a stage-coach came by. The postilion hearing a man’s groans, stopped his horses, and
told the coachman, ‘he was certain there was a dead man lying in the ditch, for he heard
him groan.’ ‘Go on, sirrah,’ says the coachman, ‘we are confounded late, and have no
time to look after dead men.’ A lady, who heard what the postilion said, and likewise
heard the groan, called eagerly to the coachman, ‘to stop and see what was the matter.’
Upon which he bid the postilion ‘alight, and look into the ditch.’ He did so, and
returned, ‘that there was a man sitting upright as naked as ever he was born,’ – ‘O, J–sus,’
cried the lady, ‘A naked man! Dear coachman, drive on and leave him.’
When robbery is mentioned, a gentleman passenger says to drive on lest they be
robbed too. A lawyer advises that the victim be taken into the coach, lest they be
implicated in a court case. Not without a fare, says the coachman; and so on. To
renew a good text – the parable of the Good Samaritan – while showing how another- Richardson’s – is bad, is an Augustan procedure.
Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones,though its action is also full of rumbustious
roadside adventures, is planned. ‘A comic epic in prose’, it has eighteen books
(Homer has twenty-four, Virgil twelve). Its symmetrical timescale has at its centre an
ac tion-packed 24 hours in an inn at Upton-upon-Severn. Tom, a foundling, is
expelled from Paradise Hall, the Somerset home of his foster-father Squire
Allworthy, and after many adventures and discoveries marries Sophia Western in
London. They return to the West. Each book has a critical prologue as vigorous as
the narrative which follows. Even chapter titles are mini-essays. In Book V, Chapter
X,Shewing the Truth of many Observations ofOvid, and of other more grave Writers,
who have proved, beyond Contradiction, that Wine is often the Fore-runner of
Incontinency, Tom throws himself down by a murmuring brook and breaks forth:
O Sophia, would heaven give thee to my arms, how blest would be my condition! ...
How contemptible would the brightest Circassian beauty, dressed in all the jewels of the
Indies, appear to my eyes! But why do I mention another woman? ... Sophia, Sophia
alone shall be mine.What raptures are in that name! I will engrave it on every tree!’ At
these wor ds he started up, and beheld – not his Sophia – no, nor a Circassian maid
richly and elegantly attired for the Grand Signior’s seraglio. No; without a gown, in a
shift that was somewhat of the coarsest, and none of the cleanest, bedewed likewise with
some odoriferous effluvia, the produce of the day’s labour, with a pitch-fork in her hand,
Molly Seagrim approached. Our hero had his pen-knife in his hand, which he had
drawn for the before-mentioned purpose, of carving on the bark; when the girl coming
near him cried out with a smile, ‘You don’t intend to kill me, Squire, I hope!’ ... Here
ensued a parley, which, as I do not think myself obliged to relate it, I shall omit. It is
sufficient that it lasted a full quarter of an hour, at the conclusion of which they retired
into the thickest part of the grove. Some of my readers may be inclined to think this
event unnatural. However, the fact is true; and, perhaps, may be sufficiently accounted
for, by suggesting that Jones probably thought one woman better than none, and Molly
as pro bably imagined two men to be better than one. Besides the before-mentioned
motive assigned to the present behaviour of Jones, the reader will be likewise pleased to
recollect in his favour, that he was not at this time perfect master of that wonderful
power of reason, which so well enables grave and wise men to subdue their unruly
passions, and to decline any of these prohibited amusements. Wine now had totally
subdued this power in Jones.
After other robust escapades of the same sort, and proof that he did not
commit the crime for which he was expelled from Paradise Hall, Sophia accepts
Jones into a blissful marriage; her name means Wisdom. Fielding advertises ‘no
other than Human Nature’ in his initial ‘Bill of Fare’, yet in his Dedication says
202 6 · AUGUSTAN LITERATURE: TO 1790