The onerous drudgery of that business, or else lack of response from a public deaf to its own interests, seems to have brought to nothing the project of this translation; and so English literature is the poorer for the loss of the works of the 'Father of Humour' translated by the incomparable pen of the 'Father of the English Novel.'[6]
Four months after the publication of the proposals for _Lucian_, Fielding took formal leave of the readers of his _Covent Garden Journal_, telling them that he no longer had "Inclination or Leisure," to carry on the paper. His brief farewell words contain an assurance very like that solemnly made, we may remember, five years before the publication of _Tom Jones_. At present, he declares, he has "No intention to hold any further correspondence with the gayer Muses"; just as eight years before he had announced that henceforth the 'infamous' Nine should have none of his company. To this declaration is added a protest against the injustice of attributing abuse to a writer who "never yet was, nor ever shall be the author of any, unless to Persons who are or ought to be infamous." From the tenor of this parting speech it is clear that Fielding was, at the time, feeling keenly the imputation, flung by some of his contemporaries, of producing 'scandalous Writings'; unmindful for the moment of his own calmer and wiser utterance, when he declared that men who engage in an heroic attempt to cleanse their age will undoubtedly find some of the dirt thereof sticking to their coats. "As he disdained all littleness of spirit, where ever he met with it in his dealings with the world, his indignation was apt to rise," says his contemporary Murphy; and we know from earlier protests how cruelly Fielding suffered from the attribution to his pen of writings utterly alien to his character. "... really," he cries, in the last words of the _Journal_, "it is hard to hear that scandalous Writings have been charged on me for that very Reason which ought to have proved the Contrary namely because they have been Scandalous."
The year 1752 closes with the birth of another daughter, born presumably in the house in Bow Street, as her baptism under the name of Louisa is entered in the registers of St Paul's, Covent Garden.