that election of the Bishop of St. Asaph, Lord Camden and the Bishop of Chester were blackballed, the society had begun to lose the high literary tone which made its earlier days yet more remarkable. Shall we wonder if distinction in such a society should open a new life to Goldsmith ?

His claim to enter it would seem to have been somewhat canvassed, at first, by at least one of the members. "As he wrote “for the booksellers,” says Hawkins, “we at the club looked on “him as a mere literary drudge, equal to the task of compiling and “translating, but little capable of original, and still less of poetical "composition: he had, nevertheless, unknown to us”. . . I need not anticipate what it was that so startled Hawkins with its unknown progress: the reader has already intimation of it. It is however more than probable, whatever may have been thought of Goldsmith's drudgery, that this extremely low estimate of his capacity was limited to Mr. Hawkins, whose opinions were seldom popular with the other members of the club. Early associations clung hard to Johnson, and, for the sake of these, Hawkins was borne with to the last; but, in the newly-formed society, even Johnson admitted him to be out of place. Neither in habits or opinions did he harmonise with the rest. He had been an attorney for many years, affecting literary tastes, and dabbling in music at the Madrigal-club; but four years before the present, so large a fortune had fallen to him in right of his wife, that he withdrew from the law, and lived and judged with severe propriety as a Middlesex magistrate. Within two years he will be elected chairman of the sessions; after seven years more, will be made a knight; and, in four years after that, will deliver himself of five quarto volumes of a history of music, in the slow and laborious conception of which he is already painfully engaged. Altogether, his existence was a kind of pompous, parsimonious, insignificant drawl, cleverly ridiculed by one of the wits in an absurd epitaph: "Here lies Sir John Hawkins, Without ❝his shoes and stawckins." To him belonged the original merit, in that age of penal barbarity and perpetual executions, of lamenting that in no less than fourteen cases it was still possible to cheat the gallows. Another of his favourite themes was the improvidence of what he called sentimental writers, at the head of whom he placed the author of Tom Jones; a book which he charged with having "corrupted the rising generation," and sapped "the founda❝tion of that morality which it is the duty of parents and all public "instructors to inculcate in the minds of young people." This was his common style of talk. He would speak contemptuously of Hogarth, as a man who knew nothing out of Covent-garden. Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne, he looked upon as "stuff;" and for the three last, as men "whose necessities and

"abilities were nearly commensurate," he had a special contempt. As chairman of quarter-sessions, what other judgment could he be expected to have of them? Being men of loose principles, he would say, bad economists, and living without foresight, "it is "their endeavour to commute for their failings by professions of "greater love to mankind, more tender affections and finer feelings "than they will allow men of more regular lives, whom they deem "formalists, to possess." With a man of such regular life, denouncing woe to loose characters that should endeavour to commute for their failings, poor Goldsmith had naturally little chance; and it fared as ill with the rest of the club when questions of "economy" or "foresight" came up. Mr. Hawkins, after the first four meetings, begged to be excused his share of the reckoning, on the ground that he did not partake of the supper. "And was he excused ?" asked Dr. Burney, when Johnson told him of the incident many years after. "Oh yes, sir," was the reply; "and very readily. No man is angry at another for being "inferior to himself. We all admitted his plea publicly, for the "gratification of scorning him privately. Sir John, sir, is a very "unclubbable man. Yet I really believe him," pursued Johnson, on the same occasion, very characteristically, "to be an "honest man at the bottom; though to be sure he is rather "penurious, and he is somewhat mean, and it must be owned he "has some degree of brutality, and is not without a tendency to 66 savageness that cannot well be defended." It was this latter tendency which caused his early secession from the club. He was not a member for more than two or three years. His own account is that he withdrew because its late hours were inconsistent with his domestic arrangements: but the fact was, says Boswell, that he one evening attacked Mr. Burke in so rude a manner, that all the company testified their displeasure; and at their next meeting his reception was such that he never came again.

Letitia Matilda Hawkins herself, proposing to defend her father, corroborates this statement. "The Burkes," she says, describing the impressions of her childhood, "as the men of that family were "called, were not then what they were afterwards considered, nor "what the head of them deserved to be considered for his splendid "talents: they were, as my father termed them, Irish adventurers ; "and came into this country with no good auguries, nor any very "decided principles of action. They had to talk their way in the "world that was to furnish their means of living."

An Irish adventurer who had to talk his way in the world, is much what Burke was considered by the great as well as little vulgar, for several more years to come. He was now thirty-three, yet had not achieved his great want, "ground to stand upon.”

Until the present year he had derived his principal help from the booksellers, for whom he had some time written, and continued still to write, the historical portion of the Annual Register. He had been but a few months in enjoyment of Hamilton's pension, and was already extremely uneasy as to the conditions on which he began to suspect it had been granted, his patron not seeming to have relished his proposed return to London society. “I know "your business ought on all occasions to have the preference," wrote Burke, in deprecation; "to be the first, and the last, and "indeed in all respects the main concern. All I contend for is, "that I may not be considered as absolutely excluded from all "other thoughts, in their proper time and due subordination." The whole truth was not made obvious to him till two years later. He then found, and on finding it flung up the pension, that Hamilton had thought him placed by it in "a sort of domestic "situation." It was the consideration of a bargain and sale of independence. It was a claim for absolute servitude. "Not to

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"value myself as a gentleman,” remonstrated Burke, “a freeman, 'man of education, and one pretending to literature, is there any “situation in life so low, or even so criminal, that can subject a 66 man to the possibility of such an engagement? Would you "dare attempt to bind your footman to such terms?" Mr. Hawkins, it is clear, would have thought the terms suitable enough to the situation in life of an Irish adventurer; and the incident may illustrate his vulgar and insolent phrase.

