[1] See C.E.H. de Coussemaker, Memoire sur Hucbald (Paris, 1841).
[2] See the Manesse MSS. reproduced in part by F.H. von der Hagen,
_Heldenbilder_ (Leipzig and Berlin, 1855) and _Bildersaal_. The
fiddles are reproduced in J. Ruhlmann's _Geschichte der
Bogeninstrumente_ (Brunswick, 1882), plates.
[3] See Schiller's _Thesaurus antiq. Teut._ vol. i. p. 379.
FIDENAE, an ancient town of Latium, situated about 5 m. N. of Rome on
the Via Salaria, which ran between it and the Tiber. It was for some
while the frontier of the Roman territory and was often in the hands of
Veii. It appears to have fallen under the Roman sway after the capture
of this town, and is spoken of by classical authors as a place almost
deserted in their time. It seems, however, to have had some importance
as a post station. The site of the _arx_ of the ancient town is probably
to be sought on the hill on which lies the Villa Spada, though no traces
of early buildings or defences are to be seen: pre-Roman tombs are to be
found in the cliffs to the north. The later village lay at the foot of
the hill on the eastern edge of the high-road, and its _curia_, with a
dedicatory inscription to M. Aurelius by the _Senatus Fidenatium_, was
excavated in 1889. Remains of other buildings may also be seen.
See T. Ashby in _Papers of the British School at Rome_, iii. 17.
FIDUCIARY (Lat. _fiduciaries_, one in whom trust, fiducia, is reposed),
of or belonging to a position of trust, especially of one who stands in
a particular relationship of confidence to another. Such relationships
are, in law, those of parent and child, guardian and ward, trustee and
_cestui que trust_, legal adviser and client, spiritual adviser, doctor
and patient, &c. In many of these the law has attached special
obligations in the case of gifts made to the "fiduciary," on whom is
laid the onus of proving that no "undue influence" has been exercised.
(See CONTRACT; CHILDREN, LAW RELATING TO; INFANT; TRUST.)
FIEF, a feudal estate in land, land held from a superior (see
FEUDALISM). The word is the French form, which is represented in
Medieval Latin as _feudum_ or _feodum_, and in English as "fee" or "feu"
(see FEE). The A. Fr. _feoffer_, to invest with a fief or fee, has given
the English law terms "feoffee" and "feoffment" (q.v.).
FIELD, CYRUS WEST (1819-1892), American capitalist, projector of the
first Atlantic cable, was born at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on the
30th of November 1819. He was a brother of David Dudley Field. At
fifteen he became a clerk in the store of A.T. Stewart & Co., of New
York, and stayed there three years; then worked for two years with his
brother, Matthew Dickinson Field, in a paper-mill at Lee, Massachusetts;
and in 1840 went into the paper business for himself at Westfield,
Massachusetts, but almost immediately became a partner in E. Root & Co.,
wholesale paper dealers in New York City, who failed in the following
year. Field soon afterwards formed with a brother-in-law the firm of
Cyrus W. Field & Co., and in 1853 had accumulated $250,000, paid off the
debts of the Root company and retired from active business, leaving his
name and $100,000 with the concern. In the same year he travelled with
Frederick E. Church, the artist, through South America. In 1854 he
became interested, through his brother Matthew, a civil engineer, in the
project of Frederick Newton Gisborne (1824-1892) for a telegraph across
Newfoundland; and he was attracted by the idea of a trans-Atlantic
telegraphic cable, as to which he consulted S.F.B. Morse and Matthew F.
Maury, head of the National Observatory at Washington. With Peter
Cooper, Moses Taylor (1806-1882), Marshall Owen Roberts (1814-1880) and
Chandler White, he formed the New York, Newfoundland & London Telegraph
Company, which procured a more favourable charter than Gisborne's, and
had a capital of $1,500,000. Having secured all the practicable landing
rights on the American side of the ocean, he and John W. Brett, who was
now his principal colleague, approached Sir Charles Bright (q.v.) in
London, and in December 1556 the Atlantic Telegraph Company was
organized by them in Great Britain, a government grant being secured of
L14,000 annually for government messages, to be reduced to L10,000
annually when the cable should pay a 6% yearly dividend; similar grants
were made by the United States government. Unsuccessful attempts to lay
the cable were made in August 1857 and in June 1858, but the complete
cable was laid between the 7th of July and the 5th of August 1858; for a
time messages were transmitted, but in October the cable became useless,
owing to the failure of its electrical insulation. Field, however, did
not abandon the enterprise, and finally in July 1866, after a futile
attempt in the previous year, a cable was laid and brought successfully
into use. From the Congress of the United States he received a gold
medal and a vote of thanks, and he received many other honours both at
home and abroad. In 1877 he bought a controlling interest in the New
York Elevated Railroad Company, controlling the Third and Ninth Avenue
lines, of which he was president in 1877-1880. He worked with Jay Gould
for the completion of the Wabash railway, and at the time of his
greatest stock activity bought _The New York Evening Express_ and _The
Mail_ and combined them as _The Mail and Express_, which he controlled
for six years. In 1879 Field suffered financially by Samuel J. Tilden's
heavy sales (during Field's absence in Europe) of "Elevated" stock,
which forced the price down from 200 to 164; but Field lost much more in
the great "Manhattan squeeze" of the 24th of June 1887, when Jay Gould
and Russell Sage, who had been supposed to be his backers in an attempt
to bring the Elevated stock to 200, forsook him, and the price fell from
156-1/2 to 114 in half an hour. Field died in New York on the 12th of
July 1892.
See the biography by his daughter, Isabella (Field) Judson, _Cyrus W.
Field, His Life and Work_ (New York, 1896); H.M. Field, _History of
the Atlantic Telegraph_ (New York, 1866); and Charles Bright, _The
Story of the Atlantic Cable_ (New York, 1903).
