the practice of his profession, if, indeed, that weary hope deferred
which forms the usual probation of legal preferment can properly be so
described. As might be anticipated from his Salisbury connections, he
travelled the Western Circuit; and, according to Hutchins's _Dorset_, he
assiduously attended the Wiltshire sessions. He had many friends among
his brethren of the Bar. His cousin, Henry Gould, who had been called in
1734, and who, like his grandfather, ultimately became a Judge, was also
a member of the Middle Temple; and he was familiar with Charles Pratt,
afterwards Lord Camden, whom he may have known at Eton, but whom he
certainly knew in his barrister days. It is probable, too, that he was
acquainted with Lord Northington, then Robert Henley, whose name appears
as a subscriber to the _Miscellanies_, and who was once supposed to
contend with Kettleby (another subscriber) for the honour of being the
original of the drunken barrister in Hogarth's _Midnight Modern
Conversation_, a picture which no doubt accurately represents a good
many of the festivals by which Henry Fielding relieved the tedium of
composing those MS. _folio_ volumes on Crown or Criminal Law, which,
after his death, reverted to his half-brother, Sir John. But towards the
close of 1741 he was engaged upon another work which has outweighed all
his most laborious forensic efforts, and which will long remain an
English classic. This was _The History of the Adventures of Joseph
Andrews, and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams_, published by Andrew
Millar in February 1742.

In the same number, and at the same page of the _Gentleman's Magazine_
which contains the advertisement of the _Vernoniad_, there is a
reference to a famous novel which had appeared in November 1740, two
months earlier, and had already attained an extraordinary popularity.
"Several Encomiums (says Mr. Urban) on a Series of _Familiar Letters_,
publish'd but last month, entitled PAMELA or _Virtue rewarded_, came too