may be acquired by titthing with their anxieties. I am Dear Sir with the greatest esteem your most obedient humble servant; то George Oliver Golsmith. Colman Esaf Having taken this decisive step, Goldsmith wrote on the following day to the now rival manager, who had left town for Lichfield; and, though his letter shows the coolness which had arisen between them, it is a curious proof of his deference to the sensitiveness of Garrick that he should use only the name of the old Covent Garden patentee, and put forth what he had recently done with his play under cover of his original intention in respect to it. His letter is dated London, July 20, 1767, and runs thus. "Sir, A few "days ago Mr. Beard renewed his claim to the piece which I had "written for his stage, and had as a friend submitted to your "perusal. As I found you had very great difficulties about that "piece, I complied with his desire; thinking it wrong to take up "the attention of my friends with such petty concerns as mine, or "to load your good nature by a compliance rather with their "requests than my merits. I am extremely sorry that you should "think me warm at our last meeting; your judgment certainly ought to be free, especially in a matter which must in some measure concern your own credit and interest. I assure you, 66 66 66 "sir, I have no disposition to differ with you on this or any other account, but am with an high opinion of your abilities and a very real esteem, sir, your most obedient humble servant, "OLIVER GOLDSMITH." To this Garrick answered by a letter, dated five days later from Lichfield, in these terms. "Sir, I was 66 66 "at Birmingham when your letter came to this place, or I should "have thanked you for it immediately. I was indeed much hurt "that your warmth at our last meeting mistook my sincere and friendly attention to your play, for the remains of a former "misunderstanding which I had as much forgot as if it had never "existed. What I said to you at my own house I now repeat, "that I felt more pain in giving my sentiments than you possibly “would in receiving them. It has been the business, and ambition “of my life, to live upon the best terms with men of genius; and as I know that Dr. Goldsmith will have no reason to change his "present friendly disposition towards me, I shall be glad of any "future opportunity to convince him how much I am his obedient "servant and well-wisher, D. GARRICK.” 66 Thus fairly launched was this great theatrical rivalry; which received even additional zest from the spirit with which Foote was now beginning his first regular campaign in the Haymarket, by right of the summer patent the Duke of York had obtained for him (some compensation for the accident at Lord Mexborough's the preceding summer, when a practical joke of the Duke's cost Foote his leg), and with help of the two great reinforcements already secured for Drury-lane, of Barry and his betrothed Mrs. Dancer, afterwards his wife. They played in a poor and somewhat absurd tragedy called the Countess of Salisbury, which had made a vast sensation in Dublin; and it is related of Goldsmith, as an instance of the zeal with which he had embarked against the Drury-lane party, that he took whimsical occasion during its performance of suddenly turning a crowded and till then favourable audience against the tragical Countess and her representative, by ludicrous allusion to another kind of actress then figuring on a wider stage. He had sat out four foolish acts with great calmness and apparent temper; but as the plot thickened in the fifth, and the scene became filled with "blood" and "slaughter,” he got up from his seat in a great hurry, cried out very audibly, Brownrigg! Brownrigg! by God!" and left the theatre. It may have been partizanship, but it was also very pardonable wit. 66 Nor, if partizanship may be justified at any time, was it here without its excuses. He had reason to think Colman embarked in a good work, and for which, whether knowingly or not, he had made an unexampled sacrifice. On the death of stingy old Lord Bath three years before, he had left his enormous wealth (upwards of 1,200,000l.) to an old brother he despised, with a sort of injunction that his nephew was to have part in its ultimate disposition; and the Covent-garden arrangements had not long been completed when General Pulteney died, leaving Colman a simple four-hundred a-year. His connection with Miss Ford the actress had been displeasing to the general; but the unpardonable offence was his having secretly turned manager of a theatre. Miss Ford was the mother of the younger Colman, now a child, yet already old enough to feel, as he remembered when he wrote his Random Records, the impression at this time made upon him by the poet's simple and playful manners, and by that love of children which had attended Goldsmith through life, which was noted everywhere, and made itself felt at even the small dinner parties of pompous Hawkins. "I little thought what I should have to boast," says Miss Hawkins, describing her experiences when she used to sit upon the carpet in the drawing room till dinner was announced, "when Goldsmith taught me to play Jack and Gill by two bits of 66 paper on his fingers." This lady observed, too, a distinction between Johnson's and Garrick's way with children, which the younger Colman partly confirms in contrasting Goldsmith's with Garrick's. The one, he tells us, played to please the boy, the other as though to