FIELDING, Henry, the prince of English novellists, was born at Sharpham-Park, Somersetshire, on the 22d of April 1707. His father, General Edmund Fielding, who had served under John duke of Marlborough, was the third son of Dr John Fielding, canon of Salisbury, who was the fifth son of George earl of Desmond, and brother of William the third earl of Denbigh; and his mother, the general’s first wife, was a daughter of Judge Gould. He was also connected with the noble family of Kingston, which, in the celebrated Lady Mary Wortley Montague, boasted a brighter ornament than rank or title could bestow. Henry Fielding was the only son of the first marriage; but he had four sisters of the full blood, one of whom, Sarah, was distinguished as an authoress by the history of David Simple, and other literary attempts. General Fielding, after the death of his first wife, married a second time, and had a numerous family of sons, one of whom is still remembered as a judge of police by the title of Sir John Fielding. The expense attending so large a family, together with a natural thoughtlessness of disposition on the part of his father, of whose habits economy formed no part, were probably the occasion of Henry being early involved in those embarrassments with which, excepting at brief intervals, he continued to struggle through life.

After acquiring the rudiments of education under the Rev. Mr Oliver, who is supposed to have furnished him with the outline of Parson Trulliber’s character, young Fielding was removed to Eton, where he made great progress in the study of the Greek and Roman authors, and imbibed that deep love of classical literature which may be traced throughout all his works. As his father destined him for the bar, he was, at the age of eighteen, sent from Eton to Leyden, where he remained about two years, and is said to have given the most earnest attention to the study of the civil law. Had he been permitted to continue the pursuit which he had thus engaged, the courts would probably have gained an accomplished lawyer, and the world would have lost a man of genius; but the circumstances of the father determined the chance in favour of posterity, though against the interests and perhaps the welfare of the son. Remittances, in short, failed, and the young civilian was compelled to return, at the age of twenty, to plunge into the dissipation of London, without a monitor to warn or a friend to support him. His father had indeed promised him an allowance of two hundred pounds a year; but this, as Fielding himself used to observe, any one might pay who would. Possessed of a strong constitution, a lively imagination, and a keen relish of pleasure, with the capacity of enjoying the present and trusting to chance for the future, Fielding thus found himself his own master in a place where the temptations to every expensive indulgence are numerous, and the means of gratification easily attainable; and, with reckless improvidence, he squandered in pursuit of pleasure the scanty means which, with strict economy, might have enabled him to begin the world, at the same time entailing upon himself those distresses and misfortunes in which he was ever afterwards involved.

But as disagreeable impressions never remained long upon his mind, and as it was his disposition to look at the brighter side of things, or rather to enliven the gloomiest prospect with the colours which his own fancy cast upon it, he flattered himself that he would find resources in his own wit and genius, and that the difficulties in which he was involved would be overcome by the exertions which he conceived himself capable of making to surmount them. To a man of pleasure, in fact, some resources were indispensably necessary, and Fielding found them in his pen, having no alternative, as he himself used to say, but to become a hackney writer or a hackney coachman. He at first employed himself in writing for the stage, then in high reputation, from having recently engaged the talents of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanburgh, and Farquhar; his comedies and farces were brought out in hasty succession; between the years 1727 and 1736, play succeeded play, to the number of eighteen, which were struck off as his necessities impelled, and sank oftener than swam in the theatrical sea upon which he cast them. Of these, the only pieces now known or read are the mock-tragedy of Tom Thumb, the translated play of The Miser, and the farces of The Mock-Doctor and Intriguing Chambermaid ; and yet, as Sir Walter Scott justly observes, they are all the production of an author unrivalled for his conception and illustration of character in the kindred department of imaginary narrative. Whilst Fielding was thus living as a man of wit and pleasure about town, seeking and finding amusement in scenes of gaiety and dissipation, and endeavouring to discharge the expense incidental to such a life by the precarious resources afforded by the stage, which, as may easily be supposed, were inadequate for the purpose, he attempted to improve his circumstances by becoming himself the manager of a company; and having, in 1735, assembled a number of discarded comedians, he proposed that they should perform his own plays, at the little theatre of the Haymarket, under the whimsical title of the Great Mogul’s company of comedians. But the project, as might have been expected, did not succeed; and the company, which seemed to have dropped from the clouds, were under the necessity of disbanding. The whole scheme, in fact, has more the air of a mad frolic than of a serious undertaking. During his theatrical career, which, we have just seen, was by no means brilliant, Fielding, like most authors of the time, found it impossible to interest the