He found that respectable people were often perfectly blind to the duties of charity in every sense of the word.He found that the only man in a whole company who pitied Joseph Andrews,when stripped and beaten by robbers was a postilion with defects in his moral character.In short,he knew that respectability often practised none but the strictly self-regarding virtues,and that poverty and recklessness did not always extinguish a native goodness of heart.
Perhaps this discovery made him leniently disposed to "characters and situations so wretchedly low and dirty,that I,"say the author of "Pamela,""could not be interested for any one of them."How amusing Richardson always was about Fielding!How jealousy,spite,and the confusion of mind that befogs a prig when he is not taken seriously,do darken the eyes of the author of "those deplorably tedious lamentations,'Clarissa'and 'Sir Charles Grandison,'"as Horace Walpole calls them!
Fielding asks his Muse to give him "humour and good humour."What novelist was ever so rich in both?Who ever laughed at mankind with so much affection for mankind in his heart?This love shines in every book of his.The poor have all his good-will,and in him an untired advocate and friend.What a life the poor led in the England of 1742!There never before was such tyranny without a servile insurrection.I remember a dreadful passage in "Joseph Andrews,"where Lady Booby is trying to have Fanny,Joseph's sweetheart,locked up in prison:-"It would do a Man good,"says her accomplice,Scout,"to see his Worship,our Justice,commit a Fellow to Bridewell;he takes so much pleasure in it.And when once we ha''um there,we seldom hear any more o''um.He's either starved or eat up by Vermin in a Month's Time."This England,with its dominant Squires,who behaved much like robber barons on the Rhine,was the merry England Fielding tried to turn from some of its ways.I seriously do believe that,with all its faults,it was a better place,with a better breed of men,than our England of to-day.But Fielding satirized intolerable injustice.
He would be a Reformer,a didactic writer.If we are to have nothing but "Art for Art's sake,"that burly body of Harry Fielding's must even go to the wall.The first Beau Didapper of a critic that passes can shove him aside.He preaches like Thackeray;he writes "with a purpose"like Dickens--obsolete old authors.His cause is judged,and into Bridewell he goes,if l'Art pour l'Art is all the literary law and the prophets.
But Fielding cannot be kept in prison long.His noble English,his sonorous voice must be heard.There is somewhat inexpressibly heartening,to me,in the style of Fielding.One seems to be carried along,like a swimmer in a strong,clear stream,trusting one's self to every whirl and eddy,with a feeling of safety,of comfort,of delightful ease in the motion of the elastic water.He is a scholar,nay more,as Adams had his innocent vanity,Fielding has his innocent pedantry.He likes to quote Greek (fancy quoting Greek in a novel of to-day!)and to make the rogues of printers set it up correctly.He likes to air his ideas on Homer,to bring in a piece of Aristotle--not hackneyed--to show you that if he is writing about "characters and situations so wretchedly low and dirty,"he is yet a student and a critic.
Mr.Samuel Richardson,a man of little reading,according to Johnson,was,I doubt,sadly put to it to understand Booth's conversations with the author who remarked that "Perhaps Mr.Pope followed the French Translations.I observe,indeed,he talks much in the Notes of Madame Dacier and Monsieur Eustathius."What knew Samuel of Eustathius?I not only can forgive Fielding his pedantry;I like it!I like a man of letters to be a scholar,and his little pardonable display and ostentation of his Greek only brings him nearer to us,who have none of his genius,and do not approach him but in his faults.They make him more human;one loves him for them as he loves Squire Western,with all his failings.Delightful,immortal Squire!
It was not he,it was another Tory Squire that called out "Hurray for old England!Twenty thousand honest Frenchmen are landed in Sussex."But it was Western that talked of "One Acton,that the Story Book says was turned into a Hare,and his own Dogs kill'd 'un,and eat 'un."And have you forgotten the popular discussion (during the Forty-five)of the affairs of the Nation,which,as Squire Western said,"all of us understand"?Said the Puppet-Man,"I don't care what Religion comes,provided the Presbyterians are not uppermost,for they are enemies to Puppet-Shows."But the Puppet-Man had no vote in 1745.Now,to our comfort,he can and does exercise the glorious privilege of the franchise.
There is no room in this epistle for Fielding's glorious gallery of characters--for Lady Bellaston,who remains a lady in her debaucheries,and is therefore so unlike our modern representative of her class,Lady Betty,in Miss Broughton's "Doctor Cupid;"for Square,and Thwackum,and Trulliber,and the jealous spite of Lady Booby,and Honour,that undying lady's maid,and Partridge,and Captain Blifil and Amelia,the fair and kind and good!
It is like the whole world of that old England--the maids of the Inn,the parish clerk,the two sportsmen,the hosts of the taverns,the beaux,the starveling authors--all alive;all (save the authors)full of beef and beer;a cudgel in every fist,every man ready for a brotherly bout at fisticuffs.What has become of it,the lusty old militant world?What will become of us,and why do we prefer to Fielding--a number of meritorious moderns?Who knows?But do not let us prefer anything to our English follower of Cervantes,our wise,merry,learned Sancho,trudging on English roads,like Don Quixote on the paths of Spain.
But I cannot convert you.You will turn to some story about store-clerks and summer visitors.Such is his fate who argues with the fair.