[In the following essay, Woods argues that Shamela was written by Fielding, citing as evidence the similar subject matter in Fielding's essays and Fielding's distinctive prose style.]

Since 1900, when Miss Clara L. Thomson suggested that the parody of Pamela (pub. Nov. 6, 1740) entitled An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews … By Mr. Conny Keyber (pub. April 4, 1741) was “not improbably written by Fielding,”¹ considerable attention has been given to this curious link between Richardson's earliest novel and Joseph Andrews (pub. Feb. 22, 1742), Fielding's first acknowledged piece of prose fiction. The researches of Dobson, de Castro, Cross, McKillop, and others² have so strengthened the hypothesis of Fielding's authorship that Shamela should eventually win an undisputed place in the Fielding canon.³

Of course the most satisfactory proof would be the discovery of an explicit statement by Fielding that he had penned the satire, but if such an avowal was ever committed to writing, it has never come to light.⁴ We know, however, that some of his contemporaries considered him the author⁵—so far as I am aware, Shamela has never been fathered on any one else—and modern scholars have pointed out a number of similarities between the work and Fielding's accepted writings.⁶ It is my hope that a rather detailed treatment of certain features of the internal evidence will help to convince any remaining skeptics that Fielding wrote Shamela.

Fortunately for such a study as this, the author of Shamela did not confine himself to writing a parody of Pamela. Besides ridiculing the leading characters of the novel, he satirizes several living persons—writers of other “Lives,” political figures, and divines—few of whom he could have regarded seriously as the probable authors of Pamela. Not one bears much resemblance to Richardson,⁷ but they are all men whom Henry Fielding might have attacked in 1741.

The wording of the title, An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews, and the pseudonym “Mr. Conny Keyber”⁸ obviously poke fun at Fielding's old enemy, who had recently alluded to the young dramatist as a “broken Wit” in An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber (pub. April, 1740). In my opinion, however, Dobson and other critics err when they picture the author of Shamela as laboring under the impression that Cibber was directly responsible for the story of Pamela's impregnable virtue.⁹ True, in Shamela Cibber's style is compared to that of “those remarkable Epistles, which the Author, or the Editor hath prefixed to the second Edition”¹⁰ of Pamela (pub. Feb. 14, 1741); and Dobson thinks Cibber is attacked when Parson Oliver suggests that “the Composer” of Pamela may be guessed “from that Ciceronian Eloquence, with which the Work abounds; and that excellent Knack of making every Character amiable, which he lays his hands on.”¹¹ It seems at least equally probable to me that Conyers Middleton or some other clerical writer of biography is the butt of Oliver's remark. However that may be, in the postscript to Shamela's last letter there is a sarcastic passage about the author of Pamela which cannot be aimed at Cibber.

Shamela is surprised at a strange fancy that “has enter'd into my Booby's head.” Her new husband, she explains, “is resolved to have a Book made about him and me.” Parson Williams has been offered the job of writing it,

but he says he never writ anything of that kind, but will recommend my Husband, when he comes to Town, to a Parson who does that Sort of Business for Folks, one who can make my Husband, and me, and Parson Williams, to be all great people; for he can make black white, it seems. Well, but they say my Name is to be altered, Mr. Williams, says the first Syllabub hath too comical a Sound so it is to be changed into Pamela; I own I can't imagine what can be said; for to be sure I shan't confess any of my Secrets to them, and so I whispered Parson Williams about that, who answered me, I need not give myself any Trouble; for the Gentleman who writes Lives, never asked more than a few Names of his Customers, and that he made all the rest out of his own Head; you mistake, Child, said he, if you apprehend any Truths are to be delivered—So far on the contrary, if you had not been acquainted with the Name, you would not have known it to be your own History. I have seen a Piece of his Performance, where the Person, whose Life was written, could he have risen from the Dead again, would not have even suspected he had been aimed at, unless by the Title of the Book, which was superscribed with his Name.¹²

Now it would be difficult to think of many ironic sobriquets that Fielding would have hesitated to apply to Cibber, but “Parson” is probably one of them. Moreover, Parson Williams's acquaintance is clearly a professional biographer. Cibber could hardly be said, even ironically, to have made a business of writing “Lives” on the strength of one book, his autobiography; and no biographical work by Cibber had appeared whose title “was superscribed with” the name of a dead person. It seems reasonable to me to assume that the passage just quoted satirizes a real clergyman who was actively engaged in producing biographies about the time Pamela and Shamela were written.

As a candidate for this doubtful honor, I should like to propose the Reverend Thomas Birch, M. A., F. R. S., the future secretary and historian of the Royal Society. From the early seventeen-thirties until late in 1740 Birch diligently edited A General Dictionary, Historical and Critical: in which a New and Accurate Translation of that of the Celebrated Mr. Bayle … is included, and interspersed with several thousand Lives never before published. (1734-1741), 10 vols. To this undertaking he contributed the stupendous total of 618 new biographies.¹³ During the same period he did biographical work for Cave on The Gentleman's Magazine and was closely associated with Samuel Johnson, who is supposed to have remarked, “Tom is a lively rogue; he remembers a great deal, and can tell many pleasant stories; but a pen is to Tom a torpedo, the touch of it benumbs his hand and his brain: Tom can talk; but he is no writer.”¹⁴ In 1738 Birch published “An Historical and Critical Account of the Life and Writings of Mr. John Milton,” which was prefixed to a two-volume edition of Milton's prose. A copy of this work was in Fielding's library at the time of his death,¹⁵ and Milton may be the person who “would not have even suspected he had been aimed at, unless by the Title of the Book, which was superscribed with his Name.”¹⁶ The activities of Birch, then, appear to dovetail neatly with those of the biographer-parson in Shamela; at any rate, we may confidently assert that no parson wrote more “Lives” than Birch during the decade preceding the publication of Shamela.

Furthermore, it is easy to point out reasons why such a man might have been satirized by Fielding in 1741: (1) Birch was a Fellow of the Royal Society, a learned body that Fielding scarcely regarded with awe;¹⁷ (2) though Birch seemed to be acquiring a reputation as a savant, he had had no public school or university training, whereas Fielding had been educated at Eton, the University of Leyden, and the Middle Temple; (3) Birch might well have impressed Fielding as a clumsy, pedantic writer;¹⁸ and (4) Birch was connected with The Gentleman's Magazine, which had printed full-page advertisements of some of his books shortly before it gave a glowing description of Pamela's tremendous popularity.¹⁹

If Shamela does attack this clergyman, the names of three writers of “Lives” whom it satirizes were curiously brought together a few years later, when Birch wrote as follows to the Earl of Orrery:

Cibber's observations on Dr. Middleton's Life of Cicero, are marked with some of the peculiarities of the author, but the book, as I am assured by good judges, has sense and vivacity, and is much beyond what one would expect from a man who professes that he knows nothing of the times about which he writes but what he derives from the writer who gave occasion to his observation, and from whom he differs in many things, and particularly with regard to the character of Caesar.²⁰

The interpretation of Caesar's character was, of course, not a new subject for Cibber, whose Caesar in Aegypt, an unsuccessful play produced at Drury Lane in 1724, was the frequent target of Fielding's gibes. Birch's praise of Cibber on Middleton would surely have struck Fielding as a crowning absurdity.

Conyers Middleton's effusive dedication of his Life of Cicero (pub. Feb., 1741) to Lord Hervey is bitingly ridiculed in “Conny Keyber's” dedication of Shamela to “Miss Fanny.” The parody is very close: whole sentences are taken over almost verbatim, but the change of a phrase or two gives a ludicrous twist to the meaning of the original;²¹ in short, the satirical method is exactly the same as that employed in the other parts of Shamela and in Fielding's immortal burlesque of dramatic absurdities, The Tragedy of Tragedies. It may have been Fielding's honest opinion that the new biography of Cicero was a stupid performance,²² and his ire was no doubt aroused because Middleton had seen fit to make a condescending, if not openly contemptuous, reference to an earlier study of Cicero by Fielding's good friend and patron, George Lyttleton.²³ The identity of Middleton's patron, however, would be sufficient to explain Fielding's animosity, for Hervey was one of the leading members of Sir Robert Walpole's administration.²⁴

It has not been noted before, I believe, that Walpole himself is satirized in Shamela. The attack occurs in a letter from “JOHN PUFF, Esq.; to the EDITOR,” which is a burlesque of the shameless puffs Richardson had prefixed to the second edition of Pamela. John Puff declares that he has read the inimitable Shamela “through and through” and then proceeds to speculate upon its authorship:

Who is he, what is he that could write so excellent a Book? he must be doubtless most agreeable to the Age, and to his Honour himself; for he is able to draw every thing to Perfection but Virtue. Whoever the Author be, he hath one of the worst and most fashionable Hearts in the World, and I would recommend to him, in his next Performance, to undertake the Life of his Honour. For he who drew the Character of Parson Williams, is equal to the Task; he seems to have little more to do than to pull off the Parson's Gown, and that which makes him so agreeable to Shamela, and the Cap will fit.²⁵

In the early seventeen-forties one of Fielding's favorite names for Walpole (there were a number of them) was “His Honour.” For example, The Champion of May 10, 1740, announces the opening of “a Court of Judicature” in this manner:

That Court will open To-morrow, when abundance of Criminals will be tryed. Amongst which are A P—e, for Misprison or concealing of several Crimes. Col. Apol. for the Murder of the English Language. T. Pistol, for breaking open a House near the bottom of Parnassus. And one Forage, alias Brass, alias His Honour, for several High Crimes.

