In Thomas Cooke's short-lived periodical The Comedian, or Philosophical Enquirer, No. 5 (August 1732) there appeared together (pp. 32-38) a political essay defending the Walpole administration against the attacks of Opposition writers and a verse epistle praising the painter John Ellys. Introducing the essay, entitled "Observations on Government, the Liberty of the Press, News-papers, Partys, and Party-writer[s]," Cooke informed his readers that it had been "communicated to me by a Friend." Immediately following the essay, he introduced the poem, entitled "An Epistle to Mr. Ellys the Painter," stating that it was written by the author of the essay:
As I promised, in my first Number of this Work, never to conclude my Labours of the Month, without a Piece of Poetry, I am glad that I have now the Power to oblige my Readers with one worthy their Attention, written by the Author of the preceding Observations on Government, &c.
In 1968, in an essay on the circle of wits and artists who joined with Hogarth in a campaign to promote the cause of native English painting, J. B. Shipley was first to suspect that Fielding, a close friend of Cooke and Ellys, was author of the poem.[1] If Fielding wrote the poem, it would of course follow that he also wrote the essay, and vice versa. Some time later, Thomas Lockwood and I independently came to this conclusion,[2] and others, notably Bertrand Goldgar, Robert Hume and Ronald Paulson,[3] have found the attributions persuasive. To date, however, the case for Fielding's authorship has not been made; and my purpose here is to adduce evidence—from his relationships and circumstances at the time of composition and from parallels with his known writings—that points convincingly to his authorship.
To begin with, the notion, once prevalent among scholars, that Fielding never wavered in his hostility to the prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, has been thoroughly discredited.[4] In 1729, as Fielding began his career as
playwright, his unfinished burlesque of Pope's
Dunciad, discovered in 1968 among the papers of his cousin Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,
[5] reflects her own political views by ardently praising Walpole while satirizing the entire phalanx of Opposition writers. Although he occasionally indulged in anonymous literary high jinks at the minister's expense in 1728 and 1730,
[6] in the latter year and again in 1731 he also addressed a pair of humorous verse epistles to the Great Man, angling for his patronage. Even in
The GrubStreet Opera—the first of his openly political satires, which was suppressed before it could be staged in June 1731—the ridicule is even-handed in roasting both parties: Walpole in the character of Robin the butler, and Pulteney, leader of the Opposition, in the character of William the coachman. Far from marking the beginning of Fielding's alliance with the Opposition, as is sometimes said, the suppression of the
Grub-Street Opera in fact marked the beginning of a period of more than two years in which, having moved from the Little Haymarket, a much inferior theater, to the Court's own theater at Drury Lane, he prospered as London's most prolific and successful playwright.
Curiously, it was Fielding himself who stopped the production of The Grub-Street Opera at the eleventh hour (so the actors reported), and Fielding, too, who actively discouraged its publication when he might have expected the book of the play to be as profitable for him as Gay's had been in the case of Polly, similarly suppressed by the government two years earlier. It is difficult to account for this self-inflicted financial damage, or for his emerging in triumph at Drury Lane after the fiasco at the Haymarket while the actors themselves were hounded into hiding by the government. The only plausible explanation for these surprising events would seem to be that Fielding's overtures to the prime minister had been at last rewarded—that by whatever means, but most likely by promising him a place at the Theatre Royal, Walpole had made it worth Fielding's while to sink his own impudent ballad opera. So it certainly appeared to the public, and to the antiministerial authors of The Grub-Street Journal, when in February 1732, soon after Fielding's comedy The Modern Husband was staged at Drury Lane, the play was published with a fulsome dedication declaring his gratitude and allegiance to "the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter."[7]
Most of Fielding's friends in 1732 were associated with Walpole. Cooke in The Comedian and James Ralph in the Weekly Register both promoted the minister and his policies. And "Jack" Ellys had been engaged by Walpole to acquire the famous collection of paintings at Houghton, for which service Walpole would later appoint him Keeper of the Lions at the Tower. And
when, provoked by the Dedication of
The Modern Husband to Walpole, the authors of the
Grub-Street Journal began a campaign of vilification against Fielding and his plays that continued throughout the spring and summer, his only defenders were Court journalists: Cooke in
The Comedian (June, September, and October 1732), Ralph in the
Weekly Register (8 July 1732), and a pseudonymous writer in the
Daily Courant (29 July 1732).
