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FIELDING, HENRY (1707-1754)
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See also:FIELDING, See also: But he must have contrived, nevertheless, to prepare his See also:pupil for See also:Eton, to which place Fielding went about this date, probably as an oppidan. Little is known of his school-days. There is no See also:record of his name in the See also:college lists; but, if we may believe his first biographer, See also:Arthur See also:Murphy, by no means an unimpeachable authority, he left uncommonly versed in the See also:Greek authors, and an See also:early See also:master of the Latin See also:classics,"—a statement which should perhaps be qualified by his own words to Sir See also:Robert See also:Walpole in 1730:
" Tuscan and See also:French are in my See also:head ;
Latin I write, and Greek—I read."
But he certainly made See also:friends among his class-fellows—some of whom continued friends for See also:life. Winnington and Hanbury-See also:Williams were among these. The See also:chief, however, and the most faithful, was See also:George, afterwards Sir George, and later See also:Baron See also:Lyttelton of Frankley.
When Fielding left Eton is unknown. But in November 1725 we hear of him definitely in what seems like a characteristic escapade. He was staying at Lyme (in See also:company with a trusty See also:retainer, ready to " See also:beat, maim or kill " in his See also:young master's behalf), and apparently See also:bent on carrying off, if necessary°by force, a See also:local heiress, See also:Miss Sarah See also:Andrew, whose fluttered guardians promptly hurried her away, and married her to some one else (See also:Athenaeum, 2nd See also:June 1883). Her baffled admirer consoled himself by translating See also:part of See also:Juvenal's See also:sixth See also:satire into See also:verse as " all the Revenge taken by an injured See also:Lover." After this he must have lived the usual life of a young See also:man about See also:town, and probably at this date improved the acquaintance of his second See also:cousin, See also:Lady See also:Mary Wortley See also:Montagu, to whom he in-scribed his first See also:comedy, Love in Several Masques, produced at See also:Drury See also:Lane in See also:February 1728. The moment was not particularly favourable, since it succeeded See also:Cibber's Provok'd Husband, and was contemporary with See also:Gay's popular See also:Beggar's See also:Opera. Almost immediately afterwards (See also: He was still there in February 1729. But he had apparently left before the See also:annual See also:registration of February 1730, when his name is absent from the books (See also:Macmillan's See also:Magazine, April 1907); and in See also:January 1730 he brought out a second comedy at the newly-opened See also:theatre in See also:Goodman's See also:Fields. Like its predecessor, the See also:Temple Beast was an See also:essay in the vein of See also:Congreve and See also:Wycherley, though, in a measure, an advance on Love in Several Masques. With the Temple Beau Fielding's dramatic career definitely begins. His father had married again; and his Leiden career had been interrupted for lack of funds. Nominally, he was entitled to an See also:allowance of £too a See also:year; but this (he was accustomed to say) "any See also:body might pay that would." Young; handsome, ardent and fond of See also:pleasure, he began that career as a See also:hand-to-mouth playwright around which so much See also:legend has gathered—and gathers. Having—in his own words—no choice but to be a See also:hackney coachman or a hackney writer, he See also:chose the See also:pen; and his inclinations, as well as his opportunities, led him to the See also:stage. From 1730 to 1736 he rapidly brought out a large number of pieces, most of which had merit enough to secure their being acted, but not sufficient to See also:earn a lasting reputation for their author. His chief successes, from a See also:critical point of view, the Author's See also:Farce (1730) and Tom Thumb (1730, 1731), were burlesques; and he also was fortunate in two See also:translations from See also:Moliere, the See also:Mock See also:Doctor (1732) and the See also:Miser (1733). Of the See also:rest (with one or two exceptions, to be mentioned presently) the names need only be recorded. They are The See also:Coffee-House Politician, a comedy (173o); The See also:Letter Writers, a farce (1731); The See also:Grub-See also:Street Opera, a See also:burlesque (1731); The Lottery, a farce (1732); The See also:Modern Husband, a comedy (1732); The Covent See also:Garden Tragedy, a burlesque (1732); The Old Debauchees, a comedy (1732); See also:Deborah; or, a Wife for you all, an after-piece (1733) ; The Intriguing Chambermaid (from See also:Regnard), a two-See also:act comedy (1734) ; and See also:Don Quixote in See also:England, a comedy, which had been partly sketched at Leiden. Don Quixote was produced in 1734, and the See also:list of plays may be here interrupted by an event of which the date has only recently been ascertained, namely, Fielding's first marriage. This took place on the 28th of November 1734 at St Mary, Charlcombe, near See also:Bath (Macmillan's Magazine, April 1907), the lady being a Salisbury beauty, Miss See also:Charlotte See also:Cradock, of whom he had been an admirer, if not a suitor, as far back as 1930. This is a fact which should be taken into See also:consideration in estimating the exact Bohemianism of his See also:London life, for there is no doubt that he was devotedly attached to her. After a fresh farce entitled An Old Man taught See also:Wisdom, and the See also:comparative failure of a new comedy, The Universal Gallant, both produced early in 1735, he seems for a time to have retired with his See also:bride, who came into £1500, to his old See also:home at East Stour. Around this rural seclusion fiction has freely accreted. He is supposed to have lived for three years on the footing of a typical 18th-See also:century See also:country See also:gentleman; to have kept a See also:pack of hounds; to have put his servants into impossible yellow liveries; and generally, by profuse hospitality and reckless See also:expenditure, to have made rapid See also:duck and See also:drake of Mrs Fielding's modest legacy. Something of this is demonstrably false; much, grossly exaggerated. In any See also:case, he was in London as See also:late as February 1735 (the date of the " See also:Preface " to The Universal Gallant); and early in March 1736 he was back again managing the Haymarket theatre with a so-called "See also:Great See also:Mogul's Company of English Comedians."
