History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
stands by as it were to clap her on the back, and encourage her when
she doth well.”
So little then did our doctors delight in death, that they discharged
the corpse after a single fee; but they were not so disgusted with
their living patient; concerning whose case they immediately agreed,
and fell to prescribing with great diligence.
Whether, as the lady had at first persuaded her physicians to believe
her ill, they had now, in return, persuaded her to believe herself so,
I will not determine; but she continued a whole month with all the
decorations of sickness. During this time she was visited by
physicians, attended by nurses, and received constant messages from
her acquaintance to enquire after her health.
At length the decent time for sickness and immoderate grief being
expired, the doctors were discharged, and the lady began to see
company; being altered only from what she was before, by that colour
of sadness in which she had dressed her person and countenance.
The captain was now interred, and might, perhaps, have already made a
large progress towards oblivion, had not the friendship of Mr
Allworthy taken care to preserve his memory, by the following epitaph,
which was written by a man of as great genius as integrity, and one
who perfectly well knew the captain.
HERE LIES,
IN EXPECTATION OF A JOYFUL RISING,
THE BODY OF
CAPTAIN JOHN BLIFIL.
LONDON
HAD THE HONOUR OF HIS BIRTH,
OXFORD
OF HIS EDUCATION.
HIS PARTS
WERE AN HONOUR TO HIS PROFESSION
AND TO HIS COUNTRY:
HIS LIFE, TO HIS RELIGION
AND HUMAN NATURE.
HE WAS A DUTIFUL SON,
A TENDER HUSBAND,
AN AFFECTIONATE FATHER,
A MOST KIND BROTHER,
A SINCERE FRIEND,
A DEVOUT CHRISTIAN,
AND A GOOD MAN.
HIS INCONSOLABLE WIDOW
HATH ERECTED THIS STONE,
THE MONUMENT OF
HIS VIRTUES
AND OF HER AFFECTION.
BOOK III.
CONTAINING THE MOST MEMORABLE TRANSACTIONS WHICH PASSED IN THE FAMILY
OF MR ALLWORTHY, FROM THE TIME WHEN TOMMY JONES ARRIVED AT THE AGE OF
FOURTEEN, TILL HE ATTAINED THE AGE OF NINETEEN. IN THIS BOOK THE
READER MAY PICK UP SOME HINTS CONCERNING THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.
Chapter i.
Containing little or nothing.
The reader will be pleased to remember, that, at the beginning of the
second book of this history, we gave him a hint of our intention to
pass over several large periods of time, in which nothing happened
worthy of being recorded in a chronicle of this kind.
In so doing, we do not only consult our own dignity and ease, but the
good and advantage of the reader: for besides that by these means we
prevent him from throwing away his time, in reading without either
pleasure or emolument, we give him, at all such seasons, an
opportunity of employing that wonderful sagacity, of which he is
master, by filling up these vacant spaces of time with his own
conjectures; for which purpose we have taken care to qualify him in
the preceding pages.
For instance, what reader but knows that Mr Allworthy felt, at first,
for the loss of his friend, those emotions of grief, which on such
occasions enter into all men whose hearts are not composed of flint,
or their heads of as solid materials? Again, what reader doth not know
that philosophy and religion in time moderated, and at last
extinguished, this grief? The former of these teaching the folly and
vanity of it, and the latter correcting it as unlawful, and at the
same time assuaging it, by raising future hopes and assurances, which
enable a strong and religious mind to take leave of a friend, on his
deathbed, with little less indifference than if he was preparing for a
long journey; and, indeed, with little less hope of seeing him again.
Nor can the judicious reader be at a greater loss on account of Mrs
Bridget Blifil, who, he may be assured, conducted herself through the
whole season in which grief is to make its appearance on the outside
of the body, with the strictest regard to all the rules of custom and
decency, suiting the alterations of her countenance to the several
alterations of her habit: for as this changed from weeds to black,
from black to grey, from grey to white, so did her countenance change
from dismal to sorrowful, from sorrowful to sad, and from sad to
serious, till the day came in which she was allowed to return to her
former serenity.
We have mentioned these two, as examples only of the task which may be
imposed on readers of the lowest class. Much higher and harder
exercises of judgment and penetration may reasonably be expected from
the upper graduates in criticism. Many notable discoveries will, I
doubt not, be made by such, of the transactions which happened in the
family of our worthy man, during all the years which we have thought
proper to pass over: for though nothing worthy of a place in this
history occurred within that period, yet did several incidents happen
of equal importance with those reported by the daily and weekly
historians of the age; in reading which great numbers of persons
consume a considerable part of their time, very little, I am afraid,
to their emolument. Now, in the conjectures here proposed, some of the
most excellent faculties of the mind may be employed to much
advantage, since it is a more useful capacity to be able to foretel
the actions of men, in any circumstance, from their characters, than
to judge of their characters from their actions. The former, I own,
requires the greater penetration; but may be accomplished by true
sagacity with no less certainty than the latter.
As we are sensible that much the greatest part of our readers are very
eminently possessed of this quality, we have left them a space of
twelve years to exert it in; and shall now bring forth our heroe, at
about fourteen years of age, not questioning that many have been long
impatient to be introduced to his acquaintance.
Chapter ii.
The heroe of this great history appears with very bad omens. A little
tale of so LOW a kind that some may think it not worth their notice. A
word or two concerning a squire, and more relating to a gamekeeper and
a schoolmaster.
As we determined, when we first sat down to write this history, to
flatter no man, but to guide our pen throughout by the directions of
truth, we are obliged to bring our heroe on the stage in a much more
disadvantageous manner than we could wish; and to declare honestly,
even at his first appearance, that it was the universal opinion of all
Mr Allworthy's family that he was certainly born to be hanged.
Indeed, I am sorry to say there was too much reason for this
conjecture; the lad having from his earliest years discovered a
propensity to many vices, and especially to one which hath as direct a
tendency as any other to that fate which we have just now observed to
have been prophetically denounced against him: he had been already
convicted of three robberies, viz., of robbing an orchard, of stealing
a duck out of a farmer's yard, and of picking Master Blifil's pocket
of a ball.
The vices of this young man were, moreover, heightened by the
disadvantageous light in which they appeared when opposed to the
virtues of Master Blifil, his companion; a youth of so different a
cast from little Jones, that not only the family but all the
neighbourhood resounded his praises. He was, indeed, a lad of a
remarkable disposition; sober, discreet, and pious beyond his age;
qualities which gained him the love of every one who knew him: while
Tom Jones was universally disliked; and many expressed their wonder
that Mr Allworthy would suffer such a lad to be educated with his
nephew, lest the morals of the latter should be corrupted by his
example.
An incident which happened about this time will set the characters of
these two lads more fairly before the discerning reader than is in the
power of the longest dissertation.
Tom Jones, who, bad as he is, must serve for the heroe of this
history, had only one friend among all the servants of the family; for
as to Mrs Wilkins, she had long since given him up, and was perfectly
reconciled to her mistress. This friend was the gamekeeper, a fellow
of a loose kind of disposition, and who was thought not to entertain
much stricter notions concerning the difference of _meum_ and _tuum_
than the young gentleman himself. And hence this friendship gave
occasion to many sarcastical remarks among the domestics, most of
which were either proverbs before, or at least are become so now; and,
indeed, the wit of them all may be comprised in that short Latin
proverb, “_Noscitur a socio;_” which, I think, is thus expressed in
English, “You may know him by the company he keeps.”
To say the truth, some of that atrocious wickedness in Jones, of which
we have just mentioned three examples, might perhaps be derived from
the encouragement he had received from this fellow, who, in two or
three instances, had been what the law calls an accessary after the
fact: for the whole duck, and great part of the apples, were converted
to the use of the gamekeeper and his family; though, as Jones alone
was discovered, the poor lad bore not only the whole smart, but the
whole blame; both which fell again to his lot on the following
occasion.
Contiguous to Mr Allworthy's estate was the manor of one of those
gentlemen who are called preservers of the game. This species of men,
from the great severity with which they revenge the death of a hare or
partridge, might be thought to cultivate the same superstition with
the Bannians in India; many of whom, we are told, dedicate their whole
lives to the preservation and protection of certain animals; was it
not that our English Bannians, while they preserve them from other
enemies, will most unmercifully slaughter whole horse-loads
themselves; so that they stand clearly acquitted of any such
heathenish superstition.
I have, indeed, a much better opinion of this kind of men than is
entertained by some, as I take them to answer the order of Nature, and
the good purposes for which they were ordained, in a more ample manner
than many others. Now, as Horace tells us that there are a set of
human beings
_Fruges consumere nati,_
“Born to consume the fruits of the earth;” so I make no manner of
doubt but that there are others
_Feras consumere nati,_
“Born to consume the beasts of the field;” or, as it is commonly
called, the game; and none, I believe, will deny but that those
squires fulfil this end of their creation.
Little Jones went one day a shooting with the gamekeeper; when
happening to spring a covey of partridges near the border of that
manor over which Fortune, to fulfil the wise purposes of Nature, had
planted one of the game consumers, the birds flew into it, and were
marked (as it is called) by the two sportsmen, in some furze bushes,
about two or three hundred paces beyond Mr Allworthy's dominions.
Mr Allworthy had given the fellow strict orders, on pain of forfeiting
his place, never to trespass on any of his neighbours; no more on
those who were less rigid in this matter than on the lord of this
manor. With regard to others, indeed, these orders had not been always
very scrupulously kept; but as the disposition of the gentleman with