He showed how the novel could present, in refreshed form, the _fatrasie_, the pillar-to-post miscellany, of which Rabelais had perhaps given the greatest example possible, but of which there were numerous minor examples in French.

He showed how it could be made, not merely to present humorous situations, but to exhibit a special kind of humour itself--to make the writer as it were the hero without his ever appearing as character in _Tristram_, or to humorise autobiography as in the _Sentimental Journey_.

And last of all (whether it was his greatest achievement or not is matter of opinion), he showed the novel of purpose in a form specially appealing to his contemporaries--the purpose being to exhibit, glorify, luxuriate in the exhibition of, sentiment or "sensibility." In none of these things was he wholly original; though the perpetual upbraiding of "plagiarism" is a little unintelligent.
Rabelais, not to mention others, had preceded him, and far excelled him, in the _fatrasie_; Swift in the humour-novel; two generations of Frenchmen and Frenchwomen in the "sensibility" kind.

But he brought all together and adjusted the English novel, actually to them, potentially to much else.
To find fault with his two famous books is almost contemptibly easy.

The plagiarism which, if not found out at once, was found out very soon, is the least of these: in fact hardly a fault at all.