, . V i'.j;'ftv: ■.',.;.• ••■•V ,/ ".' ■ ., ,., 
 
 
 
 
 ',■'■!'. 
 
 
 "If »'. V 
 
 >!■;,•/,<)-!. 
 
 I;. ,. 
 
 >^:C;^'i':'i):i-:- 
 
 
 S;-?'! 
 
 '■^m 
 
 ■yT?' 
 
 ^; 
 
 
 ■ ''Jil
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 AT LOS
 
 f ^
 
 THE GENIUS OF HENRY FIELDING
 
 
 • ' A '*' 
 
 . • ••« • • •.• 
 
 HKNUY FIELDIXCs.ETATIvS XLV 
 
 DRAWING BY HOGARTH FROM MEMORY 
 NO AUTHENTIC PORTRAIT EXISTS
 
 THE 
 
 GENIUS OF HENRY FIELDING 
 
 ( WITH SELECTIONS FROM HIS WORKS ) 
 
 INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY H. HARPER 
 
 Univ, or California 
 
 SOUrHERM Bramch 
 
 PRINTED EXCLUSIVELY FOR MEMBERS OF 
 
 THE BIBLIOPHILE SOCIETY 
 
 BOSTON — MCMXIX 
 
 ■^'f "p 
 
 1. O
 
 • • •-• *«• ••• i 
 
 B««« •••«C « 
 
 . ' .'•
 
 © 
 
 V 
 
 VJ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 >^ 
 
 
 THE GENIUS OF HENRY FIELDING 
 By Henry H. Harper 
 
 What is the poor pride arising from a magnifi- i 
 cent house, a numerous equipage, a splendid table, 
 and from all the other advantages or appearances 
 of fortune, compared to the warm, solid content, ^ 
 the swelling satisfaction, the thrilling transports, i 
 and the exulting triumphs which a good mind en- 
 rj joys in the contemplation of a generous, virtuous, . 
 noble, benevolent action? — henry fielding. 
 
 While most modern readers are more or 
 less acquainted with the genius of Henry 
 Fielding, there are some who perhaps 
 imagine that style and invention in novel- 
 writing have so iXW^b improved in the 
 pjy Mi V^edO^d (sii^iac|dF^^s{]j^e 
 Fieldiiig*s.-dgat|^tl^t ,to, read his works 
 in tms acrvknfe[P^J|e mould ; be equivafeiit 
 ^ 3 to going back and reviewing our school 
 ^^ primers. It used to be a juvenile maxim 
 at school, "A master outgrown is a master 
 outshone;" but as Fielding said of another 
 
 5
 
 equally sound maxim, the one objection 
 ^ to it is, that it is not true. Fielding has 
 been much quoted and imitated, but for 
 C sound philosophy, piquancy of style and 
 accuracy in portraying human nature in all 
 its phases he has never been outshone by 
 aC any of his pupils or successors. As one of 
 
 the first exponents of the Enghsh novel he 
 set a standard in prose, like Milton and 
 Shakespeare in poetry, that has never been 
 excelled, and rarely equalled, by moderns. 
 Later writers have no more improved upon 
 his style than modern poets have improved 
 upon Shakespeare's. 
 , / ^ Some of Fielding's book characters were 
 1/ addicted to certain moral infirmities pecul- 
 iar to the human species, and furthermore 
 they were exceedingly plain-spoken at 
 times. These propensities, although very 
 natural, have doubtless operated against 
 a good opinion of his works in the minds 
 of such persons as have to contend with 
 an unduly fastidious taste, or in other 
 words, whose dehcate sensibilities are se- 
 verely shocked by word-pictures and 
 expressions which, although in common 
 enough use by reahstic writers in Fielding's 
 time, are not so commonly employed in 
 
 6
 
 the polite literature of our day. But 
 Fielding's works were not designed for 
 those who would blush for classic Venus 
 or Apollo. In writing of Fielding's im- 
 mortal work, Tom Jones, Coleridge said: 
 "A young man whose heart or feelings can 
 be injured, or even his passions excited by 
 this novel, is already thoroughly corrupt.'* 
 
 In like manner as the styles in archi- 
 tecture have undergone many changes, 
 so has the literary method of treating with 
 epithets and morals been greatly modified. 
 But as the architectural beauty of many 
 of the old monuments and cathedrals has 
 not been surpassed in modern times, so 
 have the literary edifices built by Fielding 
 stood the test of time, while other later 
 and more pretentious ones have crumbled 
 and been forgotten; and the following 
 prophecy by the renowned Gibbon seems 
 destined to be fulfilled: "The successors 
 of Charles V may disdain their brethren 
 of England, but the romance of Tom 
 Jones, that exquisite picture of humor and 
 manners, will outlive the palace of the 
 Escurial and the Imperial Eagle of Austria." 
 
 Literary style having largely superseded 
 Nature, the more artful writers no longer 
 
 7
 
 / 
 
 permit their characters of the lower order 
 to speak in their own vernacular, or to 
 conduct themselves as they customarily 
 do in real life; but instead they choose 
 for them only such language and behavior 
 as will accord with the more punctilious 
 taste of the reader, oftentimes with a fine 
 disregard of its appropriateness to the 
 character it is meant to typify. However 
 praiseworthy this modern habit of restraint 
 < and artificiality may be, the fact still 
 
 remains, that the vital spark of longevity 
 in literature is its faithfulness to Nature, 
 — whose countenance has really under- 
 gone no very marked change since Field- 
 ing*s time. A book character with no 
 human frailties must of necessity be but 
 a sketchy outline, bearing only a superficial 
 likeness to the original; and since most 
 people convey a more accurate idea of 
 their true natures by their unrestrained 
 acts and conversation than is to be gained 
 by what others may say of them, it-:was 
 , I Fielding's practice to permit his characters 
 ^ ithe utmost spontaneity of speech and 
 jaction. He says: '*I am firmly of the 
 opinion that there is neither spirit nor 
 good sense in oaths, nor any wit or humor 
 
 8 
 
 t
 
 in blasphemy. But vulgar errors require 
 an abler pen than mine to correct." 
 
 "It is a trite but true observation," 
 says Fielding, ''that ^examples work more 
 forcibly on the mind than precepts; and 
 if this be just in what is odious and blame- 
 able, it is more strongly so in what is 
 amiable and praiseworthy." While chil- 
 dren are now-a-days taught affirmatively 
 by good example, many renowned writers 
 of the past used to employ the negative 
 method of reproving evil by force of 
 bad example — by setting forth immoral 
 acts and evil situations in their worst 
 phases and illustrating their inevitably 
 bad consequences. There is no reason why 
 the former of these two principles should 
 be adopted to the exclusion of the latter, 
 for in equal measure as we should learn 
 to accomplish what is noble and praise- 
 worthy, we should learn to avoid what is 
 ignoble and blamew^orthy. 
 
 It is the theory of some persons that 
 certain forms of vice are naturally alluring 
 to a young and impressionable mind; and 
 that the unsophisticated should be left to 
 discover for themselves that there is such 
 a thing as vice in the world. They might 
 
 9
 
 also by the same tenet be left to find out 
 for themselves that there is a retribution 
 hereafter. Mystery invites investigation; 
 and as a secret withheld excites double 
 the interest of a secret disclosed, so does 
 concealment of vice arouse a curiosity to 
 pry into it. Therefore, as children — and 
 some grown people as well — entertain 
 the belief that they are privileged to appro- 
 priate to themselves whatever they find, 
 it may be that the ancient writers were 
 more far-seeing than we suspect, in dis- 
 covering immorality and other conspicuous 
 faults in their contemporaries and laying 
 them before their readers. We may, how- 
 ever, except Rabelais, and Balzac in his 
 Contes Drolatiques; for the thoughts of 
 these two writers are as wont to follow 
 in the channels of vulgarity and lascivious- 
 ness as the inclinations of a duck are to 
 follow a path leading to a pool of stagnant 
 water. 
 
 Doubtless the most efficacious method 
 of teaching a child to avoid a hot stove is 
 to introduce it to that object and demon- 
 strate that it will burn if touched; for 
 assuredly a child could not be more con- 
 vincingly taught what a hot stove is, 
 
 10
 
 and that it will surely burn, than by seeing 
 it tested. As a knowledge of the law is 
 one's surest safeguard against plunging 
 headlong into litigation, so also a familiarity 
 with the moral pitfalls in life is the most 
 helpful means of preventing people from^ 
 stumbling into them. 
 
 It is a debatable question whether the 
 promise of reward for good deeds, or 
 the fear- of punishment for bad ones, is 
 the strongest deterrent to wrong-doing, 
 though it may be contended that even 
 the most alluring promises of health, hap- 
 piness and prosperity will not assist one 
 in combating a bad distemper, either of 
 body or mind. 
 
 Although Fielding makes no pretention 1 
 
 of being an ethical instructor, yet in his 
 works improper conduct and mean dis- 
 positions in men and women are frequently 
 employed, rather as a means of conspicu- 
 ously proving their own unhappy results 
 than to gratify the morbid sensibilities of i 
 readers. / His charac ters are veritable word- "y. ^ 
 pictures taKenfrom living models, and his '^ 
 situations'are portrayed.mainly from scenes 
 enacteElrTTeal life. "^ Notwithstanding the- 5 
 pferrrtaKguage and unchaste actions attrib- 
 
 II
 
 uted to some of them, literature contains 
 no record of a mind more instinctively 
 antagonistic to meanness, hypocrisy and - 
 knavery, or more persistent in its advocacy 
 of kindness, charity and upright dealings, 
 than we find in the author of Tom Jones. 
 Furthermore, he has set forth his own 
 varied experiences and his outlook upon 
 life in such an absorbing narrative form 
 that the reader is highly entertained by 
 a good story, filled with thrilling incident, 
 romance and adventure, and pointed with 
 
 ; an abundance of forceful maxims, and is^ 
 
 ' made to feel the elevating force of the 
 moral without being made conscious of 
 any moral preaching. 
 
 Fielding was pretty much in accord with 
 Swift in believing that the majority of 
 mankind derive greater pleasure from be- 
 ing diverted than instructed, but he says 
 in a short essay, which is printed herein, 
 that "Letters were surely intended for a 
 much more noble and profitable purpose 
 than this." He was aware of his own 
 
 / literary talents, and like Horace, Vergil 
 and others long before him, he did not 
 hesitate to predict a place for his works 
 
 V in the estimation of posterity; in which 
 
 12
 
 prognostication, as he was no inferior 
 writer, he proved to be no inferior prophet^ 
 /At the very outset Fielding sets a lively 
 pace for his characters, and he seldom 
 permits them to waste their time or that 
 of the reader in viewing the scenery, or 
 to rest from their duties of edifying the 
 audience, except for occasional digressions, 
 or when he himself intervenes with a 
 clinching argumentative apothegm to lend 
 emphasis to some point or incident. As 
 all brooks and rivers flow on toward an 
 objective, so do the actions and conver- 
 sations of Fielding's characters lead to 
 some purpose, I — such as -amusement, in- 
 struction or character-study; and his writ- 
 ings are happily free from a wearisome 
 redundance of inane chitchat and empty 
 tittle-tattle. If the action threatens to 
 drag he is ever ready to quicken the move- 
 ment by engaging some of his militant 
 actors in a hvely altercation or a highly 
 amusing brawl, usually at some country 
 inn, whereat the combatants always engage 
 with Spartan courage, generally at the 
 expense of hair, wearing apparel, and per- 
 sonal dignity. His combats, which are 
 usually impromptu, are always irregular, 
 
 13 
 
 / 
 /• 
 
 / 
 
 /
 
 1 ungloved affairs, and the participants has- 
 I tily arm themselves with whatever im- 
 \ plement of warfare is most conveniently 
 I at hand, whether it be a cane, sword, 
 : broom, frying-pan, a piece of bed-room 
 '■ china, or only their tongues and bare 
 fists. ,'' Even old parson Adams (in Joseph 
 7in3rews) is made sufficiently human to 
 forget his cloth occasionally and lend a 
 free hand on the side of justice, if not of 
 discretion, in these desultory encounters, 
 — as for example, on one occasion when 
 he and his travehng companion, Joseph 
 Andrews, arrived at a country inn kept 
 by an ill-mated pair. Joseph, who was 
 suffering from a bruised knee occasioned 
 by a bad fall, repaired to the kitchen, 
 where he was being attended by parson 
 Adams and the good landlady, when the 
 bellicose spouse entered. "This surly fel- 
 low," says Fielding, "who always propor- 
 tioned his respect to the appearance of a 
 traveller, from *God bless your honour,* 
 down to plain 'Coming presently,' observ- 
 ing his wife on her knees to a footman, 
 cried out, without considering his circum- 
 stances, 'What a pox is the woman about? 
 Why don't you mind the company in the 
 
 14
 
 coach? Go and ask them what they will 
 have for dinner.' 
 
 ***My dear,' says she, 'you know they 
 can have nothing but what is at the fire, 
 which will be ready presently; and really 
 the poor young man's leg is very much 
 bruised.' At w^hich w^ords she fell to chafing 
 more violently than before: the bell then 
 happening to ring, he damn'd his wife, and 
 bid her go in to the company, and not 
 stand rubbing there all day, for he did not 
 believe the young fellow's leg was so bad 
 as he pretended; and if it was, within 
 twenty miles he would find a surgeon to 
 cut it off. Upon these words, Adams 
 fetched two strides across the room; and 
 snapping his fingers over his head, mut- 
 tered aloud. He would excommunicate such 
 a wretch for a farthing, for he believed the 
 devil had more humanity. These words 
 occasioned a dialogue between Adams and 
 the host, in which there were two or three 
 sharp replies, till Joseph bade the latter 
 know how to behave himself to his betters. 
 At which the host (having first strictly 
 surveyed Adams) scornfully repeating the 
 word 'betters,* flew into a rage, and, telling 
 Joseph he was as able to walk out of his 
 
 15
 
 house as he had been to walk into it, 
 offered to lay violent hands on him; which 
 perceiving, Adams dealt him so sound a 
 compliment over his face with his fist, that 
 the blood immediately gushed out of his 
 nose in a stream. The host, being unwill- 
 ing to be outdone in courtesy, especially 
 by a person of Adams's figure, returned 
 the favour with so much gratitude, that the 
 parson's nostrils began to look a little red- 
 der than usual. Upon which Adams again 
 assailed his antagonist, and with another 
 stroke laid him sprawling on the floor. 
 
 "The hostess, who was a better wife 
 than so surly a husband deserved, seeing 
 her husband all bloody and stretched along, 
 hastened presently to his assistance, or 
 rather to revenge the blow, which, to all 
 appearance, was the last he would ever 
 receive; when, lo! a pan full of hog's blood, 
 which unluckily stood on the dresser, pre- 
 sented itself first to her hands. She seized 
 it in her fury, and without any reflection, 
 discharged it into the parson's face; and 
 with so good an aim, that much the greater 
 part first saluted his countenance, and 
 trickled thence in so large a current down 
 to his beard, and over his garments, that 
 
 i6
 
 a more horrible spectacle was hardly to be 
 seen, or even imagined. All which was 
 perceived by Mrs. Slipslop, who entered 
 the kitchen at that instant. This good 
 gentlewoman, not being of a temper so 
 extremely cool and patient as perhaps was 
 required to ask many questions on this 
 occasion, flew with great impetuosity at 
 the hostess's cap, which, together with some 
 of her hair, she plucked from her head in 
 a moment, giving her, at the same time, 
 several hearty cuffs in the face; which by 
 frequent practice on the inferior servants, 
 she had learned an excellent knack of de- 
 livering with a good grace. Poor Joseph 
 could hardly rise from his chair; the parson 
 was employed in wiping the blood from his 
 eyes, which had entirely blinded him; and 
 the landlord was but just beginning to stir; 
 whilst Mrs. Slipslop, holding down the land- 
 lady's face with her left hand, made so 
 dexterous an use of her right, that the poor 
 woman began to roar, in a key which 
 alarmed all the company in the inn. . . . 
 "The principal figure, and which en- 
 gaged the eyes of all, was Adams, who was 
 all over covered with blood, which the 
 whole company concluded to be his own, 
 
 17
 
 and consequently imagined him no longer 
 for this world. But the host, who had now 
 recovered from his blow, and was risen 
 from the ground, soon delivered them from 
 this apprehension, by damning his wife for 
 wasting the hog's puddings, and telling her 
 all would have been very well if she had 
 not intermeddled, like a b — as she was; 
 adding, he was very glad the gentlewoman 
 had paid her, though not half what she 
 deserved. The poor woman had indeed 
 fared much the worst; having, besides the 
 unmerciful cuffs received, lost a quantity 
 of hair, which Mrs. Slipslop in triumph 
 held in her left hand." 
 
 It is doubtful if Fielding, any more than 
 parson Adams, could have quite recon- 
 ciled himself to a free practice of that 
 laudable virtue of "turning the other cheek" 
 to an adversary who had smote him on one 
 side; although it is to be observed that 
 in most of the battles where his heroes 
 are involved they are found to be avenging 
 injuries or affronts to others, rather than 
 to themselves. Possibly Fielding may have 
 construed the Biblical injunction as apply- 
 ing only to the injured one, and not to any 
 third party who might be inclined to insist 
 
 i8
 
 upon fair play, or to administer a well- 
 deserved rebuke. At any rate, if our \ 
 author indulges his pen rather freely in 
 disputes and combats they seem for the 
 most part to arise from justifiable prov- 
 ocations; furthermore, they serve a pur- 
 pose in showing the pugnacity of human 
 nature — a quality by no means extinct 
 in the present age. Indeed a surprisingly 
 large percentage of the famous characters 
 in history have distinguished themselves 
 as fighters or writers; and there have 
 been others, perhaps less distinguished, 
 who have doubted which of these two 
 classes of celebrities is the more useful 
 to the human race. It might be argued 
 negatively in behalf of the latter class, 
 that if there were fewer fighters, more 
 happiness would be found in a correspond- 
 ingly reduced demand for their talents. 
 On the other hand, there would be a les- 
 sened need of writing tq celebrate their 
 prowess. Therefore these two classes seem 
 not only to vie with each other for suprem- 
 acy in numbers, but they lean heavily 
 upon each other to support the lustre of 
 their fame. That they are regarded by 
 some as representing two distinctly separate 
 
 19
 
 
 vocations is proved by Fielding, who re- 
 cords an instance where a poet having 
 obtruded himself into a fight and finding 
 that he was likely to become bested in 
 the fray, he withdrew upon having sud- 
 denly bethought himself that it was his 
 business to record heroic actions, rather 
 than to take part in them. 
 
 It happens that grown-ups, no less than 
 boys, occasionally relish a fight — pro- 
 / vided they are not directly involved therein 
 I — and Fielding therefore made frequent 
 I use of this diversion in his novels as a 
 method of amusing his readers. He also 
 had a happy way of assigning this feature 
 of his entertainment to such artists as are 
 most likely to please his audience, not so 
 much with their fistic cleverness as with 
 the variety and grotesqueness of their 
 1/ performance; nor did he scruple to enlist 
 the feminine as well as the masculine sex 
 in the midst of the action, thus producing 
 what might properly be termed "mixed 
 bouts.'* Fielding was apparently no ad- 
 vocate of the theory that quarrelling and 
 fighting are heroic attributes in which the 
 gentler sex are denied the right of partici- 
 pation, and to prove the contrary he usually 
 
 20
 
 kept in his troupe one or more hardy 
 Amazonians who could be relied upon to 
 give a fairly good account of themselves, 
 when occasion required. He has, more- 
 } over, dealt with almost every phase of 
 \ human life, from the highest nobleman — 
 I with all that that name implies — down 
 Ito the meanest rogue, and in a manner 
 jso reaHstic as to leave no doubt in the 
 / mind of the reader that he not only knew 
 ' their characteristics, but he knew precisely 
 the language and deportment with which to 
 : characterize them. Upon this point Field- 
 ing observes that the knowledge of an au- 
 thor "must be universal; that is, with all 
 ranks and degrees of men; for the knowl- 
 edge of what is called high life will not 
 instruct him in low; nor, e converso, will 
 his being acquainted with the inferior part 
 of mankind teach him the manners of the 
 superior.'* 
 
 In Fielding's works the relationship of 
 debtor and creditor, of judge and criminal, 
 of gaol-keeper and prisoner, of master and 
 servant, of lover and loved one, of husband 
 and wife, of parent and child, of guard- 
 ian and ward, of friend and enemy, of host 
 and guest, of teacher and pupil, of physi- 
 
 21
 
 • * ^f lawver and client, 
 cian and patient, of '^^^^^ u i^ter- 
 
 of pastor -d P'^"? 'rstorks and all are 
 ,,oven in the plots of >"= ^^oms ^^^ ^^^ 
 
 treated respecwely m the, ^ ^^^^ ^^^,,. 
 
 T"tnriearning derived wholly from 
 tility and 'earning observation; he is 
 reading and d.stant jb^er ^^^ 
 
 said to have spent niuch o ^^^ 
 
 i„ the midst of a J^^ '^^'J.he gaols in 
 a stranger to the squaK- ^^^^^^ i^„. 
 
 life his ottice oi ^ rriminals and 
 
 London, his -n^-^ ^J, ,^ rkeen facul- 
 with persons of d'Stmct on ^^ 
 
 ties of observation h.akrt sense ^^ ^^^^^^^ 
 
 ^'^ ~; £ra er" aln all combined 
 powers ot characLc "sanest 
 
 He was a kind, attect'ona ^^^^ 
 
 devoted, indulgent parent and a 
 ' •«! fr^pnd - His works are ct v 
 
 s^'s; *"*« »>■"- »" '""'"•
 
 of numberless imitators for upwards of a 
 hundred years. His writings, like the his- v \ ^■- >^ 
 trionic talents of a great actor, although ( \ -^ 
 having the appearance of ease in execution, j 
 are nevertheless difficult to imitate. As 
 a bee, with its marvelous and incompre- 
 hensible faculties, converts the essence from 
 a great variety of flowers into honey which 
 it stores in its hive, so Fielding gathered J 
 his experiences and observations from all 
 walks in life, as well as from the works 
 of learned writers, and coordinated them 
 into useful knowledge and entertainment 
 which he stored up in volumes for the 
 edification of future generations. While 
 poets have perpetuated their fame by 
 singing the praises of great heroes and / 
 
 chronicling momentous jcvents in the world's^ / 
 history, the novelist |FieIding gained re- j 
 nown by his accuratJ and humorous de- ' 
 piction of human nature as he found it i 
 existent in his own day, /-and just about-.4 
 as we now fmd it existent among ourselves 
 — indeed, to such an extent that it appears 
 at times as if Fielding had projected himself 
 into futurity and settled in our midst. 
 And speaking of poets, it may be remarked 
 that although we are a great and indus- 
 
 23
 
 trious race, our achievements, if not our 
 morals — like the heroic qualities of many 
 great men who preceded Agamemnon — 
 are in some danger of being forgotten. — 
 
 Ere Agamemnon many a hero lived. 
 But all in darkness bide while ages pass, 
 Unknown, unwept, and lost to story, 
 Lacking the aid of a sacred bard. 
 
 And yet, while Fielding's epigrammatic 
 style is comparatively easy of comprehen- 
 sion, his art, like that of a great painter, 
 requires some understanding in order fully 
 to appreciate it. He is preeminently a 
 writer for thinking people. His keen wit 
 and caustic satire are oftentimes so closely 
 veiled as to escape the observation of the 
 hasty or unthinking reader. As a mir- 
 rored reflection of the customs, vices and 
 .virtues of his own time the works of Field- 
 ing are unrivalled; as a virile story-teller 
 ^e is scarcely to be excelled; as a philos- 
 opher he is deep, resourceful and con- 
 vincing; and the doctrine of charity, the 
 /brotherhood of man and the uplifting of 
 the human race are major chords that 
 i_ vib rate throug^hout all his works, — as, 
 for example, the following speech made by 
 the young hero in Joseph Andrews. Per- 
 
 24
 
 haps Fielding himself would have willingly 
 admitted that "men build fine houses, 
 purchase fine furniture, pictures, clothes 
 and other things," from other motives 
 than that of *'an ambition to be respected 
 more than other people," but Joseph was 
 an unlettered boy, and if the first few 
 lines of his argument are not convincing, 
 the latter part certainly expresses the au- 
 thor's own views. He argues thus: — 
 
 **What inspires a man to build fine 
 houses, to purchase fine furniture, pictures, 
 clothes, and other things, at a great ex- 
 pense, but an ambition to ^^ respected 
 more than other people? ^{Now, would 
 not one great act of charity, one instance 
 of redeeming a poor family from all the 
 miseries of poverty, restoring an unfor- 
 tunate tradesman by a sum of money 
 to the means of procuring a livelihood by 
 his industry, discharging an undone debtor ^^^ 
 from his debts or a gaol, or any such- 
 like examples of goodness, create a man 
 more honour and respect than he could 
 acquire by the finest house, furniture, 
 pictures, or clothes, that were ever beheld? 
 For not only the object himself who was 
 thus relieved, but all who heard the name 
 
 25
 
 of such a person, must, I imagine, rever- 
 ence him infinitely more than the possessor 
 i of all those other things." 
 
 On this head, Fielding himself remarks, 
 — "I have, in truth, observed, and shall 
 never have a better opportunity than at 
 present to communicate my observation, 
 that the world are in general divided into 
 two opinions concerning charity, which are 
 the very reverse of each other. One party 
 seems to hold, that all acts of this kind are 
 to be esteemed as voluntary gifts, and 
 however little you give (if indeed no more 
 than your good wishes), you acquire a 
 great degree of merit in so doing. Others, 
 on the contrary, appear to be as firmly 
 persuaded that beneficence is a positive 
 duty, and that whenever the rich fall 
 greatly short of their ability in relieving 
 the distress of the poor, their pitiful lar- 
 gesses are so far from being meritorious, 
 that they have only performed their duty 
 by halves, and are in some sense more 
 contemptible than those who have entirely 
 neglected it. 
 
 "To reconcile these different opinions is 
 not in my power. I shall only add, that 
 the givers are generally of the former 
 
 26
 
 sentiment, and the receivers are almost 
 universally inclined to the latter." 
 
 Consummate perfection in authorship 
 is a quality never yet discovered; not only 
 because there is no such thing, but if 
 there were, the diversity of taste is such 
 that a unanimous opinion could never be 
 reached. As to Fielding, the one outstand-l 
 ing blemish on his works is his propensity 
 for indulging his characters now and then 
 in long extraneous narratives, and — espe- 
 cially the more learned figures — in elabo- 
 rate argumentative discourses on abstruse 
 or doctrinal observations. However much 
 these lengthy recitals and scholarly dis- 
 cussions may typify or elucidate the 
 characters from whose mouths they issue, , 
 they often weary the reader, in the first 
 instance with their irrelevancy, and in the 
 second instance with over-much erudition; 
 and they serve as stumbling-blocks that 
 halt the others\^ise rapid and cohesive 
 movement of his stories. In those days 
 the art of "filling" (in which more recent 
 writers have attained so high a degree 
 of excellence) was not uncommon, and 
 even Jonathan Swift caustically refers to 
 it as an accomplishment not to be despised, 
 
 27
 
 since it "makes a very considerable ad- 
 dition to the bulk of the volume; a cir- 
 cumstance by no means to be neglected 
 by a skillful writer." 
 
