of the writer, who, amid all the distractions of ill-health and poverty,
could find the courage to pursue and perfect such a conception. It is
true that both Cervantes and Bunyan wrote their immortal works in the
confinement of a prison. But they must at least have enjoyed the
seclusion so needful to literary labour; while _Tom Jones_ was written
here and there, at all times and in all places, with the dun at the door
and the wolf not very far from the gate. [Footnote: Salisbury, in the
neighbourhood of which _Tom Jones_ is laid, claims the originals of some
of the characters. Thwackum is said to have been Hele, a schoolmaster;
Square, one Chubb, a Deist; and Dowling the lawyer a person named
Stillingfleet.]

The little sentence quoted some pages back from Walpole's letters is
sufficient proof, if proof were needed, of its immediate success. Andrew
Millar was shrewd enough, despite his constitutional confusion, and he
is not likely to have given an additional L100 to the author of any book
without good reason. But the indications of that success are not very
plainly impressed upon the public prints. The _Gentleman's Magazine_ for
1749, which, as might be expected from Johnson's connection with it,
contains ample accounts of his own tragedy of _Irene_ and Richardson's
recently-published _Clarissa_, has no notice of _Tom Jones_, nor is
there even any advertisement of the second edition issued in the same
year. But, in the emblematic frontispiece, it appears under _Clarissa_
(and sharing with that work a possibly unintended proximity to a sprig
of laurel stuck in a bottle of Nantes), among a pile of the books of the
year; and in the "poetical essays" for August, one Thomas Cawthorn
breaks into rhymed panegyric. "Sick of her fools," sings this
enthusiastic but scarcely lucid admirer--

"Sick of her fools, great _Nature_ broke the jest,