Fielding has as
much human science; has a far firmer hold upon the tiller of
his story; has a keen sense of character, which he draws (and
Scott often does so too) in a rather abstract and academical
manner; and finally, is quite as humorous and quite as good-
humoured as the great Scotchman. With all these points of
resemblance between the men, it is astonishing that their
work should be so different. The fact is, that the English
novel was looking one way and seeking one set of effects in
the hands of Fielding; and in the hands of Scott it was
looking eagerly in all ways and searching for all the effects
that by any possibility it could utilise. The difference
between these two men marks a great enfranchisement. With
Scott the Romantic movement, the movement of an extended
curiosity and an enfranchised imagination, has begun. This
is a trite thing to say; but trite things are often very
indefinitely comprehended: and this enfranchisement, in as
far as it regards the technical change that came over modern
prose romance, has never perhaps been explained with any
clearness.
To do so, it will be necessary roughly to compare the two
sets of conventions upon which plays and romances are
respectively based. The purposes of these two arts are so
much alike, and they deal so much with the same passions and
interests, that we are apt to forget the fundamental
opposition of their methods.
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