upon us that the Name of an Author is in the ears of all good Men become almost an infamous appelation"; and, accordingly, the first number of his new paper discloses _Sir Alexander_ in full crusade against these Grub-Street writers. But that he soon perceived the quixotic impolicy of such a campaign, appears very clearly, as early as the fifth number of the _Journal_:--"when Hercules undertook to cleanse the Stables of Augeas (a Work not much unlike my present Undertaking) should any little clod of Dirt more filthy perhaps than all the rest have chanced to bedawb him, how unworthy his Spirit would it have been to have polluted his Hands, by seizing the dirty clod, and crumbling it to Pieces. He should have known that such Accidents were incident to such an Undertaking: which though both a useful and heroic office, was yet none of the cleanliest; since no Man, I believe, ever removed great quantities of Dirt from any Place without finding some of it sticking to his skirts." Such dirty clods were undoubtedly thrown by nameless antagonists, as unworthy of Fielding's steel as was one whose name has come down to us, the despicable Dr John Hill, who once suffered a public caning at Ranelagh; and one clod, "more filthy perhaps than all the rest," soiled the hands of Smollett. [2] But the dirt which was very freely flung on to our eighteenth-century Hercules has, by now, fallen back, with great justice, on to the heads of his abusers. Fielding has placed on record, in the _Journal_, his conviction that the man who reads the works of the five heroic satirists, Lucian, Cervantes, Swift, Moliere and Shakespeare, "must either have a very bad Head, or a very bad Heart, if he doth not become both a Wiser and a better Man." To-day, 'party and prejudice' having subsided, we are ready to say the same of the readers of the _Covent Garden Journal_; perceiving that, if _Mr Censor_, like his five great forerunners, chose to send his satire "laughing into the World," it was that he might better effect the 'glorious Purpose' announced in the fifth number of his paper: "However vain or romantic the Attempt may seem, I am sanguine enough to aim at serving the noble Interests of Religion, Virtue, and good Sense, by these my Lucubrations." To most men the production, twice a week, of a newspaper so wide in scope as the _Covent Garden Journal_ (for its columns included the news of the day, as well as the manifold 'censorial' energies of _Sir Alexander_) would have been occupation enough; especially with a "constitution now greatly impaired and enfeebled," and when "labouring under attacks of the gout, which were, of course, severer than ever."