public sufficiently [7:9:538]in the various attempts which lie made to gain their favour, without condescending to flatter their political animosities. In two of his dramatic pieces, Pasquin and the Historical Register, he displays great acrimony against Sir Robert Walpole, whom, in the year 1730, he had in vain attempted to propitiate by some courtly verses. The keenness of the satire made it felt, and its freedom is supposed to have operated considerably in producing a measure which was then thought necessary to restrain the licentiousness of the stage, and to check that proneness to personal and political satire which had been fostered by the success of the Peg-gar d Opera. But this measure, which consisted in vesting a discretionary power in the Lord Chamberlain to refuse a license to any piece which he should disapprove, was very unpopular at the time, and, like all petty legislation, has done mischief which was not intended by it, and failed to accomplish the object for which it was designed.^[1. “The regulation,” says Sir Walter Scott, “was the cause of much clamour at the time; but licentious satire has since found so many convenient modes of access to the public, that its exclusion from the stage is no longer a matter of interest or regret; nor is it now deemed a violent aggression on liberty that contending political parties cannot be brought into collision within the walls, of the theatres, intended, as they are, for places of amusement, not for scenes of party struggle.” {Memoir of Fielding·} This is ∏° doubt true; but has not the theatre suffered in consequence of the regulation by which all political allusions are excluded from t e stage, whilst neither the amount of licentious satire, nor its facilities of gaining access to the public, have been, in the slightest degree, diminished? ]

About the year 1736, Fielding having, it seems, formed the resolution of settling in life, espoused a young lady of Salisbury, named Craddock, possessed of considerable beauty, and of a fortune of L.1500; and, about the same time, he succeeded, in right of his mother, to a small estate of L.200 per annum, situated at Stower in Derbyshire. With this fortune, which, managed with prudence and economy, might have afforded a decent competence, he retired from London to his seat in the country, resolved to bid adieu to the follies and irregularities of a town life, and to cultivate habits of domestic enjoyment. But having unfortunately carried with him the same improvident disposition to enjoy the present at the expense of the future, which marked his whole life, he soon forgot all his resolutions of amendment; established an equipage with showy liveries; threw open his gates to unbounded hospitality; and suffered his whole substance to be devoured by horses, hounds, retinuc, and entertainments. Thus, in less than three years, Fielding found himself landless, homeless, penniless, without any other resource than his abilities, and having brought nothing from the country except that experience of rural life and its pleasures which afterwards enabled him to delineate with such inimitable truth and force the character of Squire Western. Not discouraged, however, he entered himself as a student of law at the Temple, and, after the customary term of manducation, was called to the bar. Fielding had now a profession, and, as he had vigorously applied his powerful mind to the study of the law, it might have been expected that his success would have been in proportion to his assiduity. But various causes conspired to obstruct his rise in the legal profession. In the first place, those persons who have it in their power to advance or retard the practice of a young lawyer, seem to have mistrusted the capacity of a man of wit and pleasure for steady application to business; and Fielding’s own conduct was in all probability such as to justify this want of confidence in his regularity. In the next place, disease, the consequence of a free life, came to the aid of dissipation of mind, and interrupted the course of his practice by severe attacks of the gout, which gradually undermined his naturally robust constitution. But amidst all this difficulty and suffering, he pursued his rescarches with great though irregular vigour; and, as a proof of the eminence to which, i∏ happier circumstances, he might have risen at the bar, he left two manuscript volumes in folio on the Crown Law; a branch to which he had most assiduously applied himself. The exigencies of a family, to which he was tenderly attached, forced him however to have recourse again to the stage, where he attempted to produce a continuation of his own piece, The Virgin Unmashed ; but as one of the characters was supposed to have been written in ridicule of a man of quality, the Lord Chamberlain refused his license. Political pamphlets, fugitive tracts, newspaper essays, and sometimes farccs, were the next means he had recourse to for subsistence; and as his ready pen supplied such productions upon every emergency, he contrived out of the scanty profits to support himself and family. But amidst the anxiety and labour of this precarious mode of life, he had the misfortune to lose his wife; a domestic calamity which so deeply affected him that his reason was for a time endangered by the excess of his grief. All violent emotions, however, are happily transient; Fielding recovered from the blow which had stunned him, though his regret was lasting; and the necessity of procuring subsistence compelled him to resume his literary labours. At length, in the year 1741 or 1742, circumstances led him to engage in a species of composition which he rescued from the degraded state in which he found it, and rendered a classical department in English literature.

