There are two sorts of people, who, I am afraid, have already conceived
some contempt for my heroe, on account of his behaviour to Sophia. The
former of these will blame his prudence in neglecting an opportunity to
possess himself of Mr Western's fortune; and the latter will no less
despise him for his backwardness to so fine a girl, who seemed ready to
fly into his arms, if he would open them to receive her.
Now, though I shall not perhaps be able absolutely to acquit him of either
of these charges (for want of prudence admits of no excuse; and what I
shall produce against the latter charge will, I apprehend, be scarce
satisfactory); yet, as evidence may sometimes be offered in mitigation, I
shall set forth the plain matter of fact, and leave the whole to the
reader's determination.
Mr Jones had somewhat about him, which, though I think writers are not
thoroughly agreed in its name, doth certainly inhabit some human breasts;
whose use is not so properly to distinguish right from wrong, as to prompt
and incite them to the former, and to restrain and withhold them from the
latter.
This somewhat may be indeed resembled to the famous trunk-maker in the
playhouse; for, whenever the person who is possessed of it doth what is
right, no ravished or friendly spectator is so eager or so loud in his
applause: on the contrary, when he doth wrong, no critic is so apt to hiss
and explode him.
To give a higher idea of the principle I mean, as well as one more
familiar to the present age; it may be considered as sitting on its throne
in the mind, like the Lord High Chancellor of this kingdom in his court;
where it presides, governs, directs, judges, acquits, and condemns
according to merit and justice, with a knowledge which nothing escapes, a
penetration which nothing can deceive, and an integrity which nothing can
corrupt.
This active principle may perhaps be said to constitute the most essential
barrier between us and our neighbours the brutes; for if there be some in
the human shape who are not under any such dominion, I choose rather to
consider them as deserters from us to our neighbours; among whom they will
have the fate of deserters, and not be placed in the first rank.
Our heroe, whether he derived it from Thwackum or Square I will not
determine, was very strongly under the guidance of this principle; for
though he did not always act rightly, yet he never did otherwise without
feeling and suffering for it. It was this which taught him, that to repay
the civilities and little friendships of hospitality by robbing the house
where you have received them, is to be the basest and meanest of thieves.
He did not think the baseness of this offence lessened by the height of
the injury committed; on the contrary, if to steal another's plate
deserved death and infamy, it seemed to him difficult to assign a
punishment adequate to the robbing a man of his whole fortune, and of his
child into the bargain.
This principle, therefore, prevented him from any thought of making his
fortune by such means (for this, as I have said, is an active principle,
and doth not content itself with knowledge or belief only). Had he been
greatly enamoured of Sophia, he possibly might have thought otherwise; but
give me leave to say, there is great difference between running away with
a man's daughter from the motive of love, and doing the same thing from
the motive of theft.
Now, though this young gentleman was not insensible of the charms of
Sophia; though he greatly liked her beauty, and esteemed all her other
qualifications, she had made, however, no deep impression on his heart;
for which, as it renders him liable to the charge of stupidity, or at
least of want of taste, we shall now proceed to account.
The truth then is, his heart was in the possession of another woman. Here
I question not but the reader will be surprized at our long taciturnity as
to this matter; and quite at a loss to divine who this woman was, since we
have hitherto not dropt a hint of any one likely to be a rival to Sophia;
for as to Mrs Blifil, though we have been obliged to mention some
suspicions of her affection for Tom, we have not hitherto given the least
latitude for imagining that he had any for her; and, indeed, I am sorry to
say it, but the youth of both sexes are too apt to be deficient in their
gratitude for that regard with which persons more advanced in years are
sometimes so kind to honour them.
That the reader may be no longer in suspense, he will be pleased to
remember, that we have often mentioned the family of George Seagrim
(commonly called Black George, the gamekeeper), which consisted at present
of a wife and five children.
The second of these children was a daughter, whose name was Molly, and who
was esteemed one of the handsomest girls in the whole country.
Congreve well says there is in true beauty something which vulgar souls
cannot admire; so can no dirt or rags hide this something from those souls
which are not of the vulgar stamp.
The beauty of this girl made, however, no impression on Tom, till she grew
towards the age of sixteen, when Tom, who was near three years older,
began first to cast the eyes of affection upon her. And this affection he
had fixed on the girl long before he could bring himself to attempt the
possession of her person: for though his constitution urged him greatly to
this, his principles no less forcibly restrained him. To debauch a young
woman, however low her condition was, appeared to him a very heinous
crime; and the good-will he bore the father, with the compassion he had
for his family, very strongly corroborated all such sober reflections; so
that he once resolved to get the better of his inclinations, and he
actually abstained three whole months without ever going to Seagrim's
house, or seeing his daughter.
Now, though Molly was, as we have said, generally thought a very fine
girl, and in reality she was so, yet her beauty was not of the most
amiable kind. It had, indeed, very little of feminine in it, and would
have become a man at least as well as a woman; for, to say the truth,
youth and florid health had a very considerable share in the composition.
Nor was her mind more effeminate than her person. As this was tall and
robust, so was that bold and forward. So little had she of modesty, that
Jones had more regard for her virtue than she herself. And as most
probably she liked Tom as well as he liked her, so when she perceived his
backwardness she herself grew proportionably forward; and when she saw he
had entirely deserted the house, she found means of throwing herself in
his way, and behaved in such a manner that the youth must have had very
much or very little of the heroe if her endeavours had proved
unsuccessful. In a word, she soon triumphed over all the virtuous
resolutions of Jones; for though she behaved at last with all decent
reluctance, yet I rather chuse to attribute the triumph to her, since, in
fact, it was her design which succeeded.
In the conduct of this matter, I say, Molly so well played her part, that
Jones attributed the conquest entirely to himself, and considered the
young woman as one who had yielded to the violent attacks of his passion.
He likewise imputed her yielding to the ungovernable force of her love
towards him; and this the reader will allow to have been a very natural
and probable supposition, as we have more than once mentioned the uncommon
comeliness of his person: and, indeed, he was one of the handsomest young
fellows in the world.
As there are some minds whose affections, like Master Blifil's, are solely
placed on one single person, whose interest and indulgence alone they
consider on every occasion; regarding the good and ill of all others as
merely indifferent, any farther than as they contribute to the pleasure or
advantage of that person: so there is a different temper of mind which
borrows a degree of virtue even from self-love. Such can never receive any
kind of satisfaction from another, without loving the creature to whom
that satisfaction is owing, and without making its well-being in some sort
necessary to their own ease.
Of this latter species was our heroe. He considered this poor girl as one
whose happiness or misery he had caused to be dependent on himself. Her
beauty was still the object of desire, though greater beauty, or a fresher
object, might have been more so; but the little abatement which fruition
had occasioned to this was highly overbalanced by the considerations of
the affection which she visibly bore him, and of the situation into which
he had brought her. The former of these created gratitude, the latter
compassion; and both, together with his desire for her person, raised in
him a passion which might, without any great violence to the word, be
called love; though, perhaps, it was at first not very judiciously placed.
This, then, was the true reason of that insensibility which he had shown
to the charms of Sophia, and that behaviour in her which might have been
reasonably enough interpreted as an encouragement to his addresses; for as
he could not think of abandoning his Molly, poor and destitute as she was,
so no more could he entertain a notion of betraying such a creature as
Sophia. And surely, had he given the least encouragement to any passion
for that young lady, he must have been absolutely guilty of one or other
of those crimes; either of which would, in my opinion, have very justly
subjected him to that fate, which, at his first introduction into this
history, I mentioned to have been generally predicted as his certain
destiny.