Fielding. (1707–1754).  The History of Tom Jones.

The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction.  1917.

Criticisms and Interpretations

I. By William Makepeace Thackeray

FIELDING, too, has described, though with a greater hand, the characters and scenes which he knew and saw. He had more than ordinary opportunities for becoming acquainted with life. His family and education, first—his fortunes and misfortunes afterwards, brought him into the society of every rank and condition of man. He is himself the hero of his books; he is wild Tom Jones, he is wild Captain Booth; less wild, I am glad to think, than his predecessor: at least heartily conscious of demerit, and anxious to amend.

   1

  When Fielding first came upon the town in 1727, the recollection of the great wits was still fresh in the coffeehouses and assemblies and the judges there declared that young Harry Fielding had more spirits and wit than Congreve or any of his brilliant successors. His figure was tall and stalwart; his face handsome, manly, and noble-looking; to the very last days of his life he retained a grandeur of air, and although worn down by disease, his aspect and presence imposed respect upon the people round about him.

   2

  A dispute took place between Mr. Fielding and the captain of the ship in which he was making his last voyage, and Fielding relates how the man finally went down on his knees, and begged his passenger’s pardon. He was living up to the last days of his life, and his spirit never gave in. His vital power must have been immensely strong. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu prettily characterises Fielding and this capacity for happiness which he possessed, in a little notice of his death when she compares him to Steele, who was as improvident and as happy as he was, and says that both should have gone on living forever. One can fancy the eagerness and gusto with which a man of Fielding’s frame, with his vast health and robust appetite, his ardent spirits, his joyful humour, and his keen and healthy relish for life, must have seized and drunk that cup of pleasure which the town offered to him. Can any of my hearers remember the youthful feats of a college breakfast—the meats devoured and the cups quaffed in that Homeric feast? I can call to mind some of the heroes of those youthful banquets, and fancy young Fielding from Leyden rushing upon the feast, with his great laugh, and immense healthy young appetite, eager and vigorous to enjoy. The young man’s wit and manners made him friends everywhere: he lived with the grand Man’s society of those days; he was courted by peers and men of wealth and fashion. As he had a paternal allowance from his father, General Fielding, which, to use Henry’s own phrase, any man might pay who would; as he liked good wine, good clothes, and good company, which are all expensive articles to purchase, Harry Fielding began to run into debt, and borrow money in that easy manner in which Captain Booth borrows money in the novel: was in nowise particular in accepting a few pieces from the purses of his rich friends, and bore down upon more than one of them, as Walpole tells us only too truly, for a dinner or a guinea. To supply himself with the latter, he began to write theatrical pieces, having already, no doubt, a considerable acquaintance amongst the Oldfields and Bracegirdles behind the scenes. He laughed at these pieces and scorned them. When the audience upon one occasion began to hiss a scene which he was too lazy to correct, and regarding which, when Garrick remonstrated with him, he said that the public was too stupid to find out the badness of his work: when the audience began to hiss, Fielding said with characteristic coolness—“They have found it out, have they?” He did not prepare his novels in this way, and with a very different care and interest laid the foundations and built up the edifices of his future fame.

   3

  Time and shower have very little damaged those. The fashion and ornaments are, perhaps, of the architecture of that age, but the buildings remain strong and lofty, and of admirable proportions—masterpieces of genius and monuments of workmanlike skill.

   4

  I cannot offer or hope to make a hero of Harry Fielding. Why hide his faults? Why conceal his weaknesses in a cloud of periphrases? Why not show him, like him as he is, not robed in a marble toga, and draped and polished in an heroic attitude, but with inked ruffles, and claret stains on his tarnished laced coat, and on his manly face the marks of good fellowship, of illness, of kindness, of care and wine? Stained as you see him, and worn by care and dissipation, that man retains some of the most precious and splendid human qualities and endowments. He has an admirable natural love of truth, the keenest instinctive antipathy to hypocrisy, the happiest satirical gift of laughing it to scorn. His wit is wonderfully wise and detective; it flashes upon a rogue and lightens up a rascal like a policeman’s lantern. He is one of the manliest and kindliest of human beings: in the midst of all his imperfections, he respects female innocence and infantine tenderness as you would suppose such a great-hearted, courageous soul would respect and care for them. He could not be so brave, generous, truth-telling as he is, were he not infinitely merciful, pitiful, and tender. He will give any man his purse—he can’t help kindness and profusion.

