is it to be denied that there were probably some points in Fielding's history which neither he nor any one else would have regarded as altogether edifying.

Anyhow, the man eludes our grasp. No one took the trouble during his life even to draw his picture; and the only portrait seems to be Hogarth's drawing made after his death from recollection sharpened by a profile cut by a lady with a pair of scissors; the man himself is dimly visible—an impalpable shadowy phantom, half distinguishable under the gathering mists. Yet we know as much of him as is necessary to explain his work; and it will be as well to bring together the main outlines, which any one may fill up more minutely by such colouring as pleases his fancy.

Henry Fielding was born on the 22nd of April, 1707, at Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury, in Somersetshire. His father was an officer who served under Marlborough, and became Lieutenant-General about 1730. Fielding was the eldest of six children; and, upon the death of his mother, his father married again and had a second family. It appears pretty plainly that this step would not have been approved by Malthus; and that the old gentleman, like his son, was very indifferent to the prudential checks upon matrimony. He may possibly have hoped for some kind of patronage from the noble family to which he belonged. The only way in which the pedigree is interesting to us is from Fielding's relationship to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,1 his second cousin, and certainly one of the ablest women of her time. Fielding's first start in life implies that he

1 The relationship, which it may be worth explaining, appears from the following table in Dallaway's edition of Lady Mary's works :—

was to claim a place in the higher social ranks. His early education, indeed, was intrusted to the family chaplain, one Mr. Oliver, said to have been the original of Parson Trulliber, and, if so, better fitted for the care of swine than of children. But that—as we must infer from common experience is seldom regarded as an important consideration, even by well-meaning parents. On escaping from Trulliber, Fielding was soon sent to Eton, where, as his biographers assure us, he became a good classical scholar. It is, indeed, clear-and it is worth notice-that Fielding had at some time of his life acquired familiarity with many good authors. He does not show any recondite reading, but he has rather a weakness for displaying what reading he has; and the reading is of a creditable kind. He has evidently read the most famous writers of classical and modern times, and has read them, not indeed with the eyes of a minute scholar, but with those of an independent man of the world, who looks at life directly, besides gathering secondhand knowledge through books. Shakespeare, Cervantes, Molière, and several of the great English writers of the preceding century, as well as the best known classical poets, had evidently been familiar companions. At Eton, moreover, he seems to have made some friendships, which might have been of more service to him if he had taken the regular path to preferment. Amongst these contemporaries were the great rivals, William Pitt and Henry Fox, the well-known Charles Hanbury Williams, and one who seems to have retained more of his early friendship, or, at least, to have given more proofs of it than any of the others, namely, George, afterwards the first Lord Lyttelton. When most of his companions went to Oxford from Cambridge, Fielding, for some reason, was sent to Leyden. He lost no time, we are assured, in placing himself under the celebrated Vitriarius, then professor of civil law, and was assiduous in attending lectures and taking notes. The selection of Leyden seems rather curious, as one would fancy that the celebrated Vitriarius had little authority in Westminster Hall. Scotch students of law frequently resorted to Leyden, as was done by the immortal Boswell, a generation later; and medical students, like Goldsmith or Akenside, might go there to attend lectures or obtain a degree. John Wilkes, too, was

sent to Leyden some twenty years afterwards, because his parents were Dissenters, who wished to protect him (as they certainly did) from the contamination of English orthodoxy. In Fielding's case it seems probable that pecuniary considerations were already coming into play; and it appears that, as funds became scarce, he speedily returned to London with that famous allowance of 2007. a year, which "anybody might pay who would." About the only reference to his Dutch experiences which I have noticed in Fielding's works is a comparison in the Fourney from this World to the Next. An offensive smell, as he approaches the city of diseases, "very much resembled the savour, which travellers in summer perceive as they approach to that beautiful village of the Hague, arising from those delicious canals, which, as they consist of standing water, do at that time emit odours greatly agreeable to a Dutch taste, but not so pleasant to any other. Those perfumes, with the assistance of a fair wind, begin to affect persons of quick olfactory nerves at a league's distance, and increase gradually as you approach." The comparison may possibly recall Dante, but it does not throw much light upon Fielding's academical career. He refers also, in the essay on the Increase of Robbers to the rarity and solemnity of capital punishments in Holland.

