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places for the coronation, and I gave my two eldest boys (who, by-the-bye, are twins, fine children) eighteen-pence a-piece to go to Sudrick-Fair,1 to see the Court of the Black King of Morocco, which will serve to please children well enough.

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That we might have good places on the scaffolding, my wife insisted upon going at seven o'clock the evening before the coronation, for she said she would not lose a full prospect for the world. This resolution I own shocked me. Grizzle," said I to her, "Grizzle, my dear, consider that you are but weakly, always ailing, and will never bear sitting out all night on the scaffold. You remember what a cold you caught the last fastday, by rising but half an hour before your time to go to church, and how I was scolded as the cause of it. Beside, my dear, our daughter, Anna Amelia Wilhelmina Carolina, will look like a perfect fright if she sits up, and you know the girl's face is something at her time of life, considering her fortune is but small." "Mr. Grogan," replied my wife, "Mr. Grogan, this is always the case, when you find me in spirits. I don't want to go, not I; nor I don't care whether I go at all. It is seldom that I am in spirits, but this is always the case." In short, Mr. Printer, what will you have on't? to the coronation we went.

What difficulties we had in getting a coach, how we were shoved about in the mob, how I had my pocket picked of the last new almanack, and my steel tobacco-box; how my daughter lost half an eyebrow and her laced shoe in a gutter; my wife's lamentation upon this, with the adventures of the crumbled plum-cake, and broken brandy bottle, what need I relate all these? We suffered this and ten times more before we got to our places.

At last, however, we were seated. My wife is certainly an heart of oak; I thought sitting up in the damp nightair would have killed her. I have known her for two months take possession of our easy chair, mobbed up in flannel night-caps, and trembling at a breath of air; but she now bore the night as merrily as if she had sat up

1 Perhaps Southwark Fair is meant. It was held in September, the month of this coronation.-ED.

at a christening. My daughter and she did not seem to value it of a farthing. She told me two or three stories that she knows will always make me laugh, and my daughter sung me the Noontide air towards one o'clock in the morning. However, with all their endeavours I was as cold and as dismal as ever I remember. "If this be the pleasures of a coronation," cried I, to myself, "I had rather see the Court of King Solomon in all his glory at my ease in Bartholomew Fair."

I shall never

Towards morning, sleep began to come fast upon me; and the sun rising and warming the air still inclined me to rest a little. You must know, sir, that I am naturally of a sleepy constitution; I have often sat up at table with my eyes open, and have been asleep all the while. What will you have on't? just about eight o'clock in the morning I fell fast a-sleep. I fell into the most pleasing dream in the world. forget it; I dreamed that I was at my Lord Mayor's feast, and had scaled the crust of a venison pasty. I kept eating and eating, in my sleep, and thought I could never have enough. After some time, the pasty, methought, was taken away, and the dessert was brought in its room. Thought I to myself, "If I have not got enough of the venison, I am resolved to make it up by the largest snap at the sweetmeats." Accordingly, I grasped a whole pyramid; the rest of the guests seeing me with so much, one gave me a snap, and the other gave me a snap; I was pulled this way by my neighbour on the right hand, and that by my neighbour on the left, but still kept my ground without flinching, and continued eating and pocketing as fast as I could. I never was so pulled and hauled in my whole life. At length, however, going to smell to a lobster that lay before me, methought it caught me with its claws fast by the nose. The pain I felt upon this occasion is inexpressible, in fact it broke my dream; when, awaking, I found my wife and daughter applying a smelling-bottle to my nose; and telling me it was time to go home. They assured me every means had been tried to awake me while the procession was going forward; but that I still continued to sleep till the whole ceremony was over. Mr. Printer, this is a hard case, and as I read your most

ingenious work, it will be some comfort, when I see this inserted, to find that- I write for it too.

