At the outset Fielding describes the clear structure of the novel in terms of basic locale and its moral implications: the novel, Fielding claims, is based on a Horatian country-city antithesis, with the values of wholesomeness and honesty seated in Somerset, in contrast to the "French and Italian seasoning of affectation and vice which courts and cities afford." But the context for this moral categorization lies in the narrator's concern for human nature as his subject (it is human nature itself which is thus "dressed" by the setting) and in his emphasis on providing a description of the relation of his subject to the interests of his reader. He thus leaves out of his "Bill of Fare" the central third of his novel, the journey from Somerset to London. His description itself implies the more static nature of the beginning and end of the novel, and this...