Fielding used to "damn the man who invented fifth acts"; but for which, to say nothing else, the dramatist would get his money an act sooner. But he must be a keen critic who would discover from them that Fielding was potentially a dramatist of much power; and it requires some resolution to read them even when we know them to be by the author of Tom Jones. His first utterance, as I have said, is an echo of Congreve. Wisemore, one of the chief characters in Love in Several Masques, expresses his sentiment in true Congreve style. London, says this jaded worldling, "is a mistress whose imperfections I have discovered and cast off. I know it; I have been a spectator of all its scenes. I have seen hypocrisy pass for religion, madness for sense, noise and scurrility for wit, and riches for the whole train of the virtues. Then I have seen folly beloved for its youth and beauty, and reverenced for its age. I have discovered knavery in more forms than even Proteus had, and traced him through them all, till I have lodged him behind a counter with the statute of bankruptcy in his hand and a pair of gilded horns in his pocket." Wisemore, like Fielding, has a disappointment in love, and is made happy at the end of the play by regaining his mistress. He represents that stupendous weight of worldly experience, that piercing insight into all the hypocrisies of society which is so common in early youth. This style, however, though it might suit its master, Congreve, sat rather awkwardly upon Fielding. He was too little of a wit and too much of a man to keep it up for long. In Congreve's plays we read what the most brilliant society of the day would have said if any human beings could have been clever enough to sustain the rapid interchange of sparkling epigram. The talk, if you take it literally, is unpleasantly cynical; but we need not be too much in earnest, and we may hold, if we please, that these fine ladies and gentlemen had real feelings and convictions, though they thought it bad taste to introduce them into their conversation. It is a mere display of tongue-fence; and the satirical tone is assumed-not because there is any true misanthropy-but simply because it affords the best opportunity for the keen encounter of wits. Valentine and Angelica, like Benedick and Beatrice, may be as capable of true passions as Romeo

and Juliet, but they drop the romantic tone when they meet on the stage, as their prototypes dropped it in fashionable assemblies, because it would not harmonise with the requirements of social intercourse. We must be content to keep our feelings to ourselves in ordinary society, or we should be wrangling like porters or philosophers. The comedy which reflects society must do the same; and the deepest sentiment admitted must be some random flash of satire directed against the conspicuous hypocrisies of the world. This, as I take it, is the sound contention which underlies Lamb's familiar defence of the immorality of the old comedy. The characters are so far unreal as we are supposed to see of them only that outside crust which ladies and gentlemen reveal to each other when meeting under the assumed conventional terms. But it must be also admitted that it is very hard to preserve this tone consistently. It requires the practised dexterity learned by familiarity with good society, and that sort of self-command which enables the skilled conversationist to glide past exciting topics without striking too deep a note. And, moreover, it requires, if it is to be really charming, that we should feel that the social mask really conceals tenderness and delicacy of sentiment; that we are listening to the persiflage of gentlemen who expect us to read between the lines, and whose satire does not represent real brutality or callous indifference to the higher emotions. If Congreve sometimes achieves success-though I confess that to my mind his success is very incomplete-it is impossible to say so much for the writers who are generally classed with him. One feels that Wycherley writes for blackguards, though they may be blackguards in laced coats. Vanbrugh drops the rapier and takes up the bludgeon of downright trenchant satire; and Farquhar's humour runs away with him and gives us a good hearty outburst of natural fun. Fielding was as ill qualified as any man could be to keep for any length of time in the polite atmosphere of the Congreve comedy. If he liked to put on a laced coat and give himself the airs of a fine gentleman, we may be sure that he was not altogether sorry when it went to the pawnbroker's and he could sit down to his pipe in his shirt-sleeves. The effeminate "beau" was, of course, a favourite butt for all the writers of comedy; d

VOL. I.

but Congreve could keep his temper and treat the case sufficiently with a few smart witticisms. To Fielding the race was altogether contemptible and offensive, and nothing short of a downright blow from Parson Adams's mutton fist, or a rap from Joseph Andrews's cudgel would sufficiently meet the requirements of poetical justice. His humour was not of the kind which plays over the surface, or is content to deal with delicate insinuations. He took to downright hard-hitting, and common-sense views of men and life were alone intelligible to him. What he meant for a playful tap would be uncommonly like another man's hearty box on the ear.

