PLAYHOUSE BARD
"I could not help reflecting how often the greatest abilities lie
wind-bound, as it were, in life; or if they venture out, and
attempt to beat the seas, they struggle in vain against wind and
tide."--_Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon_.
It was but three years after the Lyme Regis episode that Henry Fielding,
then a lad of one and twenty, won attention as a successful writer of
comedy. Of this his first entry into the gay world there are little but
generalities to record; but, inaccurate as Murphy is in some matters of
fact, there seems no reason to doubt the truth of the engaging picture
which he draws of the young man's _début_ upon the Town. We read of the
gaiety and quickness of his fancy; the wild flow of his spirits; the
brilliancy of his wit; the activity of his mind, eager to know the world.
To the possession of genius allied to the happiest temper, a temper "for
the most part overflowing into wit, mirth, and good-humour," young
Fielding added a handsome face, a magnificent physique (he stood over six
feet high), and the fullest vigour of constitution. "No man," wrote his
cousin, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, "enjoyed life more than he did." What
wonder that he was soon "in high request with the men of taste and
literature," or that report affirms him to have been no less welcome in
ranks of society not at all distinguished by a literary flavour.
That a youth so gifted, so "formed and disposed for enjoyment," should
find himself his own master, in London, almost presupposes a too liberal
indulgence in the follies that must have so easily beset him. When the
great and cold Mr Secretary Addison, no less than that "very merry
Spirit," Dick Steele, and the splendid Congreve, drank more than was good
for them, what chance would there be for a brilliant, ardent lad of
twenty, suddenly plunged into the robust society of that age? If
Fielding, like his elders, indisputably loved good wine, let us remember
that none of the heroes of his three great novels, neither that rural
innocent Joseph Andrews, nor the exuberant youth Tom Jones, nor erring,
repentant Captain Booth are immoderate drinkers. The degradation of
drinking is, in Fielding's pages, accorded to brutalised if honest
country squires, and cruel and corrupt magistrates; and there is little
evidence throughout his life to indicate that the great novelist drank
more freely than did the genial heroes of his pen. As regards Murphy's
general assertion that, at this his entrance into life, young Fielding
"launched wildly into a career of dissipation" no other reputable
contemporary evidence is discoverable of the "wildness" popularly
attributed to Fielding. That his youth was headlong and undisciplined is
a plausible surmise; but justice demands that the charge be recognised as
a surmise and nothing more. How keenly, twenty years later, he could
appreciate the handicap that such early indulgences impose on a man's
future life may be gathered from a passage in _Joseph Andrews_ which is
not without the ring of personal feeling. The speaker is a generous and
estimable country gentleman, living in Arcadian retirement with his wife
and children. Descended of a good family and born a gentleman, he narrates
how his education was acquired at a public school, and extended to a
mastery of the Latin, and a tolerable knowledge of the Greek, language.
Becoming his own master at sixteen he soon left school, for, he tells his
listeners, "being a forward Youth, I was extremely impatient to be in the
World: For which I thought my Parts, Knowledge, and Manhood thoroughly
qualified me. And to this early Introduction into Life, without a Guide, I
impute all my future Misfortunes; for besides the obvious Mischiefs which
attend this, there is one which hath not been so generally observed. The
first Impression which Mankind receives of you, will be very difficult to
eradicate. How unhappy, therefore, must it be to fix your Character in
Life, before you can possibly know its Value, or weigh the Consequences of
those Actions which are to establish your future Reputation?" [1] That the
wise and strenuous Fielding of later years, the energetic student at the
Bar, the active and patriotic journalist, the merciless exponent of the
hypocrite, the spendthrift, and the sensualist, the creator of the most
perfect type of womanhood in English fiction (so said Dr Johnson and
Thackeray) should look back sadly on his own years of hot-blooded youth is
entirely natural; but even so this passage and the well-known confession
placed in the mouth of the supposed writer of the _Journey from this World
to the Next_, [2] no more constitute direct evidence than do Murphy's
unattested phrases, or the anonymous scurrilities of eighteenth-century
pamphleteers.
