The History of Tom Jones (Penguin Classics)
Page 121
BOOK XIV.
CHAPTER I.
1. As several Gentlemen… able to reach: Satirizing an emphasis on originality as opposed to imitation that was gaining ground in contemporary aesthetics under the influence of Addison’s Spectator for 3 September 1711 (No. 160) and other such treatises and essays. The classic statement was to be Edward Young’s Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), which holds up Samuel Richardson, HF’s largely self-taught rival, as its leading example. HF’s most obvious target at this point is ‘one of the Greatest Writers of our own Age: I mean Mr Colley Cibber, who in the Apology for his Life, tells us, That we have frequently Great Writers that cannot read’ (Champion, p. 294 (29 April 1740); on Cibber see above, II. i, n. 1).
2. Pitt: William Pitt the Elder (1708–78; Companion, p. 116), who had been at Eton with HF and was now Paymaster General of the Forces in the Pelham administration, was renowned for his parliamentary eloquence. He owed part of his reputation to Samuel Johnson, however: see above, XIII. v, n. 4. When Philip Francis (q.v. VIII. xiii, n. 2) hailed Pitt as the new Demosthenes on the basis of a speech in the Gentleman’s Magazine for February 1743, Johnson is reported to have replied: ‘That speech I wrote in a garret in Exeter-street’ (Johnsonian Miscellanies, I, 378).
3. as Cicero persuades us: ‘Cicero hath affirmed a compleat Knowledge of all Arts and Sciences to be necessary to the Formation of a perfect Orator’ (Champion, p. 86 (25 December 1739); see also JA, p. 209 (III. ii)). The allusion is to De Oratore, I. vi. 20 and xvi. 69–73.
4. Byshe’s Art of Poetry: Edward Bysshe’s The Art of English Poetry (1702), which included a compendium of verse quotations arranged by subject and was widely used as a poets’ crib. A copy lies open in Hogarth’s print ‘The Distrest Poet’ (see above, VI. iii, n. 1), and HF may have recognized it as the source for many of Lovelace’s quotations in Richardson’s Clarissa.
5. the excellent Treatise which Mr. Essex hath given… of genteel Education: John Essex (Companion, p. 61) was a renowned dancing-master who wrote works on the subject such as A Treatis of Chorography (1710). Elsewhere HF pokes fun at ‘the late learned Mr. Essex the celebrated Dancing-Master’s Opinion, that Dancing is the Rudiment of polite Education’ (Amelia, p. 199 (V. ii)), alluding to Essex’s insistence, in The Young Ladies Conduct; or, Rules for Education (1722), that while other arts and sciences have their uses, ‘few, if any, are so Necessary and Advantageous as [Dancing]’ (p. 82).
6. the excellent Mr. Broughton: See above, XIII. v, n. 6.
7. many English Writers… know nothing of it: Possibly a hit at Richardson, whose representations of high life in Pamela, and to a lesser extent Clarissa, were littered with social solecisms. In a letter to Lady Bradshaigh of 5 October 1753, Richardson privately explained the errors by admitting ‘that my Ignorance of Proprietys of those Kinds, was one of the Causes’.
8. What Mr. Pope says of Women… none which appears: ‘Most Women have no Characters at all’ (Epistle to a Lady (1735), line 2).
CHAPTER II.
1. a legal Phrase… the Reversion: In property law, reversion is the return of an estate to its rightful owner following a temporary grant of use and possession to another.
CHAPTER IV.
1. When ev’ry Eye… conscious of the Theft: Adapting Nicholas Rowe’s The Fair Penitent (1703), I. i. 144–5, where Lothario describes his seduction of the virgin Calista.
CHAPTER VI.
1. that noble Firmness of Mind… the Calamities which happen to others: See earlier, VIII. xiii, where HF quotes the favourite passage from Horace alluded to here, supplying Philip Francis’s translation in the footnote.
2. the Foundling-Hospital: A charitable institution in London ‘for the Maintenance and Education of exposed and deserted young Children’, founded by Captain Thomas Coram in 1739 and praised by HF as doing ‘Honour not only to the noble Propagators of it, but to our very Age and Nation’ (Champion, p. 193 (21February 1740)).
CHAPTER VII.
