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physician, and not without talents and even scholarship; but a continual victim to what he called impecuniosity, and so unprovided with self-help against the disease, that he lived altogether upon the help of other people. Where he lived, however, nobody could ever find out: he gave his address at the Bedford; and beyond that, curiosity was baffled, though many and most amusing were its attempts to discover more: nor was it till after his death that his whereabout was found, in one of the wretched little courts out of St. Martin's Lane. He wrote newspaper paragraphs in the morning; foraged for his dinner; slept out the early part of the night in one of the theatres; and, in return for certain critical and convivial displays which made his company attractive after play-hours, was always sure of a closing entertainment at the Black Lion in Russell Street, or the Cyder Cellar in Maiden Lane. Latterly, he had taken altogether to dramatic criticism, for which he had some talent (his earliest Irish efforts in that line, when he ought to have been practising his profession, had been thought mighty pleasant by Burke, then a lad at Dublin College); and this, with its usual effect upon the Drury Lane manager, had lately obtained him a sort of pension from Garrick. It was the great actor's worst weakness to involve himself thus with the meaner newspaper men; and it was only this very year he was warned by a letter from Foote, of its danger in the case of Hiffernan. Upon the whole,' wrote that master in the art of literary libel (there is nothing like the voice of a Gracchus

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for a good complaint against sedition), 'it is, I think, 'worthy of consideration, whether there is not something 'immoral, as well as impolitic, in encouraging a fellow, who, without parts, principles, property, or profession, 'has subsisted for these twenty years by the qualities of a ' literary footpad.' Precisely that newspaper jobbery it was, however, to whose success the absence of parts, principles, property, and profession is essential, which had procured Hiffernan his invitation to the reading of Bickerstaff's play. A good dinner preluded the reading; and much justice was done to this, and to the glass which circulated for half an hour afterward, by 'Hiff:' but his judgment, and enjoyment, of the play, were much less clearly evinced; and when the first batch of opinions were collected at the end of the first act, Very well, by —, very well!' was all that could be got from him. Alas for what followed! 'About the middle of the second act,' says the teller of the anecdote, 'he began to nod; and in a little time afterwards 'to snore so loud that the author could scarcely be heard. 'Bickerstaff felt a little embarrassed; but raising his voice, 'went on. Hiffernan's tones, however, increased; till at last 'Goldsmith could hold out no longer, but cried out, "Never ""mind the brute, Bick! go on. So he would have served "Homer if he was here, and reading his own works."'

Nothing so easy for Kenrick as to turn this into a comparison of Bickerstaff to Homer; and no laugh was heartier than Garrick's at the new proof of Goldsmith's folly. But for his countenance of the libeller he was doomed to be

severely punished, and in connection with this very Bickerstaff. Some four years after the present date, that wretched man was driven from society with an infamous stain, and Kenrick grossly connected it by allusion with Garrick; to whom at the very time, as we now know, the miserable culprit was writing from his hiding-place the most piteous petition for charity that one human being ever made to another. (I remember that during the interval of my 'small prosperity, I presented you, at different times, with 'some trifles; their value, I believe, might be about ten 'pounds: these would now feed and clothe me.') An action was commenced against the libeller, and dropped upon ample apology. 'I did not believe him guilty, but did it 'to plague the fellow,' said Kenrick to Thomas Evans. The worthy bookseller never spoke to him again.

Scoundrel as he was, it need not be denied that he had some cleverness. Johnson hit it off exactly when he described it as a faculty that made him public, without making him known. He used to lecture at the Devil and other taverns, on every conceivable subject, from Shakespeare to the perpetual motion, which he thought he had discovered; having been, before he got his Scotch doctorship and became Griffiths's hack, a scale or rule-maker. Hence Johnson's quiet answer to his attack on the Shakespeare, that he could not consider himself 'bound by his rules;' and similar advice Johnson always gave to Goldsmith, the next most frequent object of his attack. Never 'mind, sir,' he would say, at some new venom (for nothing

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When Goldsmith

escaped this Ishmael of criticism, not even the Traveller);
' a man whose business it is to be talked of, is much helped
by being attacked. Fame, sir, is a shuttlecock if it be
struck only at one end of the room, it will soon fall to
'the ground; to keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.'
So, too, Boswell remarking to him, four years after the
present, that he thought Goldsmith the better for the
attacks so frequently made upon him, 'Yes sir,' was the
reply but he does not think so yet.
' and I published each of us something at the same time,
'we were given to understand that we might review each
'other. Goldsmith was for accepting the offer. I said, no,
'set reviewers at defiance.' Unhappily, his friend never
could do this; and even the lesson of 'retaliation' was
learnt too late. Kenrick remained, to the last, his evil
genius; and it seems to have been with a sort of uneasy
desire to propitiate, that Goldsmith yielded to Griffin's so-
licitation at the close of the present year, and consented to
take part in the editing of a new Gentleman's Journal
in which Kenrick was a leading writer, and for which
Hiffernan, Kelly, and some others were engaged. It died
soon after it was born; and on some one remarking to him
what an extraordinary thing so sudden a death was, 'Not
' at all, sir,' he answered: a very common case; it died
' of too many Doctors.'

An amusing illustration which belongs nearly to this time, of inconvenience sometimes incurred from his Grub Street protégés and pensioners, will properly dismiss for

the present this worshipful company of Kenricks and Hiffernans. The hero of the anecdote had all the worst qualities of the tribe; and 'how do you think he served me,' said Goldsmith, relating the incident to a friend.

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Why, sir, after staying away two years, he came one evening into my chambers, half drunk, as I was taking a glass of wine with Topham Beauclerc and General Oglethorpe; and sitting himself down, with most into'lerable assurance inquired after my health and literary pursuits, as if we were upon the most friendly footing. 'I was at first so much ashamed of ever having known 'such a fellow, that I stifled my resentment, and drew him ' into a conversation on such topics as I knew he could talk upon; in which, to do him justice, he acquitted himself very reputably when all of a sudden, as if recollecting something, he pulled two papers out of his pocket, which 'he presented to me with great ceremony, saying, Here, "my dear friend, is a quarter of a pound of tea, and a "half pound of sugar, I have brought you; for though "it is not in my power at present to pay you the two "guineas you so generously lent me, you, nor any man ""else, shall ever have it to say that I want gratitude." This,' added Goldsmith, was too much. I could no 'longer keep in my feelings, but desired him to turn out ' of my chambers directly; which he very coolly did, ' taking up his tea and sugar; and I never saw him after'wards.' Certainly Hogarth should have survived to depict this scene. None other could have given us the

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