may

be acquired by trotthij

with their anxieties.

9

am Dear Sir with the greatest esteem your most obedient humble servant;

Having taken this decisive step, Goldsmith wrote on the following day to the now rival manager, who had left town for Litchfield; and, though his letter shows the coolness which had arisen between them, it is a curious proof of his deference to the sensitiveness of Garrick that he should use only the name of the old Covent Garden patentee, and put forth what he had recently done with his play under cover of

his original intention in respect to it. London, July 20, 1767, and runs thus.

His letter is dated

Sir, A few days

ago Mr. Beard renewed his claim to the piece which I ' had written for his stage, and had as a friend submitted 'to your perusal. As I found you had very great diffi'culties about that piece, I complied with his desire; 'thinking it wrong to take up the attention of my friends 'with such petty concerns as mine, or to load your good 'nature by a compliance rather with their requests than

my merits. I am extremely sorry that you should think 'me warm at our last meeting; your judgment certainly 'ought to be free, especially in a matter which must in

(

some measure concern your own credit and interest. I assure you, sir, I have no disposition to differ with you 'on this or any other account, but am with an high opinion of your abilities and a very real esteem, sir, your 'most obedient humble servant, OLIVER GOLDSMITH.' To this Garrick answered by a letter dated five days later from Litchfield, in these terms. 'Sir, I was at Bir'mingham when your letter came to this place, or I should have answered and thanked you for it immediately. I was indeed much hurt that your warmth at our last 'meeting mistook my sincere and friendly attention to your play, for the remains of a former misunderstanding ' which I had as much forgot as if it had never existed. 'What I said to you at my own house I now repeat, that 'I felt more pain in giving my sentiments than you pos'sibly would in receiving them. It has been the business,

' and ever will be, of my life, to live on the best terms 'with men of genius; and I know that Dr. Goldsmith 'will have no reason to change his previous friendly dis'position towards me, as I shall be glad of every future opportunity to convince him how much I am his obedient servant and well-wisher, D. GARRICK.'

Thus fairly launched was this great theatrical rivalry ; which received even additional zest from the spirit with which Foote now began his first regular campaign in the Haymarket, by right of the summer patent the Duke of York had obtained for him (compensation for the accident at Lord Mexborough's the preceding summer, when a practical joke of the Duke's cost Foote his leg), and with help of the two great reinforcements already secured for Drury Lane, of Barry and his betrothed Mrs. Dancer, afterward his wife. They played in a poor and somewhat absurd tragedy called the Countess of Salisbury, which had made a vast sensation in Dublin; and it is related of Goldsmith, as an instance of the zeal with which he had embarked against the Drury Lane party, that he took whimsical occasion during its performance of suddenly turning a crowded, and, till then, favourable audience, against the Countess and her representative, by ludicrous allusion to another sort of actress then figuring on a wider stage. He had sat out four foolish acts with great calmness and apparent temper; but as the plot thickened in the fifth, and blood and slaughter came crowding on the scene, he rose from his seat in a great hurry, cried out very audibly,

'Brownrigg! Brownrigg, by God!' and left the theatre. It may have been partizanship, but it was also very pardonable wit.

Nor, if partizanship may be justified at any time, was it here without its excuses. He had reason to think Colman embarked in a good work, and for which, whether knowingly or not, he had made an unexampled sacrifice. On the death of stingy old Lord Bath three years before, he had left his enormous wealth (upwards of £1,200,000) to an old brother he despised, with a sort of injunction that his nephew was to have part in its ultimate disposition; and the Covent Garden arrangements had not long been completed when General Pulteney died, leaving Colman a simple four hundred a-year. His connection with Miss Ford the actress, had been displeasing to the general; but the unpardonable offence was his having secretly turned manager of a theatre. Miss Ford was the mother of the younger Colman, now a child: yet old enough to retain and remember, when he wrote his Random Records, the impression at this time made upon him by Goldsmith's simple and playful manners; and by that love of children which had attended him through life, which was noted everywhere, and made itself felt at even pompous Hawkins's. 'I little thought what I should have to boast,' says Miss Hawkins, when Goldsmith taught me to play Jack and 'Gill by two bits of paper on his fingers.' This lady observed, too, a distinction between his and Garrick's way with children, which the younger Colman describes; how

the one played to please the boy, and the other as though to please himself: while not even Foote, with his knowing broad grin, his snuff-begrimed face, and his unvarying salutation of 'blow your nose child,' was half so humourous as Goldsmith. He would at any time, for amusement of the nursery, dance a mock minuet, sing a song, or play the flute; and thought little of even putting on his best wig the wrong side foremost. One of these childish reminiscences will bear relating in detail. Drinking

coffee with Colman, on one of his first visits to Richmond, he took little George upon his knee to amuse him; and being rewarded for his pains by a spiteful attack upon the face, summary paternal punishment was inflicted by solitary confinement in an adjoining dark room. But here, when matters seemed desperate with the howling and screaming little prisoner, the door was unexpectedly unlocked and opened. It was the tender-hearted Doctor himself' pursues the teller of the story, with a lighted candle in 'his hand, and a smile upon his countenance, which was 'still partially red from the effects of my petulance. I 'sulked and sobbed, and he fondled and soothed, till I 'began to brighten: when Goldsmith, seizing the pro'pitious moment of returning good humour, put down the 'candle and began to conjure. He placed three hats which 'happened to be in the room, upon the carpet, and a

6

shilling under each. The shillings, he told me, were 'England, France, and Spain. Hey, presto, cockolorum ! 'cried the Doctor; and lo! on uncovering the shillings,