of the movements of the armies in the North, labelled "The Present History of Great Britain." Fielding's observations on the rebellion, running through the first numbers, were especially commended at the time for their moderation. His point of attack was not the Scottish people, whom he loved and honoured, but that band of "outlaws, robbers, and cut-throats" which the Pretender collected for an invasion of England. These banditti, he maintained, were not representative of Scotland. The Scottish nation as a whole-her nobility, her gentry, her clergy, the common people of the Lowlands—remained, he averred, loyal to the House of Hanover. It might have been expected that the initial success of the rebellion would have swept vast numbers into the ranks of the Highlanders; but such had not been the case. "Except outlaws, and one or two profligate younger brothers, there is not," said Fielding, “a single man of any name in the Kingdom, who hath given sanction to the Pretender's cause." All this redounded to the glory of Scotland. The politics of the first number were enlivened by ridicule of the Pretender and his master the Pope, and by "A Loyal Song" to the tune of Lillibullero, "proper to be sung at all merry meetings." A few announcements from the booksellers completed an issue. To Fielding's credit were excluded all those accounts of nostrums by quack doctors—of those pills, drops, and tinctures which disgraced eighteenth-century journalism. In place of them, an advertisement, written by himself and for which he received no pay, does the man the greatest honour. In the ninth number we may read in italics :

A

NY Person who hath enough of real Christianity to preserve a large Family from Destruction by advancing the Sum of Two hundred Pounds, on a reasonable Prospect of its being repaid, may hear further Particulars, by applying to Mr. Millar, Bookseller, opposite Katharine Street in the Strand.

Fielding dealt little in the general news, political or other, of the ordinary newspaper except to burlesque it. Such news as he regarded of genuine interest usually formed a part of "The Present History of Great Britain." It was his practice to gather from the newspapers of the week about a page of the more absurd paragraphs and to reprint them with comment beneath the headlines: "APOCRYPHA. Being a curious Collection of certain true and important WE HEARS from the News-Papers." He liked to show how one newspaper contradicted another, or how an item was rendered valueless by the vagueness of the rumour upon which it was based. On observing two "we hears" in a single paragraph of "The General Advertiser" he remarks: "As two negatives make an affirmative, two 'we hears,' I am afraid, amount to a negative." The same newspaper announced that the Duke of Richmond's regiment was at Lichfield; and Fielding, in printing the news, adds: "The Duke hath no regiment." The public was informed that yesterday the saddles for the Duke of Bedford's Regiment of Horse set out from town; whereupon Fielding comments: "As the Duke of Bedford hath only a regiment of foot, it is probable these saddles will shortly set out on their way home again." "The Daily Advertiser" said, "We hear that the Rebels are much afflicted with the bloody flux"; to which Fielding replies that "it is a distemper which may probably increase, if General Hawley should be able to come up with them." Two men were committed to prison-Patrick Hand as a sneak thief, and Thomas Sutton for stealing old iron. The former, Fielding thinks, made "an ill use of his name"; while the latter "will probably experience the danger Hudibras asserts there is in meddling with that commodity," if the lines be true

Ay me! what perils do environ

The man that meddles with cold iron!

Week by week, "The True Patriot" went on with these "ingenious conceits," as they were called, to the exasperation of the other newspapers, fixing a fashion since revived and continued by "Punch," the wittiest of all periodicals.

