of political honesty.  “Pasquin,” it may be noted, was received with extraordinary favour, enjoyed a run of fifty nights, and proved a source of both fame and profit to its author.  But the play of “The Historical Register of 1736,” produced in the spring of 1737, contained allusions of a more pointed and personal kind, and gravely offended the government.  Indeed, the result could hardly have been otherwise.  Walpole himself was brought upon the stage, and under the name of Quidam violently caricatured.  He was exhibited silencing noisy patriots with bribes, and then joining with them in a dance—­the proceedings being explained by Medley, another of the characters, supposed to be an author:  “Sir, every one of these patriots has a hole in his pocket, as Mr. Quidam the fiddler there knows; so that he intends to make them dance till all the money has fallen through, which he will pick up again, and so not lose a halfpenny by his generosity!” The play, indeed, abounded in satire of the boldest kind, in witty and unsparing invective; as the biographer of Fielding acknowledges, there was much in the work “well calculated both to offend and alarm a wary minister of state.”  Soon both “Pasquin” and “The Historical Register” were brought under the notice of the Cabinet.  Walpole felt “that it would be inexpedient to allow the stage to become the vehicle of anti-ministerial abuse.”  The Licensing Act was resolved upon.

The new measure was not avowedly aimed at Fielding, however.  It was preceded by incidents of rather a suspicious kind.  Gifford, the manager of Goodman’s Fields Theatre, professing to have received from some anonymous writer a play of singular scurrility, carried the work to the prime minister.  The obsequious manager was rewarded with one thousand pounds for his patriotic conduct, and the libellous nature of the play he had surrendered was made the excuse for the legislation that ensued.  It was freely observed at the time, however, that Gifford had profited more by suppressing the play than he could possibly have gained by representing it, and that there was something more than natural in the appositeness of his receipt of it.  If honest, it was suggested that he had been trapped by a government spy, who had sent him the play, solely that he might deal with it as he did; but it was rather assumed that he had disingenuously curried favour with the authorities, and sold himself for treasury gold.  The play in question was never acted or printed; nor was the name of the author, or of the person from whom the manager professed to have received it, ever disclosed.  Horace Walpole, indeed, boldly ascribed it to Fielding, and asserted that he had discovered among his father’s papers an imperfect copy of the play.  But the statement has not obtained much acceptance.