play great acrimony against Sir Robert Walpole, from whom, in the year 1730, he had in vain sought for patronage. The freedom of his satire is said to have operated considerably in producing a measure which was thought necessary to arrest the license o. the stage, and put an end to that proneness to per

the success of Gay's Beggar's Opera. This measure was the discretionary power vested in the Lord Chamberlain of refusing a license to any piece of which he should disapprove. The regulation was the cause of much clamour at the time; but licentious satire has since found so many convenient modes of access to the public, that its exclusion from the stage is no longer a matter of interest or regret; nor is it now deemed a violent aggression on liberty, that con

About 1736, Fielding seems to have formed the resolution of settling in life. He espoused a young lady of Salisbury, named Craddock; beautiful, amiable, and possessed of 1500l. About the same time, by the

immediate failure, though it may be the failure of a man of genius. Hence it follows, that though a good acting play may be made, by selecting a plot and characters from a novel, yet scarce any effort of genius could render a play into a narrative romance. In the former case, the author has only to contract the events within the space necessary for represen-sonal and political satire, which had been fostered by tation, to choose the most striking characters, and exhibit them in the most forcible contrast, discard from the dialogue whatever is redundant or tedious, and so dramatize the whole. But we know not any effort of genius which could successfully insert into a good play those accessaries of description and delineation which are necessary to dilate it into a readable novel. It may thus easily be conceived, that he whose chief talent lies in addressing the imagination only, and whose style, therefore, must be expanded and circum-tending political parties cannot be brought into colstantial, may fail in a kind of composition where so lision within the walls of the theatres, intended as much must be left to the efforts of the actor, with his they are for places of public amusement, nor for allies and assistants, the scene-painter and property-scenes of party struggle. man, and where every attempt to interfere with their province, is an error unfavourable to the success of the piece. Besides, it must be farther remembered, that in fictitious narrative an author carries on his manufacture alone, and upon his own account, where-death, it has been supposed, of his mother, he suc as, in dramatic writing, he enters into partnership with the performers, and it is by their joint efforts that the piece is to succeed. Copartnery is called, by civilians, the mother of discord; and, how likely it is to prove so in the present instance, may be illustrated by reference to the admirable dialogue between the player and poet, in Joseph Andrews, book iii. chap. 10. The poet must either be contented to fail, or to make great condescensions to the experience, and pay much attention to the peculiar qualifications of these by whom his piece is to be represented. And he, who, in a novel, had only to fit sentiments, action, and character, to ideal beings, is now compelled to assume the much more difficult task of adapting all these to real existing persons, who, unless their parts are exactly suited to their own taste, and their pecu-improvident master; and three years found Fielding liar capacities, have, each in his line, the means, and not unfrequently the inclination, to ruin the success of the play. Such are, amongst many others, the poculiar difficulties of the dramatic art, and they seem impediments which lie peculiarly in the way of the novelist who aspires to extend his sway over the

stage.

ceeded to a small estate of about 2001. per annum, situated at Stower, in Derbyshire, affording him, in those days, the means of decent competence. To this place he retired from London, but unfortunately carried with him the same improvident disposition to enjoy the present, at the expense of the future, which seems to have marked his whole life. He established an equipage, with showy liveries; and his biographers lay some stress on the circumstance, that the colour being a bright yellow, required to be frequently renewed; an important particular, which, in humble imitation of our accurate predecessors, we deem it unpardonable to suppress. Horses, hounds, and the exercise of an unbounded hospitality, soon aided the yellow livery-men in devouring the substance of their

without land, home, or revenue, a student in the Temple, where he applied himself closely to the law, and after the usual term was called to the bar. It is bable he brought nothing from Derbyshire, save that proexperience of a rural life and its pleasures, which afterwards enabled him to delineate the inimitable Squire Western.

