Joseph Andrews, vol 1 | Page 7

if the bottle of good wine were not forthcoming, he would
have been very tolerant of a mug of good ale. He may very possibly
have drunk more than he should, and lost more than he could
conveniently pay. It may be put down as morally ascertained that

towards all these weaknesses of humanity, and others like unto them,
he held an attitude which was less that of the unassailable philosopher
than that of the sympathiser, indulgent and excusing. In regard more
especially to what are commonly called moral delinquencies, this
attitude was so decided as to shock some people even in those days,
and many in these. Just when the first sheets of this edition were
passing through the press, a violent attack was made in a newspaper
correspondence on the morality of Tom Jones by certain notorious
advocates of Purity, as some say, of Pruriency and Prudery combined,
according to less complimentary estimates. Even midway between the
two periods we find the admirable Miss Ferrier, a sister of Fielding's
own craft, who sometimes had touches of nature and satire not far
inferior to his own, expressing by the mouth of one of her characters
with whom she seems partly to agree, the sentiment that his works are
"vanishing like noxious exhalations." Towards any misdoing by
persons of the one sex towards persons of the other, when it involved
brutality or treachery, Fielding was pitiless; but when treachery and
brutality were not concerned, he was, to say the least, facile. So, too, he
probably knew by experience--he certainly knew by native shrewdness
and acquired observation--that to look too much on the wine when it is
red, or on the cards when they are parti-coloured, is ruinous to health
and fortune; but he thought not over badly of any man who did these
things. Still it is possible to admit this in him, and to stop short of that
idea of a careless and reckless viveur which has so often been put
forward. In particular, Lady Mary's view of his childlike enjoyment of
the moment has been, I think, much exaggerated by posterity, and was
probably not a little mistaken by the lady herself. There are two moods
in which the motto is Carpe diem, one a mood of simply childish hurry,
the other one where behind the enjoyment of the moment lurks, and in
which the enjoyment of the moment is not a little heightened by, that
vast ironic consciousness of the before and after, which I at least see
everywhere in the background of Fielding's work.
The man, however, of whom we know so little, concerns us much less
than the author of the works, of which it only rests with ourselves to
know everything. I have above classed Fielding as one of the four
Atlantes of English verse and prose, and I doubt not that both the

phrase and the application of it to him will meet with question and
demur. I have only to interject, as the critic so often has to interject, a
request to the court to take what I say in the sense in which I say it. I do
not mean that Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, and Fielding are in all or
even in most respects on a level. I do not mean that the three last are in
all respects of the greatest names in English literature. I only mean that,
in a certain quality, which for want of a better word I have chosen to
call Atlantean, they stand alone. Each of them, for the metaphor is
applicable either way, carries a whole world on his shoulders, or looks
down on a whole world from his natural altitude. The worlds are
different, but they are worlds; and though the attitude of the giants is
different also, it agrees in all of them on the points of competence and
strength. Take whomsoever else we may among our men of letters, and
we shall find this characteristic to be in comparison wanting. These
four carry their world, and are not carried by it; and if it, in the
language so dear to Fielding himself, were to crash and shatter, the
inquiry, "_Que vous reste-t-il?_" could be answered by each, "_Moi!_"
The appearance which Fielding makes is no doubt the most modest of
the four. He has not Shakespeare's absolute universality, and in fact not
merely the poet's tongue, but the poet's thought seems to have been
denied him. His sphere is not the ideal like Milton's. His irony, splendid
as it is, falls a little short of that diabolical magnificence which exalts
Swift to the point whence, in his own way, he surveys all the kingdoms
of the world, and the glory or vainglory of them. All Fielding's critics
have noted the manner, in a