painted scenes and elaborate machinery, everybody ran to the theatre for a fortnight to see the spectacle. So great was the crowd one evening that "a lady lost one of her shoes going into the house and sat with a gentleman's glove on her foot; and the gentleman lost his hat and wig, and sat with a handkerchief over his head." A girl who had come all the way from Wapping, had her pocket cut off while before the door; and though she could not identify the thief, she immediately ran over, her face wet with tears, to the Bow Street court to enter a general complaint. Fielding listened to her patiently, tried to soothe her, and succeeded when he discovered that the tears flowed not from the loss of some fourteen shillings but from the loss of an entertainment on which her heart was set. As a dramatist whose plays were being performed every year, Fielding enjoyed for himself and his friends the freedom of the theatres. So he simply gave the heart-broken girl a pass to the gallery; her tears, running in brooks, dried up immediately, and she went back to the playhouse, content to lose half of all she possessed in this world's goods provided she could see the tricks of Harlequin and the many new and wonderful contrivances.

All the while Fielding was rising into eminence. No justice of the peace in his time was more competent; none ever had a higher conception of the office. To be certain of this, one has but to examine his legal tracts and his more important cases. In May, 1749, his brethren recognized his superior talents by choosing him chairman of the Quarter Sessions of the Peace for the city and liberty of Westminster; and they continued to repeat the honour, six times in all, until his health completely broke down. So notable was his first charge, delivered on the twenty-ninth of the following June, that it was published three weeks

"MS. Sessions Books for Westminster," Vol. for 1749, as quoted by Miss Godden, Henry Fielding," p. 204.

later "by Order of the Court and the unanimous request of the Grand Jury." There are a few other interesting details. The address was given in the Town Court-House near Westminster Hall. In the resolution which his Majesty's Justices of the Peace immediately passed, they thanked Henry Fielding, Esq., for his "very loyal, learned, ingenious, excellent and useful Charge, highly tending to the service of his Majesty and Administration and Government." In scope and method it is certainly a model charge, on the lines of Lambarde, through the history of the institution of grand juries and observations on the high qualities demanded of them if they are to do their duty, down to the distinction between a presentment and an indictment and to specific instruction when to return a true bill. Everywhere are displayed learning, zeal, and acumen, with passages of grave and measured eloquence. "This ingenious author and worthy magistrate," said "The Monthly Review," "has, in this little piece, with that judgment, knowledge of the world, and of our excellent laws (which the publick, indeed, could not but expect from him) pointed out the reigning vices and corruptions of the times, the legal and proper methods of curbing and punishing them, and the great necessity of all magistrates vigorously exerting themselves in the duties of their respective offices."‡

Fielding's charge was an address to the citizens of Middlesex as much as to the officers of the law; it was a manifesto setting forth the statutes relative to the minor crimes which then went unpunished, and a solemn warning that these statutes would now be enforced. This was really the reason for the publication of the charge. Fielding admonished the grand jurors that they were "the only *The St. James's Evening Post," July 18-20, 1749. The resolution was published with the "Charge." "The Monthly Review,'' I, 239-240 (July, 1749).

censors of this nation"; that as such it was their duty to inquire into all reports of misdemeanours which especially infested the public at that time, and to present the offenders for punishment to the justices of the peace in their neighbourhood. First of all, must be suppressed the brothels, which have spread throughout the metropolis into the suburbs, not merely because they are public nuisances but because they have become "seminaries of education," corrupting the minds and bodies of the next generation with vice and disease. With these houses must go, too, the dancing-halls, "where idle persons of both sexes meet in a very disorderly manner, often at improper hours, and sometimes in disguised habits"; for, though they pretend to be only "scenes of innocent diversion and amusement, they are, "in reality, the temples of iniquity." So also are the gaming-houses, which offered a difficult problem for the justice to solve. Here the aim should be, Fielding remarks, mainly to prevent gambling among the lower sort of people, those useful members of society who lose at the table all the benefits of their labour; whereas "for the rich and great, the consequence is generally no other than the exchange of property from the hands of a fool into those of a sharper, who is, perhaps, the more worthy of the two to enjoy it."