We have noticed that, until in the year 1737, or there- Fielding had now a profession, and as he had abouts, Fielding lived the life of a man of wit and strongly applied his powerful mind to the principles pleasure about town, seeking and finding amusement of the law, it might have been expected that success in scenes of gaiety and dissipation, and discharging would have followed in proportion. But those prothe expense incidental to such a life, by the precarious fessional persons, who can advance or retard the resources afforded by the stage. He even became, practice of a young lawyer, mistrusted probably the for a season, the manager of a company, having as- application of a wit and a man of pleasure to the busembled together, in 1735, a number of discarded co-siness they might otherwise have confided to him, medians, who he proposed should execute his own dramas at the little theatre in the Haymarket, under the title of the Great Mogul's Company of Comedians. The project did not succeed; and the company, which, as he expressed it, had seemed to drop from the clouds, were under the necessity of disbanding.

During his theatrical career, Fielding, like most authors of the time, found it impossible to interest the public sufficiently in the various attempts which he made to gain popular favour, without condescending to flatter their political animosities. Two of his draDatic pieces, Pasquin and the Historical Register, dis

and it is said that Fielding's own conduct was such as to justify their want of confidence. Disease, the consequence of a free life, came to the aid of dissipation of mind, and interrupted the course of Fielding's practice by severe fits of the gout, which gradually impaired his robust constitution. We find him, therefore, having again recourse to the stage, where he attempted to produce a continuation of his own piece, The Virgin Unmasked: but as one of the characters was supposed to be written in ridicule of a man of quality, the chamberlain refused his license. Pamphlets of political controversy, fugitive tracts, and

Joseph Andrews was eminently successful; and the aggrieved Richardson, who was fond of praise even to adulation, was proportionally offended, while his

essays, were the next means he had recourse to for subsistence; and as his ready pen produced them upon every emergency, he contrived by the profits to support himself and his family, to which he was fond-group of admirers, male and female, took care to echo ly attached.

back his sentiments, and to heap Fielding with reproach. Their animosity survived his life, and we find the most ungenerous reproaches thrown upon his memory, in the course of Richardson's correspondence. Richardson was well acquainted with Fielding's sisters, and complained to them-not of Fielding's usage of himself, that he was too wise, or too proud to mention, but-of his unfortunate predilection to what was mean and low in character and description. The following expressions are remarkable, as well for the extreme modesty of the writer, who thus rears himself into the paramount judge of Field

Amid this anxious career of precarious expedient and constant labour, he had the misfortune to lose his wife; and his grief at this domestic calamity was so extreme, that his friends became alarmed for the consequences to his reason. The violence of the emotion, however, was transient, though his regret was lasting; and the necessity of subsistence compelled him again to resume his literary labours. At length, in the year 1741 or 1742, circumstances induced him to engage in a mode of composition, which he retrieved from the disgrace in which he found it, and rendered a classical department of British litera-ing's qualities, and for the delicacy which could inture.

trude such observations on the ear of his rival's sis

ter, that I was equally surprised at, and concerned for, his continued lowness. Had your brother, said I, been born in a stable, or been a runner at a spunging house, one should have thought him a genius, and wished he had had the advantage of a liberal education, and of being admitted into good company!" After this we are not surprised at its being alleged that Fielding was destitute of invention and talents; that the run of his best works was nearly over; and that he would soon be forgotten as an author. Fielding does not appear to have retorted any of this ill will, so that, if he gave the first offence, and that an unprovoked one, he was also the first to retreat from the contest, and to allow to Richardson those claims

of his contemporaries. In the fifth number of the Jacobite Journal, Fielding highly commends Clarissa, which is by far the best and most powerful of Richardson's novels; and, with those scenes in Sir Charles Grandison which refer to the history of Clementina, contains the passages of deep pathos on which his claim to immortality must finally rest. Perhaps this is one of the cases in which one would rather have sympathized with the thoughtless offender, than with the illiberal and ungenerous mind which so long retained its resentment.

