Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon

by Henry Fielding
CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION TO SEVERAL WORKS
PREFACE

DEDICATION TO THE PUBLIC
INTRODUCTION TO THE VOYAGE TO LISBON

THE VOYAGE
INTRODUCTION TO SEVERAL WORKS

When it was determined to extend the present edition of Fielding,
not merely by the addition of Jonathan Wild to the three

universally popular novels, but by two volumes of Miscellanies,
there could be no doubt about at least one of the contents of

these latter. The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, if it does not
rank in my estimationanywhere near to Jonathan Wild as an

example of our author's genius, is an invaluable and delightful
document for his character and memory. It is indeed, as has been

pointed out in the General Introduction to this series, our main
source of indisputable information as to Fielding dans son

naturel, and its value, so far as it goes, is of the very
highest. The gentle and unaffected stoicism which the author

displays under a disease which he knew well was probably, if not
certainly, mortal, and which, whether mortal or not, must cause

him much actual pain and discomfort of a kind more intolerable
than pain itself; his affectionate care for his family; even

little personal touches, less admirable, but hardly less pleasant
than these, showing an Englishman's dislike to be "done" and an

Englishman's determination to be treated with proper respect, are
scarcely less noticeable and important on the biographical side

than the unimpaired brilliancy of his satiric and yet kindly
observation of life and character is on the side of literature.

There is, as is now well known since Mr. Dobson's separate
edition of the Voyage, a little bibliographical problem about the

first appearance of this Journal in 1755. The best known issue
of that year is much shorter than the version inserted by Murphy

and reprinted here, the passages omitted being chiefly those
reflecting on the captain, etc., and so likely to seem invidious

in a book published just after the author's death, and for the
benefit, as was expressly announced, of his family. But the

curious thing is that there is ANOTHER edition, of date so early
that some argument is necessary to determine the priority, which

does give these passages and is identical with the later or
standard version. For satisfaction on this point, however, I

must refer readers to Mr. Dobson himself.
There might have been a little, but not much, doubt as to a

companion piece for the Journal; for indeed, after we close this
(with or without its "Fragment on Bolingbroke"), the remainder of

Fielding's work lies on a distinctly lower level of interest. It
is still interesting, or it would not be given here. It still

has--at least that part which here appears seems to its editor to
have--interest intrinsic and "simple of itself." But it is

impossible for anybody who speaks critically to deny that we now
get into the region where work is more interesting because of its

authorship than it would be if its authorship were different or
unknown. To put the same thing in a sharper antithesis, Fielding

is interesting, first of all, because he is the author of Joseph
Andrews, of Tom Jones, of Amelia, of Jonathan Wild, of the

Journal. His plays, his essays, his miscellanies generally are
interesting, first of all, because they were written by Fielding.

Yet of these works, the Journey from this World to the Next
(which, by a grim trick of fortune, might have served as a title

for the more interesting Voyage with which we have yoked it)
stands clearly first both in scale and merit. It is indeed very

unequal, and as the author was to leave it unfinished, it is a
pity that he did not leave it unfinished much sooner than he

actually did. The first ten chapters, if of a kind of satire
which has now grown rather obsolete for the nonce, are of a good

kind and good in their kind; the history of the metempsychoses of
Julian is of a less good kind, and less good in that kind. The

date of composition of the piece is not known, but it appeared in
the Miscellanies of 1743, and may represent almost any period of

its author's development prior to that year. Its form was a very
common form at the time, and continued to be so. I do not know

that it is necessary to assign any very special origin to it,
though Lucian, its chief practitioner, was evidently and almost

avowedly a favorite study of Fielding's. The Spanish romancers,
whether borrowing it from Lucian or not, had been fond of it;

their French followers, of whom the chief were Fontenelle and Le
Sage, had carried it northwards; the English essayists had almost

from the beginning continued the process of acclimatization.
Fielding therefore found it ready to his hand, though the present

condition of this example would lead us to suppose that he did
not find his hand quite ready to it. Still, in the actual

"journey," there are touches enough of the master--not yet quite
in his stage of mastery. It seemed particularly desirable not to

close the series without some representation of the work to which
Fielding gave the prime of his manhood, and from which, had he

not, fortunately for English literature, been driven decidedly
against his will, we had had in all probability no Joseph

Andrews, and pretty certainly no Tom Jones. Fielding's
periodical and dramatic work has been comparatively seldom

reprinted, and has never yet been reprinted as a whole. The
dramas indeed are open to two objections--the first, that they

are not very "proper;" the second, and much more serious, that
they do not redeem this want of propriety by the possession of

any remarkableliterary merit. Three (or two and part of a
third) seemed to escape this double censure--the first two acts

of the Author's Farce (practically a piece to themselves, for the
Puppet Show which follows is almost entirely independent); the

famous burlesque of Tom Thumb, which stands between the Rehearsal
and the Critic, but nearer to the former; and Pasquin, the

maturest example of Fielding's satiric work in drama. These
accordingly have been selected; the rest I have read, and he who

likes may read. I have read many worse things than even the
worst of them, but not often worse things by so good a writer as

Henry Fielding. The next question concerned the selection of
writings more miscellaneous still, so as to give in little a

complete idea of Fielding's various powers and experiments. Two
difficulties beset this part of the task--want of space and the

absence of anything so markedly good as absolutely to insist on
inclusion. The Essay on Conversation, however, seemed pretty

peremptorily to challenge a place. It is in a style which
Fielding was very slow to abandon, which indeed has left strong

traces even on his great novels; and if its mannerism is not now
very attractive, the separate traits in it are often sharp and

well-drawn. The book would not have been complete without a
specimen or two of Fielding's journalism. The Champion, his

first attempt of this kind, has not been drawn upon in
consequence of the extreme difficulty of fixing with absolute

certainty on Fielding's part in it. I do not know whether
political prejudice interferes, more than I have usually found it

interfere, with my judgment of the two Hanoverian-partisan papers
of the '45 time. But they certainly seem to me to fail in

redeeming their dose of rancor and misrepresentation by any
sufficient evidence of genius such as, to my taste, saves not

only the party journalism in verse and prose of Swift and Canning
and Praed on one side, but that of Wolcot and Moore and Sydney

Smith on the other. Even the often-quoted journal of events in
London under the Chevalier is overwrought and tedious. The best

thing in the True Patriot seems to me to be Parson Adams' letter
describing his adventure with a young "bowe" of his day; and this