thetic work of Henry Fielding.§

meditated a plan* conformable to the principles of a ❘ upon the whole, it is the Odyssey, the moral and pawell-arranged fable. Were the Margites still extant, it would perhaps be found to have the same proportion to this work of our author as the sublime epic has to the Télémaque of Fénelon. This was a noble vehicle for humorous description; and to insure his success in it, with great judgment he fixed his eye upon the style and manner of Cervantes, as Virgil had before done in respect to Homer. To this excellent model he added all the advantages he could deduce from Scarron and Swift; few or no sprinklings of Rabelais being to be found in him. His own strong discernment of the foibles of mankind, and his quick sense of the ridiculous being thus improved by a careful attention to the works of the great masters of their art, it is no wonder that he has been able to raise himself to the top of the comic character, to be admired by readers with the most lively sensations of mirth, and by novel writers with a despair that he should ever be emulated with success.t

Thus we have traced our author in his progress to the time when the vigour of his mind was in its full growth of perfection; from this period it sunk, but by slow degrees, into a decline; Amelia, which succeeded Tom Jones in about four years, has indeed the marks of genius, but of a genius beginning to fall into its decay. The author's invention in this performance does not appear to have lost its fertility: his judgment, too, seems as strong as ever; but the warmth of imagination is abated; and, in his landscapes or his scenes of life, Mr. Fielding is no longer the colourist he was before. The personages of the piece delight too much in narrative, and their characters have not those touches of singularity, those specific differences, which are so beautifully marked in our author's former works: of course, the humour, which consists in happy delineations of the caprices and predominant foibles of the human mind, loses here its high flavour and relish. And yet Amelia holds the same proportion to Tom Jones that the Odyssey of Homer bears, in the estimation of Longinus, to the Iliad. A fine vein of morality runs through the whole; many of the situations are affecting and tender; the sentiments are delicate; and,

* Vide the Preface to Joseph Andrews.

† Half a century has not produced one exception to this opinion.-C.

Those who have seen much, and thought much, of the errors and distresses of domestic life, will probably feel that our author's colouring in this work is more just, as well as more chaste, than in any of his other novels. The appeals to the heart are, in my opinion, far

While he was planning and executing this piece, it should be remembered that he was distracted by that multiplicity of avocations which surround a public magistrate; and his constitution, now greatly impaired and enfeebled, was labouring under attacks of the gout, which were of course, severer than ever. However, the activity of his mind was not to be subdued. One literary pursuit was no sooner over than fresh game arose. A periodical paper, under the title of The Covent Garden Journal, by Sir Alexander Drawcansir, Knight and Censor-General of Great Britain, was immediately set on foot. It was published twice in every week, viz. on Tuesday and Saturday, and conducted so much to the entertainment of the public, for a twelvemonth together, that it was at length felt with a general regret that the author's health did not enable him to persist in the undertaking any longer. Soon after this work was dropt, our author's whole frame of body was so entirely shattered by continual inroads of complicated disorders, and the incessant fatigue of business in his office, that by the advice of his physicians, he was obliged to set out for Lisbon, to try if there was any restorative quality in the more genial air of that climate. Even in this distressful condition, his imagination still continued making its strongest efforts to display itself; and the last gleams of his wit and humour faintly sparkled in the account he left behind him of his voyage to that place. In this, his last sketch, he puts us in mind of a person under sentence of death, jesting on the scaffold; for his strength was now quite exhausted; and in about two months after his arrival in Lisbon, he yielded his last breath, in the year 1754, and in the forty-eighth year of his age.

