The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great

CONTENTS

Jonathan Wild, born about 1682 and executed at Tyburn in 1725, was one of the most notorious criminals of his age. His resemblance to the hero in Fielding's satire of the same name is general rather than particular. The real Jonathan (whose legitimate business was that of a buckle-maker) like Fielding's, won his fame, not as a robber himself, but as an informer, and a receiver of stolen goods. His method was to restore these to the owners on receipt of a commission, which was generally pretty large, pretending that he had paid the whole of it to the thieves, whom for disinterested motives he had traced. He was a great organiser, and he controlled various bands of robbers whose lives he did not hesitate to sacrifice, when his own was in danger. Naturally he was so hated by many of his underlings that it is a wonder he was able to maintain his authority over them as many years as he did. His rascality had been notorious a long time before his crimes could actually be proved. He was executed at last according to the statute which made receivers of stolen goods equally guilty with the stealers.
That Jonathan Wild is for the most part a magnificent example of sustained irony, one of the best in our literature, critics have generally agreed. The comparison steadfastly insisted upon between Jonathan Wild's greatness and the greatness which the world looks up to, but which without being called criminal is yet devoid of humanity, is admirable. Admirable, too, is the ironical humour, in which Fielding so excelled, and which in Jonathan Wild he seldom drops. It would take too long to mention all the particularly good ironical passages, but among them are the conversation between Wild and Count La Ruse, and the description of Miss Tishy Snap in the first book; the adventures of Wild in the boat at the end of the second book; and, in the last, the dialogue between the ordinary of Newgate and the hero, the death of Wild, and the chapter which sets forth his character and his maxims for attaining greatness. And yet as a satire Jonathan Wild is not perfect. Fielding himself hits upon its one fault, when, in the last book, after the long narrative of Mrs. Heartfree's adventures by sea and by land, he says, we have already perhaps detained our reader too long ... from the consideration of our hero. He has detained us far too long. A story containing so much irony as Jonathan Wild should be an undeviating satire like A Tale of a Tub. The introduction of characters like the Heartfrees, who are meant to enlist a reader's sympathy, spoils the unity. True, the way they appear at first is all very well. Heartfree is a silly fellow, possessed of several great weaknesses of mind, being good-natured, friendly, and generous to a great excess, and devoted to the silly woman, his wife. But later Fielding becomes so much interested in the pair that he drops his ironical tone. Unfortunately, however, in depicting them, he has not met with his usual success in depicting amiable characters. The exemplary couple, together with their children and Friendly, are much less real than the villain and his fellows. And so the importance of the Heartfrees in Jonathan Wild seems to me a double blemish. A satire is not truth, and yet in Mr. and Mrs. Heartfree Fielding has tried—though not with success—to give us virtuous characters who are truly human. The consequence is that Jonathan Wild just fails of being a consistently brilliant satire.