By Leslie Stephen New Edition, with Additions In Four Volumes G. P. Putnam's Sons HOURS IN A LIBRARY Fielding's Novels A DOUBLE parallel has often been pointed out between the two pairs of novelists who were most popular in the middle of our own and of the preceding century. The intellectual affinity which made Smollett the favourite author of Dickens is scarcely so close as that which commended Fielding to Thackeray. The resemblance between Pickwick and Humphrey Clinker, or between David Copperfield and Roderick Random, consists chiefly in the exuberance of animal spirits, the keen eye for external oddity, the consequent tendency to substitute caricature for portrait, and the vivid transformation of autobiography into ostensible fiction, which are characteristic of both authors. Between Fielding and Thackeray the resemblance is closer. The peculiar VOL. III.-I. I |