He was a swinging fat fellow, and
fell with almost as much noise as a house. His tobacco-box dropt at
the same time from his pocket, which Molly took up as lawful
spoils. Then Kate of the Mill tumbled unfortunately over a
tombstone, which catching hold of her ungartered stocking, inverted
the order of nature, and gave her heels the superiority to her
head. Betty Pippin, with young Roger her lover, fell both to the
ground; where, O Perverse Fate! she salutes the earth, and he the
sky.[174]
Fielding had shown more than any predecessor the possibilities of
fiction in the study of character and the illustration of manners, and
to the art of the narrator, he had added that of the dramatist. The
falling of the rug in Molly Seagrim's bedroom[175] is one of the
happiest incidents ever devised, and no doubt suggested to Sheridan the
falling of the screen in the "School for Scandal." But the chief
distinction of Fielding lies in his having carried the novel to a high
point as a work of art. It was the opinion of Coleridge that the
"Oedipus Tyrannus," "The Alchemist," and "Tom Jones," were the three
most perfect plots ever planned.[176] It is to this excellence of
plot--the subordination of each minor circumstance to the general aim,
the skill with which all events are made to lead up to the final
denouement--that Fielding, if any one, deserves the title of the
founder of the English novel.
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