2. the younger Brutus… Parricide: See previous note. ‘Parricide’ here includes murder by, and not only of, a parent. Elsewhere HF links the two Brutuses as patriots whose high motives are open to malicious misconstruction: ‘Thus we may say, that the elder Brutus, from Pride and Cruelty, put his own Sons to Death; that the younger Brutus, from Ambition, and a Desire of supplanting him in his Power, stabb’d his Friend…’ (JJ, p. 306 (No. 28, 11 June 1748)).
3. Feræ Naturæ… nullius in bonis: The lawyer makes heavy weather here of the principles of property law. Under the game laws, wild beasts (‘Feræ Naturæ’) could be considered as property if tamed (‘reclaimed’), and charges of larceny could be brought in relation to them. However, under criminal law, animals ‘of base Nature’ were considered nobody’s property (‘nullius in bonis’), and such charges could not be admitted. Battestin quotes Wood’s Institutes, 7th edn (1745), p. 386: ‘Some Things that are Wild by Nature, and made Tame, cannot be Taken away feloniously as Personal Goods; as (for Example)… Singing Birds’ (Wesleyan edn, p. 164).
CHAPTER V.
1. Parva leves… the Passion of Love: Ovid, Ars Amatoria, i. 159.
2. no-body’s Enemy but his own: One of the most celebrated phrases in Tom Jones, and much appropriated since the time of Arthur Murphy’s comedy No One’s Enemy but His Own (1764). It is memorably echoed in Jane Austen’s unpublished ‘Plan of a Novel’ (1816), which returns to HF’s original wording while mimicking her correspondent the Revd J. S. Clarke, who had pompously applied the phrase to himself (‘no man’s enemy but his own’) in one of the letters that occasioned the ‘Plan’. See J. E. Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen, ed. Kathryn Sutherland (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2002), p. 94 and n.; also Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850), ch. xxv; W. M. Thackeray, Barry Lyndon (1856), ch. xvii; Dickens, Great Expectations (1861), ch. xi; Mrs Henry Wood, East Lynne (1861), ch. viii.
3. crying Roast-meat: Incautiously broadcasting a piece of private good fortune; cf. William Wycherley, The Gentleman Dancing-Master (1672), I. ii. 305.
4. as many Mouths as ever Poet wished for: A trope commonly used by classical poets (e.g. Homer, Iliad, ii. 489; Virgil, Georgics, ii. 43) to indicate the magnitude of their subject. HF burlesques the trope in his comedy Don Quixote in England (1734), III. vi: ‘many Mouths, many Tongues; many Tongues, many Words’.
5. as soon as he was drunk: i.e. as soon as he had finished drinking.
6. he always excepted against… Mr. Handel: Alluding to the fashionable boycott of Handel’s oratorios led in the mid-1740s by Charles Sackville, Earl of Middlesex, and Lady Brown, patrons of the so-called ‘opera party’. Mary Delany wrote on 21 February 1744 that one new composition, Semele, had ‘a strong party against it, viz. the fine ladies, petit maîtres, and ignoramus’s. All the opera people are enraged at Handel’ (Autobiography and Correspondence (1861–2), II, 267). Opposition had waned by 1747, when Handel achieved new popularity with Judas Maccabaeus, a triumphalist celebration of Cumberland’s victory at Culloden, to which Western would certainly have objected.
7. Old Sir Simon… some others: Popular traditional ballads; all retained currency on the London stage in the period, and HF had used the third as Air 3 in The Author’s Farce (1730), Act III.
8. Deputation: ‘An appointment by the lord of the manor to the office and rights of a gamekeeper; a document conveying such appointment under statutory authority’ (OED2, citing the present passage as its earliest instance of this specialized and now obsolete sense).
9. Charms of the Music soothed Mr. Western to sleep: Echoing William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697), I. i. 1: ‘Music has Charms to sooth a savage Breast.’
CHAPTER VI.
1. the famous Trunk-maker in the Play-house: A playgoer of famously unerring taste in Addison’s Spectator, who ‘expresses his Approbation by a loud Knock upon the Benches, or the Wainscot, which may be heard over the whole Theatre. This person is commonly known by the Name of the Trunk-maker in the Upper-Gallery… It has been observed his Blow is so well timed, that the most judicious Critick could never except against it’ (No. 235, 29 November 1711).
