Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/155

 FIELDING 145 extravagant improbabilities and fictitious heroic manners of the school of romance of which Parthenissa was the most illustrious example in English. Pamela at once became a book that everybody had to read. Fielding read it, but with less reverence and admiration than the ladies of the time. A man cannot escape from the prevalent moral teaching of his generation ; his attitude towards it must be either sympathetic or militant. The prosperous evenly conducted printer had complete sympathy with the worldly ethics of the 18th century ; the idea of writing Pamela had been put into his head by the suggestion that he should write &quot; a little book of familiar letters on the useful concerns of common life ;&quot; and in his earnestness to pro mote the cause of religion and virtue he saw nothing absurd in making a young maid-servant resist the improper advances of her master and be sustained in her resistance by a secret hope that he might be driven by his passion into offering her lawful marriage. To Fielding, on the other hand, there was something ludicrous in good conduct which was so closely allied to artfulness, and he was moved to write a parody of Mrs Andrews s virtue and distressing humility in the adventures of Joseph Andrews, who &quot; by keeping the excellent pattern of his sister s virtues before his eyes,&quot; was enabled to preserve his purity in the midst of great temptations. Joseph Andreics, published in 1742, was thus in its original conception a parody of Pamela, but the author, though he began it with this intention, and executed his intention with inimitable wit, became aware as he went on that he was introducing a kind of writing as new in its way to English readers as Pamela itself, and when he issued the work he endeavoured in his preface to place it on a higher ground than mere burlesque. There was a wide difference, he said, between the comic and the burlesque, -the burlesque writer striving to exhibit what is monstrous, unnatural, delightfully and surprisingly absurd, while the comic writer confined himself strictly to nature, and was of all writers the last to be excused for deviating from it, because &quot;life everywhere furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous.&quot; Distinguishing epic writing into the tragic and the comic, and &quot;not scrupling to say&quot; that it might be in prose as well as in verse, Fielding claimed for Joseph Andrews the title of a comic prose epic. The author s criticism on his own work has never been sur passed for justness ; it is a striking testimony that genius is not always unconscious of its own excellence. He was equally correct in describing the novel as being &quot; written in the manner of Cervantes, 1 for in Joseph Andrews there is the same blending of the ludicrous, the admirable, and the pathetic as in the character of the knight of La Mancha. The humble squire, not the knight, was his hero, but he had at last succeeded in the dream of his youth, introduc ing Don Quixote into England. It may be assumed that the most irritating thing to Richardson in Fielding s parody was the humorous malice of making Pamela endeavour to dissuade her brother from lowering their family by marrying poor Fanny. This wise advice was too nearly in keeping with the prudent character of Mrs B. (or, as Fielding filled out the initial, Mrs Booby); and that a person of low habits should preach a higher, or at least a more spiritual morality than himself, must have been gall and wormwood to the moralist. Joseph A mire ivs was almost as great a success as Pamela. Fielding had received 200 for it from Andrew Millar, after vainly negotiating with another publisher for .25. The sum was not sufficient to allow him to rest on his oars. His next work, published two months after Joseph Andrews, was a pamphlet in defence of &quot; Old Sarah,&quot; the duchess of Mailborough. Considering that his father had been a favourite with the duke, and that one of his sisters was named alter the duchess, there is uo reason to suppose that Fielding s eulogy was venal, whatever consideration he may have received for the service. In May of the same year (1742) his last composition for the stage, Miss Lucy in Town, a sequel to an An Old Man Taught Wisdom, was produced at Drury Lane; but the enemy whom he had raised up, the lord chamberlain, prohibited the piece, when it had run successfully for several nights, because one of the characters was supposed to be a satire on a person of quality. Early in the following year he was induced to un dertake to recast for Garrick his comedy of The Wedding- Day, the third comedy he ever wrote, which had been re jected years before by a manager, possibly Gibber. The serious illness of his wife prevented him from recasting the play ; produced as it stood, it was a failure. This was the end of Fielding s connexion with the stage. In 1743 ho published three volumes of Miscellanies, the first volume containing poems, essays, and imaginary dialogues, the second being A Journey from this World to the Next, the third The History of Jonathan Wild the Great. The con versations between eminent men of the past, which the im aginary traveller overheard in his journey to the shades, are full of the most delicate satiric humour, and bear testimony also to the vividness of Fielding s scholarship. Jonathan Wild, in some respects the most powerful of Fielding s works, is the only one in which the satire is dashed with bitterness. The bitterness is not predominant : his irrepres sible humour has everywhere got the mastery, and risen to the surface ; but the blows aimed at the arts by which men attain fame and fortune are so fierce as to suggest that at no other period in his career had Fielding s troubles so deep a hold of him. At 10 other time was he so nearly overmastered by the savage feelings of the disappointed man, who sees his inferiors in ability outstripping him in the race by arts which he will not practise. At no other time, indeed, had Fielding such cause for bitterness in the accumulation of every kind of worry and vexation as in the year 1743. The evils of poverty, which were always present with him, were aggravated by the dangerous illness of his wife, to whom he was passionately attached. He was so distracted by anxiety for her safety, and remorse at the thought of being to blame for her discomfort, that he could not proceed with the work on which he depended for the support of his family. His own health was far from being good ; he suffered from attacks of gout, brought on by his sedentary habits and his excesses. Meantime the enemies whom he had enraged by his satires were swarming round him with endless devices for his annoy ance. No man ever wrote in more desperate and pitiable circumstances. Yet there is no perceptible diminution in the splendid force of his humour. He shook off his troubles like a giant, and gave no sign of the pain at his heart, save in the fiercer energy of his blows. It may well increase our admiration for the genius shown in Jonathan Wild to know that the author laboured in the face of so deadly a conspiracy to rob his hand of its strength. In 1743 Mrs Fielding caught a fever, and died, Lady Mary W. Montague says, in her husband s arms. For two years afterwards he published nothing but a preface to his sister s novel, David Simple. Although Sarah Fielding was one of Piichardson s favourites, and heard laments from him about her brother s &quot; continued lowness,&quot; she seems to have comforted that low brother in his sorrow, and even lived in the same house with him. It was probably at this time that Fielding received from Lord Lyttelton the assist ance which he gratefully acknowledges in the dedication of Tom Jones. As that masterpiece is said to have been &quot; the labour of some years of his life,&quot; we may conjecture that it was begun sometime during these otherwise barren years, and that, as Don Quixote was written in a prison, Torn Jones was written when its author was only save&amp;lt;l from IX. 19