Perhaps our verdict may be
best given in the words of Thackeray. "I am angry," he says, "with Jones.
Too much of the plum-cake and the rewards of life fall to that boisterous,
swaggering young scapegrace. Sophia actually surrenders without a proper
sense of decorum; the fond, foolish, palpitating little creature. 'Indeed,
Mr. Jones,' she says, 'it rests with you to name the day.' ... And yet
many a young fellow, no better than Mr. Thomas Jones, has carried by a
_coup-de-main_ the heart of many a kind girl who was a great deal too good
for him."
When _Joseph Andrews_ appeared, and Richardson found that so profane a
person as Fielding had dared to burlesque his _Pamela_, he was angry; and
his little tea-drinking coterie was warm in his defence; but Fielding's
party was then, and has remained, the stronger.
In his novel of _Amelia_, we have a general autobiography of Fielding.
Amelia, his wife, is lovely, chaste, and constant. Captain Booth--Fielding
himself--is errant, guilty, generous, and repentant. We have besides in it
many varieties of English life,--lords, clergymen, officers; Vauxhall and
the masquerade; the sponging-house and its inmates, debtors and
criminals,--all as Fielding saw and knew them.
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