HENRY FIELDING was of high birth; his father-a grandson of the Earl of Denbigh-was a general in the army, and his mother the daughter of a judge. He was born at Sharpham Park, Somersetshire, April 22, 1707. The general had a large family, and was a bad economist, and Henry was early familiar with embarrassments. He was educated at Eton, and afterwards studied the law for two years at Leyden. In his twentieth year his studies were stopped, 'moneybound,' as a kindred genius, Sheridan, used to say, and the youth returned to England, and commenced writing for the stage. His first play, 'Love in Several Masks,' was brought out in February 1727-8. In the course of five years he wrote seventeen dramatic pieces, only one of which, the burlesque entitled 'Tom Thumb,' can be said to have kept possession of the stage. His father promised him £200 per annum, but this, the son remarked, ‘any one might pay who would!' He obtained £1500 by his marriage with Miss Cradock, a lady of great beauty and worth, who resided in Salisbury, and he retired with his wife to the country. His mother had left him a small estate at East Stour, Dorsetshire; but there Fielding's hospitality and extravagance-a large retinue of servants in yellow liveries, entertainments, hounds and horses-soon devoured his little patrimony and wife's fortune. In the following year (1736) he took the Haymarket Theatre, and engaged a dramatic company. This project failed, and in 1737 he entered himself as a student in the Middle Temple. He was called to the bar in June 1740. His practice, however, was insufficient for the support of his family, and he continued to write pieces for the stage, and pamphlets to suit the topics of the day. In politics he was an anti-Jacobite, and a steady supporter of the Hanoverian succession. In 1742 appeared his novel of 'Joseph Andrews,' which at once stamped him as a master, uniting to genuine English humour the spirit of Cervantes and the mock-heroic of Scarron. There was a wicked wit in the choice of his subject.

To ridicule Richardson's 'Pamela,' Fielding made his hero a brother of that renowned and popular lady; he quizzed Gammer Andrews and his wife, the rustic parents of Pamela: and in contrast to the style of Richardson's work, he made his hero and his friend, Parson Adams, models of virtue and excellence, and his leading female characters (Lady Booby and Mrs. Slipslop) quite the reverse. Lady Booby is eager to marry her footman, who resists all her blandishments as his sister Pamela had resisted Mr. B. Even Pamela is brought down from her high standing of moral perfection, and is represented as Mrs. Booby, with the airs of an upstart, whom the parson is compelled to reprove for laughing in church. Richardson's vanity was deeply wounded by this insult, and he never forgave the desecration of his favorite production. The ridicule was certainly unjustifiable; but, as Sir Walter Scott has remarked, how can we wish that undone without which Parson Adams would not have existed?' The burlesque portion of the work would not have caused

its extensive and abiding popularity. It heightened its humour, and may have contributed at first to the number of its readers; but ‘Joseph Andrews' possessed strong and original claims to public favour, and has found countless admirers among persons who know nothing of Pamela.' Setting aside some ephemeral essays and light pieces, Fielding, in the following year (1743), brought out three volumes of 'Miscellanies,' which included A Journey from this World to the Next,' and 'The History of Jonathan Wild.' A vein of keen satire runs through the latter; but the hero and his companions are such callous rogues, and unsentimental ruffians, that we cannot take pleasure in their dexterity and success. The ordinary of Newgate, who administers consolation to Wild before his execution, is the best character in the novel. The ordinary preferred a bowl of punch to any other liquor, as it is nowhere spoken against in Scripture; and his ghostly admonitions to the malefactor are in harmony with this predilection.

In 1749, Fielding was appointed one of the justices of Westminster and Middlesex, for which he was indebted to the services of Lyttleton. He was an active magistrate; but the office of a trading justice, paid by fees, was as unworthy the genius of Fielding, as that of an exciseman was unsuited to Burns. It appears, from a statement made by himself, that this appointment did not bring him in, of the dirtiest money upon earth,' £800 a year. In the midst of his official drudgery and too frequent dissipations, our author produced Tom Jones, unquestionably the first of English novels. He received £600 for the copyright, and such was its success that Millar the publisher presented £100 more to the author. In 1751 appeared 'Amelia,' for which he received £1000. Johnson was a great admirer of this novel, and read it through without stopping. Its domestic scenes moved lum more deeply than heroic or ambitious adventures; but the conjugal tenderness and affection of Amelia are but ill requited by the conduct of Booth, her husband, who has the vices without the palliation of youth possessed by Tom Jones, independently of his ties as a husband and father. The character of Amelia was drawn for Fielding's wife, even down to the accident which disfigured her beauty, and the frailties of Booth are said to have shadowed forth some of the author's own backslidings and experiences. The lady whose amiable qualities he delighted to recount, and whom he passionately loved, died while they struggled on in their worldly difficulties. He was almost broken-hearted for her loss, and found no relief, it is said, but in weeping, in concert with her servant-maid, for the angel they mutually regretted.' This made the maid his habitual confidential associate; and in process of time he began to think he could not give his children a tenderer mother, or secure for himself a more faithful housekeeper and nurse. The maid accordingly became mistress of his household, and her conduct as his wife fully justified his good opinion. If there is little of romance,

