"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."
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 Nine- pence; 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.