"the ... Covetous, the Prodigal, the Ambitious, the Voluptuous, the Bully, the Vain, the Hypocrite, the Flatterer, the Slanderer, call aloud for the Champion's Vengeance."--The Champion, Dec. 22, 1739.

There is no record of when or how Fielding disposed of his share in the management of the New Theatre in the Haymarket. But on June 21 1737, Walpole's Bill for regulating the stage received, as we have seen, the royal assent; and there can be no doubt that Sir Robert would at once apply his newly acquired powers to removing the dances of the fiddler, Mr Quiddam, and the drunken consolations of Mr Pillage, from the Haymarket boards, if indeed these gentlemen had not anticipated events by already removing themselves. We may safely assume that Henry Fielding's career as political dramatist came to an abrupt conclusion some time in the summer of 1737. 1

It remains a matter for speculation why, after seven years spent in producing a stream of not unsuccessful social comedies and farces, leading up to a final and brilliant success in the field of political satiric drama, Fielding should have thrown up the stage as a whole, when suddenly debarred from those party onslaughts which had occupied but a fraction of his dramatic energies. The cause was not any lack of popularity. "The farces written by Mr Fielding," wrote Murphy in 1762, "were almost all of them very successful, and many of them are still acted every winter, with a continuance of approbation." And it is obvious that the fashionable vices and follies of the time afforded ample inducement to a satiric dramatist to continue 'laying about him,' even when Ministerial offences had been rendered inviolate by Act of Parliament. Neither was Fielding's sanguine temperament likely to be daunted by the single failure of his farce Eurydice, which had been damned at Drury Lane on February 19 of this same year: "disagreeable impressions," Murphy tells us, "never continued long upon his mind." The most satisfactory solution of the matter seems to be that now, in the approaching maturity of his powers, the 'Father of the English Novel' was becoming conscious that the true field for his genius lay in a hitherto unattempted form of imaginative narration, and not within the five acts of comedy or farce. The entirely original conceptions of a Joseph Andrews and a Jonathan Wild may already have begun to captivate the vigorous energies of his mind. We have his own word for assigning "some years" to the writing of Tom Jones; it is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that the conception of the first English "Comic Epic Poem in Prose" may date as far back as the summer of 1737.

Leaving surmise for fact, it is certain that this year marks the dividing line in Fielding's life.

Henceforth he ceases to be the witty, facile, popular dramatist; and he enters slowly on his birthright as the first in time, if not in genius, of English novelists. To this complete severance from the theatre belongs his own remark that "he left off writing for the stage when he ought to have begun." Arrived at a late maturity, and with accumulated stores of observation and insight,--"he saw the latent sources of human action," says Murphy--his genius happily turned into a channel carved, with splendid originality, for itself alone. After nine years of servitude to the limitations of dramatic construction, limitations he was wont to relieve, as his friend James Harris tells us, by "pleasantly though perhaps rather freely" damning the man who invented fifth acts, Fielding was now soon to discover his freedom in the spacious, hitherto unadventured, regions of prose fiction. But genius, especially genius with wife and child to support, cannot maintain life on inspiration alone; and, accordingly, the ex-dramatist now flung himself, with characteristic impetuosity and courage, into a struggle for independence at the Bar, perhaps the most arduous profession, under all the circumstances, that he could have chosen. For a reputation as the writer of eighteen comedies, and as the reckless political dramatist whose boisterous energies had set the town ringing with Pasquin and the Register, the fame in short of being the successful manager of The Great Mogul's Company of Comedians, was surely the last reputation in the world to bring a man briefs from cautious attorneys. And, with whatever hopes of political patronage, any temperament less buoyant might well have hesitated to embark on reading for the Bar at the age of thirty. But "by dificulties," says his earliest biographer, "his resolution was never subdued; on the contrary they only roused him to struggle through them with a peculiar spirit and magnanimity." So, within six months of the closing down of his little theatre under Walpole's irate hand, Fielding had formally entered himself as a student at the Middle Temple.

