would punish Barry's dislike of Sir Joshua, manifested

even so early, by disputing the subtlest dogmas with that irritable genius. With Burke himself, Northcote says, he overheard him sharply disputing one day in Sir Joshua's painting room about the character of the king; when, so grateful was he for some recent patronage of his comedy (it was a few months after the present date), and so outrageous and unsparing was Burke's anti-monarchical invective, that, unable any longer to endure it, he took up his hat and left the room. Another argument which Northcote overheard, at Sir Joshua's dinner-table, was between Johnson and Goldsmith; when the latter put Venice Preserved next to Shakespeare for its merit as an acting play, and was loudly contradicted by the other. 'Pooh!' roared Johnson. 'There are not forty decent lines in the whole of it. What 'stuff are these!' And then he quoted, as prose, as prose, Pierre's scornful reproach to the womanish Jaffier. What femi'nine tales hast thou been listening to, of unair'd shirts, 'catarrhs, and tooth-ache, got by thin-soled shoes?' To which the unconvinced disputant sturdily replied, ‘True!

6

To be sure! That is very like Shakespeare.' Goldsmith had no great knowledge of the higher secrets of criticism, and was guilty of occasional heresies against the masterpoet; but here his notion was right enough. He meant to say that Shakespeare had the art possessed only by the greatest poets, of placing in natural connection the extremes of the familiar and imaginative: which Garrick would have done well to remember before he began to botch Hamlet.

Another impression which remained with Northcote's old age, derived from these scenes of his youth, was that the 'set' at Sir Joshua's were somewhat intolerant of such as did not belong to their party, jealous of enlarging it, and chary of admitting merit to any new comer. Thus he remembered a new poem coming out that was sent to Reynolds, who had instructed his servant Ralph to bring it in after dinner when presently Goldsmith laid hold of it, fell into a rage with it before he had read a dozen lines, and exclaiming, 'what wretched stuff is here! what cursed nonsense that is!' kept all the while marking the passages with his thumb nail as if he would cut them in pieces. 'Nay, 'nay,' said Sir Joshua, snatching the volume, 'don't do so : 'you shall not spoil my book, neither.' In like manner, Northcote adds, he recollects their making a dead set at Cumberland. They never admitted him as one of themselves; they excluded him from the Club; Reynolds never asked him to dinner; and from any room where he was, Goldsmith would have flung out as if a dragon had been there. It was not till his life was just about to close that he became tolerant of the condescending attentions of the fretful Cumberland.

To these recollections of Northcote, some by Mr. Cradock may be added. When it was proposed one day to go down to Lichfield, and, in honour of Johnson and Garrick, act the Beaux Stratagem among themselves there, all the famous people of the Club taking part in it, 'then,' exclaimed Goldsmith, 'I shall certainly play Scrub. I should like of

'all things to try my hand at that character.' One would have liked no less to have seen him play it, and heard the roar that would have given a personal turn to the cunning serving-man's famous assertion, 'I believe they talked of me, for they laughed consumedly.' But his brogue would have been a difficulty. Even Burke's brogue was no small disadvantage to him; and Goldsmith had hardly improved his, since those Dunciad days when he would object to the exquisite bad rhyming of key with be ('let key be called kee, and then it will rhyme with be,' said one of his Griffith's criticisms, but not otherwise'): indeed, says Cooke, he rather cultivated his brogue than got rid of it. Malone's authority would have us doubt, too, whether his emphasis, even for Scrub, would always have been right; seeing he gave an example one day to prove that poets ought to read verses better than other men, by beginning the ballad At Upton on the Hill with a most emphatic oN. Farquhar's humour, nevertheless, might have gained as much as it lost; and the private play could not have spared such an actor. Richard Burke reinforced the party soon after this with his wit and his whim ('now breaking a jest and now breaking a limb'); Garrick having succeeded, where Edmund supposed that his own influence had failed, in getting him a year's leave of absence from Grenada: and his return led to a temporary dining-club at the St. James's coffee-house, the limited numbers of the Gerrard Street Club excluding both him and Garrick from present membership there. Cumberland, who became afterwards an occasional guest, correctly

attributes its origin to Burke; though he misstates everything else connected with it. Here Cradock remembered to have heard much animated talk, in which Richard Burke made himself very prominent, and seemed the most free and easy of the company. Its members used to dine at each other's houses also, less frequently; and Goldsmith indulged himself now and then in very oddly assorted assemblages at his chambers after dinner, which (in allusion to the fashionable ball-rooms of the day) he called his 'little Cornelys.' More rarely, at meetings which became afterwards more famous, the titled people who jostled against writers and artists at Shelburne House in Berkeley Square, might be seen wondering or smiling at the simple-looking Irishman who had written the Deserted Village. There were Mrs. Vesey's parties, too, more choice and select than Mrs. Montagu's, her friend and imitator; and at both we have traces of Goldsmith: Your wild genius,' as Mrs. Vesey's statelier friend Mrs. Carter calls him. These ladies had got the notion of their blue-stocking routs from the Du Duffands, and L'Espinasses, at the last French peace; but alas! the Montesquieus, Voltaires, and Du Châtelets, the De Launays, Hainaults, De Choiseuls, and Condorcets, were not always forthcoming in Hill Street or Portman Square. In truth they seem to have been dull enough, these much-talked-about réunions; though sometimes enlivened by Mrs. Vesey's forgetfulness of her own name, and at all times sparkling with Mrs. Montagu's diamonds and bows. Mrs. Thrale's were better; and though the lively little lady

made a favourite jest of Goldsmith, he passed happy days with Johnson both in Southwark and Streatham. Still, perhaps, his happiest time was when he had Johnson to himself; when there were no listeners to talk for; when, to his half-childish frolicking absurdities, Johnson lowered all that was predominant or intolerant in his great fine nature ; and together they came sporting from Gerrard Street to the Temple, or, when the Club did not meet, had supper by themselves at an adjoining tavern in Soho. This was that once famous Jack's (since Walker's) in Dean Street, kept by a singer of Garrick's company (Jack Roberts), and patronised by Garrick and his friends: which, in all but the life that departed from it when they departed, to this day exists unchanged; quite unvexed by disturbance or improvement; haunted by the ghosts of guests that are gone, but not much visited by guests that live; a venerable relic of the still life of Goldsmith's age, possessed by an owner who is venerable as itself, and whose memory, faithful to the past, now lives altogether with the shades that inhabit there. Of many pleasant tête-a-tête suppers' this was the scene; and here Goldsmith would seem boldly to have perpetrated very ancient sallies of wit, to half-grumbling half-laughing accompaniment from Johnson. 'Sir,' said the sage one night, as they supped off rumps and kidneys, these rumps are pretty little 'things; but then a man must eat a great many of 'them before he fills his belly.' 'Aye, but how many of 'them' asked Goldsmith innocently, 'would reach to the