 Fortunately, however, Fielding*s wordy 
 digressions are not only infrequent, but 
 they are mostly set apart in chapters by 
 themselves and are so marked by captions 
 that they may be passed over without 
 losing any thread of the main story or 
 lessening one's comprehension of his plots, 
 which are otherwise comparatively free 
 from incumbrance. His stories are filled 
 with lively episodes, absorbing mysteries 
 and agreeable surprises which are unfolded 
 to the reader at frequent intervals, and 
 only the main secret is withheld to be 
 revealed at the end. But above all else, 
 it is the inimitable style and good-humor 
 of Fielding that delights the reader — 
 with an abundance of wholesome laughter 
 and an occasional tear. Sometimes when 
 you are confronted with some scene or 
 conversation which threatens to become 
 tiresome the author has a felicitous way 
 of drawing the curtain, with the remark 
 that he has no idea what the actors did or 
 said, and as it could be of no interest to 
 
 28
 
 the reader he did not take the pains to 
 inquire^ Or, occasionally after a short 
 curtain speech, he apologizes for the ob- 
 trusion by some explanation, such, for 
 instance, as remarking, that as he could 
 not prevail upon any of his characters to 
 make the speech, he was obliged to make 
 it himself. 
 
 There is perhaps nothing which brings 
 an author more closely in touch with our 
 personal sympathies than the delineation 
 of thoughts, sensations and actions the 
 like of which we ourselves have entertained, 
 or commonly observed in others. It es- 
 tablishes a sort of kindred feeling between 
 the author and the reader, who is wont to 
 halt and consider, "Now, isn't that true 
 to human nature!" or, "How often have 
 I observed that myself!" In short, we are 
 prone to admire the sayings of others — es- 
 pecially those whom we consider greater 
 than ourselves — when their expressed 
 views accord perfectly with our own, for 
 we are thereby doubly assured of the 
 soundness of their wisdom. Or, in other 
 words, a wise thought which we have 
 nurtured in our own bosom (or brain), 
 and to which we claim a sort of proprietor- 
 
 29
 
 ship, if expressed by an exalted personage 
 is apt to be more relished than if we hear 
 it repeated by a dunce. Fielding's writings I 
 are so true to human nature that the 
 reader of his stories finds himself con- 
 stantly laying claim to the author's philos- i 
 ophies, and fehcitating himself that he 
 and Fielding are so much ahke in thought.^ ! 
 
 The ancient writers had a knack of 
 addressing remarks "to the reader" with 
 a famiharity which seems not to beget that 
 individual's contempt — an ingredient that 
 he seldom fails to bestow upon a modern 
 author who takes any such Hberties. This 
 tolerant attitude and the reverence for 
 the sayings of apotheosized poets and 
 philosophers may be attributed to a very 
 common trait of human nature, viz., as 
 the greater part of the human race would 
 scorn to imitate, or be imitated by, those 
 whom they consider beneath them in in- 
 tellect and worldly station, so on the 
 other hand would they swell with pride 
 on discovering that their thoughts follow 
 in the same channels with those of great 
 
 ' Queen Elisabeth (Carmen Sylva), of Roumania, said 
 that her greatest ambition was to write in such a way that 
 all who read might think they wrote it themselves. 
 
 30
 
 historical personages. Or, to paraphrase 
 one of Fielding's remarks, a man would 
 disdain to be the companion of a beggar, 
 though he would be proud to be likened 
 unto a great man. Not that modern writ- 
 ers are to be classed with beggars, but 
 their works are unseasoned by time, their 
 fame is unripened, and alas, like blighted 
 fruit, in many cases it falls before reaching 
 maturity. 
 
 Like many another writer whose pen 
 has won him renown, Fielding had his 
 contemporary critics and jealous rivals; 
 and to those he occasionally paid his 
 respects, particularly in his Tom Jones 
 and Amelia; but most of those who pre- 
 sumed to criticise his work have for many 
 generations enjoyed an unchallenged sleep 
 in oblivion, and as the sturdy oak towers 
 above the underbrush, so his fame rises far 
 above all those who sought to make him 
 the target of their ridicule. Swift, who 
 enjoyed no immunity from these tantalizing 
 literary appendages, said of them: "A 
 true critic, in the perusal of a book, is 
 like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and 
 stomach are wholly set upon what the 
 guests fling away, and consequently is apt 
 
 31
 
 to snarl most when there are the fewest 
 bones." 
 
 It has also been the unhappy fate of 
 most geniuses to wrestle with poverty and 
 die poor; and Fielding was no exception 
 to this rule. Indeed the last chapter of 
 his life is exceedingly pathetic. Upon the 
 appearance of Joseph Andrews his literary 
 genius became at once apparent, and for 
 a considerable time thereafter he is said 
 to have lived upon the bounty of one or 
 more great and noble men who supported 
 him in the interest of Letters; but after 
 his appointment as Justice of the Peace 
 in London, it being generally supposed 
 that the emoluments of that office were 
 very large, the sustaining hand was with- 
 drawn and he was left to shift for himself. 
 His innate sympathies for the poor wTetches 
 with whom his office brought him in con- 
 tact were such that he declined to take 
 fees from those who could ill afford to 
 pay them, and his income from this source 
 amounted to a beggarly three hundred 
 pounds a year with which to pay his faith- 
 ful clerk and sustain himself and a numer- 
 ous family. Then, in the prime of life, he 
 was seized with a compfication of diseases, 
 
 32
 
 including dropsy, gout, jaundice and 
 asthma, so that he could neither stand nor 
 sit nor lie down in comfort. "These ail- 
 ments,** says Fielding, "united their forces 
 in the destruction of a body so entirely 
 emaciated that it had lost all its muscular 
 flesh." Receiving no encouragement from 
 his physician, he resigned himself to the 
 inevitable, but not without the most har- 
 rowing mental tortures (which he says far 
 exceeded his bodily pain), in being doomed 
 to die and leave his wife and little children 
 utterly without any means of support. 
 Having been informed by his physician 
 that he could not possibly survive the 
 rigors of another English winter he took a 
 sad leave of his little ones, well knowing 
 that he should never see them again, 
 and accompanied by his devoted wife and 
 eldest daughter he boarded a sailing vessel 
 for Lisbon, in the hope that he might sus- 
 tain life long enough to write some 
 additional piece to leave as a legacy to 
 his loved ones. By this time he had lost 
 the use of his limbs, and could scarce hold 
 a pen to write. *'Upon my entrance into 
 the boat,'* he says, " I presented a spectacle 
 of the highest horror. The total loss of 
 
 33
 
 limbs was apparent to all who saw me." 
 His face was so attenuated and colorless 
 that it presented a "picture of death itself. 
 Indeed, so ghastly was my countenance 
 that timorous women with child had ab- 
 stained from my house, for fear of the ill 
 consequences of looking at me." During 
 the short space of time left to him he 
 strove valiantly to ward off death until 
 he could complete his last work, which 
 he entitled *'A Voyage to Lisbon." The 
 picture of this poor hopeless, pain-ridden 
 mortal, bravely struggling to rally the 
 last fragments of an erstwhile brilliant 
 genius and robust physique, and laboring 
 with all his feeble might to provide some 
 little sustenance for his family, while the 
 impatient Grim Reaper waited upon him, 
 almost at his very door, presents a truly 
 affecting scene. After all his persistent 
 advocacy of charity and human kindness, 
 followed by his unremitting labors in the 
 interest of public welfare, he was stricken 
 down in the prime of his vigor and useful- 
 ness w^ith nothing but his literary fame to 
 leave as a heritage to his dependent family. 
 All England had laughed with him and en- 
 joyed his wit and humor, but Fate decreed 
 
 34
 
 that in his poverty and intense anguish he 
 should suffer almost alone/ He died soon 
 after arriving at Lisbon. 
 
 The following lines appeared in the pub- 
 lisher's Foreword to Fielding's last work, 
 which was "begun in pain, and finished 
 almost at the same period with life:" 
 
 "Your candour is desired on the perusal 
 of the following sheets, as they are the 
 product of a genius that has long been 
 your delight and entertainment. It must be 
 acknowledged that a lamp almost burnt 
 out does not give so steady and uniform 
 a light as when it blazes in its full vigour; 
 but yet it is well known that by its waver- 
 ing, as if struggling against its own dis- 
 solution, it sometimes darts a ray as bright 
 as ever. In like manner, a strong and 
 lively genius will, in its last struggles, 
 sometimes mount aloft, and throw forth 
 the most striking marks of its original 
 lustre." 
 
 And so it was with Fielding; some of 
 the most brilliant flashes of his expiring 
 genius scintillate throughout the pages of 
 his final work, in which there is scarcely 
 a note of personal complaint. 
 
 But since words are about as futile in 
 
 35
 
 satisfying the reader concerning the talents 
 of a great writer as a dissertation on cookery 
 would be in appeasing hunger, or as our 
 author's fame was in providing bread for 
 his family, I shall here adopt Fielding's 
 borrowed maxim, which he says is "trite,i 
 but true;" that "examples operate more 
 forcibly on the mind than precepts." I 
 therefore append hereto a considerable num- 
 ber of examples from Fielding's writings, 
 which will doubtless "operate more for- 
 cibly" on the reader's mind than an over- 
 dose of panegyric. It may be explained 
 that these selections, although made at 
 random from Fielding's various works, are 
 for the most part complete in themselves. 
 Nor are these passages — excepting only 
 the first few — given for the purpose of 
 merely acquainting the reader with Field- 
 ing's style. To that end a few pages would 
 suffice; but the object in printing so great 
 a number is to furnish an interesting com- 
 pendium for thoughtful readers who may 
 have neither time nor inclination to read 
 Fielding's works in their entirety. 
 
 ^ A very great number of Fielding's arguments and 
 illustrative maxims are original with him, but no matter 
 how commonplace an adage may be it seldom appears trite 
 if happily applied. 
 
 36
 
 The book is intended to be read, not as 
 a connected story, but as one would read 
 a book of short poems, or essays, each em- 
 bodying some separate thought or story 
 worthy of the reader's interest. The pages 
 contain much food for thought, in many 
 cases amply garnished with genuine amuse- 
 ment; and furthermore they afford a sin- 
 gularly attractive study of one of the most 
 virile and interesting figures in English lit- 
 erature. His philosophy is both salutary 
 and admonitory; it is easily comprehended, 
 and it lends itself readily to the everyday 
 needs and experiences of every individual, 
 of whatsoever vocation in life. 
 
 For example, he writes, — 
 
 " Men of true wisdom and goodness are 
 contented to take persons and things as 
 they are, without complaining of their 
 imperfections, or attempting to amend 
 them. They can see a fault in a friend, 
 a relation, or an acquaintance, without 
 ever mentioning it to the parties them- 
 selves, or to any others; and this often 
 without lessening their affection. In- 
 deed, unless great discernment be tem- 
 pered with this overlooking disposition, we 
 ought never to contract friendship but 
 
 37 
 
 7 (\ '7 "5 S
 
 with a degree of folly which we can deceive; 
 for I hope my friends will pardon me when 
 I declare, I know none of them without 
 a fault; and I should be sorry if I could 
 imagine I had any friend who could not 
 see mine. Forgiveness of this kind we 
 give and demand in turn. It is an exercise 
 of friendship, and perhaps none of the least 
 pleasant. And this forgiveness we must 
 bestow, without desire of amendment. 
 There is, perhaps, no surer mark of folly, 
 than an attempt to correct the natural 
 infirmities of those we love.Ylhe finest 
 composition of human nature,*"^ well as 
 the finest china, may have a flaw in it; 
 and this, I am afraid, in either case, is 
 equally incurable; though, nevertheless, the 
 pattern may remain of the highest value." 7 
 
 " Reader, if thou hast any good wishes 
 towards me, I will fully repay them by 
 wishing thee to be possessed of a sanguine 
 disposition of mind; since, after having 
 read much and considered long on that 
 subject of happiness which hath employed 
 so many great pens, I am almost inclined 
 to fix it in the possession of this temper; 
 which puts us, in a manner, out of the 
 
 38
 
 reach of Fortune, and makes us happy 
 without her assistance. Indeed, the sen- 
 sations of pleasure it gives are much more 
 constant as well as much keener, than 
 those which that blind lady bestows; 
 nature having wisely contrived, that some 
 satiety and languor should be annexed 
 to all our real enjoyments, lest we should 
 be so taken up by them, as to be stopt 
 from further pursuits. I make no manner 
 of doubt but that, in this light, we may see 
 the imaginary future chancellor just called 
 to the bar, the archbishop in crape, and 
 the prime minister at the tail of an oppo- 
 sition, more truly happy than those who 
 are invested with all the power and profit 
 of those respective offices." 
 
 Again he says: ''There are several cere- 
 monies instituted among the polished part 
 of mankind, which, though they may to 
 coarser judgments appear as mere matters 
 of form, are found to have much of sub- 
 stance in them by the more discerning. 
 ... It hath been a custom iong estab- 
 lished in the polite world, and that upon 
 very solid and substantial reasons, that a 
 husband shall never enter his wife's apart- 
 ment without first knocking at the door. 
 
 39
 
 The many excellent uses of this custom 
 need scarce be hinted to a reader who hath 
 any knowledge of the world." 
 
 This passage, which forms a complete 
 epigram, is aptly applied to an episode 
 where an irate husband who, in pursuing 
 a run-away wife, stopped late one night at 
 a country inn where he thought she had 
 put up. He bribed the chambermaid to 
 show him to his wife's room, but that wily 
 functionary — possibly having received a 
 more generous fee from the lady herself — 
 led the impassioned husband to the bed- 
 chamber door of another couple. Fielding 
 says: "Knock, indeed, he did at the door, 
 but not one of those gentle raps which is 
 usual on such occasions. On the contrary, 
 when he found the door locked he flew at 
 it with such violence that the lock im- 
 mediately gave way, the door burst open, 
 and he fell headlong into the room." 
 
 This rude and noisy action not only 
 aroused his wife in another part of the 
 house and enabled her to make her escape, 
 but it came near costing the intruder his 
 life, all of which he might have obviated 
 had he read and observed Fielding's prov- 
 erb. 
 
 40
 
 A marked feature of Fielding's writings 
 is, that people never rap or tap gently at 
 the door; they always thunder or pound 
 uproariously from without — so much so 
 that the occupants of the room or house 
 are usually thrown into consternation, in 
 which the reader in viewing the situation 
 from within is inclined to join with as 
 much curiosity and apprehension as the 
 occupants themselves. 
 
 "There is a certain air of natural gen- 
 tility," says Fielding, "which is neither 
 in the power of dress to give, nor to con- 
 ceal." This he applied to the not very 
 well dressed Tom Jones, who he said was 
 "possessed of it to a very eminent degree. 
 . . . Mr. Jones was now in a situation, 
 which sometimes happens to be the case 
 of young gentlemen of much better figure 
 than himself. In short, he had not one 
 penny in his pocket; a situation in much 
 greater credit among the ancient philos- 
 ophers than among the modern wise men 
 who live in Lombard Street, or those who 
 frequent White's Chocolate-house. And, 
 perhaps, the great honours which those 
 philosophers have ascribed to an empty 
 pocket may be one of the reasons of that 
 
 41
 
 high contempt in which they are held in 
 the aforesaid street and Chocolate-house. 
 
 "Now if the ancient opinion, that men 
 might live very comfortably on virtue 
 only, be, as the modern wise men just 
 above-mentioned pretend to have discov- 
 ered, a notorious error; no less false is, 
 I apprehend, that position of some writers 
 of romance, that a man can hve altogether 
 on love; for however delicious repasts 
 this may afford to some of our senses or 
 appetites, it is most certain it can afford 
 none to others. Those, therefore, who have 
 placed too great a confidence in such 
 writers, have experienced their error when 
 it was too late; and have found that 
 love was no more capable of allaying 
 hunger than a rose is capable of delighting 
 the ear, or a violin of gratifying the smell/* 
 And Fielding himself had good reason to 
 appreciate the soundness of this philosophy; 
 for as Horace observed, — 
 
 Duramque callet pauperiem pati — 
 He knows by experience how to endure stern 
 poverty. 
 
 "There is scarce anything," says Field- 
 ing, "which so happily introduces mfcn 
 to our good liking, as having conceived 
 
 42
 
 some alarm at their first appearance; when 
 once those apprehensions b^ki to vanish 
 we soon forget the fears which they occa- 
 sioned, and look on ourselves as indebted 
 for our present ease to those very persons 
 who at first raised our fears. Thus it 
 happened to Nightingale, who no sooner 
 found that Jones had no demand on him, 
 as he suspected, than he began to be 
 pleased with his presence." 
 
 Again: "Nothing more aggravates ill 
 success than the near approach to good. 
 The gamester who loses his party at 
 piquet by a single point laments his bad 
 luck ten times as much as he who never 
 came within a prospect of the game. 
 So in a lottery, the proprietors of the 
 next numbers to that which wins the 
 great prize are apt to account themselves 
 much more unfortunate than their fellow- 
 sufferers. In short, these kind of hair- 
 breadth missings of happiness look like 
 the insults of Fortune, who may be con- 
 sidered as thus playing tricks with us, and 
 wantonly diverting herself at our expense." 
 
 This he applied as follows: "Jones, who 
 more than once already had experienced 
 this frolicsome disposition of the heathen 
 
 43
 
 goddess, was now again doomed to be 
 tantalized in the like manner;" for (in 
 searching for his lost Sophia) **he arrived 
 at the door of Mrs. Fitzpatrick about ten 
 minutes after Sophia's departure." 
 
 Another instance: "I remember a wise 
 old gentleman who used to say, 'When 
 children are doing nothing, they are doing 
 mischief.' I will not enlarge this quaint 
 saying to the most beautiful part of the 
 creation in general; but so far I may be 
 allowed, that when the effects of female 
 jealousy do not appear openly in their 
 proper colours of rage and fury, we may 
 suspect that mischievous passion to be at 
 work privately, and attempting to under- 
 mine what it doth not attack above- 
 ground." Which was used as a prelude 
 to the following sentence: — 
 
 "This was exempHfied in the conduct 
 of Lady Bellaston, who, under all the smiles 
 which she wore in her countenance, con- 
 cealed much indignation against Sophia; 
 and as she plainly saw that this young 
 lady stood between her and the full indul- 
 gence of her desires, she resolved to get 
 rid of her by some means or other; nor 
 was it long before a very favourable oppor- 
 
 44
 
 tunity of accomplishing this presented itself 
 to her.'* 
 
 It is curious to note what a low estimate 
 was set upon the talent and usefulness of 
 country parsons in Fielding's time, — if 
 their annual stipend may be used as a 
 criterion. The following passage refers to 
 the immortal Parson Adams, whom Field- 
 ing made one of the foremost characters 
 in Hterature: — 
 
 "His virtue, and his other quahfications, 
 as they rendered him equal to his office, 
 so they made him an agreeable and valu- 
 able companion, and so much endeared 
 and well recommended him to a bishop, 
 that at the age of fifty he was provided 
 with a handsome income of twenty-three 
 pounds a year; which, however, he could 
 not make any great figure with, because 
 he fived in a dear country, and was a 
 little encumbered with a wife and six 
 children." 
 
 This same parson Adams is later reported 
 as having come upon a villain in the act 
 of attacking a defenceless woman, and 
 with a vigor and sense of justice that did 
 credit to his calling he immediately took 
 a hand in the fray — which afforded Field- 
 
 45
 
 ing an occasion for the following dis- 
 quisition on the human skull: — 
 
 **The great abilities of Mr. Adams were 
 not necessary to have formed a right 
 judgment of this affair on the first sight. 
 He did not therefore want the entreaties 
 of the poor wretch to assist her; but, 
 lifting up his crabstick, he immediately 
 levelled a blow at that part of the ravisher*s 
 head where, according to the opinion of 
 the ancients, the brains of some persons 
 are deposited, and which he had undoubt- 
 edly let forth, had not Nature (who, as 
 wise men have observed, equips all crea- 
 tures with what is most expedient for 
 them) taken a provident care (as she 
 always doth with those she intends for 
 encounters) to make this part of the head 
 three times as thick as those of ordinary 
 men who are designed to exercise talents 
 which are vulgarly called rational, and for 
 whom, as brains are necessary, she is 
 obhged to leave some room for them in the 
 cavity of the skull; whereas, those ingre- 
 dients being entirely useless to persons of 
 the heroic calling, she hath an opportunity 
 of thickening the bone, so as to make it 
 less subject to any impression, or liable 
 
 46
 
 to be cracked or broken; and indeed, 
 in some who are predestined to the com- 
 mand of armies and empires, she is supposed 
 sometimes to make that part perfectly 
 solid." 
 
 From here on, in order to avoid the 
 constant repetition of quotation marks, 
 we shall use brackets for all introductory 
 remarks, headings and notes not belonging 
 to Fielding himself. 
 
 47
 
 AN ESSAY TO PROVE THAT AN AUTHOR WILL 
 
 WRITE THE BETTER FOR HAVING SOME 
 
 KNOWLEDGE OF THE SUBJECT ON 
 
 WHICH HE WRITES 
 
 As several gentlemen in these times, 
 by the wonderful force of genius only, 
 without the least assistance of learning, 
 perhaps without being well able to read, 
 have made a considerable figure in the 
 republic of letters; the modern critics, 
 I am told, have lately begun to assert, 
 that all kind of learning is entirely useless 
 to a writer; and, indeed, no other than a 
 kind of fetters on the natural sprightliness 
 and activity of the imagination, which is 
 thus weighed down, and prevented from 
 soaring to those high flights which other- 
 wise it would be able to reach. 
 
 This doctrine, I am afraid, is at present 
 carried much too far: for why should 
 writing differ so much from all other arts? 
 The nimbleness of a dancing-master is not 
 at all prejudiced by being taught to move; 
 nor doth any mechanic, I believe, exercise 
 
 48
 
 his tools the worse by having learnt to 
 use them. For my own part, I cannot 
 conceive that Homer or Virgil would have 
 writ with more fire, if instead of being 
 masters of all the learning of their times, 
 they had been as ignorant as most of the 
 authors of the present age. Nor do I 
 believe that all the imagination, fire, and 
 judgment of Pitt could have produced 
 those orations that have made the senate 
 of England, in these our times, a rival in 
 eloquence to Greece and Rome, if he had 
 not been so well read in the writings of 
 Demosthenes and Cicero, as to have trans- 
 ferred their whole spirit into his speeches, 
 and, with their spirit, their knowledge too. 
 I would not here be understood to insist 
 on the same fund of learning in any of my 
 brethren, as Cicero persuades us is neces- 
 sary to the composition of an orator. 
 On the contrary, very Httle reading is, 
 I conceive, necessary to the poet, less to 
 the critic, and the least of all to the poli- 
 tician. For the first, perhaps, Byshe's 
 Art of Poetry, and a few of our modern 
 poets, may suffice ; for the second, a moder- 
 ate heap of plays; and, for the last, an 
 indifferent collection of political journals. 
 
 49
 
 To say the truth, I require no more than 
 that a man should have some little knowl- 
 edge of the subject on which he treats, 
 according to the old maxim of law, Quam 
 quisque norit artem in ed se exerceat. With 
 this alone a writer may sometimes do 
 tolerably well; and, indeed, without this, 
 all the other learning in the world will 
 stand him in little stead. 
 
 For instance, let us suppose that Homer 
 and Virgil, Aristotle and Cicero, Thucy- 
 dides and Livy, could have met all 
 together, and have clubbed their several 
 talents to have composed a treatise on the 
 art of dancing: I believe it will be read- 
 ily agreed they could not have equalled 
 the excellent treatise which Mr. Essex 
 hath given us on that subject, entitled, 
 The Rudiments oj Genteel Education. 
 
 And, indeed, should the excellent Mr. 
 Broughton be prevailed on to set fist 
 to paper, and to complete the above-said 
 rudiments, by delivering down the true 
 principles of athletics, I question whether 
 the world will have any cause to lament, 
 that none of the great writers, either 
 antient or modern, have ever treated about 
 that noble and useful art. 
 
 50
 
 To avoid a multiplicity of examples 
 in so plain a case, and to come at once to 
 my point, I am apt to conceive, that 
 one reason why many English writers 
 have totally failed in describing the man- 
 ners of upper life, may possibly be, that 
 in reality they know nothing of it. 
 
 This is a knowledge unhappily not in 
 the power of many authors to arrive at. 
 Books will give us a very imperfect idea 
 of it; nor will the stage a much better: 
 the fine gentleman formed upon reading 
 the former will almost always turn out 
 a pedant, and he who forms himself upon 
 the latter, a coxcomb. 
 
 Nor are the characters drawn from these 
 models better supported. Vanbrugh and 
 Congreve copied nature; but they who 
 copy them draw as unlike the present age 
 as Hogarth would do if he was to paint 
 a rout or a drum in the dresses of Titian 
 and of Vandyke. In short, imitation here 
 will not do the business. The picture 
 must be after Nature herself. A true 
 knowledge of the world is gained only by 
 conversation, and the manners of every 
 rank must be seen in order to be known. 
 
 Now it happens that this higher order 
 
 51
 
 of mortals is not to be seen, like all the 
 rest of the human species, for nothing, 
 in the streets, shops, and coffee-houses: 
 nor are they shown, like the upper rank 
 of animals, for so much a-piece. In short, 
 this is a sight to which no persons are 
 admitted without one or other of these 
 qualifications, viz., either birth or fortune, 
 or, what is equivalent to both, the honour- 
 able profession of a gamester. And, very 
 unluckily for the world, persons so qualified 
 very seldom care to take upon themselves 
 the bad trade of writing; which is generally 
 entered upon by the lower and poorer 
 sort, as it is a trade which many think 
 requires no kind of stock to set up with. 
 
 Hence those strange monsters in lace 
 and embroidery, in silks and brocades, 
 with vast wigs and hoops; which, under 
 the name of lords and ladies, strut the 
 stage, to the great delight of attorneys 
 and their clerks in the pit, and of the 
 citizens and their apprentices in the gal- 
 leries; and which are no more to be found 
 in real life than the centaur, the chimera, 
 or any other creature of mere fiction. 
 But to let my reader into a secret, this 
 knowledge of upper life, though very neces- 
 
 52
 
 sary for preventing mistakes, is no very- 
 great resource to a writer whose province 
 is comedy, or that kind of novels which, 
 like this I am writing, is of the comic class. 
 
 What Mr. Pope says of women is very 
 applicable to most in this station, who are, 
 indeed, so entirely made up of form and 
 affectation, that they have no character 
 at all, at least none which appears. I 
 will venture to say the highest life is much 
 the dullest, and affords very little humour 
 or entertainment. The various callings in 
 lower spheres produce the great variety of 
 liumorous characters; whereas here, except 
 among the few who are engaged in the 
 pursuit of ambition, and the fewer still 
 who have a relish for pleasure, all is vanity 
 and servile imitation. Dressing and cards, 
 eating and drinking, bowing and courtesy- 
 ing, make up the business of their lives. 
 
