--There never was a novel written on this plan while the
world stood.
_Captain._ Pardon me--Tom Jones.
_Author._ True, and perhaps Amelia also. Fielding had high notions of
the dignity of an art which he may be considered as having founded. He
challenges a comparison between the Novel and the Epic. Smollett, Le
Sage, and others, emancipating themselves from the strictness of the
rules he has laid down, have written rather a history of the
miscellaneous adventures which befall an individual in the course of
life, than the plot of a regular and connected epopeia, where every
step brings us a point nearer to the final catastrophe. These great
masters have been satisfied if they amused the reader upon the road;
though the conclusion only arrived because the tale must have an end--
just as the traveller alights at the inn, because it is evening.
_Captain._ A very commodious mode of travelling, for the author at
least. In short, sir, you are of opinion with Bayes--"What the devil
does the plot signify, except to bring in fine things?"
_Author._ Grant that I were so, and that I should write with sense and
spirit a few scenes unlaboured and loosely put together, but which had
sufficient interest in them to amuse in one corner the pain of body;
in another, to relieve anxiety of mind; in a third place, to unwrinkle
a brow bent with the furrows of daily toil; in another, to fill the
place of bad thoughts, or to suggest better; in yet another, to induce
an idler to study the history of his country; in all, save where the
perusal interrupted the discharge of serious duties, to furnish
harmless amusement,--might not the author of such a work, however
inartificially executed, plead for his errors and negligences the
excuse of the slave, who, about to be punished for having spread the
false report of a victory, saved himself by exclaiming--"Am I to
blame, O Athenians, who have given you one happy day?"
_Captain.
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