Born, at Sharphan Park, Somersetshire, 22 April 1707. Family moved to East Stour, Dorsetshire, 1710. Educated at Eton [1719?–1725?]. At Leyden, studying Law [1725–27?]. Returned to London. First play, “Love in several Masques,” produced at Drury Lane, Feb. 1728. Probably returned to Leyden for a short time in 1728. Prolific writer of plays, 1727–37. Married Charlotte Craddock, 1735 [?]. Manager of Haymarket Theatre, 1736–37. Entered Middle Temple, 1 Nov. 1737; called to Bar, 20 June 1740. Edited “The Champion,” with J. Ralph; contrib. articles, 27 Nov. 1739 to 12 June 1740. Revised his play, “The Wedding Day,” for Garrick; produced 17 Feb. 1743. Wife died, 1743 [?]. Ed. “The True Patriot,” 5 Nov. 1745 to 10 June 1746. Edited “The Jacobite’s Journal,” Dec. 1747 to Nov. 1748. Married Mary Daniel, 27 Nov. 1747. Lived at Twickenham. Moved to house in Bow Street, when appointed J.P. for Westminster, Dec. 1748. Chairman of Quarter Sessions, Hick’s Hall, May 1749. Ed. “Covent Garden Journal,” Jan. to Nov. 1752. Severe illness, winter of 1749, and spring of 1754. Moved to Ealing, May 1754. To Lisbon for health, July 1754. Died there, 8 Oct. 1754; buried in English cemetery there. Works: “Love in several Masques,” 1728; “Rape upon Rape” (anon.), 1730 (another edition called: “The Coffee-house Politicians,” 1730); “The Temple Beau,” 1730; “The Author’s Farce” (under pseud. “H. Scriblerus Secundus”), 1730; “Tom Thumb” (by “Scriblerus Secundus”), 1730 (with additional act, 1731); “The Welsh Opera” (by “Scriblerus Secundus”), 1731 (2nd edn. same year, called: “The Grub Street Opera”); “The Letter-Writers” (by “H. Scriblerus Secundus”), 1731; “The Lottery” (anon.), 1732; “The Modern Husband,” 1732; “The Covent Garden Tragedy” (anon.), 1732; “The Debauchees” (or “The Old Debauchees;” anon.), 1732; “The Mock Doctor” (anon.; from Molière), 1732; “The Miser,” 1733; “The Intriguing Chambermaid,” 1734 (from Regnard); “Don Quixote in England,” 1734; “An Old Man taught Wisdom,” 1735; “The Universal Gallant,” 1735; “Pasquin,” 1736; “The Historical Register for the Year 1736” (anon.), 1737; “Eurydice,” 1737; “Tumble-down Dick,” 1737; “The Vernon-aid” (anon.), 1741; “The Crisis” (anon.), 1741; “Miss Lucy in Town” (anon.), 1742; “Letter to a Noble Lord” (respecting preceding; anon.), 1742; “The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews” (2 vols.; anon.), 1742 (2nd edn. same year); “A Full Vindication of the Duchess Dowager of Marlborough” (anon.), 1742; “Plutus” (from Aristophanes, with W. Young), 1742; “The Wedding Day,” 1743; “Miscellanies” (including “Jonathan Wild,” 3 vols.), 1743 (2nd edn. same year); “Proper Answer to a Scurrilous Libel,” 1747; “The History of Tom Jones” (6 vols.), 1749; “A Charge delivered to the Grand Jury,” 1749; “A True State of the Case of Bosavern Penlez,” 1749; “An Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers, etc.,” 1751; “Amelia,” 1751; “Examples of the Interposition of Providence,” 1752; “Proposals for making an effectual Provision for the Poor,” 1753; “A clear State of the Case of Elizabeth Canning,” 1753. Posthumous: “Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon,” 1755; “The Fathers,” 1778. He translated: Ovid’s “Art of Love,” under title of “The Lover’s Assistant,” 1859; and edited: the 2nd edn. of Sarah Fielding’s “Adventures of David Simple,” 1744, and “Familiar Letters,” 1747. Collected Works: ed. by Murphy, in 4 vols., 1762; ed. by Chalmers, in 10 vols., 1806; ed. by Roscoe, 1840; ed. by Herbert, 1872; ed. by Leslie Stephen, 10 vols. 1882; ed. by G. Saintsbury, 12 vols. 1893. Life: by F. Lawrence, 1855; by Austin Dobson, 1883.

Personal

  These so tolerated companies gave encouragement to a broken wit to collect a fourth company, who for some time acted plays in the Haymarket…. This enterprising person, I say (whom I do not choose to name, unless it could be to his advantage, or that it were of importance), had sense enough to know that the best plays with bad actors would turn but to a very poor account, and therefore found it necessary to give the public some pieces of an extraordinary kind, the poetry of which he conceived ought to be so strong that the greatest dunce of an actor could not spoil it: he knew, too, that as he was in haste to get money, it would take up less time to be intrepidly abusive than decently entertaining; that to draw the mob after him he must rake the channel and pelt their superiors…. Such then was the mettlesome modesty he set out with; upon this principle he produced several frank and free farces, that seemed to knock all distinctions of mankind on the head—religion, laws, government, priests, judges, and ministers, were all laid flat, at the feet of this Herculean satirist! this Drawcansir in wit, who spared neither friend nor foe! who, to make his poetical fame immortal, like another Erostratus, set fire to his stage by writing up to an act of parliament to demolish it. I shall not give the particular strokes of his ingenuity a chance to be remembered by reciting them; it may be enough to say, in general terms, they were so openly flagrant that the wisdom of the legislature thought it high time to take a proper notice of them.

  I wish you had been with me last week when I spent two evenings with Fielding and his sister, who wrote “David Simple:” and you may guess I was very well entertained. The lady, indeed, retired pretty soon, but Russell and I sat up with the poet till one or two in the morning, and were inexpressibly diverted. I find he values, as he justly may, his “Joseph Andrews” above all his writings. He was extremely civil to me, I fancy on my father’s account.

  He [Rigby] 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. Lyttelton, added that of Middlesex justice. He sent them word he was at supper, that they must come next morning. They did not understand that freedom, and ran up, where they found him banqueting with a blind man, a whore, and three Irishmen, on some cold mutton and a bone of ham, both in one dish, and the dirtiest cloth. He never stirred nor asked them to sit. Rigby, who had seen him so often come 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 civilised.

  I dined with him (Ralph Allen) yesterday, where I met Mr. Fielding,—a poor emaciated, worn-out rake, whose gout and infirmities have got the better even of his buffoonery.

  I advise Mr. Spondy to give him the refusal of this same pastoral; who knows but he may have the good fortune of being listed in the number of his beef-eaters, in which case he may, in process of time, be provided for in the Customs or the Church; when he is inclined to marry his own cook-wench his gracious patron may condescend to give the bride away; and may finally settle him, in his old age, as a trading Westminster Justice.

  I am sorry for H. Fielding’s death, and not only as I shall read no more of his writings, but I believe he lost more than others, as no man enjoyed life more than he did, though few had less reason to do so, the highest of his preferment being raking in the lowest sinks of vice 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 thing when he was before a venison pasty, or over a flask of champaign; and I am persuaded he has known more happy moments 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 so formed for happiness, it is a pity he was not immortal.

  Mr. Fielding had not been long a writer for the stage, when he married Miss Craddock, a beauty from Salisbury. About that time, his mother dying, a moderate estate, at Stower, in Dorsetshire, devolved to him. To that place he retired with his wife, on whom he doated, with a resolution to bid adieu to all the follies and intemperances to which he had addicted himself in the career of a town-life. But unfortunately a kind of family-pride here gained an ascendant over him; and he began immediately to vie in splendour with the neighbouring country ’squires. With an estate not much above two hundred pounds a-year, and his wife’s fortune, which did not exceed fifteen hundred pounds, he encumbered himself with a large retinue of servants, all clad in costly yellow liveries. For their master’s honour, these people could not descend so low as to be careful in their apparel, but, in a month or two, were unfit to be seen; the ’squire’s dignity required that they should be new-equipped; and his chief pleasure consisting in society and convivial mirth, hospitality threw open its doors, and in less than three years, entertainments, hounds, and horses, entirely devoured a little patrimony, which, had it been managed with economy, might have secured to him a state of independence for the rest of his life…. His passions, as the poet expresses it, were trembling alive all o’er: whatever he desired, he desired ardently; he was alike impatient of disappointment, or ill-usage, and the same quickness of sensibility rendered him elate in prosperity, and overflowing with gratitude at every instance of friendship or generosity: steady in his private attachments, his affection was warm, sincere, and vehement; in his resentments, he was manly, but temperate, seldom breaking out in his writings into gratifications of ill humour, or personal satire. It is to the honour of those whom he loved, that he had too much penetration to be deceived in their characters; and it is to the advantage of his enemies, that he was above passionate attacks upon them. Open, unbounded, and social in his temper, he knew no love of money; but, inclining to excess even in his very virtues, he pushed his contempt of avarice into the opposite extreme of imprudence and prodigality. When young in life he had a moderate estate, he soon suffered hospitality to devour it; and when in the latter end of his days he had an income of four or five hundred a-year, he knew no use of money, but to keep his table open to those who had been his friends when young, and had impaired their own fortunes. Though disposed to gallantry by his strong animal spirits, and the vivacity of his passions, he was remarkable for tenderness and constancy to his wife, and the strongest affection for his children.

  If I could not discover the place of Camoens’ interment, I at last found out the grave and tombstone of the author of “Tom Jones.” Fielding, who terminated his life, as is well-known, at Lisbon, in 1754, of a complication of disorders, at little more than forty-seven years of age, lies buried in the cemetery appropriated to the English factory. I visited his grave, which was already nearly concealed by weeds and nettles. Though he did not suffer the extremity of distress under which Camoens and Cervantes terminated their lives, yet his extravagance—a quality so commonly characteristic of men distinguished by talents—embittered the evening of his days.

  Nor was she (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu) a stranger to that beloved first wife, whose picture he drew in his “Amelia,” where, as she said, 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 passionately, and she returned his affection…. His biographers seem to have been shy of disclosing that after the death of this charming woman, he married her maid. And yet the act was not so discreditable to his character as it may sound. The maid had few personal charms, but was an excellent creature, devotedly attached to her mistress, and almost broken-hearted for her loss. In the first agonies of his own grief, which approached to frenzy, he found no relief but from weeping along with her; nor solace when a degree calmer, but in talking to her of the angel they mutually regretted. This made her his habitual confidential associate, and in process of time he began to think he could not give his children a tenderer mother, or secure for himself a more faithful housekeeper and nurse. At least, this was what he told his friends; and it is certain that her conduct as his wife confirmed it, and fully justified his good opinion.

