as much. Nevertheless, he used at Burke's table to plunge into art-discussions with Barry, when the latter returned from abroad the year following this; and would punish Barry's dislike of Sir Joshua, manifested even thus early, by disputing openly the subtlest dogmas with that irritable genius, or perhaps by laughing secretly as he put in practice a strict adherence to the two rules which formed George Primrose's qualification for setting up as cognoscento: "The one always to observe, the picture might "have been better if the painter had taken more pains; and "the other, to praise the works of Pietro Perugino." (Lord Byron delighted in the truth and wit of these rules, and often repeated them to Mr. Rogers in Italy.) With Burke himself, Northcote says, he overheard Goldsmith sharply disputing one day in Sir Joshua's painting-room about the character of the King; when, so grateful was he for some recent patronage of his comedy (it was a few months after the present date), and so outrageous and unsparing was Burke's anti-monarchical invective, that, unable any longer to endure it, he took up his hat and left the room.

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Another argument which Northcote overheard at Sir Joshua's dinner-table, was between Johnson and Goldsmith; when the latter put Venice Preserved next to Shakespeare for its merit as an acting play, and was loudly contradicted by the other. "Pooh!" roared Johnson. "There are not forty decent lines "in the whole of it. What stuff are these!" And then he quoted as prose, Pierre's scornful reproach to the womanish Jaffier. "What feminine tales hast thou been listening to, of unair'd "shirts, catarrhs, and tooth-ache, got by thin-soled shoes?" which the unconvinced disputant sturdily replied, "True! To be sure! That is very like Shakespeare." "Goldsmith certainly had no great knowledge of the higher secrets of criticism, and was guilty of very monstrous and very silly heresies against the master-poet (as in his paper on Metaphor in the Essays); but here his notion was right enough. He meant to say that Shakespeare had the art possessed only by the greatest poets, of placing in natural connection the extremes of the familiar and imaginative: which Garrick would have done well to remember before he began to botch Hamlet. Another impression which remained with Northcote's old age, derived from these scenes of his youth, was that the "set" at Sir Joshua's were somewhat intolerant of such as did not belong to their party, jealous of enlarging it, and chary of admitting merit to any new comer. Thus he remembered a new poem coming out that was sent to Reynolds, who had instructed his servant Ralph to bring it in after dinner when presently Goldsmith laid hold of it, fell into a rage with it before he had read a dozen lines, and exclaiming, "what wretched stuff is here!

"what cursed nonsense that is!" kept all the while cutting at every line almost through the paper with his thumb nail. “ Nay, "nay," said Sir Joshua, snatching the volume, “don't do so: you "shall not spoil my book, neither." In like manner, Northcote adds, he recollects their making a dead set at Cumberland. They never admitted him as one of themselves; they excluded him from the club; Reynolds never asked him to dinner; and from any room where he was, Goldsmith would have flung out as if a dragon had been there. It was not till his life was just about to close that he became tolerant of the condescending attentions of the fretful Cumberland.

To these recollections of Northcote, some by Mr. Cradock may be added. When it was proposed one day to go down to Lichfield, and, in honour of Johnson and Garrick, act the Beaux Stratagem among themselves there, all the famous people of the club taking part in it, "then," exclaimed Goldsmith, "I shall certainly play "Scrub. I should like of all things to try my hand at that "character." One would have liked no less to have seen him play it, and heard the roar that would have given a personal turn to the cunning serving-man's famous assertion, "I believe they talked of "me, for they laughed consumedly." But his brogue would have been a difficulty. Even Burke's brogue was no small disadvantage to him ; and Goldsmith had hardly improved his, since those Dunciad-days when he would object to the exquisite bad rhyming of key with be ("let key be called kee, and then it will rhyme with be,” said one of his criticisms for Griffiths, "but not otherwise "): indeed, says Cooke, he rather cultivated his brogue than got rid of it. Malone's authority would have us doubt, too, whether his emphasis, even for Scrub, would always have been right; seeing that, being at dinner one day with him and Johnson, he gave an example to prove that poets ought to read and pronounce verse with more accuracy and spirit than other men, by beginning the ballad At Upton on the Hill with a most emphatic ON. Farquhar's humour, nevertheless, might have gained as much as it lost; and the private play could not have spared such an actor. Soon after this, Richard Burke reinforced the party with his wit and his whim,-Garrick having succeeded, where Edmund supposed that his own influence had failed, in getting from Lord North another year's leave of absence from Grenada,—and his return led to the establishment of a temporary dining-club at the St. James's coffee-house, the limited numbers of the Gerrard-street club excluding both him and Garrick from present membership there. Cumberland, who became afterwards an occasional guest, correctly attributes its origin to Burke, though he misstates everything else connected with it: and here Cradock, mistaking it for the club, remembered to have heard much

