To alter the terms of his own simile for the ancient authors, Fielding's novels may be considered as a rich common, where every critic has a free right to fatten his bibliography. As the number of commentaries in recent years attests, Tom Jones offers an ample field for critical investigation, with many aspects requiring a variety of approaches. At present I wish to explore only two of these: the substance and the form of the novel's most important theme, the definition of Wisdom.

In dedicating the book to Lyttelton, Fielding himself provides the clue both to his moral purpose in Tom Jones and (in part at least) to his method of implementing that purpose. He declares

that to recommend Goodness and Innocence hath been my sincere Endeavour in this History. This honest Purpose you have been pleased to think I have attained: And to say the Truth, it is likeliest to be attained in Books of this Kind; for an Example is a Kind of Picture, in which Virtue becomes as it were an Object of Sight, and strikes us with an Idea of that Loveliness, which Plato asserts there is in her naked Charms.

Besides displaying that Beauty of Virtue which may attract the Admiration of Mankind, I have attempted to engage a stronger Motive to Human Action in her Favour, by convincing Men, that their true Interest directs them to a Pursuit of her.¹

The dominant ethical theme of Tom Jones turns upon the meaning of "Virtue" and of the phrase, our "true Interest"—what Squire Allworthy calls "the Duty which we owe to ourselves" (XVIII.x). One method Fielding chooses to present this theme is implicit in the Platonic figure of Virtue's irresistible "Charms" and in the metaphor of the "Pursuit of her." Fielding's statement, then, is schematic, pointing both to the doctrine of the novel and to the means, which may be described as iconomatic, by which the novelist transforms the abstraction of his theme into "an Object of Sight."

Tom Jones, in a sense, is an exercise in the fictive definition of Virtue, or moral Wisdom—just as Fielding's earlier novels, Joseph Andrews and Jonathan Wild, may be regarded as attempts to represent through word and action the true meaning of such concepts as Charity, Chastity, and Greatness. To achieve this purpose, Fielding employs many devices—characterization, for one, by which certain figures in the novel become "Walking Concepts," as Sheldon Sacks has observed, acting out the meaning of various virtues and vices. At² present, however, I am concerned with only two of these techniques: Fielding's exploitation of verbal ambiguity—the power of the word, as it were, to define the moral vision or blindness of character and reader alike—and his attempt to delineate emblematically the meaning of true Wisdom. The problem for the critic, fundamentally, is to ascertain the nature of that Wisdom which Fielding, together with the philosophers and divines of the Christian humanist tradition, wished to recommend. For this we may conveniently recall Cicero's distinction in De Officiis (I.xliii) between the two kinds of wisdom, the speculative and the practical, sophia and prudentia:

And then, the foremost of all virtues is wisdom—what the Greeks call óïößá; for by prudence, which they call öñüíçóéò, we understand something else, namely, the practical knowledge of things to be sought for and of things to be avoided. ³

The apprehension of sophia was the goal of Plato's philosopher; the acquisition of prudentia—which begins with the intimation that the Good, the True, and the Beautiful are one—is the quest of the vir honestus. Fielding's intention in Tom Jones is to demonstrate the nature, function, and relationship of these correlative ethical concepts.

I. Prudence: The Function of Ambiguity

Prudence (together with the more or less synonymous word discretion) is the central ethical concept of Tom Jones.⁴ The term recurs and reverberates throughout the novel, acquiring something of the quality and function of a musical motif. Yet its meanings are curiously ambivalent: according to the context, which Fielding carefully controls, prudence is either the fundamental vice, subsuming all others, or the essential virtue of the completely moral man. It exists, as the exegetical tradition might express it, in malo et in bono. At the very start of the narrative Bridget Allworthy, the prude of easy virtue, is said to be remarkable for "her Prudence" and "discreet… in her Conduct" (I.ii); but on the last page of the novel Tom Jones himself is represented as a fit partner for Sophia only because he has "by Reflexion on his past Follies, acquired a Discretion and Prudence very uncommon in one of his lively Parts." In one sense, prudence is the summarizing attribute of Blifil, the villain of the piece, and it is the distinguishing trait of a crowded gallery of meretricious and self-interested characters from every rank of society—of Deborah Wilkins (I.v, vi), Jenny Jones (I.ix), Mrs. Seagrim (IV.viii), Mrs. Western (VI.xiv), Partridge (VIII.ix), Mrs. Honour (X.ix), Lady Bellaston (XIII.iii, XV.ix). Antithetically, however, the acquisition of prudence is recognized by the good characters of the novel—by Allworthy, Sophia, and ultimately by Jones—as the indispensable requisite of the moral man. "Prudence," Allworthy maintains, "is indeed the Duty which we owe to ourselves" (XVIII.x). Sophia alone, of all the characters in the novel, is possessed of prudence in this positive sense (XII.x). And the lack of it in Jones is the source of all his "Calamities" (XVII.i), all his "miserable Distresses" (XVIII.vi).

References to prudence, understood in either the positive or pejorative sense, may be found elsewhere in Fielding's writings; but only in Tom Jones does the word recur with such frequency and insistence. Indeed, as I wish to suggest, Fielding's intention to recommend this virtue affected the very shape and character of Tom Jones: the choice and representation of the principal characters, the organization of the general movement of the narrative, and the content of particular scenes were determined in significant ways in accordance with a broadly allegorical system designed both to define the virtue of prudence and to demonstrate its essential relevance to the moral life. Unfortunately for modern readers, the passage of time has obscured the meaning of this concept in the novel.

One of the fullest contemporary expositions of this virtue occurs in an article "On Prudence" appearing in Sir John Hill's British Magazine for March 1749, one month after the publication of Tom Jones. This essay, Number XLI in the series called "The Moralist," begins by celebrating the dignity and antiquity of the concept.