1. When you promised to marry her, she became your Wife: Battestin cites Giles Jacob’s New Law-Dictionary, 4th edn (1739): ‘it has been adjudged on a Promise of future Marriage, if the Parties afterwards lie together, the Contract passes thereby into a real Marriage in Construction of Law’ (Wesleyan edn, p. 768).
CHAPTER VIII.
1. the Sentiment of the Roman Satirist… expresly holds the contrary: See Juvenal, Satires, x. 365–6: ‘Fortune was never Worshipp’d by the Wise; / But, set aloft by Fools, Usurps the Skies’ (Dryden’s translation of 1693). Comparable sentiments are expressed by Seneca, e.g. in Epistulae Morales, IX. lxxx. 5. The allusion to Cicero probably derives from his characterization of Fortune, in Tusculan Disputations, as ‘domina rerum’ or ‘queen of things’ (V. ix. 25).
2. By the Force… enchanted Things merely inanimate: According to medieval hagiography, fish leaped from the water to hear the words of St Anthony of Padua (1195–1231). In Greek myth, the trees and rocks of Olympus gathered around Orpheus when he sang and played his lyre, and Amphion similarly charmed stones into place to fortify Thebes. Cf. John Kelly, Timon in Love (1733), II. vii, in which a singing-master boasts of teaching ‘the surprising Art that made Rocks and Trees dance after Orpheus, and, by which, Amphion built the Walls of Thebes’.
BOOK XV.
CHAPTER I.
1. There are a Set of Religious, or rather Moral Writers… not true: Alluding primarily to the deist followers of the Earl of Shaftesbury (q.v. V. ii, n. 1), whose thinking on the subject partly secularized the latitudinarian theology of Benjamin Whichcote (1609–83). See especially Shaftesbury’s ‘An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit’, which concludes that ‘virtue… is that by which alone man can be happy and without which he must be miserable’ (Characteristics, p. 230). HF recalls the mocking tone of Bernard Mandeville’s critique of Shaftesbury: ‘His Notions… are a high Compliment to Human-kind, and capable by the help of a little Enthusiasm of Inspiring us with the most Noble Sentiments concerning the Dignity of our exalted Nature: What Pity it is that they are not true’ (The Fable of the Bees, I, 324).
2. the antient Epicureans… every sensual Appetite: A characteristic distinction between the rigorous original and the debased modern senses of Epicureanism (from the teaching of Epicurus, 341–270 BC); see above, II. v, n. 1.
CHAPTER II.
1. to reckon by the old Style: HF’s joke is based on the discrepancy between the Julian or ‘Old Style’ calendar, which began the year on 25 March, and the Gregorian or ‘New Style’ calendar, which began the year on 1 January. Tom Jones was written in a period of ambiguous usage before the official adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1752.
CHAPTER III.
1. an honourable Club… fight once at least: Although the War of the Austrian Succession, formally concluded in October 1748, was the most recent war to have ended, Battestin plausibly finds an allusion here to a coterie of officers, the so-called ‘Derby Captains’, who devoted themselves to provoking duels following the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), which ended the War of the Spanish Succession. Battestin also cites John Arbuthnot’s prospectus for a mock-treatise entitled ‘The Art of Political Lying’ (1727), a chapter of which would outline ‘a Project for uniting the several smaller Corporations of Lyars into one Society’ (Wesleyan edn, pp. 789–90).
2. Edwards was likewise a Member of this comical Society: Battestin suggests that Tom Edwards may be a caricature of the sonneteer and scholar Thomas Edwards of Lincoln’s Inn (1699–1757), who frequently exercised his taste for malicious gossip, in letters to his close friend Samuel Richardson and elsewhere, at HF’s expense (Wesleyan edn, pp. 790–91). This odd passage does indeed suggest a real-life target, but HF may be alluding to the notorious Thomas Edwards of Frampton in Gloucestershire, who had been outed some years earlier for his association with a sodomitical coterie of ‘Hell-Cats’ moving between London and Bristol: ‘some of them appear to be topping, thumping, He–jading Quality of the first Rank in Lucifer’s Class; but partic
ularly that old Offender, Edwards, is among them’ (Daily Gazetteer, 22 February 1737; see also Gentleman’s Magazine VII (February 1737), p. 121).
