It had many faults which none saw more clearly than the author himself, but he hoped that Garrick's energy and _prestige_ would triumphantly surmount all obstacles. He hoped, as well, to improve it by revision. The dangerous illness of his wife, however, made it impossible for him to execute his task; and, as he was pressed for money, the _Wedding Day_ was produced on the 17th of February 1743, apparently much as it had been first written some dozen years before. As might be anticipated, it was not a success. The character of Millamour is one which it is hard to believe that even Garrick could have made attractive, and though others of the parts were entrusted to Mrs. Woffington, Mrs. Pritchard, and Macklin, it was acted but six nights. The author's gains were under L50. In the Preface to the _Miscellanies_, from which most of the foregoing account is taken, Fielding, as usual, refers its failure to other causes than its inherent defects. Rumours, he says, had been circulated as to its indecency (and in truth some of the scenes are more than hazardous); but it had passed the licenser, and must be supposed to have been up to the moral standard of the time. Its unfavourable reception, as Fielding must have known in his heart, was due to its artistic shortcomings, and also to the fact that a change was taking place in the public taste. It is in connection with the _Wedding Day_ that one of the best-known anecdotes of the author is related. Garrick had begged him to retrench a certain objectionable passage. This Fielding, either from indolence or unwillingness, declined to do, asserting that if it was not good, the audience might find it out. The passage was promptly hissed, and Garrick returned to the green-room, where the author was solacing himself with a bottle of champagne. "What is the matter, Garrick?" said he to the flustered actor; "what are they hissing now?" He was informed with some heat that they had been hissing the very scene he had been asked to withdraw, "and," added Garrick, "they have so frightened me, that I shall not be able to collect myself again the whole night"--"Oh!" answered the author, with an oath, "they HAVE found it out, have they?" This rejoinder is usually quoted as an instance of Fielding's contempt for the intelligence of his audience; but nine men in ten, it may be observed, would have said something of the same sort.