This

the little tale was a sincerity and zeal for many things. indeed it was, which, while all the world were admiring it for its mirth and sweetness, its bright and happy pictures, its simultaneous movement of the springs of laughter and tears, gave it a rarer value to a more select audience, and connected it with not the least memorable anecdote of modern literary history. It had been published little more than four years, when two Germans whose names became afterwards world-famous, one a student at that time in his twentieth, the other a graduate in his twentyfifth year, met in the city of Strasburg. The younger, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, a law-scholar of the University with a passion for literature, sought knowledge from the elder, Johann Gottfried Herder, for the course on which he was moved to enter. Herder, a severe and masterly though somewhat cynical critic, laughed at the likings of the young aspirant, and roused him to other aspiration. Producing a German translation of the Vicar of Wakefield, he read it out aloud to Goethe in a manner which was peculiar to him; and, as the incidents of the little story came forth in his serious simple voice, in one unmoved unaltering tone ("just as if nothing of it was present before him, but all was 66 only historical; as if the shadows of this poetical creation did "not affect him in a life-like manner, but only glided gently by"), a new ideal of letters and of life arose in the mind of the listener. Years passed on; and while that younger student raised up and re-established the literature of his country, and came at last, in his prime and in his age, to be acknowledged for the wisest of modern men, he never ceased throughout to confess what he owed to those old evenings at Strasburg. The strength which can conquer circumstance; the happy wisdom of irony which elevates itself above every object, above fortune and misfortune, good and evil, death and life, and attains to the possession of a poetical world; first visited Goethe in the tone with which Goldsmith's tale is told. The fiction became to him life's first reality; in country clergymen of Drusenheim, there started up vicars of Wakefield; for Olivias and Sophias of Alsace, first love fluttered at his heart;—and at every stage of his illustrious after-career, its impression still vividly recurred to him. He remembered it, when, at the height of his worldly honour and success, he made his written life (Wahrheit und Dichtung) record what a blessing it had been to him; he had not forgotten it, when, some twenty years ago, standing at the age of eighty-one on the very brink of the grave, he told a friend that in the decisive moment of mental development the Vicar of Wakefield had formed his education, and that he had recently, with unabated delight, "read "the charming book again from beginning to end, not a little

"affected by the lively recollection" of how much he had been indebted to the author seventy years before.

Goldsmith was unconscious of this exalted tribute. He died as ignorant of Herder's friendly criticism, as of the gratitude of Goethe. The little book silently forced its way. I find, upon examination of the periodicals of the day, that no noise was made about it, no trumpets were blown for it. The St. James's Chronicle did not condescend to notice its appearance, and the Monthly Review confessed frankly that nothing was to be made of it. The better sort of newspapers as well as the more dignified reviews contemptuously left it to the patronage of Lloyd's Evening Post, the London Chronicle, and journals of that class; which simply informed their readers that a new novel, called the Vicar of Wakefield, had been published, that "the Editor is Doctor Gold66 smith, who has affixed his name to an introductory advertise"ment,” and that such and such were the incidents of the story. Several columns of the Evening Post and the Chronicle, between the dates of March and April, were filled in this way with bald recital of the plot; and with such extracts as the prisonscene, the account of the Primroses, and the brief episode of Matilda: but, in the way of praise or of criticism, not a word was said. Johnson, as I have remarked, took little interest in the story at any time but as the means of getting so much money for its author; and believing that "Harry Fielden " (as he called him) knew nothing but the shell of life, may be excused for thinking the Vicar a "mere fanciful performance." It would seem that

none of the club indeed, excepting Burke, cared much about it: and one may read, in the French letters of the time, how perfectly Madame Riccoboni agrees with her friend Garrick as to the little to be learned from it; and how surprised the lively lady is that the Burkes should have found it pathetic, or be able to approve of its arguments in favour of thieves and outcasts. Admiration, nevertheless, gathered slowly and steadily around it; a second edition appeared on the 5th of June, and a third on the 25th of August; it reached its sixth edition in the year of its writer's death; and he had lived to see it translated into several continental languages, though not to know that the little story had been the chief consolation of a foreign prince in his English exile, and certainly not to receive from the booksellers the least addition to that original sorry payment, which Johnson himself thought “accidentally” less than it ought to have been. In the very month when the second edition of the Vicar of Wakefield was issued, a bill which Oliver Goldsmith had drawn upon Newbery, for fifteen guineas, was returned dishonoured.

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CHAPTER XIV.

OLD DRUDGERY, AND A NEW VENTURE DAWNING. 1766.

1766.

BUT if solid rewards seldom waited on even the happiest of Goldsmith's achievements, he never now lost courage and Et. 38. hope, or showed signs of yielding in the struggle. He had always his accustomed resource, and went uncomplainingly to the old drudgery. Payne the bookseller gave him ten guineas for compiling a duodecimo volume of “Poems for Young Ladies. "In three parts: Devotional, Moral, and Entertaining." It was a respectable selection of pieces, chiefly from Parnell, Pope, Thomson, Addison, and Collins; with additions of less importance from less eminent hands, and some occasional verses which he supposed to be his friend Robert Nugent's, but which were really written by Lord Lyttelton. It has been assumed to be in this book "for young ladies" that two objectionable pieces by Prior were inserted; but the statement, though sanctioned by Percy, is incorrect. It was in a more extensive compilation of Beauties of English Poetry Selected, published in the following year, and for the gathering together of which Griffin the bookseller gave him fifty pounds, that he made the questionable choice of the "Ladle” and "Hans Carvel," which for once interdicted from general reading a book with his name upon its title-page. This was unlucky for the selection in other respects, making allowance for a limited acquaintance with the earlier English poets, was a reasonably good one; and in this, as well as in its preface and brief notices of the pieces quoted, though without any claim to originality or critical depth, was not undeserving of what he claimed generally for books of the kind as entitling them to fair reward. He used to point to them as illustrating, better than any other kind of compilations, "the art of profession” in authorship. "Judgment," he said, "is to be paid for in such selections; "and a man may be twenty years of his life cultivating his 66 'judgment." But he has also, with its help, to be mindful of changes in the public taste, to which he may himself have contributed. Nothing is more frequent than these, and few things so sudden. Staid wives will shrink with abhorrence in their fortieth autumn, from what they read with delight in their twentieth summer; and it was now even less than twenty years since that faultless "family expositor," Doctor Doddridge (as we

