0 0 6 For Cloth and wristing a Shirt To 3 months' Board &c. from March 29 to June 29 12 10 0 £15 12 9 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. The impression left by the second of these bills is borne out by Newbery's concurrent memoranda of money advanced; in sums ridiculously small, and for such work as the revision of short translations, and papers for the Christian Magazine. What were not unusual in the previous year, as cash advances of one, two, and even four and five guineas, from the publisher, have now dwindled down to "shillings" and "half-crowns;" and it is matter of doubt whether Newbery, to satisfy outstanding claims, did not engage him for some part of his time in work for his juvenile library. The author of Caleb Williams, who had been a child's publisher himself, had always a strong persuasion that Goldsmith wrote Goody Two Shoes; and if so, the effort belongs to the present year: for Mrs. Margery, radiant with gold and ginger-bread, and rich in pictures as extravagantly ill-drawn as they are dear and wellremembered, made her appearance at Christmas. Other aid was also sought to eke out that of Newbery; and a sum of thirteen guineas is acknowledged from Mr. Griffin (the publisher of the Essays in the following year), but without mention of the labours it rewarded. That, in all these memoranda, the entire labours of the year cannot yet be accounted for, it is hardly necessary to add. We are left to guess what other work was in progress, for which advances were not available; and in this, an anecdote told by Reynolds will offer some assistance. He went out to call upon Goldsmith, he says, not having seen him for some time; and no one answering at his door, he opened it without announcement, and walked in. His friend was at his desk, but with hand uplifted, and a look directed to another part of the room; where a little dog sat with difficulty on his haunches, his eyes fixed imploringly on his teacher, whose rebuke for toppling over he had evidently just received. Reynolds advanced, and looked past Goldsmith's shoulder at the writing on his desk, which seemed to be some portions of a poem. He looked more closely, and was able to read a couplet which had been that instant written: the ink of the second line was wet. By sports like these are all their cares beguil'd; This visit of Reynolds is one of the few direct evidences which the year affords of his usual intercourse with his more distinguished friends. There is no reason to doubt, however, that he had been pretty constant in his attendance at the club during the past winter; he was a member of the Society of Arts, and had been often at their meetings, of which the only trace now left is the record of loans of money begged from Newbery there (in which, as I find from inspection of the originals, the prudent publisher was careful to note whenever the loan, though but of five shillings and threepence, was "without receipts"); and his miseries and necessities must have been great indeed, that would have kept him long a stranger to the theatre. The last season (that of 1763 and '64) had been one of peculiar interest. The year 1763 had opened with evil omen to Garrick. For the first time since the memorable night of his triumph at Goodman's Fields, when, in the midst of unexampled enthusiasm, his eye fell upon a little deformed figure in a side box, was met by the approving glance of an eye as bright as his own, and, in the admiration of Alexander Pope, his heart swelled with the sense of fame, Garrick, at the commencement of that year, felt his influence shaken and his ground insecure. On a question of prices, the Fribble whom Churchill has gibbeted in the Rosciad led a riotous opposition in his theatre, to which he was compelled to offer a modified submission; and not many weeks later, after appearing in a comedy by Mrs. Sheridan and giving it out to be his last appearance in any new play (the character was a solemn old coxcomb, and one of his happiest performances), he announced his determination to go abroad for two years. The pretence was health; but the real cause (resentment of what he thought the public indifference, and a resolve that they should feel his absence) is surmised in a note of Lord Bath's which lies before me, addressed to his nephew Colman, the ad interim manager of the theatre. Garrick left London in the autumn; and his first letter to Colman from Paris describes the honours which were showering upon him, the plays revived to please him, and the veteran actors recalled to act before him. He had supped with Marmontel and d'Alembert; "the Clairon was at the supper, and recited them a charming scene from Athalie; and he had himself given the dagger scene in Macbeth, the curse in Lear, and the falling asleep of Sir John Brute, with such extraordinary effect, that "the most "wonderful wonder of wonders was nothing to it. Yet on the very day that letter was written (the 8th of October 1763), a more wonderful wonder was enacting on the boards of his own theatre. A young bankers' clerk named Powell, to whom, on hearing him rehearse, he had given an engagement before he left London of three pounds a week for three years, appeared on that day in Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster, and took the audience by storm. Foote is described to have been the only unmoved spectator. The rest of the audience were not content with clapping; "they stood up and shouted," says Walpole; and Foote's jeering went for nothing. Walpole describes the scene with what seems to be a satisfied secret persuasion (in which Goldsmith certainly shared) that Garrick had at last met a dangerous rival. He calls the new actor "what Mr. Pitt called my Lord Clive," a heavenborn hero; says the heads of the whole town are turned; and describes all the boxes taken for a month. Powell's salary was at once raised to ten pounds a-week, George Garrick consenting on the part of his brother; and such was the anxiety of the town to see him in new characters, and the readiness of the management in giving way to it, that in this his first season, from October '63 to May '64, he appeared