Fielding Part 8

"To the PUBLIC.

"All Persons who shall for the Future, suffer by Robbers, Burglars, &c., are desired immediately to bring, or send, the best Description they can of such Robbers, &c., with the Time and Place, and Circ.u.mstances of the Fact, to Henry Fielding, Esq.; at his House in Bow Street."

Another instance of his energy in his vocation is to be found in the little collection of cases ent.i.tled _Examples of the Interposition of Providence, in the Detection and Punishment of Murder_, published, with Preface and Introduction, in April 1752, and prompted, as advertis.e.m.e.nt announces, "by the many horrid Murders committed within this last Year."

It appeared, as a matter of fact, only a few days after the execution at Oxford, for parricide, of the notorious Miss Mary Blandy, and might be a.s.sumed to have a more or less timely intention; but the purity of Fielding's purpose is placed beyond a doubt by the fact that he freely distributed it in court to those whom it seemed calculated to profit.

The only other works of Fielding which precede the posthumously published _Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon_ are the _Proposal for Making an Effectual Provision for the Poor_, etc., a pamphlet dedicated to the Right Honble. Henry Pelham, published in January 1753; and the _Clear State of the Case of Elizabeth Canning_, published in March. The former, which the hitherto unfriendly _Gentleman's_ patronisingly styles an "excellent piece," conceived in a manner which gives "a high idea of his [the author's] present temper, manners and ability," is an elaborate project for the erection, _inter alia_, of a vast building, of which a plan, "drawn by an Eminent Hand," was given, to be called the County- house, capable of containing 5000 inmates, and including work-rooms, prisons, an infirmary, and other features, the details of which are too minute to be repeated in these pages, even if they had received any attention from the Legislature, which they did not. The latter was Fielding's contribution to the extraordinary judicial puzzle, which agitated London in 1753-4. It is needless to do more than recall its outline. On the 29th of January 1753, one Elizabeth Canning, a domestic servant aged eighteen or thereabouts, and who had hitherto borne an excellent character, returned to her mother, having been missing from the house of her master, a carpenter in Aldermanbury, since the 1st of the same month. She was half starved and half clad, and alleged that she had been abducted, and confined during her absence in a house on the Hertford Road, from which she had just escaped. This house she afterwards identified as that of one Mother Wells, a person of very indifferent reputation. An ill-favoured old gipsy woman named Mary Squires was also declared by her to have been the main agent in ill- using and detaining her. The gipsy, it is true, averred that at the time of the occurrence she was a hundred and twenty miles away; but Canning persisted in her statement. Among other people before whom she came was Fielding, who examined her, as well as a young woman called Virtue Hall, who appeared subsequently as one of Canning's witnesses. Fielding seems to have been strongly impressed by her appearance and her story, and his pamphlet (which was contradicted in every particular by his adversary, John Hill) gives a curious and not very edifying picture of the magisterial procedure of the time. In February, Wells and Squires were tried; Squires was sentenced to death, and Wells to imprisonment and burning in the hand. Then, by the exertions of the Lord Mayor, Sir Crisp Gascoyne, who doubted the justice of the verdict, Squires was respited and pardoned. Forthwith London was split up into Egyptian and Canningite factions; a hailstorm of pamphlets set in; portraits and caricatures of the princ.i.p.al personages were in all the print shops; and, to use Churchill's words,

"--_Betty Canning_ was at least, With _Gascoyne's_ help, a six months feast."

In April 1754, however, Fate so far prevailed against her that she herself, in turn, was tried for perjury. Thirty-eight witnesses swore that Squires had been in Dorsets.h.i.+re; twenty-seven that she had been seen in Middles.e.x. After some hesitation, quite of a piece with the rest of the proceedings, the jury found Canning guilty; and she was transported for seven years. At the end of her sentence she returned to England to receive a legacy of L500, which had been left her by an enthusiastic old lady of Newington-green. [Footnote: So says the _Annual Register_ for 1761, p. 179. But according to later accounts (_Gent.

