ABSTRACT
Two authors of our nation began the fashion of novel-writing, upon different plans indeed, but each with a degree of success, which perhaps has never yet been equalled: Richardson disposed his fable into letters, and Fielding pursued the more natural mode of a continued narration, with an exception however of certain miscellaneous chapters, one of which he prefixed to each book in the nature of a prologue, in which the author speaks in person: he has executed this so pleasantly, that we are reconciled to the interruption in this instance; but I should doubt if it is a practice in which an imitator would be wise to follow him.1
