Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/61

 12 8. V. FEB., 1919.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

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lofty unreality and inflated gradiloquence " (to use Dr. Hillhouse's phrase) characteristic of the tragedy-writers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were attacked in ' Tom Thumb.' So keenly was Fielding's vigorous humour appreciated that the piece was played "upwards of forty nights," a record that would before ' The Beggar's Opera ' have been un- precedented.

Having thus secured the public ear, Fielding improved the occasion by reconstructing the play

Young ; if an inferior actor should, in his opinion, exceed Quin or Garrick ; or a signpost painter set himself above the inimitable Hogarth : we become ridiculous by our vanity."

There are also two Appendixes, both valuable. In Appendix A some details are given of ' The Battle of the Poets,' a satire on the choice of a new laureate to succeed Eusden (who had died in September, 1730), which was interpolated in ' Tom Thumb ' in December. Dr. Hillhouse concedes that from its " mean and spiteful tone "

enlarging it from two acts to three, renaming it ! it is improbable that Fielding was responsible for ' The Tragedy of Tragedies ? or, The Life and i it, but he omits to mention a more cogent reason Death of Tom Thumb the Great,' and staging it for dissociating his name from its authorship,

1 namely, an announcement in The Daily Journal of Nov. 30, 1730 : " Whereas it hath been adver- tised that an entire new act, called the Battle of the Poets, is introduced into the Tragedy of Tom Thumb ; This is to assure the Town, that I have

in 1731. The rearranged edition, embellished with an illustration by Hogarth, was also printed, and in addition Fielding conceived the idea of tacking to it a mock-critical preface and foot- notes. The preface replete, as Dr. Hillhouse remarks, with " solemn drollery " satirized the pedantries of critics and commentators generally, and of John Dennis in particular. ' The Tragedy of Tragedies ' is one continuous parody of the extravagant sentiments and the unrestrained bombast uttered by the stage-tyrants who peopled the plays of John Banks, Dennis, Dryden, [Nathaniel Lee, Elijah Fenton, Charles Johnson, Nahum Tate, Theobald, Thomson, Young, and others. In the preface Fielding presupposes the while the foot-notes teem with " parallel passages out of the best of our English writers " who had, as he alleges, borrowed their flamboyant heroics from it. Fielding's make-belief is so compelling, and the quotations are so apt and so numerous, that the task, though laborious, was evidently a most congenial one. That was perhaps the best earnest of success, for, as the learned President of Magdalen wrote but recently, " that work of art will not please twice which has not pleased once." But Fielding, knowing that his audiences and readers needed no assistance in catching the allusions to contemporary playwrights, limited his references mainly to the less-known classical plays. What Dr. Hillhouse has done is to put us in the position of Fielding's audiences and readers, and point out to us, in his own notes, many " hits " at then better-known productions which for Fielding to have noted would have been a work of supererogation. The extent to which the present-day reader is thus assisted to the many good things provided by Fielding's satire is indicated by the fact that while Fielding's text
 * Tragedy ' to be an Elizabethan production,

sixty-five pages, the to forty-one pages of

and foot-notes occupy editor's annotations run small print.

It may not be amiss to remind ourselves that Fielding's ridicule of some phases of the dramatic work of Dryden and of Young (fair enough when limited to selected passages) does not represent his final opinion of their merits. In his ' True Greatness ' of 1741 he wrote concerning the former :

Great is the man who with unwearied toil Spies a weed springing in the richest soil. If Dryden's page with one bad line be bless'd. 'Tis great to show it as to write the rest.

His more mature opinion of Young was no less decidedly expressed. In ' Jonathan Wild ' (III. ii.) he refers to him as " the excellent poet," and in his ' Essay on Conversation ' he remarks : " If I prefer my excellence in poetry to Pope or

never seen this additional act, nor am any ways concerned therein. Henry Fielding." It is curious that this public repudiation should have been overlooked, as there is much evidence that the editor and his collaborators have sifted the contemporary news-sheets somewhat thoroughly. It should be borne in mind that Fielding did not become manager of the Haymarket Theatre until 1736.

In Appendix B ten pages are devoted to an account of the adaptations (including the musical) through which ' Tom Thumb ' has passed, and the appreciation of their merits by such competent judges as Lamb, Hazlitt, and Walter Scott. Dr. Hillhouse might have cited further testimony of their popularity. For instance, Mrs. Piozzi, writing to the Rev. Daniel Lysons in 1797, complains : " No matter 1 my half-crown for Flo shall be willingly contributed, though I do think seriously that Dent's Dog Tax will have an exceeding bad effect on the country.

Both Ministry and Opposition have at last

agreed on one point : they join against the lap-

So when two dogs are fighting in the streets With a third dog one of these two dogs meets ; With angry teeth he bites him to the bone, And this dog smarts for what that dog had done. These verses are somewhat too soft and mellifluous for the occasion, being Fielding's ; but I half long to address a doggrell epistle to Mr. Dent."

An incident, too, in Byron's life might have been recalled. His indignation was somewhat acutely roused, on his first entering the House of Lords in 1809, by certain difficulties attending the proof of his birth. These overcome, Lord Eldon welcomed him cordially, but Lord Byron himself says : " The Chancellor apologized to me for the delay, observing that these forms were part of his duty. I begged him to make no apology, and added, as he had certainly shown no violent hurry, ' Your Lordship is exactly like Tom Thumb ' (which was then being acted) ; ' you did your duty, and you did no more.' "

Thirdly, many readers would naturally lean towards a play which had been a favourite of Charles Dickens so much a favourite that O'Hara's musical version was played in amateur theatricals at his house, Dickens taking the part of the ghost of Gaffer Thumb, and Mark Lemon playing the giantess Glumdalca. Nay, more, Dickens in ' Pickwick ' quotes two lines from Lord Grizzle's song.