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All this, however, in half a century is considerably altered. The Drawcansir equipments getting gradually torn off, the natural size is seen better; translated from the bulletin style into that of fact and history, miracles, even to the shilling-gallery, are not so miraculous. It begins to be apparent that there lived great men before the era of bulletins and Agamemnon.
Scarcely had that indomitable knight, General Sir Alexander Drawcansir retired from the active public service of conducting the Covent Garden Journal when his creator reappeared with an astonishingly comprehensive and detailed plan of poor-law reform; a plan adapted to the whole kingdom, and which according to a legal comment involved "nothing less than the repeal of the Act of Elizabeth and an entire reconstruction of the Poor Laws."
The arrogant nephew and his two drawcansir uncles appeared so completely cased in steel that they and their steeds were like moving masses of iron.
If I attack the Vicious, I shall only set upon them in a Body: and will not be provoked by the worst Usage that I can receive from others, to make an Example of any particular Criminal. In short, I have so much of a Drawcansir in me, that I shall pass over a single Foe to charge whole Armies.
It would seem, from the following advertisement, that Fielding's inexhaustible pen published, about this time, a sixpenny pamphlet on 'a late Act of Parliament'; but all trace of it has been lost: "A speech made in the Censorial Court of Alexander Drawcansir, Monday, 6th June, 1752, concerning a late Act of Parliament. Printed for the Author. Price 6d." The General Advertiser, June 27, 1752.
The first number of the Covent Garden Journal appeared on the 4th of January, and its pages, produced under Fielding's own management and apparently largely written by his own pen, provided satires on folly, invectives against vice, and incitements to goodness and sense, delivered in the name of one Sir Alexander Drawcansir, Knt. Censor of Great Britain.
He did not think that greatness lay in the "thews and sinews," or in the bulk alone. When Nelson was walking on the quay at Yarmouth, the mob cried out in derision, "What! make that little fellow a captain!" "He was the only pretence of a great man we had." The large stage blusterer and ostentatious drawcansir were never, in Lamb's estimation, models for heroes.
Oh, John Wilkes, Alderman of London, and Drawcansir of Liberty, your life was not an iota too perfect, your patriotism might have been infinitely purer, your morals would have admitted indefinite amendment, you are no great favourite with us or with the rest of the world, but you said one excellent thing, for which we look on you with benevolence, nay, almost with respect.
He denounces him as a wretch hateful to God and man, for some of the most harmless and amusing trifles that ever were written and the very good- humour and pleasantry of which, we suspect, constituted their offence in the eyes of this Drawcansir. His attacks on Mrs. Robinson were unmanly, and even those on Mr. Merry and the Della-Cruscan School were much more ferocious than the occasion warranted.
Bombay, as ever comical, never so much at home as when in the dance of the Mrima, has my water-bucket on his head; Chowpereh the sturdy, the nimble, sure-footed Chowpereh has an axe in his hand, and wears a goatskin on his head; Baraka has my bearskin, and handles a spear; Mabruki, the "Bull-headed," has entered into the spirit of the thing, and steps up and down like a solemn elephant; Ulimengo has a gun, and is a fierce Drawcansir, and you would imagine he was about to do battle to a hundred thousand, so ferocious is he in appearance; Khamisi and Kamna are before the drummers, back to back, kicking up ambitiously at the stars; Asmani, the embodiment of giant strength, a towering Titan, has also a gun, with which he is dealing blows in the air, as if he were Thor, slaying myriads with his hammer.
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