ber of the company was. Both the Earl of Denbigh and Edmund Fielding had had brothers named George, but they had been long since dead after honourable careers in the army. The only living George Fielding closely connected with the family was a half-brother of Henry, born of Edmund Fielding's second marriage. This young man may have been the person intended by the narrative; but it is more likely that some confusion has arisen in the account-that George Fielding has been brought into the story in place of William Fielding, the Earl of Denbigh. While on this visit to Radway Grange, "the great novelist," it is said, read the manuscript of "Tom Jones" to the "distinguished audience" seated about him in the diningroom, that he might have their comment before his final revision. It is a scene of surpassing interest, if it be true. And no suspicion rests upon the tradition except in the matter of a few ornaments which are here mostly suppressed. The story was told long ago by George Harris in his Life of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke,* who was a frequent visitor at Radway and whose house at Wimpole was made over on designs furnished by Miller. It has recently been retold with more definite details in "Rambles round the Edge Hills and in the Vale of the Red Horse," by the Rev. George Miller, a descendant of the hospitable squire. Writing to Miss Godden in 1907, Mr. Miller repeated the story as given here and added: "My father told me this often and he had the account from his grandmother, who survived her husband several years and who was the hostess on the occasion." Pitt, a most intimate friend of Sanderson Miller, was doubtless making one of his long visits at Radway. Fielding perhaps had been staying with Lyttelton at Hagley, and thus went over to Miller's with him, while the Earl of Denbigh was invited in to com"Life of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke," 1847, II, 456-457.

† Miss Godden, "Henry Fielding,'' p. 179.

plete the company for a fortnight's entertainment. To commemorate the visit, Pitt, according to the story, planted three trees, and Miller placed near them a stone urn.

No record of the conversation on this memorable occasion has survived. But the Earl of Denbigh, according to tradition, was very fond of his cousin Henry, and liked to engage him in wit-combats. Perhaps it was at Radway Grange that he quizzed "Harry" on the proper spelling of the family name and provoked the retort quoted in the first pages of this biography. Sanderson Miller should have been pleased with the portrait of Mr. Allworthy, a country magistrate like himself, of large estate, having the same love for planting and architecture. Lyttelton, we have Fielding's word for it in the dedication of "Tom Jones," saw the novel in manuscript and passed a favourable judgment upon it, while suggesting alterations which the author adopted. From a most unexpected source the information now comes that the admiration of both Lyttelton and Pitt was so great that they everywhere recommended the forthcoming novel to their friends. Three months after the appearance of "Tom Jones," "Old England" published a most scurrilous attack on Lyttelton for permitting the novel to be dedicated to him. It is in the form of a long letter from "Aretine" to "Selim Slim," dated May 27, 1749. The passage from the disreputable newspaper which concerns us here, begins:

"Not only the Dedication, but common Fame is full of the warm Commendations you have given of the aforementioned Romance. You have run up and down the Town, and made Visits, and wrote Letters merely for that Purpose. You puffed it up so successfully about Court, and among Placemen and Pensioners, that, having catched it from you, they thought it incumbent upon them to echo it about the Coffee houses; insomuch, that all the Women laboured under the Burthen of Expectation, 'till it was

midwived into the World by your all-auspicious Hand, and proclaimed by them to be the goodest Book that was ever read.

"While it was yet in Embrio, or rather, after it was licked up into Wit and Humour, and dished finely up in Lavender, your Zanies puffed and blew it up so into Fame, among his old Masters the Booksellers, that they begun to lament their Want of Discernment touching the Value of the precious Jewel, which, like the Cock in the Fable, they had despised and cast away on the very Dunghill they found it in. But, by the Care of yourself and Brother Deserter, Two of the best and worthiest who are strongly and zealously his Friends, (yclept the Poet and the Orator!) he has been so improved and polished, as to exhibit finer Lustres than ever blazed from the great Diamond, which founded the Family of one of his said Two best and worthiest Friends. Lo! the Effects of the Public Treasury and Pay-Office!"

