The Ordinary has left a record so precious and so lying,that it must needs be quoted at length.The great ThiefCatcher's confession is a masterpiece of comfort,and is so far removed from the truth as completely to justify Fielding's incomparable creation.`Finding there was no room for mercy (and how could Iexpect mercy,who never showed any)'thus does the devil dodger dishonour our Jonathan's memory!`as soon as I came into the Condemned Hole,I began to think of making a preparation for my soul....To part with my wife,my dear Molly,is so great an Affliction to me,that it touches me to the Quick,and is like Daggers entering into my Heart.'How tame the Ordinary's falsehood to the brilliant invention of Fielding,who makes Jonathan kick his Tishy in the very shadow of the Tree!And the Reverend Gentleman gains in unction as he goes:`In the Cart they all kneeled down to prayers and seemed very penitent;the Ordinary used all the means imaginable to make them think of another World,and after singing a penitential Psalm,they cry'd Lord Jesus Christ receive our Souls,the cart drew away and they were all turned off.This is as good an account as can be given by me.'Poor Ordinary!If he was modest,he was also untruthful,and you are certain that it was not thus the hero met his death.
Even had Fielding never written his masterpiece,Jonathan Wild would still have been surnamed `The Great.'For scarce a chapbook appeared in the year of Jonathan's death that did not expose the only right and true view of his character.`His business,'
says one hack of prison literature,`at all times was to put a false gloss upon things,and to make fools of mankind.'Another precisely formulates the theory of greatness insisted upon by Fielding with so lavish an irony and so masterly a wit.While it is certain that The History of the Late Mr.Jonathan Wild is as noble a piece of irony as literature can show,while for the qualities of wit and candour it is equal to its motive,it is likewise true that therein you meet the indubitable Jonathan Wild.It is an entertainment to compare the chapbooks of the time with the reasoned,finished work of art:not in any spirit of pedantrysince accuracy in these matters is of small account,but with intent to show how doubly fortunate Fielding was in his genius and in his material.Of course the writer rejoiced in the aid of imagination and eloquence;of course he embellished his picture with such inspirations as Miss Laetitia and the Count;of course he preserves from the first page to the last the highest level of unrivalled irony.But the sketch was there before him,and a lawyer's clerk had treated Jonathan in a vein of heroism within a few weeks of his death.And since a plain statement is never so true as fiction,Fielding's romance is still more credible,still convinces with an easier effort,than the serious and pedestrian records of contemporaries.Nor can you return to its pages without realising that,so far from being `the evolution of a purely intellectual conception,'Jonathan Wild is a magnificently idealised and ironical portrait of a great man.
III
A PARALLEL
(MOLL CUTPURSE AND JONATHAN WILD))
THEY plied the same trade,each with incomparable success.By her,as by him,the art of the fence was carried to its ultimate perfection.In their hands the high policy of theft wanted nor dignity nor assurance.Neither harboured a single scheme which was not straightway translated into action,and they were masters at once of Newgate and the Highway.As none might rob without the encouragement of his emperor,so none was hanged at Tyburn while intrigue or bribery might avail to drag a halfdoomed neck from the halter;and not even Moll herself was more bitterly tyrannical in the control of a reckless gang than the thinjawed,hatchetfaced Jonathan Wild.
