floor. But of books he had never been careful. Hawkins relates that when engaged in his historical researches about music, Goldsmith told him some curious things one night at the club, which, having asked him to reduce to writing, he promised that he would, and desired Hawkins to call at his chambers for them; when, on the latter doing so, he stepped into a closet and tore out of a printed book six leaves, containing the facts he had mentioned. The carelessness, however, was not of books only. Such money as he had might be seen lying exposed in drawers, to which his "occasional man-servant" would resort as a mere matter of course, for means to pay any small bill that happened to be applied for ; and on a visitor once pointing out the danger of this, “What my "dear friend," exclaimed Goldsmith, "do you take Dennis for a "thief?" One John Eyles had lately replaced Dennis; and was become inheritor of the too tempting confidence reposed in his predecessor, at the time of Percy's visit to the Temple.

The incident of that visit, I may add, shows us how fleeting the Rowley dispute had been; and it was followed by a mark of renewed confidence from Goldsmith, which may also show the fitful despondency under which he was labouring at this time. He asked Percy to be his biographer; told him he should leave him his

papers; dictated several incidents of his life to him ; and gave him

a number of letters and manuscript materials, which were not afterwards so carefully preserved as they might have been. There is no doubt that his spirits were now unusually depressed and uncertain, and that his health had become visibly impaired. Even his temper failed him with his servants; and bursts of passion, altogether strange in him, showed the disorder of his mind. These again he would repent and atone for on the instant; so that his laundress, Mary Ginger, used to contend with John Eyles which of them on such occasions should first fall in his way, knowing well the profitable kindness that would follow the intemperate reproval. From such as now visited him, even men he had formerly most distrusted, he made little concealment of his affairs. "I remember "him when, in his chambers in the Temple," says Cumberland, who had called upon him there, "he showed me the beginning of "his Animated Nature; it was with a sigh, such as genius draws, "when hard necessity diverts it from its bent to drudge for bread, "and talk of birds and beasts and creeping things, which Pidcock's "showmen would have done as well." Cumberland had none of the necessities of the drudge, and his was not the life of the author militant. That he could eat his daily bread without performing some daily task to procure it, was a fact he made always very obvious, and was especially likely to impress on any drudge he was visiting. "You and I have very different motives for resorting to

"the stage. I write for money, and care little about fame,” said Goldsmith sorrowfully. His own distress, too, had made even more acute, at this time, his sensibility to the distress of others. He was playing whist one evening at Sir William Chambers's, when, at a critical point of the game, he flung down his cards, ran hastily from the room into the street, as hastily returned, resumed his cards, and went on with the game. He had heard an unfortunate woman attempting to sing in the street; and so did her half-singing, half-sobbing, pierce his heart, that he could not rest till he had relieved her, and sent her away. The other card-players had been conscious of the woman's voice, but not of the wretchedness in its tone which had so affected Goldsmith.

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It occurred to some friends to agitate the question of a pension for him. Wedderburne had talked somewhat largely, in his recent defence of Johnson's pension, of the resolve of the ministry no longer to restrict the bounty of the crown by political considerations, provided there was distinction in the literary world, and "the prospect of approaching distress." No living writer now answered these conditions better than Goldsmith; yet application on his behalf was met by firm refusal. His talent was not a marketable one. "A late nobleman who had been a member of "several administrations," says poor Smollett, "observed to me "that one good writer was of more importance to the government "than twenty placemen in the House of Commons:" but the good writer must have the qualities of the placeman, to enable them to recognise his importance, or induce him to accept their livery. Let me give a notable instance of this, on which some light has been lately thrown. Few things could be adduced more characteristic of the time, or of that low esteem of literature with what were called the distinguished and well-bred people, to the illustration of which I have devoted so many pages of this biography, than a memorial in favour of one of the most worthless of hack-partizans, Shebbeare, which will be found in the Grenville Correspondence (ii. 271), and which absolutely availed to obtain for him his pension of 2001. a year. It is signed by two peers, two baronets, seven county members, four members for towns, and the members for the City and the University of Oxford. It asks for a pension on two grounds. The first is "that he may be enabled to pursue "that laudable inclination which he has of manifesting his zeal for "the service of His Majesty and his government;" in other words, that a rascal should be bribed to support a corrupt administration. The second is that the memorialists "have been informed "that the late Doctor Thomson, Pemberton, Johnson, Smollett, 'Hume, Hill, Mallet, and others have had either pensions or 'places granted them as Men of Letters," or they would not have