Upon this new enterprise See also:fortune, at the outset, seemed to smile. The first piece (produced on the 5th of March) was Pasquin, a Dramatick Satire on the Times (a piece akin in its See also:plan to See also:Buckingham's See also:Rehearsal), which contained, in addition to much admirable burlesque, a See also:good See also:deal of very See also:direct See also:criticism of the shameless See also:political corruption of the Walpole era. Its success was unmistakable; and when, after bringing out the remarkable Fatal Curiosity of George See also:Lillo, its author followed up Pasquin by the See also:Historical See also:Register for the Year 1736, of which the effrontery was even more daring than that of its predecessor, the See also:ministry began to bethink themselves that matters were going too far. How they actually effected their See also:object is obscure: but grounds were speedily concocted for the Licensing Act of 1737, which restricted the number of theatres, rendered the See also:lord See also: Against this, one must set the fact that they are often immodest; and that, whatever their See also:intrinsic merit, they have failed to See also:rival in permanent popularity the See also:work of inferior men. Fielding's own conclusion was, " that he left off See also:writing for the stage, when he ought to have begun "—which can only mean that he himself regarded his plays as the outcome of See also:imitation rather than experience. They probably taught him how to construct Tom See also: But he certainly wrote a poem " Of True Greatness " (1741); a first See also:book of a burlesque epic, the Vernoniad, prompted by See also:Vernon's expedition of 1739; a See also:vision called the Opposition, and, perhaps, a political See also:sermon entitled the Crisis (1741). Another piece, now known to have been attributed to him by his contemporaries (Hist. See also:MSS. See also:Comm., Rept. 12, App. Pt. ix., p. 204), is the pamphlet entitled An See also:Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews, a See also:clever but coarse attack upon the prurient See also:side of See also:Richardson's Pamela, which had been issued in 1740, and was at the height of its popularity. Shamela followed early in 1741. Richardson, who was well acquainted with Fielding's four sisters, at that date his neighbours at See also:Hammersmith, confidently attributed it to Fielding (Corr. 1804, iv. 286, and unpublished letter at See also:South See also:Kensington) ; and there are suggestive points of See also:internal See also:evidence (such as the transformation of Pamela's "Mr B." into "Ma Booby ") which tend to connect it with the future Joseph Andrews. Fielding, however, never acknowledged it, or referred to it; and a great deal has been laid to his See also:charge that he never deserved (" Preface " to Miscellanies, 1743). But whatever may be decided in regard to the authorship of Shamela, it is quite possible that it prompted the more memorable
Joseph Andrews, which made its See also:appearance in February 1742, and concerning which there is no question. Professing, on his See also:title-See also:page, to imitate Cervantes, Fielding set out to See also:cover Pamela with Homeric ridicule by transferring the heroine's embarrassments to a See also:hero, supposed to be her brother. Allied to this purpose was a See also:collateral attack upon the slipshod Apology of the playwright See also:Colley Cibber, with whom, for obscure reasons, Fielding had See also:long been at See also:war. But the avowed object of the book See also:fell speedily into the background as its author warmed to his theme. His secondary speedily became his See also:primary characters, and Lady Booby and Joseph Andrews do not See also:interest us now as much as Mrs Slipslop and Parson Adams—the latter an invention that ranges in literature with See also:Sterne's " See also:Uncle Toby " and See also:Goldsmith's " See also:Vicar." Yet more than these and others equally admirable in their round veracity, is the writer's penetrating outlook upon the frailties and failures of human nature. By the time he had reached his second See also:volume, he had convinced himself that he had inaugurated a new See also:fashion of fiction; and in a " Preface " of exceptional ability, he announced his See also:discovery. Postulating that the epic might be " comic " or " tragic," See also:prose or verse, he claimed to have achieved what he termed the " Comic Epos in Prose," of which the See also:action was " ludicrous " rather than " See also:sublime," and the personages selected from society at large, rather than the restricted ranks of conventional high life. His plan, it will be observed, was happily adapted to his gifts of humour, satire, and above all, See also:irony. That it was matured when it began may perhaps be doubted, but it was certainly matured when it ended. Indeed, except for the See also:plot, which, in his See also:picaresque first See also:idea, had not preceded the conception, Joseph Andrews has all the characteristics of Tom Jones, even (in part) to the initial chapters.