To the contemporary readers of Fielding's newspaper these were transparent references to Alexander Pope, Colley Cibber, Theophilus Cibber, and Sir Robert Walpole. It appears that the “His Honour” label for Walpole came to be associated in the popular mind with The Champion. As early as the third number (November 20, 1739) we find a sarcastic allusion to “the great Person stiled HIS HONOUR,” and the issue of June 14, 1740, printed a letter implying that The Champion was responsible for the satiric use of the name:

Your Distinction of HIS HONOUR is certainly very just and applicable; for who is more deserving of that Title, than One that never prevaricated, trifled, or falsified his Word in a Public Assembly, and is as eminent in all the Courts of Europe, as in his own Country, for his Personal and Political Resolution, untainted Virtue, and Public Spirit.²⁶

A more elaborate treatment of the nickname than any I have found in The Champion appeared about ten weeks before Shamela in Fielding's pseudo-learned annotations on The Vernon-iad. The mock-editor explains how the victories of Marlborough over England's continental enemies are being nullified by a modern magician:

Secondly, he [Marlborough, called Μαλβοϱος] did not slay him [the monster representing hostile Europe], he only cut off his hands, which after the death of Μαλβοϱος all grew again, and the monster recovered his former strength, by the assistance of a certain magician called ὅsονος [hos onos, the ass] or ‘′Usονος or according to the Laconians ‘′Usονοϱ [Hysonor, his honor] in Latin Hishonor. This magician is said to have invented a certain aurum potabile, by which he could turn men into swine or asses, whence some think he had his name ‘′Uς signifying a swine, and ὄνος Laconice ὄνοϱ an ass.²⁷

As I see it, the fact that Fielding published this extravagant nonsense in January, 1741, is not the weakest link in the chain of evidence that connects him with Shamela. Perhaps the “his Honour” passage in John Puff's letter was meant to insinuate that Fielding, who had clearly demonstrated his talents as a mordant satirist of Walpole in his political plays and The Champion, was in all likelihood the portrayer of the rascally Parson Williams and consequently the author of Shamela.²⁸

Parson Williams plays a much more prominent part in Shamela than his prototype does in the original novel, and despicable priests in general are so soundly lashed as to leave no room for doubt that they are a major object of the satirist's attack. A reason for this cutting criticism of the clergy is not far to seek when we remember that late in 1740 Dr. Benjamin Slocock had been rash enough to recommend Pamela from the pulpit of a London church, and sentimental clerics were among the most ardent of the novel's early admirers.²⁹ It seems certain to me that the creator of Shamela was moved as much by indignation at the reception accorded Pamela as by scorn for the defects of the work itself. Consequently, the rest of this paper will be concerned with his references to the clergy.

A page-by-page examination of Shamela will show more clearly than anything else how the cloth engaged the author's attention. Though such a procedure is scarcely feasible here, it should be pointed out that every part of the satire contains some kind of allusion to parsons. The title-page promises “A full Account of all that passed between her [Shamela] and Parson Arthur Williams; whose Character is represented in a manner something different from that which he bears in PAMELA.” As we have already seen, “Conny Keyber's” dedication burlesques the dedication of a clergyman's book, and one of the two “Letters to the Editor” refers to Parson Williams; the other Letter comments, “it [Shamela] will do more good than the C—y have done harm in the World.”³⁰ Shamela's correspondence, which draws Parson Williams's character and alludes to other clerical figures, is set in a framework formed by the letters of two clergymen: Parson Oliver and Parson Tickletext.³¹ In Oliver's letter, which serves a purpose somewhat analogous to that of the introductory chapters in Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, we find a serious discussion of the shortcomings of the clergy, strikingly different in tone from the ridicule in the other sections of the work.

Oliver, a country parson, is extremely vexed when he receives a copy of Pamela from his friend Tickletext in London together with a letter which describes the way the novel has been acclaimed by the city clergy:

we have made it our common Business here [Tickletext informs Oliver], not only to cry it up, but to preach it up likewise: The Pulpit, as well as the Coffee-house, hath resounded with its Praise, and it is expected shortly, that his L——p will recommend it in a —— Letter to our whole Body.³²

And this Example, I am confident, will be imitated by all our Cloth in the Country: For besides speaking well of a Brother, in the Character of the Reverend Mr. Williams, the useful and truly religious Doctrine of Grace is every where inculcated.³³

Oliver's scathing reply to Tickletext, which at times has the sincerity and fervour of a sermon, contains the most revealing passages in the whole book to the investigator who is trying to detect Fielding's hand. According to Oliver, some of the clergy have erroneous ideas about the kind of honor due them:

Is it possible that you or any of your Function can be in earnest, or think the Cause of Religion, or Morality, can want such slender Support? God forbid they should. As for Honour to the Clergy, I am sorry to see them so solicitous about it; for if worldly Honour be meant, it is what their Predecessors in the pure and primitive Age, never had or sought. Indeed the secure Satisfaction of a good Conscience, the Approbation of the Wise and Good (which never were or will be the Generality of Mankind) and the extatick Pleasure of contemplating, that their ways are acceptable to the Great Creator of the Universe, will always attend those, who really deserve these Blessings: But for worldly Honours, they are often the Purchase of Force and Fraud, we sometimes see them in an eminent Degree possessed by Men, who are notorious for Luxury, Pride, Cruelty, Treachery, and the most abandoned Prostitution; Wretches who are ready to invent and maintain Schemes repugnant to the Interest, the Liberty, and the Happiness of Mankind, not to supply their Necessities, or even Conveniencies, but to pamper their Avarice and Ambition. And if this be the Road to worldly Honours, God forbid the Clergy should be even suspected of walking in it.³⁴

To the devotee of Fielding this paragraph has a familiar ring. In thought, phraseology, and rhythm it faithfully echoes writing that everyone agrees is genuine Fielding. As proof of this statement I wish to present a few selections expressing similar ideas from his accepted works. All of these “parallel passages” appeared within fifteen months of the publication of Shamela, and in most of them the wording is too close to that of Oliver's outburst to be satisfactorily explained by a hypothesis of fortuitous coincidence.

When Fielding was the chief contributor to The Champion, he prepared a number of careful, earnest essays on ethical and religious subjects, which are invaluable for the student of his thought. In the issue of January 22, 1740, he wrote as follows on the benefits of believing in a future life:

What a glorious, What a rapturous Consideration must it be to the Heart of Man to think the Goodness of the Great God of Nature concerned in his Happiness? … What extatic Pleasure must he feel in his Mind, when he presumes that his Ways are pleasing to the All-powerful Creator of the Universe?³⁵

An essay on reputation that appeared on March 4, 1740, recalls the sentiment and diction of this passage and foreshadows Oliver's comment on worldly honors:

As it is inconsistent with the Justice of a supremely wise and good Being, to suffer his honest and worthy Endeavours to go unrewarded, can the Heart of Man be warmed with a more exstatic Imagination, than that the most excellent Attribute of the great Creator of the Universe is concerned in rewarding him? Such a Consideration as this may well make him despise the false, short-liv'd Honours, he sees unjustly bestowed on others, and keep him constant and steady in the Ways of Virtue, at the same Time that he thoroughly despises all the Rewards within the Power of Man.³⁶

In another place the same essay reads:

Actions of the worst Nature have, by the Assistance of false Glosses, been accompanied with Honour, and Men have often arrived at the highest Fame by deserving the highest Infamy; which, when we consider the general Incapacity of Mankind, we shall be so far from being astonish'd at, that we shall rather think it Matter of Wonder, that they have ever judged right.³⁷

Still other observations on the emptiness of worldly honor, this time applied specifically to the clergy, occur in The Champion for March 29, 1740:

this Office [of the clergy] which concerns the eternal Happiness of the Souls of Men, must be of greatly superior Dignity, and Honour to any of those whose Business is at most the Regulation or well Being of the Body only.

