OF THE many lacunae in the Fielding biography, among the most irritating is that which covers-or, more properly, concealshis transition from a life of political journalism and apparently unsuccessful lawyering to a career on the inferior bench. According to the traditional account,1 during the year 1748 Fielding busied himself mainly with finishing up Tom Jones and serving the Pelham ministry as a political journalist. In return for the latter service, which extended at least as far back as his earlier editorship of the True Patriot during the emergency of the '45, Fielding's influential friends-so the traditional account has it-managed to reward him, first with an appointment to the commission of the peace for Westminster, and later with one to that of Middlesex. An inference commonly drawn from such a chronology is that Fielding terminated his Jacobite's Journal on November 5, 1748, in order to ready himself for the commencement of an active career as a Westminster justice of the peace about five weeks later. Generally speaking, such an inference is mainly right. Fielding does seem to have terminated the Jacobite's Journal in order to