The novel of Pamela, published in 1740, having raised the fame of Richardson to the highest pitch, Fielding, whether tired of hearing it overpraised,^[2. his production, many passages of which would now be thought highly indelicate, and condemned as suggestive of licentious ideas, was in those days recommended even from the pulpit. Modern refinement, though it may not have succeeded in banishing immodesty from the heart, has at least had the effect of purifying literary compositions of that grossness which, more or less, deforms almost all those of the last age. ] or whether, as a writer for subsistence, disposed to catch at whatever interested the public for the time, or whether, finally, seduced by that malicious spirit of wit which delights to turn into ridicule the idol of the day, resolved to caricature the style, the principles, and the personages of this favourite performance. As Gay’s desire to satirize Philips produced The Shepherds Weck, so Fielding’s purpose to ridicule Pamela suggested The History of Joseph Andrews ; but, in both cases, more especially the latter, a work was executed of infinitely greater merit than could have been expected to arise out of such a design; and the reader received a higher gratification than the author himself appears to have proposed or contemplated. In Fielding’s novel there is indeed a fine vein of irony, as will appear from comparing it with the pages of Pamela ; but the production against which the ridicule was directed is now almost forgotten; whilst Joseph Andrews continues to be read for its admirable pictures of manners, and, above all, for the inimitable character of Parson Adams, which alone is sufficient to decide the superiority of Fielding over all novel writers. “His learning, his simplicity, his evangelical purity of mind,” says Sir Walter Scott, “are so admirably mingled with pedantry, absence of mind, and the habit of athletic and gymnastic exercises, 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. Like Don Quixote, Parson Adams is beaten a little too much and too often; but the cudgel lights upon his shoulders, as on those of the honoured knight of La Mancha, without [7:9:539]the slightest stain to his reputation; and he is bastinadoed without being degraded.”^[3. The style of this piece is said in the preface to be an imitation of Cervantes; but it bears more resemblance to that of the Roman Cinque of Scarron, from whom Fielding appears to have copied the mock-heroic style, which narrates ludicrous events in the language of the classical epic; a vein of pleasantry, however, which is soon wrought out, and which, if frequently employed, is apt to degenerate into pedantry. ] Joseph Andrews was eminently successful; and poor Richardson, whose greediness of praise was only equalled by his extreme sensitiveness to ridicule, felt proportionally offended; whilst his admirers, male and female, took care to echo back his resentment, and to heap Fielding with reproach. The animosity of the idol and his worshippers, in fact, survived the gifted man who had rendered them all ridiculous; and in Richardson’s correspondence we find the most ungenerous, not to say malignant, reproaches cast on his memory.^[4. Kichardson, being well acquainted with Fielding’s sisters, took occasion to complain to them, not of their brother’s usage of himself (this would have been natural and honest), but of his unfortunate predilection for what was mean and low in character and description. The following passage is remarkable, first for the unexampled presumption of the writer, who thus constitutes himself the judge paramount of Fielding’s qualities; and, secondly, for the malignant indelicacy which could obtrude such observations on the sister of a rival: “Poor Fielding! I could not help telling his sister that I was equally surprised at and concerned for his continued lowness. Had y∪ur brother, said I, been born in a stable, or been a runner at a spunging-house, one should have thought him a genius, and wished he had had the advantage of a liberal education, and of being admitted into good company !” The man who could be guilty of such deliberate brutality as is here complacently chronicled, would not have scrupled to employ more criminal means to gratify his animosity, if he had not been restrained either by innate cowardice or a salutary fear of the laws. After this, however, we cannot be surprised to find Richardson alleging that Fielding was destitute of invention and talents; that the run of his best works was nearly over; and that, as an author, he would soon be forgotten! ... ] But Fielding does not appear to have retorted any of the ill-will in which Richardson and his coterie indulged. If he gave the first offence without provocation, he was also the first to retreat from the contest, and to leave his exasperated antagonists in undisputed possession of the field. Nor was Fielding slow in conceding to Richardson that praise to which his genius entitled him from the liberality of his contemporaries. In the fifth number of the Jacobite Journal, he warmly commends Clarissa Harlowe, by far the best and most powerful of Richardson’s novels, and which, with those scenes in Sir Charles Grandison relating to the history of Clementina, contains the passages of deep pathos on which his fame as a writer must finally rest. “Perhaps this is one of the cases,” says Sir Walter Scott, “in which one would rather have sympathized with the thoughtless offender, than with the illiberal and ungenerous mind which so long retained its resentment.”

