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However low Fielding might descend for his humour, he rarely reached direct personal abuse. His quarrel was with Grub Street as represented by the writers on the newspapers of the Opposition. He must have known who the men were that called themselves "Argus Centoculi" and "The Fool"; and, following the example of Pope, he might have pried into their lives for scandalous incidents. That he would not do. Nor did he print their names with the vowels out, leaving the initial, middle, and final consonants a common practice in his time as a means of escaping an indictment for libel. Only when burlesquing the style of others was he accustomed, in his own phrase, to "embowel or rather emvowel" words; and he expressed contempt for the intelligence of the judge who in a case of libel decided for the defendant on the ground that it was not certain who was meant by a row of consonants about which nobody else had any doubt. Always Fielding respected anonymity if a writer chose it, and avoided the scurrilous anecdote though he might have it at hand. With Fielding

the point of attack was not so much the individual behind the masque as the class to which he belonged. What he sometimes said about the personality of an anonymous writer was so obviously fictitious that no one could regard it as having any basis in fact.

It was not so with the gentlemen of the press whom he infuriated by his irony and ridicule. "A heavier load of scandal," said Fielding while writing "The Jacobite's Journal," "hath been cast upon me, than I believe ever fell to the share of a single man." The assertion is true for the literary men of the eighteenth century if we except Pope. With no disguise beyond casting out the vowels of his name, he was pelted in verse and prose, often in company with Pelham and Lyttelton. Pelham became "Palaam," a wretched pun upon "Balaam," who held conversations with the ass that wrote "The Jacobite's Jour

nal." Lyttelton was known as "Little-Tony" to rhyme with "money," or as "Selim Slim," so named in derision from the character of Selim in "The Persian Letters" and from the extreme thinness of his person. According to "The London Evening Post," Trottplaid or Fg was the hireling of these politicians; the "magpie" whom "Patron Slim" taught to scream obscene phrases, the meaning of which he did not know; "a dolt," "an obsequious fool," "an incorrigible blockhead," "a reptile scribbler," or "a madman" found straying in St. James's Park, whom his friends ought to commit to the care of the learned Dr. James Monro, physician to Bethlehem Hospital for the insane. In "Old England" "Aretine" had an open letter addressed to Selim Slim, censuring Lyttelton for taking into his service "the outcast of the playhouse! the refuse of the booksellers! the jest of authors, and the contempt of every ingenious reader." But all this was very mild compared with a character-sketch of Fielding which Argus Centoculi subsequently printed from the pen of "Porcupine Pelagius." Fielding was there made to say of himself down to the time that he reached a haven of rest as "the pensioned scribbler" of the Pelham Ministry:

"Hunted after Fortune, and lived on Kept-Mistresses for a while; scored deep at the Taverns, borrow'd Money of my Landlords and their Drawers; burrough'd in privileg'd Places among the Flatcaps of the Town, abused my Benefactors in the Administration of public Affairs, of religious Dispensations, of Justice, and of the Stage; hackney'd for Booksellers and News-Papers; lampoon'd the Virtuous, wrote the Adventures of Footmen, and the Lives of Thief-Catchers; crampt the Stage, debased the Press, and brought it into Jeopardy; bilk'd every Lodging for Ten Years together, and every Alehouse and Chandler's Shop in every Neighbourhood; Defrauded and revil'd all my Acquaintance, and being quite out of Cash, Credit and

Character, as well as out of Charity with all Mankind, haunted by Duns and Bumbailiffs, hollow'd, hooted at and chased from every Side and by every Voice, I escap'd with whole Bones indeed, but d-bly mangled into these Purlieus of Safety, where no venemous Creatures dare enter."'*

