But, as the Wise Man saith that a soft answer turneth away wrath, so do we often find that a merry word spoken in season will do more than all your Flaming Ordinances, and Terrific Denunciations of Fire and Sword. And although at this time (beginning of the year 1746) authority very properly exerted itself to procure obedience to the constitution, by instilling Awe into men's minds, and did breathe nothing in its official documents but heading, hanging, and quartering, with threats of bombardments, free quarters, drum-head courts-martial, chains, gags, fines, imprisonment, and sequestration,--yet I question whether so much good was done by these towards the stability of the cause of the Protestant Religion and King George, or so much harm to that of the Pretender, Popery, brass money, and wooden shoes, as by a little series of Pamphlets put forth by the witty Mr. Henry Fielding, a writer of plays and novels then much in vogue; but a sad loose fish, although he afterwards, as I am told, did good service to the State as one of the justices of peace for Middlesex, and helped to put down many notorious gangs of murderers, highwaymen, and footpads infesting the metropolis. This Mr. Fielding--whom his intimates used to call Harry, and whom I have often seen lounging in the Temple Gardens, or about the gaming-houses in St. James's Street, and whom I have often met, I grieve to say, in the very worst of company under the Piazzas in Covent Garden much overtaken in liquor, and his fine Lace clothes and curled periwig all besmirched and bewrayed after a carouse--took up the Hanoverian cause very hotly,--having perhaps weighty reasons for so doing--and, making the very best use of his natural gifts and natural weapons, namely, a very strong and caustic humour, with most keen and trenchant satire, did infinite harm to the Pretender's side by laughing at him and his adherents. He published, probably at the charges of authority,--for he was a needy gentleman, always in love, in liquor, or in debt,--a paper called the _True Patriot_, in which the Jacobites were most mercilessly treated. Notably do I recall a sort of sham diary or almanack, purporting to be written by an honest tradesman of the City during the predicted triumph of the Pretender, and in which such occurrences were noted down as London being at the mercy of Highlanders and Friars; Walbrook church and many others being razed to the ground; Father O'Blaze, a Dominican, exulting over it; Queen Anne's statue at Paul's taken away, and a large Crucifix erected in its place; the Bank, South-Sea, India Houses, &c. converted into convents; Father Macdagger, the Royal confessor, preaching at St. James's; three Anabaptists hung at Tyburn, attended by their ordinary, Mr. Machenly (a grotesque name for the ranting fellow who was wont to be known as Orator Henley); Father Poignardini, an Italian Jesuit, made Privy-Seal; four Heretics burnt in