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trial, may not succumb under temptation invincible? Cover the good man who has been vanquished-cover his face and pass on. Think of him reckless, thriftless, vain if like-but merciful, gentle, generous, full of love and pity. He passes out of our life, and goes to render his account beyond it. Think of the poor pensioners weeping at his grave; think of the noble spirits that admired and deplored him; think of the righteous pen that wrote his epitaph; and of the wonderful and unanimous response of affection with which the world has paid back the love he gave it. His humour delighting us still; his song fresh and beautiful as when first he charmed with it; his words in all our mouths; his very weaknesses beloved and familiar-his benevolent spirit seems still to smile upon us: to do gentle kindnesses: to succour with sweet charity: to soothe, caress, and forgive: to plead with the fortunate for the unhappy and the poor.

WALPOLE AND GOLDSMITH.

Walpole almost invariably depreciates his contemporaries, and appears to grudge them a modicum of merit. Oliver Goldsmith could not expect to "escape whipping." Here is one of the amenities of Strawberry Hill: "Dr. Goldsmith told me," (writes Walpole,) "he himself envied Shakspeare; but Goldsmith was an idiot, with once or twice a fit of parts."

Walpole also writes to Lady Ossory, Dec. 14, 1773: "I dined and passed Saturday at Beauclerk's, with the Edgecombes, the Garricks, and Dr. Goldsmith, and was most thoroughly tired, as I knew I should be, I who hate playing off a butt. Goldsmith is a fool, the more wearing for having some sense.' Garrick acted a speech in Cato with Goldsmith; that is, the latter sat in the other's lap, covered with a cloak, and while Goldsmith spoke, Garrick's arms that embraced him, made foolish actions.

A MISTAKE AT BATH.

Lord Clare and the Duke of Northumberland had houses next to each other, of similar architecture. Returning home one morning from an early walk, Goldsmith, in one of his frequent fits of absence, mistook the house, and walked up into the duke's dining-room, where he and the duchess were about to sit down to breakfast. Goldsmith, still supposing himself in the house of Lord Clare, and that they were

visitors, made them an easy salutation, being acquainted with them, and threw himself on a sofa in the lounging manner of a man perfectly at home. The duke and duchess soon perceived his mistake, and while they smiled internally, endeavoured, with the considerateness of well-bred people, to prevent any awkward embarrassment. They accordingly chattered sociably with him about matters in Bath, until, breakfast being served, they invited him to partake. The truth at once flashed upon poor heedless Goldsmith; he started up from his free-and-easy position, made a confused apology for his blunder, and would have retired, perfectly disconcerted, had not the duke and duchess treated the whole as a lucky occurrence to throw him in their way, and exacted a promise from him to dine with them.

This may be hung up as a companion-piece to Goldsmith's blunder on his first visit to Northumberland House.

GOLDSMITH AND GARRICK.

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In his Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning, Goldsmith had given offence to David Garrick, against whom a clamour had been raised for exercising a despotism over the stage, and bringing forward nothing but old plays, to the exclusion of original productions. Walpole joined in this charge. "Garrick," said he, is treating the town as it deserves and likes to be treated, with scenes, fireworks, and his own writings." Goldsmith, who was extremely fond of the theatre, and felt the evils of this system, inveighed in his treatise against the wrongs experienced by authors at the hands of managers. "Our poet's performance," said he, “must undergo a process truly chemical before it is presented to the public. It must be tried in the manager's fire; strained through a licenser, suffer from repeated corrections, till it may be a mere caput mortuum when it arrives before the public." But a passage which perhaps touched more sensibly than all the rest on the sensibilities of Garrick, was the following:

"I have no particular spleen against the fellow who sweeps the stage with the besom, or the hero who brushes it with his train. It were a matter of indifference to me, whether our heroines are in keeping, or our candle-snuffers burn their fingers, did not such make a great part of public care and polite conversation. Our actors assume all that state off the

stage which they do on it; to use an expression borrowed from the green-room, every one is up in his part. I am sorry to say it, they seem to forget their real characters."

These strictures were taken by Garrick to himself, and when Goldsmith applied to him for his vote for the vacant Secretaryship of the Society of Arts, the manager replied he could hardly expect his friendly exertions after the unprovoked attack he had made upon his management. Goldsmith disclaimed personalities; but he failed to get the appointment, and ever considered Garrick his enemy. He expunged the passages objected to by the manager, when the Inquiry was reprinted; but, though the author and actor became intimate in after years, this false step at the outset of their intercourse was never forgotten.