Mag._ xliii. 413), she never returned, dying in 1773 at Weathersfield in Connecticut.] Her "case" is full of the most inexplicable contradictions; and it occupies in the _State Trials_ some four hundred and twenty closely-printed pages of the most curious and picturesque eighteenth-century details. But how, from the 1st of January 1753 to the 29th of the same month, Elizabeth Canning really did manage to spend her time is a secret that, to this day, remains undivulged.

CHAPTER VII.

THE JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON.

In March 1753, when Fielding published his pamphlet on Elizabeth Canning, his life was plainly drawing to a close. His energies indeed were unabated, as may be gathered from a brief record in the _Gentleman's_ for that month, describing his judicial raid, at four in the morning, upon a gaming-room, where he suspected certain highwaymen to be a.s.sembled. But his body was enfeebled by disease, and he knew he could not look for length of days. He had lived not long, but much; he had seen in little s.p.a.ce, as the motto to _Tom Jones_ announced, "the manners of many men;" and now that, prematurely, the inevitable hour approached, he called Cicero and Horace to his aid, and prepared to meet his fate with philosophic fort.i.tude. Between

_"Quem fors dierum cunque dabit, lucro Appone,"_

and

_"Grata superveniet, quae non sperabitur, hora,"_

he tells us in his too-little-consulted _Proposal for the Poor_, he had schooled himself to regard events with equanimity, striving above all, in what remained to him of life, to perform the duties of his office efficiently, and solicitous only for those he must leave behind him.

Henceforward his literary efforts should be mainly philanthropic and practical, not without the hope that, if successful, they might be the means of securing some provision for his family. Of fiction he had taken formal leave in the trial of _Amelia_; and of lighter writing generally in the last paper of the _Covent-Garden Journal_. But, if we may trust his Introduction, the amount of work he had done for his poor-law project must have been enormous, for he had read and considered all the laws upon the subject, as well as everything that had been written on it since the days of Elizabeth, yet he speaks nevertheless as one over whose head the sword had all the while been impending:--

"The Attempt, indeed, is such, that the Want of Success can scarce be called a Disappointment, tho' I shall have lost much Time, and misemployed much Pains; and what is above all, shall miss the Pleasure of thinking that in the Decline of my Health and Life, I have conferred a great and lasting Benefit on my Country."

In words still more resigned and dignified, he concludes the book:--

His enemies, he says, will no doubt "discover, that instead of intending a Provision for the Poor, I have been carving out one for myself, [Footnote: Presumably as Governor of the proposed County-house.] and have very cunningly projected to build myself a fine House at the Expence (_sic_) of the Public. This would be to act in direct Opposition to the Advice of my above Master [i.e. Horace]; it would be indeed

Struere domos immemor sepulchri.

Those who do not know me, may believe this; but those who do, will hardly be so deceived by that Chearfulness which was always natural to me; and which, I thank G.o.d, my Conscience doth not reprove me for, to imagine that I am not sensible of my declining Const.i.tution.... Ambition or Avarice can no longer raise a Hope, or dictate any Scheme to me, who have no further Design than to pa.s.s my short Remainder of Life in some Degree of Ease, and barely to preserve my Family from being the Objects of any such Laws as I have here proposed."