  Let travellers devote one entire morning to inspecting the Arcos and the Mai das agoas, after which they may repair to the English church and cemetery, Pere-la-chaise in miniature, where, if they be of England, they may well be excused if they kiss the cold tomb, as I did, of the author of “Amelia,” the most singular genius which their island ever produced, whose works it has long been the fashion to abuse in public and to read in secret.

  I cannot offer or hope to make a hero of Harry Fielding. Why hide his faults? Why conceal his weaknesses in a cloud of periphrasis? Why not show him, like him as he is, not robed in a marble toga, and draped and polished in a heroic attitude, but with inked ruffles, and claret stains on his tarnished lace coat, and on his manly face the marks of good fellowship, of illness, of kindness, of care, and wine. Stained as you see him, and worn by care and dissipation, that man retains some of the most precious and splendid human qualities and endowments. He has an admirable natural love of truth, the keenest instinctive antipathy to hypocrisy, the happiest satirical gift of laughing it to scorn. His wit is wonderfully wise and detective; it flashes upon a rogue and lightens up a rascal like a policeman’s lantern. He is one of the manliest and kindliest of human beings: in the midst of all his imperfections, he respects female innocence and infantine tenderness, as you would suppose such a great-hearted, courageous soul would respect and care for them. He could not be so brave, generous, truth-telling as he is, were he not infinitely merciful, pitiful, and tender. He will give any man his purse—he cannot help kindness and profusion. He may have low tastes, but not a mean mind; he admires with all his heart good and virtuous men, stoops to no flattery, bears no rancour, disdains all disloyal arts, does his public duty uprightly, is fondly loved by his family, and dies at his work.

  The day of reckoning came. In a very short time Fielding found that all was spent and gone—all swallowed up in the abyss of ruin! It seemed like a dream, a wild, incoherent vision. The roar of mirth, the deafening cheer, the splendid liveries, prancing horses, staring rustics, full-mouthed dogs, faded before him like some “insubstantial pageant.” He had been generous, hospitable, profuse; and what was his reward? Those who had sat at meat with him now ridiculed his extravagance. Even the gaping boors of the neighbourhood cracked their heavy jokes at his expense. The prudent gentlemen and ladies who had not scrupled to sit at his jovial board, and partake of his cheer, now shook their heads, and gravely condemned his prodigality. Those of his more ambitious neighbours whom he had recently outshone in splendour, rejoiced in his downfall, without attempting to conceal their satisfaction. In the midst of all these untoward circumstances, he had to escape from his creditors as best he might, and to seek for happiness and a livelihood in some other sphere. How bitterly Fielding cursed his folly, and how penitently he bewailed his imprudence, can be well imagined. His sorrow—now, alas! unavailing—was not unmixed with feelings of resentment. The jealousy with which he had been regarded in the height of his ostentatious career, and the treatment he experienced in his reverses, long rankled in his breast. He could not easily forget the sneers and slights of those whom in his heart he so much despised; and from this time forth, therefore, the Squirearchy of England had to expect little mercy at his hands.

  Henry Fielding was at Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire, for the purpose of carrying off an heiress, Miss Andrew, the daughter of Solomon Andrew, Esq., the last of a series of merchants of that name at Lyme. The young lady was living with Mr. Andrew Tucker, one of the Corporation, who sent her away to Modbury in South Devon, where she married an ancestor of the present Rev. Mr, Rhodes, of Bath, who possesses the Andrew property. The circumstances about the attempt of Henry Fielding to carry off the young lady, handed down in the ancient Tucker family, were doubted by the late Dr. Rhodes, of Shapwick, &c. Since his death, I have found an entry in the old archives of Lyme about the fears of Andrew Tucker, Esq., as to his safety, owing to the behaviour of Henry Fielding and his attendant or man. According to the tradition of the Tucker family, Sophia Western was intended to portray Miss Andrew.

  In person Fielding was tall and large, being upwards of six feet high, and he seems to have attached much value to physical power, for he forms all his heroes after his own likeness. In consequence probably of his formation, he appears to have had a high relish for animal enjoyments…. That previous to his marriage he ran headlong into every species of dissipation, is, I fear, not to be doubted; but, as I have endeavoured to show, we have no proof that his life was otherwise than regular after his marriage. Had he, for example, been unfaithful to his adored wife, such was his innate candour that we can hardly doubt but he would have seized some occasion of confessing and deploring it. Even in his most licentious days, he never lost his respect for religion and virtue.

  Fielding protests on behalf of nature; and certainly to see his actions and his persons, we might think him made expressly for that: a robust, strongly built man, above six feet high, sanguine, with an excess of good humor and animal spirits, loyal, generous, affectionate, and brave, but imprudent, extravagant, a drinker, a roysterer, ruined as it were by heirloom, having seen the ups and down of life, bespattered, but always jolly…. Force, activity, invention, tenderness, all overflowed in him. He had a mother’s fondness for his children, adored his wife, became almost mad when he lost her, found no other consolation than to weep with his maid-servant, and ended by marrying that good and honest girl, that he might give a mother to his children; the last trait in the portrait of his valiant plebeian heart, quick in telling all, possessing no dislikes, but all the best parts of man, except delicacy. We read his books as we drink a pure, wholesome, and rough wine, which cheers and fortifies us, and which wants nothing but bouquet.

  And what was his reward, after wasting disappointments? The then not very reputable post of Middlesex magistrate at Bow Street. But, to his credit be it told, the corrupt practices which disgraced that important though subordinate seat of criminal justice were swept away by his judicious and indefatigable management, and from being a nest rather for the nursing care of some delinquents than for their utter extermination, it became in his hands the dread of incorrigible evil doers; while the weary and heavy-laden met with compassionate consideration. Of these facts there is no one but must feel assured who has read what may be called his dying words, which are so impressively told in his “Voyage to Lisbon”—his last resting place.

  Fielding was no hero. Ginger was hot in the mouth with him, and he was always apt to prefer the call of pleasure to the call of duty.

  I do not deny that Fielding’s temperament was far from being over nice. I am willing to admit, if you will, that the woof of his nature was coarse and animal. I should not stop short of saying that it was sensual. Yet he liked and admired the highest and best things of his time—the art of Hogarth, the acting of Garrick, the verse of Pope. He is said indeed to have loved low company, but his nature was so companionable and his hunger for knowledge so keen, that I fancy he would like any society that was not dull, and any conversation, however illiterate, from which he could learn anything to his purpose.

  The real monument which Fielding’s memory most needs is one that does not ask for the chisel of any sculptor or the voice of any orator. It is, moreover, a memorial which it would neither be difficult to raise nor pecuniarily unprofitable. That memorial is a complete edition of his writings. Though one hundred and thirty years have gone by since his death, this act of justice to his reputation has never yet been performed. Apparently, it has never once been contemplated. A portion of his work—and, in a certain way, of work especially characteristic—is practically inaccessible to the immense majority of English-speaking men. We are the losers by this neglect more than he. The mystery that envelops much of Fielding’s career can never be cleared away, the estimate of his character and conduct can never be satisfactorily fixed, until everything he wrote has been put into the hands of independent investigators pursuing separate lines of study.

  We dimly make out that the chief incident of Fielding’s dramatic career was his share in a quarrel between Cibber, then manager, and certain actors to whom, as Fielding thought, Cibber had behaved unfairly. Cibber, the smart, dapper little Frenchified coxcomb, was just the type of all the qualities which Fielding most heartily despised; and they fell foul of each other with great heartiness. On the other hand, he was equally enthusiastic on behalf of his friends. Chief among them were Hogarth, whose paintings are the best comment on Fielding’s novel, and Garrick, whom, though of very different temperament, he admired and praised with the most cordial generosity. “Harry Fielding,” as his familiars call him, was no doubt a wild youth, but to all appearance a most trustworthy and warm-hearted friend.

Dramas

  ’Twas from a sense of this concluding jumble, this unnatural huddling of events, that a witty friend of mine, who was himself a dramatic writer, used pleasantly, though perhaps rather freely, to damn the man who invented fifth acts…. So said the celebrated Henry Fielding, who was a respectable person both by education and birth…. His “Joseph Andrews” and “Tom Jones” may be called masterpieces in the comic epopée, which none since have equalled, though multitudes have imitated; and which he was peculiarly qualified to write in the manner he did, both from his life, his learning, and his genius. Had his life been less irregular (for irregular it was, and spent in a promiscuous intercourse with persons of all ranks), his pictures of human-kind had neither been so various nor so natural. Had he possessed less of literature, he could not have infused such a spirit of classical elegance. Had his genius been less fertile in wit and humour, he could not have maintained that uninterrupted pleasantry which never suffers his reader to feel fatigue.

  Though it must be acknowledged, that in the whole collection there are few plays likely to make any considerable figure on the stage hereafter, yet they are worthy of being preserved, being the works of a genius, who, in his wildest and most inaccurate productions, yet occasionally displays the talent of a master. Though in the plan of his pieces he is not always regular, yet is he often happy in his diction and style; and, in every groupe that he has exhibited, there are to be seen particular delineations that will amply recompense the attention bestowed upon them.

  Can any reason be assigned, why the inimitable Fielding, who was so perfect in Epic fable, should have succeeded so indifferently in Dramatic? Was it owing to the peculiarity of his genius, or of his circumstances? to any thing in the nature of Dramatic writing in general, or of that particular taste in Dramatic Comedy which Congreve and Vanburgh had introduced, and which he was obliged to comply with?

  Fielding was a comic writer, as well as a novelist; but his comedies are very inferior to his novels: they are particularly deficient both in plot and character. The only excellence which they have is that of the style, which is the only thing in which his novels are deficient. The only dramatic pieces of Fielding that retain possession of the stage are, “The Mock Doctor” (a tolerable translation from Moliere’s Medecin malgrè lui), and his “Tom Thumb,” a very admirable piece of burlesque.

  While it must be acknowledged that Fielding’s genius was not decidedly dramatic, it was something that he escaped disapprobation, though he was at times received with indifference.

