Genius may have soiled its canvas with
what is prurient and vile; lascivious groups may stand side by side with
pictures of saints and madonnas. To leave the figure, it is wise counsel
to read on principle, and, armed with principle, to accept and imitate the
good, and to reject the evil. Conscience gives the rule, and for every
bane will give the antidote.
Of this school and period, Fielding is the greatest figure. One word as to
his career. Passing through all social conditions,--first a country
gentleman, living on or rather squandering his first wife's little fortune
in following the hounds and entertaining the county; then a playwright,
vegetating very seedily on the proceeds of his comedies; justice of the
peace, and encountering, in his vocation, such characters as _Jonathan
Wild_; drunken, licentious, unfaithful to his wife, but always--strange
paradox of poor human nature--generous as the day; mourning with bitter
tears the loss of his first wife, and then marrying her faithful
maid-servant, that they may mourn for her together,--he seems to have been
a rare mechanism without a _governor_.
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