Generally recognized as one of the creators of the modern novel, Henry Fielding was also a successful dramatist, theater manager, journalist, and lawyer. As noted in the dedication of his comic masterpiece, Tom Jones (1749), Fielding's goal was "to recommend goodness and innocence" through comedy and satire--a theme he explored in the essay "On Reading for Amusement" (1752).
On Reading for Amusement
by Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
"At nostri proavi Plautinos et numcros, et
Laudavere sales; nitnium patienter utrumque,
Ne dicam stulte, mirati."
"In former times this tasteless, silly town
Too fondly prais'd Tom D'Urfey and Tom Brown."
The present age seems pretty well agreed in an opinion that the utmost scope and end of reading is amusement only; and such, indeed, are now the fashionable books, that a reader can propose no more than mere entertainment, and it is sometimes very well for him if he finds even this in his studies.
Letters, however, were surely intended for a much more noble and profitable purpose than this. Writers are not, I presume, to be considered as mere jackpuddings, whose business it is only to excite laughter: this, indeed, may sometimes be intermixed and served up with graver matters, in order to titillate the palate and to recommend wholesome food to the mind; and for this purpose it hath been used by many excellent authors: "for why," as Horace says, "should not any one promulgate truth with a smile on his countenance?" Ridicule, indeed, as he again intimates, is commonly a stronger and better method of attacking vice than the severer kind of satire.
When wit and humor are introduced for such good purposes, when the agreeable is blended with the useful, then is the writer said to have succeeded in every point. Pleasantry (as the ingenious author of Clarissa says of a story) should be made only the vehicle of instruction; and thus romances themselves, as well as epic poems, may become worthy the perusal of the greatest of men: but when no moral, no lesson, no instruction is conveyed to the reader, where the whole design of the composition is no more than to make us laugh, the writer comes very near to the character of a buffoon; and his admirers, if an old Latin proverb be true, deserve no great compliments to be paid to their wisdom.
After what I have here advanced I cannot fairly, I think, be represented as an enemy to laughter, or to all those kinds of writing that are apt to promote it. On the contrary, few men, I believe, do more admire the works of those great masters who have sent their satire (if I may use the expression) laughing into the world. Such are the great triumvirate, Lucian, Cervantes, and Swift. These authors I shall ever hold in the highest degree of esteem; not, indeed, for that wit and humor alone which they all so eminently possessed, but because they all endeavored, with the utmost force of their wit and humor, to expose and extirpate those follies and vices which chiefly prevailed in their several countries. I would not be thought to confine wit and humor to these writers. Shakespeare, Moliere, and some other authors, have been blessed with the same talents, and have employed them to the same purposes. There are some, however, who, though not void of these talents, have made so wretched a use of them, that, had the consecration of their labors been committed to the hands of the hangman, no good man would have regretted their loss; nor am I afraid to mention Rabelais, and Aristophanes himself, in this number. For, if I may speak my opinion freely of these two last writers and of their works, their design appears to me very plainly to have been to ridicule all sobriety, modesty, decency, virtue, and religion, out of the world. Now whoever reads over the five great writers first mentioned in this paragraph, must either have a very bad head or a very bad heart, if he doth not become both a wiser and a better man.
In the exercise of the mind, as well as in the exercise of the body, diversion is a secondary consideration, and designed only to make that agreeable which is at the same time useful, to such noble purposes as health and wisdom. But what should we say to a man who mounted his chamber-hobby, or fought with his own shadow, for his amusement only? How much more absurd and weak would he appear who swallowed poison because it was sweet!
How differently did Horace think of the study from our modern readers!
"Quid verum atque decens euro et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum:
Condo et compono, quae mox depromere passim."
"Truth and decency are my whole care and inquiry. In this study I am entirely occupied; these I am always laying up, and so disposing that I can at any time draw forth my stores for my immediate use."
The whole epistle, indeed, from which I have paraphrased this passage, is a comment upon it, and affords many useful lessons of philosophy.
Concluded on page two
