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nolds alone escape the lash of the satirist. The latter is even dismissed with unqualified and affectionate applause. Retaliation had the effect of placing the author on a more equal footing with his society than he had ever before assumed. Even against the despotism of Johnson, though much respecting him, and as much beloved by him, Goldsmith made a more spirited stand than was generally ventured upon by the compeers of that arbitrary Sultan of literature. Of this Boswell has recorded a striking instance. Goldsmith had been descanting on the difficulty and importance of making animals in an apologue speak in character, and particularly instanced the fable of the Little Fishes. Observing that Doctor Johnson was laughing scornfully, he proceeded smartly; "Why, Dr Johnson, this is not so easy as you seem to think; for if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales."

To support the expence of his new dignities, Goldsmith laboured incessantly at the literary oar. The Letters on the History of Eng land, commonly ascribed to Lord Lyttleton, and containing an excellent and entertaining abridgment of the annals of Britain, are the work of Goldsmith. His mode of compiling them we learn from some interesting anecdotes of the author, communicated to the public by Lee Lewes, an actor of genius, whom he patronized, and with whom he often associated.

“He first read in a morning, from Hume, Rapin, and sometimes Kennet, as much as he designed for one letter, marking down the passages referred to on a sheet of paper, with remarks. He then rode or walked out with a friend or two, whom he constantly had with him; returned to dinner, spent the day generally convivially, without much drinking (which he was never in the habit of,) and when he went up to bed, took up his books and paper with him, where he generally wrote the chapter, or the best part of it, before he went to rest. This latter exercise cost him very little trouble, he said; for having all his materials ready for him, he wrote it with as much facility as a common letter.

"But of all his compilations, he used to say, his Selections of Eng

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lish Poetry shewed more the art of profession.' Here he did nothing but mark the particular passages with a red-lead pencil, and for this he got two hundred pounds-but then he used to add, a man shews his judgment in these selections, and he may be often twenty years of his life cultivating that judgment.""

Goldsmith, amid these more petty labours, aspired to the honours of the sock, and the Good-natured Man was produced at Covent Garden, 29th January, 1768, with the moderate success of nine nights' run. The principal character the author probably drew from the weak side of his own; for no man was more liable than Goldsmith to be gulled by pretended friends. The character of Croaker, highly comic in itself, and admirably represented by Shuter, helped to save the piece, which was endangered by the scene of the Bailiffs, then considered as too vulgar for the stage. Upon the whole, however, Goldsmith is said to have cleared five hundred pounds by this dramatic performance. He hired better chambers in the Temple, embarked more boldly in literary speculation, and unfortunately at the same time enlarged his ideas of expence, and indulged his habit of playing at games of hazard. The Memoirs, or Anecdotes, which we have before quoted, give a minute and curious description of his habits and enjoyments about this period, when he was constantly occupied with extracts, abridgments, and other arts of book-making, but at the same time working slowly, and in secret, on those immortal verses, which secure for him so high a rank among English poets.

"Goldsmith, though quick enough at prose, was rather slow in his poetry-not from the tardiness of fancy, but the time he took in pointing the sentiment, and polishing the versification. He was, by his own confession, four or five years collecting materials in all his country excursions for this poem, and was actually engaged in the construction of it above two years. His manner of writing poetry was this; he first sketched a part of his design in prose, in which he threw out his ideas as they occurred to him; he then sat carefully down to versify them, correct them, and add such other ideas as he thought better fitted to the subject. He sometimes would exceed his prose design by writing

several verses impromptu, 'but these he would take uncommon pains afterwards to revise, lest they should be found unconnected with his main design.

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"The writer of these Memoirs, (Lee Lewes) called upon the Doctor the second morning after he had begun The Deserted Village, and to him he communicated the plan of his poem. Some of my friends,' continued he, differ with me on this plan, and think this depopulation of villages does not exist-but I am myself satisfied of the fact. I remember it in my own country, and have seen it in this.' He then read what he had done of it that morning, beginning,

Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o'er thy green,

Where humble happiness endear'd each scene!
How often have I paused on every charm,—

The shelter'd cot,-the cultivated farm,—

The never-failing brook,-the busy mill,

The decent church, that topt the neighbouring hill,—
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made.'

