I have taken advantage of the present issue to add, in the form of Appendices, some supplementary particulars which have come to my knowledge since the book was first published. The most material of these is the curious confirmation and extension of Fielding's love affair with Sarah Andrew. Besides these additions, a few necessary rectifications have been made in the text. A. D. EALING, _April_ 1889. The approaching bi-centenary (April 22, 1907) of Fielding's birth affords a pretext for bringing together, in a fourth Appendix, some additional particulars which have been discovered or established since the issue of the last edition of this Memoir. These particulars relate to his pedigree, his residence at Leyden as a student, his marriage to his first wife Charlotte Cradock, his Will, his library, his family and some other minor matters. A. D. EALING. _March_ 1907. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. EARLY YEARS--FIRST PLAYS CHAPTER II. MORE PLAYS--MARRIAGE--THE LICENSING ACT CHAPTER III. THE CHAMPION--JOSEPH ANDREWS CHAPTER IV. THE MISCELLANIES--JONATHAN WILD CHAPTER V. TOM JONES CHAPTER VI. JUSTICE LIFE--AMELIA CHAPTER VII. THE JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON POSTSCRIPT APPENDIX No. I. FIELDING AND SARAH ANDREW APPENDIX No. II. FIELDING AND MRS. HUSSEY APPENDIX No. III. AMELIA'S ACCIDENT APPENDIX No. IV. FlELDINGIANA INDEX CHAPTER I. EARLY YEARS--FIRST PLAYS. Like his contemporary Smollett, Henry Fielding came of an ancient family, and might, in his Horatian moods, have traced his origin to Inachus. The lineage of the house of Denbigh, as given in Burke, fully justifies the splendid but sufficiently quoted eulogy of Gibbon. From that first Jeffrey of Hapsburgh, who came to England, _temp._ Henry III., and assumed the name of Fieldeng, or Filding, "from his father's pretensions to the dominions of Lauffenbourg and Rinfilding," the future novelist could boast a long line of illustrious ancestors. There was a Sir William Feilding killed at Tewkesbury, and a Sir Everard who commanded at Stoke. Another Sir William, a staunch Royalist, was created Earl of Denbigh, and died in fighting King Charles's battles. Of his two sons, the elder, Basil, who succeeded to the title, was a Parliamentarian, and served at Edgehill under Essex. George, his second son, was raised to the peerage of Ireland as Viscount Callan, with succession to the earldom of Desmond; and from this, the younger branch of the Denbigh family, Henry Fielding directly descended. The Earl of Desmond's fifth son, John, entered the Church, becoming Canon of Salisbury and Chaplain to William III. By his wife Bridget, daughter of Scipio Cockain, Esq., of Somerset, he had three sons and three daughters. Edmund, the third son, was a soldier, who fought with distinction under Marlborough. When about the age of thirty, he married Sarah, daughter of Sir Henry Gould, Knt., of Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury, in Somerset, and one of the Judges of the King's Bench.