case of the Journey from this World to the Next, it is not unlikely that the first germ of this may be found in the pages of the Champion. “Reputation”—says Fielding in one of the essays in that periodical—“often courts those most who regard her the least. Actions have sometimes been attended with Fame, which were undertaken in Defiance of it. Jonathan Wyld himself had for many years no small Share of it in this Kingdom.” The book now under consideration is the elaboration of the idea thus casually thrown out. Under the name of a notorious thief-taker hanged at Tyburn in 1725, Fielding has traced the Progress of a Rogue to the Gallows, showing by innumerable subtle touches that the (so-called) greatness of a villain does not very materially differ from any other kind of greatness, which is equally independent of goodness. This continually suggested affinity between the ignoble and the pseudo-noble is the text of the book. Against genuine worth (its author is careful to explain) his satire is in no wise directed. He is far from considering “Newgate as no other than Human Nature with its Mask off;” but he thinks “we may be excused for suspecting, that the splendid Palaces of the Great are often no other than Newgate with the Mask on.” Thus Jonathan Wild the Great is a prolonged satire upon the spurious eminence in which benevolence, honesty, charity, and the like have no part; or, as Fielding prefers to term it, that false or “Bombast greatness” which is so often mistaken for the “true Sublime in Human Nature”—Greatness and Goodness combined. So thoroughly has he explained his intention in the Prefaces to the Miscellanies, and to the book itself, that it is difficult to