The novel of Pamela, published in 1740, had car-ter: " Poor Fielding! I could not help telling his sisried the fame of Richardson to the highest pitch; and Fielding, whether he was tired of hearing it overpraised (for a book, several passages of which would now be thought highly indelicate, was in those days even recommended from the pulpit,) or whether, as a writer for daily subsistence, he caught at whatever interested the public for the time; or whether, in fine, he was seduced by that wicked spirit of wit, which cannot forbear turning into ridicule the idol of the day, resolved to caricature the style, principles, and personages of this favourite performance. As Gay's desire to satirize Philips gave rise to the Shepherd's Week, so Fielding's purpose to ridicule Pamela produced the History of Joseph Andrews; and in both cases, but especially in the latter, a work was execu-which his genius really demanded from the liberality ted infinitely better than could have been expected to arise out of such a motive, and the reader received a degree of pleasure far superior to what the author himself appears to have proposed. There is, indeed, a fine vein of irony in Fielding's novel, as will appear from comparing it with the pages of Pamela. But Pamela, to which that irony was applied, is now in a manner forgotten, and Joseph Andrews continues to be read, for the admirable pictures of manners which it presents; and, above all, for the inimitable character of Mr. Abraham Adams, which alone is sufficient to stamp the superiority of Fielding over all writers of his class. His learning, his simplicity, his evangelical purity of mind, and benevolence of disposition, are so admirably mingled with pedantry, absence of mind, and with the habit of athletic and gymnastic exercise, then acquired at the universities by students of all descriptions, that he may be safely termed, one of the richest productions of the Muse of fiction. Like Don Quixote, Parson Adams is beaten a little too much, and too often; but the cudgel lights upon his shoulders, as on those of the honoured Knight of La Mancha, without the slightest stain to his reputation, and he is bastinadoed without being degraded.hearsal of the Wedding-Day) Garrick, who performThe style of this piece is said, in the preface, to have been an imitation of Cervantes; but both in Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, the author appears also to have had in view the Roman Comique of the once celebrated Scarron. From this authority he has co-pulse might disconcert him during the remainder of pied the mock-heroic style, which tells ludicrous events in the language of the classical epic; a vein of pleasantry which is soon wrought out, and which Fielding has employed so often as to expose him to the charge of pedantry.

After the publication of Joseph Andrews, Fielding had again recourse to the stage, and brought out The Wedding-Day, which, though on the whole unsuccessful, produced him some small profit. This was the last of his theatrical efforts which appeared during his life. The manuscript comedy of The Fathers was lost by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, and, when recovered, was acted, after the author's death, for the benefit of his family. An anecdote respecting the carelessness with which Fielding regarded his theatrical fame, is thus given by former biographers:"On one of the days of its rehearsal (i. e. the re

ed the principal part, and who was even then a fa-
vourite with the public, told Fielding he was appre-
hensive that the audience would make free with him
in a particular passage; and remarked that, as a re-

the night, the passage should be omitted;-'No, d-n
'em,' replied he, if the scene is not a good one, le:
them find that out.' Accordingly the play was brough
out without alteration, and, as had been foreseen,
marks of disapprobation appeared. Garrick, alarmed

at the hisses he had met with, retired into the greenroom, where the author was solacing himself with a bottle of champagne. He had by this time drank pretty freely and glancing his eye at the actor, while clouds of tobacco issued from his mouth, cried out, "What's the matter, Garrick? what are they hissing now? Why the scene that I begged you to retrench,' replied the actor; 'I knew it would not do; and they have so frightened me, that I shall not be able to collect myself again the whole night.' 'Oh! d-n 'em,' rejoined he, with great coolness, 'they have found it out, have they?'

19

«

Rigby gave me as strong a picture of nature. Ho and Peter Bathurst, t'other night, carried a servant of the latter's, who had attempted to shoot him, before Fielding, who, to all his other vocations, has, by the grace of Mr. Lyttleton, added that of Middlesex justice. He sent them word he was at supper-they must come next morning. They did not understand that freedom, and ran up, where they found him banquetting with a blind man, a wh―, and three Irishmen, on some cold mutton and a bone of ham, both in one dish, and the dirtiest cloth. He never stirred or asked them to sit. Rigby, who had seen him come so often to beg a guinea of Sir C. Williams, and Bathurst, at whose father's he had lived for victuals, understood that dignity as little, and pulled themselves chairs, on which he civilized."*

