There are few amusements more dangerous for an author than the indulgence in ironic1 descriptions of his own work. If the irony2 is depreciatory3, posterity4 is but too likely to say, “Many a true word is spoken in jest;” if it is encomiastic, the same ruthless and ungrateful critic is but too likely to take it as an involuntary confession5 of folly6 and vanity. But when Fielding, in one of his serio-comic introductions to Tom Jones, described it as “this prodigious7 work,” he all unintentionally (for he was the least pretentious8 of men) anticipated the verdict which posterity almost at once, and with ever-increasing suffrage9 of the best judges as time went on, was about to pass not merely upon this particular book, but upon his whole genius and his whole production as a novelist. His work in other kinds is of a very different order of excellence11. It is sufficiently12 interesting at times in itself; and always more than sufficiently interesting as his; for which reasons, as well as for the further one that it is comparatively little known, a considerable selection from it is offered to the reader in the last two volumes of this edition. Until the present occasion (which made it necessary that I should acquaint myself with it) I own that my own knowledge of these miscellaneous writings was by no means thorough. It is now pretty complete; but the idea which I previously13 had of them at first and second hand, though a little improved, has not very materially altered. Though in all this hack-work Fielding displayed, partially14 and at intervals15, the same qualities which he displayed eminently16 and constantly in the four great books here given, he was not, as the French idiom expresses it, dans son assiette, in his own natural and impregnable disposition17 and situation of character and ability, when he was occupied on it. The novel was for him that assiette; and all his novels are here.
Although Henry Fielding lived in quite modern times, although by family and connections he was of a higher rank than most men of letters, and although his genius was at once recognised by his contemporaries so soon as it displayed itself in its proper sphere, his biography until very recently was by no means full; and the most recent researches, including those of Mr Austin Dobson — a critic unsurpassed for combination of literary faculty18 and knowledge of the eighteenth century — have not altogether sufficed to fill up the gaps. His family, said to have descended19 from a member of the great house of Hapsburg who came to England in the reign20 of Henry II., distinguished21 itself in the Wars of the Roses, and in the seventeenth century was advanced to the peerages of Denbigh in England and (later) of Desmond in Ireland. The novelist was the grandson of John Fielding, Canon of Salisbury, the fifth son of the first Earl of Desmond of this creation. The canon’s third son, Edmond, entered the army, served under Marlborough, and married Sarah Gold or Gould, daughter of a judge of the King’s Bench. Their eldest22 son was Henry, who was born on April 22, 1707, and had an uncertain number of brothers and sisters of the whole blood. After his first wife’s death, General Fielding (for he attained23 that rank) married again. The most remarkable24 offspring of the first marriage, next to Henry, was his sister Sarah, also a novelist, who wrote David Simple; of the second, John, afterwards Sir John Fielding, who, though blind, succeeded his half-brother as a Bow Street magistrate25, and in that office combined an equally honourable26 record with a longer tenure27.
Fielding was born at Sharpham Park in Somersetshire, the seat of his maternal28 grandfather; but most of his early youth was spent at East Stour in Dorsetshire, to which his father removed after the judge’s death. He is said to have received his first education under a parson of the neighbourhood named Oliver, in whom a very uncomplimentary tradition sees the original of Parson Trulliber. He was then certainly sent to Eton, where he did not waste his time as regards learning, and made several valuable friends. But the dates of his entering and leaving school are alike unknown; and his subsequent sojourn30 at Leyden for two years — though there is no reason to doubt it — depends even less upon any positive documentary evidence. This famous University still had a great repute as a training school in law, for which profession he was intended; but the reason why he did not receive the even then far more usual completion of a public school education by a sojourn at Oxford31 or Cambridge may be suspected to be different. It may even have had something to do with a curious escapade of his about which not very much is known — an attempt to carry off a pretty heiress of Lyme, named Sarah Andrew.
Even at Leyden, however, General Fielding seems to have been unable or unwilling32 to pay his son’s expenses, which must have been far less there than at an English University; and Henry’s return to London in 1728–29 is said to have been due to sheer impecuniosity33. When he returned to England, his father was good enough to make him an allowance of L200 nominal34, which appears to have been equivalent to L0 actual. And as practically nothing is known of him for the next six or seven years, except the fact of his having worked industriously35 enough at a large number of not very good plays of the lighter36 kind, with a few poems and miscellanies, it is reasonably enough supposed that he lived by his pen. The only product of this period which has kept (or indeed which ever received) competent applause is Tom Thumb, or the Tragedy of Tragedies, a following of course of the Rehearsal37, but full of humour and spirit. The most successful of his other dramatic works were the Mock Doctor and the Miser38, adaptations of Moliere’s famous pieces. His undoubted connection with the stage, and the fact of the contemporary existence of a certain Timothy Fielding, helped suggestions of less dignified39 occupations as actor, booth-keeper, and so forth40; but these have long been discredited41 and indeed disproved.
