There is a considerable amount of humour in Fielding's "Journey from this World to the Next." He represents the spirits as drawing lots before they enter this life as to what their destinies are to be, and he introduces a sort of migration of souls, in which Julian becomes a king, fool, tailor, beggar, &c. As a tailor, he speaks of the dignity of his calling, "the prince gives the title, but the tailor makes the man." Of course his reflections turn very much upon his bills.
"Courtiers," he says, "may be divided into two sorts, very essentially different from each other; into those who never intend to pay for their clothes, and those who do intend to pay for them, but are never able. Of the latter sort are many of those young gentlemen whom we equip out for the army, and who are, unhappily for us, cast off before they arrive at preferment. This is the reason why tailors in time of war are mistaken for politicians by their inquisitiveness into the event of battles, one campaign very often proving the ruin of half-a-dozen of us."
Julian also gives his experience during his life as a beggar, showing that his life was not so very miserable.
"I married a charming young woman for love; she was the daughter of a neighbouring beggar, who with an improvidence too often seen, spent a very large income, which he procured from his profession, so that he was able to give her no fortune down. However, at his death he left her a very well-accustomed begging hut situated on the side of a steep hill, where travellers could not immediately escape from us; and a garden adjoining, being the twenty-eighth part of an acre well-planted. She made the best of wives, bore me nineteen children, and never failed to get my supper ready against my return home—this being my favourite meal, and at which I, as well as my whole family, greatly enjoyed ourselves."
"No profession," he observes, "requires a deeper insight into human nature than a beggar's. Their knowledge of the passions of men is so extensive, that I have often thought it would be of no little service to a politician to have his education among them. Nay, there is a much greater analogy between these two characters than is imagined: for both concur in their first and grand principle, it being equally their business to delude and impose on mankind. It must be admitted that they differ widely in the degree of advantage, which they make of their deceit; for whereas the beggar is contented with a little, the politician leaves but a little behind."
There is a considerable amount of indelicacy in the episodes in "Tom Jones," and also of hostility, which is exhibited in the rough form of pugilistic encounters, so as almost to remind us of the old comic stage. He seems especially fond of settling quarrels in this way, and wishes that no other was ever used, and that "iron should dig no bowels but those of the earth." The character of Deborah Wilkins, the old maid who is shocked at the frivolity of Jenny Jones; of Thwackum, the schoolmaster, whose "meditations were full of birch;" and of the barber, whose jests, although they brought him so many slaps and kicks "would come," are excellent. There is a vast fertility of humour in his pages, which depending upon the general circumstances and peculiar characters of the persons introduced, cannot be easily appreciated in extracts. The following, however, can be understood easily:—
"'I thought there must be a devil,' the sergeant says to the innkeeper, 'notwithstanding what the officers said, though one of them was a captain, for methought, thinks I to myself, if there be no devil how can wicked people be sent to him? and I have read all that upon a book.' 'Some of your officers,' quoth the landlord, 'will find there is a devil to their shame, I believe. I don't question but he'll pay off some old scores upon my account. Here was one quartered upon me half-a-year, who had the conscience to take up one of my best beds, though he hardly spent a shilling a day in the house, and his man went to roast cabbages at the kitchen fire, because I would not give them a dinner on Sunday. Every good Christian must desire that there should be a devil for the punishment of such wretches....'"
The Man of the Hill gives his travelling experiences:—
"'In Italy the landlords are very silent. In France they are more talkative, but yet civil. In Germany and Holland they are generally very impertinent. And as for their honesty I believe it is pretty equal in all those countries.... As for my own part, I past through all these nations, as you perhaps may have through a crowd at a show, jostling to get by them, holding my nose with one hand, and defending my pockets with the other, without speaking a word to any of them while I was pressing on to see what I wanted to see.'