 Some there are, however, of this rank 
 upon whom passion exercises its tyranny, 
 and hurries them far beyond the bounds 
 which decorum prescribes; of these the 
 ladies are as much distinguished by their 
 noble intrepidity, and a certain superior 
 contempt of reputation, from the frail 
 ones of meaner degree, as a virtuous woman 
 
 53
 
 of quality is by the elegance and delicacy 
 of her sentiments from the honest wife of 
 a yeoman and shopkeeper. Lady Bellas- 
 ton was of this intrepid character; but 
 let not my country readers conclude from 
 her, that this is the general conduct of 
 women of fashion, or that we mean to 
 represent them as such. They might as 
 well suppose that every clergyman was 
 represented by Thwackum, or every soldier 
 by ensign Northerton. 
 
 There is not, indeed, a greater error 
 than that which universally prevails among 
 the vulgar, who, borrowing their opinion 
 from some ignorant satirists, have affixed 
 the character of lewdness to these times. 
 On the contrary, I am convinced there 
 never was less of love intrigue carried on 
 among persons of condition than now. 
 Our present women have been taught by 
 their mothers to fix their thoughts only 
 on ambition and vanity, and to despise 
 the pleasures of love as unworthy their 
 regard; and being afterwards, by the care 
 of such mothers, married without having 
 husbands, they seem pretty well confirmed 
 in the justness of those sentiments; whence 
 they content themselves, for the dull re- 
 
 54
 
 mainder of life, with the pursuit of more 
 innocent, but I am afraid more childish, 
 amusements, the bare mention of which 
 would ill suit with the dignity of this 
 history. In my humble opinion, the true 
 characteristic of the present beau monde 
 is rather folly than vice, and the only 
 epithet which it deserves is that of frivo- 
 lous. 
 
 [chapter I OF Tom Jones^ 
 
 THE INTRODUCTION TO THE WORK, OR BILL 
 OF FARE TO THE FEAST 
 
 An author ought to consider himself 
 not as a gentleman who gives a private 
 or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one 
 who keeps a pubhc ordinary, at which 
 all persons are welcome for their money. 
 In the former case, it is well known that 
 the entertainer provides what fare he 
 pleases; and though this should be very 
 indifferent, and utterly disagreeable to the 
 taste of his company, they must not find 
 any fault; nay, on the contrary, good 
 breeding forces them outwardly to approve 
 and to commend whatever is set before 
 them. Now the contrary of this happens 
 
 55
 
 to the master of an ordinary. Men who 
 pay for what they eat will insist on grati- 
 fying their palates, however nice and whim- 
 sical these may prove; and if everything 
 is not agreeable to their taste, will challenge 
 a right to censure, to abuse, and to d — n 
 their dinner without controul. 
 
 To prevent, therefore, giving offence to 
 their customers by any such disappoint- 
 ment, it hath been usual with the honest 
 and well-meaning host to provide a bill 
 of fare which all persons may peruse 
 at their first entrance into the house; 
 and having thence acquainted themselves 
 with the entertainment which they may 
 expect, may either stay and regale with 
 what is provided for them, or may depart 
 to some other ordinary better accommo- 
 dated to their taste. 
 
 As we do not disdain to borrow wit or 
 wisdom from any man who is capable of 
 lending us either, we have condescended 
 to take a hint from these honest victuallers, 
 and shall prefix not only a general bill of 
 fare to our whole entertainment, but shall 
 likewise give the reader particular bills 
 to every course which is to be served up in 
 this and the ensuing volumes. 
 
 56
 
 The provision, then, which we have here 
 made is no other than Human Nature. 
 Nor do I fear that my sensible reader, 
 though most luxurious in his taste, will 
 start, cavil, or be offended, because I 
 have named but one article. The tortoise 
 — as the alderman of Bristol, well learned 
 in eating, knows by much experience — 
 besides the delicious calipash and calipee, 
 contains many different kinds of food; 
 nor can the learned reader be ignorant, 
 that in human nature, though here col- 
 lected under one general name, is such 
 prodigious variety, that a cook will have 
 sooner gone through all the several species 
 of animal and vegetable food in the world, 
 than an author will be able to exhaust 
 so extensive a subject. 
 
 An objection may perhaps be appre- 
 hended from the more delicate, that this 
 dish is too common and vulgar; for what 
 else is the subject of all the romances, 
 novels, plays, and poems, with which the 
 stalls abound? Many exquisite viands 
 might be rejected by the epicure, if it was 
 a sufficient cause for his contemning of 
 them as common and vulgar, that some- 
 thing was to be found in the most paltry 
 
 57
 
 alleys under the same name. In reality, 
 true nature is as difficult to be met with 
 in authors, as the Bayonne ham, or Bo- 
 logna sausage, is to be found in the shops. 
 But the whole, to continue the same 
 metaphor, consists in the cookery of the 
 author; for, as Mr. Pope tells us — 
 
 True wit is nature to advantage drest; 
 
 What oft was thought, but ne'er so well exprest. 
 
 The same animal which hath the honour 
 to have some part of his flesh eaten at 
 the table of a duke, may perhaps be de- 
 graded in another part, and some of his 
 limbs gibbeted, as it were, in the vilest 
 stall in town. Where, then, lies the dif- 
 ference between the food of the nobleman 
 and the porter, if both are at dinner on 
 the same ox or calf, but in the seasoning, 
 the dressing, the garnishing, and the setting 
 forth? Hence the one provokes and in- 
 cites the most languid appetite, and the 
 other turns and palls that which is the 
 sharpest and keenest. 
 
 In like manner, the excellence of the 
 mental entertainment consists less in the 
 subject than in the author's skill in well 
 dressing it up. How pleased, therefore, will 
 
 58
 
 the reader be to find that we have, in the 
 following work, adhered closely to one 
 of the highest principles of the best cook 
 which the present age, or perhaps that of 
 Heliogabalus, hath produced. This great 
 man, as is well known to all lovers of 
 polite eating, begins at first by setting 
 plain things before his hungry guests, 
 rising afterwards by degrees as their 
 stomachs may be supposed to decrease, 
 to the very quintessence of sauce and 
 spices. In hke manner, we shall represent 
 human nature at first to the keen appetite 
 of our reader, in that more plain and 
 simple manner in which it is found in the 
 country, and shall hereafter hash and 
 ragoo it with all the high French and 
 Italian seasoning of affectation and vice 
 which courts and cities afford. By these 
 means, we doubt not but our reader may 
 be rendered desirous to read on for ever, 
 as the great person just above-mentioned 
 is supposed to have made some persons 
 eat. 
 
 [In one of the subsequent chapters of 
 Tom Jones, when the neighborhood were 
 all busily engaged in ferreting out the 
 
 59
 
 parentage of the infant foundling — who 
 was later named Tom Jones — Fielding 
 relates an experience that fell to the lot 
 of a poor, virtuous, unattractive and in- 
 offensive pedagogue named Partridge, who 
 became a victim of gossip and circum- 
 stances far more conducive to the reader's 
 amusement than they were to Partridge's 
 complacency of mind. As a result he 
 lost his wife, and what was far more re- 
 grettable, he lost his position as school- 
 master. In after years he became the 
 ^wandering companion of Tom Jones when 
 that youth was cast upon the world. 
 
 Fielding thus prefaces and describes the 
 "battle," as he calls it, though the only 
 battling the innocent pedagogue did was 
 of a purely defensive nature: — ] 
 
 Perfect calms at sea are always suspected 
 by the experienced mariner to be the fore- 
 runners of a storm: and I know some per- 
 sons, who, without being generally the 
 devotees of superstition, are apt to appre- 
 hend that great and unusual peace or 
 tranquillity will be attended with its oppo- 
 site. For which reason the ancients used, 
 on such occasions, to sacrifice to the god- 
 dess Nemesis, a deity who was thought 
 
 60
 
 by them to look with an invidious eye on 
 human felicity, and to have a peculiar 
 delight in overturning it. 
 
 As we are very far from believing in 
 any such heathen goddess, or from encour- 
 aging any superstition, so we wish Mr. 
 John Fr , or some other such philos- 
 opher, would bestir himself a little, in 
 order to find out the real cause of this 
 sudden transition from good to bad for- 
 tune, which hath been so often remarked, 
 and of which we shall proceed to give an 
 instance; for it is our province to relate 
 facts, and we shall leave causes to persons 
 of much higher genius. 
 
 Mankind have always taken great de- 
 light in knowing and descanting on the 
 actions of others. Hence there have been, 
 in all ages and nations, certain places set 
 apart for public rendezvous, where the 
 curious might meet and satisfy their mu- 
 tual curiosity. Among these, the barbers' 
 shops have justly borne the pre-eminence. 
 Among the Greeks, barbers' news was 
 a proverbial expression; and Horace, in 
 one of his epistles, makes honourable men- 
 tion of the Roman barbers in the same 
 light. 
 
 6i
 
 Those of England are known to be no- 
 wise inferior to their Greek or Roman 
 predecessors. You there see foreign affairs 
 discussed in a manner little inferior to 
 that with which they are handled in the 
 coffee-houses; and domestic occurrences 
 are much more largely and freely treated 
 in the former than in the latter. But this 
 serves only for the men. Now, whereas 
 the females of this country, especially 
 those of the lower order, do associate 
 themselves much more than those of other 
 nations, our polity would be highly de- 
 ficient, if they had not some place set 
 apart likewise for the indulgence of their 
 curiosity, seeing they are in this no way 
 inferior to the other half of the species. 
 
 In enjoying, therefore, such place of 
 rendezvous, the British fair ought to esteem 
 themselves more happy than any of their 
 foreign sisters; as I do not remember 
 either to have read in history, or to have 
 seen in my travels, anything of the like 
 kind. 
 
 This place then is no other than the 
 chandler's shop, the known seat of all the 
 news; or, as it is vulgarly called, gossiping, 
 in every parish in England. 
 
 62
 
 Mrs. Partridge being one day at this 
 assembly of females, was asked by one 
 of her neighbours, if she had heard no 
 news lately of Jenny Jones? To which 
 she answered in the negative. Upon this 
 the other replied, with a smile. That the 
 parish was very much obliged to her for 
 having turned Jenny away as she did. 
 
 Mrs. Partridge, whose jealousy, as the 
 reader well knows, was long since cured, 
 and who had no other quarrel to her maid, 
 answered boldly. She did not know any 
 obhgation the parish had to her on that 
 account; for she believed Jenny had scarce 
 left her equal behind her. 
 
 [Her good neighbor then very ingen- 
 iously informed her that Jenny — who had 
 been a domestic in the Partridge home, 
 from which she had been less than nine 
 months absent — had lately become the 
 mother of a pair of twins, — in which 
 statement, however, there was not a word 
 of truth. Fielding then proceeds to de- 
 scribe the unhappy results of this malicious 
 fabrication : — ] 
 
 Nothing can be so quick and sudden 
 as the operations of the mind, especially 
 when hope, or fear, or jealousy, to which 
 
 63
 
 the two others are but journeymen, set 
 it to work. It occurred instantly to her 
 that Jenny had scarce ever been out of her 
 own house while she lived with her. The 
 leaning over the chair, the sudden start- 
 ing up, the Latin, the smile, and many 
 other things, rushed upon her all at once. 
 The satisfaction her husband expressed 
 in the departure of Jenny appeared now 
 to be only dissembled; again, in the same 
 instant, to be real; but yet to confirm 
 her jealousy, proceeding from satiety, and 
 a hundred other bad causes. In a word, 
 she was convinced of her husband's guilt, 
 and immediately left the assembly in con- 
 fusion. 
 
 As fair Grimalkin, who, though the 
 youngest of the feline family, degenerates 
 not in ferocity from the elder branches of 
 her house, and though inferior in strength, 
 is equal in fierceness to the noble tiger 
 himself, when a little mouse, whom it 
 hath long tormented in sport, escapes 
 from her clutches for a while, frets, scolds, 
 growls, swears; but if the trunk, or box, 
 behind which the mouse lay hid be again 
 removed, she flies like lightning on her 
 prey, and with envenomed wrath, bites, 
 
 64
 
 scratches, mumbles, and tears the little 
 animal. 
 
 Not with less fury did Mrs. Partridge 
 fly on the poor pedagogue. Her tongue, 
 teeth, and hands, fell all upon him at once. 
 His wig was in an instant torn from his 
 head, his shirt from his back, and from 
 his face descended five streams of blood, 
 denoting the number of claws with which 
 nature had unhappily armed the enemy. 
 
 Mr. Partridge acted for some time on 
 the defensive only; indeed he attempted 
 only to guard his face with his hands; 
 but as he found that his antagonist abated 
 nothing of her rage, he thought he might, 
 at least, endeavour to disarm her, or rather 
 to confine her arms; in doing which her 
 cap fell off in the struggle, and her hair 
 being too short to reach her shoulders, 
 erected itself on her head; her stays 
 likewise, which were laced through one 
 single hole at the bottom, burst open; 
 and her breasts, which were much more 
 redundant than her hair, hung down be- 
 low her middle; her face was likewise 
 marked with the blood of her husband, 
 her teeth gnashed with rage; and fire, 
 such as sparkles from a smith's forge, 
 
 65
 
 darted from her eyes. So that, altogether, 
 this Amazonian heroine might have been 
 an object of terror to a much bolder man 
 than Mr. Partridge. 
 
 He had, at length, the good fortune, 
 by getting possession of her arms, to render 
 those weapons which she wore at the ends 
 of her fingers useless; which she no sooner 
 perceived, than the softness of her sex 
 prevailed over her rage, and she presently 
 dissolved in tears, which soon after con- 
 cluded in a fit. 
 
 That small share of sense which Mr. 
 Partridge had hitherto preserved through 
 this scene of fury, of the cause of which 
 he was hitherto ignorant, now utterly 
 abandoned him. He ran instantly into 
 the street, hallowing out that his wife 
 was in the agonies of death, and beseech- 
 ing the neighbours to fly with the utmost 
 haste to her assistance. Several good 
 women obeyed his summons, who entering 
 his house, and applying the usual remedies 
 on such occasions, Mrs. Partridge was 
 at length, to the great joy of her husband, 
 brought to herself. 
 
 As soon as she had a little recollected 
 her spirits, and somewhat composed her- 
 
 66
 
 self with a cordial, she began to inform 
 the company of the manifold injuries she 
 had received from her husband; who, 
 she said, was not contented to injure 
 her in her bed; but, upon her upbraiding 
 him with it, had treated her in the crudest 
 manner imaginable; had tore her cap 
 and hair from her head, and her stays 
 from her body, giving her, at the same 
 time, several blows, the marks of which 
 she should carry to the grave. 
 
 The poor man, who bore on his face 
 many more visible marks of the indig- 
 nation of his wife, stood in silent astonish- 
 ment at this accusation; which the reader 
 will, I believe, bear witness for him, had 
 greatly exceeded the truth; for indeed 
 he had not struck her once; and this 
 silence being interpreted to be a confession 
 of the charge by the whole court, they 
 all began at once, una voce, to rebuke and 
 revile him, repeating often, that none but 
 a coward ever struck a woman. 
 
 Mr. Partridge bore all this patiently; 
 but when his wife appealed to the blood 
 on her face, as an evidence of his barbarity, 
 he could not help laying claim to his 
 own blood, for so it really was; as he 
 
 67
 
 thought it very unnatural, that this should 
 rise up (as we are taught that of a mur- 
 dered person often doth) in vengeance 
 against him. 
 
 To this the women made no other answer, 
 than that it was a pity it had not come 
 from his heart, instead of his face; all 
 declaring, that, if their husbands should 
 lift their hands against them, they would 
 have their hearts' blood out of their bodies. 
 
 Pn Tom Jones, Fielding wrote the follow- 
 ing prelude to the appearance of his young 
 heroine in the book. It is worthy of note 
 that the model he used for this exemplary- 
 character, upon whom he bestowed every 
 grace and beauty of physical and mental 
 form that his inventive mind could con- 
 jure up, was no other than his sainted 
 wife. In this book she was the adorable 
 sweetheart of the hero; while later, in his 
 Amelia, she became the titular heroine 
 of that book as the wife of Booth, and 
 was there endowed with almost every 
 charm and womanly virtue that could 
 be attributed to one of her sex. 
 
 Fielding's wife was greatly beloved not 
 
 68 
 
 J
 
 only by her husband but also by a faithful 
 and intelligent house-maid, who lamented 
 her death almost as deeply as Fielding 
 himself did. In thus mingling their com- 
 mon sorrows they became so attached to 
 each other that later they decided to get 
 married; and, perhaps profiting by the 
 example of her mistress, she made him a 
 most excellent second wife: — ] 
 
 We shall leave to the reader to determine 
 with what judgment we have chosen the 
 several occasions for inserting those orna- 
 mental parts of our work. Surely it will 
 be allowed that none could be more proper 
 than the present, where we are about to 
 introduce a considerable character on the 
 scene; no less, indeed, than the heroine 
 of this heroic, historical, prosaic poem. 
 Here, therefore, we have thought proper 
 to prepare the mind of the reader for her 
 reception, by filling it with every pleasing 
 image which we can draw from the face 
 of nature. And for this method we plead 
 many predecents. First, this is an art 
 well known to, and much practised by, 
 our tragick poets, who seldom fail to 
 prepare their audience for the reception 
 of their principal characters. 
 
 69
 
 Thus the heroe is always introduced 
 with a flourish of drums and trumpets, 
 in order to rouse a martial spirit in the 
 audience, and to accommodate their ears 
 to bombast and fustian, which Mr. Locke's 
 bUnd man would not have grossly erred 
 in likening to the sound of a trumpet. 
 Again, when lovers are coming forth, soft 
 music often conducts them on the stage, 
 either to soothe the audience with the 
 softness of the tender passion, or to lull 
 and prepare them for that gentle slumber 
 in which they will most probably be com- 
 posed by the ensuing scene. 
 
 And not only the poets, but the masters 
 of these poets, the managers of playhouses, 
 seem to be in this secret; for, besides the 
 aforesaid kettle-drums, &c., which denote 
 the heroe's approach, he is generally 
 ushered on the stage by a large troop of 
 half a dozen scene-shifters; and how neces- 
 sary these are imagined to his appearance, 
 may be concluded from the following 
 theatrical story : — 
 
 King Pyrrhus was at dinner at an ale- 
 house bordering on the theatre, when he 
 was summoned to go on the stage. The 
 heroe, being unwilling to quit his shoulder 
 
 70
 
 of mutton, and as unwilling to draw on 
 himself the indignation of Mr. Wilks (his 
 brother-manager) for making the audience 
 wait, had bribed these his harbingers to 
 be out of the way. While Mr. Wilks, 
 therefore, was thundering out, "Where 
 are the carpenters to walk on before 
 King Pyrrhus?" that monarch very quietly 
 ate his mutton, and the audience, however 
 impatient, were obliged to entertain them- 
 selves with music in his absence. 
 
 To be plain, I much question whether 
 the politician, who hath generally a good 
 nose, hath not scented out somewhat of 
 the utility of this practice. I am convinced 
 that awful magistrate my lord-mayor con- 
 tracts a good deal of that reverence which 
 attends him through the year, by the 
 several pageants which precede his pomp. 
 Nay, I must confess, that even I myself, 
 who am not remarkably liable to be capti- 
 vated with show, have yielded not a little 
 to the impressions of much preceding state. 
 When I have seen a man strutting in a 
 procession, after others whose business 
 was only to walk before him, I have con- 
 ceived a higher notion of his dignity than 
 I have felt on seeing him in a common 
 
 71
 
 situation. But there is one instance, which 
 comes exactly up to my purpose. This 
 is the custom of sending on a basket- 
 woman, who is to precede the pomp at 
 a coronation, and to strew the stage with 
 flowers, before the great personages begin 
 their procession. The antients would cer- 
 tainly have invoked the goddess Flora 
 for this purpose, and it would have been 
 no difficulty for their priests, or politicians 
 to have persuaded the people of the real 
 presence of the deity, though a plain mortal 
 had personated her and performed her 
 office. But we have no such design of 
 imposing on our reader; and therefore 
 those who object to the heathen theology 
 may, if they please, change our goddess 
 into the above-mentioned basket-woman. 
 Our intention, in short, is to introduce our 
 heroine with the utmost solemnity in our 
 power, with an elevation of stile, and 
 all other circumstances proper to raise the 
 veneration of our reader. Indeed we would, 
 for certain causes, advise those of our 
 male readers who have any hearts, to read 
 no farther, were we not well assured, 
 that how amiable soever the picture of 
 our heroine will appear, as it is really a 
 
 72
 
 copy from nature, many of our fair country- 
 women will be found worthy to satisfy 
 any passion, and to answer any idea of 
 female perfection which our pencil will 
 be able to raise. 
 
 [about physicians] 
 
 [In an early chapter of Tom Jones, 
 Captain Blifil expired of heart failure, 
 was brought from the garden into the 
 house, and two eminent physicians were 
 called to attend him. Without first ascer- 
 taining whether life was extinct they 
 promptly fell into a violent dispute over 
 his ailment, of which Fielding gives the 
 following account. His playful remarks are 
 of course not to be taken seriously, for 
 no one held a higher place in his esteem 
 than the practitioners in this honorable \ 
 calling: — ] | 
 
 Hence arose a dispute between the 
 learned men, in which each delivered the 
 reasons of their several opinions. These 
 were of such equal force, that they served 
 both to confirm either doctor in his own 
 sentiments, and made not the least impres- 
 sion on his adversary. 
 
 73
 
 To say the truth, every physician almost 
 hath his favourite disease, to which he 
 ascribes all the victories obtained over hu- 
 man nature. The gout, the rheumatism, 
 the stone, the gravel, and the consump- 
 tion, have all their several patrons in the 
 faculty; and none more than the nervous 
 fever, or the fever on the spirits. . . . 
 
 The reader may perhaps be surprized, 
 that, instead of endeavouring to revive 
 the patient, the learned gentlemen should 
 fall immediately into a dispute on the 
 occasion of his death. . . . 
 
 There is nothing more unjust than the 
 vulgar opinion, by which physicians are 
 misrepresented, as friends to death. On 
 the contrary, I believe, if the number of 
 those who recover by physic could be 
 opposed to that of the martyrs to it, the 
 former would rather exceed the latter. 
 Nay, some are so cautious on this head, 
 that, to avoid a possibility of killing the 
 patient, they abstain from all methods 
 of curing, and prescribe nothing but what 
 can neither do good nor harm. I have 
 heard some of these, with great gravity, 
 deliver it as a maxim, "That Nature 
 should be left to do her own work, while 
 
 74
 
 the physician stands by as it were to clap 
 her on the back, and encourage her when 
 she doth well." . . . 
 
 As a wise general never despises his 
 enemy, however inferior that enemy's force 
 may be, so neither doth a wise physician 
 ever despise a distemper, however incon- 
 siderable. As the former preserves the same 
 strict discipline, places the same guards, 
 and employs the same scouts, though the 
 enemy be never so wekk; so the lat- 
 ter maintains the same gravity of counte- 
 nance, and shakes his head with the same 
 significant air, let the distemper be never 
 so trifling. And both, among many other 
 good ones, may assign this solid reason 
 for their conduct, that by these means 
 the greater glory redounds to them if they 
 gain the victory, and the less disgrace 
 if by any unlucky accident they should 
 happen to be conquered. 
 
 [While Fielding took great delight in 
 setting his characters in the so-called upper 
 class at variance with one another in 
 matters of great moment, such as Learning, 
 Aff^airs of State, and profound problems 
 
 75
 
 of moral and mental import, he did not 
 despise the impolite pastimes of the lower 
 order of society; and the fact that he 
 frequently had this latter class engaging 
 I in quarrels, brawls and fistic combats 
 shows how faithfully he depicted their 
 natural bent; for although all low-bred 
 people are not quarrelsome, it may be 
 set down as an almost infallible rule that 
 all quarrelsome people are ill-bred. And 
 yet one of the strange anomalies of human 
 nature is, that the most contentious and 
 irascible persons always wonder why others 
 are so quarrelsome and stubborn. 
 
 Fielding's hero, Tom Jones, having res- 
 cued a poor woman from the hands of a 
 villain on the highway, took her to a nearby 
 country inn for shelter. Having lost the 
 greater part of her clothing in the scrim- 
 mage, and thus not presenting a very tidy 
 appearance, the landlord and his lady 
 refused her admittance. Jones finally suc- 
 ceeded in getting her upstairs, after which 
 the following lively fracas is chronicled by 
 Fielding: — ] 
 
 Now it required no very blameable 
 degree of suspicion to imagine that Mr. 
 Jones and his ragged companion had cer- 
 
 76
 
 tain purposes in their intention, which, 
 though tolerated in some Christian coun- 
 tries, connived at in others, and practised 
 in all, are however as expressly forbidden 
 as murder, or any other horrid vice, by 
 that religion which is universally believed 
 in those countries. The landlady, there- 
 fore, had no sooner received an intimation 
 of the entrance of the above-said persons 
 than she began to meditate the most 
 expeditious means for their expulsion. In 
 order to this, she had provided herself 
 with a long and deadly instrument, with 
 which, in times of peace, the chambermaid 
 was wont to demolish the labours of the 
 industrious spider. In vulgar phrase, she 
 had taken up the broomstick, and was just 
 about to sally from the kitchen, when 
 Jones accosted her with a demand of a 
 gown and other vestments, to cover the 
 half-naked woman upstairs. 
 
 Nothing can be more provoking to the 
 human temper, nor more dangerous to 
 that cardinal virtue, patience, than solici- 
 tations of extraordinary offices of kind- 
 ness on behalf of those very persons with 
 whom we are highly incensed. For this 
 reason Shakespear hath artfully introduced 
 
 77
 
 his Desdemona soliciting favours for Cassio 
 of her husband, as the means of inflaming, 
 not only his jealousy, but his rage, to the 
 highest pitch of madness; and we find 
 the unfortunate Moor less able to command 
 his passion on this occasion, than even 
 when he beheld his valued present to his 
 wife in the hands of his supposed rival. 
 In fact, we regard these efforts as insults 
 on our understanding, and to such the 
 pride of man is very difficultly brought to 
 submit. 
 
 My landlady, though a very good-tem- 
 pered woman, had, I suppose, some of 
 this pride in her composition, for Jones 
 had scarce ended his request, when she 
 fell upon him with a certain weapon, 
 which, though it be neither long, nor 
 sharp, nor hard, nor indeed threatens 
 from its appearance with either death or 
 wound, hath been however held in great 
 dread and abhorrence by many wise men — 
 nay, by many brave ones; insomuch, 
 that some who have dared to look into the 
 mouth of a loaded cannon, have not dared 
 to look into a mouth where this weapon 
 was brandished; and rather than run the 
 hazard of its execution, have contented 
 
 78
 
 themselves with making a most pitiful 
 and sneaking figure in the eyes of all their 
 acquaintance. 
 
 To confess the truth, I am afraid Mr. 
 Jones was one of these; for though he was 
 attacked and violently belaboured with the 
 aforesaid weapon, he could not be pro- 
 voked to make any resistance; but in a 
 most cowardly manner applied, with many 
 entreaties, to his antagonist to desist from 
 pursuing her blows; in plain English, 
 he only begged her with the utmost earnest- 
 ness to hear him; but before he could 
 obtain his request, my landlord himself 
 entered into the fray, and embraced that 
 side of the cause which seemed to stand 
 very little in need of assistance. 
 
