works of a genius, who, in his wildest and most inaccurate productions, yet occasionally displays the talent of a master. Though in the plan of his pieces he is not always regular, yet is he often happy in his diction and style; and, in every groupe that he has exhibited, there are to be seen particular delineations that will amply recompense the attention bestowed upon them. MURPHY, ARTHUR, 1762, An Essay on the Life and Genius of Henry Fielding, Esq., Works, ed. Chalmers, vol. I, p. 14.

Can any reason be assigned, why the inimitable Fielding, who was so perfect in Epic fable, should have succeeded so indifferently in Dramatic? Was it owing to the peculiarity of his genius, or of his circumstances? to any thing in the nature of Dramatic writing in general, or of that particular taste in Dramatic Comedy which Congreve and Vanburgh had introduced, and which he was obliged to comply with? -BEATTIE, WILLIAM, 1776-9, Essays on Poetry and Music, p. 102, note.

The

Fielding was a comic writer, as well as a novelist; but his comedies are very inferior to his novels: they are particularly deficient both in plot and character. only excellence which they have is that of the style, which is the only thing in which his novels are deficient. The only dramatic pieces of Fielding that retain possession of the stage are, "The Mock Doctor" (a tolerable translation from Moliere's Medecin malgrelui), and his "Tom Thumb," a very admirable piece of burlesque.-HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1818, On the Comic Writers of the Last Century, Lecture viii.

While it must be acknowledged that Fielding's genius was not decidedly dramatic, it was something that he escaped disapprobation, though he was at times received with indifference. ROSCOE, THOMAS, 1840, Life and Works of Henry Fielding.

Notwithstanding the ill fate which attended "Pasquin," I venture to pronounce it a work of the highest talent, if genius be not the more appropriate word. The humour is excellent; nor do I think that the satire in it at all oversteps the fair bounds of comic writing. . . . Fielding's other burlesque, "Tom Thumb," had better fortune, and still keeps possession of the stage. It is, however, the barbaric

version of Kane O'Hara which is repre sented; and they who wish to appreciate this genuine specimen of good-humoured ridicule, must look to Fielding's pages, and not to the theatre. Indeed, in any form, "Tom Thumb" is a play rather to be read than to be seen. Tom Thumb and Glumdalca ought to be left to our imagination, and not to the Property-man. If the popularity of this work of Fielding's pen is to be ascertained by a common test, the number of quotations from it, that are universally current, it will be rated very high indeed. -CREASY, SIR EDWARD, 185076, Memoirs of Eminent Etonians, p. 318.

Of all Fielding's dramatic pieces "Pasquin" seems deserving of the highest praise, and it touches pretty freely upon the political corruptions of the times. Considered in the light of a satire alone it may be pronounced very successful, showing its author as usual at his best in the unsparing use of the lash.-SMITH, GEORGE BARNETT, 1875, Poets and Novelists, p. 301.

None of Fielding's plays, with the exception, perhaps, of his adaptation of the "Miser, can be said to have "kept the stage" few even of the students of literature have read them, and those who have read them have dismissed them too hastily. The closest students these plays have ever had were the dramatists of the following generation, whose works, notably those of Sheridan, contain many traces of their assiduity. The tradition about his writing scenes after his return from tavern carousals on the papers in which his tobacco had been wrapt, and his cool reception of Garrick's desire that he should alter some passage in the "Wedding-Day," have helped the impression that they were loose, ill-considered, illconstructed productions, scribbled off hastily to meet passing demands. There is only a fraction of truth in this notion. That the plays are not the work of a dull plodder or a mechanician of elaborate ingenuity goes without saying; but, though perhaps rapidly considered and rapidly constructed, they are neither ill-considered nor ill-constructed, and bear testimony to the large and keen intelligence, as well as the overflowing humor and fertile wit of their author.-MINTO, WILLIAM, 1879, Fielding, Encyclopædia Bri tannica, vol. IX.

The dramatic pieces that he wrote during his early period were, it is true, shamefully gross, though there are humorous hints in them that have been profitably worked up by later writers; but what strikes me most in them is that there is so little real knowledge of life, the result of personal experience, and that the social scenery and conception of character are mainly borrowed from his immediate predecessors, the dramatists of the Restoration. In grossness his plays could not outdo those of Dryden, whose bust has stood so long without protest in Westminster Abbey. As to any harm they As to any harm they can do there is little to be apprehended, for they are mostly as hard to read as a Shapira manuscript.-LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, 1883-90, Fielding, Address on Unveiling the Bust of Fielding, Taunton, Sept. 4; Prose Works, Riverside ed., vol. VI, p. 58.

