not seem to have followed up dramatic authorship with equal vigour, or at all events with equal success. His real connection with the stage does not begin until January 1730, when the Temple Beau was produced by Giffard the actor at the theatre in Goodman's Fields, which had then just been opened by Thomas Odell; and it may be presumed that his incentive was rather want of funds than desire of fame. The Temple Beau certainly shows an advance upon its predecessor; but it is an advance in the same direction, imitation of Congreve; and although✓ Geneste ranks it among the best of Fielding's plays, it is doubtful whether modern criticism would sustain his verdict. It ran for a short time, and was then withdrawn. The Prologue was the work of James Ralph, afterwards Fielding's colleague in the Champion, and it thus refers to the prevailing taste. The Beggar's Opera had killed Italian song, but now a new danger had arisen, "Humour and Wit, in each politer Age, Triumphant, rear'd the Trophies of the Stage: As if to confirm his friend's opinion, Fielding's next piece combined the popular ingredients above referred to. In March following he produced at the Haymarket, under the pseudonym of Scriblerus Secundus, The Author's Farce, with a "Puppet Show" called The Pleasures of the Town. In the Puppet Show, Henley, the Clare-Market Orator, and Samuel Johnson, the quack author of the popular Hurlothrumbo, were smartly satirised, as also was the fashionable craze for Opera and Pantomime. But the most enduring part of this odd medley is the farce which occupies the two first acts, and under thin disguises no doubt depicts much which was within the writer's experience. At all events, Luckless, the author in the play, has more than one of the characteristics which distinguish the traditional portrait of Fielding himself in his early years. He wears a laced coat, is in love, writes plays, and cannot pay his landlady, who declares, with some show of justice, that she "would no more depend on a Benefit-Night of an un-acted Play, than she wou'd on a Benefit-Ticket in an un-drawn Lottery." "Her Floor (she laments) is all spoil'd with Ink-her Windows with Verses, and her Door has been almost beat down with Duns." But the most humorous scenes in the play-scenes really admirable in their ironic delineation of the seamy side of authorship in 1730 are those in which Mr. Bookweight, the publisher the Curll or Osborne of the period-is shown surrounded by the obedient hacks, who feed at his table on "good Milk-porridge, very often twice a Day," and manufacture the murders, ghost-stories, political pamphlets, and translations from Virgil (out of Dryden) with which he supplies his customers. Here is one of them as good as any :— "Bookweight. So, Mr. Index, what News with you? Index. I have brought my Bill, Sir. Book. What's here?—for fitting the Motto of Risum teneatis Amici to a dozen Pamphlets at Sixpence per each, Six Shillings For Omnia vincit Amor, & nos cedamus Amori, Sixpence For Difficile est Satyram non scribere, Sixpence-Hum! hum! hum! Sum total, for Thirty-six Latin Motto's, Eighteen Shillings; ditto English, One Shilling and Ninepence; ditto Greek, Four, Four Shillings. These Greek Motto's are excessively dear. Ind. If you have them cheaper at either of the Universities, I will give you mine for nothing. Book. You shall have your Money immediately, and pray remember that I must have two Latin Seditious Motto's and one Greek Moral Motto for Pamphlets by to-morrow Morning. . Ind. Sir, I shall provide them. Be pleas'd to look on that, Sir, and print me Five hundred Proposals, and as many Receipts. Book. Proposals for printing by Subscription a new Translation of Cicero, Of the Nature of the Gods and his Tusculan Questions, by Jeremy Index, Esq.; I am sorry you have undertaken this, for it prevents a Design of mine. Ind. Indeed, Sir, it does not, for you see all of the Book that I ever intend to publish. It is only a handsome Way of asking one's Friends for a Guinea. Book. Then you have not translated a Word of it, perhaps. Ind. Not a single Syllable. Book. Well, you shall have your Proposals forthwith; but I desire you wou'd be a little more reasonable in your Bills for the future, or I shall deal with you no longer; for I have a certain Fellow of a College, who offers to furnish me with Second-hand Motto's out of the Spectator for Two-pence each. Ind. Sir, I only desire to live by my Goods, and I hope you will be pleas'd to allow some difference between a neat fresh Piece, piping hot out of the Classicks, and old thread-bare worn-out Stuff that has past thro' ev'ry Pedant's Mouth. . . دو The latter part of this amusing dialogue, referring to Mr. Index's translation from Cicero, was added in an amended version of the Author's Farce, which appeared some years later, and in which Fielding depicts the portrait of another all-powerful personage in the literary life,—the actor-manager. This, however, will be more conveniently treated under its proper date, and it is only necessary to say here that the slight sketches of Marplay and Sparkish given in the first edition, were presumably intended for Cibber and Wilks, with whom, notwithstanding the "civil and kind Behaviour" for which he had thanked them in the "Preface" to Love in Several Masques, the young dramatist was now, it seems, at war. In the introduction to the Miscellanies, he refers to "a slight Pique" with Wilks; and it is not impossible that the key to the difference may be found in the following passage: Sparkish. What dost think of the Play? Marplay. It may be a very good one, for ought I know; but I know the Author has no Interest. Spark. Give me Interest, and rat the Play. Mar. Rather rat the Play which has no Interest. sways as much in the Theatre as at Court.-And you it is not always the Companion of Merit in either." Interest know The handsome student from Leyden- the potential Congreve who wrote Love in Several Masques, and had Lady Mary Wortley Montagu for patroness, might fairly be supposed to have expectations which warranted the civilities of Messrs. Wilks and Cibber; but the "Luckless" of two years later had probably convinced them that his dramatic performances did not involve their sine qua non of success. Under these circumstances nothing perhaps could be more natural than that they should play their parts in his little satire. We have dwelt at some length upon the Author's Farce, because it is the first of Fielding's plays in which, leaving the "wit-traps" of Wycherley and Congreve, he deals with the direct censure of contemporary folly, and because, apart from translation and adaptation, it is in this field that his most brilliant theatrical successes were C won. For the next few years he continued to produce comedies and farces with great rapidity, both under his own name, and under the pseudonym of Scriblerus Secundus. Most of these show manifest signs of haste, and some are recklessly immodest. We shall confine ourselves to one or two of the best, and do little more than enumerate the others. Of these latter, the Coffee-House Politician; or, The Justice caught in his own Trap, 1730, succeeded the Author's Farce. The leading idea, that of a tradesman who neglects his shop for "foreign affairs," appears to be derived from Addison's excellent charactersketch in the Tatler of the "Political Upholsterer." This is the more likely, in that Arne the musician, whose father is generally supposed to have been Addison's original, was Fielding's contemporary at Eton. Justice, Squeezum, another character contained in this play, is a kind of first draft of the later Justice Thrasher in Amelia. The representation of the trading justice on the stage, however, was by no means new, since Justice Quorum in Coffey's Beggar's Wedding (with whom, as will \ appear presently, Fielding's name has been erroneously associated) exhibits similar characteristics. Omitting for the moment the burlesque of Tom Thumb, the Coffee-House Politician was followed by the Letter Writers; or, A new Way to Keep a Wife at Home, 1731, a brisk little farce, with one vigorously drawn character, that of Jack Commons, a young university rake; the Grub-Street Opera, 1731; the farce of the Lottery, 1731, in which the famous Mrs. Clive, then Miss Raftor, appeared; the Modern Husband, 1732; the Covent Garden Tragedy, 1732, a broad and rather riotous burlesque of Ambrose Philips' Distrest Mother; and the Debauchees; or, The Jesuit Caught, 1732—which |