Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/449

 12 S. II. DEC. 2, 1916.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

443

work, or have gained sufficient knowledge of the world to enable him to express an opinion on it. Fielding was not a prig. Yet, admitting that Fielding may, for some special reason, have studied Burnet's ' His- tory of his own. Times,' would he have attacked it thus ? Assuredly not. The work was edited by the Bishop's son, Thomas Burnet, later a judge, whom Fielding, in his ' Voyage to Lisbon,' calls " my ever-honoured and beloved friend." In his ' Vindication of her Grace the Duchess Dowager of Marlborough ,' 1742, Fielding cites Burnet as an authority, and terms him " so impartial an historian." Consider, too, that there was no person for whom, in his younger days, Fielding entertained so sincere a regard as for his cousin Lady Mary Wort ley Montagu, whom he addressed in 1728 a,s " one whose accurate judgment has long been the glory of her own sex, and the wonder of ours." Now Lady Mary had a very decided opinion of William III.'s trusted counsellor :

" The Bishop of Salisbury (Burnet, I mean), the most indulgent parent, the most generous church- man, and the most zealous assertor of the rights and liberties of his country, was all his life defamed and vilified, and after his death barbarously calumniated, for having had the courage to write a history without flattery. I knew him in my youth, and his condescension in directing a girl in her studies is an obligation I can never forget." In Paston's ' Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her Times,' p. 505 (Methuen).

(d) Finally, in the preface to the ' Mis- cellanies ' Fielding wrote :

"I would caution my reader that it is not a very faithful portrait of Jonathan Wild himself.... Roguery, and not a rogue, is my subject....! have not, to my knowledge, ever seen a single paper relating to my hero, save some short memoirs, which about the time of his death were published in certain chronicles called newspapers, the authority of which has been sometimes questioned, and in the Ordinary of Newgate his account, which generally contains a more particu- lar relation of what the heroes are to suffer in the next world than of what they did in this."

Had Fielding in fact been the author of the Mist articles in 1725, would he not by writing in this strain in 1743 have been guilty of a suppressio veri, a defection, from all we know of him, that strikes one as alien to his nature ? Furthermore, he appears to have- had some little contempt for Mr. Mist personally (Covent Garden Journal, No. 51).

IV. Fielding in his ' Essay on Nothing *" in the ' Miscellanies ' of 1743 writes (see II. ) :

" The inimitable author of a preface to the posthumous Eclogues of a late ingenious young gentleman says : ' There are men who sit down to write what they think, and others to think what they shall write.' But indeed there is a third, and much more numerous sort, who never think either before they sit down or afterwards ; and who, when they produce on paper what was before in their heads, are sure to produce Nothing."

I find that Fielding 15 here quoting from

" Love Elegies, by Mr. H nd. Written in the

Year 1732. With a Preface by the E, of C d.

London, Printed for G. Hawkins at Milton's Head between the Temple Gates, Fleet St., and sold by T. Cooper at the Globe in Pater Noster Row 1743."

The author was James Hammond, who died in June, 1742 a date which assists irt fixing the time at which Fielding composed this essay and the preface-writer was Lord Chesterfield. In a second edition, which appeared in 1754, both names are given in full.

V. Writing of the first appearance of Fielding's 'Tom Thumb' (10 S. vi. 76), a correspondent, who sets out in full a theatrical announcement from The Craftsman of April 29, 1732, with a Miss Robinson playing the title-part, suggests that this actress " must have been the unfortunate Maria Robinson, pupil of Hannah More." As Maria Robinson (Perdita) was not bom till 1758, clearly the suggestion cannot be accepted. J. PAUL DE CASTRO.

1 Essex Court, Temple.

AN ENGLISH ARMY LIST OF 1740. (See ante, pp. 3, 43, 84, 122, 163, 204, 243, 282, 324, 364, 402.)

BRIGADIER WENTWORTH'S REGIMENT OF FOOT (p. 36) was raised in Ireland in 1689, aan was later known as " The 24th (or the 2nd Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot." Since 1881 it has been designated "The South Wales Borderers" :

Brigadier Wentworth's Regiment Dates of their Dates of their first

of Foot. present commissions. commissions.

Brigadier General Thomas Wentworth, Colonel (1) 27 June 1737 Captain, 10 Mar. 1704.

Lieutenant Colonel Theophilus Sandford (2). . 18 Aug. 1739 Lieutenant, 1713.

Major. . . . Hector Hamon. . . . 3 Nov. 1735 Ensign, 1 April 1707.

(1) Colonel of the 39th Foot, 1732-7, and of the 6th Regiment of ;Borse (5th Dragoon Guards), 1745-7. He commanded the forces in the expedition against Carthagena (South America) in 1740-41. . Died at Turin in November, 1747, then holding a diplomatic appointment there.

(2) Killed before Carthagena, 1741.