has an air of insincerity, although, contrasted with some of the
writer's later productions, _Love in Several Masques_ is comparatively
pure. But he might honestly think that the work which had received the
_imprimatur_ of a stage-queen and a lady of quality should fairly be
regarded as morally blameless, and it is not necessary to bring any bulk
of evidence to prove that the morality of 1728 differed from the
morality of to-day.

To the last-mentioned year is ascribed a poem entitled the
"_Masquerade_. Inscribed to C--t H--d--g--r. By Lemuel Gulliver, Poet
Laureate to the King of Lilliput." In this Fielding made his satirical
contribution to the attacks on those impure gatherings organised by the
notorious Heidegger, which Hogarth had not long before stigmatised
pictorially in the plate known to collectors as the "large Masquerade
Ticket." As verse this performance is worthless, and it is not very
forcibly on the side of good manners; but the ironic dedication has a
certain touch of Fielding's later fashion. Two other poetical pieces,
afterwards included in the _Miscellanies_ of 1743, also bear the date of
1728. One is _A Description of U--n G--_ (alias _New Hog's Norton_) _in
Com. Hants_, which Mr. Keightley has identified with Upton Grey, near
Odiham, in Hampshire. It is a burlesque description of a tumbledown
country-house in which the writer was staying, and is addressed to
Rosalinda. The other is entitled _To Euthalia_, from which it must be
concluded that, in 1728, Sarah Andrew had found more than one successor.
But in spite of some biographers, and of the apparent encouragement
given to his first comedy, Fielding does not seem to have followed up
dramatic authorship with equal vigour, or at all events with equal
success. His real connection with the stage does not begin until January
1730, when the _Temple Beau_ was produced by Giffard the actor at the