HENRY FIELDING

(1707-1754)

BY LESLIE STEPHEN

AM," says Fielding incidentally, in his most famous novel, "the founder of a new province of writing." The claim, though bold, is certainly not groundless. The English novel, as we know it, has in the main been developed upon the lines laid down by Fielding. It is true that Fielding, like every leader of a new literary dynasty, inherited much from earlier rulers. He looked back with reverence to Cervantes; and critics have shown that he was influenced by Le Sage, and more distinctly by Marivaux. In English literature, Defoe and Richardson in some respects anticipated him; but with differences which show his originality. 'Robinson Crusoe is simply a narrative of facts, though the facts did not happen to take place. The author expects us to be interested in a strange series of adventures, and is not consciously aiming at the portrayal of life and character. Richardson, on the contrary, began by composing edifying moral epistles, into which a story was introduced by way of connecting thread. To his own mind the didactic element always represented the ultimate aim; though his readers become a good deal more interested in Clarissa than in the moral which she was intended to point.

But Fielding- as he again tells us-means deliberately to describe "human nature." Like Shakespeare before him or Scott after him, . he is to set before us impartially the world as it presented itself to him; to give us living and moving types of the real human beings whom he had seen acting under the ordinary conditions of contemporary society. The novel, thus understood, has grown and flourished and taken many different forms. We wonder at times what'our an-. cestors did to amuse themselves in the days before it was invented. Contemporary moralists denounced the habit of frivolous reading as they do now. What was the seduction to which these frivolous readers yielded? They had novels in the old sense of the word, stories such as had been once told by Boccaccio and had lately been furbished up by Mrs. Behn. Or they might seek for more prolonged enjoyment in the voluminous romances of the Grand Cyrus' kind, which, inpelessly unreadable as they appear to us, were still intensely fascin hayg to many readers; to Fielding's cousin Lady Mary Wortley

Montagu, for example, and to his contemporary Dr. Johnson. And then, of course, the drama formed a larger proportion of light reading than at present. But the comedy of the time to which they were principally confined, brilliant as some of it is, shows but a very limited aspect of human life. It introduced them to a smart game of intrigue played by fine ladies and gentlemen, always clearly before the footlights. The novel, with its flexibility, its freedom from all external restrictions, enables us to enjoy to the full the pleasureobviously one of the greatest of pleasures-of steadily contemplating ourselves. We do not see the characters by a single flash, as they appear in some ingenious entanglement of affairs, but watch their growth and development, their conduct through a whole series of events, share their friendships and enmities, and are not prevented. from following them by the necessities of scenical representation. Fielding showed his genius by perceiving the capabilities of the still crude form of art, and he turned them to account in some directions with a success scarcely surpassed.

Fielding explains his own theory of the art in some of those running commentaries in which some critics think-though I do notthat he indulged too freely. He aspired, as he tells us, to set forth human nature. Naturally it had to be the human nature of his own day, and of his own day in England; and a brief summary of his life will show what that implies. Fielding's father was a soldier and ultimately a general; but though connected with various great people, he seems to have been always impecunious. Fielding, born April 22d, 1707, at Sharpham near Glastonbury, was sent to Eton, where he was the contemporary of the elder Pitt, of Lyttelton, and of many men who afterwards played a conspicuous part in the great game of politics. Fielding, however, on leaving school had to leave the arena in which a long purse was then essential. His father had married a second time, and was burthened with a second family. Though he made an allowance of £200 a year to Henry, it was an allowance, said the son, which "anybody might pay who would." Untroubled by such considerations, he made love to a rich young lady, and even put the your lady's guardian in fear of his life. Perhaps this performance accounts for his being packed off to Leyden to study law. Studying law, however, was not so much to his taste as writing plays; and his first performance was acted when he was just of age. Leyden and the law were soon deserted, and Fielding plunged into the pleasures of a town life in London. He was six feet high, strong and active, with enormous capacity for enjoyment and not over-delicate in his tastes. Vigorous appetites and a narrow allowance made some provision of ways and means essential. choose, said his cousin Lady Mary, between the trades ofin

had to

ckney

coachman and a hackney author. The profession of author was just coming into distinct existence; and the struggles and hardships of the career have been commemorated by the best known authors of the day.

Fielding belonged by birth to the social class which looked down upon the hack author. Happily for itself, as Chesterfield remarked, it had a more solid support than was to be found in its brains. Fielding too had received a classical education, a fact which he is a little too fond of indicating by allusions in his works. Play-writing was the most gentlemanlike part of the profession, and therefore the most attractive to the young man. The comedy presupposed some familiarity with good society. Congreve, Addison, Steele, and many others condescended to write plays, though they were also admitted to the highest circles. Moreover, a successful play was more remunerative than any other form of literary work. Gay had made a little fortune by The Beggar's Opera.' Fielding naturally followed such examples with some gleams of success. It is indeed needless for any one to read his performances now. He is, generally speak-1 ing, in an artificial note, aping Congreve or adapting Molière. In 'Tom Thumb,' indeed,—a jovial burlesque, full of nonsense and high spirit and broad satire,—we see unmistakably the genuine Fielding. It gave one of the only two pretexts, we are told, upon which Swift ever indulged in a laugh.

