Coleridge said that to pass from Richardson's books to those of Henry
Fielding was like going into the fresh air from a close room heated by
stoves. Richardson, it has been affirmed, knew _man_, but Fielding knew
_men_. The latter's first novel, _Joseph Andrews_, 1742, was begun as a
travesty of _Pamela_. The hero, a brother of Pamela, was a young footman
in the employ of Lady Booby, from whom his virtue suffered a like
assault to that made upon Pamela's by her master. This reversal of the
natural situation was in itself full of laughable possibilities, had the
book gone on simply as a burlesque. But the exuberance of Fielding's
genius led him beyond his original design. His hero, leaving Lady
Booby's service, goes traveling with good Parson Adams, and is soon
engaged in a series of comical and rather boisterous adventures.
Fielding had seen life, and his characters were painted from the life
with a bold, free hand. He was a gentleman by birth, and had made
acquaintance with society and the town in 1727, when he was a handsome,
stalwart young fellow, with high animal spirits and a great appetite for
pleasure. He soon ran himself into debt and began writing for the
stage; married, and spent his wife's fortune, living for a while in
much splendor as a country gentleman, and afterward in a reduced
condition as a rural justice with a salary of five hundred pounds of
"the dirtiest money on earth.
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