Bid him go back, and take more Care,
And give her Service to the Fair."

Swift, in his _Rhapsody on Poetry_, 1733, coupled Fielding with Leonard
Welsted as an instance of sinking in verse. But the foregoing, which he
could not have seen, is scarcely, if at all, inferior to his own
_Birthday Poems to Stella_. [Footnote: Swift afterwards substituted "the
laureate [Cibber]" for "Fielding," and appears to have changed his mind
as to the latter's merits. "I can assure Mr. _Fielding_," says Mrs.
Pilkington in the third and last volume of her _Memoirs_ (1754), "the
Dean had a high opinion of his Wit, which must be a Pleasure to him, as
no Man was ever better qualified to judge, possessing it so eminently
himself."]

The history of Fielding's marriage rests so exclusively upon the
statements of Arthur Murphy that it will be well to quote his words in
full:--

"Mr. Fielding had not been long a writer for the stage, when he married
Miss Craddock [_sic_], a beauty from Salisbury. About that time, his
mother dying, a moderate estate, at Stower in Dorsetshire, devolved to
him. To that place he retired with his wife, on whom he doated, with a
resolution to bid adieu to all the follies and intemperances to which he
had addicted himself in the career of a town-life. But unfortunately a
kind of family-pride here gained an ascendant over him; and he began
immediately to vie in splendour with the neighbouring country 'squires.
With an estate not much above two hundred pounds a-year, and his wife's
fortune, which did not exceed fifteen hundred pounds, he encumbered
himself with a large retinue of servants, all clad in costly yellow
liveries. For their master's honour, these people could not descend so