But here I would not be understood to mean what we vulgarly call Honour and Dignity in a worldly Sense, such as Pomp or Pride, or Flattery, or any of this Kind … Our Blessed Saviour himself, instead of introducing himself into the World in the Houses or Families of what we call the Great, chose to be born of the Wife of a Carpenter … he every where practised and taught Contempt of worldly Grandeur and Honors, often inculcating in his excellent Discourses, that his Kingdom was not of this World, nor his Rewards to be bestow'd in it, intending to lay the Foundation of a truly noble, refined, and Divine Philosophy, and not of any Pomp or Palaces, any of the Show Splendour, or Luxury of the Heathenish Religions, for his Disciples, or their Successors to enjoy.³⁸

The passages thus far cited were written before Oliver's reproof of Tickletext appeared in print. Equally interesting parallels are found in Joseph Andrews, which was published some ten months after Shamela. In the seventeenth chapter of Book I Parson Adams, whose language and ideas are sometimes almost identical with Parson Oliver's, argues about sermons and kindred matters with Parson Barnabas and a bookseller. Since this conversation not only echoes Oliver's remarks in the most striking fashion, but has important points of connection with other parts of Shamela, it seems best to quote it at length:

‘I am no Enemy to Sermons [says the bookseller] but because they don't sell: for I would as soon print one of Whitefield's, as any Farce whatever.’

‘Whoever prints such heterodox Stuff ought to be hanged,’ says Barnabas. ‘Sir, said he, turning to Adams, this Fellow's Writings … are levelled at the Clergy. He would reduce us to the Example of the primitive Ages … and would make Mankind believe, that the Poverty and low Estate, which was recommended to the Church in its Infancy, … was to be preserved in her flourishing and established State …’

‘Sir, answered Adams, if Mr. Whitefield had carried his Doctrine no farther than you mention, I should have remained, as I once was, his Well-wisher. I am myself as great an Enemy to the Luxury and Splendor of the Clergy as he can be. I do not, more than he, by the flourishing Estate of the Church, understand the Palaces, Equipages, Dress, Furniture, rich Dainties, and vast Fortunes of her Ministers. Surely those things, which savour so strongly of this World, become not the Servants of one who professed his Kingdom was not of it:³⁹ but when he began to call Nonsense and Enthusiasm to his Aid, and set up the detestable Doctrine of Faith against Good Works, I was his Friend no longer; for surely that Doctrine was coined in Hell, and one would think none but the Devil himself could have the Confidence to preach it …’ ‘I suppose, Sir, said the Bookseller, your Sermons are of a different Kind.’ ‘Ay, Sir, said Adams, the contrary, I thank Heaven, is inculcated in almost every page …’ ‘I wish you Success, says the Bookseller, but must beg to be excused … and indeed I am afraid, you will find a Backwardness in the Trade, to engage in a Book which the Clergy would be certain to cry down.’ ‘God forbid, says Adams, any Books should be propagated which the Clergy would cry down: but if you mean by the Clergy, some few designing factious Men who have it at heart to establish some favourite Schemes at the Price of the Liberty of Mankind, and the very Essence of Religion, it is not in the Power of such Persons to decry any Book they please; witness that excellent Book called, A plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament; a Book written (if I may venture on the Expression) with the Pen of an Angel, and calculated to restore the true use of Christianity, and of that sacred Institution … Now this excellent Book was attacked by a Party, but unsuccessfully.’⁴⁰

It is hardly necessary to emphasize the close relationship between Adams's “designing factious Men, who have it at heart to establish some favourite Schemes at the Price of the Liberty of Mankind” and Oliver's “Wretches who are ready to invent and maintain Schemes repugnant to the Interest, the Liberty, and the Happiness of Mankind,”⁴¹ or the way in which the speeches of Barnabas and Adams recall Oliver's comment on “the pure and primitive Age” of the Church. Besides the verbal resemblances to Shamela, this excerpt from Joseph Andrews exhibits other features that call for attention.

Adams's reference to Bishop Hoadly's A Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper (pub. June, 1735)⁴² and to the paper war it created has an amusing though unnoted counterpart in Shamela. When Shamela decides to “pack up my little All” and leave Squire Booby's house, like Richardson's heroine she gives a detailed list of her possessions; these include (in addition to “five Shifts, one Sham, a Hoop,” and other articles of clothing) “some few Books.” The titles in her library, which have obviously been chosen to show off her character as a hypocritical, psalm-singing slut, are:

A full Answer is a plain and true Account, & c., The Whole Duty of Man, with only the Duty to one's Neighbour, torn out. The Third Volume of the Atalantis. Venus in the Cloyster: or, the Nun in her Smock. God's dealings with Mr. Whitefield. Orfus and Eurydice.⁴³

The first item is almost certainly one of the numerous replies to Hoadly's Plain Account that had been appearing for half a decade when Shamela was written.

The “Register of Books” in the Gentleman's Magazine for March, 1736, announced the publication of the following work:

A True Account of the Nature, end, and efficacy of the Sacrament of the Lords Supper; being a full answer to the Plain Account, Shewing the Agreement of these plain Notions with the Socinians, and their disagreement with the Church of England. by Tho. Powyer Vicar of Martock, Somersetshire. printed for C. Rivington

In April, 1736, the Register gave a fuller and somewhat differently worded title, corrected the author's name to “Tho. Bowyer,” and added the price, “3s. 6d.” Though I have never seen a copy of this book, it seems likely to me that the hasty writer of Shamela inaccurately condensed its elaborate title to “A full Answer is a plain and true Account, & c.,” the ampersand indicating that there was more to the name, but it was too much trouble to transcribe it fully. We can be sure that Fielding, who admired Hoadly sincerely, would have taken delight in deriding a work which attacked the Bishop's notions as heretical. Perhaps it is not irrelevant to add that Martock, a town in eastern Somerset near the border of Dorset, is in the heart of the Fielding country (probably within a morning's walk of Sir Thomas Booby's country seat in Joseph Andrews); and Thomas Bowyer, its vicar, may have been known personally to the future novelist.⁴⁴

Another point worth noting is that the publisher of Bowyer's book was Charles Rivington, under whose imprint appeared the first five editions of Pamela. “He and Osborne shared the credit not only of publishing Pamela, but of having suggested to Richardson the idea of a collection of letters, which developed into it.”⁴⁵ Rivington also published some of the first books by the founders of Methodism, and it should be evident from the quotations given above that neither Shamela nor Joseph Andrews has much to say in favor of Methodists.⁴⁶

The most serious fault found in the Methodists by the author of each of those works seems to have been, as Parson Adams phrases it, their setting up “the detestable Doctrine of Faith against Good Works.” This is identical with “the useful and truly religious Doctrine of Grace” that Tickletext sees “every where inculcated in Richardson's novel.” Contemporary references to the antinomian bias of Whitefield and Wesley are legion, but perhaps the best gloss on what incensed Adams comes from the pen of the parson-novelist Richard Graves:

He [Whitefield] usually made choice of a different text at each meeting; but, whatever the subject was, it always ended, like Cato's speeches in the senate-house, with, Delenda est Carthago. “Down with your good works!” with a denunciation against self-righteousness, and a recommendation of Faith alone in its stead, as if Virtue were inconsistent with the belief of the Gospel …⁴⁷

The texts of a number of the sermons in which Whitefield and Wesley attempted to inculcate the “truly religious Doctrine of Grace” have come down to us. Some of these help us to understand Parson Adams's attitude towards Whitefield, but they are even more valuable for the light they throw on the characterizations of Parson Williams and Shamela.

