When the Champion was rather more than a year old, Colley Cibber published his famous Apology. To the attacks made upon him by Fielding at different times he had hitherto printed no reply — perhaps he had no opportunity of doing so. But in his eighth chapter, when speaking of the causes which led to the Licensing Act, he takes occasion to refer to his assailant in terms which Fielding must have found exceedingly galling. He carefully abstained from mentioning his name, on the ground that it could do him no good, and was of no importance; but he described him as “a broken Wit,” who had sought notoriety “by raking the Channel” (i.e. Kennel), and “pelting his Superiors.” He accused him, with a scandalised gravity that is as edifying as Chesterfield’s irony, of attacking “Religion, Laws, Government, Priests, Judges, and Ministers.” He called him, either in allusion to his stature, or his pseudonym in the Champion, a “Herculean Satyrist,” a “Drawcansir in Wit”— “who, to make his Poetical Fame immortal, like another Erostratus, set Fire to his Stage, by writing up to an Act of Parliament to demolish it. I shall not,” he continues, “give the particular Strokes of his Ingenuity a Chance to be remembered, by reciting them; it may be enough to say, in general Terms, they were so openly flagrant, that the Wisdom of the Legislature thought it high time, to take a proper Notice of them.”
Fielding was not the man to leave such a challenge unanswered. In the Champion for April 22, 1740, and two subsequent papers, he replied with a slashing criticism of the Apology, in which, after demonstrating that it must be written in English because it was written in no other language, he gravely proceeds to point out examples of the author’s superiority to grammar and learning — and in general, subjects its pretentious and slip-shod style to a minute and highly detrimental examination. In a further paper he returns to the charge by a mock trial of one “Col. Apol.” (i.e. Colley-Apology), arraigning him for that, “not having the Fear of Grammar before his Eyes,” he had committed an unpardonable assault upon his mother-tongue. Fielding’s knowledge of legal forms and phraseology enabled him to make a happy parody of court procedure, and Mr. Lawrence says that this particular “jeu d’esprit obtained great celebrity.” But the happiest stroke in the controversy — as it seems to us — is one which escaped Mr. Lawrence, and occurs in the paper already referred to, where Charon and Mercury are shown denuding the luckless passengers by the Styx of their surplus impedimenta. Among the rest, approaches “an elderly Gentleman with a Piece of wither’d Laurel on his head.” From a little book, which he is discovered (when stripped) to have bound close to his heart, and which bears the title of Love in a Riddle — an unsuccessful pastoral produced by Cibber at Drury Lane in 1729 — it is clear that this personage is intended for none other than the Apologist, who, after many entreaties, is finally compelled to part with his treasure. “I was surprized,” continues Fielding, “to see him pass Examination with his Laurel on, and was assured by the Standers by, that Mercury would have taken it off, if he had seen it.”
These attacks in the Champion do not appear to have received any direct response from Cibber. But they were reprinted in a rambling production issued from “Curll’s chaste press” in 1740, and entitled the Tryal of Colley Cibber, Comedian, &c. At the end of this there is a short address to “the Self-dubb’d Captain Hercules Vinegar, alias Buffoon,” to the effect that “the malevolent Flings exhibited by him and his Man Ralph,” have been faithfully reproduced. Then comes the following curious and not very intelligible “Advertisement:” —
“If the Ingenious Henry Fielding Esq.; (Son of the Hon. Lieut. General Fielding, who upon his Return from his Travels entered himself of the Temple in order to study the Law, and married one of the pretty Miss Cradocks of Salisbury) will own himself the AUTHOR of 18 strange Things called Tragical Comedies and Comical Tragedies, lately advertised by J. Watts, of Wild-Court, Printer, he shall be mentioned in Capitals in the Third Edition of Mr. CIBBER’S Life, and likewise be placed among the Poetae minores Dramatici of the Present Age: Then will both his Name and Writings be remembered on Record, in the immortal Poetical Register written by Mr. GILES JACOB.”