After the publication of Joseph Andrews, Fielding had again recourse to the stage, and brought out The Wedding-Day, which, though upon the whole unsuccessful, produced him some little profit. This was the last of his theatrical efforts which appeared during his life-time. The comedy of The Fathers, in manuscript, was lost by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, and, when recovered, was performed after the author’s death, for the benefit of his family.^[5. The following anecdote, which is given by former biographers, shows the carelessness of Fielding respecting his reputation as a dramatist: “On one of the davs of its rehearsal (that is, the rehearsal of The Wedding-Day), Garrick, who performed a principal part, and who was then a favourite with the public, told Fielding he was apprehensive that the audience would make free with him in a particular passage, and remarked that, as a repulse might <lisconcert him during the remainder of the night, the passage should be omitted; “No, d—n ’em,” replied he; “if the scene is"not a good one, let them find that out.” Acccrdingly the play was brought out without alteration, and, as had been foreseen, marks of disapprobation appeared. Garrick, alarmed at the hisses he met with, retired into the green-room, where the author was solacing himself with a bottle of champagne. He had by this tune drank pretty trcely; ≡nd, glancing his eye at the actor, while clouds of tobacco issued from his mouth, cried out, “What’s the matter, Garrick . what are they hissing now ?” “Why, the scene that I begged you to retrench,” replied the actor; “I knew it would not do; and they have ≡frightened me that I shall not be able to collect myself again the whole night.” “Oh, d-n ’em,” rejoined he, with great coolness, they have found it out, have they ?” ] Besides a variety of fugitive pieces, Fielding published, in 1743, a volume of miscellanies, containing, amongst other things, The Joumey from this World to the next ; a tract of which it is difficult to perceive the scope or aim, although it displays a good deal of Fielding’s characteristic humour. His next production was The History of Jonathan Wild the Great ; a picture of desperate vice, unrelieved by a single indication of human feeling, or even by an accidental deviation into virtue. What object Fielding could have proposed to himself by so revolting a delineation, it is not easy to conjecture. For, besides the disgust produced by the contemplation of wickedness naked and unredeemed, every one must feel, that ascribing a train of fictitious adventures to a real character, has in it something clumsy and inartificial; whilst, on the other hand, it subjects the author to a suspicion of having used as the title of his book the name of an infamous depredator, in the hope of connecting the one with the popular renown of the other. At the same time, there are not many passages in Fielding’s works more strongly marked with his peculiar genius, than the scene between Jonathan Wild and the Ordinary, in Newgate. Besides these more permanent proofs of his application to literature, Fielding employed his ready pen in most of the political and literary controversies of the times. He conducted one paper, called The Jacobite Journal, the object of which was to eradicate those feelings and sentiments which had already been so effectually crushed on the field of Culloden; and he either entirely composed or had a principal share in The True Patriot and The Champion, periodicals of the same class. Being attached to the principles of the Revolution, and to the settlement of the succession in the family of Brunswick, he steadily advocated what was then called the Whig cause; but whilst far inferior writers were enriched out of the secret-service money with unexampled prodigality, his zeal and ability remained long unnoticed, and never met with any suitable recompense.

