Henry Fielding, an English novelist and dramatist, born at Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury, Somersetshire, April 22, 1707, died in Lisbon, Oct. 8, 175-1. His father was a grandson of the carl of Desmond, and great-grandson of the first earl of Denbigh, and served under Marlborough, attaining the rank of lieutenant general at the close of the reign of George I. The family of the Fieldings is stated in the English peerages (where the name is spelled Feilding) to be descended from the same ancestry as the imperial house of Hapsburg. The early education of Fielding was intrusted to the care of the Rev. Mr. Oliver, a private teacher in Gen. Fielding's family, and who, it is said, appears in "Joseph Andrews" as Parson Trulliber. He received but little benefit from his tutor, and was sent at an early age to Eton, where he distinguished himself by his brilliant parts, and before his 16th year had made great progress in classical learning. From Eton he was sent to the university of Leyden, where he applied with assiduity to his studies, but led so gay a life that his father, who had taken a second wife, and had a numerous family, found himself unable to defray the cost of his son's extravagance. In his 20th year Fielding was compelled to return to.

England, and was at once thrown upon his own resources, with a fondness for costly pleasures and but slender means of paying for them. His father had promised him an allowance of £200 per annum; but this, as Fielding said, any one might pay who would." His vivacity, good humor, and talent gained him the companionship of the most eminent wits of his time; and after he arrived in London, while yet a minor, he commenced writing for the stage. His first comedy,Love in Several Masques," was produced in 1727, when he was but 20 years of age. He wrote his dramatic pieces with great rapidity, and threw into them a marvellous amount of wit and satire. As the pay he received was small, the necessity for constant production left him little time to make elaborate plots, or to pay much attention to the characters of his plays. " The Wedding Day," one of his most successful comedies, gained him but £50, and his vocation of a dramatist brought him in contact with acquaintances who were not calculated to improve either his finances or his morals. In the midst of his gay career, while living from hand to mouth by his pen, and writing his plays on the backs of his tavern bills, he formed an acquaintance with Miss Craddock of Salisbury, whom he married in his 27th year.

As his wife had a fortune of but £1,500, the financial condition of the dramatist was not much improved by his marriage. He retired to a small estate in the country which he had inherited from his mother, worth about £200 per annum. He was devotedly attached to his young bride, and made serious resolutions of reform. He gave up writing for the stage, having produced about 20 comedies, farces, and burlesques, only one of which, the burlesque of Tom Thumb," has kept its place in the theatre. He applied himself with great vigor to literary studies in his country retreat; but he also gave himself up to such pleasures as the country afforded, and was soon insolvent, and compelled to return to London to retrieve his fortunes. At the age of 30 he entered himself a student at the Inner Temple, studied diligently, and in due course was admitted to the bar. But repeated attacks of the gout compelling him to abandon legal practice, he again had recourse to his pen. He renewed his connection with the theatre, and wrote essays, poems, satires, and whatever else the taste of the day demanded, for literary periodicals. Though he could no longer travel his circuit, he turned his legal acquirements to account by preparing a work on crown law, which evinced his remarkable capacity for patient drudgery.

Failing to obtain from these sources the income requisite for his daily wants, he wrote nearly the whole of the literary contents of the Champion," a periodical which is now only known from his contributions. But now his genius was first attracted to that sphere for which it was best adapted, and in which he was destined to secure an enduring fame. His first novel,Joseph Andrews (1742), professedly in the manner of Cervantes, was begun as a burlesque on Richardson's Pamela," which was then the most popular novel of the time. Fielding's work is infinitely better than the author intended to make it, and, if his fame rested upon that work alone, he would be remembered while the language in which it is written endures. In 1743 he published three volumes of "Miscellanies," including the "Journey from this World to the Next," a work which, though incomplete, and seemingly without any special plan, exhibits much imagination and satirical power. The History of Jonathan Wild," which appeared about the same time, is a storehouse of wit, profound thought, serious satire, and benevolence so genuine, that even under the guise of the greatest villains we are made to love our brother man.

The Newgate ordinary in tins great prose satire is the representative of the whole class of worldlv-minded ecclesiastics, as much so as Macbeth is the type of unscrupulous ambition, or Othello of noble jealousy. Shortly after the publication of "Joseph Andrews," amid an accumulation of illness, broken fortunes, and constant disappointments, he lost his wife, whom he tenderly loved and most sincerely mourned; though in a few months after her death he married her maid, an act curiously apologized for by his relative, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Though he had faithfully served the whig party with his pen, the only reward he received was his appointment, in his 42d year, when his constitution was completely broken, as an acting magistrate for Westminster. He was not content to confine himself to his official duties, but published several tracts on the causes of crime and pauperism in the metropolis, one of which may be regarded as the first temperance tract ever published; it was An Inquiry into the Increase of Thieves and Robbers." Robbery was then frightfully prevalent, and he attributed it to the great consumption of gin.

Amid all these avocations he found time to write that greatest of all compositions of its class," Tom Jones, or the History of a Foundling (1749). His third novel,The History of Amelia," wherein he portrays the virtues of his first wife and the reckless conduct of his own earlier years, and on which he probably bestowed more careful labor than' on any of his other productions, was published in 1752. To eke out his inconsiderable income from his official position and from the sale of his writings, he started in this year another literary undertaking, The Covent Garden Journal, by Sir Alexander Drawcansir, Knight, Censor General of Great Britain." He now undertook as magistrate, at the request of the duke of Newcastle, the prime minister, to extirpate several gangs of ruffians which infested London; and in this, amid great bodily suffering, and with very meagre pecuniary aid, he completely succeeded. But at length his bodily strength would no longer sustain the burden imposed upon it; the dropsy with which he had long been troubled had alarmingly increased, and he was induced to try the influence of a change of climate, Lisbon being selected as the most desirable place for the purpose.

He left England June 26, 1754. The journal which he kept of his voyage gives a most touching proof of his affectionate and noble nature in detailing the events of his parting with his family. Though suffering great pain, being hardly capable of moving himself, and forced to be continually tapped, his intellect retained all its activity; he made a record of all the incidents of his voyage, and he furnishes us in his journal the best account we have of the condition of shipping in the last century, and of the inconveniences, troubles, and delays to which those were subjected who made passages by sea. The climate of Lisbon did not agree with him, and he died two months after his arrival, leaving behind him his second wife and four children, all of whom were generously provided for by his brother Sir John Fielding, aided by his friend Allen, the original of Squire Allworthy, to whom he dedicated "Tom Jones," and in allusion to whom he had said, if a letter were inscribed simply Detur Optimo, there would be few persons who would think it needed any other direction.

Great as were the literary labors of Fielding, they were hardly more important than those which he rendered as a police magistrate, in reforming the laws, and in introducing measures for the extirpation of thieves and desperadoes.-The works of Fielding have passed through very many editions, the principal of which are those of 1762 (4 vols. 4to and 8 vols. 8vo, London), with a life of the author; 1784 (10 vols. 8vo), with an essay on his life and genius by Arthur Murphy; 1821 (10 vols. 8vo). edited by Alexander Chalmers; 1840 (imp. 8vo), with a life and notice of his works by Thomas Roscoe; "SelectWorks" with a memoir by Sir Walter Scott (royal 8vo, Edinburgh, 1821); and that edited by James P. Brown (10 vols. 8vo, London, 1871).-See Thackeray's "English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1853).