Whitefield was fond of interlarding his doctrinal exegesis with gibes at his fellow-clergymen. One of the most popular of his early sermons has the following passages:

My Brethren, if Jesus Christ be not Very God of Very God, I would never preach the Gospel of Christ again—For it would not be Gospel, that is to say, Glad tidings of Salvation; it would be only a System of mere Morality; and if so, Seneca, Cicero, or any of the Heathen Philosophers, would be as good a Saviour as Jesus of Nazareth. … And whatsoever Minister of the Church of England makes use of her Forms, and eats of her Bread, and yet holds not this Doctrine, (as I fear too many such are not only crept in, but countenanced and preferr'd amongst us) such an one belongs only to the Synagogue of Satan: He is not a Child or Minister of God—No, he is a Wolf in Sheep's Cloathing: He is none other than a Child and Minister of that wicked One the Devil.⁴⁸ … What think you then, my Brethren, if I tell you that we are to be justified freely thro' Faith in Jesus Christ, without any Regard to any Works or Fitness foreseen in us at all; For Salvation is the free Gift of God—I know no Fitness in Man, but a Fitness to be thrown into the Lake of Fire and Brimstone for ever.⁴⁹

In another sermon Whitefield made it plain that he was particularly irritated by priests who were pretenders to learning. (Remember Parson Adams and his love for Aeschylus and Homer.)

But here's the Misfortune; many of us are not led by, and therefore no Wonder, that we cannot talk feelingly of the Holy Ghost—We subscribe to our Articles, and make them serve for a Key to get into Church-Preferment, and then preach contrary to those very Articles to which we have subscribed—Far be it from me, to charge all the Clergy with this hateful Hypocrisy—No, blessed be God, there are some left among us, who dare maintain the Doctrine of the Reformation, and preach the Truth, as it is in Jesus—But I speak the Truth in Christ, I lye not—The Generality of the Clergy are fallen from our Articles, and do not speak agreeable to them, or to the Form of sound Words, delivered in the Scriptures—Wo be unto such blind Leaders of the Blind! How can you escape the Damnation of Hell? It is not all your Learning (falsely so called), it is not all your Preferments can keep you from the just Judgment of God.⁵⁰

John Wesley was rather more polite but just as insistent on the necessity of salvation by faith:

Wherewithal then shall a sinful man atone for any the least of his sins? With his own works? No. Were they ever so many or holy, they are not his own, but God's. … Therefore, having nothing, neither righteousness nor works, to plead, his mouth is utterly stopped before God. … Grace is the source, faith the condition, of salvation … A Greek or Roman, therefore, yea, a Scythian or Indian, was without excuse if he did not believe thus much: the being and attributes of God, a future state of reward and punishment, and the obligatory nature of moral virtue. For this is barely the faith of a Heathen.⁵¹ … Can you empty the great deep, drop by drop? Then you may reform us by dissuasives from particular vices. But let the ‘righteousness which is of God by faith’ be brought in, and so shall its proud waves be stayed. Nothing but this can stop the mouths of those who ‘glory in their shame, and openly deny the Lord that brought them.’ They can talk as sublimely of the law, as he that hath it written by God in his heart. To hear them speak on this head might incline one to think they were not far from the kingdom of God: but take them out of the law into the gospel; begin with the righteousness of faith, with Christ, ‘the end of the law to every one that believeth’; and those who but now appeared almost, if not altogether Christians, stand confessed the sons of perdition; as far from life and salvation (God be merciful unto them!) as the depth of hell from the height of Heaven.⁵²

Nothing could be clearer than the fact that Parson Williams was intended, at least in part, as a portrait of the kind of clergyman who agreed with Whitefield and Wesley on the question of Faith vs. Good Works. Shamela has been carefully trained by her paramour and mentor to believe that any action is permissible to one who has the proper kind of faith.

Many parts of Shamela's correspondence might be cited to illustrate Williams's ethical views. One of the most illuminating appears when Shamela—for the edification of her mother, who seems to have risen from her lowly beginnings as orange-girl in the playhouse to the enviable position of Covent Garden bawd⁵³—describes a sermon she has heard Williams deliver. Note the resemblance to Wesley's attack on those who talk “of the law.”

… he shewed us that the Bible doth not require too much Goodness of us, and that People very often call things Goodness that are not so. That to go to Church, and to pray, and to sing Psalms, and to honour the Clergy, and repent, is true Religion; and 'tis not doing good to one another, for that is one of the greatest Sins we can commit, when we don't do it for the sake of Religion. That those People who talk of Vartue and Morality, are the wickedest of all Persons. That 'tis not what we do, but what we believe, that must save us, and a great many other good Things; I wish I could remember them all.⁵⁴

How Williams was wont to apply his theory that “'tis not what we do, but what we believe, that must save us” is revealed in the ludicrous casuistry with which he woos Shamela. Before her marriage to Booby he addresses her as one “whom after those Endearments which have passed between us, I must in some Respects estimate as my Wife: For tho' the Omission of the Service was a Sin; yet, as I have told you, it was a venial One, of which I have truly repented, as I hope you have; and also that you have continued the wholesome Office of reading good Books, and are improved in your Psalmody.” And he concludes by promising to spend the next Sunday evening with her “in Pleasures, which tho' not strictly innocent, are however to be purged away by frequent and sincere Repentance.”⁵⁵ After Shamela has become the Squire's wife, Williams takes the unnecessary precaution of easing her conscience with a lecture on the sanctity of adultery:

As he went along, he began to discourse very learnedly, and told me the Flesh and the Spirit were two distinct Matters, which had not the least relation to each other. That all immaterial Substances (those were his very Words) such as Love, Desire, and so forth, were guided by the Spirit. But fine Houses, large Estates, Coaches and dainty Entertainments were the Product of the Flesh. Therefore, says he, my Dear, you have two Husbands, one the object of your Love, and to satisfy your Desire; the other the Object of your Necessity, and to furnish you with those other conveniences … as then the Spirit is preferable to the Flesh, so am I preferable to your other Husband, to whom I am antecedent in Time likewise. I say these things, my Dear, (said he) to satisfie your Conscience. A Fig for my Conscience, said I, when shall I meet you again in the Garden?⁵⁶

Thus does the author of Shamela demonstrate the convenience of the truly religious Doctrine of Grace, which manifestly teaches that “the Spirit is preferable to the Flesh.”⁵⁷

Williams's sermon which showed that “the Bible doth not require too much Goodness of us” was preached, according to Shamela, from the text: “Be not Righteous over-much.” This is one of the most ingenious strokes in Shamela, and is entirely characteristic of Fielding's satiric methods. In the years immediately preceding the publication of Shamela the most widely discussed attack on Whitefield and the Methodists delivered from an English pulpit was a sermon on precisely the same text. Whitefield made the following entry in his Journal for Sunday, April 29, 1739:

At Ten, went to Christ-Church and heard Dr Trapp preach most vehemently against me and my Friends, upon these Words, Be not Righteous over-much, why shouldst thou destroy thyself? God gave me great Serenity of Mind. But alas! the Preacher was not so calm as I wish'd him. His Sermon was founded upon wrong Suppositions (the necessary Consequence of hearing with other Men's Ears) not to say there were many direct Untruths in it; and he argued so strenuously against all inward Feelings, that he plainly proved, that, with all his Learning, he knew nothing yet as he ought to know. I pray God rebuke his Spirit, and grant that Sermon may never rise up in Judgment against him.⁵⁸

Dr. Joseph Trapp, who had held the first professorship of poetry at Oxford (Fielding makes fun of his translation of Virgil in the mock-critical notes to The Vernon-iad), resented Whitefield's slurs upon learned clergymen and proceeded to put the young upstart in his place. We can imagine Whitefield's great serenity of mind when he listened to such stinging rebukes as these:

Suppose a raw Novice, very lately initiated into holy Orders, shall, upon the Principle of being righteous over-much, take upon him, at his first setting out, to execute, as it were, the Office of an Apostle, to be a Teacher, not only of all the Laity, in all Parts of the Kingdom, but of the Teachers themselves, the learned Clergy; to reflect upon, and censure them as if they did not know their Duty, or would not do it without being instructed, and reprov'd by Him; what is This but an Outrage, upon common Decency, and common Sense, the Height of Presumption, Confidence, and Self-Sufficiency … Surely it is shocking, and prodigious, for so young a Son of Levi to take so much upon him.⁵⁹

It is certain that before the appearance of Shamela Fielding had taken note of Trapp's sermon, because of the allusions to it in The Champion. In the second chapter of his “Apology for the Clergy” (April 5, 1740), where Fielding recommends inter alia forgiveness of debts and plain living to ministers, he remarks twice that he would avoid being “righteous over-much” in his interpretations of the Scripture.⁶⁰ But the most valuable reference to Trapp in The Champion for our purpose occurs in the issue of May 24, 1740. This paper, a Lucianic vision foreshadowing A Journey from This World to the Next, shows Charon and Mercury stripping vices and follies from some of Fielding's contemporaries—among whom are Cibber and Walpole—in preparation for the journey across the Styx. Whitefield, it seems, is overloaded with religion.

