Johnson was not aware how much he was himself to blame in producing this vexation. "Goldsmith," said Miss Reynolds, "always appeared to be overawed by Johnson, particularly when in company with people of any consequence; always as if impressed with fear of disgrace; and indeed well he might. I have been witness to many mortifications he has suffered in Dr. Johnson's company."

It may not have been disgrace that he feared, but rudeness. The great lexicographer, spoiled by the homage of society, was still more prone than himself to lose temper when the argument went against him. He could not brook appearing to be worsted; but would attempt to bear down his adversary by the rolling thunder of his periods; and when that failed, would become downright insulting. Boswell called it “having recourse to some sudden mode of robust sophistry;" but Goldsmith designated it much more happily. "There is no arguing with Johnson," said he, "for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it."*

In several of the intellectual collisions recorded by Boswell as triumphs of Dr. Johnson, it really appears to us that Goldsmith had the best both of the wit and the argument, and especially of the courtesy and good-nature.

On one occasion he certainly gave Johnson a capital reproof as to his own colloquial peculiarities. Talking of fables, Goldsmith observed that the animals introduced in them seldom talked in character. "For instance," said he, "the fable of the little fishes, who saw birds fly over their heads, and, envying them, petitioned Jupiter to be changed into birds. The skill consists in making them talk like little fishes." Just then observing that Dr. Johnson was shaking his sides and laughing, he immediately added, "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."

But though Goldsmith suffered frequent mortifications in society from the overbearing, and sometimes harsh, conduct of Johnson, he always did justice to his benevolence. When royal pensions were granted to Dr. Johnson and Dr. Shebbeare, a punster remarked, that the king had pensioned a she

*The following is given by Boswell, as an instance of robust sophistry: "Once, when I was pressing upon him with visible advantage, he stopped me thus, 'My dear Boswell, let's have no more of this; you'll make nothing of it. I'd rather hear you whistle a Scotch tune.'"

bear and a he-bear; to which Goldsmith replied, "Johnson, to be sure, has a roughness in his manner, but no man alive has a more tender heart. He has nothing of the bear but the skin." Goldsmith, in conversation, shone most when he least thought of shining; when he gave up all effort to appear wise and learned, or to cope with the oracular sententiousness of Johnson, and gave way to his natural impulses. Even Boswell could perceive his merits on these occasions. "For my part," said he, condescendingly, "I like very well to hear honest Goldsmith talk away carelessly;" and many a much wiser man than Boswell delighted in those outpourings of a fertile fancy and a generous heart. In his happy moods, Goldsmith had an artless simplicity and buoyant good-humor, that led to a thousand amusing blunders and whimsical confessions, much to the entertainment of his intimates; yet, in his most thoughtless garrulity, there was occasionally the gleam of the gold and the flash of the diamond.

CHAPTER XIX.

66

SOCIAL RESORTS-THE SHILLING WHIST CLUB-A PRACTICAL JOKE -THE WEDNESDAY CLUB-THE TUN OF MAN" THE PIG BUTCHER-TOM KING-HUGH KELLY-GLOVER AND HIS CHARACTERISTICS.

THOUGH Goldsmith's pride and ambition led him to mingle occasionally with high society, and to engage in the colloquial conflicts of the learned circle, in both of which he was ill at ease and conscious of being undervalued, yet he had some social resorts in which he indemnified himself for their restraints by indulging his humor without control. One of them was a shilling whist club, which held its meetings at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, a place rendered classic, we are told, by a club held there in old times, to which "rare Ben Jonson" had furnished the rules. The company was of a familiar, unceremonious kind, delighting in that very questionable wit which consists in playing off practical jokes upon each other. Of one of these Goldsmith was made the butt. Coming to the club one night in a hackney coach, he gave the coachman by mistake a guinea instead of a shilling, which he set down as a

dead loss, for there was no likelihood, he said, that a fellow of this class would have the honesty to return the money. On the next club evening he was told a person at the street door wished to speak with him. He went forth, but soon returned with a radiant countenance. To his surprise and delight the coachman had actually brought back the guinea. While he launched forth in praise of this unlooked-for piece of honesty, he declared it ought not to go unrewarded. Collecting a small sum from the club, and no doubt increasing it largely from his own purse, he dismissed the Jehu with many encomiums on his good conduct. He was still chanting his praises, when one of the club requested a sight of the guinea thus honestly returned. To Goldsmith's confusion it proved to be a counterfeit. The universal burst of laughter which succeeded, and the jokes by which he was assailed on every side, showed him that the whole was a hoax, and the pretended coachman as much a counterfeit as the guinea. He was so disconcerted, it is said, that he soon beat a retreat for the evening.