By birth and education Fielding's natural place was in the costly society
of those peers and men of wealth and fashion who courted the brilliant
young wit; but fortune had decreed otherwise, and at this his first
entrance on the world he found, as he himself said, no choice but to be a
hackney writer or a hackney coachman. True, his father allowed him a
nominal £200 a year; but this, to quote another of his son's
observations, "anybody might pay that would." The fact was that Colonel
Fielding's marriage with Madame Rasa had resulted in a large and rapidly
increasing family; and this burden, together with "the necessary demands
of his station for a genteel and suitable expence," made it impossible
for him to spare much for the maintenance of his eldest son. Launched
thus on the Town, with every capacity for spending an income the receipt
of which was denied to him, the young man flattered himself that he
should find resources in his wit and invention; and accordingly he
commenced as writer for the stage. His first play, a comedy entitled
_Love in Several Masks_, was performed at Drury Lane in February 1728,
just before the youthful dramatist had attained his twenty-first year. In
his preface to these 'light scenes' he alludes with some pride to this
distinction--"I believe I may boast that none ever appeared so early on
the stage";--and he proceeds to a generous acknowledgment of the aid
received from those dramatic stars of the eighteenth-century, Colley
Gibber, Mr Wilks and Mrs Oldfield, all of whom appeared in the cast. Of
the two former he says, "I cannot sufficiently acknowledge their civil and
kind behaviour previous to its representation"; from which we may
conclude, as his biographer Laurence points out, that Harry Fielding was
already familiar with the society of the green-room. To Mrs
Oldfield,--that charming actress
"In publick Life, by all who saw Approv'd
In private Life, by all who knew her Lov'd"--
the young man expresses yet warmer acknowledgments. "Lastly," he
declares, "I can never express my grateful sense of the good nature of
Mrs Oldfield ... nor do I owe less to her excellent judgment, shown in
some corrections which I shall for my own sake conceal." The comedy is
dedicated, with the graceful diction and elaborate courtesies of the
period, to Fielding's cousin, that notable eighteenth-century wit, the
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; and from the dedication we learn that to Lady
Mary's approval, on her first perusal, the play owed its existence. What
the approval of a great lady of those times meant for the young writer
may be measured by the fact that Fielding concludes his dedication by
solemnly 'informing the world' that the representation of his comedy was
twice honoured with Her Ladyship's presence.
In view of the frequent accusation of coarseness brought against
Fielding, we may quote a few lines of the prologue with which he made his
literary entry into the world. Here his audience are promised
"Humour, still free from an indecent Flame,
Which, should it raise your Mirth, must raise your Shame:
Indecency's the Bane to Ridicule,
And only charms the Libertine, or Fool:
Nought shall offend the Fair One's Ears to-day,
Which they might blush to hear, or blush to say.
No private Character these Scenes expose,
Our Bard, at Vice, not at the Vicious, throws."
Thus it was with an honourable declaration of war against indecency and
libel that the young wit and man of fashion, began his career as "hackney
writer." If to modern taste the first promise lacks something of
fulfilment, it is but just to remember that to other times belong other
manners.
In the play, rustic and philosophic virtue is prettily rewarded by the
possession of a beautiful heiress, while certain mercenary fops withdraw
in signal discomfiture; and that Fielding, at one and twenty, had already
passed judgment on that glittering 'tinsel' tribe, is clear enough from
his portrait of the "empty gaudy nameless thing," Lord Formal. Lord
Formal appears on the stage with a complexion much agitated by a day of
business spent with "three milleners, two perfumers, my bookseller's and
a fanshop." In the course of these fatigues he has "rid down two brace of
chairmen"; and had raised his colour to "that exorbitancy of Vermeille"
that it will hardly be reduced "under a fortnight's course of acids." It
is the true spirit of comedy which introduces into this closely perfumed
atmosphere the bluff country figure of Sir Positive Trap, with his
exordiums on the rustic ladies, and on "the good old English art of
clear-starching." Sir Positive hopes "to see the time when a man may
carry his daughter to market with the same lawful authority as any other
of his cattle"; and causes Lord Formal some moments' perplexity, his
lordship being "not perfectly determinate what species of animal to
assign him to, unless he be one of those barbarous insects the polite
call country squires." In this production of a youth of twenty we may
find a foretaste of that keen relish in watching the human comedy, that
vigorous scorn of avarice, that infectious laughter at pretentious folly,
which accompanied the novelist throughout his life.
To this same year is attributed a poem called the _Masquerade_, which need
only be noticed as again emphasising its author's lifelong war against the
evils of his time. The _Masquerade_ is a satire on the licentious
gatherings organised by the notorious Count Heidegger, Master of the
Revels to the Court of George II.
