him; except to a bookseller for money.' In the present year, it would seem, he had more experience than success in applications of that kind. Yet he was also himself in communication with Grainger's correspondent. Percy was busy with his Reliques; and in the collection and arrangement of that work, which, more than any other in its age, contributed to bring back to the study and appreciation of poetry, a natural, healthy, and passionate tone, took frequent counsel with Goldsmith. To their intercourse respecting it, we owe the charming ballad with the prettiest of opening lines, 'Turn gentle hermit of the dale;' and Percy admitted many obligations of knowledge and advice, in which no other man of letters in that day could so well have assisted him. The foremost of them, Johnson himself, was indifferent enough to the whole scheme; though at this time a visitor, with Miss Williams, in Percy's vicarage-house.

Little else than a round of visitings, indeed, does the present year seem to have been to Johnson; though the call for his Shakspeare (on which he had so long been engaged) was never so urgent as now. He passed part of the spring with his friend Langton in Lincolnshire, where it was long remembered how suddenly, and to what amazement of the elders of the family, he had laid himself down on the edge of a steep hill behind the house, and rolled over and over to the bottom; he had stayed the summer months and part of August with Percy, at Easton Mauduit vicarage in Northamptonshire; and on

his return to town had formed an acquaintance with the Thrales. Is it necessary to describe the tall, stately, wellinformed, worthy brewer, and tory member for Southwark; or his plump, little, brisk, vivacious, half-learned wife? Is not their friendship known as the solace of Johnson's later life, and remembered whenever he is named? Thrale was fond of the society of men of letters and celebrity; and Arthur Murphy, who had for some years acted as provider in that sort to the weekly dinners at Southwark and Streatham, had the honour of introducing Johnson. Mrs. Thrale was at this time as pretty as she was lively, garrulous, and young; to more than a woman's quickness of observation, added all a woman's gentleness and kindness of heart; indulged in literary airs and judgments, which she put on with an audacity as full of charms as of blunders; and beyond measure captivated Johnson. Where she came she brought him sunshine. Like some 'gay creature of the element ' she flitted past the gloomy scholar, still over-toiled and weary, though resting at last. You little creatures,' he exclaimed, on her appearing before him one day in a darkcoloured dress, 'you should never wear those sort of clothes; they are unsuitable in every way. What! 'have not all insects gay colours?' The house of the hospitable brewer became to him a second home, where unaccustomed comforts awaited him, and his most familiar friends were invited to please him; immediately after his first visit, the Thursdays in every week were set apart for

dinner with the Thrales; and before long there was a 'Mr. Johnson's room' both in the Southwark mansion and the Streatham villa. Very obvious was the effect upon him. His melancholy was diverted, and his irregular habits lessened, all said who observed him closely; but not the less active were his sympathies still, in the direction of that Grub Street world of struggle and disaster, of cock-loft lodgings and penny ordinaries, from which he had at last effected his own escape.

An illustration of this, at the commencement of their intercourse, much impressed Mrs. Thrale. One day, she says, he was called abruptly from their house after dinner, and returning in about three hours, said he had been with an enraged author, whose landlady pressed him for payment within doors, while the bailiffs beset him without; that he was drinking himself drunk with madeira to drown care, and fretting over a novel which, when finished, was to be his whole fortune; but he could not get it done for distraction, nor dared he step out of doors to offer it to sale. Mr. Johnson therefore, she continues, set away the bottle, and went to the bookseller, recommending the performance, and devising some immediate relief; which when he brought back to the writer, the latter called the woman of the house directly, to partake of punch, and pass their time in merriment. It was not,' she concludes, 'till ten years after, I dare say, that something in Doctor 'Goldsmith's behaviour struck me with an idea that he was 'the very man; and then Johnson confessed that he was so.'

A more scrupulous and patient writer corrects some inaccuracies of the lively little lady, and professes to give the anecdote authentically from Johnson's own exact narration. I received one morning,' Boswell represents Johnson to have said, 'a message from poor Goldsmith 'that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his 'power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised 'to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had

'arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent 'passion. I perceived that he had already changed my 'guinea, and had got a bottle of madeira and a glass

'before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he 'would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means

'me.

by which he might be extricated. He then told me that ' he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to I looked into it, and saw its merit; told the land'lady I should soon return; and having gone to a book'seller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith 'the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating 'his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill.'

Nor does the rating seem altogether undeserved, since there cannot be a doubt that Mrs. Fleming was the landlady. The attempt to clear her fails. Tracing the previous incidents minutely, it is impossible to disconnect her from this consummation of them, with which, at the same time, every trace of Goldsmith's residence in her house is brought to a close. The incident itself has nothing startling for the reader who is familiar with what has gone before it. It is the old story of distress, with the addition of a right to resent it which poor Goldsmith had not felt till now; and in the violent passion, the tone of indignant reproach, and the bottle of madeira, one may see that recent gleams of success and worldly consideration have not strengthened the habits of endurance. The arrest is plainly connected with Newbery's reluctance to make further advances; and of all Mrs. Fleming's accounts found among his papers, the only one unsettled is that for the summer months preceding the arrest. The manuscript of the novel (of which more hereafter) seems by both statements, in which the