FIELD, DAVID DUDLEY (1805-1894), American lawyer and law reformer, was
born in Haddam, Connecticut, on the 13th of February 1805. He was the
oldest of the four sons of the Rev. David Dudley Field (1781-1867), a
well-known American clergyman and author. He graduated at Williams
College in 1825, and settled in New York City, where he studied law, was
admitted to the bar in 1828, and rapidly won a high position in his
profession. Becoming convinced that the common law in America, and
particularly in New York state, needed radical changes in respect to the
unification and simplification of its procedure, he visited Europe in
1836 and thoroughly investigated the courts, procedure and codes of
England, France and other countries, and then applied himself to the
task of bringing about in the United States a codification of the common
law procedure. For more than forty years every moment that he could
spare from his extensive practice was devoted to this end. He entered
upon his great work by a systematic publication of pamphlets and
articles in journals and magazines in behalf of his reform, but for some
years he met with a discouraging lack of interest. He appeared
personally before successive legislative committees, and in 1846
published a pamphlet, "The Reorganization of the Judiciary," which had
its influence in persuading the New York State Constitutional Convention
of that year to report in favour of a codification of the laws. Finally
in 1847 he was appointed as the head of a state commission to revise the
practice and procedure. The first part of the commission's work,
consisting of a code of civil procedure, was reported and enacted in
1848, and by the 1st of January 1850 the complete code of civil and
criminal procedure was completed, and was subsequently enacted by the
legislature. The basis of the new system, which was almost entirely
Field's work, was the abolition of the existing distinction in forms of
procedure between suits in law and equity requiring separate actions,
and their unification and simplification in a single action. Eventually
the civil code with some changes was adopted in twenty-four states, and
the criminal code in eighteen, and the whole formed a basis of the
reform in procedure in England and several of her colonies. In 1857
Field became chairman of a state commission for the reduction into a
written and systematic code of the whole body of law of the state,
excepting those portions already reported upon by the Commissioners of
Practice and Pleadings. In this work he personally prepared almost the
whole of the political and civil codes. The codification, which was
completed in February 1865, was adopted only in small part by the state,
but it has served as a model after which most of the law codes of the
United States have been constructed. In 1866 he proposed to the British
National Association for the Promotion of Social Science a revision and
codification of the laws of all nations. For an international commission
of lawyers he prepared _Draft Outlines of an International Code_ (1872),
the submission of which resulted in the organization of the
international Association for the Reform and Codification of the Laws of
Nations, of which he became president. In politics Field was originally
an anti-slavery Democrat, and he supported Van Buren in the Free Soil
campaign of 1848. He gave his support to the Republican party in 1856
and to the Lincoln administration throughout the Civil War. After 1876,
however, he returned to the Democratic party, and from January to March
1877 served out in Congress the unexpired term of Smith Ely, elected
mayor of New York City. During his brief Congressional career he
delivered six speeches, all of which attracted attention, introduced a
bill in regard to the presidential succession, and appeared before the
Electoral Commission in Tilden's interest. He died in New York City on
the 13th of April 1894.
Part of his numerous pamphlets and addresses were collected in his
_Speeches, Arguments and Miscellaneous Papers_ (3 vols., 1884-1890).
See also the _Life of David Dudley Field_ (New York, 1898), by Rev.
Henry Martyn Field.
FIELD, EUGENE (1850-1895), American poet, was born at St Louis,
Missouri, on the 2nd of September 1850. He spent his boyhood in Vermont
and Massachusetts; studied for short periods at Williams and Knox
Colleges and the University of Missouri, but without taking a degree;
and worked as a journalist on various papers, finally becoming connected
with the Chicago _News_. _A Little Book of Profitable Tales_ appeared in
Chicago in 1889 and in New York the next year; but Field's place in
later American literature chiefly depends upon his poems of
Christmas-time and childhood (of which "Little Boy Blue" and "A Dutch
Lullaby" are most widely known), because of their union of obvious
sentiment with fluent lyrical form. His principal collections of poems
are: _A Little Book of Western Verse_ (1889); _A Second Book of Verse_
(1892); _With Trumpet and Drum_ (1892); and _Love Songs of Childhood_
(1894). Field died at Chicago on the 4th of November 1895.
His works were collected in ten volumes (1896), at New York. His prose
_Love-affairs of a Bibliomaniac_ (1896) contains a Memoir by his
brother Roswell Martin Field (b. 1851). See also Slason Thompson,
_Eugene Field: a study in heredity and contradictions_ (2 vols., New
York, 1901).
FIELD, FREDERICK (1801-1885), English divine and biblical scholar, was
born in London and educated at Christ's hospital and Trinity College,
Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship in 1824. He took orders in
1828, and began a close study of patristic theology. Eventually he
published an emended and annotated text of Chrysostom's _Homiliae in
Matthaeum_ (Cambridge, 1839), and some years later he contributed to
Pusey's _Bibliotheca Patrum_ (Oxford, 1838-1870), a similarly treated
text of Chrysostom's homilies on Paul's epistles. The scholarship
displayed in both of these critical editions is of a very high order. In
1839 he had accepted the living of Great Saxham, in Suffolk, and in 1842
he was presented by his college to the rectory of Reepham in Norfolk. He
resigned in 1863, and settled at Norwich, in order to devote his whole
time to study. Twelve years later he completed the _Origenis Hexaplorum
quae supersunt_ (Oxford, 1867-1875), now well known as _Field's
Hexapla_, a text reconstructed from the extant fragments of Origen's
work of that name, together with materials drawn from the
_Syro-hexaplar_ version and the _Septuagint_ of Holmes and Parsons
(Oxford, 1798-1827). Field was appointed a member of the Old Testament
revision company in 1870.
FIELD, HENRY MARTYN (1822-1907), American author and clergyman, brother
of Cyrus Field, was born at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on the 3rd of
April 1822; he graduated at Williams College in 1838, and was pastor of
a Presbyterian church in St Louis, Missouri, from 1842 to 1847, and of a
Congregational church in West Springfield, Massachusetts, from 1850 to
1854. The interval between his two pastorates he spent in Europe. From
1854 to 1898 he was editor and for many years he was also sole
proprietor of _The Evangelist_, a New York periodical devoted to the
interests of the Presbyterian church. He spent the last years of his
life in retirement at Stockbridge, Mass., where he died on the 26th of
January 1907. He was the author of a series of books of travel, which
achieved unusual popularity. His two volumes descriptive of a trip round
the world in 1875-1876, entitled _From the Lakes of Killarney to the
Golden Horn_ (1876) and _From Egypt to Japan_ (1877), are almost classic
in their way, and have passed through more than twenty editions. Among
his other publications are _The Irish Confederates and the Rebellion of
1798_ (1850), _The History of the Atlantic Telegraph_ (1866), _Faith or
Agnosticism? the Field-Ingersoll Discussion_ (1888), _Old Spain and New
Spain_ (1888), and _Life of David Dudley Field_ (1898).
He is not to be confused with another HENRY MARTYN FIELD, the
gynaecologist, who was born in 1837 at Brighton, Mass., and graduated at
Harvard in 1859 and at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New
York City in 1862; he was professor of Materia Medica and therapeutics
at Dartmouth from 1871 to 1887 and of therapeutics from 1887 to 1893.
FIELD, JOHN (1782-1837), English musical composer and pianist, was born
at Dublin in 1782. He came of a musical family, his father being a
violinist, and his grandfather the organist in one of the churches of
Dublin. From the latter the boy received his first musical education.