Let it always be remembered, when Burke's vehemence of will and sharp impetuosity of temper are referred to. These were less his natural defects, than his painful sense of what he wanted in the eyes of others. When, in later years, he proudly reviewed those exertions which had been the soul of the revived whig party, which had re-established their strength, consolidated their power and influence, and been rewarded with insignificant office and uniform exclusion from the cabinet, he had to reflect that at every step in the progress of his life he had been traversed and opposed, and forced to make every inch of his way in the teeth of prejudice and dislike. "The narrowness of his fortune," says Walpole, "kept him down." At every turnpike he met, he had been called to show his passport; otherwise no admission, no toleration for him. Improved by this, his manners could hardly be ;-the more other spheres of consideration were closed to him, the more would he be driven to dominate in his own ;-and I have little doubt that he somewhat painfully at times, in the first few years of the club, impressed others as well as Hawkins with a sense of his predominance. He had to "talk his way in the world that was "to furnish his means of living," and this was the only theatre

open to him yet. Here only could he as yet pour forth, to an audience worth exciting, the stores of argument and eloquence he was thirsting to employ upon a wider stage, the variety of knowledge and its practical application, the fund of astonishing imagery, the ease of philosophic illustration, the overpowering copiousness of words, in which he has never had a rival. A civil guest, says Herbert, will no more talk all, than eat all, the feast; and perhaps this might be forgotten now and then. "In my own. "mind I am convinced," says Miss Hawkins, "however he might "persuade himself, that my father was disgusted with the over"powering deportment of Burke, and his monopoly of the conversation, which made all the other members, excepting his antagonist "Johnson, merely his auditors." Something of the same sort was said by that antagonist ten years after the present date, though in a more generous way. "What I most envy Burke for," said Johnson, after admitting the astonishing range of his resources, but denying him the faculty of wit, "is, his being constantly the 66 same. He is never what we call hum-drum; never unwilling to 'begin to talk, nor in haste to leave off. Take up whatever

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"topic you please, he is ready to meet you. . His stream of mind ❝is perpetual. I cannot say he is good at listening. So desirous "is he to talk, that if one is speaking at this end of the table, he'll "speak to somebody at the other end. Burke, sir, is such a man, "that if you met him for the first time in the street, where you were stopped by a drove of oxen, and you and he stepped aside "to take shelter but for five minutes, he'd talk to you in such a “manner, that, when you parted, you would say, This is an 66 extraordinary man. Now, you may be long enough with me, "without finding anything extraordinary.'

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This was modest in Johnson, but there was more truth than he perhaps intended in it. In general, Burke's views were certainly the subtler and more able. He penetrated deeper into the principles of things, below common life and what is called good sense, than Johnson could. "Is he like Burke," asked Goldsmith, when Boswell seemed to exalt Johnson's talk too highly, "who "winds into a subject like a serpent?" A faculty of sudden and familiar illustration, too, he eminently possessed; and of this, which must have given such a power as well as charm to his conversation, what more exquisite example, or more characteristic both of Johnson and himself, could be named, than the vehement denial he gave to Boswell's mentioning Croft's Life of Young as a pretty successful imitation of Johnson's style. No, no, it is not 66 a good imitation of Johnson. It has all his pomp, without his "force; it has all the nodosities of the oak without its strength." Then, after a pause, "It has all the contortions of the Sybil,

"without the inspiration." In the conversational expression of Johnson, on the other hand, there was a strength and clearness which was all his own, and which originated Percy's likening of it, as contrasted with ordinary conversation, to an antique statue with every vein and muscle distinct and bold, by the side of an inferior cast. Johnson had also wit, often an incomparable humour, and a hundred other interesting qualities, which Burke had not; while his rough dictatorial manner, his loud voice, and slow deliberate utterance, so much oftener suggested an objection than gave help to what he said, that one may doubt the truth of Lord Pembroke's pleasantry to Boswell, that "his sayings would "not appear so extraordinary, were it not for his bow-wow way." Of the ordinary listener, at any rate, the bow-wow way exacted something too much; and was quite as likely to stun as to strike him. "He's a tremendous companion," said poor George Garrick, when urged to confess of him what he really thought. He brought, into common talk, too plain an anticipation of victory and triumph. He wore his determination not to be thrown or beaten, whatever side he might please to take, somewhat defiantly upon his sleeve ; and startled peaceful society a little too much with his uncle Andrew's habits in the ring at Smithfield. It was a sense, on his own part, of this eagerness to make every subject a battle-ground, which made him say, at a moment of illness and exhaustion, that if he were to see Burke then, it would kill him. From the first day of their meeting, now some years ago, at Garrick's dinnertable, his desire had been to measure himself, on all occasions, with that antagonist. "I suppose, Murphy," he said to Arthur, as they came away from the dinner, “ you are proud of your countryman. "Cum talis sit, utinam noster esset." The club was an opportunity for both, and promptly seized; to the occasional overshadowing, no doubt, of the comforts and opportunities of other members. Yet for the most part their wit-combats seem not only to have interested the rest, but to have improved the temper of the combatants, and made them more generous to each other. "How "very great Johnson has been to night," said Burke to Langton, as they left the club together. Langton assented, but could have wished to hear more from another person. 66 Oh, no!" replied Burke, "it is enough for me to have rung the bell to him."

Bennet Langton was, in his own person, an eminent example of the high and humane class who are content to ring the bell to their friends. Admiration of the Rambler made him seek admittance to its author, when he was himself, some eight years back, but a lad of eighteen; and his ingenuous manners and mild enthusiasm at once won Johnson's love. That he represented a great Lincolnshire family, still living at their ancient seat of