Many years later Fielding reprinted [3] two other poetical effusions
bearing the date of this his twenty-first year. Of these the first,
entitled "A Description of U----n G----(alias _New Hog's Norton_) in
_Com-Hants_" identified by Mr Keightley as Upton Grey in Hampshire, is
addressed to the fair _Rosalinda,_ by her disconsolate _Alexis_. Alexis
bewails his exile among
"Unpolish'd Nymphs and more unpolish'd Swains,"
and describes himself as condemned to live in a dwelling half house, half
shed, with a garden full of docks and nettles, the fruit-trees bearing
only snails--
"Happy for us had Eve's this Garden been
She'd found no Fruit, and therefore known no Sin,"--
the dusty meadows innocent of grass, and the company as innocent of wit.
This sketch of rural enjoyments recalls a later utterance in _Jonathan
Wild_, concerning the votaries of a country life who, with their trees,
"enjoy the air and the sun in common and both vegetate with very little
difference between them." With one or two eloquent exceptions there is
scarce a page in Fielding's books devoted to any interest other than that
of human nature.
The second fragment is a graceful little copy of verse addressed to
_Euthalia_, in which we may note, by the way, that the fair Rosalinda's
charms are ungallantly made use of as a foil to Euthalia's dazzling
perfections. As Fielding found these verses not unworthy of a page in his
later _Miscellanies_ they are here recalled:
TO EUTHALIA.
WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1728.
"Burning with Love, tormented with Despair,
Unable to forget or ease his Care;
In vain each practis'd art _Alexis_ tries;
In vain to Books, to Wine or Women flies;
Each brings _Euthalia's_ Image to his Eyes.
In _Lock's_ or _Newton's_ Page her Learning glows;
_Dryden_ the Sweetness of her Numbers shews;
In all their various Excellence I find
The various Beauties of her perfect Mind.
How vain in Wine a short Relief I boast!
Each sparkling Glass recalls my charming Toast.
To Women then successless I repair,
Engage the Young, the Witty, and the Fair.
When _Sappho's_ Wit each envious Breast alarms,
And _Rosalinda_ looks ten thousand Charms;
In vain to them my restless Thoughts would run;
Like fairest Stars, they show the absent Sun."
_Love in Several Masks_ was produced, as we have seen, in February, 1728;
and it is a little surprising to find the young dramatist suddenly
appearing, four weeks later, as a University student. He was entered at
the University of Leyden, as "Litt. Stud," on the 16th of March 1728. The
reason of this sudden change from the green-room of Drury Lane to the
ancient Dutch university must be purely matter of conjecture, as is the
nature of Fielding's undergraduate studies, Murphy having lately been
proved to be notably erroneous as to this episode. [4] His name occurs as
staying, on his entry at Leyden, at the "Casteel von Antwerpen"; and
again, a year later, in the _recensiones_ of the University for February
1729, as domiciled with one Jan Oson. As all students were annually
registered, the omission of any later entry proves that he left Leyden
before 1730; with which meagre facts and his own incidental remark that
the comedy of _Don Quixote in England_ was "begun at Leyden in the year
1728," our knowledge of the two years of Fielding's university career
concludes. In February 1730 he was presumably back in London, that being
the date of his next play, the _Temple Beau_, produced by Giffard, the
actor, at the new theatre in Goodman's Fields.
The prologue to the _Temple Beau_ was written by that man of many parts,
James Ralph, the hack writer, party journalist and historian, who was in
after years to collaborate with Fielding, both as a theatrical manager and
as a journalist. Ralph's opening lines are of interest as bearing on
Fielding's antagonism to the harlequinades and variety shows, then
threatening the popularity of legitimate drama:
"Humour and Wit, in each politer Age,
Triumphant, rear'd the Trophies of the Stage:
But only Farce, and Shew, will now go down,
And HARLEQUIN'S the Darling of the Town."
Ralph bids his audience turn to the 'infant stage' of Goodman's Fields
for matter more worthy their attention; and his promise that there
"The Comick Muse, in Smiles severely gay,
Shall scoff at Vice, and laugh its Crimes away"
must surely have been inspired by the young genius from whom twenty years
later came the formal declaration of his endeavour, in _Tom Jones,_
"to laugh mankind out of their favourite follies and vices."