   5

  He may have low tastes, but not a mean mind; he admires with all his heart good and virtuous men, stoops to no flattery, bears no rancour, disdains all disloyal arts, does his public duty uprightly, is fondly loved by his family, and dies at his work. …

   6

  As a picture of manners, the novel of Tom Jones is indeed exquisite: as a work of construction, quite a wonder: the by-play of wisdom; the power of observation; the multiplied felicitous turns and thoughts; the varied character of the great Comic Epic; keep the reader in a perpetual admiration and curiosity. 1

   7

  But against Mr. Thomas Jones himself we have a right to put in a protest, and quarrel with the esteem the author evidently has for that character. Charles Lamb says finely of Jones that a single hearty laugh from him “clears the air”—but then it is in a certain state of the atmosphere. It might clear the air when such personages as Blifil or Lady Bellaston poison it. But I fear very much that (except until the very last scene of the story), when Mr. Jones enters Sophia’s drawing-room, the pure air there is rather tainted with the young gentleman’s tobacco-pipe and punch.

   8

  I can’t say that I think Mr. Jones a virtuous character; I can’t say but that I think Fielding’s evident liking and admiration for Mr. Jones shows that the great humorist’s moral sense was blunted by his life, and that here, in Art and Ethics, there is a great error. If it is right to have a hero whom we may admire, let us at least take care that he is admirable: if, as is the plan of some authors (a plan decidedly against their interests, be it said), it is propounded that there exists in life no such being, and therefore that in novels, the picture of life, there should appear no such character; then Mr. Thomas Jones becomes an admissible person, and we examine his defects and good qualities, as we do those of Parson Thwackum, or Miss Seagrim. But a hero with a flawed reputation; a hero spunging for a guinea; a hero who can’t pay his landlady, and is obliged to let his honour out to hire, is absurd and his claim to heroic rank untenable. I protest against Mr. Thomas Jones holding such rank at all. I protest even against his being considered a more than ordinary young fellow, ruddy-cheeked, broad-shouldered, and fond of wine and pleasure. He would not rob a church, but that is all; and a pretty long argument may be debated, as to which of these old types—the spendthrift, the hypocrite, Jones and Blifil, Charles and Joseph Surface—is the worst member of society and the most deserving of censure.

   9

  What a wonderful art! What an admirable gift of nature was it by which the author of these tales was endowed, and which enabled him to fix our interest, to waken our sympathy, to seize upon our credulity, so that we believe in his people—speculate gravely upon their faults or their excellences, prefer this one or that, deplore Jones’s fondness for play and drink, Booth’s fondness for play and drink, and the unfortunate position of the wives of both gentlemen—love and admire those ladies with all our hearts, and talk about them as faithfully as if the Park! What a genius! what a vigour! what a bright-eyed intelligence and observation! what a wholesome hatred for meanness and knavery! what a vast sympathy! what a cheerfulness! what a manly relish of life! what a love of human kind! what a poet is here!—watching, meditating, brooding, creating! What multitudes of truths has that man left behind him! What generations he has taught to laugh wisely and fairly! What scholars he has formed and accustomed to the exercise of thoughtful humour and the manly play of wit! What a courage he had! What a dauntless and constant cheerfulness of intellect, that burned bright and steady through all the storms of his life and never deserted its last wreck! It is wonderful to think of the pains and misery which the man suffered; the pressure of want, illness, remorse which he endured! and that the writer was neither malignant nor melancholy, his view of truth never warped, and his generous human kindness never surrendered.

