remedies cured the little patient within three days. Dr. Thompson's medicines also had the same marvellous effect on Sergeant Atkinson after he had been given over by several very great doctors. Happy in the restoration of her husband, Mrs. Atkinson liked to entertain her friends with a humorous account of the sergeant's physicians, always ending, however, "with many vast eulogiums on him who came last." To drop Dr. Thompson, when Major Bath was wounded in the duel with Booth, the victor hurried out to Bond Street to fetch "the most eminent surgeon in the kingdom, or perhaps in the world"; that is, Dr. John Ranby who had dressed the wounds of the father of the Man of the Hill in "Tom Jones." He was too, I suppose, "the eminent surgeon" that mended Amelia's nose. like manner Dr. Joshua Ward, whom Fielding subsequently consulted, was honoured by a passing notice for his famous pill; while Dr. Robert James's Powder, destined to shorten the life of Laurence Sterne and to kill Oliver Goldsmith, was lauded as "that powder, for the invention of which, my worthy and ingenious friend Dr. James would, in almost any country but this, have received public honours and rewards."

In

Of these men, Ranby deserved the high repute he bore in his own time; but Thompson, Ward, and James were regarded askance by the medical faculty. Though not exactly quacks, they came near being such. Undue praise of these vain and pretentious men must have been offensive to practitioners jealous of the ethics of the profession. This Fielding implied in a roundabout way. Dr. Dosewell, whom Booth would not summon for consultation over the case of his child, told Lady Dilly Dally that "Amelia" was "a sad stupid book, and that the author had not a bit of wit, or learning, or sense, or any thing else." No doubt Fielding was perfectly sincere in all that he said of the irregular physicians. As other intelligent persons have 355

done in all ages, the sick man in desperation consulted quacks for the relief of disorders which could not be cured, and was buoyed up by the unwarranted hopes which they held out to him. That he put them into his book was due to the generosity of his spirit. But to the outside public, it all appeared as an advertisement of impostors and their nostrums. His impropriety Fielding saw when he undertook the revision of "Amelia." Thompson, whom everybody knew as the physician who let Winnington the politician die of a cold, lost his chapter. Ward and James, though their names were retained, were despoiled of all else. Even the allusion to Ranby nearly disappeared along with a very poor jest of the distinguished surgeon.

And the sequel? No greater disappointment ever overtook Fielding. The public had become absolutely indifferent to his novel. The second impression of the first edition still remained unsold, and nobody cared to see "Amelia" in a new dress. Nothing was now left for Fielding but to appeal to posterity. His copy of "Amelia," revised by his own hand, was carefully preserved by his family (his wife or his brother), who placed it at the disposal of Arthur Murphy for the collected edition of Fielding's works in 1762. It is this revised "Amelia" which has come down to us in popular editions. The author's firm reliance on the great qualities of his last novel has been more than justified. His genius, at its height, it must be admitted, can only be seen in "Tom Jones"; but no single character in that novel has found so many admirers for her perfect womanhood as that Amelia who was derided by the profane wits of her time.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE COVENT-GARDEN JOURNAL

Before "Amelia" was off the press, Fielding was already at the point of launching "The Covent-Garden Journal"— the fourth and last of his ventures in periodical literature. The date first set for the appearance of the initial number seems to have been Saturday, November 23, 1751. According to a notice in "The London Daily Advertiser" three weeks earlier, it was to be "A Paper of Entertainment" under the direction of "Several Eminent Hands." For reasons never announced, publication was delayed. "Amelia" doubtless still demanded the author's attention a month longer than he expected. Many of his graver friends, we know for certain, tried to dissuade him from an undertaking which they thought beneath the dignity of a magistrate; they told him, he says, that he might employ his pen much more to the honour of himself and to the good of the public. Moreover, the declining state of his health had to be considered. He could not free himself from periodic attacks of the gout which lamed him and wore him down. fearfully. Nevertheless, in spite of infirmities and all else, he persisted in his design. On a leaf inserted at the end of the second volume of "Amelia," it is announced that the new periodical "will be certainly published on Saturday the 4th of January next," that is, on January 4, 1752. There was no further postponement. On that day the coffee-houses received the first number of "The CoventGarden Journal," to be continued "every Tuesday and Saturday." The price was threepence a copy.

No one could fail to see who the editor was, though he assumed the name of "Sir Alexander Drawcansir, Knt. Censor of Great Britain." The sobriquet of "Drawcansir," the name which Colley Cibber had contemptuously applied to Fielding in the old theatrical days, was taken from a braggadocio in the Duke of Buckingham's "Rehearsal"-a burlesque of the miles gloriosus who goes into battle with the intention of killing everybody about him, whether friend or foe:

I drink, I huff, I strut, look big and stare;

And all this I can do because I dare.

When Cibber wrote his "Apology," satirists in the public press as well as on the stage were known as "Drawcansirs of the goose-quill." By assuming the title, Fielding proclaimed himself a free lance who would show no favour to any man or institution or party, or to any vice or folly that deserved reprobation. It was a rôle similar to the one which he had formerly played in the disguise of "Captain Hercules Vinegar, Champion and Censor of Great Britain."

The business secrets of "The Covent-Garden Journal" have never been disclosed; but perhaps the veil may be partially withdrawn. "The Champion," we remember, was owned by a group of booksellers and other men including Fielding, who formed a partnership for the management of its affairs. "The True Patriot" and "The Jacobite's Journal," being political sheets, may have been subsidized by the Government. In their case there seems to have been no partnership. All announcements of the forthcoming "Covent-Garden Journal" were appended to advertisements of the Universal Register Office. To that office in the Strand subscribers were to send in their names and places of abode. When the paper actually appeared, a second distributing point was added-the shop of Mrs. Dodd, the printer of the journal, at the sign of the Peacock, Temple Bar. At either place indifferently, advertisements

and letters to the author or editor were taken in. Mrs. Dodd, however, probably assumed none of the financial risks of the undertaking. She appears to have been only the agent of the proprietors of the Universal Register Office, among whom were John and Henry Fielding. "The Covent-Garden Journal," everything goes to show, was a new enterprise of that institution, though the inference is confirmed by no contemporary statement.

The Universal Register Office, which began as an employment bureau, was then extending its business, as we have seen in the chapter on "Amelia," in many directions. There curacies might be exchanged, houses and estates be sold or let, men and ships be insured, and money be borrowed up to a hundred thousand pounds if the security satisfied the lender. Not only was a branch office opened in Bishopsgate, but a similar one, loosely connected with the original, was established in Dublin. At the same time several rival offices were set up in London. By 1751-1752 competition had become exceedingly bitter; and the Universal Register Office had to fight to hold its supremacy. In "The London Daily Advertiser" of November 9, 1751, "one of the proprietors," without doubt John Fielding, protested against the policy of that journal in refusing their advertisements, while cheap and spurious counterfeits were accorded "free admission." On account of the conduct of this and other newspapers he had no adequate means, he declared, of "making the Office known and understood"; and the next day he pleaded with Dr. John Hill, the leading writer on "The London Daily Advertiser," for his assistance in spreading its fame throughout "the polite world."* In the circumstances, the proprietors of the Universal Register Office evidently decided to have an organ of their own, edited by their own literary man, wherein their varied business could be described at will. Such at least was the * British Museum, "Stowe MSS.,'' 155, f. 124.