University of Virginia Library

A Fielding Discovery, with Some Remarks on the Canon
by
M. C. with R. R. Battestin

In June 1739, in order to secure evidence for an action of libel, agents of the Walpole ministry raided the offices of the printer and editor of the Opposition organ, Common Sense, and seized their papers. Of these, 218 autograph items, the great majority representing copy for the printer, are preserved together at the Public Record Office (Chancery Lane)—call number: SP9/35. Since this collection by no means comprises a complete run of the printer's copy to the time of seizure, and since—no doubt for prudential reasons—none of the copy is signed, scholars will find this material of limited use in identifying contributors, though, by a comparative analysis of the handwriting, it is a simple matter to distinguish, in a general way, articles written by the editor from those submitted by occasional correspondents to the journal.

Included among these papers, however, is at least one item of exceptional interest; for here, in the form of a pseudonymous letter to the editor recommending silence as "the utmost Perfection of human Wisdom," is the only extant literary prose manuscript by Henry Fielding. Signed "Mum Budget" and dated from Devon on April Fool's Day 1738, this witty piece, though published in Common Sense on 13 May, has never been attributed to Fielding. It is valuable, however, not only as an important addition to the canon, representing one of Fielding's earliest known publications as a periodical essayist, the form in which—as editor of The Champion (1739-41), The True Patriot (1745-46), The Jacobite's Journal (1747-48), and The Covent-Garden Journal (1752)—he would soon outshine every rival for a decade. What is more, appearing in the midst of the two-and-a-half-year interval between the passage of the Theatrical Licensing Act (June 1737), which put an end to his career as a dramatist, and the publication of The Champion (November 1739), when he emerged as principal journalist for the Opposition, the essay sheds light on Fielding's personal circumstances and political relationships in one of the most obscure periods of his life. Because

literary manuscripts by Fielding are so rare[1] —and because this, indeed, is the only one extant which he intended as printer's copy—I will reproduce it here photographically, as well as supplying an annotated transcript for more convenient reference. Fully to appreciate its implications, both political and biographical, we need first, however, to review the circumstances in which Fielding wrote it.

Sponsored by his friends in Opposition, Common Sense: or, The Englishman's Journal began publication on 5 February 1737, during Fielding's final season as manager of the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. In a month's time, with the production of The Historical Register, he would cap the brilliant success of Pasquin a year earlier—a triumph no less spectacular than it was disastrous in its consequences for his career as a playwright; for, though Fielding's satire in these plays spared neither party, it linked him in the public mind with the Opposition's cause and moved the Ministry to silence him. As one ministerial writer was well assured, Fielding's success with Pasquin had caused him to be "secretly buoy'd up, by some of the greatest Wits and finest Gentlemen of the Age"[2] —among them, surely, Lyttelton and Chesterfield, who had now initiated the new journal. Its editor and principal writer, however, was the Irishman, Charles Molloy (d. 1767), himself a comic dramatist manqué and, as the former author of Fog's Weekly Journal (1728-37), a journalist well skilled in the art of making ministerial politicians die sweetly in print. Its printer was the inflexible Tory, John Purser.

In a sense Fielding, too, was associated with this paper from the start; for its title had been borrowed from the "emblematical" figure whose "Tragedy" is rehearsed, to hilarious effect, in the final acts of Pasquin. Though in Pasquin Common Sense suffered what might seem her inevitable fate in the age of Walpole, in the pages of Molloy's weekly paper, presumably, she would live on, with due acknowledgments to Fielding, who understood her best: "An ingenious Dramatick Author," we are reminded in the first issue, "has consider'd Common Sense as so extraordinary a Thing, that he has lately, with great Wit and Humour, not only personified it, but dignified it too with the Title of a Queen . . . ." A few months later, when Fielding needed a "Vehicle" by which to answer a ministerial attack against the alleged licentiousness of his political satire in The Historical Register, it was, predictably, Molloy

who provided it.[3] As C. W. Nichols saw some time ago, the letter signed "Pasquin" published in Common Sense for 21 May 1737 is certainly by Fielding, an attribution Molloy himself confirms, albeit obliquely, in his leader of 21 October 1738.[4] That Fielding, especially after the Licensing Act had put a stop to his play writing, might contribute other pieces to his friends' journal has always seemed likely. W. L. Cross, for instance, wished to assign to him a pair of essays treating affectation as the source of ridicule, which were published in Common Sense (3, 10 September 1737); and a recent anthologist of Fielding's criticism has considered Cross's suggestion plausible enough to justify reprinting them.[5] But these essays, though the opening of the first does bear some resemblance to Fielding's definition of "the true Ridiculous" in the Preface to Joseph Andrews (1742), are stylistically quite different from his usual manner; and unlike his known contributions to the journal, they take the form of leaders, not pseudonymous letters to the editor—a circumstance suggesting that they are by someone (Chesterfield is the usual candidate) whose connection with the paper was closer and more regular than Fielding's. Unfortunately, the manuscripts of these essays, which would settle such speculation, have not survived; but Cross's reasons for attributing them to Fielding are not persuasive.

