The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his Friend, Mr. Abraham Abrams/Book I, Chapter I

CHAPTER I.

_Of writing lives in general, and particularly of Pamela; with a word by

the bye of Colley Cibber and others._

It is a trite but true observation, that examples work more forcibly on

the mind than precepts: and if this be just in what is odious and

blameable, it is more strongly so in what is amiable and praiseworthy.

Here emulation most effectually operates upon us, and inspires our

imitation in an irresistible manner. A good man therefore is a standing

lesson to all his acquaintance, and of far greater use in that narrow

circle than a good book.

But as it often happens that the best men are but little known, and

consequently cannot extend the usefulness of their examples a great way;

the writer may be called in aid to spread their history farther, and to

present the amiable pictures to those who have not the happiness of

knowing the originals; and so, by communicating such valuable patterns

to the world, he may perhaps do a more extensive service to mankind than

the person whose life originally afforded the pattern.

In this light I have always regarded those biographers who have recorded

the actions of great and worthy persons of both sexes. Not to mention

those antient writers which of late days are little read, being written

in obsolete, and as they are generally thought, unintelligible

languages, such as Plutarch, Nepos, and others which I heard of in my

youth; our own language affords many of excellent use and instruction,

finely calculated to sow the seeds of virtue in youth, and very easy to

be comprehended by persons of moderate capacity. Such as the history of

John the Great, who, by his brave and heroic actions against men of

large and athletic bodies, obtained the glorious appellation of the

Giant-killer; that of an Earl of Warwick, whose Christian name was Guy;

the lives of Argalus and Parthenia; and above all, the history of those

seven worthy personages, the Champions of Christendom. In all these

delight is mixed with instruction, and the reader is almost as much

improved as entertained.

But I pass by these and many others to mention two books lately

published, which represent an admirable pattern of the amiable in either

sex. The former of these, which deals in male virtue, was written by the

great person himself, who lived the life he hath recorded, and is by

many thought to have lived such a life only in order to write it. The

other is communicated to us by an historian who borrows his lights, as

the common method is, from authentic papers and records. The reader, I

believe, already conjectures, I mean the lives of Mr Colley Cibber and

of Mrs Pamela Andrews. How artfully doth the former, by insinuating that

he escaped being promoted to the highest stations in Church and State,

teach us a contempt of worldly grandeur! how strongly doth he inculcate

an absolute submission to our superiors! Lastly, how completely doth he

arm us against so uneasy, so wretched a passion as the fear of shame!

how clearly doth he expose the emptiness and vanity of that phantom,

reputation!

What the female readers are taught by the memoirs of Mrs Andrews is so

well set forth in the excellent essays or letters prefixed to the second

and subsequent editions of that work, that it would be here a needless

repetition. The authentic history with which I now present the public is

an instance of the great good that book is likely to do, and of the

prevalence of example which I have just observed: since it will appear

that it was by keeping the excellent pattern of his sister's virtues

before his eyes, that Mr Joseph Andrews was chiefly enabled to preserve

his purity in the midst of such great temptations. I shall only add that

this character of male chastity, though doubtless as desirable and

becoming in one part of the human species as in the other, is almost the

only virtue which the great apologist hath not given himself for the

sake of giving the example to his readers.