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Updated: May 13, 2025
As might be expected in a beginner, and as indeed the references in the Preface to Wycherley and Congreve would lead us to expect, it was an obvious attempt in the manner of those then all-popular writers. The dialogue is ready and witty. But the characters have that obvious defect which Lord Beaconsfield recognised when he spoke in later life of his own earliest efforts.
His early songs and complimentary pieces are all in the Danish taste, and if they show any native influence at all, it is that of Welhaven. The extreme superficiality of Wergeland would naturally be hateful to so arduous a craftsman as Ibsen, and it is a fact that so far as his writings reveal his mind to us, the all-popular poet of his youth appears to be absolutely unknown to him.
Lady Bradshaigh, for instance, under her nom de guerre of "Belfour," tells him that she is fatigued with the very name of the book, having met several young ladies who were for ever talking of their Tom Jones's, "for so they call their favourites," and that the gentlemen, on their side, had their Sophias, one having gone so far as to give that all-popular name to his "Dutch mastiff puppy."
But somehow, after every trial, the debt grew larger with each year, and every system that could be devised turned out more hopeless than the last. They began, I think, with the "endless chain" of letters of appeal. You may remember the device, for it was all-popular in clerical circles some ten or fifteen years ago.
The gentlemen also had their Sophias, one indeed having bestowed that all-popular name on his 'Dutch mastiff puppy. That eccentric eighteenth century philosopher, and enthusiastic Greek scholar, Lord Monboddo declared that Tom Jones had more of character in it than any other work, ancient or modern, known to him, adding, "in short, I never saw anything that was so animated, and as I may say, all alive with characters and manners as the History of Tom Jones"; a criticism that recalls Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's remark that no man enjoyed life more than did Fielding.
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