he says,--"it rests with you to appoint the day." I suppose
Sophia is drawn from life as well as Amelia; and many a young fellow, no
better than Mr. Thomas Jones, has carried by a _coup de main_ the heart of
many a kind girl who was a great deal too good for him.

What a wonderful art! What an admirable gift of nature, was it by which
the author of these tales was endowed, and which enabled him to fix our
interest, to waken our sympathy, to seize upon our credulity, so that we
believe in his people--speculate gravely upon their faults or their
excellences, prefer this one or that, deplore Jones's fondness for drink
and play, Booth's fondness for play and drink, and the unfortunate
position of the wives of both gentlemen--love and admire those ladies with
all our hearts, and talk about them as faithfully as if we had breakfasted
with them this morning in their actual drawing-rooms, or should meet them
this afternoon in the Park! What a genius! what a vigour! what a
bright-eyed intelligence and observation! what a wholesome hatred for
meanness and knavery! what a vast sympathy! what a cheerfulness! what a
manly relish of life! what a love of human kind! what a poet is
here!--watching, meditating, brooding, creating! What multitudes of truths
has that man left behind him! What generations he has taught to laugh
wisely and fairly! What scholars he has formed and accustomed to the
exercise of thoughtful humour and the manly play of wit! What a courage he
had!(158) What a dauntless and constant cheerfulness of intellect, that
burned bright and steady through all the storms of his life, and never
deserted its last wreck! It is wonderful to think of the pains and misery
which the man suffered; the pressure of want, illness, remorse which he
endured; and that the writer was neither malignant nor melancholy, his
view of truth never warped, and his generous human kindness never
surrendered.(159)

In the quarrel mentioned before, which happened on Fielding's last voyage
to Lisbon, and when the stout captain of the ship fell down on his knees
and asked the sick man's pardon--"I did not suffer," Fielding says, in his
hearty, manly way, his eyes lighting up as it were with their old fire--"I
did not suffer a brave man and an old man to remain a moment in that
posture, but immediately forgave him." Indeed, I think, with his noble
spirit and unconquerable generosity, Fielding reminds one of those brave
men of whom one reads in stories o