CHAPTER XVII THE PUBLICATION OF TOM JONES It has been often lamented that Fielding, when he discovered his talent in "Joseph Andrews," did not proceed forthwith to write a novel free from all dependency upon Richardson, in fulfilment of the vision he then had of a great comic epic in prose, which should be for modern England what the comic counterpart of the Iliad had been for ancient Greece. Such, it is clear from the dedication of "Tom Jones" to Lyttelton, was the desire of his friend and patron, who believed him possessed of the extraordinary endowments requisite for the undertaking. Though Fielding regarded Lyttelton's desire as hardly less than a command, neither time nor circumstance then seemed favourable. The fact is, Fielding's mind soon became engrossed with the law; and so fierce and scurrilous were the attacks upon him by Grub Street for what he had written and for what he had not written, that he resolved to publish nothing more for the amusement of the public. His "Miscellanies," as I have related, was to be his last book in general literature. The next year, in the summer of 1744, he did indeed write a preface to "David Simple” to please and aid his sister; but it was made the occasion for a solemn declaration that he had given up the struggle for literary fame, upon which he had come to look with. contempt. Unexpectedly, however, the insurrection of 1745 drew him into patriotic journalism, where his ability to deal with exactly contemporary life and affairs shone with very 1749 great brilliancy. The time had arrived for "Tom Jones" if that "newspaper of many volumes," as he called it, were ever to be written. Fielding's circumstances were then made easier by the steady income week by week from the sale of his journals, of one of which the Government apparently took, as was then said, two thousand copies; and he may have received gifts of money from Lyttelton towards the support of himself and family. Without Lyttelton's assistance, he declared in the preface to "Tom Jones," the novel "had never been completed." It was to this friend, he added in explanation, that he really owed his existence "during great part of the time" he was engaged upon its composition, covering "some years" of his life. Along with Lyttelton Fielding alluded to Ralph Allen, who together were in Fielding's estimation "two of the best and worthiest men in the world," who were "strongly and zealously my friends." Their generosity, he means to say, gave him the time-it can hardly be called leisure-to write "Tom Jones," the labour, in his own phrase, of "some thousands of hours." The thousands of hours that Fielding, already becoming infirm with the gout, was able to devote to "Tom Jones" were clearly distributed over the three years, 1746-1748. Of these years, the period when he was least interrupted by hack-work fell between the discontinuance of "The True Patriot" in June, 1746, and the establishment of "The Jacobite's Journal" in December, 1747. The novel, I take it, was begun as early as the summer of 1746, and continued at a steady though not uniform rate through 1747 and 1748, despite the extra labours of "The Jacobite's Journal," down to a few months before its publication in February, 1749. Though not an historical novel, "Tom Jones" has, in harmony with the ancient epics, a slight historical background in the insurrection just preceding its composition. To be precise, its main action-the jour 1 in Lis own ju“ 2, izeruner, 1717. ,, ,་ Die to301, I tans logan to ely 8 the sneer of 1748, and elat a sterly though not adon met zowel 1747 4. degne the e fr. k.'wars o2 "The Jacobute down 1 a few months before its pendo, in 1749. There not an histerical novel, "Ta Il canes with the at cert cars, a siza bað ground in the 1 surrection inst prestul ar ition. To e prise, its main betion -the jou |