the whole Society of Wits at Will's, or all the critics of the press, had combined to trumpet forth his excellences."

For, Harry Fielding, who mores multorum hominum vidit, had personal experience of the mores of bum-bailiffs, and other rough-andready specimens of in-humanity, in the course of his ups and downs in life, and doubtless could have wished these gentry better mores, by means of a better acquaintance (fideliter didicisse) with those "ingenuous arts" which, a good authority declares, have an "emollient" influence on "manners." Better manners to ye! might once and again have been his benediction on sponging-householders, duns, and tax-collectors, whose only interest in books (and bookmen) was confined to those in which they kept their accounts-a province of literature by which a man's mores are but imperceptibly softened, so that to say nec sinit esse feros were to say the thing that is not witness Dick Steele, Harry Fielding, and a whole noble (or ignoble) army of martyrs to impecuniosity. Between the ages of twenty and twenty-two, a life about town had initiated Fielding "into all the mysteries of Bohemianism." If he was familiar with the boisterous jollity and reckless unthrift of tavern life, so was he with chill penury in some of its dreariest aspects. Almost his only means of support he derived from the playhouse treasury: supplementary aid, to make both ends meet, came sometimes in the "questionable shape" of a "tip" perhaps from his old fellow-Etonian, George Lyttleton, or from some honoured patron, such as the Dukes of Richmond and Argyle. It is no imaginary picture, therefore, that Mr. Lawrence draws of the jovial author in his early days of alternate light and shade-one day, familiar with the sordid haunts of poverty; the next, gay in velvet, ruffles, and embroidery; now, dining at the tables of the great, and quaffing champagne in ducal banquet-halls; and now seeking out the cheapest ordinary; or, if dinner was impossible, solacing himself with a pipe of tobacco, A satire entitled "Seasonable Reproof," published anonymously in 1735, thus describes his "sudden transformations from the grub to the butterfly condition :"

F

-g, who yesterday appeared so rough,

Clad in coarse frieze, and plastered down with snuff,
See how his instant gaudy trappings shine!
What playhouse bard was ever seen so fine?
But this not from his humour flows, you'll say,

But mere necessity-for last night lay

In pawn the velvet which he wears to-day.

Colley Cibber, defined by Ralph "a bottle of as pert small beer as ever whizzed in any man's face," called Fielding, in one of these effervescent ebullitions of small beer sourness, "a broken wit." Old Colley was right though. In circumstances, the man who had ridiculed him in "Pasquin" and the "Register," was a broken and battered bankrupt. In intellectuals, he was as undeniably a wit. And Cibber knew to his cost that the "chill penury," at which he indirectly sneered, availed not to "repress the noble rage" of a wit of Fielding's inches. Care killed a cat, they say; and a cat has (according to the same on dit authority) lives three times three; Fielding had only one life, but Care killed not him. If, amid straits and embarrassments the most irksome, he did not exactly laugh and grow fat, at least he laughed and grew-thin. He breathed

VOL. XXXIX.

M

a heavy atmosphere, but himself was buoyant, airy, light as a feather. He was joyous in the face of duns, and had the light heart to turn his indigence into jeux d'esprit. At three-and-twenty he thus addressed the prime minister-gaily comparing notes with Sir Robert Walpole, on their respective positions in life :

The family that dines the latest

Is in our street esteemed the greatest;
But latest hours must surely fall
'Fore him who never dines at all.
Your taste as architect, you know,
Hath been admired by friend and foe;
But can your earthly domes compare
With all my castles-in the air?

We're often taught it doth behove us
To think those greater who're above us;
Another instance of my glory,
Who live above you twice two story;
And from my garret can look down
On the whole street of Arlington.

Greatness by poets still is painted
With many followers acquainted;
This too doth in my favour speak;
Your levée is but once a week;
From mine I can exclude but one day-
My door is quiet of a Sunday.

One grave consequence, however, this garret life produced, damaging to Fielding's character as a man of letters,-the pandering to low tastes in his contributions to the stage. In the prologue to his first comedy, "Love in several Masques" (1728), he had the assurance, indeed, to claim credit for the moral tone of his scenes, and their freedom from aught that could offend the fair;* yet it were hard to say wherein this piece differs for the better from contemporary comedies-and, given the year 1728, we know what sort of things, in a moral point of view, they were. Mr. Lawrence straightforwardly protests that, "the truth is, Fielding could not afford to be dull; and decorum was in that age considered synonymous with dulness. Had his play been less piquant and more moral, he might have wanted occupation for some years to come. Let the apology, or plea, go for what it is worth; the fact upon which it is framed seems to be mortifyingly correct. But worse than this; Fielding, in his eagerness (proh pudor!) to keep up with his patrons' depraved taste, actually outran it went lengths that the playgoing public really could not go-took liberties that a by no means "nice" pit and boxes could not tolerate. "The Coffee-House Politician" was a little too strong; and however entertaining the colloquies of Dabble and Politick (whose political geography is about on a par with that of Fielding's subsequent patron, his Grace of Newcastle), and however potent the hit at London justices of the peace, in the person of Mr. Justice Squeezum (acted, too, à merveille, by Hyppesly, the original Peachum), public decency had some character still to maintain, or perhaps redeem,

