again, a year later, in the _recensiones_ of the University for February
1729, as domiciled with one Jan Oson. As all students were annually
registered, the omission of any later entry proves that he left Leyden
before 1730; with which meagre facts and his own incidental remark that
the comedy of _Don Quixote in England_ was "begun at Leyden in the year
1728," our knowledge of the two years of Fielding's university career
concludes. In February 1730 he was presumably back in London, that being
the date of his next play, the _Temple Beau_, produced by Giffard, the
actor, at the new theatre in Goodman's Fields.

The prologue to the _Temple Beau_ was written by that man of many parts,
James Ralph, the hack writer, party journalist and historian, who was in
after years to collaborate with Fielding, both as a theatrical manager and
as a journalist. Ralph's opening lines are of interest as bearing on
Fielding's antagonism to the harlequinades and variety shows, then
threatening the popularity of legitimate drama:

"Humour and Wit, in each politer Age,
Triumphant, rear'd the Trophies of the Stage:
But only Farce, and Shew, will now go down,
And HARLEQUIN'S the Darling of the Town."

Ralph bids his audience turn to the 'infant stage' of Goodman's Fields
for matter more worthy their attention; and his promise that there

"The Comick Muse, in Smiles severely gay,
Shall scoff at Vice, and laugh its Crimes away"

must surely have been inspired by the young genius from whom twenty years
later came the formal declaration of his endeavour, in _Tom Jones,_