to whom, though he gave her sufficient cause for forbearance, he was devotedly attached.  She is the prototype of his “Amelia” and “Sophia.”  She brought him L1500, and the young couple retired to East Stour, where he had a small house inherited from his mother.  The little fortune was, however, soon dissipated; and in a year he was back in London, where he formed a company of comedians, and managed a small theatre in the Haymarket.  Here he produced successfully Pasquin, a Dramatic Satire on the Times, and The Historical Register for 1736, in which Walpole was satirised.  This enterprise was brought to an end by the passing of the Licensing Act, 1737, making the imprimatur of the Lord Chamberlain necessary to the production of any play.  F. thereupon read law at the Middle Temple, was called to the Bar in 1740, and went the Western Circuit.  The same year saw the publication of Richardson’s Pamela, which inspired F. with the idea of a parody, thus giving rise to his first novel, Joseph Andrews.  As, however, the characters, especially Parson Adams, developed in his hands, the original idea was laid aside, and the work assumed the form of a regular novel.  It was pub. in 1742, and though sharing largely in the same qualities as its great successor, Tom Jones, its reception, though encouraging, was not phenomenally cordial.  Immediately after this a heavy blow fell on F. in the death of his wife.  The next few years were occupied with writing his Miscellanies, which contained, along with some essays and poems, two important works, A Journey from this World to the Next, and The History of Jonathan Wild the Great, a grave satire; and he also conducted two papers in support of the Government, The True Patriot and The Jacobite Journal, in consideration of which he was appointed Justice of the Peace for Middlesex and Westminster, and had a pension conferred upon him.  In 1746 he set convention at defiance by marrying Mary MacDaniel, who had been his first wife’s maid, and the nurse of his children, and who proved a faithful and affectionate companion.  F. showed himself an upright, diligent, and efficient magistrate, and his Inquiry into the Increase of Robbers (1751), with suggested remedies, led to beneficial results.  By this time, however, the publication of his great masterpiece, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), had given him a place among the immortals.  All critics are agreed that this book contains passages offensive to delicacy, and some say to morality.  This is often excused on the plea of the coarser manners of the age; but a much stronger defence is advanced on the ground that, while other novelists of the time made immorality an incentive to merriment, F.’s treatment of such subjects, as Lowell has said, “shocks rather than corrupts,” and that in his pages evil is evil.  On the other hand, there is universal agreement as to the permanent interest of the types