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'Come,' says he, let me tell you this is no bad morning's work; and now, my dear boy, if you are not better engaged, I should be glad to enjoy a Shoemaker's holiday with you.' This Shoemaker's Holiday was a day of great festivity to poor Goldsmith, and was spent in the following innocent manner :

"Three or four of his intimate friends rendezvoused at his chambers, to breakfast, about ten o'clock in the morning; at eleven they proceeded by the City-Road, and through the fields to Highbury Barn to dinner; about six o'clock in the evening they adjourned to White Conduit House to drink tea; and concluded the evening by supping at the Grecian or Temple Exchange Coffee-houses, or at the Globe, in Fleet Street. There was a very good ordinary of two dishes and pastry kept at Highbury Barn about this time (five-and-twenty years ago, in 1796) at 10d. per head, including a penny to the waiter,

and the company generally consisted of literary characters, a few Templars, and some citizens who had left off trade. The whole expences of this day's fete never exceeded a crown, and oftener from threeand-sixpence to four shillings, for which the party obtained good air and exercise, good living, the example of simple manners, and good conversation."

The reception given to the Deserted Village, so full of natural elegance, simplicity, and pathos, was of the warmest kind. The publisher shewed at once his skill and generosity, by pressing upon Doctor Goldsmith a hundred pounds, which the author insisted upon returning, when upon computation he found that it came to nearly a crown for every couplet, a sum which he conceived no poem could be worth. The sale of the poem made him ample amends for this unusual instance of moderation. Lissoy, near Ballymahon, where his brother the clergyman had his living, claims the honour of being the spot from which the localities of the Deserted Village were derived. The church which tops the neighbouring hill, the mill, and the lake, are still pointed out; and a hawthorn has suffered the penalty of poetical celebrity, being cut to pieces by those admirers of the bard, who desired to have classical tooth-pick cases and tobacco-stoppers. Much of this supposed locality may be fanciful, but it is a pleasing tribute to the poet in the land of his fathers.

Goldsmith's Abridgments of the History of Rome and England may here be noticed. They are eminently well calculated to introduce youth to the knowledge of their studies; for they exhibit the most interesting and striking events, without entering into controversy or dry detail. Yet the tone assumed in the History of England drew on the author the resentment of the more zealous Whigs, who accused him of betraying the liberties of the people, when, "God knows," as he expresses himself in a letter to Langton," I had no thought for or against liberty in my head; my whole aim being to make up a book of a decent size, and which, as Squire Richard says, would do no harm to nobody."

His celebrated play of She Stoops to Conquer, was Goldsmith's next

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work of importance. If it be the object of comedy to make an audience laugh, Johnson says that it was better obtained by this play than by any other of the period. Lee Lewes was, for the first time, produced in a speaking character, as young Marlow, and is, therefore, entitled to record his own recollections concerning the piece.

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"The first night of its performance, Goldsmith, instead of being at the Theatre, was found sauntering, between seven and eight o'clock, in the Mall, St James's Park; and it was on the remonstrance of a friend, who told him how useful his presence might be in making some sudden alterations which might be found necessary in the piece,' that he was prevailed on to go to the Theatre. He entered the stage-door just in the middle of the fifth act, when there was a hiss at the improbability of Mrs Hardcastle supposing herself forty miles off, though on her own grounds, and near the house. What's that?' says the Doctor, terrified at the sound. 'Pshaw, Doctor,' says Colman, who was standing by the side of the scene, don't be fearful of squibs, when we have been sitting almost these two hours upon a barrel of gunpowder.' "In the Life of Dr Goldsmith, prefixed to his Works, the above reply of Colman's is said to have happened at the last rehearsal of the piece, but the fact was (I had it from the Doctor himself) as I have stated, and he never forgave it to Colman to the last hour of his life." It may be here noticed, that the leading incident of the piece was borrowed from a blunder of the author himself, who, while travelling in Ireland, actually mistook a gentleman's residence for an inn.

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It must be owned, that however kind, amiable, and benevolent, Goldsmith shewed himself to his contemporaries, more especially to such as needed his assistance, he had no small portion of the jealous and irritable spirit proper to the literary profession. He suffered a newspaper lampoon about this time to bring him into a foolish affray with Evans the editor, which did him but little credit.

In the meantime, a neglect of economy, occasional losses at play, and too great a reliance on his own versatility and readiness of talent, had considerably embarrassed his affairs. He felt the pressure of many engagements, for which he had received advances of money, and which

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