Discarding prejudice and punctilio, every one must surely see that, in diminishing measure, even _The Holy War_ is a novel, and that _The Pilgrim's Progress_ has every one of the four requisites--plot, character, description, and dialogue--while one of these requisites--character with its accessory manners--is further developed in the _History of Mr.
Badman_ after a fashion for which we shall look vainly in any division of European literature (except drama) before it.

This latter fact has indeed obtained a fair amount of recognition since Mr.Froude drew the attention of the general reader to it in his book on Bunyan, in the "English Men of Letters" series, five-and-twenty years ago: but it must have struck careful readers of the great tinker's minor works long before.

Indeed there are very good internal reasons for thinking that no less a person than Thackeray must have known _Mr.Badman_.

This wonderful little sketch, however--the related history of a man who is an utter rascal both in family and commercial relations, but preserves his reputation intact and does not even experience any deathbed repentance--is rather an unconscious study for a character in a novel--a sketch of a _bourgeois_ Barnes Newcome--than anything more.

It has the old drawback of being narrated, not acted or spoken at first hand: and so, though it is in a sense Fielding at nearly his best, more than half a century before Fielding attempted _Joseph Andrews_, no more need be said of it.