Fielding | Page 8

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.
Book. Then you have not translated a Word of it, perhaps.
Ind. Not a single Syllable.
Book. Well, you shall have your Proposals forthwith; but I desire you
wou'd be a little more reasonable in your Bills for the future, or I shall
deal with you no longer; for I have a certain Fellow of a College, who
offers to furnish me with Second-hand Motto's out of the Spectator for
Two-pence each.
Ind. Sir, I only desire to live by my Goods, and I hope you will be
pleas'd to allow some difference between a neat fresh Piece, piping hot
out of the Classicks, and old thread-bare worn-out Stuff that has past
thro' ev'ry Pedant's Mouth...."
The latter part of this amusing dialogue, referring to Mr. Index's
translation from Cicero, was added in an amended version of the
Author's Farce, which appeared some years later, and in which
Fielding depicts the portrait of another all-powerful personage in the
literary life,--the actor-manager. This, however, will be more
conveniently treated under its proper date, and it is only necessary to
say here that the slight sketches of Marplay and Sparkish given in the
first edition, were presumably intended for Cibber and Wilks, with
whom, notwithstanding the "civil and kind Behaviour" for which he
had thanked them in the "Preface" to Love in Several Masques, the
young dramatist was now, it seems, at war. In the introduction to the

Miscellanies, he refers to "a slight Pique" with Wilks; and it is not
impossible that the key to the difference may be found in the following
passage:--
"Sparkish. What dost think of the Play?
Marplay. It may be a very good one, for ought I know; but I know the
Author has no Interest.
Spark. Give me Interest, and rat the Play.
Mar. Rather rat the Play which has no Interest. Interest sways as much
in the Theatre as at Court.--And you know it is not always the
Companion of Merit in either."
The handsome student from Leyden--the potential Congreve