llusions of a more pointed and personal kind, and
gravely offended the government. Indeed, the result could hardly have
been otherwise. Walpole himself was brought upon the stage, and under
the name of Quidam violently caricatured. He was exhibited silencing
noisy patriots with bribes, and then joining with them in a dance--the
proceedings being explained by Medley, another of the characters,
supposed to be an author: "Sir, every one of these patriots has a hole
in his pocket, as Mr. Quidam the fiddler there knows; so that he
intends to make them dance till all the money has fallen through,
which he will pick up again, and so not lose a halfpenny by his
generosity!" The play, indeed, abounded in satire of the boldest kind,
in witty and unsparing invective; as the biographer of Fielding
acknowledges, there was much in the work "well calculated both to
offend and alarm a wary minister of state." Soon both "Pasquin" and
"The Historical Register" were brought under the notice of the
Cabinet. Walpole felt "that it would be inexpedient to allow the stage
to become the vehicle of anti-ministerial abuse." The Licensing Act
was resolved upon.

The new measure was not avowedly aimed at Fielding, however. It was
preceded by incidents of rather a suspicious kind. Gifford, the
manager of Goodman's Fields Theatre, professing to have received from
some anonymous writer a play of singular scurrility, carried the work
to the prime minister. The obsequious manager was rewarded with one
thousand pounds for his patriotic conduct, and the libellous nature of
the play he had surrendered was made the excuse for the legislation
that ensued. It was freely observed at the time, however, that Gifford
had profited more by suppressing the play than he could possibly have
gained by representing it, and that there was something more than
natural in the appositeness of his receipt of it. If honest, it was
suggested that he had been trapped by a government spy, who had sent
him the play, solely that he might deal with it as he did; but it was
rather assumed that he had disingenuously curried favour with the
authorities, and sold himself for treasury gold. The play in question
was never acted or printed; nor was the name of the author, or of the
person from whom the manager professed to have received it, ever
disclosed. Horace Walpole, indeed, boldly ascribed it to Fielding, and
asserted that he had discovered among his father's papers an imperfect
cop