members might have seen that he eat no supper, but he chatted gaily as if nothing had happened amiss. Nay, to impress his friends still more forcibly with an idea of his magnanimity, he even sung his favorite song, which he never consented to sing but on special occasions, about An Old Woman tossed in a Blanket seventeen times as high as the Moon; and was altogether very noisy and loud. But some time afterward, when he and Johnson were dining with Percy at the chaplain's table at St. James's, he confessed what his feelings had this night really been, and told how the night had ended. All the while,' he said, 'I was suffering horrid tortures; and verily believe that if 'I had put a bit into my mouth it would have strangled 'me on the spot, I was so excessively ill; but I made more noise than usual to cover all that, and so they 'never perceived my not eating, nor, I believe, at all 'imaged to themselves the anguish of my heart. But 'when all were gone except Johnson here, I burst out 'a-crying, and even swore by that I would never write again.' Johnson sat in amazement while Goldsmith made the confession, and then confirmed it. 'All which, Doctor,' he said, 'I thought had been a secret between you and 'me; and I am sure I would not have said anything about 'it, for the world.' That is very certain. No man so unlikely as Johnson, when he had a friend's tears to wipe away, critically to ask himself, or afterwards discuss, whether or not they ought to have been shed; but none so likely, if they came to be discussed by others, to tell

you how much he despised them. What he says must thus be taken with what he does; in all his various opinions of Goldsmith more especially. When Mrs. Thrale asked him of this matter, he spoke of it with contempt, and said that no man should be expected to sympathise with the sorrows of vanity.' But he had sympathised with them, at least to the extent of consoling them. Goldsmith never flung himself in vain, on that great, rough, tender heart. The weakness he did his best to hide from even the kindly Langton, the humane and generous Reynolds, was sobbed out freely there; nor is it difficult to guess how Johnson comforted him. Sir,' he

said to Boswell, when that ingenious young gentle

man, now a practising Scotch advocate, joined him a month or two later at Oxford, and talked slightingly of the Goodnatur'd Man; 'it is the best comedy that has appeared 'since the Provok'd Husband. There has not been of late 6 any such character exhibited on the stage as that of 'Croaker. Sir, False Delicacy is totally devoid of character.' Who can doubt that Goldsmith had words of reassurance at the least as kindly as these to listen to, as he walked home that night from Gerrard Street with Samuel Johnson?

Nor were other and substantial satisfactions wanting. His comedy was repeated with increased effect on the removal of the bailiffs, and its announced publication excited considerable interest. Griffin was the publisher; paid him £50 the day after its appearance; and in announcing a new edition the following week, stated that the whole of the first 'large impression' had been sold on the second day. But perhaps Goldsmith's greatest pleasure in connection with the printed comedy was, that he could 'shame the rogues' and print the scene of the bailiffs. Now-a-days it is difficult to understand the objection which condemned it, urged most strongly, as we find it, by the coarsest writers of the time. When such an attempt as Honeywood's to pass off the bailiffs for his friends, gets condemned as unworthy of 'a gentleman,' Comedy seems in sorry plight indeed. "The ' town will not bear Goldsmith's low humour,' writes the not very decent Hoadley (the bishop's brother) to Garrick, ' and justly. It degrades his good-natur'd man, whom we were taught to pity and have a sort of respect for, into a low buffoon; and, what is worse, into a falsifier, a cha'racter unbecoming a gentleman.' Happily for us, Goldsmith printed the low humour notwithstanding. It had been cut out in the acting, he said, in deference to the public taste, 'grown of late, perhaps, too delicate;' and was now replaced in deference to the judgment of a few friends, 'who think in a particular way.' The particular way became more general when his second comedy laid the ghost of sentimentalism; and one is glad to know that,

though it was but the year before his death, he saw his well-beloved bailiffs restored to the scene, of which they have ever since been the most popular attraction. With the play, the prologue of course was printed; and here, too, Goldsmith had another satisfaction, in the alteration of a line that had been laughed at. 'Don't call me our 'LITTLE bard' he said to Johnson; and 'our anxious bard' was good-naturedly substituted. But what Boswell interposes on this head simply shows us how uneasy he was, not when Johnson's familiar diminutives, more fond than respectful, were used by himself, but when they passed into the mouths of others. I have often desired Mr. Johnson 'not to call me Goldy,' was his complaint to Davies. It was a courteous way of saying, 'I wish you wouldn't call 'me Goldy, whatever Mr. Johnson does.'

The comedy was played ten consecutive nights: their majesties commanding it on the fifth night (a practice not unwise, though become unfashionable); and the third, sixth, and ninth, being advertised as appropriated to the author. Shuter gave it an eleventh night, a month later, by selecting it for his benefit; when Goldsmith, in a fit of extravagant good nature, sent him ten guineas (perhaps the last he had at the time) for a box ticket. It was again, after an interval of three years, played three nights; and it was selected for a benefit the second year after that, when the bailiffs reappeared. This is all I can discover of its career upon the stage while the author yet lived to enjoy it.

Its success, in other respects, very sensibly affected his ways of life. His three nights had produced him nearly £400; Griffin had paid him £100 more; and for any good fortune of this kind, his past fortunes had not fitted him. So little, he would himself say, was he used to receive money in a lump,' that when Newbery made him. his first advance of twenty guineas, his embarrassment was as great as Captain Brazen's in the play, whether he should build a privateer or a play-house with the money. He now took means hardly less effective to disembarrass himself of the profits of his comedy. 'He descended 'from his attic story in the Staircase, Inner Temple,' says Cooke (who here writes somewhat hastily, one descent from the 'attic' having already been made), ' and purchased 'chambers in Brick Court, Middle Temple, for which he gave four hundred pounds.' They were No. 2 on the second floor, on the right hand ascending the staircase; and consisted of three reasonably sized rooms, which he furnished handsomely, with 'Wilton carpets,' blue marine' mahogany sofas, blue marine curtains, chairs corresponding, chimney glasses, Pembroke and card tables, and tasteful book-shelves. Thus, and by payment for the lease of the chambers, the sum Cooke mentions would seem to have been expended; and with it began a system of waste and debt, involving him in difficulties 'he never surmounted.' The first was in the shape of money borrowed from Mr. Edmund Bott, a barrister who occupied the rooms opposite his, on the same floor; who remained very intimate with