The entry in the books of that society runs as follows:--

[574 G] 1 Nov'ris. 1737.
Henricus Fielding, de East Stour in Com Dorset Ar, filius et haeres apparens Brig: Gen'lis: Edmundi Fielding admissus est in Societatem Medii Templi Lond specialiter at obligatur una cum &c.
Et dat pro fine 4. 0. 0.

Of the ensuing two and a half years of student life in the Temple we know practically nothing, beyond one vivacious picture of Harry Fielding's attack upon the law. "His application while a student in the Temple," writes Murphy, "was remarkably intense; and though it happened that the early taste he had taken of pleasure would occasionally return upon him, and conspire with his spirits and vivacity to carry him into the wild enjoyments of the town, yet it was particular in him that amidst all his dispositions nothing could suppress the thirst he had for knowledge, and the delight he felt in reading; and this prevailed in him to such a degree, that he has been frequently known by his intimates, to retire late at night from a tavern to his chambers, and there read and make extracts from the most abstruse authors, for several hours before he went to bed; so powerful were the vigour of his constitution and the activity of his mind."

One of the few pages of Fielding's autograph that have come down to us is presumably a relic of these student days. In the catalogue of the Morrison Manuscripts occurs this description of two undated pages in his hand: "List of offences against the King and his state immediately, which the Law terms High Treason. Offences against him in a general light as touching the Commonwealth at large, as Trade etc. Offences against him as supreme Magistrate etc." Were ever genius and wit more straitly or more honourably shackled than that of Henry Fielding, gallantly accepting such toil as this, toil moreover that must have weighed with double weight on a man who had spent nine years in the company of those charming if 'fickle jades' the Muses.

All efforts have failed to trace where Fielding and his wife and child (or children--the date of the birth of his daughter Harriet is not known) lived during these laborious months; but that money was needed in the summer following his entry at the Middle Temple may be inferred from the sale of the property at Stour. According to the legal note of this transaction, 2 "Henry ffeilding and Charlotte his wife" conveyed, in the Trinity Term of 1738, to one Thomas Hayter, for the sum of £260, "two messuages, two dove-houses, three gardens, three orchards, fifty acres of Land, eighty acres of meadow, one hundred and forty acres of pasture, ten acres of wood and common and pasture for all manner of cattle with the appurtenances in East Stour." It does not need a very active imagination to realise the keen regret with which Fielding must have parted with his gardens and orchards, his pastures, woods and commons. Sixty years ago the barn and one of the "dove-houses" had been but recently pulled down; and to this day the estate is still known as "Fielding's Farm." 3

It has been stated, on what authority does not appear, that, after leaving Stour, Fielding went to Salisbury, and there bought a house, his solicitor being a Mr John Perm Tinney. Whatever be the fact as to the Salisbury residence, it is certain that a full year after the sale of the Dorsetshire property the Temple student was by no means at the end of his resources. For in the following letter 4 to Mr Nourse, the bookseller, dated July 1739, we find him requiring a London house at a rent of forty pounds and with a large "eating Parlour."

"Mr Nourse,

Disappointments have hitherto prevented my paying y'r Bill, which, I shall certainly do on my coming to Town which will be next Month. I desire the favour of y'u to look for a House for me near the Temple. I must have one large eating Parlour in it for the rest shall not be very nice.

Rent not upwards of £40 p. an: and as much cheaper as may be. I will take a Lease for Seven years. Yr Answer to this within a fortnight will much oblige.

Y'r Humble Serv't
Henry Ffielding.
I have got Cro: Eliz. 5
"July 9th 1739."

This note, written a year before Fielding's call to the Bar, suggests that his early married life was by no means spent in the "wretched garrett" of Lady Louisa Stuart's celebrated reminiscence.

