Authors, English -- 18th century -- Biography; Fielding, Henry, 1707-1754
supports a wife and six children upon a cure of twenty-three pounds a
year, which his outspoken honesty is continually jeopardising, he is a
far finer figure than Pamela in her coach-and-six, or Bellarmine in his
cinnamon velvet. If not, as Mr. Lawrence says, with exaggerated
enthusiasm, "the grandest delineation of a pattern-priest which the
world has yet seen," he is assuredly a noble example of primitive
goodness and practical Christianity. It is certain--as Mr. Forster and
Mr. Keightley have pointed out--that Goldsmith borrowed some of his
characteristics for Dr. Primrose, and it has been suggested that Sterne
remembered him in more than one page of _Tristram Shandy_.
Next to Parson Adams, perhaps the best character in _Joseph Andrews_--
though of an entirely different type--is Lady Booby's "Waiting-
Gentlewoman," the excellent Mrs. Slipslop. Her sensitive dignity, her
easy changes from servility to insolence, her sensuality, her inimitably
distorted vocabulary, which Sheridan borrowed for Mrs. Malaprop, and
Dickens modified for Mrs. Gamp, are all peculiarities which make up a
personification of the richest humour and the most life-like reality.
Mr. Peter Pounce, too, with his "scoundrel maxims," as disclosed in that
remarkable dialogue which is said to be "better worth reading than all
the Works of _Colley Cibber_," and in which charity is defined as
consisting rather in a disposition to relieve distress than in an actual
act of relief; Parson Trulliber with his hogs, his greediness, and his
willingness to prove his Christianity by fisticuffs; shrewish Mrs. Tow-
wouse with her scold's tongue, and her erring but perfectly subjugated
husband,--these again are portraits finished with admirable spirit and
fidelity. Andrews himself, and his blushing sweetheart, do not lend
themselves so readily to humorous art. Nevertheless the former, when
freed from the wiles of Lady Booby, is by no means a despicable hero,
and Fanny is a sufficiently fresh and blooming heroine. The characters
of Pamela and Mr. Booby are fairly preserved from the pages of their
original inventor. But when Fielding makes Parson Adams rebuke the pair
for laughing in church at Joseph's wedding, and puts into the lady's
mouth a sententious little speech upon her altered position in life, he
is adding some ironical touches which Richardson would certainly have
omitted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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