 There are a sort of heroes who are 
 supposed to be determined in their chusing 
 or avoiding a conflict by the character 
 and behaviour of the person whom they 
 are to engage. These are said to know 
 their men, and Jones, I believe, knew his 
 woman; for though he had been so sub- 
 missive to her, he was no sooner attacked 
 by her husband than he demonstrated an 
 immediate spirit of resentment, and en- 
 joined him silence under a very severe 
 
 79
 
 penalty; no less than that, I think, of 
 being converted into fuel for his own fire. 
 
 The husband, with great indignation, 
 but with a mixture of pity, answered, 
 "You must pray first to be made able. 
 I believe I am a better man than yourself; 
 ay, every way, that I am;" and presently 
 proceeded to discharge half-a-dozen whores 
 at the lady above stairs, the last of which 
 had scarce issued from his lips, when a 
 swinging blow from the cudgel that Jones 
 carried in his hand assaulted him over 
 the shoulders. 
 
 It is a question whether the landlord 
 or the landlady was the most expeditious 
 in returning this blow. My landlord, 
 whose hands were empty, fell to with 
 his fist, and the good wife, uplifting her 
 broom and aiming at the head of Jones, 
 had probably put an immediate end to 
 the fray, and to Jones likewise, had not 
 the descent of this broom been prevented 
 — not by the miraculous intervention of 
 any heathen deity, but by a very natural 
 though fortunate accident, viz., by the 
 arrival of Partridge, who entered the house 
 at that instant (for fear had caused him 
 to run every step from the hill), and who, 
 
 80
 
 seeing the danger which threatened his 
 master or companion (which you chuse 
 to call him), prevented so sad a catas- 
 trophe by catching hold of the landlady's 
 arm, as it was brandished aloft in the air. 
 
 The landlady soon perceived the impedi- 
 ment which prevented her blow; and 
 being unable to rescue her arm from the 
 hands of Partridge, she let fall the broom; 
 and then leaving Jones to the discipline 
 of her husband, she fell with the utmost 
 fury on that poor fellow, who had already 
 given some intimation of himself, by cry- 
 ing, "Zounds! do you intend to kill my 
 friend?" 
 
 Partridge, though not much addicted 
 to battle, would not however stand still 
 when his friend was attacked; nor was he 
 much displeased with that part of the 
 combat which fell to his share; he there- 
 fore returned my landlady's blows as soon 
 as he received them: and now the fight 
 was obstinately maintained on all parts, 
 and it seemed doubtful to which side 
 Fortune would incline, when the naked 
 lady, who had listened at the top of the 
 stairs to the dialogue which preceded the 
 engagement, descended suddenly from 
 
 8i
 
 above, and without weighing the unfair 
 inequality of two to one, fell upon the 
 poor woman who was boxing with Part- 
 ridge; nor did that great champion desist, 
 but rather redoubled his fury, when he 
 found fresh succours were arrived to his 
 assistance. 
 
 Victory must now have fallen to the 
 side of the travellers (for the bravest troops 
 must yield to numbers) had not Susan 
 the chambermaid come luckily to support 
 her mistress. This Susan was as two- 
 handed a wench (according to the phrase) 
 as any in the country, and would, I believe, 
 have beat the famed Thalestris herself, 
 or any of her subject Amazons; for her 
 form was robust and man-like, and every 
 way made for such encounters. As her 
 hands and arms were formed to give 
 blows with great mischief to an enemy, 
 so was her face as well contrived to re- 
 ceive blows without any great injury to 
 herself, her nose being already flat to her 
 face; her lips were so large, that no swell- 
 ing could be perceived in them, and more- 
 over they were so hard, that a fist could 
 hardly make any impression on them. 
 Lastly, her cheek-bones stood out, as if 
 
 82
 
 nature had intended them for two bastions 
 to defend her eyes in those encounters 
 for which she seemed so well calculated, 
 and to which she was most wonderfully 
 well inclined. 
 
 This fair creature entering the field of 
 battle, immediately filed to that wing 
 where her mistress maintained so unequal 
 a fight with one of either sex. Here she 
 presently challenged Partridge to single 
 combat. He accepted the challenge, and 
 a most desperate fight began between 
 them. 
 
 Now the dogs of war being let loose, 
 began to lick their bloody lips; now Vic- 
 tory, with golden wings, hung hovering 
 in the air; now Fortune, taking her scales 
 from her shelf, began to weigh the fates 
 of T©m Jones, his female companion, and 
 Partridge, against the landlord, his wife, 
 and maid; all which hung in exact balance 
 before her; when a good-natured accident 
 put suddenly an end to the bloody fray, 
 with which half of the combatants had 
 already sufficiently feasted. This accident 
 was the arrival of a coach and four; upon 
 which my landlord and landlady imme- 
 diately desisted from fighting, and at their 
 
 83
 
 entreaty obtained the same favour of their 
 antagonists: but Susan was not so kind 
 to Partridge; for that Amazonian fair 
 having overthrown and bestrid her enemy, 
 was now cuffing him lustily with both 
 her hands, without any regard to his 
 request of a cessation of arms, or to those 
 loud exclamations of murder which he 
 roared forth. 
 
 No sooner, however, had Jones quitted 
 the landlord, than he flew to the rescue 
 of his defeated companion, from whom 
 he with much difficulty drew off the en- 
 raged chambermaid: but Partridge was 
 not immediately sensible of his deliverance, 
 for he still lay flat on the floor, guarding 
 his face with his hands; nor did he cease 
 roaring till Jones had forced him to look 
 up, and to perceive that the battle was 
 at an end. 
 
 [In Book V, chapter v, of Tom Jones, we 
 find a bit of pertinent comment on philos- 
 ophers, so-called. Mr. Square, a self-styled 
 philosopher and paragon of Virtue, was 
 one day discovered hidden in a closet in 
 the apartments of a woman who made 
 no very loud boast of moral scruples : — ] 
 I 84
 
 The posture, indeed, in which he stood, 
 was not greatly unhke that of a soldier 
 who is tied neck and heels; or rather 
 resembhng the attitude in which we often 
 see fellows in the public streets of London, 
 who are not suffering but deserving punish- 
 ment by so standing. He had a nightcap 
 belonging to Molly on his head, and his 
 two large eyes, the moment the rug fell, 
 stared directly at Jones; so that when 
 the idea of philosophy was added to the 
 figure now discovered, it would have been 
 very difficult for any spectator to have 
 refrained from immoderate laughter. 
 
 I question not but the surprize of the 
 reader wiH be. here equal to that of Jones; 
 as the suspicions which must arise from 
 the appearance of this wise and grave 
 man in such a place may seem so incon- 
 sistent with that character which he hath, 
 doubtless, maintained hitherto, in the opin- 
 ion of every one. 
 
 But to confess the truth, this incon- 
 sistency is rather imaginary than real. 
 Philosophers are composed of flesh and 
 blood as well as other human creatures; 
 and however sublimated and refined the 
 theory of these may be, a little practical 
 
 85
 
 frailty is as incident to them as to other 
 mortals. It is, indeed, in theory only, 
 and not in practice, as we have before 
 hinted, that consists the difference: for 
 though such great beings think much better 
 and more wisely, they always act exactly 
 like other men. They know very well how 
 to subdue all appetites and passions, and to 
 despise both pain and pleasure; and this 
 knowledge affords much delightful contem- 
 plation, and is easily acquired; but the prac- 
 tice would be vexatious and troublesome; 
 and, therefore, the same wisdom which 
 teaches them to know this, teaches them 
 to avoid carrying it into execution. 
 
 [A little farther along Fielding again 
 mentions Mr. Square in connection with 
 a free-for-all encounter he witnessed, but 
 in which he took no part; "for the phi- 
 losophy of Square," says Fielding, "ren- 
 dered him superior to all emotions, and 
 he very calmly smoaked his pipe, as was 
 his custom in all broils, unless when he 
 apprehended some danger of having it 
 broke in his mouth."] 
 
 [It is perhaps a wise saying, that "True 
 literary critics are known by their talent 
 \ 86
 
 of swarming about the noblest writers. 
 In Tom Jones, Fielding gives a caustic 
 commentary on Literary Critics, who, 
 strangely enough, have been proverbially 
 wrong in their estimates of genius, — so 
 much so that it has been regarded by some 
 as a bad omen to have their writings 
 commended by these harbingers of an au- 
 thor's fame. It is observable, also, that the 
 so-called authoritative guidebooks to suc- 
 cess in business and literary pursuits are 
 seldom, if indeed ever, written by those 
 who have successfully applied the methods 
 expounded: — ] 
 
 Now, in reality, the world have paid too 
 great a compliment to critics, and have 
 imagined them men of much greater pro- 
 fundity than they really are. From this 
 complacence, the critics have been embold- 
 ened to assume a dictatorial power, and 
 have so far succeeded, that they are now 
 become the masters, and have the assur- 
 ance to give laws to those authors from 
 whose predecessors they originally received 
 them. 
 
 The critic, rightly considered, is no more 
 than the clerk, whose office it is to trans- 
 cribe the rules and laws laid down by those 
 
 87
 
 great judges whose vast strength of genius 
 hath placed them in the light of legislators, 
 in the several sciences over which they 
 presided. This office was all which the 
 critics of old aspired to; nor did they ever 
 dare to advance a sentence, without sup- 
 porting it by the authority of the judge 
 from whence it was borrowed. 
 
 But in process of time, and in ages of 
 ignorance, the clerk began to invade the 
 power and assume the dignity of his 
 master. The laws of writing were no 
 longer founded on the practice of the 
 author, but on the dictates of the critic. 
 The clerk became the legislator, and those 
 very peremptorily gave laws, whose business 
 it was, at first, only to transcribe them. 
 
 Hence arose an obvious, and perhaps 
 an unavoidable error; for these critics 
 being men of shallow capacities, very easily 
 mistook mere form for substance. They 
 acted as a judge would, who should adhere 
 to the lifeless letter of law, and reject the 
 spirit. Little circumstances, which were 
 perhaps accidental in a great author, were 
 by these critics considered to constitute 
 his chief merit, and transmitted as essen- 
 tials to be observed by all his successors. 
 
 88
 
 To these encroachments, time and igno- 
 rance, the two great supporters of impos- 
 ture, gave authority; and thus many rules 
 for good writing have been established, 
 which have not the least foundation in 
 truth or nature; and which commonly 
 serve for no other purpose than to curb 
 and restrain genius, in the same manner 
 as it would have restrained the dancing- 
 master, had the many excellent treatises 
 on that art laid it down as an essential 
 rule that every man must dance in 
 chains. . . . 
 
 This word critic is of Greek derivation, 
 and signifies judgment. Hence I presume 
 some persons who have not understood 
 the original, and have seen the English 
 translation of the primitive, have con- 
 cluded that it meant judgment in the 
 legal sense, in which it is frequently used 
 as equivalent to condemnation. 
 
 I am the rather inclined to be of that 
 opinion, as the greatest number of critics 
 hath of late years been found amongst 
 the lawyers. Many of these gentlemen, 
 from despair, perhaps, of ever rising to the 
 bench in Westminster-hall, have placed 
 themselves on the benches at the play- 
 
 89
 
 house, where they have exerted their judi- 
 cial capacity, and have given judgment 
 I.e., condemned without mercy. 
 
 The gentlemen would, perhaps, be well 
 enough pleased, if we were to leave them 
 thus compared to one of the most impor- 
 tant and honourable offices in the common- 
 wealth, and, if we intended to apply to 
 their favour, we would do so; but, as we 
 design to deal very sincerely and plainly 
 too with them, we must remind them of 
 another officer of justice of a much lower 
 rank; to whom, as they not only pro- 
 nounce, but execute, their own judgment, 
 they bear likewise some remote resem- 
 blance. 
 
 But in reahty there is another light, 
 in which these modern critics may, with 
 great justice and propriety, be seen; and 
 this is that of a common slanderer. If a 
 person who prys into the characters of 
 others, with no other design but to dis- 
 cover their faults, and to pubfish them to 
 the world, deserves the title of a slanderer 
 of the reputations of men, why should not 
 a critic, who reads with the same malevo- 
 lent view, be as properly stiled the slan- 
 derer of the reputation of books? 
 
 90
 
 Vice hath not, I believe, a more abject 
 slave; society produces not a more odious 
 vermin; nor can the devil receive a guest 
 more worthy of him, nor possibly more 
 welcome to him, than a slanderer. The 
 world, I am afraid, regards not this mon- 
 ster with half the abhorrence which he 
 deserves; and I am more afraid to assign 
 the reason of this criminal lenity shown 
 towards him; yet it is certain that the 
 thief looks innocent in the comparison; 
 nay, the murderer himself can seldom 
 stand in competition with his guilt: for 
 slander is a more cruel weapon than a 
 sword, as the wounds which the former 
 gives are always incurable. One method, 
 indeed, there is of killing, and that the 
 basest and most execrable of all, which 
 bears an exact analogy to the vice here 
 disclaimed against, and that is poison: 
 a means of revenge so base, and yet so 
 horrible, that it was once wisely dis- 
 tinguished by our laws from all other 
 murders, in the peculiar severity of the 
 punishment. 
 
 Besides the dreadful mischiefs done by 
 slander, and the baseness of the means 
 by which they are effected, there are 
 
 91
 
 other circumstances that highly aggravate 
 its atrocious quality; for it often proceeds 
 from no provocation, and seldom promises 
 itself any reward, unless some black and 
 infernal mind may propose a reward in 
 the thoughts of having procured the ruin 
 and misery of another. 
 
 Shakespear hath nobly touched this vice, 
 when he says — 
 
 Who steals my purse steals trash; 't is something, 
 nothing; 
 
 'T was mine, 't is his, and hath been slave to thou- 
 sands: 
 
 But he that filches from me my good name 
 
 Robs me of that which not enriches him, 
 
 BUT MAKES ME POOR INDEED. 
 
 With all this my good reader will doubt- 
 less agree; but much of it will probably 
 seem too severe, when applied to the 
 slanderer of books. But let it here be 
 considered that both proceed from the 
 same wicked disposition of mind, and are 
 alike void of the excuse of temptation. 
 Nor shall we conclude the injury done this 
 way to be very slight, when we consider 
 a book as the author's offspring, and in- 
 deed as the child of his brain. 
 
 The reader who hath suffered his Muse 
 
 92
 
 to continue hitherto in a virgin state can 
 have but a very inadequate idea of this 
 kind of paternal fondness. To such we 
 may parody the tender exclamation of 
 Macduff, "Alas! Thou hast written no 
 book." But the author whose Muse hath 
 brought forth will feel the pathetic strain, 
 perhaps will accompany me with tears 
 (especially if his darling be already no 
 more), while I mention the uneasiness with 
 which the big Muse bears about her bur- 
 den, the painful labour with which she 
 produces it, and, lastly, the care, the 
 fondness, with which the tender father 
 nourishes his favourite, till it be brought 
 to maturity, and produced into the world. 
 Nor is there any paternal fondness which 
 seems less to savour of absolute instinct, 
 and which may so well be reconciled to 
 worldly wisdom, as this. These children 
 may most truly be called the riches of 
 their father; and many of them have with 
 true filial piety fed their parent in his old 
 age: so that not only the affection, but 
 the interest, of the author may be highly 
 injured by these slanderers, whose poison- 
 ous breath brings his book to an untimely 
 end. 
 
 93
 
 Lastly, the slander of a book is, in 
 truth, the slander of the author: for, as 
 no one can call another bastard, without 
 calling the mother a whore, so neither can 
 any one give the names of sad stuff, horrid 
 nonsense, &c., to a book, without calling 
 the author a blockhead; which, though 
 in a moral sense it is a preferable appel- 
 lation to that of villain, is perhaps rather 
 more injurious to his worldly interest. 
 
 Now, however ludicrous all this may 
 appear to some, others, I doubt not, will 
 feel and acknowledge the truth of it; 
 nay, may, perhaps, think I have not 
 treated the subject with decent solemnity; 
 but surely a man may speak truth with 
 a smihng countenance. In reality, to de- 
 preciate a book mahciously, or even wan- 
 tonly, is at least a very ill-natured office; 
 and a morose snarling critic may, I believe, 
 be suspected to be a bad man. 
 
 I will therefore endeavour, in the re- 
 maining part of this chapter, to explain 
 the marks of this character, and to show 
 what criticism I here intend to obviate: 
 for I can never be understood, unless by 
 the very persons here meant, to insinuate 
 that there are no proper judges of writing, 
 
 94
 
 or to endeavour to exclude from the com- 
 monwealth of literature any of those noble 
 critics to whose labours the learned world 
 are so greatly indebted. Such were Aris- 
 totle, Horace, and Longinus, among the 
 antients, Dacier and Bossu among the 
 French, and some perhaps ^among us; who 
 have certainly been duly authorised to 
 execute at least a judicial authority in 
 Joro literario. 
 
 But without ascertaining all the proper 
 quahfications of a critic, which I have 
 touched on elsewhere, I think I may 
 very boldly object to the censures of any 
 one passed upon works which he hath not 
 himself read. Such censurers as these, 
 whether they speak from their own guess 
 or suspicion, or from the report and opinion 
 of others, may properly be said to slander 
 the reputation of the book they condemn. 
 
 Such may likewise be suspected of de- 
 serving this character, who, without assign- 
 ing any particular faults, condemn the 
 whole in general defamatory terms; such 
 as vile, dull, d — d stuff, &c., and particu- 
 larly by the use of the monosyllable low; 
 a word which becomes the mouth of no 
 critic who is not Right Honourable. 
 
 95
 
 Again, though there may be some faults 
 justly assigned in the work, yet, if those 
 are not in the most essential parts, or if 
 they are compensated by greater beauties, 
 it will savour rather of the malice of a 
 slanderer than of the judgment of a true 
 critic to pass a severe sentence upon the 
 whole, merely on account of some vicious 
 part. This is directly contrary to the 
 sentiments of Horace: 
 
 Verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis 
 Offendor maculis, quas aut incuria Judit, 
 Aut bumana parum cavit natura 
 
 But where the beauties, more in number, shine, 
 I am not angry, when a casual line 
 (That with some trivial faults unequal flows) 
 A careless hand or human frailty shows. 
 
 For, as Martial says, Aliter non fity 
 Avite, liber. No book can be otherwise 
 composed. All beauty of character, as 
 well as of countenance, and indeed of 
 everything human, is to be tried in this 
 manner. Cruel indeed would it be if such a 
 work as this history, which hath employed 
 some thousands of hours in the composing, 
 should be liable to be condemned, because 
 some particular chapter, or perhaps chap- 
 ters, may be obnoxious to very just and 
 
 96
 
 sensible objections. And yet nothing is 
 more common than the most rigorous 
 sentence upon books supported by such 
 objections, which, if they were rightly 
 taken (and that they are not always), 
 do by no means go to the merit of the 
 whole. In the theatre especially, a single 
 expression which doth not coincide with the 
 taste of the audience, or with any individual 
 critic of that audience, is sure to be hissed; 
 and one scene which should be disapproved 
 would hazard the whole piece. To write 
 within such severe rules as these is as 
 impossible as to live up to some splenetic 
 opinions: and if we judge according to 
 the sentiments of some critics, and of some 
 Christians, no author will be saved in this 
 world, and no man in the next. 
 
 [The following passage from Amelia illus- 
 trates a practice which, although more 
 or less obsolete, is not entirely forgotten 
 in the present age. Booth's wife, Amelia, 
 had by means of disposing of all her little 
 trinkets, and all her clothing, excepting 
 only that which she wore, raised a sum of 
 money to discharge a debt and thus prevent 
 
 97
 
 her husband from going to gaol. While 
 on his way to pay off the creditor, Booth 
 met a person who told him that by paying 
 a sum (all he had), to a certain person of 
 "powerful interest" he could procure a 
 highly remunerative place in the war- 
 office. In the last depths of despair, Booth 
 yielded to the importunity, and Fielding 
 says, **The great man received the money, 
 not as a gudgeon doth a bait, but as a pike 
 receives a poor gudgeon into his maw.'* 
 The result was that Booth went to gaol, 
 the great man pocketed the money and 
 forgot all about the obligation he incurred 
 in receiving it : — ] 
 
 This gentleman had a place in the War- 
 office, and pretended to be a man of great 
 interest and consequence; by which means 
 he did not only receive great respect and 
 court from the inferiour officers, but actu- 
 ally bubbled several of their money, by 
 undertaking to do them services which, 
 in reality, were not within his power. In 
 truth, I have known few great men who 
 have not been beset with one or more 
 such fellows as these, through whom the 
 inferior part of mankind are obliged to 
 make their court to the great men them-
 
 selves; by which means, I believe, princi- 
 pally, persons of real merit have often 
 been deterred from the attempt; for these 
 subaltern coxcombs ever assume an equal 
 state with their masters, and look for an 
 equal degree of respect to be paid to them; 
 to which men of spirit, who are in every 
 light their betters, are not easily brought 
 to submit. These fellows, indeed, them- 
 selves have a jealous eye towards all great 
 abilities, and are sure, to the utmost of 
 their power, to keep all who are so endowed 
 from the presence of their masters. They 
 use their masters as bad ministers have 
 sometimes used a prince — they keep all 
 men of merit from his ears, and daily 
 sacrifice his true honour and interest to 
 their own profit and their own vanity. . . . 
 Here I shall stop one moment, and so, 
 perhaps, will my good-natured reader; for 
 surely it must be a hard heart which is 
 not affected with reflecting on the manner 
 in which this poor little sum was raised, 
 and on the manner in which it was be- 
 stowed. A worthy family, the wife and 
 children of a man who had lost his blood 
 abroad in the service of his country, part- 
 ing with their little all, and exposed to 
 
 99
 
 cold and hunger, to pamper such a fellow 
 as this! 
 
 And if any such reader as I mention 
 should happen to be in reality a great 
 man, and in power, perhaps the horrour of 
 this picture may induce him to put a final 
 end to this abominable practice of touch- 
 ing, as it is called; by which, indeed, a set 
 of leeches are permitted to suck the blood 
 of the brave and the indigent, of the widow 
 and the orphan. . . . 
 
 Thus did this poor man support his 
 hopes by a dependence on that ticket which 
 he had so dearly purchased of one who 
 pretended to manage the wheels in the 
 great state lottery of preferment. A lot- 
 tery, indeed, which hath this to recommend 
 it — that many poor wretches feed their 
 imaginations with the prospect of a prize 
 during their whole lives, and never discover 
 they have drawn a blank. 
 
 [In one of the last chapters of Amelia, 
 Fielding pays the following tribute to a 
 shyster lawyer with whom it may be reas- 
 onably surmised that the author himself 
 had come in contact when he was an 
 involuntary visitant of the London gaols. 
 
 100
 
 This attorney had formerly practiced in 
 the town where Amelia had lived, and it 
 was due to his chicanery that she was 
 for many years (viz., those years covered 
 by the story) kept out of her inheritance, 
 for which misdeed he was afterwards appre- 
 hended and hanged. It is interesting to 
 note the conditions on which his "very 
 good-natured'* brother attorney at home 
 consented to lodge no complaint against 
 him: — ]] 
 
 The case then was thus: this Murphy 
 had been clerk to an attorney in the very 
 same town in which the doctor [Harrison] 
 lived, and, when he was out of his time, 
 had set up with a character fair enough, 
 and had married a maid-servant of Mrs. 
 Harris, by which means he had all the 
 business to which that lady and her friends, 
 in which number was the doctor, could 
 recommend him. 
 
 Murphy went on with his business, 
 and thrived very well, till he happened to 
 make an unfortunate slip, in which he was 
 detected by a brother of the same calling. 
 But, though we call this by the gentle 
 name of a slip, in respect to its being so 
 extremely common, it was a matter in 
 
 lOI
 
 which the law, if it had ever come to its 
 ears, would have passed a very severe 
 censure, being, indeed, no less than per- 
 jury and subornation of perjury. 
 
 This brother attorney, being a very 
 good-natured man, and unwilling to be- 
 spatter his own profession, and considering, 
 perhaps, that the consequence did in no 
 wise affect the public, who had no manner 
 of interest in the alternative whether A., 
 in whom the right was, or B., to whom Mr. 
 Murphy, by the means aforesaid, had 
 transferred it, succeeded in an action; 
 we mention this particular, because, as 
 this brother attorney was a very violent 
 party man, and a professed stickler for 
 the public, to suffer any injury to have 
 been done to that, would have been highly 
 inconsistent with his principles. 
 
 This gentleman, therefore, came to Mr. 
 Murphy, and, after shewing him that 
 he had it in his power to convict him of 
 the aforesaid crime, very generously told 
 him that he had not the least delight in 
 bringing any man to destruction, nor the 
 least animosity against him. All that he 
 insisted upon was, that he would not live 
 in the same town or county with one who 
 
 102
 
 had been guilty of such an action. He 
 then told Mr. Murphy that he would keep 
 the secret on two conditions; the one was, 
 that he immediately quitted that country; 
 the other was, that he should convince 
 him he deserved this kindness by his 
 gratitude, and that Murphy should trans- 
 fer to the other all the business which he 
 then had in those parts, and to which 
 he could possibly recommend him. 
 
 It is the observation of a very wise man, 
 that it is a very common exercise of wisdom 
 in this world, of two evils to chuse the 
 least. The reader, therefore, cannot doubt 
 but that Mr. Murphy complied with the 
 alternative proposed by his kind brother, 
 and accepted the terms on which secrecy 
 was to be obtained. 
 
 [Fielding took occasion to pay off some 
 of his old scores with bailiffs, whom he 
 depicts as a heartless, acquisitive sort of 
 human beings — upon whose hospitality "^^A 
 he is said to have been frequently thrust. \ 
 
 The following satirical remarks were pre- 
 ceded by a dialogue between the bailiff 
 (Mr. Bondum) and poor Booth, Amelia's 
 
 husband : — ] 
 
 103
 
 Here the reader may be apt to conclude 
 that the bailiff, instead of being a friend, 
 was really an enemy to poor Booth; but, 
 in fact, he was not so. His desire was no 
 more than to accumulate bail-bonds; for 
 the baihfT was reckoned an honest and 
 good sort of man in his way, and had no 
 more malice against the bodies in his 
 custody than a butcher hath to those in 
 his: and as the latter, when he takes his 
 knife in hand, hath no idea but of the 
 joints into which he is to cut the carcase; 
 so the former, when he handles his writ, 
 hath no other design but to cut out the 
 body into as many bail-bonds as possible. 
 As to the life of the animal, or the liberty 
 of the man, they are thoughts which never 
 obtrude themselves on either. 
 
 [a brief speech of the villainous JON- 
 ATHAN WILD, THE MOCK-HERO OF FIELDING'S 
 GREAT SATIRICAL NOVEL OF THAT NAME: ] 
 
 He was scarce settled at school before 
 he gave marks of his lofty and aspiring 
 temper; and was regarded by all his 
 schoolfellows with that deference which men 
 generally pay to those superior geniuses 
 who will exact it of them. If an orchard 
 
 G-'
 
 was to be robbed Wild was consulted, 
 and, though he was himself seldom con- 
 cerned in the execution of the design, 
 yet was he always concerter of it, and 
 treasurer of the booty, some little part of 
 which he would now and then, with wonder- 
 ful generosity, bestow on those who took 
 it. He was generally very secret on these 
 occasions; but if any offered to plunder 
 of his own head, without acquainting mas- 
 ter Wild, and making a deposit of the 
 booty, he was sure to have an information 
 against him lodged with the schoolmaster, 
 and to be severely punished for his pains. 
 
