ses lowered, with great clanking of
chains and gnashing of old iron teeth;--and rich sport it was to see
those old rust-eaten engines once more brought into gear again.

But, as the Wise Man saith that a soft answer turneth away wrath, so do
we often find that a merry word spoken in season will do more than all
your Flaming Ordinances, and Terrific Denunciations of Fire and Sword.
And although at this time (beginning of the year 1746) authority very
properly exerted itself to procure obedience to the constitution, by
instilling Awe into men's minds, and did breathe nothing in its official
documents but heading, hanging, and quartering, with threats of
bombardments, free quarters, drum-head courts-martial, chains, gags,
fines, imprisonment, and sequestration,--yet I question whether so much
good was done by these towards the stability of the cause of the
Protestant Religion and King George, or so much harm to that of the
Pretender, Popery, brass money, and wooden shoes, as by a little series
of Pamphlets put forth by the witty Mr. Henry Fielding, a writer of
plays and novels then much in vogue; but a sad loose fish, although he
afterwards, as I am told, did good service to the State as one of the
justices of peace for Middlesex, and helped to put down many notorious
gangs of murderers, highwaymen, and footpads infesting the metropolis.
This Mr. Fielding--whom his intimates used to call Harry, and whom I
have often seen lounging in the Temple Gardens, or about the
gaming-houses in St. James's Street, and whom I have often met, I grieve
to say, in the very worst of company under the Piazzas in Covent Garden
much overtaken in liquor, and his fine Lace clothes and curled periwig
all besmirched and bewrayed after a carouse--took up the Hanoverian
cause very hotly,--having perhaps weighty reasons for so doing--and,
making the very best use of his natural gifts and natural weapons,
namely, a very strong and caustic humour, with most keen and trenchant
satire, did infinite harm to the Pretender's side by laughing at him and
his adherents. He published, probably at the charges of authority,--for
he was a needy gentleman, always in love, in liquor, or in debt,--a
paper called the _True Patriot_, in which the Jacobites were most
mercilessly treated. Notably do I recall a sort of sham diary or
almanack, purporting to be written by an honest tradesman of the City
during the predicted triumph of the Pretender, and in which such
occurr