at his house. As may be anticipated, it was not entirely satisfactory. Goldsmith was sensitive and consequential ; Garrick courteous, but cautious. Nevertheless, there was an indefinite understanding that the play should be acted. The manager seems subsequently to have blown hot and cold according to his wont. In reality, he did not like the piece, and he privately told Reynolds and Johnson that he thought it would not succeed. To the author he was not equally frank, and thus misunderstandings multiplied. Meanwhile the theatrical season slipped away, and Goldsmith, who had counted upon the pecuniary profits of his work, grew impatient. Finally he asked for an advance upon a note of the younger Newbery. This was readily granted; but the boon was followed up by suggestions for alterations and omissions in the play-alterations and omissions which, it is unnecessary to say, were anything but palatable to the author. Arbitration was next spoken of, and, in this connection, William Whitehead, a man of very inferior calibre, whom Garrick occasionally employed as his reader, was named. Thereupon, says Mr. Forster, "a dispute of so much vehemence and anger ensued, that the services of Burke as well as Reynolds were needed to moderate the disputants." But a sudden change in the state of affairs at the rival house, fortunately opened the way to a solution of these protracted differences. Colman, by a sequence of circumstances which do not belong to these pages, became one of the patentees of Covent Garden; and Goldsmith seized the opportunity for offering him his comedy. promptly received an encouraging reply. Forthwith he He 66 wrote to Garrick stating what he had done; and in return was gratified with one of those formally cordial responses in which the actor was an adept. But he had not yet reached the end of his troubles. It was in July, 1767, that he wrote to Colman, and his comedy could not be produced until Christmas. In the interval further complications arose. Garrick, already in hot competition with Covent Garden, was, naturally, not very favourably disposed to its newest dramatic writer; and he accordingly, in opposition to Goldsmith's comedy, of which we may now speak by its name of "The Good Natur'd Man," brought forward Hugh Kelly with a characterless sentimental drama called "False Delicacy." Before the end of the year the whirligig of time" had reconciled him to Colman, and one result of this was, that the latter, whose interest in Goldsmith's piece had meanwhile somewhat cooled, consented tacitly to keep back "The Good Natur'd Man" until "False Delicacy" had made its appearance. So it befell that, in January, 1768, when "The Good Natur'd Man" was going slowly through its last rehearsals, " False Delicacy" came out at Drury Lane with all the advantages of Garrick's consummate generalship. A few days later "The Good Natur'd Man" was played for the first time at Covent Garden. Johnson's prologue turned out to be rather dispiriting; and Powell, Garrick's handsome young rival, was, as the hero, cold and unsympathetic. On the other hand, Shuter, an excellent actor, proved inimitable in the part of Croaker, a character planned upon the "Suspirius" of The Rambler, while Woodward was almost equally good as the charlatan, Lofty. The success of the piece, however, was only qualified, and one scene of "low" humour, in which some bailiffs were introduced, gave so much offence, that it was withdrawn after the first representation. Goldsmith, who, as his tailor's bills testify, had attended the first night in a magnificent suit of "Tyrian bloom, satin grain, and garter blue silk breeches," and whose hopes and fears had risen and fallen many times during the performance, was bitterly disappointed. Nevertheless, after hurriedly thanking Shuter, he went away to the club in Gerrard Street, laughed loudly, made believe to sup, and ultimately sang his own particular song. Years afterwards, however, the truth leaked out. Coming back one day from dining at the chaplain's table at St. James's, Dr. Johnson told Mrs. Thrale that Goldsmith had been there giving "a very comical and unnecessarily exact recital of his own feelings when his play was hissed." He had told "the company how he went indeed to the Literary Club at night, and chatted gaily among his friends as if nothing had happened amiss; that to impress them more strongly with his magnanimity, he even sung his favourite song about an old woman tossed in a blanket seventeen times as high as the moon, 'but all this time I was suffering horrid tortures (said he), and verily believe that if I had put a bit in 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, 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.' 'All which, Doctor (says Mr. Johnson, amazed at his odd frankness), 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.'" "No man," added Johnson, commenting upon his own story, "should be expected to sympathize with the sorrows of vanity." And then he went on to make some further remarks upon the subject which show once more how much easier are precepts than practice. "The Good Natur'd Man" was played for ten consecutive nights, being commanded on the fifth by their Majesties. The third, the sixth, and the ninth nights were appropriated to the author. By these he made about £400, to which the sale of the play in book form with the suppressed bailiff scene restored added another £100. It seems clear, notwithstanding, that the play was not such a success as it deserved to be; and that much was done to protract its brief life by the author's friends. The taste for sentimental comedy, in fact, was still too strong to be overcome. Yet, as Davies points out, and Davies as a former actor is an authority, "The Good Natur'd Man" contains "two characters absolutely unknown before to the English stage; a man [Lofty] who boasts an intimacy with persons of high rank whom he never saw, and another, who is almost always lamenting misfortunes which he never knew. Croaker [he asserts] is as strongly designed, and as highly finished a portrait of a discontented man, of one who disturbs every happiness he possesses, from apprehension of distant evil, as any character of Congreve, or any other of our English dramatists." It has already been said that the character of Croaker was built upon a sketch by Johnson in The Rambler. Once when Mrs. Thrale and Miss Burney |