  Notwithstanding the ill fate which attended “Pasquin,” I venture to pronounce it a work of the highest talent, if genius be not the more appropriate word. The humour is excellent; nor do I think that the satire in it at all oversteps the fair bounds of comic writing…. Fielding’s other burlesque, “Tom Thumb,” had better fortune, and still keeps possession of the stage. It is, however, the barbaric version of Kane O’Hara which is represented; and they who wish to appreciate this genuine specimen of good-humoured ridicule, must look to Fielding’s pages, and not to the theatre. Indeed, in any form, “Tom Thumb” is a play rather to be read than to be seen. Tom Thumb and Glumdalca ought to be left to our imagination, and not to the Property-man. If the popularity of this work of Fielding’s pen is to be ascertained by a common test, the number of quotations from it, that are universally current, it will be rated very high indeed.

  Of all Fielding’s dramatic pieces “Pasquin” seems deserving of the highest praise, and it touches pretty freely upon the political corruptions of the times. Considered in the light of a satire alone it may be pronounced very successful, showing its author as usual at his best in the unsparing use of the lash.

  None of Fielding’s plays, with the exception, perhaps, of his adaptation of the “Miser,” can be said to have “kept the stage;” few even of the students of literature have read them, and those who have read them have dismissed them too hastily. The closest students these plays have ever had were the dramatists of the following generation, whose works, notably those of Sheridan, contain many traces of their assiduity. The tradition about his writing scenes after his return from tavern carousals on the papers in which his tobacco had been wrapt, and his cool reception of Garrick’s desire that he should alter some passage in the “Wedding-Day,” have helped the impression that they were loose, ill-considered, ill-constructed productions, scribbled off hastily to meet passing demands. There is only a fraction of truth in this notion. That the plays are not the work of a dull plodder or a mechanician of elaborate ingenuity goes without saying; but, though perhaps rapidly considered and rapidly constructed, they are neither ill-considered nor ill-constructed, and bear testimony to the large and keen intelligence, as well as the overflowing humor and fertile wit of their author.

  The dramatic pieces that he wrote during his early period were, it is true, shamefully gross, though there are humorous hints in them that have been profitably worked up by later writers; but what strikes me most in them is that there is so little real knowledge of life, the result of personal experience, and that the social scenery and conception of character are mainly borrowed from his immediate predecessors, the dramatists of the Restoration. In grossness his plays could not outdo those of Dryden, whose bust has stood so long without protest in Westminster Abbey. As to any harm they can do there is little to be apprehended, for they are mostly as hard to read as a Shapira manuscript.

  As a dramatist he has no eminence; and though his plays do not deserve the sweeping condemnation with which Macaulay once spoke of them in the House of Commons, they are not likely to attract any critics but those for whom the inferior efforts of a great genius possess a morbid fascination. Some of them serve, in a measure, to illustrate his career; others contain hints and situations which he afterwards worked into his novels; but the only ones that possess real stage qualities are those which he borrowed from Regnard and Molière. “Don Quixote in England,” “Pasquin,” the “Historical Register,” can claim no present consideration commensurate with that which they received as contemporary satires, and their interest is mainly antiquarian; while “Tom Thumb” and the “Covent-Garden Tragedy,” the former of which would make the reputation of a smaller man, can scarcely hope to be remembered beside “Amelia” or “Jonathan Wild.”

Joseph Andrews, 1742

  I have myself, upon your recommendation, been reading “Joseph Andrews.” The incidents are ill laid and without invention; but the characters have a great deal of nature, which always pleases even in her lowest shapes. Parson Adams is perfectly well; so is Mrs. Slipslop, and the story of Wilson; and throughout he shows himself well read in Stage-Coaches, Country Squires, Inns, and Inns of Court. His reflections upon high people and low people, and misses and masters, are very good.

  The worthy parson’s learning, his simplicity, his evangelical purity of heart 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.

  Joseph Andrews is a hero of the shoulder-knot: it would be hard to canvass his pretentions too severely, especially considering what a patron he has in Parson Adams. That one character would cut up into a hundred fine gentlemen and novel heroes!

  While, however, it is highly probable that he had Cervantes in his eye, it is certain that the satiric and burlesque portion of “Joseph Andrews” was suggested to him by the perusal of Richardson’s “Pamela,” on the overwrought refinement and strained sentiment of which it affords a humorous commentary in the adventures of her professed brother, the hero. Besides its intrinsic wit and excellence, it has thus a twofold attraction in the comic and burlesque spirit it maintains throughout, in the same way as the adventures of the Spanish knight and his squire, however ludicrous in themselves, are relished with a double zest for the contrast they offer to the dignified bearing and marvellous deeds of the old Paladins. How exquisitely Fielding has caught the humour, assumed gravity, and delicate satire of his prototype, they who have compared the two master-pieces will readily admit; and that he loses nothing in point of originality.

  Resemblances have been found, and may be admitted to exist, between the Rev. Charles Primrose and the Rev. Abraham Adams. They were from kindred genius; and from the manly habit which Fielding and Goldsmith shared of discerning what was good and beautiful in the homeliest aspects of humanity. In the parson’s saddle-bag of sermons would hardly have been found this prison-sermon of the vicar; and there was in Mr. Adams not only a capacity for beef and pudding, but for beating and being beaten, which would ill have consisted with the simple dignity of Doctor Primrose. But unquestionable learning, unsuspecting simplicity, amusing traits of credulity and pedantry, and a most Christian purity and benevolence of heart, are common to both these master-pieces of English fiction; and are in each with such exquisite touch discriminated, as to leave no possible doubt of the originality of either.

  Joseph Andrews, though he wears Lady Booby’s cast-off livery, is, I think, to the full as polite as Tom Jones in his fustian-suit, or Captain Booth in regimentals. He has, like those heroes, large calves, broad shoulders, a high courage, and a handsome face. The accounts of Joseph’s bravery and good qualities; his voice, too musical to halloo to the dogs; his bravery in riding races for the gentlemen of the county, and his constancy in refusing bribes and temptation, have something affecting in their naïveté and freshness, and prepossess one in favour of that handsome young hero. The rustic bloom of Fanny, and the delightful simplicity of Parson Adams are described with a friendliness which wins the reader of their story: we part with them with more regret than from Booth and Jones.

  The character of Mr. Abraham Adams is the most delightful in the whole range of English fiction. It is the embodiment of Christianity in all its noblest bearings—the grandest delineation of a pattern priest which the world has yet seen.

  It is a piece of admirable art, but composed of the basest materials, like a palace built of dung. “Amelia” is not so corrupt, but it is often coarse, and, as a whole, very poor and tedious. “Joseph Andrews” is by far the most delightful of his writings. With less art than “Tom Jones,” it has much more genius. Parson Adams is confessedly one of the most original and pleasing characters in fiction. Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield,” Joseph Cargill in “St. Ronan’s Well,” are both copied from him, but have not a tithe of his deep simplicity and delicious bonhommie. We predict that, in a century hence, “Joseph Andrews” will alone survive to preserve Fielding’s name.

  What is London in the mouths of Hume, and Richardson, and Boswell? A place of elegant manners, refined ideas, general enlightenment, knowledge, enterprise, wealth, liberality. What are London and England in the pictures of Hogarth and the pages of Fielding? “No better than they should be,” certainly: full of poverty, low vice, coarse indulgence, and sheer brutality, relieved now and then by exhibitions of good sense, courage, and love of learning. Parson Adams, the simple-minded clergyman in “Joseph Andrews,” who goes up to London to sell his sermons to some publisher, and meets on the way to and from the country with as many adventures as Don Quixote himself, is a literary creation of unsurpassed merit; nor are the personages that surround him, though less interesting, drawn with less ability!

  The type which shows best the force and the limits of Fielding’s genius is Parson Adams. He belongs to a distinguished family, whose members have been portrayed by the greatest historians. He is a collateral descendant of Don Quixote, for whose creation Fielding felt a reverence exceeded only by his reverence for Shakespeare. The resemblance is, of course, distant, and consists chiefly in this, that the parson, like the knight, lives in an ideal world, and is constantly shocked by harsh collision with facts. He believes in his sermons instead of his sword, and his imagination is tenanted by virtuous squires and model parsons instead of Arcadian shepherds, or knight-errants and fair ladies. His imagination is not exalted beyond the limits of sanity, but only colours the prosaic realities in accordance with the impulses or a tranquil benevolence…. If the ideal hero is always to live in fancy-land and talk in blank verse, Adams has clearly no right to the title; nor, indeed, has Don Quixote. But the masculine portraiture of the coarse realities is not only indicative of intellectual vigour, but artistically appropriate. The contrast between the world and its simple-minded inhabitant is the more forcible in proportion to the firmness and solidity of Fielding’s touch.

  It was not without reason that Fielding added prominently to his title-page the name of Mr. Abraham Adams. If he is not the real hero of the book, he is undoubtedly the character whose fortunes the reader follows with the closest interest…. Not all the discipline of hog’s blood and cudgels and cold water to which he is subjected can deprive him of his native dignity; and as he stands before us in the short great-coat under which his ragged cassock is continually making its appearance, with his old wig and battered hat, a clergyman whose social position is scarcely above that of a footman, and who supports a wife and six children upon a cure of twenty-three pounds a year, which his outspoken honesty is continually jeopardising, he is a far finer figure than Pamela in her coach-and-six, or Bellarmine in his cinnamon velvet.

Journey from This World to the Next, 1748

  “The Journey from this World to the Next,” is to me an unpleasing fiction. The main requisite for such a fiction is precisely that in which Fielding was most deficient—a poetic imagination. It will therefore rarely, I think, be read for pleasure, but it may be for information, for it is a fund of acute satire and profound observation on human nature.

  The Lucianic history called “A Journey from this World to the Next;” this begins with a very sprightly satire, culminating in the author’s entrance into Elysium; unhappily, when in a charming vein, he meets Julian the Apostate, who soliloquises, not always very amusingly, for one hundred and forty pages. Julian relinquishes his position to Anne Boleyn, and the fragment presently closes. There are some exceedingly fine passages in the shapeless work.

Jonathan Wild, 1743

  “Jonathan Wild” is assuredly the best of all the fictions in which a villain is throughout the prominent character. But how impossible it is by any force of genius to create a sustained attractive interest for such a groundwork, and how the mind wearies of, and shrinks from, the more than painful interest, the μισητὸν, of utter depravity,—Fielding himself felt and endeavoured to mitigate and remedy by the (on all other principles) far too large a proportion, and too quick recurrence, of the interposed chapters of moral reflection, like the chorus in the Greek tragedy,—admirable specimens as these chapters are of profound irony and philosophic satire.

