The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1882-02-15
Henry Fielding.
[London Daily News.l


Everybody has kindly feeling about Field
ing. He was sort of harmless and manly
scapegrace, who was never in low spirits, and
code disappro7ed. IT IS rfue rhtss sslfessasst-
line rather low, but the line which he drew he
never transgressed. He hated beau, and
would not have left much life in an "assthete"
who fen into his terrible grasp. He loved
good man who was man of his hands, and
his boxing parson, who applied himself SO serl-
ously to damaging the features OF rufhans, ap-
pears to us to have been one of the first OF Mus
cular Christians. Fielding liked young man
to be young man in o rather literal sense OF
the word. He was one of those moral agricul-
turists who think 'that had the wild oats not
been sown, the soil, left fallow, scarce had
grown the grain by which man may live."
Whatever truth there may be in this doctrine,
it is certainly not one we should proclaim, as
MI Tennyson says, 'to them that eddy round
and round" Mr.. Thackeray, in one OF his
lectures, spoke somewhat leniently OF these
ideas OF Fieldings, and it may be remembered
that Charlotte Bronte was greatly iRcensed at
this. and declared that notions of this sort
ruined men like her brother. But Bfanwell
Bronte was very unlike Tom Jones. Fielding
himself did not better his own life by living up
TO his pewter pots, as we may parody that mod
ern gnomic saying as 10 the uuty OF hVlhg up
to our blue china.
Fielding came Of the noble house mentioned
in Gibbons splendid panegyric, but his gentle
blood did little for his preferment. After leaY-
ing Eton, where probably he acquired his taste
for y,arodving the Homeric manner, Fielding
went to Leyden, instead OF studying at an Eng
lish University. When he returned to London
he threw himself on the town In those days
novels were not the natural resource OF men
who live by their pens, and Fielding did not
fall SO low as s'that common sink-a political
newspaper," to quote the stern language OF the
period. Fielding, like other clever men OF his
sort wrote new plays, or vamped up an Ola,
new, past, future piece, and lived IN veiyet
and lace or out-at-elbows as his plays succeeded
or failed. He was naturally great admirer OF
Moliere. from whom he borrowed, or rather
translated. He inherited small fortune; his
wife, a good, tolerant creature like Sophia, nad
another little fortune, and Fielding wasted IL
in the ambiguous profession OF gentlemen
farmer He left off writing plays just at the
age when he might we'll have begun. lie then
came to perceive, as Mr.. Leslie Stephen says,
'sthe capacities of the new form Of art Chat IS
of the modern novel;, land his work remains
almost a typical example of the novelist's true
| functions" Novels are as rule, the mere
butterflies of season. They are read and get
| sent down to country circulating Libraries, and
are forgotten, perhaps, by their very authors.
| Half-a-dozen in generation-books OF Thack-
eray, Dickens, George Eiot-sarvive and Hoat,
we may believe will always float, down the
stream of time. Fielding is different; he does
not share in the novelist's mortality lie Is
not read out of mere curiosity, as an lilustra-
| tor of the manners of an epoch, as is the tate
| of some old writers of romance. HIS public Is
| not confined, as we imagine that OF Richardson
| is. to a very select few who can pardon ms
| enormous length and want of humor. Field
| ing lives eternaly as writer of books Tor men,
| as Shakespeare lives and Rabelais, and as
| Thackeray will live. His robust and manly
humor, his recklessness, his tenderness, his ad-
| mirable style, as vigorous as his own boxing
----.-.slsS ri-s:.ss- -harnes and as various in
! cadence and structure as the styleo Thsckeray
bimself-these, with his high spirits and tenn
| per OF courage, give Fielding's works the salt
OF Immortality. We do not mind what Rich
| ardson, his butt, calls his continued lowness. "
study or t55ps 5 that Fielding is an author Tor tho
dated in the smoking-room neglGtSGja aseo9,ino-
virginibus puerisque. The literary virgins OF
| the age are curious people, who are not ashamed
| of familiarity with Brantome Or Aretino. Bat
| few young ladies not of the advanced school
| will regard Thomas Jones with the eyes OF
Sophia. Perhaps they had better not look at
| him at all, for, though he is fine animal, he
is not an edifyng companion for maidens.