When he can admit so much even jestingly of himself, it is but
legitimate to presume that there is no great exaggeration in the
portrait of him in 1735, by the anonymous satirist of _Seasonable
Reproof_:--

"_F------g_, who _yesterday_ appear'd so rough,
Clad in _coarse Frize_, and plaister'd down with _Snuff_,
See how his _Instant_ gaudy Trappings shine;
What _Play-house_ Bard was ever seen so fine!
But this, not from his _Humour_ flows, you'll say,
But mere _Necessity_;--for last Night lay
In _Pawn_, the _Velvet_ which he wears to Day."

His work bears traces of the inequalities and irregularities of his mode
of living. Although in certain cases (e.g. the revised edition of _Tom
Thumb_) the artist and scholar seems to have spasmodically asserted
himself, the majority of his plays were hasty and ill-considered
performances, most of which (as Lady Mary said) he would have thrown
into the fire "if meat could have been got without money, and money
without scribbling." "When he had contracted to bring on a play, or a
farce," says Murphy, "it is well known, by many of his friends now
living, that he would go home rather late from a tavern, and would, the
next morning, deliver a scene to the players, written upon the papers
which had wrapped the tobacco, in which he so much delighted." It is not
easy to conceive, unless Fielding's capacities as a smoker were unusual,
that any large contribution to dramatic literature could have been made
upon the wrappings of Virginia or Freeman's Best; but that his
reputation for careless production was established among his
contemporaries is manifest from the following passage in a burlesque