3. Echo… Ovid hath belied her Sex: Referring to the story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (iii. 356 ff.) of the garrulous nymph Echo, who pined away in the woods for thwarted love, remaining a disembodied voice after her death.
4. English Women… Possibly Circassian: Circassian slaves (from the north-western Caucasus) were proverbially associated with Turkish harems, as earlier, V. x: ‘a Circassian Maid richly and elegantly attired for the Grand Signior’s Seraglio’. The marriage/slavery analogy was a commonplace of Astellian feminism; cf. especially Sarah Chapone’s The Hardships of the English Laws in Relation to Wives (1735), which urges reform of laws entitling English husbands to ‘be as Despotick… as the Grand Seignior in his Seraglio’ (quoted in Gentleman’s Magazine V (May 1735), 242).
5. Salique Law: The ancient fundamental law of the French monarchy, which excluded women from succession to the crown, and by extension from dynastic succession in general.
CHAPTER IX.
1. the Story of the justly celebrated Arria: When Caecina Paetus (d. 42) hesitated before his enforced suicide for plotting against the emperor Claudius, his stoical wife Arria stabbed herself first and gave him the dagger, assuring him it did not hurt (Pliny, Letters, III. xvi). The story is sentimentalized in Richard Steele’s Tatler, with praise not only of Arria’s bravery but also of her ‘tender Affection’ (No. 72, 24 September 1709).
2. Plato… Bee-hive: Bees are said to have swarmed and left honey on the lips of the infant Plato, presaging eloquence (Cicero, De Divinatione, I. xxxvi. 78). HF mistakenly associates the story with Anacreon in the first three editions of Tom Jones, correcting to Plato in the fourth.
3. like Hudibras, he wore but one Spur: Referring to the hero of Samuel Butler’s Hudibras (1663–78), a quixotic Puritan knight:
For Hudibras wore but one Spur,
As wisely knowing, could he stir
To active trot one side of’s Horse,
The other would not hang an Arse. (I. i. 447–50)
4. Charms… standing still: Elaborating on the familiar proverb ‘Money makes the mare to go’: cf. Clarissa, p. 667; David Simple, p. 317 (VI. ii).
BOOK XI.
CHAPTER I.
1. Severity of the Punishment: Battestin cites a statute of 1531 that made murder by poisoning punishable by boiling to death (Wesleyan edn, p. 568, citing 22 Henry VIII, c. 9), but the act in question was repealed in 1547. HF clearly refers to a past dispensation, not to the provisions relating in his own day to poisoners such as Mary Blandy, in whose defence he wrote (see CGJ, pp. 134–9 (No. 20, 10 March 1752)) when she was executed by hanging a few years later.
2. Shakespear… MAKES ME POOR INDEED: Adapting Othello, III. iii. 161–5.
3. the tender Exclamation… written no Book: Adapting Macbeth, IV. iii. 216, where Macduff, responding to Malcolm’s attempt to comfort him for the loss of his family, exclaims: ‘He has no children.’ Cf. HF’s later declaration, of his last novel Amelia, ‘that of all my Offspring she is my favourite Child’ (CGJ, p. 65 (No. 8, 28 January 1752)).
4. Dacier and Bossu among the French: On Dacier, see above, VIII. i, n. 1. HF repeats this praise of the neoclassical critic René Le Bossu (1631–80) elsewhere, looking nostalgically back to ‘the Constitutions of Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, and Bossu, under which the State of Criticism so long flourished’ (CGJ, p. 18 (No. 1, 4 January 1752)).
5. Sentiments of Horace… Mr. Francis: Horace, Ars Poetica, lines 351–3. The same passage is more briefly quoted earlier (X. i); here HF cites the recent translation by Philip Francis (see above, VIII. xiii, n. 2), lines 477–80.
6. as Martial says… otherwise composed: Martial, Epigrams, I. xvi (addressing Avitus).
CHAPTER II.
1. a very fair promising Inn: This location is usually identified as Meriden, a village outside Coventry on the Great Northwest Road, where Cumberland’s army massed in December 1745 to block any Jacobite penetration south of Derby.
