HENRY FIELDING (1707-1754) IELDING'S best work as an essayist was done, no doubt, in the Covent Garden Journal, a periodical of the school of the Spectator and Whig Examiner which he himself founded in January, 1752. This was not his first experience in periodical literature, for he was a professional journalist, as well as a professional lawyer, a professional playwright, and a professional novelist. In 1745 he had issued the True Patriot, and in December, 1747, the Jacobite Journal, neither of which was long-lived. Steadiness of purpose was not one of the gifts which made him the first great English novelist, and the Covent Garden Journal, edited by Sir Alexander Drawcansir, of Great Britain, did not outlive the year in which it was founded. It would not have lived in vain, however, if the sole end of its existence had been to bring into the world one such essay as that of its tenth number on "Reading for Amusement." It is by no means the only one in which Fielding shows his genius, but unfortunately the Covent Garden Journal, though correct in its intentions and highly moral in its purposes, does not always employ a "terminology" which more modern taste can approve. Fielding's most elaborate effort as an essayist, "An Essay on Conversation," is characterized by passages of striking brilliancy, but in sustained strength it does not equal the best of his shorter essays. He was born near Glastonbury, in Somersetshire, England, April 22d, 1707. His father, who represented a younger branch of the aristocratic Denbigh family, noticed by Gibbon as descended from the same ancestry with the Hapsburgs, was by no means over wealthy, and it is supposed that when he sent his son to be educated at Leyden for the English bar it was because life at German universities was cheaper than at English. Fielding studied law at the Middle Temple after his return from Germany, and was admitted to the bar, but he soon became a prolific playwright, then a journalist and finally a novelist. His early training for the bar may have helped him when he was appointed a magistrate in latter life, but he did not increase his fortune greatly by it, as he writes with pride that he had managed to reduce his magistrate's fees of "the dirtiest money on earth" from £500 to £300 a year. For Tom Jones," written during this period, he received £600 and for "Amelia » £1,000, so that by "inventing the modern novel" he certainly did better financially than it is likely he ever could have done at the London bar or as the most exacting of country 'squires. His last work, "The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon," was written in 1754,- the year in which he died at Lisbon, where he had gone for his health. When Fielding was born >> in 1707, De Foe, who lived until 1731, was forty-six years old. "Robinson Crusoe » appeared in 1719, "The Life and Adventures of Duncan Campbell" in 1720, and "Captain Singleton" in the same year. Richardson's Pamela >>> appeared in 1741, and a year later Fielding entered fiction with "The Life and Adventures of Joseph Andrews," his parody on "Pamela," which showed him his strength and led him to write "Tom Jones," in 1749. The evolution of the modern novel from De Foe through Richardson is thus apparent, but it is within bounds to call "Tom Jones" the first modern novel, as is so often done, for though it was preceded in English literature by several of the best stories in any modern language, it is the first love story in which the characters move through the whole plot with definite and distinct individualities towards a conclusion, planned in advance as carefully as the climax of a drama, and developing by apparent necessity from every act, even the most trivial, of all the characters whose lives are a part of the destiny of the book. The room for art in such a microcosm as this is as infinite as the power of genius to take hold on nature, and Fielding was the first to realize it in English prose fiction. W. V. B. THE ON READING FOR AMUSEMENT "At nostri proavi Plautinos et numeros, et "In former times this tasteless, silly town Too fondly prais'd Tom D'Urfey and Tom Brown." HE present age seems pretty well agreed in an opinion that the utmost scope and end of reading is amusement only; and such, indeed, are now the fashionable books, that a reader can propose no more than mere entertainment, and it is sometimes very well for him if he finds even this in his studies. Letters, however, were surely intended for a much more noble and profitable purpose than this. Writers are not, I presume, to be considered as mere jackpuddings, whose business it is only to excite laughter: this, indeed, may sometimes be intermixed and served up with graver matters, in order to titillate the palate and to recommend wholesome food to the mind; and for this purpose it hath been used by many excellent authors: "for why," as Horace says, "should not any one promulgate truth with a smile on his countenance?" Ridicule, indeed, as he again intimates, is commonly a stronger and better method of attacking vice than the severer kind of satire. When wit and humor are introduced for such good purposes, when the agreeable is blended with the useful, then is the writer said to have succeeded in every point. Pleasantry (as the ingen. ious author of "Clarissa" says of a story) should be made only the vehicle of instruction; and thus romances themselves, as well as epic poems, may become worthy the perusal of the greatest of men: but when no moral, no lesson, no instruction is conveyed to the reader, where the whole design of the composition. is no more than to make us laugh, the writer comes very near to the character of a buffoon; and his admirers, if an old Latin proverb be true, deserve no great compliments to be paid to their wisdom. After what I have here advanced I cannot fairly, I think, be