Joseph Andrews had considerable success, and the exact sum paid for it by Andrew See also:Millar, the publisher, according to the See also:assignment now at South Kensington, was £183 :11s., one of the witnesses being the author's friend, See also: Another of his See also:minor works was a Vindication of the See also:Dowager Duchess of See also:Marlborough (1742), then much before the public by See also:reason of the See also:Account of her Life which she had recently put forth. Later in the same year, See also:Garrick applied to Fielding for a See also:play; and a very early effort, The See also:Wedding See also:Day, was hastily patched together, and produced at Drury Lane in February 1743 with no great success. It was, however, included in Fielding's next important publication, the three volumes of Miscellanies issued by subscription in the succeeding April. These also comprised some early poems, some essays, a Lucianic fragment entitled a See also:Journey from this See also:World to' the Next,-and, last but not least, occupying the entire final volume, the remark-able performance entitled the See also:History of the Life of the late Mr See also:Jonathan See also:Wild the Great. It is probable that, in its See also:composition, Jonathan Wild preceded Joseph Andrews. At all events it seems unlikely that Fielding would have followed up a success in a new See also:line by an effort so entirely different in See also:character. Taking for his ostensible hero a well-known thief-taker, who had been hanged in 1725, he proceeds to illustrate, by a mock-heroic account of his progress to See also:Tyburn, the See also:general proposition that greatness without goodness is no better than badness. He will not go so far as to say that all " Human Nature is Newgate with the See also:Mask on "; but he evidently regards the description as fairly applicable to a good many so-called great See also:people. Irony (and especially Irony neat) is not a popular See also:form of See also:rhetoric; and the remorseless pertinacity with which Fielding pursues his demonstration is to many readers discomforting and even distasteful. Yet—in spite of Scott—Jonathan Wild has its softer pages; and as a purely intellectual conception it is not surpassed by any of the author's works. His actual See also:biography, both before and after Jonathan Wild,is obscure. There are evidences that he laboured diligently at his profession; there are also evidences of sickness and embarrassment. He had become early a See also:martyr to the malady of his century—gout, and the uncertainties of a See also:precarious livelihood told grievously upon his beautiful wife, who eventually died of See also:fever in his arms, leaving him for the time so stunned and bewildered by grief that his friends feared for his reason. For some years his published productions were unimportant. He wrote " Prefaces " to the David Simple of his See also:sister Sarah in 2744 and 1747; and, in 1745–1746 and 1747–1748, produced two See also:newspapers in the ministerial interest, the True Patriot and the Jacobite's Journal, both of which are connected with, or derive from, the See also:rebellion of 1745, and were doubtless, when they ceased, the pretext of a See also:pension from the public service See also:money (Journal of a Voyage to See also:Lisbon, " Introduction "). In November 1747 he married his wife's maid, Mary See also:Daniel, at St Bene't's, See also:Paul's See also:Wharf; and in See also:December 1748, by the interest of his old school-See also:fellow, Lyttelton, he was made a See also:principal See also:justice of See also:peace for See also:Middlesex and See also:Westminster, an See also:office which put him in See also:possession of a house in See also:Bow Street, and £300 per annum " of the dirtiest money upon See also:earth " (ibid.), which might have been more had he condescended to become what was known as a " trading " See also:magistrate. For some time previously, while at Bath, Salisbury, See also:Twickenham and other temporary resting-places, he had intermittently occupied himself in composing his second great novel, Tom Jones; or, the History of a Foundling. For this, in June 1748, Millar had paid him £600, to which he added £loo more in 1749. In the February of the latter year it was published with a See also:dedication to Lyttelton, to whose pecuniary assistance to the author during the composition it plainly bears See also:witness. In Tom Jones Fielding systematically See also:developed the " new See also:Province of Writing " he had discovered incidentally in Joseph Andrews. He paid closer See also:attention to the construction and See also:evolution of the plot; he elaborated the initial essays to each book which he had partly employed before, and he compressed into his work the See also:flower and See also:fruit of his See also:forty years' experience of life. He has, indeed, no character quite up to the level of Parson Adams, but his Westerns and Partridges, his