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HENRY FIELDING (1707-1754)
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But he must have contrived, nevertheless, to prepare his See also:pupil for See also:Eton, to which place Fielding went about this date, probably as an oppidan
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Little is known of his school-days
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There is no See also:record of his name in the See also:college lists; but, if we may believe his first biographer, See also:Arthur See also:Murphy, by no means an unimpeachable authority, he left uncommonly versed in the See also:Greek authors, and an See also:early See also:master of the Latin See also:classics,"—a statement which should perhaps be qualified by his own words to Sir See also:Robert See also:Walpole in 1730:
" Tuscan and See also:French are in my See also:head ;
Latin I write, and Greek—I read."
But he certainly made See also:friends among his class-See also:fellows—some of whom continued friends for See also:life
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Winnington and Hanbury-See also:Williams were among these
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The See also:chief, however, and the most faithful, was See also:George, afterwards Sir George, and later See also:Baron See also:Lyttelton of Frankley
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When Fielding left Eton is unknown
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But in November 1725 we hear of him definitely in what seems like a characteristic escapade
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He was staying at Lyme (in See also:company with a trusty See also:retainer, ready to " See also:beat, maim or kill " in his See also:young master's behalf), and apparently See also:bent on carrying off, if necessary°by force, a See also:local heiress, See also:Miss Sarah See also:Andrew, whose fluttered guardians promptly hurried her away, and married her to some one else (See also:Athenaeum, 2nd See also:June 1883)
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Her baffled admirer consoled himself by translating See also:part of See also:Juvenal's See also:sixth See also:satire into See also:verse as " all the Revenge taken by an injured See also:Lover." After this he must have lived the usual life of a young See also:man about See also:town, and probably at this date improved the acquaintance of his second See also:cousin, See also:Lady See also:Mary Wortley See also:Montagu, to whom he in-scribed his first See also:comedy, Love in Several Masques, produced at See also:Drury See also:Lane in See also:February 1728
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The moment was not particularly favourable, since it succeeded See also:Cibber's Provok'd Husband, and was contemporary with See also:Gay's popular See also:Beggar's See also:Opera
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Almost immediately afterwards (See also: He was still there in February 1729 . But he had apparently left before the See also:annual See also:registration of February 1730, when his name is absent from the books (See also:Macmillan's See also:Magazine, April 1907); and in See also:January 1730 he brought out a second comedy at the newly-opened See also:theatre in See also:Goodman's See also:Fields . Like its predecessor, the See also:Temple Beast was an See also:essay in the vein of See also:Congreve and See also:Wycherley, though, in a measure, an advance on Love in Several Masques . With the Temple Beau Fielding's dramatic career definitely begins . His father had married again; and his Leiden career had been interrupted for lack of funds . Nominally, he was entitled to an See also:allowance of £too a See also:year; but this (he was accustomed to say) "any See also:body might pay that would." Young; handsome, ardent and fond of See also:pleasure, he began that career as a See also:hand-to-mouth playwright around which so much See also:legend has gathered—and gathers . Having—in his own words—no choice but to be a See also:hackney coachman or a hackney writer, he See also:chose the See also:pen; and his inclinations, as well as his opportunities, led him to the See also:stage . From 1730 to 1736 he rapidly brought out a large number of pieces, most of which had merit enough to secure their being acted, but not sufficient to See also:earn a lasting reputation for their author . His chief successes, from a See also:critical point of view, the Author's See also:Farce (1730) and Tom Thumb (1730, 1731), were burlesques; and he also was fortunate in two See also:translations from See also:Moliere, the See also:Mock See also:Doctor (1732) and the See also:Miser (1733) . Of the See also:rest (with one or two exceptions, to be mentioned presently) the names need only be recorded . They are The See also:Coffee-House Politician, a comedy (173o); The See also:Letter Writers, a farce (1731); The See also:Grub-See also:Street Opera, a See also:burlesque (1731); The Lottery, a farce (1732); The See also:Modern Husband, a comedy (1732); The Covent See also:Garden Tragedy, a burlesque (1732); The Old Debauchees, a comedy (1732); See also:Deborah; or, a Wife for you all, an after-piece (1733) ; The Intriguing Chambermaid (from See also:Regnard), a two-See also:act comedy (1734) ; and See also:Don Quixote in See also:England, a comedy, which had been partly sketched at Leiden . Don Quixote was produced in 1734, and the See also:list of plays may be here interrupted by an event of which the date has only recently been ascertained, namely, Fielding's first marriage .
