some eyes it
underlies them most when it is most ambitious, as in the Le Fevre story
and the diatribe against critics. It leaves the court with all manner of
stains on its character. Only, once more, if it did not exist we should
be ignorant of more than one of the most remarkable possibilities of the
English language.

Thus, in almost exactly the course of a technical generation--from the
appearance of _Pamela_ in 1740 to that of _Humphry Clinker_ in 1771--the
wain of the novel was solidly built, furnished with four main wheels to
move it, and set a-going to travel through the centuries. In a sense,
inasmuch as _Humphry Clinker_ itself, though Smollett's best work, can
hardly be said to show any absolutely new faculties, character, or
method, the process was even accomplished in two-thirds of the time,
between _Pamela_ and _Tristram Shandy_. We shall see in the next chapter
how eagerly the examples were taken up: and how, long before Smollett
died, the novel of this and that kind had become one of the most
prolific branches of literature. But, for the moment, the important
thing is to repeat that it had been thoroughly and finally started on
its high road, in general by Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett; in
particular and wayward but promising side-paths by Sterne.

CHAPTER IV

THE MINOR AND LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL[7]

[7] A little of the work to be noticed in this chapter is not
strictly eighteenth century, but belongs to the first decade or
so of the nineteenth. But the majority of the contents actually
conform to the title, and there is hardly any more convenient or
generally applicable heading for the novel before Miss Austen
and Scott, excluding the great names dealt with in the last
chapter.

It is at last beginning to be recognised in principle, though it is
still much too often forgotten in practice, that the minor work of a
time is at least as important as the major in determining general
literary characteristics and tendencies. Nor is this anywhere much more
noticeable than in regard to the present period of our present subject.
The direct influence of Richardson and Fielding was no doubt very great:
but the development of the novel during the middle and later century was
too large and too various to be all mere imitation. As a result,
however, of their influence, there certainly came over the whole kind a
very remarkable change. Even before them the _nisus_ t