sister: « Poor Fielding, I could not help telling his sister, that I was equally surprised at, and concerned for, his continued lowness. Had your brother, said I, been born in a stable, or been a runner at a spunging-house, one should have thought him a genius, and wished he had had the advantage of a liberal education, and of being admitted into good company!»

After this we are not surprised at its being alleged that Fielding was destitute of invention and talents; that the run of his best works was nearly over; and that he would soon be forgotten as an author. Fielding does not appear to have retorted any of this illwill, so that, if he gave the first offence, and that an unprovoked one, he was also the first to retreat from the contest, and to allow to Richardson those claims which his genius really demanded from the liberality of his contemporaries. In the fifth number of the Jacobite Journal, Fielding highly commends Clarissa, which is by far the best and most powerful of Richardson's novels; and, with those scenes in Sir Charles Grandison which refer to the history of Clementina, contains the passages of deep pathos on which his claim to immortality must finally rest. Perhaps this is one of the cases in which one would rather have sympathized with the thoughtless offender, than with the illiberal and ungenerous mind which so long retained its resentment.

After the publication of Joseph Andrews, Fielding had again recourse to the stage, and brought out The Wedding-Day, which, though on the whole unsuccessful, produced him some small profit. This was the last of his theatrical efforts which appeared during his life. The manuscript comedy of The Fathers was lost by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, and, when recovered, was acted, after the author's death, for the benefit of his family. An anecdote respecting the carelessness with which Fielding regarded his theatrical fame, is thus given by former biographers :

<< On one of the days of its rehearsal (i. e. the rehearsal of the Wedding-Day) Garrick, who performed a principal part, and who was even then a favourite with the public, told Fielding he was apprehensive that the audience would make free with him in a particular passage; and remarked that, as a repulse might disconcert him during the remainder of the night, the passage should be omitted:-'No, d-n 'em,' replied he, if the scene is not a good one, let them find that out.' Accordingly the play was brought out without alteration, and, as had been foreseen, marks of disapprobation appeared. Garrick, alarmed at the hisses he had met with, retired into the green-room, where the author was solacing himself with a bottle of champagne. He had by this time drank pretty freely and glancing his eye at

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the actor, while clouds of tobacco issued from his mouth, cried out, What's the matter, Garrick ? what are they hissing now?' 'Why the scene that I begged you to retrench, replied the actor; '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.'—' Oh ! d-n 'em,' rejoined he, with great coolness, they have found it out, have they?'»

Besides various fugitive pieces, Fielding published, in or about 1743, a volume of Miscellanies, including The Journey from this World to the Next, a tract containing a good deal of Fielding's peculiar humour, but of which it is difficult to conceive the plan or purport. The History of Jonathan Wild the Great next followed. It is not easy to see what Fielding proposed to himself by a picture of complete vice, unrelieved by any thing of human feeling, and never, by any accident, even deviating into virtue; and the ascribing a train of fictitious adventures to a real character has in it something clumsy and inartificial on the one hand, and, on the other, subjects the author to a suspicion that he only used the title of Jonathan Wild in order to connect his book with the popular renown of that infamous depredator. But there are few passages in Fielding's more celebrated works more marked by his peculiar genius than the

scene betwixt his hero and the ordinary when

in Newgate.

Besides these more permanent proofs of his industrious application to literature, the pen of Fielding was busily employed in the political and literary controversies of the times. He conducted one paper called The Jacobite Journal, the object of which was to eradicate those feelings and sentiments which had been already so effectually crushed upon the Field of Culloden. The True Patriot and The Champion were works of the same kind, which he entirely composed, or in which, at least, he had a principal share. In these various papers he steadily advocated what was then called the whig cause, being attached to the principles of the revolution, and the royal family of Brunswick, or, in other words, a person well affected to church and state. His zeal was long unnoticed, while far inferior writers were enriched out of the secret service money with unexampled prodigality. At length, in 1749, he received a small pension, together with the then disreputable office of a justice of peace for Westminster and Middlesex, of which he was at liberty to make the best he could by the worst means he chose. This office, such as it was, he owed to the interference of Mr, afterwards Lord Lyttleton.

At this period, the magistrates of Westminster, thence termed trading justices, were

repaid by fees for their services to the public; a mean and wretched system, which made it the interest of these functionaries to inflame every petty dispute which was brought before them, to trade as it were in guilt and in misery, and to wring their precarious subsistence out of thieves and pickpockets. The habits of Fielding, never choice or select in his society, were not improved by that to which his place exposed him. Horace Walpóle gives us, in his usual unfeeling but lively manner, the following description of a visit made to Fielding, in his capacity of a justice, by which we see his mind had stooped itself completely to his situation.

Rigby gave me as strong a picture of nature. He and Peter Bathurst, t'other night, carried a servant of the latter's, who had attempted to shoot him, before Fielding, who, to all his other vocations, has, by the grace of Mr Lyttleton, added that of Middlesex justice. He sent them word he was at supper, they must come next morning. They did not understand that freedom, and ran up, where they found him banqueting with a blind man; a wh——, and three Irishmen, on some cold mutton, and a bone of ham, both in one dish, and the dirtiest cloth. He never stirred or asked them to sit. Rigby, who had seen him come so often to beg a guinea of Sir C. Williams, and Bathurst, at whose father's he had