The History of Tom Jones (Penguin Classics)

by Henry Fielding

  CHAPTER VI.

  1. the famous Spartan Theft: HF elaborates elsewhere on the story (from Plutarch’s ‘Life of Lycurgus’, xviii) of a boy who preferred agonizing death to confession of crime, recalling ‘the Spartan Youth, who concealed a Fox under his Garment, and rather than he would produce him openly, suffered the Vermin to gnaw his very Bowels’ (CGJ (No. 60, 22 August 1752), pp. 324–5); cf. also Aphra Behn’s postscript to The Rover (1677).

  CHAPTER VII.

  1. that old Adage… at its first Approach: Persius, Satires, iii. 64.

  2. like a French Army… must arrive too late: Here and later (see VII. iii, n. 2; IX. v, at n. 7), HF plays on the reasons widely alleged for the success of France in taking and retaining towns in Flanders during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48): the superiority of their military engineers, and their bribery of Dutch leaders. See his Dialogue between a Gentleman of London… and an Honest Alderman… (1747), which complains at the readiness of ‘the Dutch Government… to throw itself into the Arms of France, even with all the Spirit our Army could give to the honest Party there’, adding that the French are ‘better skilled in the Art and Science of War, particularly in Engineering, than any other Power in Europe’ (in JJ, pp. 36, 40).

  3. the great Doctor Misaubin… have kill dem: John Misaubin (d. 1734), a French physician practising in London. Widely ridiculed for his broken English and his dubious proprietary pills, Misaubin was the addressee of HF’s ironic dedication to his comedy The Mock Doctor (1732). For a later reference to Misaubin, see XIII. ii, at n. 1; also Companion, p. 102.

  4. say with Cato… to sleep or die: Joseph Addison, Cato (1713), V.i. 38–40.

  5. If the wisest of Men… Life to a Span: Cf. Miscellanies I, p. 221: ‘The longest Term we could hope for is extremely short, and compared by Solomon himself to the Length of a Span’ (literally, the span of a hand, or a short space of time). Probably HF is thinking of the 1662 Prayer Book version of Psalm 39:6.

  6. One of the Roman Poets… from a Feast: A comparison used originally by Lucretius in De rerum natura, iii. 938–9, and later by Horace in Satires, I. i. 118–19, and Epistles, II. ii. 215.

  7. Specie: Actual coin, ready money. £500 a year would handsomely support a family with servants. In 1759 Joseph Massie estimated that 4,800 gentlemen, 3,000 merchants and 2,500 tradesmen enjoyed an annual income between £400 and £799; 2,070 gentry and noble families comprised the elite tier with incomes above £800.

  8. albeit unused… their medicinal Gums: Adapting Othello, V. ii. 350–52.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  1. arrow a Servant: i.e. any (from ‘ever a’) servant. ‘Now I will suffer Mr. F. to be as arch as he pleases against the Orthography (if it may be so called) of poor Servants’, commented ‘Orbilius’ at this point: ‘But methinks he should at least preserve a Clearness to the Reader’ (Examen, 48).

  2. as Ovid somewhere… that none: Adapting Ars Amatoria, i. 151, in which the lover is advised to affect to brush dust from his mistress’s robe in order to seem attentive.

  CHAPTER IX.

  1. that Saying of Æschines… REFLECTS HIS PERSON: Actually Aeschylus, Fragments, 221/393.

  2. the Bark: Quinine, a medicine derived from the bark of the cinchona tree.

  3. Quis Desiderio… Capitis: Horace, Odes, I. xxiv. 1–2.

  CHAPTER X.

  1. Cleostratus… drunken Man: From an anthology of classical apophthegms and fragments which HF owned, Stobaei Sententiae Graecae & Latinae (1609), 215.

  2. Aristotle… Justice in that Law: Cf. Enquiry, p. 85: ‘I do not know a more excellent Institution than that of Pittacus, mentioned by Aristotle in his Politics; by which a Blow given by a drunken Man, was more severely punished than if it had been given by one that was sober; for Pittacus, says Aristotle, considered the Utility of the Public, (as drunken men are more apt to strike) and not the Excuse.’ The Aristotelian source is Politics, II. xii. 13.

