Such was Harry Fielding as the world of 1748 knew him, in the Coffee houses, the Mall, the Green-room and the Law-courts. What that world did not know was that all this dramatic, journalistic, and political action, was little more than the surface movement of a vitality far too exuberant to be contained in any one groove of hackney writing,--of an impetuous 'enthusiasm for righteousness' far too ardent to pass by any flagrant social, moral, or political abuse without inflicting some form of chastisement; and that beneath this ever active surface movement Fielding's genius was slowly maturing in that new continent of literature the borders of which he had already crossed seven years before. In the pages of _Joseph Andrews_, he had, as we know, tentatively explored that continent feeling his way along the unknown paths of this long neglected world of human nature; bringing back with him one immortal figure, that living embodiment of simple piety and scholarship, of charity and honest strength, Parson Adams; disclosing hints of discoveries, not yet perfected, among the humours and villanies, the virtues and charms, of a dozen other inhabitants of his _terra incognita_. But there is no sign that the greatness of his discovery, the splendour of his addition to the empire of English literature, was in the least apprehended during the seven years following the appearance of _Joseph Andrews_. Only Fielding himself was conscious that he had created a kind of writing "hitherto unattempted in our language." And, having crossed the borders of this new continent, he seems, after his first survey, to have deliberately immersed himself in one portion, and that the blackest, of his re-discovered world. For _Jonathan Wild_, with its disclosure of the active spirit of 'diabolism,' of naked vice, is little else than the exploration of those darkest recesses of human nature which can be safely entered only by the sanest and healthiest of intellects. Fielding's strength was equal to his exploit; and from this, his second adventure, he brought back a picture of the deformity and folly of vice, drawn with a just and penetrating scorn unequalled, perhaps, by any English moralist. But neither of these two essays in the new field of writing had covered more than isolated or outlying portions, the first in sunlight, the second in shadow, of that vast territory. And it was not till the perfect maturity of his powers and of his experience, not till he had seen both the 'manners of many men,' and the workings of many hearts, not in a word till he had made himself master of great tracts of that human nature which had so long lain neglected, that Fielding in _Tom Jones_ disclosed himself as the creator of the English novel.