relic of Elizabeth's hunting seat. It was an old oak room on the first floor, with Gothic windows, panelled wainscot, and a recess in its eastern corner for a large press bedstead, which doubtless the poet occupied. Canonbury Tower was for many years let out in this way, and had been the frequent resort of men connected with literature: but if (as at times alleged) any of Goldsmith's poetry was written here, it was written in the present autumn, and could have been but the fragments or beginnings of a poem; for he did not return to the lodging. He now remained some weeks in it; and is said to have been often found, during the time, among a social party of his fellow-lodgers (publishers Robinson and Francis Newbery, printers Baker and Hamilton, editor Beaufort afterwards of the Town and Country Magazine, poets Woty and Huddlestone Wynne, and pamphleteering parsons Rider and Sellon), presiding at the festive board of the Crown tavern, in the Islington Lower Road, where they had formed a kind of temporary club. At the close of the year he had returned to the Temple, was in communication with Burke about his comedy, and was again pretty constant in his attendance at Gerrard Street.

He found political excitement raging. He might have wondered to see, among the first acts of the new administration, his countryman and friend Robert Nugent, the most furious upholder of colonial taxation, selected for a lordship of the Board of Trade, and raised to the rank of Baron Nugent and Viscount Clare; yet this was nothing

to the marvel of seeing emanate from Lord Chatham's Chancellor of the Exchequer, a new project for taxation of America. The rest of their career had been only less disgraceful; nor is it possible, without some allusion to it, to exhibit properly the social or other influences of the time. Violating public faith in their attack on the East India Charter, they had sustained from its resolute exposure by Mr. O'Bourke (as pompous Beckford, Lord Chatham's tool in the matter, persisted in calling Edmund), a most damaging blow. They had suffered an ignominious defeat, without precedent since Walpole's fall, on the question of continuing the land tax at four shillings; which Dowdeswell succeeded in reducing to three, backed by all the country gentlemen, by the Bedfords and the Grenvilles, by the single partizan or so who still followed Newcastle, and by all the Rockinghams except Burke, who alone (not having our number of acres,' said the top-booted gentlemen to each other) fell from his party on that question, and would not vote to lighten the land. They tasted as bitter humiliation in the later rejection of their overtures for help by the despised head of the last administration, who, manfully acting on Burke's warnings and suggestions, maintained, in the meeting with the Bedfords at Newcastle House, that the power of Lord Bute was still to be resisted; resolutely refused to sanction any arrangement which would again expose America to the mercies of George Grenville; and finally rejected the party combination which the old Duke of Newcastle, to get himself once more into office, had

ever since he left office been labouring to effect 'tooth and nail' (that is, says Horace Walpole, ' with the one of each 'sort that he has left, the old wretch!') And when, during the earlier progress of these confusions and disgraces, Chatham sullenly disappeared from the scene, and withdrew the last restraint from his ill-assorted colleagues, George Grenville, seeing his opportunity, had taunted the fiery Townshend to open rebellion. An agent from Connecticut was present in the house (the reader will remember that these were not the days of reporters), and has described what passed. Grenville stopped suddenly in the midst of a powerful speech on the existing financial depression, and turning to the treasury bench, exclaimed: 'You are cowards, you are afraid of the 'Americans. You dare not tax America.' Fear!' cried Townshend, from his seat: fear! cowards! dare not tax 'America? I dare tax America!' For a moment Grenville stood silent; but immediately added, 'Dare you tax 'America? I wish to God I could see it;' to which Townshend impetuously retorted, 'I will, I will.' The king's friends helped Grenville to keep him to this pledge, and he redeemed it. But though he passed his Colonial Importation Duties Bill easily as a turnpike act, the ill-fated ministry knew no more peace. Conway began to languish for the army, Grafton looked wistfully to Newmarket, Shelburne made no secret of his discontent; and the scenes that followed inflicted shame on all. Each, in his separate fashion, appealed against Townshend to Chatham, without,

in any case, the courtesy of an answer. Townshend, with mimicry transcending Foote's, and wit that only Garrick 'writing and acting extempore scenes of Congreve' was thought able to have equalled, rose from the seat still shared by his colleagues with himself, to burlesque them, to jeer at them, and, amid murmurs of wonder, admiration, applause, laughter, pity, and scorn, to assail even Chatham himself. Burke, with a more passionate ridicule retorting upon all, rose from his seat behind the occupants of the treasury bench; put up mock invocations to their absent, silent, sullen Chief, as a being before whom were vailed the faces (and here, at each lofty phrase, amid shouts of laughter, he waved his hand over the ministers) of thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers; and passed into a prayer to this 'Great Minister above, that ' rules and governs over all,' to have mercy upon them and not destroy the work of his own hands. Augustus Hervey called him to order. I have often suffered,' cried Burke as he sat down, 'under persecutions of order; but I did 'not expect its lash while at my prayers. I venerate the great man, and speak of him accordingly.' Still the great man kept silence. He had the gout, and would not leave Bath. He left Bath, and shut himself up in an inn at Marlborough. He left Marlborough, and came to London. But nothing would induce him to see his colleagues; not even the personal entreaties of the king. Would he, then,

see himself, his majesty deigned to ask?

He pleaded gout

(it seems to have been suppressed gout, a worse affliction,

from which he was suffering), and retreated to North-End. But in a few days, having been seen by Lord Chesterfield riding about Hampstead Heath,' again the king wrote if you cannot come to me to-morrow I am ready to call 'at North-End;' and again, under cover of profuse submission, evasion did the work of refusal. By this time, in short, though labouring still with the bodily weakness which induced his first false step, Chatham seems to have discovered the drift of the king; and what it really was that his majesty had been aiming to effect, under cover of his own great name. Lord Charlemont, describing the state of things to Flood (Charles Townshend is at open war, Conway is angry, Lord Shelburne out of humour, the 'Duke of Grafton by no means pleased, and Lord Bute's 'friends have at length positively declared themselves'), implies little further concealment of the palace plot; one of Chatham's first remarks on his subsequent reappearance in public, to the effect that the late good king had something about him by which it was possible to know whether 'he liked you or disliked you,' was pointedly levelled at the good king's grandson; and there can hardly be a doubt that the reigning monarch was now fencing only to obtain time, had already resolved upon a fresh arrangement of the offices, and, even from the moment of the new America taxation scheme, had turned with decisive favour to Charles Townshend himself. The failure of the cry for help to the Rockinghams, however, so well kept together by Burke (whose lately published Correspondence explains