No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Several of the critics of Fielding have felt strongly in Jonathan Wild an under-significance, chiefly political. None of them, however, has uttered more than a few lines about it; none, apparently, has been able to mark it out satisfactorily even to himself; and none has attempted to prove that the political significance was actually intended or does exist.
1 1730, “While at the helm of state you ride”; 1731, “Great Sir, as on each levee day.”
2 In 1732.
3 Roger = Robert? Roger Johnson was an actual man, an associate of the man Jonathan Wild. Fielding took over the name because of the person. See “The Life of Jonathan Wild, …. by H. D. Late Clerk to Justice R—: Printed for T. Warner at the Black Boy in Paternoster-Row, 1725,” pages 63-8; and “An Authentick Narrative of the Life and Actions of Jonathan Wild, The Second Edition. London: Printed for A. Moore, …. 1725,” p. 30.
1 “When the late Sir Robert Walpole, one of the best of men and of ministers, used to equip us a yearly fleet at Spithead, ….” Voyage to Lisbon, under date of July 23.
2 See Elwin's Some Eighteenth Century Men of Letters, ii, pp. 118-20.
1 Henry Fielding, 1883, p. 99, note. The revised edition has (p. 105): “But the advertisement ‘from the Publisher’ to the edition of 1754 disclaims any such ‘personal Application.‘” The revised note ends: “The writer [of the Advertisement] was probably-Fielding.”
2 See p. 9, below.
3 Henry Fielding, A Memoir (London, 1910), p. 148.
1 On this passage see page 25, below.
1 At the end of Bk. ii, ch. i, ¶ 2, in which Heartfree is introduced to the reader, the 1743 text has: “As our Reader is to be more acquainted with this Person, it may not be improper to open somewhat of his Character, especially as it will serve as a Kind of Foil to the noble and GREAT Disposition of our Hero, and as the one seems sent into this World as a proper Object on which the GREAT Talents of the other were to be displayed with a proper and just Success.” In the 1743 text Bk. ii concludes: “And now, Reader, as thou canst be in no Suspense for the Fate of our GREAT MAN, since we have returned him safe to the principal scene of his Glory, we will a little look back on the Fortunes of Mr. Heartfree, whom we left in no very pleasant Situation, especially as the Behaviour of this poor Wretch will considerably serve to set off the GREAT and exemplary Conduct of our Hero; but of this we shall treat in the next Book.”
1 A foot-note in the Vernoniad manner is in the Chapter “Of Hats”; see page 44, below. In the 1743 editions are notes explanatory of slang. More of these were added in the 1754 edition.
1 See page 25, below.
2 See page 4, above.
3 See page 4, above.
4 Pages 282-3.
5 See confirmation on page 45, below.
6 Page 283.
1 See pages 2, 30, notes.
2 See my forthcoming article on this chapter. In the present article the references are to the Books and Chapters as numbered in the 1754 and following editions.
1 See on page 29, below, the connection of this passage with Maria Skerrett.
2 See my article, The “Champion” and some Unclaimed Essays of Fielding, to appear in Englische Studien.
1 See pages 21, 23, 24, 32, 38, 42.
1 See John Morley, Walpole, pp. 139-165; Ewald, Sir Robert Walpole, London, 1878, pp. 1-4; Dict. Nat. Biog., s. v. Walpole, Robert; New Engl. Dict., s. v. prime minister.
1 See Rogers, Protests of the House of Lords, ii, p. 10.
2 Compare Jonathan Wild, Bk. iv, last chapter, the analysis of Wild's character, “…. When we see him [1754 our hero], without the least Assistance or Pretence, setting himself at the Head of a Gang, which he had not any Shadow of Right to govern; if we view him maintaining absolute Power, and exercising Tyranny over a lawless Crew, contrary to all Law, but that of his own Will. ….” See pages 37-8, below.