In the September following the sale of his Dorsetshire estate Fielding had to regret the death of George Lillo, to whose success he had devoted so much personal care and energy, when staging Lillo's tragedy Fatal Curiosity on the boards of the little theatre in the Haymarket. The close relationship in intellectual sympathy between Lillo's talent and the genius of Fielding has already been noticed. But apart from this intellectual sympathy, the personal worth and charm of the good tradesman is noteworthy, as affording striking proof of the quality of man chosen by the 'wild Harry Fielding' for regard and friendship. And it should be remembered that in those days to bridge the social gulf between the kinsman of the Earl of Denbigh and a working jeweller, required courage as well as insight. Some time after Lillo's death a generous memorial notice of him appeared in Fielding's paper the Champion. The writer detects in his work "an Heart capable of exquisitely Feeling and Painting human Distresses, but of causing none"; and declares that his title to be called the best tragic poet of his age, "was the least of his Praise, he had the gentlest and honestest Manners, and, at the same Time, the most friendly and obliging. He had a perfect Knowledge of Human Nature, though his Contempt of all base Means of Application, which are the necessary Steps to great Acquaintance, restrained his Conversation within very narrow Bounds: He had the Spirit of an old Roman, joined to the Innocence of a primitive Christian; he was content with his little State of Life, in which his excellent Temper of Mind gave him an Happiness, beyond the Power of Riches, and it was necessary for his Friends to have a sharp Insight into his Want of their Services, as well as good Inclinations or Abilities to serve him. In short he was one of the best of Men, and those who knew him best will most regret his Loss." 6 In the excellent company of Henry Fielding's friends George Lillo may surely take his stand beside the 'good Lord Lyttelton,' the munificent and pious Allen, and not far from 'Parson Adams' himself.

No record has survived of Fielding's share in the political struggles of his party, during his first two years of "intense application" to the law. Walpole's power had been sensibly lessened by the death of the Queen, and he was losing the support of the country and even of the trading classes. The Prince of Wales, now openly hostile to the "great man," was the titular head of an Opposition numbering almost all the men of wit and genius in the kingdom. Lyttelton, Fielding's warmest friend, had become secretary to the Prince, and was recognised as a fluent leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. Another friend, John Duke of Argyll, had joined the ranks of the Opposition in the Lords. On the whole the author of Pasquin, may well have hoped for a speedy fall of the "Colossos," with "its Brains of Lead, its Face of Brass, its Hands of Iron, its Heart of Adamant," and the accession to power of a party not without obligations to the fearless manager of the little theatre in the Haymarket. During these years the Opposition, even though supported by Pope and Chesterfield, Thomson and Bolingbroke, could scarcely fail to utilise the trenchant scorn, the whole-hearted vigour, the boisterous humour, of Fielding's genius; and Murphy, speaking vaguely of Fielding's legal years, says that a "large number of fugitive political tracts, which had their value when the incidents were actually passing on the great scene of business, came from his pen." It is not however till November 1739, two years and a half after the pillorying of Walpole on the Haymarket boards, that Fielding is again clearly seen, 'laying about' him, in those clamourous eighteenth-century politics.

His choice of a new weapon of attack is foreshadowed in the noble concluding words of the Introduction to the Historical Register; words written on the very eve of the Ministerial Bill gagging that and all other political plays: "If nature hath given me any talents at ridiculing vice and imposture, I shall not be indolent, nor afraid of exerting them, while the liberty of the press and stage subsists, that is to say while we have any liberty left among us." A few weeks after these words were published the liberty of the stage was triumphantly stifled by Walpole's Licensing Bill. But even "old Bob" himself dared not lay his hand on the liberty of the British Press; and so we find Mr Pasquin reappearing under the guise, or in the company, of the Champion and Censor of Great Britain, otherwise one Captain Hercules Vinegar, a truculent avenger of wrong and exponent of virtue, in whose fictitious name a political, literary, and didactic newspaper entered the field of party politics on November 15, 1739. The paper, under the title of the Champion, was issued three times a week, and consisted of one leading article, an anti-Ministerial summary of news, and literary notices of new books. The first number announced that the author and owner was the said Captain Hercules Vinegar, and that the Captain would be aided in various departments by members of his family. Thus the Captain's wife, Mrs Joan Vinegar, a matron of a very loquacious temper, was to undertake the ladies' column, and his son Jack was to have "an Eye over the gay Part of the Town." The criticism was to be conducted by Mr Nol Vinegar who was reported to have spent one whole year in examining the use of a single word in Horace. And the politics were to be dealt forth by the Captain's father, a gentleman intimately versed in kingdoms, potentates and Ministers, and of so close a disposition that he "seldom opens his Mouth, unless it be to take in his Food, or puff out the Smoke of his Tobacco."

