and Burke's example, attended the theatre. Cooke, the young law-student already referred to as Goldsmith's neighbour in the Temple, and whom he had lately introduced to his Wednesday's club, was also present; and has spoken of what befell. Mr. Bensley, a stage lover of portentous delivery, seems to have thrown into the opening of Johnson's prologue,

Prest by the load of life, the weary mind
Surveys the general toil of human kind,

a ponderous gloom, which, at the outset, dashed the spirits of the audience. Nor did Mr. Powell's Honeywood mend matters much, with the opening of the play. He had complained, at the rehearsals, that the part gave him no opportunity of displaying his abilities;' and this it now became his care to make manifest. Uniform tameness, not to say insipidity,' was his contribution to the illustration of Honeywood. He seemed, from the begin'ning to the end, to be a perfect disciple of Zeno.' Shuter, on the other hand, going to work with Croaker after a different fashion, soon warmed the audience into his own enjoyment, and shocked the sentimentalists among them with the boisterous laughter he sent ringing through the house; nor was he ill seconded by the Lofty of Woodward, another excellent comedian, the effect of whose 'contemptuous patronage' of Honeywood was long remembered. But then came the bailiffs; on whom, being poorly acted, and presenting no resistance that way, the disaffected party were able to take full revenge for what they thought the

indelicacy of all such farcical mirth.

Accordingly, when

good Mr. Twitch described his love for humanity, and Little Flanigan cursed the French for having made the beer three-pence half-penny a pot, Cooke tells us that he heard people in the pit cry out this was 'low' ('language uncommonly low,' said the worthy London Chronicle in its criticism), and disapprobation was very loudly expressed. The comedy, in short, was not only trembling in the balance, but its tendency was decisively adverse, when Shuter came on with the 'incendiary letter' in the last scene of the fourth act, and read it with such inimitable humour that it carried the fifth act through. To be composed at so truly comic an exhibition, says Cooke, ' must 'have exceeded all power of face; even the rigid moral'mongers joined the full-toned roar of approbation.' Poor Goldsmith had, meanwhile, been suffering exquisite distress; had lost all faith in his comedy, and in himself; and, when the curtain fell, could only think of his debt of gratitude to Shuter. He hurried round to the greenroom, says Cooke; thanked him in his honest, sincere 'manner, before all the performers;' and told him he ' had exceeded his own idea of the character, and that the 'fine comic richness of his colouring made it almost appear

as new to him as to any other person in the house.' Then, with little heart for doubtful congratulations, he turned off to meet his friends in Gerrard Street.

By the time he arrived there, his spirits had to all appearance returned. He had forgotten the hisses. The

members might have seen that he eat no supper, but he chatted gaily as if nothing had happened amiss. Nay, to impress his friends still more forcibly with an idea of his magnanimity, he even sung his favorite song, which he never consented to sing but on special occasions, about An Old Woman tossed in a Blanket seventeen times as high as the Moon; and was altogether very noisy and loud. But some time afterward, when he and Johnson were dining with Percy at the chaplain's table at St. James's, he confessed what his feelings had this night really been, and told how the night had ended. All the while,' he said, 'I was suffering horrid tortures; and verily believe that if 'I had put a bit into my mouth it would have strangled 'me on the spot, I was so excessively ill; but I made 'more noise than usual to cover all that, and so they 'never perceived my not eating, nor, I believe, at all 'imaged to themselves the anguish of my heart. But 'when all were gone except Johnson here, I burst out a-crying, and even swore by that I would never write 'again.' Johnson sat in amazement while Goldsmith made the confession, and then confirmed it. 'All which, Doctor,' he said, 'I thought had been a secret between you and 'me; and I am sure I would not have said anything about 'it, for the world.' That is very certain. No man so unlikely as Johnson, when he had a friend's tears to wipe away, critically to ask himself, or afterwards discuss, whether or not they ought to have been shed; but none so likely, if they came to be discussed by others, to tell

you how much he despised them. What he says must thus be taken with what he does; in all his various opinions of Goldsmith more especially. When Mrs. Thrale asked him of this matter, he spoke of it with contempt, and said that no man should be expected to sympathise with the 'sorrows of vanity.' But he had sympathised with them, at least to the extent of consoling them. Goldsmith never flung himself in vain, on that great, rough, tender heart. The weakness he Idid his best to hide from even the kindly Langton, the humane and generous Reynolds, was sobbed out freely there; nor is it difficult to guess how Johnson comforted him. 'Sir,' he said to Boswell, when that ingenious young gentle

man, now a practising Scotch advocate, joined him a month or two later at Oxford, and talked slightingly of the Goodnatur'd Man; 'it is the best comedy that has appeared 'since the Provok'd Husband. There has not been of late 'any such character exhibited on the stage as that of 'Croaker. Sir, False Delicacy is totally devoid of character.' Who can doubt that Goldsmith had words of reassurance at the least as kindly as these to listen to, as he walked home that night from Gerrard Street with Samuel Johnson?

Nor were other and substantial satisfactions wanting. His comedy was repeated with increased effect on the removal of the bailiffs, and its announced publication excited considerable interest. Griffin was the publisher; paid him £50 the day after its appearance; and in announcing a new edition the following week, stated that the whole of the first 'large impression' had been sold on the second day. But perhaps Goldsmith's greatest pleasure in connection with the printed comedy was, that he could 'shame the rogues' and print the scene of the bailiffs. Now-a-days it is difficult to understand the objection which condemned it, urged most strongly, as we find it, by the coarsest writers of the time. When such an attempt as Honeywood's to pass off the bailiffs for his friends, gets condemned as unworthy of 'a gentleman,' Comedy seems in sorry plight indeed. "The 'town will not bear Goldsmith's low humour,' writes the not very decent Hoadley (the bishop's brother) to Garrick, ' and justly. It degrades his good-natur'd man, whom we were taught to pity and have a sort of respect for, into a low buffoon; and, what is worse, into a falsifier, a cha'racter unbecoming a gentleman.' Happily for us, Goldsmith printed the low humour notwithstanding. It had been cut out in the acting, he said, in deference to the public taste, 'grown of late, perhaps, too delicate;' and was now replaced in deference to the judgment of a few friends, 'who think in a particular way.' The particular way became more general when his second comedy laid the ghost of sentimentalism; and one is glad to know that,