his reappearance in Benedict at the close of the year; and, though he did not think it safe to resume any part of which Powell was in possession, except Lusignan, Lothario, and Leon, his popularity had again shone forth unabated. It brought back his sense of power; and with it a disposition to use it, even against Johnson. The latter had not hesitated, notwithstanding their doubtful relations, to seek to secure an honest prejudice' in favour of his book, by formally asking the popular actor's 'suffrage' for it on its appearance; yet the suffrage of the popular actor was certainly exerted against it. That Johnson had not a taste for the finest productions of genius, Garrick was soon afterward very busy to explain. With Iago's ingenious mischief, with Hal's gay compliance in Falstaff's vices, such a critic might be at home; but from Lear in the storm, and from Macbeth on the blasted heath, he must be content to be far away. He could, there, but mount the high horse, and bluster about imperial tragedy. The tone was caught by the actor's friends; is perceptible throughout his correspondence; is in the letters of Warburton, and in such as I have quoted of the Wartons; and gradually, to even Johnson's disturbance, passed from society into the press, and became a stock theme with the newspapers. Garrick went too far, however, when he suffered the libeller Kenrick, not many months after his published attack on Johnson, to exhibit upon his theatre a play called Falstaff's Wedding; and to make another attempt, the following season, with a piece called the

Widowed Wife. The first was damned, and till Shakespeare's fat Jack is forgotten, is not likely to be heard of again; the second passed into oblivion more slowly: but Garrick was brought, by both, into personal relations with the writer which he lived to have reason to deplore. Meanwhile, and for some little time to come, what Joseph Warton had written was but too true. Garrick and Johnson were entirely off; and in a certain gloom of spirits and disquietude of health which were just now stealing over the latter, even his interest in the stage appeared to have passed away.

'I think, Mr. Johnson,' said Goldsmith, as they sat talking together one evening in February, 'you don't go 'near the theatres now. You give yourself no more con'cern about a new play, than if you had never had anything 'to do with the stage.' Johnson avoided the question, and his friend shifted the subject. He spoke of the public claim and expectation that the author of Irene should give them something in some other way;' on which Johnson began to talk of making verses, and said (very truly) that the great difficulty was to know when you had made good ones. He remarked that he had once written, in one day, a hundred lines of the Vanity of Human Wishes; and turning quickly to Goldsmith, added,

Doctor, I am not quite idle; I made one line t'other 'day; but I made no more.' Let us hear it,' said

the other, laughing; 'we'll put a bad one to it.' 'No,

sir,' replied Johnson, 'I have forgot it.'

Boswell was the reporter of this conversation. He had arrived from Paris a few days before, bringing with him. Rousseau's old servant maid, Mademoiselle La Vasseur. 'She's very homely and very awkward,' says Hume, ‘but more talked about than the Princess of Morocco or the 'Countess of Egmont; indeed her master's dog, who is no 'better than a collie, has a name and reputation in the 'world!' It was enough for Boswell, who clung to any rag of celebrity; nor, remembering how the ancient widow of Cicero and Sallust had seduced a silly young patrician into thinking that her close connection with genius must have given her the secret of it, were Hume and Walpole quite secure of even the honour of the young Scotch escort of the ugly old Frenchwoman. They arrived safely and virtuously notwithstanding; and Boswell straightway went to Johnson, whom, not a little to his discomfort, he found put by his doctors on a water regimen. Though they supped twice at the Mitre, it was not as in the old social time. On the night of the conversation just given, being then on the eve of his return to Scotland, he had taken Goldsmith with him to call again on Johnson,' with the hope of prevailing on him to sup 'with us at the Mitre.' But they found him indisposed, and resolved not to go abroad. 'Come then,' said Goldsmith gaily, 'we will not go to the Mitre to-night, 'since we cannot have the big man with us.' Whereupon the big man, laughing at the jovial Irish phrase, called for a bottle of port; of which, adds Boswell, Goldsmith

' and I partook, while our friend, now a water drinker, 'sat by us.'

One does not discover, in such anecdotes as these, what honest though somewhat dry Joe Warton calls Goldsmith's solemn coxcombry. But beside Boswell's effulgence in that kind, any lesser light could hardly hope to shine. Even to the Great Commoner himself, at whose unapproachable seclusion all London had so lately been amazed, and, who at length, with little abatement of the haughty mystery, had reappeared in the house of commons, was he now resolved, before leaving London, to force his way. Corsican Paoli was the card to play for this mighty Pam; and already he had sent mysterious intimation of certain views of the struggling patriot, of the illustrious Paoli, which he desired to communicate to the prime minister ' of the brave, the secretary of freedom and of spirit.' Wonder reigned at the Club when they found the interview granted, and inextinguishable laughter when they heard of the interview itself. Profiting by Rousseau's Armenian example, Boswell went in Corsican robes. 'He came in the Corsican dress,' says Lord Buchan, who was present; ' and Mr. Pitt smiled; but received him very graciously, in his pompous manner.' It was an advantage the young Scot followed up; very soon inflicting on Pitt a brief history of himself. He described his general love of great people, and how that Mr. Pitt's character in particular had filled many of his best hours with what he oddly called 'that noble admiration which a disinterested

'soul can enjoy in the bower of philosophy.' He told him he was going to publish an account of Corsica, and of Paoli's gallant efforts against the tyrant Genoese. He added that to please his father, one of our Scots judges,' he had himself studied law, and was now fairly entered to the bar. And he concluded thus. I begin to like it. I 'can labour hard: I feel myself coming forward: and I hope to be useful to my country. Could you find time to 'honour me now and then with a letter?' To no wiser a man than this, it should be always kept in mind, posterity became chiefly indebted for its laugh at Goldsmith's literary vanities, social absurdities, and so-called selfimportant ways.

With Pitt's re-appearance had meanwhile been connected another event of not less mighty consequence. On the day (the 14th of January) when he rose to support Conway's repeal of the American stamp act, and to resist his accompanying admission that such an act was not void in itself; when, in answer to Nugent's furious denunciation of rebellious colonies, he rejoiced that Massachusetts had resisted, and affirmed that colonies unrepresented could not be taxed by parliament; Burke took his seat, by an arrangement with Lord Verney, for Wendover borough. A fortnight later he made his first speech, and divided the admiration of the house with Pitt himself. Afterward, and with increased effect, he spoke again; Pitt praising him, and telling his friends to set proper value on the acquisition they had made: '