More short stories - back in the 18th Century

I read a couple of tales from Philip Hensher's anthology, both from the middle of the 18th Century.  Neither will make it into my list of all-time greats.  I'm not entirely persuaded they merit a place in a review of the British short story across 300 years of literary history.  Mr. Hensher concedes some of my reservations when he writes that,

"The first pieces in this anthology are not, in the modern sense, short stories  But they bear in a vital, animating way on the short story's historical development.  They are trying to distinguish themselves from the long form, and are drawing on a number of literary counter examples."

And I think ... maybe.  But Philip Hensher read many, many more short stories in preparing his anthology than I shall ever read (I suspect) so I'll take him at his word; accept his judgement.  That still doesn't make me any more enamoured of the second and third stories in his first volume, by Jonathan Swift and Henry Fielding.

Jonathan Swift, by Charles Jervas

I'm not a fan of Jonathan Swift.  For reasons that surprise me I struggle a bit with satirical writing generally and with Swift in particular.  I'm not entirely sure why that is; something to do, perhaps, with the way it ages so very quickly. That and what I think of as a fine line between satire on the one hand and cynicism, condescension and even misanthropy on the other.  Jonathan Swift, I've long felt, tends towards all three of the latter.  

Gulliver's Travels has always struck me as a distasteful book and it's not a surprise that most attention has been given to the first two adventures (often in a form rendered safe for children).  By the time you encounter the Yahoos I think we're in thoroughly unsavoury territory, even for its time.

Reading Directions to the Footman didn't do anything to rehabilitate Swift in my mind.  Its condescending, nasty tone was never going to appeal to me.  He may be mocking some of the absurdities of the British class system in 18th Century England but he does so by laughing at the servant classes first and foremost.  Make up your own mind: you can read it here. 

Henry Fielding, etching by Jonathan Wild

Henry Fielding's story The Female Husband seems to me to have all kinds of story-telling problems; too many, I feel, to be contained within the twenty or so pages the tale takes.  Maybe Fielding could get away with it in his longer fiction.  I don't know because I've never read any of it.  Is that a shocking admission for a man with my pretensions to make?  Probably.  Now I suppose I shall have to read Tom Jones.  As unlikely a tale as The Female Husband may be, it turns out its origins lay in historical fact, which wiki sets out here.  Shows me how wrong I can be.