n. So changed was their estate since the Reformation, that few
high-born youths, except the weak or lame, took holy orders. Many
clergymen worked during the week. One, says South, was a cobbler on
weekdays, and preached on Sundays. Wilmot says: "We are struck by the
phenomenon of a learned man sitting down to prove, with the help of logic,
that a priest or a chaplain in a family is not a servant,"--Jeremy
Collier: _Essays on Pride and the Office of a Chaplain_.

Fielding drew them and their condition from the life. Parson Adams is the
most excellent of men. His cassock is ten years old; over it he dons a
coarse white overcoat, and travels on foot to London to sell nine volumes
of sermons, wherewithal to buy food for his family. He engages the
innkeeper in serious talk; he does desperate battle to defend a young
woman who has fallen into the hands of ruffians on the highway; and when
he is arrested, his manuscript Eschylus is mistaken for a book of ciphers
unfolding a dreadful plot against the government. This is a hit against
the ignorance and want of education among the people; for it is some time
before some one in the company thinks he saw such characters many years
ago when he was young, and that it may be Greek. The incident of Parson
Trulliber mistaking his fellow-priest for a pork-merchant, on account of
his coarse garments, is excellent, but will not bear abbreviation. Adams
is splattered by the huge, overfed swine, and ejaculates, "_Nil habeo cum
porcis_; I am a clergyman, sir, and am not come to buy hogs!" The
condition of a curate and the theology of the publican are set forth in
the conversation between Parson Adams and the innkeeper.

The works of Fielding may be justly accused of describing immoral scenes
and using lewd language; but even in this they are delineative of the
manners and conversation of an age in which such men lived, such scenes
occurred, such language was used. I liken the great realm of English prose
fiction to some famous museum of art. The instructor of the young may
carefully select what pictures to show them; but the student of English
literature moves through the rooms and galleries, gazing, judging,
approving, condemning, comparing. Genius may have soiled its canvas with
what is prurient and vile; lascivious groups may stand side by side with
pictures of saints and madonnas. To leave the figure, it is wise counsel
to read on principle, and, armed with principle, to accept and imitate