which I cannot easily pardon, being very mischievous. They place a merit
in extravagant passions, and encourage young people to hope for
impossible events, to draw them out of the misery they chose to plunge
themselves into, expecting legacies from unknown relations, and generous
benefactors to distressed virtue, as much out of nature as fairy
treasures. Fielding has really a fund of true humour, and was to be
pitied at his first entrance into the world, having no choice, as he
said himself, but to be a hackney writer, or a hackney coachman. His
genius deserved a better fate; but I cannot help blaming that continued
indiscretion, to give it the softest name, that has run through his
life, and I am afraid still remains. I guessed _Random_ to be his though
without his name. I cannot think _Ferdinand Count Fathom_ wrote by the
same hand, it is every way so much below it."


Adventures of Roderick Random_ (1748) and _The Adventures of Ferdinand
Count Fathom_ (1753) were published anonymously. Lady Mary was not the
only one to attribute _Roderick Random_ to Fielding, and it was actually
translated into French in his name.

When Lady Mary heard of Fielding's death, she expressed deep regret:


"I am sorry for H. Fielding's death, not only as I shall read no more of
his writings, but I believe he lost more than others, as no man enjoyed
life more than he did, though few had less reason to do so, the highest
of his preferment being raking in the lowest sinks of vice and misery. I
should think it a nobler and less nauseous employment to be one of the
staff-officers that conduct the nocturnal weddings. His happy
constitution (even when he had, with great pains, half demolished it)