lend me sixty pound for which I will give you Newbery's note, so that the whole of my debt will be an hundred for which you shall have Newbery's note as a security. This may be paid either from my alteration if my benefit should come to so much, but at any rate I will take care you shall not be a loser. I will give you a new character in my comedy and knock out Lofty which does not do, and will make such other alterations as you direct.

The letter is indorsed in Garrick's handwriting as Goldsmith's parlaver.' But though it would thus appear to have inspired little sympathy or confidence, and the sacrifice of Lofty had come too late and been too reluctant, Garrick's answer, begged so earnestly, was not unfavourable. He evaded the altered comedy; spoke of the new one already mentioned between them; and offered the money required on Goldsmith's own acceptance. The small security of one of Newbery's notes (though the publisher, with his experience of the comedy in hand, would doubtless gladly have taken his chance of the renovated comedy), he had some time proved. Poor Goldsmith was enthusiastic in acknowledgment. Nor let it be thought he is acting unfairly to Newbery, in the advice he sends with his thanks. The

publisher had frankly accepted the chances of a certain copyright, and had no right to wait the issue of those chances before he assumed the liability they imposed.

"MY DEAR FRIEND, I thank you! I wish I could do something to serve you. I shall have a comedy for you in a season or two at farthest that I believe will be worth your acceptance, for I fancy I will make it a fine thing. You shall have the refusal. I wish you would not take up Newbery's note but let Waller tease him, without however coming to extremities; let him haggle after him and he will get it. I will draw upon you one month after date for sixty pound and your acceptance will be ready money, part of which I want to go down to Barton with. May God preserve my honest little man, for he has my heart. Ever, OLIVER Goldsmith."

Barton was a gleam of sunshine in his darkest days. There, if no where else, he could still strive to be, as in his younger time, 'well when he was not ill, and pleased 'when he was not angry.' It was the precious maxim of Reynolds, as it had been the selectest wisdom of Sir William Temple. Reynolds himself, too, their temporary disagreement forgotten, gave him much of his society on his return: seeing, as he said afterward, the change in his manner; how greatly he then seemed to need the escape from his own thoughts; and with what a look of distress he would suddenly start from the midst of social scenes he continued still passionately fond of, to go home and brood over his misfortunes. The last gay picture in Goldsmith's life is of himself and Sir Joshua at Vauxhall. And not the least memorable figures in that sauntering crowd, though it numbered princes and ambassadors then; and on its tide and

1767 TO 1774.]

torrent of fashion, floated all the beauty of the time; and through its lighted avenues of trees, glided cabinet ministers

agreeable young ladies and gentlemen of eighty two,' and all the red-heeled macaronies; were those of the President, and the ancient history Professor, of the Royal Academy. A little later we trace Goldsmith from Vauxhall to the theatre, but his enjoyment is not so certain. Kelly had tried another comedy (The School for Wives) under a feigned name, and with somewhat better success, though it lived but a few brief nights. Yet Beauclerc (who also tells Lord Charlemont of the round of pleasures Goldsmith and Sir Joshua had been getting into) says of it: 'We have a new comedy here which is good for nothing ; 'bad as it is, however, it succeeds very well, and has almost 'killed Goldsmith with envy.'

Cradock's account of what was really killing him is somewhat different from Beauclerc's, and will perhaps be thought more authentic. Although, according to the same letter of Beauclerc's, all the world but himself and a million of vulgar people were then in the country, Cradock had come up to town to place his wife under care of a dentist, and had taken lodgings in Norfolk Street to be near his friend. He found Goldsmith much altered, he says; at times very low; and he passed his mornings with him. He induced him once to dine in Norfolk Street: but his usual cheerfulness had gone, and all was forced.' The idea occurred to Cradock that money might be raised by a special subscription edition of the Traveller and Deserted Village, if consent could be obtained from the holders of the copyrights. 'Pray do what you please with them,' said Goldsmith sadly.

But he rather submitted, than encouraged, says Cradock; and the scheme fell to the ground. 'Oh sir,' said two sister milliners, named Gun, who lived at the corner of Temple Lane and were among his creditors, 'sooner persuade him 'to let us work for him gratis, than suffer him to apply to any other. We are sure that he will pay us if he can.' Cradock ends his melancholy narrative by saying, that had Goldsmith freely laid open all the debts he had contracted, he is certain his zealous friends were so numerous that they would freely have contributed to his relief. There is reason to presume as much of Reynolds, certainly; and that he had offered his aid. 'I mean,' Cradock adds, 'explicitly 'to assert only, that I believe he died miserably, and that ' his friends were not entirely aware of his distress.' Truly, it was to assert enough.

Yet before he died, and from the depth of that distress, his genius flashed forth once more. Johnson had returned to town after his three months' tour in the Hebrides; parliament had again brought Burke to town; Richard Burke was in London on the eve of his return to Grenada; the old dining party had resumed their meetings at the St. James' Coffee House, and out of these meetings sprang Retaliation. More than one writer has professed to describe the particular scene from which it immediately rose, but their accounts are not to be reconciled with what is certainly known. Cumberland's is pure romance. The poem itself, however, with what was prefixed to it when published, sufficiently explains its own origin. What had formerly