There is nothing more easy or unprofitable than running "parallels," as they are called, when there is little or no parallelism in the case. The only important point of similarity between Thackeray and Fielding is soon stated and done with; and it consists in what we may regard as the unquestionable fact, that these writers are the two greatest painters of human nature, as it actually is, that we have ever had, Shakspeare alone excepted. It does not necessarily follow that they are the two greatest novelists; because a good many things besides a profound knowledge of, and power of rendering, human nature, go to the making of a first-rate novel. Yet we should hesitate before we placed any works higher than "Amelia" and "Esmond" in the ranks of general novelesque perfection. Since there are probably few of our readers who are unacquainted with the "Newcomes," we will assume such acquaintance in the few remarks we are about to make concerning the details of this book. ter is inferior to the former, is a difference the master; and it is emphatically true of mainly of the times lived in and depicted by him, as of all other great writers, that he is these writers. Does any one suppose that only "out-running the age in the direction Fielding would have dared to describe a Squire which it is spontaneously taking." Western, or a Lady Bellaston, for the edification of subscribers to modern circulating libraries? Could the respective virtues and failings of a Joseph Andrews and a Tom Jones have been set forth, in a time when the lips of novelist and dramatist are absolutely locked, with regard to that which still exercises, as it ever did, and ever must, the chief moral energies of almost all men, during many, and those the most dramatic, years of their lives? We do not complain of this refinement of modern speech, though we doubt whether it goes much deeper. On the contrary, we heartily wish the reform were more thorough than it is, and that men should never rise, even from their talk over their wine, with the flavor in their mouths and minds of a phrase or a sentiment which ought to make them blush to "join the ladies." Reforms often advance from superficial to profound, and a pure tongue is a laudable hypocrisy, if it be nothing better. Art, it is true, has hitherto been a sufferer by the improvement. That it will not be so in the long run, we are convinced for everything that really betters life must better that which is its representative; but life, as we have said, is not as yet, probably, very substantially better in this respect; and the novelist and dramatist are meanwhile under the unhappy necessity of representing a society which dares not, and ought not to dare, to seem no better than it is. The breadth of treatment which is thus impossible for the modern novelist, is substituted in Mr. Thackeray's works by a subtlety of handling which is almost equally admirable, and which would scarcely be compatible with the strength of light and shade we find in. Fielding. Mr. Thackeray is as much the originator of this kind of writing as Fielding was of the other and if there are numerous little indications of reverence and imitation of the latter in the works of the former, the two writers, in their main characteristics, are absolute opposites, although, as we have said, that opposition is probably no more than the natural reflection, by two first-rate minds, of the opposite social character of their times. We are all of us disciples of that school of the new science of moral anatomy, of which Mr. Thackeray is : It contains more than one illustration of a truth which we have long felt, but which does not seem to be commonly recognized, that, great as Mr. Thackeray is as a satirist, he is still greater as a serious writer. In our opinion, he never rose so high as in "Esmond," in which the satirist, for a time, became the grave historian. There are examples of high and pure pathos in the "Newcomes which are scarcely surpassed elsewhere; the whole character of Colonel Newcome has an epic dignity about it, and all his history, after his loss of fortune, especially his retirement as the Grayfriars pensioner, is as full as it can be of that noble pathos which consists : in the display of an humble and heroic superiority to worldly ill. Aristophanes was right in laughing at Euripides for trying to evoke tears by the mere fact of suffering. There is, in truth, no pathos in that by itself. It may even be ridiculous, as the "base selfpitying tears" of Thersites. But, we can scarcely tell why, there is always something in true nobility of character which makes the tours "se in the heart and gather to the eyes " of those who merit to behold it. It is an evidence of immortality which we cannot resist, and the tears, perhaps, come by way of unconscious protest against the ordinary baseness of our mortal lives. natural refusal of Clive to give up the profession of an artist, for to him it was clearly nothing dearer than a profession, and only that nominally, for he did not live by it, when he saw plainly that the name of artist vexed the pride of his mistress, and greatly damaged his chance with her. Secondly, the very unsatisfactory character of the conclusion, which not only leaves us almost in doubt as to whether Clive and Ethel were married after all, but also with an unpleasant impres sion that it is not much matter whether they are or not. Mrs. Mackenzie is the person who occupies the foreground, to our mind's eye, as we close the book, and the very name of that person is as bad to one's nerves as a blast of east wind. Why did not Mr. Thackeray let us witness the final disappearance of the cloud, which for the moment obscured the fortunes and disturbed the tempers of the hero and heroine? We are not made "sad Of the various illustrations