A hundred years and upwards have elapsed since Fielding and Smollett, the fathers and chiefs of the modern school of English novel-writing, fairly established their claims to the dignified eminence they have ever since continued to enjoy; and the passage of time serves but to confirm them in their merited honors. Their pictures of life and manners are no longer, it is true, so familiar as in their own days to the great mass of readers; but this is an incident that scarce any author can hope to avert. The changes of habits and customs, and the succession of writers who in their turn essay to hold the mirror up to Nature, must always produce such a result. But while the mind of man is capable of enjoying the most fortunate combinations of genius and fancy, the most faithful expositions of the springs of action, the most ludicrous and the most pathetic representations of human conduct, the writings of Fielding and Smollett will be read and their memories kept green. Undeterred by those coarsenesses of language and occasional grossnesses of detail (which were often less their own fault than that of the age) that frequently disfigure the pages of "Amelia" and "Roderick Random," men will always be found to yield their whole attention to the story, and to recognize in every line the touches of the master's hand.
Were any needed, stronger proof of the truth of this proposition could not be given than is afforded by the zeal with which the greatest novelists since their day have turned aside to contemplate and to chronicle the career of this immortal pair, whose names, notwithstanding the dissimilarity of genius and style, seem destined to be as eternally coupled together as those of the twin sons of Leda. To the rescue from oblivion of their personal histories, a host of biographers have appeared, scattered over the whole period that has elapsed since their deaths to the present time. The first life that appeared of Tobias George Smollett came from the hands of his friend and companion, the celebrated Dr. Moore, himself a novel-writer of no mean fame. To him succeeded Anderson; who in turn was followed by Sir Walter Scott, the fruits of whose unrivalled capacity for obtaining information are before the world in the form of a most delightful memoir. So that when Roscoe, at a later date, took up the same theme, he found that the investigations of his predecessors had left him little more to do than to make selections or abridgments, and to arrange what new matter he had come into possession of. One would have thought that with all these labors the public appetite should have been satisfied,--that everything apt to be heard with interest of and about Smollett had been said. So far from this being the case, however, it was but a few years ago, that, as we all recollect, the brilliant pen of Thackeray was brought to bear on the same subject, and the great humorist of this generation employed his talents worthily in illustrating the genius of a past age. "'Humphrey Clinker,'" says he, "is, I do believe, the most laughable story that has ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing began." This is strong praise, though but of a single book; yet it falls short of the general estimate that Walter Scott formed of the capacity of our author. "We readily grant to Smollett," he says, "an equal rank with his great rival, Fielding, while we place both far above any of their successors in the same line of fictitious composition."