AMELIA'S ACCIDENT

APPENDIX No. IV.

FlELDINGIANA

INDEX




CHAPTER I.

EARLY YEARS--FIRST PLAYS.


Like his contemporary Smollett, Henry Fielding came of an ancient
family, and might, in his Horatian moods, have traced his origin to
Inachus. The lineage of the house of Denbigh, as given in Burke, fully
justifies the splendid but sufficiently quoted eulogy of Gibbon. From
that first Jeffrey of Hapsburgh, who came to England, _temp._ Henry
III., and assumed the name of Fieldeng, or Filding, "from his father's
pretensions to the dominions of Lauffenbourg and Rinfilding," the future
novelist could boast a long line of illustrious ancestors. There was a
Sir William Feilding killed at Tewkesbury, and a Sir Everard who
commanded at Stoke. Another Sir William, a staunch Royalist, was created
Earl of Denbigh, and died in fighting King Charles's battles. Of his two
sons, the elder, Basil, who succeeded to the title, was a
Parliamentarian, and served at Edgehill under Essex. George, his second
son, was raised to the peerage of Ireland as Viscount Callan, with