fresh from the hands of a scandalised Justice and an astonished Constable)—as drunk, as filthy, as cynical and detestable as a man may be. At a wink from the Comic Spirit, Sir John, insisting on 'some of your cold tea, Wife,' breaks open the closet, and Messrs. Heartfree and Constant emerge. Sir John is magnificent: drunk as he is, he rises to the situation, and is magnificent. But, says Constant in effect, after giving a lucid yet inexpressibly futile explanation of things: If you don't choose to believe all this, Sir, why, then, I wear a sword'; and so departs with Heartfree, leaving Lady Brute and Belinda to face the storm. To these Sir John: wickedly drunk, yet with a fine eye for facts, and the strongest sense imaginable of his own position, as determined by the other man's announcement that he wears a sword: to these, and to himself, Sir John-Wear a sword, Sir? And what of all that, Sir?' . . . I dare quote no further. But he that runs may read ; and he that doth so read may, having first of all rejoiced in Miss Western and the Squire, as being among the best the English Novel contains, go search me all the plays that Fielding wrote for a speech that on the stage would mean one-fortieth so much, or a part that would play one-fortieth so well. The conclusion is inevitable. Fielding's Rambles and Veromils, his Sotmores and his Millamours, his Guzzles and Rufflers, his Positive Traps, and Bellamants, and the rest, are stuff ground out for the Stage to keep some actors in parts and a certain 'young raven' we know of in mutton and champagne; while Vanbrugh's Sir John is stuff done for the Stage for the very simple reason

that it could not possibly, any more than Othello and Hamlet could, be done for anything else.

Farce, and

I shall not attempt to analyse the several essays Comedy, in Formal Comedy, Farce, Translation, Burlesque, Translation. and Political Satire which Fielding made, between Love in Several Masques (1727), which was exalted by Oldfield, Wilks, and Cibber, and The Wedding Day (1743), which not even Garrick and Woffington and Macklin could keep from sinking. With this last (there was a posthumous play, called The Fathers or The Good-Natured Man) his varied, picturesque, and in some ways interesting career as a writer for the theatres came to a rather poor full close. He is said to have remarked that he left off play-writing at the moment when he ought to have been beginning to write plays. But, for my part, while I am prepared to admit that, if he did speak to this purpose, there was much truth in what he said, I am very glad, for the sake of the English Novel, that he discovered his mistake too late to profit by it. Mr. Dobson has said all there is to say about his five-and-twenty essays in play-writing, and, in denoting Pasquin, and The Author's Farce, and the Burlesques for special commendation, has The left me and the others nothing particular to say. For the Burlesques, they are, as I think, unapproachable. In a sense they are echoes; but they are echoes so vocal and so plangent, so wanton and so vigorous, as altogether to drown the Voices that set them calling. For the Ballad-Farces, and some

1One, The Covent Garden Tragedy (1732), a travesty of Ambrose Philips and Racine, is altogether too naughty and too riotous to be included in any list of Masterpieces of the

Burlesques.

of the Formal Comedies, there is this to add: that Fielding knew his London, and in them made as good and profitable an use of it as lay in him to The Satires. make. Of the Satires, I will but note that they filled his pockets, and incidentally, at leastsuggested to Sir Robert Walpole the creation of that Dramatic Censorship by which, in the person of the Licenser of Plays, the English Stage has ever since his time been throttled. The adaptations from Molière, The Mock Doctor (1732) and The Miser (1733), are well done; and what is more, perhaps, they served to increase the reputation of the Miss Catharine Raftor afterwards famous as Mrs. Clive.1 The latter was The latter was a favourite with 'heavy leads' as late as the late Sam Phelps.

His failure on the Stage.

But, the Burlesques apart, Fielding's Théâtre, while it displays the Author as a dramatic adventurer of uncommon energy, industry, and English Drama which an honest critic might essay to eternise. Yet a masterpiece it is; and the Author was a young fellow of five-and-twenty. The other, Tom Thumb the Great, though something more pedantic, is even better fun. It was written when Fielding was twenty-three; according to Mrs. Pilkington it forced from Swift one of the two laughs of his life; it had a run of many nights, the last scene being invariably encored; in a redaction (with songs) by Kane O'Hara, it held the stage for years. Liston was magnificent as Lord Grizzle; and 'James,' said Walter Scott to the elder Ballantyne, on a day in the Year of Grace 1814- James,' he said, 'I'll tell you what Byron should say to me, when we are about to accost each other: Art thou the man whom men famed Grizzle call?" And then how germane would be my answer: thou the still more famed Tom Thumb the Small?" quotations are not so much from Fielding as from Kane O'Hara. But certain men of admirable genius-Fielding, Byron, Scott-take hands in them, and I give them for all that means.

"Art

The

1I know not if Fielding discovered this remarkable woman. But, if he did not, he did so much for her, having seen her once, that he may fairly be said to have created her.

versatility, is none the less essentially oubliable. I have read it several times; and every time it has been new to me. New, and dull. I can remember Lord Ogleby and Dr. Cantwell; I have not forgotten Mrs. Centlivre; I have, to put my case on higher ground, a good running interest in The Squire of Alsatia and The Suspicious Husband. But Fielding's heroes and heroines, his rascals and his gulls, his intrigues, his diversions, his attempts at invention, are ever a blank to me: I forget them as I read. And my conclusion is that, while he makes so interesting and respectable a figure as to bulk largely in the history of the English Stage, yet, however timely and enterprising, however ondoyantes et diverses, his ambitions were, he left English Drama and the English Stage pretty much as he found them. It is absurd to say that he did not often-(not always; but often) do his very best. Drunk or sober, Bellastonised or only 'on with this lady or that, the man was a serious artist in whatever mode of art he sought for distinction. I take it that he could not-positively could notembark upon a five-act comedy without getting interested in his work; and to be interested is to do one's best; and there is enough honest intellectual effort in The Temple Beau, or The Tragedy of Tragedies, to furnish forth (say) a dozen Second Mrs. Tanquerays. But, in the long run, there is but one thing to say of his protracted and laborious experiment: that he was not the man for the work, and that his Théâtre is therefore no place for lovers of the play, as Congreve's is, and Farquhar's, and Vanbrugh's. To be content with it, we must

lived.

rather regard it as a burrowing-ground for historians, and antiquaries, and all such persons, whether useful or not, as are interested in the manners and the Stage of Georgian London.

IV

How he THUS much of Fielding's Plays. And Life, meanwhile Life, which at the worst means old mutton and tobacco and champagne, and at the best is a prolonged occasion for self-respect, a luxury which Fielding never lacked, I take it, for more than a day or two at a time? How did the author of Tom Thumb and The Temple Beau contrive to 'keep his end up' (as we say), and pay his way? Did he come into money through his mother, and had he ever a small but regular income, in addition to that £200 a year which anybody might pay who would,' to keep him in shin of beef and British Burgundy' and 'Freeman's Best,' when champagne and what goes with it were impossible? We do not know. In his position, and with his opportunities,1 a modern 2 would get an actress to pay his debts and mother his failures, or would simply work as some Miss Matthews: with a wealthy friend,' and a strong, but wholly imbecile, ambition to make as much of her sex in drama as (say) Mme. Duse makes of her unique temperament and unrivalled

1 It is to be noted that, whether he hit or missed, he never lacked a stage, but played whatever he did the moment it was done.

Of course, I mean a modern Frenchman. For who ever heard the like of any Englishman, unless he were the hero of an Eighteenth-Century novel?