centred in the heroine that, even if the plot were inadequate, the story would retain its unity. But in "Tom Jones" there is neither a dominating personality nor a central figure. Yet the plot holds the story together. Its plan is deliberately laid, closely followed, and leads up to a definite conclusion. The mystery of the foundling's birth, suggested in the title, is the pivot of the whole, and the discovery of his parentage not only unmasks the villainy of Blifil, but removes the last obstacle to the union of Tom Jones and Sophia Western. It is, however, exaggerated praise to claim perfection for the construction. Here, as in Amelia," episodical narratives, not entirely irrelevant to the theme, but told at disproportionate length, interrupt the progress of the story. No lover of Fielding would willingly lose the "initial essays "; but it is difficult on any artistic grounds to defend their occurrence. Nor is the conduct of the story flawless. But whatever may be the minor faults in the construction of "Tom Jones," its ordered march of concerted events towards a preconceived end was an advance on the form of " Don Quixote," and a new departure, except for the example of Richardson, in English prose fiction.

Fielding brought to bear on his work other gifts besides the power of constructing a plot. His humour is abundant; his satire and irony, gay as well as grave, are pervasive. Pathos, as scenes in "Amelia " show, is at his command. But he does not, like Richardson, luxuriate in emotion. Never whining himself, he despised whining in others. He leaves the situations to make their own appeal, and it is not the less effectively made because of its restraint and simplicity. He is the master of an admirable style, which, in its strength and suppleness, gives adequate expression to all that he desires to say. Here, at any rate, his contemporary falls far below him. Richardson writes with the fluent slip-shod ease of a letter-writer. Yet if any of his readers ask themselves whether he had any style, they must inevitably reply that he had none at all.

But of all Fielding's gifts his greatest is his power of creating characters, combined, as it is, with delight in its exercise. His joy in creation is communicated to the figures whom he creates. They act, speak, laugh, quarrel, fight, with a zest and heartiness which reflect something of his own vitality. They are alive with almost superabundant life, not merely as human beings but as

individuals. It is only in those instances where his natural ardour overcomes his impartiality that they become types. He adored benevolence; he detested hypocrisy. Where he deals with an Allworthy or a Blifil, he loses his impartiality, and compounds them so exclusively of the qualities which they represent, that each ceases to be an individual and becomes a type of his respective virtue or vice.

Fielding's portraits of women lacked Richardson's delicacy of perception. Yet if less familiar than his rival with the bypaths of the female heart, he knew at least as well its broad highways. It was Fielding, not Richardson, who discovered for English readers the romance of the married woman. Amelia, the wife who not only forgave but forgot, claims her right to a place by or above Clarissa Harlowe. His men are infinitely superior to those of Richardson. In drawing many of their characters one feature in his methods recurs so often as to be almost a principle of his art as well as of his ethics. It is the search for some vein of precious ore in the most unpromising materials. Where he finds it, he tests its genuineness with almost merciless severity. Whether in Tom Jones enough of the metal to be worthy of Sophia survives the crowning ordeal of his relations with Lady Bellaston may be doubted. Fielding evidently shared the doubt, for he adopts a clumsy expedient to rehabilitate his character. In order to show that Tom still retains some power of resisting temptation, he makes him reject the hand of a Mrs. Arabella Hunt, who for the purpose of the proposal makes her first, last, and only appearance in the story. But Parson Adams is proof against every test. The heart of gold, which Fielding found in that brawny Christian, under the shabby coat, torn cassock, rusty wig, and battered hat, beats strongly through all its trials, and triumphs serenely over the ordeals of the swill-tub and the scene in Fanny's bed-chamber.

The habitual search for ore in the midst of apparent dross restricted the range of Fielding's observation. He did not look for the refinements of human nature, listen for its aspirations, or contemplate the potentialities of its rise. Consequently, there is little that is elevating or inspiring in his characters. But, within his own allotted scope, he built on the sure foundation of insight into the essentials of human nature, and his work is as solid and substantial as on the day when it was done. His search for VOL. 243. NO. 496.

