Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/489

 THE GREEN BAG Cibber's defects, displays Fielding's intimate knowledge of legal forms ■ and phraseology. It greatly enhanced the author's reputation among the critics of the day. Although Fielding's cessation from peri odical writing synchronized with his admis sion to the Bar, it was reserved for him afterwards to make his real and abiding fame in literature. In 1742 Joseph Andrews was published, and Taine calls it " his first literary work" — alas, for his claims as a writer of plays I Joseph Andrews was deliberately written to' parody Rich ardson's Pamela, and yet, probably malgre sot, Fielding's creative genius overrides the parody the purpose and the occasion and gives us "Parson Adams — " one of the most finished delineations of character in the records of fiction. Its charm is instant and abiding. Joseph Andrews has been a veritable treasure-house of suggestion to those who have followed its author's lead; and it speaks ill for our knowledge and critical discernment if we find nothing reminiscent of this work in Goldsmith and Sterne, not to mention Sheridan and Dickens. Before he had concluded his parody of Richardson's sentimentalism, Fielding "found himself" as the first, if not the greatest, of English realists in prose fiction. Midway in point of publication, although possibly not in time of writing, between Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, stands Jonathan Wild (1743) a study in the psy chology of crime, written in an ironical vein, but with the serious purpose of show ing that the qualities of the moral degen erate in all stations of life, and at all times, are the same. Critics profess to find in Jonathan Wild Thackeray's cue for Barry Lyndon. It is neither within our space nor our purpose to discuss The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, which is the corner stone of Fielding's literary fame and one of the greatest books of its kind in the round world. In its composition he de

clared that he had spent ' ' some thousands of hours; ' ' and in the result he produced a brand-new thing in literature — whereof we have glimmerings toward the close of Joseph Andrews — the prose comic epic. When we recognize this we readily concur in Sir Walter Scott's estimate of Fielding's true place in English letters. Tom Jones was published about the time that the author was appointed a justice of the peace for Middlesex and Westminster. This appointment is said to have been a reward for his editorial direction of the Jacobite's Journal in the interests of the Hanoverian succession. Fielding entered upon his public office with the fine zeal that characterized him in all his under takings. On the 12th of May, 1749, he was unanimously chosen chairman of Quarter Sessions at Hick's Hall (after wards known as the Clerkenwell Sessions) and in the following month he delivered his famous charge to the Westminster Grand Jury, dealing largely with the social vices besetting the metropolis at that period. Shortly after he presided at the trial of Bosavern Penlez for rioting and theft, at the conclusion of which he sen tenced the prisoner to death. This sentence was the subject of so much adverse criticism that the presiding magistrate was constrained to vindicate it in a formal pamphlet. In 1750 the increase of violent crimes had become so marked in the me tropolis that Fielding felt obliged by his commission of the peace to suggest measures of reform. In An Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers, etc., with some Proposal for remedying this growing Evil, dedicated to Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, he professed to find in the prevalence of excessive gin drinking the chief cause of the lawlessness of the times. This practical brochure demonstrated the many-sidedness of Fielding's mind, and greatly strengthened his hold on the public. It is said that the Enquiry, followed up by Hogarth's horribly realistic etching