ing, tell tales as to the spontaneousness of his labor in this direction; and small acknowledgments run thus-"Received of Mr. Newbury five guineas for writing a short English Grammar;" or still smaller memoranda "Lent Dr. Goldsmith one pound one.” The success of the Clandestine Marriage suggested to the ever-teeming brain of the man of letters the writing of a comedy on the older English model; and in this case, as in all others, success was no security against vexation and anxiety. The Good-natured Man was placed in the hands of Garrick by the intervention of one of the best-natured men in the world, Sir Joshua Reynolds, who did his best to smooth over or send to oblivion an unlucky difficulty between the autocratic manager and the author whose fate hung on his fiat. But the two powers found no common currency, Garrick wanting a little servility, while Goldsmith chose to consider a bargain between author and manager as one intended to be mutually advantageous, and whose adjustment asked no gratitude on either side. He forgot just then that to refuse adulation to Garrick was denying pepper to the man whose palate rejects whatever lacks the stimulant; and when he angrily resisted certain alterations proposed, and even insisted on, by the experienced actor and manager, he forgot, too, that he himself was requiring an amount of deference which he disdained to accord to one of the most successful men of the day. Endless disputings and immeasurable bitterness grew out of this transaction; and after delays and vexations which drove him almost beside himself, Goldsmith withdrew from Garrick altogether, and offered his play to the manager of the rival theatre. Here, again, the fates were against him; for in the wonderful success of Kelly's insipid play of False Delicacy, the town had exhausted its theatrical sympathy for the time, leaving little interest to spare for a comedy whose forte was humor and a nice discrimination of character. The piece was at length acted, but under several disadvantages; and "Goldsmith had, meanwhile, been suffering exquisite distress; had lost all faith in his comedy and in himself;" and after the play was over, and he was alone with Johnson, and all inducement to bravado absent, he laid his head on the table and vented his disappointment in passionate tears. The play was not damned, however; and Johnson insisted that it was the best comedy that had appeared since the Provoked Husband. It was played, with some curtailments, for ten nights, and three of these performances were appropriated to the author. Five hundred pounds, from this and other sources, now poured in upon one who was liable to have his head turned by a tenth part of the money. We have heard of an Indian, who, having been persuaded by a good missionary to lay up a barrel of pork, at once invited the whole tribe to supply their families from this inexhaustible source. Goldsmith seems to have had a similar respect for the powers of his fund. "The first thing," says Mr. Irving, "was an entire change in his domicil. The lease he purchased for £400, and then went on to furnish his rooms with mahogany sofas, card-tables, and book-cases; with curtains, mirrors, and Wilton carpets." And his tailor's bills of the period we confess we have scruples about prying into a man's tailor's bills! show suits of "Tyrian bloom, satin grains," and silk linings, and gold buttons, which stand out in strong relief after the "secondhand green and gold" of his early London life. Set forth "in this apparel and array," he invited his most aristocratic friends to dinner and supper, and led such a heyday life of it, that sober Blackstone, who occupied the chamber beneath his, complained of the house-shakings and junketings of his convivial neighbor. The success of the Good-natured Man might thus be said to have been his ruin, if only there had been any thing else but ruin staring him in the face ever since he was born. "When his purse gave out, he drew upon futurity, obtaining advances from his booksellers and loans from his friends, in confident hopes of soon turning up another trump," says Mr. Irving. He took a cottage about eight miles from London, with a gentleman of the Temple as gay as himself, and passed the summer in "book-building," en attendant something more satisfactory. In the autumn we find him in town again, where the showiness of his attire attracted attention, even in the Strand. "Look at that fly with a long pin stuck through it!" said some vulgarian, as he passed in full dress, and decorated with a sword; and Goldsmith felt this so keenly, that he resented it by half-drawing his sword and challenging the offender to a fight, regardless of the crowd which so unusual a demonstration naturally collected. Mr. Irving thinks an especial susceptibility on this point may have had its source in a newly-acquired intimacy with a very agreeable family, the Hornecks, to whose two lovely daughters Goldsmith was desirous of rendering himself acceptable. "For once, poor Goldsmith had met with polite society, in which he was perfectly at home; for once, he had met with lovely women to whom his ugly features were not repulsive." No wonder that the tailor's bills of these days bear testimony to unusual magnificence! The recollection of all the taunts, to which the unhappy appearance of the poet had subjected him from childhood up, must have passed before him in dread array whenever he prepared himself for this charming circle. All the praise of a circle of wits and of the reading world, all the consciousness of power, all the suggestions of good sense, were insufficient to lift him above this mean trouble. Shall we ascribe