VOYAGE TO LISBON

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nates peculiarities with the sagacity of the novelist, and describes them with a novelist's art. When he expected to be drowned, his sole regret was that the world would lose his sketch of a military coxcomb of the very silliest order, who came on board at Portsmouth to visit his uncle, the captain of the ship, and who in his wisdom had that particular hatred of fools that he could not tolerate their company, and would never be seen with two or three officers of his regiment whose misfortune it was to belong to that unhappy family. The captain himself was a curious mixture of kindness and bluster, of good-temper and selfimportance. When a kitten fell overboard he had the ship put about to save it, and when the same animal was afterwards suffocated in a feather bed, his lamentations resembled an Irish howl. Going one day to dine on board another vessel, he ordered a sailor to pack a quantity of small beer in the cabin, which Fielding resisting, because the intrusion was inconvenient to him at the moment, the man took boat, and went to complain to his master. Back came the captain, foaming with rage, and vomiting forth oaths. His insolence and abuse grew to a height which made Fielding resolve to quit the ship. He sent for a hoy to convey him on shore, and muttered the word law. At that ominous sound, a hero who had braved the roar of cannon (for he had once commanded a privateer) tumbled on his knees and implored for mercy. In their later confidences he confessed to Fielding that "he feared that with which he had been threatened more than any rock or quicksand." Neither the captain himself nor anybody on board appears to have had the remotest suspicion how precious was the freight they carried. Genius is appreciated most heartily by those who make the nearest approaches to it, and these people were so far removed from the least participation of the talents which elevated their great companion, that they were lost to them in the distance.

1

1 [Vol. x. pp. 295-7.]

From the time that Fielding set foot on shore we hear no more of him, until we are told that he expired on the 8th of October, 1754, in the forty-eighth year of his age. It may be conjectured from all which preceded, that, while sense remained, the last spark of life continued to shine brightly, and to assert its predominance over the pain and feebleness which oppressed him, as though that final flicker had been the entire man. Nor did he want, we may venture to hope, the consolations of religion, for even while his conduct was dissolute his faith continued firm. One of the latest works he planned was a refutation of the posthumous and infidel philosophy of Lord Bolingbroke, and he had been at the pains of making numerous extracts for the purpose from the writings of the Fathers and other eminent divines. He is buried in the English cemetery at Lisbon, where a new tomb was erected to him in 1830, with the inscription—

HENRICUS FIELDING,

LUGET BRITANNIA GREMIO NON DATUM

FOVERE NATUM.

He left four children, and Allen not only made their uncle an annual allowance to assist in defraying the expenses of their education, but on his own death, ten years afterwards, bequeathed the mother and the three survivors a hundred pounds apiece.1

1

1 [Mr. M. Davenport Hill wrote to Elwin, Jan. 23, 1856, after a perusal of Scott's sketch of Fielding's Life, prompted by reading the Quarterly article: "I observe that, when speaking of Fielding's children, he says he does not know what became of them. One went to the Bar, and practised at the Old Bailey, within the memory of men whom I knew; but I never heard more than one anecdote of him, which was that somebody-one of the judges, I think,-at the Sheriff's dinner, which was given every day during the Sessions, speaking of books, said that he had long confined his reading to two-Horace and Tom Jones; a tribute to his father, which, being made unexpectedly and without thought on the part of the speaker that any of his hearers had a peculiar interest in the opinion, so affected the son as to produce a burst of tears. Probably he may have been old enough to remember that last and sad parting with his father, which no one who has ever read could forget."

This son was the eldest, William, born 1748.]