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Page 2
A great satire, I should say, is never the equal of a great novel.
In the introductions which I have already written, in trying to
show what a great novel is, I have said that an essential part of
such a book is the reality of its scenes and characters. Now
scenes and characters will not seem real, unless there is in them
the right blend of pleasure and pain, of good and bad; for life is
not all either one thing or the other, nor has it ever been so.
Such reality is not found in a satire, for a satire, as
distinguished from a novel, both conceals and exaggerates: it
gives half-truths instead of whole truths; it shows not all of
life but only a part; and even this it cannot show quite truly,
for its avowed object is to magnify some vice or foible. In doing
so, a satire finds no means so effective as irony, which makes its
appeal wholly to the intellect. A good novel, on the contrary,
touches the head and the heart both; along with passages which
give keen intellectual enjoyment, it offers passages which move
its reader's tears. Still, a good novelist without appreciation of
irony cannot be imagined, for without the sense of humour which
makes irony appreciated, it is impossible to see the objects of
this world in their right proportions. Irony, then, which is the
main part of a satire, is essential to a good novel, though not
necessarily more than a small part of it. Intellectually there is
nothing in English literature of the eighteenth century greater
than A Tale of a Tub or the larger part of Gullivers Travels;
intellectually there is nothing in Fielding's works greater than
most of Jonathan Wild; but taken all in all, is not a novel like
Tom Jones, with its eternal appeal to the emotions as well as the
intellect, greater than a perfect satire? Even if this be not
admitted, Jonathan Wild, we have already seen, is not a perfect
satire. For a work of its kind, it is too sympathetically human,
and so suffers in exactly the opposite way from Vanity Fair, which
many people think is kept from being the greatest English novel of
the nineteenth century because it is too satirical.
No, I cannot agree with Professor Saintsbury that "Fielding has
written no greater book" than Jonathan Wild. It was unquestionably
the most important part of the Miscellanies of 1743. Its
brilliancy may make it outrank even that delightful Journal of the
Voyage to Lisbon. A higher place should not be claimed for it. Mr.
Dobson, in his Henry Fielding, has assigned the right position to
Jonathan Wild when he says that its place "in Fielding's works is
immediately after his three great novels, and this is more by
reason of its subject than its workmanship," which if not perfect,
is yet for the most part excellent.
G. H. MAYNADIER.
THE LIFE OF THE LATE
MR. JONATHAN WILD
BOOK I
CHAPTER ONE
SHEWING THE WHOLESOME USES DRAWN FROM RECORDING THE ACHIEVEMENTS
OF THOSE WONDERFUL PRODUCTIONS OF NATURE CALLED GREAT MEN.
As it is necessary that all great and surprising events, the
designs of which are laid, conducted, and brought to perfection by
the utmost force of human invention and art, should be produced by
great and eminent men, so the lives of such may be justly and
properly styled the quintessence of history. In these, when
delivered to us by sensible writers, we are not only most
agreeably entertained, but most usefully instructed; for, besides
the attaining hence a consummate knowledge of human nature in
general; of its secret springs, various windings, and perplexed
mazes; we have here before our eyes lively examples of whatever is
amiable or detestable, worthy of admiration or abhorrence, and are
consequently taught, in a manner infinitely more effectual than by
precept, what we are eagerly to imitate or carefully to avoid.
But besides the two obvious advantages of surveying, as it were in
a picture, the true beauty of virtue and deformity of vice, we may
moreover learn from Plutarch, Nepos, Suetonius, and other
biographers, this useful lesson, not too hastily, nor in the
gross, to bestow either our praise or censure; since we shall
often find such a mixture of good and evil in the same character
that it may require a very accurate judgment and a very elaborate
inquiry to determine on which side the balance turns, for though
we sometimes meet with an Aristides or a Brutus, a Lysander or a
Nero, yet far the greater number are of the mixt kind, neither
totally good nor bad; their greatest virtues being obscured and
allayed by their vices, and those again softened and coloured over
by their virtues.
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