Fielding's work supposed some familiarity with his powerfully-drawn British types, and with the downright brutal common-sense which came like a slap in the face to your pure sentimentalist. Richardson's characters and sentiments have less idiosyncrasy, and can, therefore, be more easily transported. The quality which now makes them tedious was then one cause of their success. They suited the middle class all over the world just because they had not too strong a flavour of their native soil. This suggests another point. M. Texte insists in a very interesting way upon the bond of sympathy due to the common Protestantism of Richardson and Rousseau. The English sentimentalism had obviously a distinct religious colouring. Richardson in literature was a parallel to Wesley in theology. Both men represent the dissatisfaction of the middle classes with the codes which were respected in the upper circles. The 'enthusiasm' of Methodists was the antithesis of the 'cold morality' of such men as Clarke and Hoadly. In literature, 'enthusiasm' became sentimentalism. Pope's Essay on Man, more or less dictated by Bolingbroke, represented the eighteenth century rationalism. Young's Night Thoughts, as he boasted, was meant to supply
