The History of Tom Jones (Penguin Classics)

by Henry Fielding

  2. Virtuoso: Connoisseur of artworks and curios; see below, XIII. v, n. 2.

  3. a good Countenance is a Letter of Recommendation: Cf. Amelia, IX. v: ‘A good Face they say, is a Letter of Recommendation’ (p. 374). Addison reports that this ancient proverb was often attributed to Queen Elizabeth (Spectator, No. 221, 13 November 1711); Diogenes Laertius attributes it to Aristotle (Lives of Eminent Philosophers, V. xviii).

  CHAPTER XI.

  1. the Devil… seeking whom he might devour: 1 Peter 5:8.

  2. Justice Willoughby of Noyle: Complimenting HF’s friend Richard Willoughby (c. 1703–62) of West Knoyle, Wiltshire. See above, VIII, i, n. 12; also Companion, p. 164.

  3. Recognizance: ‘A Recognizance is a Bond of Record acknowledged to the King, upon Condition to pay a certain Sum of Money if the Condition is not performed; as to appear at the Assises or Quarter-Sessions’ (Wesleyan edn, pp. 458–9, quoting Thomas Wood’s Institute of the Laws of England, 7th edn (1745), 84).

  4. Lord Justice Page: Sir Francis Page (c. 1661–1741), one of the judges of the Court of King’s Bench, who was notorious for meting out ‘Hard words or hanging, if your Judge be Page’ (Pope, ‘The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace Imitated’ (1733), line 82; see also ‘Epilogue to the Satires’ (1738), ii. 159, and the 1743 Dunciad, iv. 30 and n.). Page presided at the summer assizes on the Western Circuit in 1737–9, and this passage is sometimes thought to describe a real case.

  CHAPTER XII.

  1. Effodiuntur… malorum: ‘They dug up treasures, the provokers of evil’ (Ovid, Metamorphoses, i. 140). As the Man of the Hill indicates, ‘several Writers’ had indeed abbreviated the Pauline proverb of 1 Timothy 6:10 (‘For the love of money is the root of all evil’) into simply ‘Money is the Root of Evil’ (e.g. Ned Ward (1667–1731), ‘From a Gentleman in London, to a Friend in the Country’, line 42). HF plays on this commonplace in Don Quixote in England (1734), I. vi: ‘Money is the Fruit of Evil, as often as the Root of it.’

  2. the Friars: i.e. Blackfriars, a notoriously raffish area between Ludgate Hill and the Thames.

  3. Nubbing Cheat… the Gallows: HF annotates this term in Jonathan Wild, where nubbed is ‘the Cant Word for hanging’ and the cheat is ‘the Gallows’ (Miscellanies III, p. 141 (IV. ii)). A New Canting Dictionary (see above, VII. xii, n. 5) provides the following further definitions: ‘DOCTOR, a false Die that will run but two or three Chances’; ‘QUEERE-cull, a Fop, or Fool, a Codshead; also a shabby poor Fellow’; ‘RUM-cull, a rich Fool, that can be easily bit, or cheated by any body’; ‘BRUSH, to flee, or run away’. To run a levant (not in the Cant Dictionary) is to make a bet with the intention of absconding if losing.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  1. This Surgeon… to the King: One of HF’s many compliments to his friend and physician John Ranby (1703–73), who had been sergeant-surgeon to George II since 1740. See later, XVII. ix; also Amelia, p. 211 (V. v; the wording of the compliment is stronger in the first edition);JVL, p. 12;Companion, pp. 123–4. The compliment, of course, is anachronistic.

  2. in the noble Strain of Horace… MR. FRANCIS: Horace, Satires, II. vii. 86–8. As later (IX. i, XI. i, XII. x), HF’s footnote quotes the verse translation by Philip Francis (c. 1708–73), which had been published in 1743–6 (collected 2nd edition 1747) by Andrew Millar, the bookseller of Tom Jones.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  1. Duke of Monmouth… vast Army of Dutch: James Scott (1649–85), Duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of Charles II who led the abortive Whig-Protestant rising against the Catholic James II in the west country in 1685, having landed at Lyme with a small band of followers. The rising was brutally suppressed after the battle of Sedgemoor, prompting HF to write elsewhere of ‘the inhuman and unparallel’d Butchery committed in cold Blood, by [James II’s] immediate Order, on Monmouth’s conquer’d People in the West’ (A Serious Address (1745), in TP, p. 7).