Summarizing the attacks upon him, Fielding declared that the writers on the anti-ministerial press, as soon as they got hold of his name, "attempted to blacken it with every kind of reproach; pursued me into private life, even to my boyish years; where they have given me almost every vice in human nature." "Again," to quote further, "they have followed me, with uncommon inveteracy, into a profession, in which they have very roundly asserted, that I have neither business nor knowledge: and lastly, as an author, they have affected to treat me with more contempt, than Mr. Pope, who had great merit and no less pride in the character of a writer, hath thought proper to bestow on the lowest scribbler of his time. All this, moreover, they have poured forth in a vein of scurrility, which hath disgraced the press with every abusive term in our language." It was impossible, he said, for any man to defend himself against slander so determined and malicious. He could nevertheless console himself with the reflection that those who knew him would not take their opinion from those who knew him not. And then for the amusement of his readers, he illustrated by the death of Socrates how the scandalmonger, having a few facts, may pervert them to his purposes. Fielding called it "the Art of mixing up Truth and Falsehood." Socrates, it is well known, might have escaped from prison had he so desired; but he chose to die in the midst of his disciples after those wonderful conversa

*"Old England," March 5, 1748. For other attacks, see "Old England,'' April 23, 30, June 25, and Nov. 12, 1748; and "The London Evening Post," March 12-15, 15-17, 29-31, April 7-9, July 28-30, Sept. 13-15, 17-20, Oct. 8-11, Nov. 5-8, 1748, and many other issues of these newspapers.

tions on the immortality of the soul. When his wife Xanthippe visited him on the morning of the last day, he was disturbed by her loud lamentations and requested a friend to remove "the troublesome woman." These are the facts according to Plato; but had there been an "Athenian Evening Post," the editor would have inserted the following paragraph on the occasion:

"WE HEAR the famous Atheist Socrates, who was lately condemned for Impiety to the Gods, refused to go out of Prison, tho' the Doors were set open, and defied the Government to execute him; a fresh Instance of his Obstinacy. He persisted likewise in uttering the most horrid and shocking Blasphemies to the last; and when his Wife, who, WE HEAR, is a Woman of remarkable Sweetness of Temper, and whom he hath very cruelly used on many Occasions, went to take her Leave of him, he abused her in the grossest Language, called her by several opprobrious Names, and at length prevailed on one of his Gang, who were there to visit him, to kick the poor Woman down Stairs; so that she now lies ill of the Bruises she received."*

Inasmuch as "men of the best and most solemn characters" had no certain redress at law for libels against them, Fielding decided to erect a "Court of Criticism,' with himself as judge and lawmaker, for "the well-ordering and inspecting all matters any wise concerning the Republic of Literature, and for the correction and punishment of all abuses committed therein" by the horde of "loose, idle, and disorderly persons, calling themselves authors." It would not be, he promised, merely "a Court of Damnation," for he intended to recommend every book or writing in which he could discover the least merit. The public was strictly charged not to purchase any new book or to attend any new play at the theatres until it had received the approbation of the court. Bills of complaint might be presented

* "The Jacobite's Journal," June 11, 1748.

in person or by letter; and in answer to them authors might appear with witnesses and counsel if they wished. Whichever way it happened, a fearless judge would render an impartial decision. All proceedings of the court, which would sit weekly, were to be reported by the clerk in "The Jacobite's Journal" and nowhere else. The account of these transactions, begun in the seventh number, was continued down through the thirty-third, with four omissions in weeks when there came from the press no book worth the slightest consideration.

Before his court Fielding summoned the worst literary offenders to meet their fate. "The Fool" and the editor of "The London Evening Post" were easily convicted of scurrility. The author of "The Letters to the Whigs" was adjudged guilty of calumny; and a sentence of infamy was accordingly pronounced against him. "Porcupine Pelagius," none other in the court's opinion than "Argus Centoculi" under another name, was denounced in a scathing address to the culprit for libelling the law, the church, and the editor of "The Jacobite's Journal" in "Old England" and various satirical poems such as "The Causidicade" and "The 'Piscopade"; but in view of the scribbler's wretched condition, the court thought it sufficient to commit "Porcupine Pillage" to "the Bridewell of Billingsgate" for a month and to stand for a full day in the pillory of "The Jacobite's Journal" with two opprobrious Latin verses pasted over his head. Ever since 1743, a literary hack connected with the newspapers had been collecting stray poems and publishing them under the title of "The Foundling Hospital for Wit"; hence Fielding's "Hospital for Scoundrels." This writer, known as "Samuel Silence," pleaded so pathetically his poverty in excuse for the crime of attempting to impose bastard wit upon the public for true and legitimate humour, that the judge not only dismissed him but gave him a half-crown to purchase bread.