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Machiavelli and Fielding's Jonathan Wild

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Bernard Shea
Bernard Shea*
Affiliation:
Princeton University, Princeton, N. J.
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Extract

Aprominent verbal characteristic of Henry Fielding's The History of the Life of the late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great is the excessive use of the words “great” and “greatness.” That this serves certain specific purposes in the political and moral satire of the work has long been recognized. That it may owe something to the writings of Machiavelli is nowadays likely to pass unnoticed by readers who are not acquainted with the particular translation from which Fielding derived his surprisingly detailed and extensive knowledge of that author. Actually, Jonathan Wild contains numerous echoes of passages in the writings of Machiavelli. In addition to resemblances involving portions of the Prince and Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius, there are numerous parallels in content, structure, and diction with the Life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca There is visible adaptation of Machiavelli's method in the Life of Castruccio in that Fielding plays with the conventions of classical imaginative biography. There is also burlesque of Machiavelli's historical method. In sum, Jonathan Wild is at once an imitation, a parody, and a criticism of Machiavelli.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , March 1957 , pp. 55 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1957

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References

Note 1 in page 55 In Miscellanies by Henry Fielding, Esq. (London, 1743), Vol. in. Citations in the text are by book and chapter, with occasional page numbers.

Note 2 in page 55 This paper takes its departure from the discussion of Jonathan Wild in F. Homes Dudden, Henry Fielding, His Life, Works, and Times (Oxford, 1952), pp. 449–501. Dudden nowhere mentions Machiavelli but quotes several patently Machiavellian passages from The Beggar's Opera (1728) as anticipating Fielding's characterization of Wild (pp. 454–455). For Gay's use of Machiavelli in The Beggar's Opera and elsewhere see Sven M. Armens, John Gay: Social Critic (New York, 1954). Dudden relates the “insatiability” of Wild's “greatness” to the Hobbesian conception of the natural man and suggests that Fielding had studied Hobbes (pp. 468-469 n.). Dudden also calls attention to the precedent of Rowe's Tamerlane (1702), which glorifies William III in the character of Tamerlane and satirizes Louis XIV in the character of Bajazet, an insatiably ambitious monster of villainy (p. 465 n.). Following the train of association to Christopher Marlowe, author of Tambur-laine the Great, one might further suggest that Fielding was attacking the Marlovian concept of heroism, particularly as expressed in The Jew of Malta, where Machiavel appears in person to speak the Prologue.

Note 3 in page 55 The Works of the Famous Nicolas Machiavel, Citizen and Secretary of Florence, trans. Henry Nevile (London, 1695). Unless otherwise indicated, all citations of Machiavelli will refer to this edition in the text, by book and chapter or page numbers.

Note 4 in page 56 Fielding owned a copy of the “third” edition of 1720, which differs from previous editions only in minor typographical details. See Item No. 447 in Samuel Baker's Catalogue of the .,. Library of… Henry Fielding, Esq. (London 1755), reprinted in E. M. Thorn-bury, Henry Fielding's Theory of the Comic Prose Epic (Madison, 1931), pp. 168–189.

Note 5 in page 56 For an estimate of the influence and reputation of Machiavelli's Discourses in the Age of Milton see Zera S. Fink, The Classical Republicans (Evanston, 1945), p. 53 n. Fielding's interest in the shorter forms of prose fiction is indicated by the inclusion of 2 narratives, the histories of Leonora and of Leonard and Paul, in Joseph Andrews (1742) (ii, iv, vi and iv, x–xi).

Note 6 in page 56 George Sherburn, “Pope at Work,” in Essays on the Eighteenth Century Presented to David Nicol Smith (Oxford, 1945), pp. 50–51. The occasion was a conversation between Pope and Joseph Spence in 1730.

Note 7 in page 56 Dialogues of the Dead, xii, “Henry Duke of Guise—Machiavel,” in The Works of George Lord Lyttleton, ed. G. E. Ayscough (London, 1774), p. 392.

