othes,
and good company, which are all expensive articles to purchase, Harry
Fielding began to run into debt, and borrow money in that easy manner in
which Captain Booth borrows money in the novel: was in nowise particular
in accepting a few pieces from the purses of his rich friends, and bore
down upon more than one of them, as Walpole tells us only too truly, for a
dinner or a guinea. To supply himself with the latter, he began to write
theatrical pieces, having already, no doubt, a considerable acquaintance
amongst the Oldfields and Bracegirdles behind the scenes. He laughed at
these pieces and scorned them. When the audience upon one occasion began
to hiss a scene which he was too lazy to correct, and regarding which,
when Garrick remonstrated with him, he said that the public was too stupid
to find out the badness of his work;--when the audience began to hiss,
Fielding said, with characteristic coolness--"They have found it out, have
they?" He did not prepare his novels in this way, and with a very
different care and interest laid the foundations and built up the edifices
of his future fame.

Time and shower have very little damaged those. The fashion and ornaments
are, perhaps, of the architecture of that age; but the buildings remain
strong and lofty, and of admirable proportions--masterpieces of genius and
monuments of workmanlike skill.

I cannot offer or hope to make a hero of Harry Fielding. Why hide his
faults? Why conceal his weaknesses in a cloud of periphrases? Why not show
him, like him as he is, not robed in a marble toga, and draped and
polished in a heroic attitude, but with inked ruffles, and claret stains
on his tarnished laced coat, and on his manly face the marks of good
fellowship, of illness, of kindness, of care, and wine. Stained as you see
him, and worn by care and dissipation, that man retains some of the most
precious and splendid human qualities and endowments. He has an admirable
natural love of truth, the keenest instinctive antipathy to hypocrisy, the
happiest satirical gift of laughing it to scorn. His wit is wonderfully
wise and detective; it flashes upon a rogue and lightens up a rascal like
a policeman's lantern. He is one of the manliest and kindliest of human
beings: in the midst of all his imperfections, he respects female
innocence and infantine tenderness, as you would suppose such a
great-hearted, courageous soul would respect and care for them. He could
not be so brave, gene