anticipates Richardson's Pamela, the immediate provocative of Joseph Andrews; the Lottery, which is a brief skit at a folly of that and other days; the Covent Garden Tragedy, which is a coarse burlesque of Philips's Distressed Mother, itself a version of Racine's Andromaque; Eurydice, a farce, printed "as it was damned at the Theatre Royal, Drury-lane," in 1737—and very deservedly damned, for it is one of those most irritating misapplications of literature, a coarse travesty of a pathetic piece of mythology; and Tumble-down Dick or Phaeton in the Suds, another trifle in the same vein and produced about the same time, which announces itself on the title-page as "being ('tis hoped) the last entertainment that will ever be exhibited on any stage;" and is really in ridicule of the prevailing fashion of pantomime entertainments which were then popular under Rich at Covent Garden. Particular allusions may be picked out of these pieces which are of more or less interest; but it would be absurd to deal with them seriously. Murphy tells us how Fielding would go home from a late supper and produce next morning a scene scribbled upon the pieces of paper in which his beloved tobacco had been wrapped. We may infer that some of these performances first entered the world in this fashion, and received very little revision at any later time. It appears from more than one indication that Fielding, with all his carelessness, was not free from the sensitiveness of an author. I have already mentioned his lamentations over the evil reception of the Wedding Day and the Universal Gallant. He wrote a short sequel to the Eurydice called Eurydice Hissed, in which the author has a conversation with his Muse. He assures us, truly enough no doubt, that Eurydice was,

The trifling offspring of an idle hour

When you were absent, far below your care,

and he recalls with rapture the day in which her inspirations enabled him,

To write nine scenes with spirit in one day.

Inspired or not, Fielding's pen moved as rapidly as fitfully. But a change was now to take place in his life which makes us

regret the want of all trustworthy information. The date of his marriage is uncertain. As it was followed by a residence in the country, and there is a gap in his dramatic activity which covers at least the year 1735, it is supposed to have been at this period, that is, when Fielding was twenty-eight. The name of the lady was Charlotte Cradock; she was one of three sisters who were amongst the beauties of Salisbury, and Mrs. Fielding is said to have had a fortune of £1,500 at her own disposal; though it is also stated that she was illegitimate. All that we can know of the courtship must be inferred from certain verses published in Fielding's Miscellanies in 1743. Fielding wrote a good many songs; but can hardly be thought to have risen above the ordinary level of the rhymes which are intended only to meet the criticism of love. We could pardon the want of any great excellence in the poetry, if it would help us to a few facts. This is unhappily not the case. We discover from his verses that he once bought for half-a-crown a halfpenny which a young lady had given to a beggar; but this young lady was called Gloriana, whereas Fielding's Charlotte appears to be indicated by Celia. To Celia he addresses verses certainly not deficient in warmth; he declares, in perhaps his best performance of the kind, that he

Hates the town and all its ways,
Ridottos, operas, and plays,

and a long catalogue of other objects, whilst it is needless to say that he loves his Celia; he makes a desperate attempt at a "rebus" upon her name; he tells us how Venus blamed Cupid for not looking after Celia when she had been afraid of robbers one night, and had an old fellow sitting up with an unloaded gun, as her sole protector; and how Cupid explained that one of Celia's sighs had blown him to Harry Fielding's breast; he declares, when she expresses a wish for a Liliputian to play with, that he would like to be the Liliputian himself-ingenious youth! and he tells how Venus has decided to appoint a vicegerent upon earth; and how Jove has determined that the Cradocks are to be her representatives. We may moralize as we please, upon those faded old relics, as we are affected by disinterring some ancient love-letter from our great-grandmother's cabinet; but they

tell us little of the hearty lover who once forced his big masculine fingers to frame such old-fashioned trifles. The only remark worth making is that an address in which the other beauties of Sarum are admonished against the folly of contending with Celia, is dated 1730. The courtship, it would seem, must have been a long one; and whilst Fielding was pouring out those audacious reckless comedies and farces in London, he must all the while have kept a corner of his heart for the rustic beauty at Salisbury. His hatred of balls, ridottos, and other forms of London gaiety was probably an intermittent fever which seized him when he found it desirable to change Grub Street for the air of Salisbury Plain. Whatever may have been the obstacles to earlier success now hopelessly buried in oblivion, no one will doubt that Fielding loved Celia, seriously, and even passionately. We can hardly deny that he probably permitted himself some questionable distractions. Here, again, we can only appeal to the novels. We remember what happened to Tom Jones when he was away from his Sophia, and to Captain Booth when he was separated from Amelia. We would gladly know how far those histories may be trusted in another way. We are told, but on very slender authority, that Sophia Western, who is described as the very type of a blooming country girl, in Tom Jones (Book iv. ch. 2) was meant to be a portrait of Fielding's early love; who jilted him before he was twenty. Fielding, however, tells us himself, that the character at least of Sophia stands for his first wife. "Foretell me," he says, in that invocation to fame, which is quoted by Gibbon (Tom Jones, Book xiii. ch. 1) "that some tender maid whose grandmother is yet unborn, hereafter, when under the fictitious name of Sophia, she reads the real worth which once existed in my Charlotte, shall from her sympathetic heart send forth a burning sigh." As his first love was Miss Sarah Andrews, and Mrs. Fielding, who died before the appearance of Tom Jones, was really named Charlotte, the authority should be conclusive; Sophia, we may assume, gives Mrs. Fielding in her maiden day as Amelia is avowedly and obviously-even to the broken nose-a portrait of her as a wife and mother. But what one may ask, does the portrait reveal to us? Can we recognise the individual, or do we only see the type? For delicate

