his means; for in the following year he asks a loan of a thousand pounds from Garrick, which his "dear David," his "dearest Garrick," at once accords.* The estate was twentyfour miles from London; and within a hundred yards of the house were the ruins of what had once been Waller's home. Gregories itself has since become a ruin, having been consumed by fire; but nobler memories than the old poet's are those that now linger round what once was the home of Edmund Burke, and Goldsmith has his share in them. Exciting news at the Edgeware cottage that Beaconsfield purchase at least must have been, though even the noise of Wilkes had failed to force an entrance there. In October, Goldsmith was again in the Temple, and is to be traced at his old haunts, and in the theatres. Somewhat later in the season that now began, Garrick brought out a new tragedy by Home; but so hateful had Wilkes again made the Scotch, that its author's name had to be suppressed, its own name anglicised, and a young English gentlemen brought up from Oxford to the rehearsals, to personate the author. Goldsmith discovered the trick, and is said by Davies to have proposed a hostile party against the play, not inaptly called the Fatal Discovery. "It would hardly be credited that this man of "benevolence, for such he really was, endeavoured to muster a party to condemn it;" but this, the same authority afterwards remarks," was the transient thought of a giddy 66 same interest" (Lord Verney had again returned him for Wendover), "I have "made a push, with all I could collect of my own, and the aid of my friends, to "cast a little root in this country. I have purchased a house, with an estate of "about six hundred acres of land, in Buckinghamshire, twenty-four miles from "London, where I now am. It is a place exceedingly pleasant; and I propose (God willing) to become a farmer in good earnest. You, who are classical, will "not be displeased to hear that it was formerly the seat of Waller the poet, whose "house, or part of it, makes at present the farm-house within an hundred yards " of me." Correspondence, i. 153-4. 1768. Et. 40. 1768. Et. 40. man, who upon the least check, would have immediately What are your Britons, Romans, Grecians, Of Goldsmith, Bickerstaff, and Kelly. . . Ev'n Homer's self is but their foster-brother. The last allusion was to a story the humbler wits were now telling against Goldsmith. Bickerstaff had invited a party to his house to hear one of his dramatic pieces read; and among the company were Goldsmith and one Paul Hiffernan, already mentioned as one of his Grub-street protégés, of the Purdon and Pilkington class. He was an eccentric, drunken, idle, Irish creature; educated for a physician, and not without talents and even scholarship; but a continual victim to what he called impecuniosity, and so unprovided with self-help against the disease that he lived altogether upon the help of other people. Where he lived, however, nobody could ever find out he gave his address at the Bedford; and beyond that, curiosity was baffled, though many and most amusing were its attempts to discover more: nor was it till after his death that his whereabout was found, in one of the wretched # Life of Garrick, ii. 155, 168. And see Lord Campbell's Chancellors, vi. 85. 1768. little courts out of St. Martin's-lane. He wrote newspaper paragraphs in the morning; foraged for his dinner; slept Æt. 40. out the early part of the night in one of the theatres; and, in return for certain critical and convivial displays which made his company attractive after play-hours, was always sure of a closing entertainment at the Black Lion in Russellstreet, or the Cyder Cellar in Maiden-lane.* Latterly, he had taken altogether to dramatic criticism, for which he had some talent, his earliest Irish efforts in that line, when he ought to have been practising his profession, had been thought mighty pleasant by Burke, then a lad at Dublin College, and this, with its usual effect upon the Drury Lane manager, had recently obtained him a sort of pension from Garrick. It was the great actor's worst weakness to involve himself thus with the meaner newspaper men; and it was only this very year he was warned by a letter from Foote, of its danger in the case of Hiffernan. 'Upon the whole," wrote that master in the art of literary libel, for there is nothing like the voice of a Gracchus for a good complaint against sedition, "it is, I think, worthy of consideration, whether "there is not something immoral, as well as impolitic, in encouraging a fellow, who, without parts, principles, pro"perty, or profession, has subsisted for these twenty years by the qualities of a literary footpad." Precisely that newspaper jobbery it was, however, to whose success the absence of parts, principles, property, and profession is 66 66 * I derive my account of this curious literary mortal from some papers by Cooke in the Europ. Mag. (xxv. 110-15, and 179-84). Cooke incidentally remarks in the course of them, that one of Hiffernan's extraordinary and unaccountable publications (the Philosophic Whim) gave rise to "one of the last "flashes of poor Goldsmith. How does this poor devil of an author,' says "a friend, 'contrive to get credit even with his bookseller for paper, print, or 'advertising?' 