In the play, rustic and philosophic virtue is prettily rewarded by the
possession of a beautiful heiress, while certain mercenary fops withdraw
in signal discomfiture; and that Fielding, at one and twenty, had already
passed judgment on that glittering 'tinsel' tribe, is clear enough from
his portrait of the "empty gaudy nameless thing," Lord Formal. Lord
Formal appears on the stage with a complexion much agitated by a day of
business spent with "three milleners, two perfumers, my bookseller's and
a fanshop." In the course of these fatigues he has "rid down two brace of
chairmen"; and had raised his colour to "that exorbitancy of Vermeille"
that it will hardly be reduced "under a fortnight's course of acids." It
is the true spirit of comedy which introduces into this closely perfumed
atmosphere the bluff country figure of Sir Positive Trap, with his
exordiums on the rustic ladies, and on "the good old English art of
clear-starching." Sir Positive hopes "to see the time when a man may
carry his daughter to market with the same lawful authority as any other
of his cattle"; and causes Lord Formal some moments' perplexity, his
lordship being "not perfectly determinate what species of animal to
assign him to, unless he be one of those barbarous insects the polite
call country squires." In this production of a youth of twenty we may
find a foretaste of that keen relish in watching the human comedy, that
vigorous scorn of avarice, that infectious laughter at pretentious folly,
which accompanied the novelist throughout his life.

To this same year is attributed a poem called the _Masquerade_, which need
only be noticed as again emphasising its author's lifelong war against the
evils of his time. The _Masquerade_ is a satire on the licentious
gatherings organised by the notorious Count Heidegger, Master of the
Revels to the Court of George II.

Many years later Fielding reprinted [3] two other poetical effusions