These passages do not perhaps exhibit the by-work and the process in the conspicuous skeleton-clock fashion which their critics admire and desire, but they contain an amount of acute and profound exploration of human nature which it would be difficult to match and impossible to surpass elsewhere: while the results of Fielding's working, of his "toylike" scheme, are remarkable toys indeed--toys which, if we regard them as such, must surely strike us as rather uncanny.

One is sometimes constrained to think that it is perhaps not much more difficult to make than to recognise a thoroughly live character.

It certainly must be very difficult to do the latter if there is any considerable number of persons who are unable to do it in the case of almost every one of the personages of _Tom Jones_.

With one possible exception they are all alive--even more so than those of _Joseph Andrews_ and with a less peculiar and limited liveliness than those of _Jonathan Wild_.

But it certainly is curious that as the one good man of _Jonathan_, Heartfree, is the least alive of its personages, so the one bad man of _Tom_, Blifil, occupies the same position.
The result of this variety and abundance of life is an even more than corresponding opportunity for enjoyment.