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New Verse by Henry Fielding

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Isobel M. Grundy
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Abstract

This article incorporates the text of nearly 800 lines of verse written in 1729 and 1733 by Henry Fielding, printed from his holograph. The MS is itself a rarity, being the only extant literary writing in Fielding's hand. The verse has never been published or identified. Textual footnotes record Fielding's corrections and explanatory notes identify the people and events to which he refers. The article discusses the verses as mock-epic and polemical epistle. and as material illuminating Fielding's literary and political relationships: with Pope and the Scriblerus writers, with Robert Walpole, and with his cousin Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Fielding imitates Pope's Dunciad, yet rebukes its savagery. He appears as a vivid reporter of the topical scene, a supporter of Whig rule as a bastion against Roman Catholicism and Jacobitism, and an upholder of the ancients against the moderns. The new verse provides the earliest glimpse of Fielding working in burlesque and in comic epic, and an early example of the moral value he placed on benevolence. The various implications of this new knowledge are considered here.

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Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 87 , Issue 2 , March 1972 , pp. 213 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1972

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References

1 They occur in a collection of loose pages of MS poetry, bound at a later date, now Vol. 81 of the collection of the Harrowby MSS Trust, Sandon Hall, Stafford. I am indebted to Lord Harrowby, as the latest of his many kindnesses, for permission to publish. I must also record my gratitude to Prof. Martin C. Battestin of the Univ. of Virginia (to whose enthusiasm and knowledge this article is largely due) and to Prof. Henry K. Miller of Princeton.

2 Harrowby MS. 81, foil. 182–85.

3 Harrowby MS. 81, foil. 172–80.

4 In all the verse, Fielding's spelling, capitalization, and such punctuation as he used are retained. Deleted readings are given in notes. The only change is indentation to mark a new speaker when Fielding (only occasionally) has not supplied it. Angle brackets ( ) indicate words which are hard to read; square brackets [ ] indicate editorial additions or expansions. Standard abbreviations (ye, &) have been expanded without brackets.

5 The Dimciad Variorum was published on 10 April 1729 (R. H. Griffith, Alexander Pope: A Bibliography, Univ. of Texas Studies, No. 211, Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1922–27). All Dimciad references are to this version, designated (A) in the edition I have used: that of James Sutherland (London: Methuen; New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1943; rev. 1953). This and its companion vols, (general ed., John Butt) are here abbreviated “Twickenham.”

6 Geoffrey Tillotson, On the Poetry of Pope (Oxford: Clarendon, 1938), p. 55.

7 “O, to look oer,” 11. 85–90.

8 Foil. 36–40, 45–47 of the same vol. as the Fielding poems; printed inaccurately in Lady Mary's Letters and Works, ed. W. Moy Thomas CLondon: Bohn, 1861), ii, 468–74. The titles were supplied by her first editor, James Dallaway, and are used here for convenience. (Moy Thomas' edition will be abbreviated “ Works”)

9 “Phcebus retir'd as from Thyestes' feast” (Works, ii, 468).

10 Wilbur L. Cross, The History of Henry Fielding (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1918) iii, 290; i, 66. Un-footnoted statements about Fielding's activities are all from this work.

11 Robert Halsband, The Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956), pp. 133–37; Twickenham, v, 112.

12 Fielding, Miscellanies (1743), I, 65, 71.

13 Cross, I, 71–72; Halsband, Life, p. 137.

14 Complete Letters, ed. R. Halsband (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965–67), iii, 66.

15 Cross asks, “Where, one may inquire, was Lady Mary with her influence at Drury Lane?” (i, 74).

16 Arthur H. Scouten, The London Stage, 1600–1800 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1960–65), Part iii, pp. 34, 45, 54, 68; Cross, i, 80.

17 “Canto 2d,” 1. 75; but cf. “O to look oer,” 1. 98, n., and “Canto 2d,” 1. 36, n.

18 Complete Letters, II, 93.

19 “O to look oer,” 1. 152; “Canto 2d,” 11. 53–54.

20 The Nonsense of Common-Sense, 1737–38, its name derived at two removes from Fielding's Pasquin, 1736; Complete Letters, ii, 195, 323.

21 Works, ii, 472, 468.

22 Book i, 11. 83–84 (1720), 247–48 (1724).

23 “O to look oer,” 11. 99–104; “Canto 2d,” 11. 53–54, 69–74.