Besides various fugitive pieces, Fielding published, in or about 1743, a volume of Miscellanies, including The Journey from this World to the Next, a tract containing a good deal of Fielding's peculiar humour, but of which it is difficult to conceive the plan or purport. This is a humiliating anecdote, even after we have The History of Jonathan Wild the Great next follow-made allowance for the aristocratic exaggeration of ed. It is not easy to see what Fielding proposed to Walpole, who, in acknowledging Fielding's talents himself by a picture of complete vice, unrelieved by elsewhere, has not failed to stigmatize the lowness of any thing of human feeling, and never, by any acci- his society and habits. Yet it is consoling to observe dent, even deviating into virtue; and the ascribing a that Fielding's principles remained unshaken, though train of fictitious adventures to a real character has in the circumstances attending his official situation tendit something clumsy and inartificial on the one hand, ed to increase the careless disrespectability of his and, on the other, subjects the author to a suspicion private habits. His own account of his conduct rethat he only used the title of Jonathan Wild in order specting the dues of the office, on which he depended to connect his book with the popular renown of that for his subsistence, has never been denied or doubted. infamous depredator. But there are few passages in Fielding's more celebrated works more marked by his peculiar genius than the scene betwixt his hero and the ordinary when in Newgate.

"I will confess," says he, "that my private affairs, at the beginning of the winter, had but a gloomy aspect; for I had not plundered the public or the poor, of those sums which men, who are always ready to plunder both as much as they can, have been pleased to suspect me of taking; on the contrary, by composing, instead of inflaming the quarrels of porters and beggars (which I blush when I say hath not been universally practised,) and by refusing to take a shilling from a man who most undoubtedly would not have had another left, I had reduced an income of about 500l. a-year of the dirtiest money upon earth, to little more than 3007., a considerable portion of which remained with my clerk.”

Besides these more permanent proofs of his industrious application to literature, the pen of Fielding was busily employed in the political and literary controversies of the times. He conducted one paper called The Jacobite Journal, the object of which was to eradicate those feelings and sentiments which had been already so effectually crushed upon the Field of Culloden. The True Patriot and The Champion were works of the same kind, which he entirely composed, or in which, at least, he had a principal share. In these various papers he steadily advocated what was then called the whig cause, being attached to the principles of the revolution, and the royal family of Brunswick, or, in other words, a person well affected to church and state. His zeal was long unnoticed, while far inferior writers were enriched out of the secret service money with unexampled prodigality. At length, in 1749, he received a small pension, together with the then disreputable office of a justice of peace for Westminster and Middlesex, of which he was at liberty to make the best he could by the worst means he chose. This office, such as it was, he owed to the interference of Mr. afterwards Lord Lyttleton. At this period, the magistrates of Westminster, thence termed trading justices, were repaid by fees for their services to the public; a mean and wretched system, which made it the interest of these functionaries to inflame every petty dispute which was brought before them, to trade as it were in guilt and in misery, and to wring their precarious subsistence out of thieves and pickpockets. The habits of Fielding, never choice or select in his society, were not improved by In his poetical account of Twickenham, Fielding's that to which his place exposed him. Horace Wal-residence in the neighbourhood is not forgotten :

Besides the disinterestedness of which he set an example unusual in these days, Fielding endeavoured, by various suggestions, to abridge the catalogue of crimes and depravity, which his office placed so closely under his eye.

pole gives us, in his usual unfeeling but lively manner, the following description of a visit made to Fielding in his capacity of a justice, by which we see his mind had stooped itself completely to his situation.

His Inquiry into the Increase of Thieves and Robbers, contains several hints which have been adopted by succeeding statesmen, and some which are still worthy of more attention than they have yet received. As a magistrate, indeed, he was desirous of retrieving the dignity and independence of his own office, and his zeal on that subject has led him a little farther than he will be followed by the friends of rational freedom. But we cannot omit mentioning, that he was the first to touch on the frequency of pardons, rendered necessary by the multiplication of capital punishments, and that he placed his finger on that swelling imposthume of the state, the poor's rates, which has wrought so much evil, and is likely to

Montague, Esq. London, 1818, p. 59.
* Letters from the Hon. Horace Walpole to George

Where Fielding met his bunter muse,
And as they quaff'd the fiery juice,
Droll Nature stamp'd each lucky hit,
With unimaginable wit.