We may take it as certain, I believe, that after the "Pasquin" letter almost precisely a year went by before Fielding made his next appearance in Common Sense, this time as that wonderfully garrulous advocate of the wisdom of holding one's tongue, "Mum Budget." The essay begins, accordingly, with his anticipating the editor's surprise "at not

hearing from me in so long time." Besides making an amusing addition to the canon, this piece is of considerable interest biographically, for what it reveals both of Fielding's own sense of the events that precipitated the Licensing Act, and of his hardening attitude toward Sir Robert Walpole, whose patronage he once had courted.[6] Indeed, to those who care about the kind of man Fielding was, one of the essay's special pleasures derives from its tone: that he could make a joke of the hard blow the minister had dealt him—by thus writing a witty tour de force on the wisdom of keeping one's mouth shut in Walpole's England—is part of what one finds so admirable in his character. For, as is evident here for the first time, Fielding was himself convinced that, whatever may have been its general utility to the government, the Licensing Act had been pushed through Parliament specifically to muzzle him, and that, whatever other plays may have annoyed the prime minister, it was the satiric characterization of him as Quidam in The Historical Register which proved to be the last offending straw. After a long and humorous preamble, the essay from this point takes the political turn for which, no doubt, it was chiefly written. The yarn about the whimsical "Coffee House Politician" who was so fond of silence that he bribed others "to hold their Tongue" and who by such means became "the Oracle of the House" is, of course, a transparent allegory of Walpole. The old gentleman's habit of urging "weighty Motions concerning Tobacco, Coffee, &c." recalls the prime minister's unpopular Excise Scheme of 1733,[7] as his way of fainting "at the Sound of a Musquet" ridicules his pacific policies toward Spain at a time when "Spanish Depradations" against English ships were a constant theme of the Opposition press and in March 1738 the burden of petitions presented to Parliament by aggrieved merchants.[8] His droll indulgence of the inane and loquacious waiter, "young Will," is a hit, surely, at Walpole's "creature," Sir William Yonge (1693-1755), no less "notorious a Babbler" in "the House," who at the time was consolidating his reputation for meaningless eloquence in speeches supporting the minister's foreign policy.[9] Clearly, however even-handed Fielding had earlier tried to be in his political satires, he was ready now to take sides against Walpole and his ministry. This essay is his first in a vein that, late in the following year, would become familiar to readers of The Champion.

The discovery of this manuscript, of course, makes the possibility all the more attractive that Fielding made other contributions to Common Sense during the eighteen months that would pass before he launched his own paper in behalf of the Opposition. Textually, the relationship between the manuscript and the two printed versions of the essay—that of the original issue of Common Sense (13 May 1738) and that appearing in the two-volume reprint (1738-39)—reveals, however, certain peculiarities which complicate the problem of identifying Fielding's hand elsewhere in the journal. Most significant of these is the fact that, in setting the article, the compositor systematically, and without editorial authority, altered a characteristic of Fielding's style which has long served as an indispensable test for anyone proposing additions to the canon: in every instance Fielding's favorite archaism, the use of hath for has, has been modernized. And presumably his doth's would have been similarly treated if he had had occasion to use that verb in the essay. To compound the problem, it is clear that this particular sophistication was not a feature of Purser's "house style": the printed versions of the "Pasquin" letter retain Fielding's characteristic usage. Indeed, Molloy himself often (though not invariably) prefers the same archaisms. These changes from the manuscript, therefore, would seem to be an expression of the stylistic taste of a particular compositor—who, since he was no doubt employed at other times by Purser, may be supposed to have treated other essays in the same manner. What this practice means to anyone looking for signs of Fielding's authorship in the published numbers of Common Sense is obvious: we cannot now automatically exclude an essay from consideration merely because it shows has and does where Fielding would have used hath and doth.

