History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

by Henry Fielding

  Chapter vi.

  An apology for the insensibility of Mr Jones to all the charms of thelovely Sophia; in which possibly we may, in a considerable degree,lower his character in the estimation of those men of wit andgallantry who approve the heroes in most of our modern comedies.

  There are two sorts of people, who, I am afraid, have alreadyconceived some contempt for my heroe, on account of his behaviour toSophia. The former of these will blame his prudence in neglecting anopportunity to possess himself of Mr Western's fortune; and the latterwill no less despise him for his backwardness to so fine a girl, whoseemed ready to fly into his arms, if he would open them to receiveher.

  Now, though I shall not perhaps be able absolutely to acquit him ofeither of these charges (for want of prudence admits of no excuse; andwhat I shall produce against the latter charge will, I apprehend, bescarce satisfactory); yet, as evidence may sometimes be offered inmitigation, I shall set forth the plain matter of fact, and leave thewhole to the reader's determination.

  Mr Jones had somewhat about him, which, though I think writers are notthoroughly agreed in its name, doth certainly inhabit some humanbreasts; whose use is not so properly to distinguish right from wrong,as to prompt and incite them to the former, and to restrain andwithhold them from the latter.

  This somewhat may be indeed resembled to the famous trunk-maker in theplayhouse; for, whenever the person who is possessed of it doth whatis right, no ravished or friendly spectator is so eager or so loud inhis applause: on the contrary, when he doth wrong, no critic is so aptto hiss and explode him.

  To give a higher idea of the principle I mean, as well as one morefamiliar to the present age; it may be considered as sitting on itsthrone in the mind, like the Lord High Chancellor of this kingdom inhis court; where it presides, governs, directs, judges, acquits, andcondemns according to merit and justice, with a knowledge whichnothing escapes, a penetration which nothing can deceive, and anintegrity which nothing can corrupt.

  This active principle may perhaps be said to constitute the mostessential barrier between us and our neighbours the brutes; for ifthere be some in the human shape who are not under any such dominion,I choose rather to consider them as deserters from us to ourneighbours; among whom they will have the fate of deserters, and notbe placed in the first rank.

  Our heroe, whether he derived it from Thwackum or Square I will notdetermine, was very strongly under the guidance of this principle; forthough he did not always act rightly, yet he never did otherwisewithout feeling and suffering for it. It was this which taught him,that to repay the civilities and little friendships of hospitality byrobbing the house where you have received them, is to be the basestand meanest of thieves. He did not think the baseness of this offencelessened by the height of the injury committed; on the contrary, if tosteal another's plate deserved death and infamy, it seemed to himdifficult to assign a punishment adequate to the robbing a man of hiswhole fortune, and of his child into the bargain.

  This principle, therefore, prevented him from any thought of makinghis fortune by such means (for this, as I have said, is an activeprinciple, and doth not content itself with knowledge or belief only).Had he been greatly enamoured of Sophia, he possibly might havethought otherwise; but give me leave to say, there is great differencebetween running away with a man's daughter from the motive of love,and doing the same thing from the motive of theft.

  Now, though this young gentleman was not insensible of the charms ofSophia; though he greatly liked her beauty, and esteemed all her otherqualifications, she had made, however, no deep impression on hisheart; for which, as it renders him liable to the charge of stupidity,or at least of want of taste, we shall now proceed to account.

  The truth then is, his heart was in the possession of another woman.Here I question not but the reader will be surprized at our longtaciturnity as to this matter; and quite at a loss to divine who thiswoman was, since we have hitherto not dropt a hint of any one likelyto be a rival to Sophia; for as to Mrs Blifil, though we have beenobliged to mention some suspicions of her affection for Tom, we havenot hitherto given the least latitude for imagining that he had anyfor her; and, indeed, I am sorry to say it, but the youth of bothsexes are too apt to be deficient in their gratitude for that regardwith which persons more advanced in years are sometimes so kind tohonour them.