2. the Lord High Chancellor of this Kingdom: An office held between 1737 and 1756 by Philip Yorke, first Earl of Hardwicke (1690–1764), whom HF frequently compliments in terms similar to this paragraph in the True Patriot and elsewhere: see Companion, pp. 71–2.
3. Plate: Household silver; theft of goods worth more than twelve pence was punishable by death.
4. Congreve… vulgar Souls cannot admire: Adapting William Congreve, The Old Batchelour (1693), IV. iii. 136–7.
CHAPTER VII.
1. Sack: A loose-fitting gown.
CHAPTER VIII.
1. Hudibrass and Trulla… thy Friend Butler: Samuel Butler (1613–80), Hudibras, I. iii. 769–928, describing a battle between Hudibras, a Puritan knight, and Trulla, a virago. Although Butler had been granted a royal pension in 1677, he was traditionally seen as the archetypal starved and impoverished genius – a writer celebrated posthumously but in his own lifetime ‘neglected and undone’, in the words of HF’s earlier ‘Epitaph on Butler’s Monument’ (Miscellanies I, p. 66).
2. All things are not in the Power of all: Virgil, Eclogues, viii. 63. This familiar tag recurs in the original Latin twice later (VIII. iv; X. v).
3. As a vast Herd of Cows… roar and bellow: Much of the rest of this chapter burlesques Homeric and Virgilian epic, notably the fourth and fifth books of the Iliad, which describe the first battle between the Greeks and the Trojans. The allusion is more to the idiom in general than to specific parodied lines, but this opening mock-epic simile closely parallels Iliad, iv. 433 ff.:
As when the fleecy Flocks unnumber’d stand
In wealthy Folds, and wait the Milker’s Hand,
The hollow Vales incessant Bleating fills,
The Lambs reply from all the neighb’ring Hills:
Such Clamours rose from various Nations round,
Mix’d was the Murmur, and confus’d the Sound.
(Pope’s translation (1715–20), iv. 492–7)
4. Pattins: Clogs worn by peasants; cf. HF’s imitation of Juvenal’s sixth satire, lines 135–6: ‘Nor was this Nymph bred up to Pattins, / But swaddled soft in Silks and Sattins’ (Miscellanies I, p. 97).
CHAPTER IX.
1. choleric, nor rash… would have feared: Echoing Hamlet’s warning to Laertes, V. i. 254–6.
2. Mr. Freke… next Edition of his Book: See above, II. iv, n. 1. As Battestin suggests, HF may have in mind Freke’s attempt to explain ‘why a Company of unelectrify’d Persons… do all receive a violent Blow or Concussion on their Bodies, when one of them touches a Piece of electrify’d Iron’ (Wesleyan edn, p. 187, quoting Freke’s Essay to Shew the Cause of Electricity (1746), 36–7).
CHAPTER X.
1. Baronet… Sirloin: A baron of beef was a joint consisting of two sirloins left uncut at the backbone. Supple puns on the status of a baronet as lower in rank than a baron, not a noble lord but a common ‘Sir’. HF may have developed the joke from Swift’s Polite Conversation (1738), where Sparkish explains the term sirloin (literally surloin, the upper part) by reporting of James I that, ‘seeing a large Loyn of Beef at his Table, he drew out his Sword, and in a Frolick Knighted it’ (ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957), p. 171).
2. Rara avis… in Juvenal: Satires, vi. 165. Supple misapplies a line originally referring to the scarcity of chaste and virtuous women.
3. Mittimus: A warrant for committing someone into custody.
4. hast a done therefore: Sheridan Baker explains Western’s expression with reference to the marriage service: ‘The parson (says Western) has said more than one “therefore I pronounce you man and wife” to marry off his pregnant mistresses to unsuspecting youths in his parish’ (Norton edn, p. 123). But this is not the wording in use in HF’s day (that of the 1662 Prayer Book). Western is clearly accusing Square of ‘doing’ in the bawdy sense of copulating, and
‘therefore’ may be his west-country pronunciation of ‘the afore’, i.e. the act leading to conception of a bastard. ‘Therefore’ may possibly have had a slang sexual meaning (cf. Clarissa, p. 163), and the vaguely Shakespearian phrasing recalls the similar accusation of Partridge’s wife: ‘he hath injured my Bed many’s the good time and often’ (II. vi; cf. The Merchant of Venice, I. iii. 101).