A young Man with a meagre Aspect followed him [Cibber], who, as I heard, was the great Methodist. He was desired to lay aside that vast Quantity of Religion, but was some time obstinate, till he was at last prevailed on by several Men in black, one of whom enlarged on the Folly of being righteous over-much. He then took his Religion, and distributed it amongst all the black Gentry, and they afterwards went all into the Boat without any more Interruption.⁶¹

We can hardly regard “the great Methodist” as the sole object of this attack. Although he has too much religion, his clerical critics have too little, and it is necessary to divide Whitefield's excess load among them before all are properly supplied. This revelation of Fielding's attitude toward the Methodists and their opponents sheds light on Williams's use of “Be not Righteous over-much.” It is an exquisite touch, I think, to have the parson who is such a hearty subscriber to the Methodist “down with Good Works” doctrine preach on a text that had become associated with the detractors of Methodism. Such double-barreled or topsy-turvy satire was a favorite weapon with Fielding,⁶² and in my opinion its presence in Shamela helps to confirm the theory of his authorship.

Parson Williams is meant to be a personification of vices possessed by bad clergymen. It would be a mistake to consider him merely a rascally disciple of Whitefield, or a caricature of the parsons who praised Pamela, or a satiric imitation of Richardson's Reverend Mr. Williams, or an example of the stock figure of the libidinous priest.⁶³ His character is a synthesis that is set up as a warning to the clergy of 1741. The earnest didactic purpose behind the portrait is expressed clearly in Parson Oliver's summary near the end of the book:

As to the Character of Parson Williams, I am sorry it is a true one. Indeed those who do not know him, will hardly believe it so; but what Scandal doth it throw on the Order to have one bad Member, unless they endeavour to screen and protect him? In him you see a Picture of almost every Vice exposed in nauseous and odious Colours; and if a Clergyman would ask me by what Pattern he should form himself, I would say, Be the reverse of Williams: So far therefore he may be of use to the Clergy themselves, and though God forbid there should be many Williams's amongst them, you and I are too honest to pretend, that the Body wants no Reformation.⁶⁴

The clergy, then, will do harm to their order if they fail to expose evil members like Williams; and the author of Shamela is performing a valuable service in describing the kind of men that should be rooted out. Obviously he should not be accused of having contempt for the clergy when he wishes to improve the quality of their membership. His quarrel is with unworthy individuals, not with the body as a whole.

As we have seen before, when Parson Oliver speaks seriously on the clergy, he is likely to echo passages that have long been accepted as Fielding's work. It should not be surprising, therefore, to learn that the “Apology for the Clergy” papers in The Champion offer strikingly close parallels in thought and phrase to Oliver's explanation of Williams' significance. In the issue of March 29, 1740, Fielding gives his reasons for embarking on a defense of the clergy and distinguishes between criticism of individuals and contempt for the body as a whole.

… I have already condemn'd the Custom of throwing Scandal on a whole Profession for the Vices of some particular Members.⁶⁵ Can any Thing be more unreasonable than to cast an Odium on the Professions of Divinity, Law, and Physic, because there have been absurd or wicked Divines, Lawyers, and Physicians?

But there is an Error directly opposite to this, which may likewise deserve Correction. I mean that Protection which some Persons would draw from their Professions, who, when they are justly censured for their Actions, retreat (if I may say so) behind the Walls of their Order, and endeavour to represent our Attacs [sic] on the Individual to be levelled at the whole Body. Whereas, the Profession should give no more Security to the Man than the Man should bring a Disgrace on his Profession. …

I have heard of a Pamphlet, called Reasons of the Contempt of the Clergy.⁶⁶ If by the Clergy, the Author means the Order, I hope there is no such Contempt; nay, I will venture to say, there is not among sensible and sober Men, the only Persons whose ill Opinion is to be valued … This Contempt, therefore, must be meant of particular Clergymen … Human Frailty is indeed such, that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to preserve any Body (especially so large a one) from some rotten Members, but the utmost Care is here taken on that Regard. …

If, notwithstanding all this Care, a few unworthy Members creep in, it is certainly doing a serviceable Office to the Body to detect and expose them; nay, it is what the Sound and uncorrupt Part should not only be pleas'd with, but themselves endeavour to execute, especially if they are suspicious of, or offended at Contempt or Ridicule, which can never fall with any Weight on the Order itself, or on any Clergyman, who is not really a Scandal to it.⁶⁷

The “Apology for the Clergy” concludes with an eloquent paper (The Champion, April 29, 1740) in which Fielding gives contrasting “characters” of good and bad clergymen. This should be read by everyone who is interested in the clerical figures of his novels. Everything said about good parsons is exemplified in the character of Parson Adams, and most of the features of the bad are found in the portrait of Parson Williams. The “character” of the bad clergyman begins, “Let us suppose then, a Man of loose Morals, proud, malevolent, vain, rapacious, and revengeful”—which is a perfect description of Williams; and ends in a way that reminds one of Oliver's “God forbid there should be many Williams's amongst them”:

Perhaps it will be said I have drawn a Monster, and not a Portrait taken from Life. God forbid it should; but it is not sufficient that the whole does not resemble; for he who hath but an Eye, a Nose, a single Feature in this deformed Figure, can challenge none of the Honours due to a Minister of the Gospel.⁶⁸

In the final paragraph of the “Apology,” where Fielding reaffirms his serious purpose in discussing the clergy, he voices sentiments that would certainly have been shared by Parson Oliver:

I have thus finished what I intended, and what I begun with a good Design; for as nothing can hurt Religion so much as a Contempt of the Clergy, so nothing can justify or indeed cause any such Contempt but their own bad Lives. If there are any therefore among them who want Reformation in this Particular, it would be a truly Episcopal Office to attempt it.⁶⁹

The quotations just given from The Champion show that only a few months before the publication of Pamela Fielding was devoting a good deal of careful thought to the current criticism of the clergy. Then, after the novel became the talk of the town, when he saw parsons applauding what he considered a foolish, immoral book, he must have felt that they were deliberately inviting that contempt for their order about which they appeared to be so sensitive. They deserved the satirist's lash, especially for regarding the portrait of the fatuous busybody who wanted to marry Pamela as a compliment to the clergy. “In Parson Williams,” says Oliver, referring to Richardson's clergyman, “who is represented as a faultless character, we see a busy Fellow, intermeddling with the Private Affairs of his Patron, whom he is ungratefully forward to expose and condemn on every Occasion.”⁷⁰

The satire in Shamela has two main functions: (1) to ridicule a silly story ostensibly describing the life of a real girl (and incidentally to make fun of some other biographies of doubtful accuracy); (2) to reprimand the clergy, who were making themselves a laughing-stock by their praise of Pamela. The burlesque was shaped to fit this twofold purpose. Parson Williams, a minor figure in Richardson, was elevated to equal rank with Shamela. He is the leading male character, even more important than Squire Booby. And to make the attack on erring parsons unmistakably clear, the author devised the framework of the Oliver-Tickletext correspondence with its serious criticism and interpretations.

Perhaps the greatest value of Shamela as a link between Pamela and Joseph Andrews lies in the fact that the characterization of Parson Williams helps to explain the evolution of Parson Adams. Joseph Andrews was a reaction to Pamela in the sense that it was Fielding's demonstration of how an extended piece of prose fiction should be written, which, as he saw it, was as differently as possible from Pamela, “in the Manner of Cervantes.” In other words, Joseph Andrews was offered to the reading public as a clear-cut contrast to Pamela, not as a travesty. One of the strangest fallacies constantly recurring in our histories of literature is the theory that Fielding began Joseph Andrews with the intention of parodying Pamela, then by some quirk of fate got interested in Parson Adams, forgot about the parody, and accidentally created the most memorable clergyman in English fiction.⁷¹ But Fielding had already written his parody of Pamela, and it had suited his purpose in Shamela to make its leading male character the most contemptible parson he could invent. When he planned a book that was to differ toto caelo from Pamela, it was almost inevitable that he should think of making its central character a truly admirable parson. I, for one, am convinced that Parson Adams had been born in his creator's brain before the opening chapters of Joseph Andrews were put on paper. If this seems too much like airy theorizing, let us turn to the final paragraph of the Preface to Joseph Andrews:

As to the Character of Adams [writes Fielding], as it is the most glaring in the whole, so I conceive it is not to be found in any Book now extant. It is designed a Character of perfect Simplicity; and as the Goodness of his Heart will recommend him to the Good-natured; so I hope it will excuse me to the Gentlemen of his Cloth; for whom, while they are worthy of their sacred Order, no Man can possibly have a greater Respect.