Through the ill-nature and malice of these paragraphs is visible what happened. Only the concluding sentences need comment. By the "two best and worthiest friends," a phrase inaccurately quoted from the dedication to "Tom Jones," Fielding meant Lyttelton and Allen. But Aretine did not understand it quite that way. The second friend he derisively called "the Orator" in contrast with Lyttelton "the Poet," and identified him with the head of "the PayOffice" in antithesis with the head of "the Public Treasury." "The Orator" was William Pitt, the PaymasterGeneral of the Forces. It was his grandfather Thomas Pitt, Governor of Madras, who once possessed "the great Diamond" to which Aretine refers. He purchased it in India for a small sum, and sold it to an agent of Louis the Fifteenth for £135,000, thereby laying the foundations of the family estate, and contributing to the crown jewels of France. By common report, then, Pitt as well as Lyttelton

knew the merits of "Tom Jones" while the novel was yet in manuscript, bore a hand in its revision, and helped spread abroad its fame. All this tends to confirm the tradition that Pitt, Lyttelton, Fielding, and Tom Jones passed a merry time together at Sanderson Miller's seat on the Edge Hills. A little gossip may be traced to the author's household. While Fielding was still at work on "Tom Jones," his sister Sarah began a book called "The Governess," on the education and behaviour of girls. Jane Collier, who was intimate with the Fieldings, if indeed she did not live with them, wrote to Richardson on October 4, 1748, that brother and sister were both strongly opposed to corporal punishment, to "all the party of the Thwackums' (as Mr. Fielding calls them). And among others who saw and approved "Tom Jones" before it reached the general public, was Lady Hertford, soon to become the Duchess of Somerset. This aspirant to literary patronage, who in bygone days had received the homage of Thomson and had rescued Savage from the gallows, lived some miles from London out on the Bath road-at Percy Lodge, which as the.. former residence of Lord Bathurst had many literary associations with Addison, Pope, Congreve, and Gay. There Lady Hertford amused herself with gardening, books, rural verses, and correspondence with literary friends. On November 20, 1748, she wrote to Lady Luxborough, the sister of Lord Bolingbroke, then living in retirement at Barrells in Warwickshire:

"I have been very well entertained lately with the two first Volumes of the Foundling, written by Mr Fielding, but not to be published till the 224 of January; if the same Spirit runs through the whole Work, I think it will be much preferable to JOSEPH ANDREWS.'†

* Barbauld, "Correspondence of Samuel Richardson," II, 63.

+ Thomas Hull, "Select Letters between the late Duchess of Somerset, Lady Luxborough and Others,'' 1778, I, 85.

It is not probable that Fielding read from his manuscript to Lady Hertford or lent it to her for quiet perusal. Apparently not only her ladyship but several other friends of the author were honoured by advance copies of the first volumes as soon as they came from the press in the late autumn of 1748. Certain it is that Lady Hertford was not the only person to inform Lady Luxborough of the unpublished novel which people of fashion were writing and talking about. "I remember," Lady Luxborough wrote to the poet Shenstone in retrospect, "I heard so much in Tom Jones's praise, that when I read him, I hated him."* This praise, however, had the desired effect on the sale of the novel; for Lady Luxborough procured and began reading the complete "Tom Jones" immediately after its publication, and in turn recommended it in letters to her own friends.

Lady Luxborough had to wait for her copy, however, a month or two longer than she expected. January passed and the novel was still in press. But in "The St. James's Evening Post" of January 24, 1749, Millar set February 10 for its appearance. It is not quite certain that the novel was ready even then; for not till February 28 did Millar advertise it as actually published. The notice as it appears in "The General Advertiser' for that and subsequent dates has been often quoted:

"This Day is published, in Six Vol. 12 mo.

THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES,

A FOUNDLING.

-Mores hominum multorum vidit.

By HENRY FIELDING, Esq;

It being impossible to get Sets bound fast enough to answer the Demand for them, such Gentlemen and Ladies

* "Lady Luxborough's Letters to William Shenstone," 1775, p. 369.