learn from the letters of the holy divine), thought it no sin to read the Wife of Bath's Tale to young Nancy Moore, and take his share in the laugh it raised. Doctor Johnson himself had not forgotten those habits and ways of his youth; and amazed Boswell, some ten years later, by asserting that Prior was a lady's book, and that no lady was ashamed to have it standing in her library.

The Doctor could hardly have taken part in the present luckless selection, however, since through all the summer and autumn months of the year he had withdrawn from his old haunts and friends, and taken refuge with the Thrales. For the latter, happening to visit him in Johnson's-court one day at the close of spring, found him on his knees in such a passion of morbid melancholy, beseeching God to continue to him the use of his understanding, and proclaiming such sins of which he supposed himself guilty, that poor sober solid Thrale was fain to "lift up one hand to shut his mouth," and the worthy pair bore him off, by a sort of kindly force, to their hospitable home. With cheerfulness, health returned after some few months; he passed a portion of the summer with them at Brighton; and from that time, says Murphy, Johnson became almost resident in the family. "He went occasionally to "the club in Gerrard-street, but his head-quarters were fixed at "Streatham.” Goldsmith had rightly foreseen how ill things were going with him, when not even a new play could induce him to attend the theatre.

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In his own attendance at the theatre he was just now more zealous than ever, and had doubtless "assisted" at some recent memorable nights there. When all the world went to see Rousseau, for example, including the King and Queen; when their majesties, though Garrick exhibited all his powers in Lusignan and Lord Chalkstone, looked more at the philosopher than the player; and when poor Mrs. Garrick, who had exalted him on a seat in her box (rewarded for her pains by his laughing at Lusignan and crying at Lord Chalkstone, not understanding a word of either), held him back by the skirts of his coat all night, in continual terror that "the recluse philosopher" would tumble over the front of the box into the pit, from his eager anxiety to show himself,Goldsmith could hardly have stayed away. Nor is he likely to have been absent when the Drury-lane players (with many of whom, especially Mr. and Mrs. Yates, he had now formed acquaintance) made the great rally for their rival fund; and, in defiance of his outlawry, Wilkes unexpectedly showed himself in the theatre, more bent on seeing Garrick's Kitely than keeping faith with the ministry, to whom, through Burke, he had the day before promised to go back to Paris more secretly and quickly than he had come to London. Least of all could Goldsmith have been

absent when the last new comedy was played, of which all the town was talking still; and which seems to have this year turned his thoughts for the first time to the theatre, with serious intention to try his own fortune there.

The Clandestine Marriage, the great success of the year, and for the strength and variety of its character deservedly so, had been the joint work of Colman and Garrick; whose respective shares in its authorship have been much disputed, but now seem clear and ascertainable enough. The idea of the comedy originated with Colman, as he was looking at the first plate in Hogarth's immortal series of Marriage à la Mode; but he admits that it was Garrick who, on being taken into counsel, suggested that important alteration of Hogarth's "proud lord" into an amiable old ruin of a fop, descending to pin his noble decayed skirts to the frock of a tradesman's daughter, but still aspiring to the hopes and submitting to the toils of conquest, which gave to the stage its favourite Lord Ogleby. These leading ideas determined on, rough hints for the construction and conduct of the plot, of which Colman's was made public by his son three-and-thirty years ago, and Garrick's did not see the light till the other day, were exchanged between the friends; and from these it is manifest that, in addition to what Colman in his letters somewhat scantily admits to have been Garrick's contributions,-namely, the first suggestion of Lord Ogleby, his opening levee scene, and the fifth act which he closes with such handsome gallantry,—the practised actor had mapped out more clearly than Colman, though he may not have written all, the other principal scenes in which his chosen character was concerned. What he submitted for the interview where the antiquated fop supposes Fanny to have fallen in love with him, will not only exhibit this, but hereafter help us to understand some disagreements between himself and Goldsmith. "Bride," he remarks, putting the actor always in place of the character, resolves to open her heart to Garrick, and try to bring him over to forgive them. "O'Brien consents, and leaves her upon seeing "Garrick come smiling along. Enter Garrick, he smiling, and "taking every word from the girl as love to himself. She "hesitates; faulters; which confirms him more and more, till at "last she is obliged to go off abruptly, and dare not discover what "she intended, which is now demonstration to Garrick, who is left "" alone, and may show himself in all the glory of his character in "a soliloquy of vanity. He resolves to have the girl, and break "the hearts of the rest of the female world." Powell had to replace O'Brien, however, and King was substituted for Garrick, before the play was acted; and out of the latter circumstance arose a coolness between the friends which will reappear in this