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Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon-Part3_HENRY FIELDING(1707-1754)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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November, and in all December, not only no such thing as a

murder, but not even a street-robbery committed. Some such,



indeed, were mentioned in the public papers; but they were all

found on the strictest inquiry, to be false. In this entire



freedom from street-robberies, during the dark months, no man

will, I believe, scruple to acknowledge that the winter of 1753



stands unrivaled, during a course of many years; and this may

possibly appear the more extraordinary to those who recollect the



outrages with which it began. Having thus fully accomplished my

undertaking, I went into the country, in a very weak and



deplorable condition, with no fewer or less diseases than a

jaundice, a dropsy, and an asthma, altogether uniting their



forces in the destruction of a body so entirely emaciated that it

had lost all its muscular flesh. Mine was now no longer what was



called a Bath case; nor, if it had been so, had I strength

remaining sufficient to go thither, a ride of six miles only



being attended with an intolerablefatigue. I now discharged my

lodgings at Bath, which I had hitherto kept. I began in earnest



to look on my case as desperate, and I had vanity enough to rank

myself with those heroes who, of old times, became voluntary



sacrifices to the good of the public. But, lest the reader

should be too eager to catch at the word VANITY, and should be



unwilling to indulge me with so sublime a gratification, for I

think he is not too apt to gratify me, I will take my key a pitch



lower, and will frankly own that I had a stronger motive than the

love of the public to push me on: I will thereforeconfess to



him that my private affairs at the beginning of the winter had

but a gloomyaspect; for I had not plundered the public or the



poor of those sums which men, who are always ready to plunder

both as much as they can, have been pleased to suspect me of



taking: on the contrary, by composing, instead of inflaming the

quarrels of porters and beggars (which I blush when I say hath



not been universally practiced), and by refusing to take a

shilling from a man who most undoubtedly would not have had



another left, I had reduced an income of about five hundred

pounds[13] a-year of the dirtiest money upon earth to little more



than three hundred pounds; a considerableproportion of which

remained with my clerk; and, indeed, if the whole had done so, as



it ought, he would be but ill paid for sitting almost sixteen

hours in the twenty-four in the most unwholesome, as well as



nauseous air in the universe, and which hath in his case

corrupted a good constitution without contaminating his morals.



[13] A predecessor of mine used to boast that he made one

thousand pounds a-year in his office; but how he did this (if



indeed he did it) is to me a secret. His clerk, now mine, told

me I had more business than he had ever known there; I am sure I



had as much as any man could do. The truth is, the fees are so

very low, when any are due, and so much is done for nothing,



that, if a single justice of peace had business enough to employ

twenty clerks, neither he nor they would get much by their labor.



The public will not, therefore, I hope, think I betray a secret

when I inform them that I received from the Government a yearly



pension out of the public service money; which, I believe,

indeed, would have been larger had my great patron been



convinced of an error, which I have heard him utter more than

once, that he could not indeed say that the acting as a principal



justice of peace in Westminster was on all accounts very

desirable, but that all the world knew it was a very lucrative



office. Now, to have shown him plainly that a man must be a

rogue to make a very little this way, and that he could not make






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