When a few years later the family settled in London, Field became the
favourite pupil of the celebrated Clementi, whom he accompanied to
Paris, and later, in 1802, on his great concert tour through France,
Germany and Russia. Under the auspices of his master Field appeared in
public in most of the great European capitals, especially in St
Petersburg, and in that city he remained when Clementi returned to
England. During his stay with the great pianist Field had to suffer many
privations owing to Clementi's all but unexampled parsimony; but when
the latter left Russia his splendid connexion amongst the highest
circles of the capital became Field's inheritance. His marriage with a
French lady of the name of Charpentier was anything but happy, and had
soon to be dissolved. Field made frequent concert tours to the chief
cities of Russia, and in 1820 settled permanently in Moscow. In 1831 he
came to England for a short time, and for the next four years led a
migratory life in France, Germany and Italy, exciting the admiration of
amateurs wherever he appeared in public. In Naples he fell seriously
ill, and lay several months in the hospital, till a Russian family
discovered him and brought him back to Moscow. There he lingered for
several years till his death on the 11th of January 1837. Field's
training and the cast of his genius were not of a kind to enable him to
excel in the larger forms of instrumental music, and his seven concerti
for the pianoforte are now forgotten. Neither do his quartets for
strings and pianoforte hold their own by the side of those of the great
masters. But his "nocturnes," a form of music highly developed if not
actually created by him, remain all but unrivalled for their tenderness
and dreaminess of conception, combined with a continuous flow of
beautiful melody. They were indeed Chopin's models. Field's execution on
the pianoforte was nearly allied to the nature of his compositions,
beauty and poetical charm of touch being one of the chief
characteristics of his style. Moscheles, who heard Field in 1831, speaks
of his "enchanting legato, his tenderness and elegance and his beautiful
touch."
FIELD, MARSHALL (1835-1906), American merchant, was born at Conway,
Massachusetts, on the 18th of August 1835. Reared on a farm, he obtained
a common school and academy education, and at the age of seventeen
became a clerk in a dry goods store at Pittsfield, Mass. In 1856 he
removed to Chicago, where he became a clerk in the large mercantile
establishment of Cooley, Wadsworth & Company. In 1860 the firm was
reorganized as Cooley, Farwell & Company, and he was admitted to a
junior partnership. In 1865, with Potter Palmer (1826-1902) and Levi Z.
Leiter (1834-1904), he organized the firm of Field, Palmer & Leiter,
which subsequently became Field, Leiter & Company, and in 1881 on the
retirement of Leiter became Marshall Field & Company. Under Field's
management the annual business of the firm increased from $12,000,000 in
1871 to more than $40,000,000 in 1895, when it ranked as one of the two
or three largest mercantile establishments in the world. He died in New
York city on the 16th of January 1906. He had married, for the second
time, in the previous year. Field's public benefactions were numerous;
notable among them being his gift of land valued at $300,000 and of
$100,000 in cash to the University of Chicago, an endowment fund of
$1,000,000 to support the Field Columbian Museum at Chicago, and a
bequest of $8,000,000 to this museum.
FIELD, NATHAN (1587-1633), English dramatist and actor, was baptized on
the 17th of October 1587. His father, the rector of Cripplegate, was a
Puritan divine, author of a _Godly Exhortation_ directed against
play-acting, and his brother Theophilus became bishop of Hereford. Nat.
Field early became one of the children of Queen Elizabeth's chapel, and
in that capacity he played leading parts in Ben Jonson's _Cynthia's
Revels_ (in 1600), in the _Poetaster_ (in 1601), and in _Epicoene_ (in
1608), and the title role in Chapman's _Bussy d'Ambois_ (in 1606). Ben
Jonson was his dramatic model, and may have helped his career. The two
plays of which he was author were probably both written before 1611.
They are boisterous, but well-constructed comedies of contemporary
London life; the earlier one, _A Woman is a Weathercock_ (printed 1612),
dealing with the inconstancy of woman, while the second, _Amends for
Ladies_ (printed 1618), was written with the intention, as the title
indicates, of retracting the charge. From Henslowe's papers it appears
that Field collaborated with Robert Daborne and with Philip Massinger,
one letter from all three authors being a joint appeal for money to free
them from prison. In 1614 Field received L10 for playing before the king
in _Bartholomew Fair_, a play in which Jonson records his reputation as
an actor in the words "which is your Burbadge now?... Your best actor,
your Field?" He joined the King's Players some time before 1619, and his
name comes seventeenth on the list prefixed to the Shakespeare folio of
1623 of the "principal actors in all these plays." He retired from the
stage before 1625, and died on the 20th of February 1633. Field was part
author with Massinger in the _Fatal Dowry_ (printed 1632), and he
prefixed commendatory verses to Fletcher's _Faithful Shepherdess_.
His two plays were reprinted in J.P. Collier's _Five Old Plays_
(1833), in Hazlitt's edition of _Dodsley's Old Plays_, and in _Nero
and other Plays_ (Mermaid series, 1888), with an introduction by Mr
A.W. Verity.
FIELD, STEPHEN JOHNSON (1816-1899), American jurist, was born at Haddam,
Connecticut, on the 4th of November 1816. He was the brother of David
Dudley Field, Cyrus W. Field and Henry M. Field. At the age of thirteen
he accompanied his sister Emilia and her husband the Rev. Josiah Brewer
(the parents of the distinguished judge of the Supreme Court, David J.
Brewer) to Smyrna, Turkey, for the purpose of studying Oriental
languages, but after three years he returned to the United States, and
in 1837 graduated at Williams College at the head of his class. He then
studied law in his elder brother's office, and in 1841 he was admitted
to the New York bar. He was associated in practice there with his
brother until 1848, and early in 1849 removed to California, settling
soon afterward at Marysville, of which place, in 1850, he became the
first alcalde or mayor. In the same year he was chosen a member of the
first state legislature of California, in which he drew up and secured
the enactment of two bodies of law known as the Civil and Criminal
Practices Acts, based on the similar codes prepared by his brother David
Dudley for New York. In the former act he embodied a provision
regulating and giving authority to the peculiar customs, usages, and
regulations voluntarily adopted by the miners in various districts of
the state for the adjudication of disputed mining claims. This, as Judge
Field truly says, "was the foundation of the jurisprudence respecting
mines in the country," having greatly influenced legislation upon this
subject in other states and in the Congress of the United States. He was
elected, in 1857, a justice of the California Supreme Court, of which he
became chief justice in 1859, on the resignation of Judge David S. Terry
to fight the duel with the United States senator David C. Broderick
which ended fatally for the latter. Field held this position until 1863,
when he was appointed by President Lincoln a justice of the United
States Supreme Court. In this capacity he was conspicuous for fearless
independence of thought and action in his opinion in the test oath case,
and in his dissenting opinions in the legal tender, conscription and
"slaughter house" cases, which displayed unusual legal learning, and
gave powerful expression to his strict constructionist theory of the
implied powers of the Federal constitution. Originally a Democrat, and
always a believer in states' rights, his strong Union sentiments caused
him nevertheless to accept Lincoln's doctrine of coercion, and that,
together with his anti-slavery sympathies, led him to act with the
Republican party during the period of the Civil War. He was a member of
the commission which revised the California code in 1873 and of the
Electoral Commission in 1877, voting in favour of Tilden. In 1880 he
received sixty-five votes on the first ballot for the presidential
nomination at the Democratic National Convention at Cincinnati. In
August 1889, as a result of a ruling in the course of the Sharon-Hill
litigation, a notorious conspiracy case, he was assaulted in a
California railway station by Judge David S. Terry, who in turn was shot
and killed by a United States deputy marshall appointed to defend
Justice Field against the carrying out of Terry's often-expressed
threats. He retired from the Supreme Court on the 1st of December 1897
after a service of thirty-four years and six months, the longest in the
court's history, and died in Washington on the 9th of April 1899.