PRUDENCE is at once the noblest and the most valuable of all the qualifications we have to boast of: It at the same time gives testimony of our having exerted the faculties of our souls in the wisest manner, and conducts us through life with that ease and tranquility, that all the boasted offices of other accomplishments can never give us. The ancient Moralists with great reason placed it in the first rank of human endowments, and called it the parent and guide of all the other virtues. Without prudence, nothing in our lives is good, nothing decent, nothing truly agreeable or permanent: It is the rule and ornament of all our actions; and is to our conduct in this motly world of chances, what physick is to the body, the surest means of preventing disorders, and the only means of curing them.⁵

To further define the nature and function of this virtue, "the Moralist" invokes the traditional metaphor of sight, opposing the unerring perspicacity of the rational, to the blindness and brutishness of the passionate man: "Prudence is the just estimation and trial of all things; it is the eye that sees all, and that ought to direct all, and ordain all: and when any favourite passion hoodwinks it for the time, man ceases to be man, levels himself with the brutes, and gives up that sacred prerogative his reason, to be actuated by meanest [sic] of all principles."⁶ The special provinces of prudence are the judgment and the will: seeing what is right and how to attain it, the prudent man translates this knowledge into action—deeds "which will make ourselves and our fellow-creatures most happy, and do the greatest honour in our power to our nature, and to the great creator of it."⁷ Again, the prudent man looks to the past (memory), the present (judgment), and the future (foresight); his own and others' past experiences inform his perception of present exigencies and enable him to predict the probable consequences of actions and events.⁸ The prudent man alone is equipped to survive in a world of deceitful appearances and hostile circumstances, for only he "sees things in their proper colours, and consequently expects those things from them which ruin others by the surprize of their coming on"; only he "is guarded against what are called the changes and chances that undo all things."⁹ Although, as Tillotson and William Sherlock observed,¹⁰ not even prudence can always foresee the improbable casualties which occur under the direction of Providence, yet she is, however fallible, our only proper guide.

Prudence in this positive sense is indeed, as Allworthy insists, "the Duty which we owe to ourselves," that self-discipline and practical sagacity which Fielding's open-hearted and impetuous hero must acquire. But as Tom Jones has his half-brother Blifil, or Amelia her sister Betty, so every virtue has its counterfeit, its kindred vice which mimics it. The result is a kind of sinister parody of excellence. Thus Cicero warns against confusing false prudence and true, a vulgar error by which the clever hypocrite, bent only on pursuing his own worldly interest, passes for a wise and upright man. Such are the scoundrels of this world who—practised in what Fielding liked to call "the Art of Thriving"¹¹—wear the mask of prudence, separating moral rectitude from expediency.¹² It is "wisdom [prudentia]," Cicero writes, "which cunning [malitia] seeks to counterfeit,"¹³ so as the better to dupe and use us.

The concept of prudence in Tom Jones is deliberately complex, as significant yet as elusive as the meaning of wisdom itself. The single term carries with it at least three distinct meanings derivative from the ethical and historical contexts we have been exploring: (1) it may signify prudentia, the supreme rational virtue of the Christian humanist tradition, that practical wisdom which Tom Jones, like the vir honestus, must acquire; (2) it may signify the shadow and antithesis of this virtue—reason in the service of villainy—that malevolent cunning which characterizes the hypocrite Blifil; or (3) it may signify that prostitute and self-protective expediency, that worldly wisdom, which, owing to the influence of Gracian, De Britaine, Fuller, and the other pious-sounding perpetrators of a middle-class morality, replaced the humanist concept of prudentia in the popular mind. These are the basic variations on the theme. According to the context in Tom Jones, one of these meanings will be dominant, but the others echo in the reader's memory effecting a kind of ironic counterpoint and ultimately, as it were, testing his own sense of values, his own ability to make necessary ethical distinctions between goods real or merely apparent.

In Book XII, Chapter iii, Fielding protests: "if we have not all the Virtues, I will boldly say, neither have we all the Vices of a prudent Character." The vices of the prudent characters in Tom Jones—of Blifil, Bridget Allworthy, Lady Bellaston, and their kind—should now be sufficiently evident. The positive meaning of prudence in the novel, however, is perhaps less obvious, for the virtue which Fielding recommends is essentially synthetic, combining the prudentia of the philosophers with certain less ignoble features of the modern version. What Tom Jones fundamentally lacks, of course, is prudentia: moral vision and self-discipline. Although he intuitively perceives the difference between Sophia and the daughters of Eve, he is too much the creature of his passions to be able to act upon that knowledge. He moves through life committing one good-natured indiscretion after another, unable to learn from past experiences or to foresee the future consequences of his rash behavior. Only in prison, at the nadir of his misfortunes, does the full meaning of his imprudence appear to him. To Mrs. Waters, Jones "lamented the Follies and Vices of which he had been guilty; every one of which, he said, had been attended with such ill Consequences, that he should be unpardonable if he did not take Warning, and quit those vicious Courses for the future," and he concludes with a "Resolution to sin no more, lest a worse Thing should happen to him" (XVII.ix). When, moments later, he is informed that Mrs. Waters, the woman he had slept with at Upton, is his own mother, Jones arrives at last at the crucial moment of self-awareness toward which the novel has been moving. Rejecting Partridge's suggestion that ill luck or the devil himself had contrived this ultimate horror, Fielding's hero accepts his own responsibility for his fate: "Sure … Fortune will never have done with me, 'till she hath driven me to Distraction. But why do I blame Fortune? I am myself the Cause of all my Misery. All the dreadful Mischiefs which have befallen me, are the Consequences only of my own Folly and Vice" (XVIII.ii). Here is at once the climax and the resolution of the theme of prudentia in the novel—a theme to which Fielding would return in Amelia, where, in the introductory chapter, he propounded at length the lesson Tom Jones learned: "I question much, whether we may not by natural means account for the Success of Knaves, the Calamities of Fools, with all the Miseries in which Men of Sense sometimes involve themselves by quitting the Directions of Prudence, and following the blind Guidance of a predominant Passion; in short, for all the ordinary Phenomena which are imputed to Fortune; whom, perhaps, Men accuse with no less Absurdity in Life, then a bad Player complains of ill Luck at the Game of Chess."¹⁴ Prudence in this sense is the supreme virtue of the Christian humanist tradition, entailing knowledge and discipline of the self and the awareness that our lives, ultimately, are shaped not by circumstances, but by reason and the will. This, Fielding concludes, echoing Cicero, is "the Art of Life."

