Sir (looking at Mr. Wilkes with a placid but significant smile), a man may collect sermons with intention of making himself better by them. I hope Mr. Beauclerk intended that some time or other that should be the case with him.""

Beauclerk was especially eager in scientific researches. In the University which Johnson and Boswell amused themselves with founding in the air, Beauclerk was to have the Chair of Natural Philosophy. Goldsmith writes, 'I see Mr. Beauclerk very often both in town and country. He is now going directly forward to become a second Boyle deep in chymistry and physics.' Boswell, in a letter to his friend Temple, says, 'He has one of the most numerous and splendid private libraries that I ever saw; greenhouses, hothouses, observatory, laboratory for chymical experiments, in short, everything princely.'

To all this eagerness after knowledge, and this delight in one of the most uncourtly of men, Beauclerk 'added the character of a man of fashion, of which his dress and equipage showed him to be emulous. In the early period of his life he was the exemplar of all who wished, without incurring the censure of foppery, to become conspicuous in the gay world.' In 'Selwyn's Letters,' we read that Madame Pitt (sister to Lord Chatham) met with an accident (a sprained leg) leaning on Topham as she was stepping out of her chaise, and

swears she will trust to the shoulders of no Macaroni for

the future.'

very well.

Johnson's name for him of Beau fitted him

have been vigorous,

His temperament, Johnson one day

Sir

Beauclerk's health seems never to and he suffered a great deal at times. however, was a very happy one. talking of melancholy said, 'Some men, and very thinking men too, have not those vexing thoughts. Joshua Reynolds is the same all the year round. Beauclerk, except when ill and in pain, is the same.' In spite of occasional altercations the affection between the men was very strong. As Beauclerk and I walked up Johnson's Court,' writes Boswell, 'I said, "I have a veneration for this court;" and was glad to find that Beauclerk had the same reverential enthusiasm.' Johnson in his turn often showed his high regard for Beauclerk. 'One evening,' says Boswell, 'when we were in the street together, and I told him I was going to sup at Mr. Beauclerk's, he said, "I'll go with you." After having walked part of the way, seeming to recollect something, he suddenly stopped and said, "I cannot go, but I do not love Beauclerk the less."

'Johnson's affection for Topham Beauclerk,' Boswell says in another passage, 'was so great, that when Beauclerk was labouring under that severe illness which at

We

last occasioned his death, Johnson said (with a voice faultering with emotion), "Sir, I would walk to the extent of the diameter of the earth to save Beauclerk."" are reminded how, when he heard that Mr. Thrale had lost his only son, he said, 'I would have gone to the extremity of the earth to have preserved this boy.' On Beauclerk's death he wrote to Boswell, 'Poor, dear, Beauclerk-nec, ut soles, dabis joca. His wit and his folly, his acuteness and maliciousness, his merriment and his reasoning are now over. Such another will not often be found among mankind. He directed himself to be buried by the side of his mother, an instance of tenderness which I hardly expected.' When a year later Boswell was walking home with Johnson from the first party that Mrs. Garrick had given after her husband's death, 'We stopped,' he says, 'a little while by the rails of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames, and I said to him with some emotion that I was now thinking of two friends we had lost, who once lived in the buildings behind us, Beauclerk and Garrick. "Ay, Sir," (said he tenderly)," and two such friends as cannot be supplied.” '

CHAPTER X.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.1

'ONE day,' writes the younger Colman, 'I met the poet Harding at Oxford-a half-crazy creature, as poets generally are, with a huge broken brick and some bits of thatch upon the crown of his hat. On my asking him for a solution of this prosopopoeia, "Sir," said he, “today is the anniversary of the celebrated Dr. Goldsmith's death, and I am now in the character of his 'Deserted Village.'"' When anyone sets about celebrating the anniversary of a great writer's death, even if he does not go to the lengths of poor Harding, he is likely enough to make himself foolish. He is weighed down with the feeling that to celebrate it properly, he must celebrate it in character; and yet he is by no means certain what is the character that he should assume. It is the anniversary of a death, and so a certain degree of gloom would not be unsuitable; but, on the other hand, it may be the

'Reprinted from the Times, April 4, 1874.

anniversary of the death of a humourist, and so a certain degree of mirth would be most becoming. Like Hamlet's uncle, he is

With an auspicious and a dropping eye,

In equal scale, weighing delight and dole.

And like Hamlet's uncle, as the play goes on, he does not feel altogether at his ease in his part. The difficulties, then, of keeping anniversaries are so great that no sensible person troubles himself to keep them at all.

There are, however, those who think that just as the aloe makes an effort once every hundred years to put out flowers, so, though we are more than justified in disregarding anniversaries, we ought nevertheless to make an effort to celebrate centenaries. Such people as these, then, would have felt a kindly sympathy with poor poet Harding if it had been the centenary, and not the anniversary, of Goldsmith's death. They would not, perhaps, have shown their enthusiasm by carrying about a huge broken brick and some bits of thatch; but likely enough they would have held a kind of jubilee at the Crystal Palace.

While, however, we do not love the ostentatious celebration of anniversaries and centenaries, yet it is by no means unbecoming when some day memorable in a great man's life comes round to have his name freshly remem