1 In all the quotations in this article the capitals and italics are in the originals, unless I note the contrary.
2 See note on page 21, below.
1 In 1754 Fielding evidently felt that for the father Langfanger to serve under Hubert de Burgh, and his son Edward under Falstaff, indicated too great longevity. So in 1754 he inserted after “Edward” “had a grandson who,” as the present texts have it.
1 Possibly this chapter was carelessly expurgated or revised for the 1743 edition, as I suggest were Bk. i, ch. vii and Bk. ii, ch. vi.
2 It is impossible that Fielding did not see The Tryal of Colley Cibber, 1740, aimed at him and Ralph (see Godden, pp. 98, 103-4). Facing page 1 of this pamphlet is an elaborate half-page statement of the contents of Musgrave's book, exploiting especially the family history element.
3 Sir Robert Walpole, London, 1878, pp. 446-8.
1 See the attack on Walpole in the Champion Index to the Times of April 29, 1740, where is announced a series of “Lectures on State-Lodgic” by Robin Brass at the “Brazen-Head, a Public House, not far from Downing-street, Westminster.” Among the topics to be discussed are “That Revolution-Principles are right in one Reign and wrong in another”; “That all Men are Rascals, but all Ministers honest Men”; “That Virtue and public Spirit, are but old Wives Tales.”
2 See page 17, above.
3 The Writings of Henry Fielding, 16 vols., edited by W. E. Henley, New York, 1902, Miscellaneous Writings, Vol. ii, pp. 53-4.
1 See Fielding's notes on this passage, and page 42, below.
2 Henley's edit., pp. 55-6.
3 See page 17, above.
1 See Ewald, p. 326.
2 Henley's edit., p. 52.
1 Morley, Walpole, pp. 111-112, 131, 132-133. See Dict. Nat. Biog., s. v. Walpole, Robert, p. 204; also Pope's Moral Essays, Epistle i, ll. 15 ff. and note in Elwin's edit., iii, p. 173.
2 See Fielding's notes on this passage, and his hits on extravagance in buildings and furnishings and pictures in the Champion of February 16, 19, 1739-40, and the connection there of the prime minister with the hits.
1 See page 5, above.
2 See page 9, above.
3 Note that in Bk. iv, ch. ii (see page 19, above), Fielding remarks on the insecurity of “Dependence on the Friendship of GREAT MEN. An Observation which hath been frequently made by those who have lived in Courts or in Newgate, or in any other Place set apart for the Habitation of the said GREAT MEN.”
1 See my forthcoming paper on The “Champion” and “Jonathan Wild,” and see pages 34 ff., below.
1 See pages 17-8, 22-3, above.
2 See the Vernoniad passage quoted on page 23, above.
3 Walpole, p. 312; see Lady Louisa Stuart's Introductory Anecdotes in Thomas' edit. of Wharncliffe's Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 1861, i, pp. 71, 72; Elwin's Works of Pope, iii, p. 481, note 6; the ironical defence of my Lord Treasurer Flimnap's wife in Swift's Lilliput, ch. vi and Scott's note on the same in his edition of Swift.
1 Ewald, p. 312; Wharncliffe's Works of Lady Mary, London, 1837, i, pp. 32 ff., and Thomas' edit., 1861, pp. 172 ff.; Dict. Nat. Blog., s. v. Walpole, Robert, and Carr, Lord Hervey.
2 Memoirs, ed. Croker, 1884, iii, pp. 148-9.
3 Cunningham's edit. Letters, vii, pp. 434.
1 Hervey's Memoirs, ed. Croker, 1884, ii, pp. 115, 143.
2 Dict. Nat. Biog., s. v. Walpole, Robert, p. 205, col. 2.
3 Culloden Papers, quoted by Mahon, Hist. of England, London, 1839, ii, pp. 160-1; Dict. Nat. Biog., s. v. Walpole, Robert, p. 206, col. 1.
4 See pages 11-2, above.
1 See page 52, below. Also Fitzgerald, New Hist. of the English Stage, London, 1882, ii, p. 33; Coxe's Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole, ed. 1800, ii, pp. 118-19; Croker's Hervey's Memoirs, 1884, ii, p. 117 note.