* Nought shall offend the fair one's ears to-day,
Which she might blush to hear, or blush to say, &c.

and the play was eventually, though not at first, put down. Of his next five-act comedy, "The Modern Husband" (1732), Mr. Lawrence, ever disposed to palliate his author's transgressions, literary and moral, fairly owns, that it seems impossible at this time of day to believe in the toleration of such a piece by any decent audience. "No doubt the morals of the upper classes were bad enough in the reign of George II.,"—" but that such a state of morals as Fielding has depicted in The Modern Husband' was common in any class or circle is an incredible and monstrous supposition." Such a couple as Mr. and Mrs. Modern, the author adds, might have been found, perhaps, in probing the lowest depths of profligacy; but to represent such persons as the ordinary products of the social system then in vogue, was a libel on the age, and exceeded the limits of the comedian's licence. Nevertheless, Fielding complacently takes credit to himself, in the prologue, for his adherence to "nature and truth," and his "defence of virtue." Next year (1732) he "came out with" a burlesque (à propos of namby-pamby Phillips's "Distressed Mother," scil. Racine's "Andromaque" done into namby-pamby English), entitled "The Covent Garden Tragedy," which introduces the lowest of the low London characters of that time and that place (Covent Garden being then notorious for the evil communications that corrupt good manners), and goes far to confirm the belief, that want of decency is want of sense. This burlesque was speedily followed by "The Debauchee," a comedy flung at the head of the Jesuits, whose odour of sanctity just at this time stank in the nostrils of the town, thanks in especial to the recent exposé of Catherine Cadière and Father Girard. It is but poor comfort to know that both these last pieces were freely censured at the time for their flagrant indecency," and to have the authority of the Grub Street Journal (July, 1732), that they both "met with the universal detestation of the town:" Grub-street journalists sometimes observing only the first clause of the commandment to

Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.

66

"It

Of "The Universal Gallant," again, a comedy acted (by Quin, Cibber, &c., inter alios) at Drury-Lane Theatre, in 1735, Mr. Lawrence says: proved a most undoubted failure, and not undeservedly so." The audience, it is said, sat quietly till the third act was almost over, expecting the play to mend; but finding it grow worse and worse, they lost all patience. Fielding was bitter (for him, who had so little gall in his composition) at the fate of this comedy; imputed it to "some young gentlemen of the town who make a jest of damning plays;"* and urged the public at large to reverse the judgment of a packed and partisan few. He urged in vain; and tant mieux: for, whatever the motive of those who had condemned him, the condemnation itself will grieve or surprise no nineteenth century reader. No wonder, on the whole, if Fielding got a bad name with playgoers who had a conscience, and came to be distrusted by them as one whose next play it would not be "safe" to go

* Whence the allusion in the (paulo post) prologue:

"Can then another's anguish give you joy?
Or is it such a triumph to destroy?
We, like the fabled frogs, consider thus:
This may be sport to you, but it is death to us.”

and see acted. Thus in 1743, when his rehabilitated juvenile comedy, "The Wedding Day," was announced as "in preparation," rumour condemned it beforehand, on the score of its indecency; a charge from which Fielding endeavoured to defend it, by stating that the report arose entirely from the objection of the licenser to certain passages, which were at once expunged. But this defence, Mr. Lawrence objects, is untenable: 66 In the plot of the comedy, with which the licenser's pen could not interfere, there is an ingrained deformity; and portions of the dialogue remind us of the age of Wycherley and Congreve." That ladies of quality, in the year 1743, it is with justice remarked, should refuse to sanction* such an entertainment with their presence, is a proof that an improvement in public morals was gradually taking place.

