lly
inspirited by his _trouvaille_ of Adams, almost forgot the parody, and
only furbished up the _Pamela_-connection at the end to make a formal
correspondence with the beginning, and to get a convenient and
conventional "curtain." I am not so sure of this. Even Adams is to a
certain extent suggested by Williams, though they turn out such very
different persons. Mrs. Slipslop, a character, as Gray saw, not so very
far inferior to Adams, is not only a parallel to Mrs. Jewkes, but also,
and much more, a contrast to the respectable Mrs. Jervis and Mrs.
Warden. All sorts of fantastic and not-fantastic doublets may be traced
throughout: and I am not certain that Parson Trulliber's majestic
doctrine that no man, even in his own house, shall drink when he "caaled
vurst" is not a demoniacally ingenious travesty of Pamela's
characteristic casuistry, when she says that she will do anything to
propitiate Lady Davers, but she will not "fill wine" to her in her own
husband's house.

But this matters little: and we have no room for it. Suffice it as
agreed and out of controversy that _Joseph Andrews_ started as a parody
of _Pamela_ and that, whether in addition or in substitution, it turned
to something very different. It is not quite so uncontroversial, but
will be asserted here as capable of all but demonstration, that the
"something different" is also something much greater. There is still not
very much plot--the parody did not necessitate and indeed rather
discouraged that, and what there is is arrived at chiefly by the old and
seldom very satisfactory system of _anagnorisis_--the long-lost-child
business. But, under the three other heads, Joseph distances his sister
hopelessly and can afford her much more than weight for sex. It has been
said that there are doubtfully in Richardson anywhere, and certainly not
in _Pamela_, those startling creations of personality which are almost
more real to us than the persons we know in the flesh. It is not that
Pamela and her meyney are _un_real; for they are not: but that they are
not personal. The Reverend Abraham Adams is a good deal more real than
half the parsons who preached last Sunday, and a good deal more
personal: and the quality is not confined to him, though he has most of
it. So, too, with the description. The time was not yet for any minute
or elaborate picture-setting. But here again also that extra dose of
life and action--almost of bustle--which Fielding knows how to instil i