JOURNALIST AND MAGISTRATE
"However vain or romantic the Attempt may seem I am sanguine
enough to aim at serving the noble Interests of Religion, Virtue,
and good Sense, by these my lucubrations."
The _Covent Garden Journal_. No. 5.
Nothing could be more characteristic of Fielding's active spirit than were
the early months of 1752. For, no sooner had he deposited the four volumes
of _Amelia_ in the hands of the public, essaying to win his readers over
to a love of virtue and a hatred of vice, by placing before their eyes
that true "model of human life," than we find him launching a direct
attack on the follies and evils of the age, by means of his old weapon,
the press.
The first number of the _Covent Garden Journal_ appeared on the 4th of
January, and its pages, produced under Fielding's own management and
apparently largely written by his own pen, provided satires on folly,
invectives against vice, and incitements to goodness and sense, delivered
in the name of one _Sir Alexander Drawcansir, Knt. Censor of Great
Britain_. [1] The new paper ran but for seventy-two numbers; perhaps for
all the wit and learning, the fire and zest of its columns, the public
were reluctant to buy their own lashings. But it may be doubted whether,
except in the pages of his three great novels, Henry Fielding ever
revealed himself more completely than in these his last informal
'lucubrations.' Here, the active Justice, the accomplished scholar, the
lawyer, and man of the world, the first wit of his day, talks to us of a
hundred topics, chosen indeed on the spur of the moment, but discussed in
his own incomparable words, and with the now mature authority of one, who
had "dived into the inmost Recesses of Human Nature." No subject is too
abstruse, none too trifling, for _Mr Censor_ to illumine. Freed from the
political bands of the earlier newspapers, this last _Journal_, produced
be it remembered by a man in shattered health, and distracted by the
squalid business of a Bow Street Court-room, ranges over an amazing
compass of life and manners.
Thus, one January morning, _Sir Alexander's_ readers would open their
paper to find him deploring the decline of "a Religion sometime ago
professed in this Country, and which, if my Memory fails me not was called
Christian." The following Saturday they are presented with a learned and
pleasant argument to prove that every male critic should be eighteen years
of age, and "BE ABLE TO READ." A few days later the pages of writers
purveying the prevalent "Infidelity, Scurrility, and Indecency" are
ingeniously allotted to various uses. In February the _Journal_ accords a
noble tribute "to that great Triumvirate Lucian, Cervantes, and Swift";
not indeed "for that Wit and Humour alone, which they all so eminently
possesst, but because they all endeavoured with the utmost Force of their
Wit and Humour, to expose and extirpate those Follies and Vices which
chiefly prevailed in their several Countries." The design of Aristophanes
and Rabelais on the other hand, appears to _Mr Censor_, if he may speak
his opinion freely, "very plainly to have been to ridicule all Sobriety,
Modesty, Decency, Virtue, and Religion out of the world." From such
considerations it is an easy passage to a definition of 'real Taste' as
derived from a "nice Harmony between the Imagination and the Judgment";
and to these final censorial warnings:--"_Evil Communications corrupt good
Manners_ is a quotation of St Paul from Menander. EVIL BOOKS CORRUPT AT
ONCE BOTH OUR MANNERS AND OUR TASTE." Four days after this learned
'lucubration' the voice of the warm-hearted magistrate speaks in a
reminder of the prevailing abject misery of the London poor who "in the
most miserable lingering Manner do daily perish for Want in this
Metropolis." And in almost the next number his Honour gives his readers
letters from the fair _Cordelia_, from _Sarah Scandal_, and from other
correspondents, of a wit pleasant enough to drive London's poverty far
from their minds. Two days after attending to these ladies, the _Censor_
takes up his keenest weapons in an attack on that "detestable vice of
slander" by which is taken away the "_immediate Jewel of a Man's Soul_,"
his good name; a crime comparable to that of murder. Here we have _Sir
Alexander_ speaking with the same voice as did the playwright and
journalist of ten years previously, when he declared, in his
_Miscellanies_, that to stab a man's character 'in the dark' is no less an
offence than to stab his flesh in the same treacherous manner. Indeed,
throughout these last columns of weekly satire, wit, and learning,
Fielding remains true to the constant tenor of his genius. He exposes the
miser, the seducer of innocence, the self-seeker, the place-hunter, the
degraded vendor of moral poison, the 'charitable' hypocrite, with the same
fierce moral energy as that with which, when but a lad of one and twenty,
he first assailed the vices of the society in which his own lot was cast.