in seventeen different plays, to a profit on the receipts of nearly seven thousand pounds. His most successful efforts indicate the attractive points of his style. In Philaster he appeared sixteen times, in Posthumus eleven, seven times in Jaffier, six in Castalio, and five in Alexander. Garrick himself had meanwhile written to him from Italy to warn him against such characters as the latter, and restrain him from attempting too much. The advice was admirably written, and gratefully acknowledged; nor is there any reason to doubt its sincerity. Remoteness of place has in some respects the effect of distance of time; and the great actor, doubtless not sorry to be absent till the novelty should abate, was less likely to be jealous in Piedmont or the Savoy than in the green-room of Drury-lane. He knew himself yet unassailed in what he had always felt to be his main strength, his versatility and variety of power. Three men were now dividing his laurels; and till Powell could double Richard and Sir John Brute, till O'Brien could alternate Ranger with Macbeth, and till Weston could exhibit Lear by the side of Abel Drugger, Garrick had no call to be seriously alarmed. Be that as it might, however, Powell's success was a great thing for the authors. He came to occupy for them, opportunely, a field which the other had avowedly abandoned; and Goldsmith, always earnest for the claims of writers, sympathised strongly in his success. Another incident of the theatrical season made hardly less noise. O'Brien's charms in Ranger and Lovemore proved too much for Lady Susan Fox-Strangways, and she ran away with him. It cured Walpole for a time of his theatre-going. He had a few days before been protesting to Lord Hertford that he had the republican spirit of an old Roman, and that his name was thoroughly Horatius; but a homely-looking earl's-daughter running away with a handsome young actor, ran away with all his philosophy. He thought a footman would have been preferable ; and could not have believed that Lady Susan would have stooped so low. On the other hand, Goldsmith speaks of O'Brien's elegance and accomplishments ("by nature formed to please," said Churchill), and seems to think the lady and the player not unfairly matched. But much depends on whether these things are viewed from a luxurious seat in the private boxes, or from a hard bench in the upper gallery. "When I 66 as Poverty pressed heavily just now upon Goldsmith, as I have said. His old friend Grainger came over on leave from his West India station, to bring out his poem of the Sugar Cane; and found him in little better plight than in his garret days. "taxed little Goldsmith for not writing," he says to Percy, "he promised me, his answer was, that he never wrote a letter in "his life; and 'faith I believe him, unless to a bookseller for "money." In the present year, it would seem, he had more experience than success in applications of that kind. Yet he was also himself in communication with Grainger's correspondent. Percy was still, as he had long been, busy with his Reliques; and in the collection and arrangement of that work, which, more than any other in its age, contributed to bring back to the study and appreciation of poetry, a natural, healthy, passionate tone, took frequent counsel with Goldsmith. To their intercourse respecting it, we owe the charming ballad with the prettiest of opening lines, "Turn gentle hermit of the dale;" and Percy admitted many obligations of knowledge and advice, in which no other man of letters in that day could so well have assisted him. The foremost of them, Johnson himself, was indifferent enough to the whole scheme; though at this time a visitor, with Miss Williams, in Percy's vicarage-house. Little else than a round of visitings, indeed, does the present year seem to have been to Johnson; though the call for his Shakespeare (on which he had so long been engaged) was never so urgent as now. He passed part of the spring with his friend Langton in Lincolnshire, where it was long remembered how suddenly, and to what amazement of the elders of the family, he had laid himself down on the edge of a steep hill behind the house, and rolled over and over to the bottom; he had stayed the summer months and part of August with Percy, at Easton Mauduit vicarage in Northamptonshire; and on his return to town he had formed an acquaintance with the Thrales. Is it necessary to describe the tall, stately, well-informed, worthy brewer, and tory member for Southwark; or his brisk, vivacious, half-learned, plump little wife? Is not their friendship known as the solace of Johnson's later life, and remembered whenever he is named? Thrale was fond of the society of men of letters and celebrity; and Arthur Murphy, who had for some years acted as provider in that sort to the weekly dinners at Southwark and Streatham, had the honour of introducing Johnson. Mrs. Thrale was at this time as pretty as she was lively, garrulous, and young; to more than a woman's quickness of observation, added all a woman's gentleness and kindness of heart; indulged in literary airs and judgments, which she put on with an audacity as full of charms as of blunders; and beyond measure captivated Johnson. She was his Madam, My Mistress, his Dearest of all Dear Ladies, whom he lectured only because he loved for where she came she brought him sunshine. Like some 66 'gay creature of the element" she flitted past the gloomy scholar, still over-toiled and weary, though resting at last. "You little "creatures," he exclaimed, on her appearing before him one day in a dark coloured dress, " you should never wear those sort of "clothes; they are unsuitable in every way. What have not "all insects gay colours?" The house of the hospitable brewer became to him a second home, where unaccustomed comforts awaited him, and his most familiar friends were invited to please him; immediately after his first visit, the Thursdays in every week were set apart for dinner with the Thrales; and before long there was a "Mr. Johnson's room "both in the Southwark mansion and the Streatham villa. Very obvious was the effect upon him. His |