animated talk in which Richard Burke made himself very prominent, and seemed the most free and easy of the company. Its members, who had the privilege of introducing strangers to their meetings, used to dine at each other's houses also, less frequently; and Goldsmith indulged himself now and then in very oddly assorted assemblages at his chambers after the dinner, which, in allusion to the fashionable ball-rooms of the day, he called his "little Cornelys."

More rarely, at meetings that became afterwards more famous, the titled people who jostled against writers and artists at Shelburne-house in Berkeley-square might be seen wondering or smiling at the simple-looking Irishman who had written the Deserted Village. There were Mrs. Vesey's parties, too, more choice and select than Mrs. Montagu's, her friend and imitator; and at both we have traces of Goldsmith-"your wild genius," as Mrs. Vesey's statelier friend Mrs. Carter calls him. These ladies had got the notion of their blue-stocking routs from the Du Duffands, and L’Espinasses, at the last French peace; but alas! the Montesquieus, Voltaires, and Du Châtelets, the De Launays, Hainaults, De Choiseuls, and Condorcets, were not always forthcoming in Hill-street or Portman-square. In truth they seem to

have been dull enough, those much-talked about ré-unions; though sometimes enlivened by Mrs. Vesey's forgetfulness of her own name, and sparkling at all times with Mrs. Montagu's diamonds and bows. Mrs. Thrale's were better; and though the lively little lady made a favourite jest of Goldsmith's simple ways, he passed happy days with Johnson both in Southwark and Streatham.

Still, perhaps, his happiest time was when he had Johnson to himself; when there were no listeners to talk for; when to his half-childish frolicking absurdities, Johnson lowered all that was predominant or intolerant in his great fine nature; and together they came sporting from Gerrard-street to the Temple, or, when the club did not meet, had supper by themselves at an adjoining tavern in Soho. This was that once famous Jack's, since Walker's, in Dean-street, kept by a singer of Garrick's company (Jack Roberts), and patronised by Garrick and his friends, which, in all but the life that departed from it when they departed, to this day exists unchanged; quite unvexed by disturbance or improvement; haunted by the ghosts of guests that are gone, but not much visited by guests that live; a venerable relic of the still life of Goldsmith's age possessed by an owner who is venerable as itself, and whose memory, faithful to the past, now lives altogether with the shades that inhabit there. (That was written in 1848. It now, in 1855, exists no longer; the venerable Walker having become himself a shadow.) Of many pleasant "tête-à-tête suppers

this was the scene; and here Goldsmith would seem boldly to have perpetrated very ancient sallies of wit, to half-grumbling halflaughing accompaniment from Johnson. "Sir," said the sage one night, as they supped off rumps and kidneys, "these rumps are 66 pretty little things; but then a man must eat a great many of "them before he fills his belly." "Aye, but how many of them," asked Goldsmith innocently, "would reach to the moon?” "To "the moon!" laughed Johnson; ah, Goldy, I fear that exceeds 66 your calculation." "Not at all, sir," says Goldsmith, “I think "I could tell." "Pray then, sir," says the other, "let us hear." Why," ," and here Goldsmith instinctively, no doubt, got as far from Johnson as he could, "one, if it were long enough.” “ Well,

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sir, I have deserved it," growled the philosopher. "I should not "have provoked so foolish an answer by so foolish a question.”

