Henry Fielding: a Memoir: Including Newly Discovered Letters and Records with Illustrations from Contemporary PrintsGodden, G. M. (Gertrude M.)
General
Henry Fielding: a Memoir: Including Newly Discovered Letters and Records with Illustrations from Contemporary Prints
Godden, G. M. (Gertrude M.)
Authors, English -- 18th century -- Biography; Fielding, Henry, 1707-1754; Fielding, Henry, 1707-1754 -- Correspondence
Composition of Cruelty, Lust, Avarice, Rapine, Insolence, Hypocrisy, Fraud
and Treachery, was best fitted, surely his Answer must be certain and
immediate; and yet I am afraid all these Ingredients glossed over with
Wealth and a Title, have been treated with the highest Respect and
Veneration in the one, while one or two of them have been condemned to the
Gallows in the other."
Here is the converse of that insight which could discern goodness under a
ragged cassock, or in a swearing postilion. And, having discerned the true
nature of such Great Men, Fielding proceeds to point out that "However the
Glare of Riches and Awe of Title may terrify the Vulgar; nay however
Hypocrisy may deceive the more Discerning, there is still a Judge in every
Man's Breast, which none can cheat or corrupt, tho' perhaps it is the only
uncorrupt thing about him"; that nothing is so preposterous as that men
should laboriously seek to be villains; and that this Judge, inflexible
and honest "however polluted the Bench on which he sits," always bestows
on the spurious Great the penalty of fear, an evil which "never can in any
manner molest the Happiness" of the "Enjoyments of Innocence and Virtue."
The subsequent philosophic dissertation on the qualities of goodness and
greatness is interesting for such passages as the definition of a good man
as one possessing "Benevolence, Honour, Honesty, and Charity"; and the
fine declaration that of the passion of Love "goodness hath always
appeared to me the only true and proper Object." And the very springs of
action underlying half at least of each of the three great novels, and
almost every page of _Jonathan Wild_, are revealed in the final
declaration of the writer's intention to expose in these pages vice
stripped of its false colours; to show it "in its native Deformity." As
the native and stripped deformity of vice is perhaps not often fully
apprehended and certainly is very seldom exposed in our own age, Fielding,
by the very sincerity and fire of his morality, doubtless loses many a
modern reader.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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