Murphy’s loose and negligent way of dealing with his facts; for, with the exception of Miss Lucy in Town, which can scarcely be ranked among his works at all, there is absolutely no trace of Fielding’s having exhibited either “puppet-show” or “farce” after seriously adopting the law as a profession, nor does there appear to have been much acting at the Haymarket for some time after his management had closed in 1737. Still, his superficial characteristics, which do not depend so much upon Murphy as upon those “who were intimate with him,” are probably accurately described, and they sufficiently account for many of the obvious discordances of his work and life. That he was fully conscious of something higher than his actual achievement as a dramatist is clear from his own observation in later life, “that he left off writing for the stage, when he ought to have begun;”—an utterance which (we shrewdly suspect) has prompted not a little profitless speculation as to whether, if he had continued to write plays, they would have been equal to, or worse than, his novels. The discussion would be highly interesting, if there were the slightest chance that it could be attended with any satisfactory result. But the truth is, that the very materials are wanting. Fielding “left off writing for the stage” when he was under thirty; Tom Jones was published in 1749, when he was more than forty. His plays were written in haste; his novels at leisure, and when, for the most part, he was relieved from that “immediate urgency of want,” which, according to Murphy, characterised his younger days. If— as has been suggested—we could compare a novel written at thirty with a play of the same date, or a play written at forty with Tom Jones,
