dozen times, and one chair is vacant. So much the better. Hawkins sat in it; but his small mind was at once jealous of, and overawed by, Burke. Hawkins was insolent; Burke demolished him, and the company snubbed him; and so the "unclubbable man" disappeared for ever. Who are the rest? All eyes are turned in one direction, all ears are attent, and one man has put his trumpet to his ear, lest he should lose a word. He has roundish, blunt features, and a florid, full face, beaming with kindness; and, though his eyes are guarded by large round spectacles, his expression is lively and acute. That is Reynolds— the great painter, that even now gets one hundred guineas for a portrait-the founder of the club, and, ere long, to be a knight, the first President of the Royal Academy, and one of the most memorable men of his time, Let our eyes follow with the others. They rest on two men, One, a great, ungainly, and obese figure; a face of massive features, and hanging nether jaw; and the vast facial rotund is framed by a dishevelled wig, innocent of powder, meeting below the ears; a rumpled neckcloth, not over-clean, whereon his double chin reposes-who, but the great Dr. Johnson, the dogmatist and the literary tyrant of his day, who rules his subjects with a rod of iron, and yet tempers ofttimes his savageness with a generous benignity? Now he lolls, and now he lurches, heaving with the freight of great thoughts, which he discharges in big, sententious words, that roll along with a grand boom. He has roused up for the contest with his neighbour "That fellow (as he said) calls forth all my powers"—and, in the lavish prodigality of his intellectual strength, has undertaken to sustain a paradox, and challenges to the battle with no uncertain sound, the ominous-" Why, no, sir." The other does not invite, while he does not shrink from the combat. You see he is a formidable opponent, athletic and symmetrical; a countenance handsome in feature and dignified by the impress of intellect; a brow expansive, yet at times shadowed and frowning with the workings of thought. He replies with a grave and subtle logic and polished eloquence, and in tones whose not unpleasing Irish doric tell you it is Edmund Burke, the greatest statesman of his age, on whose words listening senates are soon to hang in admiration. Now Johnson dashes at him with his whole weight, but Burke eludes the blow, and winds like a serpent round his assailant. It is a terrible battle. Keen wit and strong common sense, and profound learning and acute reasoning, are wielded with telling effect by the two greatest talkers of their day.* Good Dr. Nugent, half in pride and half in terror, watches each effort of his son-in-law. A tall, slight, graceful man, who has scarcely seen six-and-twenty summers, sits beyond Johnson, and bends forward,

• My distinguished friend, the Right Honourable James Whiteside, in his brilliant lecture on Goldsmith, has acutely observed-" When it is said Johnson was the best talker of his time, it should be added, except Burke. I do not believe Johnson was second to any man in conversational conflict, except to our great countryman. If Burke could have submitted to the persecutions of a Boswell, or if another Boswell could have been found in the world, we might have had ten volumes of Burke's talk of superior quality."

as if hanging in delight on every word of his friend. His arms are crossed upon his bosom, and his gold-mounted snuff-box lies on the table. Who can mistake the aristocratic features, the gentle and smiling countenance of Bennet Langton, who is yet to succeed the great doctor in the chair of Ancient Literature in the Royal Academy? By Langton's side is his Oxford chum, the eccentric Topham Beauclerk, one of the most delightful and accomplished men of his day. What a handsome face! with a strong expression of the Stuarts in it-a dash of arch mischief and the rakish air of one who "knows the world:" he whose talents, Johnson said, he felt more disposed to envy than those of any man he had known. But all those talents and all the doctor's love could not save him from an early death, though he would "walk, sir, to the extent of the earth's diameter" to do so. Anthony Chamier is there, too, the friend of Beauclerk, a man of rank, and well-to-do in the world; member of Parliament for Tamworth, that is, and under-secretary of state, that is to be. And last in our picture is our own dear " Noll," the delight, and the plague, and the butt of them all, decked out in the gaudy finery in which his simple heart delighted; his ugly yet most expressive face, with "the frost-bitten bloom" upon it, beaming with delight, and watching now one combatant and now the other. The battle rages

"Boswell's glorious savage butted full,

Yet our vast boa foils his mighty bull;

Now glides away in glittering volumes rolled,

Now coils around in unrelenting fold.

Which shall prevail? the boldest wight would fear

Now to adjudge, as then to interfere.

'Twixt Burke and Johnson, Jove himself is mute,

Lest earth should rise to share in the dispute.

But not so Goldy. He flings himself between the combatants, blurts out something that seems a blunder, but has a certain shrewd wit in it, nevertheless. The doctor roars him down with a-"Sir, your genius is great, but your knowledge is small." Beauclerk launches one of his keen shafts of sarcasm at the offender, and is severely rebuked by Johnson, who will suffer no one but himself to assail his protegé. Sir, you have often given me pain, not from the power of what you said, but from seeing your intention." But there is neither bitterness nor jealousy in the hearts of those friends-least of all, in those of the mighty combatants. Burke, as he goes home with Langton, will say to him, "How very great Johnson has been to-night; it is enough for me to have rung the bell to him." And the doctor, when next day he meets a Mr. James Boswell, a Scotchman who got introduced to him last year, and hangs about him fawningly, and treasures all his words, will tell him what a great

* "St Stephen's," a Poem, p. 64.

variety of knowledge, and store of imagery, and copiousness of language Mr. Burke has. "An extraordinary man, sir! His stream of mind is perpetual. Take whatever, topic you please, he is ready to meet you."

