11 



FIELDING, HKNRT. 



FILANGIERI, OAETANO. 



la 



ding,' pp. 95, 94), that Richardson took mean anil petty methods 

 vraging himself upon hi* suoceuful satirist, by depreciating him 

 re members of hia own family, and by endeavouring to diminish 



tUU : 



of refrng 



before mom ... 



hi* reputation ai an author. Fielding however did not make reprisals, 



but contented himself with noticing Clarissa in a favourable manner, 



in a publication which he at that time conducted, called ' The Jacobite 



Journal.' 



After the publication of 'Joseph Andrew.-,' Fielding wrote another 

 play, ' The Wedding Day,' and a tract called ' The Journey from this 

 World to the next,' which were followed by 'Jonathan Wild.' The 

 Rebellion of 1745 induced Fielding to take the direction of a paper 

 called ' The Jacobite Journal,' directed against the party known by 

 that name, and in rapport of the Hanoverian succession. This, with 

 other publications of the same kind, at last obtained him a small 

 pension and the place of Justice of the Peace for Middlesex and 

 Westminster, which he is said to have owed to the influence of Lord 

 Lyttelton. 



Horace Walpole, with his usual mixture of foppery and malice, 

 gives a very unfavourable account of Fielding's habits at this period, 

 but the account is so manifestly written for effect, and to palpable a 

 distortion of the truth, that little regard nerd bo paid to it if indeed 

 a sufficient explanation cannot be given of the circumstances related 

 (tee Lawrence's ' Life of Fielding.') Fielding's conduct as a magis- 

 trate proved a strong contrast to the usual iniquity of the so-called 

 trading justices, one of whom he describes so forcibly in 'Amelia' 

 under th name of ' Justice Thrasher.' 



Amidst the laborious duties of a magistrate and pamphleteer, for 

 Fielding wss both at once, ho contrived to produce ' Tom Jones,' a 

 novel which for graphic description, originality of characters, and 

 interest of the tale, has been and ever will be lield.iu the very highest 

 admiration. The publication of ' Tom Jones ' was followed by some 

 works on Poor Laws, in one of which he appears to have struck out 

 a scheme not very dissimilar in principle to that which is now adopted. 

 He also wrote a ' Charge to the Grand Jury of Middlesex ' and some 

 Law Tract*. 



' Amelia' was Fielding's last important work. It was published in 

 1751, toon after which time he was attacked by dropsy, jaundice, and 

 asthma, and when til remedies had been tried in vain, the last remedy 

 of self-banishment was proposed by his physicians. He left England 

 for Lisbon on the 26th of June, 1754, and died there in October of 

 the same year, aged forty-seven, leaving a widow and four children. 



Fielding has been styled, with perfect justice, the father of the 

 English uoveL Sir Walter Scott observes that Richardson by no 

 means succeeded in escaping from the trammels of the French 

 romance. His characters have a strong touch of the impossible virtue 

 and improbable heroism of that class of writing ; and the length of 

 'Sir Charles Grand iron' beam no smnll resemblance to ' Le Grand 

 Cyrus.' But in Fielding's works we find the most perfect delineations 

 of individual character Squire Western, Tom Jones himself, All- 

 worthy, and perhaps above all, Amelia and Mr. 'Abraham Adam?, are 

 portraits which proclaim their own truth. Every reader of Fielding 

 must have been struck with the deficiency of individuality in his 

 heroine*. This arose, we believe, not so much from want of power in 

 the artist, as from the low state of feeling then prevalent with respect 

 to women, which placed them, while unmarried, in the light of a play- 

 tLing ; and when married, in that of an upper servant, or at most a 

 humble companion. Such our author describes Mr?. Western to have 

 been ; and while this state of manners continued, it was impossible for 

 any writer professing to give a true picture of the times, to attempt to 

 invest his heroines with such mi nt d attractions as are possessed by 

 the female characters of modern novels. His waiting-maids and land- 

 ladies are full of life and energy, which makes it still more improbable 

 that his genius should not have be* n adequate to portray women ol 

 higher station. 



Opinions have been much divided as to the tendency of Fielding's 

 works. We have little hesitation in pronouncing it to be, on the 

 whole, moral, and decidedly more so than that of Richardson's. It is 

 true that r.cenes of extreme indelicacy occur, often very unnoceraarily, 

 but the manners of the time admitted allusions and even expressions 

 at which we should now feel the greatest disgust Squire Western 

 addresses hia daughter in terms and on subjects which no female 

 would now endure ; and this under circumstances where no very grave 

 annoyance was intended ; but in spite of all this coarseness there runs 

 through all Fielding's works an honest appreciation of right and wrong 

 with no attempt to palliate bad actions by specious phrases. The 

 character of Tom Jones seems to us not to have met with a fair share 

 of prabe. His generosity and nobleness of nature arc, it is true, par 

 Ually obscured by connections of a degrading kind into which he so 

 often falls; but however much he may fail of perfection, he cannot 

 be called depraved. His love for Sophia is an affection of a kind which 

 no thoroughly bad heart could entertain. Ho has all the materials o 

 a fine character, an-1 therefore there is DO poetical injustice in marrying 

 him to Sophia, and thereby putting him in a situation to redeem him 

 .elf from the folly and vice into which he has been thrown. ' Amelia, 

 the author's lat im; ortant woik, bears the stamp of declining powers, 

 with an appreciation of female character perhaps moro delicate thai 

 we find in Tom Jones ' or ' Joncph Andrew*.' Booth and Ami lia arc 

 laid to have been portrait* of FHding and his second wit'-. 



