says the heads of the whole town are turned; and describes all the boxes taken for a month. Powell's salary was at once raised to ten pounds a week, George Garrick consenting on the part of his brother; and such was the anxiety of the town to see him in new characters, and the readiness of the management in giving way to it, that in this his first season, from October '63 to May '64, he appeared in seventeen different plays, to a profit on the receipts of nearly seven thousand pounds. His most successful efforts indicate the attractive points of his style. In Philaster he appeared sixteen times, in Posthumus eleven, seven times in Jaffier, six in Castalio, and five in Alexander. Garrick himself had meanwhile written to him from Italy to warn him against such characters as the latter, and restrain him from attempting too much. The advice was admirably written, and gratefully acknowledged; nor is there any reason to doubt its sincerity. Remoteness of place has in some respects the effect of distance of time; and the great actor, doubtless not sorry to be absent till the novelty should abate, was less likely to be jealous in Piedmont or the Savoy than in the green-room of Drury Lane. He knew himself yet unassailed in what he had always felt to be his main strength, his versatility and variety of power. Three men were now dividing his laurels; and till Powell could double Richard and Sir John Brute, till O'Brien could alternate Ranger with Macbeth, and till Weston could exhibit Lear by the side of Abel Drugger, Garrick had no call to be seriously alarmed.

Be that as it might, however, Powell's success was a great thing for the authors. He came to occupy for them, opportunely, a field which the other had avowedly abandoned; and Goldsmith, always earnest for the claims of writers, sympathized strongly in his success. Another incident of the theatrical season made hardly less noise. O'Brien's charms in Ranger and Lovemore proved too much for Lady Susan Ilchester, and she ran away with him. It cured Walpole for a time of his theatre-going. He had a few days before been protesting to his dear friend Mann that he had the republican spirit of an old Roman, and that his name was thoroughly Horatius; but an earl's daughter running away with a player, ran away with all his philosophy. He thought a footman would have been preferable; and could not have believed that Lady Susan would have stooped so low. On the other hand, Goldsmith speaks of O'Brien's elegance and accomplishments ('by 'nature formed to please,' said Churchill), and seems to think them not unfairly matched. But much depends on whether these things are viewed from a luxurious seat in the private boxes, or from a hard bench in the upper gallery.

Poverty pressed heavily just now upon Goldsmith, as I have said. His old friend Grainger came over on leave from his West India station, to bring out his poem of the Sugar Cane; and found him in little better plight than in his garret days. 'I taxed little Goldsmith for not writing,' he says to Percy, as he promised. His answer was that 'he never wrote a letter in his life. . and 'faith I believe

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'him; except to a bookseller for money.' In the present year, it would seem, he had more experience than success in applications of that kind. Yet he was also himself in communication with Grainger's correspondent. Percy was busy with his Reliques; and in the collection and arrangement of that work, which, more than any other in its age, contributed to bring back to the study and appreciation of poetry, a natural, healthy, and passionate tone, took frequent counsel with Goldsmith. To their intercourse respecting it, we owe the charming ballad with the prettiest of opening lines, 'Turn gentle hermit of the dale;' and Percy admitted many obligations of knowledge and advice, in which no other man of letters in that day could so well have assisted him. The foremost of them, Johnson himself, was indifferent enough to the whole scheme; though at this time a visitor, with Miss Williams, in Percy's vicarage-house.

Little else than a round of visitings, indeed, does the present year seem to have been to Johnson; though the call for his Shakspeare (on which he had so long been engaged) was never so urgent as now. He passed part of the spring with his friend Langton in Lincolnshire, where it was long remembered how suddenly, and to what amazement of the elders of the family, he had laid himself down on the edge of a steep hill behind the house, and rolled over and over to the bottom; he had stayed the summer months and part of August with Percy, at Easton Mauduit vicarage in Northamptonshire; and on

his return to town had formed an acquaintance with the Thrales. Is it necessary to describe the tall, stately, wellinformed, worthy brewer, and tory member for Southwark; or his plump, little, brisk, vivacious, half-learned wife? Is not their friendship known as the solace of Johnson's later life, and remembered whenever he is named? Thrale was fond of the society of men of letters and celebrity; and Arthur Murphy, who had for some years acted as provider in that sort to the weekly dinners at Southwark and Streatham, had the honour of introducing Johnson. Mrs. Thrale was at this time as pretty as she was lively, garrulous, and young; to more than a woman's quickness of observation, added all a woman's gentleness and kindness of heart; indulged in literary airs and judgments, which she put on with an audacity as full of charms as of blunders; and beyond measure captivated Johnson. Where she came she brought him sunshine. Like some 'gay creature of the element' she flitted past the gloomy scholar, still over-toiled and weary, though resting at last. You little creatures,' he exclaimed, on her appearing before him one day in a darkcoloured dress, 'you should never wear those sort of 'clothes; they are unsuitable in every way. What! ' have not all insects gay colours?' The house of the hospitable brewer became to him a second home, where unaccustomed comforts awaited him, and his most familiar friends were invited to please him; immediately after his first visit, the Thursdays in every week were set apart for

dinner with the Thrales; and before long there was a 'Mr. Johnson's room' both in the Southwark mansion and the Streatham villa. Very obvious was the effect upon him. His melancholy was diverted, and his irregular habits lessened, all said who observed him closely; but not the less active were his sympathies still, in the direction of that Grub Street world of struggle and disaster, of cock-loft lodgings and penny ordinaries, from which he had at last effected his own escape.

An illustration of this, at the commencement of their intercourse, much impressed Mrs. Thrale. ́ ́ One day, she says, he was called abruptly from their house after dinner, and returning in about three hours, said he had been with an enraged author, whose landlady pressed him for payment within doors, while the bailiffs beset him without; that he was drinking himself drunk with madeira to drown care, and fretting over a novel which, when finished, was to be his whole fortune; but he could not get it done for distraction, nor dared he step out of doors to offer it to sale. Mr. Johnson therefore, she continues, set away the bottle, and went to the bookseller, recommending the performance, and devising some immediate relief; which when he brought back to the writer, the latter called the woman of the house directly, to partake of punch, and pass their time in merriment. 'It was not,' she concludes, 'till ten years after, I dare say, that something in Doctor 'Goldsmith's behaviour struck me with an idea that he was

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very man; and then Johnson confessed that he was so.'