Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books Part 11

[Footnote 5: "Verses without content, melodious trifles."--_Ars Poet_.

322.]

[Footnote 6: Jeremy Collier, in his _Short View of the Immortality and Profaneness of the Stage_, 1698.]

[Footnote 7: "Energetic, irascible, unyielding, vehement."--Horace, _Ars Poet._121.]

[Footnote 8: "Whithersoever the fates drag us to and fro, let us follow."--Virgil, _aeneid_, v. 709.]

[Footnote 9: The statements that follow as to Chaucer's sources are mostly not in accord with the results of modern scholarship.]

[Footnote 10: The plot of neither of these poems was original with Chaucer.]

[Footnote 11: "Plenty has made me poor."--_Meta._ iii, 466.]

[Footnote 12: By Ben Jonson.]

[Footnote 13: Cowley]

[Footnote 14: 'Too much a poet'--Martial iii 44 (not Catullus)]

[Footnote 15: Suited to the ears of that time]

[Footnote 16: Speght, whom modern scholarship has shown to be right in this matter.]

[Footnote 17: What follows on Chaucer's life is full of errors.]

[Footnote 18: Wondered at]

[Footnote 19: A spurious "Plowman's Tale" was included in the older editions of Chaucer.]

[Footnote 20: A law term for slander of a man of high rank, involving more severe punishment than ordinary slander.]

[Footnote 21: Henry II. and Thomas a Becket.]

[Footnote 22: Dr. James Drake wrote a reply to Jeremy Collier's _Short View_.]

[Footnote 23: "He did the first injury"]

[Footnote 24: A Neapolitan physician who wrote on physiognomy.]

[Footnote 25: "I wish all this unsaid."]

[Footnote 26: Reckon.]

[Footnote 27: Their.]

[Footnote 28: Must.]

[Footnote 29: The corrupt state of the text of this pa.s.sage is enough to explain why Dryden found Chaucer rough.]

[Footnote 30: "Many words which have now fallen out of use shall be born again; and others which are now in honor shall fall, if custom wills it, in the force of which lie the judgement and law and rules of speech."--Horace _Ars Poet._ 70-72.]

[Footnote 31: "It is easy to add to what is already invented."]

[Footnote 32: Dionco and Fiametta sang together a long time of Arcite and Palamon.]

[Footnote 33: Not by Chaucer.]

[Footnote 34: Rev. Luke Milbourne, who had attacked Dryden's Virgil.]

[Footnote 35: Sir Richard Blackmore, who had censured Dryden for the indecency of his writings.]

[Footnote 36: "The argument from abuse to use is not valid."]

[Footnote 37: "You, Demetrius and Tigellius, I bid lament among the chairs of your scholars." Blackmore had once been a schoolmaster.--Noyes.]

PREFACE TO JOSEPH ANDREWS

BY HENRY FIELDING (1742)[A]

THE COMIC EPIC IN PROSE

As it is possible the mere English reader may have a different idea of romance with the author of these little volumes; and may consequently expect a kind of entertainment, not to be found, nor which was even intended, in the following pages; it may not be improper to premise a few words concerning this kind of writing, which I do not remember to have seen hitherto attempted in our language.

The EPIC, as well as the DRAMA, is divided into tragedy and comedy.

HOMER, who was the father of this species of poetry, gave us the pattern of both these, tho' that of the latter kind is entirely lost; which Aristotle tells us, bore the same relation to comedy which his Iliad bears to tragedy. And perhaps, that we have no more instances of it among the writers of antiquity, is owing to the loss of this great pattern, which, had it survived, would have found its imitators equally with the other poems of this great original.

And farther, as this poetry may be tragic or comic, I will not scruple to say it may be likewise either in verse or prose: for tho' it wants one particular, which the critic enumerates in the const.i.tuent parts of an epic poem, namely, metre; yet, when any kind of writing contains all its other parts, such as fable, action, characters, sentiments, and diction, and is deficient in metre only, it seems, I think, reasonable to refer it to the epic; at least, as no critic hath thought proper to range it under any other head, nor to a.s.sign it a particular name to itself.

Thus the Telemachus of the archbishop of Cambray appears to me of the epic kind, as well as the Odyssey of Homer, indeed, it is much fairer and more reasonable to give it a name common with that species from which it differs only in a single instance, than to confound it with those which it resembles in no other. Such are those voluminous works, commonly called Romances, namely Clelia, Cleopatra, Astraea, Ca.s.sandra, the Grand Cyrus, and innumerable others which contain, as I apprehend, very little instruction or entertainment.

