stopped; but he had said enough. The consciousness of his own too frequent habit of roaring down an adversary in conversation, from which such men as the Wartons as well as Goldsmith suffered, could hardly have been more amusingly confessed; and it is possible that Thomas Warton may have remembered it in the courteous severity of his retort, when Johnson so fiercely fell upon him at Reynolds's a few years later. Sir, I am not used to be 'contradicted.' 'Better for yourself and friends, sir, if 'you were. Our admiration could not be increased, but our love might.'

One of the listeners standing near Johnson, when he began his narrative, had in the course of it silently retreated from the circle. 'Doctor Goldsmith,' says Boswell, 'remained 'unmoved upon a sofa at some distance, affecting not to 'join in the least in the eager curiosity of the company. 'He assigned as a reason for his gloom and seeming in' attention, that he apprehended Johnson had relinquished his purpose of furnishing him with a prologue to his play, 'with the hopes of which he had been flattered; but it 'was strongly suspected that he was fretting with chagrin and envy at the singular honour Doctor Johnson had

lately enjoyed. At length the frankness and simplicity ' of his natural character prevailed. He sprung from the 'sofa, advanced to Johnson, and in a kind of flutter, 'from imagining himself in the situation which he had just 'been hearing described, exclaimed, "Well, you acquitted ""yourself in this conversation better than I should have

"done; for I should have bowed and stammered through ""the whole of it.""

Poor Goldsmith might have reason to be anxious about his prologue, for his play had brought him nothing but anxiety. 'In theatro sedet atra cura.' A letter lies before me from Horace Walpole's neighbour, Kitty Clive, who writes expressively though she spells ill (the great Mrs. Pritchard used to talk of her 'gownd '), assuring her friend Colman that 'vexation and fretting in a theater are the foundation ' of all Billous complaints. I speak by expeariance. I have 'been fretted by managers till my gaul has overflow'd like 'the river Nile;' and precisely thus it befel Goldsmith. His comedy completed, Kitty's 'billous' complaint began ; and there was soon an overflow of gall. Matters could not have fallen out worse for advantageous approach to Garrick, and the new dramatist's thoughts turned at first to Covent Garden. While the play was in progress it was undoubtedly intended for Beard. But Covent Garden theatre was in such confusion from Rich's death, and Beard's doubts and deafness, that Goldsmith resolved to make trial of Garrick. They do not seem to have met since their first luckless meeting, but Reynolds now interposed to bring them together; and at the painter's house in Leicester Square, Goldsmith placed in Garrick's hands the manuscript of the Good Natured Man. Tom Davies was afterward at some pains to describe what he conceived to have been the tone of their interview, and tells us that the manager, being at all times conscious of his own merit,

was perhaps more ostentatious of his abilities to serve a dramatic author than became a man of his prudence, while the poet, on his side, was as fully persuaded of his own importance and independent greatness. Mr. Garrick expected that the writer would esteem the patronage of his play as a favour, but Goldsmith rejected all ideas of 'kindness in a bargain that was intended to be of mutual 'advantage to both parties.' Both were in error, and providing cares and bitterness for each other; of which the heaviest portion fell naturally on the weakest shoulders. Mere pride must always be injurious to all men; but where it cannot itself afford that the very claim it sets up should succeed, deplorable indeed is its humiliation.

Let us admit that, in this matter of patronage, the poet might not improperly have consented at the first, to what with an ill grace he was driven to consent at last. He was possibly too eager to visit upon the actor his resentment of the want of another kind of patronage; and to interpose uneasy remembrances of a former quarrel, before what should have been a real sense of what was due to Garrick, and a proper concession of it. Johnson had no love of patronage, but would not have counselled this. Often, when most bitter on the same angry theme, and venting with the least scruple his rage at the actor's foppery, would he stop to remind himself of the consideration Garrick needed after all, and of how little in reality he assumed. For then, all generous and tolerant as at heart he was, not a merit or advantage of his fellow-townsman's

unexampled success, since the day they entered London together with fourpence between them, but would rise and plead in his behalf. The popular actor's intercourse with the great, his absolute control of crowds of dependants, his sprightliness as a writer and talker equalled by few, his immense acquired wealth, the elevation and social esteem he had conferred upon his calling, and the applause he had for ever had sounded in his ears, and dashed in his face; all would in succession array themselves in Johnson's mind, till he was fain to protest, philosopher as he was, that if all that had happened to him, if lords and ladies had flattered him, if sovereigns and statesmen had petted him, and if the public had adored him, he must have had a couple of fellows with long poles continually walking before him to knock down everybody that stood in the way. The condescension of patronage was at least a very harmless long pole, and Goldsmith might have taken a few taps from it. A mere sensitive though clever thinker like Hans Andersen, fretting behind the scenes, will talk of an actor putting himself in one scale and all the rest of the world in another; but a profoundly just man like Goethe, wise in a theatre as everywhere else, will show you that the actor's love of admiration is a part of his means to please, and that he is nothing if he seem not something to himself and others. Not to be omitted, at the same time, and not to be palliated, is Garrick's large share of blame in this special instance. His first professions should not have merged, as they did, into

excuses and delays; but should have taken, either way, a decisive tone. Keeping up fair words of success to Goldsmith, it would seem he gave private assurances to Johnson and Reynolds that the comedy could not possibly succeed. Interviews followed at his own house; explanations, and proposals for alteration; doubtful acquiescence, and doubtful withdrawal of it. Matters stood thus, the season meanwhile passing to its close, when Goldsmith, whose wants had never been so urgent, and whose immediate chances. of relieving them had been lost through Garrick's delays, thought himself justified in asking the manager to advance him forty pounds upon a note of the younger Newbery's. Garrick had at this time renewed his promise to act the play; and was in all probability very glad to lend this money, and profit by what advantage it might offer him. It is certain that soon afterward he suggested to the luckless dramatist, as essential to his success, a series of important alterations which were at once and with some indignation rejected.

The leading characters in the piece were three; and are understood to remain, at present, much as when they left Garrick's hands. In Honeywood, who gives the comedy its title, we have occasional conscious glance, not to be mistaken, at the writer's own infirmities. Nor is there any disposition to make light of them. Perhaps the errors which arise from easiness of disposition, and tend to unintentional confusions of right and wrong, have never been touched with a happier severity.

Splendid as they seem,