His unconquerable energy, an energy that neither sickness nor distress
could abate, still assaults that "cursed Maxim ... that Everybody's
business is Nobody's." And his wit has lost none of its point when
thrusting at the lesser follies of the day; at the fair Clara's devotion
to her pet monkey; at the insolence of the Town Beau at the playhouse; at
the arrogance of carters in the streets; at the vagaries of fashion
according to which Belinda graces the theatre with yards of ruff one day,
and on the next discards that covering so entirely that the snowy scene in
the boxes "becomes extremely delightful to the eyes of every Beholder."
It is quite impossible to convey, within the limits of a few pages, all
that _Sir Alexander_ tells us of what he sees and hears, as the
tragi-comedy of life passes before his Bow Street windows. For Fielding
possessed in the highest degree the art of hearing, to use his own
analysis, not with the ear only (an organ shared by man with "other
Animals") but also with the head, and with the heart; just as his eye
could penetrate beneath the velvet coat of the prosperous scoundrel, the
reputation of the illiterate author, or the sorry rags of some honest hero
of the gutter. And his _Covent Garden Journal_ is, in truth, his journal
of eleven months of a life into the forty odd years of which were
compressed both the insight of genius, and the activities of twenty
average men. Such a record cannot be sifted into a summary. The
acknowledged motive of this last of Fielding's newspapers is, however,
concise enough; and does equal honour to his patriotism and his humanity.
The age, as it seemed to him, was an age of public degradation. Religion
was vanishing from the life of the people; politics were a petty question
of party jealousy; literary taste was falling to the level of alehouse wit
and backstairs scandal; the youth of the nation were completing their
education, when fifteen or sixteen years old, by a course of the Town, and
then qualifying for a graduate's degree in like knowledge, by a foreign
tour; the 'mob' was gaining a dangerous excess of power; the leaders of
society were past masters and mistresses of vice and folly; the poor in
the streets were sunk in misery, or brutalised into reckless crime. This
was the England that _Mr Censor_ saw from his house in Bow Street; this
was the England which he set out to purify; and the means which he chose
were his own familiar weapons of satire and ridicule. Of these, ridicule,
he declares, when his _Journal_ was but four weeks old, "is commonly a
stronger and better method of attacking Vice than the severer kind of
Satire." In accordance with which view, _General Sir Alexander_ is
represented, in a mock historic forecast, as having, in the space of
twelve months, entirely cleansed his country from the evils afflicting it,
by means of a "certain Weapon called a Ridicule." These evils moreover
Fielding held to be most readily combated by assailing "those base and
scandalous Writings which the Press hath lately poured in such a torrent
upon us that the Name of an Author is in the ears of all good Men become
almost an infamous appelation"; and, accordingly, the first number of his
new paper discloses _Sir Alexander_ in full crusade against these
Grub-Street writers. But that he soon perceived the quixotic impolicy of
such a campaign, appears very clearly, as early as the fifth number of the
_Journal_:--"when Hercules undertook to cleanse the Stables of Augeas (a
Work not much unlike my present Undertaking) should any little clod of
Dirt more filthy perhaps than all the rest have chanced to bedawb him, how
unworthy his Spirit would it have been to have polluted his Hands, by
seizing the dirty clod, and crumbling it to Pieces. He should have known
that such Accidents were incident to such an Undertaking: which though
both a useful and heroic office, was yet none of the cleanliest; since no
Man, I believe, ever removed great quantities of Dirt from any Place
without finding some of it sticking to his skirts." Such dirty clods were
undoubtedly thrown by nameless antagonists, as unworthy of Fielding's
steel as was one whose name has come down to us, the despicable Dr John
Hill, who once suffered a public caning at Ranelagh; and one clod, "more
filthy perhaps than all the rest," soiled the hands of Smollett. [2] But
the dirt which was very freely flung on to our eighteenth-century Hercules
has, by now, fallen back, with great justice, on to the heads of his
abusers. Fielding has placed on record, in the _Journal_, his conviction
that the man who reads the works of the five heroic satirists, Lucian,
Cervantes, Swift, Moliere and Shakespeare, "must either have a very bad
Head, or a very bad Heart, if he doth not become both a Wiser and a better
Man." To-day, 'party and prejudice' having subsided, we are ready to say
the same of the readers of the _Covent Garden Journal_; perceiving that,
if _Mr Censor_, like his five great forerunners, chose to send his satire
"laughing into the World," it was that he might better effect the
'glorious Purpose' announced in the fifth number of his paper: "However
vain or romantic the Attempt may seem, I am sanguine enough to aim at
serving the noble Interests of Religion, Virtue, and good Sense, by these
my Lucubrations."
