Fielding

e to his brother Tom, o

refers to a visit h

ssell and I sat up with the Poet [Warton no doubt uses the word here in the sense of 'maker' or 'creator'] till one or two in the morning, and were inexpressibly diverted. I find he values, as he justly may, hi

ly that he lived much in town when he was conducting the True Patriot and the Jacobite's Journal. At other times he would appear to have had no settled place of abode. There are traditions that Tom Jones was composed in part at Salisbury, in a house at the foot of Milford Hill; and again that it was written at Twiverton, or Twerton-on-Avon, near Bath, where, as the Vicar pointed out in Notes and Queries for March 15th, 1879, there still exists a house called Fielding's Lodge, over the door of which is a stone crest of a phoenix rising out of a mural coronet. This latter tradition is supporte

ing met his

quaff'd the

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he continued to live in it until a short time before his death. It was subsequently occupied by his half-brother and successor, Sir John, [Footnote: In the riots of '80-as Dickens has not forgotten to note in Barnaby Rudge-the house was destroyed by the mob, who burned Sir John'

e same dedication, is Ralph Allen, who, according to Derrick, the Bath M.C., sent the novelist a present of L200, before he had even made his acquaintance, [Footnote: Derrick's Letters, 1767, ii. 95.] which, from the reference to Allen in Joseph Andrews, probably began before 1742. Lastly, there is Lyttelton himself, concerning whom, in addition to a sentence which implies that he actually suggested the writing of Tom Jones, we have the express statements on Fielding's part that "without your Assistance this History had never been completed," and "I partly owe to you my Existence during great Part of the Time which I have employed

the Demand for them, such Gentlemen and Ladies as pleased, might have them sew'd in Blue Paper and Boards at the Price of 16s a Set." The date of issue sufficiently disposes of the statement of Cunningham and others, that the book was written at Bow Street. Little more than the dedication, which is preface as well, can have been produced by Fielding in his new home. Making fair allowance for the usual tardy progress of a book through the press, and taking into consideration the fact that the author was actively occupied with hi

, "the greatest Pains in composing" of any part of his book, and he hopes that, like the Greek and Latin mottoes in the Spectator, they may serve to secure him against imitation by inferior authors. [Footnote: Notwithstanding this warning, Cumberland (who copied so much) copied these in his novel of Henry. On the other hand, Fielding's French and Polish translators omitted them as superfluous.] Naturally a great deal they contain is by this time commonplace, although it was unhackneyed enough when Fielding wrote. The absolute necessity in work of this kind for genius, learning, and knowledge of the world, the constant obligation to preserve character and probability-to regard variety and the law of contrast:-these are things with which the modern tiro (however much he may fail to possess or observe them) is now supposed to be at least theoretically acquainted. But there are other chapters in which Fielding may also be said to reveal his personal point of view, and these can scarcely be disregarded. His "Fare," he says, following the language of the table, is "HUMAN NATURE," which he shall first present "in that more plain and simple Manner in which it is found in the Country," and afterwards "hash and ragoo it with all the high French and Italian seasoning of Affectation and Vice which Courts and Citie

om Mantua charm'd, and who, on that fair Hill which overlooks the proud Metropolis of Britain, sat, with thy Milton, sweetly tuning the Heroic Lyre; fill my ravished Fancy with the Hopes of charming Ages yet to come. Foretel me that some tender Maid, whose Grandmother is yet unborn, hereafter, when, under the fictitious Name of Sophia, she reads the real Worth which once existed in my Charlotte

fter a mock apostrophe to W

deceiving others, when they are, in Reality, the Objects only of Ridicule, for deceiving themselves. Strip off the thin Disguise of Wisdom from Self-Conceit, of Plenty from Avarice, and of Glory from Ambition. Come thou, that hast inspired thy Ari

the hands of the injured Sophia! Again, when the secret of Jones' birth [Footnote: Much ink has been shed respecting Fielding's reason for making his hero illegitimate. But may not "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling," have had no subtler origin than the recent establishment of the Foundling Hospital, of which Fielding had written in the Champion, and in which his friend Hogarth was interested?] is finally disclosed, we look back and discover a hundred little premonitions which escaped us at first, but which, read by the light of our latest knowledge, assume a fresh significance. At the same time, it must be admitted that the over-quoted and somewhat antiquated dictum of Coleridge, by which Tom Jones is grouped with the Alchemist and OEdipus Tyrannus, as one of the three most perfect plots in the world, requires revision. It is impossible to apply the term "perfect" to a work which contains such an inexplicable stumbling-block as the Man of the Hill's story. Then again, progress and animation alone will not make a perfect plot, unless probability be superadded. And although it cannot be said that Fielding disregards probability, he certainly strains it considerably. Money is conveniently lost and found; the naivest coincidences continually occur; people turn up in the nick of time at the exact spot required, and develop the most needful (but enti

