riment, play forfeits and blind man's buff, and show them tricks upon cards. The younger Colman remembered that when he was five years old he had given Oliver a smart slap upon the face for taking him on his knee. The little vixen was locked up by his father in a dark room, whither Goldsmith soon followed with a candle and wheedled Master Colman back to good humor by placing a shilling under each of three hats, and then conjuring them all under the same crown. It was a gambol with his dog that suggested to him the pretty couplet in "The Traveller:" By sports like these are all their cares beguiled, The sports of children satisfy the child. But from sports like these he was summoned back to his desk, and, in addition to the bulky compilations he had undertaken, he was preparing "The Deserted Village" for the press. Mr. Cooke calling upon him the day after it was commenced, Goldsmith read him a fragment of ten lines, adding, when he had done, "Come, let me tell you this is no bad morning's work." From the time he took to complete the poem he could rarely have accomplished so much at a sitting. His habit was first to set down his ideas in prose, and, when he had turned them carefully into rhyme, to continue retouching the lines with infinite pains to give point to the sentiment and polish to the verse. Mr. Forster dwells with great force upon the loss to literature from the want of this care in the generality of authors. The bulky ore, he truly says, can seldom obtain currency, how ever rich the vein. Those who extract and collect the gold, no matter how thinly it may have been originally spread, will ever be the writers most prized by the world. It was owing to this care that "The Deserted Village," being published on the 26th of May, 1770, went through four editions before the end of June. His brother Henry died in 1768, and the honor which Goldsmith allotted him on the appearance of the "Traveller," he now conferred upon Sir Joshua Reynolds. "The only dedication I ever made," he gracefully says, was to my brother, because I loved him better than most men. He is since dead. Permit me to inscribe this poem to you." Sir Joshua Reynolds returned the compliment by painting a picture of Resignation, in allusion to the line 66 While Resignation gently slopes the way, and inscribing the print which was engraved 66 from it to Goldsmith. An anecdote was told of his having returned a part of the hundred pounds which Griffin had paid him for the copyright, in consequence of his having discovered that it amounted to near five shillings a couplet, which was more than any bookseller could afford, or indeed more than any modern poetry was worth." Mr. Forster rejects the tale on the ground that it was a very improbable act in a man who, a little before, had taken five hundred guineas from the same publisher on the faith of a book he had hardly begun. Mr. Cooke, however, a very trustworthy authority, and who was certainly in a situation to be privy to the transaction, says that the story was "strictly true,"-a phrase which implies both that it had been called in question, and that he knew it to be a fact. Testimony so distinct must weigh, we think, against speculative improbabilities, which amount to very little in the case of Goldsmith, who was a creature of impulse, and who in money matters especially would meanly borrow one minute what he generously gave the next. The rapid sale of the poem, it is added, removed his scruples, and he ultimately accepted payment in full. Even at this price he was only remunerated in fame for the lengthened labor he had bestowed upon the work, and he replied to Lord Lisburne, who urged him at an Academy dinner to persevere in writing verse, "I cannot afford to court the muses; they would let me starve; but by my other labors I can make shift to eat and drink, and have good clothes." "What true and pretty pastoral images has Goldsmith in his Deserted Village," says Burke in a letter quoted by Mr. Forster. "They beat all: Pope and Phillips, and Spenser too, in my opinion-that is in the pastoral, for I go no farther." In no other rural piece is there so much poetry and reality combined. The pictures of Auburnits pastor, its schoolmaster, and all its other accessories-are as exact as anything in Crabbe, but they are painted under their best and softest aspect; and while "The Parish Register" pains and depresses Goldsmith throws a hue of enchantment in the single forced conceit. The vividness of the descriptive passages, the skill with which the details are selected, the magical language in which they are expressed, the pensive sweetness which prevades the piece, unite to make it one of the most perfect little poems in the world. In the midst of the blaze of reputation which attended the publication of "The Deserted Village," Goldsmith started in July for France, attended