the women. The sole punishment which the vice of incontinence brings, is an occasional visit to a doctor for the man, and for the woman a bastard. He constantly amuses himself with somewhat indecent scenes, which he takes as a joke; and if a pretty girl's kerchief slips from her throat, he does not fail to keep the reader's eye for some time upon the charming spot. Robust and insolent health, the JohnBullism of men who are not afraid of their three bottles; in everything the material side of things writ large; this was the old Merry England of Fielding.

The two books were contradictory. Yet the public liked them both, and their success was almost equal. What is more, they often had the same readers. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, for example, puts Fielding quite plainly above Richardson as an artist. In 1755 she praised him in these high terms: "Since I was born, no original has appeared excepting Congreve and Fielding." And yet she cannot tear herself away from Richardson. This Richardson is a strange fellow. I heartily despise him and eagerly read him, nay, sob over his works in a most scandalous manner." Precious confession, which recalls Mme de Sèvigné acknowledging with lowered eyes that she loves La Calprenède.

The public hesitated, torn between the two tendencies, when it did not follow both at once: trained by the dramatists in an appreciation of comedy, it was, nevertheless, ready to weep over the adventures of a man of feeling 1. Does not Fielding himself show signs of weakness in this parody of Richardson? He is not so far from going over to the enemy. A Mr Wilson whom Adams meets, gives us a long account of his life, and it is an edifying tale 2. After a stormy youth he has fled from the society of men to the bosom of nature and

1 In two articles published in the Revue Germanique (Autour de Fielding, R.G., July and December 1920) I have given several typical examples of this divided admiration.

There are many autobiographical reminiscences in Mr Wilson's story, particularly in the passages which deal with his literary début in London.

cultivates the fruits of the earth. The story is as touching and as insipid as certain passages in Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloise. And here already we catch a glimpse of the old generation rallying to the new, in a sentimental conception of morality and nature.

This consummation is already clearly hinted at here, but it is only a hint. We shall see much more easily in Jonathan Wild how the new Fielding emerges from the old.

But although it is true to say that his moral standard will gain in definition and precision in the works which follow, we may be certain that he has found the form of his art in his first novel; the expression may be fuller in the later works, the construction more skilfully engineered, but the framework remains the same. Joseph Andrews has already all the essential characteristics of the novel which we call Fielding's, the 'prosai-comi-epos', the comic epic in prose.

Richardson had not, properly speaking, created any new form. He had contented himself with pouring into the epistolary novel, as it already existed (for example, in the Letters of a Portuguese Nun) a passion and a morality unknown to it. But Fielding altered the very texture of the novel. One is tempted to hail him, as an admirer hailed Molière : "Courage, Fielding, voici le vrai roman." The spirit which animates him is indeed the spirit which animated Molière. He has Molière's methods, he speaks of his characters and of his art in the same terms. How is it that no one has noticed this? It is the pure discipline of the great French classics, which he imposes upon himself. His is the genius which

1 According to the testimony of Goldsmith who saw them at Covent Garden (Remarks on Our Theatres, from The Bee, October 6th, 1759) Fielding's translations of L'Avare and Le Médecin malgré lui, The Miser, and The Mock Doctor were still being acted in 1759. The very great influence of Molière on the English drama, particularly on that of Fielding, cannot be discussed here. Here are two parallel passages. Molière had said: Ces sortes de satires tombent directement sur les moeurs, et ne frappent les personnes que par reflexion. N'allons point nous appliquer à nous-mêmes les traits d'une censure générale; et profitons de la leçon, si nous pouvons, sans faire semblant qu'on parle

wills and dominates, which when it has learnt its aim, marches straight towards it. No character in his later works will surpass Parson Adams in life and in artistic and human truth. He is the first live and authentic son of Fielding.

