It is these youthful love-verses, verses as he himself was the first to admit, that were 'indeed Productions of the Heart rather than the Head,' that afford our only record of Fielding's wooing. Thus, he sings his passion for _Celia_ in the declaration
"I hate the Town, and all its Ways; Ridotto's, Opera's, and Plays; The Ball, the Ring, the Mall, the Court; Where ever the Beau-Monde resort.... All Coffee-houses, and their Praters; All Courts of Justice, and Debaters; All Taverns, and the Sots within 'em; All Bubbles, and the Rogues that skin 'em,"
in short, the whole world 'cram'd all together,' because all his heart is engrossed for Celia. Again, Cupid is called to account, in that the careless urchin had left Celia's house unguarded from thieves, save for an old fellow "who sat up all Night, with a Gun without any Ammunition." Celia, it seems, had apprehended robbery, and her poet's rest is troubled:
"For how should I Repose enjoy, While any fears your Breast annoy? Forbid it Heav'n, that I should be From any of your Troubles free."
Cupid explains his desertion by ingeniously declaring that a sigh from Celia had blown him away
in which lodging the 'wicked Child' wrought unconscionable havoc. Again, Celia wishes to have a "Lilliputian to play with," so she is promptly told that her lover would doff five feet of his tall stature, to meet her pleasure, and
"Then when my Celia walks abroad I'd be her pocket's little Load: Or sit astride, to frighten People, Upon her Hat's new fashion'd Steeple."
Nay, to be prized by Celia, who would not even take the form of her faithful dog Quadrille.
Jove, we may remember, had dowered the lovely Miss Cradocks with minds as fair as their persons; and the excellence of Celia's understanding is again celebrated in a neatly turned verse upon her 'having blamed Mr Gay for his Severity on her Sex.' Had other women known a tenderness like hers, cries the poet, Gay's darts had returned into his own bosom; and last of all should such blame come from her
"in whose accomplish'd Mind The strongest Satire on thy Sex we find."
The love story that first ran to such pleasant rhymes, in the old cathedral town, was destined to know many a harsh chapter of poverty and sickness; but throughout it all the affection of the lovers remained true; and there is no reason to doubt that, had it been in Harry Fielding's power to achieve it, the promise of perhaps the most charming of his love verses would have been fulfilled: