Four wheels of the English Novel
The group of the first four novelists of the Augustan Age or Neoclassical Age: Richardson, Fielding,
Smollett and Sterne in whose hands Novel blossomed, are called The Four Wheels Of The Novel.
Smollett (1721-1771) was the grandson of a judge who was a Commissioner of the Union, and a
gentleman of birth and property which last would, had he lived long enough, have come to Smollett
himself. But he suffered in his youth from some indistinctly known family jars, was apprenticed to a
Glasgow surgeon, and escaping thence to London with a tragedy in his pocket, was in undoubted
difficulties till (and after) he obtained the post of surgeon’s mate on board a man-of-war, and took part in
the Cartagena expedition. After coming home he made at least some attempts to practice: but was once
more drawn off to literature, though fortunately not to tragedy. For the rest of his life he was a hard-
worker but by no means ill-paid journalist, novelist, and miscellanist, making as much as £2000 by his
History of England, not ill-written, though now never read. Like Fielding (though, unlike him, more than
once) he went abroad in search of health and died in the quest at Leghorn. Smollett was not ignorant,
but he seems to have known modern languages better than ancient: though there is doubt about his
direct share in the translations to which he gave his name. Moreover he had some though no great skill
in verse.
Sterne, though hardly, as it is the custom to call him, “an Irishman.” Yet vindicated the claims of the third
constituent of the United Kingdom by being born in Ireland, from which country his mother came. But
the Sterns were pure English, of a gentle family which had migrated from East Anglia through
Nottingham to Yorkshire, and was much connected with Cambridge. Thither Laurence, the novelist, after
a very roving childhood (his father was a soldier), and a rather irregular education, duly went: and,
receiving preferment in the Church from his Yorkshire relations, lived for more than twenty years in that
county without a history, till he took the literary world-hardly by storm, but by a sort of fantastic capful
of wind-with Tristram Shandy in 1760. Seven or eight years of fame, some profit, not hard work (for his
books shrink into no great solid bulk), and constant travelling, ended by a sudden death at his Bond
Street lodgings, after a long course of ill-health very carelessly attended to.
All the four were married, and married pretty early; two of them married twice. Richardson’s first wife
was, in orthodox fashion, his master’s daughter: of his second little is known. Fielding’s first (he had
made a vain attempt earlier to abduct an heiress who was a relation) was, by universal consent, the
model both of Sophia and Amelia, almost as charming as either, and as amiable; his second was her
maid. Of Mrs. Smollett, who was a Miss Lascelles and a West Indian heiress in a small way, we know very
little-the habit of identifying her with the “Narcissa” of Roderick Random is natural, inconclusive, but not
ridiculous. Sterne’s matrimonial relations are the most famous of all: and though posterity has, with its
usual charity, constructed a legend for the pair which is probably much worse than the reality, that
reality is more than a little awkward. Mrs. Sterne was a Miss Lumley, of a good Yorkshire family, some,
though small, fortune, and more friends who exerted themselves for her husband. By inexcusable levity,
ignorance, misjudgment, or heartless cupidity their daughter Lydia published, after the death of both,
letters some of which contain courtship of the most lackadaisical sentimentality and others later
expressions (which occasionally reach the scandalous) of weariness and disgust on Sterne’s part. Other
evidence of an indisputable character shows that he was, at least and best, an extravagant and mawkish
philanderer with any girl or woman who would join in a extravagant and while there is no evidence
against Mrs. Sterne’s character in the ordinary sense, and hardly any of value against her temper, she
The group of the first four novelists of the Augustan Age or Neoclassical Age: Richardson, Fielding,
Smollett and Sterne in whose hands Novel blossomed, are called The Four Wheels Of The Novel.
Smollett (1721-1771) was the grandson of a judge who was a Commissioner of the Union, and a
gentleman of birth and property which last would, had he lived long enough, have come to Smollett
himself. But he suffered in his youth from some indistinctly known family jars, was apprenticed to a
Glasgow surgeon, and escaping thence to London with a tragedy in his pocket, was in undoubted
difficulties till (and after) he obtained the post of surgeon’s mate on board a man-of-war, and took part in
the Cartagena expedition. After coming home he made at least some attempts to practice: but was once
more drawn off to literature, though fortunately not to tragedy. For the rest of his life he was a hard-
worker but by no means ill-paid journalist, novelist, and miscellanist, making as much as £2000 by his
History of England, not ill-written, though now never read. Like Fielding (though, unlike him, more than
once) he went abroad in search of health and died in the quest at Leghorn. Smollett was not ignorant,
but he seems to have known modern languages better than ancient: though there is doubt about his
direct share in the translations to which he gave his name. Moreover he had some though no great skill
in verse.
Sterne, though hardly, as it is the custom to call him, “an Irishman.” Yet vindicated the claims of the third
constituent of the United Kingdom by being born in Ireland, from which country his mother came. But
the Sterns were pure English, of a gentle family which had migrated from East Anglia through
Nottingham to Yorkshire, and was much connected with Cambridge. Thither Laurence, the novelist, after
a very roving childhood (his father was a soldier), and a rather irregular education, duly went: and,
receiving preferment in the Church from his Yorkshire relations, lived for more than twenty years in that
county without a history, till he took the literary world-hardly by storm, but by a sort of fantastic capful
of wind-with Tristram Shandy in 1760. Seven or eight years of fame, some profit, not hard work (for his
books shrink into no great solid bulk), and constant travelling, ended by a sudden death at his Bond
Street lodgings, after a long course of ill-health very carelessly attended to.
All the four were married, and married pretty early; two of them married twice. Richardson’s first wife
was, in orthodox fashion, his master’s daughter: of his second little is known. Fielding’s first (he had
made a vain attempt earlier to abduct an heiress who was a relation) was, by universal consent, the
model both of Sophia and Amelia, almost as charming as either, and as amiable; his second was her
maid. Of Mrs. Smollett, who was a Miss Lascelles and a West Indian heiress in a small way, we know very
little-the habit of identifying her with the “Narcissa” of Roderick Random is natural, inconclusive, but not
ridiculous. Sterne’s matrimonial relations are the most famous of all: and though posterity has, with its
usual charity, constructed a legend for the pair which is probably much worse than the reality, that
reality is more than a little awkward. Mrs. Sterne was a Miss Lumley, of a good Yorkshire family, some,
though small, fortune, and more friends who exerted themselves for her husband. By inexcusable levity,
ignorance, misjudgment, or heartless cupidity their daughter Lydia published, after the death of both,
letters some of which contain courtship of the most lackadaisical sentimentality and others later
expressions (which occasionally reach the scandalous) of weariness and disgust on Sterne’s part. Other
evidence of an indisputable character shows that he was, at least and best, an extravagant and mawkish
philanderer with any girl or woman who would join in a extravagant and while there is no evidence
against Mrs. Sterne’s character in the ordinary sense, and hardly any of value against her temper, she