He left behind him (for he married a second time) a wife and four children; three of which are still living, and are now training up in a handsome course of education, under the care of their uncle, with the aid of a very generous donation, given annually by Ralph Allen, Esq. for that purpose. An instance of humanity which the reader did not want to learn of him whose life is a constant effusion of munificence; but for the sake of the writer, whose works have afforded such exquisite entertainment, he will be glad to know that the generous patron of the father is now the tender guardian of his orphans.||

Thus was closed a course of disappointment, distress, vexation, infirmity, and study; for with each of these his life was variously chequered, and, perhaps, in stronger proportions than has been the lot of many. Shall we now, after the manner of the Egyptian ritual, frame a public accusation against his memory? The former method would gratify malevolence, the more especially if we stated facts with aggravation, or discoloured them a little by misrepresentation, and then, from premises injuriously established, drew, with a pretended reluctance, a few conclusions to the utter destruction of his moral character. But the candid reader will recollect that the charge venality never ceases to be exhibited against abilities, he was forced into measures of this kind; no man

in distress, which was our author's lot in the first part of his life, and that the first magistrate of Westminster is ever liable to imputations; for an answer to which we refer to a passage in the Voyage to Lisbon, and a note annexed to it. "A predecessor of mine used to boast that he made one thousand pounds a vear in his office; but how he did this (if, indeed, he did it) is to me a secret. His clerk, now mine, told me I had more business than he had ever known there; I am sure I had as much as any man could do. The truth is, the fees are so very low, when any are due, and so much is done for nothing, that if a single justice of peace had business enough to employ twenty clerks, neither he nor they would get much by their labour. The public will not, therefore, I hope, think I betray a secret, when I inform them that I received from the government a yearly pension out of the public service-money; which I believe, indeed, would have been larger, had my great patron been convinced of an error which I have heard him utter more than once that he could not indeed say that the acting as a principal justice of peace in Westminster was on all accounts very desirable, but that all the world knew that it was a very lucrative office. Now, to have shown him plainly that a man must be a rogue to make a very little this way, and that he could not make much by being as great a rogue as he could be, would have required more confidence than, I believe, he had in me, and more of his conversation than he chose to allow me; I therefore resigned the office, and the farther execution of my plan, to my brother, who had long been my assistant. And now, lest the case between me and the reader should be the same in both instances as it was between me and the great man, I will not add another word on the subject." The indignation with which he throws the dishonour from him will plead in his behalf with every candid mind: more particularly, when it is considered as the declaration of a dying man. It will therefore be the more humane and generous office, to set down to the account of slander and

having a juster sense of propriety or more honourable ideas of the employment of an author and a scholar.

Henry Fielding was in stature rather rising above six feet; his frame of body large, and remarkably robust, till the gout had broke the vigour of his constitution. Considering the esteem he was in with all the artists, it is somewhat extraordinary that no portrait of him had ever been made. He had often promised to sit to his friend Hogarth, for whose good qualities and excellent genius he always entertained so high an esteem, that he has left us in his writings many beautiful memorials of his affection: unluckily, however, it so fell out that no picture of him was ever drawn; but yet, as if it was intended that some traces of his countenance should be perpetuated, and that too by the very artist whom our author preferred to all others, after Mr. Hogarth had long laboured to try if he could bring out any likeness of him from images existing in his own fancy, and just as he was despairing of success, for want of some rule to go by in the dimensions and outlines of the face, fortune threw the grand desideratum in the way. A lady with a pair of scissors had cut a profile, which gave the distances and proportions of his face sufficiently to restore his lost ideas of him. Glad of an opportunity of paying his last tribute to the memory of an author whom he admired, Mr. Hogarth caught at this outline with pleasure, and worked with all the attachment of friendship, till he finished that excellent drawing which recalls to all who have seen the original, a corresponding image of the man.