A paragraph of the Apocrypha described the "ghosts" of the week, by which Fielding meant false news, puffs, and advertisements that appeared in the other newspapers. There were ghosts of Grub Street poets, lottery-mongers, Jacobite pamphleteers, messengers from the North, and one of a large black man-Orator Henley-suspected of being a Jacobite-who appeared on Sunday evenings at the Papist chapel near Clare Market and "talked for a whole hour what none of his hearers understood." The rendezvous of these apparitions was "The Daily Advertiser" and some other enterprising newspapers, which kept people up all night to wait for "extraordinary" issues-"extras" we now call them for short-bearing fresh tidings from Scotland, afterwards to be found untrue or mere repetitions of what had been published earlier in the day. Though Fielding has his fun with these "extraordinary ghosts," he looked with some favour, he said, on the ghosts of advertisers, and referred them to the business office of "The True Patriot." "Mrs. Cooper, the publisher of this paper," he told them, "is provided with several walking licences for ghosts, by our authority; which she issues forth to the said ghosts at various prices, from three shillings to half a guinea, according to the length and breadth of the respective ghosts; and all shadows which for the future shall venture to appear abroad in the shape of puffs or advertisements, without such licence, shall be instantly lay'd in this paper." The facetious paragraph, however, brought very few advertisements to "The True Patriot."

Humorous comment overflowed into the lists of the married and the dead. Almost every woman who married

was described by the newspapers as "beautiful" or "agreeable" or possessed of "a considerable fortune." Everybody who died was "eminent." There were eminent booksellers, eminent grocers, eminent apothecaries, eminent brewers, and eminent tobacconists, many of whom were "wealthy" as well as "eminent," and wrote "Esquire" after their names. These lists Fielding made up every week from the other newspapers, with here and there a remark printed in italics to distinguish his own property from that of Grub Street. A pun, I suppose, was intended in addressing the fortunate young man of the following marriage notice:

"Mr. John Rayner, a Quaker, to Miss Cowper, with a handsome Fortune, and every Accomplishment which can render a Lady agreeable. Friend Rayner, thou hast chosen well."

That year a cattle distemper, to which the newspapers gave much space, was raging throughout England. Fielding mingled cows with obscure people in his groups of the dead:

"Mrs. Mary Tyrrington; she was the last of her Name. She is the first of it I have ever heard of.

"Rev. Mr. Wicket; he had a Living in Kent. He was well known at the polite End of the Town; but I have often heard it doubted whether the last Letter of his name was d or t.

"Tuesday. Mr. Tillcock an eminent Stocking Presser in Grub-street. Wednesday, Mr. Tillcock is not dead but in perfect Health. It is unpardonable in these Historians to mistake in Matters of such Consequence, especially in their own Neighbourhood.

"Upwards of 40 Cows belonging to one at Tottenham Court, universally lamented by all their Acquaintance.

"N.B. If great Men and Cattle die so fast, we shall scarce have room to bury them in our Paper."

Sometimes Fielding made merry over old men who take young wives, and over widows who quickly recover from their grief. One story he tells of a woman who lost her husband in the summer, married another in the autumn, and on his death in the winter, died herself. Their friends took up the corpse of the first husband, dug the grave deeper, and put all three in together.

These jests on the dead and the living were not everywhere relished, for we find Fielding making an apology for them in the tenth number of his periodical. "To prevent," he says there, "giving offence to the many eminent dead persons, as well as to several young ladies of great beauty, merit and fortune, we shall for the future register all marriages and deaths as they come to hand, and leave all distinction to the public; after having premised that every word printed in italics is our own, and of these, and these only we will be answerable for the truth."

When someone died whom he knew for his good qualities, or whom the world esteemed, the comment became serious and unconventional in phrase. The death of that old miser, Peter Walter, Esq., Fielding passed by with the remark that he was "worth upwards of £200,000." An Edward Syderham, Esq., was "a gentleman whose heart and hands were ever ready to relieve the wants of mankind." William Avery, Esq., of Bath was "one of a triumvirate of beaus, who have flourished there these fifty years. Richard Witherston, Esq., "a barrister at law, aged 44, by an early application to the most polite and no less useful parts of literature, greatly improved those abilities nature had so liberally bestowed on him." Mr. John Robinson, son of Mr. Robinson of Bath, was "a young man, who had given very early proofs of a great genius in his profession of portrait painting." Of Lord Wyndham, formerly "Lord Chancellor of the Kingdom of Ireland," who had retired to Salisbury when his health broke, and had since come to