 [A satirical reference to Friendship, as 
 applied to the credulous Mr. He artfV ee in ,/.,^./^/, 
 Jonathan Wild — containing a valuable les- I t' 
 
 son on Credulity: — ] 
 
 I am sensible that the reader, if he hath 
 but the least notion of greatness, must have 
 such a contempt for the extreme folly of 
 this fellow [Heartfree], that he will be very 
 little concerned at any misfortunes which 
 may befal him in the sequel; for to have 
 no suspicion that an old schoolfellow [the 
 villain, Jonathan Wild] with whom he had, 
 in his tenderest years, contracted a friend- 
 ship, and who, on the accidental renewing 
 
 105
 
 of their acquaintance, had professed the 
 most passionate regard for him, should be 
 very ready to impose on him; in short, 
 to conceive that a friend should, of his 
 own accord, without any view to his own 
 interest, endeavour to do him a service, 
 must argue such weakness of mind, such 
 ignorance of the world, and such an artless, 
 simple, undesigning heart, as must render 
 the person possessed of it the lowest creature 
 and the properest object of contempt im- 
 aginable, in the eyes of every man of 
 understanding and discernment. 
 
 [Later when this poor honest, confiding 
 victim (who was in gaol for debts con- 
 tracted through the machinations of Wild) 
 discovered that Wild had made off with 
 his faithful wife, all of his furniture, and 
 all that remained of his other worldly 
 effects, Fielding thus pictures his astonish- 
 ment : — ] 
 
 It is the observation of many wise men, 
 who have studied the anatomy of the 
 human soul with more attention than 
 our young physicians generally bestow on 
 that of the body, that great and violent 
 surprize hath a different effect from that 
 which is wrought in a good housewife by 
 
 1 06
 
 perceiving any disorders in her kitchen; 
 who, on such occasions, commonly spreads 
 the disorder, not only over her whole 
 family, but over the whole neighbourhood. 
 — Now, these great calamities, especially 
 when sudden, tend to stifle and deaden 
 all the faculties, instead of rousing them; 
 and accordingly Herodotus tells us a story 
 of Croesus king of Lydia, who, on beholding 
 his servants and courtiers led captive, 
 wept bitterly; but, when he saw his wife 
 and children in that condition, stood stupid 
 and motionless; so stood poor Heartfree 
 on this relation of his apprentice, nothing 
 moving but his colour, which entirely for- 
 sook his countenance. 
 
 [Here it seems fitting to incorporate a 
 bit of true philosophy which, although used 
 by Fielding in another part of his work, is 
 equally applicable to this circumstance:] 
 
 Though the observation — how apt men 
 are to hate those they injure, or how un- 
 forgiving they are of the injuries they do 
 themselves, be common enough, yet I do 
 not remember to have ever seen the reason 
 of this strange phenomenon as at first it 
 appears. Know therefore, reader, that with 
 much and severe scrutiny we have dis- 
 
 107
 
 covered this hatred to be founded on the 
 passion of fear, and to arise from an appre- 
 hension that the person whom we have our- 
 selves greatly injured will use all possible 
 endeavours to revenge and retaliate the 
 injuries we have done him. An opinion so 
 firmly established in bad and great minds 
 (and those who confer injuries on others 
 have seldom very good or mean ones) 
 that no benevolence, nor even beneficence, 
 on the injured side, can eradicate it. On 
 the contrary, they refer all these acts of 
 kindness to imposture and design of lulling 
 their suspicion, till an opportunity offers 
 of striking a surer and severer blow; and 
 thus, while the good man who hath re- 
 ceived it hath truly forgotten the injury, 
 the evil mind which did it hath it in lively 
 and fresh remembrance. . . . never trust 
 
 THE MAN WHO HATH REASON TO SUSPECT 
 THAT YOU KNOW HE HATH INJURED YOU. 
 
 [Such was the case with Wild who, 
 fearing his victim's release, trumped up 
 a charge of embezzlement against him, 
 which he and one of his gang swore to. 
 Although Heartfree and his family had 
 always borne the most exemplary char- 
 acter, he was convicted and sentenced 
 
 1 08
 
 to be hanged, — entirely upon false testi- 
 mony. As an instance of the proneness 
 of human beings — after the manner of 
 wolves and wild hogs — to set upon those 
 of their own species who are down, Field- 
 ing adds : — ] 
 
 We cannot help mentioning a circum- 
 stance here, though we doubt it will appear 
 very unnatural and incredible to our reader; 
 which is, that, notwithstanding the former 
 character and behaviour of Heartfree, this 
 story of his embezzling was so far from 
 surprizing his neighbours, that many of 
 them declared they expected no better 
 from him. Some were assured he could 
 pay forty shillings in the pound if he 
 would. Others had overheard hints for- 
 merly pass between him and Mrs. Heart- 
 free which had given them suspicions. 
 And what is most astonishing of all is, 
 that many of those who had before censured 
 him for an extravagant heedless fool, now 
 no less confidently abused him for a cun- 
 ning, tricking, avaricious knave. 
 
 [ambition and avarice] 
 
 There is no one circumstance in which 
 the distempers of the mind bear a more 
 
 109
 
 exact analogy to those which are called 
 bodily, than that aptness which both have 
 to a relapse. This is plain in the violent 
 diseases of ambition and avarice. I have 
 known ambition, when cured at court by 
 frequent disappointments (which are the 
 only physic for it), to break out again in 
 a contest for foreman of the grand jury 
 at an assizes; and have heard of a man 
 who had so far conquered avarice, as to 
 give away many a sixpence, that comforted 
 himself, at last, on his deathbed, by making 
 a crafty and advantageous bargain con- 
 cerning his ensuing funeral, with an under- 
 taker who had married his only child. 
 
 [a short essay on vanity] 
 
 O Vanity ! how little is thy force acknowl- 
 edged, or thy operations discerned! How 
 wantonly dost thou deceive mankind under 
 different disguises! Sometimes thou dost 
 wear the face of pity, sometimes of gener- 
 osity: nay, thou hast the assurance even 
 to put on those glorious ornaments which 
 belong only to heroic virtue. Thou odious, 
 deformed monster! whom priests have 
 railed at, philosophers despised, and poets 
 ridiculed; is there a wretch so abandoned 
 
 no
 
 as to own thee for an acquaintance in 
 publick? — yet, how few will refuse to 
 enjoy thee in private? nay, thou art the 
 pursuit of most men through their lives. 
 The greatest villainies are daily practised 
 to please thee; nor is the meanest thief 
 below, or the greatest hero above, thy 
 notice. Thy embraces are often the sole 
 aim and sole reward of the private robbery 
 and the plundered province. It is to 
 pamper up thee, thou harlot, that we 
 attempt to withdraw from others what we 
 do not want, or to withhold from them 
 what they do. All our passions are thy 
 slaves. Avarice itself is often no more 
 than thy handmaid, and even Lust thy 
 pimp. The bully Fear, like a coward, 
 flies before thee, and Joy and Grief hide 
 their heads in thy presence. 
 
 I know thou wilt think that whilst I 
 abuse thee I court thee, and that thy love 
 hath inspired me to write this sarcastical 
 panegyric on thee; but thou art deceived: 
 I value thee not of a farthing; nor will 
 it give me any pain if thou shouldst pre- 
 vail on the reader to censure this digression 
 as arrant nonsense; for know, to thy con- 
 fusion, that I have introduced thee here 
 
 III
 
 for no other purpose than to lengthen 
 out a short chapter. 
 
 The great are deceived if they imagine 
 they have appropriated ambition and van- 
 ity to themselves. These noble qualities 
 flourish as notably in a country church 
 and churchyard as in the drawing-room, or 
 in the closet. Schemes have indeed been 
 laid in the vestry which would hardly dis- 
 grace the conclave. Here is a ministry, and 
 here is an opposition. Here are plots and 
 circumventions, parties and factions, equal 
 to those which are to be found in courts. 
 
 Nor are the women here less practised 
 in the highest feminine arts than their 
 fair superiors in quality and fortune. Here 
 are prudes and coquettes. Here are dress- 
 ing and ogling, falsehood, envy, malice, 
 scandal; in short, everything which is 
 common to the most splendid assembly, 
 or politest circle. Let those of high life, 
 therefore, no longer despise the ignorance 
 of their inferiors; nor the vulgar any 
 longer rail at the vices of their betters. 
 
 Love, friendship, esteem, and such like, 
 have very powerful operations in the 
 
 112
 
 human mind; interest, however, is an 
 ingredient seldom omitted by wise men, 
 when they would work others to their 
 own purposes. This is indeed a most 
 excellent medicine, and, like Ward's pill, 
 flies at once to the particular part of the 
 body on which you desire to operate, 
 whether it be the tongue, the hand, or any 
 other member, where it scarce ever fails 
 of immediately producing the desired effect. 
 
 [friendship, religion and virtue used 
 as cloaks by hypocrites] 
 
 A treacherous friend is the most dan- 
 gerous enemy; and I will say boldly, 
 that both religion and virtue have received 
 more real discredit from hypocrites than 
 the wittiest profligates or infidels could 
 ever cast upon them: nay, farther, as 
 these two, in their purity, are rightly 
 called the bands of civil society, and are 
 indeed the greatest of blessings; so when 
 poisoned and corrupted with fraud, pre- 
 tence, and affectation, they have become 
 the worst of civil curses, and have enabled 
 men to perpetrate the most cruel mischiefs 
 to their own species. 
 
 113
 
 [of benevolence] 
 
 In the histories of Alexander and Caesar 
 we are frequently, and indeed imperti- 
 nently, reminded of their benevolence and 
 generosity, of their clemency and kindness. 
 When the former had with fire and sword 
 overrun a vast empire, had destroyed the 
 lives of an immense number of innocent 
 wretches, had scattered ruin and desolation 
 like a whirlwind, we are told, as an example 
 of his clemency, that he did not cut the 
 throat of an old woman, and ravish her 
 daughters, but was content with only 
 undoing them. And when the mighty 
 Csesar, with wonderful greatness of mind, 
 had destroyed the liberties of his country, 
 and with all the means of fraud and force 
 had placed himself at the head of his 
 equals, had corrupted and enslaved the 
 greatest people whom the sun ever saw, 
 we are reminded, as an evidence of his 
 generosity, of his largesses to his followers 
 and tools, by whose means he had accom- 
 plished his purpose, and by whose assist- 
 ance he was to establish it. 
 
 Pn one of the early chapters of Joseph 
 \ Andrews, Fielding, in illustrating the im- 
 
 f 114
 
 pregnable virtue of his modern Saint An- 
 thony (in the person of Joseph Andrews), 
 records a highly amusing episode in which 
 his hero is sorely tried, and from which he 
 emerges with his virtue unscathed, but 
 not unreviled. The great Lady Booby 
 (widow of the squire), who employed Joseph 
 as footman, called him to her room one 
 day and, for reasons better understood 
 by herself than by her poor unsophisti- 
 cated footman, she flatly accused him of 
 too great familiarity with her maids.] 
 
 As a person who is struck through the 
 heart with a thunderbolt looks extremely 
 surprised, nay, and perhaps is so too — 
 thus the poor Joseph received the false 
 accusation of his mistress; he blushed 
 and looked confounded, which she mis- 
 interpreted to be symptoms of his guilt, 
 and thus went on : — 
 
 "Come hither, Joseph: another mistress 
 might discard you for these offences; but 
 I have a compassion for your youth, and 
 if I could be certain you would be no more 
 guilty — Consider, child," laying her hand 
 carelessly upon his, "you are a handsome 
 young fellow, and might do better; you 
 might make your fortune." 
 
 1 1 
 
 ■>
 
 "Madam," said Joseph, "I do assure 
 your ladyship I don't know whether any 
 maid in the house is man or woman." 
 
 "Oh fie! Joseph," answered the lady, 
 "don't commit another crime in denying 
 the truth. I could pardon the first, but 
 I hate a lyar." 
 
 "Madam," cries Joseph, "I hope your 
 ladyship will not be offended at my assert- 
 ing my innocence; for, by all that is 
 sacred, I have never offered more than 
 issing. 
 
 "Kissing!" said the lady, with great dis- 
 composure of countenance, and more red- 
 ness in her cheeks than anger in her eyes; 
 "do you call that no crime? Kissing, 
 Joseph, is as a prologue to a play. Can 
 I believe a young fellow of your age and 
 complexion will be content with kissing? 
 No, Joseph, there is no woman who grants 
 that but will grant more; and I am de- 
 ceived greatly in you if you would not put 
 her closely to it. What would you think, 
 Joseph, if I admitted you to kiss me?" 
 Joseph replied he would sooner die than 
 have any such thought. "And yet, Joseph," 
 returned she, "ladies have admitted their 
 footmen to such familiarities; and footmen, 
 
 ii6
 
 I confess to you, much less deserving them; 
 fellows without half your charms — for such 
 might almost excuse the crime. Tell me 
 therefore, Joseph, if I should admit you to 
 such freedom, what would you think of 
 me? — tell me freely." 
 
 ** Madam," said Joseph, *'I should think 
 your ladyship condescended a great deal 
 below yourself." 
 
 "Pugh!" said she; **that I am to answer 
 to myself: but would not you insist on 
 more? Would you be contented with a 
 kiss? Would not your inclinations be all 
 on fire rather by such a favour?" 
 
 *' Madam," said Joseph, **if they were, 
 I hope I should be able to controul them, 
 without suffering them to get the better 
 of my virtue." 
 
 You have heard, reader, poets talk of 
 the statue of Surprize; you have heard 
 likewise, or else you have heard very 
 little, how Surprize made one of the sons 
 of Croesus speak, though he was dumb. 
 You have seen the faces, in the eighteen- 
 penny gallery, when, through the trap- 
 door, to soft or no music, Mr. Bridgewater, 
 Mr. William Mills, or some other of ghostly 
 appearance, hath ascended, with a face 
 
 117
 
 all pale with powder, and a shirt all bloody 
 with ribbons; — but from none of these, 
 nor from Phidias or Praxiteles, if they 
 should return to hfe — no, not from the 
 inimitable pencil of my friend Hogarth, 
 could you receive such an idea of surprize 
 as would have entered in at your eyes had 
 they beheld the Lady Booby when those 
 last words issued out from the lips of 
 Joseph. **Your virtue!" said the lady, 
 recovering after a silence of two minutes; 
 "I shall never survive it! Your virtue! — 
 intolerable confidence! Have you the as- 
 surance to pretend, that when a lady 
 demeans herself to throw aside the rules 
 of decency, in order to honour you with the 
 highest favour in her power, your virtue 
 should resist her inclination? that, when 
 she had conquered her own virtue, she 
 should find an obstruction in yours? I 
 am out of patience; did ever mortal hear 
 of a man's virtue? Did ever the greatest 
 or the gravest men pretend to any of 
 this kind? Will magistrates who punish 
 lewdness, or parsons who preach against 
 it, make any scruple of committing it? 
 And can a boy, a striphng, have the con- 
 fidence to talk of his virtue? You impu- 
 
 ii8
 
 dent villain! Get out of my sight, and 
 prepare to set out this night; for I will 
 order you your wages immediately, and 
 you shall be stripped and turned away. 
 . . . You have had the vanity to mis- 
 construe the little innocent freedom I 
 took, in order to try whether what I had 
 heard was true. O! my conscience! You 
 have had the assurance to imagine I was 
 fond of you myself!" 
 
 [This incident drew from Fielding the fol- 
 lowing apostrophe on the tyranny of Love, 
 in which he includes an oblique thrust at 
 his old detracter, CoIIey Gibber: — ] 
 
 O Love, what monstrous tricks dost thou 
 play with thy votaries of both sexes ! How 
 dost thou deceive them, and make them de- 
 ceive themselves! Their foUies are thy de- 
 light! Their sighs make thee laugh, and 
 their pangs are thy merriment! 
 
 Not the great Rich, who turns men into 
 monkeys, wheel-barrows, and whatever else 
 best humours his fancy, hath so strangely 
 metamorphosed the human shape; nor the 
 great Gibber, who confounds all number, 
 gender, and breaks through every rule of 
 grammar at his will, hath so distorted the 
 English language as thou doth metamor- 
 
 119
 
 phose and distort all the human senses. 
 
 Thou puttest out our eyes, stoppest up 
 our ears, and takest away the power of 
 our nostrils; so that we can neither see 
 the largest object, hear the loudest noise, 
 nor smell the most poignant perfume. 
 Again, when thou pleasest, thou canst 
 make a molehill appear as a mountain, 
 a Jew's-harp sound like a trumpet, and 
 a daisy smell like a violet. Thou canst 
 make cowardice brave, avarice generous, 
 pride humble, and cruelty tender-hearted. 
 In short, thou turnest the heart of man 
 inside out, as a juggler doth a petticoat, 
 and bringest whatsoever pleaseth thee out 
 from it. 
 
 [Long afterwards, when Joseph Andrews 
 returned to Lady Booby's parish and was 
 about to be married to his adored Fanny, 
 the lovelorn Lady Booby, whose jealousy 
 was aroused — for though she hated him, 
 she still loved him — called in parson Adams 
 and gave him peremptory orders not to pub- 
 lish the banns or marry the couple. ] 
 
 '* Madam," said Adams, "if your lady- 
 ship will but hear me speak, I protest 
 I never heard any harm of Mr. Joseph 
 Andrews; if I had, I should have corrected 
 
 120
 
 him for it; for I never have, nor will, 
 encourage the faults of those under my 
 cure. As for the young woman, I assure 
 your ladyship I have as good an opinion 
 of her as your ladyship yourself or any 
 other can have. She is the sweetest-tem- 
 pered, honestest, worthiest young creature; 
 indeed, as to her beauty, I do not com- 
 mend her on that account, though all men 
 allow she is the handsomest woman, gentle 
 or simple, that ever appeared in the parish." 
 
 "You are very impertinent," says she, 
 **to talk such fulsome stuff to me. It is 
 mighty becoming truly in a clergyman to 
 trouble himself about handsome women, 
 and you are a delicate judge of beauty, 
 no doubt. A man who hath lived all his 
 life in such a parish as this is a rare judge 
 of beauty! Ridiculous! beauty indeed! a 
 country wench a beauty! I shall be sick 
 whenever I hear beauty mentioned again. 
 And so this wench is to stock the parish 
 with beauties, I hope. But, sir, our poor 
 is numerous enough already; I will have 
 no more vagabonds settled here." 
 
 "Madam," says Adams, "I only per- 
 form my office to Mr. Joseph." 
 
 "Pray, don't mister such fellows to me," 
 
 121
 
 cries the lady. . . . ** Since you under- 
 stand yourself no better, nor the respect 
 due from such as you to a woman of my 
 distinction, than to affront my ears by 
 such loose discourse, I shall mention but 
 one short word; it is my orders to you 
 that you publish these banns no more; 
 and if you dare, I will recommend it to 
 your master, the doctor, to discard you 
 from his service. I will, sir, notwithstand- 
 ing your poor family; and then you and 
 the greatest beauty in the parish may go 
 and beg together." 
 
 "Madam," answered Adams, "I know 
 not what your ladyship means by the 
 terms master and service. 1 am in the 
 service of a Master who will never discard 
 me for doing my duty; and if the doctor 
 (for indeed I have never been able to 
 pay for a licence) thinks proper to turn me 
 from my cure, God will provide me, I 
 hope, another. At least, my family, as 
 well as myself, have hands; and He will 
 prosper, I doubt not, our endeavours to 
 get our bread honestly with them. Whilst 
 my conscience is pure, I shall never fear 
 what man can do unto me." 
 
 122
 
 One situation only of the married state 
 is excluded from pleasure: and that is, 
 a state of indifference: but as many of 
 my readers, I hope, know what an exquisite 
 delight there is in conveying pleasure to 
 a beloved object, so some few, I am afraid, 
 may have experienced the satisfaction of 
 tormenting one we hate. It is, I appre- 
 hend, to come at this latter pleasure, that 
 we see both sexes often give up that ease in 
 marriage which they might otherwise pos- 
 sess, though their mate was never so dis- 
 agreeable to them. Hence the wife often 
 puts on fits of love and jealousy, nay, even 
 denies herself any pleasure, to disturb and 
 prevent those of her husband ; and he again, 
 in return, puts frequent restraints upon him- 
 self, and stays at home in company which 
 he dislikes, in order to confine his wife to 
 what she equally detests. Hence, too, must 
 flow those tears which a widow sometimes so 
 plentifully sheds over the ashes of a husband 
 with whom she led a life of constant disquiet 
 andturbulency, and whom now she can never 
 hope to torment any more. 
 
 We are not always to conclude, that a 
 wise man is not hurt, because he doth 
 
 123
 
 not cry out and lament himself, like those 
 of a childish or effeminate temper. 
 
 As a conquered rebellion strengthens a 
 government, or as health is more perfectly 
 established by recovery from some disease; 
 so anger, when removed, often gives new 
 life to affection. 
 
 Prudence and circumspection are neces- 
 sary even to the best of men. They 
 are indeed, as it were, a guard to Virtue, 
 without which she can never be safe. 
 It is not enough that your designs, nay, 
 that your actions, are intrinsically good; 
 you must take care they shall appear so. 
 If your inside be never so beautiful, you 
 must preserve a fair outside also. This 
 must be constantly looked to, or malice 
 and envy will take care to blacken it so, 
 that the sagacity and goodness of an 
 Allworthy will not be able to see through 
 it, and to discern the beauties within. 
 Let this, my young readers, be your con- 
 stant maxim, that no man can be good 
 enough to enable him to neglect the rules 
 of prudence; nor will Virtue herself look 
 beautiful, unless she be bedecked with the 
 
 124
 
 outward ornaments of decency and de- 
 corum. And this precept, my worthy dis- 
 ciples, if you read with due attention, 
 you will, I hope, find sufficiently enforced 
 by examples in the following pages. 
 
 I ask pardon for this short appearance, 
 by way of chorus, on the stage. It is in 
 reality for my own sake, that, while I am 
 discovering the rocks on which innocence 
 and goodness often split, I may not be 
 misunderstood to recommend the very 
 means to my worthy readers, by which 
 I intend to show them they will be undone. 
 And this, as I could not prevail on any of 
 my actors to speak, I myself was obliged 
 to declare. 
 
 Fortune may tempt men of no very bad 
 dispositions to injustice; but insults pro- 
 ceed only from black and rancorous minds, 
 and have no temptations to excuse them. 
 
 There is nothing so dangerous as a 
 question which comes by surprize on a 
 man whose business it is to conceal truth, 
 or to defend falsehood. For which reason 
 those worthy personages, whose noble office 
 it is to save the lives of their fellow- 
 
 125
 
 creatures at the Old Bailey, take the 
 utmost care, by frequent previous exami- 
 nation, to divine every question which may 
 be asked their clients on the day of tryal, 
 that they may be supplyed with proper 
 and ready answers, which the most fertile 
 invention cannot supply in an instant. 
 Besides, the sudden and violent impulse 
 on the blood, occasioned by these surprizes, 
 causes frequently such an alteration in 
 the countenance, that the man is obliged 
 to give evidence against himself. 
 
 I look upon the vulgar observation, 
 "That the devil often deserts his friends, 
 and leaves them in the lurch," to be a 
 great abuse on that gentleman's character. 
 Perhaps he may sometimes desert those 
 who are only his cup acquaintance; or 
 who, at most, are but half his; but he 
 generally stands by those who are thor- 
 oughly his servants, and helps them off in 
 all extremities, till their bargain expires. 
 
 A secret (as some of my readers will per- 
 haps acknowledge from experience) is often 
 a very valuable possession: and that not 
 
 126
 
 only to those who faithfully keep it, but 
 sometimes to such as whisper it about till 
 it come to the ears of every one except the 
 ignorant person who pays for the supposed 
 concealing of what is publickly known. 
 
 The firmness and constancy of a true 
 friend is a circumstance so extremely de- 
 lightful to persons in any kind of distress, 
 that the distress itself, if it be only tem- 
 porary, and admits of relief, is more than 
 compensated by bringing this comfort with 
 it. Nor are instances of this kind so rare 
 as some superficial and inaccurate observ- 
 ers have reported. To say the truth, 
 want of compassion is not to be numbered 
 among our general faults. The black in- 
 gredient which fouls our disposition is 
 envy. Hence our eye is seldom, I am 
 afraid, turned upward to those who are 
 manifestly greater, better, wiser, or hap- 
 pier than ourselves, without some degree 
 of malignity; while we commonly look 
 downwards on the mean and miserable 
 with sufficient benevolence and pity. In 
 fact, I have remarked, that most of the 
 defects which have discovered themselves 
 in the friendships within my observation 
 
 127
 
 have arisen from envy only: a hellish 
 vice; and yet one from which I have known 
 very few absolutely exempt. 
 
 I desire of the philosophers to grant, that 
 there is in some (I believe in many) human 
 breasts a kind and benevolent disposition, 
 which is gratified by contributing to the 
 happiness of others. That in this gratifi- 
 cation alone, as in friendship, in parental 
 and fihal affection, as indeed in general 
 philanthropy, there is a great and exquisite 
 delight. That if we will not call such dis- 
 position love, we have no name for it. That 
 though the pleasures arising from such pure 
 love may be heightened and sweetened by 
 the assistance of amorous desires, yet the 
 former can subsist alone, nor are they de- 
 stroyed by the intervention of the latter. 
 Lastly, that esteem and gratitude are the 
 proper motives to love, as youth and beauty 
 are to desire, and, therefore, though such de- 
 sire may naturally cease, when age or sick- 
 ness overtakes its object; yet these can have 
 no effect on love, nor ever shake or remove, 
 from a good mind, that sensation or pas- 
 sion which hath gratitude and esteem for 
 its basis. 
 To deny the existence of a passion of 
 
 128
 
 which we often see manifest instances, 
 seems to be very strange and absurd; 
 and can indeed proceed only from that 
 self-admonition which we have mentioned 
 above: but how unfair is this! Doth the 
 man who recognizes in his own heart no 
 traces of avarice or ambition, conclude, 
 therefore, that there are no such passions 
 in human nature? Why will we not mod- 
 estly observe the same rule in judging of 
 the good, as well as the evil of others? 
 Or why, in any case, will we, as Shakespear 
 phrases it, "put the world in our own 
 
 Predominant vanity is, I am afraid, 
 too much concerned here. This is one 
 instance of that adulation which we bestow 
 on our own minds, and this almost univer- 
 sally. For there is scarce any man, how 
 much soever he may despise the character 
 of a flatterer, but will condescend in the 
 meanest manner to flatter himself. 
 
 To those therefore I apply for the truth 
 of the above observations, whose own 
 minds can bear testimony to what I have 
 advanced. 
 
 Examine your heart, my good reader, 
 and resolve whether you do believe these 
 
 129
 
 matters with me. If you do, you may 
 now proceed to their exempHfication in 
 the following pages: if you do not, you 
 have, I assure you, already read more than 
 you have understood; and it would be 
 wiser to pursue your business, or your 
 pleasures (such as they are), than to 
 throw away any more of your time in 
 reading what you can neither taste nor 
 comprehend. To treat of the effects of 
 love to you, must be as absurd as to dis- 
 course on colours to a man born blind; 
 since possibly your idea of love may be as 
 absurd as that which we are told such 
 bhnd man once entertained of the colour 
 scarlet; that colour seemed to him to be 
 very much like the sound of a trumpet: 
 and love probably may, in your opinion, 
 very greatly resemble a dish of soup, or 
 a surloin of roast-beef. 
 
