hastens, however, utterly to disclaim all
praise, on the ground that his true motive was simply the convenience of
forgiveness. 'If men were wiser,' he adds, 'they would be oftener
influenced by that motive.' This kind of inverted hypocrisy, which may
be graceful in a man's own case (for nobody will doubt that Fielding was
less guided by calculation than he asserts), is not so graceful when
applied to his neighbours. And perhaps some readers may hold that
Fielding pitches the average strain of human motive too low. I should
rather surmise that he substantially agrees with Johnson and Burke. The
fact that most men attend a good deal to their own interests is one of
the primary data of life. It is a thing at which we have no more right
to be astonished than at the fact that even saints and martyrs have to
eat and drink like other persons, or that a sound digestion is the
foundation of much moral excellence. It is one of those facts which
people of a romantic turn of mind may choose to overlook, but which no
honest observer of life can seriously deny. Our conduct is determined
through some thirty points of the compass by our own interest; and,
happily, through at least nine-and-twenty of those points is rightfully
so determined. Each man is forced, by an unavoidable necessity, to look
after his own and his children's bread and butter, and to spend most of
his efforts on that innocent end. So long as he does not pursue his
interests wrongfully, nor remain dead to other calls when they happen,
there is little cause for complaint, and certainly there is none for
surprise.

Fielding recognises, but never exaggerates, this homely truth. He has a
hearty and generous belief in the reality of good impulses, and the
existence of thoroughly unselfish men. The main actors in his world are
not, as in Balzac's, mere hideous incarnations of selfishness. The
superior sanity of his mind keeps him from nightmares, if its calmness
is unfavourable to lofty visions. With Balzac, women like Lady Bellaston
become the rule instead of the exception, and their evil passions are
the dominant forces in society. Fielding, though he recognises their
existence, tells us plainly that they are exceptional. Society, he says,
is as moral as ever it was, and given more to frivolity than to
vice[12]--a statement judiciously overlooked by some of the critics who
want to make graphic history out of his novels. Fielding's mind had
gathered coarseness, but it ha