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However much the licentious grossness of Lady Booby, the shameless self-seeking of her waiting-woman, Mrs Slipslop, the swinish avarice of Parson Trulliber, the calculating cruelty of Mrs Tow-wouse, to name but some of the vices here exposed, blazon forth that 'enthusiasm for righteousness' which constantly moved Fielding to exhibit the devilish in human nature in all its 'native Deformity, it is still Adams who remains the central figure of the great comic epic.
In short, where extreme turbulency of temper, avarice, and an insensibility of human misery, with a degree of hypocrisy, have united in a female composition, Mrs Tow-wouse was that woman; and where a good inclination, eclipsed by a poverty of spirit and understanding, hath glimmered forth in a man, that man hath been no other than her sneaking husband.
The worthy City jeweller was, in his own limited measure, the forerunner, on the stage, of that new era in English literature created by honest Andrews and Parson Adams, Partridge and Mrs Slipslop, Fanny and Sergeant Atkinson, Tow-wouse and Mrs Miller, to name but a few of Fielding's immortal portraits, drawn from the 'vast authentic book of Nature.
Thus I believe we may venture to say Mrs Tow-wouse is coeval with our lawyer: and, though perhaps, during the changes which so long an existence must have passed through, she may in her turn have stood behind the bar at an inn, I will not scruple to affirm she hath likewise in the revolution of ages sat on a throne.
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