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  11 position, and was more like a French Prefect of Police or even a
Minister of Public Safety than a mere justice. Yet he was ill paid.
Fielding says that the emoluments, which before his accession had but
been L500 a year of "dirty" money, were by his own action but L300 of
clean; and the work, if properly performed, was very severe.
That he performed it properly all competent evidence shows, a foolish,
inconclusive, and I fear it must be said emphatically snobbish story of
Walpole's notwithstanding. In particular, he broke up a gang of
cut-throat thieves, which had been the terror of London. But his tenure
of the post was short enough, and scarcely extended to five years. His
health had long been broken, and he was now constantly attacked by gout,
so that he had frequently to retreat on Bath from Bow Street, or his
suburban cottage of Fordhook, Ealing. But he did not relax his literary
work. His pen was active with pamphlets concerning his office; Amelia,
his last novel, appeared towards the close of 1751; and next year saw
the beginning of a new paper, the Covent Garden Journal, which
appeared twice a week, ran for the greater part of the year, and died in
November. Its great author did not see that month twice again. In the
spring of 1753 he grew worse; and after a year's struggle with ill
health, hard work, and hard weather, lesser measures being pronounced
useless, was persuaded to try the "Portugal Voyage," of which he has
left so charming a record in the Journey to Lisbon. He left Fordhook
on June 26, 1754, reached Lisbon in August, and, dying there on the 8th
of October, was buried in the cemetery of the Estrella.
Of not many writers perhaps does a clearer notion, as far as their
personality goes, exist in the general mind that interests itself at all
in literature than of Fielding. Yet more than once a warning has been
sounded, especially by his best and most recent biographer, to the
effect that this idea is founded upon very little warranty of scripture.
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