In summing up our opinion of Fielding's work", we should say that 

 he ohief fault is a waut of unity in the plots. A novel is not a pro- 

 eased record of all which happens to any two people during a certain 

 lumber of years. To make it perfect it requires extraordinary com- 

 binations tending to a certain end the happiness or misery of the 

 lortiea concerned. We do not reject these as improbable, but acknow- 

 eilgo them as constituting an integral element of the work. But we 

 iro not satisfied by a succession of petty annoyances and pleasures 

 which have nothing to do with the conclusion of the tale. These 

 rather disturb than interest our attention, and we would prefer being 

 rithout them. But this is a minor fault, and very little seen in 

 Tom Jones,' the author's best work ; while to counterbalance it we 

 lave truth and originality of delineation, skill in language, considerable 

 Iramatic power, and brilliancy f wit which has never been surpassed. 



1 IK'.SOLK, FRA OIOVA'XNI DA, frequently called, from his 

 character, Bcato Angelico, is one of the most celebrated of the early 

 talian pointers. His real name was, according to Vasari, Giovanni 

 Juido, and he was a distinguished member of the brotherhood of 

 'redicant monks at Fiesole. His name is however variously given, 

 as, for instance, Santi Tosini, and Giovanni di Pietro di Mugcllo. He 

 was apparently born in Mugello in 1337, and he entered the order of 

 the Predicants at Fiesole in 1409. Little or nothing further is known 

 cither of his origin or big education. He early distinguished himself 

 or his miniature illuminations of religious books, of which there are 

 still some in the convent of San Marco at Florence, where he painted 

 several works for Cosmo do" Medici, of which the history of the 

 Passion of Christ in the refectory is still in comparative preservation. 

 Giovanni learnt the art of illuminating or miniature painting from an 

 elder brother, Fra Benedetto di Pietro di Mugello, or, Latinised, Bene- 

 dictns Petri do Mugello. 



He painted also many admirable works in the Carthusian church, in 

 Santa Maria Novella, and in the Nuuziata and other chmv 

 Florence; in San Domcnico at Fiesole; in the cathedral of Orvieto; 

 at Cortona; and in the chapel of San Lorenzo in the Vatican, and in 

 the Minerva at Rome. He was invited to Rome by Pope Niccolo V., 

 who offered him the high dignity of the archbishopric of Florence, 

 which however Giovanni was too modest to accept : he pleaded that 

 to govern or to lead was alike incompatible with hia nature. The 

 appointment was given to another monk of the same order as Giovanni, 

 Fra Antonio, who was canonised by Adrian VI. 



The frescoes in the chapel of Niccolo V. are in great part still in a 

 good state of preservation, though they have been restored. Th- 

 chapel was long neglected, and public attention was first called to these 

 frescoes by Hofrath Hirt. of Berlin. The principal subjects represent 

 the leading events of the lives of Saints Stcfauo and Lorenzo, and 

 their martyrdoms ; on the ceiling are the four evangelists ; around the 

 chapel also are the doctors and fathers of the church Saints Thomas 

 Aquinas, Bonavcntura, Athanatius, and John Chrysostom, Augu-i ii\, 

 Ambrose, Jerome, and Gregory and a ' Descent from the Cross ' was 

 paiuted above the altar, but it has been whitewashed over, 

 chapel is described in Plainer and Bunsen's ' Description of Rome,' 

 and there are small outlines of the frescoes in D'Agincourt's ' Hiatoire 

 de 1'Art par les Monumens,' and larger in a special work by (.;: 

 conii, ' Le Pitturo della Capella di Niceolo V., opere del B. Uiov. 

 da Fiesole,' Rome, 1810; also two of the principal subjects 'The 

 Preaching of St. Stephen,' and 'St. Lawrence giving Alms ' are etched 

 in Ottley's series of plates after Florentine paintings. These works 

 of Fra Giovanni, as well as those in the convent of Saint Murk at 

 Florence, and others elsewhere, though as mere abstract designs or 

 works of art they are comparatively crude and feeble, and infe. 

 the works of Masaccio, are with reference to their subjects per: 

 their sentiment, and in expression admirable, and have not been sur- 

 passed by the works of any of the great painters who followed him. 

 His works are exclusively religious or ecclesiastical ; and they breathe 

 the purest piety and humility, which are the vivid impressions of his 

 own mind and character. The genuineness of bis sentiment and 

 expression was to self-evident that his works became in a great degree, 

 mediately when not immediately, the typo of character for religious 

 art to his own and to subsequent generations. 



Though his works have not as regards style that plastic development 

 which we find in Masaocio, the inferiority is not great, but he sin 

 Masaccio some years. Giovanni's execution is sometimes extremely 

 elaborate and even beautiful, especially in his small easel panels 

 painted in distemper. There is a small gallery of these works in thu 

 Academy at Florence, of which the most remarkable piece is a ' Last 

 Judgment,' containing a great variety of figures. 



Fra Giovanni was remarkably methodic in his habits. It was his 

 maxim that whoever would represent the works of Christ mu-t bo 

 always with Christ; he accordingly never commenced any work with- 

 out praying, and he always carried out the first impression, In-'. 

 it to be an inspiration : ho never retouched or altered anything once 

 left as finished. He died in 1455, twenty-eight years before the birth 

 Of Raflaelle. 



(Vasari, Vile de' fitlori, Lanzi, Ac., and the notes in Schorn's 

 German translation ; Speth, A'umf in Italien ; Rumohr, Italiinirht 

 Pvrtchnngen.) 



I'l I ,AN(JI r.'KI, OAKTA'NO, was born at Naples in 1752, of a noble 

 f.nuily. In his early youth he did not exhibit any signs of cxtraordi- 



