I am reading it very slowly which seems to help, at first I was skimming over the text too fast and wasnt enjoying it. I am finding it a lot easier reading than other books of the same era though. I have copied below a paragraph from the introduction of my edition. It is quite a good intro, and helped me to better appreciate the story.

"Faults it has, but they are few and trifling - forgotten in the charm of style and sentiment by all save the critic. Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, command now not one reader for every hundred who read this tale.... He paints Nature as truly as any of them, but without the sententious formality and wearisome particularity of the first, or the coarseness and pruriency of the others."