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
