deceived in my opinion of men, and have served and recommended to others those persons whom I have afterwards discovered to be totally worthless. I shall, in short, be very well contented with the character which Cicero gives of Epicurus. Quis illum neget et bonum virum et comem et humanum fuisse! And whoever will allow me this, which I must own I think I deserve, shall have my leave to add, tamen, si haec vera sunt non satis acutus fuit." In these words we have a summary of Fielding. Great as was his intellect, he was above all else a man.

CHAPTER XXII

THE STORY OF AMELIA

The more the business at the Bow Street court, the less became Fielding's income. Those long investigations into riots and robberies, which kept the justice up all night, yielded him in each instance but a few shillings; and the habit grew upon him of composing petty quarrels, out of which he received nothing but thanks. If a wife or a husband accused the other of an assault, he advised them to overlook the grievance, to keep the peace, and, if possible, to live happily thereafter. One morning he was perplexed when Mary Macculloch and Jane Macculloch were arraigned before him for beating Elizabeth Macculloch, all of whom claimed the same man for husband. As none of the three wives had any evidence of her marriage, he decided that Elizabeth, who seemed to have known the man first, possessed the best right to him. The second and third wives, by consenting to the compromise, escaped Bridewell. Again, one evening a boy only twelve years old was brought in and charged with theft. What occurred in the court room was told by Fielding's clerk who reported the case: "The parents of the child (both of whom had an extreme good character) appeared; and the mother fell into agonies scarce to be conceived. In compassion to her, and to the tender years of the child, the justice, instead of sending him to prison, which would have probably ended in the death of the mother, and in the destruction of the son, recommended to his father to give him an immediate private correction with a birchen rod. This was executed with

proper severity, in the presence of the constable; and the parents, overwhelmed with joy, returned home with their child." So humane an administration of justice may have been for the good of society; but when there was no commitment there was no fee. Had Fielding had an eye to his pocket he would have first sent quarrelsome husbands and wives, apprentices and urchins, to jail; and then bailed them out, thereby collecting a fee for each act.

His family expenses increased somewhat though not largely. Illness made it more and more necessary for him to retire to Fordhook and to leave the business of his court with his brother John. A daughter Louisa was baptized at St. Paul's, Covent Garden, on December 3, 1752, and was buried at Hammersmith on May 10, 1753. Before this time, his sister Sarah must have become mainly dependent upon him and his brother. But the trouble lay not so much in the maintenance of members of his family. "When in the latter end of his days," says Arthur Murphy, who associated with him at this time, "he had an income of four or five hundred a-year, he knew no use of money, but to keep his table open to those who had been his friends when young, and had impaired their own fortunes." That Fielding's table was free to anyone who wanted to dine or sup with him is most certain, though few names of these goodnatured parasites are known. There was William Young, whom he probably employed on his newspapers and with whom he collaborated in different kinds of hack-work; there was Edward Moore, who took, whenever he liked, his friends to pass an evening with the justice; there were Walpole's "three Irishmen," typical of the lower grade; and there were Jane and Margaret Collier, whose brother had mulcted him out of a handsome sum.

Fielding's charities also exceeded his means. One day Mr. Welch told him that a baker in Bloomsbury, "an honest * "Covent Garden Journal," Feb. 4, 1752.

man' named Pierce, whose family he knew, was burned out on the previous night. The next week Fielding opened a subscription for them, which amounted to seventy-five pounds, himself contributing a guinea, or as much as Lyttelton and twice as much as Warburton. On another occasion he collected a smaller purse for a Mr. Redman, presumably a shopkeeper in distress like the baker of Bloomsbury. His name also appears among "the perpetual governors" of a lying-in hospital for married women, over which the Duke of Portland presided. That honour, unless he held it by virtue of his position as a justice of the peace, cost him thirty guineas.* How often Fielding repeated gifts like these, nobody knows; but they point to a habit in perfect accord with his generous nature, with his benefit nights, for example, in aid of unfortunate men and women when he was manager of the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. To this mode of life, his dwindling income, despite his pension and his shares in the Universal Register Office, was quite inadequate. Once more he turned to literature, which he henceforth carried on with the duties of his court just as in earlier days he had written novels and newspapers while practising law.

For some time the public had been expecting another novel from Fielding. He could not fail, it was thought, to attempt an immediate repetition of the success gained by "Tom Jones," as if a man could put out a work of that character every year or two. The consequence was that various novels in the facetious vein, often divided into books in the epic manner, were set down to the credit or the discredit of the great master in this style. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, for instance, who did not read Smollett's

"An Account of the Rise and Progress of the Lying-in Hospital for Married Women, in Brownlow-Street, Long Acre,'' 1751. See also a similar pamphlet published by the hospital the next year, and a notice in "The CoventGarden Journal," Jan. 28, 1752.

"Roderick Random" until long after its publication, "guessed" it to be her cousin's; and it was translated into French "de l'Anglais de M. Fielding." Likewise, when Francis Coventry in the spring of 1751 published without his name "Pompey the Little, or the Adventures of a Lapdog," Lady Luxborough, speaking the opinion of herself and her friends in the country, declared it to be beyond doubt Fielding's.* The genuine novel, "Amelia. By Henry Fielding Esq;" made its appearance on December 18, 1751,† though the title-page bears the numerals of the new year. A dedication "to Ralph Allen, Esq," is dated "Bow Street, Dec. 12. 1751." The work, consisting of twelve books, was brought out in four duodecimo volumes and sold fully bound at twelve shillings a set.

Several stories concerning its publication early found their way into print; which, though they all contain inaccuracies, are now known to be in part true. "Amelia," Dr. Johnson told Mrs. Piozzi in 1776, was "perhaps the only book, which being printed off betimes one morning, a new edition was called for before night." The first and third volumes of the novel were set up for Millar the publisher by William Strahan, a well-known printer in New Street, who made the following entries in his ledger:

Dec. 1751. Amelia, vols. I. and III., 261⁄2 sheets, no. 5000. Extraordinary corrections in do. £1 5s. Od.

Jan. 1752. Amelia, 2nd ed. [?] sheets, no. 3000.

It has not yet been discovered who set up the second and third volumes. All told 8,000 copies, we see, were printed; and what Dr. Johnson called "a new edition" was really a second impression without alterations. In the same loose way the second impression was described not only by Strahan but by Fielding's friend, Dr. John Kennedy, as a "second edition." The first impression may have been *"Letters to Shenstone," 1775, p. 265.

"Whitehall Evening Post," Dec. 17-19, 1751.