The Parish Register of Twickenham.
B

work so much more. He published also a Charge to the voyager with the varied beauty of its banks. One the Grand Jury of Middlesex, some Tracts concern-exception to this praise, otherwise so well merited, ing Law Trials of importance, and left behind him a occurs in the story of the Old Man of the Hill; an manuscript on crown-law. On the subject of the episode, which, in compliance with a custom introducpoor, he afterwards published a scheme for restricting ed by Cervantes, and followed by Le Sage, Fielding them to their parishes, and providing for them in has thrust into the midst of his narrative, as he workhouses, which, like many others which have had formerly introduced the History of Leonora, since appeared, only showed that he was fully sensi- equally unnecessarily and inartificially, into that of ble of the evil, without being able to suggest an effec- Joseph Andrews. It has also been wondered why tual or practical remedy. A subsequent writer on the Fielding should have chosen to leave the stain of illesame thorny subject, Sir Frederic Morton Eden, ob-gitimacy on the birth of his hero; and it has been serves, that Fielding's treatise exhibits both the know-surmised that he did so in allusion to his own first ledge of the magistrate and the energy and expres-wife, who was also a natural child. sion of the novel-writer. It was, however, before publishing his scheme for the provision of the poor, that he made himself immortal by the production of Tom Jones.

The History of a Foundling was composed under from a man so reasonable and compassionate as Allall the disadvantages incident to an author, alternate-worthy.

ly pressed by the disagreeable task of his magisterial But even the high praise due to the construction duties, and by the necessity of hurrying out some and arrangement of the story is inferior to that claimephemeral essay or pamphlet to meet the demands of ed by the truth, force, and spirit of the characters, the passing day. It is inscribed to the Honourable from Tom Jones himself, down to Black George the Mr. Lyttleton, afterward Lord Lyttleton, with a dedi-game-keeper, and his family. Amongst these, Squire cation, in which he intimates, that, without his assis- Western stands alone; imitated from no prototype, tance and that of the Duke of Bedford, the work had and in himself an inimitable picture of ignorance, prenever been completed, as the author had been indebt- judice, irascibility, and rusticity, united with natural ed to them for the means of subsistence while engag-shrewdness, constitutional good-humour, and an ined in composing it. Ralph Allen, the friend of Pope, is also alluded to as one of his benefactors, but unnamed, by his own desire; thus confirming the truth of Pope's beautiful couplet :

was after this period that he published his proposal for making an effectual provision for the poor, formerly noticed, and a pamphlet relating to the mysterious case of the celebrated Elizabeth Canning, in which he adopted the cause of common sense against popular prejudice, and failed, in consequence, in the

Amelia was the author's last work of importance. It may be termed a continuation of Tom Jones, but we have not the same sympathy for the ungrateful and dissolute conduct of Booth, which we yield to the youthful follies of Jones. The character of Amelia is said to have been drawn for Fielding's second wife. If he put her patience, as has been alleged, to tests of the same kind, he has, in some degree, repaid her, by the picture he has drawn of her feminine delicacy and pure tenderness. Fielding's novels show few instances of pathos; it was, perhaps, inconsistent with the life which he was compelled to lead; for those who see most of human misery, become necessarily, in some degree, hardened to its effects. But few scenes of fictitious distress are more affecting than that in which Amelia is described as having made her little preparations for the evening, and sitting in anxious expectation of the return of her unworthy husband, whose folly is, in the mean time, preparing for her new scenes of misery. But our sympathy for the wife is disturbed by our dislike of her unthankful husband; and the tale is, on the whole, unpleasing, even though relieved by the humours of the doughty Colonel Bath, and the learned Dr. Harrison, characters drawn with such force and precision as Fielding alone knew how to employ.

