e
could keep himself in paper for the manuscripts of his plays. For others
the rancour of Smollett calls up a Fielding who divides his time and
energy between blowing a trumpet on a Smithfield show and playing Captain
Bilkum to a flesh-and-blood Stormandra at the establishment of a living,
breathing, working Mother Punchbowl. With Dr. Rimbault and Professor
Henry Morley others yet evolve from their inner consciousness a Fielding
with a booth in Smithfield, buffooning for the coppers of a Bartlemy Fair
audience. The accomplished lawyer has had as little place in men's
thoughts as the tender father, the admirable artist as little as the
devoted husband and the steadfast friend. Fielding has been so often
painted a hard drinker that few have thought of him as a hard reader; he
has been suspected of conjugal infidelity, so it has seemed impossible
that he should be other than a violent Bohemian. In certain chapters of
_Jonathan Wild the Great_ there is enough of sustained intellectual
effort to furnish forth a hundred modern novels; but you only think of
Fielding reeling home from the Rose, and refuse to consider him except as
sitting down with his head in a wet towel to scribble immodest and
ruffianly trash for the players! A consequence of all these exercises in
sentiment and imagination has been that, while many have been ready to
deal with Fielding as the text for a sermon or the subject of an essay,
as the point of a moral or the adornment of a tale, few have cared to
think of him as worthy to dispute the palm with Cervantes and Sir Walter
as the heroic man of letters.

Facts.

He is before all things else a writer to be studied. He wrote for the
world at large and to the end that he might be read eternally. His
matter, his manner, the terms of his philosophy, the quality of his
ideals, the nature of his achievement, proclaim him universal. Like
Scott, like Cervantes, like Shakespeare, he claims not merely our
acquaintance but an intimate and abiding familiarity. He has no special
public, and to be only on nodding terms with him is to be practically
dead to his attraction and unworthy his society. He worked not for the
boys and girls of an age but for the men and women of all time; and both
as artist and as thinker he commands unending attention and lifelong
friendship. He is a great inventor, an unrivalled craftsman, a perfect
master of his material. His achievement is the result of a life-time of