But Goldsmith's mirth is from a heart now ill at ease. Every day's uncertainty as to his comedy is become fraught with serious consequence to him, and Colman still delays his answer. The recollection of former mortifications no doubt sadly recurred, and with it came back the old distrusts and bitter self-misgivings. Cooke informs us that Goldsmith accidentally, at this time, met with an old acquaintance in a chop-house (most probably himself, for he elsewhere complains that the Doctor's acquisition of more important friends had made their latter intercourse infrequent), and mentioning that he had written a comedy about which the manager seemed to have great doubts, asked him to listen to the plot and give him his candid opinion of it. The Doctor, Cooke proceeds, then began to tell the particulars of his plot, in his strange, uncouth, deranged manner, from which his friend the critic could only make out that the principal part of the business turned upon one gentleman mistaking the house of another for an inn; at which the critic shook his head and said "he was afraid "the audience, under their then sentimental impressions, would "think it too broad and farcical for comedy." Goldsmith looked very serious at this; paused for some time; and at last, taking the other by the hand, "piteously" exclaimed, "I am much obliged to you, my dear friend, for the candour of your opinion: "but it is all I can do; for, alas, I find that my genius, if ever I "had any, has of late totally deserted me." Alas, poor Goldy! It was the feeling that prompted this, and no other, which also prompted his innocent, vain absurdities; and which made him even think, if the same friend's account is to be accepted gravely, that "speechifying” was all a knack, and that he knew of nothing to prevent himself making any day quite as good a speech as Edmund Burke. "How well this post-boy drives," said Johnson to Boswell, rubbing his hands with joy for the rapid motion :

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"now if Goldy were here, he'd say he could drive better." And simply because he could not drive at all. Sadly distrusting what he could do, he thought to set the balance straight by bragging of what he could not do.

CHAPTER XIV.

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. 1772-1773.

1772.

Et. 44.

NEVER was anything like a tone of doleful distrust so little called for, as in the case of the comedy of She Stoops to Conquer. Goldsmith had here again, as in the Good Natured Man, taken his stand on the sincere broad ground of character and humour, where time has fixed him so firmly; and the final critical verdict has passed which may spare any other criticism on this last legacy of laughter he was now to leave us. Many are the sterling comedies that hold possession of the stage, cleverly exacting much calm enjoyment, while they chasten all tendency to intemperate mirth: but the family of the Hardcastles, Young Marlow, and Tony Lumpkin, are not akin to those. Let the manager be chary of introducing them, who desires to keep the enjoyment of his audience within merely reasonable bounds. When Mr. Hardcastle, anxious to initiate Diggory and his too familiar fellow-servants into the small decorums of social life, warns them against talkativeness, and tells them that if he should happen to say a good thing or tell a good story at table, they are not all of them to burst out laughing as if they formed part of the company, Diggory makes prompt answer, "Then ecod, your "worship must not tell the story of Ould Grouse in the Gun-Room ; "I can't help laughing at that. . he he! he! . . for the soul "of me. We have laughed at that these twenty years. . ha! ha! "ha!" and his worship, joining in the laugh, admits the story is a good one (surely it must have been a real one, and can no FSA exhume it, so as to tell us what it was?) and consents to make it an exception. So must exception be made now and then, in the case of comedies. With muscles only imperceptibly moved, we may sit out some dozen volumes or so of Mrs. Inchbald's Collection: but at She Stoops to Conquer, we expand into a roar. The "Three "jolly Pigeons" itself never had greater fun going forward in it and, though genteel critics have objected to the comedy that it contains low characters, just as Mrs. Hardcastle objected to the ale-house, the whole spirit of the disapproval seems to fade before

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