The Press. — London, England, 1855-12-15 00:00:00

DECEMBER 15, 1855. f it trat ur t. The Life of Henry Fielding. With Notes of his Writings, his Times, and his Contempo raries. By Frederick Lawrence, Esq., of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law. London: Arthur Hall, Virtue, and Co. THERE is not enough of originality in the facts, or of vigour in the style, of this volume to give it a high place in biography, though it is a promising VerformaLce from a writer of little experience in literature. All the matter in these pages has long been familiar, and the work is little more than an expansion of the sketch of Fielding in the charming " Lives of the Novelists "by Sir Walter Scott. If treated with more graphic vivacity and critical acumen than are here shown, the memoirs of Fielding might be made attractive to a largs circle of readers. But in general, mere literary biography, for want of strong personal incidents, fails to rivet the attention of the crowd. Nor can wo entirely concur with the point of view from which the author regards his hero. Ho claims too much love for Fielding the man, while he does not sufficiently discri minate the genius of Fielding the author. While the reverses of Fielding's social life were most useful in giving a wide knowledge of the world to the author of "Tom Jones," those mischances were far from being neces sary. We fear that Fielding must be placed amongst those instances of men of the great est intellect who are woefully deficient in plain common sense. It is painful to disparage in any wise so great a name as Fielding's, but he would be the first to admit (if his shade could find a voice) that there were many men of letters whose lives must be re garded with more sympathy and admiration than can be accorded to his. He was a Charles Surface, brilliant, and full of good humour, with glowing traits of character, but prone to excesses of improvidence ; and, like all persons of that kind who flourished in the last century, Fielding has got a more lenient judgment than he merited. It is not a little strange that the same class of persons nowa days are treated with merciless severity. Blifil in our times has legions of followers. Woe to a parliamentary Charles Surface sus pected, not of tergiversations, but of the " follies " to which men of the stamp of the Fielding class are prone. That there is more necessity for nice discrimination of Fielding's moral character than has yet been shown may be seen in a comparison of the posthumoas verdicts given to the authors of " Tom Jones " and The School for Scandal. There is a cant of false sympathy abroad for the " irregularities " of the genius that shone over a century ago ; and there is a cant of false censure on the in firmities of genius near our times. We have been struck more than once in society with the difference of tone taken by the same per sons when speaking of " the extravagance " of " the glorious Harry Fielding," and when commenting on the same fault in " poor Sir Henry Bishop—unfortunate man !" Turning from the character of Fielding, which must not be confounded with that of his immortal works, we desire to bring sonic important considerations before our readers in connection with the novel-reading world. Mr. Disraeli incidentally in the course of the last session alluded to "the mealy-mouthe " age in which we are living"; and certainly we have arrived at marvellously finical times. Vice, corruption, shocking forms of social de pravity, abound ; but our current language, whether of books or men, is the very quintes sence of prudery. The influence upon a public of a popular literature , specially ad dressed to myriads of female readers, has never been considered. " Recollec t, " said a great London publisher not long since, " your " novel must be written to female readers " For one man there are four women who read " novels." It is true ; and the consequences of it may be seen in the deplorable effeminacy which is beginning to sap the strength of our English school of fiction. " Recollect, also,' said another distinguished bibliopole, " that " novels and all light literature are generally THE PRESS. " read aloud—mark that! " Just so ; our writers of fiction know their aphorisms by heart, and they cater accordingly. Hence it is that in poetry and fiction there is such an alarming tendency to the hysterical. Instead of human nature in general, the " female heart " (or a waxwork imitation of it) is con stantly before the excited fancies of the novel writing tribe. A womanish taste is also beginning to creep over that portion of the male world which indulges in the intellectual aliment of novels. At the rate things are going on, the formulafor novel-writing must soon be,— " Do not describe life and the world as it is, but " only those phases of it which will suit women " to read about, and treat your characters so " as that they may be on familiar terms with " young ladies in teens." The consequences of this it is easy to anticipate. Against this weak fashion we believe that before long there will be an overwhelming reaction, and that more truth, more strength, more grasp, more mastery of mental life, and more enduring conformity with the master pieces of literature, will be demanded by a public overdosed with the grotesque exaqgera tions of caricature calling itself " comic, and the sentimental snivelling which is admired as " pathetic." We have seen vast changes in the literary history of our times. Not long since the extravagant admirers of Mr. Dickens supposed that amongst " popular " novelists his match never could be found ; yet " Vanity Fair " (and the highly intellectual readers who joined their suffrages to the crowd) soon taught them their error. Then came " Uncle Tom" (a woman's novel emphatically), with horrors, babies, and agonies, and a vast amount of Pickwickian scenes amongst niggers—and what an unparalleled success ! And this brings us to the question we de desire to ask—" How many now-a-days read " Tom Jones,' and how comes it that there " are so few cheap editions of it?" The " democracy " which Tomkins is always talk ing of prefers the style of Mr. G. W. M. Rey nolds to that of Mr. Henry Fielding, and we never see it upon the railway stalls. Yet observe how Gibbon wrote of that extraordi nary work : " The nobility of the Spensers," writes the historian of of the " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," " has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marl borough, but I exhort them to consider the Faery Queene ' the most precious jewel in their coronet. Our immortal Fielding was of the younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who drew their origin from the Counts of Hapsburg, the lineal descendants of Eltrico, in the seventh century Duke of Alsace. Far different have been the for tunes of the English and German divisions of the family of Hapsburgh ; the former, the knights and sheriffs of Leices tershire, have slowly risen to the dignity of a peerage; the latter, the