The whole production affords a lively example of the full-blooded pamphleteering of 1740; and throws valuable light on Fielding's repute as the Champion.
As regards Ralph's collaboration with Fielding at this period (a collaboration further affirmed by Dr Nathan Drake's assertion, written in 1809, that James Ralph was Fielding's chief coadjutor in that paper) it may be recalled that ten years previously this not very reputable American had provided a prologue for Fielding's early play, the Temple Beau; and that he appears again as Fielding's partner in the management of the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. Gradually relinquishing his theatrical ambitions, Ralph appears to have turned his talents to political journalism, and according to Tom Davies was becoming formidable as a party writer for the Opposition in these last years of Walpole's administration. Boswell tells us that Ralph ultimately succeeded Fielding in his share of the [Champion]; [12] but we have no definite knowledge of what precise part was taken by him in the earlier numbers. No continued trace occurs of his collaboration with Fielding; and indeed it is difficult to conceive any permanent alliance between Fielding's manly, independent, and generous nature, and the sordid and selfish character, and mediocre talents of James Ralph.
[CHAPTER VII]
"COUNSELLOR FIELDING"
"Wit is generally observed to love to reside in empty pockets."
Joseph Andrews.
The last retort on Colley Cibber had scarcely been launched from the columns of the Champion, when that intrepid 'Censor of Great Britain' and indefatigable law student, Captain Hercules Vinegar, attained the full dignities of a barrister of the Middle Temple. On June 20, 1740, Fielding was called to the Bar; and on the same day the Benchers of his Inn assigned to him chambers at No. 4 Pump Court, "up three pair of stairs." This assignment, according to the wording of the Temple records, was "for the term of his natural life." These chambers may still be seen, with their low ceilings and panelled walls, very much to all appearance as when tenanted by Harry Fielding. The windows of the sitting-room and bedroom look out on to the beautiful old buildings of Brick Court, and from the head of the staircase one looks across to the stately gilded sundial of Pump Court, old even in Fielding's day, with its warning motto:
"Shadows we are and like shadows depart."
Here, in these lofty chambers, up their "three pair" of worn and narrow stairs, Fielding donned his barrister's gown, and waited for briefs; and, possessing as he did an imagination "fond of seizing every gay prospect," and natural spirits that gave him, as his cousin Lady Mary tells us, cheerfulness in a garret, this summer of 1740 must have been full of sanguine hopes. He was now thirty-three, and his splendid physique had not yet become shattered by gout. He had gained, Murphy observes, no inconsiderable reputation by the Champion; his position as a brilliant political playwright had been long ago assured by Pasquin; the party to whose patriotic interests he had devoted so much energy and wit was now rapidly approaching power; and two years of eager application had equipped him with 'no incompetent share of learning' for a profession in which, we are told, he aspired to eminence. The swift disappointment of these brave hopes, the fast coming years of sickness, distress, and grief endow the old chambers with something of tragedy; but in June, 1740, the shadows were still but a sententious word on the dial.
There is practically no surviving record of Fielding's activity as a barrister. From Murphy we learn that his pursuit of the law was hampered by want of means; and that, moreover, even his indomitable energies were soon often forced to yield to disabling attacks of illness. So long as his health permitted him he "attended with punctual assiduity" on the Western circuit, and in term time at Westminster Hall. But gout rapidly "began to make such assaults upon him as rendered it impossible for him to be as constant at the bar as the laboriousness of his profession required," and he could only follow the law in intervals of health. Under such "severities of pain and want" he yet made efforts for success; and the tribute rendered by his first biographer to the courage of those efforts deserves quotation in full: "It will serve to give us an idea of the great force of his mind, if we consider him pursuing so arduous a study under the exigencies of family distress, with a wife and children, whom he tenderly loved, looking up to him for subsistence, with a body lacerated by the acutest pains, and with a mind distracted by a thousand avocations and obliged for immediate supply to produce almost extempore a farce, a pamphlet, or a newspaper." Murphy's careless pen seems here to confuse the student years with those of assiduous effort at the Bar; and the extempore farces are, judging by the dates of Fielding's collected plays, no more than a rhetorical flourish: but there seems no reason to doubt the essential truth of this picture of the vigorous struggles of the sanguine, witty, and not unlearned barrister, ambitious of distinction, and always sensitively anxious as to the maintenance of his wife and children. We may see him attending the Western circuit in March and again in August, riding from Winchester to Salisbury, thence to Dorchester and Exeter, and on to Launceston, Taunton, Bodmin, Wells or Bristol as the case might be; constant in his appearance at Westminster; and supplementing his briefs by political pamphlets written in the service of an Opposition supported by the intellect and integrity of the day.