"The captain * * * drew forth his hanger as Adams approached him, and was levelling a blow at his head which would probably have silenced the preacher forever, had not Joseph in that instant lifted up a certain huge stone pot of the chamber with one hand, which six beaux could not have lifted with both, and discharged it, together with the contents, full in the captain's face. The uplifted hanger dropped from his hand, and he fell prostrate on the floor with a lumpish noise, and his half-pence rattled in his pocket: the red liquor which his veins contained, and the white liquor which the pot contained, ran in one stream down his face and his clothes. Nor had Adams quite escaped, some of the water having in its passage shed its honors on his head, and begun to trickle down the wrinkles, or rather furrows, of his cheeks; when one of the servants snatching a mop out of a pail of water, which had already done its duty in washing the house, pushed it in the parson's face; yet could he not bear him down; for the parson wresting the mop from the fellow with one hand, with the other brought his enemy as low as the earth."[173] To obtain any adequate idea of the range of Fielding's pictures of human nature, the reader must consult the novels themselves. Propriety forbids the insertion here of quotations which could convey an impression of the happy dissoluteness of Tom Jones, the brutal coarseness of Squire Western, or the scenes of unblushing license which pervade the novels of Henry Fielding. But a sample of the witty, jovial tone which has made these novels so popular may be of interest to readers who are not inclined to open "Tom Jones" itself. The following scene was occasioned by the appearance of Molly Seagrim in church, in unaccustomed and ostentatious finery, and is described in the Homeric style, which Fielding sometimes adopted with such humorous effect. As a vast herd of cows in a rich farmer's yard, if, while they are milked, they hear their calves at a distance, lamenting the robbery which is then committing, roar and bellow: so roared forth the Somersetshire mob an halloloo, made up of almost as many squalls, screams, and other different sounds, as there were persons, or indeed passions, among them. Some were inspired by rage, others alarmed by fear, and others had nothing in theirs heads but the love of fun; but chiefly Envy, the sister of Satan and his constant companion, rushed among the crowd and blew up the fury of the women; who no sooner came up to Molly than they pelted her with dirt and rubbish.