  “The Life of Jonathan Wild” has proved a perfect crux to the critics, a proof perhaps that it may have a recondite sense. It is not the real life of that villain, which may be found in the “Newgate Calendar,” or in Watson’s “Life of Fielding;” it seems rather to be an attempt at forming the ideal of perfect and consummate villainy, absorbed in self and unchecked by feeling or remorse.

  It was written for a special purpose; it fulfilled that purpose admirably; but beyond that fact, and that it contains much of its author’s sarcastic genius, the fragment is not in any other aspect very noticeable.

  This has never been a favourite among Fielding’s readers, because of its caustic cynicism and the unbroken gloom of its tone, but it is equal to the best he has left us in force and originality. It is the history of an unmitigated ruffian, from his baptism by Titus Oates to his death at Newgate on “the Tree of Glory.” The story is intended to mock those relations in which biographers lose themselves in pompous eulogies of their subjects, for their “greatness,” without consideration of any “goodness,” by showing that it is possible to write the history of a gallows-bird in exactly the same style of inflated gusto. The inexorable irony which is sustained all through, even when the most detestable acts of the hero are described, forms rather a strain at last upon the reader’s nerves, and no one would turn to “Jonathan Wild” for mere amusement. But it shows a marvellous knowledge of the seamy side of life, the author proving himself in it to be as familiar with thieves and their prisons as in “Joseph Andrews” he had been with stage-coaches and wayside taverns; while nothing could be more picturesque than some of the scenes with Blueskin and his gang, or than the Petronian passages on board ship.

  In “Jonathan Wild” above all Fielding indulges to the full his taste for clearness and unity of intellectual structure…. Fielding conducts his narrative under the dominant influence of one prevailing purpose, in the service of which he employs all his irony, never suffering the reader for one moment to forget the main thesis, which is stated at the beginning of the story, restated at the close and illustrated with matchless skill throughout. This thesis is in effect that the elements of “greatness,” in the common acceptation of the term, when divorced from that plain goodness of heart which is little likely to foster ambition, are the same in the thief and in men eminent in more reputable professions, as those can testify “who have lived long in cities, courts, gaols, or such places.” In sketching the history of Wild, and showing how his career of selfish villainy might have been marred at innumerable points by the slightest liability to humane feeling, Fielding’s polished irony achieves a triumph, and presents a picture of almost “perfect diabolism.” The humour of the author is at its grimmest in this work, not so much in depicting Wild, the horror of whose character is almost forgotten in its artistic unity, as in sundry subordinate details.

  His brave, generous nature could never give up a belief in virtue or in the substantial happiness of a good heart. He could see, as he proved by Jonathan Wild, into the very soul of a thorough villain, the depth beyond depth of treachery and sensuality that can be embodied in human form. His moral is, as he puts it, that a man may “go to heaven with half the pains which it costs him to purchase hell.” The villain, even as things go, naturally overreaches himself. Knowledge of the world takes the gloss off much; but it properly leads to a recognition of the supreme advantage of unworldly simplicity.

Tom Jones, 1749

  I have been very well entertained lately with the two first volumes of “The Foundling,” written by Mr. Fielding, but not to be published till January (1749). If the same spirit runs through the whole work, I think it will be much preferable to “Joseph Andrews.”

  Meanwhile, it is an honest pleasure, which we take in adding, that (exclusive of one wild, detach’d, and independent Story of a Man of the Hill, that neither brings on Anything, nor rose from Anything that went before it). All the changeful windings of the Author’s Fancy carry on a course of regular Design; and end in an extremely moving Close, where Lives that seem’d to wander and run different ways, meet, All, in an instructive Center. The whole Piece consists of an inventive Race of Disappointments and Recoveries. It excites Curiosity, and holds it watchful. It has just and pointed Satire; but it is a partial Satire, and confin’d, too narrowly: It sacrifices to Authority and Interest. Its Events reward Sincerity, and punish and expose Hypocrisy; shew Pity and Benevolence in amiable Lights, and Avarice and Brutality in very despicable ones. In every Part It has Humanity for its Intention: In too many, it seems wantoner than It was meant to be: It has bold shocking Pictures; and (I fear) not unresembling ones, in high Life, and in low. And (to conclude this too adventurous Guess-work, from a Pair of forward Baggages) woud, every where (we think), deserve to please,—if stript of what the Author thought himself most sure to please by. And thus, Sir, we have told you our sincere opinion of “Tom Jones.”… Your most profest Admirers and most humble servants.

  I must confess, that I have been prejudiced by the Opinion of Several judicious Friends against the truly coarse-titled “Tom Jones;” and so have been discouraged from reading it.—I was told, that it was a rambling Collection of Waking Dreams, in which Probability was not observed: And that it had a very bad Tendency. And I had Reason to think that the Author intended for his Second View (His first, to fill his Pocket, by accommodating it to the reigning Taste) in writing it, to whiten a vicious Character, and to make Morality bend to his Practices. What Reason had he to make his Tom illegitimate, in an Age where Keeping is become a Fashion? Why did he make him a common—What shall I call it? And a Kept Fellow, the Lowest of all Fellows, yet in Love with a Young Creature who was traping [trapesing?] after him, a Fugitive from her Father’s House?—Why did he draw his Heroine so fond, so foolish, and so insipid?—Indeed he has one excuse—He knows not how to draw a delicate Woman—He has not been accustomed to such Company,—And is too prescribing, too impetuous, too immoral, I will venture to say, to take any other Byass that a perverse and crooked Nature has given him; or Evil Habits, at least, have confirm’d in him. Do Men expect Grapes of Thorns, or Figs of Thistles? But, perhaps, I think the worse of the Piece because I know the Writer, and dislike his Principles both Public and Private, tho’ I wish well to the Man, and Love Four worthy Sisters of his, with whom I am well acquainted. And indeed should admire him, did he make the Use of his Talents which I wish him to make. For the Vein of Humour, and Ridicule, which he is Master of, might, if properly turned, do great Service to y^e Cause of Virtue. But no more of this Gentleman’s Work, after I have said, That the favourable Things, you say of the Piece, will tempt me, if I can find Leisure, to give it a Perusal.

  Unfortunate Tom Jones! how sadly has he mortify’d Two sawcy Correspondents of your making! They are with me now: and bid me tell you, You have spoil’d ’em Both, for Criticks.—Shall I add, a Secret which they did not bid me tell you?—They, Both, fairly cry’d, that You shou’d think it possible they cou’d approve of Any thing, in Any work, that had an Evil Tendency, in any Part or Purpose of it. They maintain their Point so far, however, as to be convinc’d they say, that you will disapprove this over-rigid Judgment of those Friends, who cou’d not find a Thread of Moral Meaning in “Tom Jones,” quite independent of the Levities they justly censure.—And, as soon as you have Time to read him, for yourself, tis there, pert Sluts, they will be bold enough to rest the Matter.—Mean while, they love and honour you and your opinions.

  There is lately sprung up amongst us a species of narrative poem, representing likewise the characters of common life. It has the same relation to comedy that the epic has to tragedy, and differs from the epic in the same respect that comedy differs from tragedy; that is, in the actions and characters, both which are much nobler in the epic than in it. It is therefore, I think, a legitimate kind of poem; and, accordingly, we are told, Homer wrote one of that kind, called “Margites,” of which some lines are preserved. The reason why I mention it is, that we have, in English, a poem of that kind (for so I will call it), which has more of character in it than any work, antient or modern, that I know. The work I mean is, “The History of Tom Jones,” by Henry Fielding, which, as it has more personages brought into the story than any thing of the poetic kind I have ever seen; so all those personages have characters peculiar to them, insomuch, that there is not even an host or an hostess upon the road, hardly a servant, who is not distinguished in that way; in short I never saw any thing that was so much animated, and, as I may say, all alive with characters and manners, as “The History of Tom Jones.”

  I never saw Johnson really angry with me but once. I alluded to some witty passages in “Tom Jones;” he replied, “I am shocked to hear you quote from so vicious a book. I am sorry to hear you have read it: a confession which no modest lady should ever make. I scarcely know a more corrupt work!” He went so far as to refuse to Fielding the great talents which are ascribed to him, and broke out into a noble panegyric on his competitor, Richardson; who, he said, was as superior to him in talents as in virtue; and whom he pronounced to be the greatest genius that had shed its lustre on this path of literature.

  In “Tom Jones,” his greatest work, the artful conduct of the fable, and the subserviency of all the incidents to the winding up of the whole, deserve much praise.

  A book seemingly intended to sap the foundation of that morality which it is the duty of parents and all public instructors to inculcate in the minds of young people, by teaching that virtue upon principle is imposture, that generous qualities alone constitute true worth, and that a young man may love and be loved, and at the same time associate with the loosest women. His morality, in respect that it resolves virtue into good affections, in contradiction to moral obligation and a sense of duty, is that of lord Shaftesbury vulgarised, and is a system of excellent use in palliating the vices most injurious to society. He was the inventor of that cant-phrase, goodness of heart, which is every day used as a substitute for probity, and means little more than the virtue of a horse or a dog; in short, he has done more towards corrupting the rising generation than any writer we know of.

  I have already given my opinion of Fielding; but I cannot refrain from repeating here my wonder at Johnson’s excessive and unaccountable depreciation of one of the best writers that England has produced. “Tom Jones” has stood the test of publick opinion with such success, as to have established its great merit, both for the story, the sentiments, and the manners, and also the varieties of diction, so as to leave no doubt of its having an animated truth of execution throughout.

  The nobility of the Spencers has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marlborough; but I exhort them to consider the Faëry Queen as the most precious jewel of their coronet. Our immortal Fielding was of the younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who drew their origin from the Counts of Habsburgh, the lineal descendants of Ethrico, in the seventh century, Duke of Alsace. Far different have been the fortunes of the English and German divisions of the Family of Habsburgh, the former, the knights and sheriffs of Leicestershire, have slowly risen to the dignity of a peerage; the latter, the Emperors of Germany and Kings of Spain, have threatened the liberty of the old and invaded the treasures of the new world. The successors of Charles V. may disdain their brethren of England; but the romance of “Tom Jones,” that exquisite picture of human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial, and the imperial eagle of the house of Austria.

  “Tom Jones,” cannot be considered simply a novel: the abundance of philosophical ideas, the hypocrisy of society, and the contrast of natural qualities, are brought into action with an infinity of art; and love, as I have observed before, is only a vehicle to introduce all these.

