But unfortunately he was one of the pretty numerous class of men who, whatever their income be, always live beyond it. Setting up as a country squire, he kept a vast retinue of servants clad in costly yellow liveries; he exercised an unbounded hospitality, throwing open his doors to all comers, and indulged in profuse expenditure on horses and hounds. By these and such-like means he soon devoured his little patrimony, and was obliged to return to his old literary drudgery. The time he spent in the character of a country squire was not, however, altogether wasted. While apparently exceeding all his brother squires in folly, he was in reality noting with keen and vigilant eye all their peculiarities and little traits of manner, and thus storing up a vast variety of materials wherewith to enrich some of the most imperishable pages of English fiction.

On his return to London, Fielding, in order to escape from the miseries which surrounded a poor author, formed the valorous resolution of studying the law. He was called to the bar in 1740, and appears to have made considerable efforts to obtain success in his profession. Clients, however, came in slowly, and literature was, as formerly, his principal means of subsistence. Up to this time Fielding had been groping blindly about, without, it appears, the slightest knowledge of what province of literature his genius was peculiarly fitted to share in. Had Richardson never written "Pamela," Fielding, it known at all to our age, would have been known only as the author of some indifferent essays and plays. "Pamela" showed him the true path into which his powers should be directed. "He couldn't," to quote Thackeray, "do otherwise than laugh at the puny Cockney bookseller pouring out endless volumes of sentimental twaddle, and hold him up to scorn as a mollycoddle and a milksop." The result was "Joseph Andrews" (1742), the first English novel in which the author set himself to delineate the broad panorama of English life as it was moving before his eyes. Originally intended to be little else than a caricature of "Pamela," it soon passed into something much better than that. The character of Parson Adams, guileless, benevolent, child-like, with a touch of pedantry, and

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a touch of vanity (charmingly shown by his offering to walk ten miles to fetch his sermon on Vanity, merely to convince the friend with whom he was talking of his thorough contempt for that vice), is one of the finest portraits in that noble gallery where hang Dr. Primrose, My Uncle Toby, Mr. Pickwick, Colonel Newcome, The Antiquary, and other faithful and long-tried friends. Richardson never forgave Fielding for the slight put upon him by the publication of "Joseph Andrews," and to the end of his life continued to speak of him with a degree of contempt altogether unjustifiable. He declared that "he has little or no invention;" that "nothing but a shorter life than I can wish him can hinder him from writing himself out of date;" and that his knowledge of the human heart was "but as the knowledge of the outside of a clockwork machine !"

The interval between the publication of "Joseph Andrews" and Fielding's next great work may be briefly passed over. In 1743 he published by subscription three volumes of "Miscel lanies," the more notable contents of which are the "Journey from this World to the Next," a clever jeu d'esprit, the interest of which falls off considerably towards the end, and "Jonathan Wild." The latter work, which well illustrates Thackeray's remark, that Fielding's wit flashes upon a rogue and lightens up a rascal like a policeman's lantern, may be compared to the "Barry Lyndon" of the former novelist. Roguery, and not a rogue, is, as the author himself said, the subject; and the fine satire, the contempt for and abhorrence of villany, which permeate the book, go far to compensate for the unpleasantness of the subject. Fielding at all times resembled Thackeray in having a thorough and healthy aversion for anything approaching to making a hero out of a blackguard, a practice more common in our day than in his. About the time when the "Miscellanies" was published, he sustained the great affliction of his life in the loss first of his daughter, and soon after of his wife, his affection for whom constitutes one of the finest traits of his manly and generous, if somewhat reckless and dissipated, character. Her death, we are told by one of his bio

graphers, brought on such a vehemence of grief that his friends began to think him in danger of losing his reason. Mrs. Fielding left behind her a maid, whose expressions of grief at the loss of her beloved mistress so touched Fielding's heart, that he made her his second wife. He never had any reason to repent of having done so. In the last production of his pen, he commemorated her as a woman "who discharged all the offices becoming the female character—a faithful friend, an amiable companion, and a tender nurse.”

