¹ “Fielding and the Cibbers,” Philol. Quart., i, 278–289, and “Social Satire in Fielding's Pasquin and The Historical Register,” Philol. Quart., iii, 309–317.

² The ladies here referred to may very well have been the ladies of the Shakespeare Club, mentioned at the close of Fielding's The Historical Register for the Year 1736 (1737).

³ As early as 1729, in the prologue to The Temple Beau, Fielding had said:

Humour and wit, in each politer age,

Triumphant, rear'd the trophies of the stage,

But only farce, and show, will now go down,

And HARLEQUIN'S the darling of the town.

⁴ Lun was the stage name of John Rich, manager of Covent Garden Theatre; he brought out a counter-satire on Pasquin there.

⁵ From “Harlequin-Horace; or the Art of Modern Poetry.”

⁶ iii, 261–264.

⁷ Pope's note (1729): “Mr. John Rich, master of the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden, was the first that excelled this way.” Note in this connection the following lines from An Essay on the Theatres (1745):

By whom were Scenes of Harlequin begun,

By some French Dancer, or our native Lun?

Though they dispute, no Connoisseurs can fix;

Some say Lun brought, some say improv'd the Tricks.

⁸ In Eurydice Hiss'd (1737), Fielding has Honestus say:

Then give us a good Tragedy for the Money,

And let not Harlequin still pick our Pockets,

With his low paltry Tricks, and juggling Cheats,

Which any School-Boy, was he on the Stage,

Could do as well as he. In former Times,

When better Actors acted better Plays,

The Town paid less.