Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. The History of the Life of the Late Mr Jonathan Wild the Great by Henry Fielding (grave mercy .TXT) 📖
- Author: Henry Fielding
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Though our hero heard all this with proper contempt, he made no direct answer, but endeavoured to evade his proposal as much as possible, which he did with admirable dexterity: this method of getting tolerably well off, when you are repulsed in your attack on a man’s conscience, may be stiled the art of retreating, in which the politician, as well as the general, hath sometimes a wonderful opportunity of displaying his great abilities in his profession.
Wild, having made this admirable retreat, and argued away all design of involving his friend in the guilt of murder, concluded, however, that he thought him rather too scrupulous in not attempting his escape and then, promising to use all such means as the other would permit in his service, took his leave for the present. Heartfree, having indulged himself an hour with his children, repaired to rest, which he enjoyed quiet and undisturbed; whilst Wild, disdaining repose, sat up all night, consulting how he might bring about the final destruction of his friend, without being beholden to any assistance from himself, which he now despaired of procuring. With the result of these consultations we shall acquaint our reader in good time, but at present we have matters of much more consequence to relate to him.
THE EVENT OF FIREBLOOD’S ADVENTURE; AND A THREAT OF MARRIAGE, WHICH MIGHT HAVE BEEN CONCLUDED EITHER AT SMITHFIELD OR ST.
JAMES’S.
Fireblood returned from his enterprise unsuccessful. The gentleman happened to go home another way than he had intended; so that the whole design miscarried. Fireblood had indeed robbed the coach, and had wantonly discharged a pistol into it, which lightly wounded one of the passengers in the arm. The booty he met with was not very considerable, though much greater than that with which he acquainted Wild; for of eleven pounds in money, two silver watches, and a wedding-ring, he produced no more than two guineas and the ring, which he protested with numberless oaths was his whole booty. However, when an advertisement of the robbery was published, with a reward promised for the ring and the watches, Fireblood was obliged to confess the whole, and to acquaint our hero where he pawned the watches; which Wild, taking the full value of them for his pains, restored to the right owner.
He did not fail catchising his young friend on this occasion. He said he was sorry to see any of his gang guilty of a breach of honour; that without honour PRIGGERY was at an end; that if a prig had but honour he would overlook every vice in the world. “But, nevertheless,” said he, “I will forgive you this time, as you are a hopeful lad, and I hope never afterwards to find you delinquent in this great point.”
Wild had now brought his gang to great regularity: he was obeyed and feared by them all. He had likewise established an office, where all men who were robbed, paying the value only (or a little more) of their goods, might have them again. This was of notable use to several persons who had lost pieces of plate they had received from their grandmothers; to others who had a particular value for certain rings, watches, heads of canes, snuff-boxes, &c., for which they would not have taken twenty times as much as they were worth, either because they had them a little while or a long time, or that somebody else had had them before, or from some other such excellent reason, which often stamps a greater value on a toy than the great Bubble-boy himself would have the impudence to set upon it.
By these means he seemed in so promising a way of procuring a fortune, and was regarded in so thriving a light by all the gentlemen of his acquaintance, as by the keeper and turnkeys of Newgate, by Mr. Snap, and others of his occupation, that Mr. Snap one day, taking Mr. Wild the elder aside, very seriously proposed what they had often lightly talked over, a strict union between their families, by marrying his daughter Tishy to our hero. This proposal was very readily accepted by the old gentleman, who promised to acquaint his son with it.
On the morrow on which this message was delivered, our hero, little dreaming of the happiness which, of its own accord, was advancing so near towards him, had called Fireblood to him; and, after informing that youth of the violence of his passion for the young lady, and assuring him what confidence he reposed in him and his honour, he despatched him to Miss Tishy with the following letter; which we here insert, not only as we take it to be extremely curious, but to be a much better pattern for that epistolary kind of writing which is generally called love-letters than any to be found in the academy of compliments, and which we challenge all the beaus of our time to excel either in matter or spelling.
“MOST DIVINE and ADWHORABLE CREETURE,—I doubt not but those IIs, briter than the son, which have kindled such a flam in my hart, have likewise the faculty of seeing it. It would be the hiest preassumption to imagin you eggnorant of my loav. No, madam, I sollemly purtest, that of all the butys in the unaversal glob, there is none kapable of hateracting my IIs like you. Corts and pallaces would be to me deserts without your kumpany, and with it a wilderness would have more charms than haven itself. For I hop you will beleve me when I sware every place in the univarse is a haven with you. I am konvinced you must be sinsibel of my violent passion for you, which, if I endevored to hid it, would be as impossible as for you, or the son, to hid your buty’s. I assure you I have not slept a wink since I had the hapness of seeing you last; therefore hop you will, out of Kumpassion, let me have the honour of seeing you this afternune; for I am, with the greatest adwhoration,
“Most deivine creeture, Iour most passionate amirer, Adwhorer, and slave, JONATHAN WYLD.”