The special follies of the _Temple Beau_ have, for background, of course,
those precincts in which Fielding was later to labour so assiduously as a
student, and as a member of the Middle Temple; but where, as the young
Templar of the play observes, "dress and the ladies" might also very
pleasantly employ a man's time. But except for an oblique hit at duelling,
a custom which Fielding was later to attack with curious warmth, this
second play seems to yield few passages of biographical interest. Of very
different value for our purpose is the third play, which within only two
months appeared from a pen stimulated, presumably, by empty pockets. This
was the comedy entitled the _Author's Farce_, being the first portion of a
medley which included the '_Puppet Show call'd the Pleasures of the Town_;
the whole being acted in the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, long since
demolished in favour of the present building.
In the person of Harry Luckless, the hero of the _Author's Farce_, it is
impossible not to surmise the figure of young Fielding himself; a figure
gay and spirited as those of his first comedy, but, by now, well
acquainted with the hungers and the straits of a 'hackney writer.' Mr
Luckless wears a laced-coat and makes a handsome figure (we remember that
Fielding had always the grand air), whereby his landlady, clamouring for
her rent, upbraids him for deceiving her: "Cou'd I have guess'd that I had
a Poet in my House! Cou'd I have look'd for a Poet under lac'd Clothes!"
The poor author offers her the security of his (as yet unacted) play;
whereupon Mrs Moneywood (lineal ancestress of Mrs Raddles) pertinently
cries out: "I would no more depend on a Benefit-Night of an unacted Play,
than I would on a Benefit-Ticket in an undrawn Lottery." Luckless next
appeals to what should be his landlady's heart, assuring her that unless
she be so kind as to invite him "I am afraid I shall scarce prevail on my
Stomach to dine to-day." To which the enraged lady answers: "O never fear
that: you will never want a Dinner till you have dined at all the
Eating-houses round.--No one shuts their Doors against you the first time;
and I scarce think you are so kind, seldom to trouble them a second." And
that the good landlady had some grounds for her wrath is but too apparent
when she announces: "Well, I'm resolv'd when you are gone away (which I
heartily hope will be very soon) I'll hang over my Door in great red
Letters, _No Lodging for Poets_ ... My Floor is all spoil'd with Ink, my
Windows with Verses, and my Door has been almost beat down with Duns.'
While the landlady is still fuming, enters our author's man, Jack.
"_Jack_. An't please your Honour, I have been at my Lord's,
and his Lordship thanks you for the Favour you have offer'd of
reading your Play to him; but he has such a prodigious deal of
Business he begs to be excus'd. I have been with Mr _Keyber_
too: he made no Answer at all...."
"_Luckless_. Jack.
"_Jack_. Sir.
"_Luckless_. Fetch my other Hat hither. Carry it to the
Pawnbroker's.
"_Jack_. To your Honour's own Pawnbroker.
"_Luckless_. Ay And in thy way home call at the Cook's Shop.
So, one way or other I find, my Head must always provide for my
Belly."
At which moment enters the caustic, generous Witmore, belabouring the
profanity, the scurrility, the immodesty, the stupidity of the age with
one hand, the while he pays his friend's rent with the other; and who,
incidentally, is requested by that irascible genius to kick a worthy
publisher down the stairs, on the latter's refusal to give fifty
shillings "no, nor fifty farthings" for his play. Once mollified by the
settlement of her bill, we have the landlady playing advocate for her
hapless lodger in words that sound very like the apologia of Mr Harry
Fielding himself: "I have always thought, indeed, Mr _Luckless_ had a
great deal of Honesty in his Principles; any Man may be unfortunate: but I
knew when he had Money I should have it...." And the good woman's
reminiscence that while her lodger had money her doors were thundered at
every morning between four and five by coachmen and chairmen; and her wish
that that pleasant humour'd gentleman were "but a little soberer,"
finishes, we take it, the portrait of the Fielding of 1730. "Jack call a
coach; and d'ye hear, get up behind it and attend me," cries the
improvident poet, the moment his generous friend has left him; and so we
are sure did young Mr Fielding put himself and his laced coat into a
coach, and mount his man behind it, whenever the exigencies of duns and
hunger were for a moment abated. And with as gallant a humour as that of
his own Luckless did he walk afoot, when those "nine ragged jades the
muses" failed to bring him a competency.
Such failure on the part of the Muses was due to no want of wooing on his
part. During the six years between Fielding's first appearance as dramatic
author in 1728, and his marriage in 1734, there stand no fewer than
thirteen plays to his name. Of these none have won any lasting reputation;
and to this period of the great novelist's life may doubtless be applied
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's description, when lamenting that her kinsman
should have been "forced by necessity to publish without correction, and
throw many productions into the world he would have thrown into the fire,
if meat could have been got without money, and money without scribbling."
