In the enumeration of Fielding's works it is somewhat difficult (if due proportion be observed) to assign any real importance to efforts like the _Covent-Garden Journal_. Compared with his novels, they are insignificant enough. But even the worst work of such a man is notable in its way; and Fielding's contributions to the _Journal_ are by no means to be despised. They are shrewd lay sermons, often exhibiting much out-of-the-way erudition, and nearly always distinguished by some of his personal qualities. In No. 33, on "Profanity," there is a character- sketch which, for vigour and vitality, is worthy of his best days; and there is also a very thoughtful paper on "Reading," containing a kindly reference to "the ingenious Author of _Clarissa_," which should have mollified that implacable moralist. In this essay it is curious to notice that, while Fielding speaks with due admiration of Shakespeare and Moliere, Lucian, Cervantes, and Swift, he condemns Rabelais and Aristophanes, although in the invocation already quoted from _Tom Jones_, he had included both these authors among the models he admired. Another paper in the _Covent-Garden Journal_ is especially interesting because it affords a clue to a project of Fielding's which unfortunately remained a project. This was a Translation of the works of Lucian, to be undertaken in conjunction with his old colleague, the Rev. William Young. Proposals were advertised, and the enterprise was duly heralded by a "puff preliminary," in which Fielding, while abstaining from anything directly concerning his own abilities, observes, "I will only venture to say, that no Man seems so likely to translate an Author well, as he who hath formed his Stile upon that very Author"--a sentence which, taken in connection with the references to Lucian in _Tom Thumb_, the _Champion_ and elsewhere, must be accepted as distinctly autobiographic. The last number of the Covent-Garden Journal (No. 72) was issued in November 1752. By this time Sir Alexander seems to have thoroughly wearied of his task. With more gravity than usual he takes leave of letters, begging the Public that they will not henceforth father on him the dulness and scurrility of his worthy contemporaries; "since I solemnly declare that unless in revising my former Works, I have at present no Intention to hold any further Correspondence with the gayer Muses."