narrative. Colman thought Garrick's surrender of Lord Ogleby a capricious forfeiture of promise; but though an exception to his previous withdrawal from all new parts was certainly at first intended in this case, he exercised a sound discretion in changing that purpose. The new character was in truth little more than an enrichment of one of his own farces, assisted by a farce of his friend Townley's; and he could himself but have made Lord Ogleby an improved Lord Chalkstone. It was better left to an entirely new representative, and King justified his choice. Colman's sense of injury was, nevertheless, kept carefully alive by good-natured friends; and when Garrick, some time after the play's production, and while the town were still crowding to see it, wrote in triumph to his coadjutor of the difficulties of the rival house ("The ministry all to pieces! Pitt, they say, and a new 66 arrangement. Beard and Co. going positively to sell their patent "for sixty thousand pounds. 'Tis true; but, mum. We have not "yet discovered the purchasers. When I know, you shall know : "there will be the devil to do"), he little imagined what notions he was then infusing into Colman's busy discontented brain.

The unexampled success of their comedy had seemed in truth to have as thoroughly reconciled them, as it had unsettled poor Goldsmith's thoughts, and driven them in the direction of the stage. It was not unnatural. The reputation of his later writings, bringing him into occasional better company, had tempted him to habits of greater expense, while it failed to supply the means of keeping pace with them. His accounts with Newbery were growing more and more involved; an unpaid note for fifty pounds, which he had given in settlement three years ago, began to make threatening re-appearance; his last draft upon the not unfriendly but cautious bookseller, though for only eleven guineas, had been dishonoured; and ordinary modes of extrication appeared more difficult and distant than ever. There was hope in the theatre. Anxiety and pain he knew there would also be ; but he was not indisposed to risk them. They could never wholly obscure the brighter side. No longer might the playhouse be called the sole seat of wit; nor could it any more be said, as in Steele's days, to bear as important relation to the manners as the bank to the credit of the nation: but besides the tempting profits of an author's nights," which, with any reasonable success, could hardly average less than from three to four hundred pounds, there was nothing to make the town half so fond of a man, even yet, as a successful play. It had been the dream, too, of his own earliest ambition; and though his juvenile tragedy had gone the way of dreams, he had now a surer and not untried ground to build upon, of humour, character, and wit. He resolved to attempt a comedy.

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What, meanwhile, his leisure amusements were, since Johnson's withdrawal to the Thrales had limited their intercourse even at Gerrard-street, may be worth illustrating by occasional little anecdotes of the time, though rather loosely told. He had joined a cardclub, at the Devil tavern near Temple-bar, where very moderate whist was played; and where the members seem to have occupied the intervals of their favourite game with practical jokes upon himself. Here he had happened to give a guinea instead of a shilling, one night, to the driver of a coach (after dining with Tom Davies); and on the following night a fictitious coachman presented himself, to restore a guinea equally counterfeit. It was a trick to prove that not even the honesty of a hackney coachman would be too startling a trial for Goldsmith's credulity; and, as anticipated, the gilded coin was taken with an overflow of simple thanks, and subsequent more solid acknowledgment of the supposed marvellous honesty. Other incidents tell the same tale of credulous, unsuspecting, odd simplicity. Doctor Sleigh of Cork had asked him to be kind to a young Irish law-student heretofore mentioned, who had taken chambers near his own, who was known afterwards as a writer for the newspapers, as Foote's and Macklin's biographer, and, from the title of the most successful poem he published, as Conversation Cooke; and this young student, invited to apply to him in case of need, was told with earnest regrets one day, in answer to a trifling application, that he was really not at that moment in possession of a guinea. The youth turned away in less distress than Goldsmith; and, returning to his own chambers after midnight, found a difficulty in getting in. Goldsmith had meanwhile himself borrowed the money, followed with it too late, and thrust it, wrapped up in paper, half underneath the door. Cooke hurried next day to thank him, and tell him what a mercy it was somebody else had not laid hold of it. "In truth, my dear fellow," said Goldsmith, "I did not think of that.” As little did he trouble himself to think, when a French adventurer went to him towards the close of the year with proposals for a History of England in French; which was not only to be completed in fifteen volumes at the cost of seven guineas and a half, and to be paid for in advance, but to have the effect of bringing into more friendly relations the men of letters of both countries. Goldsmith, though he had been fain but a few days before this, for the humble payment of two guineas, to write Newbery a "Preface to "Wiseman's Grammar," had no mean notion of the dignity of literature in regard to such proposals as this French impostor's, and now indulged it at a thoughtless cost. Straightway he gave his name, impoverished himself by giving his last available guinea, and, in "the Colonel Chevalier de Champigny's" advertisements,

jostling the names of crowned heads and ambassadors, figured as the "Author of the Travellér."

Pleasanter are the anecdotes which tell of his love for the young, and anxiety to have them for his readers. It was matter of pride to one with as gentle a spirit and a heart as wise as his own, the late Charles Lamb, to remember that the old woman who taught him his letters, had in her own school-girl days been patted on the head by Goldsmith. Visiting where she stayed one day, he found her reading his selection of Poems for Young Ladies, praised her fondness for poetry, and sent her his own poem to encourage it. The son of Hoole, Ariosto's translator, remembered a similar incident in his father's house. Other amusing traits might be added, strongly resembling such as already have been told. Booksellers would get him to recommend books, misguiding him as to the grounds of recommendation; and though everybody had been laughing at the exaggerated accounts of Patagonians nine feet high, brought home by Commodore Byron's party, Goldsmith earnestly protested that he had talked with the carpenter of the commodore's ship (a "sensible, understanding “man, and I believe extremely faithful "), and by him had been assured, in the most solemn manner, of the truth of the relation. Nor was it altogether romance, though the honest carpenter made the most of what he had seen. Even the last survey of those coasts, though it does not establish the assertions of Magalhaens and Byron, leaves it quite certain that the Patagonians far exceed the height of ordinary men, and that the believers in this possibility were not nearly such fools as the majority too readily supposed.

