ABSTRACT
A Book having been lately published, which has given great Amusement, and, we hope, Instruction to the polite Part of the Town, we think ourselves obliged to give our Readers some Account of it
It is intitled, The History of TOM JONES, a Foundling, by Henry Fielding, Esq;1 being a novel, or prose epick composition, and calculated to recommend religion and virtue, to shew the bad consequences of indiscretion, and to set several kinds of vice in their most deformed and shocking light. This piece, like all such good compositions, consists of a principal history, and a great many episodes or incidents; all which arise naturally from the subject, and contribute towards carrying on the chief plot or design. Through the whole, the reader’s attention is always kept awake by some new surprizing accident, and his curiosity upon the stretch, to discover the effects of that accident; so that after one has begun to read, it is difficult to leave off before having read the whole.
