enough. The idea of the comedy originated with Colman, as he was looking at the first plate in Hogarth's immortal series of Marriage à la Mode; but he admits that it was Garrick who, on being taken into counsel, suggested the important alteration of Hogarth's 'proud lord' into an amiable old ruin of a fop, descending to pin his noble decayed skirts to the frock of a tradesman's daughter, but still aspiring to the hopes and submitting to the toils of conquest, which gave to the stage its favourite Lord Ogleby. These leading ideas determined on, rough hints for the construction and conduct of the plot, of which Colman's was made public by his son, and Garrick's did not see the light till the other day, were exchanged between the friends: and from these it is manifest that, in addition to what Colman in his letters somewhat scantly admits to have been Garrick's contributions; namely, the first suggestion of Lord Ogleby, his opening levee scene, and the fifth act which he closes with such handsome gallantry; the practised actor had mapped out more clearly than Colman, though he may not have written, the other principal scenes in which his chosen character was concerned. What he submitted for the interview where the antiquated fop supposes Fanny to have fallen in love with him, will not only exhibit this, but hereafter help us to understand some disagreements between himself and Goldsmith. 'Pope,' he remarks, putting the actor always in place of the character, resolves to open her heart to 'Garrick, and try to bring him over to forgive them.

'O'Brien consents, and leaves her upon seeing Garrick 'come smiling along. Enter Garrick. He smiling and 'taking every word from the girl as love to himself, she ' hesitates; faulters; which confirms him more and more: 'till at last she is obliged to go off abruptly, and dare not 'discover what she intended; which is now demonstrative 'to Garrick, who is left alone, and may show himself in 'all the glory of his character in a soliloquy of vanity. 'He resolves to have the girl, and break the hearts of the ' rest of the female world.' Powell had to replace O'Brien, however, and King was substituted for Garrick, before the play was acted; and out of the latter circumstance arose a coolness between the friends which will reappear in this narrative. Colman thought Garrick's surrender of Lord Ogleby a capricious forfeiture of promise; but though an exception to his previous withdrawal from all new parts was at first intended in this case, he exercised a sound discretion in changing that purpose. The new character was, in truth, little more than an enrichment of one of his own farces, assisted by a farce of his friend Townley's; and he could himself but have made Lord Ogleby an improved Lord Chalkstone. It was better left to an entirely new representative, and King justified his choice. Colman's sense of injury was, nevertheless, kept carefully alive by goodnatured friends; and when Garrick, some time after the play's production, and while the town were still crowding to see it, wrote in triumph to his coadjutor of the difficulties of the rival house ('The ministry all to pieces!

'Pitt, they say, and a new arrangement. Beard and Co. 'going positively to sell their patent for sixty thousand 'pounds. 'Tis true; but, mum. We have not yet discovered 'the purchasers. When I know, you shall hear: there will 'be the devil to do '), he little imagined what notions he was then infusing into Colman's busy discontented brain.

The unexampled success of their comedy had seemed in truth to have as thoroughly reconciled them, as it had unsettled poor Goldsmith's thoughts, and driven them in the direction of the stage. It was not unnatural. The reputation of his later writings, bringing him into occasional better company, had tempted him to habits of greater expense, while it failed of the means to keep pace with them. His accounts with Newbery were growing more and more involved; an unpaid note for fifty pounds, which he had given in settlement three years ago, began to make threatening re-appearance; his last draft upon the not unfriendly but cautious bookseller, though for only eleven guineas, had been dishonoured; and ordinary modes of extrication seemed more difficult and distant than ever. There was hope in the theatre. Anxiety and pain he knew there would also be; but was not indisposed to risk them. They could never wholly obscure the brighter side. No longer might the Playhouse be called the sole seat of wit; nor could it any more be said, as in Steele's days, to bear as important relation to the manners as the Bank to the credit of the nation: but beside the tempting profits of an 'author's night,' which, with any reasonable success,

could hardly average less than from three to four hundred pounds, there was nothing to make the town half so fond of a man, even yet, as a successful play. It had been the dream, too, of his own earliest ambition; and though his tragedy had gone the way of dreams, he had now a surer and not untried ground to build upon, of humour, character, and wit. He resolved to attempt a comedy.

What, meanwhile, his leisure amusements were, since Johnson's withdrawal to the Thrales had limited their intercourse even at Gerrard Street, may be worth illustrating by occasional little anecdotes of the time, though rather loosely told. He had joined a card club, at the Devil tavern, near Temple Bar, where very moderate whist was played; and where the members seem to have occupied the intervals of their favourite game with practical jokes upon himself. He gave a guinea instead of a shilling, one night, to the driver of a coach (after dining with Tom Davies); and the following night a fictitious coachman presented himself to restore as counterfeit a guinea. It was a trick to prove that not even the honesty of a hackney coachman would be too startling a trial for Goldsmith's credulity; and, as anticipated, the gilded coin was taken with an overflow of simple thanks, and subsequent more solid acknowledgment of the supposed marvellous honesty. Other incidents tell the same tale of unsuspecting odd simplicity. Doctor Sleigh of Cork had asked him to be kind to a young Irish law student, who had taken chambers near his own; known afterwards

as a writer for the newspapers, Foote's biographer, and, from the title of a poem he published, Conversation Cooke; and the latter, invited to apply to him in case of need, was told with earnest regrets one day, in answer to some trifling application, that he was really not at that moment in possession of a guinea. The youth turned away in distrust, but in less distress than Goldsmith; and returning late to his own chambers that night, found a difficulty in getting in. Goldsmith had meanwhile himself borrowed the money, and thrust it, wrapped up in paper, half underneath the door. Cooke hurried next day to thank him, and tell him what a mercy it was somebody else had not laid hold of it. 'In truth, my dear fellow,' said Goldsmith, 'I did not think of that.' As little did he trouble himself to think, when a French adventurer went to him towards the close of the year with proposals for a History of England in French, which was not only to be completed in fifteen volumes at the cost of seven guineas and a half, and to be paid for in advance, but to have the effect of bringing into more friendly relations the men of letters of both countries. Goldsmith, though he had been fain but a few days before this, for the humble payment of two guineas, to write Newbery a 'Preface 'to Wiseman's Grammar,' had no mean notion of the dignity of literature in regard to such proposals as the Frenchman's, and now indulged it at a thoughtless cost. Straightway he gave his name, impoverished himself by giving his last available guinea, and in the Chevalier's