Another circumstance may in the present day greatly interfere with the success of dramatic authors, and arises from the decay of that familiar acquaintance with the stage and its affairs, which prevailed during the more splendid days of the British theatre. It requires a frequent and close Secondly, in point of fact, no good acting play has ever been produced in the way Sir Walter describes. We have no good acting play from Don Quixote, or Gil Blas, or Tom Jones, or Roderick Random, or Waverley. The popular novels of the day are often, indeed, dramatized, in a certain sense of the word, and the people flock to see them. But are any such performances entitled to be talked of as good acting plays? On the contrary, the best of them that we have seen (for example Rob Roy) must be admitted to amount to an arbitrary sequence of individual scenes, which would be unintelligible to any audience that wanted the means of filling up, every here and there, the most lamentable and hopeless hiatus, from previous and perfect knowledge of the not merely plundered, but maimed, mutilated, mangled romance; and accordingly, whenever the romance passes from its first stage of extreme popular favour, the good acting play is sure to follow it. Fielding and Smollett had their day of being, as the author of Waverley somewhere styles the process, Terryfied. Miss Burney shared for her hour the same distinction; and so but yesterday, as it seems to us, did a greater than she, already almost equally forgotten by the mob of gallery readers,—Miss Edgeworth. Before Sir Walter is entitled to argue as he has done, he must, at the least, show us, on the one hand, an author of Macbeth trying in vain to write an historical romance, or a full-grown Moliere failing in a novel; and, on the other, an author of Waverley making a deliberate but fruitless inroad on the province of the drama. Had Don Quixote been an early production of Cervantes; had Le Sage written the Point d'Honneur, or even Turcaret, after his Diable Boiteux: had Fielding written weak plays after Tom Jones; or Smollett dull ones after Humphry Clinker,-the best, perhaps, in every respect, of his works, at all events by much the most dramatic, there might have been something in such cases; but even they would, for reasons too obvious to need stating, have been insufficient."-Quarterly Review, Sept. 1826.] attendance upon the stage to learn the peculiar points which interest an audience, and the art of forming the situations, as they are technically called, which arrest attention and bring down applause. This is a qualification for dramatic excellence, which fashionable hours and modern manners render difficult to any one who is not absolutely himself an actor. Nevertheless it is of such consequence, that it will be found, that the dullest and worst plays, written by authors who have themselves trod the stage, are, however intolerable in the closet, redeemed, in action, by some felicitous position or encounter of persons, which makes them pass muster on the boards. But this observation, though arising naturally out of the subject, cannot be said to apply to Fielding, much of whose life had probably been passed behind the scenes, and who had, indeed, as we shall see, been at one time a sort of manager himself. We have noticed, that until the year 1737, or thereabouts, Fielding lived the life of a man of wit and pleasure about town, seeking and finding amusement in scenes of gaiety and dissipation, and discharging the expense incidental to such a life, by the precarious resources afforded by the stage. He even became, for a season, the manager of a company, having assembled together, in 1735, a number of discarded comedians, who, he proposed, should execute his own dramas at the little theatre in the Haymarket, under the title of the Great Mogul's Company of Comedians. The project did not succeed; and the company, which, as he expressed it, had seemed to drop from the clouds, were under the necessity of disbanding. During his theatrical career, Fielding, like most authors of the time, found it impossible to interest the public sufficiently in the various attempts which he made to gain popular favour, without condescending to flatter their political animosities. Two of his dramatic pieces, Pasquin, and The Historical Register, display great acrimony against Sir Robert Walpole, from whom, in the year 1730, he had in vain sought for patronage. The freedom of his 1 1 [We preserve the verses addressed to Walpole on this occasion, as a specimen of Fielding's poetry. While at the helm of state you ride, While foreign courts with wonder gaze, You know, great sir, that ancient fellows, Greatness and happiness is seen. The family that dines the latest, Your taste in architect, you know, We're often taught it does behove us Who live above you, twice two story; satire is said to have operated considerably in producing a measure which was thought necessary to arrest the license of the stage, and put an end to that proneness to personal and political satire which had been fostered by the success of Gay's Beggars Opera. This measure was the discretional power vested in the Lord Chamberlain, of refusing a license to any piece of which he should disapprove. The regulation 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 Greatness by poets still is painted From mine I can exclude but one day, My door is quiet on a Sunday. Nor in the manner of attendance, Doth your great hard claim less ascendance. Familiar you to admiration May be approached by all the nation; While I, like the Mogul in Indo, Am never seen but at my window. If with my greatness you're offended, The fault is easily amended; For I'll come down, with wondrous ease, Into whatever place you please. I'm not ambitious, little matters Will serve us great, but humble creatures. Suppose a secretary o' this isle, If you should ask, what pleases best? 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 public amusement, not for scenes of party struggle. About 1736, Fielding seems to have formed the resolution of settling in life. He espoused a young lady of Salisbury, named Craddock, beautiful, amiable, and possessed of L.1500. About the same time, by the death, it has been supposed, of his mother, he succeeded to a small estate of about L.200 per annum, situated at Stower, in Derbyshire, affording him, in those days, the means of decent competence. To this place he retired from London, but unfortunately carried with him the same improvident disposition to enjoy the present at expense of the future, which seems to have marked his whole life. He established an equipage, with showy liveries; and his biographers lay some stress on the circumstance, that the colour, being a bright yellow, required to be frequently renewed, an important particular, which, in humble imitation of our accurate predecessors, we deem it unpardonable to suppress. Horses, hounds, and the exercise of an unbounded hospitality, soon aided the yellow livery-men in devouring the substance of their improvident master; and three years found Fielding without land, home, or revenue, a student in the Temple, where he applied himself closely to the law, and after the usual term was called to the bar. It is probable, he brought nothing from Derbyshire save that experience of a rural life, and its |