In or about 1735, when Fielding was twenty-eight, we find him in a new, a more brilliant and agreeable, but even a more transient phase. He had married (we do not know when or where) Miss Charlotte Cradock, one of three sisters who lived at Salisbury (it is to be observed that Fielding’s entire connections, both in life and letters, are with the Western Counties and London), who were certainly of competent means, and for whose alleged42 illegitimacy there is no evidence but an unsupported fling of that old maid of genius, Richardson. The descriptions both of Sophia and of Amelia are said to have been taken from this lady; her good looks and her amiability43 are as well established as anything of the kind can be in the absence of photographs and affidavits44; and it is certain that her husband was passionately45 attached to her, during their too short married life. His method, however, of showing his affection smacked46 in some ways too much of the foibles which he has attributed to Captain Booth, and of those which we must suspect Mr Thomas Jones would also have exhibited, if he had not been adopted as Mr Allworthy’s heir, and had not had Mr Western’s fortune to share and look forward to. It is true that grave breaches47 have been made by recent criticism in the very picturesque48 and circumstantial story told on the subject by Murphy, the first of Fielding’s biographers. This legend was that Fielding, having succeeded by the death of his mother to a small estate at East Stour, worth about L200 a year, and having received L1500 in ready money as his wife’s fortune, got through the whole in three years by keeping open house, with a large retinue49 in “costly yellow liveries,” and so forth. In details, this story has been simply riddled50. His mother had died long before; he was certainly not away from London three years, or anything like it; and so forth. At the same time, the best and soberest judges agree that there is an intrinsic probability, a consensus51 (if a vague one) of tradition, and a chain of almost unmistakably personal references in the novels, which plead for a certain amount of truth, at the bottom of a much embellished52 legend. At any rate, if Fielding established himself in the country, it was not long before he returned to town; for early in 1736 we find him back again, and not merely a playwright53, but lessee54 of the “Little Theatre” in the Haymarket. The plays which he produced here — satirico-political pieces, such as Pasquin and the Historical Register — were popular enough, but offended the Government; and in 1737 a new bill regulating theatrical56 performances, and instituting the Lord Chamberlain’s control, was passed. This measure put an end directly to the “Great Mogul’s Company,” as Fielding had called his troop, and indirectly57 to its manager’s career as a playwright. He did indeed write a few pieces in future years, but they were of the smallest importance.
After this check he turned at last to a serious profession, entered himself of the Middle Temple in November of the same year, and was called three years later; but during these years, and indeed for some time afterwards, our information about him is still of the vaguest character. Nobody doubts that he had a large share in the Champion, an essay-periodical on the usual eighteenth-century model, which began to appear in 1739, and which is still occasionally consulted for the work that is certainly or probably his. He went the Western Circuit, and attended the Wiltshire Sessions, after he was called, giving up his contributions to periodicals soon after that event. But he soon returned to literature proper, or rather made his debut58 in it, with the immortal59 book now republished. The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and his Friend Mr Abraham Adams, appeared in February 1742, and its author received from Andrew Millar, the publisher, the sum of L183, 11s. Even greater works have fetched much smaller sums; but it will be admitted that Joseph Andrews was not dear.
The advantage, however, of presenting a survey of an author’s life uninterrupted by criticism is so clear, that what has to be said about Joseph may be conveniently postponed60 for the moment. Immediately after its publication the author fell back upon miscellaneous writing, and in the next year (1743) collected and issued three volumes of Miscellanies. In the two first volumes the only thing of much interest is the unfinished and unequal, but in part powerful, Journey from this World to the Next, an attempt of a kind which Fontenelle and others, following Lucian, had made very popular with the time. But the third volume of the Miscellanies deserved a less modest and gregarious62 appearance, for it contained, and is wholly occupied by, the wonderful and terrible satire63 of Jonathan Wild, the greatest piece of pure irony in English out of Swift. Soon after the publication of the book, a great calamity64 came on Fielding. His wife had been very ill when he wrote the preface; soon afterwards she was dead. They had taken the chance, had made the choice, that the more prudent65 and less wise student-hero and heroine of Mr Browning’s Youth and Art had shunned66; they had no doubt “sighed deep, laughed free, Starved, feasted, despaired,” and we need not question, that they had also “been happy.”
Except this sad event and its rather incongruous sequel, Fielding’s marriage to his wife’s maid Mary Daniel — a marriage, however, which did not take place till full four years later, and which by all accounts supplied him with a faithful and excellent companion and nurse, and his children with a kind stepmother — little or nothing is again known of this elusive67 man of genius between the publication of the Miscellanies in 1743, and that of Tom Jones in 1749. The second marriage itself in November 1747; an interview which Joseph Warton had with him rather more than a year earlier (one of the very few direct interviews we have); the publication of two anti-Jacobite newspapers (Fielding was always a strong Whig and Hanoverian), called the True Patriot68 and the Jacobite’s Journal in 1745 and the following years; some indistinct traditions about residences at Twickenham and elsewhere, and some, more precise but not much more authenticated69, respecting patronage70 by the Duke of Bedford, Mr Lyttelton, Mr Allen, and others, pretty well sum up the whole.
