ABSTRACT
T. Ristram Shandy makes great use of visual effects, both actual and implied. From this one might deduce that the contemporary reader might have been more responsive to A Sentimental Journey. One might think of Tristram Shandy as evidence of an age when anything is acceptable. But whilst there was an audience apparently prepared to read the great variety of works of prose fiction without remark on the fact that each was sui generis. At the same time there was developing a strong movement, mainly among critics but also including a few of the readers and writers, which felt that it was necessary to impose order on the chaos. Walpole was one of the few readers and critics in the first sixty years of the century who did perceive that there were a small number of recurrent elements in contemporary prose fiction. Steele proposed marriage or elevation to a throne as terminal actions: Robert Bage perceived marriage or death similarly.
