The third volume of the _Miscellanies_ is wholly occupied with the remarkable work entitled the _History of the Life of the late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great_. As in the case of the _Journey from this World to the Next_, it is not unlikely that the first germ of this may be found in the pages of the _Champion_. "Reputation"--says Fielding in one of the essays in that periodical--"often courts those most who regard her the least. Actions have sometimes been attended with Fame, which were undertaken in Defiance of it. _Jonathan Wyld_ himself had for many years no small Share of it in this Kingdom." The book now under consideration is the elaboration of the idea thus casually thrown out. Under the name of a notorious thief-taker hanged at Tyburn in 1725, Fielding has traced the Progress of a Rogue to the Gallows, showing by innumerable subtle touches that the (so-called) greatness of a villain does not very materially differ from any other kind of greatness, which is equally independent of goodness. This continually suggested affinity between the ignoble and the pseudo-noble is the text of the book. Against genuine worth (its author is careful to explain) his satire is in no wise directed. He is far from considering "_Newgate_ as no other than Human Nature with its Mask off;" but he thinks "we may be excused for suspecting, that the splendid Palaces of the Great are often no other than _Newgate_ with the Mask on." Thus _Jonathan Wild the Great_ is a prolonged satire upon the spurious eminence in which benevolence, honesty, charity, and the like have no part; or, as Fielding prefers to term it, that false or "Bombast greatness" which is so often mistaken for the "_true Sublime_ in Human Nature"--Greatness and Goodness combined. So thoroughly has he explained his intention in the Prefaces to the _Miscellanies_, and to the book itself, that it is difficult to 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