Another of those free and easy clubs met on Wednesday evenings at the Globe Tavern in Fleet Street. It was somewhat in the style of the Three Jolly Pigeons; songs, jokes, dramatic imitations, burlesque parodies and broad sallies of humor, formed a contrast to the sententious morality, pedantic casuistry, and polished sarcasm of the learned circle. Here a huge "tun of man," by the name of Gordon, used to delight Goldsmith by singing the jovial song of Nottingham Ale, and looking like a butt of it. Here, too, a wealthy pig butcher, charmed, no doubt, by the mild philanthropy of "The Traveller," aspired to be on the most social footing with the author, and here was Tom King, the comedian, recently risen to consequence by his performance of Lord Ogleby in the new comedy of the Clandestine Marriage.

A member of more note was one Hugh Kelly, a second-rate author, who, as he became a kind of competitor of Goldsmith's, deserves particular mention. He was an Irishman, about twenty-eight years of age, originally apprenticed to a staymaker in Dublin; then writer to a London attorney; then a Grub Street hack, scribbling for magazines and newspapers. Of late he had set up for theatrical censor and satirist, and, in a paper called Thespis, in emulation of Churchill's Rosciad, had harassed many of the poor actors without mercy, and often without wit; but had lavished his incense on Garrick, who, in consequence, took him into favor. He was the author

of several works of superficial merit, but which had sufficient vogue to inflate his vanity. This, however, must have been mortified on his first introduction to Johnson; after sitting a short time he got up to take leave, expressing a fear that a longer visit might be troublesome. “Not in the least, sir,” said the surly moralist, "I had forgotten you were in the room." Johnson used to speak of him as a man who had written more than he had read.

A prime wag of this club was one of Goldsmith's poor countrymen and hangers-on, by the name of Glover. He had originally been educated for the medical profession, but had taken in early life to the stage, though apparently without much success. While performing at Cork, he undertook, partly in jest, to restore life to the body of a malefactor, who had just been executed. To the astonishment of every one, himself among the number, he succeeded. The miracle took wind. He abandoned the stage, resumed the wig and cane, and considered his fortune as secure. Unluckily, there were not many dead people to be restored to life in Ireland; his practice did not equal his expectation, so he came to London, where he continued to dabble indifferently, and rather unprofitably, in physic and literature.

He was a great frequenter of the Globe and Devil taverns, where he used to amuse the company by his talent at storytelling and his powers of mimicry, giving capital imitations of Garrick, Foote, Colman, Sterne, and other public characters of the day. He seldom happened to have money enough to pay his reckoning, but was always sure to find some ready purse among those who had been amused by his humors. Goldsmith, of course, was one of the readiest. It was through him that Glover was admitted to the Wednesday Club, of which his theatrical imitations became the delight. Glover, however, was a little anxious for the dignity of his patron, which appeared to him to suffer from the over-familiarity of some of the members of the club. He was especially shocked by the free and easy tone in which Goldsmith was addressed by the pig-butcher: "Come, Noll," would he say as he pledged him, "here's my service to you, old boy!"

Glover whispered to Goldsmith that he "should not allow such liberties." "Let him alone," was the reply, "you'll see how civilly I'll let him down.” After a time, he called out, with marked ceremony and politeness, "Mr. B., I have the honor of drinking your good health.” Alas! dignity was not

poor Goldsmith's forte: he could keep no one at a distance. "Thank'ee, thank'ee, Noll," nodded the pig-butcher, scarce taking the pipe out of his mouth. "I don't see the effect of your reproof," whispered Glover. "I give it up," replied Goldsmith, with a good-humored shrug, "I ought to have known before now there is no putting a pig in the right way." Johnson used to be severe upon Goldsmith for mingling in these motley circles, observing, that, having been originally poor, he had contracted a love for low company. Goldsmith, however, was guided not by a taste for what was low, but for what was comic and characteristic. It was the feeling of the artist; the feeling which furnished out some of his best scenes in familiar life; the feeling with which " rare Ben Jonson" sought these very haunts and circles in days of yore, to study "Every Man in his Humor."

It was not always, however, that the humor of these associates was to his taste: as they became boisterous in their merriment, he was apt to become depressed. "The company of fools," says he, in one of his essays, "may at first make us smile; but at last never fails of making us melancholy." 'Often he would become moody," says Glover, "and would leave the party abruptly to go home and brood over his misfortune."

It is possible, however, that he went home for quite a different purpose; to commit to paper some scene or passage suggested for his comedy of The Good-Natured Man. The elaboration of humor is often a most serious task; and we have never witnessed a more perfect picture of mental misery than was once presented to us by a popular dramatic writer-still, we hope, living-whom we found in the agonies of producing a farce which subsequently set the theatres in a roar.

CHAPTER XX.

THE GREAT CHAM OF LITERATURE AND THE KING-SCENE AT SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S GOLDSMITH ACCUSED OF JEALOUSYNEGOTIATIONS WITH GARRICK-THE AUTHOR AND THE ACTOR -THEIR CORRESPONDENCE.

THE Comedy of The Good-Natured Man was completed by Goldsmith early in 1767, and submitted to the perusal of John