The paper bore no signed articles; but judging from an attack levelled against it in a pamphlet of the following year, 7 Fielding and his former not very worshipful partner in the Haymarket management, James Ralph, were the reputed "authors," Ralph being in a subordinate position. Thus, it is stated that Ralph, "is now say'd to be the 'Squire of the British CHAMPION"; the writer identifies Captain Vinegar and the author of Pasquin as one and the same person; he describes Pasquin and Ralph as the "Authors of the Champion"; he asserts that the old Roman statues of Pasquin and Marfario, "are now dignified and distinguished (by The CHAMPION and his doughty Squire RALPH), under the Names [sic] of Captain Hercules Vinegar."; he prints an address to the "Self-dubb'd Captain Hercules Vinegar," and his "Man Ralph"; and appends some doggerel verse entitled "Vinegar and his gang." But from all this nothing definite emerges as to the precise part taken by Fielding in the authorship of the Champion. The pamphleteer accredits a fragment of a paper signed C. to the Captain, and attributes two papers, 8 signed C. and L., to "Mr Pasquin"--i.e. Fielding; and as the reprint of the Champion, which appeared in 1741, announces that all papers so signed are the "Work of one Hand," there is so much external proof that all such pages in these volumes (numbering some sixty essays) are by Fielding. Dr Nathan Drake, writing in 1809, more than sixty years after the appearance of the paper, asserts, without stating his reasons, that the numbers marked "C." and "L." "were the work of Fielding." This view is further supported by the opinion of Mr Austin Dobson, that many of the papers signed C. "are unmistakably Fielding's."

On the other hand Murphy, writing only twenty-two years after the appearance of the paper, but often with gross inaccuracy, states that the Champion "owed its chief support to his [Fielding's] abilities," but that "his essays in that collection cannot now be so ascertained as to perpetuate them in this edition of his works." Boswell refers to Fielding as possessing a "share" in the paper. A manuscript copy of some of the Minutes of meetings of the Champion partners, written out in an eighteenth-century handwriting, and now in the possession of the present writer, confirms Boswell's note, in as far as an entry therein records that "Henry Fielding Esq. did originally possess Two Sixteenth Shares of the Champion as a Writer in the said paper." One of the lists of the partners of the Champion which occur in the same manuscript, is headed by the name of "Mr Fielding." Finally, a contemporary satirical print shows Fielding with his "length of nose and chin" and his tall figure, acting as standard-bearer of the Champion; the paper being represented in its political capacity of a leading Opposition organ. There is, moreover, the internal evidence of style and sentiment. Thus the matter rests; and although it is exceedingly tempting to use the Champion for inferences as to the manner in which Fielding approached his new craft of journalism, and as to his attitude on the many subjects, theological, social, political and personal, handled in these essays, the evidence seems hardly sufficient to warrant such deductions. It does, however, seem clear, taking as evidence the shilling pamphlet already mentioned, 9 that Harry Fielding, the intrepid and audacious Mr Pasquin of 1736-7 reappeared, laying about him with his ever ready cudgel now raised to the dignity of a miraculous Hercules club, as the Champion of 1739-41. To all lovers of good cudgelling, whether laid on the shoulders of the incorrigible old cynic Sir Robert, or on those of the egregious Colley Cibber, or falling on the follies and abuses of the day, the "Pasquinades and Vinegarades" of Captain Hercules Vinegar, and his "doughty Squire Ralph," may be commended. And no fault can be found with the Captain's declaration, when establishing a Court of Judicature for the trial and punishment of sundry offenders in his pages, that "whatever is wicked, hateful, absurd, or ridiculous, must be exposed and punished, before this Nation is brought to that Height of Purity and good Manners to which I wish to see it exalted." 10

