Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/110

 NOTES AND QUERIES.

12 s. n. AUG. 5, uie.

Giuth- bears the same relationship to -Giut-> Geot- that " Euth-iones " bears to " Eut-ii," and Old Kentish Tenet to " Thanet." ALFRED ANSCOMBE.

30 Albany Road, Stroud Green, N.

FIELDING AND THE COLLIER FAMILY.

IN a note on ' Fielding at Boswell Court ' (12 S. i. 264) attention was directed to the case of Walton v. Collier, and to the indication it afforded of Fielding's London home during the years 1744-7. It now remains to record the bearing the case has on the relationships that existed between Fielding and the Collier family, of which the defendant was a member.

A word first as to this family. The Rev. Arthur Collier (1680-1732), Rector of Lang- ford Magna (now known as Steeple Langford), in Wilts, the author of ' Clavis Universalis,' was a metaphysician who anticipated at many points the greater George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. Langford lies seven miles north-west of Salisbury, and in 1716 Collier was permitted by his bishop to reside in the city that he might let " the handsome and convenient ' ' parsonage : a retrenchment necessitated by the extravagances of his wife (' Memoirs of Arthur Collier,' by Robert Benson, 1837, p. 158). During his school career at Eton (1719-25) Fielding spent his holidays at Salisbury, consequently it is probable he was known personally to Collier ; at any rate, he became acquainted with three of Collier's four children, namely, his son Arthur, and his two daughters, Jane and Margaret.

Arthur Collier, jun., being born in 1707, was of the same age as Fielding. He practised as an advocate at Doctors' Com- mons, and " the Worshipful Dr. Collier, LL.D.," appears as a subscriber to Fielding's ' Miscellanies ' of 1743. In later life he was tutor to Miss Hester Lynch Salusbury (after- wards Mrs. Thrale), and to that beautiful Miss Streatfield whose Greek and gift of tears were made famous by the pen of Fanny Burney. Collier was commissary of Hunt- ingdon, and confidential adviser of the Countess of Bristol, whose marriage with the Duke of Kingston he strongly promoted. He is described as an ingenious, but unsteady and eccentric man (Coote's ' Lives of the Civilians'). He died in 1777.

Miss Jane Collier was the author of the ' Art of Ingeniously Tormenting,' 1753, a

book displaying keen observation of the manners of her day, and an outspoken denunciation of the foibles of her sex, in particular of those who suffered from " the vapours." She makes appreciative remarks on Fielding's 'Tom Jones' (p. 88) and his ' Jonathan Wild ' (p. 139), and refers to him as " a good ethical writer " (p. 230). With Fielding's sister, Sarah, she collaborated in ' The Cry,' published by Dodsley, March, 1754, during the preparation of which she wrote two interesting letters to Richardson ('Richardson's Correspondenci,' vol. ii. pp. 59-68). Miss Collier's comprehensive indictments and flashes of caustic wit recall her father's controversial methods in his letters to Dr. Clarke. Rector of St. James's, Piccadilly, and to Misfs Journal. Miss Collier died before October, 1755 ; her last recorded appearance is in Fielding's ' Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon,' where, on July 1, 1754, at Gravesend, she took leave of her sister Margaret (who was to travel in Fielding's party), and posted back to town in the company of the excellent Saunders Welch. Her full-length portrait, painted by J. Highmore, was engraved by J. Faber, jun., and is regarded as one of his best mezzo- tints.

Before the partial publication by Mr. Austin Dobson, in The National Review for 1911, of a long letter written by Fielding at Lisbon, a month or so before his death, Miss Margaret Collier's name was associated with him mainly as his wife's companion to and in Portugal, and by the discredited tradition that she was the artist of the silhouette which gave Hogarth the hint for the posthumous portrait of his friend. But when Mr. G. A. Aitken (Athenaeum, Feb. 1, 1890) printed Fielding's will (made just before he left England) it was revealed that she was a witness to its execution. Conse- quently Margaret Collier was a visitor at Fordhook, Baling, in the summer of 1754, and must, on June 26, have seen that same melancholy sunrise by the light of which Fielding was, in his own opinion, " last to behold and take leave of some of those creatures on whom he doated with a mother- like fondness." Of her movements after Fielding's death and that of her sister we learn something from ' Richardson's Corre- spondence,' vol. ii. pp. 71-112, in a sequence of letters written from Ryde, whither she had retired " to kill every grain of worldly pride and vanity."

To revert to the litigation. The^docu- ments at the Public Record Office (Walton v. Collier, King's Bench Plea Roll, Trinity