The frank effrontery of satire like the foregoing had by this time begun to attract the attention of the Ministry, whose withers had already been sharply wrung by Pasquin; and it has been conjectured that the ballet of Quidam and the Patriots played no small part in precipitating the famous "Licensing Act," which was passed a few weeks afterwards. Like the marriage which succeeded the funeral of Hamlet's father, it certainly "followed hard upon." But the reformation of the stage had already been contemplated by the Legislature; and two years before, Sir John Barnard had brought in a bill "to restrain the number of houses for playing of Interludes, and for the better regulating of common Players of Interludes." This, however, had been abandoned, because it was proposed to add a clause enlarging the power of the Lord Chamberlain in licensing plays, an addition to which the introducer of the measure made strong objection. He thought the power of the Lord Chamberlain already too great, and in support of his argument he instanced its wanton exercise in the case of Gay's Polly, the representation of which had been suddenly prohibited a few years earlier. But Pasquin and the Register brought the question of dramatic lawlessness again to the front, and a bill was hurriedly drawn, one effect of which was to revive the very provision that Sir John Barnard had opposed. The history of this affair is exceedingly obscure, and in all probability it has never been completely revealed. The received or authorised version is to be found in Coxe's Life of Walpole. After dwelling on the offence given to the Government by Pasquin, the writer goes on to say that Giffard, the manager of Goodman's Fields, brought Walpole a farce called The Golden Rump, which had been proposed for exhibition. Whether he did this to extort money, or to ask advice, is not clear. In either case, Walpole is said to have "paid the profits which might have accrued from the performance, and detained the copy." He then made a compendious selection of the treasonable and profane passages it contained. These he submitted to independent members of both parties, and afterwards read them in the House itself. The result was that by way of amendment to the "Vagrant Act" of Anne's reign, a bill was prepared limiting the number of theatres, and compelling all dramatic writers to obtain a license from the Lord Chamberlain. Such is Coxe's account; but notwithstanding its circumstantial character, it has been insinuated in the sham memoirs of the younger Cibber, and it is plainly asserted in the Rambler's Magazine for 1787, that certain preliminary details have been conveniently suppressed. It is alleged that Walpole himself caused the farce in question to be written, and to be offered to Giffard, for the purpose of introducing his scheme of reform; and the suggestion is not without a certain remote plausibility. As may be guessed, however, The Golden Rump cannot be appealed to. It was never printed, although its title is identical with that of a caricature published in March 1737, and fully described in the Gentleman's Magazine for that month. If the play at all resembled the design, it must have been obscene and scurrilous in the extreme. [Footnote: Horace Walpole, in his Memoires of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George II., says (vol. i. p. 12), "I have in my possession the imperfect copy of this piece as I found it among my father's papers after his death." He calls it Fielding's; but no importance can be attached to the statement. There is a copy of the caricature in the British Museum Print Room (Political and Personal Satires, No. 2327).]
Meanwhile the new bill, to which it had given rise, passed rapidly through both Houses. Report speaks of animated discussions and warm opposition. But there are no traces of any divisions, or petitions against it, and the only speech which has survived is the very elaborate and careful oration delivered in the Upper House by Lord Chesterfield. The "second Cicero"—as Sylvanus Urban styles him—opposed the bill upon the ground that it would affect the liberty of the press; and that it was practically a tax upon the chief property of men of letters, their wit—a "precarious dependence"—which (he thanked God) my Lords were not obliged to rely upon. He dwelt also upon the value of the stage as a fearless censor of vice and folly; and he quoted with excellent effect but doubtful accuracy the famous answer of the Prince of Conti [Conde] to Moliere [Louis XIV.] when Tartuffe was interdicted at the instance of M. de Lamoignon:—"It is true, Moliere, Harlequin ridicules Heaven, and exposes religion; but you have done much worse—you have ridiculed the first minister of religion." This, although not directly advanced for the purpose, really indicated the head and front of Fielding's offending in Pasquin and the Historical Register, and although in Lord Chesterfield's speech the former is ironically condemned, it may well be that Fielding, whose Don Quixote had been dedicated to his Lordship, was the wire-puller in this case, and supplied this very illustration. At all events it is entirely in the spirit of Firebrand's words in Pasquin:—
"Speak boldly; by the Powers I serve, I swear
You speak in Safety, even tho' you speak
Against the Gods, provided that you speak
Not against Priests."
But the feeling of Parliament in favour of drastic legislation was even stronger than the persuasive periods of Chesterfield, and on the 21st of June 1737 the bill received the royal assent.
