Neither of the two last-named pieces is worthy of the author, and their strongest condemnation in our day is that they were condemned in their own for their unbridled license, the _Grub Street Journal_ going so far as to say that they had "met with the universal detestation of the Town." The _Modern Husband_, which turns on that most loathsome of all commercial pursuits, the traffic of a husband in his wife's dishonour, appears, oddly enough, to have been regarded by its author with especial complacency. Its prologue lays stress upon the moral purpose; it was dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole; and from a couple of letters printed in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's _Correspondence_, it is clear that it had been submitted to her perusal. It had, however, no great success upon the stage, and the chief thing worth remembering about it is that it afforded his last character to Wilks, who played the part of Bellamant. That "slight Pique," of which mention has been made, was no doubt by this time a thing of the past. But if most of the works in the foregoing list can hardly be regarded as creditable to Fielding's artistic or moral sense, one of them at least deserves to be excepted, and that is the burlesque of _Tom Thumb_. This was first brought out in 1730 at the little theatre in the Hay-market, where it met with a favourable reception. In the following year it was enlarged to three acts (in the first version there had been but two), and reproduced at the same theatre as the _Tragedy of Tragedies; or, The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great_, "with the Annotations of H. Scriblerus Secundus." It is certainly one of the best burlesques ever written. As Baker observes in his _Biographia Dramatica_, it may fairly be ranked as a sequel to Buckingham's _Rehearsal_, since it includes the absurdities of nearly all the writers of tragedies from the period when that piece stops to 1730. Among the authors satirised are Nat. Lee, Thomson (whose famous "O Sophonisba, Sophonisba, O!" is parodied by "O Huncamunca, Huncamunca, O!"), Banks's _Earl of Essex_, a favourite play at Bartholomew Fair, the _Busiris_ of Young, and the _Aurengzebe_ of Dryden, etc. The annotations, which abound in transparent references to Dr. B[_entle_]y, Mr. T[_heobal_]d, Mr. D[_enni_]s, are excellent imitations of contemporary pedantry. One example, elicited in Act 1 by a reference to "giants," must stand for many:--