drew the elements of his plot from the comedies of his youth. "The Justice Caught in his own Trap" had the same criminal background. Justice Squeezum, the watch, the constables, and the roundhouse had not altered much since that time. The main difference is that in the comedy Fielding's aim was farce, whereas in the novel it is the correction of abuses by exposing them. Again, the happy ending of "The Temple Beau' was brought about by the same device as in "Amelia." The father of Veromil died while the young man was travelling on the Continent, and a brother robbed him of his birthright. One of the witnesses to the forged will betrayed the secret and the lawful heir was restored. Even more. was taken from "The Modern Husband," which had been damned long ago, ostensibly because it turned upon the traffic of husbands in their wives' beauty. Fielding was never reconciled to the failure of this comedy, which he knew to be true to the fashionable life of the town among men and women living far beyond their means. It was nevertheless a bold venture to submit the same situation to the public once more. Lord! Richly of the comedy was transferred with slight change to the novel; he is the unnamed peer. Mr. and Mrs. Moderny became Captain Trent and his wife; and Mr. and Mrs. Bellamant passed into Lieutenant Booth and Amelia. Only the last set of characters need detain us. Like Bellamant," Booth can listen to the suggestion that there is only one way to retrieve his fortunes; but being a better man than his predecessor, the idea is utterly abhorrent to him. Moreover, each of the young men is guilty of a single transgression, and each is forgiven by a wife who checkmates every move against her by a libertine. Without going into further details, it may be added that this free use of old plays now seems a very natural procedure for Fielding. The main action of "Amelia" was placed in the spring of a certain year, which, though the author leaves it blank, we

know must have been seven years after the siege of Gibraltar, or in the spring of 1734. That was the period of his comedies; to them he turned to refresh his memory for a not too exact historical setting.

In the larger aspects of the novel, Fielding still held to epic analogies. The dramatic action of "Tom Jones," covering but six weeks at the end of 1745, was prepared for, we remember, by a very full account of Tom and Sophia from infancy. We may see them developing year by year among their relatives and neighbours. Everywhere dialogue rises naturally out of the narrative. At that time Fielding's model was the simple and direct method of the Iliad. Similarly, the dramatic action of "Amelia" covers only a few weeks at the end of the London season in 1734; to be more precise, from the first of April on into May; but the preparation for this grave comedy is managed quite differently. The essential facts in the previous history of Booth and Amelia are brought before the reader by means of the long story with which the lieutenant entertains Miss Mathews. This is the indirect method of the Odyssey such as Virgil followed in the Aeneid; particularly it is very like Odysseus relating his adventures to King Alcinous. Little fault can be found with the way in which Fielding follows his model. The trouble lies in the procedure itself when employed in prose fiction; that is, in a novel to be read, not in an epic to be recited. It results in an inordinate amount of narrative. In this case Fielding consumed a whole volume, a fourth of the entire novel, in laying the background of incident for his drama. To his contemporaries, the characters of the piece appeared garrulous; they liked to talk too much, it was said, about themselves.

This monotony Fielding sought to relieve in various ways. While Booth and Miss Mathews in the prison-house tell each other what has happened since they met eight or nine years before, the governor or a lawyer sometimes in

trudes to give them and the reader time to breathe; but these interruptions can be only at rare intervals. Moreover, both Booth and Miss Mathews intersperse their narratives with stretches of conversation between the persons of their stories. Booth even reads entire two letters-one from Betty to her sister Amelia, and one from Dr. Harrison to himself and his wife. To these literary conventions the modern imagination does not readily assent. We wonder how the narrators can remember exactly conversations that occurred a long time ago. We wonder how it happened that Booth had those two letters in his pocket. We may ask in what pocket they were carried, for he had been robbed of his coat on entering the prison. Of course he recovered his coat, but the author, I think, fails to say so. Perhaps Fielding did all that could be done in adapting the structure of the Odyssey to a novel, but the form at best remains awkward. When a novelist introduces a story-teller and a listener, or otherwise attempts to explain how he has derived his facts, he falls into all sorts of difficulties, and the critics are certain to annoy him with very disagreeable questions, as we shall see in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE FAILURE OF AMELIA

To Fielding's harm, "Amelia" was taken literally as a self-revelation. The novel contains, indeed, more autobiography than "Tom Jones," as one would surmise were there no contemporary evidence to this effect. The injustice to Fielding arose from a disposition to make no allowance for the novelist's prerogative of dressing fact with fiction. Thus Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who remembered Fielding as he was in his younger days, wrote from Italy to her daughter, the Countess of Bute: "H. Fielding has given a true picture of himself and his first wife, in the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Booth, some compliments to his own figure excepted; and, I am persuaded, several of the incidents he mentions are real matters of fact. I wonder he does not perceive Tom Jones and Mr. Booth are sorry scoundrels." Lady Mary, who liked her cousin, hardly meant to call him a sorry scoundrel. It was rather that he had depicted himself as such. There is a technical distinction. What compliments Fielding paid to "his own figure" are not obvious. The novel contains but one description of Booth's appearance. When Mrs. James remarks that he is generally allowed to be handsome, her husband retorts: "He handsome? What with a nose like the proboscis of an elephant, with the shoulders of a porter, and the legs of a chairman?"

In her old age, Lady Mary talked much about Fielding to her daughter. Nor was Lady Bute, it is said, a stranger "to that beloved first wife whose picture he drew in his Amelia, where . . . even the glowing language he knew how

to employ did not do more than justice to the amiable qualities of the original, or to her beauty, although this had suffered a little from the accident related in the novel-a frightful overturn, which destroyed the gristle of her nose." "He loved her," to quote further, "passionately, and she returned his affection; yet led no happy life, for they were almost always miserably poor, and seldom in a state of quiet and safety. All the world knows what was his imprudence; if ever he possessed a score of pounds, nothing could keep him from lavishing it idly, or make him think of to-morrow. Sometimes they were living in decent lodgings with tolerable comfort; sometimes in a wretched garret without necessaries; not to speak of the spunginghouses and hiding places where he was occasionally to be found.''* This was the general view. Wits who were hostile to Fielding for political or other reasons, were quick to seize upon those incidents of the novel most damaging to the character of Booth and apply them directly to the author. In this way a false impression was conveyed of both Lieutenant Booth and Henry Fielding.

The truth is, Fielding followed in "Amelia" his own career but vaguely. It was inevitable that he should become more reminiscent here than in his other novels, for we all in time grow reminiscent. This mood, united with his realistic manner, made the novel read like autobiography despite its rather conventional plot. Incidents in his own life were fused with incidents drawn from the lives of others or from his imagination. So much of himself and his first wife was put into Booth and Amelia as pleased his semi-autobiographic art. Fact and fiction, when one comes to details, can be separated only here and there. Evidence from the outside or antecedent probability are the main guides.

279.

*"Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu," 1861, I, 105; II,