  10

  In the quarrel mentioned before, which happened on Fielding’s last voyage to Lisbon, and when the stout captain of the ship fell down on his knees, and asked the sick man’s pardon—“I did not suffer,” Fielding says, in his hearty, manly way, his eyes lighting up as it were with their old fire—“I did not suffer a brave man and an old man to remain a moment in that posture, but immediately forgave him.” Indeed, I think, with his noble spirit and unconquerable generosity, Fielding reminds one of those brave men of whom one reads in stories of English shipwrecks and disasters—of the officer on the African shore, when disease had destroyed the crew, and he himself is seized by fever, who throws the lead with a death-stricken hand, takes the soundings, carries the ship out of the river or off the dangerous coast, and dies in the manly endeavor—of the wounded captain, when the vessel founders, who never loses his heart, who eyes the danger steadily, and has a cheery word for all, until the inevitable fate overwhelms him, and the gallant ship goes down. Such a brave and gentle heart, such an intrepid and courageous spirit, I love to recognise in the manly, the English Harry Fielding.—From The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century.

  11

Note 1.  “Manners change from generation to generation, and with manners morals appear to change—actually change with some, but appear to change with all but the abandoned. A young man of the present day who should act as Tom Jones is supposed to act at Upton, with Lady Bellaston, &c., would not be a Tom Jones; and a Tom Jones of the present day, without perhaps being in the ground a better man, would have perished rather than submit to be kept by a harridan of fortune. Therefore, this novel is, and indeed pretends to be, no example of conduct. But, notwithstanding all this, I do loathe the cant which can recommend Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe as strictly moral, although they poison the imagination of the young with continued doses of tinct, lyttæ, while Tom Jones is prohibited as loose. I do not speak of young women; but a young man whose heart or feelings can be injured, or even his passions excited by this novel, is already thoroughly corrupt. There is a cheerful, sunshiny, breezy spirit, that prevails everywhere, strongly contrasted with the close, hot, day-dreamy continuity of Richardson.”—COLERIDGE. Literary Remains, vol. ii. p. 374. [back]

Criticisms and Interpretations

II. By Leslie Stephen.

IT is clear, in short, that the aim of Fielding (whether he succeeds or not) is the very reverse of that attributed to him by M. Taine. Tom Jones and Amelia have, ostensibly at least, a most emphatic moral attached to them; and not only attached to them, but borne in mind and even too elaborately preached throughout. That moral is the one which Fielding had learnt in the school of his own experience. It is the moral that dissipation bears fruit in misery. The remorse, it is true, which was generated in Fielding and in his heroes was not the remorse which drives a man to a cloister, or which even seriously poisons his happiness. The offences against morality are condoned too easily, and the line between vice and virtue drawn in accordance with certain distinctions which even Parson Adams could scarcely have approved. Vice, he seems to say, is altogether objectionable only when complicated by cruelty or hypocrisy. But if Fielding’s moral sense is not very delicate, it is vigorous. He hates most heartily what he sees to be wrong, though his sight might easily be improved in delicacy of discrimination. The truth is simply that Fielding accepted that moral code which the better men of the world in his time really acknowledged, as distinguished from that by which they affected to be bound. That so wide a distinction should generally exist between these codes is a matter for deep regret. That Fielding in his hatred for humbug should have condemned purity as puritanical is clearly lamentable. The confusion, however, was part of the man, and, as already noticed, shows itself in one shape or other throughout his work. But it would be unjust to condemn him upon that ground as antagonistic or indifferent to reasonable morality. His morality is at the superior antipodes from the cynicism of a Wycherley; and far superior to the prurient sentimentalism of Sterne or the hot-pressed priggishness of Richardson, or even the reckless Bohemianism of Smollett.

