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Tom Jones's warmth and generosity do not appear to me of that kind which qualify a man for adorning domestic life.BRUNTON, MARY, 1811, Self-Control.

As a story, "Tom Jones" seems to have only one defect, which might have been so easily remedied, that it is to be regretted that it should have been neglected by the author. Jones, after all, proves illegitimate, when there would have been no difficulty for the author to have supposed that his mother had been privately married to the young clergyman. This would not only have removed the stain from the birth of the hero, but, in the idea of the reader, would have given him better security for the property of his uncle Allworthy. In fact, in a miserable continuation which has been written of the history of Tom Jones, the wrong headed author (of whom Blifil was the favourite), has made his hero bring an action against Tom after the death of Mr. Allworthy, and oust him from his uncle's property. -DUNLOP, JOHN, 1814-42, The History of Fiction, vol. II, p. 407.

Shall I say which was the first book that most strongly excited my curiosity, and interested my sensibility? It was "Tom Jones." My female Mentor tantalized me without mercy. She would let me have

but one volume at a time; and not only would not afford me any clue to the concluding catastrophe, but rather put me upon a wrong scent. Sometimes too when my impatience of expectation was at the very highest point possible, the succeeding volume was mislaid, was lent, was not impossibly lost. However, after a long and most severe trial, after hating Blifil with no common hatred, forming a most friendly intimacy with Patridge, loving Sophia with rapturous extravagance, I complacently accompanied dear wicked Tom to the nuptial altar. I endeavoured of course to procure the other productions of this popular author, but I well remember that I did not peruse any of them, no not within a hundred degrees of the satisfaction, which the Foundling communicated.-BELOE, WILLIAM, 1817, The Sexagenarian, vol. 1, p. 13.

The felicitous contrivance, and happy extrication of the story, where every incident tells upon and advances the catastrophe, while, at the same time, it illustrates the characters of those interested

in its approach, cannot too often be mentioned with the highest approbation. The attention of the reader is never diverted or puzzled by unnecessary digressions, or recalled to the main story by abrupt and startling recurrences; he glides down the narrative like a boat on the surface of some broad navigable stream, which only winds enough to gratify the voyager with the varied beauty of its banks. The vices and follies of Tom Jones, are those which the world soon teaches to all who enter on the career of life, and to which society is unhappily but too indulgent; nor do we believe, that, in any one instance, the perusal of Fielding's Novel has added one libertine to the large list, who would not have been such, had it never crossed the press.-SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1820, Henry Fielding.

Many people find fault with Fielding's "Tom Jones" as gross and immoral. For my part, I have doubts of his being so very handsome from the author's always talking about his beauty, and I suspect he was a clown, from being constantly assured he was so very genteel. Otherwise, I think Jones acquits himself very well both in his actions and speeches, as a lover and as a trencherman, whenever he is called upon. -HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1830? Men and Manners, p. 217.

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 exemplar of conduct. But, notwithstanding all this, I do loathe the cant which can recommend "Pamela" and "Clarissa Harlowe" as strictly moral, though they poison the imagination of the young with continued doses of tinet. lytta, 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 aught in 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, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1832, Notes on Books and Authors, Miscellanies Esthetic and Literary, ed. Ashe, p. 337.

In point of general excellence "Amelia" has commonly been considered, no less by critics, perhaps, than by the public, as decidedly inferior to "Tom Jones. variety and invention it assuredly is so. Its chief merit depends less on its artful and elaborate construction than on the interesting series it presents of domestic paintings, drawn, as we have remarked, from his own family history. It has more pathos, more moral lessons, with far less vigour and humour, than either of its predecessors. But we agree with Chalmers, that those who have seen much of the errors and distresses of domestic life will probably feel that the author's colouring in this work is more just, as well as more chaste, than in any of his other novels. The appeals to the heart are far more forcible.-ROSCOE, THOMAS, 1840, Life and Works of Henry Fielding.

His "Tom Jones" is quite unrivalled in plot, and is to be rivalled only in his own works for felicitous delineation of character.-TALFOURD, THOMAS NOON, 1842, On British Novels and Romances, Critical and Miscellaneous Writings, p. 13.