Lady Mary's account moreover is reinforced by Murphy's classical periods:
"Mr Fielding's case was generally the same with that of the poet described
by Juvenal; with a great genius, he must have starved if he had not sold
his performance to a favourite actor. _Esurit, intactam Paridi, nisi
vendit Agaven_." A complete list of all these ephemera will be found in
the bibliography at the end of this volume; here we need but notice those
to which a special interest attaches. Thus, that incomparable comic
actress, Kitty Clive, was cast for a part in the _Lottery_, a farce
produced in 1731; and three years later Fielding is adapting for her,
especially, the _Intriguing Chambermaid_. It was in these two plays, and
that of the _Virgin Unmasked_, that the town discovered the true comic
genius of Kitty Clive "the best player I ever saw," in Dr Johnson's
opinion. For this discovery Fielding takes credit to himself, in the
dedication addressed to Mrs Clive, which he prefixed to the _Intriguing
Chambermaid_; and in which he finds opportunity to pay a noble tribute to
the private life of that inimitable hoyden of the stage. "I cannot help
reflecting" he writes, "that the Town hath one great obligation to me, who
made the first discovery of your great capacity, and brought you earlier
forward on the theatre, than the ignorance of some and the envy of others
would have otherwise permitted.... But as great a favorite as you at
present are with the audience you would be much more so were they
acquainted with your private character ... did they see you, who can charm
them on the stage with personating the foolish and vicious characters of
your sex, acting in real life the part of the best Wife, the best
Daughter, the best Sister, and the best Friend." That this splendid praise
was as sincere as it was generous need not be doubted. No breath of
slander, even in that slanderous age, seems ever to have dulled the
reputation of the queen of comedy, and "better romp than any I ever saw in
nature"--to quote Dr Johnson again,--Kitty Clive.
So few of Fielding's letters have been, to our knowledge, preserved, that
the following note addressed to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and concerning
the _Modern Husband_, a comedy produced in 1731 or 1732, must here be
given, though containing little beyond the fact that the dramatist of
three years' standing seems still to have placed as high a value on his
cousin's judgment, as when recording her approval of his first effort for
the stage. The play was a piece of admittedly moral purpose, and was
dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole. The first line of the autograph is,
apparently, missing.
"I hope your Ladyship will honour the Scenes, which I presume to lay
before you, with your Perusal. As they are written on a Model I never yet
attempted, I am exceedingly anxious least they should find least Mercy
from you than my lighter Productions. It will be a slight compensation to
the modern Husband, that your Ladyship's censure will defend him from the
Possibility of any other Reproof, since your least Approbation will
always give me a Pleasure, infinitely superior to the loudest Applauses
of a Theatre. For whatever has past your judgment, may, I think without
any Imputation of Immodesty, refer Want of Success to Want of Judgment in
an Audience. I shall do myself the honour of waiting on your Ladyship at
Twickenham next Monday to receive my Sentence, and am, Madam, with the
most devoted Respect
"Your Ladyship's
"most Obedient most humble Servant
"Henry Ffielding. [5]
"London 7'br 4."
In 1731-32 the burlesque entitled the _Tragedy of Tragedies; or the Life
and Death of Tom Thumb the Great_, took the Town. The _Tragedy_ parodies
the absurdities of tragedians; and so far won immortality that in 1855 it
was described as still holding the stage. But its chief modern interest
lies in the tradition that Swift once observed that he "had not laughed
above twice" in his life,--once at the tricks of a merry-andrew, and again
when Fielding's Tom Thumb killed the ghost. The design for the
frontispiece of the edition of 1731, here reproduced, is from the pencil
of Hogarth; and is the first trace of a connexion between Fielding and the
painter who was to be honoured so frequently in his pages. An adaptation
from Molière, produced in 1733, under the title of the _Miser_, won from
Voltaire the praise of having added to the original "quelques beautes de
dialogue particulières a sa [Fielding's] nation." The leading character in
the _Miser_, Lovegold, became a stock part, and survived to our own days,
having been a favourite with Phelps. In _Don Quixote in England_, produced
in 1733 or 34, [6] Fielding reappears in the character of patriotic censor
with the design, as appears from the dedication to Lord Chesterfield, of
representing "the Calamities brought on a Country by general Corruption."