Allworthys and Blifils, have the inestimable See also:gift of life. He makes no pretence to produce " See also:models of perfection," but pictures of See also:ordinary humanity, rather perhaps in the rough than the polished, the natural than the artificial, and his See also:desire is to do this with See also:absolute truthfulness, neither extenuating nor disguising defects and shortcomings. One of the results of this unvarnished See also:naturalism has been to attract-more attention to certain of the episodes than their inventor ever intended. But that, in the manners of his time, he had See also:chapter and verse for everything he See also:drew is clear. His sincere purpose was, he declared, " to recommend goodness and innocence," and his obvious aversions are vanity and See also:hypocrisy. The methods of fiction have grown more sophisticated since his day, and other forms of literary egotism have taken the place of his once famous See also:introductory essays, but the traces of Tom Jones are still discernible in most of our manlier modern fiction.
Meanwhile, its author was showing considerable activity in his magisterial duties. In May 1749, he was chosen chairman of See also:quarter sessions for Westminster; and in June he delivered himself of a weighty charge to the See also:grand See also:jury. Besides other See also:pamphlets, he produced a careful and still readable Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers, &c. (1751), which, among its other merits, was not ineffectual in helping on the famous See also:Gin Act of that year, a See also:practical result to which the " Gin Lane " and " See also:Beer Street " of his friend See also:Hogarth also materially contributed. These duties and preoccupations left their See also:mark on his next fiction, Amelia (1752), which is rather more taken up with social problems and popular grievances than its forerunners. But the leading personage, in whom, as in the See also:Sophia Western of Tom Jones, he reproduced the traits of his first wife, is certainly, as even See also: Early in 1752 his still indomitable See also:energy prompted him to start a third newspaper, the Covent Garden Journal, which ran from the 4th of January to the 25th of November. It is an interesting contemporary record, and throws a good deal of See also:light on his Bow Street duties. But it has no great literary value, and it unhappily involved him in harassing, and undignified hostilities with See also:Smollett, Dr John See also: His will (undated) was printed in the Athenaeum for the 1st of February 1890. There is but one absolutely See also:authentic portrait of him, a See also:familiar outline by Hogarth, executed from memory for Andrew Millar's edition of his works in 1762. It is the likeness of a man broken by ill-health, and affords but faint indication of the handsome Harry Fielding who in his See also:salad days " warmed both hands before the See also:fire of life." Far too much stress, it is now held, has been laid by his first biographers upon the unworshipful side of his early career. That he was always profuse, sanguine and more or less improvident, is as probable as that he was always manly, generous and sympathetic. But it is also See also:plain that, in his later years, he did much, as father, friend and magistrate, to redeem the errors, real and imputed, of a too-youthful youth. As a playwright and essayist his See also:rank is not elevated. But as a novelist his place is a definite one. If the Spectator is to be credited with foreshadowing the characters of the novel, See also:Defoe with its earliest form, and Richardson with its first experiments in sentimental See also:analysis, it is to Henry Fielding that we owe its first accurate delineation of contemporary manners. Neglecting, or practically neglecting, sentiment as unmanly, and relying chiefly on humour and ridicule, he set out to draw life precisely as he saw it around him, without blanks or dashes. He was, it may be, for a judicial moralist, too indulgent to some of its frailties, but he was merciless to its meaner vices. For reasons which have been already given, his high-water mark is Tom Jones, which has remained, and remains, a See also:model in its way of the See also:kind he inaugurated. ' For a full account of this celebrated case see See also:Howell, See also:State Trials (1813), vol. xix. 327 An essay on Fielding's life and writings is prefixed to Arthur Murphy's edition of his works (1762), and See also:short See also:biographies have been written by See also:Walter See also:Scott and William See also:Roscoe. There are also lives by See also:Watson (1807), See also:Lawrence (1855), See also:Austin See also:Dobson (" Men of Letters," 1883, 1907) and G. M. Godden (1909). An annotated edition of the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon is included in the " World's Classics " (1907). (A. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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