  Fielding had all the ease which Richardson wanted, a genuine flow of humour, and a rich variety of comic character; nor was he wanting in strokes of an amiable sensibility, but he could not describe a consistently virtuous character, and in deep pathos he was far excelled by his rival. When we see Fielding parodying “Pamela,” and Richardson asserting, as he does in his letters, that the run of “Tom Jones” is over, and that it would soon be completely forgotten: we cannot but smile on seeing the two authors placed on the same shelf, and going quietly down to posterity together.

  Tom Jones’s warmth and generosity do not appear to me of that kind which qualify a man for adorning domestic life.

  As a story, “Tom Jones” seems to have only one defect, which might have been so easily remedied, that it is to be regretted that it should have been neglected by the author. Jones, after all, proves illegitimate, when there would have been no difficulty for the author to have supposed that his mother had been privately married to the young clergyman. This would not only have removed the stain from the birth of the hero, but, in the idea of the reader, would have given him better security for the property of his uncle Allworthy. In fact, in a miserable continuation which has been written of the history of Tom Jones, the wrongheaded author (of whom Blifil was the favourite), has made his hero bring an action against Tom after the death of Mr. Allworthy, and oust him from his uncle’s property.

  Shall I say which was the first book that most strongly excited my curiosity, and interested my sensibility? It was “Tom Jones.” My female Mentor tantalized me without mercy. She would let me have but one volume at a time; and not only would not afford me any clue to the concluding catastrophe, but rather put me upon a wrong scent. Sometimes too when my impatience of expectation was at the very highest point possible, the succeeding volume was mislaid, was lent, was not impossibly lost. However, after a long and most severe trial, after hating Blifil with no common hatred, forming a most friendly intimacy with Patridge, loving Sophia with rapturous extravagance, I complacently accompanied dear wicked Tom to the nuptial altar. I endeavoured of course to procure the other productions of this popular author, but I well remember that I did not peruse any of them, no not within a hundred degrees of the satisfaction, which the Foundling communicated.

  The felicitous contrivance, and happy extrication of the story, where every incident tells upon and advances the catastrophe, while, at the same time, it illustrates the characters of those interested in its approach, cannot too often be mentioned with the highest approbation. The attention of the reader is never diverted or puzzled by unnecessary digressions, or recalled to the main story by abrupt and startling recurrences; he glides down the narrative like a boat on the surface of some broad navigable stream, which only winds enough to gratify the voyager with the varied beauty of its banks…. 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.

  Many people find fault with Fielding’s “Tom Jones” as gross and immoral. For my part, I have doubts of his being so very handsome from the author’s always talking about his beauty, and I suspect he was a clown, from being constantly assured he was so very genteel. Otherwise, I think Jones acquits himself very well both in his actions and speeches, as a lover and as a trencherman, whenever he is called upon.

  Manners change from generation to generation, and with manners morals appear to change,—actually change with some, but appear to change with all but the abandoned. A young man of the present day who should act as Tom Jones is supposed to act at Upton, with Lady Bellaston, &c., would not be a Tom Jones; and a Tom Jones of the present day, without perhaps being in the ground a better man, would have perished rather than submit to be kept by a harridan of fortune. Therefore, this novel is, and indeed, pretends to be, no exemplar of conduct. But, notwithstanding all this, I do loathe the cant which can recommend “Pamela” and “Clarissa Harlowe” as strictly moral, though they poison the imagination of the young with continued doses of tinct. lyttæ, while Tom Jones is prohibited as loose. I do not speak of young women; but a young man whose heart or feelings can be injured, or even his passions excited, by aught in this novel, is already thoroughly corrupt. There is a cheerful, sunshiny, breezy spirit, that prevails everywhere, strongly contrasted with the close, hot, day-dreamy continuity of Richardson.

  In point of general excellence “Amelia” has commonly been considered, no less by critics, perhaps, than by the public, as decidedly inferior to “Tom Jones.” In variety and invention it assuredly is so. Its chief merit depends less on its artful and elaborate construction than on the interesting series it presents of domestic paintings, drawn, as we have remarked, from his own family history. It has more pathos, more moral lessons, with far less vigour and humour, than either of its predecessors. But we agree with Chalmers, that those who have seen much of the errors and distresses of domestic life will probably feel that the author’s colouring in this work is more just, as well as more chaste, than in any of his other novels. The appeals to the heart are far more forcible.

  His “Tom Jones” is quite unrivalled in plot, and is to be rivalled only in his own works for felicitous delineation of character.

  In “Tom Jones,” Fielding has comprehended a larger variety of incidents and characters under a stricter unity of story than in “Joseph Andrews;” but he has given to the whole a tone of worldliness which does not mar the delightful simplicity of the latter. As an expression of the power and breadth of his mind, however, it is altogether his greatest work, and, in the union of distinct pictorial representation with profound knowledge of practical life, is unequalled by any novel in the language.

  While at Tulnavert school, I formed one of those schoolboy friendships, which are so common among lads such as we were, for a young class-fellow called William Short. He asked me to go home and spend a few nights with him, an invitation which I gladly accepted. His father lived in a wild mountainous district and possessed a large tract of rough mountain ground. When I went there I felt astonished at the undoubted evidences of his wealth. While on this visit I saw for the first time an odd volume of “Tom Jones;” but I have not the slightest intention of describing the wonder and the feeling with which I read it. No pen could do justice to that. It was the second volume; of course the story was incomplete, and, as a natural consequence, I felt something amounting to agony at the disappointment—not knowing what the dénouement was.

  The only great English epic of that century is the prose Odyssey of which Mr. Tom Jones is the hero.

  The book breathes health. The convention of the time did not forbid a direct picturing of its evil; but the coarse scenes in Fielding’s novels are given always for what they are, with no false gloss upon them. Whenever Tom Jones sins against the purity of his love for Sophia his wrong doing is made in some way to part him from her, and when he pleads toward the close of the story, the difference between men and women, and the different codes of morality by which they are judged in society. Fielding makes Sophia answer, “I will never marry a man who is not as incapable as I am myself of making such a distinction.” The charm of genius enters into the whole texture of thought in Fielding’s novels. A page of his is to a page of Richardson’s as silk to sackcloth.

  Novelists who have undertaken to write the life of a hero or heroine have generally considered their work completed at the interesting period of marriage, and have contented themselves with the advance in taste and manners which are common to all boys and girls as they become men and women. Fielding, no doubt, did more than this in “Tom Jones,” which is one of the greatest novels in the English language, for there he has shown how a noble and sanguine nature may fall away under temptation and be again strengthened and made to stand upright.

  Like “Don Quixote,” “Tom Jones” is the precursor of a new order of things—the earliest and freshest expression of a new departure in art. But while “Tom Jones” is, to the full, as amusing as “Don Quixote,” it has the advantage of a greatly superior plan, and an interest more skilfully sustained. The incidents which, in Cervantes, simply succeed each other like the scenes in a panorama, are, in “Tom Jones,” but parts of an organised and carefully-arranged progression towards a foreseen conclusion. As the hero and heroine cross and recross each other’s track, there is scarcely an episode which does not aid in the moving forward of the story. Little details rise lightly and naturally to the surface of the narrative, not more noticeable at first than the most everyday occurrences, and a few pages farther on become of the greatest importance…. What a brave wit it is, what a wisdom after all, that is contained in this wonderful novel! Where shall we find its like for richness of reflection—for inexhaustible good-humour—for large and liberal humanity? Like Fontenelle, Fielding might fairly claim that he had never cast the smallest ridicule upon the most infinitesimal of virtues; it is against hypocrisy, affectation, insincerity of all kinds, that he wages war. And what a keen and searching observation—what a perpetual faculty of surprise—what an endless variety of method!

  At every corner there is a conspicuous finger post intended to point out the roads along which approbation and disapprobation are expected to travel. In reading “Tom Jones” we know at once that we are intended to like Tom and to hate Blifil, and the emotional attitude we are requested to take at the beginning we are compelled to retain until the end. There are light and shade, but they are not intermingled as in real life and in the most typical nineteenth century fiction, for all the sunlight falls on one place and all the shadow on another. Tom Jones is by no means a perfect character, but he is clearly an embodiment of Fielding’s ideal, and one may say—if the bull be pardonable—we are meant to feel that if he were more perfect he would be less so.

  In “Tom Jones,” a novel of which the respectable profess that they could stand the dulness if it were not so blackguardly, and the more honest admit that they could forgive the blackguardism if it were not so dull—in “Tom Jones,” with its voluminous bulk and troops of characters, there is no shadow of a gentleman, for Allworthy is only ink and paper.

  The Epic of Youth, by a master of comedy. In the prime of his manhood, speaking from a full and ripe experience, but with the zest of youthfulness still easily within the reach of memory and sympathy, Fielding gives in this book his sonorous verdict on human life and human conduct. Whether regarded for its art or for its thought, whether treated as detached scenes of the human comedy, as an example of plot-architecture, or as an attempt at the solution of certain wide problems of life, no truer, saner book has ever been written.

  “Tom Jones” is a marvel of invention, character, and wit, of which readers never weary; with its amusing scenes and adventures, its sparkling sketches of high and low life, its genial satire, and its scorn of meanness and hypocrisy. He has stronger claims to be a writer of history than the authors of many elaborate fictions known under that name.

  The scenes are still constructed as in comedy. As we read on, it is as if we were assisting at the representation of a score of comedies, parallel and successive; some pathetic, some burlesque, others possessing the gay wit of Vanbrugh and Congreve—all of which, after a skilfully manipulated revolution of circumstances, are united in a brilliant conclusion. Instead of being burdened, as were the earlier epic romancers, with a number of narratives to be gathered up in the last chapters, Fielding in the main becomes his own story-teller throughout. Character is unfolded, and a momentum is given to his plot by direct, not reported, conversations. All devices to account for his subject-matter, such as bundles of letters, fragmentary or rat-eaten manuscripts, found by chance, or given to the writer in keeping, are brushed aside as cheap and silly. Fielding throws off the mask of anonymity, steps out boldly, and asks us to accept his omniscience and omnipresence.

Amelia, 1751

  Methinks I long to engage you on the side of this poor unfortunate book, which I am told the fine folks are unanimous in pronouncing to be very sad stuff.

  You guess that I have not read “Amelia.” Indeed I have read but the first volume. I had intended to go through with it; but I found the characters and situations so wretchedly low and dirty, that I imagined I could not be interested for any one of them; and to read and not care what became of the hero and heroine, is a task I thought I would leave to those who had more leisure than I am blessed with…. Booth, in his last piece, again himself; Amelia, even to her noselessness, is again his first wife. His brawls, his jarrs, his gaols, his spunging-houses, are all drawn from what he has seen and known. As I said (witness also his hamper plot) he has little or no invention: and admirably do you observe, that by several strokes in his “Amelia” he designed to be good, but knew not how, and lost his genius, low humour, in the attempt.

