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Æt. 34.

"most authors who frequented Mr. Davies's shop met merely to abuse him." Encouraged, meanwhile, by the authors, Davies grew in amusing importance; set up for quite a patron of the players;* affected the insides as well outsides of books; became a critic, pronounced upon plays and actors, and discussed themes of scholarship; inflicted upon everyone his experiences of the Edinburgh university, which he attended as a youth; and when George Steevens called one day to buy the Oxford Homer, which he had seen tossing about upon his shelves, was told by the modest bookseller that he had but one, and kept it for his own reading.‡

Poor Goldsmith's pretensions, as yet, were small in the scale of such conceit; he being but the best of the essay writers, not the less bound on that account to unrepining drudgery, somewhat awkward in his manners, and laughed at for a carelesss implicity. Such was the character he was

* Beauclerc, on being told by Boswell that Davies had clapped Moody the player on the back to encourage him, remarked that "he could not conceive a more humi"liating situation than to be clapped on the back by Tom Davies." Life, v. 287.

↑ Pray, when you see Davies, the bookseller," writes Garrick to Colman from Bath (April 12, 1766), "assure him that I bear him not the least malice, which "he is told I do, for having mentioned the vulgarisms in The Clandestine "Marriage; and, that I may convince him that all is well between us, let him "know that I was well assured that he wrote his criticism before he had seen the "play. Quod ert demn." Memoirs of the Colmans, i. 181.

Steevens to Garrick, Correspondence, i. 608. In another letter (i. 597-8.) Steevens protests to Garrick that Tom continues "to the full as much a king in "his own shop as ever he was on your stage. When he was on the point of "leaving the theatre he most certainly stole some copper diadem from a shelf and "put it in his pocket. He has worn it ever since." So too Johnson, in a passage well worth quoting, when Boswell mentioned to him the fact of Davies having protested he could not sleep for thinking of a certain sad affair: "As to his "sleeping, sir, Tom Davies is a very great man; Tom has been upon the stage "and knows how to do those things; I have not been upon the stage, and cannot “'do those things.' BosWELL: 'I have often blamed myself, sir, for not feeling "for others as sensibly as many say they do.' JOHNSON: 'Sir, don't be duped by "them any more. You will find these very feeling people are not very ready to "do you good. They pay you by feeling." Life, iii. 95-6.

first seen in here, and he found its impressions always oddly 1762. mingled with whatever respect or consideration he challenged Et. 34. in later life. Only Johnson saw into that life as yet, or could measure what the past had been to him; and few so well as Goldsmith had reason to know the great heart which beat so gently under those harsh manners. The friendship of

Johnson was his first relish of fame; he repaid it with affection and deference of no ordinary kind; and so commonly were they seen together, now that Johnson's change of fortune brought him more into the world, that when a puppetcaricature of the Idler was threatened this summer by the Haymarket Aristophanes, the Citizen of the World was to be a puppet too. "What is the common price of an oak stick, "sir?" asked Johnson, when he heard of it. "Sixpence," answered Davies. "Why then, sir, give me leave to send your servant to purchase me a shilling one. I'll have a double quantity; for I am told Foote means to take me off, as he calls it, and I am determined the fellow shall not do "it with impunity." The Orators came out without the

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* Boswell, v. 232, 3. Johnson's offence to Foote was reported from Garrick's dinner-table, at which, on the occasion of a Christmas party (1760) with Burke, the Wartons, Murphy, and others, after hearing that somebody in Dublin had thought it "worth while" to horsewhip the modern Aristophanes, he had said he was glad "the man was rising in the world." Foote in return gave out that he would in a short time produce the Caliban of literature on the stage. Being informed of this design, Johnson sent word to Foote, that, the theatre being intended for the reformation of vice, he would go from the boxes on the stage, and correct him before the audience. "Foote abandoned the design. No ill-will ensued. Johnson used to

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say that for broad-faced mirth, Foote had not his equal." See an article in the Monthly Review (lxxvi. 374), one of a series admirably written, I suspect by Murphy. Since I threw out this suggestion, I have found several passages from these reviews reproduced in Murphy's Essay on Johnson, and among them the notice of the Christmas-day dinner at Garrick's (55). Let me not here omit what Johnson so admirably said of Foote, in talking of him to Boswell a few years later. BOSWELL. "Foote has a great deal of humour." JOHNSON. "Yes, sir." BoswELL. "He has a singular talent of exhibiting character." JOHNSON. "Sir, it is not a talent, it is a vice; it is what others abstain from. It is not comedy, which "exhibits the character of a species, as that of a miser gathered from many misers:

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attraction promised: attacking, instead, a celebrated Dublin Et. 34. printer, George Faulkner, who consoled himself (pending his prosecution of the libeller) by pirating the libel and selling it most extensively; while the satirist had the more doubtful consolation of reflecting, three years later, that his "taking off" of Faulkner's one leg* would have been much more perfect, could he have waited till the surgeon had taken off his own. It was the first dramatic piece, I may add, in which actors were stationed among the audience, and spoke from the public boxes.