This took place on the 28th of November 1734 at St Mary, Charlcombe, near See also:Bath (Macmillan's Magazine, April 1907), the lady being a Salisbury beauty, Miss See also:Charlotte See also:Cradock, of whom he had been an admirer, if not a suitor, as far back as 1930
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This is a fact which should be taken into See also:consideration in estimating the exact Bohemianism of his See also:London life, for there is no doubt that he was devotedly attached to her
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After a fresh farce entitled An Old Man taught See also:Wisdom, and the See also:comparative failure of a new comedy, The Universal Gallant, both produced early in 1735, he seems for a time to have retired with his See also:bride, who came into £1500, to his old See also:home at East Stour
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Around this rural seclusion fiction has freely accreted
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He is supposed to have lived for three years on the footing of a typical 18th-See also:century See also:country See also:gentleman; to have kept a See also:pack of hounds; to have put his servants into impossible yellow liveries; and generally, by profuse hospitality and reckless See also:expenditure, to have made rapid See also:duck and See also:drake of Mrs Fielding's modest legacy
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Something of this is demonstrably false; much, grossly exaggerated
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In any See also:case, he was in London as See also:late as February 1735 (the date of the " See also:Preface " to The Universal Gallant); and early in March 1736 he was back again managing the Haymarket theatre with a so-called "See also:Great See also:Mogul's Company of English Comedians."
Upon this new enterprise See also:fortune, at the outset, seemed to smile
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The first piece (produced on the 5th of March) was Pasquin, a Dramatick Satire on the Times (a piece akin in its See also:plan to See also:Buckingham's See also:Rehearsal), which contained, in addition to much admirable burlesque, a See also:good See also:deal of very See also:direct See also:criticism of the shameless See also:political corruption of the Walpole era
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Its success was unmistakable; and when, after bringing out the remarkable Fatal Curiosity of George See also:Lillo, its author followed up Pasquin by the See also:Historical See also:Register for the Year 1736, of which the effrontery was even more daring than that of its predecessor, the See also:ministry began to bethink themselves that matters were going too far
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How they actually effected their See also:object is obscure: but grounds were speedily concocted for the Licensing Act of 1737, which restricted the number of theatres, rendered the See also:lord See also:
Against this, one must set the fact that they are often immodest; and that, whatever their See also:intrinsic merit, they have failed to See also:rival in permanent popularity the See also:work of inferior men
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Fielding's own conclusion was, " that he left off See also:writing for the stage, when he ought to have begun "—which can only mean that he himself regarded his plays as the outcome of See also:imitation rather than experience
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They probably taught him how to construct Tom Jones; but whether he could ever have written a comedy at the level of that novel, can only be established by a comparison which it is impossible to make, namely, a comparison with Tom Jones of a comedy written at the same See also:age, and in similar circumstances
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Tumble-Down See also:Dick; or, Phaeton in the Suds, See also:Eurydice and Eurydice hissed are the names of three occasional pieces which belong to the last months of Fielding's career as a Haymarket manager
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By this date he was See also:thirty, with a wife and daughter
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As a means of support, he reverted to the profession of his maternal grandfather; and, in November 1737, he entered the See also:Middle Temple, being described in the books of the society as " of East Stour in Dorset." That he set himself strenuously to master his new profession, is admitted; ,though it is unlikely that he had entirely discarded the irregular habits which had grown upon him in his irresponsible bachelorhood
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He also did a good deal. of See also:literary work, the best known of which is contained in the See also:Champion, a " See also:News-See also:Journal " of the Spectator type undertaken. with See also: But he certainly wrote a poem " Of True Greatness " (1741); a first See also:book of a burlesque epic, the Vernoniad, prompted by See also:Vernon's expedition of 1739; a See also:vision called the Opposition, and, perhaps, a political See also:sermon entitled the Crisis (1741) . Another piece, now known to have been attributed to him by his contemporaries (Hist . See also:MSS . See also:Comm., Rept . 12, App . Pt. ix., p . 204), is the pamphlet entitled An See also:Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews, a See also:clever but coarse attack upon the prurient See also:side of See also:Richardson's Pamela, which had been issued in 1740, and was at the height of its popularity . Shamela followed early in 1741 . Richardson, who was well acquainted with Fielding's four sisters, at that date his neighbours at See also:Hammersmith, confidently attributed it to Fielding (Corr . 1804, iv . 286, and unpublished letter at See also:South See also:Kensington) ; and there are suggestive points of See also:internal See also:evidence (such as the transformation of Pamela's "Mr B." into "Ma Booby ") which tend to connect it with the future Joseph Andrews . Fielding, however, never acknowledged it, or referred to it; and a great deal has been laid to his See also:charge that he never deserved (" Preface " to Miscellanies, 1743) . 