   1

  There is a deeper question, however, beneath this discussion. The morality of those “great impartial artists” of whom M. Taine Speaks, differs from Fielding’s in a more serious sense. The highest morality of a great work of art depends upon the power with which the essential beauty and ugliness of virtue and vice are exhibited by an impartial observer.

   2

  The morality, for example, of Goethe and Shakespeare appears in the presentation of such characters as Iago and Mephistopheles. The insight of true genius shows us by such examples what is the true physiology of vice; what is the nature of the man who has lost all faith in virtue and all sympathy with purity and nobility of character. The artist of inferior rank tries to make us hate vice by showing that it comes to a bad end precisely because he has an inadequate perception of its true nature. He can see that a drunkard generally gets into debt or incurs an attack of delirium tremens, but he does not exhibit the moral disintegration which is the underlying cause of the misfortune, and which may be equally fatal, even if it happens to evade the penalty. The distinction depends upon the power of the artist to fulfill Fielding’s requirement of penetrating to the essence of the objects of his contemplation. It corresponds to the distinction in philosophy between a merely prudential system of ethics—the system of the gallows and the gaol—and the system which recognizes the deeper issues perceptible to a fine moral sense.

   3

  Now, in certain matters, Fielding’s morality is of the merely prudential kind. It resembles Hogarth’s simple doctrine that the good apprentice will be Lord Mayor and the bad apprentice get into Newgate. So shrewd an observer was indeed well aware, and could say very forcibly, 1 that virtue in this world might sometimes lead to poverty, contempt, and imprisonment. He does not, like some novelists, assume the character of a temporal Providence, and knock his evildoers on the head at the end of the story. He shows very forcibly that the difficulties which beset poor Jones and Booth are not to be fairly called accidents, but are the difficulties to which bad conduct generally leads a man, and which are all the harder when not counterbalanced by a clear conscience. He can even describe with sympathy such a character as poor Atkinson in Amelia, whose unselfish love brings him more blows than favours of fortune. But it is true that he is a good deal more sensible to what are called the prudential sanctions of virtue, at least of a certain category of virtues, than to its essential beauty. So far the want of refinement of which M. Taine speaks does, in fact, lower, and lower very materially, his moral perception. A man of true delicacy could never have dragged Tom Jones into his lowest degradation without showing more forcibly his abhorrence of his loose conduct. This is, as Colonel Newcome properly points out, the great and obvious blot upon the story, which no critics have missed, and we cannot even follow the leniency of Coleridge, who thinks that a single passage introduced to express Fielding’s real judgment would have remedied the mischief. It is too obvious to be denied without sophistry that Tom, though he has many good feelings, can preach very edifying sermons to his less scrupulous friend Nightingale, requires to be cast in a different mould. His whole character should have been strung to a higher pitch to make us feel that such degradation would not merely have required punishment to restore his self-complacency, but have left a craving for some thorough moral ablution.

   4

  Granting unreservedly all that may be urged upon this point, we may still agree with the judgment pronounced by the most congenial critics. Fielding’s pages reek too strongly of tobacco; they are apt to turn delicate stomachs; but the atmosphere is, on the whole, healthy and bracing. No man can read them without prejudice and fail to recognize the fact that he has been in contact with something much higher than a “good buffalo”. He has learnt to know a man, not merely full of animal vigour, not merely stored with various experience of men and manners, but also in the main sound and unpoisoned by the mephitic vapours which poisoned the atmosphere of his police-office. If the scorn of hypocrisy is too fully emphasised, and the sensitiveness to ugly and revolting objects too much deadened by a rough life, yet nobody could be more heartily convinced of the beauty and value of those solid domestic instincts on which human happiness must chiefly depend. Put Fielding beside the modern would-be satirists who make society—especially French society 2 —a mere sink of nastiness, or beside the more virtuous persons whose favourite affectation is simplicity, and who labour most spasmodically to be masculine, and his native vigour, his massive common-sense, his wholesome views of men and manners, stand out in solid relief. Certainly he was limited in perception, and not so elevated in tone as might be desired; but he is a fitting representative of the stalwart vigour and the intellectual shrewdness evident in the best men on his time. The English domestic life of the period was certainly far from blameless, and anything but refined; but, if we have gained in some ways, we are hardly entitled to look with unqualified disdain upon the rough vigour of our beer-drinking, beef-eating ancestors.—From Hours in a Library, Series III.