his sensitiveness to weakness? When a man of keen sensibility can live without human love and sympathy, or when the world becomes philosophical enough to accept genius alone as a substitute for attractive manners and personal graces, we may despise the sufferings of Goldsmith. How shall we dispose of the humiliating truth, that this very fastidious world would have found all its objections and disgusts neutralized, if the object of them had at any time come into possession of a handsome fortune? So "poor, genial, generous, drudging, holiday-loving Goldsmith toiling that he might play, earning his bread by the sweat of his brains, and then throwing it out of the window," went on, through his Roman History and his Animated Nature "entertaining as a Persian Tale" until he was able to present the world with the Deserted Village, the sweetest of moral poems, welcomed by the Londoners as if it had indeed transported into the dense metropolis the green fields and hedge-rows of the country, the song of birds and the sports of a rustic population. It was "a vision of trees" to the citizen; Bright columns of vapor through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside. Some aspiring critics considered it inferior to the Traveller, and perhaps they were right according to the rules; but the popular voice has ever given its vote by acclamation for the later and more closely human poem. No grandeur of sentiment or felicity of expression could make up to us for the village pastor, the schoolmaster, the "feeble, solitary thing," gathering cresses for her bread, and the places haunted by these and throngs of other living shadows. The sweet and tender seriousness of the Deserted Village is relieved by touches of humor, as well as heightened by touches of pathos; if sorrow disturb the heart, it is more than half consoled by the thought, that gentle and happy natures will find or make for themselves such simple and unexacting pleasures, wherever their lot may be cast. And then the personality which we cannot help attaching to this poem, the reflex of Goldsmith's own character, private history, cherished opinions and tastes, and secret sorrows, what interest do they impart to every line of it! Spite of all the controversy about the identity of Auburn and Lissoy, we shall always feel that the former is the scene of the poet's early life, and the haven toward which, amid the storms of his struggling existence, his eyes were ever turned. "In all my wanderings round this world of care, And as a hare, whom horn and hounds pursue, Truly, this was "a heart which all the trials and temptations and buffetings of the world could not render worldly!" A six week's tour in France with Mrs. Horneck and her daughters, undertaken after the publication of the Deserted Village, seems to have been productive of little pleasure to the poet. The ladies were true Englishwomen, uncomfortable because they could not carry home with them; and Goldsmith had not savoir faire enough to smooth the way, and make little difficulties and disagreeables forgotten. "One of our chief amusements," he says, in a letter to Sir Joshua Reynolds, "is scolding at every thing we meet with, and praising every thing and every person we have left at home;" and we may add that he himself, as usual, contributed somewhat to the amusement of the less friendly of the party by certain ungainly feats and awkward speeches. In London again-writing for Davies, and then for a while at the seat of Lord Clare, where he experienced some characteristic mortifications. The History of England, still perhaps the best compendium on the subject, was the work of this summer; and after it was published, an invitation from Mrs. Horneck to her house in the country induced him to obtain a still further advance from a publisher, on the promise of a new tale, in the style of the Vicar of Wakefield. As well promise another Pitt diamond from the mine, on the strength of having found one! The tale was, we need not say, never written, although it is said to have been attempted. She Stoops to Conquer was now on the anvil; but all that it could possibly bring was already forestalled, and the author, with his health much disordered, was continually harassed by the importunity of creditors on one side, and the equally pressing importunity of his own habits and inclinations on the other. He was "overrunning the constable, as he termed it; spending every thing in advance; working with an overtasked head and weary heart to pay for past pleasures and past extravagance, and at the same time incurring new debts, to perpetuate his struggles and darken his future prospects.' And, as if this were not enough, "while the excitement of society and the excitement of composition conspire to keep up the feverishness of the system, he has incurred an unfortunate habit of quacking himself with James's powders, a fashionable panacea of the day." More wear and tear of brain, heart, and temper about the new play; more shuffling of managers, jealousy of authors, and intrigues of actors. Universal prognostic was against it; the manager, who had written plays of his own, prophesied that it would never see a second night. The author's friends, though zealous, were not sanguine; for who can bear up against so strong an adverse tide? He himself did not venture into the theatre, but wandered in St. James's Park alone, that none might witness his agony of anxiety. But the play was received with acclamations. The jokes, which he had conned "with a most dolorous countenance," relaxed the facial muscles of everybody else. "I know of no comedy for many years," said Johnson," that has so much exhilarated |