xperiences. He wove a good deal that was personal into his
novel, which, as may easily be guessed, is a satire upon Methodism, and
in which Whitefield is personally and not altogether favourably
introduced. But even on him Graves is by no means savage: while his
treatment of his hero, Geoffrey Wildgoose, a young Oxford man who,
living in retirement with his mother in the country, becomes an
evangelist, very mainly from want of some more interesting occupation,
is altogether good-humoured. Wildgoose promptly falls in love with a
fascinating damsel-errant, Julia Townsend; and the various adventures,
religious, picaresque, and amatory, are embroiled and disembroiled with
very fair skill in character and fairer still in narrative. Nor is the
Sancho-Partridge of the piece, Jerry Tugwell, a cobbler (who thinks,
though he is very fond of his somewhat masterful wife, that a little
absence from her would not be unrefreshing), by any means a failure.
Both Scott and Dickens evidently knew Graves well,[11] and knowledge of
him might with advantage be more general.

[11] Julia Mannering reminds me a little of Julia Townsend: and
if this be doubtful, the connection of Jerry's "Old madam gave
me some higry-pigry" and Cuddie's "the leddy cured me with some
hickery-pickery" is not. While, for Dickens, compare the way in
which Sam Weller's landlord in the Fleet got into trouble with
the Tinker's Tale in _Spiritual Quixote_, bk. iv. chap. ii.

The novels that have been noticed since those contrasted ones of Mrs.
Haywood's, which occupy a position by themselves, all possess a sort of
traditional fame; and cover (with the proper time allowed for the start
given by Richardson and Fielding) nearly the same period of thirty
years--in this case 1744 (_David Simple_) to 1772 (_The Spiritual
Quixote_)--which is covered by the novels of the great quartette
themselves. It would be possible to add a great many, and easy and not
disagreeable to the writer to dwell on a few. Of these few some are
perhaps necessary. Frank Coventry's _Pompey the Little_--an amusing
satirical novel with a pet dog for the title-giver and with the
promising (but as a rule ill-handled) subject of university life treated
early--appeared in 1751--the same year which saw the much higher flight
(the pun is in sense not words) of _Peter Wilkins_, by Robert Paltock of
Clement's Inn, a person of whom practically nothing else is known. It
would be lucky for