But whatever may be decided in regard to the authorship of Shamela, it is quite possible that it prompted the more memorable
Joseph Andrews, which made its See also:appearance in February 1742, and concerning which there is no question
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Professing, on his See also:title-See also:page, to imitate Cervantes, Fielding set out to See also:cover Pamela with Homeric ridicule by transferring the heroine's embarrassments to a See also:hero, supposed to be her brother
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Allied to this purpose was a See also:collateral attack upon the slipshod Apology of the playwright See also:Colley Cibber, with whom, for obscure reasons, Fielding had See also:long been at See also:war
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But the avowed object of the book See also:fell speedily into the background as its author warmed to his theme
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His secondary speedily became his See also:primary characters, and Lady Booby and Joseph Andrews do not See also:interest us now as much as Mrs Slipslop and Parson See also: Another of his See also:minor works was a Vindication of the See also:Dowager Duchess of See also:Marlborough (1742), then much before the public by See also:reason of the See also:Account of her Life which she had recently put forth . Later in the same year, See also:Garrick applied to Fielding for a See also:play; and a very early effort, The See also:Wedding See also:Day, was hastily patched together, and produced at Drury Lane in February 1743 with no great success . It was, however, included in Fielding's next important publication, the three volumes of Miscellanies issued by subscription in the succeeding April . These also comprised some early poems, some essays, a Lucianic fragment entitled a See also:Journey from this See also:World to' the Next,-and, last but not least, occupying the entire final volume, the remark-able performance entitled the See also:History of the Life of the late Mr See also:Jonathan See also:Wild the Great . It is probable that, in its See also:composition, Jonathan Wild preceded Joseph Andrews . At all events it seems unlikely that Fielding would have followed up a success in a new See also:line by an effort so entirely different in See also:character . Taking for his ostensible hero a well-known thief-taker, who had been hanged in 1725, he proceeds to illustrate, by a mock-heroic account of his progress to See also:Tyburn, the See also:general proposition that greatness without goodness is no better than badness . He will not go so far as to say that all " Human Nature is Newgate with the See also:Mask on "; but he evidently regards the description as fairly applicable to a good many so-called great See also:people . Irony (and especially Irony neat) is not a popular See also:form of See also:rhetoric; and the remorseless pertinacity with which Fielding pursues his demonstration is to many readers discomforting and even distasteful . Yet—in spite of See also:Scott—Jonathan Wild has its softer pages; and as a purely intellectual conception it is not surpassed by any of the author's works . His actual See also:biography, both before and after Jonathan Wild,is obscure . There are evidences that he laboured diligently at his profession; there are also evidences of sickness and embarrassment . He had become early a See also:martyr to the malady of his century—See also:gout, and the uncertainties of a See also:precarious livelihood told grievously upon his beautiful wife, who eventually died of See also:fever in his arms, leaving him for the time so stunned and bewildered by grief that his friends feared for his reason . For some years his published productions were unimportant . He wrote " Prefaces " to the David Simple of his See also:sister Sarah in 2744 and 1747; and, in 1745–1746 and 1747–1748, produced two See also:newspapers in the ministerial interest, the True Patriot and the Jacobite's Journal, both of which are connected with, or derive from, the See also:rebellion of 1745, and were doubtless, when they ceased, the pretext of a See also:pension from the public service See also:money (Journal of a Voyage to See also:Lisbon, " Introduction ") . In November 1747 he married his wife's maid, Mary See also:Daniel, at St Bene't's, See also:Paul's See also:Wharf; and in See also:December 1748, by the interest of his old school-See also:fellow, Lyttelton, he was made a See also:principal See also:justice of See also:peace for See also:Middlesex and See also:Westminster, an See also:office which put him in See also:possession of a house in See also:Bow Street, and £300 per annum " of the dirtiest money upon See also:earth " (ibid.), which might have been more had he condescended to become what was known as a " trading " See also:magistrate . For some time previously, while at Bath, Salisbury, See also:Twickenham and other temporary resting-places, he had intermittently occupied himself in composing his second great novel, Tom Jones; or, the History of a Foundling . For this, in June 1748, Millar had paid him £600, to which he added £See also:loo more in 1749 . In the February of the latter year it was published with a See also:dedication to Lyttelton, to whose pecuniary assistance to the author during the composition it plainly bears See also:witness . In Tom Jones Fielding systematically See also:developed the " new See also:Province of Writing " he had discovered incidentally in Joseph Andrews . He paid closer See also:attention to the construction and See also:evolution of the plot; he elaborated the initial essays to each book which he had partly employed before, and he compressed into his work the See also:flower and See also:fruit of his See also:forty years' experience of life . He has, indeed, no character quite up to the level of Parson Adams, but his Westerns and Partridges, his Allworthys and Blifils, have the inestimable See also:gift of life . He makes no pretence to produce " See also:models of perfection," but pictures of See also:ordinary humanity, rather perhaps in the rough than the polished, the natural than the artificial, and his See also:desire is to do this with See also:absolute truthfulness, neither extenuating nor disguising defects and shortcomings . One of the results of this unvarnished See also:naturalism has been to attract-more attention to certain of the episodes than their inventor ever intended .
