we have banished humor from the stage, we should ourselves be deprived of the art of laughing."

Symptoms of reform in the drama had recently taken place. The comedy of the Clandestine Marriage, the joint production of Colman and Garrick, and suggested by Hogarth's inimitabl pictures of Marriage a la mode, had taken the town by storm, crowded the theatre with fashionable audiences, and formed one of the leading literary topics of the year. Goldsmith's emula tion was roused by its success. The comedy was in what he considered the legitimate line, totally different from the senti mental school; it presented pictures of real life, delineations of character and touches of humor, in which he felt himself calculated to excel. The consequence was, that in the course of this year (1766), he commenced a comedy of the same class, to be entitled the Good Natured Man, at which he diligently wrought whenever the hurried occupation of 'book building' allowed him leisure.

SOCIAL POSITION OF GOLDSMITH.

183

CHAPTER XVIII.

Social position of Goldsmith-his colloquial contests with Johnson.-Anec◄ dotes and illustrations.

THE social position of Goldsmith had undergone a material change since the publication of The Traveller. Before that event he was but partially known as the author of some clever anonymous writings, and had been a tolerated member of the club and the Johnson circle, without much being expected from him. Now he had suddenly risen to literary fame, and become one of the lions of the day. The highest regions of intellectual society were now open to him; but he was not prepared to move in them with confidence and success. Ballymahon had not been a good school of manners at the outset of life; nor had his experience as a 'poor student' at colleges and medical schools contributed to give him the polish of society. He had brought from Ireland, as he said, nothing but his "brogue and his blunders," and they had never left him. He had travelled, it is true; bu the Continental tour which in those days gave the finishing grace to the education of a patrician youth, had, with poor Goldsmith, been little better than a course of literary vagabondizing. It had enriched his mind, deepened and widened the benevolence of his heart, and filled his memory with enchanting pictures, but it had

contributed little to disciplining him for the polite intercourse of the world. His life in London had hitherto been a struggle with sordid cares and sad humiliations. "You scarcely can conceive," wrote he some time previously to his brother, "how much eight years of disappointment, anguish, and study, have worn me down." Several more years had since been added to the term during which he had trod the lowly walks of life. He had been a tutor, an apothecary's drudge, a petty physician of the suburbs, a bookseller's hack, drudging for daily bread. Each separate walk had been beset by its peculiar thorns and humiliations. It is wonderful how his heart retained its gentleness and kindness through all these trials; how his mind rose above the "meannesses of poverty," to which, as he says, he was compelled to submit ; but it would be still more wonderful, had his manners acquired a tone corresponding to the innate grace and refinement of his intellect. He was near forty years of age when he published The Traveller, and was lifted by it into celebrity. As is beautifully said of him by one of his biographers, "he has fought his way to consideration and esteem; but he bears upon him the scars of his twelve years' conflict; of the mean sorrows through which he has passed; and of the cheap indulgences he has sought relief and help from. There is nothing plastic in his nature now. His manners and habits are completely formed; and in any further success can make little favorable change, whatver it may effect for his mind or genius.

them

11*

We are not to be surprised, therefore, at finding him make an awkward figure in the elegant drawing-rooms which were now open to him, and disappointing those who had formed an idea of him from the fascinating ease and gracefulness of his poetry.

* Forster's Goldsmith.

JOHNSON'S CONVERSATION.

185

Con

Even the literary club, and the circle of which it formed a part, after their surprise at the intellectual flights of which he showed himself capable, fell into a conventional mode of judging and talking of him, and of placing him in absurd and whimsical points of view. His very celebrity operated here to his disadvantage. It brought him into continual comparison with Johnson, who was the oracle of that circle and had given it a tone. versation was the great staple there, and of this Johnson was a master. He had been a reader and thinker from childhood: his melancholy temperament, which unfitted him for the pleasures of youth, had made him so. For many years past the vast variety of works he had been obliged to consult in preparing his Dictionary, had stored an uncommonly retentive memory with facts on all kinds of subjects; making it a perfect colloquial armory. "He had all his life," says Boswell, "habituated himself to consider conversation as a trial of intellectual vigor and skill. He had disciplined himself as a talker as well as a writer, making it a rule to impart whatever he knew in the most forcible language he could put it in, so that by constant practice and never suffering any careless expression to escape him, he had attained an extraordinary accuracy and command of language."

His common conversation in all companies, according to Sir Joshua Reynolds, was such as to secure him universal attention, something above the usual colloquial style being always expected from him.

"I do not care," said Orme, the historian of Hindostan, on what subject Johnson talks; but I love better to hear him talk than any body. He either gives you new thoughts or a new coloring,"

A stronger and more graphic eulogium is given by Dr. Percy

"The conversation of Johnson," says he, "is strong and clear, and may be compared to an antique statue, where every vein and muscle is distinct and clear."

Such was the colloquial giant with which Goldsmith's cele brity and his habits of intimacy brought him into continual comparison; can we wonder that he should appear to disadvantage? Conversation grave, discursive and disputatious, such as Johnson excelled and delighted in, was to him a severe task, and he never was good at a task of any kind. He had not, like Johnson, a vast fund of acquired facts to draw upon; nor a retentive memory to furnish them forth when wanted. He could not, like the great lexicographer, mould his ideas and balance his periods while talking. He had a flow of ideas, but it was apt to be hurried and confused, and as he said of himself, he had contracted a hesitating and disagreeable manner of speaking. He used to say that he always argued best when he argued alone; that is to he could master a subject in his study, with his pen in his hand; but, when he came into company he grew confused, and was unable to talk about it. Johnson made a remark concerning him to somewhat of the same purport. "No man," said he, "is more foolish than Goldsmith when he has not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he has." Yet with all this conscious deficiency he was continually getting involved in colloquial contests with Johnson and other prime talkers of the literary circle. He felt that he had become a notoriety; that he had entered the lists and was expected to make fight; so with that heedlessness which characterized him in every thing else he dashed on at a venture; trusting to chance in this as in other things, and hoping occasionally to make a lucky hit. Johnson perceived his haphazard temerity, but gave him no credit for the real diffidence

say,