a people which is
itself called John Bull.' In all which there is an undoubted vein of
truth. Fielding's want of refinement, for example, is one of those
undeniable facts which must be taken for granted. But, without seeking
to set right some other statements implied in M. Taine's judgment, it is
worth while to consider a little more fully the moral aspect of
Fielding's work. Much has been said upon this point by some who, with M.
Taine, take Fielding for a mere 'buffalo,' and by others who, like
Coleridge--a safer and more sympathetic critic--hold 'Tom Jones' to be,
on the whole, a sound exposition of healthy morality.

Fielding, on the 'buffalo' view, is supposed to be simply taking one
side in one of those perpetual controversies which has occupied many
generations and never approaches a settlement. He prefers nature to law,
instinct to reasoned action; he is on the side of Charles as against
Joseph Surface; he admires the publican, and condemns the Pharisee
without reserve; he loves the man who is nobody's enemy but his own, and
despises the prudent person whose charity ends at his own doorstep. Such
a doctrine--so absolutely stated--is rather a negation of all morality
than a lax morality. If it implies a love of generous instincts, it
denies that a man should have any regard for moral rules, which are
needed precisely in order to control our spontaneous instincts. Virtue
is amiable, but ceases to be meritorious. Nothing would be easier than
to quote passages in which Fielding expressly repudiates such a theory;
but, of course, a writer's morality must be judged by the conceptions
embodied in his work, not by the maxims scattered through it. Nor, for
the same reason, can we pay much attention to Fielding's express
assertion that he is writing in the interests of virtue; for Smollett,
and less scrupulous writers than Smollett, have found their account in
similar protestations. Yet anybody, I think, who will compare 'Joseph
Andrews' with that intentionally most moral work, 'Pamela,' will admit
that Fielding's morality goes deeper than this. Fielding at least makes
us love virtue, and is incapable of the solecism which Richardson
commits in substantially preaching that virtue means standing out for a
higher price. That Fielding's reckless heroes have a genuine sensibility
to the claims of virtue, appears still more unmistakably when we compare
them with the heartless fine gentlemen of the Congreve school and of his
o