  3. No sooner had our Heroe… Deveniunt: Referring to the fourth book of Virgil’s Aeneid, in which Dido and Aeneas consummate their love in a cave; the Latin quotation (‘Blifil and the divine leader came to the same grotto’) parodies lines 165–6.

  CHAPTER XI.

  1. Mr. Pope’s Period of a Mile: Quoting The Fourth Satire of Dr. Donne Versified (1733), line 73, in which Pope sends up the distended prose of Bishop Benjamin Hoadly (q.v. II. vii, n. 1) by saying he esteems ‘Swift, for closer style, / But Hoadly for a period of a mile’.

  2. either a Forest… stript of it: Referring ironically to contemporary anxieties about deforestation of the New Forest in Hampshire, of which HF became High Steward in 1746 through the patronage of the Duke of Bedford, who was the Forest’s Warden (see above, Dedication, n. 3). Defoe dismissed anxieties about deforestation in his Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6), but by the Tour’s fifth edition (1753) a note had been added reporting that since Defoe ‘there has been great Destruction made of Trees, not only in these Parts, but in every Forest in England, where the Crown has the Property of the Timber: so that the whole Face of the Countries is very much altered’ (I, 205 n.).

  3. Samian Mysteries: i.e. sex, Samos being the birthplace of Juno, goddess of marriage and childbirth, and the home of her orgiastic cult. Cf. Miscellanies I, p. 40; also Charles Gildon, The Post-boy Rob’d of His Mail (1692), 254: ‘Plutarch mentions the Samian Dancers by way of Contempt, and as the most infamous of Whores.’

  4. her in Virgil… abstain: Aeneid, vi. 258–9 (vi. 368–9 in Dryden’s translation of 1697), in which the Sibyl warns the troops of Aeneas that they cannot follow him into the underworld to visit his dead father.

  5. Genus omne Animantium: Every form of living creature. HF plays on the proverb omne animal post coitum triste (every animal is sad after copulating), which is sometimes attributed to the second-century physician Galen.

  6. The Victory… decided by Numbers: See below, V. xii, n. 3.

  7. Battle… ROYAL: Battle between multiple mutually antagonistic combatants; cf. Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687), ii. 117.

  CHAPTER XII.

  1. King Porus, sullenly submitting to the Conqueror: Referring to the Indian king defeated by Alexander the Great after brave resistance at the battle of Hydaspes in 326 BC. HF is probably evoking the sixth of Charles LeBrun’s celebrated paintings of the victories of Alexander (1661–8), which Battestin reproduces as Plate 6 in the Wesleyan edn; Battestin also notes (p. 263) that Porus figured prominently in Lampugnani’s opera Alexander in India (from Metastasio’s libretto), which had a successful London run in 1746.

  2. might get up, like Mr. Bayes’s Troops… agreed on: In Buckingham’s burlesque of heroic drama, The Rehearsal (1671), four actors representing dead soldiers are called back to life by the author, Mr Bayes: ‘Now here’s an odd surprise: all these dead men you shall see rise up presently, at a certain Note that I have made, in Effaut flat, and fall a Dancing’ (II. v. 7–9).

  3. those Numbers… losing in the War: i.e. the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48), waged while HF was writing Tom Jones, though resolved by the time of publication. In his Dialogue between a Gentleman of London… and an Honest Alderman… (1747), HF voices anxieties about the numerical strength of the enemy, which he estimates at 300,000: ‘how could any Army we could keep up, be able to resist the whole Armies of France and Spain…?’ (in JJ, p. 37).

  BOOK VI.

  CHAPTER I.

  1. that surprising Sect… there is no God: Referring to Swift’s ironic defence, in An Argument against Abolishing Christianity (1711), of ‘two young Gentlemen of great Hopes, bright Wit, and profound Judgment, who upon a thorough Examination of Causes and Effects, and by the meer Force of natural Abilities, without the least Tincture of Learning… made a Discovery, that there was no God’.

