Well! in a way no doubt they are right; and one may imitate the wisdom of Mr. Jones on the original occasion in not saying much more to them.  To others, of course, this is the very miracle of art—­a miracle, as far as the art of prose fiction is concerned, achieved in its fullness for practically the first time.  This is the true mimesis—­the re-creation or fresh creation of fictitious reality.  There were in Fielding’s time, and probably ever since have been, those who thought him “low;” there were, even in his own time, and have been in varying, but on the whole rather increased, degree since, those who thought him immoral:  there appear to be some who think (or would like it to be thought that they think) him commonplace and obvious.  Now, as it happens, all these charges have been brought against Nature too.  To embellish, and correct, and heighten, and extra-decorate her was not Fielding’s way:  but to follow, and to interpret, and to take up her own processes with results uncommonly like her own.  That is his immense glory to all those who can realise and understand it:  and as for the others we must let them alone, joined to their own idols.

In passing to the third of this great quartette, we make a little descent, but not much of one, while the new peak to which we come is well defined and separated, with characters and outlines all its own.  It may be doubted whether any competent critic not, like Scott, bribed by compatriotism, ever put Smollett above Fielding, or even on a level with him.  Thackeray, in one of the most inspired moments of his rather irregularly-inspired criticism, remarks, “I fancy he did not invent much,” and this of itself would refer him to a lower class.  The writer of fiction is not to refuse suggestion from his experience; on the contrary, he will do so at his peril, and will hardly by any possibility escape shipwreck unless his line is the purely fantastic.  But if he relies solely, or too much, on such experience, though he may be quite successful, his success will be subject to discount, bound to pay royalty to experience itself.  It is pretty certain that most of Smollett’s most successful things, from Roderick Random to Humphry Clinker, and in those two capital books, perhaps, most of all, kept very close to actual experience, and sometimes merely reported it.

This, however, is only a comparative drawback; it is in a sense a positive merit; and it is connected, in a very intimate way, with the general character of Smollett’s novel-method.  This is, to a great extent, a reaction or relapse towards the picaresque style.  Smollett may have translated both Cervantes and Le Sage; he certainly translated the latter:  and it was Le Sage who in any case had the greatest influence over him.  Now the picaresque method is not exactly untrue to ordinary life:  on the contrary, as we have seen, it was a powerful schoolmaster to bring the novel thereto.  But it subjects the scenes of ordinary life to a peculiar process of sifting:  and when it has got what it wants, it proceeds to heighten them and “touch them up” in its own peculiar manner of decoration.  This is Smollett’s method throughout, even in that singular pastiche of Don Quixote itself, Sir Launcelot Greaves, which certainly was not his happiest conception, but which has had rather hard measure.