Chapter i.

Containing a portion of introductory writing.

When a comic writer hath made his principal characters as happy as he

can, or when a tragic writer hath brought them to the highest pitch of

human misery, they both conclude their business to be done, and that

their work is come to a period.

Had we been of the tragic complexion, the reader must now allow we

were very nearly arrived at this period, since it would be difficult

for the devil, or any of his representatives on earth, to have

contrived much greater torments for poor Jones than those in which we

left him in the last chapter; and as for Sophia, a good-natured woman

would hardly wish more uneasiness to a rival than what she must at

present be supposed to feel. What then remains to complete the tragedy

but a murder or two and a few moral sentences!

But to bring our favourites out of their present anguish and distress,

and to land them at last on the shore of happiness, seems a much

harder task; a task indeed so hard that we do not undertake to execute

it. In regard to Sophia, it is more than probable that we shall

somewhere or other provide a good husband for her in the end--either

Blifil, or my lord, or somebody else; but as to poor Jones, such are

the calamities in which he is at present involved, owing to his

imprudence, by which if a man doth not become felon to the world, he

is at least a _felo de se_; so destitute is he now of friends, and so

persecuted by enemies, that we almost despair of bringing him to any

good; and if our reader delights in seeing executions, I think he

ought not to lose any time in taking a first row at Tyburn.

This I faithfully promise, that, notwithstanding any affection which

we may be supposed to have for this rogue, whom we have unfortunately

made our heroe, we will lend him none of that supernatural assistance

with which we are entrusted, upon condition that we use it only on

very important occasions. If he doth not therefore find some natural

means of fairly extricating himself from all his distresses, we will

do no violence to the truth and dignity of history for his sake; for

we had rather relate that he was hanged at Tyburn (which may very

probably be the case) than forfeit our integrity, or shock the faith

of our reader.

In this the antients had a great advantage over the moderns. Their

mythology, which was at that time more firmly believed by the vulgar

than any religion is at present, gave them always an opportunity of

delivering a favourite heroe. Their deities were always ready at the

writer's elbow, to execute any of his purposes; and the more

extraordinary the invention was, the greater was the surprize and

delight of the credulous reader. Those writers could with greater ease

have conveyed a heroe from one country to another, nay from one world

to another, and have brought him back again, than a poor circumscribed

modern can deliver him from a jail.

The Arabians and Persians had an equal advantage in writing their

tales from the genii and fairies, which they believe in as an article

of their faith, upon the authority of the Koran itself. But we have

none of these helps. To natural means alone we are confined; let us

try therefore what, by these means, may be done for poor Jones; though

to confess the truth, something whispers me in the ear that he doth

not yet know the worst of his fortune; and that a more shocking piece

of news than any he hath yet heard remains for him in the unopened

leaves of fate.