him to the vessel, his helpless and hopeless condition is thus graphically described :—" I think upon my entrance into the boat, I presented a spectacle of the highest horror. The total loss of limbs was apparent to all who saw me, and my face contained marks of a most diseased state, if not of death itself. Indeed, so ghastly was my countenance, that timorous women with child had abstained from my house for fear of the ill consequences of looking at me. In this condition I ran the gauntlope (so, I think, I may justly call it) through rows of sailors and watermen, few of whom failed of paying their compliments to me by all manner of insults and jests on my misery. No man who knew me will think I conceived any personal resentment at this behaviour; but it was a lively picture of that cruelty and inhumanity in the nature of men which I have often contemplated with concern, and which leads the mind into a train of very uncomfortable and melancholy thoughts.”

The sea-captain, into whose custody the novelist was committed, was a curious specimen of that well-known species, the nautical despot; and his portrait has been thus handed down to posterity by the pen which sketched a Partridge and a Western :-"The particular tyrant, whose fortune it was to stow us on board, laid a farther claim to this appellation [that of captain] than the bare commander of a vehicle of conveyance. He had been the captain of a privateer, which he chose to call being in the king's service, and thence derived a right of hoisting the military ornament of a cockade over the button of his hat. He likewise wore a sword of no ordinary length by his side, with which he swaggered in his cabin among the wretches, his passengers, whom he had stowed in cupboards on each side. He was a person of very singular character. He had taken it into his head that he was a gentleman, from those very reasons that proved he was not one; and to show himself a fine gentleman, by a behaviour which seemed to insinuate he had never seen one. He was, moreover, a man of gallantry;

at the age of seventy, he had the finicalness of Sir Courtly Nice, with the roughness of Surly; and while he was deaf himself, had a voice capable of deafening all others." Before the voyage was over, Fielding found reason, however, to alter the unfavourable opinion with which he had at first regarded the old captain. But of this in its place.

All who would wish to form a notion of the delays and discomforts of a sea-voyage, before the introduction of steam power, should peruse with attention Fielding's Journal. As the vessel slowly drifted down the river, the passengers found, however, many agreeable objects to relieve the tedium of the journey. The noble ships which sailed by them reminded the novelist of the maritime superiority of his country, and occasioned some landsman's reflections thereon at which Smollett would have smiled; whilst the scenery of the Kentish coast drew from him an expression of surprise, that only "two or three gentlemen's houses, and those of very moderate account," should have presented themselves between Greenwich and Gravesend, where such hosts of villas crowded the river's banks from Chelsea to Shepperton, "where the narrower channel affords not half so noble a prospect, and where the continual succession of the small craft (like the frequent repetition of all things which have nothing in them great, beautiful, or admirable) tire the eye, and give us distaste and aversion. instead of pleasure." In the same garrulous strain, the sick man records the sufferings of his wife from a "raging tooth" (which is subjected to the inspection of a Gravesend operator), and the unmannerly conduct of a Custom-House officer' attached to that port, whose behaviour led to a (1) "Monday, July 1.-This day Mr. Welch took his leave of me after dinner, as did a young lady of her sister, who was proceeding with my wife to Lisbon. Soon after their departure, our cabin, where my wife and I were sitting together, was visited by two ruffians, whose appearance greatly corresponded with that of the sheriff's, 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 on his hat, which was cocked with much military fierceness

train of moral reflection more edifying than entertaining. From Gravesend the vessel made its way, without any incident which called for remark, to Deal, off which place it was detained some days by contrary winds. Released at length, it proceeded slowly up the Channel as far as the Isle of Wight, where the passengers were doomed to sustain a longer delay. From the 11th of July to the 23rd, they remained at Ryde, the wind being adverse all the time. Here the travellers were exposed to every variety of extortion and discomfort. Having taken up their abode ashore in a small hostelry, they were victimised by the landlady, a Mrs. Francis, of whom the novelist has drawn the following unattractive portrait, in revenge for her exactions:

"She was a short squab woman; her head was closely joined to her shoulders, where it was fixed somewhat awry;

on his head. An inkhorn at his button-hole, and some papers in his hand, sufficiently assured me what he was, and I asked him if he and his companion were not Custom-House officers; he answered, with sufficient dignity, that they were, as an information which he seemed to conclude 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 received 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 title 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 by 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, though we should not happen to be of that number whom the world calls people of fashion and distinction."-Voyage to Lisbon.