2 Croker's Hervey's Memoirs, i, p. 115 note. See the Craftsman, No. 85; Dict. Nat. Biog., s. v. Walpole, Robert, p. 205, col. 2.
3 See Dict. Nat. Biog., s. v. Gay, John, on the hit made by the actress of Polly and on the character itself. See also the verses in Vol. v Appendix of the 1731 reprint of the Craftsman.
4 An actual criminal Joseph Blake, alias “Blueskin,” who being “first made a thief” by Wild, was later given up to the authorities by him. Blueskin in revenge cut Wild's throat in a Court of Justice (see ch. i, Bk. iv). See The True and the Genuine Account of the Late Jonathan Wild, London, 1725, p. 34, ¶ 2, also pp. 14-15, 20, ¶ 4; Knapp and Baldwin's Newgate Calendar, i, pp. 252, 256-8; Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals, 2 vols. London, Reeves and Turner, 1874, i, p. 388.
1 Note here a slip (cp. slips noted on page 34, below) from the figure to the fact: there was no salary attached to Blueskin's office. Fielding confuses Blueskin the Captain of thieves and Blueskin the bribe taker.
2 Page 15, above.
1 Dict. Nat. Blog., s. v. Walpole, Robert, p. 190.
2 Walpole, p. 75.
3 Henley's edit., p. 52.
1 See page 16, above.
1 Cp. the slip in Bk. iii, ch. xiv, ¶ 3, noted on p. 31, above.
2 In the midst of the puppet-show episode in Tom Jones, Bk. xii, ch. vi, ¶ 4, is an interesting linking of the “grave man” element in the prison rivalry chapter (anticipated in the passage concerning the “grave man” in the Æneid in the Champion essay on Authority of Jan. 15, 1739-40, see pages 25-6, above), and the puppet-show matter of Wild, Bk. iii, ch. xi.
1 See pages 36 ff., below.
1 The italica here, except alias and Muscovy, are not in the original.
2 The double sense of “Motion” is quite possible: the action of the puppets and a motion in Parliament. Walpole was often styled “The Motion-Master.”
1 Cp. here page 15, above.
2 The italics here (except in Czar, Muscovy, France) are not in the original. See the italicized passage in the quotation from the story.
3 Henley's edit., pp. 57-8.
1 Cf. the phrase in the passage above that refers to this present chapter: “did hack and hew and lay each other most cruelly open to the Spectators.”
1 See page 21, above.
1 Cp. the wording of the passage quoted on p. 31, above.
1 See page 9 above.
2 See page 35, above.
1 The vessel on which the King was attempting to reach the Continent. The prevailing East Wind delayed his arrival till May 24th. See Gentleman's Magazine, 1740, p. 260, cols. 1, 2.
1 See page 3, above.
1 Page 25, above. See also pages 10, 34, above.
1 See my note in the New York Nation of April 25, 1912, p. 409.
2 Dict. Nat. Biog., s. v. Walpole, Robert, p. 198, col. 2. See Rogers' Protests of the House of Lords, ii, p. 10.
1 Coxe, Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole, edit. 1800, iii, p. 177. See Dict. Nat. Biog., s. v. Walpole, Robert, p. 198, col. 2; Morley, Walpole, p. 228.
2 History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht, 1839, ii, pp. 207-8. On all this matter see page 30, above.
1 Croker's Edit, of Hervey's Memoirs, 1884, i, p. 117. See Elwin's Works of Pope, vii, p. 125 and note.
2 The Right Honourable Earl of Orford is down for 10 sets Royal Paper; the Prince of Wales, 15 sets ditto; Chas. Fleetwood, Esq., 20 sets; Mr. Leake, 12 sets; Chas. Hanbury Williams, 10 sets Royal Paper; the Right Hon. Lord Windsor, 10 sets ditto; Mr. Peele, 10 sets ditto. The next largest subscribers took 6 sets. Only 30 in all took more than one set.