Note 8 in page 57 A. O. Aldridge, “Polygamy in Early Fiction: Henry Neville [sic], and Denis Veiras,” PMLA, LXV (1950), 466, shows that Nevile's defense of polygamy in The Isle of Pines (1668) was a hoax, and cites additional evidence that Nevile was a literary prankster.

Note 9 in page 57 “Nicolas Machiavel's Letter to Zenobius Buondelmontius, in Vindication of Himself and His Writings.” The date is 1 April 1537, that is, 10 years after the death of the supposed author. In all editions the letter occurs at the end of the volume and is separately paged in all except in the 1720 edition. It is introduced by a special, highly circumstantial—and, of course, spurious—preface, “The Publisher to the Reader, Concerning the following Letter.” John Carswell, The Old Cause (London, 1954), pp. 64–65, 366–367, discusses the use of this letter by contemporary political writers.

Note 10 in page 58 Comparison is made with the definitive Italian text, Tutte le Opère Storiche e Letlerarie di Niccolo Machiavelli, ed. Mazzoni and Casella (Firenze, 1929), p. 754.

Note 11 in page 58 See n. 22 below and related text. 12 Mazzoni and Casella, p. 761.

Note 13 in page 58 E.g., Wild “often declared that he looked upon borrowing to be as good a Way of taking as any” (i, viii, 53; also ii, xiv, 188).

Note 14 in page 58 It was appropriate that Fielding immerse himself in the writings of Machiavelli prior to undertaking political journalism on the side of the Opposition. As a Whig, he subscribed to constitutionalist principles of government; as a “Young Patriot,” he was following leaders who derived their political strategy from Bolingbroke. For amplification consult the references to Locke and Bolingbroke in Augustin Renaudet, Machiavel (Paris, 1942), and Herbert Butterfield, The Statecraft of Machiavelli (London, 1940). See also Allan H. Gilbert's excellent Introduction and notes in Machiavelli, The Prince and Other Works (Chicago, 1941; New York, 1946).

Note 15 in page 59 The Champion (London, 1741), I, 64.

Note 16 in page 61 Henry St. John, first Viscount Bolingbroke, The Idea of a Patriot King in Letters, On the Spirit of Patriotism … (London, 1749), pp. 113–117. The Patriot King is dated 1738 but was not published until 1749. Bolingbroke deposited a MS. copy with Pope, who had it printed in a surreptitious edition never released. Fielding could have read the MS. (or at least learned of its contents) soon after its composition through his connection with George Lyttleton and the “Young Patriots” and/or through William Warburton, the confidant of Pope frequently entertained by Ralph Allen.

Note 17 in page 63 “Neither Conscience nor good Nature … restrained him … wherefore it was concluded to happen, because it is so provided by providence, that no Man can be exquisitely Wicked, no more than good in Perfection” (Nevile, p. 297).

Note 18 in page 64 Champion i, 330.

Note 19 in page 66 Gilbert and Renaudet (n. 14 above) furnish extensive background information for the Life of Castruccio.

Note 20 in page 71 That Wild's maxims are “Machiavellian” need hardly be pointed out. The following can be related more or less closely to particular passages in the Prince and Discourses: No. 1—Disc, ii, xxvi and iii, xxiii; No. 3—Disc, iii, vi; No. 4—Disc, iii, xvii; No. 5—Disc., ii, xxviii; No. 7—Prince, xviii; No. 9—Disc, I, li; No. 12—Prince, xviii; No. 13—Disc., i, xxvii; No. 14—Prince, xxi; No. 15—Prince, xviii.

Note 21 in page 71 Fielding deleted this chapter (n, xii) from the revised edition of 1754—the edition usually reprinted. Consequently, most readers have never met the genuinely amusing “Joe Miller” material. Of the 34 witty sayings in the Life of Caslruccio, 32 have been traced to Diogenes Laertius. See Gilbert, The Prince (Chicago ed.), pp. 206–209. Laertius, in his Life of Antisthenes, sets forth the famous “Cynic Maxims.” Fielding matches them with Wild's maxims of cynicism.

Note 22 in page 72 Nevile is actually responsible for the text (passage discussed above; see n. 11).