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    WORKS OF HENRY FIELDING
    HENRY FIELDING




    THE WORKS OF HENRY FIELDING

    EDITED BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY

    IN TWELVE VOLUMES

    VOL. I.



    JOSEPH ANDREWS

    VOL. I.




    CONTENTS.


    INTRODUCTION.

    PREFACE.

    BOOK I.

    CHAPTER I.
    _Of writing lives in general, and particularly of Pamela, with a word
    by the bye of Colley Cibber and others_

    CHAPTER II.
    _Of Mr Joseph Andrews, his birth, parentage, education, and great
    endowments, with a word or two concerning ancestors_

    CHAPTER III.
    _Of Mr Abraham Adams the curate, Mrs Slipslop the chambermaid, and
    others_

    CHAPTER IV.
    _What happened after their journey to London_

    CHAPTER V.
    _The death of Sir Thomas Booby, with the affectionate and mournful
    behaviour of his widow, and the great purity of Joseph Andrews_

    CHAPTER VI.
    _How Joseph Andrews writ a letter to his sister Pamela_

    CHAPTER VII.
    _Sayings of wise men. A dialogue between the lady and her maid; and
    a panegyric, or rather satire, on the passion of love, in the sublime
    style_

    CHAPTER VIII.
    _In which, after some very fine writing, the history goes on, and
    relates the interview between the lady and Joseph; where the latter
    hath set an example which we despair of seeing followed by his sex in
    this vicious age_

    CHAPTER IX.
    _What passed between the lady and Mrs Slipslop; in which we prophesy
    there are some strokes which every one will not truly comprehend at
    the first reading_

    CHAPTER X.
    _Joseph writes another letter; his transactions with Mr Peter Pounce,
    &c., with his departure from Lady Booby_

    CHAPTER XI.
    _Of several new matters not expected_

    CHAPTER XII.
    _Containing many surprizing adventures which Joseph Andrews met with
    on the road, scarce credible to those who have never travelled in a
    stage-coach_

    CHAPTER XIII.
    _What happened to Joseph during his sickness at the inn, with the
    curious discourse between him and Mr Barnabas, the parson of the
    parish_

    CHAPTER XIV.
    _Being very full of adventures which succeeded each other at the inn_

    CHAPTER XV.
    _Showing how Mrs Tow-wouse was a little mollified; and how officious
    Mr Barnabas and the surgeon were to prosecute the thief: with a
    dissertation accounting for their zeal, and that of many other
    persons not mentioned in this history_

    CHAPTER XVI.
    _The escape of the thief. Mr Adams's disappointment. The arrival of
    two very extraordinary personages, and the introduction of parson
    Adams to parson Barnabas_

    CHAPTER XVII.
    _A pleasant discourse between the two parsons and the bookseller,
    which was broke off by an unlucky accident happening in the inn,
    which produced a dialogue between Mrs Tow-wouse and her maid of no
    gentle kind._

    CHAPTER XVIII.
    _The history of Betty the chambermaid, and an account of what
    occasioned the violent scene in the preceding chapter_


    BOOK II.

    CHAPTER I.
    _Of Divisions in Authors_

    CHAPTER II.
    _A surprizing instance of Mr Adams's short memory, with the
    unfortunate consequences which it brought on Joseph_

    CHAPTER III.
    _The opinion of two lawyers concerning the same gentleman, with Mr
    Adams's inquiry into the religion of his host_

    CHAPTER IV.
    _The history of Leonora, or the unfortunate jilt_

    CHAPTER V.
    _A dreadful quarrel which happened at the inn where the company
    dined, with its bloody consequences to Mr Adams_

    CHAPTER VI.
    _Conclusion of the unfortunate jilt_

    CHAPTER VII.
    _A very short chapter, in which parson Adams went a great way_

    CHAPTER VIII.
    _A notable dissertation by Mr Abraham Adams; wherein that gentleman
    appears in a political light_

    CHAPTER IX.
    _In which the gentleman discants on bravery and heroic virtue, till
    an unlucky accident puts an end to the discourse_

    CHAPTER X.
    _Giving an account of the strange catastrophe of the preceding
    adventure, which drew poor Adams into fresh calamities; and who the
    woman was who owed the preservation of her chastity to his victorious
    arm_

    CHAPTER XI.
    _What happened to them while before the justice. A chapter very full
    of learning_

    CHAPTER XII.
    _A very delightful adventure, as well to the persons concerned as to
    the good-natured reader_

    CHAPTER XIII.
    _A dissertation concerning high people and low people, with Mrs
    Slipslop's departure in no very good temper of mind, and the evil
    plight in which she left Adams and his company_


    LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


    PORTRAIT OF FIELDING, FROM BUST IN THE SHIRE HALL, TAUNTON
    "JOSEPH, I AM SORRY TO HEAR SUCH COMPLAINTS AGAINST YOU"
    THE HOSTLER PRESENTED HIM A BILL
    JOSEPH THANKED HER ON HIS KNEES




    GENERAL INTRODUCTION.


