subsequent avowal of his marriage with another and more charming widow, Lady Waldegrave (Sir Edward Walpole's natural daughter), the king's indignation found vent in the Royal Marriage Act; which was hotly opposed by the Whigs as an edict of tyranny, Lord Rockingham contesting it at every stage in the Lords, and Goldsmith (perhaps for Burke's sake) helping to make it unpopular with the people. We'll go to France,' says Hastings to Miss Neville, 'for there, even among slaves, the laws of marriage

are respected.' Said on the first night, this had directed repeated cheering and popular applause to the Duke of Gloucester, who sat in one of the boxes; and it now drew forth the allusion of Paoli. But Boswell was not content with a mere hint. Feeling that Goldsmith might not ' wish to avow positively his taking part against the Court,' and that therefore it was not fair to endeavour to bring him to a confession, he naturally resolved, upon the instant, to bring him to it if he could: so, in order to hear the exact truth from himself, he straightway doubted if the allusion had ever been intended. Goldsmith smiled and hesitated; when Paoli hastened to relieve him with an elegant metaphor. 'Monsieur Goldsmith est comme la mer, qui jette 'des perles et beaucoup d'autres belles choses, sans s'en apperçevoir.' 'Très bien dit, et très élégamment,' said Goldsmith, highly pleased.

Five days afterward he dined at Thrale's; again argued with Johnson; and seems to me to have had the best of the argument. Talking of poor Fitzherbert's melancholy

suicide the year before, Johnson said he had often thought that after a man had taken the resolution to kill himself, it was not courage in him to do anything however desperate, because he had nothing to fear. 'I don't see that,' remarked Goldsmith, reasonably enough. Nay, but, my dear sir,' said Johnson, rather unreasonably, 'why should you not 'see what every one else sees?' 'Why,' was Goldsmith's reply, it is for fear of something that he has resolved to 'kill himself: and will not that timid disposition restrain 'him?' Johnson's retort was a sophism exactly confirming Goldsmith's view. The argument arose, he said, on the resolution taken, not on the inducement to take it: Determine, and you have nothing more to fear. You may go and take the king of Prussia by the nose, at the head of his army. You cannot fear the rack, who are resolved to 'kill yourself.' Goldsmith's obvious answer might have been, It is precisely because I fear the rack that I have resolved to kill myself: but there the argument ended. Garrick's vanity was another topic started at this dinner; and Johnson accounted for it, and justified it, by the many bellows that had blown the fire (and such bellows! interposed Boswell characteristically, mentioning the notes of famous people he had persuaded Garrick to show him, 'Lord 'Mansfield with his cheeks like to burst, Lord Chatham like an Eolus'). But he was not so tolerant of his old friend eight days later, when the same party, with Reynolds, Langton, and Thrale, dined at General Oglethorpe's. Goldsmith had said he thought it mean and gross flattery' in

Garrick, to have foisted into the dialogue of Beaumont and Fletcher's play of the Chances, which he had revived that year, a compliment to the queen; when Johnson with somewhat needless warmth remarked, 'as to meanness, sir, how is 'it mean in a player, a showman, a fellow who exhibits him'self for a shilling, to flatter his queen.' In admirable taste was then the calm and just rebuke of the kindly Reynolds. 'I do not perceive why the profession of a player should be despised; for the great and ultimate end of all the employ'ments of mankind is to produce amusement. Garrick produces more amusement than any body.' This emboldened Boswell to hazard the analogy of a lawyer with a player; whereon Johnson roughly seized him, turned the laugh against him, and covered his own retreat. 'Why, what 'does this prove, sir? only that a lawyer is worse. Boswell ' is now like Jack in the Tale of a Tub, who, when he is 'puzzled by an argument' (it was for no such reason, but it served Johnson's laugh to say so), 'hangs himself. He 'thinks I shall cut him down,' and here he laughed vociferously, but I'll let him hang.' Boswell's comfort in annoyances of this sort was to diffuse the annoyance by describing the whole scene next day to some one whom it equally affected. Garrick would in this case, of course, be the first to hear all that had passed. But Garrick's revenges on Johnson were harmless enough. At his angriest, he would only pay him off by exhibiting his ungainly fondness for his old wife, Tetty, in their earlier London days; or he might show him using the most uncouth gesticula

1

tions to squeeze a lemon into a punch-bowl, looking round
the company and calling out with a broad Lichfield twang

'who's for poonsh'; or perhaps he would imitate his RY delivery of the celebrated lines of Ovid, UNIVERSITY

Os homini sublime dedit. . cœlumque eti
Jussit.. et erectos ad sidera.. tollere vultus,

IFORNIA

which he gave with pauses and half whistlings interjected,
looking downwards all the time, and absolutely touching
the ground with a kind of contorted movement of his
arms while he pronounced the four last words, till all the
listeners, exhausted with laughter, implored the mimic
to desist.

Another subject started at Oglethorpe's table was the custom of eating dogs at Otaheite, which Goldsmith named as also existing in China, adding that a dog butcher was as common there as any other butcher, and that when he walked abroad (he quite believed this, and stated it in his Animated Nature) all the dogs fell on him. Johnson did not contradict it, but explained it by the smell of carnage.' Yes,' repeated Goldsmith, 'there is a general abhorrence ' in animals at the signs of massacre. If you put a tub 'full of blood into a stable, the horses are like to go mad.' 'I doubt that,' said Johnson. 'Nay, sir,' Goldsmith gravely assured him, 'it is a fact well authenticated.' 'You 'had better prove it,' Thrale quietly interposed, 'before you put it into your book on natural history. You may 'do it in my stable if you will.' But Johnson would have him do no such thing; for the very sensible reason that

he had better leave others responsible for such errors as he might make in so comprehensive a book as his Animated Nature, than assume responsibility himself by the arduous task of experiment. From this the conversation passed to literary subjects, and Goldsmith spoke slightingly of the character of Mallet. 'Why sir,' remarked Johnson, Mallet 'had talents enough to keep his literary reputation alive as 'long as he himself lived; and that, let me tell you, is a good 'deal.' 'But' persisted Goldsmith 'I cannot agree that it

was so. His literary reputation was dead long before his 'natural death. I consider an author's literary reputation 'to be alive only while his name will insure a good price for his copy from the booksellers. I will get you' (and if the spirit of controversy was here rising in Johnson, he at once disarmed it) a hundred guineas for any thing 'whatever that you shall write, if you will put your name 'to it.' Johnson did not reply, but began to praise She Stoops to Conquer.

Poor Goldsmith's own reputation was still alive, but by this test sadly in arrear. He had several disputes with booksellers now pending, and his circumstances were verging to positive distress. The necessity of completing his Animated Nature, for which all the money had been received and spent, hung like a mill-stone upon him; his advances had been considerable upon other works, as yet not even begun; the money from his comedy was still coming in, but it could not, with the debts it had to satisfy, float his stranded fortunes; and he was now, in what leisure