With its passing Fielding's career as a dramatic author practically closed. In his dedication of the Historical Register to "the Publick," he had spoken of his desire to beautify and enlarge his little theatre, and to procure a better company of actors; and he had added—"If Nature hath given me any Talents at ridiculing Vice and Imposture, I shall not be indolent, nor afraid of exerting them, while the Liberty of the Press and Stage subsists, that is to say, while we have any Liberty left among us." To all these projects the "Licensing Act" effectively put an end; and the only other plays from his pen which were produced subsequently to this date were the "Wedding Day," 1743, and the posthumous Good- Natured Man, 1779, both of which, as is plain from the Preface to the Miscellanies, were among his earliest attempts. In the little farce of Miss Lucy in Town, 1742, he had, he says, but "a very small Share." Besides these, there are three hasty and flimsy pieces which belong to the early part of 1737. The first of these, Tumble-Down Dick; or, Phaeton in the Suds, was a dramatic sketch in ridicule of the unmeaning Entertainments and Harlequinades of John Rich at Covent Garden. This was ironically dedicated to Rich, under his stage name of "John Lun," and from the dedication it appears that Rich had brought out an unsuccessful satire on Pasquin called Marforio. The other two were Eurydice, a profane and pointless farce, afterwards printed by its author (in anticipation of Beaumarchais) "as it was d—mned at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane;" and a few detached scenes in which, under the title of Eurydice Hiss'd; or, a Word to the Wise, its untoward fate was attributed to the "frail Promise of uncertain Friends." But even in these careless and half-considered productions there are happy strokes; and one scarcely looks to find such nervous and sensible lines in a mere a propos as these from Eurydice Hiss'd:—
"Yet grant it shou'd succeed, grant that by Chance,
Or by the Whim and Madness of the Town,
A Farce without Contrivance, without Sense
Should run to the Astonishment of Mankind;
Think how you will be read in After-times,
When Friends are not, and the impartial Judge
Shall with the meanest Scribbler rank your Name;
Who would not rather wish a Butler's fame,
Distress'd, and poor in every thing but Merit,
Than be the blundering Laureat to a Court?"
Self-accusatory passages such as this—and there are others like it— indicate a higher ideal of dramatic writing than Fielding is held to have attained, and probably the key to them is to be found in that reaction of better judgment which seems invariably to have followed his most reckless efforts. It was a part of his sanguine and impulsive nature to be as easily persuaded that his work was worthless as that it was excellent. "When," says Murphy, "he was not under the immediate urgency of want, they, who were intimate with him, are ready to aver that he had a mind greatly superior to anything mean or little; when his finances were exhausted, he was not the most elegant in his choice of the means to redress himself, and he would instantly exhibit a farce or a puppet-shew in the Haymarket theatre, which was wholly inconsistent with the profession he had embarked in." The quotation displays all Murphy's loose and negligent way of dealing with his facts; for, with the exception of Miss Lucy in Town, which can scarcely be ranked among his works at all, there is absolutely no trace of Fielding's having exhibited either "puppet-show" or "farce" after seriously adopting the law as a profession, nor does there appear to have been much acting at the Haymarket for some time after his management had closed in 1737. Still, his superficial characteristics, which do not depend so much upon Murphy as upon those "who were intimate with him," are probably accurately described, and they sufficiently account for many of the obvious discordances of his work and life. That he was fully conscious of something higher than his actual achievement as a dramatist is clear from his own observation in later life, "that he left off writing for the stage, when he ought to have begun;"—an utterance which (we shrewdly suspect) has prompted not a little profitless speculation as to whether, if he had continued to write plays, they would have been equal to, or worse than, his novels. The discussion would be highly interesting, if there were the slightest chance that it could be attended with any satisfactory result. But the truth is, that the very materials are wanting. Fielding "left off writing for the stage" when he was under thirty; Tom Jones was published in 1749, when he was more than forty. His plays were written in haste; his novels at leisure, and when, for the most part, he was relieved from that "immediate urgency of want," which, according to Murphy, characterised his younger days. If— as has been suggested—we could compare a novel written at thirty with a play of the same date, or a play written at forty with Tom Jones, the comparison might be instructive, although even then considerable allowances would have to be made for the essential difference between plays and novels. But, as we cannot make such a comparison, further inquiry is simply waste of time. All we can safely affirm is, that the plays of Fielding's youth did not equal the fictions of his maturity; and that, of those plays, the comedies were less successful than the farces and burlesques. Among other reasons for this latter difference one chiefly may be given:—that in the comedies he sought to reproduce the artificial world of Congreve and Wycherley, while in the burlesques and farces he depicted the world in which he lived.
CHAPTER III.
THE CHAMPION—JOSEPH ANDREWS.
The Historical Register and Eurydice Hiss'd were published together in June 1737. By this time the "Licensing Act" was passed, and the "Grand Mogul's Company" dispersed for ever. Fielding was now in his thirty-first year, with a wife and probably a daughter depending on him for support. In the absence of any prospect that he would be able to secure a maintenance as a dramatic writer, he seems to have decided, in spite of his comparatively advanced age, to revert to the profession for which he had originally been intended, and to qualify himself for the Bar. Accordingly, at the close of the year, he became a student of the Middle Temple, and the books of that society contain the following record of his admission: [Footnote: This differs slightly from previous transcripts, having been verified at the Middle Temple.]—