particularly from fome, who have fince risen to be the first ornaments of the law, will for ever do honour to his memory. His application, while he was a student in the Temple, was remarkably intenfe; and though it happened that the early tafte he had taken of pleasure would occafionally return upon him, and confpire with his fpirits and vivacity to carry him into the wild enjoyments of the town, yet it was particular in him that amidst all his diffipations, nothing could fupprefs the thirst he had for knowledge, and the delight he felt in reading; and this prevailed in him to fuch a degree, that he had been frequently known, by his intimates, to retire late at night from a tavern to his chambers, and there read, and make extracts from the most abftrufe authors, for feveral hours before he went to bed; fo powerful were the vigour of his conftitution and the activity of his mind. After the customary time of probation at the Temple, he was called to the bar, and was allowed to have carried with him to Weftminster-Hall no incompetent fhare of learning. He attended with punctual affiduity both in term-time and on the Western circuit, as long as his health permitted him; but the gout foon began to make fuch affaults upon him, as rendered it impoffible for him to be as conftant at the bar as the laborioufnefs of his profeffion required: he could only now follow the law by fnatches, at fuch intervals as were free from indifpofition; which could not but be a difpiriting circumftance, as he faw himself at once difabled from ever rifing to the eminence he afpired to. However, under the feverities of pain and want, he ftill purfued his researches with an eagerness of curiofity peculiar to him; and, though it is wittily remarked by Wycherley, that Apollo and Littleton feldom meet in the fame brain, yet Mr. Fielding is allowed to have acquired a refpe&table fhare of jurisprudence, and in fome particular branches he is faid to have arifen to a great degree of eminence, more cfpecially in crown-law, as may be judged from his leaving two volumes in folio upon that fubject. This work ftill remains unpublished in the hands of his brother; and it will ferve to give us an idea of the great force and vigour of his mnd, if we confider him pursuing fo arduous a fludy under the exigencies of familydiftrefs, with a wife and children, whom he tenderly loved, looking up to him for fubfiftence; with a body lacerated by the acuteft pains, and with a mind diftracted by a thoufand avocations, and obliged for immediate fupply, to produce almost extempore a play, a farce, a pamphlet, or a news-paper. A large number of fugitive political tracts, which had their value

!

value when the incidents were actually paffing on the great fcene of bufinefs, came from his pen: the periodical paper, called the Champion, owed its chief fupport to his abilities; and though his effays in that collection cannot now be so afcertained, as to perpetuate them in this edition of his works, yet the reputation arifing to him at the time of publication was not inconfiderable.

"Of his other works (I mean fuch as were written before his genius was come to its full growth) an account will naturally be expected in this place; and fortunately he has spoken of them himself in the difcourfe prefixed to his Miscellanies (which is not reprinted in the body of this edition) in terms fo modeft and fenfible, that I am fure the reader will dispense with any other criticism or analysis of them."

was

"The Effay on Converfation," fays Mr. Fielding, defigned to ridicule out of fociety, one of the moft pernicious evils which attends it, viz. pampering the grofs appetites of selfishness and ill-nature, with the fhame and difquietude of others; whereas true good-breeding confifts in contributing to the fatisfaction and happiness of all about us."

"The Effay on the Knowledge of the Characters of Men expofes a fecond great evil, namely, hypocrify; the bane of all virtue, morality, and goodness; and may ferve to arm the honeft, undefigning, open-hearted man, who is generally the prey of this monfter, against it."

"The Journey from this World to the Next, it should seem, provoked the dull, fhort-fighted, and malignant enemies of our author to charge him with an intention to fubvert the fettled notions of mankind in philofophy and religion: for he affures us, in form, that he did not intend, in this allegorical piece,"to oppose any prevailing fyftem, or to erect a new one of his own."

"With regard to the Hiftory of Jonathan Wild, his defign, he tells us, was not "to enter the lifts with that excellent hiftorian, who, from authentic papers and records, &c. hath given fo fatisfactory an account of this great man; nor yet to contend with the memoirs of the ordinary of Newgate, which generally contain a more particular relation of what the heroes are to fuffer in the next world, than of what they did in this. The history of Jonathan Wild is rather a narrative of fuch actions, as he might have performed, or would, or fhould have performed, than what he really did; and may in reality as well fuit any other fuch great man, as the perfon

himfelf,

himself, whose name it bears. As it is not a very faithful portrait of Jonathan Wild, so neither is it intended to reprefent the features of any other perfon; roguery, and not a rogue, is the subject; fo that any particular application will be unfair in the reader, especially if he knows much of the great world, fince he must then be acquainted with more than one, on whom he can fix the resemblance."

"Though the merit of the life of Jonathan Wild be very confiderable, yet it must be allowed to be very fhort of that higher order of compofition which our author attained in his other pieces of invention. Hitherto he feems but preluding, as it were, to fome great work, in which all the component parts of his genius were to be feen in their full and vigorous exertion; in which his imagination was to ftrike us by the moft lively and juft colouring, his wit to enliven by the happieft allufions, his invention to enrich with the greatest variety of character and incident, and his judgment to charm not only by the propriety and grace of particular parts, but by the order, harmony, and congruity of the whole: to this high excellence he made ftrong approaches in the Jofeph Andrews; and in the Tom Jones he has fairly bore away the palm.

