The moral introductory reflections may, of course, be skipped, yet not by wise readers, for they are full of Fielding's humour, and display his confidence in the immortality of his book.
Fielding was Thackeray's master and model; in his too frequent reflections he follows Fielding too closely. If all men were equally fortunate, they would all read "Tom Jones" in the six small volumes of the First Edition: but in any edition the book is delightful. Charlotte Brontë thought it corrupting to such young fellows as her brother, the unhappy Branwell, but Branwells will go their own way, with or without the aid of the too fortunate Foundling.
Fielding was a sturdy Hanoverian, but he was mortal and an author. He must have been pleased had he known that the hero of 1745 (the year in which the tale is cast), that Prince Charles then lurking in a Parisian convent, purchased "Tom Jones," both in French and English.
Earlier than "Tom Jones" is "Jonathan Wild the Great," the romance of a thief-taker and sharer of spoils with thieves, who was gibbeted in 1725. It is customary to speak of this book, a satire of the "greatness" of men like Julius Cæsar, as a masterpiece of irony, and as a success in the field where Thackeray, on the same estimate, failed with "Barry Lyndon". If irony is to be openly and noisily unveiled in every page, then "Jonathan Wild" may be a masterpiece of irony. The reader may be left, if he can read "Jonathan Wild," to compare it with "Barry Lyndon" for himself, and to draw his own conclusions as to the relative merits of these books. The deliciously absurd adventures of Mrs. Heartfree, like those of the heroines of late Greek romances, are, at all events, intentionally or unintentionally funny. Sir Walter Scott disliked this masterpiece, and after reading it, and the commendations which eminent modern critics bestow upon it, the writer cannot honestly dissent from the disrelish of Sir Walter. He is said not to have understood Fielding's meaning which Fielding constantly proclaims and avows, namely that greatness of intellect and ambition without goodness of heart is a mischievous monstrosity. Mr. Carlyle, in some moods of hero-worship, might have differed, but we can give a general assent without wading through "Jonathan Wild".
Fielding's own heart was as good as Steele's. He adored his beautiful wife as Steele adored Prue. But, while "the greatest blessing is a faithful and beloved wife," says our author in "Amelia," "it rather tends to aggravate the misfortune of distressed circumstances from the consideration of the share which she is to bear in them". But the circumstances were distressed because Fielding, like Amelia's Captain Booth, was "a good fellow," and, like Johnson's friend, Savage, was at no time of his life the first to leave any company,—over the punch bowl. And Amelia was listening for every footstep, and dreading every accident of the streets, and money was a minus quantity, and a scrag of mutton was a rare festival, because Captain Booth had every generosity except that of a little self-denial.
By 1749 Mr. Fielding, as his friendly biographer says, "was a martyr to gout". "He had not stolen it," and we have heard of another sufferer, "a martyr to delirium tremens". By this time his wife was dead; later he married her maid, an excellent woman, Mary Daniel, probably of an old and ruined Jacobite family of Daniel. At the end of 1748 Fielding had been made a stipendiary magistrate for Westminster. Unlike his Jonathan Thrasher, Esq., J.P., who was infamously corrupt, and as ignorant of the law as the country justice before whom Frank Osbaldistone appears in "Rob Roy," Fielding brought to his work his honesty, courage, and sympathy with the poor.
The first chapters of his "Amelia" (1751) contain pictures of the contemporary corruption of justice, and the laxity of the prisons. Thence came the misfortunes of Captain Booth, a true lover, but also a young man in the prime of life. From this error of the Captain's, who met a Circe in prison, and from the greatness of his wife's character, the beautiful Amelia, the plot of the novel adroitly develops itself. She was "too good to be true". On the other hand the high spirit and temper of Miss Matthews make her a kind of shady Brynhild; and only coincidences in which Captain Booth recognized the hand of Providence prevent the most tragical catastrophe. "Men worship women on their knees; when they get up they go away," says Fielding's great successor. They never get up and go away when they worship Amelia.
The book, in addition to her and Miss Matthews, presents the delightfully amusing characters of Colonel Bath, "old honour and dignity," who fights Booth in Hyde Park from motives of the purest friendship; Colonel James, with a philosophy of love rather like Lord Foppington's; Sergeant Atkinson, a kind of later Great Heart; Mrs. Ellison, a lady "not of the nicest delicacy"; Murphy, a Jonathan Wild as attorney; and a score of other characters worthy of their creator. With "Joseph Andrews" and "Tom Jones," "Amelia" is an immortal glory of English fiction.
Fielding's experiences led him into plans for suppressing lawlessness, and for important social reforms. In 1753 he took the side of Elizabeth Canning in that unsolved mystery of a girl who, if not a good girl, "has been too hard for me," says Fielding. His own behaviour, in the case of Miss Virtue's examination, is rather startling to the modern student; and whether he ended as a partisan of the Gipsy or of Elizabeth Canning is uncertain (1753-1754). Elizabeth made a good marriage, in America, whither she was banished, and lived and died respected.