bungled abridgment by De la Place, entitled a trans- | British literature; and, therefore, he chose to prefix lation. To this charge Fielding himself might pro- a preliminary chapter to each book, explanatory of his bably have replied, that the vices into which Jones own views, and of the rules attached to this mode of suffers himself to fall are made the direct cause of composition. Those critical introductions, which raplacing him in the distressful situation which he oc- ther interrupt the course of the story, and the flow of cupies during the greater part of the narrative: while the interest at the first perusal, are found, on a second his generosity, his charity, and his amiable qualities, or third, the most entertaining chapters of the whole become the means of saving him from the consequenwork. ces of his folly. But we suspect, with Doctor John- The publication of Tom Jones carried Fielding's son, that there is something of cant both in the ob-fame to its height; but seems to have been attended jection and in the answer to it. "Men," says that with no consequences to his fortune, beyond the temmoralist," will not become highwaymen because Mac-porary relief which the copy money afforded him. It heath is acquitted on the stage;" and, we add, they will not become swindlers and thieves because they sympathize with the fortunes of the witty picaroon Gil Blas, or licentious debauchees, because they read Tom Jones. The professed moral of a piece is usually what the reader is least interested in; it is like the mendicant who cripples after some gay and splen-object of his publication. did procession, and in vain solicits the attention of those who have been gazing upon it. Excluding from consideration those infamous works which address themselves directly to awakening the grosser passions of our nature, we are inclined to think the worst evil to be apprehended from the perusal of novels is, that the habit is apt to generate an indisposition to real history and useful literature; and that the best which can be hoped is, that they may sometimes instruct the youthful mind by real pictures of life, and sometimes awaken their better feelings and sympathies by strains of generous sentiments, and tales of fictitious woe. Beyond this point they are a mere elegance, a luxury contrived for the amusement of polished life, and the gratification of that half love of literature which pervades all ranks in an advanced stage of society, and are read much more for amusement than with the least hope of deriving instruction from them. The vices and follies of Tom Jones are those which the world soon teaches to all who enter on the career of life, and to which society is unhappily but too indulgent; nor do we believe that, in any one instance, the perusal of Fielding's novel has added one libertine to the large list who would not have been such, had it never crossed the press. And it is with concern we add our sincere belief, that the fine picture of frankness and generosity exhibited in that fictitious character has had as few imitators as the career of his follies. Let it not be supposed that we are indifferent to morality, because we treat with scorn that affectation which, while in common life it connives at the open practice of libertinism, pretends to detest the memory of an author who painted life as it was, with all its shades, and more than all the lights which it occasionally exhibits to relieve them. For particular passages of the work, the author can only be defended under the custom of his age, which permitted, in certain cases, much stronger language than ours. He has himself said that there is nothing which can offend the chastest eye in the perusal, and he spoke probably according to the ideas of his time. But, in modern estimation, there are several passages at which delicacy may justly take offence; and, we can only say, that they may be termed rather jocularly coarse than seductive, and that they are atoned for by the admirable mixture of wit and argument, by which, in others, the cause of true religion and virtue is supported and advanced.

Fielding considered his works as an experiment in

Millar published Amelia in 1751. He had paid a thousand pounds for the copyright; and when he began to suspect that the work would be judged inferior to its predecessor, he employed the following stratagem to push it upon the trade. At a sale made to the booksellers, previous to the publication, Millar offered his friends his other publications on the usual terms of discount; but when he came to Amelia, he laid it aside, as a work in such demand, that he could not afford to deliver it to the trade in the usual manner. The ruse succeeded, the impression was anxiously bought up, and the bookseller relieved from every apprehension of a slow sale.

Notwithstanding former failures, Fielding, in 1752, commenced a new attempt at a literary newspaper and review, which he entitled the Covent Garden Journal, to be published twice a week, and conducted by Sir Alexander Drawcansir. It was the author's failing that he could not continue any plan of this nature, for which otherwise his ready pen, sharp wit, and classical knowledge, so highly fitted him, without involving himself in some of the party squabbles, or petty literary broils of the day. On the present oc