  2. those who… best Actions from Pride: Referring to Bernard Mandeville’s doctrine ‘that the Moral Virtues are the Political Offspring which Flattery begot upon Pride’ (The Fable of the Bees, ed
. F. B. Kaye (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), I, 51). For HF’s hostility to Mandeville (1670–1733), see Companion, pp. 96–7; also Amelia, p. 114 (III. v).

  3. Finders of Gold: Scavengers in privies or latrines (‘jakes’, in the paragraph next), as in John Crowne, Sir Courtly Nice (1685), II. 73: ‘A Gold-finder, Madam? look into Jakes for bits o’ money?’ See also Sarah Fielding and Jane Collier, The Cry (1754), I. vii: ‘And so far doth a true discoverer resemble what we call a gold-finder, that filth is his pursuit, he sculks from day-light, and works always in the dark; by forced implications he changes the most inoffensive meanings into some dark design, and then exults in the strength of his own penetration’ (I. 118).

  4. Shakespear… in our own Person: Adapting Much Ado About Nothing, II. i. 193.

  5. a Man born blind… Sound of a Trumpet: See above, IV. i, n. 6.

  CHAPTER II.

  1. the Country Interest: An umbrella term for the predominantly Tory opposition to the ministerial ‘Court’ party, which also encompassed both disaffected Whigs and the Jacobite fringe caricatured in the figure of Western. Cf. HF’s Dialogue between a Gentleman of London, Agent for Two Court Candidates, and an Honest Alderman of the Country Party (1747), in which the deluded alderman proposes to vote for ‘Sir Thomas Leadenhead’, who is, his interlocutor responds, ‘a known Jacobite’ (in JJ, p. 6).

  2. Rapin’s History of England… last twenty Years: Though a staunch Whig, Aunt Western is politically indiscriminate in her reading, favouring Paul de Rapin-Thoyras’ History of England (translated 1725–31) in modern history, and the Tory Laurence Echard’s Roman History (1695–8) for the classical period. HF elsewhere mocks Echard’s dubious scholarship, and in Joseph Andrews he offers both historians as examples of egregious partisanship, ‘where Facts being set forth in a different Light, every Reader believes as he pleases, and indeed the more judicious and suspicious very justly esteem the whole as no other than a Romance’ (III. i, p. 201); see also above, I. iii, n. 2. Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire was a common title for works of political and natural history.

  3. London Evening-Post… Bribery and Corruption: The London Evening-Post was a crypto-Jacobite newspaper with which HF feuded in his ironic Jacobite’s Journal, reserving for special ridicule the extravagance of its seditious libelling, its clumsy strategic concealment of key words and names, and the ‘acute unintelligible Articles’ that resulted (p. 100 (No. 2, 12 December 1747)). His inaugural number of 5 December mockingly announces a similar strategy of disguising words and names ‘which I embowel, or rather emvowel’ (p. 96), and he was still parodying the journal the following autumn (No. 41, 10 September 1748) in an item alleging ‘that the D—e of ——, and the E—l of ——, and Mr. ——, and a certain Person that shall be nameless, are no better than S——ls, and that they deserve a G–b—t’ (p. 388).

  4. King Alcinous… to Ulysses: See vii. 395–402 of Pope’s translation (1725–6).

  5. Politico-Peripatetic School of Exchange-Alley: An arch reference to the philosophy of the marketplace. HF’s invented name plays on Aristotle’s famous peripatetic school of philosophy (from the practice of teaching while perambulating); Exchange-Alley, near the Royal Exchange, was known as the haunt of stock-jobbers, speculators and projectors.

  6. a perfect Croat… Army of the Empress Queen: The Croatian irregulars deployed against Prussia by Maria Theresa of Austria in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) became a byword for ferocity. See, e.g., James Cawthorn’s ‘Prussia’, in Poems (1771), lines 95–100: ‘And now the queen… / With wild barbarians crouds her wanton war, / The savage croat, and the fierce hussar.’