2. some of the Rebel Ladies, who… travel with the young Chevalier: Notably Jean Cameron (c. 1695–1772), daughter of Hugh Cameron of Glendessary, who was present at the raising of the Jacobite standard at Glenfinnan in August 1745, and was erroneously reputed to have fought beside the Young Pretender (Chevalier) and become his mistress. A Brief Account of the Life and Family of Miss Jenny Cameron (1746) lists Lady Ogilvie and the Duchess of Perth among other ladies supposed ‘to have disclaimed all the Softness peculiar to their Sex’ by marching with the Jacobite army (JJ, pp. 98–9 (No. 2, 12 December 1747) and n.).
3. News arrived… to tap away directly: The squire intends to broach (‘tap’, as in Amelia, pp. 86 (II. vi) and 490 (XI. ix)) a cask or bottle in response to news and rumours that reached London on 6 December 1745–‘that memorable Day’, as HF elsewhere calls it, ‘when the Rebels having, as it was thought, slipt the Duke’s Army, were feared to be approaching this City by hasty Marches; and when this Apprehension, joined to that of an immediate Invasion from France, had thrown all Men into the most dreadful Consternation’ (TP, p. 210 (No. 14, 28 January– 4 February 1746)).
CHAPTER III.
1. Fever on the Spirits: See above, II. ix, n. 1.
CHAPTER IV.
1. Miss Graveairs: Perhaps so called after the character of Lady Graveairs in Colley Cibber’s comedy The Careless Husband (1705).
2. the Pump: Where fashionable visitors to Bath could sample the spa waters. ‘The Corporation erected within these few Years that pretty neat Building… called the Pump-room, for the Company to meet in, who drink the water, conveyed hither by a Marble Pump from the Bottom of the Springs, where it is near boiling-hot’ (Defoe’s Tour, 4th edn (1748), II, 294). The present building dates from 1786.
3. Mr. Nash: Richard ‘Beau’ Nash (1674–1761), the famous master of ceremonies at the resort, ‘to whose good Management and Behaviour Bath is greatly indebted; every-one submitting with Delight to the Regulations he imposes, with regard to Decorum, and the good Order of the Place’ (Defoe’s Tour, 4th edn (1748), II, 292); see also Companion, pp. 107–8.
CHAPTER V.
1. the Rooms: ‘In the Evening, People assemble at the great Rooms; and there are Balls twice a Week’ (Defoe’s Tour, 4th edn (1748), II, 288). Nash founded the original Assembly Rooms in the early years of the century; the present buildings date from 1769–71.
2. Jointure: Provision for widowhood, specifically ‘a competent livelihood of freehold for the wife of lands and tenements, to take effect upon the death of the husband for the life of the wife at least’ (OED2, citing Coke upon Littleton, q.v. III. iii, n. 4).
3. an old Woman… in the Orphan: See above, VIII. x, n. 1.
CHAPTER VI.
1. the Victory… gone to the Bottom: Referring to the flagship of Admiral Sir John Balchen, which was lost with all hands off the Channel Islands on 4 October 1744 as it returned from lifting a French blockade of the Tagus estuary. Eleven hundred men went down with the ship, including a hundred midshipmen aged thirteen and upwards; the remainder of the fleet survived.
CHAPTER VII.
1. I read a good deal… Human Understanding: Mrs Fitzpatrick’s is a comically eclectic list, reminiscent of the motley inventory of the heroine’s library in Shamela, which likewise includes Delarivier Manley’s political scandal novel of 1709, The New Atalantis (in JA, p. 31). HF himself owned editions of the Greek biographer and moralist Plutarch (c. ad 46–c. 121), the Protestant theologian William Chillingworth (1602–44), the philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), and Alexander Pope’s translation of Homer (1715–20; 1725–6). The Jesuit Gabriel Daniel’s History of France was translated in 1726 from the French original of 1713, and Marie-Catherine le Jumelle de Barneville, Baronne d’Aulnoy (c. 1650–1705), was a prolific author of historical romances and fairy tales, a collection of which appeared in English in 1707.
2. one is apt… as Mr. Locke says: Cf. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), IV. xvii. 15.
3. would you marry an Irishman: See below, XV. xi, n. 2.
