Two echoes have come down to us of the early appreciation of this novel. A translation of _Joseph Andrews_, "par une Dame Angloise," and bound for Marie Antoinette by Derome le Jeune, was placed on the shelves of her library in the Petit Trianon. [4] And, seven years after the appearance of _Joseph Andrews_, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, when sixty years old, writes from her Italian exile: "I have at length received the box with the books enclosed, for which I give you many thanks as they amuse me very much. I gave a very ridiculous proof of it, fitter indeed for my granddaughter than myself. I returned from a party on horseback; and after having rode 20 miles, part of it by moonshine, it was ten at night when I found the box arrived. I could not deny myself the pleasure of opening it; and falling upon Fielding's works was fool enough to sit up all night reading. I think Joseph Andrews better than his Foundling." [5] [1] _Cleopatra and Octavia_. Sarah Fielding. Introduction. [2] See the ledgers of Woodfall, the printer, quoted in _Notes and Queries_, Series vi. p. 186. [3] It is interesting to note that Samuel Rogers was heard to speak with great admiration of chapter xiii. of Book iii., entitled "A curious Dialogue which passed between Mr Abraham Adams and Mr Peter Pounce." (MS. note by Dyce, in a copy of _Joseph Andrews_, now in the South Kensington Museum.) [4] This copy, published in Amsterdam in 1775, is now in the possession of Mr Pierpont Morgan. [5] Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Vol. ii. p. 194. CHAPTER IX THE _Miscellanies_ AND _Jonathan Wild_ "Is there on earth a greater object of contempt than the poor scholar to a splendid beau; unless perhaps the splendid beau to the poor scholar." _Covent Garden Journal_, No. 61. If the 'sunrise' of Fielding's genius did indeed shine forth on the publication of _Joseph Andrews_, it was a sunrise attended by dark clouds. For, with the appearance of these two little volumes, we enter on the most obscure period of the great novelist's life, and on that in which he appears to have suffered the severest 'invasions of Fortune.' As regards the winter immediately preceding the appearance of that joyous epic of the highway, he himself has told us that he was 'laid up in the gout, with a favourite Child dying in one Bed, and my Wife in a Condition very little better, on another, attended with other Circumstances, which served as very proper Decorations to such a Scene.' In the following February, an entry in the registers of St Martin's in the Fields records the burial of a child "Charlott Fielding." So it is probable that the very month of the appearance of his first novel brought a private grief to Fielding the poignancy of which may be measured by his frequent betrayals of an anxious affection for his children.