3. Between the Acting… Nature of an Insurrection: The words of Brutus in Julius Caesar, II. i. 63–9.
4. I will never run away… my Father’s Inclinations: Here, and at several later points, HF’s wording accentuates the comic parallel with Richardson’s Clarissa. Accused by her father of encouraging Lovelace, Clarissa protests that she has ‘no inclination to marry at all’, but is then confined to the house ‘as if, like the giddiest of creatures, I would run away with this man, and disgrace my whole family’–as eventually happens (Clarissa, pp. 94, 96).
CHAPTER IV.
1. Newgate Solicitors: Predatory attorneys who specialized ‘in soliciting the Causes of the distressed Captives in Newgate’ (Miscellanies III, p. 12 (I. ii); see also Enquiry, p. 312).
2. Mr. Hook tells us, they made tolerable good Wives afterwards: Alluding to the rape of the Sabine women as recounted in the first volume of Nathaniel Hooke’s The Roman History, from the Building of Rome to the Ruin of the Commonwealth (1738), 32–8. HF owned this work and praises it elsewhere (Miscellanies II, p. 44; see also Companion, p. 83).
CHAPTER V.
1. The Fatal Marriage… disposes of her Wedding-Ring: In Thomas Southerne’s tragedy The Fatal Marriage (1694), the destitute Isabella, believing her husband to be dead, pawns her wedding ring to feed her infant son (II. ii).
2. Myrmidons: Comparing Western’s dogs to the Thessalian warriors led by Achilles in the Iliad; for a similar usage, see Amelia, p. 483 (XI. vii).
3. If my Death will make you happy… shortly be so: Sophia’s robust good health makes this a comically gratuitous remark, again apparently burlesquing Clarissa, in which the dying heroine concludes a letter to her family by bidding them ‘be blessed and happy… and in order to this, may you all speedily banish from your remembrance for ever / The unhappy / Clarissa Harlowe’ (p. 1197).
4. Spit: Contemptuous term for a sword (also used by a prototype of Western, a Somerset gentleman named Squire Badger, in HF’s comedy Don Quixote in England (1734), II. v).
CHAPTER VI.
1. In the third Chapter then of the preceding Book: Actually XIII. iii.
2. in Holland… at the Gates of Amsterdam: Referring to the French invasion of the United Provinces in 1672, when William of Orange saved Amsterdam by opening the dykes and flooding the surrounding land.
3. at Size: i.e. at the Assizes (sessions of the county court).
4. Je vous mesprise de tout mon Cœur: I despise you with all my heart.
5. Greenland should always be the Scene of the Tramontane Negotiation: Greenland was proverbially uncouth or barbarous (‘tramontane’): cf. Miscellanies I, p. 85; Miscellanies III, p. 28 (I. vii).
CHAPTER VIII.
1. Doctor’s Commons: An ecclesiastical court, near St Paul’s, where marriage licences were granted.
2. Homo sum: Humani nihil a me alienum puto: ‘I am a Man myself; and have an Interest in the Concerns of all other Men’, as HF translates these words elsewhere (CGJ, p. 112 (No. 16, 25 February 1752)). The speaker is Chremes in Terence’s Heauton Timorumenos (‘The Self-Tormentor’), I. i. 25.
CHAPTER X.
1. as Prior excellently well remarks… Letter of the Law: Matthew Prior (1664–1721), ‘Paulo Purganti and His Wife: An Honest, but a Simple Pair’ (1708), lines 1–3.
2. Addison says of Cæsar… sink before him!: Joseph Addison, Cato (1713), I. iii. 14.
CHAPTER XI.
1. her Virtue was rewarded… leaving her very rich: Resuming HF’s earlier satire on Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), in which the heroine’s virtue is rewarded by marriage to her wealthy master. Shamela parodically redefines her motivation: ‘I thought once of making a little Fortune by my Person. I now intend to make a great one by my Vartue’ (in JA, p. 29). Cf. Edward Moore’s comedy The Foundling (1748), in which a wealthy prospective husband imagines hanging himself after marriage ‘to give her Virtues the Reward of Widowhood! Faith, I must read Pamela twice over first’ (p. 4).
