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 1 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, end of the season, and if what Mr. Cooke | 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. 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 Every stage of Goldsmith's existence was was ostentatious in his entertainments, and in coupled with some disaster or jest, and a few the last year of his life Johnson and Reynolds days after the appearance of "She Stoops to rebuked his profusion by refusing to partake Conquer" he brought himself into a new de- of the second course of a too sumptuous scription of trouble. A letter appeared in dinner. He often repented his folly, but as the "London Packet" abusing his comedy, often renewed it. Reynolds found him one and asserting that he had a hopeless admira- | morning kicking a bundle round his room. GOLDSMITH. tresses enticed him into promises and profes- In the midst of these shifts and sorrows a Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness call'd Noll, [Jan., smiling good humor with which he has told most poignant truths; and the dexterity with characters are drawn with uncommon tersewhich he has blended praise and blame. The ness and force, and with such felicity of language that many of the lines have become proverbial. had been played out poor Goldsmith was in A few weeks after this game of epitaphs his grave. He was subject to strangury, produced or aggravated by fits of sedentary toil; and an attack of the disorder in March, 1774, passed into a nervous fever. On the 25th of the month he sent for an apothecary, in taking James's powder. Yet, much as the and in defiance of his remonstrance persisted medicine reduced his powers, the worst sympAbashed at the laugh which ensued, "poor rent that the sleeplessness which remained was toms of the disorder abated, and it was appaPoll" was unable to produce a retort. The induced by some other cause. "Your pulse," company pursued the idea which had been said Doctor Turton, "is in much greater disstarted, and either then or afterwards several order than it should be from the degree of of them wrote epitaphs upon their standing fever which you have. Is your mind at ease?" butt in a similar vein. Goldsmith in the "No," said Goldsmith, "it is not." He was interim was not idle. He was carefully pre- paying, in fact, with his life the penalty of paring his "Retaliation" in silence; and his improvidence. He expired, after an illwhen he had advanced as far as the character ness of ten days, on the 4th of April, 1774; of Reynolds he showed it to Burke. He and on the 9th, his remains, followed by a wished it to be a secret till it was finished; few coffeehouse acquaintances, hastily gabut having allowed copies to be taken, its thered together, were laid in the burial ground existence became known to those who were of the Temple. the subjects of it, and he was obliged to read" of a fever, exasperated, as I believe, by the of the Temple. "He died," wrote Johnson, it at the Literary Club in its imperfect state, fear of distress. He had raised money and Garrick mentions that the skirmish on the squandered it by every artifice of acquisition part of all concerned was conceived and exe- and folly of expense. Sir Joshua is of opicuted in perfect good temper; but we learn nion that he owed not less than two thousand from Mr. Cooke that Goldsmith intended that pounds. Was ever poet so trusted before? the sting should be felt. From the time that But let not his faults be remembered. He his talent for satire was discovered he was treated with greater respect, and the oddities that he should be buried in Westminster was a very great man." It was suggested which had hitherto been a theme for endless Abbey, with a pomp commensurate with his jest were spoken of as not entirely destitute fame; and Judge Day conjectured that the of humor. Oliver marked the change, felt his proposal was abandoned in consequence of power, and told a friend that he kept the his debts; but Mr. Cooke expressly states that poem "as a rod in pickle upon any future the reason why the scheme was given up occasion." The premature disclosure of his verses took away the stimulus which he de- persons who were invited to hold the pall, was because the greater part of the eminent rived from anticipating the effect they would and whose presence could alone have conferproduce upon his bantering friends, and seems red importance on the proceeding, pleaded to have prevented his proceeding any further inability to attend. Yet two at least of the in a composition which certainly cost him number had a real and deep regard for the much thought and pains. As far as we can man. Burke, when he heard of his death, recollect, nothing of the kind had ever been burst into tears; and Reynolds, who had struck out before. His little rhyming piece never been known to suspend the exercise of of pleasantry, "The Haunch of Venison," his calling for any distress, laid down his which he sent to Lord Clare about 1771, is brush, and painted no more that day. in the same easy strain of verse; but the peculiarity of "Retaliation" is in the happy mixture of gaiety and satire; in the air of his face round and strongly pitted with the |