[citation needed] That same year, however, Ralph was in Philadelphia, working as a clerk and a part of a literary society that included Benjamin Franklin (Okie 873).
In his Autobiography, Franklin recalled Ralph as a man of exquisite manners and declares, "I think I never knew a prettier talker" (quoted in Okie 874).
Upon arrival in London, Ralph unsuccessfully sought to find work as a copyist, editor, or actor (Okie 874).
In 1727, Ralph read James Thomson's Winter and imitated it with The Tempest, or the Terrors of Death, and he followed that in 1728 with Night.
The answer was a tour de force and encompasses not only Ralph's grandiosity, but also his imitation of Thomson's verse.
His belief is understandable, but it is unlikely, given the responses that James Moore Smythe, Edward Cooke, and Leonard Welsted got from their mentions in Dunciad.
His claim requires John Crowne being disqualified for English birth, and it has the additional problem of defining "American" solely as the territories that would declare independence in 1775 (Kenny 332).
While some, such as Battestin, have argued that Ralph's politics and Fielding's diverged, the publication evidence is difficult to interpret with certainty.
In 1737, the political censorship and restrictions of Licensing Act put an end to the Little Theatre and to Fielding's dramatic career.
After the Licensing Act 1737, Ralph co-edited The Champion with Fielding, where he wrote, primarily, the essays on politics (Okie 874).
He also wrote attacks on the Walpole administration for its handling of the War of Jenkins' Ear and general corruption and graft.
In 1742, Ralph wrote a counter to Sarah Churchill's Account of the Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, attacking her and her deceased husband as self-serving politicians.
In 1743, Ralph began his association with his future patron, George Bubb Dodington by editing Old England with William Guthrie.
Whether Garrick and his tory-leaning friends were instrumental or not, Ralph had to agree to disavow political writing to receive the pension.
In this work, he argues that the old system of patronage was ending and that writers were now completely at the mercy of booksellers and theatre directors.
This portrait of the conditions of print culture would be influential, although it sold poorly in its day, and it would show up in histories by Oliver Goldsmith, Isaac Disraeli, and Thomas Babington Macaulay (Okie 874).
At the same time, the complaint that Ralph lodges is a later mirroring of what Pope had decried in Dunciad—the satire that had ended his poetic career.
[8] His mother-in-law, Mrs Ann Curtis, died in 1765, and in her will requested her executor, Sir Henry Cheere, "to pay all the Just Debts of my late Son in Law James Ralph Esquire".