"Porcupinus Pelagius," and surely had the hundred eyes of "Argus Centoculi." The man who thus multiplied himself was also, I daresay, the word-catcher that assisted Carew with the revision of his "Apology." We cannot certainly call him by name. Was he that Macnamara Morgan, to whom has been attributed "The Causidicade"? Or had another Porcupine stolen the pen of the old one? Through more than a hundred pages, Orbilius took up "Tom Jones" chapter by chapter, finding or fabricating mistakes in every one of them and damning every character. If readers should observe, he remarked, a certain strangeness in his style, that was because he had decided to adopt Mr. Fielding's "elegant termination of th instead of s" in the third person singular of the auxiliary verbs do and have; though he would refrain from imitating, except in quotations, that author's pleonasms such as "the final end," for "the end" by itself seemed able to do the business. Whenever he hit upon a genuine slip, he was, of course, in glee. For example, Fielding apparently ascribed the proverb, "Evil communications corrupt good manners," to Solomon instead of St. Paul or Menander; whereupon Orbilius remarked, "Read your Bible, Mr. F. before you cite from it again." When Fielding despaired of making "shine" a scene which he would like to write and so omitted it, Orbilius told him that he could make this and all the dull passages in his book "shine" by casting them into the flames. At the end, however, the critic relented far enough to say: "Yet have I no personal pique against this gentleman; but admire some irregular touches of wit and morality, which, like the few fertile spots to be seen among the most barren parts of the Alps, may be found in travelling thro' his volumes."

A few months later, the humorous climax of censure was reached in "Old England." During the spring of 1750, London was visited by two earthquakes, which occurred

just a month apart, on February 8 and March 8. Houses rocked, chairs shook, pewter rattled, chimneys tumbled, people ran into the streets, "the councillors in the Court of the King's Bench and Chancery in Westminster Hall were so alarmed that they expected the building to fall." While the inhabitants were in consternation, an astrologer predicted a third and worse earthquake for the fifth of April. Though the prophecy was not fulfilled, quivers continued at intervals far into the summer. The earthquakes were preceded and followed by terrific storms of wind and rain and hail; while at night the heavens throughout England were all illumined with the Aurora Borealis, and meteors exploded with dreadful detonations. At Fielding's old home in Salisbury was seen "an extraordinary phenomenon, being a very luminous collection of vapours, that formed an irregular arch, like rock work, and extended across the horizon, waving like flames issuing from fire. After a short continuance, it disappeared at once, the sky being very clear, and more enlightened than by the stars only." Some people tried to find humour in this turmoil of earth and heaven. Fashionable ladies in Westminster, we are told, "were so ludicrously profane as to send cards thus inscribed: 'I invite your ladyship to the earthquake on next.'" But when the night approached for the third earthquake, great numbers left their houses, walked in the fields, lay in boats, sat in their coaches, and thronged the roads as far as Windsor until daybreak came and the danger was over.

The strange occurrences were the theme of numerous pamphlets written in jest or in earnest. One of them was a letter from the devil, who congratulated the people of London on their conduct before and after the earthquakes; others explained the commotions in earth and air from natural causes; but most discerned in them the hand of the Almighty. In March, Thomas Sherlock, the Bishop of

London, came out with a "Pastoral Letter," calling the people to repentance, of which ten thousand copies were sold in two days and forty thousand were distributed to the poor. Inasmuch as the earthquakes were hardly felt outside London and Westminster, it was clear to the Bishop that the tremendous shocks had been directed by the immediate hand of God against "these two great cities" because of their infidelity, lewdness, and debauchery. And then, near the time the town was to be shaken by the third earthquake, "Old England" admonished the people to heed the voices of heaven ringing in their ears, to mend their ways, to cease from gaming and masquerades, and from all manner of loose and profane pleasures. What above all else had reduced London to a sink of abominations, declared Argus of the Hundred Eyes, was the reading of lewd books, especially one called "Tom Jones" which, to the shame of England, had been greedily devoured by everybody. On the other hand, it was intimated, Paris had preserved her morals by suppressing the novel, and so had escaped the earthquake and meteors. But in England, earthquakes still threatened; and night after night "streams of a darkruddy fire" continued to shoot from the heavens "in a menacing manner," with now and then "a mild gleam of light" higher up in the sky as a sign, perhaps, "of mercy after judgment." The conclusion was that the surest way to appease the wrath of the Almighty would be for Parliament to pass an Act prohibiting the sale of "Tom Jones" and all other books so clearly designed in cool and diabolical malice to corrupt the religion and morals of the nation.

And there was an equally humorous sequel. One of the wise men who forecast the third earthquake was a "crazy life-guardsman" named John Misavan. He belonged to Lord Delawar's troop of horse then stationed in London. Claiming that "the intelligence was communicated to him by an angel," Misavan warned the public that the most

dreadful of all earthquakes would soon be upon them; that the Thames would wash away London Bridge, that Westminster Abbey would be laid level with the ground, that the earth would open in a great many places and swallow up numberless buildings and people. Alarmed by the impending disaster, men and women of all classes visited and questioned the prophet and came away still more frightened. "Certain persons of a great family having been to hear him, they were so terrified, that they sent to Mr. Whiston the astronomer, to know if it was possible for any man to foretell an earthquake; his answer was, that no man could without divine inspiration; but that in foreign countries, where earthquakes were more common, they seldom had two, but they had a third to succeed." Thereupon Fielding as the principal justice of the peace for London and Westminster intervened. On the night before the earthquake was to occur, he summoned John Misavan into court and committed him to Newgate "with strict orders to chain him down in one of the cells." Rarely in literary history has an author been able to get so complete control over a hostile critic, and thereby forestall an earthquake threatening his readers with destruction.*

* The story of the earthquake may be followed in "The Gentleman's Magazine" and "The London Magazine,'' March, April, May, June, 1750; and with greater detail in the newspapers of the year. Prof. J. E. Wells called my attention to two pamphlets dealing with the case of Misavan, of which one has the following title: "The False Prophet Detected: Being a particular Account of the Apprehending John Misavan. . . . With his whole Examination before the Worshipful Justice Fielding, and his Commitment on Wednesday Night to Newgate, with strict Orders to chain him down in one of the Cells, as a Warning to all Persons how they are guilty of such wicked and blasphemous Crimes.''

CHAPTER XIX

THE ART OF TOM JONES

I

Regard "Tom Jones" as you will-from the standpoint of mere artifice, characters, or ethics-and it will turn out to be an innovation in the history of fiction, no less unexpected than the meteors and earthquakes that were let loose after its publication. Hitherto those novelists who had aimed at a portrait of contemporary manners had taken as the basis of their plots a story from real life, and embroidered it with fictitious details. Such, so far as one can divine it, had been the method of Defoe in "Moll Flanders" and even in "Robinson Crusoe." Such, too, was the method of Richardson in "Pamela." Twenty-five years before "Pamela" was written there had actually lived in England a Mrs. B., who had reformed and married a rake and was then living happily with him after all his villainous attempts to undo her. Exactly as in the novel, the girl had tried to drown herself in a pond as the only escape from the wiles of the young gentleman. Richardson let his imagination play upon this story and spun it into a novel of four volumes. As he possessed the dramatic sense lacking in Defoe, he was able to give to his narrative the form of bourgeois comedy. He took the drowning incident for his climax of distress, introduced, in the character of Mr. Williams, a foil to Mr. B., and eventually wrought the conversion of his hero by placing in his hands the journal of Pamela which laid bare all her suffering for