Although this is the fundamental positive meaning of prudence in Tom Jones, Fielding extends the concept to accommodate a nobler, purified version of that worldly wisdom so assiduously inculcated by the moderns. Since the business of life was a matter not simply of preserving the moral health of one's soul, but also of surviving in a world too quick to judge by appearances, it was necessary to have a proper regard to one's reputation. In Maxim XCIX Gracian warned that "THINGS are not taken for what they really are, but for what they appear to be.… It is not enough to have a good Intention, if the Action look ill" (see also CXXX), and Fuller's apothegms (for example, Nos. 1425 and 1590) similarly emphasize that "a fair Reputation" is necessary to all men. Fielding, however, is careful to distinguish his own version of prudence from that of the cynical proponents of a self-interested dissimulation—those who cared not at all for virtue, but only for the appearance of virtue. Good-nature and charity are the indispensable qualifications of Fielding's heroes—of Parson Adams, Heartfree, Tom Jones, Captain Booth—who demand our affection despite their naívete, their foibles and indiscretions. But Fielding was concerned that the good man preserve his good name; otherwise he became vulnerable to the malicious designs of his enemies and subject to the disdain of his friends. The difficulty of distinguishing truth from appearances is Fielding's constant theme: the classical prudentia enables us to make these crucial discriminations; prudence in the modern sense, on the other hand, is in part the awarenéss that such distinctions are rarely made by the generality of men, that we are judged by appearances and must therefore conduct ourselves with discretion. As early as The Champion (22 November 1739) Fielding had insisted on this point: "I would … by no Means recommend to Mankind to cultivate Deceit, or endeavour to appear what they are not; on the contrary, I wish it were possible to induce the World to make a diligent Enquiry into Things themselves, to withold them from giving too hasty a Credit to the outward Shew and first Impression; I would only convince my Readers, That it is not enough to have Virtue, without we also take Care to preserve, by a certain Decency and Dignity of Behaviour, the outward Appearance of it also."¹⁵ This, too, is the "very useful Lesson" Fielding sets forth in Tom Jones for the benefit of his youthful readers, who will find

… that Goodness of Heart, and Openness of Temper, tho' these may give them great Comfort within, and administer to an honest Pride in their own Minds, will by no Means, alas! do their Business in the World. Prudence and Circumspection are necessary even to the best of Men. They are indeed as it were a Guard to Virtue, without which she can never be safe. It is not enough that your Designs, nay that your Actions, are intrinsically good, you must take Care they shall appear so. If your Inside be never so beautiful, you must preserve a fair Outside also. This must be constantly looked to, or Malice and Envy will take Care to blacken it so, that the Sagacity and Goodness of an Allworthy will not be able to see thro' it, and to discern the Beauties within. Let this, my young Readers, be your constant Maxim, That no Man can be good enough to enable him to neglect the Rules of Prudence; nor will Virtue herself look beautiful, unless she be bedecked with the outward Omaments of Decency and Decorum. (IIl.vii)

Like Virtue herself, Sophia is concerned to preserve her good name, the outward sign of her true character (XIII.xi). And Allworthy more than once echoes his author's sentiments in advising Jones that prudence is "the Duty which we owe to ourselves" (XVIII.x), that it is, together with religion, the sole means of putting the good-natured man in possession of the happiness he deserves (V.vii).

As the recommendation of Charity and Chastity is the underlying purpose of Fielding's first novel, Joseph Andrews, the dominant ethical concern of Tom Jones is the anatomy of Prudence. It is a process as essential as the discrimination of vice from virtue, of selfishness from self-discipline, and as significant to life as the pursuit of wisdom. Lacking prudence, Tom Jones is a prey to hypocrites and knaves and too often the victim of his own spontaneities, his own generous impulses and extravagancies. For Fielding in this his greatest novel, virtue was as much a matter of the understanding and the will as of the heart. Prudence, he implies, is the name each man gives to that wisdom, worldly or moral, which he prizes. This is the fundamental paradox of the novel as of life. Fielding's rhetorical strategy—his ironic use of the same word to convey antithetical meanings—forces the reader to assess his own sense of values, to distinguish the true from the false. We, too, are implicated, as it were, in Tom Jones' awkward progress toward that most distant and elusive of goals—the marriage with Wisdom herself.

II. Sophia and the Functions of Emblem

Since it is a practical virtue, Fielding may thus define prudence, negatively and positively, by associating the word with various examples of moral behavior chosen to illustrate those disparate meanings of the concept which he meant either to ridicule or recommend. In action the "prudence" of Blifil or Mrs. Western may be distinguished from the "prudence" of Sophia; the deed to which the word is applied controls our sense of Fielding's intention, whether ironic or sincere. The nature of speculative wisdom, on the other hand, is less easily and effectively conveyed by means of the counterpoint of word and action: sophia was a mystery even Socrates could describe only figuratively—a method to which Fielding alludes in the Dedication to Tom Jones when he invokes the Platonic metaphor of the "naked Charms" of Virtue imaged as a beautiful woman.¹⁶ In Tom Jones the meaning of sophia is presented to the reader as "an Object of Sight" in the character of Fielding's heroine.

Although it has apparently escaped the attention of his critics, the emblemizing technique Fielding here employs—which it is our present purpose to consider in its various manifestations in Tom Jones—is one of the most distinctive resources of his art as a novelist. More than any other writer of his day—unless, perhaps, one accepts J. Paul Hunter's provocative interpretation of Defoe's method in Robinson Crusoe ¹⁷—Fielding organized his novels schematically, choosing his characters and shaping his plots so as to objectify an abstract moral theme which is the germ of his fiction. There is what may be called an iconomatic impulse behind much of Fielding's art: many of his most memorable episodes and characters, and the general design and movement of such books as Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, may be seen to function figuratively as emblem or allegory, as the embodiment in scene or character or action of Fielding's themes. Tom Jones is not of course an allegory in the same sense or in the same way that The Faerie Queene, let us say, is an allegory; nevertheless, both these works have certain schematic intentions and certain narrative and scenic techniques in common. Tom Jones differs from the conventional allegory in that Fielding's story is primary and autonomous: characters, events, setting have an integrity of their own and compel our interest in and for themselves; they do not require, at every point in the narrative, to be read off as signs and symbols in some controlling ideational system. Whereas Una is "the One," Sophia Western is the girl whom Tom Jones loves and her family bullies. Spenser's heroine engages our intellect; Fielding's our affection and sympathy.

