There is no comedy of the last century, however absurd the plot, and coarse and ridiculous the incidents, that is more absurd, coarse, and ridiculous than this comedy in which Fielding was the hero and Mistress Wadsworth and the Duchess of Cleveland the heroines. The beau was convinced he had married a widow with a jointure of a golden character. The letters he addressed to the residence of Mrs. Deleau must have caused infinite astonishment to that calm relict of the citizen of Copthall-court; but she held the writer as mad, and thought little more of the matter. In the meantime Fielding, who had patronized half-a-dozen tailors on the strength of his expectations, mysteriously alluded to, acted the strangest of parts. He married her Grace the noble Barbara within three weeks of his union with Mary Wadsworth. He provided himself with two stools for the support of his dignity; and in the very fashion of the proverb, he got very terribly bruised indeed. The wretched duper turned out to be the dupe. He had expended his cake and wine, his _petit soupers_, wax-lights, and sconces all to no purpose; he had run in debt for a ring with a posy of his own choosing, “_Tibi Soli_;” and he had paid an Italian singer Margaretta to come and sing to his beloved, “Ianthe the lovely,” translated by himself from the Greek. He had looked for threescore thousand pounds, and had been deluded into the idea that he was about to be the sire of a little “Lord Tunbridge,” and at the end of all, the bride proves a common jilt; goes boldly to Fielding’s lodgings in Whitehall, claims him, as he walks into the street, by the title of “lawful wife,” and gets an unsavoury name by way of reply, and a thorough thrashing into the bargain.