emperors of Germany and kings of Spain, have threatened the liberties of the Old, and invaded the treasures of the New World. The successors of Charles V. may disdain their brethren in England ; but the romance of Tom Jones '—that exquisite picture of humour and manners—will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the Imperial Eagle of Austria." We do not think the opinion so expressed by Gibbon to be exaggerated. Fielding was a thinker as well as a fictionist ; he was a philosopher as much as a novelist. He could live a distinguished literary life while confined to the province of the understanding, anti if not permitted to seek resources in his ideality. He had a strictly logical intellect of the most comprehensive kind, and he could reason profoundly as well as feel intensely upon morality. The casuistry of a mere ethical special pleader he could demolish at a stroke, but he had an intellect also that could have unravelled the web of sophistry secundum art em. Some of our living novelists have repeatedly attempted the parts of political writers, but never to the satisfaction of them selves or friends. Yet Fielding could unques tionably, if living in our times, hold his own as a masculine and argumentative writer. If bred to the Church, and under happy aus pices, he might have produced volumes of divinity worthy of being placed on the shelves with Barrow and South. There was a massive ness in his intellect, and a largeness in his understanding, which we seek for in vain in other novelists. And yet how comes it that so few women now-a-days read " Tom Jones ?" Is it that the work is real') vicious, that its morality is too loose, and that it deserves to be branded as immoral? Or is it that the age is too prudish, 1195 too squeamish, too falsely nice, too absurdly " mealy-mouthed"? Coarse it certainly must be rated, according to the taste of these times but we affirm, without hesitation, that young boarding-school misses have far more dangers to encounter while reading of the Marquis of Steyne and the intrigues of Miss Becky Sharpe, than in perusing the pages of " Tom Jones.' There are passages in Fielding's great work which are gross in phrase and broad in thought, and so there aro in Shakspeare. But in neither case is there any catering for morbid fancies, or dalliance with prurient imagination. Fielding cannot be called " a voluptuous " writer ; and the minds that are allowed to linger over the luscious love tales of Byron and Moore may be safely admitted to read our great novelist. In say ing this, we suppose that some grandmammas may be shocked, but we can dissipate their alarm by assuring them that the young ladies of this generation are not at all likely to be fascinated with Fielding. "Eras" and" Little Neils " would not live in his society, or allow of a visiting acquaintance. Sense, strength, keen wit, close observation, classical breadth of view, were all very well in former times; but sentimentality and caricature, and fanci ful photographs of ephemeral exceptions to nature, are now deemed to be worth them all together. Fielding's popularity, and the phases through which it has passed, would have been a good subject for Mr. Lawrence, but he has not sufficient experience of literature to dis cuss it adequately. " Tom Jones" was the production of a vast intellect, and the brilliant minds of succeeding ages will always give it perpetuity of fame, whatever may be its fate with the crowd. The most original knowledge conveyed in this volume before us will be found in the appendix, which contains the following curious particulars relating to the foreign translation of "Tom Jones" : The Polish" Tom Jones " was purchased for the British Museum library at the time when a project was enter tained of procuring the whole set of foreign translations of some of our most distinguished authors, such as Shak speare, Milton, &c., and in the case of very voluminous wri ters, the whole set of translations of some one of their most conspicuous productions. It was intended, for instance, to get all of " Tom Jones," " The Vicar of Wakefield," " The Antiquary," and " The Pickwick Papers." It was thought that such a collection would furnish an unusually in teresting means of comparing the powers and copiousness of the different languages of Europe—some of them at very different stages of their progress—and that it would also supply very good materials for the history of the pro gress of English literature abroad. The execution of the idea was brought to a standstill by the general decrease in the resources of the library, but 1 now hope it will be resumed at some not very remote period. It had already been carried far enough to place on the Museum shelves an array of translations of Shakspeare into Swedish, Polish, Hungarian, Italian, Russian, Frisian, German, &c., which will supply more than one new page to future biblio graphers. To return to " Tom Junes: "—Sopikov in his " Rua- Sian Bibliography " (in five volumes, published at Bt. Petersburg. in 1'13.16), mentions translations of many of the works of Fielding, but not one of them direct from the original—all either from French or German. The " Tom Jones " by Kharlamov is from the French. An edition of it, in four volumes, with plates, was published at St. Petersburg in 1770-71 ; a second at Moscow in 1787. There is no other translation mentioned in the subsequent catalogues of Smirdin and Olkhin. This is somewhat surprising, as the Russians are remarkably fond of English novels. 1 see by a new number of one of their periodi cals (the Otechestvennitiya Zapiaki for June, 18.55), that in the midst of the desperate struggle before Sebastopol, the public of St. Petersburg was being amused with translations given at full length in that magazine, of Lever's " Dodd Family Abroad," and Ainsworth's " Flitch of Dunmow." The Germans, as might be supposed, are rich in trans - !talons of " Tom ,Tones," but tley do not seem to have been so early in the field as might have been anticipated. Hirsching, in 1795 (" Historisch-literarisches Handbuch, vol. ii. p. 218), speaks of one that had appeared about thirty years before, which is probably the same as that of which Heinsius mentions an edition atllamburg, in 1771. Au entirely , new one, from the pen of Professor Schmit, was issued at Nuremberg in 1780. The merits of both appear to have been very scanty, and they were completely superseded by that of .1. J. Bode (6 vols., Leipzig. 1756.88), which was for a length of time the standard version. A new one, by Liidemann, formed part of Brock haus's "Bibliothek classischer Romane," about 1825 ; and another, by Diezmann, of the " Itibliothek der alteren Romandichter Englantls, " about 1810. It is worth remarking that "Tom Jones" has been reprinted at least three times in English in Germany ; at Dresden, in 1773; at Basel, in 1701 ; and at Marburg, in 1814-24. The last of the three, in five volumes, has " critical and explanatory notes, and grammatical obaetations, by Kar) F. C. Wagner." I I I