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Article: Works of Henry Fielding: Tom Jones: Books 15 and 16
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Fielding, Henry
Monarch Notes
01-01-1963
Tom Jones: Books 15 and 16
Book XV
In Which The History Advances About Two Days
In the first chapter, which pretends not to be a preface on the ground
that the book is too short to need a preface, Fielding makes at least two of
his most important statements concerning his ethical position. First he
utterly rejects the speciously optimistic view of morality. "There are a set
of religious, or rather moral writers, who teach that virtue is the certain
road to happiness, and vice to misery, nn this world. A very wholesome and
comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that
it is not true." Secondly, he rejects the notion that ...