Week by week, "The True Patriot" went on with these "ingenious conceits," as they were called, to the exaspera tion of the other newspapers, fixing a fashion since ref vived and continued by "Punch," the wittiest of all periodicals.

A paragraph of the Apocrypha described the "ghosts" of the week, by which Fielding meant false news, puffs, and advertisements that appeared in the other newspapers. There were ghosts of Grub Street poets, lottery-mongers, Jacobite pamphleteers, messengers from the North, and one of a large black man-Orator Henley-suspected of being a Jacobite who appeared on Sunday evenings at the Papist chapel near Clare Market and "talked for a whole hour what none of his hearers understood." The rendezvous of these apparitions was "The Daily Advertiser" and some other enterprising newspapers, which kept people up all night to wait for "extraordinary" issues-"extras" we now call them for short-bearing fresh tidings from Scotland, afterwards to be found untrue or mere repetitions of what had been published earlier in the day. Though Fielding has his fun with these "extraordinary ghosts," he looked with some favour, he said, on the ghosts of advertisers, and referred them to the business office of "The True Patriot." "Mrs. Cooper, the publisher of this paper," he told them, "is provided with several walking licences for ghosts, by our authority; which she issues forth to the said ghosts at various prices, from three shillings to half a guinea, according to the length and breadth of the respective ghosts; and all shadows which for the future shall venture to appear abroad in the shape of puffs or advertisements, without such licence, shall be instantly lay'd in this paper." The facetious paragraph, however, brought very few advertisements to "The True Patriot."

Humorous comment overflowed into the lists of the married and the dead. Almost every woman who married

was described by the newspapers as "beautiful" or "agreeable" or possessed of "a considerable fortune." Everybody who died was "eminent." There were eminent booksellers, eminent grocers, eminent apothecaries, eminent brewers, and eminent tobacconists, many of whom were "wealthy" as well as "eminent," and wrote "Esquire" after their names. These lists Fielding made up every week from the other newspapers, with here and there a remark printed in italics to distinguish his own property from that of Grub Street. A pun, I suppose, was intended in addressing the fortunate young man of the following marriage notice:

"Mr. John Rayner, a Quaker, to Miss Cowper, with a handsome Fortune, and every Accomplishment which can render a Lady agreeable. Friend Rayner, thou hast chosen well."

That year a cattle distemper, to which the newspapers gave much space, was raging throughout England. Fielding mingled cows with obscure people in his groups of the dead:

"Mrs. Mary Tyrrington; she was the last of her Name. She is the first of it I have ever heard of.

"Rev. Mr. Wicket; he had a Living in Kent. He was well known at the polite End of the Town; but I have often heard it doubted whether the last Letter of his name was d or t.

"Tuesday. Mr. Tillcock an eminent Stocking Presser in Grub-street. Wednesday, Mr. Tillcock is not dead but in perfect Health. It is unpardonable in these Historians to mistake in Matters of such Consequence, especially in their own Neighbourhood.

"Upwards of 40 Cows belonging to one at Tottenham Court, universally lamented by all their Acquaintance.

"N.B. If great Men and Cattle die so fast, we shall scarce have room to bury them in our Paper."

Sometimes Fielding made merry over old men who take young wives, and over widows who quickly recover from their grief. One story he tells of a woman who lost her husband in the summer, married another in the autumn, and on his death in the winter, died herself. Their friends took up the corpse of the first husband, dug the grave deeper, and put all three in together.

These jests on the dead and the living were not everywhere relished, for we find Fielding making an apology for them in the tenth number of his periodical. "To prevent," he says there, "giving offence to the many eminent dead persons, as well as to several young ladies of great beauty, merit and fortune, we shall for the future register all marriages and deaths as they come to hand, and leave all distinction to the public; after having premised that every word printed in italics is our own, and of these, and these only we will be answerable for the truth."