    There are few amusements more dangerous for an author than the
    indulgence in ironic descriptions of his own work. If the irony is
    depreciatory, posterity is but too likely to say, "Many a true word is
    spoken in jest;" if it is encomiastic, the same ruthless and ungrateful
    critic is but too likely to take it as an involuntary confession of
    folly and vanity. But when Fielding, in one of his serio-comic
    introductions to _Tom Jones_, described it as "this prodigious work," he
    all unintentionally (for he was the least pretentious of men)
    anticipated the verdict which posterity almost at once, and with
    ever-increasing suffrage of the best judges as time went on, was about
    to pass not merely upon this particular book, but upon his whole genius
    and his whole production as a novelist. His work in other kinds is of a
    very different order of excellence. It is sufficiently interesting at
    times in itself; and always more than sufficiently interesting as his;
    for which reasons, as well as for the further one that it is
    comparatively little known, a considerable selection from it is offered
    to the reader in the last two volumes of this edition. Until the present
    occasion (which made it necessary that I should acquaint myself with
    it) I own that my own knowledge of these miscellaneous writings was by
    no means thorough. It is now pretty complete; but the idea which I
    previously had of them at first and second hand, though a little
    improved, has not very materially altered. Though in all this hack-work
    Fielding displayed, partially and at intervals, the same qualities which
    he displayed eminently and constantly in the four great books here
    given, he was not, as the French idiom expresses it, _dans son
    assiette_, in his own natural and impregnable disposition and situation
    of character and ability, when he was occupied on it. The novel was for
    him that _assiette_; and all his novels are here.

    Although Henry Fielding lived in quite modern times, although by family
    and connections he was of a higher rank than most men of letters, and
    although his genius was at once recognised by his contemporaries so soon
    as it displayed itself in its proper sphere, his biography until very
    recently was by no means full; and the most recent researches, including
    those of Mr Austin Dobson--a critic unsurpassed for combination of
    literary faculty and knowledge of the eighteenth century--have not
    altogether sufficed to fill up the gaps. His family, said to have
    descended from a member of the great house of Hapsburg who came to
    England in the reign of Henry II., distinguished itself in the Wars of
    the Roses, and in the seventeenth century was advanced to the peerages
    of Denbigh in England and (later) of Desmond in Ireland. The novelist
    was the grandson of John Fielding, Canon of Salisbury, the fifth son of
    the first Earl of Desmond of this creation. The canon's third son,
    Edmond, entered the army, served under Marlborough, and married Sarah
    Gold or Gould, daughter of a judge of the King's Bench. Their eldest son
    was Henry, who was born on April 22, 1707, and had an uncertain number
    of brothers and sisters of the whole blood. After his first wife's
    death, General Fielding (for he attained that rank) married again. The
    most remarkable offspring of the first marriage, next to Henry, was his
    sister Sarah, also a novelist, who wrote David Simple; of the second,
    John, afterwards Sir John Fielding, who, though blind, succeeded his
    half-brother as a Bow Street magistrate, and in that office combined an
    equally honourable record with a longer tenure.

    Fielding was born at Sharpham Park in Somersetshire, the seat of his
    maternal grandfather; but most of his early youth was spent at East
    Stour in Dorsetshire, to which his father removed after the judge's
    death. He is said to have received his first education under a parson of
    the neighbourhood named Oliver, in whom a very uncomplimentary tradition
    sees the original of Parson Trulliber. He was then certainly sent to
    Eton, where he did not waste his time as regards learning, and made
    several valuable friends. But the dates of his entering and leaving
    school are alike unknown; and his subsequent sojourn at Leyden for two
    years--though there is no reason to doubt it--depends even less upon
    any positive documentary evidence. This famous University still had a
    great repute as a training school in law, for which profession he was
    intended; but the reason why he did not receive the even then far more
    usual completion of a public school education by a sojourn at Oxford or
    Cambridge may be suspected to be different. It may even have had
    something to do with a curious escapade of his about which not very much
    is known--an attempt to carry off a pretty heiress of Lyme, named
    Sarah Andrew.

    Even at Leyden, however, General Fielding seems to have been unable or
    unwilling to pay his son's expenses, which must have been far less there
    than at an English University; and Henry's return to London in 1728-29
    is said to have been due to sheer impecuniosity. When he returned to
    England, his father was

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