Fielding's third great novel has been the subject of much more
discordant judgments than either of its forerunners. If we take the
period since its appearance as covering four generations, we find the
greatest authority in the earliest, Johnson, speaking of it with
something more nearly approaching to enthusiasm than he allowed
himself in reference to any other work of an author, to whom he was on
the whole so unjust. The greatest man of letters of the next
generation, Scott (whose attitude to Fielding was rather undecided,
and seems to speak a mixture of intellectual admiration and moral
dislike, or at least failure in sympathy), pronounces it "on the whole
unpleasing," and regards it chiefly as a sequel to _Tom Jones_,
showing what is to be expected of a libertine and thoughtless husband.
But he too is enthusiastic over the heroine. Thackeray (whom in this
special connection at any rate it is scarcely too much to call the
greatest man of the third generation) overflows with predilection for
it, but chiefly, as it would seem, because of his affection for Amelia
herself, in which he practically agrees with Scott and Johnson. It
would be invidious, and is noways needful, to single out any critic of
our own time to place beside these great men. But it cannot be denied
that the book, now as always, has incurred a considerable amount of
hinted fault and hesitated dislike. Even Mr. Dobson notes some things
in it as "unsatisfactory;" Mr. Gosse, with evident consciousness of
temerity, ventures to ask whether it is not "a little dull." The very
absence of episodes (on the ground that Miss Matthews's story is too
closely connected with the main action to be fairly called an episode)
and of introductory dissertations has been brought against it, as the
presence of these things was brought against its forerunners.
I have sometimes wondered whether _Amelia_ pays the penalty of an
audacity which, _a priori_, its most unfavourable critics would
indignantly deny to be a fault. It begins instead of ending with the
marriage-bells; and though critic after critic of novels has exhausted
his indignation and his satire over the folly of insisting on these as
a finale, I doubt whether the demand is not too deeply rooted in the
English, nay, in the human mind, to be safely neglected. The essence
of all romance is a quest; the quest most perennially and universally
interesting to man is the quest of a wife or a mistress; and the
chapters dealing with what comes later have an inevitable flavour of
tameness, and of the day after the feast. It is not common now-a-days
to meet anybody who thinks Tommy Moore a great poet; one has to
encounter either a suspicion of Philistinism or a suspicion of paradox
if one tries to vindicate for him even his due place in the poetical
hierarchy. Yet I suspect that no poet ever put into words a more
universal criticism of life than he did when he wrote "I saw from the
beach," with its moral of--
"Give me back, give me back, the wild freshness of morning--Her smiles
and her tears are worth evening's best light."
If we discard this fallacy boldly, and ask ourselves whether _Amelia_
is or is not as good as _Joseph Andrews_ or _Tom Jones_, we shall I
think be inclined to answer rather in the affirmative than in the
negative. It is perhaps a little more easy to find fault with its
characters than with theirs; or rather, though no one of these
characters has the defects of Blifil or of Allworthy, it is easy to
say that no one of them has the charm of the best personages of the
earlier books. The idolaters of Amelia would of course exclaim at this
sentence as it regards that amiable lady; and I am myself by no means
disposed to rank amiability low in the scale of things excellent in
woman. But though she is by no means what her namesake and spiritual
grand-daughter. Miss Sedley, must, I fear, be pronounced to be, an
amiable fool, there is really too much of the milk of human kindness,
unrefreshed and unrelieved of its mawkishness by the rum or whisky of
human frailty, in her. One could have better pardoned her forgiveness
of her husband if she had in the first place been a little more
conscious of what there was to forgive; and in the second, a little
more romantic in her attachment to him. As it is, he was _son homme_;
he was handsome; he had broad shoulders; he had a sweet temper; he was
the father of her children, and that was enough. At least we are
allowed to see in Mr. Booth no qualities other than these, and in her
no imagination even of any other qualities. To put what I mean out of
reach of cavil, compare Imogen and Amelia, and the difference will be
felt.
