This was, perhaps, no very civil use of such personages:
but the contrivance was, nevertheless, ingenious enough,
and had its effect. And this will now plainly
appear, if, instead of serious and comic, we supply
the words duller and dullest; for the comic was certainly
duller than anything before shown on the stage, and
could be set off only by that superlative degree of
dulness which composed the serious. So intolerably
serious, indeed, were these gods and heroes, that
harlequin (though the English gentleman of that name
is not at all related to the French family, for he
is of a much more serious disposition) was always
welcome on the stage, as he relieved the audience
from worse company.
Judicious writers have always practised this art of
contrast with great success. I have been surprized
that Horace should cavil at this art in Homer; but
indeed he contradicts himself in the very next line:
Indignor quandoque
bonus dormitat Homerus;
Verum opere in longo
fas est obrepere somnum.
I grieve if e’er
great Homer chance to sleep,
Yet slumbers on long
works have right to creep.
For we are not here to understand, as perhaps some
have, that an author actually falls asleep while he
is writing. It is true, that readers are too
apt to be so overtaken; but if the work was as long
as any of Oldmixon, the author himself is too well
entertained to be subject to the least drowsiness.
He is, as Mr Pope observes,
Sleepless himself to
give his readers sleep.
To say the truth, these soporific parts are so many
scenes of serious artfully interwoven, in order to
contrast and set off the rest; and this is the true
meaning of a late facetious writer, who told the public
that whenever he was dull they might be assured there
was a design in it.
In this light, then, or rather in this darkness, I
would have the reader to consider these initial essays.
And after this warning, if he shall be of opinion
that he can find enough of serious in other parts
of this history, he may pass over these, in which we
profess to be laboriously dull, and begin the following
books at the second chapter.
In which Mr Jones receives many friendly visits during
his confinement; with some fine touches of the passion
of love, scarce visible to the naked eye.
Tom Jones had many visitors during his confinement,
though some, perhaps, were not very agreeable to him.
Mr Allworthy saw him almost every day; but though
he pitied Tom’s sufferings, and greatly approved
the gallant behaviour which had occasioned them; yet
he thought this was a favourable opportunity to bring
him to a sober sense of his indiscreet conduct; and
that wholesome advice for that purpose could never
be applied at a more proper season than at the present,
when the mind was softened by pain and sickness, and
alarmed by danger; and when its attention was unembarrassed
with those turbulent passions which engage us in the
pursuit of pleasure.