2. any Irishman… fifty thousand Pounds: Alluding to the comic stereotype of the Irish fortune-hunter: stage examples include Macahone in George Farquhar’s The Stage-Coach (1704), Shamwell in James Miller’s The Humours of Oxford (1730) and Mactawdry in John Mottley’s The Craftsman (1728).
CHAPTER XII.
1. you would come at the Infinitive Mood… Imperative: i.e. run before you can walk. Partridge’s expression is conditioned, as ever, by Lily’s Grammar, which arranges the verbal moods in order from Indicative and Imperative to, finally, Infinitive.
2. I would be my Pot too: i.e. Partridge would buy the next drink; he uses a similar construction above (see VIII. v, n. 2).
3. ad unguem: ‘To perfection’ (literally, ‘to a fingernail’, thus setting up a nonsensical pun).
BOOK XVI.
CHAPTER I.
1. a Dramatic Writer… Play than a Prologue: Possibly Nicholas Rowe; cf. Rowe’s epilogue to The Biter (1705):
Of all the Taxes which the Poet pays,
Those Funds of Verse, none are so hard to raise
As Prologues and as Epilogues to Plays. (1–3)
2. that Author, who first instituted… the Prologue: Probably Euripides, who is satirized by Aristophanes in The Frogs for his obsessive composition of explanatory prologues; limited use of the device, however, had already been made by other tragedians of the fifth century BC.
CHAPTER II.
1. an Order for Baggage-Waggons… grant a Warrant: By order of the annual ‘Mutiny Act’, Justices of the Peace were required to issue warrants to ensure the provision of baggage-wagons when troops were on the march (Wesleyan edn, p. 835).
2. Hide-Park: Hyde Park, especially the part known as the Ring, was the location of choice for duellists in London; cf. Amelia, p. 209 (V. v). Richard Brinsley Sheridan fought his celebrated duel with Thomas Mathews there in May 1772, adjourning to the Hercules Pillars when interrupted.
3. Varden: i.e. farthing.
4. choused: i.e. tricked.
CHAPTER III.
1. the Air on Bansted Downs, or Salisbury Plain: Areas of high ground in Surrey and Wiltshire respectively, renowned for their invigorating air; Banstead remained a place of fashionable resort even after 1730, when its race meetings moved to Epsom. Cf. William Congreve, Love for Love (1695), I. i. 91–4: ‘I never sit at the Door, that I don’t get double the Stomach that I do at a Horse-Race. The Air upon Banstead-Downs is nothing to it for a Whetter’; also William Hazlitt’s allusion to the philosopher Abraham Tucker (1705–74) in his essay ‘On the Pleasure of Painting’ (1821): ‘as excellent an appetite for one’s dinner as old Abraham Tucker acquired for his by riding over Banstead Downs’.
2. the Royal Society: See above, XIII. v, n. 5.
3. Ovid tells us of a Flower… the Royal Society of his Day: Cf. HF’s Some Papers Proper to be Read before the R—l Society (1743), in which similar use is made of Virgil’s Eclogues, iii. 106–7: ‘Tell me in what land spring up flowers with royal names written thereon’ (Miscellanies I, p. 197 and n.). Virgil alludes to the myth of Hyacinth, a young Spartan prince inadvertently killed by his lover Apollo; Apollo makes a flower spring from Hyacinth’s blood, its petals marked with the characters ‘ai, ai’ to indicate both the first vowel of Hyacinth’s name and the Greek cry of mourning (Ovid, Metamorphoses, x. 162–219).
CHAPTER IV.
1. Turnpike Acts: Laws passed to finance road-building and maintenance through collection of tolls at turnpikes. HF writes as turnpike mania was taking off (37 such acts were passed in the 1740s, 170 in the 1750s) amid popular resentment about tolls and elite complaints about the inadequate quality and maintenance of roads. The Broad Wheel Act of 1753 (26 George II, c. 30) aimed to protect deteriorating surfaces by regulating the width of wheel-rims. Turnpike destruction was made a capital offence in 1735, and a protestor was hanged at Ledbury t
he following year; see also CGJ, p. 409 (No. 15, 22 February 1752), for a case of turnpike robbery that came before HF on the bench.