shews himself well read in Stage-Coaches, Country Squires, Inns, and
Inns of Court. His reflections upon high people and low people, and
misses and masters, are very good. However the exaltedness of some minds
(or rather as I shrewdly suspect their insipidity and want of feeling or
observation) may make them insensible to these light things, (I mean
such as characterise and paint nature) yet surely they are as weighty
and much more useful than your grave discourses upon the mind, the
passions, and what not." And thereupon follows that fantastic utterance
concerning the romances of MM. Marivaux and Crebillon _fils_, which has
disconcerted so many of Gray's admirers. We suspect that any reader who
should nowadays contrast the sickly and sordid intrigue of the _Paysan
Parvenu_ with the healthy animalism of _Joseph Andrews_ would greatly
prefer the latter. Yet Gray's verdict, though cold, is not
undiscriminating, and is perhaps as much as one could expect from his
cloistered and fastidious taste.

Various anecdotes, all more or less apocryphal, have been related
respecting the first appearance of _Joseph Andrews_, and the sum paid to
the author for the copyright. A reference to the original assignment,
now in the Forster Library at South Kensington, definitely settles the
latter point. The amount in "lawful Money of Great Britain," received by
"Henry Fielding, Esq." from "Andrew Millar of St. Clement's Danes in the
Strand," was L183 11s. In this document, as in the order to Nourse of
which a _facsimile_ is given by Roscoe, both the author's name and
signature are written with the old-fashioned double f, and he calls
himself "Fielding" and not "Feilding," like the rest of the Denbigh
family. If we may trust an anecdote given by Kippis, Lord Denbigh once
asked his kinsman the reason of this difference. "I cannot tell, my
lord," returned the novelist, "unless it be that my branch of the family
was the first that learned to spell." In connection with this