So few of Fielding's letters have been, to our knowledge, preserved, that the following note addressed to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and concerning the _Modern Husband_, a comedy produced in 1731 or 1732, must here be given, though containing little beyond the fact that the dramatist of three years' standing seems still to have placed as high a value on his cousin's judgment, as when recording her approval of his first effort for the stage. The play was a piece of admittedly moral purpose, and was dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole. The first line of the autograph is, apparently, missing.
"I hope your Ladyship will honour the Scenes, which I presume to lay before you, with your Perusal. As they are written on a Model I never yet attempted, I am exceedingly anxious least they should find least Mercy from you than my lighter Productions. It will be a slight compensation to the modern Husband, that your Ladyship's censure will defend him from the Possibility of any other Reproof, since your least Approbation will always give me a Pleasure, infinitely superior to the loudest Applauses of a Theatre. For whatever has past your judgment, may, I think without any Imputation of Immodesty, refer Want of Success to Want of Judgment in an Audience. I shall do myself the honour of waiting on your Ladyship at Twickenham next Monday to receive my Sentence, and am, Madam, with the most devoted Respect
"Your Ladyship's "most Obedient most humble Servant "Henry Ffielding. [5]
In 1731-32 the burlesque entitled the _Tragedy of Tragedies; or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great_, took the Town. The _Tragedy_ parodies the absurdities of tragedians; and so far won immortality that in 1855 it was described as still holding the stage. But its chief modern interest lies in the tradition that Swift once observed that he "had not laughed above twice" in his life,--once at the tricks of a merry-andrew, and again when Fielding's Tom Thumb killed the ghost. The design for the frontispiece of the edition of 1731, here reproduced, is from the pencil of Hogarth; and is the first trace of a connexion between Fielding and the painter who was to be honoured so frequently in his pages. An adaptation from Molière, produced in 1733, under the title of the _Miser_, won from Voltaire the praise of having added to the original "quelques beautes de dialogue particulières a sa [Fielding's] nation." The leading character in the _Miser_, Lovegold, became a stock part, and survived to our own days, having been a favourite with Phelps. In _Don Quixote in England_, produced in 1733 or 34, [6] Fielding reappears in the character of patriotic censor with the design, as appears from the dedication to Lord Chesterfield, of representing "the Calamities brought on a Country by general Corruption." No less than fifteen songs are interspersed in the play, and it is matter for curious conjecture why none of them was chosen for a reprint among the collected verses published ten years later in the _Miscellanies_. Time has almost failed to preserve even the hunting-song beginning finely--