Joseph Andrews, vol 1 | Page 5

years of queer
experience on (as Mr Carlyle would have said) the "burning marl" of
the London Bohemia. Very shortly afterwards he was chosen Chairman
of Quarter Sessions, and established himself in Bow Street. The Bow
Street magistrate of that time occupied a most singular position, and
was more like a French Prefect of Police or even a Minister of Public
Safety than a mere justice. Yet he was ill paid. Fielding says that the
emoluments, which before his accession had but been L500 a year of
"dirty" money, were by his own action but L300 of clean; and the work,
if properly performed, was very severe.
That he performed it properly all competent evidence shows, a foolish,
inconclusive, and I fear it must be said emphatically snobbish story of
Walpole's notwithstanding. In particular, he broke up a gang of
cut-throat thieves, which had been the terror of London. But his tenure
of the post was short enough, and scarcely extended to five years. His
health had long been broken, and he was now constantly attacked by
gout, so that he had frequently to retreat on Bath from Bow Street, or
his suburban cottage of Fordhook, Ealing. But he did not relax his
literary work. His pen was active with pamphlets concerning his office;
Amelia, his last novel, appeared towards the close of 1751; and next
year saw the beginning of a new paper, the Covent Garden Journal,
which appeared twice a week, ran for the greater part of the year, and
died in November. Its great author did not see that month twice again.
In the spring of 1753 he grew worse; and after a year's struggle with ill
health, hard work, and hard weather, lesser measures being pronounced
useless, was persuaded to try the "Portugal Voyage," of which he has
left so charming a record in the Journey to Lisbon. He left Fordhook on
June 26, 1754, reached Lisbon in August, and, dying there on the 8th of
October, was buried in the cemetery of the Estrella.
Of not many writers perhaps does a clearer notion, as far as their

personality goes, exist in the general mind that interests itself at all in
literature than of Fielding. Yet more than once a warning has been
sounded, especially by his best and most recent biographer, to the effect
that this idea is founded upon very little warranty of scripture. The truth
is, that as the foregoing record--which, brief as it is, is a sufficiently
faithful summary--will have shown, we know very little about Fielding.
We have hardly any letters of his, and so lack the best by far and the
most revealing of all character-portraits; we have but one important
autobiographic fragment, and though that is of the highest interest and
value, it was written far in the valley of the shadow of death, it is not in
the least retrospective, and it affords but dim and inferential light on his
younger, healthier, and happier days and ways. He came, moreover,
just short of one set of men of letters, of whom we have a great deal of
personal knowledge, and just beyond another. He was neither of those
about Addison, nor of those about Johnson. No intimate friend of his
has left us anything elaborate about him. On the other hand, we have a
far from inconsiderable body of documentary evidence, of a kind often
by no means trustworthy. The best part of it is contained in the letters
of his cousin, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and the reminiscences or
family traditions of her grand-daughter, Lady Louisa Stuart. But Lady
Mary, vivacious and agreeable as she is, had with all her talent a very
considerable knack of writing for effect, of drawing strong contrasts
and the like; and it is not quite certain that she saw very much of
Fielding in the last and most interesting third of his life. Another
witness, Horace Walpole, to less knowledge and equally dubious
accuracy, added decided ill-will, which may have been due partly to the
shrinking of a dilettante and a fop from a burly Bohemian; but I fear is
also consequent upon the fact that Horace could not afford to despise
Fielding's birth, and knew him to be vastly his own superior in genius.
We hear something of him again from Richardson; and Richardson
hated him with the hatred of dissimilar genius, of inferior social
position, and, lastly, of the cat for the dog who touzles and worries her.
Johnson partly inherited or shared Richardson's aversion, partly was
blinded to Fielding's genius by his aggressive Whiggery. I fear, too,
that he was incapable of appreciating it for reasons other than political.
It is certain that Johnson, sane and robust as he was, was never quite at
ease before genius of the