he had gone to recruit his broken health. I think of him with a feeling of deep pity, and with sorrow not unmingled with gratitude.
Fielding's History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, was first published in 1749. It has survived its probation of a century, and will, I think, continue to live. That it is a great, a very great work who can deny? First of all novels in artistic execution; second only to Don Quixote in freshness and vigour. But there our admiration pauses. We admit the charm of the captivating page, the ceaseless interest with which, once and again, through long sunny hours of summer, under the shade of venerable trees or overlooking clear waters, we read it, and are lost to all else but its perusal: if, however, we look for anything more than mere amusement, we find it wanting. Nor (and herein lies a graver and more positive charge, sin of commission as well as omission, for which alone Fielding is cited to our bar)—is even the amusement which we obtain wholly harmless. Tom Jones, even if scarcely deserving Colonel Newcomers severe invective, passes through scenes which, to say the least, are very unsuited to modern taste, and expressions are used which could not now be read aloud. The readers of Tom Jones, and, of Fielding's other novels, must indeed, in any case, be confined to the male sex.
Concerning Smollett our feeling is very different. For Humphrey Clinker we might, indeed, pardon him; but in Peregrine Pickle his obscenity is wholly inexcusable. Surely the full extent of depravation in this book is unknown, or it would not take a place in so many libraries. What a hero for a novel is Peregrine! Is he brave, noble, just in any particular throughout the book? Is he not debased, selfish, sensual in every incident in which he takes a part? The same is the case, though in a less virulent degree, in Roderick Random, In the whole range of literature, I know of no two books more pernicious than these, from the attraction which
