As a magistrate, indeed, he was desirous of retrieving the dignity and independence of his own office, and his zeal on that subject has led him a little farther than he will be followed by the friends of rational freedom. But we cannot omit mentioning, that he was the first to touch on the frequency of pardons, rendered necessary by the multiplication of capital punishments, and that he placed his finger on that swelling imposthume of the state, the poor's rates, which has wrought so much evil, and is likely to work so much more. He published also a Charge to the Grand Jury of Middlesex, some Tracts concerning Law Trials of importance, and left behind him a manuscript on crown-law. On the subject of the poor, he afterwards published a scheme for restricting them to their parishes, and providing for them in workhouses, which, like many others which have since appeared, only showed that he was fully sensible of the evil, without being able to suggest an effectual or practical remedy. A subsequent writer on the same thorny subject, Sir Frederic Morton Eden, observes, that Fielding's treatise exhibits both the knowledge of the magistrate and the energy and expression of the novel-writer. It was, however, before publishing his scheme for the provision of the poor, that he made himself immortal by the production of Tom Jones.

The History of a Foundling was composed under all the disadvantages incident to an author, alternately pressed by the disagreeable task of his magisterial duties,

and by the necessity of hurrying out some ephemeral essay or pamphlet to meet the demands of the passing day. It is inscribed to the Honourable Mr. Lyttleton, afterward Lord Lyttleton, with a dedication, in which he intimates, that, without his assistance and that of the Duke of Bedford, the work had never been completed, as the author had been indebted to them for the means of subsistence while engaged in composing it. Ralph Allen, the friend of Pope, is also alluded to as one of his benefactors, but unnamed, by his own desire: thus confirming the truth of Pope's beautiful couplet :

Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame,

Do good by stealth and blush to find it fame.

It is said that this munificent and modest patron made Fielding a present of 2007. at one time, and that even before he was personally acquainted with him.

Under such precarious circumstances, the first English novel was given to the public, which had not yet seen any works of fiction founded upon the plan of painting from nature. Even Richardson's novels are but a step from the old romance, approaching, indeed, more nearly to the ordinary course of events, but still dealing in improbable incidents, and in characters swelled out beyond the ordinary limits of humanity. The History of a Foundling is truth and human nature itself, and there lies the inestimable advantage which it possesses over all previous fictions of this particular kind. It was received with unanimous accla

mation by the public, and proved so productive to Millar, the publisher, that he handsomely added 1007. to 6007., for which he had purchased the work from the author.

The general merits of this popular and delightful work have been so often dwelt upon, and its imperfections so frequently censured, that we can do little more than hastily run over ground which has been so repeatedly occupied. The felicitous contrivance and happy extrication of the story, where every incident tells upon and advances the catastrophe, while, at the same time, it illustrates the characters of those interested in its approach, cannot too often be mentioned with the highest approbation. The attention of the reader is never diverted or puzzled by unnecessary digressions, or recalled to the main story by abrupt and startling recurrences; he glides down the narrative like a boat on the surface of some broad navigable stream, which only winds enough to gratify the voyager with the varied beauty of its banks. One exception to this praise, otherwise so well merited, occurs in the story of the Old Man of the Hill; an episode, which, in compliance with a custom introduced by Cervantes, and followed by Le Sage, Fielding has thrust into the midst of his narrative, as he had formerly introduced the History of Leonora, equally unnecessarily and inartificially, into that of Joseph Andrews. It has also been wondered why Fielding should have chosen to leave the stain of illegitimacy on the birth of his hero;

VOL. I.

and it has been surmised that he did so in allusion to his own first wife, who was also a natural child.

A better reason may be discovered in the story itself; for, had Miss Bridget been privately married to the father of Tom Jones, there could have been no adequate motive assigned for keeping his birth secret from a man so reasonable and compassionate as Allworthy.

But even the high praise due to the construction and arrangement of the story is inferior to that claimed by the truth, force, and spirit of the characters, from Tom Jones himself, down to Black George the game-keeper, and his family. Amongst these, Squire Western stands alone; imitated from no prototype, and in himself an inimitable picture of ignorance, prejudice, irascibility, and rusticity, united with natural shrewdness, constitutional good-humour, and an instinctive affection for his daughter-all which qualities, good and bad, are grounded upon that basis of thorough selfishness natural to one bred up from infancy where no one dared to contradict his arguments, or to control his conduct. In one incident alone, we think Fielding has departed from this admirable sketch. As an English squire, Western ought not to have taken a beating so unresistingly from the friend of Lord Fellamar. We half suspect that the passage is an interpolation. It is inconsistent with the squire's readiness to engage in rustic affrays. We grant a pistol or sword might have appalled him, but Squire Western should have yielded to no one in the use of the English horsewhip-and

as, with all his brutalities, we have a sneaking interest in the honest, jolly country gentleman, we would will. ingly hope there is some mistake in this matter.

The character of Jones, otherwise a model of generosity, openness, manly spirit mingled with thoughtless dissipation, is in like manner unnecessarily degraded by the nature of his intercourse with Lady Bellaston; and this is one of the circumstances which incline us to believe that Fielding's ideas of what was gentlemanlike and honourable, had sustained some depreciation, in consequence of the unhappy circumstances of his life, and of the society to which they condemned him.

A more sweeping and general objection was made against the History of a Foundling by the admirers of Richardson, and has been often repeated since. It is alleged that the ultimate moral of Tom Jones, which conducts to happiness, and holds up to our sympathy and esteem, a youth who gives way to licentious habits, is detrimental to society, and tends to encourage the youthful reader in the practice of those follies, to which his natural passions and the usual course of the world but too much direct him. French delicacy, which, on so many occasions, has strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel, saw this fatal tendency in the work, and, by an arret, discharged the circulation of a bungled abridgment by De la Place, entitled a translation. To this charge Fielding himself might probably have replied, that the vices into which Jones suffers himself to fall are made the direct cause of placing him in the dis