With the exception of the above, and kindred pa.s.sages quoted from the Prefaces to the _Miscellanies_ and the Plays, the preceding pages, as the reader has no doubt observed, contain little of a purely autobiographical character. Moreover, the anecdotes related of Fielding by Murphy and others have not always been of such a nature as to inspire implicit confidence in their accuracy, while of the very few letters that have been referred to, none have any of those intimate and familiar touches which reveal the individuality of the writer. But from the middle of 1753 up to a short time before his death, Fielding has himself related the story of his life, in one of the most unfeigned and touching little tracts in our own or any other literature. The only thing which, at the moment, suggests itself for comparison with the _Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon_ is the letter and dedication which Fielding's predecessor, Cervantes, prefixes to his last romance of _Persiles and Sigismunda_. In each case the words are animated by the same uncomplaining kindliness--the same gallant and indomitable spirit; in each case the writer is a dying man. Cervantes survived the date of his letter to the Conde de Lemos but three days; and the _Journal_, says Fielding's editor (probably his brother John), was "finished almost at the same period with life." It was written, from its author's account, in those moments of the voyage when, his womankind being sea-sick, and the crew wholly absorbed in working the s.h.i.+p, he was thrown upon his own resources, and compelled to employ his pen to while away the time. The Preface, and perhaps the Introduction, were added after his arrival at Lisbon, in the brief period before his death. The former is a semi- humorous apology for voyage-writing; the latter gives an account of the circ.u.mstances which led to this, his last expedition in search of health.

At the beginning of August 1753, Fielding tells us, having taken the Duke of Portland's medicine [Footnote: A popular eighteenth-century gout-powder, but as old as Galen. The receipt for it is given in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. xxiii., 579.] for near a year, "the effects of which had been the carrying off the symptoms of a lingering imperfect gout," Mr. Ranby, the King's Sergeant-Surgeon [Footnote: Mr. Ranby was also the friend of Hogarth, who etched his house at Chiswick.] (to whom complimentary reference had been made in the Man of the Hill's story in _Tom Jones_), with other able physicians, advised him "to go immediately to Bath." He accordingly engaged lodgings, and prepared to leave town forthwith. While he was making ready for his departure, and was "almost fatigued to death with several long examinations, relating to five different murders, all committed within the s.p.a.ce of a week, by different gangs of street robbers," he received a message from the Duke of Newcastle, afterwards Premier, through that Mr. Carrington whom Walpole calls "the cleverest of all ministerial terriers," requesting his attendance in Lincoln's-Inn Fields (Newcastle House). Being lame, and greatly over-taxed, Fielding excused himself. But the Duke sent Mr.

Carrington again next day, and Fielding with great difficulty obeyed the summons. After waiting some three hours in the antechamber (no unusual feature, as Lord Chesterfield informs us, of the Newcastle audiences), a gentleman was deputed to consult him as to the devising of a plan for putting an immediate end to the murders and robberies which had become so common. This, although the visit cost him "a severe cold," Fielding at once undertook. A proposal was speedily drawn out and submitted to the Privy Council. Its essential features were the employment of a known informer, and the provision of funds for that purpose.

By the time this scheme was finally approved, Fielding's disorder had "turned to a deep jaundice," in which case the Bath waters were generally regarded as "almost infallible." But his eager desire to break up "this gang of villains and cut-throats" delayed him in London; and a day or two after he had received a portion of the stipulated grant, (which portion, it seems, took several weeks in arriving), the whole body were entirely dispersed,--"seven of them were in actual custody, and the rest driven, some out of town, and others out of the kingdom."

In examining them, however, and in taking depositions, which often occupied whole days and sometimes nights, although he had the satisfaction of knowing that during the dark months of November and December the metropolis enjoyed complete immunity from murder and robbery, his own health was "reduced to the last extremity."

"Mine (he says) was now no longer what is called a Bath case," nor, if it had been, could his strength have sustained the "intolerable fatigue"

of the journey thither. He accordingly gave up his Bath lodgings, which he had hitherto retained, and went into the country "in a very weak and deplorable condition." He was suffering from jaundice, dropsy, and asthma, under which combination of diseases his body was "so entirely emaciated, that it had lost all its muscular flesh." He had begun with reason "to look on his case as desperate," and might fairly have regarded himself as voluntarily sacrificed to the good of the public.

But he is far too honest to a.s.sign his action to philanthropy alone. His chief object (he owns) had been, if possible, to secure some provision for his family in the event of his death. Not being a "trading justice,"--that is, a justice who took bribes from suitors, like Justice Thrasher in _Amelia_, or Justice Squeez'um in the _Coffee House Politician_,--his post at Bow Street had scarcely been a lucrative one.

