In that novel, as well as in its successors, _Tom Jones_ and _Amelia_, Fielding has given us rare pictures of English life, and satires upon English institutions, which present the social history of England a century ago: in this view our sympathies are not lost upon purely ideal creations.
In him, too, the French _illuminati_ claimed a co-laborer; and their influence is more distinctly seen than in Richardson's works: great social problems are discussed almost in the manner of a Greek chorus; mechanical forms of religion are denounced. The French philosophers attacked errors so intertwined with truth, that the violent stabs at the former have cut the latter almost to death; Richardson attacked the errors without injuring the truth: he is the champion of purity. If _Joseph Andrews_ was to rival _Pamela_ in chastity, _Tom Jones_ was to be contrasted with both in the same particular.
TOM JONES.--Fielding has received the highest commendations from literary men. Byron calls him the "prose Homer of human nature;" and Gibbon, in noticing that the Lords of Denbigh were descended, like Charles V., from Rudolph of Hapsburg, says: "The successors of Charles V. may despise their brethren of England, but the romance of _Tom Jones_--that exquisite picture of human manners--will outlive the Palace of the Escurial and the Imperial Eagle of Austria." We cannot go so far; we quote the praise but doubt the prophecy. The work is historically valuable, but technically imperfect and unequal. The plot is rambling, without method: most of the scenes lie in the country or in obscure English towns; the meetings are as theatrical as stage encounters; the episodes are awkwardly introduced, and disfigure the unity; the classical introductions and invocations are absurd. His heroes are men of generous impulses but dissolute lives, and his women are either vile, or the puppets of circumstance.
ITS TRUE VALUE.--What can redeem his works from such a category of condemnation? Their rare portraiture of character and their real glimpses of nature: they form an album of photographs of life as it was--odd, grotesque, but true. They have no mysterious Gothic castles like that of Otranto, nor enchanted forests like that of Mrs. Radcliffe. They present homely English life and people,--_Partridge_, barber, schoolmaster, and coward; _Mrs. Honor_, the type of maid-servants, devoted to her mistress, and yet artful; _Squire Western_, the foul and drunken country gentleman; _Squire Allworthy_, a noble specimen of human nature; _Parson Adams_, who is regarded by the critics as the best portrait among all his characters.