here and there traces and indications of something higher and purer from which he has swerved: the latter seems utterly vulgar, and incapable of noble thought. As Salvator, through his deep prostration of intellect, shows at intervals a temporary striving, more or less successful, after loftier achievement; so Fielding intersperses with his more hopeless and dreary pages, gleams of truer insight and holier desire. Again: as Wouvermans is sunk in complete selfishness, and, with entire satisfaction, paints men occupied in no higher employments than those of drinking, smoking, and card-playing; so Smollett never rises, and seeks not to rise, from the slough of filth in which he wallows.
Poor Fielding! He seems to me, of all the great writers with whom I am acquainted, to have stood so peculiarly alone. Other literary men have had friends numerous and kind among their own brethren. Even Savage had a companion—and what a companion!—in his dreary night-walks. But Fielding had few friends and no companions. He was the contemporary of both Pope and Johnson[1]—two men of pre-eminent catholicity of heart—but we hear of no intimacy, or even acquaintance, subsisting between them. Neither the little man of Twickenkam, nor the big man of Bolt Court, held out to him the right hand of fellowship; though we do know that the latter sat-up all night once to read his Amelia, Remember with what a superb disdain Horace Walpole writes of him. "Had your brother been bred in a stable," said Richardson to Fielding's sister, "we might have understood," &c, &c. Unsavoury evidently to the printer-novelist's olfactory nerves is this Fielding! He died, too, far away from his country and what friends he had, at Lisbon,[2] whither
- ↑ Pope, b. 1688; d. 1744 (two years after the publication of Joseph Andrews); Fielding, 1707—1764; Johnson, 1709—1784.
- ↑ His account of the voyage, published after his death—full as it is of his best humour—is infinitely sad. Every page must have cost a pang to his weary heart. The little volume (which is in all respects unexceptionable) ought to be reprinted: is is one of the best pieces of autobiographic writing in the English language.
