nothing perhaps could be more natural than that they should play their
parts in his little satire.

We have dwelt at some length upon the _Author's Farce_, because it is
the first of Fielding's plays in which, leaving the "wit-traps" of
Wycherley and Congreve, he deals with the direct censure of contemporary
folly, and because, apart from translation and adaptation, it is in this
field that his most brilliant theatrical successes were won. For the
next few years he continued to produce comedies and farces with great
rapidity, both under his own name, and under the pseudonym of Scriblerus
Secundus. Most of these show manifest signs of haste, and some are
recklessly immodest. We shall confine ourselves to one or two of the
best, and do little more than enumerate the others. Of these latter, the
_Coffee-House Politician; or, The Justice caught in his own Trap,_ 1730,
succeeded the _Author's Farce_. The leading idea, that of a tradesman
who neglects his shop for "foreign affairs," appears to be derived from
Addison's excellent character-sketch in the _Tatler_ of the "Political
Upholsterer." This is the more likely, in that Arne the musician, whose
father is generally supposed to have been Addison's original, was
Fielding's contemporary at Eton. Justice Squeezum, another character
contained in this play, is a kind of first draft of the later Justice
Thrasher in _Amelia_. The representation of the trading justice on the
stage, however, was by no means new, since Justice Quorum in Coffey's
_Beggar's Wedding_ (with whom, as will appear presently, Fielding's name
has been erroneously associated) exhibits similar characteristics.
Omitting for the moment the burlesque of _Tom Thumb_, the _Coffee-House
Politician_ was followed by the _Letter Writers; or, A new Way to Keep a
Wife at Home_, 1731, a brisk little farce, with one vigorously drawn
character, that of Jack Commons, a young university rake; the _Grub-
Street Opera_, 1731; the farce of the _Lottery_, 1731, in which the