1. those Sounds… translated Oyster-Wenches: Referring to the proverbially foul-mouthed fishwives of Billingsgate, London’s main fish market. HF’s invented etymology for ‘Billingsgate’ plays on ‘bi (two) + lingua (tongue), the root of the nineteenth-century coinage ‘bilingual’, to suggest that Billingsgate constitutes a separate second language. Cf. XVIII. ii: ‘a Bout at Altercation, that perhaps the Regions of Billingsgate never equalled’.
2. Milton Oyster: Milton lies on the Swale estuary, near Sittingbourne: ‘the Oysters taken in the Grounds about this Town are the most famous of any in Kent’ (Defoe’s Tour, 4th edn (1748), I, 157).
3. The famous Nell Gwynn: Eleanor Gwyn (1650–87), comic actress and mistress of Charles II. HF adapts this anecdote from Cambridge Jests, or Witty Alarums for Melancholy Spirits (1674 and later editions), which refers to ‘a notorious Strumpet’ rather than Gwyn by name, and lacks the final sentence (pp. 66–7). For details see Thomas Keymer, ‘Tom Jones, Nell Gwyn, and the Cambridge Jest Book’, Notes and Queries 51.4 (2004), pp. 408–9.
4. the learned Dr. Cheney… down your Throat: Referring to George Cheyne (1671–1743), a celebrated physician of Bath and a close friend of Samuel Richardson, who had written of punch as ‘liquid Flames’ in An Essay of Health and Long Life (1724), 56. For HF’s mockery of Cheyne in the Champion and elsewhere, see Companion, p. 42.
5. corrupting the Governor… Art of War: See above, V. vii, n. 2.
CHAPTER IX.
1. Drum-Room: See later, XVII. vi: ‘A Drum then, is an Assembly of well dressed Persons of both Sexes, most of whom play at Cards, and the rest do nothing at all…’
2. led Captains: Hangers-on, ingratiating dependants; cf. JA, p. 184 (II. xiv); also JVL, p. 87.
3. Eshur… Prior’s Park: All renowned country estates, noted especially for their landscaped gardens, and owned by patrons of HF or their allies. Esher Place, Surrey, was the seat of Henry Pelham (1695?–1754; Companion, pp. 111–12), Prime Minister at the time; Stowe, in Buckinghamshire, was the seat of Sir Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham (1675–1749;Companion, p. 48), and already a tourist attraction, a guidebook having been published in 1744; Wilton was the seat near Salisbury of Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (1693–1751;Companion, pp. 112–13); Eastbury was the Dorset estate of George Bubb Dodington (1691–1762; Companion, pp. 58–9); Prior Park was Ralph Allen’s estate near Bath (see above, Dedication, n. 2).
4. Bœotian Writers: The inhabitants of Boeotia (the area around Thebes in central Greece) were a byword for stupidity in the ancient world, though both Pindar and Plutarch were Boeotian writers. See Horace, Epistles, II. i. 244, and Philip Francis’s note on this line: ‘Boeotian Dulness was a Proverb, but how justly, the Name of Pindar alone sufficiently proves’ (A Poetical Translation of the Works of Horace, 2nd edn (1747), IV, 180 n.).
BOOK XII.
CHAPTER I.
1. Abbé Bannier… Trouble of transcribing: Antoine Banier, Mythology and Fables of the Ancients Explain’d from History (1738–40; English translation 1739–41), I, viii. The translation was reissued in January 1748 by Andrew Millar, the publisher of Tom Jones, and intensively promoted by HF in the Jacobite’s Journal (p. 127 (No. 6, 9 January 1748) and elsewhere).
2. the Illiterate: i.e. those not literate in the classical languages; cf. Amelia, pp. 458–9 (XI. ii).
3. robbing the Spittal: i.e. stealing from the most needy. Cf. Johnson, Dictionary (1755), s.v. Spittal: ‘A charitable foundation. In use only in the phrases, a spittal sermon, and rob not the spittal.’
