782623.9

COLLECTION

OF

BRITISH AUTHORS.

VOL. LXI.

TOM JONES BY HENRY FIELDING.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

THE

HISTORY OF TOM JONES,

A

FOUNDLING.

BY

HENRY FIELDING, Esq.

WITH THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LEIPZIG

BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ

1844.

THE

HISTORY OF A FOUNDLING.

BOOK X.

In which the history goes forward about twelve hours.

CHAPTER I.

Containing instructions very necessary to be perused by modern critics.

READER, it is impossible we should know what sort of person thou wilt be; for, perhaps, thou mayest be as learned in human nature as Shakspeare himself was, and, perhaps thou mayest be no wiser than some of his editors. Now, lest this latter should be the case, we think proper, before we go any farther together, to give thee a few wholesome admonitions; that thou mayest not as grossly misunderstand and misrepresent us, as some of the said editors have misunderstood and misrepresented their author.

First, then, we warn thee not too hastily to condemn any of the incidents in this our history, as impertinent and foreign to our main design, because thou dost not immediately conceive in what manner such incident may conduce to that design. This work may, indeed, be considered as a great creation of our own; and for a little reptile of a critic to presume to find fault with any of its parts, without knowing the manner in which the whole is connected, and before he comes to the final catastrophe, is a most presumptuous absurdity. The allusion and metaphor we have here made use of, we must acknowledge to be infinitely too great for our occasion, but there is, indeed, no other which is at all adequate to express the difference between an author of the first rate, and a critic of the lowest.

Tom Jones. II.

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