at it is necessary
to assign any very special origin to it, though Lucian, its chief
practitioner, was evidently and almost avowedly a favorite study of
Fielding's. The Spanish romancers, whether borrowing it from Lucian or
not, had been fond of it; their French followers, of whom the chief were
Fontenelle and Le Sage, had carried it northwards; the English essayists
had almost from the beginning continued the process of acclimatization.
Fielding therefore found it ready to his hand, though the present
condition of this example would lead us to suppose that he did not find
his hand quite ready to it. Still, in the actual "journey," there are
touches enough of the master--not yet quite in his stage of mastery.
It seemed particularly desirable not to close the series without some
representation of the work to which Fielding gave the prime of his
manhood, and from which, had he not, fortunately for English literature,
been driven decidedly against his will, we had had in all probability no
Joseph Andrews, and pretty certainly no Tom Jones. Fielding's periodical
and dramatic work has been comparatively seldom reprinted, and has
never yet been reprinted as a whole. The dramas indeed are open to two
objections--the first, that they are not very "proper;" the second, and
much more serious, that they do not redeem this want of propriety by the
possession of any remarkable literary merit. Three (or two and part of
a third) seemed to escape this double censure--the first two acts of the
Author's Farce (practically a piece to themselves, for the Puppet Show
which follows is almost entirely independent); the famous burlesque of
Tom Thumb, which stands between the Rehearsal and the Critic, but nearer
to the former; and Pasquin, the maturest example of Fielding's satiric
work in drama. These accordingly have been selected; the rest I have
read, and he who likes may read. I have read many worse things than even
the worst of them, but not often worse things by so good a writer as
Henry Fielding. The next question concerned the selection of writings
more miscellaneous still, so as to give in little a complete idea of
Fielding's various powers and experiments. Two difficulties beset this
part of the task--want of space and the absence of anything so markedly
good as absolutely to insist on inclusion. The Essay on Conversation,
however, seemed pretty peremptorily to challenge a place. It is in a
style which Fielding was very slow to abandon