English Literature boasts three comic worthies – three great creations that will live for ever. Pickwick and Falstaff are better known, but Parson Adams, who bestrides Joseph Andrews like a colossus, is of the same company, the favourite of every reader who encounters him in these picaresque pages. He lives, and so do all the rest of the wonderful characters, for seldom was a novel so rich in incident and all round excellence. Says George Saintsbury: ‘The hero and heroine are surprisingly human where most writers would have made them sticks. And the rest require no allowance. Lady Booby, few as are the strokes given to her, is not much less alive than Lady Bellaston. Mr. Trulliber, monster and not at all delicate monster as he is, is also a man, and when he lays it down that no one even in his own house shall drink when he ‘Caaled Vurst, ‘ one can but pay his maker the tribute of that silent shudder of admiration which hails the addition of one more everlasting entity to the world of thought and fancy. And Mr. Tow-wouse is real and Mrs Tow-wouse is more real still, and Betty is real and the coachman, and Miss Grave-airs and all the wonderful crew from first to last.’
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