Henry Fielding: A Memoir | Page 9

From the absence of his name on the
college lists, it may be inferred that he was an Oppidan. It is said that
he gave "distinguished proofs of strong and peculiar parts"; and that he
left the school with a good reputation as a classical scholar. And it is
not surprising to learn that here, as he himself tells us, his vigorous
energies made acquaintance with that 'birchen altar' at which most of
the best blood in England has been disciplined. "And thou," he cries,
"O Learning (for without thy Assistance nothing pure, nothing correct,
can Genius produce) do thou guide my Pen. Thee, in thy favourite
Fields, where the limpid gently rolling Thames washes thy Etonian
banks, in early Youth I have worshipped. To thee at thy birchen Altar,
with true Spartan Devotion, I have sacrificed my Blood." [8] That the
sacrifice was not made in vain appears from the reputation with which
Fielding left Eton of being "uncommonly versed in the Greek authors
and an early master of the Latin classics"; and also from the yet better
evidence of his own pages. Long after these boyish days we find him,
in the words of "The man of the Hill," thus eloquently acknowledging
the debt of humanity, and doubtless his own, to those inestimable
treasures bequeathed to the world by ancient Greece: "These Authors,
though they instructed me in no Science by which Men may promise to
themselves to acquire the least Riches, or worldly Power, taught me,
however, the Art of despising the highest Acquisitions of both. They
elevate the Mind, and steel and harden it against the capricious
Invasions of Fortune. They not only instruct in the Knowledge of
Wisdom, but confirm Men in her Habits, and demonstrate plainly, that
this must be our Guide, if we propose ever to arrive at the greatest
worldly Happiness; or to defend ourselves, with any tolerable Security,
against the Misery which everywhere surrounds and invests us." [9]
And that this was no mere figure of speech appears from that touching
picture which Murphy has left us of the brilliant wit, the 'wild' Harry
Fielding, when under the pressure of sickness and poverty, quietly
reading the De Consolations of Cicero. His Plato accompanied him on
the last sad voyage to Lisbon; and his library, when catalogued for sale
on behalf of his widow and children, contained over one hundred and
forty volumes of the Greek and Latin classics.

Thus, supreme student and master as he was of "the vast authentic book
of nature," there is abundant proof that Fielding fulfilled his own axiom
that a "good share of learning" is necessary to the equipment of a
novelist. Let the romance writer's natural parts be what they may,
learning, he declared, "must fit them for use, must direct them in it,
lastly must contribute part at least of the materials." [10] Looking back
on such utterances by the 'father of the English Novel,' written at the
full height of his power, it is but natural to wonder if the boy's eager
application to Greek and Latin drudgery had in it something of
half-conscious preparation for the great part he was destined to play in
the history of English literature.
It is clear that Henry Fielding flung his characteristic energies zealously
into the acquirement of the classical learning proffered him at Eton; but
a fine scholarship, great possession though it be, was not the only gain
of his Eton years. Here, says Murphy in his formal eighteenth-century
phrasing, young Fielding had "the advantage of being early known to
many of the first people in the kingdom, namely Lord Lyttelton, Mr
Fox, Mr Pitt, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, and the late Mr
Winnington, etc."
Of these companions at Eton, George Lyttelton, afterwards known as
the "good Lord Lyttelton," statesman and orator, stands foremost by
virtue of the generous warmth of a friendship continued throughout the
novelist's chequered life. To Lyttelton Tom Jones was dedicated; it was
his generosity, as generously acknowledged, that supplied Fielding, for
a time, with the very means of subsistence; and to him was due the
appointment, subsequently discharged with so much zealous labour, of
Magistrate for Westminster and Middlesex. It is recorded that George
Lyttelton's school exercises "were recommended as models to his
schoolfellows." Another Eton friend, Thomas Winnington, made some
figure in the Whig political world of the day; he was accredited by
Horace Walpole with having an inexhaustible good humour, and
"infinitely more wit than any man I ever knew." Of the friendship with
Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, of which we first hear at Eton, little is
known, save the curious episode of the recovery, many years after its
author's death, of Fielding's lost play _The Good-Natured Man>_,

which had apparently been submitted to Sir Charles, whose celebrity
was great