[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 many people if they were thus singly yoked to history.  It was once fashionable to dismiss Peter as a boy’s book, because it discovers a world of flying men and women, modelled partly on Defoe, partly on Swift; it has more recently been fashionable to hint a sneer at it as “sentimental” because of its presentment of a sort of fantastic and unconventional Amelia (who, it may be remembered, made her appearance in the same year) in the heroine Youwarkee.  Persons who do not care for fashion will perhaps sometimes agree that, though not exactly a masterpiece, it is rather a charming book.  If anybody is sickened by its charm he may restore himself by a still better known story which no one can accuse of charm or sentiment, though it is clever enough—­Charles Johnstone’s Chrysal or The Adventures of a Guinea (1760).  This, which is strongly Smollettian in more ways than one, derives its chief notoriety from the way in which the scandalous (and perhaps partly fabulous) orgies of Medmenham Abbey are, like other scandalous and partly fabulous gossip of the time, brought in.  But it is clever; though emphatically one of the books which “leave a bad taste in the mouth.”  Indeed about this time the novel, which even in clean hands allowed itself not a little freedom, took, in others, excursions in the direction of the province of “prohibited literature,” and sometimes passed the border.