'for the poor devil of a waiter, who might otherwise get 'sick from so nauseating a meal.'

Before I pass from these humble records of the Wednesday's club, it will be proper to mention Kelly's withdrawal from it. Alleged attacks by Goldsmith on his comedy having been repeated to him with exaggeration such as a remark, on being told of the contemplated foreign translations, that except for the booths of foreign fairs they were little likely to be required; and an impetuous refusal to write again for the stage, while such trash as False Delicacy continued to attract audiences: he resolved to resent the unfriendliness. What the exact character of their friendship had been, I cannot precisely ascertain ; but though recent, it had probably for a time been intimate. Kelly succeeded Jones as editor of the Public Ledger, and the mutual connexion with Newbery must have brought them much together; nor is it difficult to believe the report of which I have found several traces, that but for Kelly's sensible remonstrance on the prudential score, his wife's sister, who lived in his house (as pretty and as poor as his wife, being simply as she had been, an expert and industrious needlewoman), would have been carried off and wedded by Goldsmith. Since their respective comedies they had not met; when, abruptly encountering each other one night in the Covent Garden green-room, Goldsmith stammered out awkward congratulations to Kelly on his recent success, to which the other, prepared for war, promptly replied that he could not thank him

because he could not believe him. From that hour they never spoke to one another:' and Kelly, reluctant that Goldsmith should be troubled to 'do anything more for him,' resigned the club. The latter allusion was (by way of satire) to a story he used to tell of the terms of Goldsmith's answer to the first dinner invitation he had given him. I would with pleasure accept your kind invitation,' so ran the whimsical and very pardonable speech, but to 'tell you the truth, my dear boy, my Traveller has found

me a home in so many places, that I am engaged, I 'believe, three days. Let me see: to-day I dine with Edmund Burke, to-morrow with Doctor Nugent' (again with Burke, that is, for he and his father-in-law then lived together), and the next day with Topham Beauclerc : but 'I'll tell you what I'll do for you, I'll dine with you on

Saturday.' Now Kelly, though conceited and not very scrupulous, was not an ill-natured man, on the whole he wrote a novel called Louisa Mildmay, which, with some scenes of a questionable kind of warmth, an ill-natured man could not have written: but he was not justified in the tone he took during this quarrel, and after it. It was not for him to sneer at Goldsmith's follies, who was for nothing more celebrated than his unconscious imitations of them; who was so fond, in his little gleam of prosperity, of displaying on his sideboard the plate he possessed, that he added to it his spurs; and who, even as he laughed at his more famous countryman's Tyrian bloom and satin, was displaying his own corpulent little person at all public places

in 'a flaming broad silver-laced waistcoat, bag-wig, and sword.'

Mr. William Filby's bill marks the 21st of January as the day when the Tyrian bloom satin grain, and garter blue silk breeches' (charged £8. 2s. 7d.) were sent home; doubtless the suit ordered for the comedy's first night. Within three months, Mr. Filby having meanwhile been paid his previous year's account by a draft on Griffin, another more expensive suit (lined with silk, and gold buttons') was supplied; and in three months more, the entry on the same account of 'a suit of mourning,' furnished on the 17th of June, marks the period of Henry Goldsmith's death. At the close of the previous month, in the village of Athlone, had terminated, at the age of forty-five, that brother's life of active piety and humble but noble usefulness, whose unpretending Christian example, far above the worldlier fame he had himself acquired, his brother's genius has consecrated and preserved for ever. Shortly after he had tidings of his loss, the character of the Village Preacher was most probably written; for certainly the lines which immediately precede it were composed about a month before. From his father and his brother alike, indeed, were drawn the exquisite features of this sketch; but of the so recent grief we may find marked and unquestionable trace, as well in the sublime and solemn image at the close, as in those opening allusions to Henry's unworldly contentedness, which already he had celebrated, in prose hardly less beautiful, by the dedication to the

Traveller. Now, too, is repeated, with yet greater earnest

ness, his former tribute to his brother's hospitality.

A man he was to all the country dear;
And passing rich with forty pounds a year.
Remote from towns he ran his godly race,

Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place;
Unpractis'd he to fawn, or seek for power
By doctrines fashion'd to the varying hour;
Far other aims his heart had learn'd to prize,
More skill'd to raise the wretched than to rise.
His house was known to all the vagrant train,
He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain :
The long-remember'd beggar was his guest,
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast;
The ruin'd spendthrift, now no longer proud,
Claim'd kindred there, and had his claims allow'd ;
The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay,
Sat by his fire, and talk'd the night away;

Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done,

Shoulder'd his crutch, and show'd how fields were won.
Pleas'd with his guests, the good man learn'd to glow,

And quite forgot their vices in their woe;
Careless their merits or their faults to scan,

His pity gave ere charity began.

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,
And e'en his failings lean'd to virtue's side:
But in his duty prompt at every call,

He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt for all ;
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reprov'd each dull delay,
Allur'd to brighter worlds, and led the way.

Beside the bed where parting life was laid,
And sorrow, guilt, and pain, by turns dismay'd,
The reverend champion stood. At his control,
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul;
Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise,
And his last faltering accents whisper'd praise.

At church, with meek and unaffected grace,
His looks adorn'd the venerable place;

Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway,
And fools, who came to scoff, remain'd to pray.
The service past, around the pious man,

With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran;
Even children follow'd, with endearing wile,

And pluck'd his gown, to share the good man's smile :
His ready smile a parent's warmth express'd,

Their welfare pleas'd him, and their cares distress'd;
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,

But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven:
As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,

Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,

Eternal sunshine settles on its head.

The idea of the Deserted Village was thrown out at the close of the Traveller,

(Have we not seen, at pleasure's lordly call,
The smiling long-frequented village fall?
Beheld the duteous son, the sire decay'd,
The modest matron, and the blushing maid,
Forc'd from their homes. . .)

and on the general glad acceptance of that poem he had at once turned his thoughts to its successor. The subject of the growth of trade and opulence in England, of the relation of labour to the production of wealth, and of the advantage or disadvantage of its position in reference to manufactures and commerce, or as connected with the cultivation of land, which, two years after the Traveller appeared, Adam Smith exalted into a philosophic system by the publication of his immortal work, was one that Goldsmith had frequently adverted to in his earliest writings, and on which his views were undoubtedly less sound than poetical. But they were strongly felt; had