But they might be avoided and the merits kept: nor is it too much to say that the triumphs of the English novel in the last century have been not a little due to the avoidance of the one and the keeping of the other.
It would be, in the circumstances, peculiarly uncivil and disobliging to lay very much stress on the fact that, after all, the greatest of Richardson's works is his successor, caricaturist, and superior--Fielding.

When the memoirs of Miss Pamela Andrews appeared, the future biographer of her doubly supposititious brother was a not very young man of thirty-three, who had written a good many not very good plays, had contributed to periodicals, and had done a little work at the Bar, besides living, at least till his marriage and it may be feared later, an exceedingly "rackety" life.

It is not improbable, though it is not certain, that he had already turned his attention to prose fiction of a kind.

For, though the _Miscellanies_ which followed _Joseph Andrews_ were three years later than _Pamela_ in appearance, the _Journey from this World to the Next_ which they contain has the immaturity of earliness; and we can hardly conceive it as written after the adventures and character of Mr.Abraham Adams.

It is unequal, rather tedious in parts, and in conception merely a _pastiche_ of Lucian and Fontenelle: but it contains some remarkable things in the way of shrewd satirical observation of human nature.