FIELDING, SMOLLETT, STERNE, GOLDSMITH
It was largely this exaggeration of the pathetic, and the idealizing of the chief character in order to gain an opportunity for the pathetic, that led Fielding〖H. C., xxxix, 176.〗 to begin his first novel, “Joseph Andrews,” as a parody of Richardson’s “Pamela.” Pamela had been pictured as a virtuous maid-servant, chastely resisting the approaches of her young master, and Fielding planned the story of Pamela’s brother Joseph, placed in a corresponding position toward his mistress, to ridicule the absurdities of his predecessor’s method. But he soon became interested in his hero for his own sake, and in this novel, and still more in his masterpiece, “Tom Jones,” he treated human nature with a robust frankness that earned for him the famous compliment of his disciple, Thackeray, that he was the last English novelist who dared to draw a man.
Some of Fielding and perhaps more of Defoe is to be found in the sordid tales of Tobias Smollett; and in Laurence Sterne we have the sentimental tendencies of Richardson carried to the last extreme, but mingled in extraordinary fashion with a conscious humor that doubles back on the sentiment, the whole related in a style of remarkable individuality and brilliant wit. In the same period, Oliver Goldsmith produced his one novel, “The Vicar of Wakefield,” a delicately drawn picture of a phase of contemporary society enriched with a group of characters, broadly typical, but delineated with an abundance of tender sympathy and gentle humor.