Joseph Andrews, Vol. 1
Page 5
CHAPTER I.
_Of writing lives in general, and particularly of Pamela; with a word bythe bye of Colley Cibber and others._
It is a trite but true observation, that examples work more forcibly onthe mind than precepts: and if this be just in what is odious andblameable, it is more strongly so in what is amiable and praiseworthy.Here emulation most effectually operates upon us, and inspires ourimitation in an irresistible manner. A good man therefore is a standinglesson to all his acquaintance, and of far greater use in that narrowcircle than a good book.
But as it often happens that the best men are but little known, andconsequently cannot extend the usefulness of their examples a great way;the writer may be called in aid to spread their history farther, and topresent the amiable pictures to those who have not the happiness ofknowing the originals; and so, by communicating such valuable patternsto the world, he may perhaps do a more extensive service to mankind thanthe person whose life originally afforded the pattern.
In this light I have always regarded those biographers who have recordedthe actions of great and worthy persons of both sexes. Not to mentionthose antient writers which of late days are little read, being writtenin obsolete, and as they are generally thought, unintelligiblelanguages, such as Plutarch, Nepos, and others which I heard of in myyouth; our own language affords many of excellent use and instruction,finely calculated to sow the seeds of virtue in youth, and very easy tobe comprehended by persons of moderate capacity. Such as the history ofJohn the Great, who, by his brave and heroic actions against men oflarge and athletic bodies, obtained the glorious appellation of theGiant-killer; that of an Earl of Warwick, whose Christian name was Guy;the lives of Argalus and Parthenia; and above all, the history of thoseseven worthy personages, the Champions of Christendom. In all thesedelight is mixed with instruction, and the reader is almost as muchimproved as entertained.
But I pass by these and many others to mention two books latelypublished, which represent an admirable pattern of the amiable in eithersex. The former of these, which deals in male virtue, was written by thegreat person himself, who lived the life he hath recorded, and is bymany thought to have lived such a life only in order to write it. Theother is communicated to us by an historian who borrows his lights, asthe common method is, from authentic papers and records. The reader, Ibelieve, already conjectures, I mean the lives of Mr Colley Cibber andof Mrs Pamela Andrews. How artfully doth the former, by insinuating thathe escaped being promoted to the highest stations in Church and State,teach us a contempt of worldly grandeur! how strongly doth he inculcatean absolute submission to our superiors! Lastly, how completely doth hearm us against so uneasy, so wretched a passion as the fear of shame!how clearly doth he expose the emptiness and vanity of that phantom,reputation!
What the female readers are taught by the memoirs of Mrs Andrews is sowell set forth in the excellent essays or letters prefixed to the secondand subsequent editions of that work, that it would be here a needlessrepetition. The authentic history with which I now present the public isan instance of the great good that book is likely to do, and of theprevalence of example which I have just observed: since it will appearthat it was by keeping the excellent pattern of his sister's virtuesbefore his eyes, that Mr Joseph Andrews was chiefly enabled to preservehis purity in the midst of such great temptations. I shall only add thatthis character of male chastity, though doubtless as desirable andbecoming in one part of the human species as in the other, is almost theonly virtue which the great apologist hath not given himself for thesake of giving the example to his readers.