If the spelling of this letter be not so strictly orthographical, the reader will be pleased to remember that such a defect might be worthy of censure in a low and scholastic character, but can be no blemish in that sublime greatness of which we endeavour to raise a complete idea in this history. In which kind of composition spelling, or indeed any kind of human literature, hath never been thought a necessary ingredient; for if these sort of great personages can but complot and contrive their noble schemes, and hack and hew mankind sufficiently, there will never be wanting fit and able persons who can spell to record their praises. Again, if it should be observed that the stile of this letter doth not exactly correspond with that of our hero’s speeches, which we have here recorded, we answer, it is sufficient if in these the historian adheres faithfully to the matter, though he embellishes the diction with some flourishes of his own eloquence, without which the excellent speeches recorded in antient historians (particularly in Sallust) would have scarce been found in their writings. Nay, even amongst the moderns, famous as they are for elocution, it may be doubted whether those inimitable harangues published in the monthly magazines came literally from the mouths of the HURGOS, &c., as they are there inserted, or whether we may not rather suppose one historian of great eloquence hath borrowed the matter only, and adorned it with those rhetorical showers for which many of the said HURGOS are not so extremely eminent.
MATTERS PRELIMINARY TO THE MARRIAGE BETWEEN MR. JONATHAN WILD AND
THE CHASTE LAETITIA.
But to proceed with our history; Fireblood, having received this letter, and promised on his honour, with many voluntary asseverations, to discharge his embassy faithfully, went to visit the fair Laetitia. The lady, having opened the letter and read it, put on an air of disdain, and told Mr. Fireblood she could not conceive what Mr. Wild meant by troubling her with his impertinence; she begged him to carry the letter back again, saying, had she known from whom it came, she would have been d—d before she had opened it. “But with you, young gentleman,” says she, “I am not in the least angry. I am rather sorry that so pretty a young man should be employed in such an errand.” She accompanied these words with so tender an accent and so wanton a leer, that Fireblood, who was no backward youth, began to take her by the hand, and proceeded so warmly, that, to imitate his actions with the rapidity of our narration, he in a few minutes ravished this fair creature, or at least would have ravished her, if she had not, by a timely compliance, prevented him.
Fireblood, after he had ravished as much as he could, returned to Wild, and acquainted him as far as any wise man would, with what had passed; concluding with many praises of the young lady’s beauty, with whom, he said, if his honour would have permitted him, he should himself have fallen in love; but, d—n him if he would not sooner be torn to pieces by wild horses than even think of injuring his friend. He asserted indeed, and swore so heartily, that, had not Wild been so thoroughly convinced of the impregnable chastity of the lady, he might have suspected his success; however, he was, by these means, entirely satisfied of his friend’s inclination towards his mistress.
Thus constituted were the love affairs of our hero, when his father brought him Mr. Snap’s proposal. The reader must know very little of love, or indeed of anything else, if he requires any information concerning the reception which this proposal met with.
Not guilty never sounded sweeter in the ears of a prisoner at the bar, nor the sound of a reprieve to one at the gallows, than did every word of the old gentleman in the ears of our hero. He gave his father full power to treat in his name, and desired nothing more than expedition.
The old people now met, and Snap, who had information from his daughter of the violent passion of her lover, endeavoured to improve it to the best advantage, and would have not only declined giving her any fortune himself, but have attempted to cheat her of what she owed to the liberality of her relations, particularly of a pint silver caudle-cup, the gift of her grandmother. However, in this the young lady herself afterwards took care to prevent him.
As to the old Mr. Wild, he did not sufficiently attend to all the designs of Snap, as his faculties were busily employed in designs of his own, to overreach (or, as others express it, to cheat) the said Mr. Snap, by pretending to give his son a whole number for a chair, when in reality he was intitled to a third only.
While matters were thus settling between the old folks the young lady agreed to admit Mr. Wild’s visits, and, by degrees, began to entertain him with all the shew of affection which the great natural reserve of her temper, and the greater artificial reserve of her education, would permit. At length, everything being agreed between their parents, settlements made, and the lady’s fortune (to wit, seventeen pounds and nine shillings in money and goods) paid down, the day for their nuptials was fixed, and they were celebrated accordingly.
Most private histories, as well as comedies, end at this period; the historian and the poet both concluding
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