please himself; and not even Foote, with his knowing broad grin, his snuff-begrimed face, and his unvarying salutation of “blow your nose, child," was half so humorous as Goldsmith, of whose tenderness of course he possessed nothing. The poet would at any time, for amusement of the nursery, dance a mock minuet, sing a song, or play the flute; and thought little of even putting on his best wig the wrong side foremost. One of these childish reminiscences will bear relating in detail. Drinking coffee one evening with Colman, on one of his first visits to Richmond, Goldsmith took little George upon his knee to amuse him ; and being rewarded for his pains by a spiteful slap in the face, summary paternal punishment was inflicted by solitary confinement in an adjoining dark room. But here, when matters seemed desperate with the howling and screaming little prisoner, the door was unexpectedly unlocked and opened. "It was the tender"hearted Doctor himself," pursues the teller of the story, "with a “lighted candle in his hand, and a smile upon his countenance, "which was still partially red from the effects of my petulance. "I sulked and sobbed, and he fondled and soothed, till I began to brighten. Goldsmith, who in regard to children was like the "Village Preacher he has so beautifully described, for 'their "welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed,' seized the "propitious moment of returning good humour; so he put down "the candle, and began to conjure. He placed three hats which "happened to be in the room, upon the carpet, and a shilling "under each ;-the shillings, he told me, were England, France, "and Spain. Hey, presto, cockolorum! cried the Doctor; and lo! on uncovering the shillings, which had been dispersed each 66 "beneath a separate hat, they were all found congregated under one. I was no Politician at five years old, and therefore might "not have wondered at the sudden revolution which brought 66 England, France, and Spain all under one crown; but as I was "also no Conjuror, it amazed me beyond measure. Astonishment 66 might have amounted to awe for one who appeared to me gifted "with the power of performing miracles, if the good-nature of the 66 man had not obviated my dread of the magician; but from that "time, whenever the Doctor came to visit my father 'I plucked "his gown to share the good man's smile,' a game of romps "constantly ensued, and we were always cordial friends and merry "playfellows." The little hero of the incident was a child of only five years old, but we have evidence in the letters of Garrick to his father, that he used at this time to imitate Garrick showing Charles Dibdin how to act Lord Ogleby; and that even a full year and a half earlier he had entertained Mrs. Garrick with a whole "budget" of stories and songs, had delivered the ditty of the Chimney Sweep with exquisite taste as a solo, and, in the form of a duet with Garrick himself, had sung Old Rose and Burn the Bellows. We shall be perfectly safe, therefore, in accepting it on his authority that Oliver Goldsmith in 1767 was neither more nor less than a conjuror. CHAPTER XVII. THE WEDNESDAY-CLUB. 1767. 1767. Et. 39. BUT more serious affairs than conjuring again claim Goldsmith's attention, and ours. His comedy cannot, in the most favourable expectation, appear before Christmas; and his necessities are hardly less pressing, meanwhile, than in his most destitute time. The utmost he received this year from the elder Newbery, for his usual task-work, would seem to have been about ten pounds for a compilation on a historical subject (The British Empire). The concurrent advance of another ten pounds on his promissory note, though side by side with the ominous shadow of the yet unpaid note of four years preceding, shows their friendly relations subsisting still; but the present illness of the publisher, from which he never recovered, had for some months interrupted the ordinary course of his business, and its management was gradually devolving on his nephew. No less a person than Tom Davies, however, came to Goldsmith's relief. Tom's business had thriven since he left the stage, and he determined to speculate in a history. Goldsmith's anonymous Letters from a Nobleman to his Son continued to sell, and still to excite curiosity whether or not Lord Lyttelton had really written them. "I asked Lord L. himself," writes the learned Mrs. Carter to the less learned Mrs. Vesey, "who assured me that he had never read them through, and moreover seemed to be very "clearly of opinion that he did not write them. Seriously, you may deny his being the author with the fullest certainty. It seems they were writ by Lord Cork." All this sort of gossip (with no more foundation in the latter case than that Lord Cork and Orrery had addressed to his son a translation of Pliny's as well as other letters, and was no longer alive to contradict the rumour) was better known to Davies than to any one; and the sensible suggestion occurred to him of a History of Rome from the same hand, in the same easy, popular, unlearned manner. An agreement was accordingly drawn up, in which Goldsmith undertook to write such a book in two volumes, and if possible to complete it in two years, for the sum of two hundred and fifty guineas; an undertaking of a somewhat brighter complexion than has yet appeared in these pages; rife with future promise, it may be, in that respect; and certainly very creditable to Davies. It is 66 66 66 |