Integrity which nothing can corrupt,” is clearly an oblique panegyric of Philip Yorke, Lord Hardwicke, to whom, two years later, Fielding dedicated his Enquiry into the late Increase of Robbers, etc. Besides these, there are references to Bishop Hoadly (bk. ii. ch. vii.), Mrs. Whitefield, of the “Bell” at Gloucester, and Mr. Timothy Harris (bk. viii. ch. viii), Mrs. Clive, and Mr. Miller of the Gardener’s Dictionary (bk. ix. ch. i.); and closer examination would no doubt reveal further allusions. Meanwhile the above will be sufficient to show that the statement of the “celebrated mantua-maker in the Strand” respecting Fielding’s friends in Tom Jones is not without foundation.
APPENDIX No. III. AMELIA’S ACCIDENT.
In addition to the alterations mentioned at p. 109 n., Fielding inserted the following paragraph in the Covent-Garden Journal, No. 3, for 11th January 1752:—
“It is currently reported that a famous Surgeon, who absolutely cured one Mrs. Amelia Booth, of a violent Hurt in her Nose, insomuch, that she had scarce a Scar left on it, intends to bring Actions against several ill-meaning and slanderous People, who have reported that the said Lady had no Nose, merely because the Author of her History, in a Hurry, forgot to inform his Readers of that Particular, and which, if those Readers had any Nose themselves, except that which is mentioned in the Motto of this Paper, they would have smelt out.”
The motto is the passage from Martial (Ep. i. 4. 6) in which he speaks of the nasus rhinocerotis.