   5

Note 1.  “Tom Jones,” book xv. chap. i. [back]

Note 2.  For Fielding’s view of the French novels of his day see “Tom Jones,” book xiii. chap. ix. [back]

Criticisms and Interpretations

III. By Austin Dobson

LIKE Don Quixote, Tom Jones is the precursor of a new order of things,—the earliest and freshest expression of a new departure in art. But while Tom Jones is, to the full, as amusing as Don Quixote, it has the advantage of a greatly superior plan, and an interest more skillfully sustained. The incidents which, in Cervantes, simply succeed each other like the scenes in a panorama, are, in Tom Jones, but parts of an organized and carefully arranged progression towards a foreseen conclusion. As the hero and heroine cross and re-cross each other’s track, there is scarcely an episode which does not aid in the moving forward of the story. Little details rise lightly and naturally to the surface of the narrative, not more noticeable at first than the most everyday occurrences, and a few pages farther on become of the greatest importance. The hero makes a mock proposal of marriage to Lady Bellaston. It scarcely detains attention, so natural an expedient does it appear, and behold in a chapter or two it has become a terrible weapon in the hands of the injured Sophia! Again, when the secret of Jones’ birth is finally disclosed, we look back and discover a hundred little premonitions which escaped us at first, but which, read by the light of our latest knowledge, assume a fresh significance. At the same time, it must be admitted that the over-quoted and somewhat antiquated dictum of Coleridge, by which Tom Jones is grouped with the Alchemist and �dipus Tyrannus, as one of the three most perfect plots in the world, requires revision. It is impossible to apply the term “perfect” to a work which contains such an inexplicable stumbling-block as the Man of the Hill’s story. Then, again, progress and animation alone will not make a perfect plot, unless probability be superadded. And although it cannot be said that Fielding disregards probability, he certainly strains it considerably. Money is conveniently lost and found; the naivest coincidences continually occur; people turn up in the nick of time at the exact spot required, and develop the most needful (but entirely casual) relations with the characters. Sometimes an episode is so inartistically introduced as to be almost clumsy. Towards the end of the book, for instance, it has to be shown that Jones has still some power of resisting temptation, and he accordingly receives from a Mrs. Arabella Hunt, a written offer of her hand, which he declines. Mrs. Hunt’s name has never been mentioned before, nor, after this occurrence, is it mentioned again. But in the brief fortnight which Jones has been in town, with his head full of Lady Bellaston, Sophia, and the rest, we are to assume that he has proposes and is refused—all in a chapter. Imperfections of this kind are more worthy of consideration than some of the minor negligences which criticism has amused itself by detecting in this famous book. Such, among others, is the discovery made by a writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, that in one place winter and summer come too close together; or the “strange specimen of oscitancy” which another (it is, in fact, Mr. Keightley) considers it worth while to record respecting the misplacing of the village of Hambrook. To such trifles as these last the precept of non offendar maulis may safely be applied, although Fielding, wiser than his critics, seems to have foreseen the necessity for still larger allowances:

