1. CHAPTER I.
Containing a portion of introductory writing
When a comic writer hath made his principal characters as happy as
he can, or when a tragic writer hath brought them to the highest pitch
of human misery, they both conclude their business to be done, and
that their work is come to a period.
Had we been of the tragic complexion, the reader must now allow we
were nearly arrived at this period, since it would be difficult for
the devil, or any of his representatives on earth, to have contrived
much greater torments for poor Jones than those in which we left him
in the last chapter; and as for Sophia, a good-natured woman would
hardly wish more uneasiness to a rival than what she must at present
be supposed to feel. What then remains to complete the tragedy but a
murder or two, and a few moral sentences!
But to bring our favourites out of their present anguish and
distress, and to land them at last on the shore of happiness, seems
a much harder task; a task, indeed, so hard that we do not undertake
to execute it. In regard to Sophia, it is more than probable that we
shall somewhere or other provide a good husband for her in the end-
either Blifil, or my lord, or somebody else; but as to poor Jones,
such are the calamities in which he is at present involved, owing to
his imprudence, by which, if a man doth not become felon to the world,
he is at least a felo de se; so destitute is he now of friends, and
so persecuted by enemies, that we almost despair of bringing him to
any good; and if our reader delights in seeing executions, I think
he ought not to lose any time in taking a first row at Tyburn.
This I faithfully promise, that, notwithstanding any affection which
we may be supposed to have for this rogue, whom we have
unfortunately made our heroe, we will lend him none of that
supernatural assistance with which we are entrusted, upon condition
that we use it only on very important occasions. If he doth not,
therefore, find some natural means of fairly extricating himself
from all his distresses, we will do no violence to the truth and
dignity of history for his sake; for we had rather relate that he
was hanged at Tyburn (which may very probably be the case) than
forfeit our integrity, or shock the faith of our reader.
In this the antients had a great advantage over the moderns. Their
mythology, which was at that time more firmly believed by the vulgar
than any religion is at present, gave them always an opportunity of
delivering a favourite heroe. Their deities were always ready at the
writer's elbow, to execute any of his purposes; and the more
extraordinary the invention was, the greater was the surprize and
delight of the credulous reader. Those writers could with greater ease
have conveyed a heroe from one country to another, nay from one
world to another, and have brought him back again, than a poor
circumscribed modern can deliver him from a jail.
The Arabians and Persians had an equal advantage in writing their
tales from the genii and fairies, which they believe in as an
article of their faith, upon the authority of the Koran itself. But we
have none of these helps. To natural means alone we are confined;
let us try therefore what, by these means, may be done for poor Jones;
though, to confess the truth, something whispers me in the ear, that
he doth not yet know the worst of his fortune; and that a more
shocking piece of news than any he hath yet heard remains for him in
the unopened leaves of fate.