His _Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California_, originally
privately printed in 1878, was republished in 1893 with George C.
Gorham's _Story of the Attempted Assassination of Justice Field_.
FIELD, WILLIAM VENTRIS FIELD, BARON (1813-1907), English judge, second
son of Thomas Flint Field, of Fielden, Bedfordshire, was born on the
21st of August 1813. He was educated at King's school, Bruton,
Somersetshire, and entered the legal profession as a solicitor. In 1843,
however, he ceased to practise as such, and entered at the Inner Temple,
being called to the bar in 1850, after having practised for some time as
a special pleader. He joined the Western circuit, but soon exchanged it
for the Midland. He obtained a large business as a junior, and became a
queen's counsel and bencher of his inn in 1864. As a Q.C. he had a very
extensive common law practice, and had for some time been the leader of
the Midland circuit, when in February 1875, on the retirement of Mr
Justice Keating, he was raised to the bench as a justice of the queen's
bench. Mr Justice Field was an excellent puisne judge of the type that
attracts but little public attention. He was a first-rate lawyer, had a
good knowledge of commercial matters, great shrewdness and a quick
intellect, while he was also painstaking and scrupulously fair. When the
rules of the Supreme Court 1883 came into force in the autumn of that
year, Mr Justice Field was so well recognized an authority upon all
questions of practice that the lord chancellor selected him to sit
continuously at Judges' Chambers, in order that a consistent practice
under the new rules might as far as possible be established. This he did
for nearly a year, and his name will always, to a large extent, be
associated with the settling of the details of the new procedure, which
finally did away with the former elaborate system of "special pleading."
In 1890 he retired from the bench and was raised to the peerage as Baron
Field of Bakeham, becoming at the same time a member of the privy
council. In the House of Lords he at first took part, not infrequently,
in the hearing of appeals, and notably delivered a carefully-reasoned
judgment in the case of the _Bank of England_ v. _Vagliano Brothers_
(5th of March 1891), in which, with Lord Bramwell, he differed from the
majority of his brother peers. Before long, however, deafness and
advancing years rendered his attendances less frequent. Lord Field died
at Bognor on the 23rd of January 1907, and as he left no issue the
peerage became extinct.
FIELD (a word common to many West German languages, cf. Ger. _Feld_,
Dutch _veld_, possibly cognate with O.E. _folde_, the earth, and
ultimately with root of the Gr. [Greek: platos], broad), open country as
opposed to woodland or to the town, and particularly land for
cultivation divided up into separate portions by hedges, banks, stone
walls, &c.; also used in combination with words denoting the crop grown
on such a portion of land, such as corn-field, turnip-field, &c. The
word is similarly applied to a region with particular reference to its
products, as oil-field, gold-field, &c. For the "open" or "common field"
system of agriculture in village communities see COMMONS. Generally with
a reference to their "wild" as opposed to their "domestic" nature
"field" is applied to many animals, such as the "field-mouse." There are
many applications of the word; thus from the use of the term for the
place where a battle is fought, and widely of the whole theatre of war,
come such phrases as to "take the field" for the opening of a campaign,
"in the field" of troops that are engaged in the operations of a
campaign. It is frequently used figuratively in this sense, of the
subject matter of a controversy, and also appears in military usage, in
field-fortification, field-day and the like. A "field-officer" is one
who ranks above a captain and below a general (see OFFICERS); a field
marshal is the highest rank of general officer in the British and many
European armies (see MARSHAL). "Field" is used in many games, partly
with the idea of an enclosed space, partly with the idea of the ground
of military operations, for the ground in which such games as cricket,
football, baseball and the like are played. Hence it is applied to those
players in cricket and baseball who are not "in," and "to field" is to
perform the functions of such a player--to stop or catch the ball played
by the "in" side. "The field" is used in hunting, &c., for those taking
part in the sport, and in racing for all the horses entered for a race,
and, in such expressions as "to back the field," is confined to all the
horses with the exception of the "favourite." A common application of
the word is to a surface, more or less wide, as of the sky or sea, or of
such physical phenomena as ice or snow, and particularly of the ground,
of a special "tincture," on which armorial bearings are displayed (see
HERALDRY); it is thus used also of the "ground" of a flag, thus the
white ensign of the British navy has a red St George's cross on a white
"field." In scientific usage the word is also used of the sphere of
observation or of operations, and has come to be almost equivalent to a
department of knowledge. In physics, a particular application is that to
the area which is influenced by some agent, as in the magnetic or
electric field. The field of observation or view is the area within
which objects can be seen through any optical instrument at any one
position. A "field-glass" is the name given to a binocular glass used in
the field (see BINOCULAR INSTRUMENT); the older form of field-glass was
a small achromatic telescope with joints. This terms is also applied, in
an astronomical telescope or compound microscope, to that one of the
two lenses of the "eye-piece" which is next to the object-glass; the
other is called the "eye-glass."