Inspection of the manuscript, and collation of the manuscript with

the printed versions, reveal two other sources of possible confusion. Molloy, for instance, was not above tampering with Fielding's phrasing when, to his by no means infallible ear, it seemed infelicitous. Thus in the second sentence of the manuscript Fielding's forceful declaration "that the utmost Perfection of human Wisdom is Silence" is padded out by Molloy to read, "that the utmost Perfection that human Wisdom is capable of attaining to is, Silence"—a pointless adulteration of the original which I have ignored in transcribing the essay. Another such revision occurs at the end of the first sentence of the penultimate paragraph, where Molloy obliterated Fielding's own phrase and substituted the words "maintained in It as long as he lived." Happily, Molloy did not take many such liberties with Fielding's text. Even so, this essay in its published form presents an additional, if no doubt minor, hazard to anyone trying to weigh its claims to be Fielding's work: we would be right in supposing that Fielding could not have written the feeble phrase in the first example above, but we would be wrong to infer therefore that Fielding had not written the essay as a whole. And finally, anyone seeking Fielding's traces in the pages of the two-volume reprint of Common Sense may expect to encounter numerous pitfalls of another sort. For, though the essay as originally published includes Molloy's revisions as well as a number of errors committed by the compositor, who in several places misread the manuscript, the version in the reprint is more imperfect still; besides preserving the faults of the original issue, it introduces others of its own, including the deletion of four entire phrases.

For these reasons, then, the task of identifying Fielding's hand in the published numbers of Common Sense cannot be undertaken very confidently. Without the hath-doth test to rely on, we have lost one simple means of narrowing the range of possibilities. The manuscripts preserved at the Public Record Office are, of course, a considerable help toward this end, and in some instances may serve to chasten the rash: if, for example, we set aside the hath-doth test, the leader published in the journal on 30 September 1738—an ironic allegory of corruption in English society written in the form of a "Letter from Common Honesty to Common Sense"—sounds rather like Fielding; but, as the manuscript proves, he was not the author.[10] And what about the issue of 23 December 1738, in which the author anticipates the satiric analogy between Walpole and Jonathan Wild which Fielding would develop at length in his novel? If, like W. R. Irwin,[11] we had resisted the temptation to attribute

this leader to Fielding chiefly because it fails the hath test, we may wish now to have another, closer look; the manuscript, unfortunately, has not been preserved. I doubt, however, that this is Fielding's work: though the basic device of the satire is identical with that of Jonathan Wild—and represents, moreover, the earliest known instance of the analogy after its original occurrence in Mist's Weekly Journal (12, 19 May 1725)—yet Fielding could not have developed the idea in so dogged a manner, and his humor, needless to say, is never so lifeless and heavy-handed. A more playful piece that might well be his is the clever satire of Theophilus Cibber (Common Sense, 19 May 1739) which takes the form of a brazen, hectoring epistle, partly in verse, from "Pistol" to the editor—"Pistol" being, of course, Fielding's name for Theophilus Cibber in Tumble-Down Dick (1736) and The Historical Register, where he is made to strut and rant in a similar vein.[12] But again, there is no manuscript to confirm the attribution.

Since all the extant manuscripts of the journal antedate 27-28 June 1739, when Walpole's agents confiscated them,[13] they offer no clues to the authorship of any essays published after that time. In my opinion, however, Fielding did make at least one, and quite possibly two, further contributions to Common Sense during the period before The Champion began publication on 15 November. On 15 September Molloy devoted his front page to two witty and learned letters from, ostensibly,

two anonymous correspondents. The first is a political piece which begins with a friendly caveat to the editor—"The Restraint, or Excise, which Wit may some Time or other suffer, will confine the Use of it altogether to Manuscripts or Discourse; and even then, the Use of it may lead its Owner into great Inconveniencies, if he has not the Art to check it, or let it loose with Judgment and Discretion"—and proceeds through references to Tacitus and Juvenal, Bacon and Ralegh, to apply the lessons of history to present politics, most particularly to the consequences of corruption and luxury in high places and to the threat ministerial "Whisperers" post to freedom of expression. The second is on a moral theme, being the droll complaint of a man who has pored over many books hoping in vain that the wisdom of the ancients might cure him of his favorite vices—"Talkativeness" and "Intemperance in eating and drinking." Both these letters show has and does instead of Fielding's usual archaisms; but, with some reservations about the first, I believe they are his work. Certainly, as the "Mum Budget" essay attests, few others at this time could speak more feelingly, or with such humor and playful erudition, about the "great Inconveniencies" authors might suffer owing to the "Restraint, or Excise," on "Wit" in Walpole's England. And again, with "Mum Budget's" views on the wisdom of silence in mind, there is, at least, a witty symmetry worthy of Fielding in this new piece on talkativeness from a man who, though he has "a thousand Precepts in [his] Budget against going too far," finds them all sadly ineffectual. Might we not see these two letters, treating political and moral matters in that humorous way so characteristic of Fielding's manner in The Champion, as a sort of preliminary exercise calculated to demonstrate his qualifications for conducting a periodical paper of his own? However that may be, I do believe he wrote them. Proving he did is a very different matter of course, perhaps for another occasion.

