Wild and Count La Ruse, and the description of Miss Tishy Snap in
the first book; the adventures of Wild in the boat at the end of
the second book; and, in the last, the dialogue between the
ordinary of Newgate and the hero, the death of Wild, and the
chapter which sets forth his character and his maxims for
attaining greatness. And yet as a satire Jonathan Wild is not
perfect. Fielding himself hits upon its one fault, when, in the
last book, after the long narrative of Mrs. Heartfree's adventures
by sea and by land, he says, "we have already perhaps detained our
reader too long ... from the consideration of our hero." He has
detained us far too long. A story containing so much irony as
Jonathan Wild should be an undeviating satire like A Tale of a
Tub. The introduction of characters like the Heartfrees, who are
meant to enlist a reader's sympathy, spoils the unity. True, the
way they appear at first is all very well. Heartfree is "a silly
fellow," possessed of several great weaknesses of mind, being
"good-natured, friendly, and generous to a great excess," and
devoted to the "silly woman," his wife. But later Fielding becomes
so much interested in the pair that he drops his ironical tone.
Unfortunately, however, in depicting them, he has not met with his
usual success in depicting amiable characters. The exemplary
couple, together with their children and Friendly, are much less
real than the villain and his fellows. And so the importance of
the Heartfrees in Jonathan Wild seems to me a double blemish. A
satire is not truth, and yet in Mr. and Mrs. Heartfree Fielding
has tried--though not with success--to give us virtuous characters
who are truly human. The consequence is that Jonathan Wild just
fails of being a consistently brilliant satire.

As to its place among Fielding's works, critics have differed