To most men the production, twice a week, of a newspaper so wide in scope
as the _Covent Garden Journal_ (for its columns included the news of the
day, as well as the manifold 'censorial' energies of _Sir Alexander_)
would have been occupation enough; especially with a "constitution now
greatly impaired and enfeebled," and when "labouring under attacks of the
gout, which were, of course, severer than ever."
But there is no hint of either editorial or valetudinarian seclusion in
the fragmentary glimpses obtainable of Mr Justice Fielding during these
eleven months of 1752. Thus, by an advertisement recurring throughout the
_Journal_, he expressly invites to his house in Bow Street, "All Persons,
who shall for the Future suffer by Robbers Burglars &c.," that they may
bring him "the best Description they can of such Robbers, &c., with the
Time, and Place, and Circumstances of the Fact"; and that this invitation
was likely to bring half London within his doors appears from Fielding's
own description of the condition of the capital at the time. "There is not
a street," he declares, speaking of Westminster, "which doth not swarm all
day with beggars, and all night with thieves. Stop your coach at what shop
you will, however expeditious the tradesman is to attend you, a beggar is
commonly beforehand with him; and if you should directly face his door the
tradesman must often turn his head while you are talking to him, or the
same beggar, or some other thief at hand will pay a visit to his shop!"
And nothing could prove more conclusively the arduousness of Fielding's
work as a magistrate than the record of the last ten days of January,
1752. On the night of the 17th a peculiarly brutal murder had been
perpetrated on a poor higgler in Essex; and the _Journal_ for January 28,
tells us how Fielding "spent near eight hours," examining, separately,
suspected persons, "at the desire of several gentlemen of Fortune in the
County of Essex"; having on the previous Friday and Saturday, been engaged
"above Twenty hours in taking Depositions concerning this Fact." Then, on
the day after the arrival of the murder suspects, we find two of the
Shoreditch constables bringing no fewer than ten "idle lewd and
disorderly" men and women before the Justice; a woman was charged by a
diamond seller on suspicion of feloniously receiving "three Brilliant
Diamonds"; Mr Welch, the notable High Constable of Holborn, brought
seventeen "idle and lewd Persons" whom he had apprehended the night
before; and, to complete this single day's work, an Italian was brought
in, "all over covered with [the] Blood" of a brother Italian, whose head
he had almost cut off. Twenty-nine cases on one day, and these in the
midst of eight hour examinations concerning a murder, were surely work
enough to satisfy even Fielding's energies. And, as another entry in his
_Journal_ mentions the examination of a suspected thief "very late at
Night," there seems to have been no hour out of the twenty-four in which
the great novelist did not hold himself at the service of the public.
Meanwhile, the criminal licence of the streets was now receiving
Ministerial attention. The King's Speech, delivered at the opening of
Parliament in the previous November, had contained a passage which might
have been inspired by Fielding himself: "I cannot conclude," said His
Majesty, "without recommending to you in the most earnest manner, to
consider seriously of some effectual provisions to suppress those
audacious crimes of Robbery and Violence which are now become so
frequent...and which have proceeded in great Measure from that profligate
Spirit of Irreligion, Idleness, Gaming, and Extravagance, which has of
late extended itself in an uncommon degree, to the Dishonour of the
Nation, and to the great Offence and Prejudice of the sober and
industrious Part of the People." Six weeks later the first number of the
_Journal_, makes comment on the need of fresh legislation to suppress
drunkenness; and on the twenty first of the month _Sir Alexander_
announces, with something of special information in his tone, that the
immediate suppression of crimes of violence "we can with Pleasure assure
the Public is at present the chief attention of Parliament."
