...Moving from argument to metaphor, he compares the difference between Richardson and Fielding to that "between a man who knew how a watch was made, and...could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." 143 Predictably, response has been partisan. Defenders of Fielding have accused Johnson of slighting...

...over Fielding, praising Richardson's depth against Fielding's superficiality in his famous comparison 'between a man who knew how a watch was made, and...could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate'. But this was the judgement of the first of the great critics, who also pronounced, of Sterne's Tristram...

...Johnson is said to have made a similar remark, in spring 1768, contrasting Richardson and Henry Fielding: "there was as great a difference between them as between...could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." 65 Johnson may have varied the terms of the comparison twelve years later, making sure that Henry Fielding...

...Samuel Johnson ( 1 79 1 ) February 1767 25 There was as great a difference between Ihem as belween a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate. [ames Boswell Life of Samuel Johnson 1 1 79 1 1 Spring l 7(18 4' î 414 1 Let me smile with the wise,...

...heart'. This distinction between Richardson and Fielding was more memorably expressed when Johnson said that ' there was as great a difference between them...and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial plate';1 and the same idea is present in the even more plainly invidious statement reported by...

...Earlier in BoswelFs Life,* he compared the authors of Clarissa and Tom Jones in a famous metaphor: "there was as great a difference between them as between...made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking at the dial-plate." This — what Johnson saw as Fielding's inability to "dive into the recesses of...

...heart", Fielding's are characters of manners, entertaining but superficial — it is the difference between "a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial -plate".57 Later critics elaborated the charge: in Fielding there is no "mysterious penumbra enveloping...

...century, Johnson told Boswell "that there was as great a difference between [Richardson and Fielding] as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and...could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate" (Life, H, 48-49). Exactly how the metaphor of the clock is to be applied to the relative qualities...

...1768, at about the time of Sarah's death, contrasting Richardson and Henry Fielding as respectively 'a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate'.43 The transition from contrasting Henry and Sarah to contrasting Fielding and Richardson...

...Fielding the narrator is fixed by Samuel Johnson's famous distinction between Richardson and Fielding: 'that there was as great a difference between them...and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate'.2 A history of the afterlife of Fielding could be constructed by this contrast with Richardson,...