It would appear from the tone of these paragraphs, and from the identical form of some of them in two papers of the same date, that they are advertisements and not news, in the modern sense; hence as evidence of the importance of Timothy Fielding they must be taken with reservations due to their probable origin. Genest notices Timothy Fielding as acting minor rôles at Drury Lane in one play in 1729, and in four plays in 1731; but as Timothy's participation in the performance of Henry Fielding's The Miser in 1733 is omitted, Genest's information is not complete enough to be of value except as an indication of Timothy's obscurity. The British Museum Catalogue does not know Timothy Fielding; apparently he was not credited with the authorship of plays or of entertainments or of anything else so far as we can observe to-day." Though there is not evidence sufficient, perhaps, to establish a final conclusion, I believe the chances are stronger that the "Mr. Fielding" who wrote the Dialogue published by Watts was Henry Fielding the author, than that he was Timothy the comedian. My reasons are these: Though in the year 1732 Timothy Fielding seems to be making a stir as a theatrical producer in Smithfield and Bloomsbury, yet our chief evidence of this is newspaper "publicity" which, I presume, in his time as in ours was bought and paid for, and was not a real indication of reputation. I believe that-newspaper "publicity" aside--he was not at all prominent, and his name was very little known. Henry Fielding, on the other hand, was already a man of some success as a writer, and was, moreover, a man of polite social connections. Volume VI of the Musical Miscellany appeared in 1731. During the preparation of this volume its publisher, John Watts, assuredly had Henry Fielding in mind. For, it should be noted, Watts had been publishing plays by Fielding as follows: Love in Several Masques (1728); The Temple Beau (1730); The Coffee-House Politician (1730). The last named Watts published under this 6 The only other notice of him I have found is the following: "Other amusement-providers might have been introduced into the picture [Hogarth's Southwark Fair'] had there been room, such as Timothy Fielding, the actor (often confused with Henry Fielding the author), who had a booth at the Fair."Wheatley, Hogarth's London, (New York, 1909) p. 433. title as late as December 17, 1730. Moreover, the fact that these plays were fresh in Watts's mind is attested by his inclusion in the volume of one song from each of the three comedies. The songs were identified, as was the case with other songs from operas and plays, by the name of the comedy alone; only in the case of separate songs did Watts append the name of the author, as he did to the Dialogue in question. Not only are we assured that Henry Fielding was in the publisher's mind on account of Watts's interest in the plays, but we know also that the dramatist was designated by his publisher at this time as "Mr. Fielding.' The title-page of each of the three comedies by Henry Fielding which Watts had published reads, "Written By Mr. Fielding. Late in 1730 Watts called Henry Fielding by that name; and he seems to have had no thought of confusion of identity. There is still another argument which may be very tentatively advanced. Before 1732 Fielding's plays appeared either with the name of the author as "Mr. Fielding," or with the pseudonym "Scriblerus Secundus." They had been performed at Goodman's Field, the Haymarket, or Lincoln's-Inn Fields, except the early play, Love in Several Masques (1728), performed at Drury Lane. In 1732 his plays once more appeared at Drury Lane. And at Drury Lane Timothy Fielding was now an actor; hence for the first time he could cause serious confusion for the playwright. Such a contingency might explain the appearance of The Modern Husband (acted Feb. 21, 1732 at Drury Lane, and published by Watts) with the fuller statement appearing for the first time on a title-page, "Written by Henry Fielding, Esq." Thereafter plays by Fielding bore either his full name on the title-page or no name at all. I suggest, then, that it was not until 1732, when Fielding's plays began to appear at the theatre in which Timothy was an actor, that Watts realized the possibility of ambiguity and therefore changed the form of the author's name on succeeding titlepages from "Mr. Fielding" to "Henry Fielding, Esq." 7 It is possible that the sixth volume of the Musical Miscellany; being a Collection of Choice Songs, and Lyrick Poems: with the Basses to each Tune, etc., came out within a month of the publication of this play, if it was the inspiration of an article in the Universal Spectator, No. 121, Jan. 30, 1731, quoted by the Gentleman's Magazine, I (1731) 15, which recommended "A Collection of Lyric Poems and Songs, with Musick Annex'd lately published.’’ Thus the relations existing between Henry Fielding and John Watts in 1730-31, together with the comparative obscurity of Timothy Fielding, lead me to believe that when Watts published volume VI of the Musical Miscellany in 1731 (prepared, presumably, in 1730) "Mr. Fielding" signified to the publisher not the actor, but Henry Fielding, a writer by profession; hence the Dialogue was almost certainly the work of the dramatist whose plays Watts had been publishing and would appear to be a minor addition to the Fielding canon. LA FONTAINE'S IMITATION By COLBERT SEARLES University of Minnesota For a number of years La Fontaine wrote with characteristic complacency upon subjects for which he had no great talent and probably but little taste. But during this long apprenticeship he was drawn and held more and more firmly to his proper orbit by his own instinct and by the doctrines which dominated the literary movement of the time, whose most frequent watchword and precept was the "imitation of Nature." The comedy of Terence attracted him, as he says in a preface, because "its subject is simple, as our masters prescribe that it should be; it is not crowded with useless and detached incidents as a supreme merit, all the characters are true to nature.""1 La Fontaine sought to imitate these qualities of composition and style while preserving his originality and individuality. In the preface to the Psyché, on whose composition he lingered long, he asserted: "The way of telling it is mine and so are the details and what the characters say. Almost all the inventions, I mean the principal ones and the best, come from Apuleius.''2 But even so, as he goes on to say: "I have changed a great many of them in accordance with the liberty which I ordinarily allow myself." This interest in "the way of telling" things developed steadily. If one were to accept literally the introductory verses of the Matrone d'Ephèse, this tale would be little more than an étude in the technique of composition: S'il est un conte usé, commun, et rebattu, C'est celui qu'en ces vers j'accommode à ma guise: Qui t'engage à cette entreprise? N'a-t-elle point déjà produit assez d'écrits? Sans répondre aux censeurs, car c'est chose infinie Voyons si dans mes vers je l'aurai rajeunie.3 All the material which he took from his sources, whether Greek, 1 L'Eunuque, Avertissement au Lecteur, Euvres de Jean de la Fontaine (Grands Écrivains). vol. 7, p. 7. 2 Euvres, vol. 8, p. 21. 3 Euvres, vol. 6, p. 67. Latin, Oriental or French, was treated in precisely the same way: Je ne prends que l'idée, et les tours et les lois, Que nos maîtres suivaient eux-mêmes autrefois; Si d'ailleurs quelque endroit plein chez d'eux d'excellence Je l'y transporte, et veux qu'il n'ait rien d'affecté, That is to say, La Fontaine, like the other great classic poets of France, appropriated, rather than imitated, the works of his predecessors, ancient and modern. The point of view was perfectly simple and logical. Since poetry, by consecrated definition, is an "imitation of life," the longevity of the works which the ancients created is clear proof of the fidelity with which they imitated, i. e., portrayed life. It is convenient to use the material which they gathered in so far as it may be applicable to modern conditions. It is the modern poet's business to bring the imitation up to date; his "invention," or, as we should say, his originality, consists in making this "air of antiquity" his own and that of the age in which he lives. Thereby he becomes as much a creator as those from whom he takes his raw material, because he is actuated by the same purpose and wrestles with the same problem: to give the most perfect imitation possible of the life he sees and leads. An interesting and characteristic example of this "rejuvenation" of ancient subject matter is offered by the fable of the Nightingale and the Kite. In Aesop, the nightingale, having fallen into the clutches of the kite pleads for its life. As a last resort it appeals to the gluttony of the bird of prey, urging him to seek a victim better proportioned to the exigencies of his appetite. To make the fable teach the lesson that one should be satisfied with what he has, Aesop's kite is made to reply: "I should be a fool if I let go the dinner which I have in hand, in order to go in pursuit of a prey which is not even in sight." Between this and a modern version, there must be taken into account centuries of evolution in sentiment, which have made of the nightingale a symbol of that which is poetic and beautiful, and of the kite and his like, a symbol of that which is cruel and voracious. La Fontaine 4 Epitre à Monseigneur l'Evêque de Soissons, en lui donnant un Quintilien de la Traduction d'Horatio Toscanella. Œuvres, vol. 9, p. 202. |