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Letters on Literature-Part3_ANDREW LANG(1844-1912)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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had not, after her marriage, to be as forgiving as Amelia, I fear I

must admit that probably it was so. But Dr. Johnson himself thought



little of that.

I am afraid our only way of dealing with Fielding's morality is to



take the best of it and leave the remainder alone. Here I find that

I have unconsciously agreed with that well-knownphilosopher, Mr.



James Boswell, the younger, of Auchinleck:

"The moral tendency of Fielding's writings . . . is ever favourable



to honour and honesty, and cherishes the benevolent and generous

affections. He who is as good as Fielding would make him is an



amiable member of society, and may be led on by more regulated

instructions to a higher state of ethical perfection."



Let us be as good and simple as Adams, without his vanity and his

oddity, as brave and generous as Jones, without Jones's faults, and



what a world of men and women it will become! Fielding did not

paint that unborn world, he sketched the world he knew very well.



He found that respectable people were often perfectly blind to the

duties of charity in every sense of the word. He found that the



only man in a whole company who pitied Joseph Andrews, when stripped

and beaten by robbers was a postilion with defects in his moral



character. In short, he knew that respectability often practised

none but the strictly self-regarding virtues, and that poverty and



recklessness did not always extinguish a native goodness of heart.

Perhaps this discovery made him leniently disposed to "characters



and situations so wretchedly low and dirty, that I," say the author

of "Pamela," "could not be interested for any one of them."



How amusing Richardson always was about Fielding! How jealousy,

spite, and the confusion of mind that befogs a prig when he is not



taken seriously, do darken the eyes of the author of "those

deplorably tedious lamentations, 'Clarissa' and 'Sir Charles



Grandison,'" as Horace Walpole calls them!

Fielding asks his Muse to give him "humour and good humour." What



novelist was ever so rich in both? Who ever laughed at mankind with

so much affection for mankind in his heart? This love shines in



every book of his. The poor have all his good-will, and in him an

untired advocate and friend. What a life the poor led in the



England of 1742! There never before was such tyranny without a

servile insurrection. I remember a dreadful passage in "Joseph



Andrews," where Lady Booby is trying to have Fanny, Joseph's

sweetheart, locked up in prison:-



"It would do a Man good," says her accomplice, Scout, "to see his

Worship, our Justice, commit a Fellow to Bridewell; he takes so much



pleasure in it. And when once we ha' 'um there, we seldom hear any

more o' 'um. He's either starved or eat up by Vermin in a Month's



Time."

This England, with its dominant Squires, who behaved much like



robber barons on the Rhine, was the merry England Fielding tried to

turn from some of its ways. I seriously do believe that, with all



its faults, it was a better place, with a better breed of men, than

our England of to-day. But Fielding satirized intolerable



injustice.

He would be a Reformer, a didactic writer. If we are to have



nothing but "Art for Art's sake," that burly body of Harry

Fielding's must even go to the wall. The first Beau Didapper of a



critic that passes can shove him aside. He preaches like Thackeray;

he writes "with a purpose" like Dickens--obsolete old authors. His



cause is judged, and into Bridewell he goes, if l'Art pour l'Art is

all the literary law and the prophets.



But Fielding cannot be kept in prison long. His noble English, his

sonorous voice must be heard. There is somewhat inexpressibly



heartening, to me, in the style of Fielding. One seems to be

carried along, like a swimmer in a strong, clear stream, trusting



one's self to every whirl and eddy, with a feeling of safety, of

comfort, of delightful ease in the motion of the elastic water. He



is a scholar, nay more, as Adams had his innocentvanity, Fielding

has his innocent pedantry. He likes to quote Greek (fancy quoting






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