of Chesterfield, and on the 21st of June 1737 the bill received the royal assent.
With its passing Fielding’s career as a dramatic author practically closed. In his dedication of the Historical Register to “the Publick,” he had spoken of his desire to beautify and enlarge his little theatre, and to procure a better company of actors; and he had added—“If Nature hath given me any Talents at ridiculing Vice and Imposture, I shall not be indolent, nor afraid of exerting them, while the Liberty of the Press and Stage subsists, that is to say, while we have any Liberty left among us.” To all these projects the “Licensing Act” effectively put an end; and the only other plays from his pen which were produced subsequently to this date were the “Wedding Day,” 1743, and the posthumous Good-Natured Man, 1779, both of which, as is plain from the Preface to the Miscellanies, were among his earliest attempts. In the little farce of Miss Lucy in Town, 1742, he had, he says, but “a very small Share.” Besides these, there are three hasty and flimsy pieces which belong to the early part of 1737. The first of these, Tumble-Down Dick; or, Phaeton in the Suds, was a dramatic sketch in ridicule of the unmeaning Entertainments and Harlequinades of John Rich at Covent Garden. This was ironically dedicated to Rich, under his stage name of “John Lun,” and from the dedication it appears that Rich had brought out an unsuccessful satire on Pasquin called Marforio. The other two were Eurydice, a profane and pointless farce, afterwards printed by its author (in anticipation of Beaumarchais) “as it was d—mned at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane;” and a few detached scenes in which, under the