As a dramatist he has no eminence; and though his plays do not deserve the sweeping condemnation with which Macaulay once spoke of them in the House of Commons, they are not likely to attract any critics but those for whom the inferior efforts of a great genius possess a morbid fascination. Some of them serve, in a measure, to illustrate his career; others

contain hints and situations which he afterwards worked into his novels; but the only ones that possess real stage qualities are those which he borrowed from Regnard and Molière. "Don Quixote in England," "Pasquin," the "Historical Register," can claim no present consideration commensurate with that which they received as contemporary satires, and their interest is mainly antiquarian; while "Tom Thumb" and the "Covent-Garden Tragedy," the former of which would make the reputation of a smaller man, can scarcely hope to be remembered beside "Amelia" or "Jonathan Wild."-DOBSON, AUSTIN, 1883, Fielding (English Men of Letters), p. 176.

JOSEPH ANDREWS

1742

I have myself, upon your recommendation, been reading "Joseph Andrews.' The incidents are ill laid and without invention; but the characters have a great deal of nature, which always pleases even in her lowest shapes. Parson Adams is perfectly well; so is Mrs. Slipslop, and

the story of Wilson; and throughout he shows himself well read in Stage-Coaches, Country Squires, Inns, and Inns of Court. His reflections upon high people and low people, and misses and masters, are very good.-GRAY, THOMAS, 1742, Letter to Richard West.

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 Muse of Fiction. SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1820,

Henry Fielding.

Joseph Andrews is a hero of the shoulder-knot: it would be hard to canvass his pretentions too severely, especially considering what a patron he has in Parson Adams. That one character would cut up into a hundred fine gentlemen and novel heroes! HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1830? Men and Manners.

While, however, it is highly probable that he had Cervantes in his eye, it is certain that the satiric and burlesque portion of "Joseph Andrews" was suggested to him by the perusal of Richardson's "Pamela,"

on

Be

the overwrought refinement and strained sentiment of which it affords a humorous commentary in the adventures of her professed brother, the hero. sides its intrinsic wit and excellence, it has thus a twofold attraction in the comic and burlesque spirit it maintains throughout, in the same way as the adventures of the Spanish knight and his squire, however ludicrous in themselves, are relished with a double zest for the contrast they offer to the dignified bearing and marvellous deeds of the old Paladins. How exquisitely Fielding has caught the humour, assumed gravity, and delicate satire of his prototype, they who have compared the two master-pieces will readily admit; and that he loses nothing in point of originality. ROSCOE, THOMAS, 1840, Life and Works of Henry Fielding.

Resemblances have been found, and may be admitted to exist, between the Rev. Charles Primrose and the Rev. Abraham Adams. They were from kindred genius; and from the manly habit which Fielding and Goldsmith shared of discerning what

was good and beautiful in the homeliest aspects of humanity. In the parson's saddle-bag of sermons would hardly have been found this prison-sermon of the vicar; and there was in Mr. Adams not only a capacity for beef and pudding, but for beating and being beaten, which would ill have consisted with the simple dignity of Doctor Primrose. But unquestionable learning, unsuspecting simplicity, amusing traits of credulity and pedantry, and a most Christian purity and benevolence of heart, are common to both these masterpieces of English fiction; and are in each with such exquisite touch discriminated, as to leave no possible doubt of the originality of either.-FORSTER, JOHN, 184854, The Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith, vol. 1, ch. xiii.

Joseph Andrews, though he wears Lady Booby's cast-off livery, is, I think, to the full as polite as Tom Jones in his fustiansuit, or Captain Booth in regimentals. He has, like those heroes, large calves, broad shoulders, a high courage, and a handsome face. The accounts of Joseph's bravery and good qualities; his voice, too musical to halloo to the dogs; his bravery in riding races for the gentlemen of the county, and his constancy in refusing bribes and temptation, have something affecting in their naïveté and freshness, and prepossess one in favour of that handsome young hero. The rustic bloom of Fanny, and the delightful simplicity of Parson Adams are described with a friendliness which wins the reader of their story: we part with them with more regret than from Booth and Jones.-THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE, 1853, The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century.

The character of Mr. Abraham Adams is the most delightful in the whole range of English fiction. It is the embodiment of Christianity in all its noblest bearingsthe grandest delineation of a pattern priest which the world has yet seen.-LAWRENCE, FREDERICK, 1855, The Life of Henry Fielding, p. 155.

