exerted against it. That Johnson had not a taste for the finest productions of genius, Garrick was soon afterwards very busy to explain. With Iago's ingenious mischief, with Hal's gay compliance in Falstaff's vices, such a critic might be at home; but from Lear in the storm, and from Macbeth on the blasted heath, he must be content to be far away: he could, there, but mount the high horse, and bluster about imperial tragedy. The tone was caught by the actor's friends; is perceptible throughout his correspondence; is in the letters of Warburton, and in such as I have quoted of the Wartons; and gradually, to even Johnson's disturbance, passed from society into the press, and became a stock theme with the newspapers. Garrick went too far, however, when he suffered the libeller Kenrick, not many months after his published attack on Johnson, to exhibit upon his theatre a play called Falstaff's Wedding; and to make another attempt, the following season, with a piece called the Widowed Wife. The first was damned, and till Shakespeare's fat Jack is forgotten, is not likely to be heard of again; the second passed into oblivion more slowly : but Garrick was brought, by both, into personal relations with the writer which he lived to have reason to deplore. Meanwhile, and for some little time to come, what Joseph Warton had written was but too true. Garrick and Johnson were entirely off; and in a certain gloom of spirits, and disquietude of health, which were just now stealing over the latter, even his interest in the stage appeared to have passed away.

"I think, Mr. Johnson," said Goldsmith, as they sat talking together one evening in February, "you don't go near the theatres 66 now. You give yourself no more concern about a new play, "than if you had never had anything to do with the stage." Johnson avoided the question, and his friend shifted the subject. He spoke of the public claim and expectation that the author of Irene should give them "something in some other way;" on which Johnson began to talk of making verses, and said (very truly) that the great difficulty was to know when you had made good ones. He remarked that he had once written, in one day, a hundred lines of the Vanity of Human Wishes; and turning quickly to Goldsmith, added, "Doctor, I am not quite idle; I made one line "t'other day; but I made no more." "Let us hear it," said the other laughing; "we'll put a bad one to it." "No, sir,” replied Johnson, "I have forgot it."

He had arrived

Boswell was the reporter of this conversation. from Paris a few days before, bringing with him Rousseau's old servant maid, Mademoiselle le Vasseur. "She's very homely and very awkward," says Hume, "but more talked of than the "Princess of Morocco or the Countess of Egmont, on account of

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"her fidelity and attachment towards him.

..

His very dog, who is no better than a collie, has a name and reputation in the world!” It was enough for Boswell, who clung to any rag of celebrity; nor, remembering how the ancient widow of Cicero and Sallust had seduced a silly young patrician into thinking that her close connection with genius must have given her the secret of it, were Hume and Walpole quite secure of even the honour of the young Scotch escort of the ugly old Frenchwoman. They arrived safely and virtuously, notwithstanding; and Boswell straightway went to Johnson, whom, not a little to his discomfort, he found put by his doctors on a water regimen. Though they supped twice at the Mitre, it was not as in the old social time. On the night of the conversation just given, being then on the eve of his return to Scotland, he had taken Goldsmith with him to call again on Johnson, "with the hope of prevailing on him to sup with us at the "Mitre." But they found him indisposed, and resolved not to go abroad. "Come then," said Goldsmith gaily, we will not go to "the Mitre to-night, since we cannot have the big man with us." Whereupon the big man, laughing at the jovial Irish phrase, called for a bottle of port; of which, adds Boswell, "Goldsmith "and I partook, while our friend, now a water drinker, sat by us." One does not discover, in such anecdotes as these, what honest though somewhat dry Joe Warton calls Goldsmith's solemn coxcombry. But beside Boswell's effulgence in that kind, any lesser light could hardly hope to shine. Even to the great commoner himself, at whose unapproachable seclusion all London had so lately been amazed, and who at length, with little abatement of the haughty mystery, had reappeared in the House of Commons, was "Jemmy" now resolved, before leaving London, to force his way. Corsican Paoli was the card to play for this mighty Pam; and already he had sent mysterious intimation to Pitt of certain views of the struggling patriot, of the illustrious Paoli, which he desired to communicate to "the prime minister of the brave, the secretary "of freedom and of spirit." Wonder reigned at the club when they found the interview granted, and inextinguishable laughter when they heard of the interview itself. Profiting by Rousseau's Armenian example, Boswell went in Corsican robes. "He came

"in the Corsican dress," says Lord Buchan, who was present; "and Mr. Pitt smiled; but received him very graciously, in his "pompous manner. ." It was an advantage the young Scot followed up, very soon inflicting on Pitt a brief history of himself in an elaborate epistle. He described his general love of great people, and how that Mr. Pitt's character in particular had filled many of his best hours with what he oddly called "that noble admiration "which a disinterested soul can enjoy in the bower of philosophy."

He told him he was going to publish an account of Corsica, and of Paoli's gallant efforts against the tyrant Genoese; added that to please his father he had himself studied law, and was now fairly entered to the bar; and concluded thus. "I begin to like it. I can "labour hard; I feel myself coming forward, and I hope to be useful "to my country. Could you find time to honour me now and then with letter?" To no wiser man than this, it should be always kept in mind, posterity became chiefly indebted for its laugh at Goldsmith's literary vanities, social absurdities, and so-called self-important ways.

