809 



FIELD, NATHANIEL. 



FIELDING, HENRY. 



810 



object to explain the doctrines of the Platonists. Its meetings, which 

 were greatly encouraged by Lorenzo, were cheered by symposia, or 

 annual banquets, on the anniversary of Plato's birthday, of one of 

 which, held at the villa of Careggi, Ficino has given an interesting 

 description. The Academicians were divided into three classes : 1, 

 the Mecenati, being the family of the Medici ; 2, the teachers, who 

 consisted of the most learned men of the time, such as Pico della 

 Mirandola, Poliziauo, Leon Battista Alberti, Landino, and others; 3, 

 of pupils. (Bandini, 'Specimen Literature Florentines,' vol. ii. ; 

 Brucker, ' Histor. Philon.,' torn, iv., period the third, b. 1.) 



At the age of forty Ficino resolved to devote himself to the church, 

 and being ordained, his patron Lorenzo conferred upon him a 

 canonry in the cathedral of Florence. He now made an attempt to 

 amalgamate the theology of Plato with Christianity, and in BO doing 

 was carried by his zeal beyond the limits of sound judgment or 

 propriety. He is said however to have been sincere and single- 

 minded, exemplary in his private conduct, mild and moderate in his 

 temper, and averse from literary feuds and polemics. But his writings 

 savour everywhere a great deal more of the heathen philosopher than 

 of the Christian divine. Being of a diminutive size, and of very 

 precarious health, he says himself that he hardly passed a day without 

 bodily pain, and yet he constantly applied to study. Much of his 

 time was spent at the various country residences of the Medici near 

 Florence, in which he composed his works. He died in 1499, at the 

 age of sixty-six, and his countrymen raised to him a monument in 

 the cathedral of Florence, with his bust, and an epitaph written by 

 his friend Poliziano. His works were collected and published at 

 Basel, 2 vols. folio, 1491. They consist of translations from the 

 Greek philosophers, original treatises on metaphysics and ethics, his 

 ' Theologia Platonica," and other writings. His Latin epistles, which 

 were published separately at Venice, 1495, are interesting on account 

 of the details which they contain concerning the distinguished 

 scholars collected at Florence by the fostering patronage of Lorenzo. 

 Ficino wrote also a work 'De Religione Christiana, 1 aud a commentary 

 on the Epistles of St. Paul. ( Roscoe, Lorenzo the Magnificent ; Corniani, 

 Secoli delta Letteratura ttaliana.) 



FIELD, NATHANIEL, whose name is for several reasons interest- 

 ing in the history of the old English drama, was professionally a 

 player. As early as the year 1600 he was one of the Children of the 

 Chapel, afterwards called Children of the Revels, youths who were 

 trained to act plays before the court, and he continued in that 

 company till after 1609. He then became a member of Shakspere's 

 company, the players of the Globe and Blackfriara theatres, among 

 whom he is named in the list prefixed to the folio of Shakspere's 

 works printed in 1623. Two years later his name disappears ; and in 

 1641 he ia mentioned as 'gone,' which probably means that he was 

 then dead. Besides these circumstances, the only ones known in his 

 history are such as show him to have been poor and distressed. He 

 was the writer of the famous begi?ing-letter, addressed to Henslowe, 

 by himself, Daboone, and Philip Massinger ; and among Henslowe's 

 papers are two other letters of the same melancholy tenor. Field 

 wrote a part, and perhaps Gifford does him less than justice in the 

 quantity he assigns to him, of the fine tragedy of ' The Fatal Dowry,' 

 printed among the works of its other poet Massinger. He is also the 

 author of two comedies, both of which were written between 1605 

 and 1611 ; 'A woman is a Weathercock,' first printed in 1612, and 

 'Amends for Ladies,' first printed in 1618, and again in 1639. Both 

 are included in a small collection, ' The Old English Drama,' 4 vols. 

 12mo, 1830; and in Collier's 'Supplement to Dodsley'a Old Plays,' 

 1833. They abound in spirit, incident, and variety. 



FIELDING, COPLEY VANDYKE, was born about 1787, and 

 belonged to a family several of the members of which were artists of 

 greater or less ability. Copley Fielding exhibited his first pictures 

 at the Artists' Exhibition, Spring-Gardens, in 1810. It was by his 

 water-colour landscapes that he first attracted notice, and though he 

 subsequently made many attempts to achieve success as a painter in 

 oil, it is by his paintings in water-colours that he will be remembered. 

 Mr. Fielding began the practice of the art about the time that Oirtin 

 and Turner had succeeded in raising the practice of water-colour 

 painting almost to a level with that of oil-colours, and Fielding 

 devoted himself with thorough earnestness of purpose to the new art. 



From an early period in his career he became a teacher, and he 

 had in that line an unusual measure of success, as well in the progress 

 of his pupils as in their number and social position. His success as 

 a teacher of course did much to secure for him a wide circle of 

 patrons and friends, which the merits of his works effectually main- 

 tained. Hig course was one of steady prosperity, quite devoid of 

 adventure. His time was constantly occupied either in teaching or 

 painting, or in those sketching excursions which were to furnish him 

 with the materials for new pictures. For many years Mr. Fielding 

 held the office of President of the Society of Painters in Water- 

 Coloura, and bis position was generally recognised as that of the head 

 and representative of his branch of art in England ; the more readily 

 DO doubt in consequence of the estimation in which his personal as 

 well as professional qualities were universally held. He died March 3, 

 1855, in his sixty-eighth year, at Worthing, Sussex, where, or at 

 Brighton, he had for a long period been accustomed to spend his 

 antumni. 