At a later period, Fielding acquired a more genuine knowledge of the world, and a mode of utterance more adapted to his genius. At present it seems as if he had adopted chiefly the faults of his model. There is little attempt at brilliance of dialogue after his first play or two. He has not given himself the time to polish. The effect is that the want of moral refinement becomes unpleasantly obvious. He is not intentionally immoral; and, indeed, he can come down very vigorously upon certain gross and palpable vices; but certainly there is a singular want of perception upon some points, which is the more obvious from the literary crudity of the work. The second comedy, the Temple Beau, is much in the vein of the first, with less smartness in dialogue, and with one of the teasing plots in which severe fathers and jealous husbands are playing a worrying game of hide-and-seek after prodigal sons and wives of precarious virtue. till somehow or other, the game comes to an end, and a couple of lovers who have been involved in its mazes, embrace amidst the correct group in the last scene. Some of the following are more remarkable, though not more edifying. Fielding, indeed, seems to have been under the impression that he was a decidedly moral writer. In his prologue to Love in Several Masques, he takes credit for writing nothing which shall cause the "fair ones" amongst his audience to blush. Such a boast may sometimes have to be read backwards; it has, at least, been prefixed to some very doubtful performances. It was, however, in the fashion of the time. Love in Several Masques followed the Provoked Husband, a play which had a remarkable success, and put forward great claims to

moral excellence.

In fact, that admirable character, Colley Cibber, had inserted a quantity of sermonizing into an unfinished performance of Vanbrugh's, and pieced out his vigorous satire with a highly moral conclusion. It may be doubted by modern readers whether Cibber moralizing is more or less edifying than Cibber without the morality, but for the time he was apparently taken at his own valuation. Fielding was equally convinced of the excellence of his own morality. The Wedding Day, as we have seen, was his third play, though not produced till 1743. It failed, as he tells us, chiefly from a rumour of its indecencies; and this rumour, he argues, must have been ill-founded, because every passage to which the licencer objected was struck out. If immorality could be excised after this fashion, the task of purifying the stage would be indeed an easy one. In fact, however, the play has not only situations which, under our present code of decency, would be palpably inadmissible, but is marked by a cognate defect, unfortunately characteristic of Fielding. The situation of the characters is such, that a shocking catastrophe is only prevented by the accidental revelation of an unsuspected relationship. The recurrence of similar complications near the end of Joseph Andrews and of Tom Jones, shows a painful insensibility in such matters. Fielding did not always know when he was becoming disgusting.

Two other plays, the Modern Husband and the Universal Gallant, are perhaps equally objectionable to modern taste. The former was submitted in 1731 to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in terms of profound respect. He esteems it the greatest, and, indeed, the only happiness of his life to offer his unworthy performances to her perusal. We know not whether these exuberant compliments propitiated Lady Mary. The play itself is intended as a scathing satire upon the wickedness of modern husbands who profit by extorting money from their wives' gallants. In that sense, of course, it is highly moral; but it does not require very lofty feeling to condemn a man for extortion of the basest kind; and I cannot say that it seems to me much more edifying than the Universal Gallant, which was damned, as Fielding maintained, in a melancholy advertisement, out of malicious wantonness. If the audience cared to defend themselves from the

charge, they would have had abundant excuse for taking a high moral tone; as the purpose of the piece seems to be a defence of the thesis, that the husband who resolutely shuts his eyes is wiser than the one who tries to keep them open.

In truth, it is only fair to Fielding to remember that the last of these performances must have been written at the latest when he was twenty-seven, and still engaged in the process of sowing his wild oats. On the whole, the impression made is decidedly painful. We seem to be assisting at the early scenes of the Rake's Progress. The literary merit of the work declines : Fielding takes less trouble to polish his style or restrict his plot; and he seems to be unpleasantly willing to gratify the coarser tastes of his audience. Even in that day, which was certainly far less decorous than our own, he gave offence to audiences not excessively squeamish. The Debauchee, first produced in 1732, is a version of a scandal of the time, about the seduction of a girl by her popish confessor. It would be hard upon Fielding to compare this rough performance with such a masterpiece as the Tartuffe; but the comparison would bring out a very obvious conclusion to which Fielding never seems to have been sufficiently awake. A writer, that is, may exhibit vice as repulsive without therefore having a moral tendency. Fielding's tone reminds us more of the reporter of a police case, who certainly does not sympathise with the criminal, but yet insists upon the details in such a way as to show obtuseness of moral feeling. This is a fault which is only too characteristic. In a certain sense, Fielding is moral, and doubtless held himself to be moral, even when he is at his coarsest. He is fond of enforcing one doctrine, which is certainly sound, and shows generous feeling. "The practised libertine," says a character in the Temple Beau, "who seduces poor, unskilful, thoughtless virgins is applauded, whilst they must suffer endless misery and shame." So, in the Wedding Day, Heartfast lays down his standard of morality pretty clearly. "My practice," he says, "is perhaps not equal to my theory; but I pretend to sin with as little mischief as I can to others; and this I can lay my hand on my heart and affirm, that I never seduced a young woman to her own ruin, nor a married one to the misery of her husband." His eloquence