The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding: BOOK IX., v.- BOOK X., i.

We start with a meal between Mrs. Waters, our poor victim of assault from last week’s chapters. She does her best to seduce Tom—and it works pretty well.

While that’s going on the serjeant and Partridge are, well, gossiping about Tom and Mrs. Waters—who really isn’t a Mrs. She’s just someone who spends a lot of time with Waters (and the implication is that she spends a good deal of time with people who aren’t Waters—like say, Northerton. But that little relationship went off the rails, as we saw). Partridge gets into Tom’s relationship with Allworthy (and implies a bit more about Tom’s status than is really true).

We close this week with the beginning of the next book, a digression about the morality of characters—he’s clear that he wants to avoid wholly good or completely depraved characters, but instead:

In fact, if there be enough of goodness in a character to engage the admiration and affection of a well-disposed mind, though there should appear some of those little blemishes quas humana parum cavit natura, they will raise our compassion rather than our abhorrence. Indeed, nothing can be of more moral use than the imperfections which are seen in examples of this kind; since such form a kind of surprize, more apt to affect and dwell upon our minds than the faults of very vicious and wicked persons. The foibles and vices of men, in whom there is great mixture of good, become more glaring objects from the virtues which contrast them and shew their deformity; and when we find such vices attended with their evil consequence to our favourite characters, we are not only taught to shun them for our own sake, but to hate them for the mischiefs they have already brought on those we love.

This seems like a highly appropriate thing to think about at the moment.