5. Ingenui vultus… of an ingenuous Modesty: Juvenal, Satires, xi. 154.
CHAPTER XI.
1. A Lawyer… this Instance: At least two justices were required to sign the order committing an unmarried woman to the house of correction, and their examination could not take place until one month after the child’s birth. As an early commentator noted at this point, ‘That Mr. Allworthy was intended to be drawn a Fool… strongly appears from his Ignorance of the Bounds of his own Authority as a Justice’ (‘Orbilius’, Examen, 38).
2. a much shorter Word… I here suppress: Previous editors propose ‘rant’ (Mutter), ‘shit’ (Baker) and ‘lie’ (Bender and Stern). A better candidate is ‘fib’, a colloquialism HF relishes twice elsewhere (III. iv; XV. iii).
3. As Sir Richard Steele says… to be called generous: Adapting Mr Sealand’s similarly misplaced sarcasm about Bevil, the virtuous hero of Steele’s comedy The Conscious Lovers (1722), V. iii. 93–4.
CHAPTER XIII.
1. an End: i.e. on end; see the same usage again later in the opening sentence of XVIII. ii; also Richardson’s Pamela, p. 68.
2. says Mr. Osborne… God ever made: No such passage has been traced in the works of Francis Osborne (1592–1659), which HF owned in the collected edition of 1682, but their tone is recurrently misogynist.
3. Aristotle… Pertness in a Woman: Paraphrasing Aristotle’s argument in Politics, I. xiii. 9.
4. Mr. Bayle… Love of Glory: Referring to Pierre Bayle’s popular encyclopedia of biography and myth, which HF owned in the sixth French edition of 1734. The passage concerned comes in the entry on the Duke of Guise (see the major English translation, A General Dictionary, Historical and Critical (1733–41), V, 643), in which Helen and Paris are used as a supporting example.
5. The English Reader… left out in the Translation: Referring to the freedom of Pope’s translation (1725–6) of the Odyssey, i. 437–40 (i. 343–4 in the original).
CHAPTER XIV.
1. sat like Patience… Grief: Viola’s description of concealed and therefore self-destructive love in Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, II.iv. 115–16.
2. there lay your Ladyship’s Muff… prettiest Muff in the World: Here and elsewhere (see V. iv, n. 1) HF plays teasingly on the slang meaning of muff as ‘a Woman’s Secrets’ (A New Canting Dictionary (1725), s.v. Muff).
3. a Rule of Horace… Despair of Success: Ars Poetica, lines 149–50.
BOOK V.
CHAPTER I.
1. that nice Unity of Time or Place: Referring to the neoclassical tradition based on Aristotle’s Poetics, whereby all action must take place in a single setting within the space of twenty-four hours. HF also disputes the relevance to fiction of the doctrine in the Preface to his sister’s novel of 1744, David Simple, announcing that readers who ‘object want of Unity of Action here, may, if they please, or if they dare, fly back with their Objection, in the Face even of the Odyssey itself’ (Appendix 2, p. 463).
2. travel, like Electors, without any Expence: Candidates in contested elections would pay the expenses, and more, of their voters; cf. the election scenes in HF’s comedies Don Quixote in England (1734) and Pasquin (1736); also below, XII. x, n. 1.
3. the Limitation… five acts: Horace, Ars Poetica, line 189.
4. Inventas qui vitam… Life improv’d: Adapting Virgil’s Aeneid, vi. 663.
5. the Inventor of… the English Pantomime: John Rich (1692–1761), founder and manager of the theatres at Lincoln’s Inn Fields (1716) and Covent Garden (1732), where he promoted his own brand of pantomime in which he himself played the part of the Harlequin (see below, XVIII. xi, at n. 3). His flamboyant, lowbrow mingling of the serious and the comic was also ridiculed by Pope in the Dunciad (iii. 231–64 in the version of 1743), and by HF in Joseph Andrews (I. vii, p. 76) and elsewhere; see Companion, p. 125.
