It was into a conflict with this epidemic of crime that Fielding, at forty-three, and with already broken health, flung his energies, to such purpose that in these last five years of his life it is but too easy to forget the creator of _Joseph Andrews_, of _Tom Jones_, and of _Amelia_, in his last 'ardent desire,' as ardently pursued, to purify the sorely diseased body politic. His method of attack was twofold. He dealt vigorously with the individual criminal; and he sought to remove some of the causes by which those criminals were engendered. The individual attack is, for the most part, but sordid reading. Thus from a fragment of the Westminster _Committment Books_, preserved with the Middlesex Records, we may see how in January and February of this year 1749 'Henry Fielding Esq.' committed to the New Prison such cases as: Thomas Thrupp for riot Thomas Trinder for burglary T. Chamberlain and Terence Fitz Patrick for assault C. O'Neal for assaulting two Watchmen Mary Hughes and Caterine Edmonds for assault and beating John Smithson for exercising the art of pattenmaker without having been brought up thereto for seven years Cornelius York for filing guineas Christo Kelsey for ill fame Bryan Park for assault This sorry list, interspersed with cases of murder, of robbery with violence, and of smuggling, may doubtless be extended over the entire five years of Fielding's work on the Bench; and to reiterate the details of such work would be as tedious now as the monotonous discharge of these duties must once have been to the author of _Tom Jones_. [9] Of much more enduring interest is the great novelist's second line of attack on the problem confronting him.