Tom Jones was published in February (a favourite month with Fielding or his publisher Millar) 1749; and as it brought him the, for those days, very considerable sum of L600 to which Millar added another hundred later, the novelist must have been, for a time at any rate, relieved from his chronic71 penury72. But he had already, by Lyttelton’s interest, secured his first and last piece of preferment, being made Justice of the Peace for Westminster, an office on which he entered with characteristic vigour73. He was qualified74 for it not merely by a solid knowledge of the law, and by great natural abilities, but by his thorough kindness of heart; and, perhaps, it may also be added, by his long years of queer experience on (as Mr Carlyle would have said) the “burning marl” of the London Bohemia. Very shortly afterwards he was chosen Chairman of Quarter Sessions, and established himself in Bow Street. The Bow Street magistrate of that time occupied a most singular position, and was more like a French Prefect of Police or even a Minister of Public Safety than a mere10 justice. Yet he was ill paid. Fielding says that the emoluments75, which before his accession had but been L500 a year of “dirty” money, were by his own action but L300 of clean; and the work, if properly performed, was very severe.
That he performed it properly all competent evidence shows, a foolish, inconclusive, and I fear it must be said emphatically snobbish76 story of Walpole’s notwithstanding. In particular, he broke up a gang of cut-throat thieves, which had been the terror of London. But his tenure of the post was short enough, and scarcely extended to five years. His health had long been broken, and he was now constantly attacked by gout, so that he had frequently to retreat on Bath from Bow Street, or his suburban77 cottage of Fordhook, Ealing. But he did not relax his literary work. His pen was active with pamphlets concerning his office; Amelia, his last novel, appeared towards the close of 1751; and next year saw the beginning of a new paper, the Covent Garden Journal, which appeared twice a week, ran for the greater part of the year, and died in November. Its great author did not see that month twice again. In the spring of 1753 he grew worse; and after a year’s struggle with ill health, hard work, and hard weather, lesser78 measures being pronounced useless, was persuaded to try the “Portugal Voyage,” of which he has left so charming a record in the Journey to Lisbon. He left Fordhook on June 26, 1754, reached Lisbon in August, and, dying there on the 8th of October, was buried in the cemetery79 of the Estrella.
Of not many writers perhaps does a clearer notion, as far as their personality goes, exist in the general mind that interests itself at all in literature than of Fielding. Yet more than once a warning has been sounded, especially by his best and most recent biographer, to the effect that this idea is founded upon very little warranty80 of scripture81. The truth is, that as the foregoing record — which, brief as it is, is a sufficiently faithful summary — will have shown, we know very little about Fielding. We have hardly any letters of his, and so lack the best by far and the most revealing of all character-portraits; we have but one important autobiographic fragment, and though that is of the highest interest and value, it was written far in the valley of the shadow of death, it is not in the least retrospective, and it affords but dim and inferential light on his younger, healthier, and happier days and ways. He came, moreover, just short of one set of men of letters, of whom we have a great deal of personal knowledge, and just beyond another. He was neither of those about Addison, nor of those about Johnson. No intimate friend of his has left us anything elaborate about him. On the other hand, we have a far from inconsiderable body of documentary evidence, of a kind often by no means trustworthy. The best part of it is contained in the letters of his cousin, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and the reminiscences or family traditions of her grand-daughter, Lady Louisa Stuart. But Lady Mary, vivacious82 and agreeable as she is, had with all her talent a very considerable knack83 of writing for effect, of drawing strong contrasts and the like; and it is not quite certain that she saw very much of Fielding in the last and most interesting third of his life. Another witness, Horace Walpole, to less knowledge and equally dubious84 accuracy, added decided85 ill-will, which may have been due partly to the shrinking of a dilettante86 and a fop from a burly Bohemian; but I fear is also consequent upon the fact that Horace could not afford to despise Fielding’s birth, and knew him to be vastly his own superior in genius. We hear something of him again from Richardson; and Richardson hated him with the hatred87 of dissimilar genius, of inferior social position, and, lastly, of the cat for the dog who touzles and worries her. Johnson partly inherited or shared Richardson’s aversion, partly was blinded to Fielding’s genius by his aggressive Whiggery. I fear, too, that he was incapable88 of appreciating it for reasons other than political. It is certain that Johnson, sane89 and robust90 as he was, was never quite at ease before genius of the gigantic kind, either in dead or living. Whether he did not like to have to look up too much, or was actually unable to do so, it is certain that Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, and Fielding, those four Atlantes of English verse and prose, all affected91 him with lukewarm admiration92, or with positive dislike, for which it is vain to attempt to assign any uniform secondary cause, political or other. It may be permitted to hint another reason. All Johnson’s most sharp-sighted critics have noticed, though most have discreetly94 refrained from insisting on, his “thorn-inthe-flesh,” the combination in him of very strong physical passions with the deepest sense of the moral and religious duty of abstinence. It is perhaps impossible to imagine anything more distasteful to a man so buffeted95, than the extreme indulgence with which Fielding regards, and the easy freedom, not to say gusto, with which he depicts96, those who succumb98 to similar temptation. Only by supposing the workings of some subtle influence of this kind is it possible to explain, even in so capricious a humour as Johnson’s, the famous and absurd application of the term “barren rascal” to a writer who, dying almost young, after having for many years lived a life of pleasure, and then for four or five one of laborious99 official duty, has left work anything but small in actual bulk, and fertile with the most luxuriant growth of intellectual originality100.