represented as an enemy to laughter, or to all those kinds of writing that are apt to promote it. On the contrary, few men, I believe, do more admire the works of those great masters who have sent their satire (if I may use the expression) laughing into the world. Such are the great triumvirate, Lucian, Cervantes, and Swift. These authors I shall ever hold in the highest degree of esteem; not, indeed, for that wit and humor alone which they all so eminently possessed, but because they all endeavored, with the utmost force of their wit and humor, to expose and extirpate those follies and vices which chiefly prevailed in their several countries. I would not be thought to confine wit and humor to these writers. Shakespeare, Moliere, and some other authors, have been blessed with the same talents, and have employed them to the same purposes. There are some, however, who, though not void of these talents, have made so wretched a use of them, that, had the consecration of their labors been committed to the hands of the hangman, no good man would have regretted their loss; nor am I afraid to mention Rabelais, and Aristophanes himself, in this number. For, if I may speak my opinion freely of these two last writers and of their works, their design appears to me very plainly to have been to ridicule all sobriety, modesty, decency, virtue, and religion, out of the world. Now whoever reads over the five great writers first mentioned in this paragraph, must either have a very bad head or a very bad heart, if he doth not become both a wiser and a better man. In the exercise of the mind, as well as in the exercise of the body, diversion is a secondary consideration, and designed only to make that agreeable which is at the same time useful, to such noble purposes as health and wisdom. But what should we say to a man who mounted his chamber-hobby, or fought with his own shadow, for his amusement only? How much more absurd and weak would he appear who swallowed poison because it was sweet! How differently did Horace think of the study from our modern readers! "Quid verum atque decens curo et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum: «Truth and decency are my whole care and inquiry. In this study I am entirely occupied; these I am always laying up, and so disposing that I can at any time draw forth my stores for my immediate use." The whole epistle, indeed, from which I have paraphrased this passage, is a comment upon it, and affords many useful lessons of philosophy. When we are employed in reading a great and good author, we ought to consider ourselves as searching after treasures, which, if well and regularly laid up in the mind, will be of use to us on sundry occasions in our lives. If a man, for instance, should be overloaded with prosperity or adversity (both of which cases. are liable to happen to us), who is there so very wise, or so very foolish, that, if he were a master of Seneca and Plutarch, could not find great matter of comfort and utility from their doctrines? I mention these rather than Plato and Aristotle, as the works of the latter are not, I think, yet completely made English, and, consequently, are less within the reach of most of my country men. But perhaps it may be asked, Will Seneca or Plutarch make us laugh? Perhaps not; but if you are not a fool, my worthy friend, which I can hardly with civility suspect, they will both (the latter especially) please you more than if they did. For my own part, I declare I have not read even Lucian himself with more delight than I have Plutarch; but surely it is astonishing that such scribblers as Tom Brown, Tom D'Urfey, and the wits of our age, should find readers, while the writings of so excellent, so entertaining, and so voluminous an author as Plutarch remain in the world, and, as I apprehend, are very little known. The truth, I am afraid, is that real taste is a quality with which human nature is very slenderly gifted. It is indeed so very rare, and so little known, that scarce two authors have agreed in their notions of it; those who have endeavored to explain it to others seem to have succeeded only in showing us that they know it not themselves. If I might be allowed to give my own sentiments, I should derive it from a nice harmony between the imagination and the judgment; and hence perhaps it is that so few have ever possessed this talent in any eminent degree. Neither of these will alone bestow it; nothing is indeed more common than to see men of very bright imaginations, and of very accurate learning (which can hardly be acquired without judgment), who are entirely devoid of taste; and Longinus, who, of all men, seems most exquisitely to have possessed it, will puzzle his reader very much if he should attempt to decide whether imagination or judgment shine the brighter in that inimitable critic. But as for the bulk of mankind, they are clearly void of any degree of taste. It is a quality in which they advance very little beyond a state of infancy. The first thing a child is fond of in a book is a picture, the second is a story, and the third a jest. Here then is the true Pons Asinorum, which very few readers. ever get over. From what I have said it may perhaps be thought to appear that true taste is the real gift of nature only; and if so, some may ask to what purpose have I endeavored to show men that they are without a blessing which it is impossible for them to attain ? Now, though it is certain that to the highest consummation of taste, as well as of every other excellence, nature must lend much assistance, yet great is the power of art, almost of itself, or at best with only slender aids from nature; and, to say the truth, there are very few who have not in their minds some small seeds of taste. says Cicero, "have a sort of tacit sense of what is right or wrong in arts and sciences, even with « All men, |