The “poetical register” indicated was the book of that name, containing the Lives and Characteristics of the English Dramatic Poets, which Mr. Giles Jacob, an industrious literary hack, had issued in 1723. Mr. Lawrence is probably right in his supposition, based upon the foregoing advertisement, that Fielding “had openly expressed resentment at being described by Cibber as ‘a broken wit,’ without being mentioned by name.” He never seems to have wholly forgotten his animosity to the actor, to whom there are frequent references in Joseph Andrews; and, as late as 1749, he is still found harping on “the withered laurel” in a letter to Lyttelton. Even in his last work, the Voyage to Lisbon, Cibber’s name is mentioned. The origin of this protracted feud is obscure; but, apart from want of sympathy, it must probably be sought for in some early misunderstanding between the two in their capacities of manager and author. As regards Theophilus Cibber, his desertion of Highmore was sufficient reason for the ridicule cast upon him in the Author’s Farce and elsewhere. With Mrs. Charke, the Laureate’s intractable and eccentric daughter, Fielding was naturally on better terms. She was, as already stated, a member of the Great Mogul’s Company, and it is worth noting that some of the sarcasms in Pasquin against her father were put into the mouth of Lord Place, whose part was taken by this undutiful child. All things considered, both in this controversy and the later one with Pope, Cibber did not come off worst. His few hits were personal and unscrupulous, and they were probably far more deadly in their effects than any of the ironical attacks which his adversaries, on their part, directed against his poetical ineptitude or halting “parts of speech.” Despite his superlative coxcombry and egotism, he was, moreover, a man of no mean abilities. His Careless Husband is a far better acting play than any of Fielding’s, and his Apology, which even Johnson allowed to be “well-done,” is valuable in many respects, especially for its account of the contemporary stage. In describing an actor or actress he had few equals — witness his skilful portrait of Nokes, and his admirably graphic vignette of Mrs. Verbruggen as that “finish’d Impertinent,” Melantha, in Dryden’s Marriage a-la-Mode.
The concluding paper in the collected edition of the Champion, published in 1741, is dated June 19, 1740. On the day following Fielding was called to the Bar by the benchers of the Middle Temple, and (says Mr. Lawrence) “chambers were assigned him in Pump Court.” Simultaneously with this, his regular connection with journalism appears to have ceased, although from his statement in the Preface to the Miscellanies, — that “as long as from June 1741,” he had “desisted from writing one Syllable in the Champion, or any other public Paper,” — it may perhaps be inferred that up to that date he continued to contribute now and then. This, nevertheless, is by no means clear. His last utterance in the published volumes is certainly in a sense valedictory, as it refers to the position acquired by the Champion, and the difficulty experienced in establishing it. Incidentally, it pays a high compliment to Pope, by speaking of “the divine Translation of the Iliad, which he [Fielding] has lately with no Disadvantage to the Translator COMPARED with the Original,” the point of the sentence so impressed by its typography, being apparently directed against those critics who had condemned Pope’s work without the requisite knowledge of Greek. From the tenor of the rest of the essay it may, however, be concluded that the writer was taking leave of his enterprise; and, according to a note by Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, it seems that Mr. Reed of Staple Inn possessed documents which showed that Fielding at this juncture, probably in anticipation of more lucrative legal duties, surrendered the reins to Ralph. The Champion continued to exist for some time longer; indeed, it must be regarded as long-lived among the essayists, since the issue which contained its well-known criticism on Garrick is No. 455, and appeared late in 1742. But as far as can be ascertained, it never again obtained the honours of a reprint.
