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| Benjamin West The artist's wife, Elizabeth, and their son, Raphael 1773 oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art |
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| Benjamin West The artist and his son, Raphael 1773 oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art |
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| Benjamin West Portrait of Queen Charlotte 1777 oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art |
GREATNESS
1. Never to do more mischief to another than was necessary to the effecting his purpose; for that mischief was too precious a thing to be thrown away.
2. To know no distinction of men from affection; but to sacrifice all with equal readiness to his interest.
3. Never to communicate more of an affair than was necessary to the person who was to execute it.
4. Not to trust him who hath deceived you, nor who knows he hath been deceived by you.
5. To forgive no enemy; but to be cautious and often dilatory in revenge.
6. To shun poverty and distress, and to ally himself as close as possible to power and riches.
7. To maintain a constant gravity in his countenance and behaviour, and to affect wisdom on all occasions.
8. To foment eternal jealousies in his gang, one of another.
9. Never to reward any one equal to his merit; but always to insinuate that the reward was above it.
10. That all men were knaves or fools, and much the greater number a composition of both.
11. That a good name, like money, must be parted with, or at least greatly risked, in order to bring the owner any advantage.
12. That virtues, like precious stones, were easily counterfeited; that the counterfeits in both cases adorned the wearer equally, and that very few had knowledge or discernment sufficient to distinguish the counterfeit jewel from the real.
13. That many men were undone by not going deep enough in roguery; as in gaming any man may be a loser who doth not play the whole game.
14. That men proclaim their own virtues, as shopkeepers expose their goods, in order to profit by them.
15. That the heart was the proper seat of hatred, and the countenance of affection and friendship.
– by Henry Fielding, from The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great (1743)
"Jonathan Wild is a person of undeviating criminality; the beautiful consistency of his life is marred by scarce a single generous deed or decent impulse. From the time of his youthful captaincy over a gang of orchard robbers, when he was invariably the "treasurer of the booty, some little part of which he would now and then, with wonderful generosity, bestow on those who took it," until his consummation on the scaffold or "tree of glory," when he found breath to deliver "a hearty curse" upon the assembled crowd, he showed himself to be "not restrained by any of those weaknesses which disappoint the views of mean and vulgar souls, and which are comprehended in one general term of honesty, which is a corruption of HONOSTY, a word derived from what the Greeks call an ass." From the title-page to the closing sentence there is an incessant harping on the word "greatness," used in this scheme of irony to mean material success without moral goodness. And when, near the end, Fielding reduces the career of his infamous protagonist to a list of elementary principles of "greatness," behold! that list exactly defines and delineates the practices by which Fielding saw eminence achieved in the most respected careers of his own 18th century world. His purpose was to show how a boot-licking society worshiped prestige no matter how gained; his method is to draw a grotesque parallel between the successful man of the great world and the successful criminal of the underworld, and to signify that the one is as little worthy of admiration as the other. This catalogue of principles, as applicable to a Robert Walpole as to a Jonathan Wild, seems to me to be among the most ingenious and pointed uses of savage irony in English."
– from The Modern Novel (1918) by Wilson Follett
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| John Singleton Copley Portrait of Richard Heber 1782 oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art |
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| John Singleton Copley Portrait of a lady 1771 oil on canvas Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| John Singleton Copley Portrait of Mrs Sylvester Gardiner, née Abigail Pickman, formerly Mrs William Eppes ca. 1772 oil on canvas Brooklyn Museum |
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| George Romney Portrait of Mrs Andrew Reid ca. 1780-88 oil on canvas Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas |
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| George Romney Portrait of Jane Dawkes Robinson 1778 oil on canvas Indianapolis Museum of Art |
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| George Romney Portrait of Emma, Lady Hamilton 1791 oil on canvas Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas |
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| George Willison Portrait of James Boswell, diarist and biographer 1765 oil on canvas National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh |
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| Thomas Gainsborough Portrait of Thomas Linley the younger 1772 oil on canvas Dulwich Picture Gallery, London |
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| Thomas Gainsborough Portrait of Thomas Linley the elder ca. 1765-70 oil on canvas Dulwich Picture Gallery, London |
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| Thomas Gainsborough Portrait of Samuel Linley 1778 oil on canvas Dulwich Picture Gallery, London |
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| Thomas Gainsborough Portrait of the Honourable Mrs Graham 1775 oil on canvas National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh |
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| Thomas Gainsborough Portrait of Mrs Elizabeth Moody with her sons Samuel and Thomas ca. 1779-85 oil on canvas Dulwich Picture Gallery, London |