incorrect in many respects. If Fielding married in 1735 (though, as already pointed out, he may have married earlier, and retired to the country upon the failure of the Universal Gallant), he is certainly inaccurately described as “not having been long a writer for the stage,” since writing for the stage had been his chief occupation for seven years. Then again his mother had died as far back as April 10, 1718, when he was a boy of eleven; and if he had inherited anything from her, he had probably been in the enjoyment of it ever since he came of age. Furthermore, the statement as to “three years” is at variance with the fact that, according to the dedication to the Universal Gallant, he was still in London in February 1735, and was back again managing the Haymarket in the first months of 1736. Murphy, however, may only mean that the “estate” at East Stour was in his possession for three years. Mr. Keightley’s other points—namely, that the “tolerably respectable farm-house,” in which he is supposed to have lived, was scarcely adapted to “splendid entertainments,” or “a large retinue of servants;” and that, to be in strict accordance with the family arms, the liveries should have been not “yellow,” but white and blue—must be taken for what they are worth. On the whole, the probability is, that Murphy’s words were only the careless repetition of local tittle-tattle, of much of which, as Captain Booth says pertinently in Amelia, “the only basis is lying.” The squires of the neighbourhood would naturally regard the dashing young gentleman from London with the same distrustful hostility that Addison’s “Tory Foxhunter” exhibited to those who differed with him in politics. It would be remembered,
