Ridiculous Critics by Smallwood Philip; Wild Min; & Min Wild

Author:Smallwood, Philip; Wild, Min; & Min Wild [Smallwood, Philip & Wild, Min]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Published: 2014-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

Notes

1. For a modern printing see The Adventures, ed. Malcolm Kelsall (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 82–91.

2. The third is not specified—presumably, the good and true ones.

1749: Henry Fielding’s Critical Reptiles and Slanderers: Tom Jones

Henry Fielding’s most ingenious satire of the flourishing institution of criticism, appearing in The History of Tom Jones (1749), is nuanced with extravagant faux-humility. As in the case of Wycherley’s damnation of critics before him, the passage is a pre-emptive self-defence and begins as a politely turned tease aimed mockingly at the reptilian critics most likely to savage his books. Combining a tone of amiability and airy superiority, Fielding takes his readers into his confidence and learnedly lectures the community of critics on their responsibilities, their critical practice and theory. In the second passage, he draws attention to the tendency to confuse judgment in the courts with critical judgment, and the negative consequence of this confusion for the reputation of works of imagination—namely, common slander. The passages constitute book X, chapter 1, “Containing Instructions very necessary to be perused by modern Critics,” and book XI, chapter 1, “A Crust for the Critics,” of Tom Jones. As indicated by ellipses, we have trimmed Fielding’s sentences and paragraphs in some places.

Source text: The History of Tom Jones, a foundling, 4 vols. (London, 1749), 3: 1–5; 59–65.1

Book X, Chapter 1:

Reader, it is impossible we should know what Sort of Person thou wilt be: For, perhaps, thou may’st be as learned in Human Nature as Shakespear himself was, and, perhaps, thou may’st be no wiser than some of his Editors. Now lest this latter should be the Case, we think proper, before we go any farther together, to give thee a few wholesome Admonitions; that thou may’st not as grossly misunderstand and misrepresent us, as some of the said Editors have misunderstood and misrepresented their Author.

First, then, we warn thee not too hastily to condemn any of the Incidents in this our History as impertinent and foreign to our main Design, because thou dost not immediately conceive in what Manner such Incident may conduce to that Design. This Work may, indeed, be considered as a great Creation of our own; and for a little Reptile of a Critic to presume to find Fault with any of its Parts, without knowing the Manner in which the Whole is connected, and before he comes to the final Catastrophe, is the most presumptuous Absurdity. The Allusion and Metaphor we have here made use of, we must acknowledge to be infinitely too great for our Occasion, but there is, indeed, no other, which is at all adequate to express the Difference between an Author of the first Rate and a Critic of the lowest.

Another Caution we would give thee, my good Reptile, is, that thou dost not find out too near a Resemblance between certain Characters here introduced. . . . To be able to preserve these Characteristics, and at the same Time to diversify their Operations, is one Talent of a good Writer.

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