nothing to show that he was either sot or gamester. With one exception,
when, in the joy of his heart at his benefactor's recovery, he takes too
much wine (and it may be noted that on the same occasion the Catonic
Thwackum drinks considerably more), there is no evidence that he was
specially given to tippling, even in an age of hard drinkers, while of
his gambling there is absolutely no trace at all. On the other hand, he
is admittedly brave, generous, chivalrous, kind to the poor, and
courteous to women. What, then, is his cardinal defect? The answer lies
in the fact that Fielding, following the doctrine laid down in his
initial chapters, has depicted him under certain conditions (in which,
it is material to note, he is always rather the tempted than the
tempter), with an unvarnished truthfulness which to the pure-minded is
repugnant, and to the prurient indecent. Remembering that he too had
been young, and reproducing, it may be, his own experiences, he exhibits
his youth as he had found him--a "piebald miscellany,"--

"Bursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire;"

and, to our modern ideas, when no one dares, as Thackeray complained,
"to depict to his utmost power a Man," the spectacle is discomforting.
Yet those who look upon human nature as keenly and unflinchingly as
Fielding did, knowing how weak and fallible it is,--how prone to fall
away by accident or passion,--can scarcely deny the truth of Tom Jones.
That such a person cannot properly serve as a hero now is rather a
question of our time than of Fielding's, and it may safely be set aside.
One objection which has been made, and made with reason, is that
Fielding, while taking care that Nemesis shall follow his hero's lapses,
has spoken of them with too much indulgence, or rather without
sufficient excuse. Coleridge, who was certainly not squeamish, seems to
have felt this when, in a MS. note [Footnote: These notes were