by Mrs. Horneck and her two pretty daughters-a Devonshire family whose acquaintance he had made in the house of Reynolds. To travel had once been his supreme delight. The love for every place, except that in which they resided, is mentioned by himself as a Goldsmith characteristic. "But travelling at twenty and at forty are," he said, “very different things. I set out with all my confirmed habits about me, and can find nothing on the continent so good as when I left it.' Not meeting with the pleasure he anticipated, and his literary undertakings weighing upon his mind, he was glad to get back to his old quarters, after an absence of two months. He was no sooner home than he added to his already oppressive engagements by agreeing for a payment of fifty guineas to abridge his Roman History. A slight sketch of Parnell, which contained two or three graceful paragraphs, was published in the summer with some success; and a "Life of Bolingbroke," to be prefixed to his "Dissertation on Parties," which was calculated might obtain a fresh lease of popularity in the political heats of that fiery time, was now to be provided without delay. It was the first completed of his pending projects, and is one of the flimsiest tracts which ever proceeded from his pen-flat and feeble in style, as well as destitute of thought and knowledge. In August, 1771, came forth the "History of England," in four volumes, which has all the characteristics of his former compilations of the same kind. He avowedly took his information in at secondhand, and only engaged to furnish what he more than accomplished "a plain, unaffected narrative of facts, with just ornament enough to keep attention awake, and with reflection barely sufficient to set the reader upon thinking." He was accused, by men who were themselves overflowing with party-spirit, of being the tool of the ministry, and of making history subservient to political passions. "I have been a good deal abused," he remarked, writing to Langton, "for betraying the liberties of the people. God knows I had no thought for or against liberty in my head; my whole aim being to make up a book of decent size, that, as Squire Richard says, would do harm to nobody. However, they set me down as an arrant Tory, and consequently an honest man. When you come to look at any part of it, you'll say that I am a sour Whig." Goldsmith's political creed was of so extreme a kind that he was even opposed to the Hanoverian succession, and affirmed that it never would be well with our constitution until another "happy revolution" should rectify the injury done by the settlement of 1688. He had once gone with Johnson to visit Westminster Abbey, and, while they were surveying poet's corner, his friend exclaimed Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis. When they reached Temple Bar Goldsmith pointed to the bony remains of the rebel's heads, and slily whispered, in allusion to their mutual Jacobite predilections Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur ISTIS. But notwithstanding his indulgence in these obsolete theories, his practical interest in passing politics, during the hottest ebullitions of factious rage, appears to have been extremely slight, and there were few subjects, we imagine, upon which he read, thought, or understood less. A year A year or two before, Dr. Scott, the chaplain of Lord Sandwich, endeavored to engage him to devote his pen to the support of the administration, and informed him that he was empowered to pay him liberally for his services; but poor as Goldsmith was, he was not to be tempted by the offer. "I can earn," he said, "as much as will supply my wants without writing for any party; the assistance you offer is therefore unnecessary to me." The fame of "The Traveller" brought Goldsmith into contact with his countryman Mr. Nugent, who had now become Lord Clare. He was much with him at the close of 1770 at his seat of Gosfield Park, and in the spring of 1771 accompanied him to Bath. Oliver is said by Mr. Cooke to have been liable to fits of absence, and an instance occurred during the present visit when he strayed into the house of the Duke of Northumberland, who lived next door to Lord Clare, and threw himself down on the sofa just as the Duke and the Duchess, who were acquainted with him, were sitting down to breakfast. Conjecturing that he had made a mistake, they endeavored to put him at his ease and inquired the news of the day; but it was not until they invited him to join never reach a second representation, and refused to expend a shilling in decoration. Several of the performers mutinied and threw up their parts. Other petty vexations followed, and, with the exception of a favor two more, everything conspired to frown. upon the venture. There was some difficulty in finding a suitable title for the piece, and on Davies