In the end of 1748 Fielding accepted what was then considered the rather degrading office of a Bow Street Magistrate. These officials were termed Trading Justices, being repaid by fees for their services to the public. It deserves to be recorded to Fielding's honour that, in contrast to many of his brethren, he discharged his duties with strict honesty, thus, as he said, "reducing an income of about £500 a year of the dirtiest money upon earth to little more than £300; a considerable proportion of which remained with my clerk."

appeared his greatest work, "Tom Jones," the labour, he tells us, of some years of his life-a fact sufficiently well attested by its careful and masterly execution. It was so well received that within a month after its publication a notice appeared. stating, that it being impossible to bind sets fast enough to answer the demand, those who pleased might have them in blue paper or boards; and the publisher, in consequence of the enormous sale, added £100 to the £600 agreed to be paid to the author. The skilful elaboration of the plot, the admirable drawing of the characters, and the shrewd and sensible remarks interspersed thickly throughout the work, combine to give "Tom Jones" a proud pre-eminence over all the other novels of the eighteenth century. Exception may, indeed, be taken to parts of it; one is sometimes tempted to think that Tom, who is evidently such a favourite with the author, was in reality not much better than an "accomplished blackguard," as Byron calls him, and that the beautiful Sophia was, to use Hazlitt's expression, merely a pretty simpleton; but there can be no question as to the general power, spirit, and fidelity to

Fielding's "Amelia."

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nature of the book. The character of Squire Western, the Tory fox-hunter, with his animalism, his coarseness, his prejudices, his instinctive love of his daughter, balanced by his equally strong love of the pleasures of the chase, is immortal and unsurpassed. Thackeray's Sir Pitt Crawley, who was evidently modelled on this unapproachable portrait, is only a feeble echo of it. The coarseness and indelicacy which too often pollute the pages of "Tom Jones" are what must be allowed for in all the novels of the time. Neither Richardson, nor Fielding, nor Smollett, nor Sterne is reading adapted virginibus puerisque. Nevertheless, we are decidedly of Mr. Ruskin's opinion, that, rightly viewed, Fielding is a thoroughly moral novelist. The absence from his works of all cant and insincerity, his love of truth, courage, and uprightness, his hatred and detestation of falsehood, malice, and depravity, give his novels a perennial air of freshness and health.

About three years after "Tom Jones," in December 1751, Fielding's last important work, "Amelia," was completed. It is on the whole the least excellent of the trio. Its construction is far inferior to the consummate art with which the plot of "Tom Jones" is worked out; and though in some ways considerably superior to "Joseph Andrews," it contains no shining character like Parson Adams, on whose memory one loves to linger. Nevertheless, the book had one great triumph. Dr. Johnson, who was always so scandalously unjust to Fielding, that one is tempted to suppose that he must have had some personal animosity towards him, read it through without stopping, and declared that Amelia was the most pleasing heroine in romance. Amelia, whose portrait Fielding drew from that of his second wife, has, indeed, been always at favourite character with readers; but the same cannot be said about her husband, Booth, who, we may suppose, was intended to represent Fielding himself. If so, the likeness which he drew is certainly not a flattering one. Thackeray preferred Captain Booth to Tom Jones, because he thought much more humbly of himself than Jones did, and went down on his knees and owned his weaknesses; but most will be inclined to agree

with Scott, who declares that we have not the same sympathy for the ungrateful and dissolute conduct of Booth which we yield to the youthful follies of Jones. However, after all necessary deductions have been made, "Amelia" must be pronounced a wonderful work, full of that rich flow of humour and deep knowledge of human nature which charm us in "Tom Jones" and "Joseph Andrews."

Besides his plays and his novels, Fielding wrote a variety of other works. He was the conductor and principal writer of two or three periodical publications, in which he strenuously upheld his political opinions, which were strongly Protestant and anti-Jacobite, and assailed vigorously some of the more noted quacks of the day. He also, in connection with his duties as magistrate, wrote on such subjects as the best means for diminishing the number of robberies, making effectual provision for the poor, &c. His irregular life early undermined his naturally vigorous constitution, and in 1753 he was advised to endeavour to recruit his shattered frame by a voyage to a warmer climate. He sailed for Lisbon, but his health was too seriously impaired to be benefited by the change, and he expired on the 8th October 1754. He is buried in the English Cemetery at Lisbon, where a tomb erected to him in 1830 bears the following inscription :

"HENRICUS FIELDING,

LUGET BRITTANIA GREMIO NON DATUM

FOVERE NATUM."

"I am sorry for Henry Fielding's death," wrote Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, "not only as I shall read no more of his writings, but because I believe he lost more than others, as no man enjoyed life more than he did. . . . His happy constitution, even when he had, with great pains, half demolished it, made him forget every evil when he was before a venison pasty or over a flask of champagne; and I am persuaded he has known more happy moments than any prince upon earth. His natural spirits gave him rapture with his cook-maid, and cheerfulness when he was starving in a garret. There was a