I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species.

This remark is associated with Fielding’s self-defensive framing of his fiction as moral and social satire rather than personal lampoon. In the mid-18th century, novelists and playwrights were often accused of “drawing” recognizable contemporaries and thereby committing libel or malicious caricature. Fielding repeatedly insists that his targets are general human types and prevailing social behaviors—hypocrisy, affectation, vanity, and vice—rather than particular named persons. The line functions as a pre-emptive rebuttal to readers who might try to identify real individuals behind his characters, and it aligns with his broader project of using comic narrative to anatomize the manners of his age.

Fielding distinguishes between portraiture and satire. He claims he is not writing to expose or ridicule specific people (“men”), but to depict the patterns of conduct, customs, and moral habits (“manners”) that characterize society. By saying he portrays “not an individual, but a species,” he casts his characters as representative types—embodiments of recurring human dispositions—so that the reader recognizes broader truths rather than gossip. The statement also defends the ethical purpose of comedy: laughter is meant to correct general follies and vices, not to settle personal scores. It invites readers to look for social diagnosis and moral instruction in the narrative.