Yet at the same time Fielding shares with the allegorist the desire to render the abstractions of his theme—in this instance, to find the particular shape and image for the complementary concepts of Providence and Prudence, of divine Order and human Virtue, which were the bases for his comic vision of life. What Charles Woods observed of Fielding's plays, invoking a favorite term of the critic Sneerwell in Pasquin, pertains as well to the novels, where Fielding deserts the "realistic" mode for the "Emblematical."¹⁸

The general figurative strategy in Tom Jones is implicit in the passage from Fielding's Dedication comparing "Virtue" (i.e., sophia) to a beautiful woman and our "true Interest" (i.e., prudentia) to the "Pursuit of her." Although Sophia Western is first of all a character in Fielding's novel, she is also the emblematic redaction of the Platonic metaphor. After his expulsion from Paradise Hall, Tom Jones' journey is at first aimless and uncertain: "The World, as Milton phrases it, lay all before him; and Jones, no more than Adam, had any Man to whom he might resort for Comfort or Assistance" (VII.ii). After the crisis at Upton, however, his pursuit of Sophia will symbolize his gradual and painful attainment of prudentia, of self-knowledge and clarity of moral vision. The marriage of Tom and Sophia is thus the necessary and inevitable culmination of Fielding's theme: it is a symbolic union signifying the individual's attainment of true wisdom.

To illustrate this quasi-allegorical dimension of Tom Jones, we may consider, first of all, the ways in which Fielding renders the Platonic metaphor of Virtue—in which the idea of sophia becomes associated with the girl Sophy Western. Without forgetting his heroine's role and function in the story itself, from time to time in the course of the narrative Fielding makes the reader aware that Sophia's beauty is ultimately the physical manifestation of a spiritual perfection almost divine, that she is for him as for Tom Jones, the Idea of Virtue incarnate. Like much of his comedy Fielding's introduction of Sophia "in the Sublime" style (IV.ii) is both playful and serious, mocking the extravagancies of romance while at the same time invoking the old values of honor and virtue which romance celebrates. By a process of allusion—to mythology, art, poetry, and his own more immediate experience—Fielding presents his heroine as the ideal woman, the representative of a beauty of form and harmony of spirit so absolute as to be a sort of divine vitalizing force in man and nature alike. She is like "the lovely Flora," goddess of springtime, whom every flower rises to honor and who is the cause of the perfect harmony of the birds that celebrate her appearance: "From Love proceeds your Music, and to Love it returns." Her beauty excels that of the Venus de Medici, the statue considered by Fielding's contemporaries to be "the standard of all female beauty and softness."¹⁹ She is the idealization in art of his dead wife Charlotte, "whose Image never can depart from my Breast." But what is clear above all is that her beauty is only the reflection of her spiritual nature: "the Outside of Sophia … this beautiful Frame," is but the emblem of her "Mind," which diffuses "that Glory over her Countenance, which no Regularity of Features can give." Like Elizabeth Drury, Donne's ideal woman in The Anniversaries, to whom Fielding here expressly compares her, Sophy Western is also the image and embodiment of "Sophia or the Divine Wisdom."²⁰

For Jones, of course, Sophia is the perfection of beauty and virtue that her name implies: she is "my Goddess," he declares to Mrs. Honour; "as such I will always worship and adore her while I have Breath" (IV.xiv). And he can scarcely think of her except in terms of divinity itself: he stands in awe of her "heavenly Temper" and "divine Goodness" (V.vi); she is his "dear… divine Angel" (XVIII.xii). Such sentiments are, to be sure, the usual effusions and hyperbole of the adolescent lover, but they work together none the less to reinforce the reader's sense of Sophy's perfections. In answer to the landlady's insipid description of his mistress as "a sweet young Creature," Jones supplies a truer definition, applying to Sophia alone Jaffeir's apostrophe to Woman in Venice Preserved (I.i):

'A sweet Creature!' cries Jones, 'O Heavens!

Angels are painted fair to look like her.
There's in her all that we believe of Heaven,
Amazing Brightness, Purity and Truth,
Eternal Joy, and everlasting Love.'
(VIII.ii)

Like his author, Jones insists that Sophia's physical beauty is only the imperfect manifestation of her essential spiritual nature. It is her "charming Idea" that he doats on (XIII.xi). Thus, when his friend Nightingale inquires if she is "honourable," Jones protests that her virtues are so dazzling as to drive all meaner considerations from his thoughts; it is not her body but the spiritual reality it expresses which demands his love:

'Honourable?' answered Jones … 'The sweetest Air is not purer, the limpid Stream not clearer than her Honour. She is all over, both in Mind and Body, consummate Perfection. She is the most beautiful Creature in the Universe; and yet she is Mistress of such noble, elevated Qualities, that though she is never from my Thoughts, I scarce ever think of her Beauty; but when I see it.' (XV.ix)

Twice during the novel Fielding symbolically dramatizes the distinction he wishes his readers to make between the girl Sophy Western and her "Idea"—that is, in a Platonic sense, the mental image or form of that essential spiritual Beauty of which his heroine's lovely face is but an imperfect manifestation.²¹ As Socrates had regretted that mortal eyes were able to behold only the shadow of sophia, reflected as in a glass darkly,²² so Fielding uses the conventional emblem of the mirror to dramatize the nature of his allegory, to demonstrate that what is ultimately important about Sophia is not her physical charms, but her spiritual reality. The use of the mirror as an emblem of the mind's powers to conceptualize and abstract was common among iconographers. "The Glass," writes a commentator upon Ripa's emblems, "wherein we see no real Images,. is a Resemblance of our Intellect; wherein we phancy many Ideas of Things that are not seen"; or it "denotes Abstraction, that is to say, by Accidents, which the Sense comprehends; the Understanding comes to know their Nature, as we, by seeing the accidental Forms of Things in a Glass, consider their Essence."²³ Fielding introduces this emblem at the moment when his hero, having pursued Sophia from Upton, is reunited with her in Lady Bellaston's town house (XIII.xi). The first sight the lovers have of each other is of their images reflected in a mirror:

… Sophia expecting to find no one in the Room, came hastily in, and went directly to a Glass which almost fronted her, without once looking towards the upper End of the Room, where the Statue of Jones now stood motionless.—In this Glass it was, after contemplating her own lovely Face, that she first discovered the said Statue; when instantly turning about, she perceived the Reality of the Vision.…

The vision in the mirror that has momentarily turned Jones to a statue is the visible projection of the ideal image of Sophia he has carried in his mind. Whatever his indiscretions, he assures her that his "Heart was never unfaithful": "Though I despaired of possessing you, nay, almost of ever seeing you more, I doated still on your charming Idea, and could seriously love no other Woman."

