sweetness and light as he does to-day, and even objected to Bunyan's "Pilgrim." In his rough and vigorous verse-and the peculiar value of that has never been properly brought out-the great author notices this prejudice. His second book thus speaks to him, But some love not the method of your first : Bunyan answers his book : : My Christiana, if with such thou meet, But if they frown, I prythee on them smile. Others turned this Christian smile into satire: hence rose a more polished, acute, and subtle kind of novel, which, while it teaches moral lessons of the highest value, amuses by its variety of incident, its merriment, and quickness of style, its apparent philosophy, and its caustic wit. The great master of satirical romance, Henry Fielding, is in many respects the greatest novelist we have ever had. Thoroughly well educated, according to the times he lived in, he had that observation and wisdom which mere education can never give; and which make the finest scholars-mere scholars-but dwarfs and parrots, in comparison with the original genius; for men who are merely learned are but the indexes of the original thinker; indexes, moreover, not always to be trusted. Henry Fielding, who was born in 1707, was the son of Lieutenant-general Fielding, and of the family of JOSEPH ANDREWS. 277 the Earls of Denbigh. He was educated at Eton, and afterwards lived beyond his means; and this is the key to his character. His father allowed him when he was young £300 a-year; but they, said his son, might pay this who liked. He however got £1,500 with his wife, which he spent as if it were an annual payment, feasting all the squires, and living like a gentleman. In three years he was again penniless; the wonder is that he made the money last so long. As a young Templar he subsisted on writing plays; so as gaily as ever he went back to that employment, established one or two critical papers, and in 1742 he produced "Joseph Andrews," a mock heroic novel, written to satirize the "Pamela" of Richardson. The latter, it was said, had "made the passions move at the command of virtue;" and it was noticeable that all his ladies were paragons of virtue, while all his gentlemen were more or less villanous. Fielding reversed the plan his Lady Booby and Mrs. Slipslop are but frail mortals, and Pamela is but a very ordinary creature when married, while Parson Adams and Joseph Andrews are as virtuous as they are true. Besides this, the novel contained a number of introductory essays and reflections as delightful as they are wise and deep; while such dry and good humour, such a knowledge of character, so gentle a pencil had never before been exercised by a painter of manners. The works next in rotation are capital, but are not now popularly read; they are "A Journey from this World to the Next," and the "History of Jonathan Wild the Great." In the latter he makes a brutal thief-catcher and dealer in blood-money his hero, satirically to lecture the world on its preference for soldiers, conquerors, and : those who are eminent by brute force. Perhaps a more trenchant satire was never written. It is far too cutting and too strong for the Philistines of the present day; and yet every word of it is true. As Fielding was a barrister and a genius, the ministers of the Hanoverian race who rule this countrywho afterwards, with equal propriety, made the sweetest of Scottish poets a whisky-gauger-made him a Bow Street magistrate, one of those who were then paid for their judgments by certain fees wrung from those who appeared before them. They were popularly known as trading justices; and as Fielding did not stoop to do as did his brothers, he only realized from his appointment £300 a-year of what he called the dirtiest money upon earth. But he was an excellent justice, and did good service; so much so, that, for a wonder, the Government intrusted him with £600 to extirpate highwaymen, which he did very effectually. In the midst of all this labour he produced "Tom Jones," perhaps the finest novel in the English language, for which the publisher gave him the large sum of £600, and, on its immense success, £100 more. This generosity on the part of a publisher deserves to be recorded. In 1751 appeared his second great novel, "Amelia," which shares with Burton's "Anatomy" the honour of keeping Dr. Johnson awake all night to read it; and in 1754 the author, worn out with labour, and, it may be, with early dissipation, so far as regards wine, left England for Lisbon, where he died. His was a joyous nature, but not a happy life. His wife, whom he tenderly loved,-and whose portrait appears, we fancy, both as Sophia and as Amelia, two heroines, two gentle English ladies, the sweetness of whom, like HENRY FIELDING. 279 that of our native wild hedge-roses, is so pure and healthful, that there is none other to compare with it, -died while the author was in the midst of his struggles, leaving him but her memory and a perpetual regret. His health broke down under constant mental labour and anxiety, and his last work, "A Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon," written, no doubt, for the booksellers, is one of the saddest records in the English language. He sailed for Lisbon on June 30th, 1754, and he died and was buried there in October in the same year. It has been said that, to read one of Fielding's natural stories after one of Richardson's, is like walking on a breezy heath after having been shut up in a sick-room. All sorts of fine things have been said of the former author. "He is," said Byron, "the prose prose Homer of Human Nature." "No one now-a-days," said Thackeray, "dare write of men as truly as Fielding wrote." Hence "Tom Jones" is not a novel which women generally read. It reveals too much of the follies, the vices, and the wickedness of men. Fielding paints his heroes from the life: they are redolent not only of the tobacco-pipe and the smell of punch, but they give hints, not to be misunderstood, of the libertinage of man. "Oh Sophia," says Tom Jones, "the purity of your sex cannot comprehend the baseness of ours ;" and that is the key-note of the work. Yet Fielding never palliates vice, and never tries to conceal it. As a picture of the manners of the day, more openly corrupt than they are at present, yet perhaps only different in that respect, the work is exquisite. "As a work of construction," wrote Thackeray, "it is quite a wonder. The by-play of wisdom the power of observation, the multiplied felicitous turns and thoughts, the varied character of the great comic epic, keep the reader in a perpetual admiration and curiosity" ("English Humorists," p. 275). "A single laugh from Tom Jones," said Lamb, “clears the air." But, more than this, while reading the book, howsoever much you may dislike the hero, you cannot but admire the genius, vigour, intelligence, and real goodness of the author. He is always a man, always a gentleman. What 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 scholars he has formed and accustomed to the exercise of thoughtful humour and the manly play of wit!" There, indeed, is the secret of his greatness. Larger praise yet remains behind. Fielding's works are essentially books for men, and for manly men. He scorns folly and roguery. "His wit is wonderfully wise and delectable : it flashes upon a rogue, and lightens up a rascal like a policeman's lantern." Above all, he was no snob. He told the Earl of Denbigh that his branch of the family spelt the name Fielding, and not Feilding, because it had learned to spell first. He refused as a magistrate to accept the accustomed fees, and to take the shillings of poor suitors. He had an honest enmity to all that was base and untrue; and in the midst of sin a clear Christian faith. "Our immortal Fielding," Gibbon wrote, was of the younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who drew their origin from the Counts of Hapsburgh. The successors of Charles V. may disdain their brethren of England; but the ro 66 |