But Fielding was a prose writer, writing in London in the eighteenth
century, while Shakespeare was a poet writing in all time and all
space, so that the comparison is luminous in more ways than one. I do
not think that in the special scheme which the novelist set himself
here he can be accused of any failure. The life is as vivid as ever;
the minor sketches may be even called a little more vivid. Dr Harrison
is not perfect. I do not mean that he has ethical faults, for that is
a merit, not a defect; but he is not quite perfect in art. His
alternate persecution and patronage of Booth, though useful to the
story, repeat the earlier fault of Allworthy, and are something of a
blot. But he is individually much more natural than Allworthy, and
indeed is something like what Dr Johnson would have been if he had
been rather better bred, less crotchety, and blessed with more health.
Miss Matthews in her earlier scenes has touches of greatness which a
thousand French novelists lavishing "candour" and reckless of
exaggeration have not equalled; and I believe that Fielding kept her
at a distance during the later scenes of the story, because he could
not trust himself not to make her more interesting than Amelia. Of the
peers, more wicked and less wicked, there is indeed not much good to
be said. The peer of the eighteenth-century writers (even when, as in
Fielding's case, there was no reason why they should "mention him with
_Kor_," as Policeman X. has it) is almost always a faint type of
goodness or wickedness dressed out with stars and ribbons and coaches-
and-six. Only Swift, by combination of experience and genius, has
given us live lords in Lord Sparkish and Lord Smart. But Mrs. Ellison
and Mrs. Atkinson are very women, and the serjeant, though the touch
of "sensibility" is on him, is excellent; and Dr Harrison's country
friend and his prig of a son are capital; and Bondum, and "the
author," and Robinson, and all the minor characters, are as good as
they can be.
It is, however, usual to detect a lack of vivacity in the book, an
evidence of declining health and years. It may be so; it is at least
certain that Fielding, during the composition of _Amelia,_ had much
less time to bestow upon elaborating his work than he had previously
had, and that his health was breaking. But are we perfectly sure that
if the chronological order had been different we should have
pronounced the same verdict? Had _Amelia_ come between _Joseph_ and
_Tom,_ how many of us might have committed ourselves to some such
sentence as this: "In _Amelia_ we see the youthful exuberances of
_Joseph Andrews_ corrected by a higher art; the adjustment of plot and
character arranged with a fuller craftsmanship; the genius which was
to find its fullest exemplification in _Tom Jones_ already displaying
maturity"? And do we not too often forget that a very short time--in
fact, barely three years--passed between the appearance of _Tom Jones_
and the appearance of _Amelia?_ that although we do not know how long
the earlier work had been in preparation, it is extremely improbable
that a man of Fielding's temperament, of his wants, of his known
habits and history, would have kept it when once finished long in his
desk? and that consequently between some scenes of _Tom Jones_ and
some scenes of _Amelia_ it is not improbable that there was no more
than a few months' interval? I do not urge these things in mitigation
of any unfavourable judgment against the later novel. I only ask--How
much of that unfavourable judgment ought in justice to be set down to
the fallacies connected with an imperfect appreciation of facts?
To me it is not so much a question of deciding whether I like _Amelia_
less, and if so, how much less, than the others, as a question what
part of the general conception of this great writer it supplies? I do
not think that we could fully understand Fielding without it; I do not
think that we could derive the full quantity of pleasure from him
without it. The exuberant romantic faculty of Joseph Andrews and its
pleasant satire; the mighty craftsmanship and the vast science of life
of _Tom Jones;_ the ineffable irony and logical grasp of _Jonathan
Wild_, might have left us with a slight sense of hardness, a vague
desire for unction, if it had not been for this completion of the
picture. We should not have known (for in the other books, with the
possible exception of Mrs. Fitzpatrick, the characters are a little
too determinately goats and sheep) how Fielding could draw _nuances_,
how he could project a mixed personage on the screen, if we had not
had Miss Matthews and Mrs. Atkinson--the last especially a figure full
of the finest strokes, and, as a rule, insufficiently done justice to
by critics.
