Joseph Andrews, vol 1 | Page 2

a political light_

CHAPTER IX.
_In which the gentleman discants on bravery and heroic virtue, till an
unlucky accident puts an end to the discourse_

CHAPTER X.
_Giving an account of the strange catastrophe of the preceding
adventure, which drew poor Adams into fresh calamities; and who the
woman was who owed the preservation of her chastity to his victorious
arm_

CHAPTER XI.
_What happened to them while before the justice. A chapter very full of
learning_

CHAPTER XII.
_A very delightful adventure, as well to the persons concerned as to the
good-natured reader_

CHAPTER XIII.
_A dissertation concerning high people and low people, with Mrs
Slipslop's departure in no very good temper of mind, and the evil plight
in which she left Adams and his company_
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PORTRAIT OF FIELDING, FROM BUST IN THE SHIRE HALL,
TAUNTON "JOSEPH, I AM SORRY TO HEAR SUCH
COMPLAINTS AGAINST YOU" THE HOSTLER PRESENTED
HIM A BILL JOSEPH THANKED HER ON HIS KNEES

GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
There are few amusements more dangerous for an author than the
indulgence in ironic descriptions of his own work. If the irony is

depreciatory, posterity is but too likely to say, "Many a true word is
spoken in jest;" if it is encomiastic, the same ruthless and ungrateful
critic is but too likely to take it as an involuntary confession of folly
and vanity. But when Fielding, in one of his serio-comic introductions
to Tom Jones, described it as "this prodigious work," he all
unintentionally (for he was the least pretentious of men) anticipated the
verdict which posterity almost at once, and with ever-increasing
suffrage of the best judges as time went on, was about to pass not
merely upon this particular book, but upon his whole genius and his
whole production as a novelist. His work in other kinds is of a very
different order of excellence. It is sufficiently interesting at times in
itself; and always more than sufficiently interesting as his; for which
reasons, as well as for the further one that it is comparatively little
known, a considerable selection from it is offered to the reader in the
last two volumes of this edition. Until the present occasion (which
made it necessary that I should acquaint myself with it) I own that my
own knowledge of these miscellaneous writings was by no means
thorough. It is now pretty complete; but the idea which I previously had
of them at first and second hand, though a little improved, has not very
materially altered. Though in all this hack-work Fielding displayed,
partially and at intervals, the same qualities which he displayed
eminently and constantly in the four great books here given, he was not,
as the French idiom expresses it, dans son assiette, in his own natural
and impregnable disposition and situation of character and ability,
when he was occupied on it. The novel was for him that _assiette_; and
all his novels are here.
Although Henry Fielding lived in quite modern times, although by
family and connections he was of a higher rank than most men of
letters, and although his genius was at once recognised by his
contemporaries so soon as it displayed itself in its proper sphere, his
biography until very recently was by no means full; and the most recent
researches, including those of Mr Austin Dobson--a critic unsurpassed
for combination of literary faculty and knowledge of the eighteenth
century--have not altogether sufficed to fill up the gaps. His family,
said to have descended from a member of the great house of Hapsburg
who came to England in the reign of Henry II., distinguished itself in
the Wars of the Roses, and in the seventeenth century was advanced to

the peerages of Denbigh in England and (later) of Desmond in Ireland.
The novelist was the grandson of John Fielding, Canon of Salisbury,
the fifth son of the first Earl of Desmond of this creation. The canon's
third son, Edmond, entered the army, served under Marlborough, and
married Sarah Gold or Gould, daughter of a judge of the King's Bench.
Their eldest son was Henry, who was born on April 22, 1707, and had
an uncertain number of brothers and sisters of the whole blood. After
his first wife's death, General Fielding (for he attained that rank)
married again. The most remarkable offspring of the first marriage,
next to Henry, was his sister Sarah, also a novelist, who wrote David
Simple; of the second, John, afterwards Sir John Fielding, who, though
blind, succeeded his half-brother as a Bow Street magistrate, and in that
office combined an equally honourable record with a longer tenure.
Fielding was born at Sharpham Park in Somersetshire, the seat of his
maternal grandfather; but most of his early youth was spent at East
Stour in