repeating that the great oracle had said, "We are all in labor for a name to Goldy's play," Oliver in one of those capricious fits of assumption, which oddly intermingled with undignified familiarity, expressed, "I have often desired him not to call me Goldy." them at the table that he awoke from his reverie, and explained, with many apologies and much confusion, that he was unconscious of the intrusion. After seeing on his return to London his "History of England" through the press, he hired a room in a farm-able opinion from Dr. Johnson and one or house on the Edgeware Road, and commenced "She Stoops to Conquer." "I have been trying these three months," he wrote to Bennet Langton, September 7th, 1771, "to do something to make people laugh. There have I been strolling about the hedges, studying jests with a most tragical countenance. The comedy is now finished, but when or how it will be acted, or whether it will be acted at all, are questions I cannot resolve." He met with more difficulties in his attempt to get it brought upon the stage than he probably anticipated when these words were penned. He told his friends that, notwithstanding the partiality of the public for graver pieces, he would persevere in his former course, and, at the risk of being thought low, "would hunt after nature and humor in whatever walks of life they were most conspicuous." The cold reception of the "Good-natured Man" had nevertheless abated much of his confidence in the result, and he was easily discouraged. A friend to whom he told the plot in a chop-house, shook his head and expressed a fear that the audience would think it too broad and farcical for comedy. Goldsmith looked serious, and, taking him by the hand after a pause, said in piteous tones, "I am much obliged to you, my dear friend, for the candor of your opinion, but it is all I can do; for, alas! I find that my genius, if ever I had any, has of late totally deserted me." The manager of Covent Garden Theatre shook his head, like this friend. He kept the author long without an answer, started objections to the conduct of the piece, and on a pressing appeal from Goldsmith, in January, 1773, to be relieved from suspense, coupled with an entreaty that the comedy might at least be allowed a hearing in consideration of the large sum of money he had shortly to make up, he replied by sending back the manuscript, with several unwelcome criticisms endorsed upon the pages. Though he added an assurance that the play should be acted, Oliver was irritated and applied to Garrick. He had no sooner taken the step than he revoked the request at the advice of Dr. Johnson, who went to Colman, and in his own words "prevailed on him at last by much solicitation, nay a kind of force, to bring it on." The manager still believed that it would On the evening of the first performance (March 15th, 1773,) a few of the principal literary friends of the author assembled at dinner; but Goldsmith was too agitated to swallow a mouthful, and too nervous to accompany the party to the theatre. He was found sauntering in St. James's Park by an acquaintance, who told him his presence might be necessary to make some alteration demanded by the temper of the audience, which induced him to go. Entering the stage-door as a faint hiss broke out at the improbability of Mrs. Hardcastle believing herself to be forty miles from home when she was within a few yards of her own house, he exclaimed with alarm "What's that ?" "Pshaw! Doctor," said Colman, who was standing behind the scenes, "don't be fearful of squibs, when we have been sitting almost these two hours upon a barrel of gunpowder." Goldsmith never forgave the speech. In reality the piece had not been in jeopardy for an instant, and from beginning to end all was mirth and applause. Johnson, who presided over the dinner, was present to justify his favorable verdict, and, as often as he broke forth into a roar of laughter, the rest of the house followed the lead and laughed in chorus. "I know of no comedy," he said, "for many years that has so much exhilarated an audience,—that has answered so much the great end of comedy, making an audience merry." "The play," Goldsmith wrote himself to Mr. Cradock, "has met with a success much beyond your expectations or mine. I cannot help saying that I am very sick of the stage, and, though I believe Ishall get three tolerable benefits, yet I shall on the whole be a loser even in a pecuniary light; my ease and comfort I certainly lost while it was in agitation." The comedy was repeated all the available nights, which amounted only to twelve, up to the end of the season, and if what Mr. Cooke | says be true, that Goldsmith cleared eight hundred pounds, he could not have been the loser he anticipated through the time subtracted from his ordinary task-work. In the next season "She Stoops to