And I have purposely left to the last a group of personages about whom
indeed there has been little question, but who are among the triumphs
of Fielding's art--the two Colonels and their connecting-link, the
wife of the one and the sister of the other. Colonel Bath has
necessarily united all suffrages. He is of course a very little
stagey; he reminds us that his author had had a long theatrical
apprenticeship: he is something too much _d'une piece_. But as a study
of the brave man who is almost more braggart than brave, of the
generous man who will sacrifice not only generosity but bare justice
to "a hogo of honour," he is admirable, and up to his time almost
unique. Ordinary writers and ordinary readers have never been quite
content to admit that bravery and braggadocio can go together, that
the man of honour may be a selfish pedant. People have been unwilling
to tell and to hear the whole truth even about Wolfe and Nelson, who
were both favourable specimens of the type; but Fielding the
infallible saw that type in its quiddity, and knew it, and registered
it for ever.
Less amusing but more delicately faithful and true are Colonel James
and his wife. They are both very good sort of people in a way, who
live in a lax and frivolous age, who have plenty of money, no
particular principle, no strong affection for each other, and little
individual character. They might have been--Mrs. James to some extent
is--quite estimable and harmless; but even as it is, they are not to
be wholly ill spoken of. Being what they are, Fielding has taken them,
and, with a relentlessness which Swift could hardly have exceeded, and
a good-nature which Swift rarely or never attained, has held them up
to us as dissected preparations of half-innocent meanness,
scoundrelism, and vanity, such as are hardly anywhere else to be
found. I have used the word "preparations," and it in part indicates
Fielding's virtue, a virtue shown, I think, in this book as much as
anywhere. But it does not fully indicate it; for the preparation, wet
or dry, is a dead thing, and a museum is but a mortuary. Fielding's
men and women, once more let it be said, are all alive. The palace of
his work is the hall, not of Eblis, but of a quite beneficent
enchanter, who puts burning hearts into his subjects, not to torture
them, but only that they may light up for us their whole organisation
and being. They are not in the least the worse for it, and we are
infinitely the better.
[Illustration.]
[Illustration.]
DEDICATION.
To RALPH ALLEN, ESQ.
SIR,--The following book is sincerely designed to promote the cause of
virtue, and to expose some of the most glaring evils, as well public
as private, which at present infest the country; though there is
scarce, as I remember, a single stroke of satire aimed at any one
person throughout the whole.
The best man is the properest patron of such an attempt. This, I
believe, will be readily granted; nor will the public voice, I think,
be more divided to whom they shall give that appellation. Should a
letter, indeed, be thus inscribed, DETUR OPTIMO, there are few persons
who would think it wanted any other direction.
I will not trouble you with a preface concerning the work, nor
endeavour to obviate any criticisms which can be made on it. The good-
natured reader, if his heart should be here affected, will be inclined
to pardon many faults for the pleasure he will receive from a tender
sensation: and for readers of a different stamp, the more faults they
can discover, the more, I am convinced, they will be pleased.
Nor will I assume the fulsome stile of common dedicators. I have not
their usual design in this epistle, nor will I borrow their language.
Long, very long may it be before a most dreadful circumstance shall
make it possible for any pen to draw a just and true character of
yourself without incurring a suspicion of flattery in the bosoms of
the malignant. This task, therefore, I shall defer till that day (if I
should be so unfortunate as ever to see it) when every good man shall
pay a tear for the satisfaction of his curiosity; a day which, at
present, I believe, there is but one good man in the world who can
think of it with unconcern.
Accept then, sir, this small token of that love, that gratitude, and
that respect, with which I shall always esteem it my GREATEST HONOUR
to be,
Sir,
Your most obliged,
and most obedient
humble servant,
HENRY FIELDING.
_Bow Street, Dec. 2, 1751._
[Illustration.]
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