The literary work of Fielding is so inextricably interwoven with what is known of his life that most of it has been examined in the course of the foregoing narrative. What remains to be said is chiefly in summary of what has been said already. As a dramatist he has no eminence; and though his plays do not deserve the sweeping condemnation with which Macaulay once spoke of them in the House of Commons, they are not likely to attract any critics but those for whom the inferior efforts of a great genius possess a morbid fascination. Some of them serve, in a measure, to illustrate his career; others contain hints and situations which he afterwards worked into his novels; but the only ones that possess real stage qualities are those which he borrowed from Regnard and Moliere. Don Quixote in England, Pasquin, the Historical Register, can claim no present consideration commensurate with that which they received as contemporary satires, and their interest is mainly antiquarian; while Tom Thumb and the Covent-Garden Tragedy, the former of which would make the reputation of a smaller man, can scarcely hope to be remembered beside Amelia or Jonathan Wild. Nor can it be admitted that, as a periodical writer, Fielding was at his best. In spite of effective passages, his essays remain far below the work of the great Augustans, and are not above the level of many of their less illustrious imitators. That instinct of popular selection, which retains a faint hold upon the Rambler, the Adventurer, the World, and the Connoisseur, or at least consents to give them honourable interment as “British Essayists” in a secluded corner of the shelves, has made no pretence to any preservation, or even any winnowing, of the Champion and the True Patriot. Fielding’
