dissipated his fortune keeping hounds." In 1718, it may be observed,
Fielding was a boy of eleven. Probably the whole of the latter sentence
is nothing more than a distortion of Murphy.] But even L1500, and (in
spite of Murphy) it is by no means clear that he had anything more,
could scarcely last for ever. Whether his footmen wore yellow or not, a
few brief months found him again in town. That he was able to rent a
theatre may perhaps be accepted as proof that his profuse hospitalities
had not completely exhausted his means.

The moment was a favourable one for a fresh theatrical experiment. The
stage-world was split up into factions, the players were disorganised,
and everything seemed in confusion. Whether Fielding himself conceived
the idea of making capital out of this state of things, or whether it
was suggested to him by some of the company who had acted _Don Quixote
in England_, it is impossible to say. In the first months of 1736,
however, he took the little French Theatre in the Haymarket, and opened
it with a company which he christened the "Great Mogul's Company of
Comedians," who were further described as "having dropped from the
Clouds." The "Great Mogul" was a name sometimes given by playwrights to
the elder Cibber; but there is no reason for supposing that any allusion
to him was intended on this occasion. The company, with the exception of
Macklin, who was playing at Drury Lane, consisted chiefly of the actors
in _Don Quixote in England_; and the first piece was entitled _Pasquin:
a Dramatick Satire on the Times: being the Rehearsal of Two Plays, viz.
a Comedy call'd the Election, and a Tragedy call'd the Life and Death of
Common-Sense_. The form of this work, which belongs to the same class as
Sheridan's _Critic_ and Buckingham's _Rehearsal_, was probably
determined by Fielding's past experience of the public taste. His latest
comedy had failed, and its predecessors had not been very successful.
But his burlesques had met with a better reception, while the election