24 An Historical View of the Principles, Characters, Persons etc. of the Political Writers in Great Britain (1740), p. 50; Henry K. Miller, Essays on Fielding's Miscellanies, A Commentary on Volume One (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1961), p. 129.

25 “Canto 2d,” 11. 148–89.

26 In The True Patriot: and The History of Our Own Times, 1745–46, and The Jacobite's Journal, 1747–48.

27 Miscellanies, i, 41–44. Cf., however, H. Amory, “Fielding's Epistles to Walpole: A Reexamination,” which argues that they are wholly ironical and date from 1738 (PQ, 46, 1967, 236–47).

28 C. B. Woods, “Fielding's Epilogue for Theobald,” PQ, 28 (1949), 423–24.

29 Fog's Weekly Journal, 1 Aug. 1730; The Craftsman, 11 July 1730; The Grub-Street Journal, 26 Sept. 1734; The Daily Gazetteer, 1 and 2 Aug. 1740; An Historical View, pp. 49–50.

30 Woods, pp. 419–24.

31 W. B. Coley, “Fielding and the Two Walpoles,” PQ, 45 (1966), 158; M. C. Battestin, “Fielding's Changing Politics and Joseph Andrews,” PQ, 39 (1960), 53; J. R. Brown, “Henry Fielding's Grub-Street Opera,” MLQ, 16 (1955), 41; Sheridan Baker, “Political Allusion in Fielding's Author's Farce, Mock Doctor, and Tumble-Down Dick,” PMLA, 11 (1962), 221–31.

32 Battestin, pp. 40–41.

33 26 March 1748.

34 For interpretations of this as ironical and as literal, see Cross (iii, 63) and Battestin (p. 49). Irony has also been suspected in the dedication of The Modern Husband (G. R. Levine, Henry Fielding and the Dry Mock, The Hague; Mouton, 1967, p. 146, n. 3).

35 “Account of the Court of George the First at his Accession” (Works, i, 133–34).

36 “Canto 2d,” 11. 148–85, 198–203; “Canto 3d,” 11. 66–81.

37 The Champion, 13 Dec. 1739, 17 May 1740.

38 iii.283–84.

39 E.g., of Windsor Forest (“O to look oer,” 1. 162 and ii.).

40 “Fielding and Pope,” N&Q, 204 (June 1959), 200, 203–04.

41 During the last months of 1741 (Battestin, “Lord Hervey's Role in Joseph Andrews,” PQ, 42, 1963, 236–37).

42 James T. Hillhouse, The Grub-Street Journal (Durham, N. C: Duke Univ. Press, 1928) pp. 173–85. Scholars are divided as to whether Swift in fact named Fielding as an instance of sinking in On Poetry: A Rapsody, 1733 (Poems, ed. Harold Williams, Oxford: Clarendon, 1937; rev. 1958, ii, 654, n. ; Cross, I, 87–88).

43 Miller, Essays, p. 10. 44 Fielding, pp. 65–87.

45 See “O to look oer,” 11. 85–90 and n.

46 “Canto 2d,” 11. 229–43; “Canto 3d,” 11. 17–30.

47 “Canto 2d,” 11. 85–86.

48 Harrowby MS. 81, foll. 57–58, 64–65.

49 A Proper Reply to a Lady, 3 April, and Advice to Sappho, 13 April.

50 Verses Addressed to the Imitator of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace, by Lady Mary and Lord Hervey, 8 March 1733 (Works, II, 464–67).

51 Tom Jones, Bk. viii, Ch. i; Molière, Select Comedies, French and English (London: John Watts, 1732), vi; but see Miller, Essays, p. 337 and n. 1.

52 Halsband, Life, p. 139.

53 Complete Letters, ii, 481; iii, 232.

54 Works, II, 474–76.

55 Cross, i, 163.

56 “Canto 2d,” 11. 200–01; Champion, 13 Dec. 1739; Miscellanies, 1743, i [xxxiv]; Tom Jones, Bk.xi, Ch.i.

57 “An Epistle to Mr. Pope. From Rome, 1730,” Works, -3rd ed. (London: Dodsley, 1776), iii, 100.

58 N&Q, p. 203.

59 Miscellanies, i, 55, 65, 146–47; “An Epistle to Mr Lyttleton,” 11. 58–59 and n.

60 Miscellanies, I, 3–38.

61 Essays, pp. 30, 29.

62 Essays, p. 40.

63 Preface to the Miscellanies, i, ii.

64 Complete Letters, iii, 66, 67–68, 88.