Novel and Romance. The possibilities of the Crusoe and Gulliver kind of story are rather limited. The entire interest is centred in the action; incident, adventure, is all-important; character-drawing is not even attempted, and every figure in both stories appeals to us not at all for what he is, but solely for what he does. Richardson discovered the much larger field, the novel of character. Between these two types a line is usually drawn by designating Defoe's the romance, and Richardson's the novel. To set forth fully the distinctive features of each would require more space than would be appropriate here. We will, therefore, content ourselves with Professor Cross's brief definitions: "That prose-fiction which deals realistically with actual life is called preeminently the novel. That prose-fiction which deals with life in a false or fantastic manner, or represents it in the setting of strange, improbable, or impossible adventures, or idealizes the virtues and the vices of human nature, is called romance." 1 Richardson's Works. Richardson was a London printer who got into literature quite by accident. Early in life he had been employed by some unlettered young women to write love-letters for them; and when later in life a publishing firm discovered his gift, they suggested that he write a volume of letters to serve as models for the uneducated. The idea came to Richardson that the letters would gain in interest if connected by a thread of story; and acting on this 1 The Development of the English Novel, page xv. sal La th real to FIELDING. dealing with the shady side of "Tom Jones:" Plot and Method. Coleridge once said that the three greatest plots he knew were Eschylus's Edipus Tyrannus, Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, and Fielding's Tom Jones. Great as is Tom Jones on the side of plot, a fact which cannot be adequately set forth in small space, it is even more remarkable considered from other points of view. To each "book," or main division of the novel, there is an introductory chapter, which is, in Thackeray's words, "a sort of confidential talk between writer and reader." Here Fielding discusses in the first person and at considerable length his methods and aims, a procedure followed with great success regularly by his pro Influ respect faithfu varr.is ether in the of To been Fieldin podes would to the Smc said. and F each 0 are tol in Sm Peregr Dew in years scenes sea, al anoth terizat famili Dicke |