Still clearer, perhaps, is Fielding's use of the mirror emblem toward the close of the novel (XVIII.xii), in a scene designed both to stress the allegorical identity of Sophia and to dramatize Socrates' declaration in the Phaedrus (250D) that "wisdom would arouse terrible love, if such a clear image of it were granted as would come through the sight." But, as Fielding observed in The Champion (5 July 1740), few there are "whose Eyes are able to behold Truth without a Glass." Protesting that "No Repentance was ever more sincere," and pleading that his contrition "reconcile" him to his "Heaven in this dear Bosom," Jones attempts to overcome Sophia's doubts as to his sincerity by making her confront the vision of her own beauty and virtue reflected in a mirror. To behold and possess not the image merely, but the reality itself, would, as Socrates had said, convert even the most inveterate reprobate to the love of virtue:

[Jones] replied, 'Don't believe me upon my Word; I have a better Security, a Pledge for my Constancy, which it is impossible to see and to doubt.' 'What is that?' said Sophia, a little surprized, 'I will show you, my charming Angel,' cried Jones, seizing her Hand, and carrying her to the Glass. 'There, behold it there in that lovely Figure, in that Face, that Shape, those Eyes, that Mind which shines through these Eyes: Can the Man who shall be in Possession of these be inconstant? Impossible! my Sophia: They would fix a Dorimant, a Lord Rochester. You could not doubt it, if you could see yourself with any Eyes but your own.' Sophia blushed, and half smiled; but forcing again her Brow into a Frown, 'If I am to judge,' said she, 'of the future by the past, my Image will no more remain in your Heart when I am out of your Sight, than it will in this Glass when I am out of the Room.' 'By Heaven, by all that is sacred,' said Jones, 'it never was out of my Heart.'

Such passages demand to be read on more than one level: Sophy Western's image in the glass is the literalizing of the Platonic metaphor, the dramatization of Fielding's meaning in the broadly allegorical scheme of the novel. Ultimately, her true identity is ideal, an abstraction.

Within the paradigmatic universe of Tom Jones—in which the values of Fielding's Christian humanism are systematically rendered and enacted—Sophy Western is both cynosure and avatar, the controlling center of the theme of Virtue and its incarnation. Though she is, above all, the woman that Tom loves, she is also, as Fielding's Dedication implies, the emblem and embodiment of that ideal Wisdom her name signifies. Without her Paradise Hall and the country from which Tom has been driven are unbearable, meaningless (XII.iii)—an Eden empty of grace. To win her in marriage is the supreme redemptive act, a divine dispensation which for Jones, as for every man, restores joy and order to a troubled world: "To call Sophia mine is the greatest … Blessing which Heaven can bestow" (XVIII.x). But for one of Jones' passionate nature the conditions upon which she may be won are exacting, nothing less, indeed, than the acquisition of prudentia: Tom must perfect his "Understanding," as Sophia herself insists (XI.vii), must learn not only to distinguish between the values of the spirit and those of the flesh, between the true and the false, but to discipline his will so that this knowledge may govern his life. Having learned this lesson at last, Jones is able to withstand the blandishments of such sirens as Mrs. Fitzpatrick, for, as the narrator observes, "his whole Thoughts were now so confined to his Sophia, that I believe no Woman upon Earth could have now drawn him into an Act of Inconstancy" (XVI.ix). On the eve of their wedding, as the company of brides and grooms convenes, Sophia is revealed presiding over the feast of virtuous love, eclipsing the beauty of the women, adored by every man: she "sat at the Table like a Queen receiving Homage, or rather like a superiour Being receiving Adoration from all around her. But it was an Adoration which they gave, not which she exacted: For she was as much distinguished by her Modesty and Affability, as by all her other Perfections" (XVIII.xiii). In its way not unlike the banquet of Socrates, the wedding dinner of Tom and Sophia celebrates the power of Beauty and Virtue. In the light of such passages, Jones' "Quest" for "his lovely Sophia" (X.vii) takes on a symbolic dimension: it is the dramatization of Fielding's expressed concern in the novel to convince "Men, that their true Interest directs them to a Pursuit of [Virtue]."

Fielding's method of projecting the abstractions of his theme in image and action is comparable, in a way, to the poet's device of personification. It is also the correlative in fiction of the graphic artist's use of emblem and allegorical design. Following Horace, Fielding recognized the sisterhood of the two art forms.²⁴ In this respect, as in others, he may be compared with Pope, many of whose descriptions—that of the triumph of Vice in the Epilogue to the Satires. Dialogue I (11.151 ff.), for example, or of Dulness holding court in The Dunciad (IV. 17 ff.)—have the effect of allegorical tableaux, pictorially conceived and composed in order to carry the poet's meaning before the visual imagination. Fielding himself more than once observed the relationship between his own satiric art and that of his friend Hogarth, the "comic History Painter," who well understood the use of symbolic detail to render and characterize abstractions.²⁵ Particularly "Hogarthian" in conception and effect, for instance, is the image Fielding presents of the philosopher Square after his hilarious exposure in Molly Seagrim's bedroom (V.v). At the critical moment the rug behind which he has concealed himself falls away, and the august metaphysician—who has made a career of denouncing the body—is revealed in the closet, clad only in a blush and Molly's nightcap and fixed "in a Posture (for the Place would not near admit his standing upright) as ridiculous as can possibly be conceived":

The Posture, indeed, in which he stood, was not greatly unlike that of a Soldier who is tyed Neck and Heels; or rather resembling the Attitude in which we often see Fellows in the public Streets of London, who are not suffering but deserving Punishment by so standing. He had a Night-cap belonging to Molly on his Head, and his two large Eyes, the Moment the Rug fell, stared directly at Jones; so that when the Idea of Philosophy was added to the Figure now discovered, it would have been very difficult for any Spectator to have refrained from immoderate Laughter.

