History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

by Henry Fielding

  Chapter i.

  Containing instructions very necessary to be perused by moderncritics.

  Reader, it is impossible we should know what sort of person thou wiltbe; for, perhaps, thou may'st be as learned in human nature asShakespear himself was, and, perhaps, thou may'st be no wiser thansome of his editors. Now, lest this latter should be the case, wethink proper, before we go any farther together, to give thee a fewwholesome admonitions; that thou may'st not as grossly misunderstandand misrepresent us, as some of the said editors have misunderstoodand misrepresented their author.

  First, then, we warn thee not too hastily to condemn any of theincidents in this our history as impertinent and foreign to our maindesign, because thou dost not immediately conceive in what manner suchincident may conduce to that design. This work may, indeed, beconsidered as a great creation of our own; and for a little reptile ofa critic to presume to find fault with any of its parts, withoutknowing the manner in which the whole is connected, and before hecomes to the final catastrophe, is a most presumptuous absurdity. Theallusion and metaphor we have here made use of, we must acknowledge tobe infinitely too great for our occasion; but there is, indeed, noother, which is at all adequate to express the difference between anauthor of the first rate and a critic of the lowest.

  Another caution we would give thee, my good reptile, is, that thoudost not find out too near a resemblance between certain charactershere introduced; as, for instance, between the landlady who appears inthe seventh book and her in the ninth. Thou art to know, friend, thatthere are certain characteristics in which most individuals of everyprofession and occupation agree. To be able to preserve thesecharacteristics, and at the same time to diversify their operations,is one talent of a good writer. Again, to mark the nice distinctionbetween two persons actuated by the same vice or folly is another;and, as this last talent is found in very few writers, so is the truediscernment of it found in as few readers; though, I believe, theobservation of this forms a very principal pleasure in those who arecapable of the discovery; every person, for instance, can distinguishbetween Sir Epicure Mammon and Sir Fopling Flutter; but to note thedifference between Sir Fopling Flutter and Sir Courtly Nice requires amore exquisite judgment: for want of which, vulgar spectators of playsvery often do great injustice in the theatre; where I have sometimesknown a poet in danger of being convicted as a thief, upon much worseevidence than the resemblance of hands hath been held to be in thelaw. In reality, I apprehend every amorous widow on the stage wouldrun the hazard of being condemned as a servile imitation of Dido, butthat happily very few of our play-house critics understand enough ofLatin to read Virgil.

  In the next place, we must admonish thee, my worthy friend (for,perhaps, thy heart may be better than thy head), not to condemn acharacter as a bad one, because it is not perfectly a good one. Ifthou dost delight in these models of perfection, there are books enowwritten to gratify thy taste; but, as we have not, in the course ofour conversation, ever happened to meet with any such person, we havenot chosen to introduce any such here. To say the truth, I a littlequestion whether mere man ever arrived at this consummate degree ofexcellence, as well as whether there hath ever existed a monster badenough to verify that

  _----nulla virtute redemptum A vitiis_----[*]

  [*] Whose vices are not allayed with a single virtue

  in Juvenal; nor do I, indeed, conceive the good purposes served byinserting characters of such angelic perfection, or such diabolicaldepravity, in any work of invention; since, from contemplating either,the mind of man is more likely to be overwhelmed with sorrow and shamethan to draw any good uses from such patterns; for in the formerinstance he may be both concerned and ashamed to see a pattern ofexcellence in his nature, which he may reasonably despair of everarriving at; and in contemplating the latter he may be no lessaffected with those uneasy sensations, at seeing the nature of whichhe is a partaker degraded into so odious and detestable a creature.

  In fact, if there be enough of goodness in a character to engage theadmiration and affection of a well-disposed mind, though there shouldappear some of those little blemishes _quas humana parum cavitnatura_, they will raise our compassion rather than our abhorrence.Indeed, nothing can be of more moral use than the imperfections whichare seen in examples of this kind; since such form a kind of surprize,more apt to affect and dwell upon our minds than the faults of veryvicious and wicked persons. The foibles and vices of men, in whomthere is great mixture of good, become more glaring objects from thevirtues which contrast them and shew their deformity; and when we findsuch vices attended with their evil consequence to our favouritecharacters, we are not only taught to shun them for our own sake, butto hate them for the mischiefs they have already brought on those welove.

  And now, my friend, having given you these few admonitions, we will,if you please, once more set forward with our history.