 Fear is never more uneasy than when it 
 doth not certainly know its object; for on 
 such occasions the mind is ever employed in 
 raising a thousand bugbears and fantoms, 
 much more dreadful than any realities, and, 
 like children when they tell tales of hobgob- 
 lins, seems industrious in terrifying itself. 
 
 130
 
 Whoever considers the common fate of 
 great men must allow they well deserve 
 and hardly [_i e., with difficulty] earn that 
 applause which is given them by the 
 world; for, when we reflect on the labours 
 and pains, the cares, disquietudes, and 
 dangers which attend their road to great- 
 ness, we may say with the divine that a 
 man may go to heaven with half the pains 
 which it costs him to purchase hell. 
 
 So great a torment is anxiety to the 
 human mind, that we always endeavour to 
 relieve ourselves from it by guesses, how- 
 ever doubtful or uncertain; on all which 
 occasions, dislike and hatred are the surest 
 guides to lead our suspicion to its object. 
 
 Men of great genius as easily discover 
 one another as Freemasons can. 
 
 Circumstances of great improbability 
 often escape men who devour a story 
 with greedy ears. 
 
 Logicians sometimes prove too much by 
 an argument, and politicians often over- 
 reach themselves in a scheme. 
 
 131
 
 My young readers, flatter not your- 
 selves that fire will not scorch as well as 
 warm, and the longer we stay within its 
 reach the more we shall burn. The ad- 
 miration of a beautiful woman, though 
 the wife of our dearest friend, may at 
 first perhaps be innocent, but let us not 
 flatter ourselves it will always remain so; 
 desire is sure to succeed; and wishes, hopes, 
 designs, with a long train of mischiefs, 
 tread close at our heels. In affairs of 
 this kind we may most properly apply 
 the well-known remark of nemo repente 
 Juit turpissimus. It fares, indeed, with 
 us on this occasion as with the unwary 
 traveller in some parts of Arabia, the 
 desert, whom the treacherous sands im- 
 perceptibly betray till he is overwhelmed 
 and lost. In both cases the only safety 
 is by withdrawing our feet the very first 
 moment we perceive them sliding. 
 
 This digression may appear impertinent 
 to some readers; we could not, however, 
 avoid the opportunity of offering the above 
 hints; since of all passions there is none 
 against which we should so strongly fortify 
 ourselves as this, which is generally called 
 love; for no other lays before us, especially 
 
 132
 
 in the tumultuous days of youth, such sweet, 
 such strong and almost irresistible tempta- 
 tions; none hath produced in private life 
 such fatal and lamentable tragedies; and 
 what is worst of all, there is none to whose 
 poison and infatuation the best of minds 
 are so liable. Ambition scarce ever pro- 
 duces any evil but when it reigns in cruel 
 and savage bosoms; and avarice seldom 
 flourishes at all but in the basest and poor- 
 est soil. Love, on the contrary, sprouts usu- 
 ally up in the richest and noblest minds; 
 but there, unless nicely watched, pruned, 
 and cultivated, and carefully kept clear of 
 those vicious weeds which are too apt to 
 surround it, it branches forth into wildness 
 and disorder, produces nothing desirable, 
 but choaks up and kills whatever is good 
 and noble in the mind where it so abounds. 
 In short, to drop the allegory, not only ten- 
 derness and good nature, but bravery, gen- 
 erosity, and every virtue are often made the 
 instruments of effecting the most atrocious 
 purposes of this all-subduing tyrant. 
 
 It is a good maxim to trust a person 
 entirely or not at all; for a secret is often 
 
 133
 
 innocently blabbed out by those who know 
 but half of it. 
 
 To draw out scenes of wretchedness to 
 too great a length, is a task very uneasy 
 to the writer, and for which none but 
 readers of a most gloomy complexion will 
 think themselves ever obhged to his labours. 
 
 My worthy reader, console thyself, that 
 however few of the other good things of 
 life are thy lot, the best of all things, 
 which is innocence, is always within thy 
 own power; and, though Fortune may 
 make thee often unhappy, she can never 
 make thee completely and irreparably 
 miserable without thy own consent. 
 
 It is not because innocence is more 
 bhnd than guilt that the former often 
 overlooks and tumbles into the pit which 
 the latter foresees and avoids. The truth 
 is, that it is almost impossible guilt should 
 miss the discovering of all the snares in 
 its way, as it is constantly prying closely 
 into every corner in order to lay snares for 
 others. Whereas innocence, having no 
 such purpose, walks fearlessly and care- 
 
 134
 
 lessly through life, and is consequently 
 liable to tread on the gins which cunning 
 hath laid to entrap it. To speak plainly 
 and without allegory or figure, it is not 
 want of sense, but want of suspicion, by 
 which innocence is often betrayed. Again, 
 we often admire at the folly of the dupe, 
 when we should transfer our whole surprize 
 to the astonishing guilt of the betrayer. 
 In a word, many an innocent person 
 hath owed his ruin to this circumscance 
 alone, that the degree of villany was such 
 as must have exceeded the faith of every 
 man who was not himself a villain. 
 
 Few men, I believe, think better of others 
 than of themselves; nor do they easily allow 
 the existence of any virtue of which they 
 perceive no traces in their own minds; for 
 which reason I have observed, that it is 
 extremely difficult to persuade a rogue that 
 you are an honest man; nor would you 
 ever succeed in the attempt by the strong- 
 est evidence, was it not for the comfortable 
 conclusion which the rogue draws, that he 
 who proves himself to be honest proves 
 himself to be a fool at the same time. 
 
 135
 
 A true Christian can never be disap- 
 pointed if he doth not receive his reward 
 in this world; the labourer might as well 
 complain that he is not paid his hire in 
 the middle of the day. 
 
 Revenge, indeed, of all kinds is strictly 
 ^ prohibited; wherefore, as we are not to 
 
 ) execute it with our own hands, so neither 
 
 are we to make use of the law as the in- 
 strument of private malice, and to worry 
 each other with inveteracy and rancour. 
 And where is the great difficulty in obeying 
 this wise, this generous, this noble precept? 
 If revenge be, as a certain divine, not 
 greatly to his honour, calls it, the most 
 luscious morsel the devil ever dropt into 
 the mouth of a sinner, it must be allowed 
 at least to cost us often extremely dear. 
 It is a dainty, if indeed it be one, which we 
 come at with great inquietude, with great 
 difficulty, and with great danger. How- 
 ever pleasant it may be to the palate while 
 we are feeding on it, it is sure to leave a 
 bitter relish behind it; and so far, indeed, 
 it may be called a luscious morsel, that the 
 most greedy appetites are soon glutted, 
 and the most eager longing for it is soon 
 
 136
 
 turned into loathing and repentance. I 
 allow there is something tempting in its out- 
 ward appearance, but it is like the beautiful 
 colour of some poisons, from which, how- 
 ever they may attract our eyes, a regard to 
 our own welfare commands us to abstain. 
 
 There is not in the universe a more 
 ridiculous nor a more contemptible animal 
 than a proud clergyman; a turkey-cock 
 or a jackdaw are objects of veneration 
 when compared with him. I don't mean, 
 by Pride, that noble dignity of mind to 
 which goodness can only administer an 
 adequate object, which delights in the 
 testimony of its own conscience, and could 
 not, without the highest agonies, bear its 
 condemnation. By Pride I mean that 
 saucy passion which exults in every little 
 eventual pre-eminence over other men: 
 such are the ordinary gifts of nature, 
 and the paultry presents of fortune, wit, 
 knowledge, birth, strength, beauty, riches, 
 titles, and rank. That passion which is 
 ever aspiring, like a silly child, to look 
 over the heads of all about them; which, 
 while it servilely adheres to the great, 
 
 137
 
 flies from the poor, as if afraid of contami- 
 nation; devouring greedily every murmur 
 of applause and every look of admiration; 
 pleased and elated with all kind of respect; 
 and hurt and enflamed with the contempt 
 of the lowest and most despicable of fools. 
 
 An injury is the object of anger; danger, 
 of fear, and praise, of vanity; and in the 
 same simple manner it may be asserted 
 that goodness is the object of love. 
 
 However Fortune may be reported to 
 favour fools, she never, I believe, shews 
 them any countenance when they engage 
 in play with knaves. 
 
 [a short essay on true wisdom] 
 
 True wisdom, notwithstanding all which 
 Mr. Hogarth's poor poet may have writ 
 against riches, and in spite of all which 
 any rich well-fed divine may have preached 
 against pleasure, consists not in the con- 
 tempt of either of these. A man may have 
 as much wisdom in the possession of an 
 affluent fortune, as any beggar in the 
 streets; or may enjoy a handsome wife or 
 
 138
 
 a hearty friend, and still remain as wise 
 as any sour popish recluse, who buries 
 all his social faculties, and starves his 
 belly while he well lashes his back. 
 
 To say truth, the wisest man is the 
 likeliest to possess all worldly blessings 
 in an eminent degree; for as that moder- 
 ation which wisdom prescribes is the sur- 
 est way to useful wealth, so can it alone 
 qualify us to taste many pleasures. The 
 wise man gratifies every appetite and every 
 passion, while the fool sacrifices all the rest 
 to pall and satiate one. 
 
 It may be objected, that very wise men 
 have been notoriously avaricious. I answer, 
 Not wise in that instance. It may likewise 
 be said. That the wisest men have been in 
 their youth immoderately fond of pleasure. 
 I answer, They were not wise then. 
 
 Wisdom, in short, whose lessons have been 
 represented as so hard to learn by those who 
 never were at her school, only teaches us to 
 extend a simple maxim universally known 
 and followed even in the lowest life, a little 
 farther than that life carries it. And this 
 is, not to buy at too dear a price. 
 
 Now, whoever takes this maxim abroad 
 with him into the grand market of the 
 
 139
 
 world, and constantly applies it to honours, 
 to riches, to pleasures, and to every other 
 commodity which that market affords, is, I 
 will venture to affirm, a wise man, and 
 must be so acknowledged in the worldly 
 sense of the word; for he makes the best 
 of bargains, since in reality he purchases 
 everything at the price of a little trouble, 
 and carries home all the good things I 
 have mentioned, while he keeps his health, 
 his innocence, and his reputation, the 
 common prices which are paid for them 
 by others, entire and to himself. 
 
 From this moderation, likewise, he learns 
 two other lessons, which complete his char- 
 acter. First, never to be intoxicated when 
 he hath made the best bargain, nor dejected 
 when the market is empty, or when its com- 
 modities are too dear for his purchase. 
 
 [a short essay 
 on '*the world and the stage "] 
 
 The world hath been often compared to 
 the theatre; and many grave writers, as 
 well as the poets, have considered human 
 life as a great drama, resembling, in almost 
 every particular, those scenical representa- 
 
 140
 
 tions which Thespis is first reported to 
 have invented, and which have been since 
 received with so much approbation and 
 delight in all polite countries. 
 
 This thought hath been carried so far, 
 and is become so general, that some words 
 proper to the theatre, and which were at 
 first metaphorically applied to the world, 
 are now indiscriminately and literally spoken 
 of both; thus stage and scene are by com- 
 mon use grown as familiar to us, when we 
 speak of life in general, as when we confine 
 ourselves to dramatic performances: and 
 when transactions behind the curtain are 
 mentioned, St. James's is more likely to 
 occur to our thoughts than Drury-Iane. 
 
 It may seem easy enough to account 
 for all this, by reflecting that the theatrical 
 stage is nothing more than a representation, 
 or, as Aristotle calls it, an imitation of 
 what really exists; and hence, perhaps, 
 we might fairly pay a very high compli- 
 ment to those who by their writings or 
 actions have been so capable of imitating 
 life, as to have their pictures in a manner 
 confounded with, or mistaken for, the 
 originals. 
 
 But, in reality, we are not so fond of 
 
 141
 
 paying compliments to these people, whom 
 we use as children frequently do the in- 
 struments of their amusement; and have 
 much more pleasure in hissing and buffet- 
 ing them, than in admiring their excellence. 
 There are many other reasons which have 
 induced us to see this analogy between the 
 world and the stage. 
 
 Some have considered the larger part 
 of mankind in the Hght of actors, as person- 
 ating characters no more their own, and 
 to which in fact they have no better title, 
 than the player hath to be in earnest 
 thought the king or the emperor whom he 
 represents. Thus the hypocrite may be 
 said to be a player; and indeed the Greeks 
 called them both by one and the same 
 name. 
 
 The brevity of life hath likewise given 
 occasion to this comparison. So the im- 
 mortal Shakespear — 
 
 -Life's a poor player, 
 
 That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
 And then is heard no more. 
 
 For which hackneyed quotation I will make 
 the reader amends by a very noble one, 
 which few, I believe, have read. It is taken 
 from a poem called The Deity, pubhshed 
 
 142
 
 about nine years ago, and long since buried 
 in oblivion; a proof that good books, no 
 more than good men, do always survive 
 the bad. 
 
 From Thee ^ all human actions take their springs, 
 
 The rise of empires and the fall of kings! 
 
 See the vast Theatre of Time display'd, 
 
 While o'er the scene succeeding heroes tread! 
 
 With pomp the shining images succeed, 
 
 What leaders triumph, and what monarchs bleed! 
 
 Perform the parts thy providence assign'd. 
 
 Their pride, their passions, to thy ends inclin'd: 
 
 Awhile they glitter in the face of day. 
 
 Then at thy nod the phantoms pass away; 
 
 No traces left of all the busy scene, 
 
 But that remembrance says — Tbe things have been! 
 
 In all these, however, and in every other 
 similitude of life to the theatre, the resem- 
 blance hath been always taken from the 
 stage only. None, as I remember, have at 
 all considered the audience at this great 
 drama. 
 
 But as Nature often exhibits some of her 
 best performances to a very full house, so 
 will the behaviour of her spectators no less 
 admit the above-mentioned comparison than 
 that of her actors. In this vast theatre of 
 time are seated the friend and the critic; 
 here are claps and shouts, hisses and groans; 
 
 1 The Deity.
 
 in short, everything which was ever seen or 
 heard at the Theatre-Royal. 
 
 Let us examine this in one example; for 
 instance, in the behaviour of the great 
 audience on that scene which Nature was 
 pleased to exhibit in the twelfth chapter 
 of the preceding book, where she intro- 
 duced Black George running away with 
 the £500 from his friend and benefactor. 
 
 Those who sat in the world's upper gal- 
 lery treated that incident, I am well con- 
 vinced, with their usual vociferation; and 
 every term of scurrilous reproach was most 
 probably vented on that occasion. 
 
 If we had descended to the next order 
 of spectators, we should have found an 
 equal degree of abhorrence, though less 
 of noise and scurrihty; yet here the good 
 women gave Black George to the devil, 
 and many of them expected every minute 
 that the cloven-footed gentleman would 
 fetch his own. 
 
 The pit, as usual, was no doubt divided; 
 those who delight in heroic virtue and 
 perfect character objected to the producing 
 such instances of villany, without punish- 
 ing them very severely for the sake of 
 example. Some of the author's friends 
 
 144
 
 cryed, ''Look'e, gentlemen, the man is 
 a villain, but it is nature for all that." 
 And all the young critics of the age, the 
 clerks, apprentices, &c., called it low, and 
 fell a groaning. 
 
 As for the boxes, they behaved with their 
 accustomed politeness. Most of them were 
 attending to something else. Some of those 
 few who regarded the scene at all, declared 
 he was a bad kind of man; while others 
 refused to give their opinion, till they 
 had heard that of the best judges. 
 
 Now we, who are admitted behind the 
 scenes of this great theatre of Nature 
 (and no author ought to write anything 
 besides dictionaries and spelling-books who 
 hath not this privilege), can censure the 
 action, without conceiving any absolute 
 detestation of the person, whom perhaps 
 Nature may not have designed to act an 
 ill part in all her dramas; for in this in- 
 stance life most exactly resembles the 
 stage, since it is often the same person 
 who represents the villain and the heroe; 
 and he who engages your admiration to-day 
 will probably attract your contempt to- 
 morrow. As Garrick, whom I regard in 
 tragedy to be the greatest genius the 
 
 145
 
 world hath ever produced, sometimes con- 
 descends to play the fool; so did Scipio 
 the Great, and Lselius the Wise, according 
 to Horace, many years ago; nay, Cicero 
 reports them to have been ''incredibly 
 childish." These, it is true, played the 
 fool, like my friend Garrick, in jest only; 
 but several eminent characters have, in 
 numberless instances of their lives, played 
 the fool egregiously in earnest; so far as 
 to render it a matter of some doubt whether 
 their wisdom or folly was predominant; 
 or whether they were better intitled to the 
 applause or censure, the admiration or 
 contempt, the love or hatred, of mankind. 
 Those persons, indeed, who have passed 
 any time behind the scenes of this great 
 theatre, and are thoroughly acquainted 
 not only with the several disguises which 
 are there put on, but also with the fantastic 
 and capricious behaviour of the Passions, 
 who are the managers and directors of 
 this theatre (for as to Reason, the patentee, 
 he is known to be a very idle fellow and 
 seldom to exert himself), may most prob- 
 ably have learned to understand the fa- 
 mous nil admirari of Horace, or in the 
 English phrase, to stare at nothing. 
 
 146
 
 A single bad act no more constitutes 
 a villain in life, than a single bad part on 
 the stage. The passions, like the managers 
 of a playhouse, often force men upon parts 
 without consulting their judgment, and 
 sometimes without any regard to their 
 talents. Thus the man, as well as the 
 player, may condemn what he himself 
 acts; nay, it is common to see vice sit as 
 awkwardly on some men, as the character 
 of lago would on the honest face of Mr. 
 William Mills. 
 
 Upon the whole, then, the man of can- 
 dour and of true understanding is never 
 hasty to condemn. He can censure an 
 imperfection, or even a vice, without rage 
 against the guilty party. In a word, they 
 are the same folly, the same childishness, 
 the same ill-breeding, and the same ill- 
 nature, which raise all the clamours and 
 uproars both in life and on the stage. 
 The worst of men generally have the 
 words rogue and villain most in their 
 mouths, as the lowest of all wretches are 
 the aptest to cry out low in the pit. 
 
 The author who will make me weep, 
 says Horace, must first weep himself. In 
 
 147
 
 reality, no man can paint a distress well 
 which he doth not feel while he is painting 
 it; nor do I doubt, but that the most 
 pathetic and affecting scenes have been 
 writ with tears. In the same manner 
 it is with the ridiculous. I am convinced 
 I never make my reader laugh heartily 
 but where I have laughed before him; 
 unless it should happen at any time, that 
 instead of laughing with me he should 
 be inclined to laugh at me. Perhaps this 
 may have been the case at some passages 
 in this chapter, from which apprehension 
 I will here put an end to it. 
 
 [an essay on habit] 
 
 Habit, my good reader, hath so vast a 
 prevalence over the human mind, that 
 there is scarce anything too strange or too 
 strong to be asserted of it. The story of 
 the miser, who, from long accustoming 
 to cheat others, came at last to cheat 
 himself, and with great delight and triumph 
 picked his own pocket of a guinea to con- 
 vey to his hoard, is not impossible or 
 improbable. In like manner it fares with 
 the practisers of deceit, who, from having 
 long deceived their acquaintance, gain at 
 
 148
 
 last a power of deceiving themselves, and 
 acquire that very opinion (however false) 
 of their own abilities, excellencies, and 
 virtues, into which they have for years 
 perhaps endeavoured to betray their neigh- 
 bours. Now, reader, to apply this obser- 
 vation to my present purpose, thou must 
 know, that as the passion generally called 
 love exercises most of the talents of the 
 female or fair world, so in this they now 
 and then discover a small inclination to 
 deceit; for which thou wilt not be angry 
 with the beautiful creatures when thou 
 hast considered that at the age of seven, 
 or something earlier, miss is instructed 
 by her mother that master is a very mon- 
 strous kind of animal, who will, if she 
 suffers him to come too near her, infallibly 
 eat her up and grind her to pieces: that, 
 so far from kissing or toying with him of 
 her own accord, she must not admit him 
 to kiss or toy with her: and, lastly, that 
 she must never have any affection towards 
 him; for if she should, all her friends 
 in petticoats would esteem her a traitress, 
 point at her, and hunt her out of their 
 society. These impressions, being first re- 
 ceived, are farther and deeper inculcated 
 
 149
 
 by their school-mistresses and companions; 
 so that by the age of ten they have con- 
 tracted such a dread and abhorrence of 
 the above-named monster, that whenever 
 they see him they fly from him as the 
 innocent hare doth from the greyhound. 
 Hence, to the age of fourteen or fifteen, 
 they entertain a mighty antipathy to mas- 
 ter; they resolve, and frequently profess, 
 that they will never have any commerce 
 with him, and entertain fond hopes of 
 passing their lives out of his reach, of the 
 possibility of which they have so visible 
 an example in their good maiden aunt. 
 But when they arrive at this period, and 
 have now passed their second climacteric, 
 when their wisdom, grown riper, begins 
 to see a little farther, and, from almost 
 daily falling in master's way, apprehend 
 the great difficulty of keeping out of it; 
 and when they observe him look often at 
 them, and sometimes very eagerly and 
 earnestly too (for the monster seldom 
 takes any notice of them till at this age), 
 they then begin to think of their danger; 
 and, as they perceive they cannot easily 
 avoid him, the wiser part bethink them- 
 selves of providing by other means for 
 
 150
 
 their security. They endeavour, by all 
 methods they can invent, to render them- 
 selves so amiable in his eyes, that he may 
 have no inclination to hurt them; in which 
 they generally succeed so well, that his 
 eyes, by frequent languishing, soon lessen 
 their idea of his fierceness, and so far abate 
 their fears, that they venture to parley 
 with him; and when they perceive him 
 so different from what he hath been de- 
 scribed, all gentleness, softness, kindness, 
 tenderness, fondness, their dreadful appre- 
 hensions vanish in a moment; and now (it 
 being usual with the human mind to skip 
 from one extreme to its opposite, as easily, 
 and almost as suddenly, as a bird from one 
 bough to another) love instantly succeeds 
 to fear: but, as it happens to persons who 
 have in their infancy been thoroughly 
 frightened with certain no-persons called 
 ghosts, that they retain their dread of 
 those beings after they are convinced that 
 there are no such things, so these young 
 ladies, though they no longer apprehend 
 devouring, cannot so entirely shake off 
 all that hath been instilled into them; 
 they still entertain the idea of that censure 
 which was so strongly imprinted on their 
 
 151
 
 tender minds, to which the declarations 
 of abhorrence they every day hear from 
 their companions greatly contribute. To 
 avoid this censure, therefore, is now their 
 only care; for which purpose they still 
 pretend the same aversion to the monster: 
 and the more they love him, the more 
 ardently they counterfeit the antipathy. 
 By the continual and constant practice 
 of which deceit on others, they at length 
 impose on themselves, and really believe 
 they hate what they love. 
 
 There are a set of religious, or rather 
 moral writers, who teach that virtue is 
 the certain road to happiness, and vice to 
 misery, in this world. A very wholesome 
 and comfortable doctrine, and to which 
 we have but one objection, namely, that 
 it is not true. 
 
 Indeed, if by virtue these wTiters mean 
 the exercise of those cardinal virtues, which 
 like good housewives stay at home, and 
 mind only the business of their own family, 
 I shall very readily concede the point; 
 for so surely do all these contribute and 
 lead to happiness, that I could almost 
 
 152
 
 wish, in violation of all the anticnt and 
 modern sages, to call them rather by the 
 name of wisdom, than by that of virtue; 
 for, with regard to this life, no system, 
 I conceive, was ever wiser than that of 
 the antient Epicureans, who held this 
 wisdom to constitute the chief good; nor 
 foolisher than that of their opposites, those 
 modern epicures, who place all felicity in 
 the abundant gratification of every sensual 
 appetite. 
 
 But if by virtue is meant (as I almost 
 think it ought) a certain relative quality, 
 which is always busying itself without- 
 doors, and seems as much interested in 
 pursuing the good of others as its own; 
 I cannot so easily agree that this is the 
 surest way to human happiness; because 
 I am afraid we must then include poverty 
 and contempt, with all the mischiefs which 
 backbiting, envy, and ingratitude, can bring 
 on mankind, in our idea of happiness; 
 nay, sometimes perhaps we shall be obliged 
 to wait upon the said happiness to a jail; 
 since many by the above virtue have 
 brought themselves thither. 
 
 153
 
 [a short, instructive essay on books] 
 
 The present age seems pretty well agreed 
 in an opinion, that the utmost scope and 
 end of reading is amusement only; and 
 such, indeed, are now the fashionable 
 books, that a reader can propose no more 
 than mere entertainment, and it is some- 
 times very well for him if he finds even 
 this, in his studies. 
 
 Letters, however, were surely intended 
 for a much more noble and profitable 
 purpose than this. Writers are not, I 
 presume, to be considered as mere jack- 
 puddings, whose business it is only to 
 excite laughter: this, indeed, may some- 
 times be intermixed and served up with 
 graver matters, in order to titillate the 
 palate, and to recommend wholesome food 
 to the mind; and for this purpose it hath 
 been used by many excellent authors: 
 "for why," as Horace says, ** should not 
 any one promulgate truth with a smile 
 on his countenance?" Ridicule indeed, as 
 he again intimates, is commonly a stronger 
 and better method of attacking vice than 
 the severer kind of satire. 
 
 When wit and humour are introduced 
 
 154
 
 for such good purposes, when the agree- 
 able is blended with the useful, then is the 
 writer said to have succeeded in every 
 point. Pleasantry (as the ingenious author 
 of Clarissa says of a story) should be made 
 only the vehicle of instruction; and thus 
 romances themselves, as well as epic poems, 
 may become worthy the perusal of the 
 greatest of men: but when no moral, 
 no lesson, no instruction, is conveyed to 
 the reader, where the whole design of the 
 composition is no more than to make us 
 laugh, the writer comes very near to the 
 character of a buffoon; and his admirers, 
 if an old Latin proverb be true, deserve 
 no great compliments to be paid to their 
 wisdom. 
 
 After what I have here advanced I 
 cannot fairly, I think, be represented as 
 an enemy to laughter, or to all those 
 kinds of writing that are apt to promote 
 it. On the contrary, few men, I believe, 
 do more admire the works of those great 
 masters who have sent their satire (if 
 I may use the expression) laughing into 
 the world. Such are the great triumvirate, 
 Lucian, Cervantes, and Swift. These 
 authors I shall ever hold in the highest 
 
 155
 
 degree of esteem; not indeed for that wit 
 and humour alone which they all so emi- 
 nently possessed, but because they all en- 
 deavoured, with the utmost force of their 
 wit and humour, to expose and extirpate 
 those follies and vices which chiefly pre- 
 vailed in their several countries. I would 
 not be thought to confme wit and humour 
 to these writers. Shakspeare, Moliere, and 
 some other authors, have been blessed 
 with the same talents, and have employed 
 them to the same purposes. There are 
 some, however, who, though not void 
 of these talents, have made so wretched 
 a use of them, that, had the consecration 
 of their labours been committed to the 
 hands of the hangman, no good man 
 would have regretted their loss; nor am 
 I afraid to mention Rabelais, and Aris- 
 tophanes himself, in this number. For, if 
 I may speak my opinion freely of these 
 two last writers, and of their works, their 
 design appears to me very plainly to have 
 been to ridicule all sobriety, modesty, 
 decency, virtue, and religion, out of the 
 world. Now, whoever reads over the five 
 great writers first mentioned in this para- 
 graph, must either have a very bad head 
 
 156
 
 or a very bad heart if he doth not become 
 both a wiser and a better man. 
 