The comedies may be kindly consigned to oblivion. There was much else that Fielding would gladly have forgotten, in the part of his life which most impressed his biographers. The reckless, jovial rake, with pockets overflowing one day and empty the next, with a velvet coat sometimes on his back and sometimes in pawn, sometimes admitted to the drawing-room of Lady Mary and then carousing with boon companions in a tavern, or eclipsed for a period in the sponging-house, -is the Fielding of this period, and has been taken as the only Fielding. The scanty anecdotes which remain have stamped the impression upon later readers. We are presented to Fielding in the green-room, drinking champagne and chewing tobacco. A friend has warned him that a passage in his play will offend the audience. "Damn them!" he had replied, "let them find that out!» The friend now reports that the audience are hissing. "Damn them!» he exclaims, "they have found it out, have they?" The hisses, however, as we happen to know, affected him a good deal. Then we are told how Fielding emptied his pockets into those of a poorer friend, and when the tax-gatherer came, said, "Friendship has called for the money; let the collector call again!" No doubt that was one aspect of Fielding. To do him justice, it must be noted that a fuller record would have shown some less equivocal proofs of good feeling.

We dimly make out that the chief incident of Fielding's dramatic career was his share in a quarrel between Cibber, then manager, and certain actors to whom, as Fielding thought, Cibber had behaved unfairly. Cibber, the smart, dapper little Frenchified coxcomb, was just the type of all the qualities which Fielding most heartily despised; and they fell foul of each other with great heartiness. On the other hand, he was equally enthusiastic on behalf of his friends. Chief among them were Hogarth, whose paintings are the best comment on Fielding's novel, and Garrick, whom, though of very different temperament, he admired and praised with the most cordial generosity. "Harry Fielding," as his familiars call him, was no doubt a wild youth, but to all appearance a most trustworthy and warm-hearted friend. Fielding moreover was a devoted lover. The facts about his marriage are all uncertain: but we know that he courted Charlotte Cradock of Salisbury; that he was writing poems to her in 1730, and that he married her (probably) about 1735. If we wish to know what Miss Cradock was like, we are referred to Sophia in Tom Jones'; and still more to Amelia. Amelia was his first wife, it is said, «< even to that broken nose," which according to Johnson ruined the success of the story. Both novels were written after her death, and are indicative of a lasting passion, which, whatever else it may have been, was worthy of a masculine and tender nature. Miss Cradock's lover was not free from faults,—faults tangible enough and evidently the cause of much bitter remorse; but he was at least a lover who worshiped her with unstinted and manly devotion. The marriage, which took place when he was about twenty-eight, changed his life. Vague stories-dates and facts in Fielding's life, all of provoking flimsiness and inconsistency-indicate that he tried to set up as a country gentleman on some small property of his wife's; that the neighboring squires spited the town wit, who, if not very refined, was at least a writer of books, and therefore justly open to suspicion of arrogance; but that Fielding himself, which is not surprising, made a bad farmer; and that before long he was back in London, with his finances again at the ebb and additional burthens to support. His first effort was in his old line: he took a small theatre and brought out a successful political farce. Walpole was at this time still at the height of power, but a formidable and heterogeneous opposition was gathering against him. Whigs, Tories, and Jacobites were uniting to denounce corruption, which was right enough; but imagining, not so rightly, that the fall of Walpole would imply the end of corruption. Fielding was a hearty Whig; a believer in the British Constitution, and a despiser of French frog-eaters, beggarly unbreeched Scotsmen, and Jacobites, and Papists, and all such obnoxious entities. He joined heartily, however, in the cry against Walpole by his 'Pasquin:

A Dramatic Satire on the Times.' The piece had a great run; and Fielding, always sanguine, no doubt hoped that at last he was getting his feet upon solid ground. But Walpole was a dangerous enemy. He obtained the passage of an Act of Parliament which made it necessary to obtain a license for plays.

Fielding's occupation was gone. It was quite plain that no license would be given to farces aimed at the prime minister. He gave up the theatre and made another effort. He entered at one of the Inns of Court and began to study the law. He was still only thirty-two, and full of abundant energy. He would leave his tavern (perhaps it would have been better not to have gone to it) to go home and pore over "abstruse authors" till far into the night. He was called to the bar in 1740, and duly attended the quarter-sessions. Briefs, however, did not come. Then, as now, attorneys looked with some suspicion upon men distracted by literary aims. Fielding, in fact, was obliged to support himself during his legal studies by working at his old trade. He tried the usual schemes of a professional author of those days. He brought out a periodical on the Spectator model, called the Champion. He wrote a Vindication' of the old Duchess of Marlborough, for which the duchess paid five guineas,- only, we will hope, an installment. During the rebellion of 1745, he published a journal intended to arouse John Bull out of his apparent apathy. He had already struck out another and more fruitful line. In 1742 he brought out 'Joseph Andrews'-to indulge in a great guffaw at Richardson's sentimental Pamela." As he developed the story he fell in love with his characters as Dickens fell in love with Pickwick, and became more serious in his aims. By this book he made about £200, and his success encouraged him to publish by subscription in 1743 three volumes of 'Miscellanies.' In those days a subscription was a kind of joint-stock patronage, and showed chiefly that the author had friends among "persons of quality." Fielding probably made £400 or £500, which was no doubt a welcome transient help. The Miscellanies' include one of his most remarkable if not pleasantest performances, Jonathan Wild the Great.' 'Joseph Andrews' had shown his true power, and it is perhaps rather remarkable that 'Tom Jones' did not follow until 1749. Whatever Fielding's anxieties, it is noticeable that he did his work as thoroughly as if he had been independent of the pay. Before speaking of his literary performance, however, I will continue the story of his life..

His wife died at the end of 1743. His grief, it is said, was so great that his friends feared the loss of his reason. He had however children to care for, and was too brave a man to relax in his fight with the fates. He had still some hopes of success at the bar, and at one moment, probably on some gleam of success, declared