noses, if I may say so, in all her
agony, and squeezing the last drop of bitterness out of every incident.
I should have liked some symptom that he was anxious to turn his eyes
from the tragedy instead of giving it so minutely as to suggest that he
enjoys the spectacle. Books sometimes owe part of their success, as I
fear we must admit, to the very fact that they are in bad taste. They
attract the contemporary audience by exaggerating and over-weighting the
new vein of sentiment which they have discovered. That, in fact, seems
to be the reason why in spite of all authority, modern readers find it
difficult to read Richardson through. We know, at any rate, how it
affected one great contemporary. This incessant strain upon the moral in
question (a very questionable moral it is) struck Fielding as mawkish
and unmanly. Richardson seemed to be a narrow, straitlaced preacher, who
could look at human nature only from the conventional point of view, and
thought that because he was virtuous there should be no more cakes and
ale.

Fielding's revolt produced his great novels, and the definite creation
of an entirely new form of art which was destined to a long and
vigorous life. He claimed to be the founder of a new province in
literature, and saw with perfect clearness what was to be its nature.
The old romances which had charmed the seventeenth century were still
read occasionally: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, for example, and Dr.
Johnson had enjoyed them, and Chesterfield, at a later period, has to
point out to his son that Calprenede's _Cassandra_ has become
ridiculous. The short story, of which Mrs. Behn was the last English
writer, was more or less replaced by the little sketches in the
_Spectator_; and Defoe had shown the attractiveness of a downright
realistic narrative of a series of adventures. But whatever precedents
may be found, our unfortunate ancestors had not yet the true modern
novel. Fielding had, like other hack authors, written for the stage and
tried to carry on the Congreve tradition. But the stage had declined.
The best products, perhaps, were the _Beggar's Opera_ and
_Chrononhotonthologos_ and Fielding's own _Tom Thumb_. When Fielding
tried to make use of the taste for political lampoons, the result was
the Act of Parliament which in 1737 introduced the licensing system. The
Shakespearian drama, it is true, was coming into popularity with the
help of Fielding's great friend, Garrick; but no new Shakespeare
a