And this, it will be recalled, is Parson Oliver's comment on Williams:

As to the Character of Parson Williams [writes Fielding], I am sorry it is a true one. Indeed those who do not know him, will hardly believe it so … In him you see a Picture of almost every Vice exposed in nauseous and odious Colours … So far therefore he may be of use to the Clergy themselves, and though God forbid there should be many Williams's amongst them, you and I are too honest to pretend, that the Body wants no Reformation.

Notes

1. Clara Linklater Thomson, Samuel Richardson (London, 1900), p. 38. There seems to have been almost no earlier speculation in the nineteenth century about the authorship of Shamela. In 1894 Raleigh dismissed it in a sentence as an early burlesque of Pamela “by an anonymous writer.” See Sir Walter Raleigh, The English Novel (London, reprint of 1929), p. 161.

2. Those interested in the comment that has followed Miss Thomson's study should consult Ethel M. M. McKenna, The Novels of Richardson (London, 1902), i, xiv, xxviii; Austin Dobson, Samuel Richardson (London, 1902), pp. 42-45, and “Fielding” in Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed. (1910); J. Paul de Castro, “Did Fielding Write ‘Shamela’?” Notes and Queries, 12 S., i (Jan. 8, 1916), 24-26, and “Introductory Note” to his edition of Joseph Andrews (London, 1929), pp. 9-11; Wilbur L. Cross, The History of Henry Fielding (Yale Univ. Press, 1918), i, 303-313; Aurelien Digeon, The Novels of Fielding (London, 1925), pp. 44-49; R. Brimley Johnson, Introduction to his reprint of Shamela (Golden Cockerel Press, 1926); Brian W. Downs, Richardson (London, 1928), pp. 65-68, and Introduction to his reprint of Shamela (Cambridge [Eng.], 1930); E. A. Baker, The History of the English Novel, iv (London, 1930), 87-88; Alan D. McKillop, “The Personal Relations between Fielding and Richardson,” Modern Philology, xxviii (1931), 424-425, and Samuel Richardson (Chapel Hill, 1936), pp. 73-75; A. B. Shepperson, The Novel in Motley (Harvard Univ. Press, 1936), pp. 19-28; William M. Sale, Jr., Samuel Richardson, a Bibliographical Record (Yale Univ. Press, 1936), pp. 113-114; Charles Richard Greene, “A Note on the Authorship of Shamela,” Modern Language Notes, lix (Dec., 1944), 571. This list does not pretend to be exhaustive.

3. This is hardly the impression given by some standard works of reference. In The Cambridge History of English Literature (x, 7) Cazamian remarked that the authorship of Shamela was “still [in 1913?] under discussion.” In Sir Oliver Elton's opinion the evidence pointing to Fielding's authorship is “not conclusive.” Elton disagrees with Cross and other authorities on the style of Shamela: “I do but state an impression that the style of Shamela is not Fielding's. … Shamela is like a snowball with a stone inside it; Joseph Andrews, though a hard enough snowball, is otherwise innocent. I would not ask, however, for a verdict of more than ‘not proven.’” See A Survey of English Literature 1730-1780 (London, 1928), i, 192; and compare George Kitchin, A Survey of Burlesque and Parody in English (Edinburgh, 1931), p. 169: “We have not so far referred to … Shamela … because there still remains a doubt as to its authorship.” According to the 1943 issue of the Encyclopedia Britannica (ix, 224), “whether he [Fielding] actually wrote the famous … Shamela … is quite uncertain.”

4. It should not be forgotten that when Fielding confessed (in the Preface to his Miscellanies [pub. April, 1743]) to the authorship of Joseph Andrews and other pieces that had appeared anonymously in 1741-1742, he carefully worded the acknowledgment so that it would apply to nothing published before the end of June, 1741. Even if we leave Shamela out of account, it is safe to say that he had published anonymously in the first half of 1741. In the face of his letter to Nourse one can scarcely doubt that he wrote The Vernoniad (pub. Jan. 22, 1741), and the evidence for his authorship of The Crisis: a Sermon, which appeared in the same month as Shamela and bore the imprint of the same publisher, is very persuasive. See Cross, The History of Henry Fielding, i, 288-297.

5. At least two were contemporaries who should have known the truth. The catalogue of the bookseller Francis Cogan, unearthed by McKillop, seems to me to carry more weight than Horace Walpole's and Dampier's ascriptions, which may merely reflect gossip.

   But the most interesting contemporary testimony is found in that letter of Richardson's which apparently inspired Miss Thomson's investigation. Written late in 1749 to Lady Bradshaigh, the letter is worth quoting at some length because it proves that Richardson possessed accurate and intimate knowledge of Fielding's literary activities: “So long as the world will receive, Mr. Fielding will write. Have you ever seen a list of his performances? Nothing but a shorter life than I wish him, can hinder him from writing himself out of date. The Pamela, which he abused in his Shamela, taught him how to write to please, tho' his manners are so different. Before his Joseph Andrews (hints and names taken from that story, with a lewd and ungenerous engraftment) the poor man wrote without being read, except when his Pasquins, & c. roused party attention and the legislature at the same time, according to that of Juvenal, which may be thus translated:

   Would'st thou be read, or would'st thou bread ensure, Dare something worthy Newgate or the Tower.

   In the former of which (removed from inns and alehouses) will some of his next scenes be laid; and perhaps not unusefully; I hope not.” (Correspondence, ed. Barbauld, iv, 285-286.)

   The last lines must surely refer to Fielding's Amelia, and they were written two years before its publication. If Richardson knew what was going into a novel by Fielding two years before it was revealed to the world, I find it difficult to believe that his unqualified statement about Shamela's origin was based on inadequate knowledge. For some reason Cross, who thinks that the composition of Amelia was begun early in 1751, ignores this passage. According to him (ii, 311), “In the literary ana of the period there is no mention of Fielding's being engaged upon ‘Amelia.’” But compare McKillop, Richardson, p. 174.

6. Miss Thomson observed that the expansion of Richardson's “Mr. B———” into “Booby” first occurs in Shamela, Dobson noted that Shamela and Mrs. Jewkes use language much like Mrs. Slipslop's, and Cross has shown that the style of Shamela exhibits mannerisms characteristic of Fielding. But the most original contributions of this sort have been made by de Castro; see especially Notes and Queries, Jan. 8, 1916, p. 25.

7. Richardson seems to have delayed public acknowledgment of his authorship until the appearance of Pamela II in December, 1741.

8. Cross (i, 307) is undoubtedly right in explaining how this name combines hits at Cibber and Conyers Middleton. Downs (in his edition of Shamela, p. x) makes a strange slip when he refers to “that very Author's Farce of Fielding's in which ‘Keyber’ was first invented.” Cibber had been dubbed “Mynheer Keyber” by Mist's Journal while Fielding was still a schoolboy at Eton.

9. See Dobson, Richardson, pp. 44-45; Digeon, pp. 47, 49; R. Brimley Johnson, p. iii; H. K. Banerji, Henry Fielding (Oxford, 1929) pp. 108-109.

10. Shamela, ed. R. Brimley Johnson, p. 15. (All quotations are from this edition.) Compare Joseph Andrews, Bk. I, Ch. I: “What the Female Readers are taught by the Memoirs of Mrs. Andrews, is so well set forth in the excellent Essays or Letters prefixed to the second and subsequent Editions of that Work.” (The quotations from Joseph Andrews in this paper are taken from the fourth edition [London: A. Millar, 1749].)

11. Shamela, p. 17.

12. Shamela, pp. 74-75.

13. See James Marshall Osborn, “Thomas Birch and the General Dictionary (1734-1741),” Modern Philology, xxxvi (August, 1938), 25-46. According to Mr. Osborn (p. 32), “no individual has contributed more to the materials of British biography than Thomas Birch.”

14. Sir John Hawkins, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., 2nd ed. (London, 1787), p. 209. Compare Boswell's Life, ed. Hill and Powell, i, 159. Johnson's unflattering opinion has an amusing parallel in a letter written by Horace Walpole some years after Birch's death: “Dr. Birch … was a worthy good-natured soul, full of industry and activity, and running about like a young setting dog in quest of anything, new or old, and with no parts, taste or judgment.” (Walpole's Correspondence with the Rev. William Cole, ed. Lewis and Wallace, ii, 186.)

