comprehend how Scott could fail to see his drift. Possibly, like some others, he found the subject repugnant and painful to his kindly nature. Possibly, too, he did not, for this reason, study the book very carefully, for, with the episode of Heartfree under one’s eyes, it is not strictly accurate to say (as he does) that it presents “a picture of complete vice, unrelieved by any thing of human feeling, and never by any accident even deviating into virtue.” If the author’s introduction be borne in mind, and if the book be read steadily in the light there supplied, no one can refrain from admiring the extraordinary skill and concentration with which the plan is pursued, and the adroitness with which, at every turn, the villainy of Wild is approximated to that of those securer and more illustrious criminals with whom he is so seldom confused. And Fielding has never carried one of his chief and characteristic excellences to so great perfection: the book is a model of sustained and sleepless irony. To make any extracts from it—still less to make any extracts which should do justice to it, is almost impracticable; but the edifying discourse between Wild and Count La Ruse in Book i., and the pure comedy of that in Book iv. with the Ordinary of Newgate (who objects to wine, but drinks punch because “it is no where spoken against in Scripture”), as well as the account of the prison faction between Wild and Johnson, [Footnote: Some critics at this point appear to have identified Johnson and Wild with Lord Wilmington and Sir Robert Walpole (who resigned in 1742), while Mr. Keightley suspects that Wild throughout typifies Walpole. But the advertisement “from the Publisher” to the edition of 1754 disclaims any such “personal Application.” “The Truth is (he says), as a very corrupt State of Morals is here represented, the Scene seems very properly to have been laid in
