Garrick had begged him to retrench a certain objectionable passage. This Fielding, either from indolence or unwillingness, declined to do, asserting that if it was not good, the audience might find it out. The passage was promptly hissed, and Garrick returned to the green-room, where the author was solacing himself with a bottle of champagne. “What is the matter, Garrick?” said he to the flustered actor; “what are they hissing now?” He was informed with some heat that they had been hissing the very scene he had been asked to withdraw, “and,” added Garrick, “they have so frightened me, that I shall not be able to collect myself again the whole night”—“Oh!” answered the author, with an oath, “they HAVE found it out, have they?” This rejoinder is usually quoted as an instance of Fielding’s contempt for the intelligence of his audience; but nine men in ten, it may be observed, would have said something of the same sort.
The only other thing which need be referred to in connection with this comedy—the last of his own dramatic works which Fielding ever witnessed upon the stage—is Macklin’s doggerel Prologue. Mr. Lawrence attributes this to Fielding; but he seems to have overlooked the fact that in the Miscellanies it is headed, “Writ and Spoken by Mr. Macklin,” which gives it more interest as the work of an outsider than if it had been a mere laugh by the author at himself. Garrick is represented as too busy to speak the prologue; and Fielding, who has been “drinking to raise his Spirits,” has begged Macklin with his “long, dismal, Mercy-begging Face,” to go on and apologise. Macklin then pretends to recognise him among the audience, and pokes fun at