"By composing, instead of inflaming, the quarrels of porters and beggars (which I blush when I say hath not been universally practised) and by refusing to take a s.h.i.+lling from a man who most undoubtedly would not have had another left, I had reduced an income of about L500 a year of the dirtiest money upon earth to little more than L300, a considerable proportion of which remained with my clerk." Besides the residue of his justice's fees, he had also, he informs us, a yearly pension from the Government, "out of the public service-money," but the amount is not stated. The rest of his means, as far as can be ascertained, were derived from his literary labours. To a man of his lavish disposition, and with the claims of a family upon him, this could scarcely have been a competence; and if, as appears not very clearly from a note in the Journal, he now resigned his office to his half-brother, who had long been his a.s.sistant, his private affairs at the beginning of the winter of 1753-54 must, as he says, have "had but a gloomy aspect." In the event of his death his wife and children could have no hope except from some acknowledgment by the Government of his past services.

Meanwhile his diseases were slowly gaining ground. The terrible winter of 1753-54, which, from the weather record in the _Gentleman's_, seems, with small intermission, to have been prolonged far into April, was especially trying to asthmatic patients, and consequently wholly against him. In February he returned to town, and put himself under the care of the notorious Dr. Joshua Ward of Pall Mall, by whom he was treated and tapped for dropsy. [Footnote: Ward appears in Hogarth's _Consultation of Physicians_, 1736, and in Pope--"Ward try'd on Puppies, and the Poor, his Drop." He was a quack, but must have possessed considerable ability.

Bolingbroke wished Pope to consult him in 1744; and he attended George II. There is an account of him in Nichols's _Genuine Works of Hogarth_, i. 89.] He was at his worst, he says, "on that memorable day when the public lost Mr. Pelham (March 6th);" but from this time, he began, under Ward's medicines, to acquire "some little degree of strength," although his dropsy increased. With May came the long-delayed spring, and he moved to Fordhook, [Footnote: It lay on the Uxbridge Road, a little beyond Acton, and nearly opposite the subsequent site of the Ealing Common Station of the Metropolitan District Railway. The spot is now occupied by "commodious villas."] a "little house" belonging to him at Ealing, the air of which place then enjoyed a considerable reputation, being reckoned the best in Middles.e.x, "and far superior to that of Kensington Gravel-Pits." Here a re-perusal of Bishop Berkeley's _Siris_, which had been recalled to his memory by Mrs. Charlotte Lennox, "the inimitable author of the _Female Quixote_," set him drinking tar-water with apparent good effect, except as far as his chief ailment was concerned. The applications of the trocar became more frequent: the summer, if summer it could be called, was "mouldering away;" and winter, with all its danger to an invalid, was drawing on apace. Nothing seemed hopeful but removal to a warmer climate. Aix in Provence was at first thought of, but the idea was abandoned on account of the difficulties of the journey. Lisbon, where Doddridge had died three years before, was then chosen; a pa.s.sage in a vessel trading to the port was engaged for the sick man, his wife, daughter, and two servants; and after some delays they started. At this point the actual _Journal_ begins with a well-remembered entry:--

"_Wednesday, June 26th_, 1754.--On this day, the most melancholy sun I had ever beheld arose, and found me awake at my house at Fordhook. By the light of this sun, I was, in my own opinion, last to behold and take leave of some of those creatures on whom I doated with a mother-like fondness, guided by nature and pa.s.sion, and uncured and unhardened by all the doctrine of that philosophical school where I had learnt to bear pains and to despise death.

"In this situation, as I could not conquer nature, I submitted entirely to her, and she made as great a fool of me as she had ever done of any woman whatsoever: under pretence of giving me leave to enjoy, she drew me to suffer the company of my little ones, during eight hours; and I doubt not whether, in that time, I did not undergo more than in all my distemper.

