a quest that Fielding himself knew to be vain. That the record was ever written at all is a striking proof of the author's indomitable courage, and in reading it we think of the sick and broken author writing in the little cabin of the Queen of Portugal and then of the man of whom his cousin, Lady Mary Montagu, said, “No man enjoyed life more than he did, though few had less reason to do so. I am persuaded he has known more happy moments than any prince on earth." No literary hero-worshipper could wish from the object of his devotion a braver vale to life than this Journal of Fielding. It is replete with the traits we most admire in him -his courage, his courtesy, his spirit, his humanity, his stalwart commonsense. He had consistently waged war all his life—"a Drawcansir in wit," said an old enemy, "who spared neither friend nor foe" —against affectation and hypocrisy, and it is safe to say that no satirist was ever more free of the weaknesses he satirised. He had others in plenty, and he has left pages that he might well have wished to blot. The weaknesses, like the animosities, are mortal: "the humanities live for ever." The creator of Captain Booth has anticipated the accuser: the thought of Fielding's ironic laughter has turned aside the itinerant biographical apologist with his bucket of whitewash. On the morality of Fielding's work as a whole we may safely accept the verdict of Sir Walter Scott, the greatest of Fielding's descendants and incomparably the most competent judge in all cases where literature and morals meet. "It is with concern," says Scott, "we add our sincere belief that the fine picture of frankness and generosity exhibited in that fictitious character [Tom Jones] has had as few imitators as the career of his follies....We treat with scorn the affectation which, while in common life it connives

at the practice of libertinism, pretends to detest the memory of an author who painted life as it was, with all its shades, and more than all the lights which it occasionally exhibits to relieve them.'

The

In his account of Fielding (written, as ought to be remembered but so often is not, for the purpose of a popular lecture) Thackeray allowed his imagination free play with the "inked ruffles, and claret-stains on his tarnished lace coat." There seems little doubt that such references, torn from their context, have, combined with Johnson's unsympathetic comments, to mould a popular conception of Fielding's character that is at once lop-sided and unjust, and one that Thackeray himself would have been the first to combat. closing words of the following extract from his generous appreciation of his literary master are sufficient to show the wrong that has been inflicted by partial quotation both on Fielding and on Thackeray himself. "He has an admirable natural love of truth, the keenest instinctive antipathy to hypocrisy, the happiest satirical gift of laughing it to scorn. His wit is wonderfully wise and detective; it flashes upon a rogue and lightens up a rascal like a policeman's lantern. He is one of the manliest and kindliest of human beings.... He could not be so brave, generous, truth-telling as he is, were he not infinitely merciful, pitiful, and tender. He will give any man his purse he can't help kindness and profusion. He may have low tastes, but not a mean mind; he admires with all his heart good and virtuous men, stoops to no flattery, bears no rancour, disdains all disloyal acts, does his public duty uprightly, is fondly loved by his family, and dies at his work."

J. H. L.

FIELDING'S VOYAGE TO

LISBON

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

THERE would not, perhaps, be a more pleasant, or profitable study, among those which have their principal end in amusement, than that of travels or voyages, if they were writ, as they might be, and ought to be, with a joint view to the entertainment and information of mankind. If the conversation of travellers be so eagerly sought after as it is, we may believe their books will be still more agreeable company, as they will, in general, be more instructive and more entertaining.

But when I say the conversation of travellers is usually so welcome, I must be understood to mean that only of such as have had good sense enough to apply their peregrinations to a proper use, so as to acquire from them a real and valuable knowledge of men and things; both which are best known by comparison. If the customs and manners of men were every where the same, there would be no office so dull as that of a traveller: for the difference of hills, valleys, rivers; in short, the various views in which we may see the face of the earth, would scarce afford him a pleasure worthy of his labour; and surely it would give him very little opportunity of communicating any kind of entertainment or improvement to others.

L. F.

I

To make a traveller an agreeable companion to a man of sense, it is necessary, not only that he should have seen much, but that he should have overlooked much of what he hath seen. Nature is not, any more than a great genius, always admirable in her productions, and therefore the traveller, who may be called her commentator, should not expect to find every where subjects worthy of his notice.

It is certain, indeed, that one may be guilty of omission as well as of the opposite extreme: but a fault on that side will be more easily pardoned, as it is better to be hungry than surfeited, and to miss your dessert at the table of a man whose gardens abound with the choicest fruits, than to have your taste affronted with every sort of trash that can be pick'd up at the green-stall, or the wheelbarrow.

If we should carry on the analogy between the traveller and the commentator, it is impossible to keep one's eye a moment off from the laborious much read doctor Zachary Grey, of whose redundant notes on Hudibras I shall only say, that it is, I am confident, the single book extant in which above five hundred authors are quoted, not one of which could be found in the collection of the late doctor Mead.

As there are few things which a traveller is to record, there are fewer on which he is to offer his observations: this is the office of the reader, and it is so pleasant a one, that he seldom chuses to have it taken from him, under the pretence of lending him assistance. Some occasions, indeed, there are when proper observations are pertinent, and others when they are necessary; but good sense alone must point them out. I shall lay down only one general rule, which I believe to be of universal truth between relator and hearer, as it is between author and reader; this is, that the latter never forgive any observation of the former which doth not convey some knowledge that they are sensible they could not possibly have attained of themselves.

But all his pains in collecting knowledge, all his