15. No. 451 in Samuel Baker's Auction Catalogue.

16. Fielding was a wholehearted admirer of Milton's poetry, especially Paradise Lost. There is an ironic reference to a more famous clerical critic of Milton in The Vernon-iad: “if Dr. Bentley had never given us his comment on Milton, it is more than possible few of us would have understood that poet in the same surprisingly fine manner with that great critic.” (Works of Fielding, ed. W. E. Henley [New York, 1902], xv, 55.)

17. Evidence of Fielding's low opinion of the Royal Society is scattered throughout his works. Two examples antedating Shamela should be enough to illustrate his attitude. In Pasquin (1736), pp. 62-63, a messenger thus addresses Queen Ignorance:

    Madam, I come an Envoy from Crane-Court,
    The great Society that there assemble
    Congratulate your Victory, and request
    That firm Alliance henceforth may subsist
    Between your Majesty's Society
    Of Grubstreet and themselves:

    And the satire continues for dozen or more lines. An issue of The Champion devoted to criticism of Cibber's style (April 29, 1740) has this passage: “so by not reading I mean such as we generally say can hardly write and read, or in other words, a Man barely qualified to be a Member of the R——— S———y.” (The Champion, 2nd ed. [1743], ii, 158. All quotations are from this collected edition.)

18. Most accounts of Birch comment on his wooden style. See, for example, the article in the D. N. B.

19. Advertisements of Birch's work appeared in Jan., 1740, p. 40 and Dec., 1740, p. 628; the puff of Pamela in Jan., 1741, p. 56.

20. The Orrery Papers, ed. the Countess of Cork and Orrery (London, 1903), i, 309. The letter is dated Feb. 7, 1746, which probably means 1746/1747.

21. A typical instance is the parody of a passage praising Hervey's studious habits. Middleton had written (Life of Cicero, third edition [1742], i, ix-x): “in those early hours, when all around You are hushed in sleep, [you] seize the opportunity of that quiet as the most favorable season of study, and frequently spend an usefull day, before others begin to enjoy it. I am saying no more, my Lord, than what I know, from my constant admission to Your Lordship in my morning visits, before good manners would permit me to attempt a visit any where else; where I have found You commonly engaged with the Classical writers of Greece or Rome … I have seen the solid effects of Your reading … and have felt Your weight even in controversy, on some of the most delicate parts of their History.” The author of Shamela condenses in this fashion (pp. 4-5): “You keep very good Hours, and frequently spend an useful Day before others begin to enjoy it. This I will take my Oath on; for I am admitted to your Presence in a Morning before other People's Servants are up; when I have constantly found you reading in good Books; and if ever I have drawn you upon me, I have always found you very heavy.”

22. See the hit at Middleton's book in Joseph Andrews, Bk. III, Ch. 6.

23. See Life of Cicero, op. cit., i, xxix-xxx. The first edition of Lyttleton's Observations on the Life of Cicero appeared in 1731.

24. “Miss Fanny” is an obvious adaptation of one of Pope's nicknames for the effeminate Hervey, which Fielding had probably alluded to in the popular “fan scene” in Pasquin.

25. Shamela, pp. 9-10. Compare the Introduction to the second edition of Pamela (Shakespeare Head ed., i, xii, xiii): “Yet, I confess, there is One, in the World, of whom I think with still greater Respect, than of PAMELA: and That is, of the wonderful AUTHOR of PAMELA.—Pray, Who is he, Dear Sir? and where, and how, has he been able to hide, hitherto, such an encircling and all-mastering Spirit? … But what, above All, I am charm'd with, is the amiable Good-nature of the AUTHOR; who, I am convinc'd, has one of the best, and most generous Hearts, of Mankind: because, mis-measuring other Minds, by His Own, he can draw Every thing, to Perfection, but Wickedness.”

26. See The Champion (1743), i, 18, and ii, 203-204, 338.

27. Revised from Works, ed. Henley, xv, 43. This passage is badly garbled in the Henley edition, and I have not had access to an eighteenth-century copy of The Vernon-iad. Through the kindness of Professor George Sherburn, who called my attention to the errors in Henley and told me how the Greek words were spelled in an early edition of the poem, I am able to give a more accurate quotation.

28. The theory that in Puff's letter Fielding borders on self-revelation would be more plausible if we could be certain that he had planned something like Jonathan Wild as early as the spring of 1741, for it would be hard to find an apter subtitle for that work, at least as far as its political features are concerned, than “the Life of his Honour.”

29. See McKillop, Richardson, pp. 47, 50.

30. Presumably a reflection of a widely circulated remark, attributed to Pope, to the effect that Pamela would do more good than many volumes of sermons. See McKillop, Richardson, p. 50.

31. Mr. Howard P. Vincent has discovered a better authority than Arthur Murphy for Fielding's having had a boyhood tutor named the Reverend Mr. Oliver. See Review of English Studies, xvi (October, 1940), 440.

    It has been pointed out more than once that there are parsons named Murdertext and Puzzletext in Fielding's plays. Though such resemblances mean little, one might add that a “Revd. Mr. Squeeze-Tithe” is mentioned in Shamela (p. 37), and a Squeezepurse appears in The Wedding Day; Justice Squeezum is the central figure of Rape upon Rape; or, The Justice Caught in his own Trap.

32. That is, “his Lordship [Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London] will recommend it in a Pastoral Letter to our whole Body.”

33. Shamela, p. 11.

34. Shamela, pp. 15-16.

35. The Champion, i, 208.

36. The Champion, i, 332.

37. The Champion, i, 329.

38. The Champion, ii, 48-50. The source of this quotation is the first of a series of four papers that came out on successive Saturdays from March 29 to April 19. The last three are entitled “The Apology for the Clergy,” and the whole series gives indispensable information for an understanding of Fielding's attitude towards parsons.

39. This sentence and the similar one in The Champion of March 29, 1740, were no doubt partly intended as complimentary allusions to Hoadly's famous sermon The Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ, preached on March 31, 1717, from the text “My kingdom is not of this world.” See Norman Sykes, “Benjamin Hoadly” in The Social and Political Ideas of Some English Thinkers of the Augustan Age, ed. F. J. C. Hearnshaw (London, 1928), pp. 142ff.

40. Joseph Andrews, i, 84-87.

41. Pointed out by de Castro thirty years ago but ignored by other writers on Shamela.

42. On the value of this work as an exposition of Hoadly's latitudinarian views see Norman Sykes, op. cit., pp. 150-151, and the same scholar's Church and State in England in the XVIIIth Century (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1934), pp. 349-350.

43. Shamela, p. 55. Venus in the Cloyster: or, the Nun in her Smock became a notorious piece of pornography during Edmund Curll's conflict with the law in 1725-1728 (see Ralph Straus, The Unspeakable Curll [London, 1927], pp. 98-121). The last item is no doubt Theobald's Orpheus and Eurydice, a pantomime produced at Covent Garden in February, 1740, which Fielding ridiculed in The Champion (see especially the issues of Feb. 21 and May 24, 1740).

44. The most complete bibliography of Thomas Bowyer that I know of is in the British Museum General Catalogue of Printed Books, xxiii (London, 1938), 948. It is clear that his attack on Hoadly made some stir. A corrected and enlarged edition appeared in 1737; and a lengthy defense of Hoadly's Plain Account published by Thomas Buttonshaw in 1747 is said on the title-page to be “in reply to the several answers to it, as Dr. Brett, Dr. Warren, Mr. Bowyer, etc.”

45. H. R. Plomer, Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers 1668-1725 (Oxford Univ. Press, 1922), p. 254.

46. According to the D. N. B., “Charles Rivington brought out one of Whitefield's earliest works, ‘The Nature and Necessity of a new Birth in Christ’ (1737), and Wesley's edition of ‘Thomas à Kempis’ (1735).”

    A Rivington publication ridiculed mercilessly by Fielding was Dr. George Cheyne's Essay on Regimen (1740). The author was a friend of Richardson's, a hostile critic of Joseph Andrews, and reputedly an incipient Methodist. See The Champion for June 12, 1740, and Charles F. Mullett, “The Letters of Doctor George Cheyne to Samuel Richardson,” Univ. of Missouri Studies, Vol. xviii, No. 1. (Columbia, Mo., 1943).

