On the day following, the 24th of June, he landed, and that evening enjoyed the long unknown luxury of a good supper, in a kind of coffee-house "very pleasantly situated on the brow of a hill, about a mile from the city, [which] hath a very fine prospect of the River Tajo from Lisbon to the sea." With that pleasant prospect the Voyage closes. Begun as it was to while away the enforced solitude of his cabin, a condition, which no man, he tells us, disliked more than himself and which mortal sickness rendered especially irksome, these pages, some of which "were possibly the production of the most disagreeable hours which ever haunted the author," reveal Fielding to us if not as Mr Lowell has said "with artless inadvertence" at least with perfect fullness. The undimmed gaiety of spirit, the tender affection, the constant desire to remove those evils which he found oppressing his country-men by sea not less than on land, the 'enthusiasm for righteousnes,' the humour of the first of English novelists, burn here as brightly as though the writer were but midway in his life's voyage. The hand that exposed evil in its native loathsomeness in a Blifil and a Wild has not lost its cunning in depicting Mrs Humphreys; the eye that delighted in the green fields of England saw in the southern sunset that which made human creations 'almost below the regard of children.' And to the last the patriotic energies of the author of _Pasquin_ and of the _Champion_, of the whole hearted social reformer, of the tireless magistrate, knew no relaxation. Page after page of the _Voyage_ justify the passage in which he tells us how "I would indeed have this work, which, if I live to finish it (a matter of no great certainty, if indeed of any great hope to me), will be probably the last I shall ever undertake, to produce some better end than the mere diversion of the reader"; and manifest his desire, here explicitly stated, to finish life "as I have probably lost it, in the service of my country." We have no knowledge concerning the four months following the last entry in the pages of the _Voyage to Lisbon_. On October 8, 1754, the end so calmly expected came; and in the beautiful English cemetery, facing the great Basilica of the Heart of Jesus, was laid to rest all that an alien soil could claim of 'our immortal Fielding.' [1] The _Public Advertiser_, 1754, February 26. [2] The _Public Advertiser_ 1754, April 17. [3] Middlesex Records. _Sessions Book_. 1754. [4] See the Middlesex Records. [5] See the _Public Advertiser_. February, 1754. [6] This little house was apparently replaced by a larger house; and it is probably this second building of which a sketch is inserted in a copy of Lysons' _Environs_ to be seen in the Guildhall Library. It is now pulled down. [7] Dr Johnson spoke of Saunders Welch as "one of my best and dearest friends." [8] Austin Dobson. _Fielding_, p. 170. [9] "Dedication" of the _Voyage_, written possibly by John Fielding.