ONE:Fielding (b. 1707; d. 1754) began his career by an attempt, in "Joseph Andrews," to caricature the "Pamela" of Richardson. He represented Joseph as Pamela's brother; but he had not proceeded far when he became too much interested in his own creation to make a mere parody of him. This novel he produced in 1742, the year after the completion of "Pamela." The following year he gave to the world "Jonathan Wild;" in 1749, "Tom Jones;" and in 1751, but three years before his death, at the age of only forty-seven, "Amelia." But, besides a novelist, Fielding was a dramatic writer, a political writer, and the editor of four successive periodicalsThe Champion, The True Patriot, The Jacobite Journal, and The Covent Garden Journal. Fielding, unlike Richardson, was educated at Eton, and afterwards at Leyden. He had fortune, but he dissipated it; and had the opportunity of seeing both high and low life, by his rank as a gentleman and his office as a police-magistrate. His novels are masterly productions. His squire Western and parson Adams, and his other characters are genuine originals; and they are made to act and talk with a raciness of humour and a flow of wit that might even yet render them popular, if their occasional grossness did not repel the reader of this age. It is, indeed, the misfortune of Fielding, Sterne, and Smollett, that they lived in so coarse and debauched an epoch; their very fidelity now renders them repulsive. Richardson and Fielding were the Dickens and Thackeray of their day. In Fielding, the colder nature and the more satiric tone make the resemblance to Thackeray the more striking.[See larger version]
TWO:During this reign architecture was in a state of transition, or, rather, revolution, running through the Palladian, the Roman, the Greek, and into the Gothic, with a rapidity which denoted the unsettled ideas on the subject. At the commencement of the reign James Paine and John Carr were the prevailing architects. Worksop Manor, since pulled down, and Keddlestone, in Derbyshire, were the work of Paine; but Robert Adam, an advocate for a Roman style, completed Keddlestone. Carr built Harewood House, and others of a like character, chiefly remarkable for Grecian porticos attached to buildings of no style whatever. The Woods, of Bath, employed a spurious Grecian style in the Crescent in that city, Queen's Square, the Pounds, etc., which, however, acquired a certain splendour by their extent and tout ensemble. To these succeeded Robert Taylor, the architect of the Bank of England and other public buildings, in a manner half Italian, half Roman. Sir William Chambers, of more purely Italian taste, has left us Somerset House as a noble specimen of his talent. Robert and James Adam erected numerous works in the semi-Roman semi-Italian style, as Caenwood House, at Highgate, Portland Place, and the screen at the Admiralty. In Portland Place Robert Adam set the example of giving the space necessary for a great metropolis. James Wyatt, who succeeded Chambers as Surveyor-General in 1800, destined to leave extensive traces of his art, commenced his career by the erection of the Pantheon, London, in the classical style, and then took up the Gothic style, which had begun to have its admirers, and in which James Essex had already distinguished himself by his restoration of the lantern of Ely Cathedral, and in other works at Cambridge. Wyatt was employed to restore some[200] of the principal colleges at Oxford, and to do the same work for the cathedral of Salisbury and Windsor Castle. In these he showed that he had penetrated to a certain extent into the principles of that order of architecture, but was far from having completely mastered them. A greater failure was his erection of Fonthill Abbey, for Beckford, the author of "Vathek," where he made a medley of half an abbey, half a castle, with a huge central church tower, so little based on the knowledge of the Gothic architects that in a few years the tower fell. Wyatt, however, was a man of enterprising genius. Co-temporary with Wyatt, George Dance made a much less happy attempt in Gothic in the front of Guildhall, London; but he built Newgate and St. Luke's Hospital in a very appropriate style. One of the most elegant erections at this period was the Italian Opera House, by a foreigner, Novosielsky, in 1789. Nor must we omit here the publication of John Gwynn's "London and Westminster Improved," in 1766, by which he led the way to the extensive opening up of narrow streets, and throwing out of fresh bridges, areas, and thoroughfares, which have been since realised, or which are still in progress.
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