No less than fifteen songs are interspersed in the play, and it is matter
for curious conjecture why none of them was chosen for a reprint among the
collected verses published ten years later in the _Miscellanies_. Time has
almost failed to preserve even the hunting-song beginning finely--
"The dusky Night rides down the Sky,
And ushers in the Morn;
The Hounds all join in glorious Cry,
The Huntsman winds his Horn:"
But a happier fate has befallen the fifth song, now familiar as the first
verse of the _Roast Beef of Old England_. It is eminently appropriate that
the most distinctly national of English novelists should have written:
"_When mighty Rost Beef was the_ Englishman's _food,
It ennobled our Hearts, and enriched our Blood;
Our Soldiers were brave and our Courtiers were good.
Oh, the Rost Beef of old England,
And old_ England's _Rost Beef!_
"_Then_, Britons, _from all nice Dainties refrain,
Which effeminate_ Italy, France, _and_ Spain;
_And mighty Rost Beef shall command on the Main.
Oh, the Rost Beef_, etc."
To this truly prolific period of the young 'hackney writer's' pen belongs
an _Epilogue_, hitherto overlooked, written for Charles Johnson's five-act
play _Caelia or the Perjur'd Lover_, and spoken by Kitty Clive. The lines,
which are hardly worth reprinting, consist of an ironic attack on the
laxity of town morals, where "Miss may take great liberties upon her," and
each woman is virtuous till she be found out.
An average of two plays a year is a record scarcely conducive to literary
excellence; any more than is the empty cupboard, and the frequent recourse
to 'your honour's own pawnbroker,' so often and so honourably familiar to
struggling genius. "The farces written by Mr Fielding," says Murphy"...
were generally the production of two or three mornings, so great was his
facility in writing"; and we have seen Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's
assertion that much of his work would have been thrown into the fire had
not his dinner gone with it. Of the struggles of these early years [7]
(struggles never wholly remitted, for, to quote Lady Mary again, Fielding
would have wanted money had his hereditary lands been as extensive as his
imagination) we get further suggestions in the _Poetical Epistle_
addressed to Sir Robert Walpole when the young poet was but twenty-three.
The lines go with a gallant spirit, but it is not difficult to detect a
savour of grim hardship behind the jests:
"While at the Helm of State you ride,
Our Nation's Envy and its Pride;
While foreign Courts with Wonder gaze,
And curse those Councils which they praise;
Would you not wonder, Sir, to view
Your Bard a greater Man than you?
Which that he, is you cannot doubt,
When you have heard the Sequel out.
. . . . .
"The Family that dines the latest,
Is in our Street esteem'd the greatest;
But latest Hours must surely fall
Before him who ne'er dines at all.
Your Taste in Architect, you know,
Hath been admir'd by Friend and Foe;
But can your earthly Domes compare
With all my Castles--in the Air?
"We're often taught it doth behove us
To think those greater who're above us;
Another Instance of my Glory,
Who live above you, twice two Story,
And from my Garret can look down
On the whole Street of Arlington." [8]
Not to depend too greatly on Mr Luckless for our picture of Fielding as a
playwright, we will conclude it with the well-known passage from Murphy:
"When he had contracted to bring on a play, or a farce, it is well known,
by many of his friends now living, that he would go home rather late from
a tavern, and would the next morning deliver a scene to the players,
written upon the papers which had wrapped the tobacco in which he so much
delighted." Would that some of those friends had recorded for our delight
the wit that, alas! has vanished like the smoke through which it was
engendered. What would we not give for the table-talk of Henry Fielding.
[1] _Joseph Andrews_, Book iii. Chap. iii.
[2] _Miscellanies_, ed. 1743, vol. ii. p. 62.
[3] In the _Miscellanies_ of 1743.
[4] _Fielding_, Austin Dobson, 1907. App. iv.
[5] What appears to be the original autograph of the above letter is now
(1909) in the library of the Boston Athenaeum, having been presented by Mr
C. P. Greenough.
[6] _Notitia Dramatica_ (British Museum. MSS. Dept.) and Genest give 1734
as the date of Don Quixote; Murphy, edition of 1766, vol. iii p. 249,
gives 1733.
[7] For the refutation of Genest's confusion of Timothy Fielding, a
strolling player, with Henry Fielding, see Austin Dobson, _Fielding_, pp.
28, 29.
[8] The _Miscellanies_. Edition 1743.