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, and for the benefit, as was expressly announced, of his
family. But the curious thing is that there is ANOTHER edition, of date
so early that some argument is necessary to determine the priority,
which does give these passages and is identical with the later or
standard version. For satisfaction on this point, however, I must refer
readers to Mr. Dobson himself.

There might have been a little, but not much, doubt as to a companion
piece for the Journal; for indeed, after we close this (with or without
its "Fragment on Bolingbroke"), the remainder of Fielding's work lies
on a distinctly lower level of interest. It is still interesting, or
it would not be given here. It still has--at least that part which here
appears seems to its editor to have--interest intrinsic and "simple of
itself." But it is impossible for anybody who speaks critically to deny
that we now get into the region where work is more interesting because
of its authorship than it would be if its authorship were different
or unknown. To put the same thing in a sharper antithesis, Fielding is
interesting, first of all, because he is the author of Joseph Andrews,
of Tom Jones, of Amelia, of Jonathan Wild, of the Journal. His plays,
his essays, his miscellanies generally are interesting, first of all,
because they were written by Fielding.

Yet of these works, the Journey from this World to the Next (which, by
a grim trick of fortune, might have served as a title for the more
interesting Voyage with which we have yoked it) stands clearly first
both in scale and merit. It is indeed very unequal, and as the author
was to leave it unfinished, it is a pity that he did not leave it
unfinished much sooner than he actually did. The first ten chapters, if
of a kind of satire which has now grown rather obsolete for the
nonce, are of a good kind and good in their kind; the history of the
metempsychoses of Julian is of a less good kind, and less good in that
kind. The date of composition of the piece is not known, but it appeared
in the Miscellanies of 1743, and may represent almost any period of its
author's development prior to that year. Its form was a very common form
at the time, and continued to be so. I do not know th