Copley Fielding paiuted perhaps a larger number of landscapes than 

 any other among his contemporaries of anything like equal standing 

 in the art. Of course this was in a great measure owing to his remark- 

 able mechanical dexterity; to which also was unquestionably due 

 much that was at first sight most striking and characteristic in his 

 works. His ' execution ' as it is technically called, was indeed very 

 noticeable. The peculiar texture of his pictures was usually as much 

 produced by the use of sponge and cloth as by brush or pencil ; and 

 this manipulative trickery for in the excess to which he carried it 

 such it eventually became like every kind of clever charlatanism, 

 found a body of enthusiastic admirers, and secured for his pictures 

 eager purchasers at high prices. But it had necessarily a mischievous 

 influence on the painter, and, as far as his example extended, on art. 

 Manipulative dexterity is always easier than that careful and specific 

 imitation which is the result of continuous observation aud con- 

 scientious thought : and the indulgence in any mechanical trickery 

 inevitably leads, as was the case with Fielding in his later years, to 

 the frequent repetition of certain peculiarities of effect, and to 

 mannerism. 



But Copley Fielding was undoubtedly one of the very best of our 

 many admirable landscape painters in water-colours ; a body of artists 

 especially distinguished by a true and simple rendering of natural 

 scenery, and by a decidedly original and self-dependent study of it. His 

 range of subjects was not very extensive, but withiu it he was almost 

 unrivalled. Of our broad chalk downs, with their sunny slopes, wooded 

 hollows, and glimpses of near or remote ocean, or the soft vapoury 

 stretches of di-tant Kentish or Sussex weald, Copley Fielding may 

 fairly be said to be the first who felt the poetry, aud who perceived 

 their exquisite adaptation to pictorial art ; and often as other artists 

 have since essayed to represent the South Downs, he remains as yet 

 their only adequate painter. In depicting our Knglish, Welsh, aud 

 Scotch mountain and lake scenery too, under certain atmospheric 

 conditions, he was equally at home, and so also in those combinations 

 of river, hills, and foliage, of which his 'Bolton Abbey' may be 

 regarded as the representative ; while his stormy marine views, though 

 they became of late years more and more conventional, were always 

 deeply impressive, and sometimes extremely grand. But in all there 

 are the faults arising from insufficient study from the excessive 

 rapidity of production allowing scarce auy subject to be fairly 

 thought out and wrought into a finished and master-like picture. The 

 colour, exquisite as it often is in parts, is too often crude ; the forms 

 are unstudied, the drawing excessively loose, and the chiaroscuro con- 

 ventional. At least such, with all their brilliancy and richness of effect, 

 is too commonly the case with his more recent pictures; many of his 

 earlier ones are, as far as they go, among the most successful aud 

 satisfactory pictures of their class which have been produced by any 

 painter. 



FIELDING, HENRY, born April 22, 1707, wag the sou of General 

 Edmund Fielding, a descendant of the earls of Denbigh. He was 

 nearly connected with the ducal family of Kingston, and thereby 

 with Lady M. W. Montagu. Being designed for the bar, he was 

 removed from Eton to the University of Leyden, where he is said to 

 have studied with application ; but owing to the limited nature of 

 his finances, he was compelled to return to London, where he pluuged 

 into all the dissipation of the metropolis. His first resource as a 

 means of support was writing for the stage ; and between 1727 and 

 1736 he produced eighteen comedies and farces, of which not more 

 than two or three are now known or read. 



About the year 1736 Fielding married. His wife's portion and a 

 small estate, inherited, as is supposed, from his mother, enabled him 

 to retire from London ; but his habitual extravagance again brought 

 him into difficulties, and after three years he became a student at the 

 Temple, with the view of retrieving his fortune at the bar. At the 

 usual time he was called; but gout, the consequence of his early 

 dissipation, rendered it impossible for him to practise with regularity 

 sufficient to insure success. During the interval which preceded his 

 call to the bar, he supported his family by pamphlets aud essays on 

 the passing occurrences of the day ; aud at this time two events 

 happened which seem to have influenced the whole of his remaining 

 career : the death of his wife, to whum he was fondly attached, aud 

 the publication of Richardson's novel of ' Pamela,' which gave him 

 an opportunity to enter upon an employment which ha found prefer- 

 able to the study of law. He now wrote what professed to be the 

 counterpart of ' Pamela,' the history of her brother, ' Joseph Andrews,' 

 who undergoes a variety of trials of a kind similar to those which 

 make Pamela's career so interesting. The whole book is intended as 

 a satire on 'Pamela;' but the author visibly warms with his subject, 

 and draws characters which perhaps none but himself could have 

 drawn in any casej and not even he, had he kept his primary object 

 distinctly in view. 



The character of Parson Adams has been applauded and appre- 

 ciated so often that it would be vain to say anything in its praise ; 

 Nichols ('Literary Anecdotes,' iii., 371) informs us, that it waS taken 

 from a clergyman named Young, and indeed it seems almost impos- 

 sible that so peculiar a character should have been the work of 

 imagination, for there is perhaps scarcely anything so difficult for a 

 novelist as to draw singularity without allowing it to lapse into 

 improbability and extravagance. Sir Walter Scott relates (' Life of 



