Another announcement in the columns of the _Advertiser_ links this last Spring of Fielding's life with that earlier Spring of 1743, when as a popular play-wright and a struggling barrister, absorbed in anxiety for the health of a beloved wife and with his own health already attacked, he published that masterpiece of irony _Jonathan Wild_. Now, while he was still slowly drawing his 'feet out of the grave,' after those critical first days of March, a new edition of the _History_ of that "Great Man," with "considerable Corrections and Additions," was advertised; the actual date of publication being, apparently, about March 19. The new edition appeared with a prefatory note, "from the Publisher to the Reader," which although it bears no signature conveys, undoubtedly, Fielding's intention, if not his actual words. There is the familiar protest against the "scurrility of others," the odium of which had fallen on the innocent shoulders of "the author of our little book"; and there is a solemn declaration that the said little book shows no reason for supposing any 'personal application' to be meant in its pages "unless we will agree that there are without those Walls [i.e. of Newgate], some other bodies of men of worse morals than those within; and who have consequently, a right to change places with its present inhabitants." Then follows an explicit reference to a chapter in the _History_ of the arch-villain Wild, which is obviously designed to satirise the condition of English politics, if not the person of any one politician. The disclaimer, seems on the whole, to partake very properly of the ironic nature of the ensuing pages; although it recalls that youthful declaration of the young dramatist, prefixed to his first comedy acted nearly thirty years before, that no private character was the target of his pen. At the end of these two months of March and April, spent as we have seen in acquiring some little degree of strength, and in at least attempting to expend the same on the consignment of petty thieves to Newgate, Fielding again submitted his dropsy to the surgeon, the consequences of which he now bore much better. This improvement, he tells us, he attributed greatly to "a dose of laudanum prescribed by my surgeon. It first gave me the most delicious flow of spirits, and afterwards as comfortable a nap." Lady Mary Wortley Montagu has recorded how her cousin's 'happy constitution,' even when half-demolished, could enjoy, with undiminished zest "a venison pasty, or a flask of champagne." Surely none other than Henry Fielding could have recorded with like zest this 'delicious flow of spirits' and 'comfortable nap' derived from a dose of laudanum.