Page:Moral Obligation to be Intelligent.djvu/157

 is a lucky juxtaposition of events to help out the character, which suggests the fairy godmother rather than the observer of this world. No ill effects result from bad choices, and good fortune is not the result of wisdom in the characters, but of benevolence in the author. Fielding has had his reputation from his hearty interest in life and his advance in verisimilitude over his predecessors. Looking back now, however, we see that his interest in life was neither wide nor deep, and that he had no use for the conception of the world as a sequence of inexorable justice; he preferred to think of it as a career where manliness was a sufficient talisman—where the effects of conduct suspended themselves for a possibly erring heart, so long as it was stout.

To make a similar criticism of Dickens requires some resolution, for he enlists our loyalty as Fielding never does.