the express statements on Fielding’s part that “without your Assistance this History had never been completed,” and “I partly owe to you my Existence during great Part of the Time which I have employed in composing it.” These words must plainly be accepted as indicating pecuniary help; and, taking all things together, there can be little doubt that for some years antecedent to his appointment as a Justice of the Peace, Fielding was in straitened circumstances, and was largely aided, if not practically supported, by his friends. Even supposing him to have been subsidised by Government as alleged, his profits from the True Patriot and the Jacobite’s Journal could not have been excessive; and his gout, of which he speaks in one of his letters to the Duke of Bedford, must have been a serious obstacle in the way of his legal labours.
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, was published by Andrew Millar on the 28th of February 1749, and its appearance in six volumes, 12mo, was announced in the General Advertiser of that day’s date. There had been no author’s name on the title-page of Joseph Andrews; but Tom Jones was duly described as “by Henry Fielding, Esq.,” and bore the motto from Horace, seldom so justly applied, of “Mores hominum multorum vidit.“ The advertisement also ingenuously stated that as it was “impossible to get Sets bound fast enough to answer the Demand for them, such Gentlemen and Ladies as pleased, might have them sew’d in Blue Paper and Boards at the Price of 16s a Set.” The date of issue sufficiently disposes of the statement of Cunningham and others, that the book was written at Bow Street. Little more than the dedication, which is preface as well, can have been produced
