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_, the
comparison might be instructive, although even then considerable
allowances would have to be made for the essential difference between
plays and novels. But, as we cannot make such a comparison, further
inquiry is simply waste of time. All we can safely affirm is, that the
plays of Fielding's youth did not equal the fictions of his maturity;
and that, of those plays, the comedies were less successful than the
farces and burlesques. Among other reasons for this latter difference
one chiefly may be given:--that in the comedies he sought to reproduce
the artificial world of Congreve and Wycherley, while in the burlesques
and farces he depicted the world in which he lived.




CHAPTER III.

THE CHAMPION--JOSEPH ANDREWS.


The _Historical Register_ and _Eurydice Hiss'd_ were published together
in June 1737. By this time the "Licensing Act" was passed, and the
"Grand Mogul's Company" dispersed for ever. Fielding was now in his
thirty-first year, with a wife and probably a daughter depending on him