  7. will keep your Leagues, like the French… break them: Battestin quotes from the General Advertiser (30 August 1746) the standard allegation against France of ‘breaking the Faith of All the Treaties she had made with All the Powers which she is now at War with’ (Wesleyan edn, p. 279).

  CHAPTER III.

  1. Mr. Hogarth’s poor Poet… against Riches: Referring to the revised engraving (1741) of Hogarth’s The Distrest Poet, in which an impoverished hack is depicted composing ‘Riches: a Poem’.

  CHAPTER IV.

  1. the Gazette: The London Gazette, an official organ of the government, which specialized in foreign news.

  2. Things look so well in the North: i.e. the north of Europe, where British military and diplomatic interests were progressing well, as opposed to Scotland and the north of England, which HF later means when referring in VIII. v to ‘the Rebellion in the North’ (the Jacobite rising of 1745–6, which has not entered the novel at this point).

  CHAPTER V.

  1. the production of a young Lady of Fashion: Widely held to be a compliment to HF’s sister Sarah Fielding (1710–68), whose first novel, David Simple, had appeared in two editions of 1744. The latter edition carries a preface by HF in which he praises the author in terms similar to those used here.

  2. as she was sensible… hasten the Match as much as possible: Sophia’s double bind mirrors that of the heroine in Richardson’s Clarissa (circulated in manuscript from 1744; published 1747–8). Clarissa pleads for time to overcome her aversion to Solmes, an odious neighbour whose estates adjoin those of her family; her plea is instead taken as evidence of prepossession in favour of the rakish Lovelace, causing her family to accelerate plans for forcible marriage to Solmes.

  CHAPTER VII.

  1. Misfortunes do not come single: See above, III. ix, n. 1.

  CHAPTER IX.

  1. Strephon and Phyllis: Traditional names for lovers in pastoral poetry, and also in mock-pastoral. See the modern epigram quoted by Joseph Trapp in the eighth of his Lectures on Poetry (English translation, 1742): ‘Strephon and Phyllis each one eye have lost, / Yet may of beauty more than mortal boast.’

  2. the great Dowdy… along the Gallery: Battestin identifies the reference here to the practical jokes of Daniel Pearce (d. 1762), one of the Corporation mace-bearers in Salisbury. ‘The Demerit of this man, known by the name of Dowdy, consisted in assuming the tatter’d garment, decorations of straw, rattling chains, visage stained with blood, and deportment of the most desperate lunatic… he had a peculiar genius for this part, so as to fill the boldest with real fear, and hunt them to and fro, thro’ windows, up chimneys, and even over the tops of houses’ (obituary in Lloyd’s Evening Post, and British Chronicle, 18–20 January, quoted in Wesleyan edn, p. 301). A ‘catch’ is a musical round.

  3. many valuable Quotations… from Seneca: Presumably from his treatise De Ira.

  4. Alexander and Clitus… insert it here: Cf. Plutarch’s ‘Life of Alexander’, l–li, for the tradition that Alexander the Great killed his friend Clitus, to whom he owed his life, during a drunken quarrel. Commonplace books were kept to record striking passages for ease of recollection or reference.

  CHAPTER X.

  1. the zinking Fund… our Nation with: Walpole had set up the Sinking Fund in 1717 to pay off (‘sink’) the national debt; but, since the early 1740s, the Opposition had made issue of its diversion to support the interests of Hanover, George II’s hereditary German principality. Cf. the irascible Sir George Boncour in HF’s post-humously published comedy The Fathers (1778), Act I: ‘He shall never have a groat—a farthing of mine… I’ll endow an hospital, or give my money to the Sinking Fund.’

  CHAPTER XII.

  1. as the gigantic Poet Lee calls it: Alluding to a bombastic line from Theodosius (1680) by Nathaniel Lee, a playwright earlier burlesqued by HF in The Tragedy of Tragedies (1731): ‘And I am dar’d with this Gigantick honour’ (II. i. 340).

  CHAPTER XIII.

  1. to say black is his Eye: To find fault with him (proverbial), as again later, IX. iv.

  2. arrow young Gentleman: See above, V. viii, n. 1.

  CHAPTER XIV.