while Tom Jones is, to the full, as amusing as Don Quixote, it has the advantage of a greatly superior plan, and an interest more skilfully sustained. The incidents which, in Cervantes, simply succeed each other like the scenes in a panorama, are, in Tom Jones, but parts of an organised and carefully-arranged progression towards a foreseen conclusion. As the hero and heroine cross and re-cross each other’s track, there is scarcely an episode which does not aid in the moving forward of the story. Little details rise lightly and naturally to the surface of the narrative, not more noticeable at first than the most everyday occurrences, and a few pages farther on become of the greatest importance. The hero makes a mock proposal of marriage to Lady Bellaston. It scarcely detains attention, so natural an expedient does it appear, and behold in a chapter or two it has become a terrible weapon in the hands of the injured Sophia! Again, when the secret of Jones’ birth [Footnote: Much ink has been shed respecting Fielding’s reason for making his hero illegitimate. But may not “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling,” have had no subtler origin than the recent establishment of the Foundling Hospital, of which Fielding had written in the Champion, and in which his friend Hogarth was interested?] is finally disclosed, we look back and discover a hundred little premonitions which escaped us at first, but which, read by the light of our latest knowledge, assume a fresh significance. At the same time, it must be admitted that the over-quoted and somewhat antiquated dictum of Coleridge, by which Tom Jones is grouped with the Alchemist and OEdipus Tyrannus, as one of the three most perfect plots in the world, requires revision. It is impossible to apply the term “perfect”