Conquer" continued a favorite, and Goldsmith grew in love with dramatic writing and the stage. Mr. Cooke believes that, had he lived, he would have increasingly devoted himself to this department of literature. The general approbation of the comedy was accompanied by a general abuse of Colman for his jealousy or want of judgment, and he was at last humbled to the point of asking Goldsmith to make some statement which should "take him off the rack of the newspapers." No better description can be given of "She Stoops to Conquer" than that which was written by Johnson to Boswell, after reading it in manuscript. "The chief diversion arises from a stratagem by which a lover is made to mistake his future father-inlaw's house for an inn. This, you see, borders upon farce. The dialogue is quick and gay, and the incidents are so prepared as not to seem improbable." With a general resemblance of manner to his former comedy. there is this prominent distinction, that in the "Good-natured Man" he has concentrated his strength upon the humor which grows out of character, and in "She Stoops to Conquer" upon the mirth which is provoked by misadventures. Even Marlow, forward with his inferiors and bashful with his equals, seems a commonplace conception. The interest and comicality of the piece are in the succession of deceptions and misunderstandings, and the lively dialogue which accompanies them. As he indulged before in extravagance of character, so he did now in extravagance of incident, and nothing except his admirable management of his materials kept his piece within the limits of comedy. Horace Walpole pronounced it the "lowest of all possible farces." He might at least have said the highest, nor does is much matter by what name it is called, when it is allowed by everybody to be one of the most ingenious, original, and laughable plays in the language. The "Good-natured Man" is tame by comparison." Every stage of Goldsmith's existence was coupled with some disaster or jest, and a few days after the appearance of "She Stoops to Conquer" he brought himself into a new description of trouble. A letter appeared in the "London Packet" abusing his comedy, and asserting that he had a hopeless admira tion of Miss Horneck. He had the folly to call upon Evans, the publisher of the paper, and strike him with a cane at the moment when he was disclaiming his knowledge of the libel, and promised to speak to the editor. Evans returned the blow, a scuffle ensued, Goldsmith's hand was much bruised in the fray, a lamp above his head was broken to pieces and covered him with oil, and, to complete his humiliation, there issued at this instant from a back room his old detractor, Dr. Kenrick, the author of the attack, who led him away to a hackney coach. He was prosecuted by Evans for the assault, and compromised the action by paying fifty pounds to a Welsh charity. His friends laughed, the journals railed at him, and he wrote a letter in his defence, called by Johnson "a foolish thing well done," in which, avoiding all the details of the transaction, he confined himself to half-a-dozen well-turned sentences upon the licentiousness of the press. It was this time a comedy in which "he had stooped to be conquered. Neither the eight hundred pounds, nor his other earnings, sufficed to satisfy his past debts and present extravagance. "When he exchanged his simple habits," says Mr. Cooke, "for those of the great, he contracted their follies without their fortunes or qualifications. Hence when he eat or drank with them he was habituated to extravagances which he could not afford; when he squandered his time with them he squandered part of his income; and when he lost his money at play with them he had not their talents to recover it at another opportunity." He had all his life been fond of cards, played ill, and, when the run of luck was against him, would fling his hand upon the floor, and exclaim with mock concern, "Bye-fore George, I ought for fever to renounce thee, fickle, faithless Fortune!" But in his latter years he played for deeper stakes. He contracted what Cooke calls "a"passion for gaming," which is one of the ingredients in the motley character that was drawn of him by Garrick, and Mr. Cradock, who was on familiar terms with him at this period, specifies it as his greatest fault, that if he had thirty pounds in his pocket he would lose it all by an attempt to double it. An abstemious man himself, he was ostentatious in his entertainments, and in the last year of his life Johnson and Reynolds rebuked his profusion by refusing to partake of the second course of a too sumptuous | dinner. He often repented his folly, but as often renewed it. Reynolds found him one morning kicking a bundle round his room. The poet said in explanation, that it was a | the younger Newberry, to whom he made masquerade suit, and, being