greater reason is, that we could find no simile adequate to our purpose:
for indeed, what instance could we bring to set before our reader's eyes
at once the idea of friendship, courage, youth, beauty, strength, and
swiftness? all which blazed in the person of Joseph Andrews. Let those,
therefore, that describe lions and tigers, and heroes fiercer than both,
raise their poems or plays with the simile of Joseph Andrews, who is
himself above the reach of any simile.

Now Rockwood had laid fast hold on the parson's skirts, and stopt his
flight; which Joseph no sooner perceived than he levelled his cudgel at
his head and laid him sprawling. Jowler and Ringwood then fell on his
greatcoat, and had undoubtedly brought him to the ground, had not
Joseph, collecting all his force, given Jowler such a rap on the back,
that, quitting his hold, he ran howling over the plain. A harder fate
remained for thee, O Ringwood! Ringwood the best hound that ever pursued
a hare, who never threw his tongue but where the scent was undoubtedly
true; good at trailing, and sure in a highway; no babler, no overrunner;
respected by the whole pack, who, whenever he opened, knew the game was
at hand. He fell by the stroke of Joseph. Thunder and Plunder, and
Wonder and Blunder, were the next victims of his wrath, and measured
their lengths on the ground. Then Fairmaid, a bitch which Mr John Temple
had bred up in his house, and fed at his own table, and lately sent the
squire fifty miles for a present, ran fiercely at Joseph and bit him by
the leg: no dog was ever fiercer than she, being descended from an
Amazonian breed, and had worried bulls in her own country, but now waged
an unequal fight, and had shared the fate of those we have mentioned
before, had not Diana (the reader may believe it or not if he pleases)
in that instant interposed, and, in the shape of the huntsman, snatched
her favourite up in her arms.