During all this time he seems to have been steadily applying himself to the practice of his profession, if, indeed, that weary hope deferred which forms the usual probation of legal preferment can properly be so described. As might be anticipated from his Salisbury connections, he travelled the Western Circuit; and, according to Hutchins's _Dorset_, he assiduously attended the Wiltshire sessions. He had many friends among his brethren of the Bar. His cousin, Henry Gould, who had been called in 1734, and who, like his grandfather, ultimately became a Judge, was also a member of the Middle Temple; and he was familiar with Charles Pratt, afterwards Lord Camden, whom he may have known at Eton, but whom he certainly knew in his barrister days. It is probable, too, that he was acquainted with Lord Northington, then Robert Henley, whose name appears as a subscriber to the _Miscellanies_, and who was once supposed to contend with Kettleby (another subscriber) for the honour of being the original of the drunken barrister in Hogarth's _Midnight Modern Conversation_, a picture which no doubt accurately represents a good many of the festivals by which Henry Fielding relieved the tedium of composing those MS. _folio_ volumes on Crown or Criminal Law, which, after his death, reverted to his half-brother, Sir John. But towards the close of 1741 he was engaged upon another work which has outweighed all his most laborious forensic efforts, and which will long remain an English classic. This was _The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams_, published by Andrew Millar in February 1742.