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With Pitt's reappearance had meanwhile been connected another event of not less mighty consequence. On the day (the 14th of January) when he rose to support Conway's repeal of the American stamp-act, and to resist his accompanying admission that such an act was not void in itself; when, in answer to Nugent's furious denunciation of rebellious colonies, he rejoiced that Massachusetts had resisted, and affirmed that colonies unrepresented could not be taxed by parliament ;—Burke took his seat, by an arrangement with Lord Verney, for Wendover borough. A fortnight later he made his first speech, and divided the admiration of the house with Pitt himself, Afterwards, and with increased effect, he spoke again; Pitt praising him, and telling his friends to set proper value on the "acquisition they had made;" and when the struggle for the repeal was over, after the last victorious division on the memorable morning of the 22nd of February, and Pitt and Conway came out amid the huzzaings of the crowded lobby, where the leading merchants of the kingdom whom this great question so vitally affected had till “almost a winter's return of light” tremblingly awaited the decision, Burke stood at their side, and received share of the same shouts and benedictions.

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Extraordinary news for the club, all this; and again the excellent Hawkins is in a state of wonder. "Sir," exclaimed Johnson, "there is no wonder at all. We who know Mr. Burke, know that "he will be one of the first men in the country. But he had regrets with which to sober this admission. He disliked the Rockingham party, and was zealous for more strict attendance at the club. "We have the loss of Burke's company," he complained to Langton, “since he has been engaged in the public business.” Yet he cannot help adding (it was the first letter he had written to Langton from his new study in Johnson's-court, which he thinks "looks very pretty" about him) that it is well so great a man by nature as Burke, should be expected soon to attain civil greatness. "He has gained more reputation than perhaps any man at his "his first appearance ever gained before. His speeches have filled "the town with wonder."

Ten days after the date of this letter came out an advertisement

in the St. James's Chronicle, which affected the town with neither wonder nor curiosity, though not without matter for both to the members of the club. "In a few days will be published," it said, "in two volumes, twelves, price six shillings bound, or five "shillings sewed, The Vicar of Wakefield. A tale, supposed to be "written by himself. Printed for F. Newbery at the Crown in "Paternoster Row." This was the manuscript story sold to Newbery's nephew fifteen months before; and it seems impossible satisfactorily to account for the bookseller's delay. Johnson says that not till now had the Traveller's success made the publication worth while; but eight months were passed, even now, since the Traveller had reached its fourth edition. We are left to conjecture; and the most likely supposition will probably be, that the delay was consequent on business arrangements between the younger and the elder Newbery. Goldsmith had certainly not claimed the interval for any purpose of retouching his work; and can hardly have failed to desire speedy publication, for what had been to him a labour of love as rare as the Traveller itself. But the elder Newbery may have interposed some claim to a property in the novel, and objected to its appearance contemporaneously with the Traveller. He often took part in this way in his nephew's affairs; and thus, for a translation of a French book on philosophy which the nephew published after the Vicar, and which Goldsmith at this very time was labouring at, we find, from the summer account handed in by the elder Newbery, that the latter had himself provided the payment. He gave Goldsmith twenty pounds for it; and had also advanced him, at about the time when the Vicar was put in hand (it was printed at Salisbury, and was nearly three months in passing through the press), the sum of eleven guineas on his own promissory note. The impression of a common interest between the booksellers is confirmed by what I find appended to all Mr. Francis Newbery's advertisements of the novel in the various papers of the day ("of whom may be had The Traveller, or a "prospect of society, a poem by Doctor Goldsmith. Price 1s. 6d."); and it seems further to strengthen the surmise of Mr. John Newbery's connection with the book, that he is himself niched into it. He is introduced as the philanthropic bookseller in St. Paul's-churchyard, who had written so many little books for children ("he called himself their friend, but he was the friend of "all mankind”) and as having published for the Vicar against the deuterogamists of the age.

:

So let the worthy bookseller, whose philanthropy was always under watchful care of his prudence, continue to live with the Whistonian controversy; for the good Doctor Primrose, that courageous monogamist, has made both immortal.

CHAPTER XIII.

1766. Et. 38.

THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 1766.

No book upon record has obtained a wider popularity than the Vicar of Wakefield, and none is more likely to endure. One who, on the day of its appearance, had not left the nursery, but who grew to be a popular poet and a man of fine wit, and who happily still survives with the experience of the seventy years over which his pleasures of memory extend, remarked lately to the present writer, that, of all the books which, through the fitful changes of three generations, he had seen rise and fall, the charm of the Vicar of Wakefield had alone continued as at first; and, could he revisit the world after an interval of many more generations, he should as surely look to find it undiminished. Such is the reward of simplicity and truth, and of not overstepping the modesty of nature.

It is not necessary that any critical judgment should be here gone into, of the merits or the defects of this charming tale. Every one is familiar with Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. We read it in youth and in age. We return to it, as Walter Scott has said, again and again; "and we bless the memory of an

"author who contrives so well to reconcile us to human nature." With its ease of style, its turns of thought so whimsical yet wise, and the humour and wit which sparkle freshly through its narrative, we have all of us profitably amused the idle or the vacant hour; from year to year we have had its tender or mirthful incidents, its forms so homely in their beauty, its pathos and its comedy, given back to us from the canvas of our Wilkies, Newtons, and Stothards, our Leslies, Maclises, and Mulreadys : but not in those graces of style, or even in that home-cherished gallery of familiar faces, can the secret of its extraordinary fascination be said to consist. It lies nearer the heart. A something which has found its way there; which, while it amused, has made us happier; which, gently inweaving itself with our habits of thought, has increased our good-humour and charity; which, insensibly it may be, has corrected wilful impatiences of temper, and made the world's daily accidents easier and kinder to us all: somewhat thus should be expressed, I think, the charm of the Vicar of Wakefield. It is our first pure example of the simple domestic novel. Though wide as it was various, and most minutely