which this work affords of those of the writer's merits which are universally admitted, we have not spoken, and do not intend to speak, our purpose being mainly at present to do justice to him in particulars in which justice has been hitherto generally refused. His view of the characters of women is one of these points. It is constantly said of his female characters, that when they are amusing and agreeable they are worthless, and that when they are good they are stupid. Mrs. Laura and Ethel are contradictions of this charge, unless indeed it is stupid not to talk epigrams, and not to despise religion. For Mrs. Laura we profess an unbounded esteem and affection, and think that we cannot give her higher praise than that of saying she reminds us of Fielding's "Amelia," whom we agree with Mr. Thack-der and wiser" by this sorry conclusion, but eray in regarding as the loveliest female char- only put out of sorts, and left irritable; — the acter ever described in prose or verse. Ethel, only moral we are disposed at the moment to too, though vastly less attractive than Mrs. draw being, that we also have our Mrs. MackLaura, is neither stupid nor bad. Mr. enzie somewhere among our "friends" or reThackeray is almost the only modern writer lations, and that we will henceforth be like who has understood that the secret of describ- Clive, and let her know our minds about her, ing the character of a true woman is to do it instead of excusing her to ourselves, or decently by negatives. When we have read all about containing our rage, as hitherto. Laura Bell, afterwards Mrs. Pendennis, what It would be as hard to criticize one of do we know about her except that she illus- Fielding's novels as to criticize a fine daytrates that sweet and golden medium, that they have so few faults and so few peculiarmoderation in all things, which is the great ities. Their excellence is " as broad and gencharm of the feminine nature, and which eral as the casing air," and is only to be makes its highest positive praise that which is praised in terms which would be true of Nathe principal thing predicated of her in the ture herself. It is impossible for any one, who Bible, namely, discretion? "A fair woman brings to the perusal a proper amount of exwithout discretion, is as a jewel of gold in a perience and observation, to read any of these swine's snout." "Teach the young women works without a sense of moral invigoration, to be sober, to love their husbands, to love which is as delightful as it is unlike the result their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers of nearly all other novel reading. Few things at home, good, obedient to their own hus- are more startling than the contrast between bands." No positive and partial excellencies this tone and what seems to have been the can compensate in the woman for the absence character of Fielding's life. This of itself, it of this beautiful want of character, which must be allowed, seems not to have been one Pope, in his moral and physical incapacity to to create any great admiration for him. The appreciate woman, complained of; and few best thing in it is his love of his first wife; have ever felt this negative loveliness more yet a man must be far gone who is incapable strongly than Mr. Thackeray. of a passionate, enduring, and increasing de In a novel so certain as the "Newcomes "votion to such a woman as the original of of becoming a classic, we must not neglect to "Amelia." But if we are to judge a man by point out two faults which we hope that Mr. his works, it must be by all his works, and, Thackeray may think it worth his while to as the biographer of Keats admirably says, correct in a future edition. First. the un- the "works" of an author are his works in - deed. St. Bernard says, that, at the Last His friendship with Lyttleton lasted with Day, it will not be asked what we did or what their lives. we believed, but what we loved. If we would On leaving Eton, Fielding was sent to study know what Fielding loved, we must question Civil Law under one of the most famous pronot our superficial knowledge of his actual life, fessors at Leyden, for it was his father's inbut "Tom Jones," "Amelia," and "Joseph tention to make him a barrister. It was Andrews," from which we find not only agreed, on his leaving England, that his father that he sincerely loved what is gracious in should allow him an annual income of £200, human life, but that he comprehended and which was probably drawn from an estate in loved the source of that graciousness. Cole- Dorsetshire which had belonged to Fielding's ridge says that the young man's mind must mother, who was now dead; but, during his already be corrupt which can receive damage son's absence, General Fielding having entered from these novels. They are not works, how-upon his second marriage, and brought upon ever, which we would recommend to young himself the expense of a young family, and people. The minds of almost all young men being, moreover, a man of liberal habits, found are more or less corrupt· at least it would be very dangerous in education to act on the assumption of the reverse. But apart from that question, it is certainly not advisable that young minds should be familiarized with the idea of the possibility of such general laxness of manners as Fielding depicts of course without astonishment, since he lived in them himself. Let us, with the help of Mr. Laurence's amusing Life, look back for a little to these old times. Henry Fielding was born at Sharpman Park, near Glastonbury, on the 22d of April, 1707. His father, General Fielding, son of Dr. Fielding, canon of Salisbury, served with distinction under the great Marlborough. Henry was one of six children. His only brother died young, and, of his four sisters, Sarah, the third, is known