himself steadily to the practice of law; he assiduously attended the Wiltshire sessions, and composed volumes on Crown or Criminal Law. But in 1741 he was engaged upon a work which placed his legal and journalistic labours in the shade. He was writing his first effort in fiction, the History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his friend Mr Abraham Adams, which was published in 1742. Joseph Andrews was undertaken mainly to ridicule the prudery of Richardson's Pamela, but it grew in Fielding's hands, and the original intention was lost in the natural course of the story. The next year Fielding published the Miscellanies, in which the History of the Life of Mr Jonathan Wild the Great appeared. From this date until the publication of the History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, in 1749, Fielding produced no work of any moment, and his personal history for some years is obscure. Notwithstanding the dissentient voices of Dr Johnson and Thackeray, who both preferred Fielding's last novel, Amelia, the orbis terrarum of literary criticism has decided that Tom Jones

is his greatest work, and, as Gibbon said, "the first of ancient or modern romances." In 1748, through the offices of his old schoolfellow Lyttleton, Fielding was appointed a Justice of the Peace for Westminster and for the county of Middlesex, and next year was made Chairman of Quarter Sessions. After the death of his first wife he married her maid, which brought upon him many lampoons by his enemies, and even Smollett, in giving counsel to a young author in Peregrine Pickle, wrote, "when he is inclined to marry his own cook wench, his gracious patron may condescend to give the bride away; and may finally settle him, in his old age, as a trading Westminster justice." But Fielding was conscientious in the discharge of his duties as a magistrate, and he did much to suppress crimes of violence in the London streets.

From the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon it will be seen that although Fielding's energies as a Bow Street magistrate were unabated, his body was enfeebled with disease, and that when he left England he had little hope of any amelioration.

In point of fact, within two months after the last words of the Journal were written, Fielding was dead. He arrived at Lisbon about the middle of August, and on October the 8th 1754 he died, and he was buried at Lisbon. The writer upon whom, more than any other, his mantle descended-Thackeray-thus sums up his work:

What a wonderful art! . . . What a genius! what a vigour! what a bright-eyed intelligence and observation! what a wholesome hatred for meanness and knavery! what a vast sympathy! what a cheerfulness! what a manly relish of life! what a love of human kind! what a poet is here! -watching, meditating, brooding, creating! What multitude of truths has that man left behind him! What generations he has taught to laugh wisely and fairly! What scholars he has formed and accustomed to the exercise of thoughtful humour and the manly play of wit! What a courage he had! What a dauntless and constant cheerfulness of intellect, that burned bright and steady through all the storms of his life, and never deserted its last wreck! It is

wonderful to think of the pains and misery which the man suffered; the pressure of want, illness, remorse, which he endured; and that the writer was neither malignant nor melancholy, his view of truth never warped, and his generous human kindness never surrendered."

HANNAFORD BENNETT

The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon

INTRODUCTION

In the beginning of August, 1753, when I had taken the duke of Portland's medicine, as it is called, near a year, the effects of which had been the carrying off the symptoms of a lingering imperfect gout, I was persuaded by Mr Ranby, the king's premier serjeant-surgeon, and the ablest advice, I believe, in all branches of the physical profession, to go immediately to Bath. I accordingly writ that very night to Mrs Bowden, who, by the next post, informed me she had taken me a lodging for a month certain.

Within a few days after this, whilst I was preparing for my journey, and when I was almost fatigued to death with several long examinations, relating to five different murders, all committed within the space of a week, by different gangs of street-robbers, I received a message from his grace the duke of Newcastle, by Mr Carrington, the king's messenger, to attend his grace the next morning, in Lincoln'sinn-fields, upon some business of importance; but I excused myself from complying with the message, as, besides being lame, I was very ill with the great