"At twelve precisely my coach was at the door, which was no sooner told me than I kiss'd my children round, and went into it with some little resolution. My wife, who behaved more like a heroine and philosopher, tho' at the same time the tenderest mother in the world, and my eldest daughter, followed me; some friends went with us, and others here took their leave; and I heard my behaviour applauded, with many murmurs and praises to which I well knew I had no t.i.tle; as all other such philosophers may, if they have any modesty, confess on the like occasions."

Two hours later the party reached Rotherhithe. Here, with the kindly a.s.sistance of his and Hogarth's friend, Mr. Saunders Welch, High Constable of Holborn, the sick man, who, at this time, "had no use of his limbs," was carried to a boat, and hoisted in a chair over the s.h.i.+p's side. This latter journey, far more fatiguing to the sufferer than the twelve miles ride which he had previously undergone, was not rendered more easy to bear by the jests of the watermen and sailors, to whom his ghastly, death-stricken countenance seemed matter for merriment; and he was greatly rejoiced to find himself safely seated in the cabin. The voyage, however, already more than once deferred, was not yet to begin. Wednesday, being King's Proclamation Day, the vessel could not be cleared at the Custom House; and on Thursday the skipper announced that he should not set out until Sat.u.r.day. As Fielding's complaint was again becoming troublesome, and no surgeon was available on board, he sent for his friend, the famous anatomist, Mr. Hunter, of Covent Garden, [Footnote: This must have been William Hunter, for in 1754 his more distinguished brother John had not yet become celebrated.]

by whom he was tapped, to his own relief, and the admiration of the simple sea-captain, who (he writes) was greatly impressed by "the heroic constancy, with which I had borne an operation that is attended with scarce any degree of pain." On Sunday the vessel dropped down to Gravesend, where, on the next day, Mr. Welch, who until then had attended them, took his leave; and, Fielding, relieved by the trocar of any immediate apprehensions of discomfort, might, in spite of his forlorn case, have been fairly at ease. He had a new concern, however, in the state of Mrs. Fielding, who was in agony with toothache, which successive operators failed to relieve; and there is an unconsciously touching little picture of the sick man and his skipper, who was deaf, sitting silently over "a small bowl of punch" in the narrow cabin, for fear of waking the pain-worn sleeper in the adjoining state-room. Of his second wife, as may be gathered from the opening words of the _Journal_, Fielding always speaks with the warmest affection and grat.i.tude.

Elsewhere, recording a storm off the Isle of Wight, he says, "My dear wife and child must pardon me, if what I did not conceive to be any great evil to myself, I was not much terrified with the thoughts of happening to them: in truth, I have often thought they are both too good, and too gentle, to be trusted to the power of any man." With what a tenacity of courtesy he treated the whilom Mary Daniel may be gathered from the following vignette of insolence in office, which can be taken as a set-off to the malicious tattle of Walpole:--

"Soon after their departure [i.e. Mr. Welch and a companion], our cabin, where my wife and I were sitting together, was visited by two ruffians, whose appearance greatly corresponded with that of the sheriffs, or rather the knight-marshal's bailiffs. One of these, especially, who seemed to affect a more than ordinary degree of rudeness and insolence, came in without any kind of ceremony, with a broad gold lace upon his hat, which was c.o.c.ked with much military fierceness on his head. An inkhorn at his b.u.t.ton-hole, and some papers in his hand, sufficiently a.s.sured me what he was, and I asked him if he and his companions were not custom-house officers; he answered with sufficient dignity that they were, as an information which he seemed to consider would strike the hearer with awe, and suppress all further inquiry; but on the contrary I proceeded to ask of what rank he was in the Custom house, and receiving an answer from his companion, as I remember, that the gentleman was a riding surveyor; I replied, that he might be a riding surveyor, but could be no gentleman, for that none who had any t.i.tle to that denomination would break into the presence of a lady, without any apology, or even moving his hat. He then took his covering from his head, and laid it on the table, saying, he asked pardon, and blamed the mate, who should, he said, have informed him if any persons of distinction were below. I told him he might guess from our appearance (which, perhaps, was rather more than could be said with the strictest adherence to truth) that he was before a gentleman and lady, which should teach him to be very civil in his behaviour, tho' we should not happen to be of the number whom the world calls people of fas.h.i.+on and distinction. However, I said, that as he seemed sensible of his error, and had asked pardon, the lady would permit him to put his hat on again, if he chose it. This he refused with some degree of surliness, and failed not to convince me that, if I should condescend to become more gentle, he would soon grow more rude."