ndemned, because some particular Chapter, or perhaps Chapters, may be obnoxious to very just and sensible Objections.... To write within such severe Rules as these, is as impossible as t

entative, and at the same time, completely individual character. Western has all the rustic tastes, the narrow prejudices, the imperfect education, the unreasoning hatred to the court, which distinguished the Jacobite country gentleman of the Georgian era; but his divided love for his daughter and his horses, his good-humour and his shrewdness, his foaming impulses and his quick subsidings, his tears, his oaths, and his barbaric dialect, are all essential features in a personal portrait. When Jones has rescued Sophia, he will give him all his stable, the Chevalier and Miss Slouch excepted; when he finds he is in love with her, he is in a frenzy to "get at un" and "spoil his Caterwauling." He will have the surgeon's heart's blood if he takes a drop too much from Sophia's white arm; when she opposes his wishes as to Blifil, he will turn her into the street with no more than a smock, and give his estate to the "zinking Fund." Throughout the book he is qualis ab incepto,-boisterous, brutal, jovial, and inimitable; so that when finally in "Chapter the Last," we get that pretty picture of him in Sophy's nursery, protesting that the tattling of his little granddaughter is "sweeter Music than the finest Cry of Dogs in England," we part with him almost with a feeling of e

orace; Ensign Northerton, with his vague and disrespectful recollections of "Homo;" young Nightingale and Parson Supple:-each is a definite character bearing upon his forehead the mark of his absolute fidelity to human nature. Nor are the female actors less accurately conceived. Starched Miss Bridget Allworthy, with her pinched Hogarthian face; Miss Western, with her disjointed diplomatic jargon; that budding Slipslop, Mrs. Honour; worthy Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, Mrs. Waters, Lady Bellaston,-all are to the full as real. Lady Bellaston especially, deserves more than a word. Like Lady Booby in Joseph Andrews, she is not a pleasant character; but the picture of the fashionable demirep, cynical, sensual, and imperious, has never been drawn more vigorously, or more completely-even by Balzac. Lastly, there is the adorable Sophia herself, whos

e is in reality little or nothing to show that he was either sot or gamester. With one exception, when, in the joy of his heart at his benefactor's recovery, he takes too much wine (and it may be noted that on the same occasion the Catonic Thwackum drinks considerably more), there is no evidence that he was specially given to tippling, even in an age of hard drinkers, while of his gambling there is absolutely no trace at all. On the other hand, he is admittedly brave, generous, chivalrous, kind to the poor, and courteous to

heart and slips

s a hero now is rather a question of our time than of Fielding's, and it may safely be set aside. One objection which has been made, and made with reason, is that Fielding, while taking care that Nemesis shall follow his hero's lapses, has spoken of them with too much indulgence, or rather without sufficient excuse. Coleridge, who was certainly not squeamish, seems to have felt this when,

ore fully & forcibly unfolding Tom Jones's sense of self-degradation on the discovery of the true character of the relation, in which he had stood to Lady Bellaston-& his awakened feeling

nd General Braddock,) it is a question whether in a picture of average English life it was necessary to deal with exceptions of this kind, or, at all events, to exemplify them in the principal personage. But the discussion of this subject would prove endless. Right or wrong, Fielding has certainly suffered in popularity for his c

ronically A Receipt to regain the lost Affections of a Wife, in which Captain John Blifil gives so striking an example of Mr. Samuel Johnson's just published Vanity of Human Wishes, by dying suddenly of apoplexy while he is considering what he will do with Mr. Allworthy's property (when it reverts to him); or that admirable scene, commended by Macaulay, of Partridge at the Playhouse, which is none the worse because it has just a slight look of kinship with that other famous visit which Sir Roger de Coverley paid to Philips's Distrest Mother. Or take again, as ut

it was absurd, if not downright Hypocrisy, to affect any Qualms at this Trifle.'-In return to which, Conscience, like a good Lawyer, attempted to distinguish between an absolute Breach of Trust, as here where the Goods were delivered, and a bare Concealment of what was found, as in the former Case. Avarice presently treated this with Ridicule, called it a Distinction without a Difference, and absolutely insisted, that when once all Pretensions of Honour and Virtue were given up in any one

