Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/154

 144 FIELDING writing brethren, losing no opportunity of girding at them, and complaining to the public more than once that they had conspired to &quot;damn&quot; his plays. He found, too, another field for his satire in the political corruption of the time, When he returned from Leyden to London, he had solicited the patronage of Sir Robert Walpole, as was the custom of the time, in a copy of verses, but the great minister had paid no heed to them. He was thus left free to indulge his humour. The election scenes in Don Quixote, in which he gave a ludicrous representation of the corrupt arts of politicians and the venality of corporations, had made a hit ; and when Fielding took the Haymarket Theatre, arid assembled a company of unemployed actors, he endeavoured to crown this success by a still bolder lampoon on the times. The mock-comedy in Pasquin is an election scene, in which he gratifies at the same time his contempt for the performances of rival playwrights and his hatred of politi cal dishonesty. When Pastern was followed up by the Historical Register, in which the political transactions for the previous year were freely travestied, the legislature deemed it time to interfere; and after a witty and eloquent protest from the earl of Chesterfield, in which he argued against the measure as an attack upon the property of authors, wit, &quot;too often the only property they have to de pend on,&quot; a bill was passed to amend the Acts relating to rogues, vagabonds, sturdy beggars, and vagrants, by a pro vision that every dramatic piece, previous to its representa tion, should receive the licence of the lord chamberlain. Fielding was thus responsible for the institution of the lord chamberlain s censorship of the stage. It is generally an irksome task to read plays which were written to be acted, and intended to owe no small part of their point to the art of the actors, but the task is consider ably lightened in the case of Fielding s plays by the light which they throw on his private history. When he began life in London as a youth of twenty, he had access through his friends and relations to the most brilliant society. Whether he took much advantage of this, in spite of his dislike to &quot; that swarm of impertinences which compose the common-place chat of the world,&quot; or whether he succumbed at once to the charms of &quot; low life, &quot; with its frank oddities and eccentricities, which his fashionable friends said acquired complete ascendency over him in his later years, we have no means of knowing ; but, according to all tra ditions, he drew from his own case in the character of Luckless in the Author s Farce. Luckless is represented as being in a condition which would be pitiable but for the imperturbable cheerfulness and gaiety with which he bears it, attired as a man of fashion but very much in debt, his door almost battered in by duns, winning the heart of his lodging-house-keeper and staying her just claims by his good-humour and wit, seldom dining more than once at the same ordinary, and helped occasionally out of desperate pinches by the generosity of his friends. The colours of the picture are probably somewhat overcharged, but all are agreed as to its substantial truthfulness. We have the authority of his friend Murphy for saying that to the end of his days Fielding was always hard pressed for money ; neither his impecuniosity nor his cheerfulness ever deserted him. He had a brief interval of abundance and reckless profusion for two or three years after his marriage with Miss Craddock, a Salisbury &quot;belle,&quot; and heiress of .1500. The exact date of his marriage with this lady, who is said to be the original of Amelia, as a former sweetheart and cousin of his, Miss Sarah Andrews, was of Sophia Western, is not known ; it took place some time during his play -writ ing career, probably in 1737, when he was twenty-nine years of age ; but whatever may have been the date of the marriage, the youthful husband very soon spent his wife s money. He went, his biographer Murphy tells us, to live in the country, on a small estate which he had inherited from his mother, and at once set about dazzling and out braving the squires of the neighbourhood by setting up a magnificent equipage, dressing a numerous retinue of servants in yellow-plush, and dispensing an open-handed hospitality. From this congenial &quot; fling &quot; he was soon com pelled to return to his literary drudgery in London, and, it is conjectured, to domestic troubles such as he has de picted in the household of Captain and Mrs Booth, filled with no high opinion of the intellects and manners of the rural squirearchy, but still unsoured at heart, ready as be fore to meet all embarrassments with a cheerful face, and to profess himself a disciple of Democritus rather than Heraclitus. The institution of the lord chamberlain s censorship, and the consequent dispersion of the Great Mogul s company, was a great discouragement to Fielding s play writing, just as he had hit upon a new and profitable vein. In 1737 he entered as a student of the Middle Temple, and de voted himself with great energy to the study of the law. As a gap of two years occurs at this period in the series of his literary publications, we may probably set this down as the date of his marriage and his experiment at living in the country. Before he had completed his terms, he again had recourse to literary employment, projecting, in conjunction with a journalist of the name of Ralph, a thrice-a-week jour nal called the Champion. It is based on the model of the Spectator and the Tatter, but in the first number, in which Fielding gives an account of his contributors different members of the great family of Vinegar and his purposes, he announces his intention of discussing politics freely as well as literary and social subjects, laying down as his &quot;platform&quot; the reduction of the army, the ibolition of use less offices, the restoration of triennial parliaments, and the removal of &quot; that grand anti-constitutional first mover, a prime minister.&quot; As the journal went on, these objects did not assume a prominent place ; still, the Cliampion is broader in its scope and more rollicking in its tone than the Spectator, as might have been expected from the less decorous character of its principal writers. In two volumes of it which were republished in 1741, the work of the different contributors is indicated, and we find among Fielding s essays the germs of many of the disquisitions with which he afterwards adorned his novels. In the Champion also he renewed his warfare with Gibber, who had turned upon his witty persecutor and assailed him angrily in his Apology as &quot; a broken wit,&quot; who, in his &quot; haste to get money,&quot; did not scruple to &quot; draw the mob after him,&quot; by &quot; raking the channel and pelting their superiors.&quot; Fielding s temper was disturbed but not over thrown by this furious onslaught ; he retorted merrily by drawing up an account of a trial of the laureate for murder, the murder of his native tongue. At the same time the bitter taunts rankled, and prompted Fielding to many further reprisals. It was significant of Gibber s power of stinging that his enemies could never let him alone. The next episode in Fielding s life was a serious attempt to get practice at the bar. He was called to the bar in June 1740, and we are assured by Murphy that he threvr himself earnestly into the work, forswore literature, attended Westminster Hall diligently, went circuit ; but briefs did not come in, he could not afford to wait, and was compelled, however reluctantly, to return to his old trade. Fielding returned to literature, but in a new character. A few months after he w r as called to the bar Richardson s novel Pamela was published, and w r as received with the favour always accorded to whatever is fresh and out of the beaten track. Richardson s novels are somewhat tedious reading now, but their simplicity and close adherence to nature were a new revelation to a public surfeited with the