companion, declared she could not blame, but at the same time
dissuaded her from indulging; attempting to moderate the grief of
her friend by philosophical observations on the many disappointments
to which human life is daily subject, which, she said, was a
sufficient consideration to fortify our minds against any accidents,
how sudden or terrible soever. She said her brother's example ought to
teach her patience, who, though indeed he could not be supposed as
much concerned as herself, yet was, doubtless, very uneasy, though his
resignation to the Divine will had restrained his grief within due
bounds.
"Mention not my brother," said Mrs. Blifil; "I alone am the object
of your pity. What are the terrors of friendship to what a wife
feels on these occasions? Oh, he is lost! Somebody hath murdered him-
I shall never see him more!"- Here a torrent of tears had the same
consequence with what the suppression had occasioned to Mr. Allworthy,
and she remained silent.
At this interval a servant came running in, out of breath, and cried
out, The captain was found; and, before he could proceed farther, he
was followed by two more, bearing the dead body between them.
Here the curious reader may observe another diversity in the
operations of grief: for as Mr. Allworthy had been before silent, from
the same cause which had made his sister vociferous; so did the
present sight, which drew tears from the gentleman, put an entire stop
to those of the lady; who first gave a violent scream, and presently
after fell into a fit.
The room was soon full of servants, some of whom, with the lady
visitant, were employed in care of the wife; and others, with Mr.
Allworthy, assisted in carrying off the captain to a warm bed; where
every method was tried, in order to restore him to life.
And glad should we be, could we inform the reader that both these
bodies had been attended with equal success; for those who undertook
the care of the lady succeeded so well, that, after the fit had
continued a decent time, she again revived, to their great
satisfaction: but as to the captain, all experiments of bleeding,
chafing, dropping, &c., proved ineffectual. Death, that inexorable
judge, had passed sentence on him, and refused to grant him a
reprieve, though two doctors who arrived, and were fee'd at one and
the same instant, were his counsel.
These two doctors, whom, to avoid any malicious applications, we
shall distinguish by the names of Dr. Y. and Dr. Z., having felt his
pulse; to wit, Dr. Y. his right arm, and Dr. Z. his left; both
agreed that he was absolutely dead; but as to the distemper, or
cause of his death, they differed; Dr. Y. holding that he died of an
apoplexy, and Dr. Z. of an epilepsy.
Hence arose a dispute between the learned men, in which each
delivered the reasons of their several opinions. These were of such
equal force, that they served both to confirm either doctor in his own
sentiments, and made not the least impression on his adversary.
To say the truth, every physician almost hath his favourite disease,
to which he ascribes all the victories obtained over human nature. The
gout, the rheumatism, the stone, the gravel, and the consumption, have
all their several patrons in the faculty; and none more than the
nervous fever, or the fever on the spirits. And here we may account
for those disagreements in opinion, concerning the cause of a
patient's death, which sometimes occur, between the most learned of
the college; and which have greatly surprized that part of the world
who have been ignorant of the fact we have above asserted.
The reader may perhaps be surprized, that, instead of endeavouring
to revive the patient, the learned gentlemen should fall immediately
into a dispute on the occasion of his death; but in reality all such
experiments had been made before their arrival: for the captain was
put into a warm bed, had his veins scarified, his forehead chafed, and
all sorts of strong drops applied to his lips and nostrils.
The physicians, therefore, finding themselves anticipated in
everything they ordered, were at a loss how to apply that portion of
time which it is usual and decent to remain for their fee, and were
therefore necessitated to find some subject or other for discourse;
and what could more naturally present itself than that before
mentioned?
Our doctors were about to take their leave, when Mr. Allworthy,
having given over the captain, and acquiesced in the Divine will,
began to enquire after his sister, whom he desired them to visit
before their departure.
This lady was now recovered of her fit, and, to use the common
phrase, as well as could be expected for one in her condition. The
doctors, therefore, all previous ceremonies being complied with, as
this was a new patient, attended, according to desire, and laid hold
on each of her hands, as they had before done on those of the corpse.
The case of the lady was in the other extreme from that of her
husband: for as he was past all the assistance of physic, so in
reality she required none.
There is nothing more unjust than the vulgar opinion, by which
physicians are misrepresented, as friends to death. On the contrary, I
believe, if the number of those who recover by physic could be opposed
to that of the martyrs to it, the former would rather exceed the
latter. Nay, some are so cautious on this head, that, to avoid a
possibility of killing the patient, they abstain from all methods of
curing, and prescribe nothing but what can neither do good nor harm. I
have heard some of these, with great gravity, deliver it as a maxim,
"That Nature should be left to do her own work, while the physician
stands by as it were to clap her on the back, and encourage her when
she doth well."
So little then did our doctors delight in death, that they
discharged the corpse after a single fee; but they were not so
disgusted with their living patient; concerning whose case they
immediately agreed, and fell to prescribing with great diligence.
Whether, as the lady had at first persuaded her physicians to
believe her ill, they had now, in return, persuaded her to believe
herself so, I will not determine; but she continued a whole month with
all the decorations of sickness. During this time she was visited by
physicians, attended by nurses, and received constant messages from
her acquaintance to enquire after her health.
At length the decent time for sickness and immoderate grief being
expired, the doctors were discharged, and the lady began to see
company; being altered only from what she was before, by that colour
of sadness in which she had dressed her person and countenance.
The captain was now interred, and might, perhaps, have already
made a large progress towards oblivion, had not the friendship of
Mr. Allworthy taken care to preserve his memory, by the following
epitaph, which was written by a man of as great genius as integrity,
and one who perfectly well knew the captain.