47. The Spiritual Quixote, 2nd ed. (London, 1774), ii, 115.

48. Compare what Adams says about Whitefield's doctrine: “for surely that Doctrine was coined in Hell, and one would think none but the Devil himself could have the Confidence to preach it.”

49. “What think ye of CHRIST? A SERMON PREACHED AT Kennington-Common, In the YEAR MDCCXXXIX. BY GEORGE WHITEFIELD, A. B. Late of Pembroke College, OXFORD. LONDON: Printed by W. STRAHAN for JAMES HUTTON, at the Bible and Sun, without Temple-Bar. 1740.” Pp. 6-7, 13-14.

50. “The Indwelling of the Spirit, the common Privilege of all Believers. A SERMON Preached at the Parish-Church of BEXLY in Kent, on Whitsunday, 1739. BY GEORGE WHITEFIELD, A. B. of Pembroke College, Oxford. Published at the Request of the VICAR and many of the Hearers. LONDON: Printed by W. STRAHAN, and sold at Mr. JAMES HUTTON'S, without Temple-Bar, for the Benefit of the School-house now erecting for the Colliers in Kingswood, near Bristol. 1739.” P. 11. Title-pages of this sort are alluded to by the bookseller who gives Adams advice about marketing his sermons: “we could say in the Title-page, published at the earnest Request of the Congregation, or the Inhabitants.” See Joseph Andrews, i, 83.

51. Remarks about heathen morality such as those quoted from Whitefield and Wesley were no doubt in Adams's mind when he declared: “my own Opinion … hath always been, that a virtuous and good Turk, or Heathen, are [sic] more acceptable in the Sight of their Creator, than a vicious and wicked Christian, tho' his Faith was as perfectly orthodox as St. Paul's himself.” See Joseph Andrews, i, 86.

52. John Wesley, “Salvation by Faith: A Gospel for Sinners. A Sermon preached at St. Mary's, Oxford, before the University on 11 June 1738.” in Religious Thought in the Eighteenth Century Illustrated from Writers of the Period, ed. J. M. Creed and J. S. Boys Smith (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1934), pp. 154, 155, 163-164.

53. She writes to Shamela: “When Mrs. Jervis thinks of coming to Town, I believe I can procure her a good House, and fit for the Business.” Her vulgarity is exceeded only by her piety; she has an interest in “good Books” and contributes to her daughter's library. One of her letters to Shamela concludes: “I have inclosed you one of Mr. Whitefield's Sermons, and also the Dealings with him.” See Shamela, pp. 22, 24.

54. Shamela, pp. 38-39.

55. Shamela, pp. 37-38.

56. Shamela, pp. 68-69.

57. It is probably significant that one of Fielding's favorite clerical writers, the Restoration divine Dr. Robert South, was a sardonic critic of Antinomians. Passages from South's sermons such as the following might have given suggestions to the creator of Parson Williams: “… nothing speaks so full and home to the very inmost Desires of his [corrupt man's] Soul, as those Doctrines and Opinions, which would persuade him, that it may, and shall be well with him hereafter, without any Necessity of his living well here. Which great Mystery of Iniquity being carefully managed by the utmost Skill of the Tempter, and greedily embraced by a Man's own treacherous Affections, lies at the bottom of all false Religions, and eats out the very Heart and Vitals of the True. For in the Strength of this, some hope to be saved by believing well … and some by shedding a few insipid Tears, and uttering a few hard Words against those Sins which they have no other Controversy with, but that they were so unkind as to leave the Sinner before he was willing to leave them. For, all this Men can well enough submit to, as not forcing them to abandon any one of their beloved Lusts. And therefore they will not think themselves hardly dealt with though you require Faith of them, if you will but dispense with Good Works.” (South's Sermons, 3rd ed. [London, 1715], iii, 135.)

    As is shown by the numerous references to South in The Champion (see, for example, the issues of Nov. 17, 20, Dec. 27, 1739, and Jan. 22, Feb. 14, March 6, April 15, 1740), Fielding was taking ideas from his sermons not long before Shamela was written.

    In 1916 de Castro noted that Shamela's exclamation (p. 46): “How sweet is Revenge: Sure the Sermon Book is in the Right, in calling it sweetest Morsel the Devil ever dropped into the Mouth of a Sinner” has this parallel in The Champion for Feb. 2, 1740: “Revenge, which Dr. South calls, the most delicious Morsel that the Devil ever dropped into the Mouth of a Sinner”; and recently C. R. Greene has called attention to an amusing variation in Fielding's Mock Doctor (1732), where Dorcas says in scene vi (2nd ed., p. 12): “Revenge is surely the most delicious Morsel the Devil ever dropt into the Mouth of a Woman.” (See Modern Language Notes, lix, 571.) South's original wording is: “Revenge is certainly the most luscious Morsel that the Devil can put into the Sinner's mouth.” (Sermons, op. cit., ii, 381.) Can any one think it likely that two writers would chance to alter South's “the Devil can put into the Sinner's mouth” in exactly the same way?

58. Quoted from the Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1739, p. 329.

59. Gentleman's Magazine, June, 1739, p. 289 (an extract from Trapp's sermon, which was published in the same month).

    Interesting contemporary comment on Whitefield and Trapp is found in a letter from Lady Hertford to Lady Pomfret dated September 1, 1739. Lady Hertford was not an unsympathetic critic of the early Methodists, but (like Trapp) she took offense at their intolerance: “What appears to me most blamable in the Methodists is the uncharitable opinions they entertain in regard to the salvation of all who do not think and live after their way.” See Helen Sard Hughes, The Gentle Hertford (New York, 1940), pp. 367-368.

60. The Champion, ii, 75, 77.

61. The Champion, ii, 257.

62. Typical examples are the treatment of Fielding's political friends in The Opposition. a Vision (pub. December, 1741) and the ridicule of Walpole as both Wild and Johnson in Book IV of Jonathan Wild.

63. An early specimen of Fielding's skill at drawing this stock type appears in The Old Debauchees (1732).

64. Shamela, pp. 76-77.

65. See The Champion for February 12 and March 6, 1740.

66. Perhaps the same as The Contempt of the Clergy Considered; in a Letter to a Friend. By an impartial hand (1739), described by Norman Sykes as “a valuable pamphlet, giving a review of the complaints urged against the clergy, a moderate defence of their conduct, with suggestions for the reform of certain glaring abuses, and a suggestive examination of the relative standards of clerical and lay morality.” See his Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London (Oxford Univ. Press, 1926), pp. 211ff.

67. The Champion, ii, 45-57. A few lines later Fielding says, “I shall here attempt to set a Clergyman in a just and true Light.” Shamela is described on its title-page as a work in which “all the matchless ARTS of that young Politician [Pamela], [are] set in a true and just Light.” Downs (p. x of his ed. of Shamela) has called attention to similar phraseology in a newspaper advertisement of Jonathan Wild.

68. The Champion, ii, 121.

69. The Champion, ii, 124.

70. Shamela, p. 78. Compare the Introduction to the second edition of Pamela (Shakespeare Head ed., i, xxiv): “And there, too, broods the kind and credulous Parson WILLIAMS'S Dove, (without serpentine Mixture) hatching Pity and Affection, for an Honesty so sincere, and, so silly!”

71. Of course the reader of Joseph Andrews is supposed to recall the absurdity of certain characters and situations in Pamela. But the satiric effect is achieved by a comic inversion of Richardson's material rather than by mimicry or parody. The difference becomes clear immediately when one compares the attempted seduction of Joseph by Lady Booby in dishabille with the burlesque imitations of Richardson's bedroom scenes in Shamela.

    I have never been able to see why the Preface to Joseph Andrews should be considered an afterthought, though the critics who maintain that the novel is a parody which got out of hand must perforce so regard it. They should be reminded that after describing the “comic Epic-Poem in Prose” in his Preface, Fielding concludes: “Having thus distinguished Joseph Andrews from the Productions of Romance Writers on the one Hand, and Burlesque Writers on the other, and given some few very short Hints (for I intended no more) of this Species of Writing, which I have affirmed to be hitherto unattempted in our Language; I shall leave to my good-natur'd Reader to apply my Piece to my Observations. …” How could Fielding have stated more plainly that he was not trying to produce a burlesque novel and that his work was the result of deliberate planning? Why, in short, should the satire on Pamela in Joseph Andrews be viewed as an indication that the comic epic in prose was developed by an author who didn't know where he was going when he started to write?