  “Amelia,” which succeeded “Tom Jones” in about four years, has indeed the marks of genius, but of a genius beginning to fall into its decay. The author’s invention in this performance does not appear to have lost its fertility; his judgment, too, seems as strong as ever; but the warmth of imagination is abated; and, in his landscapes, or his scenes of life, Mr. Fielding is no longer the colourist he was before…. And yet “Amelia” holds the same proportion to “Tom Jones” that “The Odyssey” of Homer bears, in the estimation of Longinus, to the “Iliad.” A fine vein of morality runs through the whole; many of the situations are affecting and tender; the sentiments are delicate; and, upon the whole, it is “The Odyssey,” the moral and pathetic work, of Henry Fielding.

  Of all his novels, it leaves the finest impression of quiet, domestic delight, of the sweet home feeling, and the humanities connected with it. We have not the glad spring or the glowing summer of his genius, but its autumnal mellowness and mitigated sunshine, with something of the thoughtfulness befitting the season. Amelia herself, the wife and mother, arrayed in all matronly graces, with her rosy children about her, is a picture of womanly gentleness and beauty, and unostentatious heroism, such as never leaves the imagination in which it has once found a place.

  However this may be, I think that of all the novels of that period, “Amelia” is the one which gives the most generally truthful idea of the manners and habits of middle-class society then. There is little, if any, exaggeration or caricature, and I have no doubt that Fielding intended faithfully to depict society, such as he knew it, with its merits and its faults; its licentious manners, and domestic virtues; its brawls, its oaths, its prisons, and its masquerades.

  Amelia, whose portrait Fielding drew from that of his second wife, has, indeed, been always a favourite character with readers; but the same cannot be said about her husband, Booth, who, we may suppose, was intended to represent Fielding himself. If so, the likeness which he drew is certainly not a flattering one. Thackeray preferred Captain Booth to Tom Jones, because he thought much more humbly of himself than Jones did, and went down on his knees and owned his weaknesses; but most will be inclined to agree with Scott, who declares that we have not the same sympathy for the ungrateful and dissolute conduct of Booth which we yield to the youthful follies of Jones. However, after all necessary deductions have been made, “Amelia” must be pronounced a wonderful work, full of that rich flow of humour and deep knowledge of human nature which charm us in “Tom Jones” and “Joseph Andrews.”

  In “Amelia,” things get better; all things get better; it is one of the curiosities of literature that Fielding, who wrote one book that was engaging, truthful, kind, and clean, and another book that was dirty, dull, and false, should be spoken of, the world over, as the author of the second and not the first, as the author of “Tom Jones,” not of “Amelia.”

  On the whole one likes Booth. If he sins he is heavily punished, and his conscience never becomes hardened. He is irresponsible, but he is not a fool. Fielding was a true artist when he put this born soldier into circumstances that needed the attainments of a man of business, and showed thereby that the qualities which were winning for us our colonial empire would not ensure financial success to their possessor. There is no subject on which our author waxes more indignant than the ingratitude shown by the Government to officers of distinguished merit who were so unfortunate as to lack interest in high places. But Booth’s military training is apparent throughout the book. As far as his own sufferings are concerned he has plenty of pluck; it is the misery of those dear to him that disturbs his fortitude. When Amelia tries to deter him from foreign service for her sake, his tender heart is torn for his wife, while his honour as a soldier bids him go. And honour wins the day in spite of Amelia’s entreaties. This man, after all, has some spirit, and is not simply a foolish prodigal, alternately uxorious and licentious.

General

  Through all Mr. Fielding’s inimitable comic romances we perceive no such thing as personal malice, no private character dragged into light; but every stroke is copied from the volume which nature has unfolded to him; every scene of life is by him represented in its natural colours, and every species of folly or humour is ridiculed with the most exquisite touches. A genius like this is perhaps more useful to mankind than any class of writers; he serves to dispel all gloom from our minds, to work off our ill-humours by the gay sensations excited by a well-directed pleasantry, and in a vain of mirth he leads his readers into a knowledge of human nature.

  We have [says Mr. Bookseller] another writer of these imaginary histories, one who has not long since descended to these regions. His name is Fielding; and his works, as I have heard the best judges say, have a true spirit of comedy, and an exact representation of nature, with fine moral touches. He has not indeed given lessons of pure and consummate virtue, but he has exposed vice and meanness with all the powers of ridicule.

  Fielding being mentioned, Johnson exclaimed, “he was a blockhead;” and upon my expressing my astonishment at so strange an assertion, he said, “What I mean by his being a blockhead is that he was a barren rascal.” BOSWELL.—“Will you not allow, Sir, that he draws very natural pictures of human life?” JOHNSON.—“Why, Sir, it is of very low life. Richardson used to say, that had he not known who Fielding was, he should have believed he was an hostler. Sir, there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson’s, than in all ‘Tom Jones.’ I, indeed, never read ‘Joseph Andrews.’”

  Of the Comic Epopee we have two exquisite models in English, I mean the “Amelia” and “Tom Jones” of Fielding. The introductory part of the latter follows indeed the historical arrangement, in a way somewhat resembling the practice of Euripides in his prologues, or at least as excusable: But, with this exception, we may venture to say, that both fables would bear to be examined by Aristotle himself, and, if compared with those of Homer, would not suffer in the comparison. This author, to an amazing variety of probable occurrences, and of characters well drawn, well supported, and finely contrasted, has given the most perfect unity, by making them all co-operate to one and the same final purpose. It yields a very pleasing surprise to observe, in the unravelling of his plots, particularly that of “Tom Jones,” how many incidents, to which, because of their apparent minuteness, we have scarce attended as they occurred in the narrative, are found to have been essential to the plot. And what heightens our idea of the poet’s art is, that all this is effected by natural means, and human abilities, without any machinery.

  The cultivated genius of Fielding entitles him to a high rank among the classics. His works exhibit a series of pictures drawn with all the descriptive fidelity of a Hogarth. They are highly entertaining, and will always be read with pleasure.

  Mr. Fielding’s novels are highly distinguished for their humour; a humour which, if not of the most refined and delicate kind, is original, and peculiar to himself. The characters which he draws are lively and natural, and marked with the strokes of a bold pencil. The general scope of his stories is favourable to humanity and goodness of heart.

  It always appeared to me that he estimated the compositions of Richardson too highly, and that he had an unreasonable prejudice against Fielding. In comparing those two writers, he used this expression: “that there was as great a difference between them as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate.” This was a short and figurative state of his distinction between drawing characters of nature and characters only of manners. But I cannot help being of opinion, that the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed as the large clocks of Richardson, and that his dial-plates are brighter. Fielding characters, though they do not expand themselves so widely in dissertation, are as just pictures of human nature, and I will venture to say, have more striking features, and nicer touches of the pencil; and though Johnson used to quote with approbation a saying of Richardson’s, “that the virtues of Fielding’s heroes were the vices of a truly good man,” I will venture to add, that the moral tendency of Fielding’s writings, though it does not encourage a strained and rarely possible virtue, is ever favourable to honour and honesty, and cherishes the benevolent and generous affections. He who is as good as Fielding would make him, is an amiable member of society, and may be led on by more regulated instructors, to a higher state of ethical perfection.

  Fielding will forever remain the delight of his country, and will always retain his place in the library of Europe, notwithstanding the unfortunate grossness which is the mark of an uncultivated taste, and which, if not yet entirely excluded from conversation, has been for some time banished from our writings, where, during the best age of national genius, it prevailed more than in those of any other polished nation.

  Fielding’s novels are, in general, thoroughly his own; and they are thoroughly English. What they are most remarkable for, is neither sentiment, nor imagination, nor wit, nor even humour, though there is an immense deal of this last quality; but profound knowledge of human nature, at least of English nature, and masterly pictures of the characters of men as he saw them existing. This quality distinguishes all his works, and is shown almost equally in all of them. As a painter of real life, he was equal to Hogarth; as a mere observer of human nature, he was little inferior to Shakspeare, though without any of the genius and poetical qualities of his mind. His humour is less rich and laughable than Smollett’s; his wit as often misses as hits; he has none of the fine pathos of Richardson or Sterne; but he has brought together a greater variety of characters in common life, marked with more distinct peculiarities, and without an atom of caricature, than any other novel writer whatever.

  Of all the works of imagination, to which English genius has given origin, the writings of Henry Fielding are, perhaps, most decidedly and exclusively her own. They are not only altogether beyond the reach of translation, in the proper sense and spirit of the word, but we even question, whether they can be fully understood, or relished to the highest extent, by such natives of Scotland and Ireland, as are not habitually and intimately acquainted with the characters 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…. Fielding, the first of British novelists, for such he may surely be termed…. The celebrated Henry Fielding, father of the English Novel.

  The prose Homer of human nature.

  Fielding conceived life as it was, with great strength and distinctness, and brought out into clear light those contrasts which are indeed now well enough known, but which were then remarked by none, because England was regarded as a paradise—a Utopia. He showed with such power the difference between appearance and truth—between a flattering clergy and true religion, that the lovers of sentimentality and the multitude, who are always willing to have their eyes bound that they may dream pleasantly, were in some measure driven from himself to his countryman Richardson, the discoverer of a conventional morality. We cannot therefore wonder that Fielding, who died in 1754, found a public in Germany much later than Richardson, whose moralizing and sentimental heroes and heroines had already become the fashion by means of Rousseau, at the same time with the idyllic dreams of Gessner. We must possess good practical sense and a knowledge of pure old English life, and of the abuses of its hierarchy and clergy, to understand Fielding, to estimate a “Joseph Andrews” and a “Tom Jones,” and to find pleasure in them; whereas we have only need of indefinite general notions and sensibility, to admire Richardson’s “Pamela,” and his “Sir Charles Grandison.”

  Have you read Fielding’s novels? they are genuine things; though if you were not a decent fellow, I should pause before recommending them, their morality is so loose.

  I find, in the last conversation I saw, you make me an admirer of Fielding, and so I am; but I find great fault with him too, I grant he is one of these writers that I remember; he stamps his characters, whether good or bad, on the reader’s mind. This is more than I can say of every one. For instance, when Godwin plagues me about my not having sufficient admiration of Wordsworth’s poetry, the answer I give is, that it is not my fault, for I have utterly forgotten it; it seemed to me like the ravelings of poetry. But to say nothing of Fielding’s immorality, and his fancying himself a fine gentleman in the midst of all his coarseness, he has oftener described habits than character. For example, Western is no character; it is merely the language, manners, and pursuits of the country squire, of that day; and the proof of this is, that there is no Squire Western now. Manners and customs wear out, but characters last for ever.

