fastidious face of Beauclerc, than whom no man ever showed a more uniform and even painful sense of the ridiculous, when the tea and sugar were produced.

Oglethorpe was a recent acquaintance, and has become, by the compliment of Pope and in the page of Boswell, an historical name. Now thirty years older than Goldsmith, he survived him full ten years: and to the last preserved that 'strong benevolence of soul' which connects his memory with the colonization of Georgia; as well as those Jacobite leanings which involved him in a court-martial after the affair of '45, and subsequently shelved him as a soldier. He entered Parliament, and distinguished himself as much by humane as by high tory crotchets. The sympathies which attracted him to Goldsmith, and continued their intimacy, appear in the commencement of the only letter that survives of their correspondence. 'How just, sir,' writes Oglethorpe, I were your observations, that the poorest objects were by 'extreme poverty deprived of the benefit of hospitals erected ' for the relief of the poorest.' And he incloses five pounds for his friend to distribute as he may think proper. Nor were they without the other point of agreement which had attracted Oglethorpe to Johnson. For Goldsmith, though the social bearing of politics always interested him most, and he cared little at any time for its party questions, had something of a half-fanciful Jacobite leaning, dabbled now and then in Jacobite opinions, and was as ready for a hit at the 'Hanoverian rat' as Johnson himself. An anecdote of their stroll one day into Westminster Abbey, has preserved

pleasant record of this. They stood together in Poets' Cor

silence, and whispered the hope in a Latin verse,

'Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.'

stopped Johnson, pointed up, and slily returned his whisper,

Forsitan et nostrum.. miscebitur ISTIS.'

With the opening of 1769, we find Goldsmith busily engaged upon new projects, his Roman History completed; and it was now, Percy tells us, that Johnson took him to Oxford, and obtained for him, ad eundem, the degree of M.B. The fact must rest on the bishop's authority; for the present Oxford registrar, though disposed to think it correct, finds a chasm in the University register which leaves it without positive corroboration. They They were at this time much together, it is certain; and if Johnson's opinion of the genius of Goldsmith was now at its highest, it was repaid with very hearty affection. Look,' said Gray, as in walking this year with a friend through a crowded street of the city, he saw a large uncouth figure 'polling' before them look, look, Bonstetten, the Great Bear! 'There goes Ursa Major!' It was Johnson. Ah!' said Goldsmith, when such expressions were repeated to him, 'they may say that. Johnson, to be sure, has a roughness ' of manner, but no man alive has a more tender heart. 'He has nothing of the bear but his skin.' Their entertainer at Oxford was the accomplished lawyer, Chambers, at this time Vinerian Professor, and five years later a judge in India; in whose rooms his more celebrated townsman Scott (both were Newcastle men) was afterwards introduced to Johnson, and who had lately been admitted a member of the Gerrard Street Club.

His election took place on the resignation of Hawkins; and it seems doubtful if I have not, in a former page, antedated Percy's election. The records of the early years of

the Club are, in truth, so scanty and imperfect, that it is difficult to ascertain the simplest fact in connection with it. But it is certain that the original number of ten had now been enlarged to twelve; and, as a result of the resignation of Hawkins, and of Beauclerc's forfeiture by continued nonattendance, four vacancies had to be filled. To the first Percy was elected; the second was re-claimed by Beauclerc (whose recent marriage with Lady Di Spencer, on her divorce from Lord Bolingbroke, sufficiently explained his temporary withdrawal); and the third and fourth were filled by Chambers and George Colman. It was on the occasion of this slight increase that Goldsmith seems to have urged the expediency of a larger infusion of new men: 'it would give the Club an agreeable variety,' he thought; there could now be nothing new among the 'members, for they had travelled over each other's minds.' This nettled Johnson; being too much in his own way. 'Sir,' he said, 'you have not travelled over my mind, I 'promise you.' Nevertheless Reynolds agreed with Goldsmith, thinking that life wanted colour and diversity as much as his own canvasses; and immediately before Goldsmith died, the number was increased to twenty: but from that time Johnson took little interest in the meetings. Almost all the rising men of the day were Whigs (bottomless Whigs, as he called Burke); and the spectacle of Charles Fox in the chair, quoting Homer and Fielding to the astonishment of Joe Warton, was one he could not get reconciled to. Within three Within three years, he was himself

the advocate of a yet further increase to thirty; and the form the Club then assumed was precisely what he wished to bring it to: 'a mere miscellaneous collection of con'spicuous men, without any determinate character.' So, to the present day, it has continued.

Colman's election seemed a studied slight to Garrick, but his claim was not inconsiderable. It was a choice between rival managers and rival wits; eager little figures both; both social and most agreeable men; and the scale was easily turned. Langton describes a Club incident soon after Colman's admission. He He says that Goldsmith, on the occasion of a play brought out by Mrs. Lennox (a very ingenious, deserving, and not very fortunate woman, who wrote the clever novel of the Female Quixote, and a somewhat silly book about Shakespeare, to which Johnson, a great friend of hers, was suspected to have contributed), told Johnson at the Club that a person had advised him to go and hiss it, because she had attacked Shakespeare in her book called Shakespeare Illustrated. And did you 'not tell him,' returned Johnson sharply, 'that he was a 'rascal?' 'No, sir,' said Goldsmith, 'I did not. Perhaps 'he might not mean what he said.' 'Nay, sir,' was the reply, if he lied, it is a different thing.' Colman was sitting by while this passed; and dropping his voice out of Johnson's hearing, slily remarked to Langton, 'Then 'the proper expression should have been, Sir, if you don't

lie, you're a rascal.' The play was produced at Colman's theatre with the title of the Sister, and encountered so