   1

  Notwithstanding its admitted superiority to Joseph Andrews as a work of art, there is no male character in Tom Jones which can compete with Parson Adams—none certainly which we regard with equal admiration. Allworthy, excellent compound of Lyttelton and Allen though he be, remains always a little stiff and cold in comparison with the “veined humanity” around him. We feel of him, as of another impeccable personage, that we “cannot breathe in that fine air, That pure severity of perfect light,” and that we want the “warmth and colour” which we find in Adams. Allworthy is a type rather than a character—a fault which also seems to apply to that Molieresque hypocrite, the younger Blifil. Fielding seems to have welded this latter together, rather than to have fused him entire, and the result is a certain lack of verisimilitude, which makes us wonder how his pinchbeck progressions and vamped-up virtues could deceive so many persons. On the other hand, his father, Captain John Blifil, has all the look of life. Nor can there be any doubt about the vitality of Squire Western. Whether the germ of his character be derived from Addison’s Tory Foxhunter or not, it is certain that Fielding must have had superabundant material of his own from which to model this thoroughly representative, and at the same time, completely individual character. Western has all the rustic tastes, the narrow prejudices, the imperfect education, the unreasoning hatred to the court, which distinguished the Jacobite country gentleman of the Georgian era; but his divided love for his daughter and his horses, his goodhumour and his shrewdness, his foaming impulses and his quick subsidings, his tears, his oaths, and his barbaric dialect, are all essential features in a personal portrait. When Jones has rescued Sophia, he will give him all his stables, the Chevalier and Miss Slouch excepted; when he finds he is in love with her, he is in a frenzy to “get at un” and “spoil his Caterwauling.” He will have the surgeon’s heart’s blood if he takes a drop too much from Sophia’s white arm; when she opposes his wishes as to Blifil, he will turn her into the street with no more than a smock, and give his estate to the “zinking Fund.” Throughout the book he is qualis ab incepto,—boisterous, brutal, jovial, and inimitable; so that when finally in “Chapter the Last,” we get that pretty picture of him in Sophy’s nursery, protesting that the tattling of his little granddaughter is “sweeter Music than the finest Cry of Dogs in England,” we part with him almost with a feeling of esteem. Scott seems to have thought it unreasonable that he should have “taken a beating so unresistingly from the friend of Lord Fellamar,” and even hints that the passage is an interpolation, although he wisely refrains from suggesting by whom, and should have known that it was in the first edition. With all deference to so eminent an authority, it is impossible to share his hesitation. Fielding was fully aware that even the bravest have their fits of panic. It must besides be remembered that Lord Fellamar’s friend was not an effeminate dandy, but a military man—probably a professed sabreur, if not a salaried bully like Captain Stab in the “Rake’s Progress;” that he was armed with a stick and Western was not; and that he fell upon him in the most unexpected manner, in a place where he was wholly out of his element. It is inconceivable that the sturdy squire, with his faculty for distributing “Ficks” and “Dowses,”—who came so valiantly to the aid of Jones in his battle-royal with Blifil and Thwackum,—was likely, under any but very exceptional circumstances, to be dismayed by a cane. It was the exceptional character of the assault which made a coward of him; and Fielding, who had the keenest eye for inconsistencies of the kind, knew perfectly well what he was doing.

   2

  Of the remaining dramatis persona—the swarming individualities with which the great comic epic is literally “all alive,” as Lord Monboddo said—it is impossible to give any adequate account. Few of them, if any, are open to the objection already pointed out with respect to Allworthy and the younger Blifil, and most of them bears signs of having been closely copied from living models …—each is a definite character bearing upon his forehead the mark of his absolute fidelity to human nature.

   3

Criticisms and Interpretations

IV. By Gordon Hall Gerould

IN turning from “Jonathan Wild” to “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling” (1749), reader and critic alike must feel a sense of relief. The tension of the former work is almost too severe; the latter introduces us to a healthy, hearty world, where good as nearly balances evil as it does in real life, and where the only sins to be castigated are the fruits of animalism and hypocrisy. It is the legitimate successor of “Joseph Andrews” and greater than the earlier novel in a good many ways. By common consent it is regarded as Fielding’s masterpiece, nor is it likely to be cast down from that proud eminence. If he had written only this one book, Fielding would still be regarded as a member of that inner circle of novelists to which but few have attained. Here he shows his powers at their best,—his unflagging vigor of thought, imagination, and phrase, his splendid flow of satirical and vitalizing humour, and, in spite of certain critics like Dr. Johnson, who regarded Fielding as a ruffian, and Taine, who rather unamiably spoke of him as an “amiable buffalo,” his tender appreciation of the delicate shades of nobility and virtue. “Tom Jones” has the advantage of “Joseph Andrews” in its very clear and definite plan. It is more mature, though youthful in the same delightful way, more coherent, and more solid.

