'For, says he, the Rascal not only refused to subscribe to my Works; but
sent back my Letter unanswered, tho' I'm a better Gentleman than
himself.'" The descriptions of the City of Diseases, the Palace of
Death, and the Wheel of Fortune from which men draw their chequered
lots, are all unrivalled in their way. But here, as always, it is in his
pictures of human nature that Fielding shines, and it is this that makes
the chapters in which Minos is shown adjudicating upon the separate
claims of the claimants to enter Elysium the most piquant of all. The
virtuoso and butterfly hunter, who is repulsed "with great Scorn;" the
dramatic author who is admitted (to his disgust), not on account of his
works, but because he has once lent "the whole Profits of a Benefit
Night to a Friend;" the parson who is turned back, while his poor
parishioners are admitted; and the trembling wretch who has been hanged
for a robbery of eighteen-pence, to which he had been driven by poverty,
but whom the judge welcomes cordially because he had been a kind father,
husband, and son; all these are conceived in that humane and generous
spirit which is Fielding's most engaging characteristic. The chapter
immediately following, which describes the literary and other
inhabitants of Elysium, is even better. Here is Leonidas, who appears to
be only moderately gratified with the honour recently done him by Mr.
Glover the poet; here is Homer, toying with Madam Dacier, and profoundly
indifferent as to his birthplace and the continuity of his poems; here,
too, is Shakespeare, who, foreseeing future commentators and the "New
Shakespere Society," declines to enlighten Betterton and Booth as to a
disputed passage in his works, adding, "I marvel nothing so much as that
Men will gird themselves at discovering obscure Beauties in an Author.
Certes the greatest and most pregnant Beauties are ever the plainest and
most evidently striking; and when two Meanings of a Passage can in the
least ballance our Judgements which to prefer, I hold it matter of
unquestionable Certainty that neither is worth a farthing." Then, again,