6. Indignor quandoque… right to creep: Ars Poetica, lines 359–60. The translation is probably HF’s own.
7. as long as any of Oldmixon: John Oldmixon (1673–1742), author of lengthy Whiggish histories such as The Critical History of England (1724–6) and The History of England (1729–35), and a frequent butt of HF’s ridicule. See esp. CGJ, pp. 120–25 (No. 17, 29 February 1752); also Companion, p. 110.
8. as Mr. Pope observes… Readers Sleep: Adapting Pope’s Dunciad, i. 94 (1743 version).
9. a late facetious Writer… Design in it: Sir Richard Steele (1672–1729) in the Tatler, Nos 38 (7 July 1709) and 234 (7 October 1710). The passage was a favourite point of reference for HF, notably in the inaugural number of CGJ (4 January 1752), p. 16.
CHAPTER II.
1. Tully’s Tusculan Questions… Lord Shaftesbury: Referring to Book II of Marcus Tullius Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, which argues in accordance with Stoic philosophy that pain is not an evil, and to Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671–1713), 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, who argues in ‘An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit’ that ‘there is no such thing as real ill in the universe, nothing ill with respect to the whole’ (Characteristics, p. 165). See above, III. iii, n. 3; also, on Cicero and Shaftesbury, Companion, pp. 45–6 and 132–3.
2. that Proverb… evil Communication: Actually Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:33 (‘evil communications corrupt good manners’, a proverb cited again later, XII. iii), and deriving ultimately from Menander, Thais, Fragment 2. HF corrects himself elsewhere (CGJ, p. 77 (No. 10, 4 February 1752)), the error having been pointed out by ‘Orbilius’ (Examen, pp. 44–5).
3. Flick: ‘A light blow, esp. one given with something pliant, a whip, etc.’ (OED2, citing this passage; Western repeats the expression in VI. ii).
4. the Chevalier: Western’s horse is named in honour of the exiled Pretender, James Francis Edward Stuart (1688–1766), sometimes known as the Chevalier de St Georges, or his son Charles Edward (1720–88), sometimes known as the Young Chevalier.
CHAPTER IV.
1. Don’t you remember… my Lady’s Muff once: See above, IV. xiv, n. 2. This passage provoked ‘Orbilius’ to complain that ‘the little Incident of the Muff, on which Mrs. Honour, or the Author, so profusely wantons, is at the same time a great one against Sophia’s Delicacy’ (Examen, 46).
2. Thus the Poet… the City won: From Virgil’s Aeneid, ii. 196–8, with Dryden’s translation (1697), ii. 261–3; the lines refer to the Trojan Horse.
CHAPTER V.
1. the great Delta… a better Idea of it: By ‘English Reader’ HF means here, as in the preface to Joseph Andrews (p. 49), the reader who knows only English. In Greek, a capital delta is written ‘Δ’.
2. The Posture… deserving Punishment by so standing: ‘The Tying Neck and Heels, is a Punishment of decrepiting, that is benumming the Body, by drawing it all together, as it were into a round Ball’ (Randle Holme, The Academy of Armory (1688), III, 310; see also later, VII. xi, where this military punishment is mentioned again). Here the implication is that Square squats as if defecating in the street.
3. liquorish: Lecherous, as again later, V. xii (‘thou art a liquorish Dog’) and XVI. ix (‘there never was a more liquorish one than her Ladyship’).
4. like Mr. Constant… in his Pocket: Referring to Constant’s threatening answer – ‘I wear a sword, Sir’ – when challenged by Lady Brute’s jealous husband in Sir John Vanbrugh’s comedy The Provok’d Wife (1697), V. ii. 91.
5. behind the Arras: The phrase jestingly links Square with Polonius in Hamlet, III. iv.
6. the KALON: i.e. the beautiful (in Greek). Battestin cites George Berkeley’s Alciphron (1732): ‘Doubtless there is a beauty of the mind, a charm in virtue, a symmetry and proportion in the moral world. This moral beau
ty was known to the ancients by the name of honestum, or sò καλóv’ (Wesleyan edn, p. 233). See also above, Dedication, n. 5.
The History of Tom Jones (Penguin Classics) Page 114