 In the exercise of the mind, as well as 
 in the exercise of the body, diversion is a 
 secondary consideration, and designed only 
 to make that agreeable which is at the 
 same time useful, to such noble purposes 
 as health and wisdom. But what should 
 we say to a man who mounted his chamber- 
 hobby, or fought with his own shadow, 
 for his amusement only? how much more 
 absurd and weak would he appear who 
 swallowed poison because it was sweet? 
 
 How differently did Horace think of 
 study from our modern readers! 
 
 Quid verum atque decens euro et rogo, et omnis in 
 
 hoc sum: 
 Condo et compono, quae mox depromere posslm. 
 
 "Truth and decency are my whole care 
 and enquiry. In this study I am entirely 
 occupied; these I am always laying up, and 
 so disposing that I can at any time draw 
 forth my stores for my immediate use." 
 The whole epistle, indeed, from which I 
 have paraphrased this passage, is a com- 
 ment upon it, and affords many useful les- 
 sons of philosophy. 
 
 When we are employed in reading a 
 
 157
 
 I 
 
 great and good author, we ought to con- 
 sider ourselves as searching after treasures, 
 which, if well and regularly laid up in the 
 mind, will be of use to us on sundry occa- 
 sions in our lives. If a man, for instance, 
 should be overloaded with prosperity or 
 adversity (both of which cases are liable 
 to happen to us), who is there so very wise, 
 or so very foohsh, that, if he was a master 
 of Seneca and Plutarch, could not find 
 great matter of comfort and utility from 
 their doctrines? I mention these rather 
 than Plato and Aristotle, as the works of 
 the latter are not, I think, yet completely 
 made English, and, consequently, are less 
 within the reach of most of my country- 
 men. 
 
 But perhaps it may be asked, will 
 Seneca or Plutarch make us laugh? Per- 
 haps not; but if you are not a fool, my 
 worthy friend, which I can hardly with 
 civility suspect, they will both (the latter 
 especially) please you more than if they 
 did. For my own part, I declare, I have 
 not read even Lucian himself with more 
 delight than I have Plutarch; but surely 
 it is astonishing that such scribblers as 
 Tom Brown, Tom D'Urfey, and the wits 
 
 158
 
 of our age, should find readers, while the 
 writings of so excellent, so entertaining, 
 and so voluminous an author as Plutarch 
 remain in the world, and, as I apprehend, 
 are very little known. 
 
 The truth I am afraid is, that real taste 
 is a quality with which human nature is 
 very slenderly gifted. It is indeed so very 
 rare, and so little known, that scarce two 
 authors have agreed in their notions of 
 it; and those who have endeavoured to 
 explain it to others seem to have succeeded 
 only in shewing us that they know it not 
 themselves. If I might be allowed to give 
 my own sentiments, I should derive it 
 from a nice harmony between the imagi- 
 nation and the judgment; and hence per- 
 haps it is that so few have ever possessed 
 this talent in any eminent degree. Neither 
 of these will alone bestow it; nothing is 
 indeed more common than to see men of 
 very bright imaginations, and of very accu- 
 rate learning (which can hardly be acquired 
 without judgment), who are entirely devoid 
 of taste; and Longinus, who of all men 
 seems most exquisitely to have possessed 
 it, will puzzle his reader very much if he 
 should attempt to decide whether imagi- 
 
 159
 
 nation or judgment shine the brighter in 
 that inimitable critic. . . . 
 
 The first thing a child is fond of in a book 
 is a picture, the second is a story, and the 
 third a jest. Here then is the true Pons 
 Asinorum, which very few readers ever get 
 over. 
 
 From what I have said it may perhaps 
 be thought to appear that true taste is 
 the real gift of nature only; and if so, some 
 may ask to what purpose have I en- 
 deavoured to show men that they are 
 without a blessing which it is impossible 
 for them to attain? 
 
 Now, though it is certain that to the 
 highest consummation of taste, as well 
 as of every other excellence, nature must 
 lend much assistance, yet great is the 
 power of art, almost of itself, or at best 
 with only slender aids from nature; and, 
 to say the truth, there are very few who 
 have not in their minds some small seeds 
 of taste. "All men," says Cicero, "have 
 a sort of tacit sense of what is right or 
 wrong in arts and sciences, even without 
 the help of arts." This surely it is in the 
 power of art very greatly to improve. 
 That most men, therefore, proceed no 
 
 1 60
 
 farther than as I have above declared, is 
 owing either to the want of any, or (which 
 is perhaps yet worse) to an improper 
 education. . . . "Evil communications cor- 
 rupt good manners," is a quotation of St. 
 Paul from Menander. Evil books corrupt at 
 once both our manners and our taste. 
 
 Contempt is a port to which the pride 
 of man submits to fly with reluctance, 
 but those who are within it are always in 
 a place of the most assured security. 
 
 Nothing is more unjust than to carry' 
 our prejudices against a profession into 
 private life, and to borrow our idea of a 
 man from our opinion of his calling. Habit, 
 it is true, lessens the horror of those actions 
 which the profession makes necessary, and 
 consequently habitual; but in all other 
 instances, Nature works in men of all 
 professions alike; nay, perhaps, even more 
 strongly with those who give her, as it 
 were, a holiday, when they are following 
 their ordinary business. A butcher, I make 
 no doubt, would feel compunction at the 
 slaughter of a fine horse; and though a 
 
 i6i
 
 surgeon can feel no pain in cutting off 
 a limb, I have known him compassionate 
 a man in a fit of the gout. The common 
 hangman, who hath stretched the necks 
 of hundreds, is known to have trembled 
 at his first operation on a head: and the 
 very professors of human blood-shedding, 
 who, in their trade of war, butcher thou- 
 sands, not only of their fellow-professors, 
 but often of women and children, without 
 remorse; even these, I say, in times of 
 peace, when drums and trumpets are laid 
 aside, often lay aside all their ferocity, 
 and become very gentle members of civil 
 society. In the same manner an attorney 
 may feel all the miseries and distresses 
 of his fellow-creatures, provided he happens 
 not to be concerned against them. 
 
 The good or evil we confer on others 
 very often, I believe, recoils on ourselves. 
 For as men of a benign disposition enjoy 
 their own acts of beneficence equally with 
 those to whom they are done, so there are 
 scarce any natures so entirely diabolical, 
 as to be capable of doing injuries, without 
 paying themselves some pangs for the ruin 
 which they bring on their fellow-creatures. 
 
 162
 
 There is a kind of sympathy in honest 
 minds, by means of which they give an easy 
 credit to each other. 
 
 Persons who suspect they have given 
 others cause of offence, are apt to conclude 
 they are offended. 
 
 It hath been observed by some man of 
 much greater reputation for wisdom than 
 myself, that misfortunes seldom come single. 
 An instance of this may, I believe, be seen 
 in those gentlemen who have the misfortune 
 to have any of their rogueries detected; for 
 here discovery seldom stops till the whole is 
 come out. 
 
 "Parva leves capiunt animos — Small 
 things affect light minds," was the senti- 
 ment of a great master of the passion of 
 love. 
 
 The porter at a great man's door is a 
 kind of thermometer, by which you may 
 discover the warmth or coldness of his 
 master's friendship. Nay, in the highest 
 stations of all, as the great man himself 
 hath his different kinds of salutation, from 
 
 163
 
 an hearty embrace with a kiss, and my 
 dear lord or dear Sir Charles, down to, 
 
 well Mr. , what would you have me 
 
 do? so the porter to some bows with re- 
 spect, to others with a smile, to some he 
 bows more, to others less low, to others 
 not at all. Some he just lets in, and others 
 he just shuts out. And in all this they so 
 well correspond, that one would be inclined 
 to think that the great man and his porter 
 had compared their lists together, and, 
 like two actors concerned to act different 
 parts in the same scene, had rehearsed 
 their parts privately together before they 
 ventured to perform in public. . . . 
 
 I have often thought that, by the partic- 
 ular description of Cerberus, the porter 
 of hell, in the 6th JEneid, Virgil might 
 possibly intend to satirize the porters of 
 the great men in his time; the picture, 
 at least, resembles those who have the 
 honour to attend at the doors of our great 
 men. The porter in his lodge answers 
 exactly to Cerberus in his den, and, like 
 him, must be appeased by a sop before 
 access can be gained to his master. 
 
 Though title and fortune communicate 
 
 164
 
 a splendor all around them, and the foot- 
 men of men of quality and of estate think 
 themselves entitled to a part of that 
 respect which is paid to the quality and 
 estate of their masters, it is clearly oth- 
 erwise with regard to virtue and under- 
 standing. These advantages are strictly 
 personal, and swallow themselves all the 
 respect which is paid to them. To say 
 the truth, this is so very little, that they 
 cannot well afford to let any others partake 
 with them. As these therefore reflect no 
 honour on the domestic, so neither is he 
 at all dishonoured by the most deplorable 
 want of both in his master. Indeed it 
 is otherwise in the want of what is called 
 virtue in a mistress, the consequence of 
 which we have before seen: for in this 
 dishonour there is a kind of contagion, 
 which, like that of poverty, communicates 
 itself to all who approach it. 
 
 Now for these reasons we are not to 
 wonder that servants- (I mean among the 
 men only) should have so great regard for 
 the reputation of the wealth of their mas- 
 ters, and little or none at all for their 
 character in other points, and that, though 
 they would be ashamed to be the footman 
 
 165
 
 of a beggar, they are not so to attend 
 upon a rogue or a blockhead; and do 
 consequently make no scruple to spread 
 the fame of the iniquities and follies of 
 their said masters as far as possible, and 
 this often with great humour and merri- 
 ment. In reality, a footman is often a 
 wit as well as a beau, at the expence of 
 the gentleman whose livery he wears. 
 
 Nothing is more erroneous than the 
 common observation, that men who are 
 ill-natured and quarrelsome when they 
 are drunk, are very worthy persons when 
 they are sober: for drink, in reality, doth 
 not reverse nature, or create passions in 
 men which did not exist in them before. 
 It takes away the guard of reason, and 
 consequently forces us to produce those 
 symptoms, which many, when sober, have 
 art enough to conceal. It heightens and 
 inflames our passions (generally indeed 
 that passion which is uppermost in our 
 mind), so that the angry temper, the 
 amorous, the generous, the good-humoured, 
 the avaricious, and all other dispositions 
 of men, are in their cups heightened and 
 exposed. 
 
 1 66
 
 And yet as no nation produces so many 
 drunken quarrels, especially among the 
 lower people, as England (for indeed, with 
 them, to drink and to fight together are 
 almost synonymous terms), I would not, 
 methinks, have it thence concluded, that 
 the EngHsh are the worst-natured people 
 alive. Perhaps the love of glory only is 
 at the bottom of this; so that the fair 
 conclusion seems to be, that our country- 
 men have more of that love, and more 
 of bravery, than any other plebeians. And 
 this the rather, as there is seldom anything 
 ungenerous, unfair, or ill-natured, exercised 
 on these occasions: nay, it is common for 
 the combatants to express good-will for 
 each other even at the time of the con- 
 flict; and as their drunken mirth gener- 
 ally ends in a battle, so do most of their 
 battles end in friendship. 
 
 If there be enough of goodness in a 
 character to engage the admiration and 
 affection of a well-disposed mind, though 
 there should appear some of those little 
 blemishes quas humana parum cavit natura, 
 they will raise our compassion rather than 
 our abhorrence. Indeed, nothing can be 
 
 167
 
 of more moral use than the imperfections 
 which are seen in examples of this kind; 
 since such form a kind of surprize, more 
 apt to affect and dwell upon our minds 
 than the faults of very vicious and wicked 
 persons. The foibles and vices of men, 
 in whom there is great mixture of good, 
 become more glaring objects from the vir- 
 tues which contrast them and shew their 
 deformity; and when we find such vices 
 attended with their evil consequence to 
 our favourite characters, we are not only 
 taught to shun them for our own sake, but 
 to hate them for the mischiefs they have 
 already brought on those we love. 
 
 All persons under the apprehension of 
 danger convert whatever they see and hear 
 into the objects of that apprehension. 
 
 Fear hath the common fault of a justice 
 of peace, and is apt to conclude hastily from 
 every slight circumstance, without examin- 
 ing the evidence on both sides. 
 
 It is an observation sometimes made, 
 that to indicate our idea of a simple fellow, 
 we say, he is easily to be seen through: 
 
 1 68
 
 nor do I believe it a more improper de- 
 notation of a simple book. 
 
 Notwithstanding the sentiment of the 
 Roman satirist, which denies the divinity of 
 fortune, and the opinion of Seneca to the 
 same purpose; Cicero, who was, I believe, 
 a wiser man than either of them, expressly 
 holds the contrary; and certain it is, there 
 are some incidents in life so very strange 
 and unaccountable, that it seems to require 
 more than human skill and foresight in 
 producing them. 
 
 It may be laid down as a general rule, 
 that no woman who hath any great pre- 
 tensions to admiration is ever well pleased 
 in a company where she perceives herself 
 to fill only the second place. This obser- 
 vation, however, I humbly submit to the 
 judgment of the ladies, and hope it will 
 be considered as retracted by me if they 
 shall dissent from my opinion. 
 
 Of all the ministers of vengeance, there 
 are none with whom the devil deals so 
 treacherously as with those whom he em- 
 ploys in executing the mischievous pur- 
 
 169
 
 poses of an angry mistress; for no sooner 
 is revenge executed on an offending lover 
 than it is sure to be repented; and all 
 the anger which before raged against the 
 beloved object, returns with double fury 
 on the head of his assassin. . . . 
 
 It is usual for people who have rashly 
 or inadvertently made any animate or 
 inanimate thing the instrument of mischief 
 to hate the innocent means by which the 
 mischief was effected (for this is a subtle 
 method which the mind invents to excuse 
 ourselves, the last objects on whom we 
 would willingly wreak our vengeance). 
 
 Those who have read any romance or 
 poetry, ancient or modern, must have been 
 informed that love hath wings: by which 
 they are not to understand, as some young 
 ladies by mistake have done, that a lover 
 can fly; the writers, by this ingenious 
 allegory, intending to insinuate no more 
 than that lovers do not march like horse- 
 guards. 
 
 [on dividing books into chapters] 
 
 There are certain mysteries or secrets in 
 all trades, from the highest to the lowest, 
 
 170
 
 from that of prime-ministering to this of 
 authoring, which are seldom discovered 
 unless to members of the same calling. 
 Among those used by us gentlemen of the 
 latter occupation, I take this of dividing 
 our works into books and chapters to be 
 none of the least considerable. Now, for 
 want of being truly acquainted with this 
 secret, common readers imagine, that by 
 this art of dividing we mean only to swell 
 our works to a much larger bulk than they 
 would otherwise be extended to. These sev- 
 eral places therefore in our paper, which 
 are filled with our books and chapters, are 
 understood as so much buckram, stays, 
 and stay-tape in a taylor's bill, serving 
 only to make up the sum total, commonly 
 found at the bottom of our first page and 
 of his last. 
 
 But in reality the case is otherwise, 
 and in this as well as all other instances 
 we consult the advantage of our reader, 
 not our own; and indeed, many notable 
 uses arise to him from this method; for, 
 first, those little spaces between our chap- 
 ters may be looked upon as an inn or 
 resting-place where he may stop and take 
 a glass or any other refreshment as it 
 
 171
 
 pleases him. Nay, our fine readers will, 
 perhaps, be scarce able to travel farther 
 than through one of them in a day. As 
 to those vacant pages which are placed 
 between our books, they are to be regarded 
 as those stages where in long journies 
 the traveller stays some time to repose 
 himself, and consider of what he hath 
 seen in the parts he hath already passed 
 through; a consideration which I take 
 the liberty to recommend a little to the 
 reader; for, however swift his capacity 
 may be, I would not advise him to travel 
 through these pages too fast; for if he 
 doth, he may probably miss the seeing 
 some curious productions of nature, which 
 will be observed by the slower and more 
 accurate reader. A volume without any 
 such places of rest resembles the opening 
 of wilds or seas, which tires the eye and 
 fatigues the spirit when entered upon. 
 
 Secondly, what are the contents pre- 
 fixed to every chapter but so many inscrip- 
 tions over the gates of inns (to continue 
 the same metaphor), informing the reader 
 what entertainment he is to expect, which 
 if he likes not, he may travel on to the 
 next; for, in biography, as we are not tied 
 
 172
 
 down to an exact concatenation equally 
 with other historians, so a chapter or two 
 (for instance, this I am now writing) may 
 be often passed over without any injury 
 to the whole. And in these inscriptions 
 I have been as faithful as possible, not 
 imitating the celebrated Montaigne, who 
 promises you one thing and gives you 
 another; nor some title-page authors, who 
 promise a great deal and produce nothing 
 at all. 
 
 There are, besides these more obvious 
 benefits, several others which our readers 
 enjoy from this art of dividing; though 
 perhaps most of them too mysterious to 
 be presently understood by any who are 
 not initiated into the science of authoring. 
 To mention therefore, but one which is 
 most obvious, it prevents spoiling the 
 beauty of a book by turning down its 
 leaves, a method otherwise necessary to 
 those readers who (though they read with 
 great improvement and advantage) are apt, 
 when they return to their study after half- 
 an-hour's absence, to forget where they left 
 
 off. 
 
 These divisions have the sanction of 
 great antiquity. Homer not only divided 
 
 173
 
 his great work into twenty-four books 
 (in compliment perhaps to the twenty- 
 four letters to which he had very particular 
 obligations), but, according to the opinion 
 of some very sagacious criticks, hawked 
 them all separately, delivering onlj one 
 book at a time (probably by subscription). 
 He was the first inventor of the art which 
 hath so long lain dormant, of publishing 
 by numbers; an art now brought to such 
 perfection, that even dictionaries are di- 
 vided and exhibited piecemeal to the pub- 
 lic; nay, one bookseller hath (to encourage 
 learning and ease the public) contrived 
 to give them a dictionary in this divided 
 manner for only fifteen shillings more than 
 it would have cost entire. 
 
 Virgil hath given us his poem in twelve 
 books, an argument of his modesty; for 
 by that, doubtless, he would insinuate that 
 he pretends to no more than half the merit 
 of the Greek; for the same reason, our 
 Milton went originally no farther than ten; 
 till, being puffed up by the praise of his 
 friends, he put himself on the same foot- 
 ing with the Roman poet. 
 
 I shall not, however, enter so deep into 
 this matter as some very learned criticks 
 
 174
 
 have done; who have with infinite labour 
 and acute discernment discovered what 
 books are proper for embeUishment, and 
 what require simplicity only, particularly 
 with regard to similes, which I think are 
 now generally agreed to become any book 
 but the first. 
 
 I will dismiss this subject with the fol- 
 lowing observation: that it becomes an au- 
 thor generally to divide a book, as it does a 
 butcher to joint his meat, for such assist- 
 ance is of great help to both the reader and 
 the carver. 
 
 [an explanation of the term, 
 
 '*TO RIDE AND TIE"] 
 
 Mr. Adams discharged the bill, and they 
 were both setting out, having agreed to 
 ride and tie; a method of travcHing much 
 used by persons who have but one horse 
 between them, and is thus performed. The 
 two travellers set out together, one on 
 horseback, the other on foot: now, as it 
 generally happens that he on horseback 
 outgoes him on foot, the custom is, that, 
 when he arrives at the distance agreed on, 
 he is to dismount, tie the horse to some 
 gate, tree, post, or other thing, and then 
 
 175
 
 proceed on foot; when the other comes up 
 to the horse he unties him, mounts, and 
 gallops on, till, having passed by his fel- 
 low-traveller, he likewise arrives at the 
 place of tying. 
 
 It hath been observed, by wise men or 
 women, I forget which, that all persons 
 are doomed to be in love once in their 
 lives. No particular season is, as I re- 
 member, assigned for this; but the age 
 at which Miss Bridget was arrived [above 
 thirty], seertis to me as proper a period as 
 any to be fixed on for this purpose: it 
 often, indeed, happens much earlier; but 
 when it doth not, I have observed it sel- 
 dom or never fails about this time. More- 
 over, we may remark that at this season 
 love is of a more serious and steady nature 
 than what sometimes shows itself in the 
 younger parts of life. The love of girls 
 is uncertain, capricious, and so foohsh that 
 we cannot always discover what the young 
 lady would be at; nay, it may almost 
 be doubted whether she always knows this 
 herself. 
 
 Now we are never at a loss to discern 
 this in women about forty; for as such 
 
 176
 
 grave, serious, and experienced ladies well 
 know their own meaning, so it is always 
 very easy for a man of the least sagacity to 
 discover it with the utmost certainty. . . . 
 And to say the truth, there is, in all 
 points, great difference between the reason- 
 able passion which women at this age 
 conceive towards men, and the idle and 
 childish liking of a girl to a boy, which is 
 often fixed on the outside only, and on 
 things of little value and no duration; as 
 on cherry-cheeks, small, lily-white hands, 
 sloe-black eyes, flowing locks, downy chins, 
 dapper shapes; nay, sometimes on charms 
 more worthless than these, and less the 
 party's own; such are the outward orna- 
 ments of the person, for which men are 
 beholden to the taylor, the laceman, the 
 periwig-maker, the hatter, and the mil- 
 liner, and not to nature. Such a passion 
 girls may well be ashamed, as they gener- 
 ally are, to own either to themselves or 
 others. 
 
 Nothing can be more reasonable, than 
 that slaves and flatterers should exact the 
 same taxes on all below them, which they 
 themselves pay to all above them. 
 
 177
 
 Be it known then, that the human 
 species are divided into two sorts of people, 
 to-wit, high people and low people. As 
 by high people I would not be understood 
 to mean persons literally born higher in 
 their dimensions than the rest of the 
 species, nor metaphorically those of exalted 
 characters or abilities; so by low people 
 I cannot be construed to intend the reverse. 
 High people signify no other than people 
 of fashion, and low people those of no 
 fashion. Now, this word fashion hath by 
 long use lost its original meaning, from 
 which at present it gives us a very different 
 idea; for I am deceived if by persons of 
 fashion we do not generally include a 
 conception of birth and accomplishments 
 superior to the herd of mankind; whereas, 
 in reality, nothing more was originally 
 meant by a person of fashion than a per- 
 son who drest himself in the fashion of 
 the times; and the word really and truly 
 signifies no more at this day. Now, the 
 world being thus divided into people of 
 fashion and people of no fashion, a fierce 
 contention arose between them; nor would 
 those of one party, to avoid suspicion, 
 be seen publickly to speak to those of 
 
 178
 
 the other, though they often held a very 
 good correspondence in private. In this 
 contention it is difficult to say which party 
 succeeded; for, whilst the people of fashion 
 seized several places to their own use, 
 such as courts, assemblies, operas, balls, 
 &c., the people of no fashion, besides 
 one royal place, called his Majesty's Bear- 
 garden, have been in constant possession 
 of all hops, fairs, revels, &c. Two places 
 have been agreed to be divided between 
 them, namely, the church and the play- 
 house, where they segregate themselves 
 from each other in a remarkable manner; 
 for, as the people of fashion exalt them- 
 selves at church over the heads of the 
 people of no fashion, so in the playhouse 
 they abase themselves in the same degree 
 under their feet. This distinction I have 
 never met wdth any one able to account for: 
 it is sufficient that, so far from looking 
 on each other as brethren in the Christian 
 language, they seem scarce to regard each 
 other as of the same species. . . . 
 
 And with regard to time, it may not be 
 unpleasant to survey the picture of de- 
 pendence like a kind of ladder; as, for 
 instance; early in the morning arises the 
 
 179
 
 postillion, or some other boy, which great 
 famiHes, no more than great ships, are 
 without, and falls to brushing the clothes 
 and cleaning the shoes of John the foot- 
 man; who, being drest himself, then applies 
 his hands to the same labours for Mr. 
 Secondhand, the squire's gentleman; the 
 gentleman in the like manner, a little 
 later in the day, attends the squire; and 
 the squire is no sooner equipped than he 
 attends the levee of my lord; which is 
 no sooner over than my lord himself is 
 seen at the levee of the favourite, who, 
 after the hour of homage is at an end, 
 appears himself to pay homage to the 
 levee of his sovereign. Nor is there, per- 
 haps, in this whole ladder of dependence, 
 any one step at a greater distance from the 
 other than the first from the second; so 
 that to a philosopher the question might 
 only seem, whether you would chuse to 
 be a great man at six in the morning, 
 or at two in the afternoon. And yet there 
 are scarce two of these who do not think 
 the least familiarity with the persons below 
 them a condescension, and, if they were 
 to go one step farther, a degradation. 
 
 1 80
 
 In all bargains, whether to fight or to 
 marry, or concerning any other such busi- 
 ness, httle previous ceremony is required 
 to bring the matter to an issue when both 
 parties are really in earnest. 
 
 Though envy is at best a very malig- 
 nant passion, yet is its bitterness greatly 
 heightened by mixing with contempt 
 towards the same object; and very much 
 afraid I am, that whenever an obligation 
 is joined to these two, indignation and 
 not gratitude will be the product of all 
 three. 
 
 It is with jealousy as with the gout: 
 when such distempers are in the blood, 
 there is never any security against their 
 breaking out; and that very often on the 
 slightest occasions, and when least sus- 
 pected. 
 
 There is no conduct less politic, than 
 to enter into any confederacy with your 
 friend's servants against their master: for 
 by these means you afterwards become the 
 slave of these very servants; by whom you 
 are constantly liable to be betrayed. 
 
 i8i
 
 The most formal appearance of virtue, 
 when it is only an appearance, may, 
 perhaps, in very abstracted considerations, 
 seem to be rather less commendable than 
 virtue itself without this formality; but 
 it will, however, be always more com- 
 mended; and this, I believe, will be granted 
 by all, that it is necessary, unless in some 
 very particular cases, for every woman 
 to support either the one or the other. 
 
 Virgil, I think, tells us, that when the 
 mob are assembled in a riotous and tu- 
 multuous manner, and all sorts of missile 
 weapons fly about, if a man of gravity 
 and authority appears amongst them, the 
 tumult is presently appeased, and the mob, 
 which when collected into one body, may 
 be well compared to an ass, erect their 
 long ears at the grave man's discourse. 
 
 On the contrary, when a set of grave 
 men and philosophers are disputing; when 
 wisdom herself may in a manner be con- 
 sidered as present, and administering argu- 
 ments to the disputants; should a tumult 
 arise among the mob, or should one scold, 
 who is herself equal in noise to a mighty 
 mob, appear among the said philosophers; 
 
 182
 
 their disputes cease in a moment, wisdom 
 no longer performs her ministerial office, 
 and the attention of every one is imme- 
 diately attracted by the scold alone. 
 