à nous.. Ce sont miroirs publics, où il ne faut jamais témoigner qu'on se voie. . ." (Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes, sc. VI). Fielding using the same image writes that he desires "to hold the glass to thousands in their closets, that they may contemplate their deformity, and endeavour to reduce it, and thus by suffering private mortification may avoid public shame. . ."(Joseph Andrews, III, 1.). Molière “disait que son dessein est de peindre les moeurs sans vouloir toucher aux personnes." (Impromptu de Versailles, sc. IV). Fielding writes: I declare here, once for all that I describe not men but manners.' (Joseph Andrews, III, 1).

The whole dialogue between the poet and the actor (Joseph Andrews, III, 10), so interesting from the point of view of Fielding's literary ideas, is inspired by the Trissotin-Vadius dialogue in the Femmes Savantes.

Fielding also quotes Balzac and Voltaire, Scarron, Marivaux and, of course, Cervantes.

CHAPTER III

JONATHAN WILD THE GREAT (AND THE

MISCELLANIES)

Chance plays a great part in literary history. It was pure coincidence that Pamela was published just at the moment when Fielding, prevented from writing freely for the theatre, was seeking a new outlet for his inspiration; and by another singularly happy chance, he was then, thanks to all his earlier experiments in literature, at the height of his talent. The Miscellanies, which we are about to study, show the direction which he might have continued to follow, had he not been turned aside by Richardson's heroine. For Joseph Andrews revealed him to himself. He had written from inspiration and straightway had produced a masterpiece, which instantly satisfied him and which he "valued above all his writings 1."

It may seem surprising that he did not profit by the success of Joseph Andrews to undertake another novel in the same style. Seven years elapsed before the publication of Tom Jones. The probable explanation of this is that Fielding had really no choice in the matter. Before publishing Joseph Andrews he had solicited subscriptions for three volumes of

1 Joseph Warton writing to his brother, in October, 1746, says: "I spent two evenings with Fielding and his sister, who wrote David Simple, and you may guess I was very well entertained. . . I find he values, as he justly may, Joseph Andrews above all his writings." (Wooll's Biographical Memoirs of Warton, p. 215).

Miscellanies, the plan of which he had previously published. The success of Joseph Andrews would not absolve him from carrying out his previous engagements, however small his inclination to do so. He worked energetically at the Miscellanies during the winter; and in April, 1743, they were ready. The pages were padded with old compositions, fragments, rough sketches, some of which were printed without his having had the inclination or the time to revise or finish them. He rapidly emptied his drawers of anything which he could find in them.

Besides being a profitable expedient, the Miscellanies were a liquidation of his literary past. Fielding's art had ripened slowly, the Miscellanies give us a strange medley of his successive attempts. Like Pope he had written moral epistles in verse and translations of the ancient poets; like Defoe he had taken up and was to keep practising political journalism; he had also written essays after the manner of Steele and Addison. But the principal outlet for his energies had been the drama. He had thus tried, one after another, all the literary forms cultivated in his time, all those which his experience showed him might make a writer famous. Even the two important works contained in the Miscellanies fall in this category. The Journey from this World to the Next

"

1 Although the exact date of the first application for subscribers has not yet been discovered, it must, if the time necessary for the printing of the books be taken into account, have been very much earlier than the publication and perhaps even than the composition of Joseph Andrews. Indeed, the publication of the Miscellanies must have been promised for the winter of 1741-2, or the spring of 1742, if we are to believe the excuse added by Fielding to his announcement of June 5th, 1742: The publication of these volumes has been hitherto retarded by the Author's indisposition last winter, and a train of melancholy accidents scarce to be parallel'd; but he takes the opportunity to assure his subscribers [they were thus already in existence] that he will most certainly deliver them within the time mentioned in his last receipts [thus there were other receipts which announced an earlier date] viz., by the 25th of December next." This announcement appeared in the Daily Post, and a translation of the prospectus was published in the Nouvelles Littéraires (p. 209) of the Bibliothèque Britannique, ou histoire des ouvrages des savants de la Grande Bretagne, for the months of April, May, and June, 1743 at the Hague.