"His taste for ridicule was strong, but indelicate, which made him not over-curious in the choice of his topics. His style in picturing his characters, though masterly, was without that elegance of hand which is required to collect and allay the force of so bold a colouring. Thus the bias of his nature leading him to Plautus, rather than Terence, for his model; it is not to be wondered, that his wit is too frequently caustic, his raillery coarse, and his humour excessive."

There is another circumstance respecting the drama, in which Fielding's judgment seems to have failed him: the strength of his genius certainly lay in fabulous narration; and he did not sufficiently consider, that some incidents of a story, which when related, may be worked up into much pleasantry and humour, are apt when thrown into action, to excite sensations incompatiable with humour and ridicule.

To these causes of his failure in the province of the drama, may be added, that sovereign contempt he always entertained for the understandings of the generality of mankind. It was in vain to tell him, that a particular scene was dangerous, on account of its coarseness, or because it retarded the general business with feeble efforts of wit; he doubted the discernment of his auditors, and so thought himself secured by their stupidity, if not by his own humour and vivacity. A very remarkable instance of this disposition appeared, when the comedy of "The Wedding Day” was put into rehearsal.

An actor, who was principally concerned in the piece, and though young, was then by the advantage of uncommon talents, an early favorite of the public, told Mr. Fielding, he was apprehensive, that the audience would make free with him in a particu lar passage; adding, that a repulse might so flutter his spirits, as to disconcert him for the rest of the night, and therefore begged that it might be omitted. "No, d-mn 'em," replied the bard, "if the scene is not a good one, let them find that out."

Accordingly, the play was brought on without alteration; and just as had been foreseen, the disapprobation of the house was prevoked at the passage before objected to; and the performer, alarmed and uneasy at the hisses he had met with, retired into the green where the author was solacing himself with a bottle of

room,

champaign. He had by this time drank pretty plentifully, and cocking his eye at the actor, while streams of tobacco trickled down from the corner of his mouth, "What's the matter Gar rick," says he, "what are they hissing now?" "Why, the scene that I begged you to retrench; I knew it would not do; and they have so frightened me, that I shall not be able to collect myself again the whole night." "Oh! d-mn'em," replies the author,

"they have found it out, have they?”

If we add to the foregoing remarks an observation of his own; "that he left off writing for the stage, when he ought to have begun;" and, together with this, consider his extreme hurry and dispatch; we shall be able fully to account for his not bearing a more distinguished place in the rank of dramatic writers.

It is apparent, that in the frame and constitution of his genius, there was no defect, but some faculty or other was suffered to lie dormant, and the rest of course, were exerted with less efficacy : at one time we see his wit superseding all his other talents; at another, his invention runs riot, and multiplies incidents and characters in a manner repugnant to all the received laws of the drama. ' Generally his judgment was very little consulted; and indeed how could it? When he had contracted to bring on a play, or a farce he would go home rather late from a tavern, and the next morning deliver a scene to the players, written upon the papers which wrapped up the tobacco in which he so much delighted.

Though it was the lot of Henry Fielding to write always with a view to profit, he derived but small aids towards his subsistence 'from the treasurer of the play-house. One of his farces he has printed as it was damned at the theatre royal in Drury-lane; and, that he might be more generous to his enemies than they were willing to be to him, he informs them, in the general preface to his Miscellanies, that for the Wedding-Day, though acted six nights, his profits from the house did not exceed fifty pounds.

A fate not much better attended him in his earlier productions; but the severity of the public, and the malice of his enemies, met with a noble alleviation, from the patronage of the late duke of Richmond, John duke of Argyle, the late duke of Roxburgh, and many persons of distinguished rank and character; among whom may be numbered the late lord Lyttelton, whose friendship

to our author softened the rigour of his misfortunes while he lived, and exerted itself towards his memory when he was no more, by taking pains to clear up imputations of a particular kind, which had been thrown out against his character.

