KINDS OF NARRATIVE. benry Fielding. Born 1707. Died 1754. FROM THE Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.1 2 [The test of good personal narrative is the truth with which it represents the author's character. Says Lowell, "We may read Fielding's character clearly in his books, for it is not complex, but especially in his Voyage to Lisbon, where he reveals it with artless inadvertence. He was courageous, gentle, thoroughly conscious of his own dignity as a gentleman, and able make that dignity respected." These qualities are well shown in the apparently odd triviality of the details of the voyage which he took in 1754, in the hope of curing his grievous malady, the dropsy, or at least of prolonging his life. The text is that of the Chiswick Press, edited by Mr. Austin Dobson.] Saturday, July 13. The wind seeming likely to continue in the same corner, where it had been almost constantly for two months together, I was persuaded by my wife to go ashore, and stay at Ryde till 3. we sailed. I approved the motion much; for, though I am a great lover of the sea, I now fancied there was more pleasure in breathing the fresh air of the land; but, how to get thither was the question: for, being really that dead luggage which I considered all pas 1 Appeared posthumously in 1755. Prose Works, vol. vi, p. 66. Riverside Press, 1892 sengers to be in the beginning of this narrative, and incapable of any bodily motion without external impulse, it was in vain to leave the ship, or to determine to do it, without the assistance of others. In one instance, perhaps, the living luggage is more difficult 5 to be moved, or removed, than an equal or much superior weight of dead matter; which, if of the brittle kind, may indeed be liable to be broken through negligence, but this, by proper care, may be almost certainly prevented; whereas the fractures to 10 which the living lumps are exposed, are sometimes by no caution avoidable, and often by no art to be amended. I was deliberating on the means of conveyance, not so much out of the ship to the boat, as out of a little 15 tottering boat to the land. A matter which, as I had already experienced in the Thames, was not extremely easy, when to be performed by any other limbs than your own. Whilst I weighed all that could suggest itself on this head, without strictly 20 examining the merit of the several schemes which were advanced by the captain and sailors, and indeed, giving no very deep attention even to my wife, who, as well as her friend and my daughter, were exerting their tender concern for my ease and safety; fortune, 25 for I am convinced she had a hand in it, sent me a present of a buck; a present welcome enough of itself, but more welcome on account of the vessel in which it came, being a large hoy, which in some places would pass for a ship, and many people would go 30 some miles to see the sight. I was pretty easily conveyed on board this hoy, but to get from hence to the shore was not so easy a task; for, however strange it may appear, the water itself did not extend so far; an instance which seems to explain those lines of Ovid, "Omnia Pontus erant, deerant quoque littora Ponto," 5 in a less tautological sense, than hath generally been imputed to them. In fact, between the sea and the shore, there was, at low water, an impassable gulph, if I may so call it, of deep mud, which could neither be traversed by 10 walking or swimming, so that for near one half of the twenty-hour hours, Ryde was inaccessible by friend or foe. But as the magistrates of this place seemed more to desire the company of the former, than to fear that of the latter, they had begun to make a 15 small causeway to the low water mark, so that foot passengers might land whenever they pleased; but as this work was of a public kind, and would have cost a large sum of money, at least ten pounds, and the magistrates, that is to say, the churchwardens, the 20 overseers, constable and tithingman, and the principal inhabitants, had every one of them some separate scheme of private interest to advance at the expence of the public, they fell out among themselves; and after having thrown away one half of the requisite 25 sum, resolved, at least, to save the other half, and rather be contented to sit down losers themselves, than to enjoy any benefit which might bring in a greater profit to another. Thus that unanimity, which is so necessary in all public affairs, became wanting, and 'It was all sea; and there were no shores to the sea. |