Amelia | Page 6

yourself
without incurring a suspicion of flattery in the bosoms of the malignant.
This task, therefore, I shall defer till that day (if I should be so
unfortunate as ever to see it) when every good man shall pay a tear for
the satisfaction of his curiosity; a day which, at present, I believe, there
is but one good man in the world who can think of it with unconcern.
Accept then, sir, this small token of that love, that gratitude, and that
respect, with which I shall always esteem it my GREATEST
HONOUR to be,
Sir, Your most obliged, and most obedient humble servant, HENRY
FIELDING.
_Bow Street, Dec. 2, 1751._
[Illustration.]

AMELIA.
VOL. I
BOOK I.

Chapter i.

_Containing the exordium, &c._
The various accidents which befel a very worthy couple after their
uniting in the state of matrimony will be the subject of the following
history. The distresses which they waded through were some of them
so exquisite, and the incidents which produced these so extraordinary,
that they seemed to require not only the utmost malice, but the utmost
invention, which superstition hath ever attributed to Fortune: though
whether any such being interfered in the case, or, indeed, whether there
be any such being in the universe, is a matter which I by no means
presume to determine in the affirmative. To speak a bold truth, I am,
after much mature deliberation, inclined to suspect that the public voice
hath, in all ages, done much injustice to Fortune, and hath convicted
her of many facts in which she had not the least concern. I question
much whether we may not, by natural means, account for the success of
knaves, the calamities of fools, with all the miseries in which men of
sense sometimes involve themselves, by quitting the directions of
Prudence, and following the blind guidance of a predominant passion;
in short, for all the ordinary phenomena which are imputed to Fortune;
whom, perhaps, men accuse with no less absurdity in life, than a bad
player complains of ill luck at the game of chess.
But if men are sometimes guilty of laying improper blame on this
imaginary being, they are altogether as apt to make her amends by
ascribing to her honours which she as little deserves. To retrieve the ill
consequences of a foolish conduct, and by struggling manfully with
distress to subdue it, is one of the noblest efforts of wisdom and virtue.
Whoever, therefore, calls such a man fortunate, is guilty of no less
impropriety in speech than he would be who should call the statuary or
the poet fortunate who carved a Venus or who writ an Iliad.
Life may as properly be called an art as any other; and the great
incidents in it are no more to be considered as mere accidents than the
several members of a fine statue or a noble poem. The critics in all
these are not content with seeing anything to be great without knowing
why and how it came to be so. By examining carefully the several
gradations which conduce to bring every model to perfection, we learn

truly to know that science in which the model is formed: as histories of
this kind, therefore, may properly be called models of human life, so,
by observing minutely the several incidents which tend to the
catastrophe or completion of the whole, and the minute causes whence
those incidents are produced, we shall best be instructed in this most
useful of all arts, which I call the _art _ of life.

Chapter ii
_The history sets out. Observations on the excellency of the English
constitution and curious examinations before a justice of peace._
On the first of April, in the year ----, the watchmen of a certain parish (I
know not particularly which) within the liberty of Westminster brought
several persons whom they had apprehended the preceding night before
Jonathan Thrasher, Esq., one of the justices of the peace for that liberty.
But here, reader, before we proceed to the trials of these offenders, we
shall, after our usual manner, premise some things which it may be
necessary for thee to know.
It hath been observed, I think, by many, as well as the celebrated writer
of three letters, that no human institution is capable of consummate
perfection. An observation which, perhaps, that writer at least gathered
from discovering some defects in the polity even of this well-regulated
nation. And, indeed, if there should be any such defect in a constitution
which my Lord Coke long ago told us "the wisdom of all the wise men
in the world, if they had all met together at one time, could not have
equalled," which some of our wisest men who were met together long
before said