there is sound sense, affection, and gratitude in this step of Fielding, but it is probable the noble families to whom he was allied might regard it as a stain on his escutcheon. 'Amelia' was the last work of fiction that Fielding gave to the world. His last public act was an undertaking to extirpate several gangs of thieves and highwaymen that then infested London. The government employed him in this somewhat perilous enterprise, placing a sum of £600 at his disposal, and he was completely successful. The vigour and sagacity of his mind still remained, but Fielding was paying, by a premature old age and decrepitude, for the follies and excesses of his youth. A complication of disorders weighed down his latter days, the most formidable of which was dropsy. As a last resource he was advised to try the effect of a milder climate, and departed for Lisbon in the spring of 1754. Nothing can be more touching than the description he has given in his posthumous work, 'A Voyage to Lisbon,' of this parting scene:

Wednesday, June 26, 1754. On this day the most melancholy sun I had ever beheld arose, and found me awake at my house at Fordhook. By the light of this sun I was, in my own opinion, last to behold and take leave of some of those creatures on whom I doted with a mother-like fondness, guided by nature and passion, and uncured and unhardened by all the doctrine of that philosophical school where I had learned to bear pains and to despise death.

In this situation, as I could not conquer nature, I submitted etirely to her, and she made as great a fool of me as she had ever done of any woman whatsoever; under pretense of giving me leave to enjoy, she drew me into suffer, the company of my little ones during eight hours; and I doubt whether in that time I did not undergo more than in all my distemper.

At twelve precisely my coach was at the door, which was no sooner told me than I kissed my children round, and went into it with some little resolution. My wife, who behaved more like a heroine and philosopher, though at the same time the tenderest mother in the world, and my eldest daughter, followed me; some friends went with us, and others here took their leave; and I heard my behaviour applauded, with many murmurs and praises to which I well knew I had no title; as all other such philosophers may, if they have any modesty, confess on the like occasions.'

The great novelist reached Lisbon, and resided in that genial climate for about two months. His health, however, gradually declined, and he died on the 8th of October, 1754. It is pleasing to record that his family, about which he evinced so much tender solici tude in his last days, were sheltered from want by his brother and a private friend, Ralph Allen, Esq., whose character for worth and benevolence he had drawn in Allworthy, in Tom Jones.

Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame,
Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

POPE.

The English factory at Lisbon erected a monument over his remains. A new tomb was erected to him in 1830.

The irregularities of Fielding's life-however dearly he may have paid for fame-contributed to his riches as an author. He had surveyed human nature in various aspects, and experienced its storms and sunshine. His kinswoman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, assigns to him an enviable vivacity of temperament, though it is at the expense of his morality. His happy constitution,' she says, 'even when he had, with great pains, half demolished it, made him forget every evil when he was before a venison-pasty, or over a flask of champagne; and I am persuaded he has known more happy moments than any prince upon earth. His natural spirits gave him rapture with his cook-maid, and cheerfulness when he was starving in a garret.' Fielding's experience as a Middlesex justice was unfavourable to his personal respectability; but it must also have brought him into contact with scenes and characters well fitted for his graphic delineations. On the other hand, his birth and education as a gentleman, and his brief trial of the life of a rural squire, immersed in sports and pleasures, furnished materials for a Squire Western, an Allworthy, and other country characters, down to black George the gamekeeper; while, as a man of wit and fashion on the town, and a gay dramatist, he must have known various prototypes of Lord Fellamar and his other city portraits. The profligacy of Lady Bellaston, and the meanness of Tom Jones in accepting support from such a source, are, we hope, circumstances which have rarely occurred even in the fashionable life of that period. The tone of morality is never very high in Fielding, but the case we have cited is his lowest descent.