Partly on the obiter dicta of persons like these, partly on the still more tempting101 and still more treacherous102 ground of indications drawn103 from his works, a Fielding of fantasy has been constructed, which in Thackeray’s admirable sketch104 attains105 real life and immortality106 as a creature of art, but which possesses rather dubious claims as a historical character. It is astonishing how this Fielding of fantasy sinks and shrivels when we begin to apply the horrid107 tests of criticism to his component108 parts. The eidolon, with inked ruffles109 and a towel round his head, sits in the Temple and dashes off articles for the Covent Garden Journal; then comes Criticism, hellish maid, and reminds us that when the Covent Garden Journal appeared, Fielding’s wild oats, if ever sown at all, had been sown long ago; that he was a busy magistrate and householder in Bow Street; and that, if he had towels round his head, it was probably less because he had exceeded in liquor than because his Grace of Newcastle had given him a headache by wanting elaborate plans and schemes prepared at an hour’s notice. Lady Mary, apparently110 with some envy, tells us that he could “feel rapture111 with his cook-maid.” “Which many has,” as Mr Ridley remarks, from Xanthias Phoceus downwards112; but when we remember the historic fact that he married this maid (not a “cook-maid” at all), and that though he always speaks of her with warm affection and hearty113 respect, such “raptures” as we have of his clearly refer to a very different woman, who was both a lady and a beautiful one, we begin a little to shake our heads. Horace Walpole at second-hand114 draws us a Fielding, pigging with low companions in a house kept like a hedge tavern115; Fielding himself, within a year or two, shows us more than half-undesignedly in the Voyage to Lisbon that he was very careful about the appointments and decency116 of his table, that he stood rather upon ceremony in regard to his own treatment of his family, and the treatment of them and himself by others, and that he was altogether a person orderly, correct, and even a little finikin. Nor is there the slightest reasonable reason to regard this as a piece of hypocrisy117, a vice118 as alien from the Fielding of fancy as from the Fielding of fact, and one the particular manifestation119 of which, in this particular place, would have been equally unlikely and unintelligible120.
It may be asked whether I propose to substitute for the traditional Fielding a quite different person, of regular habits and methodical economy. Certainly not. The traditional estimate of great men is rarely wrong altogether, but it constantly has a habit of exaggerating and dramatising their characteristics. For some things in Fielding’s career we have positive evidence of document, and evidence hardly less certain of probability. Although I believe the best judges are now of opinion that his impecuniosity has been overcharged, he certainly had experiences which did not often fall to the lot of even a cadet of good family in the eighteenth century. There can be no reasonable doubt that he was a man who had a leaning towards pretty girls and bottles of good wine; and I should suppose that if the girl were kind and fairly winsome121, he would not have insisted that she should possess Helen’s beauty, that if the bottle of good wine were not forthcoming, he would have been very tolerant of a mug of good ale. He may very possibly have drunk more than he should, and lost more than he could conveniently pay. It may be put down as morally ascertained122 that towards all these weaknesses of humanity, and others like unto them, he held an attitude which was less that of the unassailable philosopher than that of the sympathiser, indulgent and excusing. In regard more especially to what are commonly called moral delinquencies, this attitude was so decided as to shock some people even in those days, and many in these. Just when the first sheets of this edition were passing through the press, a violent attack was made in a newspaper correspondence on the morality of Tom Jones by certain notorious advocates of Purity, as some say, of Pruriency123 and Prudery combined, according to less complimentary29 estimates. Even midway between the two periods we find the admirable Miss Ferrier, a sister of Fielding’s own craft, who sometimes had touches of nature and satire not far inferior to his own, expressing by the mouth of one of her characters with whom she seems partly to agree, the sentiment that his works are “vanishing like noxious124 exhalations.” Towards any misdoing by persons of the one sex towards persons of the other, when it involved brutality125 or treachery, Fielding was pitiless; but when treachery and brutality were not concerned, he was, to say the least, facile. So, too, he probably knew by experience — he certainly knew by native shrewdness and acquired observation — that to look too much on the wine when it is red, or on the cards when they are parti-coloured, is ruinous to health and fortune; but he thought not over badly of any man who did these things. Still it is possible to admit this in him, and to stop short of that idea of a careless and reckless viveur which has so often been put forward. In particular, Lady Mary’s view of his childlike enjoyment126 of the moment has been, I think, much exaggerated by posterity, and was probably not a little mistaken by the lady herself. There are two moods in which the motto is Carpe diem, one a mood of simply childish hurry, the other one where behind the enjoyment of the moment lurks127, and in which the enjoyment of the moment is not a little heightened by, that vast ironic consciousness of the before and after, which I at least see everywhere in the background of Fielding’s work.