As it was impossible, however, that such a man could be altogether overlooked, Fielding, in 1749, received a small pension, together with an appointment as a justice of peace for Westminster; an office then considered as disreputable, and of which he was at liberty to make the most he could by the worst means he chose. At this period the magistrates of Westminster, being paid by fees for their services to the public, were thence termed trading justices; and in general they appear to have deserved this opprobrious appellation; for the mean and wretched system on which they were remunerated making it their interest to inflame petty disputes, to wring out of thieves and pickpockets a portion of their unhallowed gains, and thus to traffic, as it were, in guilt and misery, seemed equally well calculated to encourage crime, and to degrade those whose ostensible duty it was to repress it. The habits of Fielding, who was never very select in his society, cannot be supposed to have [7:9:540]been improved by the position into which he was now thrown; and from a humiliating anecdote told by Horace Walpole,^[6. “Rigby gave me a strong picture of nature. He 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 Lyttleton, added that of Middlesex justice. He sent them word he was at supper; they must come next morning. They did not understand that freedom, and ran up, where they found him banquetting with a blind man, a wh—, and three Irishmen, on some cold mutton, and a bone of ham, both in one dish, and the dirtiest cloth. He never stirred or asked them to sit. Rigby, who had seen him come so often 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 civilized.” (Letters from the Hon. Horace Walpole to George Montague, Esq. p. 58, London, 1818.) It ought to be added, however, that Walpole, though he has here stigmatized the lowness of Fielding’s society and habits, has elsewhere done justice to his talents. In The Parish Register of Twickenham, or poetical account of that place, Fielding’s residence in the neighbourhood is not forgotten; that residence, Where Fielding met his bunter muse, And as they quaff’d the fiery juice, Droll nature stamp’d each lucky hit With unimaginable wit. ]in his usual lively but unfeeling manner, it would appear, even after allowance is made for the aristocratical exaggeration of the narrator, that his mind had sunk to the level of his situation. Yet, though the circumstances attending his official situation tended to foster the careless and disreputable habits which he was unfortunately but too prone to indulge, it is consoling to observe that Fielding’s principles remained unshaken, and that there is no foundation whatever for the imputation of venality which, from the popular discredit attaching to his office, and his own thoughtless extravagance, the ill-natured world were at one time but too ready to cast upon him. His own account of his conduct respecting the dues of the office on which he depended for subsistence has been confirmed by Mr Murphy, and never doubted or denied. “I will confess,” says he, “that my private affairs at the beginning of winter had but a gloomy aspect; for I had not plundered the public, or the poor, of those sums which men, who are always ready to plunder both as much as they can, have been pleased to suspect me of taking; on the contrary, by composing instead of inflaming the quarrels of porters and beggars (which, I blush when I say, hath not been universally practised), and by refusing to take a shilling from a man who most undoubtedly would not have had another left, I had reduced an income of L.500 a year, of the dirtiest money upon earth, to little more than L.300, a considerable portion of which remained with my clerk.” Nor was this all. Whilst Fielding thus evinced his disinterestedness as a magistrate, he endeavoured, by various suggestions, to check the growth of crime and depravity. His Inquiry into the Increase of Thieves and Robbers contains several valuable hints which succeeding statesmen have adopted, and some which have not yet received the attention they deserve. He was the first to expose the injurious effects of the frequency of pardons, rendered necessary by the reckless multiplication of capital punishments; and he had the merit of directing public attention to that swelling imposthume of the state, pauperism, with the consequences to be apprehended from the state of the poor laws and the mode in which they were administered. He afterwards published a scheme for the provision of the poor, which showed that he was fully sensible of the evil, without being able to suggest an effectual or practical remedy; but although his project for restricting them to their parishes, and providing for them in workhouses, was not approved of, it has never been disputed that his treatise exhibits both the knowledge of the magistrate and the picturesque expression of the novel writer. He also published a Charge to the Grand Jury of Middlesex, and some Tracts concerning Law Trials, which are considered as valuable.