It is a piece of admirable art, but composed of the basest materials, like a palace built of dung. "Amelia" is not so corrupt, but it is often coarse, and, as a whole, very poor and tedious. "Joseph Andrews" is by far the most delightful of his writings. With less art than "Tom

Jones, " it has much more genius. Parson Adams is confessedly one of the most original and pleasing characters in fiction. Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," Joseph Cargill in "St. Ronan's Well," are both copied from him, but have not a tithe of his deep simplicity and delicious bonhommie. We predict that, in a century hence, "Joseph Andrews' will alone survive to preserve Fielding's name.-GILFILLAN, GEORGE, 1855, A Third Gallery of Portraits, p. 231.

What is London in the mouths of Hume, and Richardson, and Boswell? A place of elegant manners, refined ideas, general enlightenment, knowledge, enterprise, wealth, liberality. What are London and England in the pictures of Hogarth and the pages of Fielding? "No better than they should be," certainly: full of poverty, low vice, coarse indulgence, and sheer brutality, relieved now and then by exhibitions of good sense, courage, and love of learning. Parson Adams, the simple-minded clergyman in "Joseph Andrews," who goes up to London to sell his sermons to some publisher, and meets on the way to and from the country with as many adventures as Don Quixote himself, is a literary creation of unsurpassed merit; nor are the personages that surround him, though less interesting, drawn with less ability.— ARNOLD, THOMAS, 1868-75, Chaucer to Wordsworth, p. 372.

The type which shows best the force and the limits of Fielding's genius is Parson Adams. He belongs to a distinguished family, whose members have been portrayed by the greatest historians.

He is

a collateral descendant of Don Quixote, for whose creation Fielding felt a reverence exceeded only by his reverence for Shakespeare. The resemblance is, of course, distant, and consists chiefly in this, that the parson, like the knight, lives in an ideal world, and is constantly. shocked by harsh collision with facts. He believes in his sermons instead of his sword, and his imagination is tenanted by virtuous squires and model parsons instead of Arcadian shepherds, or knight-errants and fair ladies. His imagination is not exalted beyond the limits of sanity, but only colours the prosaic realities in accordance with the impulses or a tranquil benevolence. . . . If the ideal hero is always to live in fancy-land and talk in

blank verse, Adams has clearly no right to the title; nor, indeed, has Don Quixote. But the masculine portraiture of the coarse realities is not only indicative of intellectual vigour, but artistically appropriate. The contrast between the world and its simple-minded inhabitant is the more forcible in proportion to the firmness and solidity of Fielding's touch.-STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1874-79. Hours in a Library, Second Series, pp. 195, 197.

..

It was not without reason that Fielding added prominently to his title-page the name of Mr. Abraham Adams. If he is not the real hero of the book, he is undoubtedly the character whose fortunes the reader follows with the closest interest. Not all the discipline of hog's blood and cudgels and cold water to which he is subjected can deprive him of his native dignity; and as he stands before us in the short great-coat under which his ragged cassock is continually making its appearance, with his old wig and battered hat, a clergyman whose social position is scarcely above that of a footman, and who supports a wife and six children upon a cure of twenty-three pounds a year, which his outspoken honesty is continually jeopardising, he is a far finer figure than Pamela in her coachand-six, or Bellarmine in his cinnamon velvet.-DOBSON, AUSTIN, 1883, Fielding (English Men of Letters), pp. 73, 74.

JOURNEY FROM THIS WORLD TO THE NEXT

1743

"The Journey from this World to the Next," is to me an unpleasing fiction. The main requisite for such a fiction is precisely that in which Fielding was most deficient a poetic imagination. It will therefore rarely, I think, be read for pleasure, but it may be for information, for it is a fund of acute satire and profound observation on human nature.-KEIGHTLEY, THOMAS, 1858, On the Life and Writings of Henry Fielding, Fraser's Magazine, vol. 57, p. 212.

The Lucianic history called "A Journey from this World to the Next;" this begins with a very sprightly satire, culminating in the author's entrance into Elysium; unhappily, when in a charming vein, he meets Julian the Apostate, who soliloquises, not always very amusingly, for

"Jonathan Wild" is assuredly the best of all the fictions in which a villain is

throughout the prominent character. But how impossible it is by any force of genius to create a sustained attractive interest for such a groundwork, and how the mind wearies of, and shrinks from, the more than painful interest, the montov, of utter depravity, — Fielding himself felt and endeavoured to mitigate and remedy by the (on all other principles) far too large a proportion, and too quick recurrence, of the interposed chapters of moral reflection, like the chorus in the Greek tragedy, admirable specimens as these chapters are of profound irony and philosophic satire.-COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1832, Notes on Books and Authors; Miscellanies, Esthetic and Literary, ed. Ashe, p. 339.