It must have been with something of the pleasure which he so earnestly
desires in one of the last utterances of his pen--"the pleasure of
thinking that, in the decline of my health and life, I have conferred a
great and lasting Benefit on my Country,"--that Fielding saw the royal
assent given, in the following March, to an Act for the "_better
preventing Thefts and Robberies and for regulating Places of Public
Entertainment, and punishing Persons keeping disorderly Houses_."
[3] For this Act is directed to the suppression of four of the abuses so
strongly denounced, twelve months previously, in his own _Enquiry_; and
when we recall the fact that he had already submitted, to the Lord
Chancellor, draft legislation for the suppression of robberies, it is at
least a plausible surmise that here we have a memorial of Henry Fielding's
patriotic energy, preserved on the pages of the Statute Book itself.
[4] The four points so specially urged in the _Enquiry_, and here made
law, are the suppression of the "multitude of places of Entertainment" for
the working classes; the better suppression of Gaming Houses; the
punishment of the scandalous advertisements offering rewards 'and no
questions asked' for stolen goods; and the payment of certain prosecutors
for their expenses in time and trouble, when a conviction had been
obtained.
In this same month of March another Act, which closely concerned
Fielding's official work, received the royal assent. This was an Act "for
better preventing the horrid Crime of Murder." [5] The pressing need of
such a measure had been already urged in the _Covent Garden journal_. In
February the _Journal_ declares that _"More shocking Murders have been
committed within the last Year, than for many Years before. To what can
this be so justly imputed as to the manifest decline of Religion among the
lower People. A matter, which even, in a Civil Sense, demands the
attention of the Government."_ And Mr Censor returns to the subject on
March 3: _"More Murders and horrid Barbarities have been committed within
the last twelvemonth, than during many preceding years. This as we have
before observed, is principally to be attributed to the Declension of
Religion among the Common People."_ By the end of the month the
above-named Act had received the royal assent; and the first clause
thereof again yielded Fielding the satisfaction of seeing a measure which
he had warmly recommended in his Enquiry now placed on the Statute Book,
namely the clause that the execution of the criminal be made immediate on
his conviction. This Act, moreover, provides for the abatement of another
scandal exposed by Fielding many years previously, in the pages of
Jonathan Wild, that of the excessive supply of drink allowed to condemned
prisoners.
In the following month Fielding carried out a scheme, conceived he tells
us "some time since," for combating this prevalence of murder. This was
his shilling pamphlet, published about April 14, entitled "Examples of the
Interposition of Providence in the _Detection_ and _Punishment_ of MURDER.
Containing above thirty cases, in which this dreadful crime hath been
brought to light in the most extraordinary and miraculous manner." The
advertisement describes the _Examples_ as _"very proper to be given to all
the inferior Kind of People; and particularly to the Youth of both sexes,
whose natural Love of Stories will lead them to read with Attention what
cannot fail of Infusing in to their tender Minds an early Dread and
Abhorrence of staining their Hands with the Blood of their
Fellow-creatures"_ Low as was the price, a "large allowance" was made by
Andrew Millar to those who bought any quantity; and Fielding distributed
the little volume freely in Court.
The thirty-three _Examples_ are introduced and concluded by Fielding's own
denunciation of this, "the blackest sin, which can contaminate the hands,
or pollute the soul of man." And from these pages we may learn his own
solemnly declared belief in a peculiarly "immediate interposition of the
Divine providence" in the detection of this crime; and also his faith in
"the fearful and tremendous sentence of eternal punishment" as that
divinely allotted to the murderer. He warns the murderer, moreover, that
by hurrying a fellow-creature to a sudden and unprepared death he may be
guilty of destroying not only his victim's body, but also his soul. And it
may be questioned whether Fielding ever put his unrivalled mastery of
style to a nobler intention than in the closing words of this pamphlet,
words designed to be read by the lowest of the people: "Great courage may,
perhaps, bear up a bad mind (for it is sometimes the property of such)
against the most severe sentence which can be pronounced by the mouth of a
human judge; but where is the fortitude which can look an offended
Almighty in the face? Who can bear the dreadful thought of being
confronted with the spirit of one whom we have murdered, in the presence
of all the Host of Heaven, and to have justice demanded against our guilty
soul, before that most awful judgement-seat, where there is infinite
justice as well as infinite power?"
