Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

up in the chancel of his church), was, to poor Horace, significant of evil. Yet when he went to Paris a month or two later, and could not get into the Louvre for the crowds that were flocking to see Madame Dubarry's portrait at the Exposition, he did not seem to see evil impending : he could only wonder that the French should adore the monarch that was starving them; and when the Revolution did come, was ready to tear his periwig with horror. Unhappily, little things and great things too often affected him, or escaped him, in exactly the same proportion, to the sad misuse of his brilliant talents; and it was with this Gray pleasantly reproached him, when, after quiet sarcastic enjoyment of the Paris moralities, he blazed up with so much heat against poor Garrick's Stratford Jubilee. Why so tolerant of Dubarrydom, and so wrathful at Vanity Fair?

The great actors at the Jubilee in Shakespeare's honour made a three days' wonder of it (the 6th, 7th, and 8th of September), and then came back to town. Neither Johnson nor Goldsmith had joined them: but among them were Colman, representing his theatre (in place of poor Powell, who had died suddenly at Bristol two months before); Foote, laughing at everything going forward; several of Garrick's noble friends, dukes, earls, and aristocratic beauties; and last, not least, Mr. Boswell in a Corsican 'habit, with pistols in his belt, and a musket at his back, ' and in the front of his cap, in gold letters, these words, 'PAOLI AND LIBERTY.' He had written a poem for recitation at the masquerade, to which the crowd refused to

listen; but he brought it up to London, fired it off in the newspapers, and had the singular satisfaction of presenting it to Paoli himself, who arrived in London not many days after his admirer. The patriot's struggle having ended in the defeat and absorption of Corsica, he was content to subside into a civil dangler at St. James' with a pension of a thousand a-year; and probably laughed as heartily as anybody when Boswell now appeared in a full suit of black, with 'Corsica' exposed in legible letters on his hat, as the dear defunct he was in mourning for. Nor did the fit abate for some time. It was not till several months later that the old laird of Affleck (so was Auchinleck familiarly called) had occasion to make his famous complaint to a friend. 'There's nae hope for Jamie, mon. Jamie is gaen clean gyte. What do you think, mon? He's done wi' Paoli; ' he's off wi' the land-louping scoundrel of a Corsican; ' and whose tail do you think he has pinn'd himself to ' now, mon? A dominie, mon; an auld dominie: he keeped a schule, and cau'd it an acaadamy.' But though not yet exclusively pinned to the auld dominie's tail, Jamie so far abated his ostentatious attendance on the land-louping Corsican as to revive some of the old nights at the Mitre, and to get up some dinners and drinking parties at his rooms in Old Bond Street. One of the dinners was fixed for the 16th of October; and the party invited were Johnson, Reynolds (now knighted as the president of the Royal Academy), Goldsmith, Garrick, Murphy, Bickerstaff, and Tom Davies.

[ocr errors]

But some days before it took place, an incident occurred

[ocr errors]

of no small interest to that circle. One of Johnson's early acquaintance was the Italian Baretti, a man of cynical temper and overbearing manners, but also of undoubted ability, who had been useful to him at the time of the Dictionary, and whose services had never been forgotten. To Goldsmith, on the other hand, this man had made. himself peculiarly hateful, by all that malice in little, which, on a larger field, he subsequently practised against poor Mrs. Thrale; and they never seem to have met but to quarrel. Their mutual dislike is described by Davies. 'Goldsmith, ' least of all mankind, approved Baretti's conversation; he 'considered him an insolent foreigner: as Baretti, in his ' turn, thought the other an unpolished man, and an absurd companion.' It now unhappily fell out, however, that in a street scuffle Baretti drew out a fruit knife which he always carried, and killed a man (one of three who had grossly insulted him, on his somewhat rudely repulsing the overtures of a woman with whom they were proved to be connected); and it further happened that Goldsmith was among the first to hear of the incident next morning, while Baretti was under examination before Sir John Fielding. The good-natured man forgot all his wrongs in an instant; thought only of his enemy's evil plight; and hurried off to render him assistance. When this unhappy Italian,' says Davies, 'was charged with murder, and sent by Sir John Fielding to Newgate, Goldsmith opened his purse, would 'have given him every shilling it contained; and at the same time insisted upon going in the coach with him to

[ocr errors]

'the place of his confinement.' Bail was given before Lord Mansfield a few days later; and never were such names, before or since, proffered in connection with such a charge. They were Reynolds, Fitzherbert, Burke, and Garrick. All the friends met to arrange the defence; and it was at one of the consultations, on a hot dispute arising between Burke and Johnson, that the latter afterwards frankly admitted, Burke and I should have been of one opinion if we had had no audience.' Baretti was acquitted, though not without merited rebuke; and Johnson subsequently obtained for him the post of tutor in the family of the Thrales, and Reynolds that of honorary foreign secretary to the new Academy.

[ocr errors]

On that very

But Mr. Boswell's dinner is waiting us. day (as Mr. Prior, who discovered Mr. William Filby's bills, enables us with commendable correctness to state), Goldsmith's tailor took him home a half-dress suit of 'ratteen lined with satin, a pair of silk stocking breeches, ' and a pair of bloom-coloured ditto' (for which the entire charge was about sixteen pounds); and to Old Bond Street the poet would seem to have proceeded in silk attire.' Though he is said to have been last at every dinner party, arriving always in a violent bustle just as the rest were sitting down, when he arrived on this occasion there was still a laggard but Garrick and Johnson were come, and Boswell pleasantly relates with what good humour they had met; how Garrick played round Johnson with a fond vivacity, taking hold of the breasts of his coat, and, as he

:

looked up in his face with a lively archness, complimenting him on the good health which he seemed then to enjoy, while the sage, shaking his head, beheld him with a gentle

[graphic]

complacency. Dinner continued to be kept waiting however; and, says Boswell, Goldsmith, to divert the tedious 'minutes, strutted about bragging of his dress, and I believe 'was seriously vain of it, for his mind was wonderfully prone to such impressions. Of course Boswell had no such weakness, any more than Horace Walpole, also a great laugher on the same score. Though the one had so lately figured in Corsican costume, and was so proud of his ordinary dress that he would show printers' devils his new ruffles and sword; though the other had just received a

« AnteriorContinuar »