  That the reader may be no longer in suspense, he will be pleased toremember, that we have often mentioned the family of George Seagrim(commonly called Black George, the gamekeeper), which consisted atpresent of a wife and five children.

  The second of these children was a daughter, whose name was Molly, andwho was esteemed one of the handsomest girls in the whole country.

  Congreve well says there is in true beauty something which vulgarsouls cannot admire; so can no dirt or rags hide this something fromthose souls which are not of the vulgar stamp.

  The beauty of this girl made, however, no impression on Tom, till shegrew towards the age of sixteen, when Tom, who was near three yearsolder, began first to cast the eyes of affection upon her. And thisaffection he had fixed on the girl long before he could bring himselfto attempt the possession of her person: for though his constitutionurged him greatly to this, his principles no less forcibly restrainedhim. To debauch a young woman, however low her condition was, appearedto him a very heinous crime; and the good-will he bore the father,with the compassion he had for his family, very strongly corroboratedall such sober reflections; so that he once resolved to get the betterof his inclinations, and he actually abstained three whole monthswithout ever going to Seagrim's house, or seeing his daughter.

  Now, though Molly was, as we have said, generally thought a very finegirl, and in reality she was so, yet her beauty was not of the mostamiable kind. It had, indeed, very little of feminine in it, and wouldhave become a man at least as well as a woman; for, to say the truth,youth and florid health had a very considerable share in thecomposition.

  Nor was her mind more effeminate than her person. As this was tall androbust, so was that bold and forward. So little had she of modesty,that Jones had more regard for her virtue than she herself. And asmost probably she liked Tom as well as he liked her, so when sheperceived his backwardness she herself grew proportionably forward;and when she saw he had entirely deserted the house, she found meansof throwing herself in his way, and behaved in such a manner that theyouth must have had very much or very little of the heroe if herendeavours had proved unsuccessful. In a word, she soon triumphed overall the virtuous resolutions of Jones; for though she behaved at lastwith all decent reluctance, yet I rather chuse to attribute thetriumph to her, since, in fact, it was her design which succeeded.

  In the conduct of this matter, I say, Molly so well played her part,that Jones attributed the conquest entirely to himself, and consideredthe young woman as one who had yielded to the violent attacks of hispassion. He likewise imputed her yielding to the ungovernable force ofher love towards him; and this the reader will allow to have been avery natural and probable supposition, as we have more than oncementioned the uncommon comeliness of his person: and, indeed, he wasone of the handsomest young fellows in the world.

  As there are some minds whose affections, like Master Blifil's, aresolely placed on one single person, whose interest and indulgencealone they consider on every occasion; regarding the good and ill ofall others as merely indifferent, any farther than as they contributeto the pleasure or advantage of that person: so there is a differenttemper of mind which borrows a degree of virtue even from self-love.Such can never receive any kind of satisfaction from another, withoutloving the creature to whom that satisfaction is owing, and withoutmaking its well-being in some sort necessary to their own ease.

  Of this latter species was our heroe. He considered this poor girl asone whose happiness or misery he had caused to be dependent onhimself. Her beauty was still the object of desire, though greaterbeauty, or a fresher object, might have been more so; but the littleabatement which fruition had occasioned to t
his was highlyoverbalanced by the considerations of the affection which she visiblybore him, and of the situation into which he had brought her. Theformer of these created gratitude, the latter compassion; and both,together with his desire for her person, raised in him a passion whichmight, without any great violence to the word, be called love; though,perhaps, it was at first not very judiciously placed.

  This, then, was the true reason of that insensibility which he hadshown to the charms of Sophia, and that behaviour in her which mighthave been reasonably enough interpreted as an encouragement to hisaddresses; for as he could not think of abandoning his Molly, poor anddestitute as she was, so no more could he entertain a notion ofbetraying such a creature as Sophia. And surely, had he given theleast encouragement to any passion for that young lady, he must havebeen absolutely guilty of one or other of those crimes; either ofwhich would, in my opinion, have very justly subjected him to thatfate, which, at his first introduction into this history, I mentionedto have been generally predicted as his certain destiny.