W

homely virtues, under the rough exteriors of commonplace men and sorry rascals, was much more than a literary device. Nor was it merely the instinct of a kind-hearted man. It had a deeper origin and meaning. It was a protest against the formalism of the day, an insistence on the difference between being and seeming, an assertion of his belief that what a man is is at least as important as what he does; perhaps, also, an unconscious appeal to posterity to judge him, not by his manifest faults and frailties, but by the tenor of his life as a whole.

BODIAM CASTLE

Bodiam Castle, Sussex: A Historical and Descriptive Survey by the late MARQUESS CURZON OF KEDLESTON, K.G. With Illustrations from Photographs, Drawings, Plans and Diagrams. Jonathan Cape. 1926.

IT

T is perhaps not the most unimportant proof of the late Marquis Curzon's extraordinary gifts, that amid the cares of State and the burden of a singularly varied and strenuous public life, he should have found leisure to cultivate a taste for medieval archæology, and to accomplish work of permanent value in a field usually reserved for the labours of the specialist. His timely action in rescuing Tattershall Castle from the clutches of an American vandal, who already had torn out the beautiful fireplaces for shipment across the Atlantic, will be within the recollection of many among our readers. An even greater service that he rendered to the cause of archæology was the excavation and repair of the famous Castle of Bodiam, in Sussex, which he bequeathed to the nation, "so that so rare a treasure should neither be lost to our country nor desecrated by irreverent hands." Up to the time of his death Lord Curzon was engaged in preparing a series of monographs upon this and other ancient buildings that had attracted his interest; but only in the case of Bodiam was he spared to complete his manuscript. The sumptuous volume now under review has been seen through the press by his executors, to whom the highest credit is due for the ability and faithfulness with which they have discharged their trust. The work is in all respects one of the most important of recent contributions to English medieval studies. Every page bears abiding witness alike to the literary skill and to the amazing knowledge and capacity for exact research that the author amid so many distractions brought to a task which clearly was a labour of love.

Bodiam Castle is situated on the eastern border of Sussex, upon the verdant slopes of a pleasant nook of meadow-land between the Rother and its tributary, the Kent Ditch, which as its name implies forms here the county boundary. As the crow flies it is nine miles from the ancient port of Rye, but the distance is fully fourteen miles along the winding river, which in medieval

days extended its sinuous course amid a broad and dismal marsh. The name itself bears witness to the existence of a manor here in Old English times. Who was Bode is a question that cannot be answered; but the site of his ham appears to be indicated by a moated homestead on the right bank of the Kent Ditch, north-east of Bodiam Church—“ a quadrangular plot of ground overgrown with tangled bushes and weeds, and surrounded on all sides by a stagnant and slimy moat, which is itself hidden from view by fields of hops and trees." Here also, presumably, resided the Norman lords whom William de Eu, grantee of the Rape of Hastings, placed in possession of Bodiam, and who assumed the territorial designation of de Bodeham from their new manor. From the de Bodehams it subsequently passed to the family of Wardeux; and, somewhere in the latter half of the fourteenth century, Elizabeth, heiress of the last Wardeux lord, brought the manor to her husband, Sir Edward Dalyngrigge, the builder of the castle.

Sir Edward Dalyngrigge, sprung from a good old fighting Sussex stock seated at Dalling Ridge, near East Grinstead, had served with distinction in the French wars under that silent and heavy-handed soldier of fortune, Sir Robert Knollys, whose "mitres," in the grim jest of his men, marked his cruel path of devastation over the fair fields of Brittany and Normandy.t Returning home in the reign of Richard II, Sir Edward settled down at Bodiam, taking an active part in local and national affairs; and on October 20, 1386, he received a licence to "strengthen with a wall of stone and lime, and crenellate and construct and make into a castle his manor-house of Bodyham, near the sea, in the County of Sussex, for defence of the adjacent country and resistance to our enemies." The motive prompting the grant, so clearly revealed in its language, is illustrated by the fact that nine years previously-owing to the paralytic condition of the English navy in the decadent closing days of Edward III-a French fleet, under the great Admiral Jean de Vienne, whose exploits adorn the brilliant page of Froissart, had sacked the port of Rye.

*Lord Curzon shows that the subordination of Bodiam to Hastings, evidenced in the payment of castle-guard rent to the Lord of the Hastings rape, persisted until the year 1769.

The gables of burned houses, standing forth against the skyline, were compared to mitres.