1768. Æt. 40. and disapprobation was very loudly expressed. The comedy, in short, was not only trembling in the balance, but the chances were 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 66 roar of approbation." Poor Goldsmith, meanwhile, had 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 green-room, says Cooke; "thanked him in "his honest, sincere manner, before all the performers;" and told him "he had exceeded his own idea of the cha"racter, 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 66 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 ate 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 66 "thing at any time. If so be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly. "THIRD FELLOW. I like the maxum of it, Master Muggins. What though I am obligated to dance a bear? a man may be a gentleman for all that. May this "be my poison, if my bear ever dances but to the very genteelest of tunes : “Water parted,' or 'The minuet in Ariadne."" * Moon; and was altogether very noisy and loud. But some 66 66 66 1768. time afterwards, when he and Johnson were dining with t. 40. Percy at the chaplain's table at St. James's, he confessed what his feelings had this night really been; "made,” said Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, "a very comical and unnecessarily exact recital" of them; and told how the night had ended. "All this 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 especially in all his 66 thus be taken with what he does, more * Another version of this famous ditty is supplied in the learned correspondence of Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Montague; but here the old woman is more decorously "drawn up in a basket three or four leagues, as high as the moon" and what it gains in decorum it seems to lose (as so often happens) in spirit. 66 + Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes, 244-6. Nay, let us remember what he has said, too, on this very subject. "Want of tenderness," we find from Dr. Maxwell's excellent Collectanea in Boswell (iii. 136-7) "he always alleged was want of parts, and was no less a proof of 66 stupidity than depravity." How delightful is Pope's remark to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu! "I know you have tenderness; you must have it; it is the 1768. Æt. 40. various opinions of Goldsmith. 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 did his best to hide from even the kindly Langton, from 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 gentleman, now a practising Scotch advocate, joined him a month or two later at Oxford, and talked slightingly of the Good-natured 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. False Delicacy is totally 'devoid of character." Who can doubt that Goldsmith very emanation of good-sense and virtue; the finest minds, like the finest "metals, dissolve the easiest." Works (Ed. Roscoe) vi. 63. And who does not remember Juvenal ?— Mollissima corda Humano generi dare se Natura fatetur Quæ lachrymas dedit: hæc nostri pars optima sensus. Sat. xv. 131-3. Admirable is the advice that follows: "If you are mortified by any ill usage, "whether real or supposed, keep at least the account of such mortifications to yourself, and forbear to proclaim how meanly you are thought on by others, "unless you desire to be meanly thought of by all." Anecdotes, 246. + Boswell, iii. 37-8. "Sir," continued he, "there is all the difference in the "world between characters of nature and characters of manners; and there is the "difference between the characters of Fielding and those of Richardson. Characters "of manners are very entertaining; but they are to be understood by a more "superficial observer than characters of nature, where a man must dive into the 66 recesses of the human heart." This, too, I may say, is substantially the verdict which Gibbon's friend M. Deyverdun, who with the historian edited the Mémoires Literaires de la Grande Bretagne pour l'an 1768, delivers on the two principal comedies of the year. Remarking on the fact that the public seemed to have preferred Kelly to Goldsmith, he says that he must be bold enough to appeal from a sentence which fashion rather than taste had dictated. He speaks highly of the 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 Hoadly, the bishop's son,* to Garrick, "and "justly. It degrades his Good-Natur'd Man, whom they were "taught to pity and have a sort of respect for, into a low situations and management of the mere story in Kelly's play, but gives the palm of character and humour to Goldsmith; and though he observes (a valuable piece of evidence by the bye) that Goldsmith's play might in general have been better acted, and had greater justice done to it by the performers, he yet tells us that Croaker and Lofty had at least succeeded in making every one laugh heartily-qui rient encore-who still were in the habit of indulging in that unfashionable weakness. Let me add that Mrs. Inchbald, a woman of true genius, says of the leading characters in the comedy, "The characters of Croaker, of Honeywood, and of Lofty, each "deserve this highest praise which fictitious characters can receive. In fiction they are perfectly original, yet are seen every day in real life." * John Hoadly, younger brother of the author of the Suspicious Husband, was a great friend of Garrick's; was one of the most clever and voluminous, but (though a dignitary and pluralist of the church, master of St. Cross, and Chancellor of Winchester) not the most decent, of his correspondents; and was himself a writer of pieces both tragic, comic, and pastoral, none of which have kept the stage. 1768. Æt. 40. 1768. Et. 40. "buffoon; and, what is worse, into a falsifier, a character "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, though it was but the year before his death, he saw his well-beloved bailiffs restored to the scene, of which they have ever since been the most popular attraction. With the play, the prologue of course was printed; and here Goldsmith had another satisfaction, in the alteration of a line that had been laughed at. "Don't call me our LITTLE bard," he said to Johnson; and our anxious bard" was good-naturedly substituted. But what Boswell interposes on this head simply shows us how uneasy he was, not when Johnson's familiar diminutives, more fond than respectful, were used by himself, but when * Hoadly to Garrick. Garr. Correspondence, i. 506. Yet the age had not become too refined for Fondle wife and Ben, two of Yates's favourite characters; and Goldsmith may be forgiven the sneer with which he is said to have expressed his surprise, somewhat later, "in this refined age, to see Lord North and all his "family in the stage box at the Old Bachelor; though to be sure, the fact of Mr. "Yates having been admonished not to sing 'The Soldier and the Sailor' in that "other refined comedy of Love for Love, was a gratifying proof of delicacy." This was a fact, and so enraged Yates that he swore he had sung the song for forty years, and would sing it still. Cradock's Memoirs, iv. 283-4. + Lee Lewes, who had then just obtained a reputation by his performance of Young Marlow, played Lofty on the occasion; it being for the benefit of Mrs. Green, who had the good taste to hold out the inducement in her playbills that "in act the third, by particular desire, will be restored the original scene of the "Bailiffs." Some Account of the Stage, v. 372. + "Amidst the toils of this returning year When senators and nobles learn to fear, Our little bard, without complaint, may share," &c. &c. Malone used to refer to this omission as one of the most characteristic traits he knew of Goldsmith. Taylor's Records, i. 119. |