We have looked through many of the pieces of Mr. Roscoe's handsome volume. The dramatic works could not have been spared possibly, but the reader will have no great pleasure, as we fancy, in looking at them more than once. They are not remarkable for wit even, though they have plenty of spirits—a great deal too much perhaps.
But he was an honest-hearted fellow, with affections as tender and simple as ever dwelt in the bosom of any man; and if, in the heyday of his spirits and the prodigal outpouring of his jovial good humor, he could give a hand to many "a lad and lass" whom the squeamish world would turn its back on (indeed, there was a virtue in his benevolence, but we dare not express our sympathies now for poor Doll Tearsheet and honest Mistress Quickly)—if he led a sad riotous life, and mixed with many a bad woman in his time, his heart was pure, and he knew a good one when he found her. He married, and (though Sir Walter Scott speaks rather slightingly of the novel in which Fielding has painted his first wife) the picture of Amelia, in the story of that name, is (in the writer's humble opinion) the most beautiful and delicious description of a character that is to be found in any writer, not excepting Shakspeare. It is a wonder how old Richardson, girded at as he had been by the reckless satirist—how Richardson, the author of "Pamela," could have been so blinded by anger and pique as not to have seen the merits of his rival's exquisite performance.
Amelia was in her grave when poor Fielding drew this delightful portrait of her; but, with all his faults, and extravagancies, and vagaries, it is not hard to see how such a gentle, generous, loving creature as Fielding was, must have been loved and prized by her. She had a little fortune of her own, and he at this time inherited a small one from his mother. He carried her to the country, and like a wise, prudent Henry Fielding as he was, who, having lived upon nothing very jovially for some years, thought £5,000 or £6,000 an endless wealth; he kept horses and hounds, flung his doors open, and lived with the best of his country. When he had spent his little fortune, and saw that there was nothing for it but to work, he came to London, applied himself fiercely to the law, seized upon his pen again, never lost heart for a moment, and, be sure, loved his poor Amelia as tenderly as ever he had done. It is a pity that he did not live on his income, that is certain: it is a pity that he had not been born a lord, or a thrifty stock broker at the very least; but we should not have had "Joseph Andrews" if this had been the case, and indeed it is probable that Amelia liked him quite as well after his ruin as she would have done had he been as rich as Rothschild.
The biographers agree that he would have been very successful at the bar, but for certain circumstances. These ugly circumstances always fall in the way of men of Fielding's genius: for though he amassed a considerable quantity of law, was reputed to be a good speaker, and had a great wit, and a knowledge of human nature which might serve him in excellent stead, it is to be remarked that those without a certain degree of patience and conduct will not insure a man's triumph at the bar, and so Fielding never rose to be a Lord Chancellor or even a judge.
His days of trouble had now begun in earnest, and indeed he met them like a man. He wrote incessantly for the periodical works of the day, issued pamphlets, made translations, published journals and criticisms, turned his hand, in a word, to any work that offered, and lived as best he might. This indiscriminate literary labor, which obliges a man to scatter his intellects upon so many trifles, and to provide weekly varieties as sets-off against the inevitable weekly butcher's bills, has been the ruin of many a man of talent since Fielding's time, and it was lucky for the world and for him that at a time of life when his powers were at the highest he procured a place which kept him beyond the reach of weekly want, and enabled him to gather his great intellects together and produce the greatest satire and two of the most complete romances in our language.
Let us remark, as a strong proof of the natural honesty of the man, the exquisite art of these performances, the care with which the situations are elaborated, and the noble, manly language corrected. When Harry Fielding was writing for the week's bread, we find style and sentiment both careless, and plots hastily worked off. How could he do otherwise? Mr. Snap, the bailiff, was waiting with a writ without—his wife and little ones asking wistfully for bread within. Away, with all its imperfections on its head, the play or the pamphlet must go. Indeed, he would have been no honest man had he kept them longer on his hands, with such urgent demands upon him as he had.
But as soon as he is put out of the reach of this base kind of want, his whole style changes, and instead of the reckless and slovenly hack-writer, we have one of the most minute and careful artists that ever lived. Dr. Beattie gave his testimony to the merit of "Tom Jones." Moral or immoral, let any man examine this romance as a work of art merely, and it must strike him as the most astonishing production of human ingenuity. There is not an incident ever so trifling but advances the story, grows out of former incidents and is connected with the whole. Such a literary providence, if we may use such a word, is not to be seen in any other work of fiction. You might cut out the half of Don Quixote, or add, transpose, or alter any given romance of Walter Scott, and neither would suffer. Roderick Random, and heroes of that sort, run through a series of adventures, at the end of which the fiddles are brought and there is a marriage. But the history of Tom Jones connects the very first page with the very last, and it is marvellous to think how the author could have built and carried all this structure in his brain, as he must have done, before he began to put it to paper.
And now a word or two about our darling "Amelia," of which we have read through every single word in Mr. Roscoe's handsome edition. "As for Captain Booth, Madam," writes old Richardson to one of his toadies, "Captain Booth has done his business. The piece is short, is as dead as if it had been published forty years ago;" indeed, human nature is not altered since Richardson's time; and if there are rakes, male and female, as there were a hundred years since, there are in like manner envious critics now as then. How eager they are to predict a man's fall, how unwilling to acknowledge his rise! If a man write a popular work, he is sure to be snarled at; if a literary man rise to eminence out of his profession, all his old comrades are against him.
Well, in spite of Richardson's prophecies, the piece which was dead at its birth is alive a hundred years after, and will live, as we fancy, as long as the English language shall endure. Fielding, in his own noble words, has given a key to the philosophy of the work. "The nature of man," cries honest Dr. Harrison, "is far from being in itself evil; it abounds with benevolence, and charity, and pity, coveting praise and honor, and shunning shame and disgrace. Bad education, bad habits, and bad customs debauch our nature, and drive it headlong into vice." And the author's tale is an exemplification of this text. Poor Booth's habits and customs are bad indeed, but who can deny the benevolence, and charity, and pity, of this simple and kindly being? His vices even, if we may say so, are those of a man; there is nothing morbid or mawkish in any of Fielding's heroes; no passionate pleasing extenuation, such as one finds in the pseudo-moral romances of the sentimental character; no flashy excuses like those which Sheridan puts forward (unconsciously, most likely), for those brilliant blackguards who are the chief characters of his comedies. Vice is never to be mistaken for virtue in Fielding's honest downright books; it goes by its name, and invariably gets its punishment.
Besides the matchless character of Amelia, whose beauty and charming innocent consciousness of it (so delicately described by the novelist), whose tenderness and purity are such that they endear her to a reader as much as if she were actually alive, his own wife or mother, and make him consider her as some dear relative and companion of his own, about whose charms and virtues is scarcely modest to talk in public; besides Amelia, there are other characters, not so beautiful, but not less admirably true to nature. Miss Matthews is a wonderful portrait, and the vanity which inspires every one of the actions of that passionate, unscrupulous lady, the color as it were which runs through the whole of the picture is touched with a master's hand. Mrs. James, the indifferent woman, is not less skilful.