the sub-title, "Virtue Rewarded." The book appeared in 1740. Its popularity encouraged Richardson to publish a sequel two years later, and two other long novels, Clarissa (1748), and Sir Charles Grandison (1753).

Clarissa."-The former is the story of a young lady, Clarissa Harlowe, who, as the result of the attempt of her family to force her into an unwelcome marriage, flees from her home. In her flight she accepts the assistance of a certain Lovelace, who has long been in love with her, and this gentlemanly reprobate virtually kidnaps her. After many attempts to escape, and much suffering, she dies, leaving her relatives to repent of their cruelty, and Lovelace to suffer the punishment of his guilty conscience.

Like Pamela, Clarissa is told by means of letters in which the different characters speak for themselves. Indeed, it is clear that Richardson thought of the novel as an elaborated drama. He calls Clarissa "a dramatic narrative"; and he does so very properly, for, as in a play, there is. in Clarissa a definite catastrophe, every step toward which is carefully prepared for by something in the environment or the characters of the actors. Richardson could not, however, forego entirely the novelist's right to personal communication with his audience. He introduced footnotes in which he enforced his own view of the story when he thought his readers likely to go astray. Especially in the long negotiation between Clarissa and Lovelace in regard to the latter's offer of marriage, the heroine needed the personal defence of the author from the charge of squeamishness. Though Richardson is not entirely successful in securing his heroine's acquittal, he has won a greater triumph in making her so real that we are willing to discuss with him the wisdom of her conduct, and pity her mistakes. Impatient as we may be of her uncertainties, scruples, and hesitations, we accept them as part of the character of a living woman-one who, in her humiliation and suffering, makes an appeal to which our human sympathy responds.

Richardson's Character.-Sir Charles Grandison is the story of the hero's love affair with Miss Harriet Byron, its various obstacles, and happy conclusion. In this novel

Richardson undertook to study the heart of a man with the same minute analysis that he had practised earlier in the case of his heroines, but his success is not the same. Grandison, for all the ingenuity expended upon him, remains like Lovelace, a machine. Richardson knew women better than men. As a youth he used to write love-letters for the girls of his village. As a novelist he worked in close connection with the feminine part of his audience. His circle of admirers began with his wife and a young lady visitor, who stimulated him to his task by inquiring daily, "Haven't you a little more 'Pamela,' Mr. Richardson?" It widened with his fame until it included even great ladies of fashion, who, in person or by letter, communicated with the old printer upon the progress of his tales. They petted him and flattered him until the good Richardson lost himself in the seclusion which they provided, and forgot the world of action outside. So retired did he become that at last he would communicate with the foreman of his printing-house only by letter. We think of him naturally as an indoor man, always in dressing-gown and slippers. Because of this seclusion Richardson's novels lack breadth and freshness. They deal with a small world of trifles and scruples, of feminine niceties of sentiment and deportment.

Richardson's Purpose.-Like Defoe, Richardson was of the English middle class, and wrote primarily to minister to its interest in morality and in behavior. He began his work with the humble design of teaching his readers to write, but his plan broadened until it covered the essentials of the art of living. Pamela serves as a model for servants; Clarissa is perfection in a higher sphere. Richardson's characters are all involved in intricate questions of conscience. Clarissa's course is determined after elaborate discussion of the right and wrong of each step. In Sir Charles Grandison, it is only after the hero has dealt with a succession of difficult circumstances arising from the claims upon him of his friend, his friend's children, his sister, and his ward, that he yields to his passion for Miss Byron. Richardson surely did not exaggerate when he declared the inculcation of virtue to be his first object.

IV. HENRY FIELDING (1707-1754)

Fielding's Life.-Something like disgust for Richardson's moral pretensions led Henry Fielding, the greatest of eightcenth-century novelists, to enter the field of fiction. Fielding was of higher birth than Richardson, his father being a soldier of some renown, and his grandfather the son of a peer; he had, too, a far wider and more varied experience of life. He was born in 1707, was educated at Eton, and afterward went to Leyden to study law. In 1727 he returned to London, where he supported himself for awhile by writing plays. He married a lady of fortune, and lived for a time as a country gentleman; but he at length exhausted his wife's money, and returned to London in poverty. Deprived of his profession of playwright by the restrictions of the licensing act of 1737, he betook himself again to the study of law, meanwhile supporting his family by miscellaneous writing. His wife died in 1743, leaving him with two children. He struggled on until life was made somewhat easier for him by his appointment as police magistrate in London, in which office he was highly efficient. In 1754, broken in health, he left England for Portugal; a journey of which he has left a pathetic account in his Voyage to Lisbon. He died the same year.