Now, a comic romance is a comic epic-poem in prose; differing from comedy, as the serious epic from tragedy: its action being more extended and comprehensive; containing a much larger circle of incidents, and introducing a greater variety of characters. It differs from the serious romance in its fable and action, in this: that as in the one these are grave and solemn, so in the other they are light and ridiculous; it differs in its characters, by introducing persons of inferiour rank, and consequently of inferiour manners, whereas the grave romance sets the highest before us; lastly in its sentiments and diction; by preserving the ludicrous instead of the sublime. In the diction I think, burlesque itself may be sometimes admitted; of which many instances will occur in this work, as in the description of the battles, and some other places not necessary to be pointed out to the cla.s.sical reader; for whose entertainment those parodies or burlesque imitations are chiefly calculated.

But tho' we have sometimes admitted this in our diction, we have carefully excluded it from our sentiments and characters; for there it is never properly introduced, unless in writings of the burlesque kind, which this is not intended to be. Indeed, no two species of writing can differ more widely than the comic and the burlesque: for as the latter is ever the exhibition of what is monstrous and unnatural, and where our delight, if we examine it, arises from the surprising absurdity, as in appropriating the manners of the highest to the lowest, or _e converso_; so in the former, we should ever confine ourselves strictly to nature, from the just imitation of which, will flow all the pleasure we can this way convey to a sensible reader. And perhaps, there is one reason, why a comic writer should of all others be the least excused for deviating from nature, since it may not be always so easy for a serious poet to meet with the great and the admirable; but life everywhere furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous.

I have hinted this little, concerning burlesque; because I have often heard that name given to performances, which have been truly of the comic kind, from the author's having sometimes admitted it in his diction only; which as it is the dress of poetry, doth like the dress of men establish characters, (the one of the whole poem, and the other of the whole man), in vulgar opinion, beyond any of their greater excellences: but surely, a certain drollery in style, where characters and sentiments are perfectly natural, no more const.i.tutes the burlesque, than an empty pomp and dignity of words, where everything else is mean and low, can ent.i.tle any performance to the appellation of the true sublime.

And I apprehend, my Lord Shaftesbury's opinion of mere burlesque agrees with mine, when he a.s.serts, "There is no such thing to be found in the writings of the antients." But perhaps I have less abhorrence than he professes for it: and that not because I have had some little success on the stage this way; but rather as it contributes more to exquisite mirth and laughter than any other; and these are probably more wholesome physic for the mind, and conduce better to purge away spleen, melancholy, and ill affections, than is generally imagined.

Nay, I will appeal to common observation, whether the same companies are not found more full of good-humour and benevolence, after they have been sweetened for two or three hours with entertainments of this kind, than soured by a tragedy or a grave lecture.

But to ill.u.s.trate all this by another science, in which, perhaps, we shall see the distinction more clearly and plainly: let us examine the works of a comic history-painter, with those performances which the Italians call _Caricatura_, where we shall find the greatest excellence of the former to consist in the exactest copy of nature, insomuch, that a judicious eye instantly rejects anything _outre_, any liberty which the painter hath taken with the features of that _alma mater_. Whereas in the _Caricatura_ we allow all licence. Its aim is to exhibit monsters, not men, and all distortions and exaggerations whatever are within its proper province.

Now what Caricatura is in painting Burlesque is in writing, and in the same manner the comic writer and painter correlate to each other. And here I shall observe, that as in the former, the painter seems to have the advantage, so it is in the latter infinitely on the side of the writer, for the Monstrous is much easier to paint than describe, and the Ridiculous to describe than paint.

And tho' perhaps this latter species doth not in either science so strongly affect and agitate the muscles as the other, yet it will be owned I believe, that a more rational and useful pleasure arises to us from it. He who should call the ingenious Hogarth a burlesque painter, would, in my opinion, do him very little honour: for sure it is much easier, much less the subject of admiration, to paint a man with a nose, or any other feature of a preposterous size, or to expose him in some absurd or monstrous att.i.tude, than to express the affections of men on canvas. It hath been thought a vast commendation of a painter to say his figures _seem to breathe_, but surely it is a much greater and n.o.bler applause, _that they appear to think_.