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THE BRITISH EDITION OF FIELDING'S SELECT WORKS.

THE distinguished merit of Fielding has always procured for his works a circulation, fully as general and extensive as the productions of any other author in the English language have ever obtained. The most valuable parts of his works have, indeed, been so often and so variously printed, that any new edition of them, at present, may appear to be almost unnecessary. But in the numberless editions of his detached works, from the dissimilarity of form, there is now considerable difficulty in finding what is valuable among the literary remains of Fielding, exhibited in a manner, at once creditable to his talents, and agreeable to his admirers.

The success which the select works of Smollett have met with, has induced the Publishers to offer THE SELECT WORKS OF FIELDING, printed in a uniform manner. In making this Selection, they have been guided by the public judgment alone. The Dramatic Works of Fielding, which are now almost unknown, they have not attempted to recall from oblivion. Nor have they brought forward his Political performances, which, for obvious reasons, could have been interesting only at the period at which they were written. They have, in short, presented to the public, under the name of Select Works, no more than what have long and universally received the fullest approbation; and these, it may confidently be said, will be transmitted with undiminished admiration to the latest posterity.

To this First American Edition of the Select Works of Fielding, a LIFE OF THE AUTHOR by Sir Walter Scott, and an ESSAY ON HIS LIFE AND GENIUS, by Arthur Murphy, Esq. have been prefixed.

The American Publishers have in press, printed in a uniform manner with the present work, THE SELECT WORKS OF SMOLLETT, in 2 volumes octavo.

THE

LIFE OF HENRY FIELDING.

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Of all the works of imagination to which English | as a judge of police, by the title of Sir John Fielding. genius has given origin, the novels of the celebrated It is most probable that the expense attending so Henry Fielding are, perhaps, most decidedly and ex-large a family, together with a natural thoughtlessclusively her own. They are not only altogether be-ness of disposition on the part of his father, occasionyond the reach of translation, in the proper sense and ed Henry's being early thrown into those precarious spirit of the word, but we even question whether they circumstances, with which, excepting at brief intercan be fully understood, or relished to the highest ex-vals, he continued to struggle through life. tent, by such natives of Scotland and Ireland, as are not habitually acquainted with the character and manners of Old England. Parson Adams, Towwouse, Partridge, above all, Squire Western, are personages as peculiar to England as they are unknown to other countries. Nay, the actors whose character is of a more general cast, as Allworthy, Mrs. Miller, Tom Jones himself, and almost all the subordinate agents in the narrative, have the same cast of nationality, which adds not a little to the verisimilitude of the tale. The persons of the story live in England, travel in England, quarrel and fight in England; and scarce an incident occurs without its being marked by something which could not well have happened in any other country. This nationality may be ascribed to the author's own habits of life, which rendered him conversant, at different periods, with all the various classes of English society, specimens of which he has selected, with inimitable spirit of choice and description, for the amusement of his readers. Like many other men of talent, Fielding was unfortunate; his life was a life of imprudence and uncertainty. But it was, while passing from the high society to which he was born, to that of the lowest and most miscellaneous kind, that he acquired the extended familiarity with the English character, in every rank and aspect, which has made his name immortal as a painter of national manners.

Henry Fielding, born April 22, 1707, was of noble descent, the third son of General Edmund Fielding, himself the third son of the Honourable John Fielding, who was the fifth son of William, Earl of Denbigh, who died in 1655. Our author was nearly connected with the ducal family of Kingston, which boasted a brighter ornament than rank or titles could bestow, in the wit and beauty of the celebrated Lady Mary Wortley Montague. The mother of Henry Fielding was a daughter of Judge Gold, the first wife of his father, the General. Henry was the only son of this marriage; but he had four sisters of the full blood, of whom Sarah, the third, was distinguished as an authoress, by the History of David Simple, and other literary attempts. General Fielding married a sccond time, after the death of his first lady, and had a numerous family, one of whom is well remembered

After receiving the rudiments of education from the Rev. Mr. Oliver, who is supposed to have furnished him with the outline of Parson Trulliber's character, Fielding was removed to Eton, where he was imbued deeply with that love of classic literature which may be traced through all his works. As his father destined him to the bar, he was sent from Eton to study at Leyden, where he is said to have given earnest attention to the civil law. Had he remained in this regular course of study, the courts would probably have gained a lawyer, and the world would have lost a man of genius; but the circumstances of General Fielding determined the chance in favour of posterity, though, perhaps, against his son. Remittances failed, and the young student was compelled to return at the age of twenty, to plunge into the dissipation of London, without a monitor to warn him, or a friend to support him. General Fielding, indeed, promised his son an allowance of two hundred pounds a year; but this, as Fielding himself used to say, "any one migh pay who would." It is only necessary to add, tha Fielding was tall, handsome, and well-proportioned, had an expressive countenance, and possessed, with an uncommonly strong constitution, a keen relish of pleasure, with the power of enjoying the present moment, and trusting to chance for the future;-and the reader has before him sufficient grounds to estimate the extent of his improvidence and distress. Lady Mary Wortley Montague, his kinswoman and early acquaintance, has traced his temperament and its consequences in a few lines; and no one, who can use her words, would willingly employ his own.