  Try what you can remember about Fielding for me. The “Voyage to Lisbon” is the most remarkable example I ever met with of native cheerfulness triumphant over bodily suffering and surrounding circumstances of misery and discomfort.

  What a master of composition Fielding was! Upon my word, I think the Œdipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, and Tom Jones, the three most perfect plots ever planned. And how charming, how wholesome, Fielding always is! To take him up after Richardson, is like emerging from a sick room heated by stoves, into an open lawn, on a breezy day in May.

  After dinner indulged myself with several chapters of “Tom Jones.” I can only believe, when I read Fielding, that persons speak in utter ignorance of his wit, humour, profound thought, satire, and truth of character when they set Scott above him, or even compare the two writers.

  There is not in Fielding much of that which can properly be called ideal—if we except the character of Parson Adams; but his works represent life as more delightful than it seems to common experience, by disclosing those of its dear immunities, which we little think of, even when we enjoy them. How delicious are all his refreshments at all his inns! How vivid are the transient joys of his heroes, in their chequered course—how full and over-flowing are their final raptures.

  Fielding within the range of his mind, approaches near absolute perfection; and if he had possessed as keen a sense of the supernatural as the natural, he might have taken the highest rank among great constructive and creative minds; but he had no elevation of soul, and little power of depicting it in imagination. As it is, however, the life-like reality of the characters and scenes he has painted, indicates that his genius was bounded by nothing but his sentiments.

  Is the forthcoming critique on Mr. Thackeray’s writings in the “Edinburgh Review” written by Mr. Lewes? I hope it is. Mr. Lewes, with his penetrating sagacity and fine acumen, ought to be able to do the author of “Vanity Fair” justice. Only he must not bring him down to the level of Fielding—he is far, far above Fielding. It appears to me that Fielding’s style is arid, and his views of life and human nature coarse, compared with Thackeray’s.

  What a wonderful art! What an admirable gift of nature, was it by which the author of these tales was endowed, and which enabled him to fix our interests, to waken our sympathy, to seize upon our credulity, so that we believe in his people—speculate gravely upon their faults or their excellencies, prefer this one or that, deplore Jones’s fondness for drink and play, Booth’s fondness for play and drink, and the unfortunate position of the wives of both gentlemen—love and admire those ladies with all our hearts, and talk about them as faithfully as if we had breakfasted with them this morning in their actual drawing-rooms, or should meet them this afternoon in the Park! What a genius! what a vigour, what a bright-eyed intelligence and observation! what a wholesome hatred for meanness and knavery! what a vast sympathy! what a cheerfulness! what a manly relish of life! what a love of human kind! what a poet is here!—watching, meditating, brooding, creating! What multitudes of truths has that man left behind him! What generations he has taught to laugh wisely and fairly! What scholars he has formed and accustomed to the exercise of thoughtful humour and the manly play of wit! What a courage he had! What a dauntless and constant cheerfulness of intellect, that burned bright and steady through all the storms of his life, and never deserted its last wreck! It is wonderful to think of the pains and misery which the man suffered; the pressure of want, illness, remorse which he endured; and that the writer was neither malignant nor melancholy, his view of truth never warped, and his generous human kindness never surrendered.

  With all his faults, Fielding was one of the greatest novelists that England ever produced. If he were often licentious in sentiment and coarse in expression, these were in no small degree the faults of his times and the true reflex of the society which he portrayed; but his merits were all his own. He painted with the heart of a genius and the hand of an artist. Every character is conceived with truth and delineated with vigour. From the lady of fashion to the chambermaid; from the dissipated man of the town to the humble parson—all are portraits; and though some of them are likenesses of a class that has passed away or been greatly changed, others present to us features that will be fresh in every age, and last for all time.

  He imitates the emphatic style; ruffles the petticoats and bobs the wigs; upsets with his rude jests all the seriousness of conventionality. If you are refined, or simply well dressed, don’t go along with him. He will take you to prisons, inns, dunghills, the mud of the roadside; he will make you flounder among rollicking, scandalous, vulgar adventures, and crude pictures. He has plenty of words at command, and his sense of smell is not delicate…. Ladies will do well not to enter here. This powerful genius, frank and joyous, loves boisterous fairs like Rubens; the red faces, beaming with good humour, sensuality, and energy, move about his pages, flutter hither and thither, and jostle each other, and their overflowing instincts break forth in violent actions. Out of such he creates his chief characters. He has none more life-like than these, more broadly sketched in bold and dashing outline, with a more wholesome colour…. Cervantes, whom you imitate, and Shakspeare, whom you recall, had this refinement, and they have painted it; in this abundant harvest, with which you fill your arms, you have forgotten the flowers. We tire at last of your fisticuffs and tavern bills. You flounder too readily in cow-houses, among the ecclesiastical pigs of Parson Trulliber. We would fain see you have more regard for the modesty of your heroines; wayside accidents raise their tuckers too often; and Fanny, Sophia, Mrs. Heartfree, may continue pure, yet we cannot help remembering the assaults which have lifted their petticoats. You are so rude yourself, that you are insensible to what is atrocious. You persuade Tom Jones falsely, yet for an instant, that Mrs. Waters, whom he has made his mistress, is his mother, and you leave the reader long buried in the shame of this supposition. And then you are obliged to become unnatural in order to depict love; you can give but constrained letters; the transports of your Tom Jones are only the author’s phrases. For want of ideas he declaims odes. You are only aware of the impetuosity of the senses, the upwelling of the blood, the effusion of tenderness, but not of the nervous exaltation and poetic rapture. Man, such as you conceive him, is a good buffalo; and perhaps he is the hero required by a people which is itself called John Bull.

  There never was a subtler or a more sagacious observer than Fielding, or who better deserved what is generously said of him by Smollett, that he painted the characters and ridiculed the follies of life with equal strength, humour, and propriety. But might it not be said of him, as of Dickens, that his range of character was limited; and that his method of proceeding from a central idea in all his leading people, exposed him equally to the charge of now and then putting human nature itself in place of the individual who should only be a small section of it?

  Fielding, in his public capacity of magistrate, as well as in the public career he pursued, had an infinite variety of characters come under his notice; and his order of mind and natural tendency being that of studying the evolutions of human action, the whole animus of his genius was directed to that order of delineation. Hence is to be noticed in his novels how very meagre are his descriptions of scenery, particularly of rural scenery. Compare them with Walter Scott’s, whose order of mind was absolutely panoramic. Scott was a true poet. Fielding had very little external imagination, and even less fancy; he never went out of the scenes in which he had been accustomed to move. He busied himself solely with human nature; and rarely has any one turned his studies to more ample account than he. Its principles, and general, intimate, and remote feelings, acting under particular circumstances and impressions, move him to an intense degree. They were ever present with him.

  Although Fielding was dramatic, in so far as conversation and incident led the story on from point to point with a certain degree of system, combined with spontaneity, he did not carry the dramatic movement far enough. When all was over, his tale would remain but a rambling, aimless concatenation, terminating in nothing but an end of the adventures. His great powers lay in the observation of manners and natures; but he was content to offer the results of this observation in a crude, digressive form, somewhat lacking—if it may be said—in principle. He was fond of whipping in and out among his characters, in person, and did so with a sufficiently cheery and pleasant defiance of all criticism; but the practice injured his art, nevertheless. In a word, he seems to have written as much for his own amusement as for that of his reader; and although he sedulously endeavoured to identify these two interests, he did not hesitate, when he felt like discharging a little dissertation of love, or classical learning, or what not, to do this at any cost, either of artistic propriety or the reader’s patience. And, worst of all, he frequently dissected his dramatis personæ in full view of the audience, giving an epitome of their characters off-hand, or chattering garrulously about them, when the mood took him. These shortcomings withheld from him the possibility of grouping his keen observations firmly about some centre of steady and assimilative thought. With Fielding, nothing crystallized, but all was put together in a somewhat hastily gathered bundle; and the parts have a semi-detached relation.

  His surpassing merits have compelled even his most pronounced foes to assign him a lofty place in the art which he adorned. Attempts to depreciate his genius, because the moral backbone was lacking in some of his characters, have been repeatedly made, but with no permanent effect upon his renown. For ourselves, we affirm at the outset that we consider him the Shakspeare of novelists…. He is at the head of his race. Other novelists may show a particular aptitude, he is the one being who has no aptitudes, for his art is universal. The temple he has reared has no dwarfed or stunted columns; it is perfect and symmetrical, and of towering and magnificent dimensions. Years have not defaced its beauty or shaken its foundations. Another tribute to those already paid to this great king of fiction—more ephemeral, perhaps, than some, but as sincere as any—is now laid at his feet. Henry Fielding might have been a better man, but it is impossible not to love him, and to recognise shining through him that glorious light of genius which grows not dim with Time, but whose luminous presence is ever with us to cheer, to reprove, to delight, and to elevate.

  He despises the Pharisee, and has a considerable compassion for the sinner; but then there are sins of different degrees of turpitude. The doctrine of male chastity, expounded in “Pamela,” struck him as simply ridiculous; but though a man was not bound to be a monk, he was not to be a seducer or a systematic voluptuary. He would be the last man to attack marriage, and his ideal woman, though made of very solid flesh and blood, is pure in conduct, if tolerably free in speech. His view reflects the code by which men of sense generally govern their conduct, as distinguished from that by which they affect to be governed in language. His respect for facts is, in this sense, as marked as Johnson’s. He refuses to be imposed upon by phrases.

  Our great eighteenth century novelists have won a place in the abiding literature of the world—a place beside the poets more specially so called. Their knowledge of human nature, their humour, their dramatic skill, their pathos, make them peers of those who have used the forms of verse, and it is in the form and not in substance that they may rank below the masters of the creative art in verse. First among them all is the generous soul of Fielding, to whom so much is forgiven for the nobleness of his great heart. On him and on the others there rests the curse of their age, and no incantation can reverse the sentence pronounced upon those who deliberately stoop to the unclean. It is a grave defect in the splendid tale of “Tom Jones”—of all prose romances the most rich in life and the most artistic in construction—that a Bowdlerised version of it would be hardly intelligible as a tale. Grossness, alas! has entered into the marrow of its bones. Happily, vice has not; and amidst much that is repulsive, we feel the good man’s reverence for goodness, and the humane spirit’s honour of every humane quality, whilst the pure figure of the womanly Sophia (most womanly of all women in fiction) walks in maiden meditation across the darkest scenes, as the figure of the glorified Gretchen passes across the revel in the Walpurgis-Nacht.

