German, Polish, Dutch, and Spanish. Russia and Sweden have also their versions. The first French translation, or rather abridgment, by M. de La Place was prohibited in France (to Richardson’s delight) by royal decree, an act which affords another instance, in Scott’s words, of that “French delicacy, which, on so many occasions, has strained at a gnat, and swallowed a camel” (e.g. the novels of M. Crebillon fils). La Place’s edition (1750) was gracefully illustrated with sixteen plates by Hubert Bourguignon, called Gravelot, one of those eighteenth-century illustrators whose designs at present are the rage in Paris. In England, Fielding’s best-known pictorial interpreters are Rowlandson and Cruikshank, the latter being by far the more sympathetic. Stothard also prepared some designs for Harrison’s Novelists Magazine; but his refined and effeminate pencil was scarcely strong enough for the task. Hogarth alone could have been the ideal illustrator of Henry Fielding; that is to say—if, in lieu of the rude designs he made for Tristram Shandy, he could have been induced to undertake the work in the larger fashion of the Rake’s Progress, or The Marriage a la Mode.
As might perhaps be anticipated, Tom Jones attracted the dramatist. [Footnote: It may be added that it also attracted the plagiarist. As Pamela had its sequel in Pamela’s Conduct in High Life, 1741, so Tom Jones was continued in The History of Tom Jones the Foundling, in his Married State, a second edition of which was issued in 1750. The Preface announces, needlessly enough, that “Henry Fielding, Esq., is not the Author of this Book.” It deserves no serious consideration.] In 1765, one J. H. Steffens made a comedy of it for the German boards; and in 1785, a M. Desforges based upon it another, called Tom