In short, there is nothing improbable about the possibility that Fielding could be the "Friend" who contributed the pieces in question to Cooke's Comedian. The evidence of the texts themselves strongly suggests that he was. This evidence consists of parallels with his known writings, interests, and relationships which are recorded in the endnotes. In selecting the parallels, I have, as earlier in attributing the Craftsman essays to Fielding, followed the advice of the late James Earle Deese, a scientist well known for his studies of the psychological bases of language: on the principle that the probability of Fielding's authorship of a given anonymous essay increases in proportion to the number of close correspondences (whether commonplaces or otherwise) between that essay and his known writings, I have kept the number of parallels high. To assist the reader in distinguishing between the commonplace and the unusual, however, I have marked with an asterisk those notes that contain striking or distinctive parallels.
[8]
N.B. Not only in the texts in question but throughout the journal, Cooke, or the printer of The Comedian, shows certain peculiarities of spelling which are not Fielding's: among these are the plural of nouns and the past tense of verbs ending in y, such as Partys, Enemys, Beautys, etc. and sayed, denyed, heared, etc.
With the exception of the plays and certain other pieces listed below, references to Fielding's works are to the Wesleyan Edition (Middletown, CT, and Oxford: Wesleyan University Press and Oxford University Press, 1966/ 67- ), as follows in alphabetical order: Amelia, ed. Martin C. Battestin (1983); The Champion and Related Writings, ed. W. B. Coley (2003); The Covent-Garden Journal and A Plan of the Universal Register-Office, ed. Bertrand A. Goldgar (1988); An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers and Related Writings, ed. Malvin R. Zirker (1988); The Jacobite's Journal and Related Writings, ed. W. B. Coley (1975); Joseph Andrews, ed. Martin C. Battestin (1966/67); Miscellanies, Volume One, ed. Henry Knight Miller (1972), Volume Two and Volume Three, ed. Bertrand A. Goldgar and Hugh Amory (1993 and 1997); Tom Jones, ed. Martin C. Battestin and Fredson Bowers, 2 vols. (1974/75), 2nd edn. paperback (Wesleyan University Press, 1975); The True Patriot and Related Writings, ed. W. B. Coley (1987). For The Coffee-House Politician, The Modern Husband, and The Fathers, see Fielding's Complete Works, ed. W. E. Henley, vols. 9-10, 12 (1903); for
The Author's Farce (1730), ed. Charles B. Woods (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966). For
The Masquerade, see
The Female Husband and Other Writings, ed. Claude E. Jones (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1960); for
Shamela, see
Joseph Andrews and Shamela, ed. Martin C. Battestin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961); for
The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, ed. Tom Keymer (Penguin Books, 1996).
In the notes to the texts, the following abbreviations are used:
| AF = The Author's Farce (1730) |
JWN = Journey from This World to the Next (1743)
|
| Am = Amelia (1751) |
KCM = "Essay on the Knowledge of the Characters of Men" (1743)
|
|
CdGJ = Charge delivered to the Grand Jury (1749)
|
Life = Martin C. with Ruthe R. Battestin, Henry Fielding: A Life (London: Routledge, 1989)
|
| CGJ = Covent-Garden Journal (1752) |
Ma = Masquerade (1728) |
|
C-H = Chadwyck-Healey online database
Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Cambridge, England: ChadwyckHealey Ltd., 1996)
|
Misc1, 2, 3 = Miscellanies, vols. 1, 2, 3 |
| Ch = The Champion (1739-1740) |
New Essays = Martin C. Battestin, New Essays by Henry Fielding: His Contributions to the Craftsman (1734-1739) and Other Early Journalism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989)
|
| CS = Common Sense (1738) |
OED = Oxford English Dictionary
|
| EC = "Essay on Conversation" (1743) |
PRS = "Some Papers Proper to be Read before the R[oyal] Society" (1743)
|
|
ECIR = Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers (1751)
|
Ribbles = Frederick G. and Anne G. Ribble, Fielding's Library: An Annotated Catalogue (Charlottesville: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1996)
|
| F = The Fathers (1778) |
TG = Of True Greatness (1741) |
|
Grundy = Isobel M. Grundy, "New Verse by Fielding," PMLA (1972), 213-245
|
TJ = Tom Jones (1749) |
| HF = Henry Fielding |
TP = True Patriot (1745-1746) |
| JA = Joseph Andrews (1742) |
UG = Universal Gallant (1735) |
| JJ = Jacobite's Journal (1747-1748) |
US = Universal Spectator (1737) |
|
JSS = "Part of Juvenal's Sixth Satire Modernized in Burlesque Verse" (1743)
|
|
JVL = Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (1755)
|
| JW = Jonathan Wild (1743) |