portrayal of feminine character we must doubtless wait till the period at which women themselves took up the pencil. Fielding does not attempt to give us very delicate shading.

His Charlotte -if we may trust to his description, and by his Charlotte I mean, not the woman whom he loved, but the woman as perceived by him,-was clearly a thorough piece of healthy flesh and blood; by no means too bright and good for human nature's daily food; nor even capable of supposing that in this world any such perfection was either possible or desirable. She was a wholesome vigorous body, who could be equally at home as the mistress of a country house, or in the dairy of an old-fashioned farm; always with half-a-dozen chubby infants tugging at her skirts; kindly to all her dependants and tender to her dogs and birds; full of sound common sense and running over with merry good-humoured laughter; capable of dancing a town beau off his legs and of executing a tune on the harpsichord to soothe the breast of a country squire; but grossly wanting in modern accomplishments, and regarding the knowledge of Greek and Latin as totally inappropriate for women; ready to accept her husband as an angel, to forgive him any errors even till seventy times seven, and to set them down to the account of the rakes with whom it is proper for him to be acquainted, though their language and their ways are apt to be not a little startling to her simple intelligence. That capacity for forgiveness was indeed called into play rather too often, and may suggest that Fielding valued too highly the qualities which fit a woman to be the domestic slave of a reckless free-liver, who would soothe him when suffering from the headache which he had richly deserved, and never venture to ask inconvenient questions as to his employment of spare hours. But there is something more than this in Fielding's tone about his heroines. He really honours them with his whole big heart; he speaks of women with a chivalrous devotion, a generous appreciation of their purity and goodness which is wanting in all the bachelor wits of the previous generation, with the exception of Steele, who in warmth of heart as in recklessness of behaviour was a thoroughly congenial character. Fielding's wife, we may say, was not the affectionate dependant, ready to submit to any neglect and live thankfully upon the scraps which her domestic

tyrant might throw to her; she was the object of a true domestic worship, of a devotion hearty and sincere in spite of many failings, and of a worship, it may be added, which kept alive in the heart of the worshipper a generous and unstinted admiration for goodness, purity, and gentleness.

It is clear, indeed, that Mrs. Fielding did not succeed in impressing upon her husband the value of prudence. That hatred of the town and its ways, of ridottos and assemblies, and wits and courtiers, which inspired his poetry was so far genuine that the pair began by attempting a rustic retirement. The story of what followed is told by Murphy, and is repeated by all the biographers. Fielding, it seems, had inherited a small property of £200 a year from his mother, at East Stour in Dorsetshire. His mother had died in 1718, and the house was probably given up to him upon his marriage. With the help of his small income, and his wife's £1,500 he resolved to set up as a country squire. "A kind of family pride," in Murphy's opinion, "gained an ascendant over him." He gratified it by setting up "a large retinue of servants, all clad in costly yellow liveries." These liveries, as Murphy plausibly argues, probably required frequent renewal. Fielding, moreover, was exceedingly hospitable, and "in less than three years, entertainments, hounds and horses, entirely devoured a little patrimony, which, had it," &c., &c. In short, Fielding might have done well enough as a gentleman farmer, but he had tastes and habits which speedily ruined his property. The general statement may be true enough, though there is a good deal of difficulty in allowing three years for the process. Fielding was clearly in London during 1734, when he produced several plays, and the dedication to the Universal Gallant, is dated Buckingham Street, Feb. 12 (1735). Again, it is clear that he was back in London and managing a company in 1736. He must, therefore, it would seem, have spent his fortune upon yellow liveries in little over a year. Another remark, however, is more important. It is generally admitted that Fielding described his own history in the story of Booth's country life in Amelia. Booth, like Fielding, sets up as a farmer, and is ruined. His first mistake, as he tells Miss Mathews, is in adding a farm to his business, which turns out to be a bad bargain, and