Page:Fielding.djvu/119

 Champion, though the kind of allegory of which it consists is common enough with the elder essayists; and it is notable that another book was published in April 1743, under the title of Cardinal Fleury’s Journey to the other World, which is manifestly suggested by Quevedo. Fielding’s Journey, however, is a fragment which the author feigns to have found in the garret of a stationer in the Strand. Sixteen out of five-and-twenty chapters in Book i. are occupied with the transmigrations of Julian the Apostate, which are not concluded. Then follows another chapter from Book xix., which contains the history of Anna Boleyn, and the whole breaks off abruptly. Its best portion is undoubtedly the first ten chapters, which relate the writer’s progress to Elysium, and afford opportunity for many strokes of satire. Such are the whimsical terror of the spiritual traveller in the stagecoach, who hears suddenly that his neighbour has died of smallpox, a disease he had been dreading all his life; and the punishment of Lord Scrape, the miser, who is doomed to dole out money to all comers, and who, after “being purified in the Body of a Hog,” is ultimately to return to earth again. Nor is the delight of some of those who profit by his enforced assistance less keenly realised:—“I remarked a poetical Spirit in particular, who swore he would have a hearty Gripe at him: ‘For, says he, the Rascal not only refused to subscribe to my Works; but sent back my Letter unanswered, tho’ I’m a better Gentleman than himself.’” The descriptions of the City of Diseases, the Palace of Death, and the Wheel of Fortune from which men draw their chequered lots, are all unrivalled in their way. But here, as always, it is in his pictures of human nature that Fielding shines,