For as his greatest follower has it somewhere, though not of him, "You cannot beat the best, you know." One point only remains, the handling of which may complete a treatment which is designedly kept down in detail.

It has been hinted at already, perhaps more than once, but has not been brought out.

This is the enormous range of suggestion in Fielding--the innumerable doors which stand open in his ample room, and lead from it to other chambers and corridors of the endless palace of Novel-Romance.

This had most emphatically not been the case with his predecessor: for Richardson, except in point of mere length, showed little power of expatiation, kept himself very much to the same ground and round, and was not likely to teach anybody else to make excursions.

Indeed Fielding's breaking away in _Joseph Andrews_ is an allegory in itself.