forgotten it, when, some seventeen years ago, standing, at the age of eighty-one, on the very brink of the grave, he told a friend that in the decisive moment of mental development the Vicar of Wakefield had formed his education, and that he had lately, with unabated delight, 'read the charming book again from beginning to end, 'not a little affected by the lively recollection' how much he had been indebted to the author seventy years before.

Goldsmith was unconscious of this exalted tribute. He died as ignorant of Herder's friendly criticism, as of the gratitude of Goethe. The little book silently forced its way. No noise was made about it, no trumpets were blown for it. The St. James' Chronicle did not condescend to notice its appearance. It was left to the patronage of Lloyd's Evening Post, the London Chronicle, and papers of that class; which simply informed their readers that a new novel, called the Vicar of Wakefield, had been published, that 'the Editor is Doctor Goldsmith, who has 'affixed his name to an introductory advertisement,' and that such and such were the incidents of the story. Several columns of the Evening Post and the Chronicle, between the dates of March and April, were filled in this way with bald recital of the plot; and with such extracts as the prison scene, the account of the Primroses, and the brief episode of Matilda: but in the way of praise or of criticism, not a word was said. Johnson, as I have remarked, took little interest in it at any time but as the means of getting so much money for its author; and believing that

'Harry Fielden' (as he called him) knew nothing but the shell of life, may be excused for thinking the Vicar a 'mere fanciful performance.' It would seem that none of the Club, indeed, excepting Burke, cared much about it: and one may read, in the French letters of the time, how perfectly Madame Riccoboni agrees with her friend Garrick as to the little to be learned from it; and how surprised the lively lady is that the Burkes should have found it pathetic, or be able to approve of its arguments in favour of thieves and outcasts. Admiration, nevertheless, gathered slowly and steadily round it; a second edition appeared on the 5th of June, and a third on the 25th of August; it reached its sixth edition in the year of its writer's death ; and he had lived to see it translated into several continental languages, though not to receive from the booksellers the least addition to that original sorry payment, which even Johnson thought 'accidentally' less than it ought to have been. In the very month when the second edition was issued, a bill which he had drawn upon Newbery, for fifteen guineas, was returned dishonoured.

He had his accustomed resource, and went uncomplainingly to the old drudgery. Payne the bookseller gave him ten guineas for compiling a duodecimo volume of 'Poems for Young Ladies. In three parts: Devotional, 'Moral, and Entertaining.' It was a respectable selection of pieces, chiefly from Parnell, Pope, Thomson, Addison, and Collins; with additions of less importance from less eminent hands, and some of the occasional verses of his

friend Robert Nugent. It has been supposed to have been in this book for young ladies' that two objectionable pieces by Prior were inserted; but the statement, though sanctioned by Doctor Percy, is incorrect. It was in a more extensive selection of Beauties of English Poesy, published in the following year, and for the compilation of which Griffin the bookseller gave him fifty pounds, that he made that questionable choice of the Ladle' and 'Hans Carvel,' which for once interdicted from general reading a book with his name upon its title-page. It was unlucky for the selection in other respects, making allowance for a limited acquaintance with the earlier English poets, was a good one; and in this, as well as its preface and brief notices of the pieces quoted, not undeserving of what he claimed generally on behalf of books of the kind as entitling them to fair reward. 'Judgment,' he said, 'is to be paid for in such selections; and a man 'may be twenty years of his life cultivating this judgment.' But he has also, with its help, to be mindful of changes in the public taste, to which he may himself have contributed. Nothing more frequent than these; few things so sudden. Staid wives will shrink with abhorrence in their fortieth autumn, from what they read with delight in their twentieth summer; and it was now even less than twenty years since that faultless 'family expositor,' Doctor Doddridge (as we learn from the letters of the holy divine), thought it no sin to read the Wife of Bath's Prologue to young Nancy Moore, and take his share in the laugh

it raised. Doctor Johnson himself had not forgotten these ways of his youth; and amazed Boswell, some ten years later, by asserting that Prior was a lady's book, and that no lady was ashamed to have it standing in her library.

The Doctor could hardly have taken part in the present luckless selection, however, for through all the summer and autumn months of the year he had withdrawn from his old haunts and friends, and taken refuge at the Thrales'. For the latter, happening to visit him in Johnson's Court one day at the close of spring, found him on his knees in such a passion of morbid melancholy, beseeching God to continue to him the use of his understanding, and proclaiming such sins of which he supposed himself guilty, that poor sober solid Thrale was fain to 'lift up one hand to shut his mouth,' and the worthy pair bore him off, by a sort of kindly force, to their hospitable home. With cheerfulness, health returned after some few months; and Johnson from that time, says Murphy, became almost resident in the family. He went occa'sionally to the Club in Gerrard Street, but his head 'quarters were fixed at Streatham.' Goldsmith had rightly foreseen how ill things were going with him, when not even a new play could induce him to attend the theatre.

In his own attendance at the theatre he was just now more zealous than ever, and had doubtless 'assisted' at some recent memorable nights there. When all the world went to see Rousseau, for example, including the king and queen; when their majesties, though Garrick exhibited all

his powers in Lusignan and Lord Chalkstone, looked more at the philosopher than the player; and when poor Mrs. Garrick who had exalted him on a seat in her box (rewarded for her pains by his laughing at Lusignan and crying at Lord Chalkstone, not understanding a word of either), held him back by the skirts of his coat all night, in continual terror that he would tumble over the front of the box into the pit, from his eager anxiety to show himself; Goldsmith could hardly have stayed away. Nor is he likely to have been absent when the Drury Lane players (with many of whom, especially Mr. and Mrs. Yates, he had now formed acquaintance) made the great rally for their rival fund; and in defiance of his outlawry, Wilkes unexpectedly showed himself in the theatre, more bent on seeing Garrick's Kitely than keeping faith with the ministry, to whom, through Burke, he had the day before promised to go back to Paris more secretly and quickly than he had come to London. Least of all could Goldsmith have been absent when the last new comedy was played, of which all the town was talking still; and which seems to have this year turned his thoughts for the first time to the theatre, with serious intention to try his own fortune there.

The Clandestine Marriage, the great success of the year, and for the strength and variety of its character deservedly so, had been the joint work of Colman and Garrick; whose respective shares in its authorship have been much disputed, but now seem clear and ascertainable