The distinctive quality of this passage is graphic. It is as close to the pictorial as the artist in words can bring it: the sense of composition, of attitude is there; the subject has been frozen at the critical moment in time, his chagrin economically defined by the two features, the night cap and the astonished stare, which explain and characterize it. What is more, the scene has an emblematic effect: it serves as the pictorial projection of an idea—namely, of the theory of "the true Ridiculous," which, as the Preface to Joseph Andrews makes clear, Fielding thought to consist principally in the comic disparity between what we are and what we profess to be. As the literal revelation of the naked truth behind the drapery of pretension, the exposure of Square is the quintessential scene in Fielding's fiction.

Other scenes in the novel are pictorially conceived, and for a variety of effects. Most obvious of these is Fielding's ironic imitation of one of the most celebrated historical tableaux of the period: Plate VI of Charles Le Brun's magnificent series depicting the victories of Alexander.²⁶ As Le Brun had represented the vanquished King Porus being carried before the magnanimous conqueror, so Fielding, with due regard to the arrangement and attitudes of his figures, describes the scene after Jones' and Western's bloody victory over the forces of Blifil and Thwackum (V.xii):

At this time, the following was the Aspect of the bloody Field. In one Place, lay on the Ground, all pale and almost breathless, the vanquished Blifil. Near him stood the Conqueror Jones, almost covered with Blood, part of which was naturally his own, and Part had been lately the Property of the Reverend Mr. Thwackum. In a third Place stood the said Thwackum, like King Porus, sullenly submitting to the Conqueror. The last Figure in the Piece was Western the Great, most gloriously forbearing the vanquished Foe.

Analysis of Fielding's mock-heroicism must clearly extend beyond his burlesque allusions to Homer and Virgil to such skillful imitations of specific masterpieces of historical art.

Certain other scenes in Tom Jones recall the art of the painter of "prospect" pieces, wherein, however, Fielding has chosen and arranged the features of the landscape for their allegorical or emblematic suggestiveness. Such are the descriptions, almost iconological in effect, of Allworthy's estate and of the view from Mazard Hill. The prospect at Paradise Hall (I.iv), while apparently a static landscape, is carefully organized so as to carry the reader's eye, and hence his imagination, from the immediate and local outward to the distant and infinite, thereby implicitly presenting the characteristic quality and intention of Fielding's art in the novel, which is a continual translation of particulars into universals: the spring, gushing from its source at the summit of the hill, flows downward to a lake in the middle distance, from whence issues a river which the eye follows as it meanders for several miles before it empties itself in the sea beyond. The scene takes on yet another significant dimension once we are aware that it is composed of elements associating Paradise Hall, the place of Tom Jones' birth and the home of his spiritual father, both with the estates of Fielding's patrons, George Lyttelton and Ralph Allen, and with Glastonbury Tor, which rises fully visible from the threshold of Sharpham Park, Fielding's own birthplace and the seat of his maternal grandfather.²⁷ Paradise Hall is very much the product of Fielding's symbolic imagination; it is his own, as well as his hero's, spiritual home. Equally suggestive, and more obviously emblematic, is the subsequent description of Allworthy walking forth to survey his estate as dawn breaks, bathing the creation in light. The glory of this good man—who is, more than any other character except Sophia herself, the center of the novel's moral universe—is rendered in terms of the sun, traditional symbol of the deity.²⁸

It was now the Middle of May, and the Moming was remarkably serene, when Mr. Allworthy walked forth on the Terrace, where the Dawn opened every Minute that lovely Prospect we have before described to his Eye. And now having sent forth Streams of Light, which ascended the Blue Firmament before him, as Harbingers preceding his Pomp, in the full Blaze of his Majesty up rose the Sun; than which one Object alone in this lower Creation could be more glorious, and that Mr. Allworthy himself presented; a human Being replete with Benevolence, meditating in what Manner he might render himself most acceptable to his Creator, by doing most Good to his Creatures.

A final illustration of Fielding's emblematic art in Tom Jones will serve to return us to the theme of Wisdom. As in presenting the "Idea" of sophia, Fielding, at one significant moment in the novel, also drew upon conventional iconological techniques in order visually to project the meaning of prudentia. The scene occurs at the opening of Book IX, Chapter ii, as Tom Jones contemplates the prospect from atop Mazard Hill. Structurally, the scene holds a crucial position between the narrative of the Old Man of the Hill and the pivotal events at Upton; thematically, it is the emblematic statement of the nature of true prudence and of Tom's progress along the way to acquiring that virtue. Fielding's basic device was entirely familiar. We will recall that it was conventional for poets and philosophers alike to translate the notion of the prudent man's intellectual apprehension of past, present, and future into physical and spatial terms: to look in the direction from whence one has come is to contemplate the meaning of the past; to look in the direction one is going is to consider what the future holds in store. The iconology of Prudence traditionally represented this virtue in the likeness of a figure with two (or three) faces—one, often the face of an old man, looking to the left or behind; the other, that of a young man or woman, looking to the right or ahead. Titian's Allegory of Prudence—the symbolism of which Professor Panofsky has brilliantly explicated²⁹—depicts a head with three faces and bears a Latin inscription reading: "The prudent man of today profits from past experience in order not to imperil the future."³⁰ Following the design by Caesar Ripa, whose Iconologia (1593) was the standard work well into the eighteenth century, most emblematists represented Prudence with two faces, while retaining the sense of Titian's symbolism. George Richardson explains the significance of the design as follows: "The ancients have represented this virtue with two faces, the one young, and the other old, to indicate that prudence is acquired by consideration of things past, and a foresight of those to come."³¹ The persistence of this metaphor, associating Prudence with the vision of distant things, is further suggested by Pope's personification of this virtue in The Dunciad (I.49), where the image of Prudence with her perspective glass was drawn from a different, but obviously related, iconological tradition.