The dedication of this pamphlet, dated Bow Street, April 8, 1752, is
addressed to Dr Madox, Bishop of Worcester, and in it Fielding recalls a
conversation he had some time previously had with that prelate, in which
he had mentioned the plan of such a book, and received immediate
encouragement from his lordship. A further appreciation of the _Examples_
appears in a paragraph in the _Journal_ for May 5: "Last week a certain
Colonel of the Army bought a large number of the book called _Examples of
the Interposition of Providence in the Detection and Punishment of
Murder_, in Order to distribute them amongst the private soldiers of his
Regiment. An Example well worthy of Imitation!"
Fielding never allows us to forget for any length of time one or another
of his contrasting activities, however absorbed he may seem to be in some
one field of action. Now, when he is plunged in a hand-to-hand struggle
with the criminal conditions of London, when he is admonishing the gayer
end of the Town with his weekly censorial satire and ridicule, and while
he is watching the enactment of new legislation for which he had so
strenously pleaded,--he suddenly reappears in his earlier rôle of
classical scholar. On June 17, the columns of the _Journal_ advertise
proposals for "A New Translation into English of the Works of LUCIAN. From
the original Greek. With Notes, Historical, Critical and Explanatory. By
Henry Fielding Esquire; and the Rev. Mr William Young." To which notice
there is added, a few days later, the assurance that "Everything which
hath the least Tendency to the Indecent will be omitted in this
Translation." The most delightful, perhaps, of all the leading articles in
the _Covent Garden Journal_ is that in which the merits of this "Father of
True Humour" are delineated. The facetious wit, the "attic Elegance of
Diction," the poignant satire, the virtues and abilities of Lucian are
here so persuasively presented that scarce a reader but surely would
hasten, as he laid his paper down, to Mr Fielding's or Mr Young's house,
or to Millar in the Strand or Dodsley in Pall Mall, where orders (with a
guinea to be paid on booking the same) were received. And this essay is
also memorable for the express declaration therein contained that Fielding
had "formed his stile" upon that of Lucian; and, again, as betraying a
note of disappointment, an acknowledgment that worldly fortune had indeed
treated him somewhat harshly, such as Fielding's sanguine courage very
seldom permits him to utter. The concluding words, written on his own
behalf and on that of Mr Young, are words of gentle protest to the public
for their lack of support to "two gentlemen who have hitherto in their
several capacities endeavoured to be serviceable to them without deriving
any great Emolument to themselves from their Labours." And when he tells
us how that 'glory of human Nature, Marcus Aurelius' employed Lucian "in a
very considerable Post in the Government," since that great emperor "did
not, it seems, think, that a Man of Humour was below his Notice or unfit
for Business of the gravest Kind," we cannot but remember that the
business on which the Government of George II. thought fit to employ the
inimitable genius of Henry Fielding was that of a Bow Street magistrate.
The onerous drudgery of that business, or else lack of response from a
public deaf to its own interests, seems to have brought to nothing the
project of this translation; and so English literature is the poorer for
the loss of the works of the 'Father of Humour' translated by the
incomparable pen of the 'Father of the English Novel.'[6]
Four months after the publication of the proposals for _Lucian_, Fielding
took formal leave of the readers of his _Covent Garden Journal_, telling
them that he no longer had "Inclination or Leisure," to carry on the
paper. His brief farewell words contain an assurance very like that
solemnly made, we may remember, five years before the publication of _Tom
Jones_. At present, he declares, he has "No intention to hold any further
correspondence with the gayer Muses"; just as eight years before he had
announced that henceforth the 'infamous' Nine should have none of his
company. To this declaration is added a protest against the injustice of
attributing abuse to a writer who "never yet was, nor ever shall be the
author of any, unless to Persons who are or ought to be infamous." From
the tenor of this parting speech it is clear that Fielding was, at the
time, feeling keenly the imputation, flung by some of his contemporaries,
of producing 'scandalous Writings'; unmindful for the moment of his own
calmer and wiser utterance, when he declared that men who engage in an
heroic attempt to cleanse their age will undoubtedly find some of the dirt
thereof sticking to their coats. "As he disdained all littleness of
spirit, where ever he met with it in his dealings with the world, his
indignation was apt to rise," says his contemporary Murphy; and we know
from earlier protests how cruelly Fielding suffered from the attribution
to his pen of writings utterly alien to his character. "... really," he
cries, in the last words of the _Journal_, "it is hard to hear that
scandalous Writings have been charged on me for that very Reason which
ought to have proved the Contrary namely because they have been
Scandalous."