   1

  The novel, indeed, is constructed on a generous scale. It recounts the lives of the titular hero and his circle of acquaintance. Skillfully welded, they are unfolded to the reader in a complex series of events which for the most part are not of themselves very extraordinary but which never fail of interest. Tom Jones, the foundling, is informally adopted by Mr. Allworthy, a country gentleman of great wealth and goodness. He is educated with the son of his foster father’s sister, young Blifil. His innocent and frolicsome boyhood is delightfully painted. Later, as the result partly of his own misconduct but more by the malice and treachery of Blifil, he is cast off by Allworthy, sets out from home with no definite purpose, and meets with many adventures on the roads of western England. Before this happens, however, he has fallen in love with the beautiful Sophia Western, the only daughter of a neighbouring squire, and is beloved by her in turn. After his departure she is urged to marry Blifil against her will and flees from home with her maid, Mrs. Honour. There follows a complicated series of adventures in which most of the personages of the story are involved. Finally Sophia meets her cousin, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and goes with her to London, where she makes her home with Lady Bellaston. Thither Jones follows her and is involved in a new series of adventures which are creditable neither to his brain nor his morals, though he honestly tries to live righteously and to rescue Sophia from the clutches of her enemies, who number not only the despicable Lady Bellaston and a nobleman who wishes to marry her, but her aunt and her father, who speedily come to town. Thither also come Squire Allworthy and the villainous Blifil. Poor distressed Sophia is ground between the upper and nether millstones of the conflicting wishes of her relatives and her love for Jones. She believes her lover to be more guilty than he is and nearly succeeds in stifling her regard for him. He too meets with misfortunes, though not in proportion to his deserts, and is finally arrested on the charge of murdering a man in a street quarrel. From this he is released, partly through the efforts of various persons whom he has befriended and partly by the discovery of Blifil’s unspeakable villainy, for that young man eventually overreaches himself. In the event Jones is proved to be the son of Allworthy’s sister and is acknowledged as such at the very time when Blifil is disgraced. Sophia, in spite of resolutions of spinsterhood, forgives him readily—all too readily—and consents to an immediate marriage. The many characters of the story who stand in need of forgiveness are duly forgiven or disposed of by death or disappearance, while all those who have any claims to sympathy are rewarded with good fortune and happiness. So the curtain falls on a scene of domestic bliss in which the beauteous Sophia and the reformed Thomas Jones are the central figures.

   2

  As to the stupendous achievement of the novel there can be no question. Beyond all cavil it is supremely great. By the very might of its revelation of human nature it disarms criticism and tempts to the use of the superlative. Indeed, where Gibbon and Scott and, with reservations, Thackeray have so indulged themselves, there is excuse for us. Yet for that reason the book needs no praise, but only the explanation of its virtues and the enumeration of its defects. The merit of it consists in the performance of what Fielding in his prefatory chapter promised to give the reader: “The provision then which we have here made is no other than HUMAN NATURE.—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.” In other words, “Tom Jones” is great because it pictures real men and women, and because its craftmanship is marvelous.