4. one Mr. Moore… the poetical Trade: In Act II of his comedy The Rival Modes, first performed on 27 January 1728, James Moore Smythe (1702–34) inserted six lines by Pope which he had seen in manuscript prior to their publication in volume III of the Pope–Swift Miscellanies (8 March 1728). Although Smythe had initially secured Pope’s permission (later retracted) for the borrowing, and used italics to flag the lines as quotation in the published text of his play, Pope punitively inserted him in the Dunciad Variorum of 1729 ‘to represent the folly of a Plagiary’ (ii. 46 n.). Pope later reused the passage as lines 243–8 of An Epistle to a Lady (1735), and continued to attack Smythe after his death (in the Epistle to Arbuthnot (1735) and elsewhere). The lengthy Dunciad footnote is evidently HF’s source for this paragraph.
CHAPTER II.
1. Sorrow not… like those without Hope: Cf. 1 Thessalonians 4: 13.
2. Sir Roger L’Estrange… will be a Mouser still: Adapting L’Estrange’s Fables, of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists: with Morals and Reflexions (1692), Fable 61, ‘A Cat and Venus’ (pp. 60–61).
CHAPTER III.
1. sed vox ea sola reperta est: ‘But that case alone is found’, a phrase Partridge remembers from Lily’s Grammar and applies to mean ‘no other word will do’.
2. some fine Lines out of Horace… the Brave: Horace, Odes, III. ii. 13–16. The accuracy and style of Tom’s translation were criticized by ‘Orbilius’, who cites instead a version by Swift, emphasizing Tom’s omissions: ‘How blest is he, who for his Country dies, / Since Death pursues the Coward, as he flies! / The Youth, in vain, would fly from Fate’s attack, / With trembling Knees, and Terror at his Back: / Tho’ Fear should lend him Pinions like the Wind; / Yet swifter Fate will seize him from behind’ (Examen, 81–2).
3. Evil Communication corrupts good Manners: Adapting 1 Corinthians 15:33 (see above, V. ii, n. 2).
CHAPTER IV.
1. Action of Trover: An action at law to recover the value of personal property illegally ‘converted’ or applied by another to his own use. To stand any chance of winning, the beggar would have to establish not only that the book was his own property, but also that Tom had appropriated it for himself (see Wesleyan edn, p. 633).
CHAPTER V.
1. the Crown and Coffin: Satirical prints of the period regularly represent the Jacobite standard as a crown and coffin, or three crowns above a coffin, in mocking allusion to the Young Pretender’s reported resolution before the Forty-five to return with the crowns of three kingdoms, or in his coffin. See, e.g., Nos 2662 (‘The Rebellion Displayed’, 1 November 1745) and 2788 (‘Tandem Triumphans’, 7 May 1746) in the 1734–50 volume of the British Museum Catalogue of Prints and Drawings, ed. F. G. Stephens and E. Hawkins (1877).
2. the fine and serious Part of the Provoked Husband: The revision and completion by Colley Cibber (q.v. II. i, n. 1) of A Journey to London, a comedy left unfinished by Sir John Vanbrugh on his death in 1726. After a hostile first night on 10 January 1728, Cibber cut several scenes ‘of the lower humor’, and published the play with pompous declarations of its seriousness and refinement (The Provoked Husband (1728), ‘To the Reader’).
3. The present Age… a rational Entertainment: As many early readers would have recognized, HF had recently operated a puppet theatre on exactly opposite principles. Running off Haymarket during the spring of 1748, this was ‘a Puppet Shew after the Antient manner; in which the true Humour of that most diverting Entertainment will be restored… With the Comical Humours of PUNCH and his Wife JOAN, With all the Original Jokes, F-rts, Songs, Battles, Kickings, &c.’ (advertisement quoted by Battestin, Henry Fielding: A Life (1989), pp. 434–5).
CHAPTER VI.
1. Merry Andrew: A clown or buffoon. Cf. JA, p. 63 (I. ii): ‘that Sect of laughing Philosophers, since called Merry Andrews’.
2. Jephthah’s Rash Vow: Judges 11:30 ff., in which Jephthah is obliged to kill his daughter in fulfilment of his vow to sacrifice the first living thing to meet him on his return from battle. This was indeed a popular subject with puppet-masters and strolling players in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; the stroller Spangle offers to perform it in John Breval’s comedy of 1718, The Play is the Plot (IV. i. 240).
3. Virgil… at the grave Man’s Discourse: Cf. Aeneid, i. 148–53; the ass is HF’s embellishment.
The History of Tom Jones (Penguin Classics) Page 119