Before publishing his scheme for the provision of the poor, however, Fielding made himself immortal by the production of Tom Jones, or the History of a Foundling; a work composed under all the disadvantages incident to an author alternately harassed by his disagreeable magisterial duties, and pressed by the necessity of hurrying out some ephemeral essay or pamphlet to meet the demands of the passing day. ^[7. Tom Jones is inscribed to the Hon. Mr, afterwards Lord Lyttleton, in a dedication where he intimates that, without his assistance, and that of the Duke of Bedford, the work would never have been composed, inasmuch as the author had been indebted to them for the means of subsistence whilst engaged in composing it. Ralph Allen, the friend of Pope, is also alluded to as one of bis benefactors, but, by his own desire, not named. This modest and munificent patron of merit is said to have made Fielding a present of L.200 at one time, and that before he was personally acquainted with the object of his "bounty; an act of rare generosity, and, from the manner in which it was performed, fully confirming the truth of Pope’s beautiful couplet-- Let modest Allen, with ingenuous shame, Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame. ] In these painful and precarious circumstances was the first of English novels given to the public, who nad not hitherto seen any works founded upon the plan of painting from nature, and who, consequently, were quite unprepared for a work constructed on such a principle. Even Richardson’s novels are but a step removed from the domain of the old romance; and, though approaching more nearly to the ordinary course of events, still resemble it by dealing in improbable incidents, exaggerated delineations, and characters swelled out beyond the ordinary proportions of humanity. Tom Jones, on the other hand, is truth and human nature itself, and therein consists the incalculable advantage which it possesses over all previous fictions of this particular kind. Fielding is the Hogarth of novelists; and he painted manners with the hand of a master. The History of a Foundling was received with unanimous acclamation by the public, and proved so productive to Millar, the publisher, that he handsomely added L.100 to the L.600 for which he had purchased the work from the author.

“The general merits of this popular and delightful work,” says Sir Walter Scott, “have been so often dwelt upon, and its imperfections so frequently censured, that we can do little more than hastily run over ground which has been so repeatedly occupied. 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. One exception to this praise, otherwise so well merited, occurs in the story of the Old Man of the Hill; an episode which, in compliance with a custom introduced by Cervantes, and followed by Le Sage, Fielding has thrust [7:9:541] into the midst of his narrative, as he had formerly introduced the History of Leonora, equally unnecessarily and inartificially, into that of Joseph Andrews. It has also been wondered why Fielding should have chosen to leave the stain of illegitimacy on the birth of his hero; and it has been surmised that he did so in allusion to his own first wife, who was also a natural child. A better reason may be discovered in the story itself; for had Miss Bridget been privately married to the father of Tom Jones, there could have been no adequate motive assigned for keeping his birth secret from a man so reasonable and compassionate as Allworthy.

“But even the high praise due to the construction and arrangement of the story is inferior to that claimed by the truth, force, and spirit of the characters, from Tom Jones himself down to Black George the game-keeper and his family. Amongst these, Squire Western stands alone; imitated from no prototype, and in himself an inimitable picture of ignorance, prejudice, irascibility, and rusticity, united with natural shrewdness, constitutional good humour, and an instinctive, affection for his daughter,—all which qualities, good and bad, are grounded upon that basis of thorough selfishness, natural to one bred up from infancy where no one dared to contradict his arguments or to control his conduct. In one incident alone we think Fielding has departed from this admirable sketch. As an English squire, Western ought not to have taken a beating so unresistingly from the friend of Lord Fellamar. We half suspect that the passage is an interpolation. It is inconsistent with the squire’s readiness to engage in rustic affrays. We grant a pistol or sword might have appalled him; but Squire Western should have yielded to no one in the use of the English horsewhip; and as, with all his brutalities, we have a sneaking interest in the honest jolly country gentleman, we would willingly hope there is some mistake in this matter.

“The character of Jones, otherwise a model of generosity, openness, manly spirit, mingled with thoughtless dissipation, is, in like manner, unnecessarily degraded by the nature of his intercourse with Lady Bellaston; and this is one of the circumstances which incline us to believe that Fielding’s ideas of what was gentleman-like and honourable had sustained some depreciation, in consequence of the unhappy circumstances of his life, and of the society to which they condemned him.

