Again—
"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;"
and
"This too doth in my Favour speak,
Your Levee is but twice a Week;
From mine I can exclude but one Day,
My Door is quiet on a Sunday."
When he can admit so much even jestingly of himself, it is but legitimate to presume that there is no great exaggeration in the portrait of him in 1735, by the anonymous satirist of Seasonable Reproof:—
"F———g, who yesterday appear'd so rough,
Clad in coarse Frize, and plaister'd down with Snuff,
See how his Instant gaudy Trappings shine;
What Play-house Bard was ever seen so fine!
But this, not from his Humour flows, you'll say,
But mere Necessity;—for last Night lay
In Pawn, the Velvet which he wears to Day."
His work bears traces of the inequalities and irregularities of his mode of living. Although in certain cases (e.g. the revised edition of Tom Thumb) the artist and scholar seems to have spasmodically asserted himself, the majority of his plays were hasty and ill-considered performances, most of which (as Lady Mary said) he would have thrown into the fire "if meat could have been got without money, and money without scribbling." "When he had contracted to bring on a play, or a farce," says Murphy, "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." It is not easy to conceive, unless Fielding's capacities as a smoker were unusual, that any large contribution to dramatic literature could have been made upon the wrappings of Virginia or Freeman's Best; but that his reputation for careless production was established among his contemporaries is manifest from the following passage in a burlesque Author's Will published in the Universal Spectator of Oldys:—
"Item, I give and bequeath to my very negligent Friend Henry Drama, Esq., all my INDUSTRY. And whereas the World may think this an unnecessary Legacy, forasmuch as the said Henry Drama, Esq., brings on the Stage four Pieces every Season; yet as such Pieces are always wrote with uncommon Rapidity, and during such fatal Intervals only as the Stocks have been on the Fall, this Legacy will be of use to him to revise and correct his Works. Furthermore, for fear the said Henry Drama should make an ill Use of the said Industry, and expend it all on a Ballad Farce, it's my Will the said Legacy should be paid him by equal Portions, and as his Necessities may require."
There can be little doubt that the above quotation, which is reprinted in the Gentleman's for July 1734, and seems to have hitherto escaped inquiry, refers to none other than the "very negligent" Author of the Modern Husband and the Old Debauchees—in other words, to Henry Fielding.