CHAPTER XV.

THE GREAT WORLD AND ITS RULERS. 1766.

THE eleventh year of Goldsmith's London struggle was now coming to a close, amid strange excitement and change, which may only here be so far pursued as to exhibit its re- Æt. 38.

1766.

action on literature and its cultivators. What Garrick had reported of the ministry in the summer, was in the main correct. Though it had not broken to pieces, the King had exploded it ; and there was Pitt and a new 66 arrangement." The word was not ill chosen. Changes of ministry were now brought about without the conflict of principles or party, and by no better means than might be used for "arrangement" of the royal bed-chamber.

Lord Rockingham had hardly taken office when the Duke of Cumberland's death left him defenceless against palace intrigues; and their busy fomentors, the "king's friends" whom Burke has gibbetted in his Thoughts on Discontents, very speedily destroyed him. His Stamp Act repeal bill, his America trading bill, his resolution against General Warrants, and his Seizure of Papers' bill, were the signal for royal favour to every creeping placeman who opposed them; and on the failure of the latter bill Grafton threw up his office, saying Pitt alone could save them. Pitt's fame as well as peace would have profited, had he consented to do that. But against his better self, the King's appeals had enlisted his pride; he had not strength, amid failing health, to conquer the impulse of vanity; he did not see that the real object aimed at, was no alliance of the throne with the people, but subordination of everything, including the great houses, to the throne; and in an evil hour he consented to be Prime Minister, with the title of the Earl of Chatham.

Rockingham retired, with hands as clean as when he entered office, without asking for honour, place, or pension for any of his friends, and with that phalanx of friends unbroken. It was in vain that Chatham attempted to separate the party from its chief. This was steadily resisted. Savile, Dowdeswell, Lord John Cavendish, the Duke of Richmond, the Duke of Portland, Fitzherbert, and Charles Yorke (Burke could only refuse future office, he had none to resign), persisted in resigning office; and the only important members of the late administration who remained, were the two whom Cumberland had induced to join it, General Conway (with whom William Burke remained as undersecretary) and the Duke of Grafton.

With these, though strongly opposed in views as well as temper, were now associated two men of remarkable talents, personal adherents of Chatham; Lord Camden as Chancellor, and Lord Shelburne as a Secretary of State: the latter a young but not untried statesman, nor alone distinguished for political ability, but also for such rare tastes and independent originality of character, that men of science and letters, such men as even Goldsmith, had come to regard him as a friend. The next ingredient in the strange compound was Charles Townshend, at once perhaps the cleverest and undoubtedly the most dangerous man in the whole kingdom. Admirably did Horace Walpole remark that his good humour turned away hatred from him, but his levity intercepted love. He was made Chancellor of the Exchequer, with the lead of the House of Commons ; and his opinions no man knew, save that they were simply the opinions of the House of Commons. He had with equal ability advocated every shade of opinion, as the majority had with equal impartiality voted; and certainly no man, for his brief reign, was ever so

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popular in it, or so nearly approached to itself in the extravagance of his inconsistencies. But a man is not remembered in history for his mere predominance there; and he who exactly suits that audience, and "hits the house between wind and water," may be found to have lost a nobler hearing, and to have missed much worthier aims. Little spoken of indeed as Charles Townshend now is, it seems necessary to call to mind, when any modern writer pauses at his once famous name, that as well in the copious abundance of his faults as in the wonderful brilliancy of his parts he had far outstripped competition; and must have ranked, even beyond the circle of his contemporaries, for the most knowing man of their age, but for his ignorance of common truth, common "sincerity, common honesty, common modesty, common steadiness, common courage, and common sense. Wanting these qualities, and having every other in surprising abundance, he most thoroughly completed the charm of powerful trouble which Chatham was now preparing; and in which every shade of patriot and courtier, king's-friend and republican, tory and whig, treacherous ally and open enemy, were at length most ingeniously united. Nobody knew anybody in this memorable cabinet, and all its members hated each other. Soon did even its author turn sullenly away from the monstrous prodigy he had created, and leave it to work its mischief unrestrained.

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Poor Conway first took the alarm, and got the Duke of Grafton to urge the necessity of having some one in the lower house, on whom real reliance could be placed. There will be 66 a strong phalanx of able personages against us," he said; “and among "those whom Mr. Conway wishes to see support him is Mr. Burke, "the readiest man on all points perhaps in the whole house." Burke had been a member little more than six months when this was written; yet, even among the men who thus felt his usefulness, there was as little idea of recognising his claim to an office of any importance, as of offering to make him prime minister. wish had been, as soon as it became certain that the Rockinghams must resign, to obtain an appointment which happened then to be vacant, and to have held which, however quickly surrendered, would have increased his parliamentary consideration; but he failed in the attempt, and was styled, by the vehement Bishop of Chester, nothing short of "madman" to have made it. "Here

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"is an Irishman," wrote Colonel Lee in the following month to the Prince Royal of Poland, "sprung up in the House of Commons, "who has astonished every body by the power of his eloquence, "and his comprehensive knowledge in all our exterior and "internal politics, and commercial interests. He wants nothing "but that sort of dignity annexed to rank and property in England,