FIELDFARE (O.E. _fealo-for_ = fallow-farer), a large species of thrush,
the _Turdus pilaris_ of Linnaeus--well known as a regular and common
autumnal visitor throughout the British Islands and a great part of
Europe, besides western Asia, and even reaching northern Africa. It is
the _Veldjakker_ and _Veld-lyster_ of the Dutch, the _Wachholderdrossel_
and _Kramtsvogel_ of Germans, the _Litorne_ of the French, and the
_Cesena_ of Italians. This bird is of all thrushes the most gregarious
in. habit, not only migrating in large bands and keeping in flocks
during the winter, but even commonly breeding in society--200 nests or
more having been seen within a very small space. The birch-forests of
Norway, Sweden and Russia are its chief resorts in summer, but it is
known also to breed sparingly in some districts of Germany. Though its
nest has been many times reported to have been found in Scotland, there
is perhaps no record of such an incident that is not open to doubt; and
unquestionably the missel-thrush (_T. viscivorus_) has been often
mistaken for the fieldfare by indifferent observers. The head, neck,
upper part of the back and the rump are grey; the wings, wing-coverts
and middle of the back are rich hazel-brown; the throat is ochraceous;
and the breast reddish-brown--both being streaked or spotted with black,
while the belly and lower wing-coverts are white, and the legs and toes
very dark-brown. The nest and eggs resemble those of the blackbird (_T.
merula_), but the former is usually built high up in a tree. The
fieldfare's call-note is harsh and loud, sounding like _t'chatt'chat_:
its song is low, twittering and poor. It usually arrives in Britain
about the middle or end of October, but sometimes earlier, and often
remains till the middle of May before departing for its northern
breeding-places. In hard weather it throngs to the berry-bearing bushes
which then afford it sustenance, but in open winters the flocks spread
over the fields in search of animal food--worms, slugs and the larvae of
insects. In very severe seasons it will altogether leave the country,
and then return for a shorter or longer time as spring approaches. From
_William of Palerne_ (translated from the French c. 1350) to the writers
of our own day the fieldfare has occasionally been noticed by British
poets with varying propriety. Thus Chaucer's association Of its name
with frost is as happy as true, while Scott was more than unlucky in his
well-known reference to its "lowly nest" in the Highlands.
Structurally very like the fieldfare, but differing greatly in many
other respects, is the bird known in North America as the "robin"--its
ruddy breast and familiar habits reminding the early British settlers in
the New World of the household favourite of their former homes. This
bird, the _Turdus migratorius_ of Linnaeus, has a wide geographical
range, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from Greenland to
Guatemala, and, except at its extreme limits, is almost everywhere a
very abundant species. As its scientific name imports, it is essentially
a migrant, and gathers in flocks to pass the winter in the south, though
a few remain in New England throughout the year. Yet its social
instincts point rather in the direction of man than of its own kind, and
it is not known to breed in companies, while it affects the homesteads,
villages and even the parks and gardens of the large cities, where its
fine song, its attractive plumage, and its great services as a destroyer
of noxious insects, combine to make it justly popular. (A. N.)
FIELDING, ANTHONY VANDYKE COPLEY (1787-1855), commonly called Copley
Fielding, English landscape painter (son of a portrait painter), became
at an early age a pupil of John Varley. He took to water-colour
painting, and to this he confined himself almost exclusively. In 1810 he
became an associate exhibitor in the Water-colour Society, in 1813 a
full member, and in 1831 president of that body. He also engaged largely
in teaching the art, and made ample profits. His death took place at
Worthing in March 1855. Copley Fielding was a painter of much elegance,
taste and accomplishment, and has always been highly popular with
purchasers, without reaching very high in originality of purpose or of
style: he painted in vast number all sorts of views (occasionally in
oil-colour) including marine subjects in large proportion. Specimens of
his work are to be seen in the water-colour gallery of the Victoria and
Albert Museum, of dates ranging from 1829 to 1850. Among the engraved
specimens of his art is the _Annual of British Landscape Scenery_,
published in 1839. (W. M. R.)
FIELDING, HENRY (1707-1754), English novelist and playwright, was born
at Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury, Somerset, on the 22nd of April 1707.
His father was Lieutenant Edmund Fielding, third son of John Fielding,
who was canon of Salisbury and fifth son of the earl of Desmond. The
earl of Desmond belonged to the younger branch of the Denbigh family,
who, until lately, were supposed to be connected with the Habsburgs. To
this claim, now discredited by the researches of Mr J. Horace Round
(_Studies in Peerage_, 1901, pp. 216-249), is to be attributed the
famous passage in Gibbon's _Autobiography_ which predicts for _Tom
Jones_--"that exquisite picture of human manners"--a diuturnity
exceeding that of the house of Austria. Henry Fielding's mother was
Sarah Gould, daughter of Sir Henry Gould, a judge of the king's bench.
It is probable that the marriage was not approved by her father, since,
though she remained at Sharpham Park for some time after that event, his
will provided that her husband should have nothing to do with a legacy
of L3000 left her in 1710. About this date the Fieldings moved to East
Stour in Dorset. Two girls, Catherine and Ursula, had apparently been
born at Sharpham Park; and three more, together with a son, Edmund,
followed at East Stour. Sarah, the third of the daughters, born November
1710, and afterwards the author of _David Simple_ and other works,
survived her brother.
Fielding's education up to his mother's death, which took place in April
1718 at East Stour, seems to have been entrusted to a neighbouring
clergyman, Mr Oliver of Motcombe, in whom tradition traces the uncouth
lineaments of "Parson Trulliber" in _Joseph Andrews_. But he must have
contrived, nevertheless, to prepare his pupil for Eton, to which place
Fielding went about this date, probably as an oppidan. Little is known
of his schooldays. There is no record of his name in the college lists;
but, if we may believe his first biographer, Arthur Murphy, by no means
an unimpeachable authority, he left "uncommonly versed in the Greek
authors, and an early master of the Latin classics,"--a statement which
should perhaps be qualified by his own words to Sir Robert Walpole in
1730:--
"Tuscan and French are in my head;
Latin I write, and Greek--I read."
But he certainly made friends among his class-fellows--some of whom
continued friends for life. Winnington and Hanbury-Williams were among
these. The chief, however, and the most faithful, was George, afterwards
Sir George, and later Baron Lyttelton of Frankley.
When Fielding left Eton is unknown. But in November 1725 we hear of him
definitely in what seems like a characteristic escapade. He was staying
at Lyme (in company with a trusty retainer, ready to "beat, maim or
kill" in his young master's behalf), and apparently bent on carrying
off, if necessary by force, a local heiress, Miss Sarah Andrew, whose
fluttered guardians promptly hurried her away, and married her to some
one else (_Athenaeum_, 2nd June 1883). Her baffled admirer consoled
himself by translating part of Juvenal's sixth satire into verse as "all
the Revenge taken by an injured Lover." After this he must have lived
the usual life of a young man about town, and probably at this date
improved the acquaintance of his second cousin, Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu, to whom he inscribed his first comedy, _Love in Several
Masques_, produced at Drury Lane in February 1728. The moment was not
particularly favourable, since it succeeded Cibber's _Provok'd Husband_,
and was contemporary with Gay's popular _Beggar's Opera_. Almost
immediately afterwards (March 16th) Fielding entered himself as "Stud.
