lord Lyttelton, Mr. Fox, Mr. Pitt, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, the late Mr. Winnington, &c. When he left this great seminary, he was said to be uncommonly versed in the Greek and Latin classics; for both which he ever retained a strong admiration. From Eton he was sent to Leyden, and there he studied the civilians for about two years. Remittances failing, at the age of twenty, or thereabouts, he returned from Leyden to London, where, though under age, he found himself his own master; from that source flowed all the inconveniencies that attended him throughout the remainder of his life. The brilliancy of his wit, the vivacity of his humour, and his high relish of social enjoyment, soon brought him into request with the men of taste and literature, and with the voluptuous of all ranks. His finances were not answerable to the frequent draughts made upon him by the extravagance which 'naturally followed. He was allowed, Indeed, 2001. a year by his father, but, as he himself used to say, any body might pay it that would. The fact was, general Fielding having married again soon after the death of our author's mother, had so large an increase of family, and that too 30 quick, that he could not spare any considerable disbursements for the maintenance of his eldest son. Of this truth Henry Fielding was sensible, and he was, therefore, in whatever difficulties he might be involved, never wanting in filial piety, which, his nearest relations agree, was a shining part of his chaDisappointments, indeed, were observed to provoke him into occasional peevishness, and severity of animadversion: but his general

racter.

temper was remarkably gay, and for the most part overflowing into wit, mirth, and good humour. As he disdained all littleness of spirit, wherever he met with it in his dealings with the world, his indignation was apt to rise; and as he was of a penetrating discernment, he could always develope selfishness, mistrust, pride, avarice, interested friendship, the ungenerous, and the unfeeling temper, however plausibly disguised; and as he could read them to the bottom, so he could likewise assault them with the keenest strokes of spirited and manly satire. Disagreeable impressions never continued long upon his mind; his imagination was fond of seizing every gay prospect, and, in his worst adversities, filled him with sanguine hopes of a better situation. To obtain this, he flattered himself that he should find his resources in his wit and invention; and accordingly he commenced a writer for the stage in the year 1727, being then about twenty years of age.

His first dramatic piece soon after adventured into the world, and was called Love in several Masques. It immediately succeeded the Provoked Husband, a play, which, for the continued space of twenty-eight nights, received as great and as just applauses as ever were bestowed on the English stage. Notwithstanding these obstacles, Fielding's play was favourably received. His second play, the Temple Beau, appeared the year after. From the year 1727, to the end of 1736, almost all his plays and farces were written, not above two or three having appeared since that time; so that he produced about eighteen theatrical performances, plays and farces in

cluded,

cluded, before he was quite thirty years old. Though in the plan of his pieces he is not always regular, yet he is often happy in his diction and style and in every groupe that he has exhibited, there are to be seen particular delineations that will amply recompense the attention bestowed upon them. The comedy of the Miser, which he has mostly taken from Moliere, has maintained its ground upon the stage ever since it was first perform ed, and has the value of a copy from a great painter by an eminent hand. If the comedy of Pasquin was restored to the stage, it would perhaps be a favourite entertainment with our audiences. It is said, that the wit and humour of our modern Aristophanes, Mr. Fielding, whose quarry in some of his pieces, particularly the Historical Register, was higher game than in prudence he should have chosen, were principal instruments that occasioned that law, which subjected all new pieces to the inspection of a li

censer.

In the comedy called Rape upon Rape, or the Coffee-house Politician, we have an admirable draught of a character very common in this country, namely, a man who is smitten with an insatiable thirst for news, and concerns himself more about the balance of power than of his books. The folly of these statesmen out of place is there exhibited with a masterly ridicule: and indeed in all the plays of our author, however in some respects deficient, there are strokes of humour and half-length paintings, not excelled by some of the ablest artists. His farces were almost all of them very successful, and many of them are still acted every winter with aps

probation. They were generally the production of two or three morn ings. It need not be observed, in justification of their being preserved in the same collection with his more important works, that farce is deemed by our best critics an appendage of the theatre, as well as pieces of a higher nature. A learned and excellent critic (the Rev. Mr. Hurd) has given it a full consideration in his Dissertation on the several Provinces of the Drama. "The representations, says he, of common nature may either be taken accurately, so as to reflect a faithful and exact image of their original, which alone is that I would call Comedy; or they may be forced and overcharged above the simple and just proportions of nature; as when the excesses of a few are given for standing characters, when not the men (in general) but the passion, is described; or when, in the draught of the man, the leading feature is extended beyond measure; and in these cases the representation holds of the province of farce." The Lottery, the Intriguing Chambermaid, and the Virgin Unmask'd, besides the real entertainment they afford, had on their first appearance, this additional merit, that they served to make early discoveries of that true comic genius which was then dawning forth in Mrs. Clive.

