"Pasquin," it may be
noted, was received with extraordinary favour, enjoyed a run of fifty
nights, and proved a source of both fame and profit to its author. But
the play of "The Historical Register of 1736," produced in the spring
of 1737, contained allusions of a more pointed and personal kind, and
gravely offended the government. Indeed, the result could hardly have
been otherwise. Walpole himself was brought upon the stage, and under
the name of Quidam violently caricatured. He was exhibited silencing
noisy patriots with bribes, and then joining with them in a dance--the
proceedings being explained by Medley, another of the characters,
supposed to be an author: "Sir, every one of these patriots has a hole
in his pocket, as Mr. Quidam the fiddler there knows; so that he
intends to make them dance till all the money has fallen through,
which he will pick up again, and so not lose a halfpenny by his
generosity!" The play, indeed, abounded in satire of the boldest kind,
in witty and unsparing invective; as the biographer of Fielding
acknowledges, there was much in the work "well calculated both to
offend and alarm a wary minister of state.
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