What follows is an annotated transcript of the manuscript in the Public Record Office (Chancery Lane)—call number: SP9/35, items 215-16. The manuscript itself, comprising two folio sheets (12½ by 7¾ inches) with writing on both sides, is photographically reproduced in the plates accompanying this article. In preparing the transcript, I have tried to convey a sense of Fielding's original intentions. Whenever I was confident that I could distinguish these from the changes introduced by Molloy as he edited the copy, I have disregarded the latter in order to restore Fielding's own phrasing and his own practice with respect to the accidentals, particularly paragraphing. Unfortunately, though it is comparatively easy to distinguish between author and editor in substantive matters—Molloy's hand being quite different from Fielding's— it is virtually impossible to do so in the case of pointing. Elsewhere, in

his correspondence, Fielding tends toward minimal punctuation;[14] but he may well have followed a different practice when marking copy for publication—and since the present manuscript is the only such copy by him which has survived, there is no basis for comparison. Some decisions affecting capitalization—especially the capitalization of nouns— were also difficult, since the form Fielding gives certain letters is constant, whether he intends them for upper or lower case: this is true of his m, o, s, u, v, w, and occasionally his a. When he means to capitalize these letters he simply writes them larger; and size being a relative thing, his intention is not always clear. In doubtful cases, therefore, I have followed his normal practice of capitalizing substantive nouns. Finally, in annotating the essay, I have not glossed biographical or political matters when these have been dealt with above.

* * *

I believe you may have wondered at not hearing from me in so long time, and will, perhaps, be more surprized at the Reason I am going to give you.—In short, Sir, I am at length thoroughly convinced, that the utmost Perfection of human Wisdom is Silence;[1] and that when a Man hath learnt to hold his Tongue, he may be properly said to have arrived at the highest Pitch of Philosophy.

I am so very fond of this virtue, that I shall do a kind of violence to it (for Silence implies holding the Pen as well as the Tongue) to trumpet forth its Praises, seeing that, upon much deep Reflection, I am persuaded, if any Virtue hath had that universal Assent Wch Mr Lock seems to deny,[2] it must be allowed to be this.

Solomon, the wisest of Men, declares loudly in Commendation of this virtue. In the multitude of Words, says he, there wanteth not Sin: but he that refraineth his Lips is wise. again,—he that hath Knowledge spareth his words. and[3] again, Even a Fool, when he holdeth his Lips, is counted wise; and he that shutteth his Lips is esteemed a Man of Understanding.[4] and in several other Places throughout his Proverbs.

King David is so fond of Silence, that he applauds himself for abstaining even from good words; which, tho' it seems it was extremely troublesome to him, yet he was so resolute in his Perseverance in this virtue, that rather than

let a word go from him he was determined to put a Bridle, or, as I have seen it rendered from the Hebrew, a Muzzle on his Mouth.[5]

The Stoicks, the greatest, wisest and most virtuous of all the Sects of Heathen Philosophers,[6] had this virtue in such Estimation, that it is well known what a long Silence was necessary to qualify a Graduate in their Schools:[7] —whether these great Men imagined, as some have insinuated, that Wisdom, like good Ale, ripened and refined it self by being well corked, I will not decide; or whether they might not, with greater Justice observe, that Wisdom, like Air, being stopped in one place would naturally find a vent in another, and so, by keeping the Mouth close shut, infuse itself into the Muscles of the Face, and thereby create what we call a wise Look, a Quality ever held in great Esteem, and of singular good use in all Philosophical Societies.

Homer, a Poet of deep Penetration, to give his Reader a vast Idea of the wisdom of the Greeks, makes particular mention of the profound Silence in which their Army marched.

oὶ δ'αρ ισαν σιγη μενεα πνειονΤες Aχαιοι.[8]

But, indeed, such are the Honours which Antiquity hath conferred on this admirable Quality, that I may say, with Cicero, si velim omnia percurrere Dies deficeret;[9] I shall therefore confine my self, in the Residue of this Letter, to my own Country, which, I can with Pleasure observe to have been inferiour to no other in her Esteem of Silence.