Lit." at Leiden University. He was still there in February 1729. But he
had apparently left before the annual registration of February 1730,
when his name is absent from the books (_Macmillan's Magazine_, April
1907); and in January 1730 he brought out a second comedy at the
newly-opened theatre in Goodman's Fields. Like its predecessor, the
_Temple Beau_ was an essay in the vein of Congreve and Wycherley,
though, in a measure, an advance on _Love in Several Masques_.
With the _Temple Beau_ Fielding's dramatic career definitely begins. His
father had married again; and his Leiden career had been interrupted for
lack of funds. Nominally, he was entitled to an allowance of L200 a
year; but this (he was accustomed to say) "any body might pay that
would." Young, handsome, ardent and fond of pleasure, he began that
career as a hand-to-mouth playwright around which so much legend has
gathered--and gathers. Having--in his own words--no choice but to be a
hackney coachman or a hackney writer, he chose the pen; and his
inclinations, as well as his opportunities, led him to the stage. From
1730 to 1736 he rapidly brought out a large number of pieces, most of
which had merit enough to secure their being acted, but not sufficient
to earn a lasting reputation for their author. His chief successes, from
a critical point of view, the _Author's Farce_ (1730) and _Tom Thumb_
(1730, 1731), were burlesques; and he also was fortunate in two
translations from Moliere, the _Mock Doctor_ (1732) and the _Miser_
(1733). Of the rest (with one or two exceptions, to be mentioned
presently) the names need only be recorded. They are _The Coffee-House
Politician_, a comedy (1730); _The Letter Writers_, a farce (1731); _The
Grub-Street Opera_, a burlesque (1731); _The Lottery_, a farce (1732);
_The Modern Husband_, a comedy (1732); _The Covent Garden Tragedy_, a
burlesque (1732); _The Old Debauchees_, a comedy (1732); _Deborah; or, a
Wife for you all_, an after-piece (1733); _The Intriguing Chambermaid_
(from Regnard), a two-act comedy (1734); and _Don Quixote in England_, a
comedy, which had been partly sketched at Leiden.
_Don Quixote_ was produced in 1734, and the list of plays may be here
interrupted by an event of which the date has only recently been
ascertained, namely, Fielding's first marriage. This took place on the
28th of November 1734 at St Mary, Charlcornbe, near Bath (_Macmillan's
Magazine_, April 1907), the lady being a Salisbury beauty, Miss
Charlotte Cradock, of whom he had been an admirer, if not a suitor, as
far back as 1730. This is a fact which should be taken into
consideration in estimating the exact Bohemianism of his London life,
for there is no doubt that he was devotedly attached to her. After a
fresh farce entitled _An Old Man taught Wisdom_, and the comparative
failure of a new comedy, _The Universal Gallant_, both produced early in
1735, he seems for a time to have retired with his bride, who came into
L1500, to his old home at East Stour. Around this rural seclusion
fiction has freely accreted. He is supposed to have lived for three
years on the footing of a typical 18th-century country gentleman; to
have kept a pack of hounds; to have put his servants into impossible
yellow liveries; and generally, by profuse hospitality and reckless
expenditure, to have made rapid duck and drake of Mrs Fielding's modest
legacy. Something of this is demonstrably false; much, grossly
exaggerated. In any case, he was in London as late as February 1735 (the
date of the "Preface" to _The Universal Gallant_); and early in March
1736 he was back again managing the Haymarket theatre with a so-called
"_Great Mogul's_ Company of _English_ Comedians."
Upon this new enterprise fortune, at the outset, seemed to smile. The
first piece (produced on the 5th of March) was _Pasquin, a Dramatick
Satire on the Times_ (a piece akin in its plan to Buckingham's
_Rehearsal_), which contained, in addition to much admirable burlesque,
a good deal of very direct criticism of the shameless political
corruption of the Walpole era. Its success was unmistakable; and when,
after bringing out the remarkable _Fatal Curiosity_ of George Lillo, its
author followed up _Pasquin_ by the _Historical Register for the Year
1736_, of which the effrontery was even more daring than that of its
predecessor, the ministry began to bethink themselves that matters were
going too far. How they actually effected their object is obscure: but
grounds were speedily concocted for the Licensing Act of 1737, which
restricted the number of theatres, rendered the lord chamberlain's
licence an indispensable preliminary to stage representation, and--in a
word--effectually put an end to Fielding's career as a dramatist.
Whether, had that career been prolonged to its maturity, the result
would have enriched the theatrical repertoire with a new species of
burlesque, or reinforced it with fresh variations on the "wit-traps" of
Wycherley and Congreve, is one of those inquiries that are more academic
than, profitable. What may be affirmed is, that Fielding's plays, as we
have them, exhibit abundant invention and ingenuity; that they are full
of humour and high spirits; that, though they may have been hastily
written, they were by no means thoughtlessly constructed; and that, in
composing them, their author attentively considered either managerial
hints, or the conditions of the market. Against this, one must set the
fact that they are often immodest; and that, whatever their intrinsic
merit, they have failed to rival in permanent popularity the work of
inferior men. Fielding's own conclusion was, "that he left off writing
for the stage, when he ought to have begun"--which can only mean that he
himself regarded his plays as the outcome of imitation rather than
experience. They probably taught him how to construct _Tom Jones_; but
whether he could ever have written a comedy at the level of that novel,
can only be established by a comparison which it is impossible to make,
namely, a comparison with _Tom Jones_ of a comedy written at the same
age, and in similar circumstances.
_Tumble-Down Dick; or, Phaeton in the Suds_, _Eurydice_ and _Eurydice
hissed_ are the names of three occasional pieces which belong to the
last months of Fielding's career as a Haymarket manager. By this date he
was thirty, with a wife and daughter. As a means of support, he reverted
to the profession of his maternal grandfather; and, in November 1737, he
entered the Middle Temple, being described in the books of the society
as "of East Stour in Dorset." That he set himself strenuously to master
his new profession, is admitted; though it is unlikely that he had
entirely discarded the irregular habits which had grown upon him in his
irresponsible bachelorhood. He also did a good deal of literary work,
the best known of which is contained in the _Champion_, a "News-Journal"
of the _Spectator_ type undertaken with James Ralph, whose poem of
"Night" is made notorious in the _Dunciad_. That the _Champion_ was not
without merit is undoubted; but the essay-type was for the moment
out-worn, and neither Fielding nor his coadjutor could lend it fresh
vitality. Fielding contributed papers from the 15th of November 1739 to
the 19th of June 1740. On the 20th of June he was called to the bar, and
occupied chambers in Pump Court. It is further related that, in the
diligent pursuit of his calling, he travelled the Western Circuit, and
attended the Wiltshire sessions.