  2. Exclusion… during the Reign of his Brother: Referring to the Exclusion Crisis of 1679–81, when Charles II repeatedly thwarted the parliamentary efforts of Whig-Protestant grandees to exclude the future James II from succession to the throne in favour of the Duke of Monmouth; cf. TP, pp. 5–6.

  3. two Rebellions in favour of the Son of King James: i.e. the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745–6.

  4. the glorious Revolution: The new constitutional settlement established following the landing in England of William of Orange in November 1688 and James II’s flight to France.

  CHAPTER XV.

  1. Laquais à Louage: Manservants hired by travellers.

  2. an excellent Writer… Individuals of that Species: A proposition reminiscent of Shaftesbury, though he nowhere puts it so bluntly: see esp. Characteristics, pp. 167–77; also Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, I. xiv. 32.

  BOOK IX.

  CHAPTER I.

  1. favourable Reception… from the Public: Richardson’s Clarissa (1747–8) and Smollett’s Roderick Random (1748) were the most conspicuous recent successes. Both are in the first person, without Tom Jones’s self-conscious authorial voice and metanarrative chapters. As the author of An Essay on the New Species of Writing Founded by Mr. Fielding (1751) was among the first to note, the prefatory chapters were quickly but clumsily imitated: early examples include the anonymous History of Charlotte Summers (1750), Edward Kimber’s The Life and Adventures of Joe Thompson (1750), William Goodall’s The Adventures of Captain Greenland (1752) and Thomas Mozeen’s Young Scarron (1752).

  2. the ingenious Author of the Spectator… braying in the Lion’s Skin: Joseph Addison (1672–1719), who discusses his use of mottos in the Spectator (No. 221, 13 November 1711), although HF’s explanation here is his own. In the fable referred to here, an ass ‘Masquerading up and down in a Lyon’s Skin’ is found out by his undisguised voice and ears, ‘and well Cudgell’d for his Pains’ (Sir Roger L’Estrange, Fables, of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists (1692), No. 224).

  3. such Imitators… bare Feet and sour Faces: Nicholas Rowe (1674–1718), a playwright burlesqued in HF’s Tragedy of Tragedies (1731), who, having edited Shakespeare’s works in 1709, identified his own Jane Shore (1714) on its title-page as ‘Written in Imitation of Shakespeare’s Style’. Horace likens literary imitators to men who mimicked the outward asceticism of the orator Cato in order to claim a comparable inner virtue (Epistles, I. xix. 12–14).

  4. Scribimus indocti… FRANCIS: Epistles, II. i. 117, which HF’s note renders in Philip Francis’s translation of 1743–6.

  5. one of the wittiest of Men… Looseness of the Brain: Referring to Pope’s ironic treatise Peri Bathous (1728): ‘Therefore is the Desire of Writing properly term’d Pruritus, the “Titillation of the Generative Faculty of the Brain”’ (ch. iii). Pope collaborated on this work with Arbuthnot and Swift; Battestin suggests that HF may have intended to compliment Swift here (Wesleyan edn, p. 489).

  6. The first is Genius… can avail us: Ars Poetica, lines 409–10.

  7. Now this last… one and the same Person: A distinction famously made by Locke in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), II. xi. 2, and subsequently much rehearsed, including by HF himself (TP, No. 8, 24 December 1745, pp. 161–3). Cf. Addison in the Spectator, No. 62 (11 May 1711); Pope, Essay on Criticism (1711), lines 80–83.

  8. the ingenious Mr. Miller… see it in the Garden: The leading horticulturalist Philip Miller (1691–1771), whose principal work The Gardener’s Dictionary (1731–9) was printed by Samuel Richardson in numerous editions and abridgements. Battestin notes that in his Preface, which stresses the importance of practical experience and criticizes books ‘wrote by Persons only skilful in the Theory’ (I, x), Miller also uses the Aesopian fable with which HF opens the present chapter (Wesleyan edn, pp. 492–3).

  9. Garrick… Clive: Complimenting the star actors David Garrick (1717–79), Susannah Arne Cibber (1714–66) and Catherine (Kitty) Raftor Clive (1711–85), who had recently joined forces in a new company following Garrick’s acquisition of the Drury Lane patent in 174
7. For HF’s connections with, and compliments elsewhere to, all three, see Companion, pp. 44, 47, 65–6.