There is even a hint at the curtailment of theatrical performances of the kind that Foote was giving at CoventGarden, where "the stage is reduced back again to that degree of licentiousness [or unrestraint] which was too enormous for the corrupt state of Athens to tolerate." Nor is the press forgotten. "Our newspapers, it is declared, "from the top of the page to the bottom, the corners of our streets up to the very eves of our houses, present us with nothing but a view of masquerades, balls, and assemblies of various kinds, fairs, wells, gardens, etc., tending to promote idleness, extravagance and immorality, among

all sorts of people." Lastly, there is the offence of libelling, "which is punished by the Common Law, as it tends immediately to quarrels and breaches of the peace, and very often to bloodshed and murder itself." To paraphrase Fielding, a man wins praise and honour and reputation, seeking no other rewards for noble actions; and then comes a miscreant to strip him of his good name and to expose him to public contempt. Long ago Demosthenes justly stigmatized the libeller as a "viper, which men ought to crush where-ever they find him, without staying 'till he bite them."

It is not easy, as Fielding found, to put into practice the excellent advice of the Greek orator. That sly viper Aretine, who still lay hiding in "Old England," again poured forth his venom without being harmed by any heel. In a parody on the "Charge," he accused the justice himself of all the misdemeanours enumerated in the pamphlet, and instructed the grand jury to present him to one of his brethren on the bench as "a nuisance to civil society, the bane of peace, and the scandal of human kind."'* Had not, Aretine inquired, this same Fielding (now turned informer against the liberty of the press) once libelled whomsoever he pleased in his theatrical pieces and in a contemptible newspaper called "The Champion"? To say the truth, there was some incongruity between Fielding the man of letters and Fielding the justice. Moreover, the large programme 'which he laid out for the officers of the law exposed him to ridicule, for it was impossible of fulfilment And yet, the endeavour to transform the town into an earthly paradise was a noble ideal. What Fielding mainly hoped to do was to check the current vices by driving them from the streets and public places of amusement, so that they might not contaminate the young. By infusing new August 5, as quoted in "The Gentleman's Magazine,'' XIX, 366-367 (Aug., 1749).

*

life into the grand juries and by warning the citizens against crime, he did all that one man could do in a depraved state of society. The vigour with which he administered the Bow Street court simply astonished the gentlemen of the press, who recorded day by day his many commitments.

His charge was delivered on a Thursday, just before he went into the country for the week-end. The place where Fielding sought deliverance from scenes of crime is not quite certain. There is a tradition, found in Lysons's "Environs of London,"* that he took, at this time or earlier, a house at Barnes across the Thames in Surrey, and on the way by boat to Twickenham, where he had passed some time after his second marriage. His "four worthy sisters," all unmarried, then lived at Ealing, Hammersmith. Wherever he went-whether to Barnes or Ealing or elsewhere,dreadful riots, while he was away, broke out in the Strand. On Saturday evening, the first of July, three sailors belonging to the Grafton man-of-war visited a house at the sign of the Crown, where, it was claimed, they were robbed of more than thirty guineas by women who frequented or lived at the place. Being driven out, the men returned with a large number of other sailors; and when thus reinforced they broke all the windows of the house, demolished all the furniture, ripped the clothing from the backs of the inmates, piled up the spoils of war in the street, and set the heap ablaze. An immense crowd gathered to encourage the rioters or to share in the plunder; the parish engines were summoned, though they never arrived, to stay the flames which threatened adjoining buildings whose beams were already hot; beadles and constables bustled about, only to be jeered at; and no magistrate could be found who cared to meddle with the angry mob. Towards midnight * 1792, II, 544. In 1792 the house was the property of "Mr. Partington."