Mr. Saunders Welch succeeded Fielding as a justice of the peace. Dr. Johnson, according to Boswell, maintained with him a long and intimate friendship, and when the justice, like his predecessor, was driven by failing health to try the experiment of a more genial climate, the doctor wrote him an affectionate letter, instinct with good feeling. It is plain that his office was not considered by the author of "The Rambler" disreputable or unimportant. "Johnson," says Boswell, "who had an eager and unceasing curiosity to know human life in all its variety, told me that he attended Mr. Welch in his office for a whole winter, to hear the examination of the culprits, but that he found an almost uniform tenor of misfortune, wretchedness, and profligacy."-Boswell's Life of Johnson. Mr. Welch was also the intimate friend of Hogarth.

every feature of her countenance was sharp and pointed; her face was furrowed with the smallpox; and her complexion, which seemed to be able to turn milk into curds, not a little resembled in colour such milk as had already undergone that operation. She appeared indeed to have many symptoms of a deep jaundice in her looks; but the strength and firmness of her voice overbalanced them all: the tone of this was a sharp treble at a distance, for I seldom heard it on the same floor, but was usually waked with it in the morning, and entertained with it almost continually through the whole day." The vixenish disposition and insolent demeanour of this woman evidently made a strong impression upon him, and he was not a little pleased to be released from her system of extortion, which every day became more intolerable. "If her bills were remonstrated against," he says, "she was offended with the tacit censure of her fair dealing; if they were not, she seemed to regard it as a tacit sarcasm on her folly, which might have set down larger prices with the same success. On this latter hint she did indeed improve; for she daily raised some of her articles. A pennyworth of fire was to-day rated at a shilling, to-morrow at eighteen pence; and if she dressed us two dishes for two shillings on the Saturday, we paid half-a-crown for the cookery of one on the Sunday; and whenever she was paid, she never left the room without lamenting the small amount of her bill, saying,' she knew not how it was that others got their money by gentlefolks, but for her part she had not the art of it!""

The most admirable feature of this curious Journal is the hearty, honest spirit of cheerfulness which pervades it. There are in it no useless repinings, no sickening complaints of the ill-usage of the world or the slights of fortune. An evident desire to make the best of everything had taken complete possession of the poor, infirm, dropsical, dying man. He could even jest at sufferings and infirmi

ties, from which the strongest of us would have recoiled with dismay." In this last sketch," says Murphy, "he puts us in mind of a person under sentence of death jesting on the scaffold." But this is certainly not a fair comparison. His cheerfulness is not forced or unnatural; it was the habit of his mind, which neither pain, nor weakness, nor sorrow, could subdue or change. Though death had marked him for its own, why should he make others miserable? Why not preserve as long as he could that merry countenance which had carried pleasure into every circle, and lightened the cares of those who were dearest to him on earth? He was no trifler, be it remembered; for a becoming seriousness occasionally pervaded his last meditations but that his natural manner never forsook him that he was the gay, light-hearted humourist to the last-is to us a pleasant subject for reflection. Better, in the final hours which must come to all of us, the cheerfulness of a Fielding, than the gloom and despondency of a Swift!

:

Above all, it is gratifying to observe how grateful he was for the attentions lavished on him by his devoted wife and child. The smallest kindnesses were not thrown away upon him; and those more considerable offerings of feminine devotedness, which involved self-sacrifice and personal discomfort, were fully appreciated. His second wife, whatever her origin, must have been a true woman; and he does not forget to speak of her as one "who, be

(1) One of Richardson's correspondents makes the following absurd and illiberal remarks on Fielding's Journal:-"I have lately read over with much indignation Fielding's last piece, called his 'Voyage to Lisbon.' That a man who had led such a life as he had should trifle in that manner, when immediate death was before his eyes, is amazing. From this book I am confirmed in what his other works had fully persuaded me of, that, with all his parade and pretences to virtuous and human affections, the fellow had no heart. And so-his knell is knolled." This precious piece of criticism is from the pen of Mr. Edwards of Turrick, Bucks, author of "The Canons of Criticism," and other long since forgotten works. Mrs. Barbauld says, that though "his letters are not brilliant, he seems to have been a very good, pious, and kind-hearted man!" -Richardson's Life and Correspondence.