as the authoress of" David Simple." His early education was conducted at home by the family chaplain, who is thought to have furnished an original for the parson Trulliber of "Joseph Andrews," "one of the largest men you should see, and could have acted the part of Sir John Falstaff without stuffing. Add to this, that the rotundity of his belly was considerably increased by the shortness of his stature, his shadow ascending very near as far in height when he lay on his back as when he stood on his legs. His voice was loud and hoarse, and his accent extremely broad. To complete the whole, he had a stateliness in his gait when he walked not unlike that of a goose, only he stalked slower." From the tutorship of this man, Fielding was transferred to Eton, where he was fellow-student with George Lyttleton, William Pitt, Henry Fox, and other celebrities of the day, with most of whom his liveliness, wit, and good nature, made him a favorite. his expenses increase so much, that, after making each remittance less than its predecessor, he was compelled as last to drop them altogether. Fielding never seems to have borne his father any ill-will on this account. He had perfect faith in his good intentions, and probably saw that the home expenditure made it impossible for his father to keep his promise as regarded the allowance. It, however, became necessary for him to exert himself in some way to supply the deficiency. The practice of his profession offered little prospect of immediate relief, and, having tried his hand at dramatic writing while in Holland, he determined on producing a finished play, and trying his success in this kind of literature. It was at this time that Fielding, being scarcely twenty years old, formed his first attachment. The object of it was Sarah Andrews, his cousin, a young girl of great beauty, who is said to have furnished him with a model for "Sophia Western." Fielding's prospects and habits were not such as to win the consent of the lady's friends, and as, upon their rejection of his proposal, he attempted her abduction, she was removed from his reach. Much of his profligacy between this time and his marriage, some six or eight years after, may perhaps be ascribed to the effects of a disappointment which seems greatly to have embittered him for the time. Fielding's first published play was a comedy called "Love in several Masks." The taste of the day had been both pandered to, and further vitiated, by the immoralities of Congreve, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh. A play which had no gross jests, and no sneers at the marriage-tie, would have been instantly rejected by the audience as lacking savor, and power of fixing the attention. As Fielding | assistance came. Sir Robert's deafness to was writing for money, his first object was these frequent appeals may in some measure of course to please the play-goers; and it is account for Fielding's spite against him, as probable that much of the grossness and im- shown in " Pasquin " and the "Historical morality of this and his subsequent produc- Register." tions is to be laid to the charge of the audi- In the year 1731, being then twenty-four ence rather than to the perverted taste of the years old, Fielding brought out several more author. It is certainly a fact, that no gross-plays, hastily written and full of faults, ness is ever to be detected in the works of which he himself was the first to perceive Fielding, introduced simply for its own sake. and ridicule, while the public admired. He The laugh is produced by a witticism to which had now a name sufficiently known to get a such grossness is only a means, and never, hearing, and the play-goers of the day were as in the works of many of his contempora- ill able to judge of the merits of a play beries, by the mere breach of decorum or mor-yond that one point of coarseness and imality-never, in short, by the grossness morality, of which Fielding was by no means itself. During the writing and publication of his plays, Fielding's life was of a very irregular description. The green-room and tavern were his favorite places of resort; and his companions, among whom was Richard Savage, were of the description which these places usually afford. He was constantly in want of money; for what he got was either immediately swallowed up in the payment of old debts, in redeeming pawned finery, or in thoughtless extravagancies. If we may judge from his companions, he belonged to the class of professional beggars and borrowers, who in all ages have disgraced literature; he was not ashamed to seek patronage even where his advances met with neglect, or decided repulses; and a not very honorable poverty seems to have been rather a matter of boasting than otherwise; witness his letter to Sir Robert Walpole, written about this time: "The family that dines the latest Is in our street esteemed the greatest; sparing. It is curious to find him submitting There is some difficulty in determining the date of Fielding's marriage. Mr. Lawrence, we think rightly, fixes it in 1735. Fielding was then twenty-eight years old, and had for some time been intimate with three sisters of Salisbury, of the name of Cradock, all of them so beautiful as to be considered the belles of their town. He was deeply attached to one of the three, named Charlotte, who, by all accounts, was as amiable as she was beautiful. Among a collection of poems published several years after, not included in any edition of his works, we find many addressed by Fielding to his Charlotte, he assuming the name of Strephon, and Charlotte being addressed as Celia. Here is a curious "rebus 99 on her real name. "Her Christian Name." "A very good fish, very good way of selling given, When a Christian was made of an angel in heaven." In some lines, noticeable, not