ABSTRACT
Henry Fielding died so heavily in debt there would be nothing left of his estate after his creditors were satisfied. It was well for the children that Mary was now free to come home. And it was well for them and their mother that, suffering the consequences of Fielding's improvidence, they also benefited from the goodwill and gratitude he had widely inspired, not only by his writings and his services to the public, but by the simple gift he had for friendship. A final word needs saying about the fortunes of the family Fielding left behind, and of his works, the children of his brain, as he liked to call them, for which he is chiefly remembered. Fielding's friends did not forget him, and his countrymen came to acknowledge, with gratitude and pride, the inestimable legacies he left them in literature and the law.