Mr. Fielding had not been long a writer for the stage, when he married Miss Craddock, a beauty from Salisbury. About that time his mother dying, a moderate estate at Stower, in Dorsetshire, devolved to him. To that place he retired with his wife, on whom he doated, with a resolution to bid adieu to all the follies and intemperances of a town life. But unfortunately, a kind of family pride here gained an ascendant over him; and he began immediately to vie in splendor with the neighbouring country gentlemen. With an estate not much above two hundred pounds a year, and his wife's fortune, which did not exceed fifteen hundred pounds, he encumbered himself with a large retinue of servants, all clad with costly yellow liveries. For their master's honor these people could not descend so low as to be careful in their apparel, but in a month or two were unfit to be seen; the squire's dignity required that they ehould be new equipped; and his chief pleasure consisting in society and convivial mirth, hospitality threw open his doors, and in less than three years, entertainments, hounds and horses, entirely devoured a little patrimony, which had it been managed with conomy, might have secured to him a state of independence for the rest of his life. Sensible of the disagreeable situation he had now reduced himself to, he immeditely determined to exert his best endeavours to recover what he had wantonly thrown away, a decent competence; and being then about thirty years of age, he betook himself to the study of the law. The friendships he met with from some, who have risen to be the first ornaments of the law, will ever do honor to his memory. His application, while he was a student in the temple, was remarkably intense: he has been frequently known, by his intimates, to retire late at night from a tavern to his chambers, and there read, and make abstracts from the most abstruse authors, for several hours before he went to bed. After the customary time of probation at the Temple, he was called to the bar. He attended with assiduity, both in term-time and on the western circuit, as long as his health permitted; but the gout soon rendered it impossible for him to be as constant at

the bar as the laboriousness of his profession required: he could only now follow the law by starts, at such intervals as were free from indisposition; which could not but be a dispiriting circumstance, as he saw himself at once disabled from ever rising to the eminence he aspired to. However, under the severities of pain and want, he still pursued his researches, with an eagernes of curiosity peculiar to him: and though it is wittily remarked by Wycherly, that Apollo and Lyttelton seldom meet in the same. brain, yet Mr. Fielding is allowed to have acquired a respectable share of jurisprudence, and in some particular branches, he is said to have risen to a great degree of eminence, more especially in crown-law, as may be judged from his leaving two volumes in folio on that subject. This work remains still unpublished; and it is deemed perfect in some parts. It will serve to give us an idea of the great force and vigour of his mind, if we consider him pursuing so arduous a study under the exigences of family distress, with a wife and children, whom he tenderly loved, looking up to him for subsistence, with a body lacerated by the acutest pains, and with a mind distracted with a thousand avocations, and obliged, for immediate supply, to produce, almost extempore, a play, a farce, a pamphlet, or a newspaper.

7

A large number of fugitive political tracts, which had their value when the incidents were actually passing on the great scene of business, came from his pen ; the periodical paper, called "The Champion," owed his chief support to his abilities; and though essays in that collection cannot now be ascertained, yet the reputation arising to him, at the time of publication, was not incon siderable

his

In the progress of Henry Fielding's talents, there seems to have been three remarkable periods; one, when his genius brøke forth at once, with an effulgence superior to all the rays of light it had before emitted, like the sun in his morning glory; the second, when it was displayed with collected force, and a fulness of perfection, like the sun in meridian' majesty; and the third, when the same genius grown more cool and temperate, still continued to cheer and enliven, but shewed at the same time that it was tending to its decline, like the sun abating from his ardour, but still gilding the western hemisphere.

To these three epochas of our author's genius, there is an exact analogy, in his Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones and Amelia. It will not be improper here to mention, that the reverend Mr. Young, a learned and múch esteemed friend of Mr. Fielding's, sat for parson Adams. Mr. Young was remarkable for his intimate acquaintance with the Greek authors, and had as passionate a veneration for schylus, as parson Adams: the overflowings of his benevolence were as strong, and his fits of reverie were as f frequent, and occurred too upon the most interesting occasions.

t

Of this last observation a singular instance is given, by a gentle. man who served, during the last war in Flanders, in the very same regiment to which Mr. Young was chaplain: on a fine summers evening, he thought proper to indulge himself in his love of a solitary walk; and accordingly, he sallied forth from his tent: the beauties of the hemisphere, and the landscape round him, pressed warmly on his imagination; his heart overflowed with benevolence to all God's creatures, and gratitude to the Supreme Dispenser of that emanation of glory which covered the face of things. It is very possible that a passage in his dearly beloved schylus occur ed to his memory on this occasion, and seduced his thoughts into a profound meditation. Whatever was the object of his reflection, certain it is, that something did powerfully seize his imagination, so as to preclude all attention to things that lay immediately before him; and in that deep fit of absence, Mr. Young proceeded on his journey till he arrived very quietly and calmly into the enemy's camp, where he was, with difficulty, brought to a recollection of himself, by the reputation of "Qui va la," from the soldiers upon duty. The officer who commanded, finding that he had strayed thither in the undesigning simplicity of his heart, and seeing an innate goodness in his prisoner, which commanded his respect, very politely gave him leave to pursue his contemplations home again,

Soon after the publication of Joseph Andrews, Fieldings last comedy, the Wedding-day, was exhibited on the stage: "and as we have already observed, it was attended with an indifferent share of success. The law, from this time, had its hot and cold fits with him. The repeated shocks of illness disabled him from being as assiduous an attendant at the bar, as his own inclination, and