tory in the Mind of Black George, and after making him a few Comp

of ill-health and poverty, could find the courage to pursue and perfect such a conception. It is true that both Cervantes and Bunyan wrote their immortal works in the confinement of a prison. But they must at least have enjoyed the seclusion so needful to literary labour; while Tom Jones was written here and there, at all times an

nly impressed upon the public prints. The Gentleman's Magazine for 1749, which, as might be expected from Johnson's connection with it, contains ample accounts of his own tragedy of Irene and Richardson's recently-published Clarissa, has no notice of Tom Jones, nor is there even any advertisement of the second edition issued in the same year. But, in the emb

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ever talking of their Tom Jones's, "for so they call their favourites," and that the gentlemen, on their side, had their Sophias, one having gone so far as to give that all-popular name to his "Dutch mastiff puppy." But perhaps the best and freshest exhibition (for, as far as can be ascertained, it has never hitherto been made public) of Richardson's attitude to his rival is to be found in a little group of letters in the Forster collection at South Kensington. The writers are Aaron Hill and his daughters; but the letters do not seem to have been known to Mrs. Barbauld, whose last communication from Hill is dated November 2, 1748. Nor are they to be found in Hill's own Correspondence. The ladies, it appears, had visited Richardson at Salisbu

ous Body of his meanings), with long Runs of bantering Levity, which his [Fielding's] Good sense may suffer by Effect of." "It is true (they continue), he seems to wear this Lightness, as a grave Head sometime wears a Feather: which tho' He and Fashion may consider a

that neither brings on Anything, nor rose from Anything that went before it) All the changefull windings of the Author's Fancy carry on a course of

punish and expose Hypocrisy; shew Pity and Benevolence in amiable Lights, and Avarice and Brutality in very despicable ones. In every Part It has Humanity for its Intention: In too many, it seems wantoner than It was meant to be: It has bold shocking Pictures; and (I fear) [Footnote: Th

told you our sincere o

t Admirers and mo

and Min

he 27th of

rongly condemned as immoral,-his own obvious familiarity with what he has not read but does not scruple to censure,- his transparently jealous anticipation o

make his Tom illegitimate, in an Age where Keeping is become a Fashion? Why did he make him a common-What shall I call it? And a Kept Fellow, the Lowest of all Fellows, yet in Love with a Young Creature who was traping [trapesing?] after him, a Fugitive from her Father's House?-Why did he draw his Heroine so fond, so foolish, and so insipid?-Indeed he has one Excuse-He knows not how to draw a delicate Woman-He has not been accustomed to such Company,-And is too prescribing, too impetuous, too immoral, I will venture to say, to take any other Byass than that a perverse

, That the favourable Things, you say of the Piece, will

before he finishes his letter. Its effect upon Minerva and Astraea is hest describe

hink it possible they you'd approve of Any thing, in Any work, that had an Evil Tendency, in any Part or Purpose of it. They maintain their Point so far, however, as to be convinc'd they say, that you will disapprove this over-rigid Judgment of those Friends, who you'd not fin

e able to "bestow a Reading" on Tom Jones; but by a letter from Lady Bradshaigh, printed in Barbauld, and dated December 1749, it seems that even at that date he had not, or pretended he had not, yet done so. In another of the unpublished South Kensington letters, from a Mr. Solomon Lowe, occurs the following:-"I do not

ssional critics innumerable. As may be seen from the British Museum Catalogue, it has been translated into French, German, Polish, Dutch, and Spanish. Russia and Sweden have also their versions. The first French translation, or rather abridgment, by M. de La Place was prohibited in France (to Richardson's delight) by royal decree, an act which affords another instance, in Scott's words, of that "French delicacy, which, on so many occasions, has strained at a gnat, and swallowed a camel" (e.g. the novels of M. Crebillon fils). La Place's edition (1750) was gracefully illustrated with sixteen plates by Hubert Bourguignon, called Gravelot,

gh, that "Henry Fielding, Esq., is not the Author of this Book." It deserves no serious consideration.] In 1765, one J. H. Steffens made a comedy of it for the German boards; and in 1785, a M. Desforges based upon it another, called Tom Jones a Londres, which was acted at the Theatre Francais. It was also turned into a comic opera by Joseph Reed in 1769, and played at Cove

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