In such society time passed pleasantly enough, and the evening meetings at the Turk's Head were the compensations for many a day of privation; for Goldsmith was too imprudent, and his literary remuneration too precarious, to be ever above want. We find him borrowing money as freely from one friend as he parts with it for the necessities of another. Johnson seems to have taken him into his care as tenderly as a father would take a child, counselling, and comforting, and keeping him as straight as he can. At last things have come to the worst. His landlady has arrested him for arrears of rent. Goldsmith has not a farthing, so he writes off to Johnson in his distress, beseeching his friend to come and see him. Johnson sends a guinea by the messenger, with a promise to follow soon. So he does, and finds Oliver in a violent passion at the indignity, and cooling his rage with a bottle of Madeira, into which he had converted the guinea. Noble, tender-hearted Johnson! he knew what it was to owe for his lodgings, and to be hurried away to a sponging-house, and to be relieved by a true friend-and such a friend he is now. "I put the cork into the bottle," said he afterwards to Boswell; "desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated." Goldsmith says he has a novel ready for the press, and shows it. 'I looked into it and saw its merits; told the landlady I should soon return, and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for £60. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating the landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill." What that novel is we shall know hereafter; now it lies amongst the bookseller's purchases, to be brought out when Goldsmith's name is before the world as a favourite, and is worth something on a title-page. That time is near at hand. The thoughts and experiences of his travel have, during many a dark and lonely hour, been his study and his solace, and he has wrought at them and shaped them into something very beautiful, and accordingly, on the 19th of December, 1764, comes out "The Traveller; or, a Prospect of Society, by Oliver Goldsmith, M.B." Assuredly it took the world by surprise, and even his own friends were of the number. What high philosophic reflection! what life-like painting of nature, moral and physical! what exquisite touches of pathos! what heart-yearnings of human affection! and all clothed in verse so harmonious, in language so simple and yet so dignified! Johnson pronounced it "a poem to which it would not be easy to find anything equal since the days of Pope;" and he read it to Miss Reynolds till she declared that she would never again call Goldsmith ugly. And Fox said "it was one of the finest poems in the English language." And Langton averred that there was not a bad line in it. Then the critics began to praise it, and the

world to believe in the critics, and in a month there was a second edition, and soon after another, and then it made its way into foreign tongues,

and got a world's reputation. Dr. Goldsmith became the fashion,

and essays and nameless things of his were collected and reproduced, to the great benefit of the booksellers, and with little profit to the author. Oliver thinks that a fashionable poet may become a fashionable physician. He has removed to respectable chambers on the library staircase of the Temple; and out he comes, on a fine summer's day, in 1765, "in purple silk small clothes, a handsome scarlet roquelaure, buttoned close under the chin, a full professional wig, a sword and cane," to practise in higher regions than Bankside. But practice would not come; and somehow an apothecary was thought a safer guide by one of his patients-a lady friend-and Oliver indignantly declares he will prescribe no more for his friends. Then malicious. Beauclerk retorts, "Do so, my dear doctor. Whenever you undertake to kill, let it be your enemies!" Yes; there is better work than feeling old ladies' pulses. He will soon feel the pulse of the whole world, as it throbs to his touch. Francis Newbery bethinks him of the novel that he paid £60 for; so he looks it up, sends it to the printing-office, and gives it to the public on the 27th May, 1766; "The Vicar of Wakefield." To-day we look back with something like wonder at the slowness of Johnson's appreciation of its merits. He told Reynolds he did not think it would have much success. Possibly its utter simplicity made him undervalue it. "I looked into it," he said, somewhat coldly, "and saw its merit." The world has been looking into it ever since, and sees its merit-sees it more and more, as time goes on. Criticism has exhausted itself in its praise, in every country and in every tongue. One only a man whose genius had little in common with that of Goldsmith-has been found to subject it to an unjust analysis, and to censure it upon untenable objections. The unfriendly criticism of Lord Macaulay has been ably refuted by Mr. Whiteside, while he substitutes his own eloquent and genial estimate with a truth and force that command our heartiest assent. But we have a higher criticism to adduce—the criticism by which all critics must ultimately be judged, and from whose judgment there is no appeal-the criticism of the people at large; not of to-day, but of all time; not of one locality, but of every nation. Governed by no scholastic canons, testing by no artistic analyses, but guided by the instincts of the heart and the dictates of the intellect, they pronounce a judgment abiding and irreversible, because slow and matured.

We pause not to record the hack-work which Goldsmith was still forced to continue even while greater things were in preparation. His mind was now turned towards the drama. He attended the theatres, and mixed much in convivial societies and clubs, studying life and nature in the midst of his