The man, however, of whom we know so little, concerns us much less than the author of the works, of which it only rests with ourselves to know everything. I have above classed Fielding as one of the four Atlantes of English verse and prose, and I doubt not that both the phrase and the application of it to him will meet with question and demur128. I have only to interject, as the critic so often has to interject, a request to the court to take what I say in the sense in which I say it. I do not mean that Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, and Fielding are in all or even in most respects on a level. I do not mean that the three last are in all respects of the greatest names in English literature. I only mean that, in a certain quality, which for want of a better word I have chosen to call Atlantean, they stand alone. Each of them, for the metaphor129 is applicable either way, carries a whole world on his shoulders, or looks down on a whole world from his natural altitude. The worlds are different, but they are worlds; and though the attitude of the giants is different also, it agrees in all of them on the points of competence130 and strength. Take whomsoever else we may among our men of letters, and we shall find this characteristic to be in comparison wanting. These four carry their world, and are not carried by it; and if it, in the language so dear to Fielding himself, were to crash and shatter, the inquiry131, “Que vous reste-t-il?” could be answered by each, “Moi!”
The appearance which Fielding makes is no doubt the most modest of the four. He has not Shakespeare’s absolute universality, and in fact not merely the poet’s tongue, but the poet’s thought seems to have been denied him. His sphere is not the ideal like Milton’s. His irony, splendid as it is, falls a little short of that diabolical132 magnificence which exalts133 Swift to the point whence, in his own way, he surveys all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory or vainglory of them. All Fielding’s critics have noted134 the manner, in a certain sense modest, in another ostentatious, in which he seems to confine himself to the presentation of things English. They might have added to the presentation of things English — as they appear in London, and on the Western Circuit, and on the Bath Road.
But this apparent parochialism has never deceived good judges. It did not deceive Lady Mary, who had seen the men and manners of very many climes; it did not deceive Gibbon, who was not especially prone135 to overvalue things English, and who could look down from twenty centuries on things ephemeral. It deceives, indeed, I am told, some excellent persons at the present day, who think Fielding’s microcosm a “toylike world,” and imagine that Russian Nihilists and French Naturalists136 have gone beyond it. It will deceive no one who has lived for some competent space of time a life during which he has tried to regard his fellow-creatures and himself, as nearly as a mortal may, sub specie aeternitatis.
As this is in the main an introduction to a complete reprint of Fielding’s four great novels, the justification137 in detail of the estimate just made or hinted of the novelist’s genius will be best and most fitly made by a brief successive discussion of the four as they are here presented, with some subsequent remarks on the Miscellanies here selected. And, indeed, it is not fanciful to perceive in each book a somewhat different presentment of the author’s genius; though in no one of the four is any one of his masterly qualities absent. There is tenderness even in Jonathan Wild; there are touches in Joseph Andrews of that irony of the Preacher, the last echo of which is heard amid the kindly138 resignation of the Journey to Lisbon, in the sentence, “Whereas envy of all things most exposes us to danger from others, so contempt of all things best secures us from them.” But on the whole it is safe to say that Joseph Andrews best presents Fielding’s mischievous139 and playful wit; Jonathan Wild his half-Lucianic half-Swiftian irony; Tom Jones his unerring knowledge of human nature, and his constructive140 faculty; Amelia his tenderness, his mitis sapientia, his observation of the details of life. And first of the first.
The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his friend Mr Abraham Adams was, as has been said above, published in February 1742. A facsimile of the agreement between author and publisher will be given in the second volume of this series; and it is not uninteresting to observe that the witness, William Young, is none other than the asserted original of the immortal Mr Adams himself. He might, on Balzac’s plea in a tolerably well-known anecdote141, have demanded half of the L183, 11s. Of the other origins of the book we have a pretty full account, partly documentary. That it is “writ in the manner of Cervantes,” and is intended as a kind of comic epic97, is the author’s own statement — no doubt as near the actual truth as is consistent with comic-epic theory. That there are resemblances to Scarron, to Le Sage142, and to other practitioners143 of the Picaresque novel is certain; and it was inevitable144 that there should be. Of directer and more immediate61 models or starting-points one is undoubted; the other, though less generally admitted, not much less indubitable to my mind. The parody145 of Richardson’s Pamela, which was little more than a year earlier (Nov. 1740), is avowed146, open, flagrant; nor do I think that the author was so soon carried away by the greater and larger tide of his own invention as some critics seem to hold. He is always more or less returning to the ironic charge; and the multiplicity of the assailants of Joseph’s virtue147 only disguises the resemblance to the long-drawn dangers of Pamela from a single ravisher. But Fielding was also well acquainted with Marivaux’s Paysan Parvenu148, and the resemblances between that book and Joseph Andrews are much stronger than Fielding’s admirers have always been willing to admit. This recalcitrance149 has, I think, been mainly due to the erroneous conception of Marivaux as, if not a mere fribble, yet a Dresden–Shepherdess kind of writer, good at “preciousness” and patch-and-powder manners, but nothing more.
There was, in fact, a very strong satiric55 and ironic touch in the author of Marianne, and I do not think that I was too rash when some years ago I ventured to speak of him as “playing Fielding to his own Richardson” in the Paysan Parvenu.
