New Verse by Henry Fielding

Abstract

This article incorporates the text of nearly 800 lines of verse written in 1729 and 1733 by Henry Fielding, printed from his holograph. The MS is itself a rarity, being the only extant literary writing in Fielding's hand. The verse has never been published or identified. Textual footnotes record Fielding's corrections and explanatory notes identify the people and events to which he refers. The article discusses the verses as mock-epic and polemical epistle. and as material illuminating Fielding's literary and political relationships: with Pope and the Scriblerus writers, with Robert Walpole, and with his cousin Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Fielding imitates Pope's Dunciad, yet rebukes its savagery. He appears as a vivid reporter of the topical scene, a supporter of Whig rule as a bastion against Roman Catholicism and Jacobitism, and an upholder of the ancients against the moderns. The new verse provides the earliest glimpse of Fielding working in burlesque and in comic epic, and an early example of the moral value he placed on benevolence. The various implications of this new knowledge are considered here.