 On 25 January 1752, Fielding defended his work again by bringing the novel before the imaginary "Court of Censorial Enquiry", in which the prosecutors are Hill and the other critics and it is they, not "Amelia" that are truly put on trial.Fielding's rival, Samuel Richardson, declared in February 1752 that the novel "is as dead as if it had been published forty years ago, as to sale.