of the personages of Tom Jones.  With one possible exception they are all alive—­even more so than those of Joseph Andrews and with a less peculiar and limited liveliness than those of Jonathan Wild.  But it certainly is curious that as the one good man of Jonathan, Heartfree, is the least alive of its personages, so the one bad man of Tom, Blifil, occupies the same position.

The result of this variety and abundance of life is an even more than corresponding opportunity for enjoyment.  This enjoyment may arise in different persons from different sources.  The much praised and seldom cavilled at unity and completeness of the story may appeal to some.  There are others who are inclined towards elaborate plots as Sam Weller was to the “‘rig’nal” of his subpoena.  It was a “gratifyin’ sort o’ thing, and eased his mind” to be aware of its existence, and that was all.  These latter find their sources of enjoyment elsewhere, but everywhere else.  The abundance and the vividness of character-presentation; the liveliness and the abundance of the staging of that character; the variety of scene and incident—­all most properly connected with the plot, but capable of existing and of being felt without it; the human dialogue; the admirable phrase in that dialogue and out of it, in the digressions, in the narrative, above, and through, and about, and below it all—­these things and others (for it is practically impossible to exhaust the catalogue) fill up the cup to the brim, and keep it full, for the born lover of the special novel-pleasure.

In one point only was Fielding a little unfortunate perhaps:  and even here the “perhaps” has to be underlined.  He came just before the end of a series of almost imperceptible changes in ordinary English speech which brought about something like a stationary state.  His maligner and only slightly younger contemporary, Horace Walpole, in some of his letters, writes in a fashion which, putting mere slang aside, has hardly any difference from that of to-day.  Fielding still uses “hath” for “has” and a few other things which seem archaic, not to students of literature but to the general.  In the same way dress, manners, etc., though much more picturesque, were by that fact distinguished from those of almost the whole nineteenth century and the twentieth as far as it has gone:  while incidents were, even in ordinary life, still usual which have long ceased to be so.  In this way the immense advance—­greater than was made by any one else till Miss Austen—­that he made in the pure novel of this ordinary life may be missed.  But the intrinsic magnificence, interest, nature, abundance of Tom Jones can only be missed by those who were predestined to miss them.  It is tempting—­but the temptation must be resisted—­to enliven these pages with an abstract of its astonishing “biograph-panorama.”  But nothing save itself can do it justice.  “Take and read” is the only wise advice.