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Shebbeare and

"taken the liberty" to intercede for Shebbeare. Johnson! Smollett and Mallet! Hume and Hill! how exquisite the impartiality of regard and estimation. It was false, too; for poor Smollett's name never appeared in the pension list at all, and Johnson, on his appearance in it at Michaelmas quarter 1763, had no worthier neighbour than "Mr. Wight, Ward's chymist, one quarter, "751," which name follows "Mr. Samuel Johnson one quarter, 751.” It might seem almost incredible to assert, but it is the simple fact, that the most distinguished public recognition of literary merit made at this time was to Arthur Murphy, and to Hugh Kelly, the latter having been for some years in Government pay: but Goldsmith had declined the overtures which these men accepted. Such political feeling as he had shown in his English History, it is true, was decidedly anti-aristocratic: but though, with this, he may have exhibited a strong leaning to the monarchy, he had yet neither the merit, which with the king was still a substitute for most other merit, of being a Scotchman; nor even the merit, which might have done something to supply that defect, of concealing his general contempt for the ministers and politicians of the day. It requires no great stretch of fancy to suppose that such a remark as this of Jack Lofty's in the Good Natured Man, would not be extremely pleasant in great places. "Sincerely, don't you pity us poor creatures in affairs? Thus it is eternally: solicited for "places here, teazed for pensions there, and courted everywhere. "I know you pity me. Yes, I see you do.... Waller, Waller, is "he of the house?.... Oh, a modern poet! We men of busi66 ness despise the moderns; and as for the ancients, we have no "time to read them. Poetry is a pretty thing enough for our "wives and daughters, but not for us. Why now, here I stand, "that know nothing of books; and yet, I believe, upon a land"carriage fishery, a stamp-act, or a jaghire, I can talk by two "hours without feeling the want of them.” Goldsmith could not

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have drawn a more exact portrait of the official celebrities, the ministers of state, of his time; and they rewarded him as he probably expected.

While the matter was still in discussion, there had come up to London, the Scotch professor, Beattie, who had written the somewhat trumpery Essay on Truth to which I formerly adverted; and which had eagerly been caught at, with avowed exaggeration of praise, as a mere battery of assault against the Voltaire and Hume philosophy. The object, such as it was, was a good one; and though it could not make Beattie a tolerable philosopher, it made him, for the time, a very perfect social idol. He was supposed to have "avenged" insulted Christianity. "He is so caressed, and "invited, and treated, and liked, and flattered by the great, that

"I can see nothing of him," says Johnson.

