these subjects; for these sciences, indeed, employed his whole time, and formed his only amusement. He at last completed a most excellent plan; and very sorry we are that it is not in our power to present it to our reader, since even the luxury of the present age, I believe, would hardly match it. It had, indeed, in a superlative degree, the two principal ingredients which serve to recommend all great and noble designs of this nature; for it required an immoderate expense to execute, and a vast length of time to bring it to any sort of perfection. The former of these, the immense wealth of which the captain supposed Mr. Allworthy possessed, and which he thought himself sure of inheriting, promised very effectually to supply; and the latter, the soundness of his own constitution, and his time of life, which was only what is called middle-age, removed all apprehension of his not living to accomplish.

Nothing was wanting to enable him to enter upon the immediate execution of this plan, but the death of Mr. Allworthy; in calculating which he had employed much of his own algebra, besides purchasing every book extant that treats of the value of lives, reversions, &c. From all which he satisfied himself, that as he had every day a chance of this happening, so had he more than an even chance of its happening within a few years.

But while the captain was one day busied in deep contemplations of this kind, one of the most unlucky as well as unseasonable accidents happened to him. The utmost malice of Fortune could, indeed, have contrived nothing so cruel, so mal-a-propos, so absolutely destructive to all his schemes. In short, not to keep the reader in long suspense, just at the very instant when his heart was exulting in meditations on the happiness which would accrue to him by Mr. Allworthy's death, he himself-died of an apoplexy.

This unfortunately befell the captain as he was taking his evening walk by himself, so that nobody was present to lend him any assistance, if indeed any assistance could have preserved him. He took therefore measure of that proportion of soil which was now become adequate to all his future purposes, and he lay dead on the ground a great (though not a living) example of the truth of that observation of Horace, which I shall thus give to the English reader: "You provide the noblest materials for building, when a pickaxe and a spade are only necessary ;

1

and build houses of five hundred by a hundred feet, forgetting that of six by two."1

Of the characters, Squire Western is perhaps the chief. The materials of which he is made up are few, and are far from promising. He is nothing more than a drinking Jacobite foxhunter, coarse in his language, and violent in his temper. The rare humour with which his anger, his ignorance, his headstrong wilfulness, and sporting propensities are set forth, redeemed by a certain heartiness of disposition, and a species of selfish fondness for his daughter while she ministers to his pleasure, keeps up our interest in him to the very latest page. The pedantry of Partridge, with his scraps of bad Latin, his babbling, his boastfulness, his cowardice, and kindliness, is another exquisitely comical portrait. But it is endless to particularise. Blifil is one of those hypocritical villains who excite disgust. He is drawn with a masterly hand, and for that very reason his presence is always painful. Jones is truthful, frank, brave, and generous; but Fielding, in assigning him his own virtues, has equally fathered upon him his vices, and evidently does not feel that they degrade his hero. In his eyes they were simple indiscretions, pardonable improprieties. This is the most censurable blot on the book; for the coarseness appertained to the age, whereas the easiness with which he treats the misconduct of Jones is an offence against principle. This ill-disguised countenance of a debasing laxity of practice is an exception to the usual maxims of Fielding on morality and religion, of which he is an earnest and often a powerful supporter. Not a word can be breathed against the delicacy of his heroine. Sophia Western is one of the loveliest of beings. She has a bewitching meekness and gentleness, which never shine more than in the firmness with which she resists the marriage with Blifil, from whose acted sanctity her simple

1 [Tom Jones, book ii.]

goodness shrinks with instinctive horror. Like the lady in Comus, she preserves a maidenly modesty amid the "rudeness and swilled insolence of the wassailers" about her. When the Squire begins to address her after dinner in his gross fashion, she rises from the table, and tells him that a hint from him was always sufficient to make her withdraw. This natural gracefulness never leaves her. She is unobtrusive to that degree that she hardly betrays a consciousness of self, not even of her beauty and charms. The character which Allworthy draws of her is worth transcribing as in itself a delightful sketch of feminine diffidence.

I never heard anything of pertness, or what is called repartee, out of her mouth; no pretence to wit, much less to that kind of wisdom which is the result only of great learning and experience, the affectation of which, in a young woman, is as absurd as any of the affectations of an ape: no dictatorial sentiments, no judicial opinions, no profound criticism. Whenever I have seen her in the company of men, she hath been all attention, with the modesty of a learner, not the forwardness of a teacher. I once, to try her only, desired her opinion on a point which was controverted between Mr. Thwackum and Mr. Square, to which she answered with much sweetness, "You will pardon me, good Mr. Allworthy, I am sure you cannot in earnest think me capable of deciding any point in which two such gentlemen disagree." Thwackum and Square, who both alike thought themselves sure of a favourable decision, seconded my request. She answered, with the same good humour, "I must absolutely be excused; for I will affront neither so much, as to give my judgment on his side."1

Still more graceful is the admirable reply by which she turns his own argument against Jones, when at the end of the novel he is endeavouring to prevail on her to confide in his protestations of future fidelity.

He replied, "Don't believe me upon my word; I have a better security, a pledge for my constancy, which it is impossible to see and to doubt."

1 [Book xvii. chap iii.]

AMELIA

"What is that?" said Sophia, a little surprised.

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"I will show you, my charming angel," cries Jones, seizing her hand, and carrying her to the glass. "There, behold it there in that lovely figure, in that face, that shape, those eyes, that mind which shines through those eyes; can the man who shall be in possession of these be inconstant?"

Sophia blushed and half smiled; but, forcing again her brow into a frown, "If I am to judge," said she, "of the future by the past, my image will no more remain in your heart when I am out of your sight, than it will in this glass when I am out of the room." 1

Nor were her fears without foundation. In what Booth was to Amelia we see what Jones, after his marriage, would have become to Sophia. She was a vast deal too good for him.

In Amelia, Fielding changes his ground. Rural characters had the prominent place in Tom Jones; in his last fiction he gives his London experience, and describes sponginghouses and prisons, sharpers and roués. Had he undertaken the task in the prime of his powers, his town might have rivalled his country portraits, but he was enervated by disease, and gradually yielding to a premature decay. The same hand is visible, but the lines are feebler, and the colouring less vivid. The plot, which is not to be compared to that of Tom Jones, still exhibits his skill in keeping up interest by a series of distresses, in which probability is no further violated than that they are crowded together. Amelia is beautiful in her feminine devotion and patient endurance, but we venture to think that the incessant parade of her perfections by her husband injures their effect. The attempt to exalt her virtue and beauty, by making her a perpetual object of dishonourable pursuit, would now be thought an offence against taste, but the contemporaries of Fielding did not share our ideas. Booth is contemptible. He may be more repentant than Tom Jones, but he is much less manly, and it is plain that

1 [Book xviii. chap. xii.]

he will be duped by rogues, and led astray by profligates, to the close of his days, in spite of past warnings and his love for his suffering Amelia. Dr. Harrison, with the moral courage, integrity, and benevolence of Parson Adams, is too much below him in raciness not to suffer by the contrast. Amelia throughout is always reminding us of something better from the same pen, and, with its many excellences, we lay down the book with a feeling of disappointment after Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones. In force of character, in freshness of incident, in wit and humour, it is very inferior to both; in domestic pathos it is superior. Even if it had been altogether unworthy of him, which it is not, his claim to head the procession of English novelists would have remained the same. It is by St. Paul's and not by Temple Bar that we measure the genius of Wren.