In the progress of Henry Fielding's talents there feem to have been three remarkable periods; one, when his genius broke forth at once with an effulgence fuperior to all the rays of light it had before emitted, like the fun in his morning glory, without the ardor and the blaze which afterwards attend him; the fecond, when it was difplayed with collected force, and a fullness of perfection, like the fun in meridian majefty, with all his highest warmth and fplendor; and the third, when the fame genius, grown more cool and temperate, ftill continued to cheer and enliven, but fhewed at the fame time that it was tending to its decline, like the fame fun, abating from his ardor, but ftill gilding the western hemifphere.

To these three epochas of our author's genius, the reader will be before-hand with me in obferving that there is an exact correfpondency in the Jofeph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia. Jofeph Andrews, as the preface to the work informs us, was intended for an imitation of the ftile and manner of Cervantes: and how delightfully he has copied the humour, the gravity, and the fine ridicule of his mafter, they can witness who are acquainted with both writers. The truth is, Fielding, in this performance, was employed in the very province for which his talents were peculiarly and hap

pily formed; namely, the fabulous narration of fome imagin ed action, which did occur, or might probably have occurred in human life. Nothing could be more happily conceived than the character of Parfon Adams for the principal perfonage of the work; the humanity, and benevolence of affection, the goodness of heart, and the zeal for virtue, which come from him upon all occafions, attach us to Mr. Adams in the moft endearing manner; his excellent talents, his erudition, and his real acquirements of knowledge in claffical antiquity, and the facred writings, together with his honefty, command our esteem and refpect; while his fimplicity and innocence in the ways of men provoke our fmiles by the contraft they bear to his real intellectual character, and conduce to make him in the highest manner the object of mirth, without degrading him in our estimation, by the many ridiculous embarailments to which they every now and then make him liable; and to crown the whole, that habitual abfence of mind, which is his predominant foible, and which never fails to give a tinge to whatever he is about, makes the honeft clergyman almost a rival of the renowned Don Quixote; the adventures he is led into, in confequence of this infirmity, affuming fomething of the romantic air which accompanies the knight errant, and the circumstances of his forgetfulness tending as strongly to excite our laughter as the mistakes of the Spanish hero. I will venture to fay, that when Don Quixote mistakes the barber's bafon for Mambrino's helmet, no reader ever found the fituation more ridiculous and truly comic than Parson Adams's travelling to London to fell a set of sermons, and actually Snapping his fingers and taking two or three turns round the room in extacy, when introduced to a bookfeller in order to make an immediate bargain; and then immediately after, not being able to find those fame fermons, when he exclaims, “I profefs, I believe I left them behind me." There are many touches in the conduct of this character, which occafion the most exquifite merriment; and I believe it will not be found too bold an affertion, if we fay that the celebrated character of an absent man by La Bruyere is extremely fhort of that true and juft refemblance to nature with which our author has delineated the features of Adams: the former indeed is carried to an agreeable extravagance, but the latter has the fine lights and fhades of probability. It will not be improper here to mention that the reverend Mr. Young, a learned and much efteemed friend of Mr. Fielding's, fat for this picture, Mr. Young was remarkable for his intimate acquaintance with the Greek authors, and had as paffionate

a vene

a veneration for Efchylus as Parfon Adams; the overflowings of his benevolence were as ftrong, and his fits of reverie were as frequent, and occurred too upon the most interesting occafions. Of this laft cbfervation, a fingular inftance is given by a gentleman who served, during the last war in Flanders, in the very fame regiment to which Mr. Young was chaplain. On a fine fummer's evening, he thought proper to indulge himself in his love of a folitary walk; and accordingly he fallied forth from his tent: the beauties of the hemisphere and the landskip round him preffed warmly on his imagination; his heart overflowed with benevolence to all God's creatures, and gratitude to the Supreme Difpenfer of that emanation of glory, which covered the face of things. It is very poffible that a paffage in his dearly beloved Efchylus occurred to his memory on this occafion, and feduced his thoughts into a profound meditation. Whatever was the object of his reflections, certain it is that something did powerfully seize his imagination, fo 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 in the enemy's camp, where he was, with difficulty, brought to a recollection of himself by the repetition of Qui va la, from the foldiers upon duty. The officer, who commanded, finding that he had ftrayed thither in the undefigning fimplicity of his heart, and feeing an innate goodness in his prifoner, which commanded his refpect, very politely gave him leave to purfue his contemplations home again. Such was the gentleman from whom the idea of Parson Adams was derived; how it is interwoven into the History of Jofeph Andrews, and how fuftained with unabating pleafantry to the conclufion, need not be mentioned here, as it is fufficiently felt and acknowledged. The whole work indeed abounds with fituations of the truly comic kind; the incidents and characters are unfolded with fine turns of furprize; and it is among the few works of invention, produced by the English writers, which will always continue in request. But ftill it is but the fun-rife of our author's genius. The hint, it feems, was fuggefted to him by the fuccefs of the late Mr. Richardjon's hiftory of Pamela Andrews: Jofeph is here reprefented as her brother, and he boafts the fame virtue and continency which are the characteristics of his fifter. In the plan of the work, Mr. Fielding did not form to himself a circle wide enough for the abundance of his imagination; the main action was too trivial and unimportant to admit of the variety of characters and events which the reader gene

rally