"Every one," says

Mrs. Thrale, "loves Doctor Beattie but Goldsmith, who says he "cannot bear the sight of so much applause as we all bestow upon "" him. Did he not tell us so himself, who could believe he was so "amazingly ill-natured?" Telling it thus, one half called him ill-natured; and the other half, absurd. He certainly had the objection all to himself. "I have been but once at the club since you "left England," writes Beauclerc to Lord Charlemont ; we were "entertained as usual by Doctor Goldsmith's absurdity. Mr. V[esey] can give you an account of it.” Some harangue against Beattie, very probably; for even the sarcastic Beau went with the rest of the "ale-house in Gerrard-street," as he calls the club, in support of the anti-infidel philosopher. What most vexed Goldsmith, however, was the adhesion of Reynolds. It was the only grave difference that had ever been between them; and it is honourable to the poet that it should have arisen on the only incident in the painter's life which has somewhat tarnished his fame. Reynolds accompanied Beattie to Oxford, partook with him in an honorary doctorship of civil law, and on his return painted his fellow doctor in Oxonian robes, with the Essay on Truth under his arm, and at his side the angel of Truth overpowering and chasing away the demons of Infidelity, Sophistry, and Falsehood; the last represented by the plump and broadbacked figure of Hume, the second by the lean and piercing face of Voltaire, and the first bearing something of a remote resemblance to Gibbon. "It very ill becomes a man of your eminence and "character," said Goldsmith to Sir Joshua, and his fine rebuke will outlast the silly picture, "to debase so high a genius as "Voltaire before so mean a writer as Beattie. Beattie and his "book will be forgotten in ten years, while Voltaire's fame will "last for ever. Take care it does not perpetuate this picture, to "the shame of such a man as you." Reynolds persisted, notwithstanding the protest; but was incapable of any poor resentment of it. He produced, this same year, at Goldsmith's suggestion, his painting of Ugolino, founded on a head not originally painted for that subject, but which had struck Burke as well as Goldsmith to be eminently suited to it; and their friendship, based as it was on sympathies connected with art as well as on strong private regard, knew no abatement. Beattie himself, however, was full of resentment. He called his critic a poor fretful creature, eaten up with affectation and envy; yet he liked many things in his genius, he said, and (writing a year hence, when he had no more to fear from him) was sorry to find last summer that he looked upon "me as a person who seemed to stand between him and his "interest." The allusion was to the pension; for which it was

well known that Goldsmith was an unsuccessful solicitor, and which had been granted unsolicited to Beattie. The king had sent for him, praised his Essay, and given him two hundred a year. Johnson welcomed the news in the Hebrides with his most vehement expression of delight; though, seeing he had quoted his favourite Traveller but three days before, till the "tear started to "his eye," he might have thought somewhat of his other unpensioned friend, and clapped his hands less loudly.

That the failure of hope in this direction should a little have soured and changed the unlucky petitioner, will hardly provoke surprise. He had hitherto taken small interest, and no part, in politics; and his inclination, as far as it may be traced, had never been to the ministerial side. But he seems no longer to have scrupled to avow a decisive sympathy with the opposition; and there is as little reason to doubt that he was now building frail hopes of some appointment through Lord Shelburne's interest. His personal knowledge of that able but wayward statesman gives some colour to the assertion; and I have found, in a magazine published a few years after Goldsmith's death, a distinct statement confirming it, by one who evidently knew him well, and who adds that "the expectation contributed to involve him ; and "he often spoke with great asperity of his dependence on what he "called moonshine." Feeble as the light was, however, there are other proofs of his having followed it in these last melancholy months of his life. Lord Shelburne's member and protégé, Townshend, was at this time Lord Mayor of London; and by his fiery liberalism, and really bold resolution, quite careless of those "Malagrida" taunts against his patron with which the sarcasm of Junius had supplied ministerial assailants, was now exasperating the Court to the last degree. Yet Goldsmith did not hesitate to praise the "patriotic magistrate,” and to avow that he had done So. "Goldsmith, the other day," writes Beauclerc to Lord Charlemont, put a paragraph into the newspapers, in praise of Lord "Mayor Townshend. The same night we happened to sit next "to Lord Shelburne, at Drury-lane. I mentioned the circum"stance of the paragraph to him, and he said to Goldsmith, that "he hoped he had mentioned nothing about Malagrida in it. Do 66 6 you know,' answered Goldsmith, that I never could conceive "the reason why they call you Malagrida, FOR Malagrida was a 66 6 very good sort of man.' You see plainly what he meant to say; but that happy turn of expression is peculiar to himself. "Mr. Walpole says that this story is a picture of Goldsmith's "whole life."

Ah! so it might seem to men whose whole life had been a holiday. No slavish drudgery, no clownish straits, no scholarly