Origins, however, and indebtedness and the like, are, when great work is concerned, questions for the study and the lecture-room, for the literary historian and the professional critic, rather than for the reader, however intelligent and alert, who wishes to enjoy a masterpiece, and is content simply to enjoy it. It does not really matter how close to anything else something which possesses independent goodness is; the very utmost technical originality, the most spotless purity from the faintest taint150 of suggestion, will not suffice to confer merit on what does not otherwise possess it. Whether, as I rather think, Fielding pursued the plan he had formed ab incepto, or whether he cavalierly neglected it, or whether the current of his own genius carried him off his legs and landed him, half against his will, on the shore of originality, are questions for the Schools, and, as I venture to think, not for the higher forms in them. We have Joseph Andrews as it is; and we may be abundantly thankful for it. The contents of it, as of all Fielding’s work in this kind, include certain things for which the moderns are scantly151 grateful. Of late years, and not of late years only, there has grown up a singular and perhaps an ignorant impatience152 of digressions, of episodes, of tales within a tale. The example of this which has been most maltreated is the “Man of the Hill” episode in Tom Jones; but the stories of the “Unfortunate Jilt” and of Mr Wilson in our present subject, do not appear to me to be much less obnoxious153 to the censure154; and Amelia contains more than one or two things of the same kind. Me they do not greatly disturb; and I see many defences for them besides the obvious, and at a pinch sufficient one, that divagations of this kind existed in all Fielding’s Spanish and French models, that the public of the day expected them, and so forth. This defence is enough, but it is easy to amplify155 and reintrench it. It is not by any means the fact that the Picaresque novel of adventure is the only or the chief form of fiction which prescribes or admits these episodic excursions. All the classical epics156 have them; many eastern and other stories present them; they are common, if not invariable, in the abundant mediaeval literature of prose and verse romance; they are not unknown by any means in the modern novel; and you will very rarely hear a story told orally at the dinner-table or in the smoking-room without something of the kind. There must, therefore, be something in them corresponding to an inseparable accident of that most unchanging of all things, human nature. And I do not think the special form with which we are here concerned by any means the worst that they have taken. It has the grand and prominent virtue of being at once and easily skippable. There is about Cervantes and Le Sage, about Fielding and Smollett, none of the treachery of the modern novelist, who induces the conscientious157 reader to drag through pages, chapters, and sometimes volumes which have nothing to do with the action, for fear he should miss something that has to do with it. These great men have a fearless frankness, and almost tell you in so many words when and what you may skip. Therefore, if the “Curious Impertinent,” and the “Baneful Marriage,” and the “Man of the Hill,” and the “Lady of Quality,” get in the way, when you desire to “read for the story,” you have nothing to do but turn the page till finis comes. The defence has already been made by an illustrious hand for Fielding’s inter-chapters and exordiums. It appears to me to be almost more applicable to his insertions.
And so we need not trouble ourselves any more either about the insertions or about the exordiums. They both please me; the second class has pleased persons much better worth pleasing than I can pretend to be; but the making or marring of the book lies elsewhere. I do not think that it lies in the construction, though Fielding’s following of the ancients, both sincere and satiric, has imposed a false air of regularity158 upon that. The Odyssey159 of Joseph, of Fanny, and of their ghostly mentor160 and bodily guard is, in truth, a little haphazard161, and might have been longer or shorter without any discreet93 man approving it the more or the less therefor. The real merits lie partly in the abounding162 humour and satire of the artist’s criticism, but even more in the marvellous vivacity163 and fertility of his creation. For the very first time in English prose fiction every character is alive, every incident is capable of having happened. There are lively touches in the Elizabethan romances; but they are buried in verbiage164, swathed in stage costume, choked and fettered165 by their authors’ want of art. The quality of Bunyan’s knowledge of men was not much inferior to Shakespeare’s, or at least to Fielding’s; but the range and the results of it were cramped166 by his single theological purpose, and his unvaried allegoric or typical form. Why Defoe did not discover the New World of Fiction, I at least have never been able to put into any brief critical formula that satisfies me, and I have never seen it put by any one else. He had not only seen it afar off, he had made landings and descents on it; he had carried off and exhibited in triumph natives such as Robinson Crusoe, as Man Friday, as Moll Flanders, as William the Quaker; but he had conquered, subdued167, and settled no province therein. I like Pamela; I like it better than some persons who admire Richardson on the whole more than I do, seem to like it. But, as in all its author’s work, the handling seems to me academic — the working out on paper of an ingeniously conceived problem rather than the observation or evolution of actual or possible life. I should not greatly fear to push the comparison even into foreign countries; but it is well to observe limits. Let us be content with holding that in England at least, without prejudice to anything further, Fielding was the first to display the qualities of the perfect novelist as distinguished from the romancer.
What are those qualities, as shown in Joseph Andrews? The faculty of arranging a probable and interesting course of action is one, of course, and Fielding showed it here. But I do not think that it is at any time the greatest one; and nobody denies that he made great advances in this direction later. The faculty of lively dialogue is another; and that he has not often been refused; but much the same may be said of it. The interspersing168 of appropriate description is another; but here also we shall not find him exactly a paragon169. It is in character — the chief differentia of the novel as distinguished not merely from its elder sister the romance, and its cousin the drama, but still more from every other kind of literature — that Fielding stands even here preeminent170. No one that I can think of, except his greatest successor in the present century, has the same unfailing gift of breathing life into every character he creates or borrows; and even Thackeray draws, if I may use the phrase, his characters more in the flat and less in the round than Fielding. Whether in Blifil he once failed, we must discuss hereafter; he has failed nowhere in Joseph Andrews. Some of his sketches171 may require the caution that they are eighteenth-century men and women; some the warning that they are obviously caricatured, or set in designed profile, or merely sketched172. But they are all alive. The finical estimate of Gray (it is a horrid joy to think how perfectly173 capable Fielding was of having joined in that practical joke of the young gentlemen of Cambridge, which made Gray change his college), while dismissing these light things with patronage, had to admit that “parson Adams is perfectly well, so is Mrs Slipslop.” “They were, Mr Gray,” said some one once, “they were more perfectly well, and in a higher kind, than anything you ever did; though you were a pretty workman too.”