“A more sweeping and general objection was made against the History of a Foundling by the admirers of Richardson, and has been often repeated since. It is alleged, that the ultimate moral of Tom Jones, which conducts to happiness, and holds up to our sympathy and esteem a youth who gives way to licentious habits, is detrimental to society, and tends to encourage the youthful reader in the practice of those follies to which his natural passions and the usual course of the world but too much direct him. French delicacy, which on so many occasions has strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel, saw this fatal tendency in the work, and by an arret discharged the circulation of a bungled abridgment by De la Place, entitled a translation. To this charge Fielding himself might probably have replied, that the vices into which Jones suffers himself to fall are made the direct cause of placing him in the distressful situation which he occupies during the greater part of the narrative; whilst his generosity, his charity, and his amiable qualities, become the means of saving him from the consequences of his folly. But we suspect with Dr Johnson, that there is something of cant both in the objection and in the answer to it, < Men,’ says that moralist, ‘ will not become highwaymen because Macheath is acquitted on the stage;’ an d we add, they will not become swindlers and thieves because they sympathize with the fortunes of the witty picaroon Giī Blas, or licentious debauchees because they read Torn Jones. The professed moral of a piece is usually what the reader is least interested in; it is like the mendicant, who cripples after some splendid and gay procession, and in vain solicits the attention of those who have been gazing upon it. Excluding from consideration those infamous works, which address themselves directly to awakening the grosser passions of our nature, we are inclined to think, the worst evil to be apprehended from the perusal of novels is, that the habit is apt to generate an indisposition to real history and useful literature; and that the best which can be hoped is, that they may sometimes instruct the youthful mind by real pictures of life, and sometimes awaken their better feelings and sympathies by strains of generous sentiment and tales of fictitious wo. Beyond this point they are a mere elegance, a luxury contrived for the amusement of polished life, and the gratification of that half love of literature, which pervades all ranks in an advanced stage of society, and are read much more for amusement than with the least hope of deriving instruction from them. 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. And it is with concern we add our sincere belief, that the fine picture of frankness and generosity exhibited in that fictitious character has had as few imitators as the career of his follies. Let it not be supposed that we are indifferent to morality, because we treat with scorn that affectation which, while in common life it connives at the open practice of libertinism, pretends to detest the memory of an author who painted life as it was, with all its shades, and more than all the lights which it occasionally exhibits, to relieve them. For particular passages of the work, the author can only be defended under the custom of his age, which permitted, in certain cases, much stronger language than ours. He has himself said, that there is nothing which can offend the chastest eye in the perusal; and he spoke probably according to the’ideas of his time. But in modern estimation, there are several passages at which delicacy may justly take offence; and we can only say, that they may be termed rather jocularly coarse than seductive; and that they are atoned for by the admirable mixture of wit and argument by which, in others, the cause of true religion and virtue is supported and advanced.

“Fielding considered his works as an experiment in British literature; and therefore he chose to prefix a preliminary chapter to each book, explanatory of his own views, and of the rules attached to this mode of composition. Those critical introductions, which rather interrupt the course of the story, and the flow of the interest at the first perusal, are found, on a second or third, the most entertaining chapters of the whole work.”

The publication of Torn Jones placed Fielding at the head of English novellists, but it seems to have been attended with little or no advantage to his fortune beyond the temporary relief afforded by the copy-money. His last work of importance was Amelia, which may be considered as a continuation of Torn Jones ; but we have not the same sympathy for the ungrateful and dissolute conduct of Booth, as for the youthful, and on that account somewhat excusable, follies of Jones. The character of Amelia is said to have been drawn for Fielding’s second wife; and if, as has been alleged, he put her forbearance to tests of the same kind, it must also be confessed that he has in some degree repaid her by the picture which he has drawn [7:9:542]of her purity, delicacy, and tenderness. Amelia was published in 1751 by Millar, who paid a thousand pounds for the copyright, and contrived to reimburse himself by an ingenious stratagem which he practised on the trade. In 1752, Fielding, unmoved by former failures, commenced a literary newspaper and review, to be published twice a week, which he entitled the Covent-Garden Journal; but although his ready pen, sharp wit, and classical attainments, highly fitted him for conducting a work of this kind, it was his failing to embroil himself in the party squabbles or literary feuds of the day; and on this occasion it was not long ere he involved himself in a quarrel with Dr Hill and other periodical writers, amongst whom we regret to mention Smollett, a man possessed of kindred genius, and second only to Fielding in that department of literature where both so eminently excelled. The warfare was of short duration, and neither party would derive honour from an inquiry into the cause or the conduct of hostilities.