 The ancients may be considered as a 
 rich common, where every person who hath 
 even the smallest tenement in Parnassus 
 hath a free right to fatten his muse. Or, 
 to place it in a clearer light, we moderns 
 are to the ancients what the poor are to 
 the rich. By the poor here I mean that 
 large and venerable body which, in English, 
 we call the mob. Now, whoever hath had 
 the honour to be admitted to any degree 
 of intimacy with this mob, must well 
 know that it is one of their established 
 maxims to plunder and pillage their rich 
 neighbours without any reluctance; and 
 that this is held to be neither sin nor 
 shame among them. And so constantly 
 do they abide and act by this maxim, 
 that, in every parish almost in the kingdom, 
 there is a kind of confederacy ever carry- 
 ing on against a certain person of opulence 
 called the squire, whose property is con- 
 sidered as free-booty by all his poor neigh- 
 bours; who, as they conclude that there 
 
 183
 
 is no manner of guilt in such depredations, 
 look upon it as a point of honour and 
 moral obligation to conceal, and to preserve 
 each other from punishment on all such 
 occasions. 
 
 In like manner are the ancients, such as 
 Homer, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, and the 
 rest, to be esteemed among us writers, as 
 so many wealthy squires, from whom we, 
 the poor of Parnassus, claim an immemo- 
 rial custom of taking whatever we can 
 come at. 
 
 A man is capable of doing what he hath 
 done already, and it is possible for one who 
 hath been a villain once, to act the same 
 part again. 
 
 Women, to their glory be it spoken, are 
 more generally capable of that violent and 
 apparently disinterested passion of love, 
 which seeks only the good of its object, 
 than men. 
 
 Though there are many gentlemen who 
 very well reconcile it to their consciences 
 to possess themselves of the whole fortune 
 of a woman, without making her any kind 
 
 184
 
 of return; yet to a mind, the proprietor of 
 which doth not deserve to be hanged, 
 nothing is, I believe, more irksome than to 
 support love with gratitude only; especially 
 where inclination pulls the heart a contrary 
 way. 
 
 The elegant Lord Shaftesbury somewhere 
 objects to telling too much truth: by which 
 it may be fairly inferred, that, in some 
 cases, to lie is not only excusable but 
 commendable. 
 
 And surely there are no persons who may 
 so properly challenge a right to this com- 
 mendable deviation from truth, as young 
 women in the affair of love; for which they 
 may plead precept, education, and above 
 all, the sanction, nay, I may say the neces- 
 sity of custom, by which they are restrained, 
 not from submitting to the honest impulses 
 of nature (for that would be a foolish pro- 
 hibition), but from ow^ning them. 
 
 Though Nature hath by no means mixed 
 up an equal share either of curiosity or 
 vanity in every human composition, there 
 is perhaps no individual to whom she hath 
 not allotted such a proportion of both as 
 
 185
 
 requires much arts, and pains too, to sub- 
 due and keep under; — a conquest, how- 
 ever, absolutely necessary to every one who 
 would in any degree deserve the characters 
 of wisdom or good breeding. 
 
 Heroes, notwithstanding the high ideas 
 which, by the means of flatterers, they may 
 entertain of themselves, or the world may 
 conceive of them, have certainly more of 
 mortal than divine about them. However 
 elevated their minds may be, their bodies 
 at least (which is much the major part 
 of most) are liable to the worst infirm- 
 ities, and subject to the vilest offices of 
 human nature. Among these latter, the act 
 of eating, which hath by several wise men 
 been considered as extremely mean and 
 derogatory from the philosophic dignity, 
 must be in some measure performed by the 
 greatest prince, heroe, or philosopher upon 
 earth; nay, sometimes Nature hath been 
 so frolicsome as to exact of these dignified 
 characters a much more exorbitant share 
 of this office than she hath obliged those 
 of the lowest order to perform. 
 
 To say the truth, as no known inhabitant 
 of this globe is really more than man, so 
 
 1 86
 
 none need be ashamed of submitting to 
 what the necessities of man demand; but 
 when those great personages I have just 
 mentioned condescend to aim at confining 
 such low offices to themselves — as when, 
 by hoarding or destroying, they seem 
 desirous to prevent any others from eating 
 — then they surely become very low and 
 despicable. 
 
 [a short invocation to fame, etc.] 
 
 Comfort me by a solemn assurance, 
 that when the little parlour in which I sit 
 at this instant shall be reduced to a worse 
 furnished box, I shall be read with honour 
 by those who never knew nor saw me, and 
 whom I shall neither know nor see. . . . 
 
 And now . . . whose assistance shall I 
 invoke to direct my pen? 
 
 First, Genius; thou gift of Heaven; with- 
 out whose aid in vain we struggle against 
 the stream of nature. Thou who dost sow 
 the generous seeds which art nourishes, 
 and brings to perfection. Do thou kindly 
 take me by the hand, and lead me through 
 all the mazes, the winding labyrinths of 
 nature. Initiate me into all those mysteries 
 which profane eyes never beheld. Teach 
 
 187
 
 me, which to thee is no difFicuIt task, 
 to know mankind better than they know 
 themselves. Remove that mist which dims 
 the intellects of mortals, and causes them to 
 adore men for their art, or to detest them 
 for their cunning, in deceiving others, when 
 they are, in reality, the objects only of 
 ridicule, for deceiving themselves. Strip 
 off the thin disguise of wisdom from self- 
 conceit, of plenty from avarice, and of glory 
 from ambition. Come, thou that hast in- 
 spired thy Aristophanes, thy Lucian, thy 
 Cervantes, thy Rabelais, thy Moliere, thy 
 Shakespear, thy Swift, thy Marivaux, fill 
 my pages with humour; till mankind learn 
 the good-nature to laugh only at the fol- 
 lies of others, and the humility to grieve at 
 their own. 
 
 And thou, almost the constant attendant 
 on true genius. Humanity, bring all thy 
 tender sensations. If thou hast already dis- 
 posed of them all between thy Allen and 
 thy Lyttleton, steal them a little while 
 from their bosoms. Not without these the 
 tender scene is painted. From these alone 
 proceed the noble, disinterested friendship, 
 the melting love, the generous sentiment, 
 the ardent gratitude, the soft compassion, 
 
 i88
 
 the candid opinion; and all those strong 
 energies of a good mind, which fill the 
 moistened eyes with tears, the glowing 
 cheeks with blood, and swell the heart with 
 tides of grief, joy, and benevolence. 
 
 And thou, O Learning! (for without thy 
 assistance nothing pure, nothing correct, 
 can genius produce) do thou guide my pen. 
 Thee in thy favorite fields, where the 
 limpid, gently-rolling Thames washes thy 
 Etonian banks, in early youth I have 
 worshipped. To thee, at thy birchen altar, 
 with true Spartan devotion, I have sacri- 
 ficed my blood. Come then, and from thy 
 vast and luxuriant stores, in long antiquity 
 piled up, pour forth the rich profusion. 
 Open thy Mseonian and thy Mantuan 
 coffers, with whatever else includes thy 
 philosophic, thy poetic, and thy historical 
 treasures, whether with Greek or Roman 
 characters thou hast chosen to inscribe 
 the ponderous chests: give me a while 
 that key to all thy treasures, which to thy 
 Warburton thou hast entrusted. 
 
 Lastly, come Experience, long conversant 
 with the wise, the good, the learned, and 
 the polite. Nor with them only, but with 
 every kind of character, from the minister 
 
 189
 
 at his levee, to the bailiff in his spunging- 
 house; from the dutchess at her drum, 
 to the landlady behind her bar. From 
 thee only can the manners of mankind 
 be known; to which the recluse pedant, 
 however great his parts or extensive his 
 learning may be, hath ever been a stranger. 
 
 Come all these, and more, if possible; 
 for arduous is the task I have undertaken; 
 and without all your assistance, will, I 
 find, be too heavy for me to support. 
 But if you all smile on my labours I hope 
 still to bring them to a happy con- 
 clusion. . . . 
 
 The great happiness of being known to 
 posterity, with the hopes of which we so 
 dehghted ourselves in the foregoing, is 
 the portion of few. To have the several 
 elements which compose our names, as 
 Sydenham expresses it, repeated a thousand 
 years hence, is a gift beyond the power 
 of title and wealth; and is scarce to be 
 purchased, unless by the sword and the 
 pen. 
 
 190
 
 [a short dissertation on nature, in 
 
 HER attitude TOWARDS INDIVIDUALS^ 
 
 Be it known that the great Alma Mater, 
 Nature, is of all other females the most 
 obstinate, and tenacious of her purpose. 
 So true is that observation, 
 
 Naturam expellas Jurca licet, usque recurret. 
 
 Which I need not render in English, it 
 being to be found in a book which most 
 fine gentlemen are forced to read. What- 
 ever Nature, therefore, purposes to herself, 
 she never suffers any reason, design, or 
 accident to frustrate. Now, though it 
 may seem to a shallow observer that 
 some persons were designed by Nature 
 for no use or purpose whatever, yet certain 
 it is that no man is born into the world 
 without his particular allotment; viz., some 
 to be kings, some statesmen, some embas- 
 sadors, some bishops, some generals, and 
 so on. Of these there be two kinds; 
 those to whom Nature is so generous to 
 give some endowment qualifying them for 
 the parts she intends them afterwards 
 to act on this stage, and those whom she 
 uses as instances of her unlimited power, 
 
 191
 
 and for whose preferment to such and 
 such stations Solomon himself could have 
 invented no other reason that than Nature 
 designed them so. These latter some great 
 philosophers have, to shew them to be the 
 favourites of Nature, distinguished by the 
 honourable appellation of naturals. In- 
 deed, the true reason of the general igno- 
 rance of mankind on this head seems to 
 be this; that, as Nature chuses to execute 
 these her purposes by certain second causes, 
 and as many of these second causes seem 
 so totally foreign to her design, the wit of 
 man, which, like his eye, sees best directly 
 forward, and very little and imperfectly 
 what is oblique, is not able to discern the 
 end by the means. Thus, how a handsome 
 wife or daughter should contribute to exe- 
 cute her original designation of a general, 
 or how flattery or half a dozen houses in 
 a borough-town should denote a judge, or 
 a bishop, he is not capable of comprehend- 
 ing. And, indeed, we ourselves, wise as we 
 are, are forced to reason ab effectu; and if 
 we had been asked what Nature had in- 
 tended such men for, before she herself had 
 by the event demonstrated her purpose, it 
 is possible we might sometimes have been 
 
 192
 
 puzzled to declare; for It must be confessed 
 that at first sight, and to a mind uninspired, 
 a man of vast natural capacity and much 
 acquired knowledge may seem by Nature 
 designed for power and honour, rather 
 than one remarkable only for the want of 
 these, and indeed all other qualifications; 
 whereas daily experience convinces us of 
 the contrary, and drives us as it were into 
 the opinion I have here disclosed. 
 
 [In Fielding's narrative of his journey 
 to the next world he relates how he, 
 in company with a number of other spirits, 
 arrived at the Gate, where they all stood 
 outside listening to Judge Minos arguing 
 with the various applicants for admission. 
 He says : — ] 
 
 THE PROCEEDINGS OF JUDGE MINOS 
 AT THE GATE OF ELYSIUM 
 
 I now got near enough to the gate to 
 hear the several claims of those w^ho 
 endeavoured to pass. The first, among 
 other pretensions, set forth that he had 
 been very liberal to an hospital; but 
 Minos answered, ''Ostentation!" and re- 
 
 193
 
 pulsed him. The second exhibited that he 
 had constantly frequented his church, been 
 a rigid observer of fast-days: he likewise 
 represented the great animosity he had 
 shewn to vice in others, which never es- 
 caped his severest censure; and as to his 
 own behaviour, he had never been once 
 guilty of whoring, drinking, gluttony, or 
 any other excess. He said he had dis- 
 inherited his son for getting a bastard. 
 ''Have you so?'* said Minos; "then pray 
 return into the other world and beget 
 another; for such an unnatural rascal 
 shall never pass this gate." A dozen 
 others, who had advanced with very con- 
 fident countenances, seeing him rejected, 
 turned about of their own accord, declar- 
 ing, if he could not pass, they had no 
 expectation, and accordingly they followed 
 him back to earth; w^hich was the fate of 
 all who were repulsed, they being obliged 
 to take a further purification, unless those 
 who were guilty of some very heinous 
 crimes, who were hustled in at a little 
 back gate, whence they tumbled imme- 
 diately into the bottomless pit. 
 
 The next spirit that came up declared 
 he had done neither good nor evil in the 
 
 194
 
 world; for that since his arrival at man's 
 estate he had spent his whole time in 
 search of curiosities; and particularly in 
 the study of butterflies, of which he had 
 collected an immense number. Minos made 
 him no answer, but with great scorn he 
 pushed him back. 
 
 There now advanced a very beautiful 
 spirit indeed. She began to ogle Minos 
 the moment she saw him. She said she 
 hoped there was some merit in refusing 
 a great number of lovers, and dying a 
 maid, though she had had the choice of a 
 hundred. Minos told her she had not 
 refused enow yet, and turned her back. 
 
 She was succeeded by a spirit who told 
 the judge he believed his works would 
 speak for him. "What works?" answered 
 Minos. ''My dramatic works," replied the 
 other, "which have done so much good 
 in recommending virtue and punishing 
 vice." "Very well," said the judge; "if 
 you please to stand by, the first person 
 who passes the gate by your means shall 
 carry you in with him; but, if you will 
 take my advice, I think, for expedition 
 sake, you had better return, and live 
 another life upon earth." The bard grum- 
 
 195
 
 bled at this, and replied that, besides 
 his poetical works, he had done some 
 other good things: for that he had once 
 lent the whole profits of a benefit-night 
 to a friend, and by that means had saved 
 him and his family from destruction. Upon 
 this the gate flew open, and Minos desired 
 him to walk in, telling him, if he had 
 mentioned this at first, he might have 
 spared the remembrance of his plays. The 
 poet answered, he believed, if Minos had 
 read his works, he would set a higher 
 value on them. He was then beginning 
 to repeat, but Minos pushed him forward, 
 and, turning his back to him, applied 
 himself to the next passenger, a very 
 genteel spirit, who made a very low bow 
 to Minos, and then threw himself into an 
 erect attitude, and imitated the motion 
 of taking snufl" with his right hand. Minos 
 asked him what he had to say for himself. 
 He answered, he would dance a minuet 
 with any spirit in Elysium: that he could 
 likewise perform all his other exercises 
 very well, and hoped he had in his life 
 deserved the character of a perfect fine 
 gentleman. Minos replied it would be 
 great pity to rob the world of so fine a 
 
 196
 
 gentleman, and therefore desired him to 
 take the other trip. The beau bowed, 
 thanked the judge, and said he desired no 
 better. Several spirits expressed much 
 astonishment at this his satisfaction; but 
 we were afterwards informed he had not 
 taken the emetic above mentioned. 
 
 A miserable old spirit now crawled for- 
 wards, whose face I thought I had formerly 
 seen near Westminster Abbey. He enter- 
 tained Minos with a long harangue of 
 what he had done when in the house; 
 and then proceeded to inform him how 
 much he was worth, without attempting 
 to produce a single instance of any one 
 good action. Minos stopt the career of his 
 discourse, and acquainted him he must 
 
 take a trip back again. "What! to S 
 
 house?" said the spirit in an ecstasy; but 
 the judge, without making him any answer 
 turned to another, who, with a very sol- 
 emn air and great dignity, acquainted him 
 that he was a duke. "To the right-about, 
 Mr. Duke," cried Minos, "you are in- 
 finitely too great a man for Elysium;'* 
 and then, giving him a kick on the breech, 
 he addressed himself to a spirit who, with 
 fear and trembling, begged he might not 
 
 197
 
 go to the bottomless pit: he said he hoped 
 Minos would consider that, though he 
 had gone astray, he had suffered for it — 
 that it was necessity which drove him to 
 the robbery of eighteenpence, which he 
 had committed, and for which he was 
 hanged — that he had done some good 
 actions in his life — that he had supported 
 an aged parent with his labour — that he 
 had been a very tender husband and a 
 kind father — and that he had ruined 
 himself by being bail for his friend. At 
 which words the gate opened, and Minos 
 bid him enter, giving him a slap on the 
 back as he passed by him. 
 
 A great number of spirits now came for- 
 wards, who all declared they had the same 
 claim, and that the captain should speak 
 for them. He acquainted the judge that 
 they had been all slain in the service of 
 their country. Minos was going to admit 
 them, but had the curiosity to ask who had 
 been the invader, in order, as he said, to 
 prepare the back gate for him. The cap- 
 tain answered they had been the invaders 
 themselves — that they had entered the 
 enemy's country, and burnt and plundered 
 several cities. "And for what reason?'* 
 
 198
 
 said Minos. "By the command of him 
 who paid us," said the captain; "that is 
 the reason of a soldier. We are to execute 
 whatever we are commanded, or we should 
 be a disgrace to the army, and very little 
 deserve our pay." "You are brave fellows 
 indeed," said Minos; "but be pleased to 
 face about, and obey my command for 
 once, in returning back to the other world: 
 for what should such fellows as you do 
 where there are no cities to be burnt, 
 nor people to be destroyed? But let me 
 advise you to have a stricter regard to 
 truth for the future, and not call the 
 depopulating other countries the service 
 of your own." The captain answered, 
 in a rage, "D — n me! do you give me the 
 lie?" and was going to take Minos by the 
 nose, had not his guards prevented him, 
 and immediately turned him and all his 
 followers back the same road they came. 
 
 Four spirits informed the judge that they 
 had been starved to death through poverty 
 — being the father, mother, and two chil- 
 dren; that they had been honest and as 
 industrious as possible, till sickness had 
 prevented the man from labour. "All that 
 is very true," cried a grave spirit who 
 
 199
 
 stood by. "I know the fact; for these poor 
 people were under my cure." 
 
 **You was, I suppose, the parson of the 
 parish,'* cries Minos; "I hope you had a 
 good living, sir." "That was but a small 
 one," replied the spirit; "but I had another 
 a little better." — "Very well," said Minos; 
 "let the poor people pass." At which the 
 parson was stepping forwards with a stately 
 gait before them; but Minos caught hold 
 of him and pulled him back, saying, "Not 
 so fast, doctor — you must take one step 
 more into the other world first; for no man 
 enters that gate without charity." 
 
 A very stately figure now presented 
 himself, and, informing Minos he was a 
 patriot, began a very florid harangue on 
 public virtue and the liberties of his coun- 
 try. Upon which Minos shewed him the 
 utmost respect, and ordered the gate to be 
 opened. The patriot was not contented 
 with this applause; he said he had behaved 
 as well in place as he had done in the 
 opposition; and that, though he was now 
 obliged to embrace the court measures, 
 yet he had behaved very honestly to his 
 friends, and brought as many in as was 
 possible. "Hold a moment," says Minos: 
 
 200
 
 "on second consideration, Mr. Patriot, I 
 think a man of your great virtue and abili- 
 ties will be so much missed by your coun- 
 try, that, if I might advise you, you should 
 take a journey back again. I am sure you 
 will not decline it; for I am certain that 
 you will, with great readiness, sacrifice your 
 own happiness to the public good." 
 
 The patriot smiled, and told Minos he 
 believed he was in jest; and was offering 
 to enter the gate, but the judge laid fast 
 hold of him and insisted on his return, 
 which the patriot still declining, he at 
 last ordered his guards to seize him and 
 conduct him back. 
 
 A spirit now advanced, and the gate was 
 immediately thrown open to him before 
 he had spoken a word. I heard some one 
 whisper, "That is our last lord mayor!" 
 
 It now came to our company's turn. The 
 fair spirit which I mentioned with so much 
 applause in the beginning of my journey 
 passed through very easily; but the grave 
 lady was rejected on her first appearance, 
 Minos declaring that there was not a single 
 prude in Elysium. 
 
 The judge then addressed himself to 
 me, who little expected to pass this fiery 
 
 201
 
 trial. I confessed I had indulged myself 
 very freely with wine and women in my 
 youth, but had never done an injury to 
 any man living, nor avoided an opportunity 
 of doing good; that I pretended to very 
 little virtue more than general philanthropy 
 and private friendship. I was proceeding, 
 when Minos bid me enter the gate, and 
 not indulge myself with trumpeting forth 
 my virtues. I accordingly passed forward 
 with my lovely companion, and, embracing 
 her with vast eagerness, but spiritual in- 
 nocence, she returned my embrace in the 
 same manner, and we both congratulated 
 ourselves on our arrival in this happy 
 region, whose beauty no painting of the 
 imagination can describe. 
 
 [While Fielding was en route to Lisbon 
 the sailing vessel was becalmed and his 
 party betook themselves to a country inn 
 on the shore, where they remained for 
 some days, waiting for a favorable wind. 
 In his journal there appears the following 
 account of the landlord, named Francis, and 
 his "amiable" lady: — ] 
 
 He had no more passion than an Ichthuo- 
 fagus or Ethiopian fisher. He wished not 
 
 202
 
 for anything, thought not of anything; 
 indeed he scarce did anything or said 
 anything. Here I cannot be understood 
 strictly; for then I must describe a nonen- 
 tity, whereas I would rob him of nothing 
 but that free agency which is the cause of 
 all corruption and of all the misery of 
 human nature. No man, indeed, ever did 
 more than this farmer, for he was an 
 absolute slave to labour all the week; 
 but in truth, as my sagacious reader must 
 have at first apprehended, when I said 
 he resigned the care of the house to his 
 wife, I meant more than I then expressed, 
 even the house and all that belonged to it; 
 for he was really a farmer only under the 
 direction of his wife. In a word, so com- 
 posed, so serene, so placid a countenance, 
 I never saw; and he satisfied himself by 
 answering to every question he was asked, 
 "I don't know anything about it, sir; 
 I leaves all that to my wife." 
 
 Now, as a couple of this kind would, 
 like two vessels of oil, have made no com- 
 position in life, and for want of all savour 
 must have palled every taste; nature or 
 fortune, or both of them, took care to 
 provide a proper quantity of acid in the 
 
 203
 
 materials that formed the wife, and to 
 render her a perfect helpmate for so tran- 
 quil a husband. She abounded in what- 
 soever he was defective; that is to say, in 
 almost everything. She was indeed as vin- 
 egar to oil, or a brisk wind to a standing- 
 pool, and preserved all from stagnation and 
 corruption. . . . 
 
 A tyrant, a trickster, and a bully, gener- 
 ally wear the marks of their several dis- 
 positions in their countenances; so do the 
 vixen, the shrew, the scold, and all other 
 females of the like kind. But, perhaps, 
 nature hath never afforded a stronger 
 example of all this than in the case of Mrs. 
 Francis. She was a short, squat woman; 
 her head was closely joined to her shoulders, 
 where it was fixed somewhat awry; every 
 feature of her countenance was sharp and 
 pointed; her face was furrowed with the 
 small-pox; and her complexion, which 
 seemed to be able to turn milk to curds, 
 not a little resembled in colour such milk 
 as had already undergone that operation. 
 She appeared, indeed, to have many symp- 
 toms of a deep jaundice in her look; but the 
 strength and firmness of her voice over- 
 balanced them all; the tone of this was 
 
 204
 
 a sharp treble at a distance, for I seldom 
 heard it on the same floor, but was usually- 
 waked with it in the morning, and enter- 
 tained with it almost continually through 
 the whole day. 
 
 Though vocal be usually put in op- 
 position to instrumental music, I ques- 
 tion whether this might not be thought 
 to partake of the nature of both; for 
 she played on two instruments, which she 
 seemed to keep for no other use from 
 morning till night; these were two maids, 
 or rather scolding-stocks, who, I suppose, 
 by some means or other, earned their 
 board, and she gave them their lodging 
 gratis^ or for no other service than to keep 
 her lungs in constant exercise. 
 
 She differed, as I have said, in every 
 particular from her husband; but very 
 remarkably in this, that, as it was impos- 
 sible to displease him, so it was as impossible 
 to please her; and as no art could remove 
 a smile from his countenance, so could no 
 art carry it into hers. If her bills were 
 remonstrated against she was offended with 
 the tacit censure of her fair-dealing; if 
 they were not, she seemed to regard it as 
 a tacit sarcasm on her folly, which might 
 
 205
 
 have set down larger prices with the same 
 success. On this latter hint she did in- 
 deed improve, for she daily raised some of 
 her articles. A pennyw^orth of fire was 
 to-day rated at a shilling, to-morrow at 
 eighteen-pence; and if she dressed us 
 two dishes for two shillings on the Saturday, 
 we paid half-a-crown for the cookery of 
 one on the Sunday; and, whenever she 
 was paid, she never left the room without 
 lamenting the small amount of her bill, 
 saying, "she knew not how it was that 
 others got their money by gentlefolks, 
 but for her part she had not the art of 
 it." When she was asked why she com- 
 plained, when she was paid all she de- 
 manded, she answered, "she could not 
 deny that, nor did she know that she had 
 omitted anything; but that it was but 
 a poor bill for gentlefolks to pay." 
 
 [The following is an excerpt from Field- 
 ing's Preface to his "Voyage to Lisbon." 
 These lines are among the last he wrote : — ] 
 
 To make a traveller an agreeable com- 
 panion to a man of sense, it is necessary, 
 not only that he should have seen much, 
 
 206
 
 but that he should have overlooked much 
 of what he hath seen. Nature is not, any- 
 more than a great genius, always admirable 
 in her productions, and therefore the trav- 
 eller, who may be called her commentator, 
 should not expect to find everywhere sub- 
 jects worthy of his notice. 
 
 As there are few things which a traveller 
 is to record, there are fewer on which he is 
 to offer his observations: this is the office 
 of the reader; and it is so pleasant a one, 
 that he seldom chuses to have it taken from 
 him, under the pretence of lending him 
 assistance. Some occasions, indeed, there 
 are, when proper observations are pertinent, 
 and others when they are necessary; but 
 good sense alone must point them out. 
 I shall lay down only one general rule; 
 which I believe to be of universal truth 
 between relator and hearer, as it is between 
 author and reader; this is, that the latter 
 never forgive any observation of the for- 
 mer which doth not convey some knowl- 
 edge that they are sensible they could not 
 possibly have attained of themselves. 
 
 But all his pains in collecting knowledge, 
 all his judgment in selecting, and all his 
 art in communicating it, will not suffice, 
 
 207 /' 
 
 /
 
 unless he can make himself, in some degree, 
 an agreeable as well as an instructive 
 companion. The highest instruction we 
 can derive from the tedious tale of a dull 
 fellow scarce ever pays us for our attention. 
 There is nothing, I think, half so valuable 
 as knowledge. 
 
 208 
 
 R
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 V, 
 
 Of CI 1 1872 
 
 REC'D LD-URB 
 
 APR 2 5 1975 
 
 J^\^ 
 
 
 X 
 
 Form L9-Serie8 4939 
 
 V 
 
 / 
 
 \ 
 
 ^u
 
 DO NOT REMOVE 
 i Hi5 EOOK CARdS 
 
 ^ 
 
 N^^UBRi^Ya^ 
 
 ^'''^0J!TV3JO'^ 
 
 "> 
 
 University Research Library 
 
 - l-H 
 
 K 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY rAClLIT/ 
 
 AA 000 379 970 
 
 1 
 
 
 _J 
 
 ffi 
 
 
 J n
 
 W-.J'