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of Henry Fielding's novel Tom Jones.
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In that, when it was useful to have a change in plot,
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all the author had to do
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was to introduce the idea of smallpox,
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because no one would question that that was appropriate,
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or consider that this was a clumsy or artificial artifice.
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Everyone expected smallpox.
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And in Fielding's novel, Joseph Andrews,
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we find that there's a heroine who is pockmarked.
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Or consider Thackeray's The Adventures of Henry Esmond,
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set in the eighteenth century,
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where smallpox drives the plot.