Joseph Andrews, vol 1 | Page 4

profession, entered himself of the Middle Temple in November of the same year, and was called three years later; but during these years, and indeed for some time afterwards, our information about him is still of the vaguest character. Nobody doubts that he had a large share in the Champion, an essay-periodical on the usual eighteenth-century model, which began to appear in 1739, and which is still occasionally consulted for the work that is certainly or probably his. He went the Western Circuit, and attended the Wiltshire Sessions, after he was called, giving up his contributions to periodicals soon after that event. But he soon returned to literature proper, or rather made his debut in it, with the immortal book now republished. The _History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and his Friend Mr Abraham Adams_, appeared in February 1742, and its author received from Andrew Millar, the publisher, the sum of L183, 11s. Even greater works have fetched much smaller sums; but it will be admitted that Joseph Andrews was not dear.
The advantage, however, of presenting a survey of an author's life uninterrupted by criticism is so clear, that what has to be said about Joseph may be conveniently postponed for the moment. Immediately after its publication the author fell back upon miscellaneous writing, and in the next year (1743) collected and issued three volumes of Miscellanies. In the two first volumes the only thing of much interest is the unfinished and unequal, but in part powerful, Journey from this World to the Next, an attempt of a kind which Fontenelle and others, following Lucian, had made very popular with the time. But the third volume of the Miscellanies deserved a less modest and gregarious appearance, for it contained, and is wholly occupied by, the wonderful and terrible satire of Jonathan Wild, the greatest piece of pure irony in English out of Swift. Soon after the publication of the book, a great calamity came on Fielding. His wife had been very ill when he wrote the preface; soon afterwards she was dead. They had taken the chance, had made the choice, that the more prudent and less wise student-hero and heroine of Mr Browning's Youth and Art had shunned; they had no doubt "sighed deep, laughed free, Starved, feasted, despaired," and we need not question, that they had also "been happy."
Except this sad event and its rather incongruous sequel, Fielding's marriage to his wife's maid Mary Daniel--a marriage, however, which did not take place till full four years later, and which by all accounts supplied him with a faithful and excellent companion and nurse, and his children with a kind stepmother--little or nothing is again known of this elusive man of genius between the publication of the Miscellanies in 1743, and that of Tom Jones in 1749. The second marriage itself in November 1747; an interview which Joseph Warton had with him rather more than a year earlier (one of the very few direct interviews we have); the publication of two anti-Jacobite newspapers (Fielding was always a strong Whig and Hanoverian), called the True Patriot and the _Jacobite's Journal_ in 1745 and the following years; some indistinct traditions about residences at Twickenham and elsewhere, and some, more precise but not much more authenticated, respecting patronage by the Duke of Bedford, Mr Lyttelton, Mr Allen, and others, pretty well sum up the whole.
Tom Jones was published in February (a favourite month with Fielding or his publisher Millar) 1749; and as it brought him the, for those days, very considerable sum of L600 to which Millar added another hundred later, the novelist must have been, for a time at any rate, relieved from his chronic penury. But he had already, by Lyttelton's interest, secured his first and last piece of preferment, being made Justice of the Peace for Westminster, an office on which he entered with characteristic vigour. He was qualified for it not merely by a solid knowledge of the law, and by great natural abilities, but by his thorough kindness of heart; and, perhaps, it may also be added, by his long years of queer experience on (as Mr Carlyle would have said) the "burning marl" of the London Bohemia. Very shortly afterwards he was chosen Chairman of Quarter Sessions, and established himself in Bow Street. The Bow Street magistrate of that time occupied a most singular position, and was more like a French Prefect of Police or even a Minister of Public Safety than a mere justice. Yet he was ill paid. Fielding says that the emoluments, which before his accession had but been L500 a year of "dirty" money, were by his own action but L300 of clean; and the work, if properly performed, was very severe.
That he performed it properly all competent evidence shows, a foolish,