In "Tom Jones," Fielding has comprehended a larger variety of incidents and characters under a stricter unity of story than in "Joseph Andrews;" but he has given to the whole a tone of worldliness which does not mar the delightful simplicity of the latter. As an expression of the power and breadth of his mind, however, it is altogether his greatest work, and, in the union of distinct pictorial representation with profound knowledge of practical life, is unequalled by any novel in the language.-WHIPPLE, EDWIN P., 1849, The Life and Works of Henry Fielding, North American Review, vol. 68, p. 70. While at Tulnavert school, I formed one of those schoolboy friendships, which are so common among lads such as we were, for a young class-fellow called William Short. He asked me to go home and spend a few nights with him, an invitation which I gladly accepted. His father lived in a wild mountainous district and possessed a large tract of rough mountain

ground. When I went there I felt astonished at the undoubted evidences of his wealth. While on this visit I saw for the first time an odd volume of "Tom Jones;" but I have not the slightest intention of describing the wonder and the feeling with which I read it. No pen could do justice to that. It was the second volume; of course the story was incomplete, and, as a natural consequence, I felt something amounting to agony at the disappointment -not knowing what the dénouement was. CARLETON, WILLIAM, 1869, Autobiography, Life by O'Donoghue, vol. 1, p. 74.

The only great English epic of that century is the prose Odyssey of which Mr. Tom Jones is the hero.-DOWDEN, EDWARD, 1880, Southey (English Men of Letters), p. 51.

The book breathes health. The convention of the time did not forbid a direct picturing of its evil; but the coarse scenes in Fielding's novels are given always for what they are, with no false gloss upon them. Whenever Tom Jones sins against the purity of his love for Sohpia his wrong doing is made in some way to part him from her, and when he pleads toward the close of the story, the difference between men and women, and the different codes of morality by which they are judged in society, Fielding makes Sophia answer, "I will never marry a man who is not as incapable as I am myself of making such a distinction." The charm of genius enters into the whole texture of thought in Fielding's novels. A page of his is to a page of Richardson's as silk to sackcloth.

MORLEY, HENRY, 1881, Of English Literature in the Reign of Victoria, with a Glance at the Past, p. 88.

Novelists who have undertaken to write the life of a hero or heroine have generally considered their work completed at the interesting period of marriage, and have contented themselves with the advance in taste and manners which are common to all boys and girls as they become men and women. Fielding, no doubt, did more than this in "Tom Jones," which is one of the greatest novels in the English language, for there he has shown how a noble and sanguine nature may fall away under temptation and be again strengthened and made to stand upright.-TROLLOPE, ANTHONY, 1882-83, An Autobiography, ch. xvii.

Like "Don Quixote," "Tom Jones" is the precursor of a new order of thingsthe 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 skilfully sustained.

The incidents which, in Cervantes, simply succeed each other like the scenes in a panorama, are, in "Tom Jones," but parts of an organised and carefully-arranged progression towards a foreseen conclusion. As the hero and heroine cross and recross 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. What a brave wit it is, what a wisdom after all, that is contained in this wonderful novel! Where shall we find its like for richness of reflection-for inexhaustible good-humour-for large and liberal humanity? Like Fontenelle, Fielding might fairly claim that he had never cast the smallest ridicule upon the most infinitesimal of virtues; it is against hypocrisy, affectation, insincerity of all kinds, that he wages war. And what a keen and searching observation-what a perpetual faculty of surprise--what an endless variety of method!-DOBSON, AUSTIN, 1883, Fielding, pp. 118, 126.

At every corner there is a conspicuous finger post intended to point out the roads along which approbation and disapprobation are expected to travel. In reading "Tom Jones" we know at once that we are intended to like Tom and to hate Blifil, and the emotional attitude we are requested to take at the beginning we are compelled to retain until the end. There are light and shade, but they are not intermingled as in real life and in the most typical nineteenth century fiction, for all the sunlight falls on one place and all the shadow on another. Tom Jones is by no means a perfect character, but he is clearly an embodiment of Fielding's ideal, and one may say-if the bull be pardonable-we are meant to feel that if he were more perfect he would be less so. NOBLE, JAMES ASHCROFT, 1886, Morality in English Fiction, p. 15.

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In "Tom Jones, a novel of which the respectable profess that they could stand the dulness if it were not so blackguardly, and the more honest admit that they could forgive the blackguardism if it were not so dull-in "Tom Jones," with its voluminous bulk and troops of characters, there is no shadow of a gentleman, for Allworthy is only ink and paper.-STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS, 1888, Some Gentlemen in Fiction, Scribner's Magazine, vol. 3, p. 766.

The Epic of Youth, by a master of comedy. In the prime of his manhood, speaking from a full and ripe experience, but with the zest of youthfulness still easily within the reach of memory and sympathy, Fielding gives in this book his sonorous verdict on human life and human conduct. Whether regarded for its art or for its thought, whether treated as detached scenes of the human comedy, as an example of plot-architecture, or as an attempt at the solution of certain wide problems of life, no truer, saner book has ever been written.-RALEIGH, WALTER, 1894, The English Novel, p. 170.