Fielding's plays, however, are now fairly shelved; and probably the higher the shelf the better. His novels, on the other hand, have the vitality involved in his appellation, Father of the English Novel. The coarseness and indelicacy by which they too are blotted, are lamentable drawbacks to the delight they otherwise afford. Sir John Hawkins was bilious (as usual or possibly a little extra) when he called "Tom Jones" a book "seemingly intended to sap the foundation of that morality which it is the duty of parents," &c.; and Richardson was a jealous rival and a blind critic when he said, "Tom Jones is a dissolute book. Its run is over,” &c.; and France was inconsistent, and had something like a beam in her eye, when she, dieting on Crébillon fils, refused to license Master Tom, because of his immorality; nevertheless it is well to give proper weight to the weighty objections, on this ground, to which Fielding's novels are one and all liable, and which only their extraordinary merit in other respects could have struggled against with success. The degree of this merit enhances the vexation one feels at offences to taste and morals so frequent and so gratuitous; indeed, superlative as it is, it is in no way superfluous, merely as a disinfectant-as a counter-agent against that tendency to decay which, Heaven be praised, is an innate tendency in all corrupt matter. There needed a goodly array of sterling qualities to maintain "Tom Jones" in life and vigour, to an age when novel readers are used to the innocuous pages of Scott, and Dickens, and Thackeray. Not that we forget the progressive refinement of taste, or the conventional freedom of a period in which Dr. Doddridge could read the Wife of Bath's Tale, with infinite relish, to the maiden (not yet old maiden) Hannah More. But is it not possible that, in their wellgrounded strictures on the moral character of most moral Richardson's novels-"Pamela," at least, the head and front of his offending,-Coleridge, and others who have caught up his cry, may have too indiscriminately admired the healthy, bracing atmosphere in which Fielding breathes so very freely? Healthy and bracing it may be by comparison with Richardson's "close and relaxing clime"-but a relative virtue is not a virtue absolute, and Harry the heedless might be better than Samuel the serious, and yet be no better than he should be. For all that, the world could have better spared a better man.

*Moreover, Mrs. Clive "refused a part in the comedy which she considered particularly objectionable: a circumstance which gave rise to a copy of verses by Sir C. Hanbury Williams."

THE PRIVATE THEATRICALS AT CHESHANT.

I ALWAYS used to think that Uncle John of Cheshant was just the kindest, best-hearted, dearest old duck in Christendom, and now I'm sure of it; he never seemed to have a care in the world. Poor Aunt Sophia died ever so long ago, and left him with neither chick nor child; and he used to come up to us in this terrible Bedford-square of ours, from the country, like an angel of light and love. His own house is not such an enormously huge one as everybody makes out their uncle's place to be when they go out of town to spend Christmas at it, but it is a very good size indeed; with a double drawing-room (remember that), and a dining-room of course, a library, an awful magistrate's room, a charming housekeeper's snuggery, where pickles, and jams, and those pineapple preserves are kept, and such a love of a boudoir! looking out upon the grand old church from which the wedding-bells-I mean the Christmasbells-were pealing all day long and half the night. We two sistersLilly and I slept over the library, and Carry and Anne-our cousinsover the drawing-room, and the boudoir was between us and our common room. These were all of us girls at Cheshant, in general. Papa and mamma were there too, naturally; and Captain L'Estrange, the Punjaub man; and Mr. Stokes, the squire, from Fellaton; and-and Leonard—that is, Mr. Leonard Hughes, of Watlington-and that's all. But last Christmas it was another matter. Lilly did it. She had been to some "Tableaux Vivants" at the Williamses, in October, where Colonel Montmorenci of the Guards (on urgent private affairs from the Crimea), had played Tamerlane in her Indian shawl, and she could never get it out of her mind. So, "Uncle, dear," she whispered, one night, when Uncle John had got his handkerchief over his eyes after dinner, and was "going off," "don't you think we could have some tableaux, or charades, or private theatricals, here, now?"

"Some what?" said the dear old gentleman, rather snappishly. "Private theatricals ?'-Private fiddlesticks!"

"Yes, dear Uncle John, of course,' ," she answered (for when Lilly "goes in for a thing," as Leonard says, there's nothing like her in this world)" of course we must have private fiddlesticks, and, if possible, a drum. But whether the hall or the back drawing-room is the best place to act in, that is the question." And because that was the last thing Uncle John had heard before he went off to sleep, he kept on repeating "Back drawing-room-back drawing-room," for half an hour-which was a promise.

Uncle John, he was to be manager (that was settled at once), but he would not act; papa and mamma were in doubt for a long time, but one had to be painted in yellow-ochre, we said, and the other to have her hair powdered, so they both threw up their engagements; the captain he had his uniform with him, and was therefore of course an acquisition; Mr. Stokes was half a Frenchman-he had been so long abroad, retrenching-and was consequently ready to act anything; and Mr. Hughes said, very rudely, on my asking him what he was fit for, "The husband, the loving husband, miss," and threw himself upon his ridiculous knees,