The year 1752 closes with the birth of another daughter, born presumably
in the house in Bow Street, as her baptism under the name of Louisa is
entered in the registers of St Paul's, Covent Garden.
The curtain that, in Fielding's case, hangs so closely over all the
pleasant intimate details of life, lifts once or twice during this year of
incessant activity, and discloses just those warmhearted acts of kindness
that help us to think of Harry Fielding with an affection almost as warm
and personal as that we keep for Dick Steele or Oliver Goldsmith.
Fielding, we know, had "no other use for money" than to help those even
less fortunate than himself; and several incidents of this year show how
he turned his opportunities, both as journalist and magistrate, to like
generous uses. Thus there is the story of how, one day in March, "A poor
girl who had come from Wapping to see the new entertainment at Covent
Garden Theatre had her pocket cut off in the crowd before the doors were
opened. Tho' she knew not the Pickpocket she came immediately to lay her
complaint before the Justice and with many tears lamented not the loss of
her Money, but of her Entertainment. At last, having obtained a sufficient
Passport to the Gallery she departed with great satisfaction, and
contented with the loss of fourteen shillings, though she declared she had
not much more in the world." [7] Another day, or night rather, it is a
poor troup of amateur players who had good reason to be grateful to the
kindly Justice:--"last Monday night an Information was given to Henry
Fielding Esquire: that a set of Barber's apprentices, Journeymen
Staymakers, Maidservants &c. had taken a large room at the Black House in
the Strand, to act the Tragedy of the Orphan; the Price of Admittance One
shilling. About eight o'clock the said Justice issued his Warrant,
directed to Mr Welch, High Constable, who apprehended the said Actors and
brought them before the said Justice, who out of compassion to their Youth
only bound them over to their good behaviour. They were all conducted
through the streets in their Tragedy Dresses, to the no small diversion of
the Populace." [8] And in May both the ample energies and scanty purse of
Justice Fielding were occupied in collecting a subscription for a young
baker and his wife and child, who, by a disastrous fire, were suddenly
plunged into destitution. For these poor people Fielding obtained no less
a sum than £57, within a fortnight of his announcement of their distress
in the columns of the _Journal_. The list of subscribers, published on May
16, shows a guinea against his own name, and a like sum, it may be noted,
from the wealthy Lyttelton.
The splendour of Fielding's genius has shone, as Gibbon foretold,
throughout the world. His indefatigable labours in cleansing England from
some of the evils that then oppressed her deserve to be remembered, if not
by all the world, at least by the citizens of that country which, in the
decline of 'health and life,' he yet strove so eagerly to benefit.
[1] A dramatic satire, advertised in March at Covent Garden Theatre and
written (as stated by Dibdin, _History of the Stage_. Vol. v. p. 156), by
the actor Macklin, bore for sub-title _Pasquin turned Drawcansir, Censor
of Great Britain_. The name, and the further details of the advertisement,
recall Fielding's early success with his political _Pasquin_: but all
further trace of this 'Satire' seems lost. See Appendix C.
[2] _A faithful Narrative..._. By Drawcansir.... Alexander. 1752.
[3] 25. G II. cap 36.
[4] All trace seems now lost of the actual part Fielding may have taken in
the drafting of this Act.
[5] 25. G. II. c. 37.
[6] It would seem, from the following advertisement, that Fielding's
inexhaustible pen published, about this time, a sixpenny pamphlet on 'a
late Act of Parliament'; but all trace of it has been lost:--"A speech
made in the Censorial Court of Alexander Drawcansir, Monday, 6th June,
1752, concerning a late Act of Parliament. Printed for the Author. Price
6d." _The General Advertiser_, June 27, 1752.
[7] The _General Advertiser_ March 4. 1752.
[8] The _General Advertiser_, April 15, 1752.