★★★★★ 5
A Foundling's Felicity
This book or novel or whatever you may deem fit to call it has so many points in its favour that it's difficult to know where to begin. I think a rundown of a few of the myriad of characters that delight me personally might do for starters:
Tom Jones - A young fellow with many "imperfections" if so they may be called, but a robust fellow with a "good heart." Prudence and what is commonly called virtue are not his strong suit - But may I remind the reader that virtue comes from the Latin word for "manliness"- Tom is certainly possessed of the word's etymological origins, if not of its modern usage (particularly in amorous matters)--And a good thing too, or we should have no story here to delight us!
Squire Western- Another rambunctious character, who, for me, typifies all that is Eighteenth Century England. Every time he appeared in this book, whether it was to comment on wenching, wine, or riding to hounds a smirk would immediately cross my face followed invariably by chuckling by the end of the chapter.
Henry Fielding - The author plays as much a part of the book as any of the characters with many prologues and prefaces and etc. For these, and for much of the rest of the book, I might add, the reader who has not had four years of Latin inculcated into him at an English boarding school would do well to buy the Oxford edition, which fully explains all the learned quotes - Also, as one who was thus inculcated but is inclined to laziness, the Oxford edition's notes prove extremely helpful also. Fielding also gives us a lively picture of the literary life of his time, which the Oxford footnotes do a deft job of explaining- In short, buy the Oxford edition.
This review can not be comprehensive. There are simply too many characters to even make a go at encompassing them all. I'm merely describing some of the, to me, more delightful ones.
The book as a whole is simply a joy to read, in its comic descriptions of all who will deign to admit that they are human, and of some priggish sorts who will not so deign. I can put it no better than Fielding Himself at the beginning of Book XV:
"There are a set of religious, or rather moral writers, who teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery, in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that is not true."
In short, this is a delightful ramble of a book which, while entertaining the reader not too attached to Sunday School, sheds light on how unvirtuous the virtuous can be, and how kind and good-natured the roguish can be as well as giving us as good a history lesson on the state of affairs in Eighteenth century England (with attention given to the Jacobite Rebellion etc.) as many a "proper" history does.
Who, I ask myself, would not delight in this book? ---Well...for the priggish, there's always Jane Austen.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2007
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