This mention of _Joseph Andrews_ has misled some of Fielding's biographers into thinking that he ranked that novel above _Tom Jones_. But, in October 1746, _Tom Jones_ had not been published; and, from the absence of any reference to it by Warton, it is only reasonable to conclude that it had not yet assumed a definite form, or Fielding, who was by no means uncommunicative, would in all probability have spoken of it as an effort from which he expected still greater things. It is clear, too, that at this date he was staying in London, presumably in lodgings with his sister; and it is also most likely that he lived much in town when he was conducting the _True Patriot_ and the _Jacobite's Journal_. At other times he would appear to have had no settled place of abode. There are traditions that _Tom Jones_ was composed in part at Salisbury, in a house at the foot of Milford Hill; and again that it was written at Twiverton, or Twerton-on-Avon, near Bath, where, as the Vicar pointed out in _Notes and Queries_ for March 15th, 1879, there still exists a house called Fielding's Lodge, over the door of which is a stone crest of a phoenix rising out of a mural coronet. This latter tradition is supported by the statement of Mr. Richard Graves, author of the _Spiritual Quixote_, and rector, _circa_ 1750, of the neighbouring parish of Claverton, who says in his _Trifling Anecdotes of the late Ralph Allen_, that Fielding while at Twerton used to dine almost daily with Allen at Prior Park. There are also traces of his residence at Bath itself; and of visits to the seat of Lyttelton's father at Hagley in Worcestershire. Towards the close of 1747 he had, as before stated, rooms in Back Lane, Twickenham; and it must be to this or to some earlier period that Walpole alludes in his _Parish Register_ (1759):-- "Here Fielding met his bunter Muse And, as they quaff'd the fiery juice, Droll Nature stamp'd each lucky hit With unimaginable wit;"-- a quatrain in which the last lines excuse the first. According to Mr. Cobbett's already-quoted _Memorials of Twickenham_, he left that place upon his appointment as a Middlesex magistrate, when he moved to Bow Street. His house in Bow Street belonged to John, Duke of Bedford; and he continued to live in it until a short time before his death. It was subsequently occupied by his half-brother and successor, Sir John, [Footnote: In the riots of '80--as Dickens has not forgotten to note in _Barnaby Rudge_--the house was destroyed by the mob, who burned Sir John's goods in the street (Boswell's _Johnson_, chap. lxx.)] who, writing to the Duke in March 1770, to thank him for his munificent gift of an additional ten years to the lease, recalls "that princely instance of generosity which his Grace shewed to his late brother, Henry Fielding."