Although, after he was called to the Bar, Fieldin
g practically relinquished periodical literature, he does not seem to have entirely desisted from writing. In Sylvanus Urban’s Register of Books, published during January 1741, is advertised the poem Of True Greatness afterwards included in the Miscellanies; and the same authority announces the Vernoniad, an anonymous burlesque Epic prompted by Admiral Vernon’s popular expedition against Porto Bello in 1739, “with six Ships only.” That Fielding was the author of the latter is sufficiently proved by his order to Mr. Nourse (printed in Roscoe’s edition), to deliver fifty copies to Mr. Chappel. Another sixpenny pamphlet, entitled The Opposition, a Vision, issued in December of the same year, is enumerated by him, in the Preface to the Miscellanies, among the few works he had published “since the End of June 1741;” and, provided it can be placed before this date, he may be credited with a political sermon called the Crisis (1741), which is ascribed to him upon the authority of a writer in Nichols’s Anecdotes. He may also, before “the End of June 1741,” have written other things; but it is clear from his Caveat in the above-mentioned “Preface,” together with his complaint that “he had been very unjustly censured, as well on account of what he had not writ, as for what he had,” that much more has been laid to his charge than he ever deserved. Among ascriptions of this kind may be mentioned the curious Apology for the Life of Mr. The’ Cibber, Comedian, 1740, which is described on its title-page as a proper sequel to the autobiography of the Laureate, in whose “style and manner” it is said to be written. But, although this performance is evidently the work of some one well acquainted with the dramatic annals of the day, it is more than doubtful whether Fielding had any hand or part in it. Indeed, his own statement that “he never was, nor would be the Author of anonymous Scandal [the italics are ours] on the private History or Family of any Person whatever,” should be regarded as conclusive.
During all this time he seems to have been steadily applying himself to the practice of his profession, if, indeed, that weary hope deferred which forms the usual probation of legal preferment can properly be so described. As might be anticipated from his Salisbury connections, he travelled the Western Circuit; and, according to Hutchins’s Dorset, he assiduously attended the Wiltshire sessions. He had many friends among his brethren of the Bar. His cousin, Henry Gould, who had been called in 1734, and who, like his grandfather, ultimately became a Judge, was also a member of the Middle Temple; and he was familiar with Charles Pratt, afterwards Lord Camden, whom he may have known at Eton, but whom he certainly knew in his barrister days. It is probable, too, that he was acquainted with Lord Northington, then Robert Henley, whose name appears as a subscriber to the Miscellanies, and who was once supposed to contend with Kettleby (another subscriber) for the honour of being the original of the drunken barrister in Hogarth’s Midnight Modern Conversation, a picture which no doubt accurately represents a good many of the festivals by which Henry Fielding relieved the tedium of composing those MS. folio volumes on Crown or Criminal Law, which, after his death, reverted to his half-brother, Sir John. But towards the close of 1741 he was engaged upon another work which has outweighed all his most laborious forensic efforts, and which will long remain an English classic. This was The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams, published by Andrew Millar in February 1742.
In the same number, and at the same page of the Gentleman’s Magazine which contains the advertisement of the Vernoniad, there is a reference to a famous novel which had appeared in November 1740, two months earlier, and had already attained an extraordinary popularity. “Several Encomiums (says Mr. Urban) on a Series of Familiar Letters, publish’d but last month, entitled PAMELA or Virtue rewarded, came too late for this Magazine, and we believe there will be little Occasion for inserting them in our next; because a Second Edition will then come out to supply the Demands in the Country, it being judged in Town as great a Sign of Want of Curiosity not to have read Pamela, as not to have seen the French and Italian Dancers.” A second edition was in fact published in the following month (February), to be speedily succeeded by a third in March and a fourth in May. Dr. Sherlock (oddly misprinted by Mrs. Barbauld as “Dr. Slocock”) extolled it from the pulpit; and the great Mr. Pope was reported to have gone farther and declared that it would “do more good than many volumes of sermons.” Other admirers ranked it next to the Bible; clergymen dedicated theological treatises to the author; and “even at Ranelagh” — says Richardson’s biographer— “those who remember the publication say, that it was usual for ladies to hold up the volumes of Pamela to one another, to shew that they had got the book that every one was talking of.” It is perhaps hypercritical to observe that Ranelagh Gardens were not opened until eighteen months after Mr. Rivington’s duodecimos first made their appearance; but it will be gathered from the tone of some of the foregoing