History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

by Henry Fielding

  Chapter i.

  Containing a portion of introductory writing.

  When a comic writer hath made his principal characters as happy as hecan, or when a tragic writer hath brought them to the highest pitch ofhuman misery, they both conclude their business to be done, and thattheir work is come to a period.

  Had we been of the tragic complexion, the reader must now allow wewere very nearly arrived at this period, since it would be difficultfor the devil, or any of his representatives on earth, to havecontrived much greater torments for poor Jones than those in which weleft him in the last chapter; and as for Sophia, a good-natured womanwould hardly wish more uneasiness to a rival than what she must atpresent be supposed to feel. What then remains to complete the tragedybut a murder or two and a few moral sentences!

  But to bring our favourites out of their present anguish and distress,and to land them at last on the shore of happiness, seems a muchharder task; a task indeed so hard that we do not undertake to executeit. In regard to Sophia, it is more than probable that we shallsomewhere or other provide a good husband for her in the end--eitherBlifil, or my lord, or somebody else; but as to poor Jones, such arethe calamities in which he is at present involved, owing to hisimprudence, by which if a man doth not become felon to the world, heis at least a _felo de se_; so destitute is he now of friends, and sopersecuted by enemies, that we almost despair of bringing him to anygood; and if our reader delights in seeing executions, I think heought not to lose any time in taking a first row at Tyburn.

  This I faithfully promise, that, notwithstanding any affection whichwe may be supposed to have for this rogue, whom we have unfortunatelymade our heroe, we will lend him none of that supernatural assistancewith which we are entrusted, upon condition that we use it only onvery important occasions. If he doth not therefore find some naturalmeans of fairly extricating himself from all his distresses, we willdo no violence to the truth and dignity of history for his sake; forwe had rather relate that he was hanged at Tyburn (which may veryprobably be the case) than forfeit our integrity, or shock the faithof our reader.

  In this the antients had a great advantage over the moderns. Theirmythology, which was at that time more firmly believed by the vulgarthan any religion is at present, gave them always an opportunity ofdelivering a favourite heroe. Their deities were always ready at thewriter's elbow, to execute any of his purposes; and the moreextraordinary the invention was, the greater was the surprize anddelight of the credulous reader. Those writers could with greater easehave conveyed a heroe from one country to another, nay from one worldto another, and have brought him back again, than a poor circumscribedmodern can deliver him from a jail.

  The Arabians and Persians had an equal advantage in writing theirtales from the genii and fairies, which they believe in as an articleof their faith, upon the authority of the Koran itself. But we havenone of these helps. To natural means alone we are confined; let ustry therefore what, by these means, may be done for poor Jones; thoughto confess the truth, something whispers me in the ear that he dothnot yet know the worst of his fortune; and that a more shocking pieceof news than any he hath yet heard remains for him in the unopenedleaves of fate.