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Unit 2: Joseph Andrews-I: Detailed Study of the Text

Chapter XVI Notes
The Ruffian turns out to have escaped during the night. The Constable who was guarding him
comes under suspicion of having aided his escape, not so much because his name is Tom
Suckbribe as because, “not having been concerned in the taking of the Thief, he could not have
been entitled to any part of the Reward, if he had been convicted.”
Joseph rises but still is not well enough to travel. Mr. Adams, having bought meals for himself
and Joseph, is running low on money and attempts to borrow three guineas from Mr. Tow-
wouse, leaving as a pledge a volume of his sermons. The landlord declines this plan, disappointing
Mr. Adams, who has run out of ideas. Mr. Adams goes off to smoke his pipe, and meanwhile
a coach and six drives up, carrying a young fellow and a coachman named Jack, who insults
each other lustily as they settle themselves in the inn. Meanwhile, the footmen from the coach
go to the kitchen, where they discuss having seen “Parson Adams smoking his Pipe in the
Gallery.” Mr. Barnabas, overhearing them, decides to sit down Mr. Adams to a bowl of punch,
now that he knows him to be a fellow man of the cloth. Mr. Adams accepts the invitation, and
the conversation comes around to the volumes of sermons that he wishes to publish.
Mr. Barnabas warns him that he knows from experience that no one read sermons anymore.
When the punch is gone, Mr. Adams goes upstairs to check on Joseph, who is sitting down
to a loin of mutton. The Surgeon enters and attributes Joseph’s recovery to the powers of a
medicine that, as it happens, Joseph has not touched. Joseph takes another three days to
recover from his wounds, and then resolves to set off again the next day, urging Mr. Adams
to continue on to London. Mr. Adams still expects great things of his sermons, so he agrees
to Joseph’s plan. In the evening they repair to Joseph’s room and spend “a considerable time
in Prayer and Thanksgiving.”

Chapter XVII
Mr. Barnabas sends for Mr. Adams so that he can meet a London Bookseller who has recently
arrived. Mr. Adams is delighted with the opportunity to make some cash without leaving the
inn. The Bookseller does not indulge Mr. Adams for very long, explaining that most sermons
do not sell well and concluding, “I had rather be excused.” He offers, however, to take the
manuscript to London with him and send his opinion of it to Mr. Adams shortly. They go on
to discuss the publishing trade and which genres sell the best, and the Bookseller remarks
that, far from objecting to the publication of sermons per se, he is happy to publish the
abnormally lucrative sermons of the Methodist George Whitefield. Mr. Adams and Mr. Barnabas
then argue over the merits and demerits of Whitefield: Barnabas finds Whitefield’s advocacy
of clerical poverty offensive, whereas Adams shares Whitefield’s objection to “the Luxury and
Splendour of the Clergy” but cannot accept “the detestable Doctrine of Faith against Good
Works.” Adams imagines a soul in Whitefield’s scheme appearing before God on the last day
and pleading, “Lord, it is true I never obeyed one of thy Commandments, yet punish me not,
for I believe them all”; he even suggests that “a virtuous and good Turk, or Heathen, are more
acceptable in the sight of their Creator, than a vicious and wicked Christian, tho’ his Faith was
as perfectly orthodox as St. Paul’s himself.” The Bookseller, suspecting that Mr. Adams’s
doctrines would not sit well with the bishops and thereby would suffer on the market, once
again begs to be excused from the project. Mr. Adams goes on to express further low-church
opinions on the nature and purpose of Sunday service, whereupon Mr. Barnabas rings for the
bill, eager to flee the company of such a heterodox clergyman.
A great commotion erupts somewhere else in the inn: “Mrs. Tow-wouse, Mr. Tow-wouse, and
Betty, all lifting up their Voices together.” The landlady is heard to accuse her husband of
“abusing my Bed, my own Bed, with my own Servant”; she also threatens violence against

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