One personal sketch of Fielding himself deserves quotation, whether drawn by his own hand or that of another. The Champion for May 24, 1740, contains a vision of the Infernal Regions, where Charon, the ghostly boatman, is busy ferrying souls across the River Styx. The ferryman bids his attendant Mercury see that all his passengers embark carrying nothing with them; and the narrator describes how, after various Shades had qualified for their passage, "A tall Man came next, who stripp'd off an old Grey Coat with great Readiness, but as he was stepping into the Boat, Mercury demanded half his Chin, which he utterly refused to comply with, insisting on it that it was all his own." Fielding's length of chin and nose was well known; and not less familiar, doubtless, was the 'old Grey Coat,' among the purlieus of the Temple. The beginning of the year 1740, when the lusty Champion and his cudgel were well established, and Captain Hercules' private legal studies were drawing to a close, was marked by a fresh outburst of the old feud with Colley Cibber. Cibber, already notorious as actor, dramatist, manager, the Poet Laureat of "preposterous Odes," and the 'poetical Tailor' who would even cut down Shakespeare himself, now appeared in the character of historian and biographer, publishing early in 1740 the famous Apology for the Life of Mr Colley Cibber, Comedian, and late Patentee of the Theatre Royal. With an Historical View of the Stage during his Own Time.

Cibber, soon to be scornfully chosen by Pope as dunce-hero of the Dunciad, had, for the past six years, been pilloried by Fielding; and, not unmindful of these onslaughts, he inserted in his new work a virulent attack on the late manager of the New Theatre in the Haymarket. The tenor of Pasquin was here grossly misrepresented. Fielding was described as being, at the time of entering on his management, "a Broken Wit"; he was accused of using the basest dramatic means of profit, since "he was in haste to get money"; and the final insult was added by Cibber's stroke of referring to his enemy anonymously, as one whom "I do not chuse to name."

Looking back across two centuries on to the supreme figures of Pope and Fielding, it is matter for some wonder that these giants of the intellect should have greatly troubled to annihilate a Colley Cibber. A finer villain, it seems to us, might have been chosen by Pope for the six hundred lines of his Dunciad a worthier target might have drawn the arrows of Fielding's Champion. But Cibber possessed at least the art of arousing notable enmities; and the four slashing papers in which the Champion 11 promptly parried the scurrilities of the Apology still make pretty reading for those who are curious in the annals of literary warfare. It is noteworthy that these Champion retorts are honourably free from the personalities of an age incredibly gross in the use of personal invective. Fielding's journal, even under the stinging provocation of the insults of the Apology, was still true to the standard set in the Prologue of his first boyish play

'No private character these scenes expose.'

It is Cibber's ignorance of grammar, his murder of the English tongue, his inflated literary conceit, rather than his 'private character' that are here exposed.

Some time during the latter half of 1740 the whole feud between Cibber, Pope, Fielding and Ralph was reprinted in the shilling pamphlet, already referred to, entitled The Tryal of Colley Cibber. The collection concludes as follows:

"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 whole production affords a lively example of the full-blooded pamphleteering of 1740; and throws valuable light on Fielding's repute as the Champion.

Theatre Ticket for Fielding's 'Mock Doctor'

As regards Ralph's collaboration with Fielding at this period (a collaboration further affirmed by Dr Nathan Drake's assertion, written in 1809, that James Ralph was Fielding's chief coadjutor in that paper) it may be recalled that ten years previously this not very reputable American had provided a prologue for Fielding's early play, the Temple Beau; and that he appears again as Fielding's partner in the management of the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. Gradually relinquishing his theatrical ambitions, Ralph appears to have turned his talents to political journalism, and according to Tom Davies was becoming formidable as a party writer for the Opposition in these last years of Walpole's administration. Boswell tells us that Ralph ultimately succeeded Fielding in his share of the Champion; 12 but we have no definite knowledge of what precise part was taken by him in the earlier numbers. No continued trace occurs of his collaboration with Fielding; and indeed it is difficult to conceive any permanent alliance between Fielding's manly, independent, and generous nature, and the sordid and selfish character, and mediocre talents of James Ralph.