Henry Fielding: a Memoir. G. M. Godden
an honourable declaration of war against indecency and libel that the young wit and man of fashion, began his career as "hackney writer." If to modern taste the first promise lacks something of fulfilment, it is but just to remember that to other times belong other manners.
In the play, rustic and philosophic virtue is prettily rewarded by the possession of a beautiful heiress, while certain mercenary fops withdraw in signal discomfiture; and that Fielding, at one and twenty, had already passed judgment on that glittering 'tinsel' tribe, is clear enough from his portrait of the "empty gaudy nameless thing," Lord Formal. Lord Formal appears on the stage with a complexion much agitated by a day of business spent with "three milleners, two perfumers, my bookseller's and a fanshop." In the course of these fatigues he has "rid down two brace of chairmen"; and had raised his colour to "that exorbitancy of Vermeille" that it will hardly be reduced "under a fortnight's course of acids." It is the true spirit of comedy which introduces into this closely perfumed atmosphere the bluff country figure of Sir Positive Trap, with his exordiums on the rustic ladies, and on "the good old English art of clear-starching." Sir Positive hopes "to see the time when a man may carry his daughter to market with the same lawful authority as any other of his cattle"; and causes Lord Formal some moments' perplexity, his lordship being "not perfectly determinate what species of animal to assign him to, unless he be one of those barbarous insects the polite call country squires." In this production of a youth of twenty we may find a foretaste of that keen relish in watching the human comedy, that vigorous scorn of avarice, that infectious laughter at pretentious folly, which accompanied the novelist throughout his life.
To this same year is attributed a poem called the Masquerade, which need only be noticed as again emphasising its author's lifelong war against the evils of his time. The Masquerade is a satire on the licentious gatherings organised by the notorious Count Heidegger, Master of the Revels to the Court of George II.
Many years later Fielding reprinted 3 two other poetical effusions bearing the date of this his twenty-first year. Of these the first, entitled "A Description of U----n G---- (alias New Hog's Norton) in Com-Hants" identified by Mr. Keightley as Upton Grey in Hampshire, is addressed to the fair Rosalinda, by her disconsolate Alexis. Alexis bewails his exile among
"Unpolish'd Nymphs and more unpolish'd Swains,"
and describes himself as condemned to live in a dwelling half house, half shed, with a garden full of docks and nettles, the fruit-trees bearing only snails--
"Happy for us had Eve's this Garden been She'd found no Fruit, and therefore known no Sin,"--
the dusty meadows innocent of grass, and the company as innocent of wit. This sketch of rural enjoyments recalls a later utterance in Jonathan Wild, concerning the votaries of a country life who, with their trees, "enjoy the air and the sun in common and both vegetate with very little difference between them." With one or two eloquent exceptions there is scarce a page in Fielding's books devoted to any interest other than that of human nature.
The second fragment is a graceful little copy of verse addressed to Euthalia, in which we may note, by the way, that the fair Rosalinda's charms are ungallantly made use of as a foil to Euthalia's dazzling perfections. As Fielding found these verses not unworthy of a page in his later Miscellanies they are here recalled:
TO EUTHALIA.
WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1728.
"Burning with Love, tormented with Despair,
Unable to forget or ease his Care;
In vain each practis'd art Alexis tries; In vain to Books, to Wine or Women flies; Each brings Euthalia's Image to his Eyes. In Lock's or Newton's Page her Learning glows; Dryden the Sweetness of her Numbers shews; In all their various Excellence I find The various Beauties of her perfect Mind. How vain in Wine a short Relief I boast! Each sparkling Glass recalls my charming Toast. To Women then successless I repair, Engage the Young, the Witty, and the Fair. When Sappho's Wit each envious Breast alarms, And Rosalinda looks ten thousand Charms; In vain to them my restless Thoughts would run; Like fairest Stars, they show the absent Sun."
Love in Several Masks was produced, as we have seen, in February, 1728; and it is a little surprising to find the young dramatist suddenly appearing, four weeks later, as a University student. He was entered at the University of Leyden, as "Litt. Stud," on the 16th of March 1728. The reason of this sudden change from the green-room of Drury Lane to the ancient Dutch university must be purely matter of conjecture, as is the nature of Fielding's undergraduate studies, Murphy having lately been proved to be notably erroneous as to this episode. 4 His name occurs as staying, on his entry at Leyden, at the "Casteel von Antwerpen"; and again, a year later, in the recensiones of the University for February 1729, as domiciled with one Jan Oson. As all students were annually registered, the omission of any later entry proves that he left Leyden before 1730; with which meagre facts and his own incidental remark that the comedy of Don Quixote in England was "begun at Leyden in the year 1728," our knowledge of the two years of Fielding's university career concludes. In February 1730 he was presumably back in London, that being the date of his next play, the Temple Beau, produced by Giffard, the actor, at the new theatre in Goodman's Fields.
The prologue to the Temple Beau was written by that man of many parts, James Ralph, the hack writer, party journalist and historian, who was in after years to collaborate with Fielding, both as a theatrical manager and as a journalist. Ralph's opening lines are of interest as bearing on Fielding's antagonism to the harlequinades and variety shows, then threatening the popularity of legitimate drama:
"Humour and Wit, in each politer Age, Triumphant, rear'd the Trophies of the Stage: But only Farce, and Shew, will now go down, And HARLEQUIN'S the Darling of the Town."
Ralph bids his audience turn to the 'infant stage' of Goodman's Fields for matter more worthy their attention; and his promise that there
"The Comick Muse, in Smiles severely gay, Shall scoff at Vice, and laugh its Crimes away"
must surely have been inspired by the young genius from whom twenty years later came the formal declaration of his endeavour, in Tom Jones, "to laugh mankind out of their favourite follies and vices."
The special follies of the Temple Beau have, for background, of course, those precincts in which Fielding was later to labour so assiduously as a student, and as a member of the Middle Temple; but where, as the young Templar of the play observes, "dress and the ladies" might also very pleasantly employ a man's time. But except for an oblique hit at duelling, a custom which Fielding was later to attack with curious warmth, this second play seems to yield few passages of biographical interest. Of very different value for our purpose is the third play, which within only two months appeared from a pen stimulated, presumably, by empty pockets. This was the comedy entitled the Author's Farce, being the first portion of a medley which included the 'Puppet Show call'd the Pleasures of the Town; the whole being acted in the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, long since demolished in favour of the present building.
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