Although, with the _Champion_, he professed, for the time, to have
relinquished periodical literature, he still wrote at intervals, a fact
which, taken in connexion with his past reputation as an effective
satirist, probably led to his being "unjustly censured" for much that he
never produced. But he certainly wrote a poem "Of True Greatness"
(1741); a first book of a burlesque epic, the _Vernoniad_, prompted by
Vernon's expedition of 1739; a vision called the _Opposition_, and,
perhaps, a political sermon entitled the _Crisis_ (1741). Another piece,
now known to have been attributed to him by his contemporaries (_Hist.
MSS. Comm., Rept._ 12, App. Pt. ix., p. 204), is the pamphlet entitled
_An Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews_, a clever but coarse
attack upon the prurient side of Richardson's _Pamela_, which had been
issued in 1740, and was at the height of its popularity. _Shamela_
followed early in 1741. Richardson, who was well acquainted with
Fielding's four sisters, at that date his neighbours at Hammersmith,
confidently attributed it to Fielding (_Corr._ 1804, iv. 286, and
unpublished letter at South Kensington); and there are suggestive points
of internal evidence (such as the transformation of _Pamela's_ "MR B."
into "Mr Booby") which tend to connect it with the future _Joseph
Andrews_. Fielding, however, never acknowledged it, or referred to it;
and a great deal has been laid to his charge that he never deserved
("Preface" to _Miscellanies_, 1743).
But whatever may be decided in regard to the authorship of _Shamela_, it
is quite possible that it prompted the more memorable _Joseph Andrews_,
which made its appearance in February 1742, and concerning which there
is no question. Professing, on his title-page, to imitate Cervantes,
Fielding set out to cover _Pamela_ with Homeric ridicule by transferring
the heroine's embarrassments to a hero, supposed to be her brother.
Allied to this purpose was a collateral attack upon the slipshod
_Apology_ of the playwright Colley Cibber, with whom, for obscure
reasons, Fielding had long been at war. But the avowed object of the
book fell speedily into the background as its author warmed to his
theme. His secondary speedily became his primary characters, and Lady
Booby and Joseph Andrews do not interest us now as much as Mrs Slipslop
and Parson Adams--the latter an invention that ranges in literature with
Sterne's "Uncle Toby" and Goldsmith's "Vicar." Yet more than these and
others equally admirable in their round veracity, is the writer's
penetrating outlook upon the frailties and failures of human nature. By
the time he had reached his second volume, he had convinced himself that
he had inaugurated a new fashion of fiction; and in a "Preface" of
exceptional ability, he announced his discovery. Postulating that the
epic might be "comic" or "tragic," prose or verse, he claimed to have
achieved what he termed the "Comic Epos in Prose," of which the action
was "ludicrous" rather than "sublime," and the personages selected from
society at large, rather than the restricted ranks of conventional high
life. His plan, it will be observed, was happily adapted to his gifts of
humour, satire, and above all, irony. That it was matured when it began
may perhaps be doubted, but it was certainly matured when it ended.
Indeed, except for the plot, which, in his picaresque first idea, had
not preceded the conception, _Joseph Andrews_ has all the
characteristics of _Tom Jones_, even (in part) to the initial chapters.
_Joseph Andrews_ had considerable success, and the exact sum paid for it
by Andrew Millar, the publisher, according to the assignment now at
South Kensington, was L183:11s., one of the witnesses being the author's
friend, William Young, popularly supposed to be the original of Parson
Adams. It was with Young that Fielding undertook what, with exception of
"a very small share" in the farce of _Miss Lucy in Town_ (1742),
constituted his next work, a translation of the _Plutus_ of
Aristophanes, which never seems to have justified any similar
experiments. Another of his minor works was a _Vindication of the
Dowager Duchess of Marlborough_ (1742), then much before the public by
reason of the _Account of her Life_ which she had recently put forth.
Later in the same year, Garrick applied to Fielding for a play; and a
very early effort, _The Wedding Day_, was hastily patched together, and
produced at Drury Lane in February 1743 with no great success. It was,
however, included in Fielding's next important publication, the three
volumes of _Miscellanies_ issued by subscription in the succeeding
April. These also comprised some early poems, some essays, a Lucianic
fragment entitled a _Journey from this World to the Next_, and, last but
not least, occupying the entire final volume, the remarkable performance
entitled the _History of the Life of the late Mr Jonathan Wild the
Great_.
It is probable that, in its composition, _Jonathan Wild_ preceded
_Joseph Andrews_. At all events it seems unlikely that Fielding would
have followed up a success in a new line by an effort so entirely
different in character. Taking for his ostensible hero a well-known
thief-taker, who had been hanged in 1725, he proceeds to illustrate, by
a mock-heroic account of his progress to Tyburn, the general proposition
that greatness without goodness is no better than badness. He will not
go so far as to say that all "Human Nature is Newgate with the Mask on";
but he evidently regards the description as fairly applicable to a good
many so-called great people. Irony (and especially Irony neat) is not a
popular form of rhetoric; and the remorseless pertinacity with which
Fielding pursues his demonstration is to many readers discomforting and
even distasteful. Yet--in spite of Scott--_Jonathan Wild_ has its softer
pages; and as a purely intellectual conception it is not surpassed by
any of the author's works.
His actual biography, both before and after _Jonathan Wild_, is
obscure. There are evidences that he laboured diligently at his
profession; there are also evidences of sickness and embarrassment. He
had become early a martyr to the malady of his century--gout, and the
uncertainties of a precarious livelihood told grievously upon his
beautiful wife, who eventually died of fever in his arms, leaving him
for the time so stunned and bewildered by grief that his friends feared
for his reason. For some years his published productions were
unimportant. He wrote "Prefaces" to the _David Simple_ of his sister
Sarah in 1744 and 1747; and, in 1745-1746 and 1747-1748, produced two
newspapers in the ministerial interest, the _True Patriot_ and the
_Jacobite's Journal_, both of which are connected with, or derive from,
the rebellion of 1745, and were doubtless, when they ceased, the pretext
of a pension from the public service money (_Journal of a Voyage to
Lisbon_, "Introduction"). In November 1747 he married his wife's maid,
Mary Daniel, at St Bene't's, Paul's Wharf; and in December 1748, by the
interest of his old school-fellow, Lyttelton, he was made a principal
justice of peace for Middlesex and Westminster, an office which put him
in possession of a house in Bow Street, and L300 per annum "of the
dirtiest money upon earth" (_ibid._), which might have been more had he
condescended to become what was known as a "trading" magistrate.
