'some trial of his patience?' asked the statesman of the young painter, who had fallen into petty disputes at Rome. And then he warned him that a man can never have a point of mere pride that will not be pernicious to him; that we must be at peace with our species, if not for their sakes, yet very much for our own; and that the arms with which the ill dispositions of the world are to be combated, and the qualities by which it is to be reconciled to us and we reconciled to it, are moderation, gentleness, a little indulgence to others, and a great deal of distrust of ourselves; 'which are not qualities of a mean spirit, as some may 'possibly think them, but virtues of a great and noble 'kind, and such as dignify our nature as much as they 'contribute to our fortune and repose.'

Well would it have been for the subject of this biography, if the same justice which the world thus obtained from him, throughout their chequered intercourse, he had been able to obtain either from or for himself. It has not hitherto been concealed that, in whatever respect society may have conspired against him, he is not clear of the charge of having aided it by his own weakness; and still more evident will this be hereafter. With the present year ended his exclusive reliance on the booksellers, and, as though to mark it more emphatically, his old friend Newbery died; but with the year that followed, bringing many social seductions in the train of the theatre, came a greater inability than ever to resist improvident temptation and unsuitable expense. His old habit of living merely

from day to day beset every better scheme of life; the difficulty with which he earned money had not helped to teach him its value; and he became unable to apportion wisely his labour and his leisure. The one was too violent, and the other too freely indulged. It is doubtful if the

charge of gambling can be to more than a very trifling extent supported: but in the midst of poverty he was too often profuse, into clothes and entertainments he threw money that should have liquidated debts, and he wanted courage and self-restraint to face the desperate arrears that still daily mounted up against him. Hardly a new resource that did not bring a new waste, and fresh demands upon his jaded powers.

But before we too sternly pronounce upon genius sacrificed thus, and opportunities thrown away, let the forty years which have been described in this biography; the thirty of unsettled habit and undetermined pursuit, the ten of unremitting drudgery and desolate toil; be calmly retraced and charitably judged. Nor let us omit from that consideration the nature to which he was born, the land in which he was raised, his tender temperament neglected in early youth, the brogue and the blunders which he described as his only inheritance; and when the gains are counted up which we owe to his genius, be it still with admission of its native and irreversible penalties. His generous warmth of heart, his transparent simplicity of spirit, his quick transitions from broadest humour to gentlest pathos, and that delightful buoyancy of nature

ment.

which survived in every depth of misery; who shall undertake to separate these from the Irish soil in which they grew, in which impulse still reigns predominant over conscience and reflection, where unthinking benevolence yet passes for considerate goodness, and the gravest duties of life are overborne by social pleasure, or sunk in mad exciteManful, in spite of all, was Goldsmith's endeavour, and noble its result. He did not again draw back from the struggle in which at last he had engaged; unaided by a helping hand, he fought the battle out; and much might yet have been retrieved when death arrived so suddenly. Few men live at present, properly speaking; but are preparing to live at another time, which may or may not arrive. The other time was cut from under Goldsmith; and out of such labour as his in the present, few men could have snatched time to live. Ah!' he exclaimed to a young gentleman of fortune, who shewed him a most elaborate manuscript: Ah, Mr. Cradock! think of me, 'that must write a volume every month!' Think of him, too, who wrote always in the presence of craving want, and from his life's beginning to its end had never known the assistance of a home. It was said of Burke that his every care used to vanish, from the moment he entered under his own roof; of himself he could say no better than that at home or abroad, in crowds or in solitude, he was still carrying on a conflict with unrelenting care.

6

But one friend he had that never wholly left him, that in his need came still with comfort. Nature, who smiled

upon him in his cradle, in this 'garret' of Garden Court had not deserted him. Her school was open to him even here; and in the crowd and glare of streets, but a step divided him from her cool and calm refreshments. Among his happiest hours were those he passed at his window, looking over into the Temple Gardens. Steam and smoke were not yet so all prevailing, but that, right opposite where he looked, the stately stream which washes the garden-foot might be seen, as though freshly 'weaned from her Twicken'ham Naiades,' flowing gently past. Nor had the benchers thinned the trees in those days; for they were that race of benchers loved of Charles Lamb, who refused to pass in their treasurer's account twenty shillings to the gardener 'for stuff to poison the sparrows.' So there he sat with the noisy life of Fleet Street shut out, and made country music for himself out of the noise of the old Temple rookery. Luther used to moralize the rooks; and Goldsmith had illustrious example for the amusement he now took in their habits, as from time to time he watched them. He saw the rookery, in the winter deserted, or guarded only by some five or six, 'like old soldiers in a garrison,' resume its activity and bustle in the spring; and he moralized, like the great reformer, on the legal constitutions established, the social laws enforced, and the particular castigations endured, for the good of the community,' by those blackdressed and grey-eyed chatterers. 'Often has their plan

' of policy amused me,' he says, ' as I observed it from my 'window in the Temple, that looks upon a grove where

'they have made a colony.' Nor will we doubt that from this wall-girt grove, too, came many a thought that carried him back to childhood, made him free of solitudes explored in boyish days, and re-peopled deserted villages. It was better than watching the spiders amid the dirt of Green Arbour Court; for though his grove was city planted, and scant of the foliage of the forest, there was Fancy to piece out for him, transcending these, far other groves and other trees,

Annihilating all that's made

To a green thought in a green shade.

Let us leave him to this happiness for a time; before we pass to the few short years of labour, enjoyment, and sorrow, in which his mortal existence closed.