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THE

WORKS

OF

HENRY FIELDING, ESQ.

WITH

AN ESSAY

ON

HIS LIFE AND GENIUS,

BY ARTHUR MURPHY, ESQ.

A NEW EDITION, IN TEN VOLUMES.

VOL. VI.

LONDON:

Printed for J. Johnson; J. Nichols and Son; R. Baldwin; F. and C. Rivington;
Otridge and Son; WJ. and J. Richardson; R. Faulder; G. Nicol and Son;
T. Payne; W. Lowndes; Wilkie and Robinson; Ogilvie and Son; Scatcherd
and Letterman; Lane and Newman; J.Walker; Vernor and Hood; R. Lea;
J. Nunn; Lackington, Allen, and Co.; Cuthell and Martin; Wynne and
Son; C. Law; Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme; Cadell and Davies; T.
Booker; S. Bagster; J. Mawman; J. Asperne; and Joseph Harding.

PR3451
.M918
V.6

The

UNIVERSITY

OF CHICAGO
LIBRARY

Printed by Ellerton & Byworth, Johnson's Court, Fleet Street.

TO THE HONOURABLE

GEORGE LYTTLETON, ESQ.

SIR,

One of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury.

NOTWITHSTANDING your constant refusal, when I have asked leave to prefix your name to this dedication, I must still insist on my right to desire your protection of this work.

To you, sir, it is owing that this history was ever begun. It was by your desire that I first thought of such a composition. So many years have since past, that you may have perhaps forgotten this circumstance: but your desires are to me in the nature of commands; and the impression of them is never to. be erased from my memory.

Again, sir; without your assistance this history had never been completed. Be not startled at the assertion. I do not intend to draw on you the suspicion of being a romance-writer. I mean no more than that I partly owe to you. my existence during great part of the time which I have employed in composing it; another matter which it may be necessary to remind you of, since there are certain actions of which you are apt to be extremely forgetful; but of these I

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hope I shall always have a better memory than yourself.

Lastly, It is owing to you that the history appears what it now is. If there be in this work, as some have been pleased to say, a stronger picture of a truly benevolent mind than is to be found in any other, who that knows you, and a particular acquaintance of yours, will doubt whence that benevolence hath been copied? The world will not, I believe, make me the compliment of thinking I took it from myself. I care not: this they shall own, that the two persons from whom I have taken it; that is to say, two of the best and worthiest men in the world; are strongly and zealously my friends. I might be contented with this, and yet my vanity will add a third to the number; and him one of the greatest and noblest, not only in his rank, but in every public and private virtue. But here, whilst my gratitude for the princely benefactions of the duke of BEDFORD bursts from my heart, you must forgive my reminding you, that it was you who first recommended me to the notice of my benefactor.

And what are your objections to the allowance of the honour which I have solicited? Why, you have commended the book so warmly, that you should be ashamed of reading your name before the dedication. Indeed, sir, if the book itself doth not make you ashamed of your commendations, nothing that I can here write will or ought. I am not to give up my right to your protection and patronage, because you have

commended my book: for though I acknowledge so many obligations to you, I do not add this to the number; in which friendship, I am convinced, hath so little share; since that can neither bias your judgement, nor pervert your integrity. An enemy may at any time obtain your commendation, by only deserving it; and the utmost which the faults of your friends can hope for is your silence, or perhaps, if too severely accused, your gentle palliation.

In short, sir, I suspect that your dislike of public praise is your true objection to granting my request. I have observed, that you have, in common with my two other friends, an unwillingness to hear the least mention of your own virtues; that, as a great poet says of one of you, (he might justly have said it of all three) you

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

If men of this disposition are as careful to shun applause as others are to escape censure, how just must be your apprehension of your character falling into my hands; since what would not a man have reason to dread, if attacked by an author who had received from him injuries equal to my obligations to you!

And will not this dread of censure increase in proportion to the matter which a man is conscious of having afforded for it? If his whole life, for instance, should have been one continued subject of satire, he may well tremble when an incensed satirist takes him in hand. Now, sir, if we apply this to your modest aversion to pane

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