  10. The Author… must first weep himself: Ars Poetica, lines 102–3.

  CHAPTER II.

  1. Mazard Hill: A fictional location usually identified with the Worcestershire Beacon, the highest point of the Malvern Hills. Mazard is a species of wild cherry common in the west country, and also (humorously) the head: cf. the disinterred Yorick in Hamlet, ‘chopless, and knocked about the mazard with a sexton’s spade’ (V. i. 87–8).

  2. Upton… the nearest Town: ‘An antient Market-town of some Note upon the Severn, over which it has a good Bridge’ (Defoe’s Tour, 4th edn (1748), II, 329).

  3. as Orpheus and Eurydice marched heretofore: In classical myth (most famously rendered in Ovid, Metamorphoses, x, and Virgil, Georgics, iv), Orpheus redeems his wife from the underworld on condition that he does not look back towards her as she follows. He fatally forgets his promise, ‘And his long toils were forfeit for a look’ (Dryden’s translation (1697) of Virgil’s Georgics, iv. 711). HF burlesques the story in his afterpiece Eurydice: or, The Devil Henpeck’d (1737), in which Eurydice, disgruntled at being made to leave the social whirl in hell, deliberately tricks Orpheus into looking back (Miscellanies II, p. 146).

  CHAPTER III.

  1. For this Reason Shakespear… his supposed Rival: Cf. Othello III. iii and IV. i (the ‘valued Present’ being a handkerchief that Othello has given Desdemona).

  2. the famed Thalestris herself: Queen of the mythical Amazons, invoked again later, XVI. iv.

  3. Dogs of War: Cf. Julius Caesar, III. i. 273.

  CHAPTER IV.

  1. Pillowbere: Archaic term for a pillowcase: Cf. Smollett, Humphry Clinker (1771), Win’s letter of 15 May.

  2. black is my eye: Proverbial: see above, VI. xiii, n. 1.

  3. those Libations… in two Instances: The scene burlesques the ritual accompanying vows and treaties in Homeric verse, in which libations are poured on the soil in honour of a god: ‘Each pour’d to Jove before the Bowl was crown’d, / And large Libations drench’d the thirsty Ground’ (Pope’s Iliad translation of 1715–20, vii. 576–7).

  CHAPTER V.

  1. Cremona Fiddle: i.e. a violin from Cremona in northern Italy, where the famous seventeenth- and eighteenth-century violin makers Amati, Stradivari and Guarneri were based. Cf. Richardson, Familiar Letters upon Important Occasions (1741), letter lxxvi (‘his best Cremona fiddle’).

  2. as Pasiphae doth of her Bull: Wife of King Minos of Crete, who falls in love with a bull, disguises herself as a cow to engage his attention, and ends up conceiving the hybrid Minotaur (Ovid, Metamorphoses, viii. 131–56; ix. 735–43).

  3. Spicula & Faces Amoris… whole Artillery of Love: Battestin reports that the Latin phrase (‘the stings and flames of love’) does not occur verbatim in Ovid, but cites comparable expressions in Ars Amatoria, ii. 520, 708, and Remedia Amoris, line 140 (Wesleyan edn, p. 329). Cleopatra deploys ‘the whole Artillery of Love’ in Colley Cibber’s tragedy Caesar in Aegypt (1725), II. 337; see also JA, I. xviii: ‘the whole Artillery of kissing, flattering, bribing, and every other Weapon which is to be found in the whole Armory of Love’ (p. 116).

  4. hitherto unessayed either in Prose or Verse: Cf. Milton’s Paradise Lost, i. 16: ‘Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.’

  5. Seraphina’s Countenance: See above, I. viii, n. 4.

  6. Dignus Vindice nodus: See above, VIII. i, n. 4.

  7. a Kind of Dutch Defence: See above, V. vii, n. 2.

  BOOK X.

  CHAPTER I.

  1. Shakespear… some of his Editors: The incompetence of modern scholars and editors of Shakespeare was a regular target for HF, who followed Pope’s 1728 Dunciad by singling out Lewis Theo-bald (Companion, pp. 143–4) for special mockery. There may also be a sly allusion to the most recent edition of Shakespeare, by William Warburton (1747): see below, XIII. i, n. 10.