At this point we have Fielding launched into the stream of London life, at the age of twenty. He was, as we are told, over six feet high, of great physical strength and immense powers of enjoyment. It was at this period that he must have been known to his cousin Lady Mary, who was then one of the leaders of London society. He dedicates his first play to her in language of profound respect, and informs the world that she condescended to read it, and to honour the representation with her presence. Lady Mary, now at the age of thirty-seven, wondered at the gusto with which her young kinsman was flinging himself upon the pleasures of the town. When she heard of his death, near thirty years later, she still had before her the recollection of his amazing vitality. She regrets his death because she thinks that he has lost more than other men. Nobody enjoyed life more, "though few had less reason to do so, the highest of his preferment being raking in the lowest sinks of vice and misery. His happy constitution

(even when he had with great pains half demolished it) made him forget every evil when he was before a venison pasty or over a flask of champagne, and I am persuaded he has known more happy moments than any prince on earth. His natural spirits gave him rapture with his cookmaid and cheerfulness when he was starving in a garret." Fielding and Steele, she goes on to say, "both agreed in wanting money in spite of all their friends, and would have wanted it if their hereditary lands had been as extensive as their imaginations, yet each of them was so formed for happiness it is a pity he was not immortal." This is a view which commends itself very naturally to the rich and worldly speculating upon the fate of a poor relation. After all, they say, the poor devil had the best of it; our wealth would have been thrown away upon him; he would have thrown it to the dogs; and he enjoyed himself quite as much in his rags. It is a comfort to know that we could have done nothing for him. It is not improbable indeed that there was a good deal of truth in this rather cynical judgment, and yet poor Fielding might have smiled rather bitterly if he could have known Lady Mary's opinion. He had gone through trials of which she probably knew little enough, and had learnt, we suspect, during his later years to be less reckless in the pursuit of enjoyment.

For the present, however, this was probably the true Fielding. Given a young man of enormous animal vigour, with good connections and school friends amongst the privileged classes, turned loose in London with a shadowy allowance, and invited to make his way by his wits, we might safely anticipate the first stage of his career. If we have any difficulty in filling the outlines of the picture we have only to turn to the pages of Tom Jones and Amelia, where if we do not find actual autobiography, we have undoubtedly what may be called autobiography transmuted into fiction. A story remains of an early passion for a cousin, of severe parents, and an attempted elopement. The disappointed lover speedily recovered his spirits, and took a rather odd revenge by translating part of the sixth satire of Juvenal. It is clear, however, that he never became a misogynist, and was much more inclined, as he says, to panegyric on that "amiable He had speedily to look about him for ways and means,

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and his only choice, as he said, lay between being a hackney coachman and a hackney writer. The only recognised means of making any but the humblest living by the pen was through the drama. Even Johnson, when not long afterwards, he threw himself upon the town, managed to squeeze out a tragedy by way of providing himself for the journey. In those days, the author looked forward as naturally to the third night of a play as he now does to the second edition of a novel. In a few years Fielding became a prolific though not a very successful dramatist. His biographers have thought it right to consider at some length the problem why eminent success in one department of literature should be compatible with comparative failure in another. Scott was possibly thinking of the author of Waverley when he endeavoured to prove that there was a natural incompatibility between the talents of the novelist and the dramatist. It is impossible to put much confidence in any such à priori demonstration, which may be upset by a single concrete case, as, for example, by that of Victor Hugo. It is clear enough that the two kinds of writing demand very different methods, and most eminent writers have a special idiosyncrasy which makes one form of utterance the most congenial. But there seems to be no sufficient reason for doubting that some men may be versatile enough to achieve success in both; and I can in particular see no ground for doubting that Fielding, under different conditions, might have been eminent, at least in that class of drama in which Ben Jonson is our first and greatest master. No man had a keener eye for "humours," or was more capable of devising telling situations. I am content, therefore, to explain his shortcomings on humbler and more special grounds. Fielding said himself that he left off writing for the stage at the time when he ought to have begun. His immediate masters indeed were especially youthful. Congreve ceased to write at thirty, and Farquhar died before he was thirty; Wycherley, if his own (very doubtful) statement is to be accepted, wrote his best play at the age of twenty-five. We can hardly say therefore that Fielding showed very remarkable precocity, though he returned from Leyden with at least one play in his pocket, and had composed some twenty dramatic pieces of various kinds