Meanwhile Fielding’s strength was fast decaying; a complication of disorders having terminated in a dropsical habit, which totally undermined his naturally robust constitution. But as the Duke of Newcastle, then prime minister, was desirous of receiving assistance from him in the formation of a plan for the prevention of secret robberies, and for improving the police of the metropolis, Fielding undertook, for the small consideration of L.600, to be paid by government, to extirpate several gangs of daring ruffians, who then infested London and its vicinity; and, though his health was thus impaired, he continued to superintend the conduct of his agents, to take evidence, and to make out commitments, until this great object was accomplished. The exertions which were thus rendered necessary, however, proved fatal to his exhausted frame, which was now suffering under dropsy, jaundice, and asthma. The Bath waters were tried, but in vain; and various modes of cure or alleviation were resorted to, though with little effect. As a last resource, therefore, his medical advisers recommended him to try the effect of a milder climate; and with this view he undertook a voyage to Lisbon, of which he has left a record, written with a hand trembling almost in its latest hour.^[8. Of his departure for Lisbon he has himself left the following melancholy record, in which his situation is painted a thousand times better than could have been done by any pen but his own: “On this day, Wednesday, June 26, 17ð4, the most melancholy sun I had ever beheld arose, and found me awake at my house at I ’ 'ordhook. By the light of this sun, I was, in my own opinion, last to behold and take leave of some creatures on whom I doated with a mother-like fondness, guided by nature and passion, and uncured and unhardened by all the doctrine of that philosophical school, where I had learned to bear pains, and to despise death. In this situation, as 1 could not conquer nature, I submitted entirely to her, and she made as great a fool of me as she had ever done of any woman whatsoever; under pretence of giving me leave to enjoy, she drew me in to suffer, the company of my little ones during eight hours; and I doubt not whether, in that time, I did not undergo more than in all my distemper. At twelve precisely my coach was at the door, which was no sooner told me, than I kissed my children, and went into it with some little resolution. γV wife, who behaved more like a heroine and philosopher, though at the same time the tenderest mother in the world, and my eldest daughter, followed me. Some friends went with us, others here took their leave; and I heard my behaviour applauded, with many murmurs and praises to which I well knew I had no title.” (Pby¾'∙e to Lisbon, p. 1.) This affecting passage remains a singular example of I ieldiug s natural strength of mind; and, indeed, the whole of the Journey to Lisbon shows that, whilst struggling at once with the depression and the irritability of disease, he could still exhibit a few flashes of that bright wit which used to set the wor in a roar. “His perception of character, and power of describing it,” says Sir Walter Scott, “had not forsaken him in those sa moments; for the master of the ship in which he sailed, the scolding landlady of the Isle of Wight, the military coxcomb who Visι s their vessel, are all portraits marked with the master-hand which traced Parson Adams and Squire Western.” ] Fielding, however, reached that city alive, and remained there two months; but he was unable to continue his proposed literary labours. The hand of death was upon him; and in the beginning of October 1754 he terminated his earthly career, in the forty-eighth year of his age, leaving behind him a widow and four children. “Thus lived, and thus died,” says Sir Walter Scott, “at a period of life when the world might have expected continued delight from his matured powers, the celebrated Henry Fielding, father of the English novel, and in his powers of strong and national humour, and forcible yet national expression of cha racter, unapproached as yet even by his successful fol. lowers.” (See Murphy’s Life and Genius of Fielding- Chalmers’ Biog. Diet. art. Fielding ; and, above all, Sir Walter Scott’s Prefatory Memoir, in Ballantyne’s Novelist’s Library.) (a.)