United States or Saint Martin ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Through him Napoleon's sun of Austerlitz rises, for us, with a more brilliant menace upon arms and the plain; through him Fielding's "most melancholy sun" lights the dying man to the setting-forth on that last voyage of his with such an immortal gleam, denying hope, as would not have lighted, for us, the memory of that seaward morning, had our poetry not undergone the illumination, the transcendent vision, of Tennyson's genius.
He was one of the most vociferous of the imps who tossed me in the blanket, and later, when the elaborate manuscript I had prepared was brought forth, was conspicuously energetic in daubing with hot mush from a huge wooden spoon the sheets I had composed with much painstaking. The grand event in the "Pudding" of our time was the performance of Fielding's extravaganza of Tom Thumb.
The Prologue was the work of James Ralph, afterwards Fielding's colleague in the Champion, and it thus refers to the prevailing taste. The Beggar's Opera had killed Italian song, but now a new danger had arisen, "Humour and Wit, in each politer Age, Triumphant, rear'd the Trophies of the Stage: But only Farce, and Shew, will now go down, And Harlequin's the Darling of the Town."
Despite his superlative coxcombry and egotism, he was, moreover, a man of no mean abilities. His Careless Husband is a far better acting play than any of Fielding's, and his Apology, which even Johnson allowed to be "well-done," is valuable in many respects, especially for its account of the contemporary stage.
While one desperate gang was busy with the destruction of Newgate, other gangs, no less desperate, were busy with destructive work elsewhere. The new prison in Clerkenwell was broken open by one crowd, and its prisoners set free. Another assailed Sir John Fielding's house, and burned its furniture in the streets. A third attacked the house of Lord Mansfield in Bloomsbury Square.
A few weeks before the production of Lillo's tragedy, and while Pasquin was still in the full tide of political success, an event occurred of closer import to Fielding's affectionate nature than all the applause of the Opposition and the town. This was the birth, in April, 1736, of his daughter Charlotte.
This was Ruth Fielding's introduction to the Red Mill, its occupants, and its surroundings. The spot was, indeed, beautiful, and an hour after she had arrived she knew that she would love it. The Lumano River was a wide stream and from the little window of the chamber that Aunt Alviry said would be her own, she could look both up and down the river for several miles.
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.
With his nightcap drawn over his wig, a short grey coat half covering a torn cassock, the crabstick so formidable to ruffians in his hand, and his beloved AEschylus in his pocket, Adams smoking his pipe by the inn fire, or surrounded by his "children" as he called his parishioners vying "with each other in demonstrations of duty and love," fully justifies John Forster's comment on Fielding's manly habit of "discerning what was good and beautiful in the homeliest aspects of humanity."
The great Thief-Catcher's confession is a masterpiece of comfort, and is so far removed from the truth as completely to justify Fielding's incomparable creation.
Word Of The Day