incidents should be repeated with impunity which the existence of a police force would seem to make impossible.  But the reader whose sense of probability is shocked by the unpunished and uninterrupted villanies of Mr. B. and of Lovelace, can find evidence of the security with which such crimes could be committed by the rich and influential in the Newgate calendar.  The forcible detention in his own house, by Lord Baltimore, of a young girl, his atrocious treatment of her, and his escape from punishment, are incidents in real life not more remarkable than the fictions of the novelist.

Sir Walter Scott lamented, early in the present century, the neglect into which the works of Richardson had fallen.  That neglect has not since been diminished, for obvious reasons.  “Surely, sir,” said Erskine to Johnson, “Richardson is very tedious.”  “Why, sir,” was the lexicographer’s reply, “if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself, but you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment.”  But the reader of today will agree with Erskine in thinking that Richardson is tedious.  We have so many good novels which do not require the attention and labor exacted by him.  We live so fast that we cannot spare the time for so much sentiment.  These novels, like the elaborate embroideries of the last century, belong to a period when life was less full, and books less abundant.  Samuel Richardson will take his place among the great authors who are much admired and little read, whose works every educated person should have heard of, but upon which very few would like to be examined.

With Richardson’s novels English fiction took a long step forward; but it made a still greater advance in the hands of Henry Fielding.  The latter was peculiarly well fitted by his talents and experience to carry the novel to a high position of importance and artistic merit.  He united a considerable dramatic, and a great narrative power with an exuberant wit and an extensive knowledge of men.  Allied to a noble family, but oppressed by poverty, Fielding mingled during his life with all classes of society.  The Hon. George Lyttleton was his friend and protector, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was his cousin.  On the other hand, his poverty and improvidence constantly kept him, as Lady Mary put it, “raking in the lowest rinks of vice and misery.”  Richardson, who always denounced Fielding’s works as “wretchedly low and dirty,” said sneeringly:  “his brawls, his jars, his jails, his spunging-houses are all drawn from what he has seen and known.”  But in this ungenerous sneer lay a substantial compliment.  Fielding did describe what he had seen and known, and the variety of his experience gave him a breadth and power in describing human nature which the confined life of Richardson could not afford.  The two novelists cannot be fairly compared, nor should they be considered as rivals.  They pursued different methods, and aimed at opposite effects.  Each has a high place in English literature, which the greatness of the other cannot depress.  Richardson is best able to make his reader weep, and Fielding to make him laugh.