[4] This unique contemporary print of Fielding may be seen in the British Museum, Print Room, _Social Satires_, No. 3213. [5] Record Office. _State Papers. Domestic_ G. II., 127, no. 24. [6] Lysons. _Environs of London_. 1795. Vol. ii. p. 229. [7] The quotations from the _Voyage to Lisbon_ are from the edition recently prepared by Mr Austin Dobson, for the 'World's Classics.' [8] This letter is now in the British Museum. The endorsement on the back is: "Dec. 6, 1753 from Mr Fielding recommending Mr. Saunders Welch to be in the Com. of ye Peace for Westmr and Middx." CHAPTER XVII VOYAGE TO LISBON--DEATH "satisfied in having finished my life, as I have probably lost it in the service of my country." _Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon_. To a man dying of a complication of disorders the terrible winter of 1753-4 brought added danger; a winter which, says Fielding, "put a lucky end, if they had known their own interests, to such numbers of aged and infirm valetudinarians." But this, too, his splendid constitution struggled through; and in February 1754, he was back in town, in a condition less despaired of, he tells us, by himself than by any of his friends. And if he did not allow himself to despair, neither did he, even now, relinquish all his magistrate's work. On the 26th of February cases are actually recorded as brought before him. [1] But within a few days, apparently, of this date treatment employed on the advice of Dr Joshua Ward, so weakened a body already 'enervate' and emaciated, that at first the patient "was thought to be falling into the agonies of death." On March 6, he was, he tells us, at his worst--that "memorable day when the public lost Mr Pelham. From that day I began slowly, as it were, to draw my feet out of the grave; till in two months time I had again acquired some little degree of strength." Before the expiration of these two months that 'little degree of strength' was again being expended in the drudgery of the Bow Street court-room. "Yesterday," states the _Public Advertiser_ of April 17, "Elizabeth Smith was committed to Newgate by Henry Fielding Esqre; being charged with stealing a great quantity of Linnen." [2] And five days later, on April 22, a committal is recorded in the Middlesex _Sessions Book_. [3]