"I am sorry for Henry Fielding's death," says her ladyship, in one of her letters, upon receiving information of that event, "not only as I shall read no more of his writings, but because I believe he lost more than others, as no man enjoyed life more than he did; though few had less occasion to do so, the highest of his preferment being raking in the lowest sinks of vico and misery. I should think it a nobler and less nauseous employment to be one of the staff-officers that conduct the nocturnal weddings. 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 ;

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and, I am persuaded, he has known more happy mo- | This may, perhaps, be found in the nature of these

ments than any prince upon earth. His natural spirits gave him rapture with his cook-maid, and cheerfulness when he was starving in a garret. There was a great similitude between his character and that of Sir Richard Steele. He had the advantage, both in learning and, in my opinion, genius; they 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 imagination; yet each of them was so formed for happiness, it is pity he was not immortal."

two studies, which intimately connected as they seem to be, are yet naturally distinct in some very essential particulars, so much so as to vindicate the general opinion, that he who applies himself with eminent success to the one, becomes, in some degree, unqualified for the other; like the artisan, who, by a particular turn for excellence in one mechanical department, loses the habit of dexterity necessary for acquitting himself with equal reputation in another; or, as the artist who has dedicated himself to the use of watercolours, is usually less distinguished by his skill in

It is the sole object of the novel-writer to place before the reader as full and accurate a representation of the events which he relates as can be done by the mere force of an excited imagination, without the assistance of material objects. His sole appeal is made to the world of fancy and of ideas, and in this consists his strength and his weakness, his poverty and his wealth. He cannot, like the painter, present a visible and tangible representation of his towns and his woods, his palaces and his castles; but, by awakening the imagination of a congenial reader, he places before his mind's eye landscapes fairer than those of

Some resources were necessary for a man of plea-oil-painting. sure, and Fielding found them in his pen, having, as he used to say himself, no alternative but to be a hackney writer or a hackney coachman. He at first employed himself in writing for the theatre, then in high reputation, having recently engaged the talents of Wycherly, of Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar. Fielding's comedies and farces were brought on the stage in hasty succession; and play after play, to the number of eighteen, sunk or swam on the theatrical sea betwixt the years 1727 and 1736. None of these are now known or read, excepting the mock tragedy of Tom Thumb, the translated play of the Miser, and the farces of The Mock Doctor and Intriguing Cham-Claude, and wilder than those of Salvator. He canbermaid, and yet they are the production of an author unrivalled for his conception and illustration of character in the kindred walk of imaginary narrative.

not, like the dramatist, present before our living eyes the heroes of former days, or the beautiful creations of his own fancy, embodied in the grace and majesty of Kemble or of Siddons; but he can teach his reader to conjure up forms even more dignified and beautiful than theirs. The same difference follows him through every branch of his art. The author of a novel, in short, has neither stage nor scene-painter, nor com

applied with the best of his skill, must supply all that these bring to the assistance of the dramatist. Action and tone, and gesture, the smile of the lover, the frown of the tyrant, the grimace of the buffoon, ali must be told, for nothing can be shown. Thus, the very dialogue becomes mixed with the narration, for he must not only tell what the characters actually said, in which his task is the same as that of the dramatic author, but must also describe the tone, the

Fielding, the first of British novelists, for such he may surely be termed, has thus added his name to that of Le Sage and others, who, eminent for fictitious narration, haye either altogether failed in their dramatic attempts, or, at least, have fallen far short of that degree of excellence which might have been pre-pany of comedians, nor dresser, nor wardrobe: words, viously augured of them. It is hard to fix upon any plausible reason for a failure, which has occurred in too many instances, to be the operation of mere chance, since a priori, one would think the same talents necessary for both walks of literature. Force of character, strength of expression, felicity of contrast and situation, a well-constructed plot, in which the development is at once natural and unexpected, and where the interest is kept uniformly alive, till summed up by the catastrophe-all these are requi-look, the gesture, with which their speech was accomsites as essential to the labour of the novelist as to panied-telling, in short, all which in the drama it bethat of the dramatist, and, indeed, appear to compre- comes the province of the actor to express. It must, hend the sum of the qualities necessary to success in therefore, frequently happen, that the author best qua both departments. Fielding's biographers have, in lified for a province in which all depends on the comthis particular instance, explained his lack of theatri- munication of his own ideas and feelings to the reacal success as arising entirely from the careless haste der, without any intervening medium, may fall short with which he huddled up his dramatic compositions; of the skill necessary to adapt his compositions to the it being no uncommon thing with him to finish an act medium of the stage, where the very qualities most or two in a morning, and to write out whole scenes excellent in a novelist are out of place, and an impeupon the paper in which his favourite tobacco had diment to success. Description and narration, which been wrapped up. Negligence of this kind will, no form the very essence of the novel, must be very doubt, give rise to great inequalities in the productions sparingly introduced into dramatic composition, and of an author so careless of his reputation, but will scarce ever have a good effect upon the stage. Mr. scarcely account for an attribute something like dul- Puff, in The Critic, has the good sense to leave out ness, which pervades Fielding's plays, and which is "all about gilding the eastern hemisphere;" and the rarely found in those works which a man of genius very first thing which the players struck out of his throws off" at a heat," to use Dryden's expression, in memorable tragedy, was the description of Queen prodigal self-reliance on his internal resources. Nei- Elizabeth, her palfrey, and her side-saddle. The ther are we at all disposed to believe, that an author drama speaks to the eye and ear, and when it ceases so careless as Fielding, took much more pains in la- to address these bodily organs, and would exact from bouring his novels than in composing his plays, and a theatrical audience that exercise of the imagination we are therefore compelled to seek some other and which is necessary to follow forth and embody cirmore general reason for the inferiority of the latter.cumstances neither spoken nor exhibited, there is an

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