  2. Sir Epicure Mammon… Sir Courtly Nice: Comic roles in, respectively, Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist (1610), Sir George Etherege’s The Man of Mode: or, Sir Fopling Flutter (1676) and John Crowne’s Sir Courtly Nice (1685). The Man of Mode and Sir Courtly Nice often ran alongside one another in repertory, with the same actor playing the eponymous fop in each case: Colley Cibber took both roles at Covent Garden in the 1745–6 season; his son Theophilus played both at Drury Lane in 1746–7.

  3. nulla virtute… a single Virtue: Juvenal, Satires, iv. 2–3.

  4. quas humana parum cavit natura: ‘Which human frailty has failed to avert’ (adapting Horace, Ars Poetica, lines 352–3). The passage is quoted at greater length later, with Philip Francis’s translation (XI. i).

  CHAPTER II.

  1. one of Mrs. Behn’s Novels… good Literature: The amatory fiction of Aphra Behn (1640–89) was still widely read, reprinted and disparaged. HF’s sideswipe is reminiscent of the anonymous Man Superior to Woman (1739), which ironically recommends establishing a university for the study of novels: Behn would be ‘read as the Standard of that Science; and as Impiety and Smut are considerable Branches of it, I would have those Passages, which are the most remarkable for either, particularly inforced to the fair Students’ (pp. 51–2, quoted in Jane Spencer, Aphra Behn’s Afterlife (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 90).

  CHAPTER III.

  1. A celebrated Mantua-maker… Shapes of Women: Identified by Battestin as Amey Hussey of St Martin’s in the Fields, a fashionable dressmaker known to HF, who had reportedly promised her a ‘niche’ in the novel (Wesleyan edn, p. 526).

  CHAPTER IV.

  1. Fourberie: A trick or deception.

  2. Mrs. Abigail, (so for Shortness we will call her): Generic name for a lady’s maid, from the Beaumont and Fletcher play The Scornful Lady (1616). Cf. An Essay on the New Species of Writing Founded by Mr. Fielding (1751), which notes of the genre of heroic romance that Fielding’s popularity had ‘persuaded the Ladies to leave this Extravagance to their Abigails with their cast Cloaths’ (p. 15).

  3. Non semper vox casualis est verbo nominativus: Partridge quotes, somewhat cryptically, a grammatical rule from the ‘Syntaxis’ section (see above, II. iii, n. 2) of William Lily’s standard Latin primer, A Short Introduction of Grammar, a work originally compiled in the sixteenth century and still in use in HF’s day: ‘Tho’ a casual word, that is to say, a Noun or a word declined with Cases, is generally the Nominative Case to a Verb, yet it is not always so’ William Willymot, Shorter Examples to Lily’s Grammar-Rules (1721), p. 6.

  CHAPTER V.

  1. Never a Barrel… a true Saying: ‘Neither barrel the better herring’ (i.e. nothing to choose between them) is proverbial. Cf. HF’s plays The Welsh Opera (1731), II. ii. 75 (‘No Barrell the better Herring’), and Pasquin (1736), III. i. 267 (‘better Herring is in neither Barrell’). For ‘Noscitur a socio’, see earlier, III. ii, where HF translates the expression as ‘You may know him by the company he keeps.’

  CHAPTER VI.

  1. such as beggar all Description: Quoting Antony and Cleopatra, II. ii. 208.

  2. Mr. King… travel that Road: Plausibly identified by Battestin as Thomas King, whose coaching service between Chester, Bristol, Bath and the White Bear Inn, Piccadilly, is advertised several times in the Daily Gazetteer for 1747 (Wesleyan edn, p. 549).

  3. hit off a Fault: Recover a lost scent.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  1. E’en such a Man… half his Troy was burn’d: From 2 Henry IV, I. i. 70–73, where Northumberland is informed by a messenger that his son Hotspur is dead.

  2. Hercules… that beautiful Youth: ‘Hercules had the misfortune to lose his favorite youth Hylas, in the expedition to Colchis; nor would he be prevailed upon by the importunities and angry remonstrances of his companions, to depart, till they all assisted him, in bellowing after him, Hyla, Hyla!’ (footnote by HF and William Young to their translation of Aristophanes, Plutus, the God of Riches (1742), V. i. 38). Here HF is probably recalling Virgil’s evocati
on of the search: ‘The Cries of Argonauts for Hylas drown’d, / With whose repeated Name the Shoars resound’ (Eclogues, vi. 43–4, as translated in Dryden’s version of 1697).