HERE LIES,
IN EXPECTATION OF A JOYFUL RISING,
THE BODY OF
CAPTAIN JOHN BLIFIL.
LONDON
HAD THE HONOUR OF HIS BIRTH,
OXFORD
OF HIS EDUCATION.
HIS PARTS
WERE AN HONOUR TO HIS PROFESSION
AND TO HIS COUNTRY
HIS LIFE, TO HIS RELIGION
AND HUMAN NATURE.
HE WAS A DUTIFUL SON,
A TENDER HUSBAND,
AN AFFECTIONATE FATHER,
A MOST KIND BROTHER,
A SINCERE FRIEND,
A DEVOUT CHRISTIAN,
AND A GOOD MAN.
HIS INCONSOLABLE WIDOW
HATH ERECTED THIS STONE,
THE MONUMENT OF
HER VIRTUES
AND OF HER AFFECTION.
BOOK III
CONTAINING THE MOST MEMORABLE TRANSACTIONS WHICH PASSED IN THE
FAMILY OF MR. ALLWORTHY, FROM THE TIME WHEN TOMMY JONES ARRIVED AT THE
AGE OF FOURTEEN, TILL HE ATTAINED THE AGE OF NINETEEN. IN THIS BOOK
THE READER MAY PICK UP SOME HINTS CONCERNING THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
Chapter 1
Containing little or nothing
The reader will be pleased to remember, that, at the beginning of
the second book of this history, we gave him a hint of our intention
to pass over several large periods of time, in which nothing
happened worthy of being recorded in a chronicle of this kind.
In so doing, we do not only consult our own dignity and ease, but
the good and advantage of the reader: for besides that by these
means we prevent him from throwing away his time, in reading without
either pleasure or emolument, we give him, at all such seasons, an
opportunity of employing that wonderful sagacity, of which he is
master, by filling up these vacant spaces of time with his
conjectures; for which purpose we have taken care to qualify him in
the preceding pages.
For instance, what reader but knows that Mr. Allworthy felt, at
first, for the loss of his friend, those emotions of grief, which on
such occasions enter into all men whose hearts are not composed of
flint, or their heads of as solid materials? Again, what reader doth
not know that philosophy and religion in time moderated, and at last
extinguished, this grief? The former of these teaching the folly and
vanity of it, and the latter correcting it as unlawful, and at the
same time assuaging it, by raising future hopes and assurances,
which enable a strong and religious mind to take leave of a friend, on
his deathbed, with little less indifference than if he was preparing
for a long journey; and, indeed, with little less hope of seeing him
again.
Nor can the judicious reader be at a greater loss on account of Mrs.
Bridget Blifil, who, he may be assured, conducted herself through
the whole season in which grief is to make its appearance on the
outside of the body, with the strictest regard to all the rules of
custom and decency, suiting the alterations of her countenance to
the several alterations of her habit: for as this changed from weeds
to black, from black to grey, from grey to white, so did her
countenance change from dismal to sorrowful, from sorrowful to sad,
and from sad to serious, till the day came in which she was allowed to
return to her former serenity.
We have mentioned these two, as examples only of the task which
may be imposed on readers of the lowest class. Much higher and
harder exercises of judgment and penetration may reasonably be
expected from the upper graduates in criticism. Many notable
discoveries will, I doubt not, be made by such, of the transactions
which happened in the family of our worthy man, during all the years
which we have thought proper to pass over: for though nothing worthy
of a place in this history occurred within that period, yet did
several incidents happen of equal importance with those reported by
the daily and weekly historians of the age; in reading which great
numbers of persons consume a considerable part of their time, very
little, I am afraid, to their emolument. Now, in the conjectures
here proposed, some of the most excellent faculties of the mind may be
employed to much advantage, since it is a more useful capacity to be
able to foretel the actions of men, in any circumstance, from their
characters, than to judge of their characters from their actions.
The former, I own, requires the greater penetration; but may be
accomplished by true sagacity with no less certainty than the latter.
As we are sensible that much the greatest part of our readers are
very eminently possessed of this quality, we have left them a space of
twelve years to exert it in; and shall now bring forth our heroe, at
about fourteen years of age, not questioning that many have been
long impatient to be introduced to his acquaintance.
Chapter 2
The heroe of this great history appears with very bad omens. A
little tale of so low a kind that some may think it not worth their
notice. A word or two concerning a squire, and more relating to a
gamekeeper and a schoolmaster
As we determined, when we first sat down to write this history, to
flatter no man, but to guide our pen throughout by the directions of
truth, we are obliged to bring our heroe on the stage in a much more
disadvantageous manner than we could wish; and to declare honestly,
even at his first appearance, that it was the universal opinion of all
Mr. Allworthy's family that he was certainly born to be hanged.
Indeed, I am sorry to say there was too much reason for this
conjecture; the lad having from his earliest years discovered a
propensity to many vices, and especially to one which hath as direct a
tendency as any other to that fate which we have just now observed
to have been prophetically denounced against him: he had been
already convicted of three robberies, viz., of robbing an orchard,
of stealing a duck out of a farmer's yard, and of picking Master
Blifil's pocket of a ball.
The vices of this young man were, moreover, heightened by the
disadvantageous light in which they appeared when opposed to the
virtues of Master Blifil, his companion; a youth of so different a
cast from little Jones, that not only the family but all the
neighbourhood resounded his praises. He was, indeed, a lad of a
remarkable disposition; sober, discreet, and pious beyond his age;
qualities which gained him the love of every one who knew him: while
Tom Jones was universally disliked; and many expressed their wonder
that Mr. Allworthy would suffer such a lad to be educated with his