Had the writer of this Essay the happy power of delineation which distinguishes the artist just mentioned, he would here attempt a portrait of Mr. Fielding's mind: of the principal features, such as they appear to him, he will at least endeavour to give a sketch, however imperfect. His passions, as the poet expresses it, 'were tremblingly alive all o'er:' whatever he desired he desired ardently; he was alike impatient of disappointment, or ill usage; and the same quickness of sensibility rendered him elate in prospe

defamation a great part of that abuse which was dis-rity, and overflowing with gratitude at every instance

charged against him by his enemies, in his lifetime; deducing, however, from the whole, this useful lesson, that quick and warm passions should be early controlled, and that dissipation and extravagant pleasures are the most dangerous palliatives that can be found for disappointments and vexations in the first stages of life. We have seen how Mr. Fielding very soon squandered away his small patrimony, which, with economy, might have procured him independence; we have seen how he ruined into the bargain a constitution which, in its original texture, seemed formed to last much longer. When illness and indigence were once let in upon him, he no longer remained the master of his own actions; and that nice delicacy of conduct which alone constitutes and preserves a character, was occasionally obliged to give way. When he was not under the immediate urgency of want, they who were intimate with him are ready to aver that he had a mind greatly superior to any thing mean or little; when his finances were exhausted, he was not the most elegant in his choice of the means to redress himself, and he would instantly exhibit a farce or a puppet-show in the Haymarket Theatre, which was wholly inconsistent with the profession he had embarked in. But his inti

of friendship or generosity: steady in his private attachments, his affection was warm, sincere and vehement: in his resentments he was manly, but temperate, seldom breaking out in his writings into gratifications of ill-humour, or personal satire. It is to the honour of those whom he loved, that he had too much penetration to be deceived in their characters; and it is to the advantage of his enemies, that he was above passionate attacks upon them. Open, unbounded, and social in his temper, he knew no love of money; but, inclining to excess even in his very virtues, he pushed his contempt of avarice into the opposite extreme of imprudence and prodigality. When, young in life, he had a moderate estate, he soon suffered hospitality to devour it; and when in the latter end of his days, he had an income of four or five hundred a year, he knew no use of money but to keep his table open to those who had been his friends when young, and had impaired their own fortunes. Though disposed to gallantry by his strong animal spirits, and the vivacity of his passions, he was remarkable for tenderness and constancy to his wife, and the strongest affection for his children. Of sickness and poverty he was singularly patient; and, under the pressure of those evils, he could quietly read Cicero de Consola

mates can witness how much his pride suffered when | tione; but if either of them threatened his wife, he

E

34

ESSAY ON THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF HENRY FIELDING, ESQ.

was impetuous for her relief: and thus often from his virtues arose his imperfections. A sense of honour he had as lively and delicate as most men, but sometimes his passions were too turbulent for it, or rather his necessities were too pressing; in all cases where delicacy was departed from, his friends know how his own feelings reprimanded him. The interests of virtue and religion he never betrayed; the former is amiably enforced in his works; and for the defence of the latter he had projected a laborious answer to the posthumous philosophy of Bolingbroke; and the pre

fatigable friend; a satirist of vice and evil manners. yet a lover of mankind; a useful citizen, a polishea and instructive wit; and a magistrate zealous for the order and welfare of the community which he served.

Such was the man, and such the author, whose works we now offer to the public. Of this undertaking we shall only say, that the proprietor was above taking advantage of the author's established reputation to enhance the price, but studied principally to send it into the world at as cheap a purchase as possible; and the editor, from the prodigious num

paration he had made for it of long extracts and argu-ber of materials before him, was careful, after com

ments from the fathers, and the most eminent writers of controversy, is still extant in the hands of his brother, Sir John Fielding.* In short, our author was unhappy, but not vicious in his nature; in his understanding lively, yet solid; rich in invention, yet a lover of real science; an observer of mankind, yet a scholar of enlarged reading; a spirited enemy, yet an inde

Sir John died in 1780.-С.

municating with the ablest and best of the author's friends, to reprint every thing worthy of a place in this edition of his works; which is intended, and no doubt will prove A LASTING MONUMENT OF THE GENIUS OF HENRY FIELDING.

ARTHUR MURPHY.

Lincoln's Inn, March 25, 1762.

TOM JONES,

OR THE

HISTORY OF A FOUNDLING.

35