"Joseph Andrews."-While Fielding was earning his bread by various literary ventures, he was moved to write a burlesque upon Richardson's Pamela. The hero, who is described as Pamela's brother, Joseph Andrews, is, like his sister, a model of virtue, but unlike her he is turned out of doors for his pains, and left to make his way from London to his home in the country. The course of this journey brings Joseph and his companion, Parson Adams, into manifold adventures, and introduces them to men and women who, as Fielding sketches them for us, are as vivid as the figures in Hogarth's prints. Mrs. Towwouse, the innkeeper's wife, Trulliber, the hog-raising parson, and Mrs. Slipslop are drawn with a broad humor which becomes caricature, but they are essentially true to the crude life of the English country-side. In his wide vision of the world, in the fertility

with which his imagination peoples it, and in his power to individualize types of human life, often with a touch of comedy, Fielding is a realist of the company of Chaucer.

"Jonathan Wild."-Joseph Andrews appeared in 1742. Possibly before this Fielding had written the story called Jonathan Wild the Great, suggested by the life of a famous rascal whom Defoe had also celebrated. Here, also, Fielding began his work as a burlesque on other writers, in this case the biographers, who find every trait in their heroes a sign of greatness. Both these earlier stories are written loosely, with little care for construction, but in his last two novels, Tom Jones (1749), and Amelia (1751), Fielding developed genuine plots.

"Tom Jones."-Tom Jones opens with the discovery of the hero as a babe in the house of a virtuous gentleman named Mr. Allworthy. He grows up with Allworthy's nephew Blifil, who out of jealousy ruins Tom's reputation with his benefactor, and gets him turned out into the world. Meanwhile, Tom has fallen in love with the daughter of a neighbor, Sophia Western. He travels to London, meeting adventures in plenty by the way; he passes through temptations, not unscathed; and finally, by the discovery of the secret of his birth and the revelation of Blifil's villainy, he is advanced to his happy fortune, the favor of Allworthy, and marriage with Sophia.

Tom Jones may be taken as an account of Fielding's own experience, the vigorous, careless, adventurous life of a good-hearted, thoughtless youth, turned loose upon the rough life of English villages, inns, post-roads, and country houses. If we think of Richardson as always in his armchair, shod with slippers, we must fancy Fielding on horseback, in jack-boots and spurs. Richardson's scenes are usually laid within doors, and the characters are engaged in working out some complication of private life. Fielding keeps his story out of doors, and his characters in contact with the larger world. His novels thus gain in movement and freshness, in breadth and picturesqueness. Again, Richardson's characters appeal to us chiefly by virtue of their mental struggles and sufferings; Fielding's, by their external appearance

and bearing. The most fascinating element in Tom Jones is the brilliant figure of the hero as he rides across England in the days when travel was little less exciting than war.

"Amelia.”—In Fielding's last book, Amelia, we behold this brightness somewhat dimmed. Captain Booth, the hero, is Tom Jones grown older, but no wiser. Like Fielding himself, he has spent his wife's fortune, and is compelled to resort to all manner of shifts to live. His adventures lack the picturesqueness of those in Tom Jones. They are the reflection of the sordid life of poverty in London, which Fielding knew only too well. The heroine, Amelia, is the counterpart of Fielding's wife, a developed portrait for which Sophia Western was a first sketch. Her constancy and devotion save Booth from the ruin to which his light character tempts him.

Fielding's Satire.-Fielding has been taken to task for the frankness with which he portrayed man's life, both in the case of Booth and that of Tom Jones. For the honesty of his picture he is not to be blamed; but the indifference which he shows toward moral considerations, and his lack of concern for a life higher than that of worldly enjoyment, are to be regarded as serious shortcomings. But if Fielding is deficient in the spiritual virtues, he has in abundance those that belong to mere human nature. With his broad view of the world of men went an immense sympathy with them that always saves his satire from cynicism. He laughs, but his laughter is never inhuman like Swift's; and it is always ready to give place to tenderness and pity. For him the tragedy of life lay in the appearance of virtue and innocence in a world of evil, cruelty, and deception. In his presentation of this tragedy Fielding is always direct, sincere, and simple. The scene in which Amelia prepares supper for Booth, and when he does not come puts aside the wine untasted to save a sixpence, while her husband is losing guincas at the gaming-table, is more moving than are the complicated woes of Clarissa. It is this humanity, the most essential quality of the novelist, that makes Fielding's work permanently winning and powerful.