Fielding | Page 7

may have
been its preliminary difficulties, Fielding's first play was not exposed to
so untoward a fate. It was well received. As might be expected in a
beginner, and as indeed the references in the Preface to Wycherley and
Congreve would lead us to expect, it was an obvious attempt in the
manner of those then all-popular writers. The dialogue is ready and
witty. But the characters have that obvious defect which Lord
Beaconsfield recognised when he spoke in later life of his own earliest

efforts. "Books written by boys," he says, "which pretend to give a
picture of manners and to deal in knowledge of human nature must
necessarily be founded on affectation." To this rule the personages of
Love in Several Masques are no exception. They are drawn rather from
the stage than from life, and there is little constructive skill in the plot.
A certain booby squire, Sir Positive Trap, seems like a first indication
of some of the later successes in the novels; but the rest of the dramatis
personae are puppets. The success of the piece was probably owing to
the acting of Mrs. Oldfield, who took the part of Lady Matchless, a
character closely related to the Lady Townleys and Lady Betty
Modishes, in which she won her triumphs. She seems, indeed, to have
been unusually interested in this comedy, for she consented to play in it
notwithstanding a "slight Indisposition" contracted "by her violent
Fatigue in the Part of Lady Townly," and she assisted the author with
her corrections and advice--perhaps with her influence as an actress.
Fielding's distinguished kinswoman Lady Mary Wortley Montagu also
read the MS. Looking to certain scenes in it, the protestation in the
Prologue--
"Nought shall offend the Fair Ones Ears to-day, Which they might
blush to hear, or blush to say"--
has an air of insincerity, although, contrasted with some of the writer's
later productions, Love in Several Masques is comparatively pure. But
he might honestly think that the work which had received the
imprimatur of a stage-queen and a lady of quality should fairly be
regarded as morally blameless, and it is not necessary to bring any bulk
of evidence to prove that the morality of 1728 differed from the
morality of to-day.
To the last-mentioned year is ascribed a poem entitled the "Masquerade.
Inscribed to C--t H--d--g--r. By Lemuel Gulliver, Poet Laureate to the
King of Lilliput." In this Fielding made his satirical contribution to the
attacks on those impure gatherings organised by the notorious
Heidegger, which Hogarth had not long before stigmatised pictorially
in the plate known to collectors as the "large Masquerade Ticket." As
verse this performance is worthless, and it is not very forcibly on the

side of good manners; but the ironic dedication has a certain touch of
Fielding's later fashion. Two other poetical pieces, afterwards included
in the Miscellanies of 1743, also bear the date of 1728. One is A
Description of U--n G-- (alias New Hog's Norton) in Com. Hants,
which Mr. Keightley has identified with Upton Grey, near Odiham, in
Hampshire. It is a burlesque description of a tumbledown
country-house in which the writer was staying, and is addressed to
Rosalinda. The other is entitled To Euthalia, from which it must be
concluded that, in 1728, Sarah Andrew had found more than one
successor. But in spite of some biographers, and of the apparent
encouragement given to his first comedy, Fielding does not seem to
have followed up dramatic authorship with equal vigour, or at all
events with equal success. His real connection with the stage does not
begin until January 1730, when the Temple Beau was produced by
Giffard the actor at the theatre in Goodman's Fields, which had then
just been opened by Thomas Odell; and it may be presumed that his
incentive was rather want of funds than desire of fame. The Temple
Beau certainly shows an advance upon its predecessor; but it is an
advance in the same direction, imitation of Congreve; and although
Geneste ranks it among the best of Fielding's plays, it is doubtful
whether modern criticism would sustain his verdict. It ran for a short
time, and was then withdrawn. The Prologue was the work of James
Ralph, afterwards Fielding's colleague in the Champion, and it thus
refers to the prevailing taste. The Beggar's Opera had killed Italian
song, but now a new danger had arisen,--
"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