WORKS OF HENRY FIELDING.

(1707-1754.)

If one would know the secret of Thackeray's style, a style at once elegant, yet familiar, and luminous, yet discursive, a style that reminds one of the best conversation of a cultivated man of the world, he must go to the works of Henry Fielding. Not that Thackeray imitated Fielding, but by his study of that master he learned the matchless grace and ease of our English tongue.

Dickens, too, owed much to Fielding, and on more than one occasion acknowledged his indebtedness. In truth, while Fielding is not the first of English novelists, he is the greatest, and, like Shakespeare in the drama, leads all the rest. He

is the master to whom all must turn who would learn the niceties of the art of fiction. Byron called him the "Prose Homer of human nature." In his lecture on "The English Humorists Thackeray says:

I cannot hope to make a hero of Henry Fielding. Why hide his faults? Why conceal his weakness in clouds of

periphrases? . . . . Stained as you see him, and worn by care and dissipation, that man retains some of the most precious and splendid human qualities and endowments. He has an admirable love of truth, the keenest instinctive antipathy to hypocrisy, the happiest satirical gift of laughing it to scorn. His wit is wonderfully wise and detective; it flashes upon a rogue and lightens up a rascal like a policeman's lantern. He is one of the manliest and kindest of human beings.

Charles Lamb says that "the hearty laugh of Tom Jones clears the air," and Hazlitt remarks: "As a painter of real life he was equal to Hogarth; as a mere observer of human nature he was little inferior to Shakespeare." Sir Walter Scott wrote a biography of Fielding in which he praises him as the first of British novelists and immortal as a painter of natural manners. The most incisive of American critics, James Russell Lowell, places Fielding among the greatest of English writers, and such undoubtedly is the universal testimony of critics and readers.

Fielding's works, like many others belonging to past English literature, are of those that are more written about than read in these days. There is so much that is good in our everyday production that it is only omnivorous readers that can go back to read the English classics. Most people are willing to take these for granted,

though they want to know about them, and Fielding's novels are of this class. They need to be read by proxy. This wisest and wittiest of writers cannot be recommended for general perusal, not, as Mr. Lowell very acutely remarks, because the readers would be corrupted, but because they would be shocked. Fielding wrote in conformity with the spirit and manners of his time. He lived in a coarse age and described coarse manners, and his books are, therefore, not for the Young Person," any more than are the works of Richardson or of Sterne. They belong to an age and describe a people who are as remote and strange to us in some respects as if they were of a different planet. Fielding's moral standard was not high, and he falls into grossness at times, but his volumes present a picture of life and manners as they really were. If we would know what kind of people our English ancestors were in the days of George II., we must resort to these pages. Thackeray says:

Fielding has described the characters and scenes which he knew and saw. He had more than ordinary opportunities for becoming acquainted with life. His family and education first-his fortunes and misfortunes afterwards,brought him into the society of every rank and condition of

men,

Henry Fielding was born April 22, 1707, of a very ancient family, his father being a general in the British army. He was educated at Eton, and at twenty was thrown upon his own resources for a livelihood. Nominally he had an allowance from his father, which, in his own phrase, "any man might pay who would." He went to London and lived a life of fashion, gayety, and dissipation on nothing a year, but if he had possessed millions his improvidence would have been the same. His cousin, Lady Mary Montagu, said of him : "He would have wanted money if his hereditary lands had been as extensive as his imagination." He wrote plays which were not very successful, and toward middle life married, studied law, became a barrister, and was appointed a justice of the peace, in which office he became a terror to evil-doers.

The greatest and most famous of Fielding's works is "Tom Jones," a comic prose epic and work of art which in the domain of fiction has never been equaled, at least not in English literature. It is written in the most admirable style, and, as George Eliot says, "the author seems to bring his armchair to the proscenium and chat with us in all the lusty ease of his fine English." Here we may find wit, humor, learning, generosity, tenderness,

hatred of oppression, pity for the weak, scorn of affectation and ridicule of folly. Its scenes are life itself, its characters as varied as mankind, its stage is the world. It can no more be recommended for family reading than Shakespeare's comedies, for it belongs to a bygone age. The hero is not an admirable young man, much as he was praised when he first made his appearance. Thackeray says:

As a picture of manners the novel of " Tom Jones" is indeed exquisite; as a work of construction, quite a wonder; the byplay of wisdom, the power of observation, the multiplied felicitous turns and thoughts, the varied character of the great comic epic keep the reader in a perpetual admiration and curiosity. But against Mr. Thomas Jones himself we have a right to put in a protest and quarrel with the esteem the author evidently has for that character.

Nevertheless, when all has been said that can be said on the score of grossness, Fielding continues to rank with the great portrayers of character and living humanity-with Homer, Cervantes and Shakespeare. His works may not again be generally read, nor is it necessary they should be, but they must form a part of every well-selected library, for they belong to undying English litera

ture.