y entitled to look with unqualified disdain upon the
rough vigour of our beer-drinking, beef-eating ancestors.

We have felt, indeed, the limitations of Fielding's art more clearly
since English fiction found a new starting-point in Scott. Scott made us
sensible of many sources of interest to which Fielding was naturally
blind. He showed us especially that a human being belonged to a society
going through a long course of historical development, and renewed the
bonds with the past which had been rudely snapped in Fielding's period.
Fielding only deals, it may be roughly said, with men as members of a
little family circle, whereas Scott shows them as members of a nation
rich in old historical traditions, related to the past and the future,
and to the external nature in which it has been developed. A wider set
of forces is introduced into our conception of humanity, and the
romantic element, which Fielding ignored, comes again to life. Scott,
too, was a greater man than Fielding, of wider sympathy, loftier
character, and, not the least, with an incomparably keener ear for the
voices of the mountains, the sea, and the sky. The more Scott is
studied, the higher, I believe, the opinion that we shall form of some
of his powers. But in one respect Fielding is his superior. It is a kind
of misnomer which classifies all Scott's books as novels. They are
embodied legends and traditions, descriptions of men, and races, and
epochs of history; but many of them are novels, as it were, by accident,
and modern readers are often disappointed because the name suggests
misleading associations. They expect to sympathise with Scott's heroes,
whereas the heroes are generally dropped in from without, just to give
ostensible continuity to the narrative. The apparent accessories are
really the main substance. The Jacobites and not Waverley, the
Borderers, not Mr. Van Beest Brown, the Covenanters, not Morton or Lord
Evandale, are the real subject of Scott's best romances. Now Fielding is
really a novelist in the more natural sense. We are interested, that is,
by the main characters, though they are not always the most attractive
in themselves. We are really absorbed by the play of their passions and
the conflict of their motives, and not merely taking advantage of the
company to see the surrounding scenery or phases of social life. In this
sense Fielding's art is admirable, and surpassed that of all his English
predecessors as of most of his succ