Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/472

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NOTES AND QUERIES. 112 s. m. NOV., 1917.

announcements in The General Advertiser of December, 1751, was this one :

" To satisfy the earnest Demand of the Publick this Work [' Amelia '] has been printed at four Presses ; but the Proprietor notwithstanding finds it impossible to get them bound in Time, without spoiling the Beauty of the Impression, and therefore will sell them sew'd at Half -a- guinea." This declaration is borne out by Strahan's entry, which reads :

" Dec. 1751. Amelia, vols I. and III., 26 sheets, no. 5000. Extraordinary corrections in do. 1 5s. Qd."

" Jan. 1752. Amelia, 2nd ed. (?) sheets, no. 3000." ' Amelia ' was published in 4 volumes,

consequently it is clear that vols. ii. and iv. were set up elsewhere. A close inspection of the title-pages discloses a difference in fount between vols. i. and iii., and ii. and iv.

The second entry corroborates an observa- tion by Johnson chronicled in the " Anec- dotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D., by Hester Lynch Piozzi " (see ' Johnsonian Miscellanies,' arranged and edited by G. Birkbeck Hill, 1897, vol. i. p. 297) :

" Johnson's attention to veracity was without equal or example ; and whenjl mentioned Clarissa as a perfect character ; ' On the contrary (said he), you may observe there is always something which she prefers to truth. Fielding's Amelia was the most pleasing heroine of all the romances (he said) ; but that vile broken nose never cured, ruined the sale of perhaps the only book, which being printed off betimes one morning, a new edition was called for before night.' "

Mrs. Piozzi must mean " which being published betimes," &c., remarks Dr. Hill.

Owing to the absence of any specific second edition of 'Amelia' between 1752 and 1762, some doubt has been expressed as to the accuracy of Johnson's statement to Mrs. Thrale. See F. S. DICKSON (ante, p. 7) and Austin Dobson, The Library, July, 1916. But Strahan's entry shows plainly that there must have been ground for it. Possibly it would be more accurately described as a second " impression " or " issue." Heretofore it has been considered that the second edition was that published in Murphy & Millar's edition of Fielding's ' Works ' of 1762, where Murphy in the introductory essay says :

" It is proper the reader should be informed that ' Amelia,' in this edition, is printed from a copy corrected by the author's own hand. The exceptional passages, which inadvertency had thrown out, are here retrenched ; and the work, upon the whole, will be found nearer perfection than it was in its original state."

But, according to MB. DICKSON, " the second edition of ' Amelia ' was dated in London in 1775 " (ante, p. 7).

4. Salisbury. In ' Old and New Salisbury,' by Benson and Hatcher, a constituent volume of ' The History of Modern Wiltshire,' by Sir Richard G'olt Hoare, Bart., occurs (at p. 602) an oft-quoted passage :

" We need not observe that the scene of ' Tom Jones ' is laid in this neighbourhood, and that a few of the incidents are related as happening at Salisbury. Some of the characters also are identified with persons living here at the time. Thwackum is said to have been drawn from Mr. Hele, master of the Close School ; Square the philosopher for Chubb the Deist ; and Dowling the lawyer for a person named Stillingfleet, who exercised that profession. The Golden Lion, where the ghost scene was acted, was a well- known inn, at the corner of the Market Place and Winchester Street, where many a merry prank was played, and the person who sustained this Doughty, one of the Serjeants at mace."

I have recently enjoyed the great advan- tage of consulting the manuscripts of the late Mr. T. H. Baker of Salisbury, who devoted many years to a study of that ity's archives. From his investigations on The Old Inns of Salisbury ' it is quite clear that the inn at the corner of the Market Place and Winchester Street was not the Golden Lion, but the Three Lyons ; and Mr. Baker sets out a list of licence- holders of the latter inn from 1585 to 1834, together with much historical matter respecting this noted house. The Golden Lion, on the other hand, was situated in Endless Street, and his list of licensees goes no further back than 1779. It may be remarked incidentally that, as an unpublished letter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu shows, Fielding's cousin patronized the Three Lyons when she resided at West Dean, Wilts.

Among Mr. Baker's notes was the following excerpt from The Salisbury Journal for Jan. 18, 1762 :

" On Monday last departed this life in an advanced age Daniel Pearce, who was several years second Serjeant at mace to the Mayor of this City ; and tho' not universally known in that sphere, was in another more popular than any man in England of his station, for 40 years, by the name of Dowdy, Mr. Fielding introducing him by way of simile in the ' History of Tom Jones,' vol. ii. chap, ix., ' as when two gentlemen, strangers, are cracking a bottle together at some inn or tavern at Salisbury if the great Dowdy, who acts the part of a madman as some of his setters-on do that of a fool,' &c."

One is loth to find fault with a book so richly illustrated and handsomely printed, but Benson and Hatcher's ' Salisbury ' was published in 1843, a period of imaginative biography, while Robert Benson, the Re- corder of Salisbury and an unusually accurate man, had little part in writing up this work. But here are two facts inaccu-