Fielding's Journal Had Perhaps
The Least Immediate Success Of The Four.
Sterne's Journey
unquestionably had the most.
The tenant of "Shandy Hall," as was
customary in the first heyday of "Anglomania," went to Paris to
ratify his successes, and the resounding triumph of his
naughtiness there, by a reflex action, secured the vote of
London. Posterity has fully sanctioned this particular "judicium
Paridis." The Sentimental Journey is a book sui generis, and in
the reliable kind of popularity, which takes concrete form in
successive reprints, it has far eclipsed its eighteenth-century
rivals. The fine literary aroma which pervades every line of this
small masterpiece is not the predominant characteristic of the
Great Cham's Journey. Nevertheless, and in spite of the malignity
of the "Ossianite" press, it fully justified the assumption of
the booksellers that it would prove a "sound" book. It is full
of sensible observations, and is written in Johnson's most
scholarly, balanced, and dignified style. Few can read it without
a sense of being repaid, if only by the portentous sentence in
which the author celebrates his arrival at the shores of Loch
Ness, where he reposes upon "a bank such as a writer of romance
might have delighted to feign," and reflects that a "uniformity
of barrenness can afford very little amusement to the traveller;
that it is easy to sit at home and conceive rocks and heath and
waterfalls; and that these journeys are useless labours, which
neither impregnate the imagination nor enlarge the
understanding." Fielding's contribution to geography has far less
solidity and importance, but it discovers to not a few readers an
unfeigned charm that is not to be found in the pages of either
Sterne or Johnson.
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