  I do not believe that Henry Fielding was ever in love.

  After the lapse of more than a century and a half, still disputes with Scott and one or two others the proud position of the greatest of English writers of fiction.

  Fielding is often censured by moralists for the coarseness of his novels. But had he not been coarse he would not have been true. He described life as it was in the eighteenth century, as he had seen it in the ups and downs of a checkered career. His characters were taken from the higher ranks and the lower. He placed the house, the amusements, the habits of a country-gentleman before the reader with the faithfulness of a man who had hunted, feasted, and got drunk with country-gentlemen. He described the miserable prisons of his time as he only could who had mingled with their degraded inmates, and had exerted his power as a police magistrate to break up the gang of ruffians who infested the streets. Thus Fielding’s novels have a high historical, as well as a literary value. Mr. Lecky has testified to their importance in a reconstruction of the past by placing “Amelia” among his authorities. Squire Allworthy, Squire Western, Tom Jones, Parson Adams, are characters to be studied by whoever would understand social life in the eighteenth century. The lovely Sophia, the modest Fanny, and above all Amelia, whom Thackeray considered “the most charming character in English fiction,” are portraits in the gallery of history.

  Certainly Fielding’s genius was incapable of that ecstasy of conception through which the poetic imagination seems fused into a molten unity with its material, and produces figures that are typical without loss of characteristic individuality, as if they were drawn, not from what we call real life, but from the very source of life itself, and were cast in that universal mould about which the subtlest thinkers that have ever lived so long busied themselves. Fielding’s characters are very real persons; but they are not types in the same sense as Lear and Hamlet. They seem to be men whom we have seen rather than men whom we might see if we were lucky enough, men who have been rather than who might have been…. He at least does not paint the landscape as a mere background for the naked nymph. He never made the blunder of supposing that the Devil always smelt of sulphur. He thought himself to be writing history, and called his novels Histories, as if to warn us that he should tell the whole truth without equivocation. He makes all the sins of his heroes react disastrously on their fortunes. He assuredly believed himself to be writing with an earnest moral purpose in his two greater and more deliberately composed works, and indeed clearly asserts as much. I also fully believe it, for the assertion is justified by all that we know of the prevailing qualities of his character, whatever may have been its failings and lapses, if failings and lapses they were…. Fielding, then, was not merely, in my judgment at least, an original writer, but an originator. He has the merit, whatever it may be, of inventing the realistic novel, as it is called.

  Probably his only legacy to mankind, certainly his chief one, is the picture he has set before us of English society in his generation. We see pretty much what we should have seen as lookers-on. In vindicating the novel against the loftier pretensions of professed historians, he asserted that “in their productions nothing is true but the names and the dates, whereas in mine everything is true but the names and dates.” Without going so far, still, as the novel embodies substantially the remarks of the ablest observers upon their contemporaries, we may admit his claim to be a writer of history, who, more faithfully than many historians proper, has given us the very form and presence of the times. In his own age, when coarseness was less offensive, he did, as a humorist, the good that mere pleasure can do. His humor, however, is in this age situated where those who are refined or well-dressed will not care to enter. In this direction, as in others, his influence has ceased to be felt. This is the criterion of a truly great man,—that his life has been deepened and chastened by sorrow, enabling him to discern the inner heart of things, so that there rises out of him a kind of universal Psalm; his thought is in our thoughts, and the fruit of his genius scatters its seed across continents and centuries.

  Fielding’s moral strength lay in the keen insight which enabled him to detect, and the healthy common sense which prompted him to spurn a false, artificial, and altogether inadequate ideal; his weakness lay in a certain want of elevation, which expressed itself in an implied denial of any ideal whatsoever. His theory of life seems to have been that men and women are weak creatures; that any very lofty code of morals is nothing but a collection of counsels of perfection altogether unrealizable in life; and that the highest possibilities of virtue are attained by the man who enjoys himself honestly with the least harm to any one, and is always ready to be charitable to the frailties of others because he knows he has so many of his own. His creed is, in fact, that of the average man of the world in all ages; it is not elevated but it is at least sincere; and if we cannot pay to those who hold it the compliment implied by a large moral demand we can at least say of them that they practice what they preach, and we can acquit them of the too common crime of poisoning the moral atmosphere of the world with the stench of whited sepulchre.

  There is somewhat inexpressibly heartening, to me, in the style of Fielding. One seems to be carried along, like a swimmer in a strong, clear stream, trusting one’s self to every whirl and eddy, with a feeling of safety, of comfort, or delightful ease in the motion of the elastic water. He is a scholar, nay more, as Adams had his innocent vanity, Fielding has his innocent pedantry. He likes to quote Greek (fancy quoting Greek in a novel of to-day!) and to make the rogues of printers set it up correctly. He likes to air his ideas on Homer, to bring in a piece of Aristotle—not hackneyed—to show you that if he is writing about “characters and situations so wretchedly low and dirty,” he is yet a student and a critic.

  Fielding’s portrait-painting is rough at the best. But his error is over-statement and not the fatal error of suppression, and at any rate he gives a true social picture of his time.

  He is before all things else a writer to be studied. He wrote for the world at large and to the end that he might be read eternally. His matter, his manner, the terms of his philosophy, the quality of his ideals, the nature of his achievement, proclaim him universal. Like Scott, like Cervantes, like Shakespeare, he claims not merely our acquaintance but an intimate and abiding familiarity. He has no special public, and to be only on nodding terms with him is to be practically dead to his attraction and unworthy his society. He worked not for the boys and girls of an age but for the men and women of all time; and both as artist and as thinker he commands unending attention and lifelong friendship. He is a great inventor, an unrivalled craftsman, a perfect master of his material. His achievement is the result of a lifetime of varied experience, of searching and sustained observation, of unwearying intellectual endeavour. The sound and lusty types he created have an intellectual flavour peculiar to themselves. His novels teem with ripe wisdom and generous conclusions and beneficient examples.

  There is this to be said for him as a moralist, that he threw no sentimental halo over vice, that he honored true worth in manhood and in womanhood, that his Parson Adams, his Squire Allworthy, and his Amelia are among the most lovable characters in fiction, and that no satirist ever exposed meanness, hypocrisy, and kindred vices with healthier scorn and ridicule.

  Theoretically, Fielding denies the existence of the typical hero as commonly conceived, and is, of course, warmly applauded by the great Mr. Thackeray for his opportune discovery; but, as matter of fact, Fielding does make a hero out of Tom Jones, and, from beginning to end, very obviously exalts into heroic attributes the very vices which he politely deprecates and for which he artfully apologizes. The truth is, that while Fielding thus displays the manners of the times, he chooses from preference and sympathy to depict the bad manners of his time rather than the best. Perhaps we need not quarrel with the author’s taste: he certainly comprehended life and character, and was in his art, when that was at its highest, far in advance of his rival Richardson. The author of “Joseph Andrews” and “Tom Jones” may not be entitled to claim the highest place among the British novelists, but he certainly deserves to rank among the most vigorous and faithful, as he is, doubtless, one of the most popular of English realists.

  As a master of style, Fielding has a claim on our admiration, apart from all the other attributes of his genius. It seems strange in regard to Fielding to set aside all the wealth of human sympathy, all the range of humour, all the vividness of character-drawing, and to restrict ourselves solely to the one aspect that interests us here, his place as a writer of prose. His style reflects much that is distinctive of his genius, its massive carelessness, its strong simplicity, its clearness of outline, and its consummate ease. But above all things he repeats two leading characteristics of his age, its irony and its scholarship. Fielding was from first to last a man of letters, as the character was conceived in his time—without pedantry, without strain, without the constraint of subtlety, but always imbued with the instinct of the scholar, never forgetting that, in the full rush of his exuberant fancy and his audacious humour, he must give to his style that indescribable quality that makes it permanent, that forces us to place it in the first rank of literary effort, that, even when irregular, pleads for no allowance on the score of neglect of art. He challenges comparison on merely literary grounds with the best models of literary art, and he is no loser by the comparison.

  There are only two other writers whom I at least should rank with Fielding in the very topmost class of English novelists. And both Scott and Thackeray were notoriously careless in the mint and anise and cumin of style…. He might, if his education and early practice had been different, have written with more formal correctness and yet none the worse; he could hardly, if the paradox may be pardoned, have written otherwise than he did and yet have written much the better. Of no one is the much-quoted and much-misquoted maxim of Buffon more justified than of him. His style is exactly suited to his character and his production—which latter, be it remembered, considering the pleasures of his youth and the business of his age, was very considerable. No fault of his style can ever, either in the general reader or in the really qualified critic, have hindered the enjoyment of the best part of his work; and like the work itself the style in which it is clothed is eminently English. It is English no less in its petty shortcomings of correctness, precision, and grace, than in its mighty merits of power and range. Of the letter Fielding may be here and there a little neglectful; in the spirit he always holds fast to the one indispensable excellence, the adjustment of truth and life to art.

  If Richardson was “womanish,” Fielding was masculine with a vengeance; gross, too, in a way, which always will, and always should, keep his books outside the pale of decent family reading. Filth is filth, and always deserves to be scored by its name—whatever blazon of genius may compass it about. I have no argument here with the artists who, for art’s sake, want to strip away all the protective kirtles which the Greek Dianas wore: but when it comes to the bare bestialities of such tavern-bagnois as poor Fielding knew too well, there seems room for reasonable objection, and for a strewing of some of the fig-leaves of decency.

  His desultory criticism is as sound as it is original, and whatever differences of opinion there may be as to the value of his fiction, there can be none as to the faithfulness with which he adheres in his novels to the theories which his essays propound.

  Fielding, in each of his works, but in “Tom Jones” pre-eminently, is above all things candid and good-humoured. He is a lover of morals, but he likes them to be sincere; he has no palliation for their rancid varieties. He has his eye always on conduct; he is keen to observe not what a man pretends or protests, but what he does, and this he records to us, sometimes with scant respect for our susceptibilities. But it has been a magnificent advantage for English fiction to have near the head of it a writer so vigorous, so virile, so devoid of every species of affectation and hypocrisy. In all the best of our later novelists there has been visible a strain of sincere manliness which comes down to them in direct descent from Fielding, and which it would be a thousand pities for English fiction to relinquish.