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 Death of that very Child, then one of the loveliest Creatures ever seen, comforting herself with reflecting, that her Child could never know what it was to feel such a Loss as she then lamented.” Were it not for the passages already quoted from the Preface, it might almost be concluded from the tone of the foregoing quotation and the final words of the paper, which refer to our meeting with those we have lost in Heaven, that Mrs. Fielding was already dead. But the use of the word “draw” in the Preface affords distinct evidence to the contrary. It is therefore most probable that she died in the latter part of 1743, having been long in a declining state of health. For a time her husband was inconsolable. “The fortitude of mind,” says Murphy, “with which he met all the other calamities of life, deserted him on this most trying occasion.” His grief was so vehement “that his friends began to think him in danger of losing his reason.”

That Fielding had depicted his first wife in Sophia Western has already been pointed out, and we have the authority of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Richardson for saying that she was afterwards reproduced in Amelia. “Amelia,” says the latter, in a letter to Mrs. Donnellan, “even to her noselessness, is again his first wife.” Some of her traits, too, are to be detected in the Mrs. Wilson of Joseph Andrews. But, beyond these indications, we hear little about her. Almost all that is definitely known is contained in a passage of the admirable Introductory Anecdotes contributed by Lady Louisa Stuart in 1837 to Lord Wharncliffe’s edition of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Letters and Works. This account was based upon the recollections of Lady Bute, Lady Mary’s daughter.

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