The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling | Page 9

Heliogabalus, hath
produced. This great man, as is well known to all lovers of polite eating,
begins at first by setting plain things before his hungry guests, rising
afterwards by degrees as their stomachs may be supposed to decrease,
to the very quintessence of sauce and spices. In like manner, we shall
represent human nature at first to the keen appetite of our reader, in that
more plain and simple manner in which it is found in the country, and
shall hereafter hash and ragoo it with all the high French and Italian
seasoning of affectation and vice which courts and cities afford. By
these means, we doubt not but our reader may be rendered desirous to
read on for ever, as the great person just above-mentioned is supposed

to have made some persons eat.
Having premised thus much, we will now detain those who like our bill
of fare no longer from their diet, and shall proceed directly to serve up
the first course of our history for their entertainment.

Chapter ii.
A short description of squire Allworthy, and a fuller account of Miss
Bridget Allworthy, his sister.
In that part of the western division of this kingdom which is commonly
called Somersetshire, there lately lived, and perhaps lives still, a
gentleman whose name was Allworthy, and who might well be called
the favourite of both nature and fortune; for both of these seem to have
contended which should bless and enrich him most. In this contention,
nature may seem to some to have come off victorious, as she bestowed
on him many gifts, while fortune had only one gift in her power; but in
pouring forth this, she was so very profuse, that others perhaps may
think this single endowment to have been more than equivalent to all
the various blessings which he enjoyed from nature. From the former of
these, he derived an agreeable person, a sound constitution, a solid
understanding, and a benevolent heart; by the latter, he was decreed to
the inheritance of one of the largest estates in the county.
This gentleman had in his youth married a very worthy and beautiful
woman, of whom he had been extremely fond: by her he had three
children, all of whom died in their infancy. He had likewise had the
misfortune of burying this beloved wife herself, about five years before
the time in which this history chuses to set out. This loss, however
great, he bore like a man of sense and constancy, though it must be
confest he would often talk a little whimsically on this head; for he
sometimes said he looked on himself as still married, and considered
his wife as only gone a little before him, a journey which he should
most certainly, sooner or later, take after her; and that he had not the
least doubt of meeting her again in a place where he should never part

with her more--sentiments for which his sense was arraigned by one
part of his neighbours, his religion by a second, and his sincerity by a
third.
He now lived, for the most part, retired in the country, with one sister,
for whom he had a very tender affection. This lady was now somewhat
past the age of thirty, an aera at which, in the opinion of the malicious,
the title of old maid may with no impropriety be assumed. She was of
that species of women whom you commend rather for good qualities
than beauty, and who are generally called, by their own sex, very good
sort of women--as good a sort of woman, madam, as you would wish to
know. Indeed, she was so far from regretting want of beauty, that she
never mentioned that perfection, if it can be called one, without
contempt; and would often thank God she was not as handsome as Miss
Such-a-one, whom perhaps beauty had led into errors which she might
have otherwise avoided. Miss Bridget Allworthy (for that was the name
of this lady) very rightly conceived the charms of person in a woman to
be no better than snares for herself, as well as for others; and yet so
discreet was she in her conduct, that her prudence was as much on the
guard as if she had all the snares to apprehend which were ever laid for
her whole sex. Indeed, I have observed, though it may seem
unaccountable to the reader, that this guard of prudence, like the trained
bands, is always readiest to go on duty where there is the least danger.
It often basely and cowardly deserts those paragons for whom the men
are all wishing, sighing, dying, and spreading, every net in their power;
and constantly attends at the heels of that higher order of women for
whom the