"Tom Jones" is a marvel of invention, character, and wit, of which readers never weary; with its amusing scenes and adventures, its sparkling sketches of high and low life, its genial satire, and its scorn of meanness and hypocrisy. He has stronger claims to be a writer of history than the authors of many elaborate fictions known under that name.—AUBREY, W. H. S., 1895, The Rise and Growth of the English Nation, vol. I, p. 121.

The scenes are still constructed as in comedy. As we read on, it is as if we were assisting at the representation of a score of comedies, parallel and successive; some pathetic, some burlesque, others possessing the gay wit of Vanbrugh and Congreve all of which, after a skilfully manipulated revolution of circumstances, are united in a brilliant conclusion. Instead of being burdened, as were the earlier epic romancers, with a number of narratives to be gathered up in the last chapters, Fielding in the main becomes his own story-teller throughout. Character is unfolded, and a momentum is given to his plot by direct, not reported, conversations. All devices to account for his subject-matter, such as bundles of letters, fragmentary or rat-eaten manuscripts, found by chance, or given to the

writer in keeping, are brushed aside as cheap and silly. Fielding throws off the mask of anonymity, steps out boldly, and asks us to accept his omniscience and omnipresence.-CROSS, WILEUR L., 1899, The Development of the English Novel, p.45.

AMELIA

1751

Methinks I long to engage you on the side of this poor unfortunate book, which I am told the fine folks are unanimous in pronouncing to be very sad stuff.-CARTER, ELIZABETH, 1751, Letters.

You guess that I have not read "Amelia." Indeed I have read but the first volume. I had intended to go through with it; but I found the characters and situations so wretchedly low and dirty, that I imagined I could not be interested for any one of them; and to read and not care what became of the hero and heroine, is a task I thought I would leave to those who had more leisure than I am blessed with. . . . Booth, in his last piece, again himself; Amelia, even to her noselessness, is again his first wife. His brawls, his jarrs, his gaols, his spunginghouses, are all drawn from what he has seen and known. As I said (witness also his hamper plot) he has little or no invention: and admirably do you observe, that by several strokes in his "Amelia" he designed to be good, but knew not how, and lost his genius, low humour, in the attempt. RICHARDSON, SAMUEL, 1752, Letter to Mrs. Donnellan, Correspondence, ed. Barbauld, vol. IV, p. 60.

"Amelia," which succeeded "Tom "Tom Jones" in about four years, has indeed the marks of genius, but of a genius beginning to fall into its decay. The author's invention in this performance does not appear to have lost its fertility; his judgment, too, seems as strong as ever; but the warmth of imagination is abated; and, in his landscapes, or his scenes of life, Mr. Fielding is no longer the colourist he was before. And yet "Amelia"

holds the same proportion to "Tom Jones" that "The Odyssey" of Homer bears, in the estimation of Longinus, to the "Iliad." A fine vein of morality runs through the whole; many of the situations are affecting and tender; the sentiments are delicate; and, upon the whole, it is "The Odyssey," the moral and pathetic work, of Henry Fielding. MURPHY,

ARTHUR, 1762, An Essay on the Life and Genius of Henry Fielding, Esq.

Of all his novels, it leaves the finest impression of quiet, domestic delight, of the sweet home feeling, and the humanities connected with it. We have not the glad spring or the glowing summer of his genius, but its autumnal mellowness and mitigated sunshine, with something of the thoughtfulness befitting the season. Amelia herself, the wife and mother, arrayed in all matronly graces, with her rosy children about her, is a picture of womanly gentleness and beauty, and unostentatious heroism, such as never leaves the imagination in which it has once found a place. - WHIPPLE, EDWIN P., 1849, The Life and Works of Henry Fielding, North American Review, vol. 68, p. 76.

However this may be, I think that of all the novels of that period, "Amelia" is the one which gives the most generally truthful idea of the manners and habits of middle-class society then. There is little, if any, exaggeration or caricature, and I have no doubt that Fielding intended faithfully to depict society, such as he knew it, with its merits and its faults; its licentious manners, and domestic virtues; its brawls, its oaths, its prisons, and its masquerades. - FORSYTH, WILLIAM, 1871, The Novels and Novelists of the Eighteenth Century, p. 273.

