The History of the Life of the Late Mr Jonathan Wild the Great | Page 3

and pain, of good and bad; for life is not all either one thing or the other, nor has it ever been so. Such reality is not found in a satire, for a satire, as distinguished from a novel, both conceals and exaggerates: it gives half-truths instead of whole truths; it shows not all of life but only a part; and even this it cannot show quite truly, for its avowed object is to magnify some vice or foible. In doing so, a satire finds no means so effective as irony, which makes its appeal wholly to the intellect. A good novel, on the contrary, touches the head and the heart both; along with passages which give keen intellectual enjoyment, it offers passages which move its reader's tears. Still, a good novelist without appreciation of irony cannot be imagined, for without the sense of humour which makes irony appreciated, it is impossible to see the objects of this world in their right proportions. Irony, then, which is the main part of a satire, is essential to a good novel, though not necessarily more than a small part of it. Intellectually there is nothing in English literature of the eighteenth century greater than A Tale of a Tub or the larger part of Gullivers Travels; intellectually there is nothing in Fielding's works greater than most of Jonathan Wild; but taken all in all, is not a novel like Tom Jones, with its eternal appeal to the emotions as well as the intellect, greater than a perfect satire? Even if this be not admitted, Jonathan Wild, we have already seen, is not a perfect satire. For a work of its kind, it is too sympathetically human, and so suffers in exactly the opposite way from Vanity Fair, which many people think is kept from being the greatest English novel of the nineteenth century because it is too satirical.
No, I cannot agree with Professor Saintsbury that "Fielding has written no greater book" than Jonathan Wild. It was unquestionably the most important part of the Miscellanies of 1743. Its brilliancy may make it outrank even that delightful Journal of the Voyage to Lisbon. A higher place should not be claimed for it. Mr. Dobson, in his Henry Fielding, has assigned the right position to Jonathan Wild when he says that its place "in Fielding's works is immediately after his three great novels, and this is more by reason of its subject than its workmanship," which if not perfect, is yet for the most part excellent.
G. H. MAYNADIER.

THE LIFE OF THE LATE
MR. JONATHAN WILD
BOOK I
CHAPTER ONE
SHEWING THE WHOLESOME USES DRAWN FROM RECORDING THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THOSE WONDERFUL PRODUCTIONS OF NATURE CALLED GREAT MEN.
As it is necessary that all great and surprising events, the designs of which are laid, conducted, and brought to perfection by the utmost force of human invention and art, should be produced by great and eminent men, so the lives of such may be justly and properly styled the quintessence of history. In these, when delivered to us by sensible writers, we are not only most agreeably entertained, but most usefully instructed; for, besides the attaining hence a consummate knowledge of human nature in general; of its secret springs, various windings, and perplexed mazes; we have here before our eyes lively examples of whatever is amiable or detestable, worthy of admiration or abhorrence, and are consequently taught, in a manner infinitely more effectual than by precept, what we are eagerly to imitate or carefully to avoid.
But besides the two obvious advantages of surveying, as it were in a picture, the true beauty of virtue and deformity of vice, we may moreover learn from Plutarch, Nepos, Suetonius, and other biographers, this useful lesson, not too hastily, nor in the gross, to bestow either our praise or censure; since we shall often find such a mixture of good and evil in the same character that it may require a very accurate judgment and a very elaborate inquiry to determine on which side the balance turns, for though we sometimes meet with an Aristides or a Brutus, a Lysander or a Nero, yet far the greater number are of the mixt kind, neither totally good nor bad; their greatest virtues being obscured and allayed by their vices, and those again softened and coloured over by their virtues.
Of this kind was the illustrious person whose history we now undertake; to whom, though nature had given the greatest and most shining endowments, she had not given them absolutely pure and without allay. Though he had much of the admirable in his character, as much perhaps as is usually to be found in a hero, I will not yet venture to affirm that he was entirely free from all defects, or that the sharp eyes of censure could