GOLDSMITH AND REYNOLDS.

A congenial intimacy was contracted by Goldsmith with Mr. (afterwards Sir Joshua) Reynolds. The latter was now about forty years of age, a few years older than the poet. They were men of kindred genius, excelling in corresponding qualities of their several arts, for style in writing is what colour is in painting; both are innate endowments, and equally magical in their effects. Reynolds soon understood and appreciated the merits of Goldsmith, and a sincere and lasting friendship ensued between them.

At Reynolds's house in Leicester-square, Goldsmith mingled in a higher range of company than he had been accustomed to. Here gathered men of talents of all kinds, and the increasing affluence of Reynolds's circumstances enabled him to give fuli indulgence to his hospitable disposition. Poor Goldsmith had not yet, like Dr. Johnson, acquired reputation enough to atone for his external defects, and his want of the air of good society. Miss Reynolds used to inveigh against his personal appearance, which gave her the idea, she said, of a low mechanic, a journeyman tailor. One evening, at a large supper party, being called upon to give as a toast the ugliest man she knew, she gave Dr. Goldsmith, upon which a lady who sat opposite, and whom she had never met before, shook hands with her across the table, and "hoped to become better acquainted."

H

GOLDSMITH AND COLMAN THE YOUNGER.

"I was only five years old," says George Colman the younger, "when Goldsmith, one evening whilst drinking coffee with my father, took me on his knee and began to play with me, which amiable act I returned with a very smart slap in the face; it must have been a tingler, for I left the marks of my little spiteful paw upon his cheek. This infantile outrage was followed by summary justice, and I was locked up by my father in an adjoining room, to undergo solitary imprisonment in the dark. Here I began to howl and scream most abominably. At length, a friend appeared to extricate me from jeopardy; it was the good-natured Doctor himself, 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 until I began to brighten. He seized the propitious moment, placed three hats upon the carpet, and a 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, they were all found congregated under one. From that time, whenever the Doctor came to visit my father,

'I plucked his gown to share the good man's smile;'

a game of romps constantly ensued, and we were always cordial friends and merry playfellows."

OLIVER AND THE BALLAD-SINGER.

Mr. Prior relates that Goldsmith, when at a dinner-party, rose abruptly from the table, and running out into the street, gave all he had to a ballad-singer. Some of the company observed and remarked on his lavish bountifulness. "Oh," said he, "you were all saying she sang sweetly-but you did not perceive the misery of her notes."

"HUNG UP IN HISTORY."

Walking one day with Goldsmith, in Westminster Abbey, among the tombs of monarchs, warriors, and statesmen, Johnson came to the sculptured mementoes of literary worthies

in Poets' Corner. Casting his eye round upon these memorials of genius, Johnson muttered in a low tone to his companion,

"Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis."

Goldsmith treasured up the intimated hope, and shortly afterwards, as they were passing by Temple Bar, where the heads of Jacobite rebels, executed for treason, were mouldering aloft on spikes, pointed up to the grizzly mementoes, and echoed the intimation,

"Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.”

BORROWING AND PAYING.

To Conversation Cooke, while "yet but a stranger in town, and his supplies occasionally short, Goldsmith had more than once offered the use of his purse, which Cooke at length accepted; the temptation of an evening at Marylebone or Ranelagh Gardens with several companions being irresistible. On applying to the poet, however, he was told very seriously and no doubt truly, that he had not a guinea in his possession. This being considered an evasion, something like a reproach escaped the applicant, that he regretted having made such a request where, notwithstanding voluntary offers of assistance, there existed so little disposition to afford it. Nettled by the remark, Goldsmith, as evidence of his desire to oblige, borrowed the money. In the meantime Cooke, provided from another quarter, had locked his chambers and proceeded to his amusement, but returning at an early hour in the morning, found a difficulty in opening the door, which on examination proved to arise from the sum he had requested, in silver, being wrapped in paper and thrust underneath. On being thanked for this proof of sincerity on the following day, but told that the money might as readily have fallen into strange hands as those of him for whom it was meant, he characteristically replied, 'In truth, my dear fellow, I did not think of that." "-Prior.

SUPPING AT "THE MITRE."

In the elbow of the court leading from Fleet-street to the Inner Temple, is the Mitre Tavern, a favourite supperhouse with Dr. Johnson, who first took with him Goldsmith on July 1. Johnson and Boswell had supped at the Mitre in