Excerpt from The History of Henry Fielding, Vol. 2 These books were studied and annotated in some cases as a preparation for treatises of his own. Fielding was in train ing for the Bench. Circumstances, however, checked his immediate ambi tions. The Ministry that had been patched up after the fall of Walpole was held in contempt by the politicians of both the Whig factions from which it had been formed. Consequently it had to face a torrent of abuse from the friends of Walpole, who wished to paralyze it, and from the members of the old Opposition, who were angry be cause their real leaders were left out. In an anonymous Letter to a Friend in the Country, which appeared in April, 1743, the author declared that at no time in his memory had there ever been afloat so many scurrilous libels, lampoons, and ballads violating all truth and decency. Much of this scandal was laid to Fielding, notwithstanding his solemn promise in the preface to the Miscellanies. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.