pleasures, which afterwards enabled him to delineate the inimitable Squire Western.

Fielding had now a profession, and, as he strongly applied his powerful mind to the principles of the law, it might have been expected that success would have followed in proportion. But those professional persons who can advance or retard the practice of a young lawyer, mistrusted, probably, the application of a wit and a man of pleasure, to the business they might otherwise have confided to him; and it is said, that Fielding's own conduct was such as to justify their want of confidence. Disease, the consequence of a free life, came to the aid of dissipation of mind, and interrupted the course of Fielding's practice by severe fits of the gout, which gradually impaired his robust constitution. We find him, therefore, having again recourse to the stage, where he attempted to produce a continuation of his own piece of The Virgin Unmasqued; but, as one of the characters was supposed to be written in ridicule of a man of quality, the Chamberlain refused his license. Pamphlets

["As long as his health permitted him," says Nichols, "he attended with punctual assiduity, both in term-time and on the Western Circuit; and it is probable that he would have arisen to considerable eminence in the law, had not the progress of his success been stopped by repeated attacks of the gout. These came so frequently upon him, that it was impossible for him to be as constant at the bar as the laboriousness of his profession required. Under this disadvantage, he still pursued his researches with an eagerness of curiosity peculiar to him; and attained such a knowledge of jurisprudence in general, and of crown-law in particular, as to leave two volumes in folio upon the latter subject."- Literary Anecdotes, vol. iii., p. 367.]

of political controversy, fugitive tracts, and essays, were the next means he had recourse to for subsistence; and as his ready pen produced them upon every emergency, he contrived, by the profits, to support himself and his family, to which he was fondly attached.

Amid this anxious career of precarious expedient, and constant labour, he had the misfortune to lose his wife; and his grief at this domestic calamity was so extreme, that his friends became alarmed for the consequences to his reason. The violence of the emotion, however, was transient, though his regret was lasting; and the necessity of subsistence compelled him again to resume his literary labours. At length, in the year 1741 or 1742, circumstances induced him to engage in a mode of composition, which he retrieved from the disgrace in which he found it, and rendered a classical department of British literature.

The novel of Pamela, published in 1740, had carried the fame of Richardson to the highest pitch; and Fielding,—whether he was tired of hearing it over-praised, (for a book, several passages of which would now be thought highly indelicate, was in those days even recommended from the pulpit,) 1 or whether, as a writer for daily subsistence, he caught at whatever interested the public for the time; or, whether, in fine, he was seduced by that wicked spirit of wit which cannot forbear turning into ridicule the idol of the day,-resolved to caricature the style, principles, and personages of this favourite performance. As Gay's desire to satirize

[See Note, Life of Richardson, ante, p. 34, 35.]

Philips gave rise to The Shepherd's Week, so Fielding's purpose to ridicule Pamela produced the History of Joseph Andrews; and in both cases, but especially in the latter, a work was executed infinitely better than could have been expected to arise out of such a motive, and the reader received a degree of pleasure very different, as well as far superior, to what the author himself appears to have proposed. There is, indeed, a fine vein of irony in Fielding's novel, as will appear from comparing it with the pages of Pamela; but Pamela, to which that irony was applied, is now in a manner forgotten, and Joseph Andrews continues to be read, for the admirable pictures of manners which it presents, and, above all, for the inimitable character of Mr Abraham Adams,' which alone is sufficient to stamp the superiority of Fielding over all writers of his class. The worthy parson's learning, his simplicity, his evangelical purity of heart, and benevolence of disposition, are so admirably mingled with pedantry, absence of mind, and with the habit of athletic and gymnastic exercise, then acquired at the universities by students of all descriptions, that he may be safely termed one of the richest productions of the

["The Rev. William Young, a learned and much-esteemed friend of Mr Fielding's, sat for this picture. Mr Young was remarkable for his intimate acquaintance with the Greek writers, and was as passionate an admirer of Æschylus as Parson Adams is represented to have been. The overflowings of his benevolence were likewise as strong, and his fits of reverie as frequent. Indeed, they occurred to him on the most interesting occasions." So says Mr Nichols-see his Literary Anecdotes, vol. iii., p. 371. Mr Young superintended and improved the edition of Ainsworth's Latin Dictionary, 2 vols. folio, 1752; and he was also employed in correcting an edition of Hederic's Greek Lexicon.]

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 the slightest stain to his reputation; and he is bastinadoed without being degraded. The style of this piece is said, in the preface, to have been an imitation of Cervantes; but both in Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, the author appears also to have had in view the Roman Comique of the once celebrated ScarFrom this author he has copied the mock heroic style, which tells ludicrous events in the language of the classical Epic; a vein of pleasantry which is soon wrought out, and which Fielding has employed so often as to expose him to the charge of pedantry.

ron.

Joseph Andrews was eminently successful; and the aggrieved Richardson, who was fond of praise even to adulation, was proportionally offended, while his group of admirers, male and female, took care to echo back his sentiments, and to heap Fielding with reproach. Their animosity survived his life, and we find the most ungenerous reproaches thrown upon his memory, in the course of Richardson's correspondence. Richardson was well acquainted with Fielding's sisters, and complained to them, not of Fielding's usage of himself, that he was too wise, or too proud to mention,-but of his unfortunate predilection to what was mean and low in character and description. The following expressions are remarkable, as well for the extreme modesty of the writer who thus rears himself into the paramount judge of Fielding's qualities, as for

the delicacy which could intrude such observations on the ear of his rival's sister: “Poor Fielding! I could not help telling his sister, that I was equally surprised at, and concerned for, his continued lowness. Had your 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!"-After this, we are not surprised at its being alleged, that Fielding was destitute of invention and talents; that the run of his best works was nearly over; and that he would soon be forgotten as an author! Fielding does not appear to have retorted any of this ill-will; so that, if he gave the first offence, and that an unprovoked one, he was also the first to retreat from the contest, and to allow to Richardson those claims which his genius really demanded from the liberality of his contemporaries. In the fifth number of the Jacobite Journal, Fielding highly commends Clarissa, which is by far the best and most powerful of Richardson's novels, and, with those scenes in Sir Charles Grandison which refer to the history of Clementina, contains the passages of deep pathos on which his claim to immortality must finally rest. Perhaps this is one of the cases in which one would rather have sympathized with the thoughtless offender, than with the less liberal and almost ungenerous mind which so long retained its resentment.1

After the publication of Joseph Andrews, Fielding had again recourse to the stage, and brought 1 1 [See Life of Richardson, ante, pp. 20, 38.]