Joseph Andrews, vol 1 | Page 4

returned to town; for early in
1736 we find him back again, and not merely a playwright, but lessee
of the "Little Theatre" in the Haymarket. The plays which he produced
here--satirico-political pieces, such as Pasquin and the _Historical
Register_--were popular enough, but offended the Government; and in
1737 a new bill regulating theatrical performances, and instituting the
Lord Chamberlain's control, was passed. This measure put an end
directly to the "Great Mogul's Company," as Fielding had called his
troop, and indirectly to its manager's career as a playwright. He did
indeed write a few pieces in future years, but they were of the smallest
importance.
After this check he turned at last to a serious profession, entered
himself of the Middle Temple in November of the same year, and was
called three years later; but during these years, and indeed for some
time afterwards, our information about him is still of the vaguest
character. Nobody doubts that he had a large share in the Champion, an
essay-periodical on the usual eighteenth-century model, which began to
appear in 1739, and which is still occasionally consulted for the work
that is certainly or probably his. He went the Western Circuit, and
attended the Wiltshire Sessions, after he was called, giving up his
contributions to periodicals soon after that event. But he soon returned
to literature proper, or rather made his debut in it, with the immortal
book now republished. The _History of the Adventures of Joseph
Andrews, and his Friend Mr Abraham Adams_, appeared in February
1742, and its author received from Andrew Millar, the publisher, the
sum of L183, 11s. Even greater works have fetched much smaller sums;
but it will be admitted that Joseph Andrews was not dear.
The advantage, however, of presenting a survey of an author's life
uninterrupted by criticism is so clear, that what has to be said about

Joseph may be conveniently postponed for the moment. Immediately
after its publication the author fell back upon miscellaneous writing,
and in the next year (1743) collected and issued three volumes of
Miscellanies. In the two first volumes the only thing of much interest is
the unfinished and unequal, but in part powerful, Journey from this
World to the Next, an attempt of a kind which Fontenelle and others,
following Lucian, had made very popular with the time. But the third
volume of the Miscellanies deserved a less modest and gregarious
appearance, for it contained, and is wholly occupied by, the wonderful
and terrible satire of Jonathan Wild, the greatest piece of pure irony in
English out of Swift. Soon after the publication of the book, a great
calamity came on Fielding. His wife had been very ill when he wrote
the preface; soon afterwards she was dead. They had taken the chance,
had made the choice, that the more prudent and less wise student-hero
and heroine of Mr Browning's Youth and Art had shunned; they had no
doubt "sighed deep, laughed free, Starved, feasted, despaired," and we
need not question, that they had also "been happy."
Except this sad event and its rather incongruous sequel, Fielding's
marriage to his wife's maid Mary Daniel--a marriage, however, which
did not take place till full four years later, and which by all accounts
supplied him with a faithful and excellent companion and nurse, and
his children with a kind stepmother--little or nothing is again known of
this elusive man of genius between the publication of the Miscellanies
in 1743, and that of Tom Jones in 1749. The second marriage itself in
November 1747; an interview which Joseph Warton had with him
rather more than a year earlier (one of the very few direct interviews we
have); the publication of two anti-Jacobite newspapers (Fielding was
always a strong Whig and Hanoverian), called the True Patriot and the
_Jacobite's Journal_ in 1745 and the following years; some indistinct
traditions about residences at Twickenham and elsewhere, and some,
more precise but not much more authenticated, respecting patronage by
the Duke of Bedford, Mr Lyttelton, Mr Allen, and others, pretty well
sum up the whole.
Tom Jones was published in February (a favourite month with Fielding
or his publisher Millar) 1749; and as it brought him the, for those days,
very considerable sum of L600 to which Millar added another hundred
later, the novelist must have been, for a time at any rate, relieved from

his chronic penury. But he had already, by Lyttelton's interest, secured
his first and last piece of preferment, being made Justice of the Peace
for Westminster, an office on which he entered with characteristic
vigour. He was qualified for it not merely by a solid knowledge of the
law, and by great natural abilities, but by his thorough kindness of heart;
and, perhaps, it may also be added, by his long