over the various claims of a meeting at the Mermaid with Shakespeare and Jonson, a 'neat repast of Attic taste' with Milton, a gossip at Button's with Addison and Steele, a club-dinner with Johnson and Burke, a supper with Lamb, or (certainly the least attractive) an evening at Holland House, I sometimes fancy that, after all, few things would be pleasanter than a pipe and a bowl of punch with Fielding and Hogarth. It is true that for such a purpose I provide myself in imagination with a new set of sturdy nerves, and with a digestion such as that which was once equal to the horrors of an undergraduates' 'wine party.' But, having made that trifling assumption, I fancy that there would be few places where one would hear more good motherwit, shrewder judgments of men and things, or a sounder appreciation of those homely elements of which human life is in fact chiefly composed. Common-sense in the highest degree--whether we choose to identify it or contrast it with genius--is at least one of the most enduring and valuable of qualities in literature as everywhere else; and Fielding is one of its best representatives. But perhaps one is unduly biassed by the charm of a complete escape in imagination from the thousand and one affectations which have grown up since Fielding died and we have all become so much wiser and more learned than all previous generations. FOOTNOTES: [7] Richardson wrote the first part of 'Pamela' between November 10, 1739, and January 10, 1740. 'Joseph Andrews' appeared in 1742. The first four volumes of 'Clarissa Harlowe' and 'Roderick Random' appeared in the beginning of 1748; 'Tom Jones' in 1749. [8] See some appreciative remarks upon this in Scott's preface to the _Monastery_. [9] It is rather curious that Richardson uses the same comparison to Miss Fielding. He assures her that her brother only knew the outside of a clock, whilst she knew all the finer springs and movements of its inside. See _Richardson's Correspondence_, ii. 105. [10] Fielding blundered rather strangely in the celebrated Betsy Canning case, as Balzac did in the 'Affaire Peytel'; but the story is too long for repetition in this place. The trials of Miss Canning and her supposed kidnappers are amongst the most amusing in the great collection of State Trials. See vol. xix. of the 8vo edition. Fielding's defence of his own conduct in the matter is reprinted in his 'Miscellanies and Poems,' being the supplementary volume of the last collected edition of his works. [11] They were really the property not of Fielding but of the once famous '_beau_ Fielding.' See _Dictionary of National Biography_. [12] See _Tom Jones_, book xiv. chap. i. [13] See _Voyage to Lisbon_ (July 21) for some very good remarks upon this word, which, as he says, no two men understand in the same sense.