But that, in the manners of his time, he had See also:chapter and verse for everything he See also:drew is clear
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His sincere purpose was, he declared, " to recommend goodness and innocence," and his obvious aversions are vanity and See also:hypocrisy
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The methods of fiction have grown more sophisticated since his day, and other forms of literary egotism have taken the place of his once famous See also:introductory essays, but the traces of Tom Jones are still discernible in most of our manlier modern fiction
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Meanwhile, its author was showing considerable activity in his magisterial duties
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In May 1749, he was chosen chairman of See also:quarter sessions for Westminster; and in June he delivered himself of a weighty charge to the See also:grand See also:jury
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Besides other See also:pamphlets, he produced a careful and still readable Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers, &c
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(1751), which, among its other merits, was not ineffectual in helping on the famous See also:Gin Act of that year, a See also:practical result to which the " Gin Lane " and " See also:Beer Street " of his friend See also:Hogarth also materially contributed
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These duties and preoccupations left their See also:mark on his next fiction, Amelia (1752), which is rather more taken up with social problems and popular grievances than its forerunners
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But the leading personage, in whom, as in the See also:Sophia Western of Tom Jones, he reproduced the traits of his first wife, is certainly, as even See also:
Early in 1752 his still indomitable See also:energy prompted him to start a third newspaper, the Covent Garden Journal, which ran from the 4th of January to the 25th of November
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It is an interesting contemporary record, and throws a good deal of See also:light on his Bow Street duties
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But it has no great literary value, and it unhappily involved him in harassing, and undignified hostilities with See also:Smollett, Dr John See also: His will (undated) was printed in the Athenaeum for the 1st of February 1890 . There is but one absolutely See also:authentic portrait of him, a See also:familiar outline by Hogarth, executed from memory for Andrew Millar's edition of his works in 1762 . It is the likeness of a man broken by ill-health, and affords but faint indication of the handsome Harry Fielding who in his See also:salad days " warmed both hands before the See also:fire of life." Far too much stress, it is now held, has been laid by his first biographers upon the unworshipful side of his early career . That he was always profuse, sanguine and more or less improvident, is as probable as that he was always manly, generous and sympathetic . But it is also See also:plain that, in his later years, he did much, as father, friend and magistrate, to redeem the errors, real and imputed, of a too-youthful youth . As a playwright and essayist his See also:rank is not elevated . But as a novelist his place is a definite one . If the Spectator is to be credited with foreshadowing the characters of the novel, See also:Defoe with its earliest form, and Richardson with its first experiments in sentimental See also:analysis, it is to Henry Fielding that we owe its first accurate delineation of contemporary manners . Neglecting, or practically neglecting, sentiment as unmanly, and relying chiefly on humour and ridicule, he set out to draw life precisely as he saw it around him, without blanks or dashes . He was, it may be, for a judicial moralist, too indulgent to some of its frailties, but he was merciless to its meaner vices . For reasons which have been already given, his high-water mark is Tom Jones, which has remained, and remains, a See also:model in its way of the See also:kind he inaugurated . ' For a full account of this celebrated case see See also:Howell, See also:State Trials (1813), vol. xix . 327 An essay on Fielding's life and writings is prefixed to Arthur Murphy's edition of his works (1762), and See also:short See also:biographies have been written by See also:Walter Scott and William See also:Roscoe . There are also lives by See also:Watson (1807), See also:Lawrence (1855), See also:Austin See also:Dobson (" Men of Letters," 1883, 1907) and G . M . Godden (1909) . An annotated edition of the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon is included in the " World's Classics " (1907) . (A . |
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