translation from Cicero, was added in an amended version of the
_Author's Farce_, which appeared some years later, and in which Fielding
depicts the portrait of another all-powerful personage in the literary
life,--the actor-manager. This, however, will be more conveniently
treated under its proper date, and it is only necessary to say here that
the slight sketches of Marplay and Sparkish given in the first edition,
were presumably intended for Cibber and Wilks, with whom,
notwithstanding the "civil and kind Behaviour" for which he had thanked
them in the "Preface" to _Love in Several Masques_, the young dramatist
was now, it seems, at war. In the introduction to the Miscellanies, he
refers to "a slight Pique" with Wilks; and it is not impossible that the
key to the difference may be found in the following passage:--

"_Sparkish._ What dost think of the Play?

_Marplay._ It may be a very good one, for ought I know; _but I know the
Author has no Interest_.

_Spark._ Give me Interest, and rat the Play.

_Mar._ Rather rat the Play which has no Interest. Interest sways as much
in the Theatre as at Court.--And you know it is not always the Companion
of Merit in either."

The handsome student from Leyden--the potential Congreve who wrote _Love
in Several Masques_, and had Lady Mary Wortley Montagu for patroness,
might fairly be supposed to have expectations which warranted the
civilities of Messrs. Wilks and Cibber; but the "Luckless" of two years
later had probably convinced them that his dramatic performances did not
involve their _sine qua non_ of success. Under these circumstances