Henry Fielding - The Works of Henry Fielding, vol. 12

]

King . It is resolv'd – the princess is your own.

Thumb . Oh! [1]happy, happy, happy, happy Thumb.

[Footnote 1: Massinissa is one-fourth less happy than Tom Thumb.]

Oh! happy, happy, happy! — Ibid .

]

Queen . Consider, sir; reward your soldier's merit, But give not Huncamunca to Tom Thumb.

Queen . Though greater yet his boasted merit was, He shall not have my daughter, that is pos'.

King . Ha! sayst thou, Dollallolla?

Queen . – I say he shan't.

King . [1]Then by our royal self we swear you lie.

[Footnote 1: No by myself. — Anna Bullen .]

Queen . [1] Who but a dog, who but a dog Would use me as thou dost? Me, who have lain [2] These twenty years so loving by thy side! But I will be revenged. I'll hang myself. Then tremble all who did this match persuade, [3] For, riding on a cat, from high I'll fall, And squirt down royal vengeance on you all.

]

[Footnote 2: – A bride, Who twenty years lay loving by your side. — Banks . ]

[Footnote 3: For, borne upon a cloud, from high I'll fall, And rain down royal vengeance on you all. — Alb. Queens . ]

Food . [1]Her majesty the queen is in a passion.

[Footnote 1: An information very like this we have in the tragedy of Love, where, Cyrus having stormed in the most violent manner, Cyaxares observes very calmly,

Why, nephew Cyrus, you are moved.

]

[Footnote 1: 'Tis in your choice. Love me, or love me not. — Conquest of Granada . ]

[Footnote 1: There is not one beauty in this charming speech but what hath been borrow'd by almost every tragick writer. ]

[Footnote 1: Mr Banks has (I wish I could not say too servilely) imitated this of Grizzle in his Earl of Essex: Where art thou, Essex, &c.]

[Footnote 1: The countess of Nottingham, in the Earl of Essex, is apparently acquainted with Dollallolla.]

Queen . Wherefore? Oh! blood and thunder! han't you heard (What every corner of the court resounds) That little Thumb will be a great man made?

Griz . I heard it, I confess – for who, alas! [1] Can always stop his ears? – But would my teeth, By grinding knives, had first been set on edge!

[Footnote 1: Grizzle was not probably possessed of that glew of which

Mr Banks speaks in his Cyrus.

I'll glew my ears to every word.

]

Griz . Oh horror! horror! horror! cease, my queen, [1] Thy voice, like twenty screech-owls, wracks my brain.

[Footnote 1: Screech-owls, dark ravens, and amphibious monsters, Are screaming in that voice. — Mary Queen of Scots . ]

Queen . Then rouse thy spirit – we may yet prevent This hated match.

[Footnote 1: The reader may see all the beauties of this speech in a late ode called the Naval Lyrick.]

[Footnote 2: This epithet to a dolphin doth not give one so clear an idea as were to be wished; a smiling fish seeming a little more difficult to be imagined than a flying fish. Mr Dryden is of opinion that smiling is the property of reason, and that no irrational creature can smile:

Smiles not allow'd to beasts from reason move.

– State of Innocence .

]

Queen . Oh, no! prevent the match, but hurt him not; For, though I would not have him have my daughter, Yet can we kill the man that kill'd the giants?

Griz . I tell you, madam, it was all a trick;

He made the giants first, and then he kill'd them;

As fox-hunters bring foxes to the wood,

And then with hounds they drive them out again.

Queen . How! have you seen no giants? Are there not Now, in the yard, ten thousand proper giants?

Griz . [1]Indeed I cannot positively tell, But firmly do believe there is not one.

[Footnote 1: These lines are written in the same key with those in the

Earl of Essex:

Why, say'st thou so? I love thee well, indeed

I do, and thou shalt find by this 'tis true.

Or with this in Cyrus:

The most heroick mind that ever was.