   3

  As to the characters, the most various opinions have been expressed, though no one has yet arisen to say that they are not truly flesh and blood. Fielding, said Thackeray in his preface to “Pendennis,” was the last English novelist who was “permitted to depict to his utmost power a man;” and Fielding, we might add, has suffered from his frankness in painting certain characters and certain scenes which no right-thinking man can commend. In spite of stains upon their reputations, however, the men and women of “Tom Jones” are, almost without exception, gloriously alive. As for Tom himself, though by no means a hero in the conventional sense, he is a most interesting young person. His lack of moral stamina in conflict with his really excellent principles, his selfishness oddly mixed with extraordinary generosity, his cowardly weakness combined with vigorous manliness of body and soul,—all these things present that painful contrast which is always present to some degree in the undeveloped man. Pendennis and Richard Feverel have many of the same characteristics. From one point of view all three got more than they deserved, yet all three are in the main sound and good. Tom’s bad qualities need not be condoned, nor should he be absolutely condemned. He became, one cannot doubt, a useful citizen, a faithful and unselfish husband, and a good Christian. He was one of those scapegraces who repent sincerely and are spared by fate as far as the world can see.

   4

  The lovely Sophia is not less persuasive, while she gains the unreserved respect and sympathy of all who know her. What man ever read “Tom Jones” without becoming for the nonce her admirer? Times have changed, it is true, and our ideals of womanhood are not altogether those of Fielding’s day. Most of us find Sophia excessively passive and absurdly plastic, but we are taken captive by her goodness and beauty all the same. She is vastly the superior of poor Tom in every way, and because she is the embodiment of the eternal virtues of womanhood she can never lose her freshness of appeal. That the author’s first wife sat for the picture as well as for the portrait of Amelia is of no special importance to us—except as it makes us honor Henry Fielding—in view of the greater fact that the two are types of womankind such as the world could ill spare.

   5

  It is almost sacrilege to speak of Blifil after Sophia. Here, one cannot but feel hatred of cant and hypocrisy carried Fielding too far. Blifil is too perfect a villain. He overacts the part and becomes a monster,—a thing to shudder at but not to believe in. On the other hand, we do not altogether believe in Mr. Allworthy because he is too good, or rather because his humanity is too thin. He is an excellent eulogy but not always a man. Of the other characters of this multiplex tableau it would not be profitable to speak at length. They are all living and breathing creatures, neither better nor worse than the average of their generation. Bluff Squire Western, stubborn, tyrannical, unspeakably foul-mouthed, yet not without redeeming traits, is probably but a composite of many country gentlemen. The sisters of the two squires, the one prim and not impeccable, the other obstinate and conceited, are as well done as their brothers. Mrs. Honour and the landladies need no commendation, especially the excellent Mrs. Miller, who is a good and true woman though not very wise. As for Lady Bellaston, cynical and passionate, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, foolish and deceptive, let us, while we wonder at their creator’s art, hope that such types do not exist to-day. Square and Thwackum, twin representatives of philosophy and piety, who are equally destitute of true religion; poor Partridge, immortal representative of masculine weakness; young Nightingale, as ready to give good advice and to follow the wrong path as Jones himself; the Seagrim family and Mrs. Waters—what other novel can show a wider range of perfectly individualized characters?

   6

  In “Tom Jones” Fielding has attained the maturity of his art. He handles his material with consummate skill, never allows the unessential to obtrude, yet wisely permits himself the utmost latitude of space in developing his theme. Such art is unhasting and unresting. The phrase fits the thought, the thought the situation, the situation the general plan. It is altogether probable that the author’s early training as a playwright helped him to an easy mastery of narrative form. The very haste and profusion of his dramatic work must have given him an eye for situation and a nice sense for the arrangement of material. How to make such episodes as the Man of the Hill’s story accord with this praise is difficult to see, to be sure. Indeed, in spite of the historical reasons for their introduction, allying the work with the Picaresque novel, one cannot help feeling that their insertion is a weakness. Yet the very fact that they have nothing to do with the plot and are easily skipped, renders them less obnoxious. Certain other faults which are inherent in the author rather than in the book can best be discussed in another connection. As a whole, “Tom Jones” is a picture of eighteenth-century life and manners drawn with unfailing vigor and unfailing insight—so wonderful a picture indeed that it transcends the limits of time and takes its place in universal literature.—From Introduction to “Selected Essays of Henry Fielding” (1905).