too poor to have over the copyright of "She Stoops to Conanything useless about him, he was taking quer," in partial satisfaction of a debt which out the value in exercise, or in other words, he had previously promised to discharge by he was venting his vexation for his thought- another such tale as the "Vicar of Wakeless conduct upon the dress. His accumu- field." The specimen which he furnished lating debts made him melancholy and proved to be a narrative version of the wayward. He would frequently quit abruptly" Good-natured Man," and was declined by the social circle and creep to his own cheer- the publisher. He undertook, as a comless chamber to brood over his embarrass- panion to his "History of Rome," to compile ments. His happiest periods, as he acknow- for two hundred and fifty pounds a "History ledged, were when, driven by sheer necessity of Greece," which was unfinished when he from the round of dissipation, he retired into died. But his favorite project was a "Poputhe country to labor with unremitting toil lar Dictionary of Arts and Sciences," to upon his projects. which Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds had promised to contribute, and the loss of the disquisitions of these famous men renders the abandonment of the work a subject for great regret, though in the aggregate it would probably have been a very imperfect performance. Goldsmith wrote the Introduction to the Dictionary, which was read in the manuscript by Mr. Cradock, who thought it excellent, and which may possibly be the same with the Prospectus he.printed and circulated among his friends, but which has hitherto escaped the researches of his editors. Davies tells us that his expectations from any new scheme were generally sanguine, but for this he prognosticated an unusual success, and never recovered the disappointment of its rejection by the booksellers, who had little confidence in the prosperity of "an undertaking, the fate of which was to depend upon a man with whose indolence of temper and habits of procrastination they had long been acquainted." In some emergency in 1773 he borrowed forty pounds of Garrick, and not long afterwards he sent him a note, which bears manifest marks of having been written in agitation and distress, in which he requests him to make the debt an hundred. To propitiate his creditor he offered to remodel the In the intervals between his other engagements Goldsmith had for some time been continuing in his farm - house retreat the "History of Animated Nature." "It is about half finished," he said to Langton in the letter of September, 1771, "and I will shortly finish the rest. God knows, I am tired of this kind of finishing, which is but bungling work." Boswell, in company with Mickle, the translator of the Lusiad, went to see him at his country lodging in April, 1772. He was not at home, but they entered his apartment and found curious scraps of descriptions of animals scrawled upon the wall with a black-lead pencil. Buffon was his principal storehouse for facts, and much of the work is an avowed translation from the eloquent Frenchman. "Goldsmith, Sir," said Johnson, "will give us a very fine book on the subject, but, if he can distinguish a cow from a horse, that I believe may be the extent of his knowledge of Natural History." To observe for himself, and to recapitulate the observations of others, were such distinct operations, that, in spite of his want of a practical acquaintance with the science, he might easily be equal to a view of the popular parts of the study. He was a little credulous of marvels, and if his guides had gone astray he of necessity copied their errors, but the volumes teem with delightful information, and of the literary merits of the narrative it is enough to say that it was written by Goldsmith. The purchase-money of the " History of Animated Nature" was spent before it was earned. The work was not finished till Goldsmith was within a foot of the grave, nor published till after his death, and throughout the interval which elapsed from its commencement to its conclusion it continued to be one of his worst embarrassments. He had still to provide for the wants of the passing hour, and numerous were the schemes he attempted or proposed. He was in arrear to Good-natured Man" in accordance with the original proposal of the manager when they quarrelled upon the subject. "I will give you a new character," Goldsmith said, "and knock out Lofty, which does not do, and will make such other alterations as you suggest." Garrick promised the money, but. gave no encouragement to the scheme for recasting the play. The thanks of Goldsmith were warm, and to show his gratitude he added, "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.' Both these notes are endorsed by Garrick, "Goldsmith's parlaver;" and it is likely enough that his dis |