As we have already remarked, what Tom Jones must acquire before he is ready to marry Sophia and return to the country of his birth is prudence—the ability to learn from past experience, both his own and others', so as to distinguish the true from the false and to estimate the future consequences of his present behavior. To invoke the Aristotelian notion of the "Three Ages of Man,"³² at this juncture in Tom's progress toward maturity he is presented with the extreme alternatives of youth and age—the rashness and passion which characterize his own adolescence, and which define all that is most and least admirable about him, as opposed to the cowardly cynicism of the Old Man of the Hill. Having heard the wretched history of the Old Man and rejected his misanthropy, Tom has profited from one lesson that experience has to teach him; but, as events in Upton will soon prove, he has not yet mastered the more difficult test of his own past follies. As Upton represents the apex of the rising action of the novel and the turning point in Tom's progress, so at this stage in the narrative Fielding's hero stands literally at the summit of a high hill, from which he can survey the vast terrain that separates him from his home and mistress, and, by facing in the opposite direction, regard the obscure and tangled wood which, it will appear, contains the woman who will abruptly dislodge Sophia from his thoughts and involve him in the near fatal consequences of his own imprudence. The prospect Fielding describes, with a warning that we may not fully "understand" it, allegorizes the theme of prudence in the novel, rendering spiritual and temporal matters in terms of physical and spatial analogues: the view southward toward "Home" representing the meaning of the past, the view northward toward the dark wood imaging the problem of the future. As the Old Man shrewdly remarks to his young companion: "I perceive now the Object of your Contemplation is not within your Sight":

Aurora now first opened her Casement, Anglicè, the Day began to break, when Jones walked forth in Company with the Stranger, and mounted Mazard Hill; of which they had no sooner gained the Summit, than one of the most noble Prospects in the World Presented itself to their View, and which we would likewise present to the Reader; but for two Reasons. First, We despair of making those who have seen this Prospect, admire our Description. Secondly, We very much doubt whether those, who have not seen it, would understand it.

Jones stood for some Minutes fixed in one Posture, and directing his Eyes towards the South; upon which the old Gentleman asked, What he was looking at with so much Attention? 'Alas, Sir,' answered he with a Sigh, 'I was endeavouring to trace out my own Journey hither. Good Heavens! what a Distance is Gloucester from us! What a vast Tract of Land must be between me and my own Home.' 'Ay, ay, young Gentleman,' cries the other, 'and, by your Sighing, from what you love better than your own Home, or I am mistaken. I perceive now the Object of your Contemplation is not within your Sight, and yet I fancy you have a Pleasure in looking that Way.' Jones answered with a Smile, 'I find, old Friend, you have not yet forgot the Sensations of your youth.—I own my Thoughts were employed as you have guessed.'

They now walked to that Part of the Hill which looks to the North-West, and which hangs over a vast and extensive Wood.

Here they were no sooner arrived, than they heard at a Distance the most violent Screams of a Woman, proceeding from the Wood below them. Jones listened a Moment, and then, without saying a Word to his Companion (for indeed the Occasion seemed sufficiently pressing) ran, or rather slid, down the Hill, and without the least Apprehension or Concern for his own Safety, made directly to the Thicket whence the Sound had issued.

Occurring midway through Jones' journey—and through his progress toward maturity, toward the acquisition of prudence—the scene atop Mazard Hill is the emblematic projection of Fielding's theme. The past and its meaning are plain and clear to Jones, but not plain and clear enough; the future is obscure and tangled, fraught with sudden and unforeseen dangers. Sophia is abruptly supplanted in his thoughts by the more immediate appeal of another woman, in whose arms at Upton Tom will forget, for the moment at least, the lesson of his past follies and the claims of his true mistress. It is his affair with Jenny Jones at Upton that will result in his estrangement from Sophia and, eventually, in the anxious knowledge that his behavior, however generous and gallant, has apparently involved him in the sin of incest. What Tom sees looking south from Mazard Hill reassures us about his essential health of spirit, about those values he ultimately cherishes. His precipitous descent, however, reflects those qualities of character which are both his greatest strength and his weakness: on the one hand, courage and selflessness, prompting him to the assistance of injured frailty; on the other, that rashness which is the source of his vulnerability as a moral agent.

Despite the number of illuminating studies in recent years, the technical resources of Fielding's art as a novelist have not yet been fully disclosed, nor have we as yet adequately appreciated the degree to which Fielding applied the devices of his craft to the communication of his serious concerns as a moralist. If the structure of Tom Jones is organic in an Aristotelian sense—as Professor Crane has shown it to be—it is also schematic, the expression through emblem, parable, and significant design of Fielding's controlling themes. If Tom Jones is the playful celebration of the feast of life—as Andrew Wright has insisted—it is also the expression in art of Fielding's Christian vision. The ways in which such devices as ambiguity, allegory, and emblem function together to define the theme of Wisdom in the novel may be taken as one more measure of Fielding's intention and his achievement.

Notes

¹ Quotations from Tom Jones are from the 4th edition (1750).

² See Fiction and the Shape of Belief (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964).

³ Walter Miller, trans. (Loeb Classical Library, 1913).

⁴ Only recently have critics begun to direct serious attention to this theme in the novel: see Eleanor N. Hutchens, "'Prudence' in Tom Jones: A Study of Connotative Irony," PQ, XXXIX (1960), 496-507, and the excellent discussion by Glenn W. Hatfield in Chapter V of his forthcoming book, Henry Fielding and the Language of Irony (University of Chicago Press).

⁵The British Magazine, IV (March 1749), 77.

⁶Ibid., IV, 78.

⁷Loc. cit.

⁸Ibid., IV, 78-79.

⁹Ibid., IV, 79.

¹⁰ See John Tillotson, Sermon XXXVI, "Success not always Answerable to the Probability of Second Causes," Works (1757), III, 28-29; and William Sherlock, A Discourse Concerning the Divine Providence, 9th ed. (1747), p. 43.

¹¹ "An Essay on the Knowledge of the Characters of Men," in Miscellanies (1743), 1, 183.

¹² Cicero, De Officiis, II.iii, III.xvii.

¹³Ibid., III.xxv; trans. W. Miller (Loeb Classical Library, 1913).

¹⁴ Quoted from the 1st ed. (1752).

¹⁵ Quoted from the 1741 reprint, I, 23.

