文档介绍：THE JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON
THE JOURNAL OF A
VOYAGE TO LISBON
by Henry Fielding
1
THE JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON
INTRODUCTION TO SEVERAL
WORKS
When it was determined to extend the present edition of Fielding, not
merely by the addition of Jonathan Wild to the three universally popular
novels, but by two volumes of Miscellanies, there could be no doubt about
at least one of the contents of these latter. The Journal of a Voyage to
Lisbon, if it does not rank in my estimation anywhere near to Jonathan
Wild as an example of our author's genius, is an invaluable and delightful
document for his character and memory. It is indeed, as has been pointed
out in the General Introduction to this series, our main source of
indisputable information as to Fielding dans son naturel, and its value, so
far as it goes, is of the very highest. The gentle and unaffected stoicism
which the author displays under a disease which he knew well was
probably, if not certainly, mortal, and which, whether mortal or not, must
cause him much actual pain and fort of a kind more intolerable than
pain itself; his affectionate care for his family; even little personal touches,
less admirable, but hardly less pleasant than these, showing an
Englishman's dislike to be "done" and an Englishman's determination to
be treated with proper respect, are scarcely less noticeable and important
on the biographical side than the unimpaired brilliancy of his satiric and
yet kindly observation of life and character is on the side of literature.
There is, as is now well known since Mr. Dobson's separate edition of
the Voyage, a little bibliographical problem about the first appearance of
this Journal in 1755. The best known issue of that year is much shorter
than the version inserted by Murphy and reprinted here, the passages
omitted being chiefly those reflecting on the captain, etc., and so likely to
seem invidious in a book published just after the author's death,