The History of Henry Fielding, Volume 2

Front Cover
Yale University Press, 1918 - Authors, English

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 124 - Which lives as long as fools are pleased to laugh. Some, valuing those of their own side or mind, Still make themselves the measure of mankind: Fondly we think we honour merit then, When we but praise ourselves in other men.
Page 324 - H. Fielding has given a true picture of himself and his first wife in the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Booth, some compliments to his own figure excepted ; and I am persuaded, several of the incidents he mentions are real matters of fact.
Page 126 - TO THE COUNTESS OF BUTE. Venice, Oct. 1, NS 1748. MY DEAR CHILD, I HAVE at length received the box, with the books enclosed ; for which I give you many thanks, as they amused me very much. I gave a very ridiculous proof of it, fitter indeed for my grand-daughter than myself. I returned from a party on horseback ; and after having rode twenty miles, part of it by moonshine, it was ten at night when I found the box arrived. I could not deny myself the pleasure of opening it : and, falling upon Fielding's...
Page 162 - ... fine park, composed of very unequal ground, and agreeably varied with all the diversity that hills, lawns, wood, and water, laid out with admirable taste, but owing less to art than to nature, could give. Beyond this, the country gradually rose into a ridge of wild mountains, the tops of which were above the clouds.
Page 174 - I am sure if I had seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as he did. And then to be sure, in that scene, as you called it, between him and his mother, where you told me he acted so fine, why any man, that is, any good man, that had such a mother, would have done exactly the same.
Page 268 - But if we were to make a progress through the outskirts of this town, and look into the habitations of the poor, we should there behold such pictures of human misery as must move the compassion of every heart that deserves the name of human. What, indeed, must be his composition who could see whole families in want of every necessary of life, oppressed with hunger, cold, nakedness, and filth; and with diseases, the certain consequences of all these - what, I say, must be his composition who could...
Page 225 - Bathurst t'other night carried a servant of the latter 's, who had attempted to shoot him, before Fielding; who, to all his other vocations, has, by the grace of Mr. Lyttelton, added that of Middlesex justice. He sent them word he was at supper, that they must come next morning.
Page 340 - I can truly say that I bestowed a more than ordinary Pains in her Education; in which I will venture to affirm, I followed the Eules of all those who are acknowledged to have writ best on the Subject; and if .her Conduct be fairly examined, she will be found to deviate very little from the strictest Observation of all those Rules ; neither Homer nor Virgil pursued them with greater Care than myself, and the candid and learned Reader will see that the latter was the noble model, which I made use of...
Page 22 - AY me ! what perils do environ The man that meddles with cold iron ! What plaguy mischiefs and mishaps Do dog him still with after-claps...
Page 128 - In comparing those two writers, he used this expression ; " that there was as great a difference between them as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate.

Bibliographic information