It had been suggested by a debating society called the Robin Hood, somewhat famous in those days, which used to meet near Temple-bar; with which the connection of Burke's earliest eloquence may serve to keep it famous still, since it had numbered among its members that eager Temple student, whose public life was now at last beginning with under-secretary Hamilton in Dublin; and to which Goldsmith was introduced by Samuel Derrick, his acquaintance and countryman.† Struck by the eloquence and imposing aspect of the president, who sat in a large gilt chair, he thought nature had meant him for a lord chancellor. "No,

"it is farce, which exhibits individuals." BoswELL. "Did not he think of "exhibiting you, sir ?" JOHNSON. "Sir, fear restrained him; he knew I would "have broken his bones. I would have saved him the trouble of cutting off a leg; "I would not have left him a leg to cut off." Boswell, iii. 95, 6. No man, at the same time, was less sore than Johnson at mere ordinary personal abuse. On some one reporting to him that Gilbert Cooper had invented for him the name, which Foote applies to him above, of the Caliban of literature, he merely smiled and said, "Well, then, I must dub him the Punchinello." Ib. iii. 143, 4.

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* See Boswell, iii. 181, 2.

+ Derrick had strange experiences to relate, by which doubtless Goldsmith profited. Sir," said Johnson to Boswell, "I honour Derrick for his presence of "mind. One night, when Floyd, another poor author, was wandering about the "streets in the night, he found Derrick fast asleep upon a bulk upon being "suddenly waked, Derrick started up, My dear Floyd, I am sorry to see you in "this destitute state: will you go home with me to my lodgings?""_ Life, ii. 244.

no," whispered Derrick, who knew him to be a wealthy 1762. baker from the city," only for a master of the rolls." Gold- Et. 34. smith was not much of an orator; Doctor Kippis remembered him making an attempt at a speech in the Society of Arts on one occasion, and obliged to sit down in confusion; but till Derrick went away to succeed Beau Nash at Bath, he seems to have continued his visits, and even spoken occasionally; for he figures in a flattering account of the members published at about this time, as "a good orator "and candid disputant, with a clear head and an honest heart, "though coming but seldom to the society." The honest heart was worn upon his sleeve, whatever his society might be. He could not even visit the three Cherokees, whom all the world were at this time visiting, without leaving the savage chiefs a trace of it. He gave them some trifle" they did not look for; and so did the gift, or the manner of it,

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"The great room of the society now mentioned," says Doctor Kippis, at the close of his memoir of Mr. Gilbert Cooper, and referring to the Society of Arts, "was for several years the place where many persons chose to try, or to display, "their oratorical abilities. Doctor Goldsmith, I remember, made an attempt at a speech, but was obliged to sit down in confusion. I once heard Doctor Johnson "speak there, upon a subject relating to mechanics, with a propriety, perspicuity, "and energy which excited general admiration." Biog. Brit. (new edit.) iv. 266. Against this, however, in so far as Johnson is concerned, we have to set off the express and very interesting statement in Boswell's Life, iii. 157-8. "I remember it was ob"served by Mr. Flood, that Johnson, having been long used to sententious brevity, "and the short flights of conversation, might have failed in that continued and ex

panded kind of argument which is requisite in stating complicated matters in public speaking; and, as a proof of this, he mentioned the supposed speeches in parliament "written by him for the magazine, none of which, in his opinion, were at all like "real debates. The opinion of one who was himself so eminent an orator, must "be allowed to have great weight. It was confirmed by Sir William Scott [Lord "Stowell], who mentioned, that Johnson had told him that he had several times "tried to speak in the Society of Arts and Sciences, but had found he could not "get on. From Mr. William Gerard Hamilton I have heard, that Johnson, when "observing to him that it was prudent for a man who had not been accustomed to speak in public to begin his speech in as simple a manner as possible, "acknowledged that he rose in that society to deliver a speech which he had 66 prepared; 'but,' said he, 'all my flowers of oratory forsook me.'"

1762. please them, that with a sudden embrace they covered Æt. 34. his cheeks with the oil and ochre that plentifully bedaubed

their own, and left him to discover, by the laughter which greeted him in the street, the extent and fervour of their gratitude.*

Not always such ready recipients, however, did Goldsmith find the objects of his always ready kindness. One of the members of this Robin Hood was Peter Annet, a man, who, though ingenious and deserving in other respects, became unhappily notorious by a kind of fanatic crusade against the Bible, for which (publishing weekly papers against the Book of Genesis) he stood twice this year in the pillory, and was now undergoing imprisonment in the King's Bench. To Annet's rooms in St. George's-fields we trace Goldsmith. He had brought Newbery with him to conclude the purchase of a child's book on grammar by the prisoner, hoping so to relieve his distress; but, on the prudent bookseller objecting to a publication of the author's name, Annet accused him of cowardice, rejected his assistance with contempt, and in a furious rage bade him and his introducer good evening. Yet the amount of Newbery's intended assistance was so liberal as to have startled both Goldsmith and Annet, no less a sum than ten guineas being offered for the child's grammar,t though for the "completion of a history of England” he had

"We have a very wrong idea of savage finery, and are apt to suppose that like "the beasts of the forest, they rise, and are dressed with a shake; but the reverse "is true for no birth-night beauty takes more time or pains in the adorning her 66 person than they. I remember, when the Cherokee kings were over here, that I "have waited for three hours during the time they were dressing... they had their "boxes of oil and ochre, their fat and their perfumes." Animated Nature. i. 420.

It was the magnificence of the offer which brought about the catastrophe, such a fervour of gratitude being excited in Annet that he suddenly protested he would add a dedication and append his name, and Newbery should have the benefit of both. I derive the anecdote from Cooke, who says it was one of those stories which he had heard Goldsmith "relate with much colloquial humour;" and he gives a