KINDS OF NARRATIVE.

benry Fielding.

Born 1707. Died 1754.

FROM THE Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.1

[The test of good personal narrative is the truth with which it represents the author's character. Says Lowell,2 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 to 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 5 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.

2 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," 1

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 Io 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

1 It was all sea; and there were no shores to the sea.

every man, from the fear of being a bubble to another, was, in reality, a bubble to himself.

However, as there is scarce any difficulty, to which the strength of men, assisted with the cunning of art, is not equal, I was at last hoisted into a small boat, 5 and being rowed pretty near the shore, was taken up by two sailors, who waded with me through the mud, and placed me in a chair on the land, whence they afterward conveyed me a quarter of a mile farther, and brought me to a house, which seemed to bid the fairest 10 for hospitality of any in Ryde.

We brought with us our provisions from the ship, so that we wanted nothing but a fire to dress our dinner, and a room in which we might eat it. In neither of these had we any reason to apprehend a disappoint- 15 ment, our dinner consisting only of beans and bacon, and the worst apartment in his majesty's dominions. being fully sufficient to answer our present ideas of delicacy.

Unluckily, however, we were disappointed in both; 20 for when we arrived about four at our inn, exulting in the hopes of immediately seeing our beans smoking on the table, we had the mortification of seeing them on the table indeed, but without that circumstance which would have made the sight agreeable, being in the 25 same state in which we had dispatched them from our ship.

. In excuse for this delay, tho' we had exceeded, almost purposely, the time appointed, and our provision had arrived three hours before, the mistress of 30 the house acquainted us, that it was not for want of time to dress them that they were not ready, but for

fear of their being cold or over-done before we should come; which she assured us was much worse than waiting a few minutes for our dinner. An observation so very just, that it is impossible to find any 5 objection in it; but indeed it was not altogether so proper at this time for we had given the most absolute orders to have them ready at four, and had been ourselves, not without much care and difficulty, most exactly punctual in keeping to the very minute of our Io appointment. But tradesmen, inn-keepers, and servants never care to indulge us in matters contrary to our true interest, which they always know better than ourselves, nor can any bribes corrupt them to go out of their way, whilst they are consulting our good in 15 our own despight.

Our disappointment in the other particular, in defiance of our humility, as it was more extraordinary, was more provoking. In short, Mrs. Humphrys no sooner received the news of our intended arrival, than 20 she considered more the gentility than the humanity of her guests, and applied herself not to that which kindles, but to that which extinguishes fire, and forgetting to put on her pot, fell to washing her house.

As the messenger who had brought my venison was 25 impatient to be dispatched, I ordered it to be brought and laid on the table, in the room where I was seated; and the table not being large enough, one side, and a very bloody one, was laid on the brick floor. I then ordered Mrs. Humphrys to be called in, in order to 30 give her instructions concerning it; in particular, what I would have roasted, and what baked; concluding that she would be highly pleased with the prospect