I am, Sir, Your distressed,
Humble Servant,

L. GROGAN.1

1 Horace Walpole writes as follows of this coronation:-"I am going to let London cool, and will not venture into it again this fortnight. Oh! the buzz, the prattle, the crowds, the noise, the hurry! Nay, people are so little come to their senses, that, though the Coronation was but the day before yesterday, the Duke of Devonshire had forty messages yesterday, desiring tickets for a ball that they fancied was to be at Court last night. People had sat up a night and a day, and yet wanted to see a dance. If I was to entitle ages, I would call this the century of crowds. For the Coronation, if a puppet-show could be worth a million, that is. The multitudes, balconies, guards, and processions, made Palace-yard the liveliest spectacle in the world: the Hall was the most glorious. The blaze of lights, the richness and variety of habits, the ceremonial, the benches of peers and peeresses, frequent and full, was as awful as a pageant can be; and yet, for the King's sake and my own, I never wish to see another."-Letter to George Montagu, Sep. 24, 1761.-ED.

ESSAYS BY OLIVER GOLDSMITH;

COLLECTED AFTER HIS DEATH BY BISHOP PERCY.

[The later collected essays will be found in our fourth volume. The following are the essays not included by Goldsmith in his two collections of 1765 and 1766, but which were first published in Percy's edition of Goldsmith's works, 1801. They originally appeared in various periodicals to which the author is otherwise known to have contributed. These essays collected for Percy may generally be viewed as of better authenticity than those subsequently collected by Prior and others, because Percy was the author's friend and literary executor. Nevertheless, some of this collection have been doubted, and notably the series of seven upon the "Belles Lettres" commencing at p. 323. See the notes at pp. 323,

325, the Appendix to this edition of the Essays, &c. For the text, generally, of these unacknowledged essays (as they may be termed) we have been to the original publications in the various periodicals, as well as to the Percy edition. Particulars of date and place of first publication are supplied in the notes.-ED.]

NATIONAL CONCORD.1

[As you seem by your writings to have a just regard and filial affection for your country, and as your monthly lucubrations are widely diffused over all the dominions of Great Britain,] I take the liberty to communicate to the public [through your channel], a few loose thoughts upon a subject which, though often handled, has not yet in my opinion been fully discussed: I mean national concord, or unanimity, which in this kingdom has been generally considered as a bare possibility, that existed no where but in speculation. Such a union is, perhaps, neither to be

1 Addressed "To the Authors of the British Magazine," where it first appeared, December, 1760, and was titled "National Union." The opening (in brackets) is as given then. When Percy republished the essay he opened it with-"I take the liberty," &c. He also omitted the essay's conclusion, about a page and a half, which we now give (likewise in brackets).-ED.

expected nor wished for, in a country whose liberty depends rather upon the genius of the people, than upon any precautions which they have taken, in a constitutional way, for the guard and preservation of this inestimable blessing.

There is a very honest gentleman, with whom I have been acquainted these thirty years, during which there has not been one speech uttered against the ministry in parliament; nor a struggle at an election for a burgess to serve in the House of Commons; nor a pamphlet published in opposition to any measure of the administration, nor even a private censure passed in his hearing upon the misconduct of any person concerned in public affairs—but he is immediately alarmed, and loudly exclaims against such factious doings, in order to set the people by the ears together at such a delicate juncture. "At any other time," says he, "such opposition might not be improper, and I don't question the facts that are alleged; but at this crisis, Sir, to inflame the nation !—the man deserves to be punished as a traitor to his country." In a word, according to this gentleman's opinion, the nation has been in a violent crisis at any time these thirty years; and were it possible for him to live another century, he would never find any period at which a man might with safety impugn the infallibility of a minister.

The case is no more than this: my honest friend has invested his whole fortune in the stocks, on Government security, and trembles at every whiff of popular discontent. Were every British subject of the same tame and timid disposition, Magna Charta (to use the coarse phrase of Oliver Cromwell) would be no more regarded by an ambitious prince than Magna F-ta, and the liberties of England expire without a groan. Opposition, when restrained within due bounds, is the salubrious gale that ventilates the opinions of the people, which might otherwise stagnate into the most abject submission. It may be said to purify the atmosphere of politics; to dispel the gross vapours raised by the influence of ministerial artifice and corruption, until the constitution, like a mighty rock, stands full disclosed to the view of every individual who dwells within the shade of its protection. Even when this gale blows with augmented violence, it generally tends to

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