Though written amidst discouraging circumstances and irksome duties Tom Jones' bears no marks of haste. The author committed some errors as to time and place, but his fable is constructed with historical exactness and precision, and is a finished model of the comic romance. Byron has styled Fielding 'the prose Homer of human nature.' Since the days of Homer,' says Dr. Beattie, the world has not seen a more artful epic fable. The characters and adventures are wonderfully diversified; yet the circumstances are all so natural, and rise so easily from one another, and co-operate with somuch regularity in bringing on, even while they seem to retard the catastrophe, that the curiosity of the reader is always kept awake, and, instead of flagging, grows more and more impatient as the story advances, till at last it becomes downright anxiety. And when we get to the end, and look back on the whole contrivance, we are amazed to find that of so many incidents there should be so few superfluous; that in such a variety of fiction there should be so great a probability, and that so complex a tale should be so perspicuously conducted, and with perfect unity of design. The only digression from the main story which is felt to be tedious is the episode of the Man of the IIill. In Don Quixote' and 'Gil Blas' we are recon

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ciled to such interpolations by the air of romance which pervades the whole, and which seems indigenous to the soil of Spain. In Cervantes, too, these digressions are sometimes highly poetical and striking tales. But in the plain life-like scenes of Tom Jones-English life in the eighteenth century, in the county of Somerset-such a tedious hermit of the vale' is felt to be an unnatural incumbrance. Fielding had little of the poetical or imaginative_faculty. study lay in real life and everyday scenes, which he depicted with a truth and freshness, a buoyancy and vigour, and such an exuberance of practical knowledge, easy satire, and lively fancy, that in his own department he stands unrivalled. Others have had bolder invention, a higher cast of thought, more poetical imagery, and profounder passion (for Fielding has little pathos or sentiment); but in the perfect nature of his characters, especially in low life, and in the perfect skill with which he combined and wrought up his comic powers, seasoning the whole with wit and wisdom, the ripened fruit of genius and wide experience, this great English author is still unapproached. A passage from Fielding to Smollett can convey no more idea of the work from which it is taken, or the manner of the author, than a single stone or brick would of the architecture of a house. We are tempted, however, to extract the account of Partridge's impressions on first visiting a playhouse, when he witnessed the representation of 'Hamlet.' The faithful attendant of Tom Jones was half-barber and half-schoolmaster, shrewd, yet simple as a child.

Partridge at the Theatre.

In the first row, then, of the first gallery, did Mr. Jones, Mrs. Miller, her youngest daughter, and Part idge, take their places. Partridge immediately declared it was the finest place he had ever been in." When the first music was played, he said: 'It was a wonder how so many fiddlers could play at one time without putting one auother out.' While the fellow was lighting the upper candles, he cried out to Mrs. Miller: Look, look, madam; the very picture of the man in the end of the commonprayer book, before the gunpowder treason service.' Nor could he help observing, with a sigh, when all the candles were lighted: That here were candles enough burnt in one night to keep an honest poor family for a whole twelvemonth.'

As soon as the play, which was Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,' began, Partridge was all attention, nor did he break silence till the entrance of the ghost; upon which he asked Jones;What man that was in the strange dress; something,' said he, like what I have seen in a picture. Sure it is not armour, is it?' Jones answered: That is the ghost.' To which Partridge replied, with a smile: Persuade me to that, sir, if you can. Though I can't say I ever exactly saw a ghost in my life, yet I am certain I should know one if I saw him better than that comes to. No, no, sir; ghosts don't appear in such dresses as that neither.' In this mistake, which caused much laughter in the neighbourhood of Partridge, he was suffered to continue til the scene between the ghost and Hamlet, when Partridge gave that credit to Mr. Garrick which he had denied to Jones, and fell into so violent a trembling that his knees knocked against each other. Jones asked him what was the matter, and whether he was afraid of the warrior upon the stage. Ola! sir.' said he, I perceive now it is what you told me. I am not afraid of anything, for I know it is but a play; and if it was really a ghost. it could do one no harm at such a distance, and in so much company; and yet if I was frightened, I am not the only person.' Why, who,' cries Jones, 'dost thou take to be such a coward here beside thyself?' Nay, you may call me a coward if you will; but if that little man there upon the stage is not frightened, I never saw any man frightened in my life. Ay, ay; go along with you! Ay, to be