¹⁶ Cf. Phaedrus, 250D: "wisdom would arouse terrible love, if such a clear image of it were granted as would come through sight" (trans. H. N. Fowler, Loeb Classical Library, 1914). See also Cicero, De Finibus, II.xvi, and De Officiis, I.v; and Seneca, Epistulae Morales, CXV.6. The specific notion of the naked charms of Virtue, imaged as a beautiful woman, is only implicit in Plato. Fielding was especially fond of this commonplace: see, for example, The Champion (24, 26 January 1739/40), and "An Essay on Conversation" and "An Essay on the Knowledge of the Characters of Men"—both published in the Miscellanies (1743), I, 159, 217. For a discussion of this image and its relation to the moral theme of Fielding's last novel, see Alan Wendt, "The Naked Virtue of Amelia," ELH, XXVII (1960), 131-148.

¹⁷ See Hunter, The Reluctant Pilgrim: Defoe's Emblematic Method and Quest for Form in 'Robinson Crusoe' (Baltimore, 1966).

¹⁸ Fielding, The Author's Farce, ed. Charles B. Woods (Lincoln, Neb., 1966), p. xvi.

¹⁹ Joseph Spence, Polymetis (1747), p. 66.

²⁰ The quotation is from Jacob Boehme, The Way to Christ (Bath, 1775), p. 56, as given in Frank Manley, ed., John Donne: The Anniversaries (Baltimore, 1963), p. 38. On the identification of "the noble Virgin Sophia" with the biblical figure of Wisdom, see Manley's Introduction, pp. 37-38.

²¹ The definition of idea given in George Richardson's Iconology: or, A Collection of Emblematical Figures, Moral and Instructive (1778-79), is as follows: "In general, [Idea] is the image of any thing, which, though not seen, is conceived in the mind. Plato defines it, the essence sent forth by the divine spirit, which is entirely separated from the matter of created things" (1,82).

²²Phaedo, 99D-E.

²³ See Isaac Fuller and Peirce Tempest, Iconologia: or, Moral Emblems, by Caesar Ripa (1709), Figures 229 and 269, folios 57 and 67.

²⁴ For an excellent discussion of the relationship between poetry and painting in the eighteenth century, see Jean H. Hagstrum, The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray (Chicago, 1958).

²⁵ For Fielding's compliments to Hogarth, see, among many other references, the Preface to Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones (I.xi, II.iii, III.vi, VI.iii, X.viii), where Fielding refers the reader to particular Hogarth prints to clarify the description of Bridget Allworthy, Mrs. Partridge, and Thwackum.

²⁶ Done at the command of Louis XIV, Le Brun's series depicting the victories of Alexander now hangs in the Louvre. Copies of the official engravings by the Audrans were commissioned in England and published by Carington Bowles. The series was much admired: see, for example, Farquhar's Beaux' Stratagem (1707), IV, and Charles Gildon, The Complete Art of Poetry (1718), I, 230. When Louis Laguerre was commissioned to commemorate Marlborough's victories over the French, he looked to Le Brun's tableaux for a model (see Margaret Whinney and Oliver Millar, English Art, 1625-1744 [Oxford, 1957], pp. 305-306).

²⁷ In describing Allworthy's seat, Fielding's intentions are as much allusive and symbolic as they are chorographical. The description is based upon elements associated primarily with Sharpham Park and secondarily with Hagley Park and Prior Park, the estates of Lyttelton and Allen respectively. From the doorway at Sharpham Park Fielding would have looked daily across the moors at Glastonbury and Tor Hill. The prospect from Allworthy's Paradise Hall corresponds in general with the view westward from Tor Hill (see Wilbur L. Cross, The History of Henry Fielding [New Haven, 1918], II, 165). The "Style" of Paradise Hall itself is doubtless in honor of a mutual friend of Fielding's and Lyttelton's, Sanderson Miller (1717-80), amateur architect and pioneer of the Gothic revival. In 1747-78 and 1749-50 Lyttelton erected a ruined castle and a rotunda of Miller's design at Hagley Park; indeed, until his second wife disapproved, he had wanted Miller to build him a Gothic house. Like Allworthy's mansion, furthermore, Hagley Hall is situated on the south side of a hill, nearer the bottom than the top, yet high enough to command a pleasant view of the valley. And many of the details in Fielding's description echo Thomson's celebration of Hagley Park in "Spring," 11. 900-958 (Seasons, 1744 ed.). At the same time, in the third paragraph of the chapter, Fielding does not forget Ralph Allen, whose house, an example of "the best Grecian Architecture," he had praised earlier in Joseph Andrews (III.i, vi) and A Journey from This World to the Next (I. v): Allen's Palladian mansion stands on the summit of a hill down which a stream falls into a lake which is visible "from every Room in the Front."

²⁸ For an elaborate gloss on the sun as "A fit Emblem, or rather Adumbration of God," see William Turner's Compleat History of the Most Remarkable Providences (1697), pp. 14-19. The sun, according to Turner (and many others), is "the Eye of Heaven" (p. 14) and a symbol of God's "Benignity and Beneficence" (p. 18). It is with this latter attribute of the Deity that both Barrow and Fielding particularly associated the sun. Wrote Barrow: "Such is a charitable man; the sun is not more liberal of his light and warmth, than he is of beneficial influence" (Sermon XXVII, "The Nature, Properties and Acts of Charity," op. cit., I, 261). In the verse epistle "Of Good-Nature," Fielding, recalling Matthew V:45, exclaims: "Oh! great Humanity, whose beams benign,/Like the sun's rays, on just and unjust shine."

²⁹ Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts, Doubleday Anchor Books (Garden City, N.Y., 1955), pp. 146-168.

³⁰ Because she regards past, present, and future, Prudence is represented in Dante's Purgatorio, XXIX, as a figure with three eyes. See also Francisco degli Allegri, Tractato Nobilissimo della Prudentia et Iustitia (Venice, 1508): British Museum, Prints and Drawings. 163^*.a.23.

³¹ Richardson, op. cit., II, 23-24. For earlier emblems of Prudence, based on Ripa and representing a figure with two faces, see the following: Jacques de Bie and J. Baudoin, Iconologie (Paris, 1644), pp. 160, 164, and Fuller and Tempest, op. cit., Figure 251 and folio 63.

³² See Aristotle, Rhetoric, II.xii-xiv.