DEVELOPMENTS; SMOLLETT, STERNE AND OTHERS
The popularity of Richardson and Fielding showed itself in a hearty public welcome: and also in that sincerest form of flattery, imitation. Many authors began to write the new fiction. Where once a definite demand is recognized in literature, the supply, more or less machine-made, is sure to follow.
In the short quarter of a century between "Pamela" and "The Vicar of Wakefield," the Novel got its growth, passed out of leading strings into what may fairly be called independence and maturity: and by the time Goldsmith's charming little classic was written, the shelves were comfortably filled with novels recent or current, giving contemporary literature quite the air so familiar to-day. Only a little later, we find the Gentleman's Magazine, a trustworthy reporter of such matters, speaking of "this novel-writing age." The words were written in 1773, a generation after Richardson had begun the form. Still more striking testimony, so far back as 1755, when Richardson's maiden story was but a dozen years old, a writer in "The Connoisseur" is facetiously proposing to establish a factory for the fashioning of novels, with one, a master workman, to furnish plots and subordinates to fill in the details—an anticipation of the famous literary menage of Dumas pere.
Although there was, under these conditions, inevitable imitation of the new model, there was a deeper reason for the rapid development. The time was ripe for this kind of fiction: it was in the air, as we have already tried to suggest. Hence, other fiction-makers began to experiment with the form, this being especially true of Smollett. Out of many novelists, feeble or truly called, a few of the most important must be mentioned.