When someone died whom he knew for his good qualities, or whom the world esteemed, the comment became serious and unconventional in phrase. The death of that old miser, Peter Walter, Esq., Fielding passed by with the remark that he was "worth upwards of £200,000." An Edward Syderham, Esq., was "a gentleman whose heart and hands were ever ready to relieve the wants of mankind." William Avery, Esq., of Bath was "one of a triumvirate of beaus, who have flourished there these fifty years. Richard Witherston, Esq., "a barrister at law, aged 44, by an early application to the most polite and no less useful parts of literature, greatly improved those abilities nature had so liberally bestowed on him." Mr. John Robinson, son of Mr. Robinson of Bath, was "a young man, who had given very early proofs of a great genius in his profession of portrait painting." Of Lord Wyndham, formerly "Lord Chancellor of the Kingdom of Ireland," who had retired to Salisbury when his health broke, and had since come to

London for medical advice, Fielding could say: "He was a good natured and honest man. In public he always preserved his integrity, and in private life an inoffensive cheerfulness, which made him an amiable companion. When Fielding, the Eton boy, visited his grandmother Gould at Salisbury, this Thomas Wyndham was recorder of Sarum. He subscribed to the "Miscellanies." Of the Rev. Dr. William Broome, who died at Bath, it was recorded: "This gentleman was not unknown in the learned world, tho' perhaps he had less reputation in it than he deserved. He read over the whole comment of Eustathius in Greek, in order to furnish Mr. Pope with notes to his Iliad and Odyssey. Nay perhaps he had some share in the translating, at least in the construing those poems, if we may believe Mr. Pope himself." Finally, on Swift there was a paragraph in which Fielding left his most direct estimate of his brother humorist as a man as well as a writer:

"A few Days since died in Ireland, Dr. Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's in Dublin. A Genius who deserves to be ranked among the first whom the World ever saw. He possessed the Talents of a Lucian, a Rabelais, and a Cervantes, and in his Works exceeded them all. He employed his Wit to the noblest Purposes, in ridiculing as well Superstition in Religion as Infidelity, and the several Errors and Immoralities which sprung up from time to time in his Age; and lastly, in the Defence of his Country, against several pernicious Schemes of Wicked Politicians. Nor was he only a Genius and a Patriot; he was in private Life a good and charitable Man, and frequently lent Sums of Money without Interest to the Poor and Industrious; by which Means many Families were preserved from Destruction. The Loss of so excellent a Person would have been more to be lamented, had not a Disease that affected his Understanding, long since deprived him of the Enjoy

ment of Life, and his Country of the Benefit of his great Talents; But we hope this short and hasty Character will not be the last Piece of Gratitude paid by his Cotemporaries to such eminent Merit."

Fielding's leaders also assumed a serious tone as the danger from the invading army increased on every day's march further southward. When news reached London that the Highlanders were at Derby, the capital was struck, says Fielding, "with a terror scarce to be credited." A day of fast and humiliation was appointed for December 18. The Bishop of St. Asaph preached before the Lords at St. Peter's, Westminster, and the Rector of St. Mary-leBow before the Commons at St. Margaret's. Both took the same text: "Remember therefore whence thou art fallen, and repent." Never before, according to the newspapers, had there been so great an attendance of Lords and Commons. The day preceding the fast, Fielding revived Parson Adams for a sermon addressed to the town, on a text taken from Pythagoras: "Go upon the work, having first prayed to the Gods for success." Much, I daresay, as the Bishop of St. Asaph, Parson Adams attributed "the unparallel'd success" of the rebellion to "the just judgment of God against an offending people." During the three or four years that he had "tarried in the great city," he had seen everywhere "monstrous impieties and iniquities," far surpassing in wickedness anything recorded of ancient Sodom. Nothing could save a town void of charity and given over wholly to lying and luxury, but "a total amendment of life, a total change of manners." Subsequently Parson Adams had another discourse on the divine wrath that was overtaking a nation bent upon its own destruction; wherein he imputed all the ills that Great Britain was suffering under, to "the notorious want of care in parents in the education of youth," who are no longer, either in the city or in the country, instructed in the