To begin with our Philosophers,—The Spectator, whom the French call Le Socrate moderne,[10] was so perfect an Observer of Silence, that he assures us he seldom proceeded farther in Conversation than to a Monosyllable; that he had often, among Persons not thoroughly acquainted with him, passed by the name of the Dumb Man: to which I need not add the great Ceremony & Difficulty with which his Mouth was once publickly opened, as it is so

universally known.[11] In a Word, he seems to value himself more on his Taciturnity than his Eloquence, and, notwithstanding the universal Applause his Works procured him, seems to have taken to himself more Merit from what he had not said, than what he had.

2dly, it is well remembered, that somewhat less than 100 years ago Silence had obtained so much Ground in our Religious Meetings, That the secret, silent Breathings of the Spirit diffused themselves all over the Nation, some notable Remains of which we have at this Day among the People called Quakers;—the Profoundness of whose silent Meetings I have often beheld with great Pleasure, nor can I help observing here the Insinuation of a certain reverend Dean, in a serious Essay of his, that true Christianity hath been put to Silence some time ago among us.[12]

But this Virtue blossoms no where so much as among the Politicians.—A certain ludicrous Poet, in a Piece called the Historical Register, wherein he introduced several Politicians on the Stage, gives this Character of Silence to the chief of them;[13] but I am afraid in so doing, he did not act very politickly for himself: for I have observed, that his Muse hath been silent ever since.

I have heard of a Coffee House Politician, who, by long Study and deep Attention to the Art of Politicks, hath contracted as great a Fondness for Silence as ever Don Quixotte had for Knight Errantry. It is reported of this whimsical Person, that he would bribe Persons to hold their Tongue. I have heard, that if any Fellow attempted to make a Noise in the Coffee House he was sure to have a Sum[14] of the old Gentleman, to procure his future Silence; which, they tell me, produced some comical Events.

As Mankind are generally apt, in their Opinions, to pay great Regard to the value the Person sets on himself, and to esteem the Beauty of Women and Wit of men in proportion to the Difficulty which attends their Enjoyment:

so this Old Gentleman, by his great Parsimony of Words, at last procured such a veneration for every thing he uttered, that my Grandfather, in whose Time he lived, hath assured me that, on his offering to open his Mouth, the whole Audience have attended as if Friar Bacon's brazen Head had been on the Table.[15] In short, this Gentlemen [sic] (whose Profession was that of a Haberdasher of small Wares)[16] acquired at last such a Reputation in the Coffee-House by his Taciturnity (for my Grandfather says he can attribute it to nothing else,) that no one ever spoke but himself; & being now become the Oracle of the House, he used to make certain weighty Motions concerning Tobacco, Coffee, &c. and when no one answered him, he always ordered accordingly, pronouncing with a grave Accent, Silence gives Consent.

But if we search narrowly into these Characters, which the French call outrez, we may commonly discover in them Contradictions equal to their Absurdities: for this old Fellow, who had so violent an Antipathy to some Noises, had as great a Fondness for others. Thus he is said to have been a passionate Admirer of a Drum,[17] at the same time that he always fainted at the Sound of a Musquet; and his Antipathy to the human Organs, themselves, was not without some Particularity, and, indeed, seems to have been not so much to the Sounds as to the Ideas they conveyed: of which I have heard the following Instance: One of the Waiters at the Coffee-House, whom they called young Will, was so notorious a Babbler, that it was generally thought the old Gentleman abovesaid would have insisted on his being turned away; but what was their Surprize, when they beheld him clap young Will on the Back & tip him Sixpence, crying out, That's my good Boy, for tho' thou talkest more than any Body, no Man can accuse thee of having ever said any thing.

So much for this old Coffee-House Politician: but pray, Mr Common-Sense, will you be so good to inform us, who live at this Distance, whether any of this Gentleman's Successors are yet living; whether there reigns as great[18] Silence in the Coffee-Houses [sic] at present as this Gentleman maintaind in It as long as he lived.[19] There was a great Noise some time ago concerning Spanish Depradations, which we did not like.—I do assure you, Sir, as great an Enemy as I am to Noise, I should not be displeased at the Musick

of a few Broad Sides: methinks, I could h[ea]r[20] you with Pleasure on that Head; for if we are quite silent at home, it is probable we may hear on both Sides our Ears from abroad: but sure we may have better Expectations from the glorious Warmth of our King, and the ready Zeal of his Parlt to support him therein. After this, no silent Steps are to be apprehended, and therefore I shall be silent on that Head.

But it is now time for me to relapse into my usual Silence, therefore, after having congratulated you on yr prudent speaking but once a Week, while the Gazeteer chatters every day, I shall, in a silent Manner, assure you, I am

Yr most humble Servt,
Mum Budget [21]
Devon, 1 April, 1738.

Notes