The date of this occurrence was July the 1st. On the evening of the same day they weighed anchor and managed to reach the Nore. For more than a week they were wind-bound in the Downs, but on the 11th they anch.o.r.ed off Hyde, from which place, on the next morning, Fielding despatched the following letter to his brother. Besides giving the names of the captain and the s.h.i.+p, which are carefully suppressed in the _Journal_, [Footnote: Probably this was intentional. Notwithstanding the statement in the "Dedication to the Public" that the text is given "as it came from the hands of the author," the Journal, in the first issue of 1755, seems to have been considerably "edited." "Mrs. Francis" (the Ryde landlady) is there called "Mrs. Humphrys," and the portrait of the military c.o.xcomb, together with some particulars of Fielding's visit to the Duke of Newcastle, and other details, are wholly omitted.] it is especially interesting as being the last letter written by Fielding of which we have any knowledge:--

"On board the Queen of Portugal, Rich'd Veal at anchor on the Mother Bank, off Ryde, to the Care of the Post Master of Portsmouth --this is my Date and yr Direction.

"July 12 1754.

"Dear Jack, After receiving that agreeable Lre from Mess'rs Fielding and Co., we weighed on monday morning and sailed from Deal to the Westward.

Four Days long but inconceivably pleasant Pa.s.sage brought us yesterday to an Anchor on the Mother Bank, on the Back of the Isle of Wight, where we had last Night in Safety the Pleasure of hearing the Winds roar over our Heads in as violent a Tempest as I have known, and where my only Consideration were the Fears which must possess any Friend of ours, (if there is happily any such) who really makes our Wellbeing the Object of his Concern especially if such Friend should be totally inexperienced in Sea Affairs. I therefore beg that on the Day you receive this Mrs.

Daniel [Footnote: It will be remembered that the maiden-name of Fielding's second wife, as given in the Register of St. Bene't's, was Mary Daniel. "Mrs. Daniel" was therefore, in all probability, Fielding's mother-in-law; and it may reasonably be a.s.sumed that she had remained in charge of the little family at Fordhook.] may know that we are just risen from Breakfast in Health and Spirits this twelfth Instant at 9 in the morning. Our Voyage hath proved fruitful in Adventures all which being to be written in the Book, you must postpone yr. Curiosity--As the Incidents which fall under yr Cognizance will possibly be consigned to Oblivion, do give them to us as they pa.s.s. Tell yr Neighbour I am much obliged to him for recommending me to the Care of a most able and experienced Seaman to whom other Captains seem to pay such Deference that they attend and watch his Motions, and think themselves only safe when they act under his Direction and Example. Our s.h.i.+p in Truth seems to give Laws on the Water with as much Authority and Superiority as you Dispense Laws to the Public and Examples to yr Brethren in Commission.

Please to direct yr Answer to me on Board as in the Date, if gone to be returned, and then send it by the Post and Pacquet to Lisbon to

"Yr affect Brother

"H. FIELDING

"To John Fielding Esq. at his House in

"Bow Street Covt Garden London."