Amelia, whose portrait Fielding drew from that of his second wife, has, indeed, been always a favourite character with readers; but the same cannot be said about her husband, Booth, who, we may suppose, was intended to represent Fielding himself. If so, the likeness which he drew is certainly not a flattering one. Thackeray preferred Captain Booth to Tom Jones, because he thought much more humbly of himself than Jones did, and went down on his knees and owned his weaknesses; but most will be inclined to agree with Scott, who declares that we have not the same sympathy for the ungrateful and dissolute conduct of Booth which we yield to the youthful follies of Jones. However, after all necessary deductions have been made, "Amelia" must be pronounced a wonderful work, full of that rich flow of humour and deep knowledge of human nature which charm

us

in "Tom Jones" and "Joseph

Andrews."-NICOLL, HENRY J., 1882, Landmarks of English Literature, p. 219.

In "Amelia," things get better; all things get better; it is one of the curiosities of literature that Fielding, who wrote one book that was engaging, truthful, kind, and clean, and another book that was dirty, dull, and false, should be spoken of, the world over, as the author of the second and not the first, as the author of "Tom Jones, not of "Amelia."-STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS, 1888, Some Gentlemen in Fiction, Scribner's Magazine, vol. 3, p. 766.

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On the whole one likes Booth. sins he is heavily punished, and his conscience never becomes hardened. He is irresponsible, but he is not a fool. Fielding was a true artist when he put this born soldier into circumstances that needed the attainments of a man of business, and showed thereby that the qualities which were winning for us our colonial empire

would not ensure financial success to their possessor. There is no subject on which our author waxes more indignant than the ingratitude shown by the Government to officers of distinguished merit who were so unfortunate as to lack interest in high places. But Booth's military training is apparent throughout the book. As far as

his own sufferings are concerned he has plenty of pluck; it is the misery of those dear to him that disturbs his fortitude. When Amelia tries to deter him from foreign service for her sake, his tender heart is torn for his wife, while his honour as a soldier bids him go. And honour wins the day in spite of Amelia's entreaties. This man, after all, has some spirit, and is not simply a foolish prodigal, alternately uxorious and licentious.-THOMSON, CLARA, 1899, A Note on Fielding's "Amelia," The Westminster Review, vol.

152, p. 585.

GENERAL

Sick of her fools, great Nature broke the jest, And Truth held out each character to test, When Genius spoke: Let Fielding take the pen!

Life dropt her mask, and all mankind were

men.

-CAWTHORN, THOMAS, 1749, Gentleman's Magazine.

Through all Mr. Fielding's inimitable comic romances we perceive no such thing as personal malice, no private character

dragged into light; but every stroke is copied from the volume which nature has unfolded to him; every scene of life is by him represented in its natural colours, and every species of folly or humour is ridiculed with the most exquisite touches. A genius like this is perhaps more useful to mankind than any class of writers; he serves to dispel all gloom from our minds, to work off our ill-humours by the gay sensations excited by a well-directed pleasantry, and in a vain of mirth he leads. his readers into a knowledge of human nature. -SMART, CHRISTOPHER, 1752, The Hilliad, Preface.

We have [says Mr. Bookseller] another writer of these imaginary histories, one who has not long since descended to these regions. His name is Fielding; and his works, as I have heard the best judges say, have a true spirit of comedy, and an exact representation of nature, with fine moral touches. He has not indeed given lessons of pure and consummate virtue, but he has exposed vice and meanness with all the powers of ridicule.-MONTAGU, ELIZABETH, 1760-65, Dialogues of the Dead, by Lord Lyttelton, No. 28.

Fielding being mentioned, Johnson exclaimed, he was a blockhead;" and upon my expressing my astonishment at so strange an assertion, he said, "What I mean by his being a blockhead is that he was a barren rascal.' BOSWELL."Will you not allow, Sir, that he draws very natural pictures of human life?" JOHNSON."Why, Sir, it is of very low life. Richardson used to say, that had he not known who Fielding was, he should have believed he was an hostler. Sir, there is more

knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's, than in all 'Tom Jones.' I, JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1772, Life by Boswell, indeed, never read 'Joseph Andrews'."April 6, ed. Hill, vol. II, p. 199.

Of the Comic Epopee we have two exquisite models in English, I mean the "Amelia" and "Tom Jones" of Fielding. The introductory part of the latter follows indeed the historical arrangement, in a way somewhat resembling the practice of Euripides in his prologues, or at least as excusable: But, with this exception, we may venture to say, that both fables would bear to be examined by Aristotle himself, and, if compared with those of Homer, would not suffer in the comparison.

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