Yes, parson Adams is perfectly well, and so is Mrs Slipslop. But so are they all. Even the hero and heroine, tied and bound as they are by the necessity under which their maker174 lay of preserving Joseph’s Joseph-hood, and of making Fanny the example of a franker and less interested virtue than her sister-inlaw that might have been, are surprisingly human where most writers would have made them sticks. And the rest require no allowance. Lady Booby, few as are the strokes given to her, is not much less alive than Lady Bellaston. Mr Trulliber, monster and not at all delicate monster as he is, is also a man, and when he lays it down that no one even in his own house shall drink when he “caaled vurst,” one can but pay his maker the tribute of that silent shudder175 of admiration which hails the addition of one more everlasting176 entity177 to the world of thought and fancy. And Mr Tow-wouse is real, and Mrs Tow-wouse is more real still, and Betty is real; and the coachman, and Miss Grave-airs, and all the wonderful crew from first to last. The dresses they wear, the manners they exhibit, the laws they live under, the very foods and drinks they live upon, are “past like the shadows on glasses” — to the comfort and rejoicing of some, to the greater or less sorrow of others. But they are there — alive, full of blood, full of breath as we are, and, in truth, I fear a little more so. For some purposes a century is a gap harder to cross and more estranging178 than a couple of millenniums. But in their case the gap is nothing; and it is not too much to say that as they have stood the harder test, they will stand the easier. There are very striking differences between Nausicaa and Mrs Slipslop; there are differences not less striking between Mrs Slipslop and Beatrice. But their likeness179 is a stranger and more wonderful thing than any of their unlikenesses. It is that they are all women, that they are all live citizenesses of the Land of Matters Unforgot, the fashion whereof passeth not away, and the franchise180 whereof, once acquired, assures immortality.
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ironic
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| adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的 | |
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irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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depreciatory
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| adj.贬值的，蔑视的 | |
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posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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pretentious
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| adj.自命不凡的，自负的，炫耀的 | |
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suffrage
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| n.投票，选举权，参政权 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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excellence
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| n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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eminently
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| adv.突出地；显著地；不寻常地 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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magistrate
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| n.地方行政官，地方法官，治安官 | |
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honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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tenure
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| n.终身职位；任期；(土地)保有权，保有期 | |
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maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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complimentary
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| adj.赠送的，免费的，赞美的，恭维的 | |
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sojourn
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| v./n.旅居，寄居；逗留 | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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impecuniosity
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| n.（经常）没有钱，身无分文，贫穷 | |
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nominal
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| adj.名义上的；(金额、租金)微不足道的 | |
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industriously
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lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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rehearsal
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| n.排练，排演；练习 | |
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miser
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| n.守财奴，吝啬鬼 (adj.miserly) | |
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dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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discredited
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| 不足信的，不名誉的 | |
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alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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amiability
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| n.和蔼可亲的，亲切的，友善的 | |
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affidavits
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| n.宣誓书，（经陈述者宣誓在法律上可采作证据的）书面陈述( affidavit的名词复数 ) | |
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passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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smacked
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| 拍，打，掴( smack的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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breaches
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| 破坏( breach的名词复数 )； 破裂； 缺口； 违背 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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retinue
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| n.侍从；随员 | |
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riddled
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| adj.布满的；充斥的；泛滥的v.解谜，出谜题(riddle的过去分词形式) | |
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consensus
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| n.(意见等的)一致，一致同意，共识 | |
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embellished
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| v.美化( embellish的过去式和过去分词 )；装饰；修饰；润色 | |
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playwright
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| n.剧作家，编写剧本的人 | |
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lessee
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| n.（房地产的）租户 | |
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satiric
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| adj.讽刺的，挖苦的 | |
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theatrical
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| adj.剧场的，演戏的；做戏似的，做作的 | |
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indirectly
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| adv.间接地，不直接了当地 | |
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debut
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| n.首次演出，初次露面 | |
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immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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postponed
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| vt.& vi.延期，缓办，（使）延迟vt.把…放在次要地位；[语]把…放在后面（或句尾）vi.（疟疾等）延缓发作（或复发） | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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gregarious
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| adj.群居的，喜好群居的 | |
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satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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calamity
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| n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件 | |
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prudent
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| adj.谨慎的，有远见的，精打细算的 | |
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shunned
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| v.避开，回避，避免( shun的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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patriot
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| n.爱国者，爱国主义者 | |
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authenticated
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| v.证明是真实的、可靠的或有效的( authenticate的过去式和过去分词 )；鉴定，使生效 | |
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patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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chronic
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| adj.(疾病)长期未愈的，慢性的；极坏的 | |
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penury
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| n.贫穷，拮据 | |
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vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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emoluments
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| n.报酬，薪水( emolument的名词复数 ) | |
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snobbish
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| adj.势利的，谄上欺下的 | |
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suburban
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| adj.城郊的，在郊区的 | |
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lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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warranty
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| n.担保书，证书，保单 | |
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scripture
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| n.经文，圣书，手稿；Scripture:(常用复数)《圣经》，《圣经》中的一段 | |
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vivacious
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| adj.活泼的，快活的 | |
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knack
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| n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法 | |
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dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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dilettante
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| n.半瓶醋，业余爱好者 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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discreet
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| adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的 | |
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discreetly
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| ad.(言行)审慎地，慎重地 | |
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buffeted
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| 反复敲打( buffet的过去式和过去分词 )； 连续猛击； 打来打去； 推来搡去 | |
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96
depicts
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| 描绘，描画( depict的第三人称单数 )； 描述 | |
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97
epic
