There are some who insist that Fielding’s “Tom Jones” has not been surpassed by the work of any of the later novelists.
I confess that on the second reading of this story I failed to find in either plot or portraiture that excellence which would entitle the book to take a preëminent rank among works of fiction. In the succession of adventures which compose the tale there is a recurrence of incidents which resemble each other so closely that they cease to be novel or attractive. Conversations are usually interrupted by the unexpected appearance of some one not desired, or else by an “uproar” followed by a fight, until the repetition becomes monotonous. There is not a character in the book capable of arousing any strong feeling of admiration or sympathy.
Sophia Western is intended to be amiable and attractive, though she gives little evidence of any remarkable or alluring qualities in what she says or does. Her sufferings are hardly great enough to cause distress to the reader, and the manner in which she finally agrees to wed her scapegrace of a lover, without waiting for the probationary year which she had first required, does not betoken any great constancy or strength of purpose.
Tom Jones himself is not beset by those overpowering temptations and strong passions which might in a way excuse his scandalous behavior. He is indeed warm-hearted, courageous, and fond of his benefactor, Mr. Allworthy, and he is apparently somewhat attached even to the young woman to whom he is continually unfaithful. If he has other excellences, they do not appear, while his vices are conspicuous and repulsive. A thoroughly interesting character can not be made out of such material.
On the other hand, hypocrisy becomes living flesh and blood in the person of the discreet, pious, treacherous, cold-blooded Blifil, who “visited his friend Jones but seldom, and never alone,” and “cautiously avoided any intimacy lest it might contaminate the sobriety of his own character.”
The most picturesque person in the book is undoubtedly Squire Western, with his senseless prejudices and his wild outbreaks of passion.
But if we leave the characters and incidents out of the question, there is a good deal of delightful reading in the book. The author is a consummate master of English. I began “Tom Jones” just after finishing “David Copperfield,” and the transition from the style of Dickens to that of Fielding was a refreshing surprise. The chapters which are introductory to each of the so-called “books” of the novel are intended, as the author tells us, to set off the rest by reason of their dulness. Some of them are in fact a little tedious, but many are pleasant excursions into fields ofcriticism and satire which mark the author as an essayist of the first order. The mock-heroic manner in which he describes the methods of his own work, the burlesque praises which he bestows upon it, and his contempt for his critics, are very amusing.
“This work,” he says, “may indeed be considered as a great creation of our own, and for a little reptile of a critic to presume to find fault with any of its parts without knowing the manner in which the whole is connected, and before he comes to the final catastrophe, is a most presumptuous absurdity.”
In another place he gives a comic justification of plagiarism from classical authors:
“The ancients,” he says, “may be considered as a rich common where every person who has the smallest tenement in Parnassus hath a free right to fatten his muse.” “The writers of antiquity were so many wealthy squires from whom the poor might claim an immemorial custom of taking whatever they could come at, so long as they maintained strict honesty among themselves.”
His use of epic diction in the description of the commonplace is sometimes irresistibly comic,—for example, the following on the fight of Mollie Seagrim in the churchyard:
“Recount, O Muse, the names of those who fell on this fatal day. First, Jemmy Tweedle felt on his hinder head the direful bone. Him the pleasant banks of sweetly winding Stour had nourished, where he first learnt the vocal art, with which, wandering up and down at wakesand fairs, he cheered the rural nymphs and swains, when upon the green they interweaved the sprightly dance, while he himself stood fiddling and jumping to his own music. How little now avails his fiddle! He thumps the verdant floor with his carcass.”
“Recount, O Muse, the names of those who fell on this fatal day. First, Jemmy Tweedle felt on his hinder head the direful bone. Him the pleasant banks of sweetly winding Stour had nourished, where he first learnt the vocal art, with which, wandering up and down at wakesand fairs, he cheered the rural nymphs and swains, when upon the green they interweaved the sprightly dance, while he himself stood fiddling and jumping to his own music. How little now avails his fiddle! He thumps the verdant floor with his carcass.”
Contrary to the general opinion, I think that Fielding is entitled to far more praise for the literary quality which pervades his novel than for its “realism” and “fidelity to nature” which are the claims of most of its admirers.