The first relates to the exact period of his residence at Leyden
University. His earliest biographer, Arthur Murphy, writing in 1762, is
more explicit than usual on this topic. "He [Fielding]," says Murphy,
"went from Eton to Leyden, and there continued to show an eager thirst
for knowledge, and to study the civilians with a remarkable application
for about two years, when, remittances failing, he was obliged to return
to London, not then quite twenty years old" [_i.e._ before 22nd April,
1727]. In 1883, like my predecessors, I adopted this statement, for the
sufficient reason that I had nothing better to put in its place. And
Murphy should have been well-informed. He had known Fielding personally;
he was employed by Fielding's publisher; and he could, one would
imagine, have readily obtained accurate data from Fielding's surviving
sister, Sarah, who was only three years younger than her brother, of
whose short life (he died at forty-eight) she could scarcely have
forgotten the particulars. Murphy's story, moreover, exactly fitted in
with the fact, only definitely made known in June 1883, that Fielding,
as a youth of eighteen, had endeavoured, in November 1725, to abduct or
carry off his first love, Miss Sarah Andrew of Lyme Regis. Although the
lady was promptly married to a son of one of her fluttered guardians,
nothing seemed more reasonable than to assume that the disappointed
lover (one is sure he was never an heiress-hunter!) was despatched to
the Dutch University to keep him out of mischief.
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