For some time previously, while at Bath, Salisbury, Twickenham and other
temporary resting-places, he had intermittently occupied himself in
composing his second great novel, _Tom Jones; or, the History of a
Foundling_. For this, in June 1748, Millar had paid him L600, to which
he added L100 more in 1749. In the February of the latter year it was
published with a dedication to Lyttelton, to whose pecuniary assistance
to the author during the composition it plainly bears witness. In _Tom
Jones_ Fielding systematically developed the "new Province of Writing"
he had discovered incidentally in _Joseph Andrews_. He paid closer
attention to the construction and evolution of the plot; he elaborated
the initial essays to each book which he had partly employed before, and
he compressed into his work the flower and fruit of his forty years'
experience of life. He has, indeed, no character quite up to the level
of Parson Adams, but his Westerns and Partridges, his Allworthys and
Blifils, have the inestimable gift of life. He makes no pretence to
produce "models of perfection," but pictures of ordinary humanity,
rather perhaps in the rough than the polished, the natural than the
artificial, and his desire is to do this with absolute truthfulness,
neither extenuating nor disguising defects and shortcomings. One of the
results of this unvarnished naturalism has been to attract more
attention to certain of the episodes than their inventor ever intended.
But that, in the manners of his time, he had chapter and verse for
everything he drew is clear. His sincere purpose was, he declared, "to
recommend goodness and innocence," and his obvious aversions are vanity
and hypocrisy. The methods of fiction have grown more sophisticated
since his day, and other forms of literary egotism have taken the place
of his once famous introductory essays, but the traces of _Tom Jones_
are still discernible in most of our manlier modern fiction.
Meanwhile, its author was showing considerable activity in his
magisterial duties. In May 1749, he was chosen chairman of quarter
sessions for Westminster; and in June he delivered himself of a weighty
charge to the grand jury. Besides other pamphlets, he produced a careful
and still readable _Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of
Robbers_, &c. (1751), which, among its other merits, was not ineffectual
in helping on the famous Gin Act of that year, a practical result to
which the "Gin Lane" and "Beer Street" of his friend Hogarth also
materially contributed. These duties and preoccupations left their mark
on his next fiction, _Amelia_ (1752), which is rather more taken up with
social problems and popular grievances than its forerunners. But the
leading personage, in whom, as in the Sophia Western of _Tom Jones_, he
reproduced the traits of his first wife, is certainly, as even Johnson
admitted, "the most pleasing heroine of all the romances." The minor
characters, too, especially Dr Harrison and Colonel Bath, are equal to
any in _Tom Jones_. The book nevertheless shows signs, not of failure
but of fatigue, perhaps of haste--a circumstance heightened by the
absence of those "prolegomenous" chapters over which the author had
lingered so lovingly in _Tom Jones_. In 1749 he had been dangerously
ill, and his health was visibly breaking. The L1000 which Millar is said
to have given for _Amelia_ must have been painfully earned.
Early in 1752 his still indomitable energy prompted him to start a third
newspaper, the _Covent Garden Journal_, which ran from the 4th of
January to the 25th of November. It is an interesting contemporary
record, and throws a good deal of light on his Bow Street duties. But it
has no great literary value, and it unhappily involved him in harassing
and undignified hostilities with Smollett, Dr John Hill, Bonnell
Thornton and other of his contemporaries. To the following year belong
pamphlets on "Provision for the Poor," and the case of the strange
impostor, Elizabeth Canning (1734-1773).[1] By 1754 his own case, as
regards health, had grown desperate; and he made matters worse by a
gallant and successful attempt to break up a "gang of villains and
cut-throats," who had become the terror of the metropolis. This
accomplished, he resigned his office to his half-brother John
(afterwards Sir John) Fielding. But it was now too late. After fruitless
essay both of Dr Ward's specifics and the tar-water of Bishop Berkeley,
it was felt that his sole chance of prolonging life lay in removal to a
warmer climate. On the 26th of June 1754 he accordingly left his little
country house at Fordhook, Ealing, for Lisbon, in the "Queen of
Portugal," Richard Veal master. The ship, as often, was tediously
wind-bound, and the protracted discomforts of the sick man and his
family are narrated at length in the touching posthumous tract entitled
the _Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon_, which, with a fragment of a comment
on Bolingbroke's then recently issued essays, was published in February
1755 "for the Benefit of his [Fielding's] Wife and Children." Reaching
Lisbon at last in August 1754, he died there two months later (8th
October), and was buried in the English cemetery, where a monument was
erected to him in 1830._ Luget Britannia gremio non dari fovere natum_
is inscribed upon it.
His estate, including the proceeds of a fair library, only covered his
just debts (_Athenaeum_, 25th Nov. 1905); but his family, a daughter by
his first, and two boys and a girl by his second wife, were faithfully
cared for by his brother John, and by his friend Ralph Allen of Prior
Park, Bath, the Squire Allworthy of _Tom Jones_. His will (undated) was
printed in the _Athenaeum_ for the 1st of February 1890. There is but
one absolutely authentic portrait of him, a familiar outline by Hogarth,
executed from memory for Andrew Millar's edition of his works in 1762.
It is the likeness of a man broken by ill-health, and affords but faint
indication of the handsome Harry Fielding who in his salad days "warmed
both hands before the fire of life." Far too much stress, it is now
held, has been laid by his first biographers upon the unworshipful side
of his early career. That he was always profuse, sanguine and more or
less improvident, is as probable as that he was always manly, generous
and sympathetic. But it is also plain that, in his later years, he did
much, as father, friend and magistrate, to redeem the errors, real and
imputed, of a too-youthful youth.
As a playwright and essayist his rank is not elevated. But as a novelist
his place is a definite one. If the _Spectator_ is to be credited with
foreshadowing the characters of the novel, Defoe with its earliest form,
and Richardson with its first experiments in sentimental analysis, it is
to Henry Fielding that we owe its first accurate delineation of
contemporary manners. Neglecting, or practically neglecting, sentiment
as unmanly, and relying chiefly on humour and ridicule, he set out to
draw life precisely as he saw it around him, without blanks or dashes.
He was, it may be, for a judicial moralist, too indulgent to some of its
frailties, but he was merciless to its meaner vices. For reasons which
have been already given, his high-water mark is _Tom Jones_, which has
remained, and remains, a model in its way of the kind he inaugurated.
An essay on Fielding's life and writings is prefixed to Arthur
Murphy's edition of his works (1762), and short biographies have been
written by Walter Scott and William Roscoe. There are also lives by
Watson (1807), Lawrence (1855), Austin Dobson ("Men of Letters," 1883,
1907) and G.M. Godden (1909). An annotated edition of the _Journal of
a Voyage to Lisbon_ is included in the "World's Classics" (1907).
(A. D.)