commendations that its morality was a strong point with the new candidate for literary fame; and its voluminous title-page did indeed proclaim at large that it was “Published in order to cultivate the Principles of Virtue and Religion in the Minds of the Youth of Both Sexes.” Its author, Samuel Richardson, was a middle-aged London printer, a vegetarian and water-drinker, a worthy, domesticated, fussy, and highly-nervous little man. Delighting in female society, and accustomed to act as confidant and amanuensis for the young women of his acquaintance, it had been suggested to him by some bookseller friends that he should prepare a “little volume of Letters, in a common style, on such subjects as might be of use to those country readers, who were unable to indite for themselves.” As Hogarth’s Conversation Pieces grew into his Progresses, so this project seems to have developed into Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. The necessity for some connecting link between the letters suggested a story, and the story chosen was founded upon the actual experiences of a young servant girl, who, after victoriously resisting all the attempts made by her master to seduce her, ultimately obliged him to marry her. It is needless to give any account here of the minute and deliberate way in which Richardson filled in this outline. As one of his critics, D’Alembert, has unanswerably said— “La, nature est bonne a imiter, mais non pas jusgu’a l’ennui” — and the author of Pamela has plainly disregarded this useful law. On the other hand, the tedium and elaboration of his style have tended, in these less leisurely days, to condemn his work to a neglect which it does not deserve. Few writers — it is a truism to say so — have excelled him in minute analysis of motive, and knowledge of the human heart. About the final morality of his heroine’s long-drawn defence of her chastity it may, however, be permitted to doubt; and, in contrasting the book with Fielding’s work, it should not be forgotten that, irreproachable though it seemed to the author’s admirers, good Dr. Watts complained (and with reason) of the indelicacy of some of the scenes.
But, for the moment, we are more concerned with the effect which Pamela produced upon Henry Fielding, struggling with the “eternal want of pence, which vexes public men,” and vaguely hoping for some profitable opening for powers which had not yet been satisfactorily exercised. To his robust and masculine genius, never very delicately sensitive where the relations of the sexes are concerned, the strange conjunction of purity and precaution in Richardson’s heroine was a thing unnatural, and a theme for inextinguishable Homeric laughter. That Pamela, through all her trials, could really have cherished any affection for her unscrupulous admirer would seem to him a sentimental absurdity, and the unprecedented success of the book would sharpen his sense of its assailable side. Possibly, too, his acquaintance with Richardson, whom he knew personally, but with whom he could have had no kind of sympathy, disposed him against his work. In any case, the idea presently occurred to Fielding of depicting a young man in circumstances of similar importunity at the hands of a dissolute woman of fashion. He took for his hero Pamela’s brother, and by a malicious stroke of the pen turned the Mr. B. of Pamela into Squire Booby. But the process of invention rapidly carried him into paths far beyond the mere parody of Richardson, and it is only in the first portion of the book tha
t he really remembers his intention. After chapter x. the story follows its natural course, and there is little or nothing of Lady Booby, or her frustrate amours. Indeed, the author does not even pretend to preserve congruity as regards his hero, for, in chapter v., he makes him tell his mistress that he has never been in love, while in chapter xi. we are informed that he had long been attached to the charming Fanny. Moreover, in the intervening letters which Joseph writes to his sister Pamela, he makes no reference to this long-existent attachment, with which, one would think, she must have been perfectly familiar. These discrepancies all point, not so much to negligence on the part of the author, as to an unconscious transformation of his plan. He no doubt speedily found that mere ridicule of Richardson was insufficient to sustain the interest of any serious effort, and, besides, must have been secretly conscious that the “Pamela” characteristics of his hero were artistically irreconcilable with the personal bravery and cudgel-playing attributes with which he had endowed him. Add to this that the immortal Mrs. Slipslop and Parson Adams — the latter especially — had begun to acquire an importance with their creator for which the initial scheme had by no means provided; and he finally seems to have disregarded his design, only returning to it in his last chapters in order to close his work with some appearance of consistency. The History of Joseph Andrews, it has been said, might well have dispensed with Lady Booby altogether, and yet, without her, not only this book, but Tom Jones and Amelia also, would probably have been lost to us. The accident which prompted three such masterpieces cannot be honestly regretted.
Complete Fictional Works of Henry Fielding Page 429