To this I shall answer: First, that it is very difficult to pursue a series of human actions and keep clear from them.

Secondly, that the vices to be found here, are rather the accidental consequences of some human frailty, or foible, than causes habitually existing in the mind.
Thirdly, that they are never set forth as the objects of ridicule, but detestation.

Fourthly, that they are never the principal figure at that time on the scene; lastly, they never produce the intended evil.
[Footnote A: Henry Fielding, dramatist, novelist, and judge, was born near Glastonbury, Somersetshire, April 22, 1707, and died at Lisbon, October 8, 1754.

Though seldom spoken of as an essayist, Fielding scattered through his novels a large number of detached or detachable discussions which are essentially essays, of which the preface to "Joseph Andrews" on the "Comic Epic in Prose," is a favorable specimen.

The novel which it introduces was begun as a parody on Richardson's "Pamela," and the preface gives Fielding's conception of this form of fiction.].