History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding
Chapter i.
1427 words | Chapter 297
An essay to prove that an author will write the better for having some
knowledge of the subject on which he writes.
As several gentlemen in these times, by the wonderful force of genius
only, without the least assistance of learning, perhaps, without being
well able to read, have made a considerable figure in the republic of
letters; the modern critics, I am told, have lately begun to assert,
that all kind of learning is entirely useless to a writer; and,
indeed, no other than a kind of fetters on the natural sprightliness
and activity of the imagination, which is thus weighed down, and
prevented from soaring to those high flights which otherwise it would
be able to reach.
This doctrine, I am afraid, is at present carried much too far: for
why should writing differ so much from all other arts? The nimbleness
of a dancing-master is not at all prejudiced by being taught to move;
nor doth any mechanic, I believe, exercise his tools the worse by
having learnt to use them. For my own part, I cannot conceive that
Homer or Virgil would have writ with more fire, if instead of being
masters of all the learning of their times, they had been as ignorant
as most of the authors of the present age. Nor do I believe that all
the imagination, fire, and judgment of Pitt, could have produced those
orations that have made the senate of England, in these our times, a
rival in eloquence to Greece and Rome, if he had not been so well read
in the writings of Demosthenes and Cicero, as to have transferred
their whole spirit into his speeches, and, with their spirit, their
knowledge too.
I would not here be understood to insist on the same fund of learning
in any of my brethren, as Cicero persuades us is necessary to the
composition of an orator. On the contrary, very little reading is, I
conceive, necessary to the poet, less to the critic, and the least of
all to the politician. For the first, perhaps, Byshe's Art of Poetry,
and a few of our modern poets, may suffice; for the second, a moderate
heap of plays; and, for the last, an indifferent collection of
political journals.
To say the truth, I require no more than that a man should have some
little knowledge of the subject on which he treats, according to the
old maxim of law, _Quam quisque nôrit artem in eâ se exerceat_. With
this alone a writer may sometimes do tolerably well; and, indeed,
without this, all the other learning in the world will stand him in
little stead.
For instance, let us suppose that Homer and Virgil, Aristotle and
Cicero, Thucydides and Livy, could have met all together, and have
clubbed their several talents to have composed a treatise on the art
of dancing: I believe it will be readily agreed they could not have
equalled the excellent treatise which Mr Essex hath given us on that
subject, entitled, The Rudiments of Genteel Education. And, indeed,
should the excellent Mr Broughton be prevailed on to set fist to
paper, and to complete the above-said rudiments, by delivering down
the true principles of athletics, I question whether the world will
have any cause to lament, that none of the great writers, either
antient or modern, have ever treated about that noble and useful art.
To avoid a multiplicity of examples in so plain a case, and to come at
once to my point, I am apt to conceive, that one reason why many
English writers have totally failed in describing the manners of upper
life, may possibly be, that in reality they know nothing of it.
This is a knowledge unhappily not in the power of many authors to
arrive at. Books will give us a very imperfect idea of it; nor will
the stage a much better: the fine gentleman formed upon reading the
former will almost always turn out a pedant, and he who forms himself
upon the latter, a coxcomb.
Nor are the characters drawn from these models better supported.
Vanbrugh and Congreve copied nature; but they who copy them draw as
unlike the present age as Hogarth would do if he was to paint a rout
or a drum in the dresses of Titian and of Vandyke. In short, imitation
here will not do the business. The picture must be after Nature
herself. A true knowledge of the world is gained only by conversation,
and the manners of every rank must be seen in order to be known.
Now it happens that this higher order of mortals is not to be seen,
like all the rest of the human species, for nothing, in the streets,
shops, and coffee-houses; nor are they shown, like the upper rank of
animals, for so much a-piece. In short, this is a sight to which no
persons are admitted without one or other of these qualifications,
viz., either birth or fortune, or, what is equivalent to both, the
honourable profession of a gamester. And, very unluckily for the
world, persons so qualified very seldom care to take upon themselves
the bad trade of writing; which is generally entered upon by the lower
and poorer sort, as it is a trade which many think requires no kind of
stock to set up with.
Hence those strange monsters in lace and embroidery, in silks and
brocades, with vast wigs and hoops; which, under the name of lords and
ladies, strut the stage, to the great delight of attorneys and their
clerks in the pit, and of the citizens and their apprentices in the
galleries; and which are no more to be found in real life than the
centaur, the chimera, or any other creature of mere fiction. But to
let my reader into a secret, this knowledge of upper life, though very
necessary for preventing mistakes, is no very great resource to a
writer whose province is comedy, or that kind of novels which, like
this I am writing, is of the comic class.
What Mr Pope says of women is very applicable to most in this station,
who are, indeed, so entirely made up of form and affectation, that
they have no character at all, at least none which appears. I will
venture to say the highest life is much the dullest, and affords very
little humour or entertainment. The various callings in lower spheres
produce the great variety of humorous characters; whereas here, except
among the few who are engaged in the pursuit of ambition, and the
fewer still who have a relish for pleasure, all is vanity and servile
imitation. Dressing and cards, eating and drinking, bowing and
courtesying, make up the business of their lives.
Some there are, however, of this rank upon whom passion exercises its
tyranny, and hurries them far beyond the bounds which decorum
prescribes; of these the ladies are as much distinguished by their
noble intrepidity, and a certain superior contempt of reputation, from
the frail ones of meaner degree, as a virtuous woman of quality is by
the elegance and delicacy of her sentiments from the honest wife of a
yeoman and shopkeeper. Lady Bellaston was of this intrepid character;
but let not my country readers conclude from her, that this is the
general conduct of women of fashion, or that we mean to represent them
as such. They might as well suppose that every clergyman was
represented by Thwackum, or every soldier by ensign Northerton.
There is not, indeed, a greater error than that which universally
prevails among the vulgar, who, borrowing their opinion from some
ignorant satirists, have affixed the character of lewdness to these
times. On the contrary, I am convinced there never was less of love
intrigue carried on among persons of condition than now. Our present
women have been taught by their mothers to fix their thoughts only on
ambition and vanity, and to despise the pleasures of love as unworthy
their regard; and being afterwards, by the care of such mothers,
married without having husbands, they seem pretty well confirmed in
the justness of those sentiments; whence they content themselves, for
the dull remainder of life, with the pursuit of more innocent, but I
am afraid more childish amusements, the bare mention of which would
ill suit with the dignity of this history. In my humble opinion, the
true characteristic of the present beau monde is rather folly than
vice, and the only epithet which it deserves is that of frivolous.
Reading Tips
Use arrow keys to navigate
Press 'N' for next chapter
Press 'P' for previous chapter