as regards poetical merit, but from being characteristic, and apparently the offspring of feeling, FieldThis letter brought no such reply as Field-ing declares his weariness of town life, and ing had evidently hoped. A subsequent disgust at its pleasures and ordinary complay of Fielding's was dedicated to the min-panions. On his marriage, he became masister, and a second poetical letter sent, much ter of his mother's little estate at Last Stour, of a piece with that quoted; but still no added to which, his wife brought him fifteen This play was a complete success, and was listened to by a crowded audience for six successive weeks. It was a bold satire on the system of bribery, and ministerial corruption, mixed with personal allusions to people of note, which called forth peals of laughter and applause. hundred pounds. He had therefore enough it suddenly occurred to Fielding that what money to live on with comfort, far from the answered so well in print, would have even scenes for which he now felt so little taste, greater success on the stage. With little and to indulge his wish for leisure and coun- difficulty he hired his old staff of actors, and try life. It is, however, difficult, after six the now tenantless Haymarket theatre, after or eight years of profligacy and imprudence, which he caused large advertisements to be to do suddenly as those do who have had circulated to the effect that "The Great Molong experience in a quiet and honorable gul's Company of Comedians" would perway of living. Fielding at once set up house- form "Pasquin," a dramatic satire on the keeping on a magnificent scale, being appar- times; being the rehearsal of two plays, ently set on making a great sensation among viz., a comedy called "The Election," and a the neighboring squires. It is related of him tragedy called "The Life and Death of Comthat his equipage was of unheard-of elegance; mon Sense." his footmen were clothed in canary-colored plush, perhaps the color of all others which required the most frequent renewing; his hunters and hounds were famous all round, and his dinner parties calculated to astonish all the folks of Dorsetshire. Such a state of things could only last as long as his wife's capital, and in a year or two the crash came. In 1737, Fielding repeated his experiment Of course the squires and squires' wives, in another piece of satire called "The Regwhose establishments had been thrown into ister for 1736." Here the minister was inthe shade by the yellow blaze of the Fielding troduced in a way so offensive that the matlivery, could only shake their heads and de- ter began to be seriously discussed by the clare that the catastrophe had long been pre- Government. Among other scenes of a simdicted by each and all of them. Fielding, ilar character, one represents Sir Robert finding old guests and present creditors equally unpleasant company, left the place in disgust; and began London life again, with this difference only, that he had three, instead of one, to provide for. It is not unlikely that the following passage in "Amelia," was suggested by a recollection of this time: Walpole under the name of Mr. Quindam, as bribing some troublesome patriots, and then proposing a dance, in which he joins, fiddling at the same time. The supposed author, who presides at the rehearsal, addresses the audience, explaining that "every one of these patriots has a hole in his pocket, as Mr. Quindam knows; so that he intends to make them dance till all the money is fallen through, which he will pick up again, and so not lose one half-penny by his generosity.' "The neighboring little squires, too, were uneasy to see a little renter become their equal in a matter in which they placed so much dignity (a carriage); and not doubting but it arose in me from the same ostentation, they began to hate In the midst of the agitation caused by me likewise and to turn my equipage into rid- the publication of "Pasquin" and "The icule; asserting that my horses, which were as Register," Mr. Giffard, a theatrical manawell matched as any in the kingdom, were of different colors and sizes, with much more of that ger, professing to be seized with qualms of conscience, concerning a certain play called kind of wit, the only basis of which is lying." "The Golden Rump," which had been subIt is commonly believed that " Amelia "mitted to him, sent it for the inspection of was drawn by Fielding from his wife, and that all the vivid descriptions of domestic happiness drawn by the hero, are reflections of Fielding's own experience, for among all his misfortunes, he retained a full sense of the value of that kind and beautiful companion whose money he had thus squandered. On reaching London, Fielding at first turned his thoughts to the profession for which he had been originally intended, but he was diverted from it by a sudden inspiration in another direction. Sir Robert Walpole was, at this time, at the height of his power, and was consequently the butt of much abuse and jealousy. Satires of all kinds were fashionable, at his expense, and the Cabinet. The play was suppressed, and the manager well paid by the Treasury for his patriotism. As the name of the author never transpired, and as no one but Giffard and the members of the Cabinet ever caught a glimpse of the condemned play, it has been supposed that the whole transaction was a trick, got up expressly to make an unques tionable foundation for passing the law, caused in reality by the ridicule of the minister by Fielding, which to have noticed, as such, would have been beneath the dignity of the Cabinet. Be this as it may, a law passed both Houses with great speed, though strongly opposed by Lord Chesterfield and others, to the effect that "every dramatic piece, previous to its representation, should |
