combination in him of very strong physical passions with the deepest
sense of the moral and religious duty of abstinence. It is perhaps
impossible to imagine anything more distasteful to a man so buffeted,
than the extreme indulgence with which Fielding regards, and the easy
freedom, not to say gusto, with which he depicts, those who succumb to
similar temptation. Only by supposing the workings of some subtle
influence of this kind is it possible to explain, even in so capricious
a humour as Johnson's, the famous and absurd application of the term
"barren rascal" to a writer who, dying almost young, after having for
many years lived a life of pleasure, and then for four or five one of
laborious official duty, has left work anything but small in actual
bulk, and fertile with the most luxuriant growth of intellectual
originality.

Partly on the _obiter dicta_ of persons like these, partly on the still
more tempting and still more treacherous ground of indications drawn
from his works, a Fielding of fantasy has been constructed, which in
Thackeray's admirable sketch attains real life and immortality as a
creature of art, but which possesses rather dubious claims as a
historical character. It is astonishing how this Fielding of fantasy
sinks and shrivels when we begin to apply the horrid tests of criticism
to his component parts. The _eidolon_, with inked ruffles and a towel
round his head, sits in the Temple and dashes off articles for the
_Covent Garden Journal_; then comes Criticism, hellish maid, and reminds
us that when the _Covent Garden Journal_ appeared, Fielding's wild oats,
if ever sown at all, had been sown long ago; that he was a busy
magistrate and householder in Bow Street; and that, if he had towels
round his head, it was probably less because he had exceeded in liquor
than because his Grace of Newcastle had given him a headache by wanting
elaborate plans and schemes prepared at an hour's notice. Lady Mary,