"The Life of Jonathan Wild" has proved a perfect crux to the critics, a proof perhaps that it may have a recondite sense. It is not the real life of that villain, which may be found in the "Newgate Calendar,' or in Watson's "Life of Fielding;" it seems rather to be an attempt at forming the ideal of perfect and consummate villainy, absorbed in self and unchecked by feeling or remorse.-KEIGHTLEY, THOMAS, 1858, On the Life and Writings of Henry Fielding, Fraser's Magazine, vol. 57, p.213.

It was written for a special purpose; it fulfilled that purpose admirably; but beyond that fact, and that it contains much of its author's sarcastic genius, the fragment is not in any other aspect very noticeable. SMITH, GEORGE BARNETT, 1875, Poets and Novelists, p. 296.

This has never been a favourite among Fielding's readers, because of its caustic cynicism and the unbroken gloom of its tone, but it is equal to the best he has left us in force and originality. It is the history of an unmitigated ruffian, from his baptism by Titus Oates to his death at Newgate on "the Tree of Glory." The story is intended to mock those relations

in which biographers lose themselves in pompous eulogies of their subjects, for their "greatness," without consideration of any "goodness," by showing that it is possible to write the history of a gallows-bird in exactly the same style of inflated gusto. The inexorable irony which is sustained all through, even when the most detestable acts of the hero are described, forms rather a strain at last upon the reader's nerves, and no one would turn to "Jonathan Wild" for mere amusement. But it shows a marvellous knowledge of the seamy side of life, the author proving himself in it to be as familiar with thieves and their prisons as in "Joseph Andrews" he had been with stage-coaches and wayside taverns; while nothing could be more picturesque than some of the scenes with Blueskin and his gang, or than the Petronian passages on board ship.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 253.

In "Jonathan Wild" above all Fielding indulges to the full his taste for clearness and unity of intellectual structure. . . . Fielding conducts his narrative under the dominant influence of one prevailing purpose, in the service of which he employs all his irony, never suffering the reader for one moment to forget the main thesis, which is stated at the beginning of the story, restated at the close and illustrated with matchless skill throughout. This thesis is in effect that the elements of "greatness," in the common acceptation of the term, when divorced from that plain goodness of heart which is little likely to foster ambition, are the same in the thief and in men eminent in more reputable professions, as those can testify "who have lived long in cities, courts, gaols, or such places.' In sketching the history of Wild, and showing how his career of selfish villainy might have been marred at innumerable points by the slightest liability to humane feeling, Fielding's polished irony achieves a triumph, and presents a picture of almost "perfect diabolism." The humour of the author is at its grimmest in this work, not so much in depicting Wild, the horror of whose character is almost forgotten in its artistic unity, as in sundry subordinate details. RALEIGH, WALTER, 1894, The English Novel, pp. 167, 168.

His brave, generous nature could never give up a belief in virtue or in the substantial happiness of a good heart. He could see, as he proved by Jonathan Wild, into the very soul of a thorough villain, the depth beyond depth of treachery and sensuality that can be embodied in human form. His moral is, as he puts it, that a man may "go to heaven with half the pains which it costs him to purchase hell." The villain, even as things go, naturally overreaches himself. Knowledge of the world takes the gloss off much; but it properly leads to a recognition of the supreme advantage of unworldly simplicity.-STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1897, Henry Fielding, Library of the World's Best Literature, ed. Warner, vol. x, p. 5701.

TOM JONES

1749

I have been very well entertained lately with the two first volumes of "The Foundling," written by Mr. Fielding, but not to be published till January (1749). If the same spirit runs through the whole work, I think it will be much preferable to "Joseph Andrews."-HERTFORD, LADY (DUCHESS OF SOMERSET), 1748, Letter to Lady Luxborough.

Meanwhile, it is an honest pleasure, which we take in adding, that (exclusive of one wild, detach'd, and independent Story of a Man of the Hill, that neither brings on Anything, nor rose from Anything that went before it). All the changeful windings of the Author's Fancy carry on a course of regular Design; and end in an extremely moving Close, where Lives that seem'd to wander and run different ways, meet, All, in an instructive Center. The whole Piece consists of an inventive Race of Disappointments and Recoveries. It excites Curiosity, and holds it watchful. It has just and pointed Satire; but it is a partial Satire, and confin'd, too narrowly: It sacrifices to Authority and Interest. Its Events reward Sincerity, and punish and expose Hypocrisy; shew Pity and Benevolence in amiable Lights, and Avarice and Brutality in very despicable ones. In every Part It has Humanity for its Intention: In too many, it seems wantoner than It was meant to be: It has bold shocking Pictures; and (I fear) not unresembling ones, in high Life, and in low. And (to conclude this too adventurous Guess-work.