Page:Fielding.djvu/131

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Rebellion, was succeeded in December 1747 by the Jacobite’s Journal, supposed to emanate from “John Trott-Plaid, Esq.,” and intended to push the discomfiture of Jacobite sentiment still further. It is needless to discuss these mainly political efforts at any length. They are said to have been highly approved by those in power: it is certain that they earned for their author the stigma of “pension’d scribbler.” Both are now very rare; and in Murphy the former is represented by twenty-four numbers, the latter by two only. The True Patriot contains a dream of London abandoned to the rebels, which is admirably graphic; and there is also a prophetic chronicle of events for 1746, in which the same idea is treated in a lighter and more satirical vein. But perhaps the most interesting feature is the reappearance of Parson Adams, who addresses a couple of letters to the same periodical—one on the rising generally, and the other on the “young England” of the day, as exemplified in a very offensive specimen he had recently encountered at Mr. Wilson’s. Other minor points of interest in connection with the Jacobite’s Journal, are the tradition associating Hogarth with the rude woodcut headpiece (a Scotch man and woman on an ass led by a monk) which surmounted its earlier numbers, and the genial welcome given in No. 5, perhaps not without some touch of contrition, to the two first volumes, then just published, of Richardson’s Clarissa. The pen is the pen of an imaginary “correspondent,” but the words are unmistakably Fielding’s:—

“When I tell you I have lately received this Pleasure [i.e. of reading a new master-piece], you will not want me to inform you that I owe it to the Author of CLARISSA. Such