' Amelia' was Fielding's last important work. It was published in 1751, soon after which time he was attacked by dropsy, jaundice, and asthma, and when all remedies had been tried in vain, the last remedy of self-banishment was proposed by his physicians. Ho left England for Lisbon on the 2Gth of June, 1751, and died there in October of the same year, aged forty-seven, leaving it widow and four children.
Fielding his been styled, with perfect justice, the father of the English novel. Sir Walter Scott observes that Richardson by no means succeeded in escaping from the trammels of the French romance. Hie characters have it strong touch of the impossible virtue and improbable heroism of that class of writing ; and the length of ' Sir Charles Grandisou ' beers no small resemblance to Le Grand Cyrus.' But in Fielding's works we find the most perfect delineations of individual character—Squire Western, Tom Jones himself, All ;smithy, and perhaps above all, Amelia and Mr.'Abraham Adams, are portraits which proclaim their own truth. Every reader of Fielding must have been struck with the deficiency of individuality in his heroines. This arose, we believe, not so much from want of power in the artist, ss from the low state of feeling then prevalent with respect to women, which placedthem, while unmarried, in the light of a play thing ; and when married, in that of an upper servant, or at most a humble companion. Such our author describes Mrs. Western to have been ; and while this state of manners continued, it was impossible for any writer professing to give a true picture of the times, to attempt to invest his heroines with such mental attractions as are possessed by the female characters of modern novels. Ilia waiting-maids and Lend ladies aro full of life and energy, which makes it still more improbable that his genius should not have bee n adequate to portray women of higher station.
Opinions have been much divided as to the tendency of Fielding's works. We have little hesitation in pronouncing it to be, on the whole, moral, and decidedly more so than that of Itielirdson'a It is true that scenes of extreme indelicacy occur, often very unnecessarily, but the manners of tho time admitted allusions and even expressions at which we should now feel the greatest disgust. Squire Western
addresses his daughter in terms and on subjects which no female would now endure; sad this under circumstances where no very grave annoyance was intended ; but in spite of all this coarseness there runs through all Fielding's went' an honest appreciation of right and wrong, with no attempt to palliate bad actions by specious phrases. The character of Tom Jones seems to us not to have met with it fair share of praise. His generosity and nobleness of nature aro, it is true, par tially obscured by connections of a degradiog kind into which ho so often falls; but however much lie may fail of perfection, he cannot be called depraved. His love for Sophia is an affection of a kind which no thoroughly bad heart could entertain.- Ho has all the materials of • fine charseter, and therefore there is no poetical injustice In marrying him to Sophia, and thereby putting him in a situation to redeem him self from the folly and vice into which he has been thrown. Amelia,' the author's last important work, bears the stamp of declining powers, with an appreciation of female character perhaps more delicate than we find in ' Tom Jones' ' Joseph Andrews.' Booth and Amelia are raid to have been portraits of Field:ng and his second wife.
In summing up our opinion of Fielding's works, we should say that the ohief fault is a want of unity in the plots; A novel is not a pro fessed record of all which happens to any two people during a certain number of years. To make it perfect it requires extraordinary corns biontions tending to a certain end—the happiness or misery of the parties concerned. We do not reject these as improbable, but acknow ledge them as constituting an integral element of the work. But wo aro not satisfied by a enecession of petty annoyances and pleasures which have nothing to do with the conclusion of the tale. These rather disturb than interest our attention, and wo would prefer being without them. But this is a minor fault, and very little seen in 'Tom Jones,' the author's best work ; while to counterbalance it wo have truth and originality of delineation, skill in language, considerable dramatic power, and brilliancy of wit which has never been surpassed.