As the _Queen of Portugal_ did not leave Ryde until the 23d, it is possible that Fielding received a reply. During the remainder of this desultory voyage he continued to beguile his solitary hours--hours of which we are left to imagine the physical torture and monotony, for he says but little of himself--by jottings and notes of the, for the most part, trivial accidents of his progress. That happy cheerfulness, of which he spoke in the _Proposal for the Poor_, had not yet deserted him; and there are moments when he seems rather on a pleasure-trip than a forlorn pilgrimage in search of health. At Ryde, where, for change of air, he went ash.o.r.e, he chronicles, after many discomforts from the most disobliging of landladies (let the name of Mrs. Francis go down to posterity!), "the best, the pleasantest, and the merriest meal, [in a barn] with more appet.i.te, more real, solid luxury, and more festivity, than was ever seen in an entertainment at White's." At Torbay, he expatiates upon the merits and flavour of the John Dory, a specimen of which "gloriously regaled" the party, and furnished him with a pretext for a dissertation on the London Fish Supply. Another page he devotes to commendation of the excellent _Vinum Pomonae_, or Southam cyder, supplied by "Mr. Giles Leverance of Cheeshurst, near Dartmouth in Devon," of which, for the sum of five pounds ten s.h.i.+llings, he extravagantly purchases three hogsheads, one for himself, and the others as presents for friends, among whom no doubt was kindly Mr. Welch. Here and there he sketches, with but little abatement of his earlier gaiety and vigour, the human nature around him. Of the objectionable Ryde landlady and her husband there are portraits not much inferior to those of the Tow-wouses in _Joseph Andrews_, while the military fop, who visits his uncle the captain off Spithead, is drawn with all the insight which depicted the vagaries of Ensign Northerton, whom indeed the real hero of the _Journal_ not a little resembles. The best character sketch, however, in the whole is that of Captain Richard Veal himself (one almost feels inclined to wonder whether he was in any way related to the worthy lady whose apparition visited Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury!), but it is of necessity somewhat dispersed. It has also an additional attraction, because, if we remember rightly, it is Fielding's sole excursion into the domain of Smollett. The rough old sea-dog of the Haddock and Vernon period, who had been a privateer; and who still, as skipper of a merchant-man, when he visits a friend or gallants the ladies, decorates himself with a scarlet coat, c.o.c.kade, and sword; who gives vent to a kind of Irish howl when his favourite kitten is suffocated under a feather bed; and falls abjectly on his knees when threatened with the dreadful name of Law, is a character which, in its surly good-humour and sensitive dignity, might easily, under more favourable circ.u.mstances, have grown into an individuality, if not equal to that of Squire Western, at least on a level with Partridge or Colonel Bath. There are numbers of minute touches--as, for example, his mistaking "a lion" for "Elias" when he reads prayers to the s.h.i.+p's company; and his quaint a.s.severations when exercised by the inconstancy of the wind--which show how closely Fielding studied his deaf companion. But it would occupy too large a s.p.a.ce to examine the _Journal_ more in detail. It is sufficient to say that after some further delays from wind and tide, the travellers sailed up the Tagus. Here, having undergone the usual quarantine and custom-house obstruction, they landed, and Fielding's penultimate words record a good supper at Lisbon, "for which we were as well charged, as if the bill had been made on the Bath Road, between Newbury and London."

The book ends with a line from the poet whom, in the _Proposal for the Poor_, he had called his master:--

"--hic finis chartaeque viaeque."

Two months afterwards he died at Lisbon, on the 8th of October, in the forty-eighth year of his age.

He was buried on the hillside in the centre of the beautiful English cemetery, which faces the great Basilica of the Heart of Jesus, otherwise known as the Church of the Estrella. Here, in a leafy spot where the nightingales fill the still air with song, and watched by those secular cypresses from which the place takes its Portuguese name of _Os Cyprestes_, lies all that was mortal of him whom Scott called the "Father of the English Novel." His first tomb, which Wraxall found in 1772, "nearly concealed by weeds and nettles," was erected by the English factory, in consequence mainly--as it seems--of a proposal made by an enthusiastic Chevalier de Meyrionnet, to provide one (with an epitaph) at his own expense. That now existing was subst.i.tuted in 1830, by the exertions of the Rev. Christopher Neville, British Chaplain at Lisbon. It is a heavy sarcophagus, resting upon a large base, and surmounted by just such another urn and flame as that on Hogarth's Tomb at Chiswick. On the front is a long Latin inscription; on the back the better-known words:--