him in danger of losing his reason."

That Fielding had depicted his first wife in Sophia Western has already
been pointed out, and we have the authority of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
and Richardson for saying that she was afterwards reproduced in
_Amelia_. "Amelia," says the latter, in a letter to Mrs. Donnellan,
"even to her _noselessness_, is again his first wife." Some of her
traits, too, are to be detected in the Mrs. Wilson of _Joseph Andrews_.
But, beyond these indications, we hear little about her. Almost all that
is definitely known is contained in a passage of the admirable
_Introductory Anecdotes_ contributed by Lady Louisa Stuart in 1837 to
Lord Wharncliffe's edition of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's _Letters and
Works_. This account was based upon the recollections of Lady Bute, Lady
Mary's daughter.

"Only those persons (says Lady Stuart) are mentioned here of whom Lady
Bute could speak from her own recollection or her mother's report. Both
had made her well informed of every particular that concerned her
relation Henry Fielding; nor was she a stranger to that beloved first
wife whose picture he drew in his Amelia, where, as she said, even the
glowing language he knew how to employ did not do more than justice to
the amiable qualities of the original, or to her beauty, although this
had suffered a little from the accident related in the novel,--a
frightful overturn, which destroyed the gristle of her nose. [Footnote:
That any one could have remained lovely after such a catastrophe is
difficult to believe. But probably Lady Bute (or Lady Stuart)
exaggerated its effects; for--to say nothing of the fact that,
throughout the novel, Amelia's beauty is continually commended--in the
delightfully feminine description which is given of her by Mrs. James in
Book xi. chap. i., pp. 114-15 of the first edition of 1752, although she