So early as when he was at Leyden, Mr. Fielding made some efforts towards a comedy in the sketch of Don Quixote in England. When he left that place, and settled in London, a variety of characters at; tracted his notice, and of course served to strengthen his favourite inclination; the inconsistencies that flow from vanity, from affectation,

from

from hypocrisy, from pretended friendship, and, in short, all the dissonant qualities, which are often whimsically blended together by the folly of men, could not fail to strike a person who had so fine a sense of ridicule and accordingly we find that he never seems so happy, as when he is developing a character made up of motley and repugnant properties. To search out and to describe objects of this kind, scems to have been the favourite bent of his mind, and from his happy descriptions of the manners, he may justly be pronounced an admirable Comic Genius in the largest acceptation of the phrase, implying humorous and pleasant imitation of men and manners, whether in the way of fabulous narration, or of dramatic composition. In the former species of writing lay the excellence of Mr. Fielding: in dramatic imitation he must be allowed to fall short of the great masters in that art.

An ingenious writer (Mr. Hurd) has passed a judgement upon Ben Jonson, which, though Fielding did not attain the same dramatic eminence, may be justly applied to him. "His taste for ridicule was strong, but indelicate, which made him not over-curious in the choice of his topics. His style in picturing his characters, though masterly, was without that elegance of hand, which is required to correct and allay the force of so bold a colouring. Thus the bias of his nature leadng him to Plautus rather than Terence, for his model, it is not to be wondered that his wit is too frequently caustic, his raillery coarse, and his humour excessive."

This want of refinement seems to ave been principally owing to the

woundings which every fresh disappointment gave Fielding, before he was yet well disciplined in the school of life: and perhaps too the asperity of his Muse was not a little encouraged by the practice of two great wits who had fallen into the same vein before him; I mean Wycherley and Congreve, who were not fond of copying the amiable part of human life. In his style, Mr. Fielding derived an error from the same source: he sometimes forgot that humour and ridicule were the two principal ingredients of comedy; and, like Congreve, he frequently aimed at decorations of wit, which do not appear to make part of the ground, but seem rather to be embroidered upon it.

There is another circumstance respecting the drama, in which Fielding's judgement seems to have failed him: the strength of his genius certainly lay in fabulous narration; and he did not sufficiently consider that some incidents of a story, which when related may be worked up into a deal of pleasantry and humour, are apt, when thrown into action, to excite sensations incompatible with humour and ridicule.

To these causes of his failure in the province of the drama, may be added, that sovereign contempt he always entertained for the understandings of the generality of mankind. It was in vain to tell him, that a particular scene was dangerous on account of its coarseness, or because it retarded the general business with feeble efforts of wit; he doubted the discernment of his auditors, and so thought himself secured by their stupidity, if not by his own humour and vivacity. A very remarkable instance of this disposition appeared, when the co

medy

medy of the Wedding Day was put into rehearsal. An actor, who was principally concerned in the piece, and, though young, was then, by the advantage of happy requisites, an early favourite of the public, told Mr. Fileding, he was apprehensive that the audience would make free with him in a particular passage; adding, that a repulse might so flurry his spirits as to disconcert him for the rest of the night, and therefore begged that it might be omitted. "No, d-mn 'em, replied the bard, if the scene is not a good one, let them find that out." Accordingly the play was brought on without alteration, and, just as had been foreseen, the disapprobation of the house was provoked at the passage before objected to; and the performer, alarmed and uneasy at the hisses he had met with, retired into the green-room, where the author was solacing himself with a bottle of champaign. He had by this time drank pretty plentifully; and cocking his eye at the actor, while streams of tobacco trickled down from the corner of his mouth," What's the matter, Garrick?" says he, "what are they hissing now?" "Why the scene that I begged you to retrench; I knew it would not do, and they have so frightened me, that I shall not be able to collect myself again the whole night." "O! d-mn 'em," replies the author, "they have found it out, have they?"

If we add to the foregoing remarks an observation of his own, namely, that he left off writing for the stage, when he ought to have begun; and together with this consider his extreme hurry and dispatch, we shall be able fully to account for his not bearing a more distinguished

place in the rank of dramatic wri ters. It is apparent, that in the frame and constitution of his genius there was no defect, but some faculty or other was suffered to lie dormant, and the rest of course were exerted with less efficacy: at one time we see his wit superseding all his other talents; at another his invention runs riot, and multiplies incidents and characters in a manner repugnant to all the received laws of the drama. Generally his judgement was very little consulted. And, indeed, how could it be otherwise? When he had contracted to bring on a play, or a farce, he would go home rather late from a tavern, and would, the next morning, deliver a scene to the players written upon the papers which had wrapped the tobacco in which he so much delighted.

Though it was the lot of Henry Fielding to write always with a view to profit, he derived but small aids towards his subsistence from the treasurer of the play-house. One of his farces he has printed as it was damned at the theatre-royal in Drury-lane; and that he might be more generous to his enemies than they were willing to be to him, he informs them, in the general preface to his miscellanies, that for the Wedding Day, though acted six} nights, his profits from the house did not exceed fifty pounds. A fate not much better attended him in his earlier productions; but the severity of the public, and the malice of his enemies, met with a noble alleviation from the patronage of the late duke of Richmond, John duke of Argyll, the late duke of Roxburgh, and many persons of distinguished rank and character; among whom may be numbered the

present