pamphlet, of only twenty-three pages, dealing ironically with Irish affairs, in letters which Thomas Stupidius addresses to "The Fool," the name assumed by the editor of "The Daily Gazetteer," the violent anti-ministerial newspaper. Thomas Stupidius is bitterly opposed to the great improvements in the economic condition of the Irish people under the Pelham Ministry. He particularly denounces the encouragement given to the linen industry by means of bounties, and those "cursed Protestant schools," supported by private charity, wherein children "are taught to read the Bible... and still more infamously employed in tilling the land, spinning, weaving, or some other manual operations, unknown to their forefathers." He longs for the restoration of the good old times when the children were kept in "indolence and rags," and the priests frightened "these little reptiles" with purgatory and hell. pamphlet seems to have been written to praise the work done in Ireland by Lord Chesterfield as Lord Lieutenant and by his successor and kinsman, the first Earl of Harrington. The Doctors will disagree on the authorship of this and the other pamphlet. The Dublin editor altered the date of the affidavit to which the young ladies of "The Important Triflers" set their names, making it "16° Aprilis, 1749," instead of 1748, and also adjusted a line in the poem itself to the new date. These minor details, however, do not touch the question at issue. It is merely my own opinion that Fielding originally composed the verses at Bath in the circumstances described in the advertisement. They are in the light and playful mood so common in his occasional poems; and the translations from the Latin are like the free and facetious paraphrases seen all through his work and culminating in "The Covent-Garden Journal.” Similarly “Stultus versus Sapientem," slight as it appears, is in line with the irony of "The Jacobite's Journal," which he had edited; it is the laudation of men whom he had there lauded; and the economic position taken in the pamphlet is the same that Fielding afterwards elaborated elsewhere. In the second letter of Tom Stupidius to the Fool, we read: "The riches and prosperity of a nation are in proportion to their inhabitants properly employed." In "A Pro vision for the Poor," which we know Fielding wrote later, we read: "It is not barely . . . in the numbers of people, but in numbers of people well and properly disposed, that we can truly place the strength and riches of a society." Taking everything into consideration, we may, I think, restore the two lost strays to the Fielding fold. If they add nothing to his literary reputation, they have a bibliographical interest, and show that his name was worth something to Dublin publishers in 1749. In the meantime, "Tom Jones" was making its way abroad in a French dress. In June, 1749, Pierre-Antoine de la Place, who had just published his "Théâtre Anglais," read the novel and could not resist, he says, the temptation to translate it into his own language. Fearing that he might be anticipated by others, he set to work at once and completed his task before the year was out. The result was not so much a translation as an adaptation and abridgment according to principles explained in a letter which La Place addressed to Fielding in English and afterwards turned into French by way of preface or introduction to his volumes. "I have never seen you, Sir," said the translator, to paraphrase his French, for his own English has been lost, "but I love you; I do not know you, but I admire you. And yet if Mr. Fielding had written his novel for the French, he would probably have suppressed a large number of passages, which, though excellent in themselves, would appear out of place to French readers, who, when once interested in an intrigue, become impatient of digressions and dissertations, or a treatise on morals, and regard all these ornaments, however fine, as obstacles to the pleasure which they are in haste to enjoy." For this reason La Place proceeded to make over "Tom Jones" in accordance with French views of what a novel should be. "I have done," he said, "no more than the author himself would have done," had he been a Frenchman. On this assumption, he cut down the novel a full third-from six to four duodecimo volumes; compressed the narrative wherever he wished by giving the gist of it; abridged the dedication; and sent the initial chapters with two exceptions to the scrap heap. His opinion was that these "preliminary discourses," as he called them, might make a little volume, if printed separately, as instructive as amusing, but that they could not be tolerated as a part of the novel. In this mutilated version "Tom Jones" crossed the Channel and was read by Prince Charles Edward Stuart. The volumes were rendered unusually attractive by sixteen plates designed by Gravelot, who from a long residence in London knew English life much better than the translator. Like many other French translations of English books, the "Histoire de Tom Jones, ou L'Enfant Trouvé" was first printed in London, chez Jean Nourse, and then in Amsterdam, "aux Depens de la Compagnie"; that is, at the expense of a group of French booksellers residing there. Thence it spread to their agents in France and Germany. Copies for Dresden bore the imprint of "George Conrad Walther Libraire du Roi, Avec Privilège de Sa Maj. le Roi de Pol. Elect. de Saxe." Those for Paris, it was said by "The Gentleman's Magazine," were the ones "artfully" described on the title-page, to translate the French phrase, as "printed for Mr. Nourse in London." Other copies had on the title-page Paris, Reims, Geneva, or merely "En France." In France poor "Tom Jones" met with a rebuff. According to "Old England" for April 7, 1750, "A-la-Main," a Paris newspaper much quoted in London, had the following announcement in its issue for the sixteenth of March: "An Arrêt of the Council of State is issued for suppressing a certain immoral Work, entitled The History of Toм JONES, translated from the English." The prominence that Argus Centoculi gave to the word immoral in his translation of the decree shows with what delight he received the news. It was intimated in "The Gentleman's Magazine"* that French ladies were shocked by Tom's breaches of faith to Sophia and that parents exclaimed against her running from home in search of him. This was doubtless the immorality which the French saw in "Tom Jones." It was a question of differences in race and custom. As Fielding well knew, the irregularities of youth were easily pardoned in England; a girl who fled after her lover from a suitor whom she hated, was in fact a heroine in that land of liberty. The stay to the sale of "Tom Jones" in France appears to have been brief, for within a year the novel was having "a vast run" there. It was also immediately translated into Dutch and German. Thus far, discordant notes have entered now and then into the story I have told of the praise lavished upon "Tom Jones." It will be equally entertaining to reverse the process, to throw the emphasis of the narrative upon the discords. Strike a balance and we shall have the truth. By Fielding's enemies, "Tom Jones" was as completely damned as the worst of his comedies. First of all, there was Samuel Richardson. What he thought of "the bastard" may be seen in the Barbauld correspondence and in those unpublished letters which passed between him and his friends, now preserved at the South Kensington Museum. Twice in "The Jacobite's Journal," Fielding had expressed the highest admiration for "Clarissa Harlowe" when the first two volumes of that novel made their * March, 1750, XX, 117-118. appearance. "Sure this Mr. Richardson," he wrote there, "is master of all that art which Horace compares to witchcraft, This apt quotation from Horace, Richardson conveyed to a postscript appended to his last volume for the purpose of explaining how "Clarissa Harlowe" differed from all other novels; and an admirer paraphrased the passage for the opening lines of a "sonnet" subsequently placed before the preface: O master of the heart! whose magic skill The close recesses of the soul can find, The complete "Clarissa" thus bore, though impressed by other hands, the finger-print of Henry Fielding. The anonymous poet could do no better than expand his words for adulation; Richardson could do no better than employ them for a disquisition on the novelist's art. Before the last instalment of "Clarissa" was published, Fielding, probably in a conversation with Richardson, advised him to give the novel "a happy ending." Beyond this private advice, which the author heard also from Lyttelton, the poet Thomson, and others, Fielding never went in his strictures on "Clarissa Harlowe." Who was right, it matters not; for Richardson could brook no criticism. Whoever questioned his infallibility lost at once his favour, which could be won back only by the most abject flattery. Such was the temper of this irritable little man who wrote a very great novel. He never forgot, too, as his letters show, Fielding's "rude engraftment" on "Pamela"; and when "Tom Jones" now appeared on the heels of "Clarissa |