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| n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的 | |
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98
succumb
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| v.屈服，屈从；死 | |
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99
laborious
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| adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅 | |
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100
originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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101
tempting
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| a.诱人的, 吸引人的 | |
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102
treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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103
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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104
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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105
attains
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的第三人称单数 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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106
immortality
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| n.不死，不朽 | |
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107
horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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108
component
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| n.组成部分，成分，元件；adj.组成的，合成的 | |
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109
ruffles
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| 褶裥花边( ruffle的名词复数 ) | |
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110
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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111
rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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112
downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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113
hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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114
second-hand
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| adj.用过的，旧的，二手的 | |
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115
tavern
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| n.小旅馆，客栈；小酒店 | |
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116
decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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117
hypocrisy
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| n.伪善，虚伪 | |
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118
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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119
manifestation
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| n.表现形式；表明；现象 | |
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120
unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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121
winsome
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| n.迷人的，漂亮的 | |
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122
ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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123
pruriency
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| n.好色；迷恋；淫欲；（焦躁等的）渴望 | |
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124
noxious
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| adj.有害的，有毒的；使道德败坏的，讨厌的 | |
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125
brutality
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| n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮 | |
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126
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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127
lurks
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| n.潜在，潜伏；（lurk的复数形式）vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的第三人称单数形式） | |
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128
demur
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| v．表示异议，反对 | |
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129
metaphor
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| n.隐喻，暗喻 | |
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130
competence
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| n.能力，胜任，称职 | |
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131
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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132
diabolical
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| adj.恶魔似的，凶暴的 | |
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133
exalts
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| 赞扬( exalt的第三人称单数 )； 歌颂； 提升； 提拔 | |
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134
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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135
prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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136
naturalists
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| n.博物学家( naturalist的名词复数 )；（文学艺术的）自然主义者 | |
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137
justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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138
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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139
mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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140
constructive
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| adj.建设的，建设性的 | |
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141
anecdote
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| n.轶事，趣闻，短故事 | |
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142
sage
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| n.圣人，哲人；adj.贤明的，明智的 | |
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143
practitioners
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| n.习艺者，实习者( practitioner的名词复数 )；从业者（尤指医师） | |
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144
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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145
parody
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| n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文 | |
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146
avowed
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| adj.公开声明的，承认的v.公开声明，承认( avow的过去式和过去分词) | |
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147
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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148
parvenu
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| n.暴发户，新贵 | |
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149
recalcitrance
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| n.固执，顽抗 | |
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150
taint
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| n.污点；感染；腐坏；v.使感染；污染 | |
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151
scantly
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| 缺乏地，仅仅 | |
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152
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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153
obnoxious
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| adj.极恼人的，讨人厌的，可憎的 | |
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154
censure
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| v./n.责备；非难；责难 | |
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155
amplify
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| vt.放大，增强；详述，详加解说 | |
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156
epics
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| n.叙事诗( epic的名词复数 )；壮举；惊人之举；史诗般的电影（或书籍） | |
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157
conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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158
regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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159
odyssey
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| n.长途冒险旅行；一连串的冒险 | |
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160
mentor
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| n.指导者，良师益友；v.指导 | |
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161
haphazard
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| adj.无计划的，随意的，杂乱无章的 | |
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162
abounding
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| adj.丰富的，大量的v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的现在分词 ) | |
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163
vivacity
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| n.快活，活泼，精神充沛 | |
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164
verbiage
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| n.冗词；冗长 | |
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165
fettered
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| v.给…上脚镣，束缚( fetter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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166
cramped
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| a.狭窄的 | |
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167
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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168
interspersing
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| v.散布，散置( intersperse的现在分词 )；点缀 | |
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169
paragon
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| n.模范，典型 | |
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170
preeminent
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的 | |
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171
sketches
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| n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概 | |
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172
sketched
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| v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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173
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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174
maker
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| n.制造者，制造商 | |
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175
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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176
everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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177
entity
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| n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物 | |
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178
estranging
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| v.使疏远（尤指家庭成员之间）( estrange的现在分词 ) | |
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179
likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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180
franchise
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| n.特许，特权，专营权，特许权 | |
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