‘Which may most strictly be applied to all those writers, who have endeavoured to convince the Jacobites by argument.
‘Again what can give us a more adequate Idea of that Firmness, with which we have supported all the ill-usage of the worst of Sovereigns without Resentment, than the laudable Indifference which an Ass hath for the same; whom you may beat, whip, kick, and spur as long as you are pleased, he still trudges on without altering his Pace.
‘To omit many other obvious Resemblances, such as Braying, &c, the famous story of the Countryman and the Ass, briefly touched upon by Horace in the Epistle addressed to his own Book, is so perfect a Picture of Jacobitism, that I have been inclined to think as the Antients are known to have inveloped all their Mysteries in Fable and Allegory, that no less than Jacobitism itself was intended to be couched under this story: “A certain Countryman observing an Ass making towards a Precipice, ran to him, and catching hold of his Tail, endeavoured with all his Might to withhold him from Destruction; but the more the Countryman attempted to preserve him, the more obstinately the Ass contended against his kind Preserver, and the more eagerly was bent upon accomplishing his fatal Purpose. The Countryman at last, wearied out with his Endeavours to save an obstinate Beast against his own will, and having probably received some Thanks from his Heels for his intended kindness, instead of pulling any longer, gave the Ass a Push, and tumbled him headlong down the Precipice which he had been so industriously pursuing.”
‘I make no doubt but many of our good Enemies the Whigs, who have well imitated this Countryman in the former part of his Behaviour, would imitate him likewise in the latter, was it not that they cannot precipitate us without tumbling down themselves at the same time.
‘These are the Mysteries, then, which have been couched under my Frontispiece, and which, tho’ their meaning must now appear to have been so plain, have nevertheless stood exposed so long at the Head of this Journal, without having been, as I can find, understood by any.
‘Perhaps I shall be asked, why I have now displaced them, since, after so large and full an Explanation, they cannot fail of being highly agreeable to that Party for whose use chiefly this Paper is calculated; and who would, for the future, worship my Ass with the same Veneration with which the Jews of old did theirs.
‘Now, tho’ the Indignation which I have exprest in the Beginning of this Essay at the many gross and absurd Misconceptions which have been vented by the Public, would alone very well justify the Discontinuance of my Emblem so much abused, there are, to say the Truth, two other Reasons which have had a stronger Weight with me in producing this Determination. The former of these is, that the Ass and his Retinue do indeed take up too much room, and must oblige us either to suppress Part of our Lucubrations, or some of those material articles of News which we weekly transcribe from others; or lastly those pieces of Intelligence called Advertisements, which tho’ not always most entertaining to our Reader, do afford very agreeable Entertainment to ourselves.
‘A second and a very strong Motive with us, is to lend all the Assistance in our Power to a very worthy and willing, tho’ weak Brother, the learned and facetious Novelist, Mr. Carte; whose great Romance, tho’ in our Court of Criticism, where we shall always act impartially, we have been obliged like other Judges, to condemn, contrary to our own Inclinations, to be grubb’d, we shall always privately esteem as a work calculated solely for the use of our Party. As we have therefore, to our great Concern, received very credible Information that the said work begins already to be considered only as a Heap of Waste Paper, we have thought proper to lend our Frontispiece to our good Brother, in order that it may be prefixed to the future Volumes of that great Work advising him to omit the words London Evening Post, and to insert English History in their stead. This will not fail of greatly recommending his Performance to our Party, who never willingly read anything but what an Ass may at least be supposed to have bray’d.
‘I could wish, moreover, that the learned Novelist would take our Advice in another Instance, and for the future deal forth his excellent work in weekly Portions or Numbers; I do not mean in such a Form as the real History of England is now publishing by Mr. Waller; but in the same manner with those true and delectable Histories of Argalus and Parthenia, Guy, Earl of Warwick, the Seven Champions, &c., in which Form, at the price of 1d. each, when embellished by our Frontispiece, I make no doubt of assuring him as universal a Sale as the inimitable Adventures of Robinson Crusoe formerly had throughout this Kingdom.’
The ‘Mr. Carte’ to whom Fielding proposed to lend his ‘Frontispiece’ was Thomas Carte, the historian, who had just brought out the first volume of his History of England, in which he showed such decided Jacobite predilections that his work was ruined in consequence. He professed to be acquainted with the case of a person who had been cured of the King’s Evil by the Pretender, then an exile in France, and this so disgusted many of the subscribers to his book that they withdrew their names and abandoned the author and his work together. He, however, brought out two more volumes, and a fourth was published after his death. It was probably in allusion to this story of the Pretender curing the King’s Evil that Fielding speaks of Carte as ‘the learned and facetious novelist;’ and doubtless the ‘great Romance’ referred to was intended for his history of England. Fielding and Carte both died in the same year, 1754.