'Oh, my dear sir,' says Goldsmith, very easily-he steals "the broom ready made."" Europ. Mag. xxv. 180. 1768. essential, which had procured Hiffernan his invitation to the Et. 40. reading of Bickerstaff's play. A good dinner preluded the reading, and much justice was done to this, and to the glass which circulated for half an hour afterwards, by "Hiff: " but his judgment, and enjoyment, of the play, were much less clearly evinced; and when the first batch of opinions were collected at the end of the first act, "Very well, by -, very "well!" was all that could be got from him. Alas, for what followed! "About the middle of the second act," says the teller of the anecdote," he began to nod; and in a little "time afterwards, to snore so loud that the author could scarcely be heard. Bickerstaff felt a little embarrassed; "but raising his voice, went on. Hiffernan's tones, however, "increased; till at last Goldsmith could hold out no longer, "but cried out, Never mind the brute, Bick! go on. So "he would have served Homer if he was here, and reading "his own works.' * 66 Nothing could be easier for Kenrick than to turn this into a comparison of Bickerstaff to Homer; and no laugh was heartier than Garrick's at the new proof of Goldsmith's folly. But, for his countenance of the libeller he was doomed to be severely punished, and in connection with this very Bickerstaff. Some four years after the present date, that wretched man was driven from society with an infamous stain, and Kenrick grossly connected it by allusion with Garrick; to whom at the very time, as we now know, the miserable culprit was writing from his hiding-place the most piteous. petitions for charity that one human being ever addressed to European Magazine, xxv. 184. Hiffernan, however, according to Cooke, made his own best excuse next day, and one which Goldsmith was ready enough to admit as such; for when the latter asked him how he could behave in that manner, the other coolly replied, "It's my usual way-I never can resist sleeping "at a pantomine." 66 1768. another. An action was commenced against the libeller, and dropped upon ample apology. "I did not believe him Æt. 40. guilty, but did it to plague the fellow," said Kenrick to Thomas Evans. The worthy bookseller never spoke to him again. Scoundrel as he was, it need not be denied that he had some cleverness. Johnson hit it off exactly when he described it as a faculty that made him public, without making him known. He used to lecture at the Devil and other taverns, on every conceivable subject, from Shakspeare to the perpetual motion, which he thought he had discovered; having been, before he got his Scotch doctorship and became. Griffiths's hack, a scale or rule-maker. Hence Johnson's quiet answer to the attack on his Shakspeare, that he could * See Letter in Garrick Correspondence (i. 473), written in French, dated "St. Malo, Juin 24, 1772," and endorsed by Garrick, "From that poor wretch Bicker"staff. I could not answer it." After an interval of nearly five years Bickerstaff wrote again (ii. 208): "I am in the greatest distress; so great that words cannot 66 express it. I remember that during the interval of my small prosperity, "I presented you at different times, with some trifles; their value, I believe, might "be about ten pounds: these would now feed and clothe me." In the same letter he refers to Kenrick, justly enough, as "the vilest miscreant that ever dishonoured a 66 pretension to literature, and for whom there should be a whip in the hand of every "honest man to lash him out of human society." Yet to this wretched being, himself by his own misconduct lashed out of human society, the stage was indebted for several very pure and pleasing entertainments, among them Love in a Village, The Maid of the Mill, Lionel and Clarissa, The Spoiled Child, The Padlock, &c; and we have seen in the course of this narrative that such men as Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick, Foote, Murphy, and others, were indebted to him for occasional hospitality. "I closed with the offer of Mr. Garrick's friendship," says Murphy, persisting in one of his many querulous disputes with the manager of Drury Lane, "and dined with him and Dr. Johnson at Bickerstaff's house. After dinner the 66 plays were mentioned. 'Prithee,' says Dr. Johnson, 'don't talk of plays; if 'you do, you will quarrel again.' He was a true prophet." Murphy to Garrick, 13th Jan. 1773. Gar. Cor. i. 520. I may add that this miserable Bickerstaff case called forth a celebrated and admirable saying of Johnson's. Mrs. Piozzi tells us that "when Mr. Bickerstaff's flight confirmed the report of his "guilt, and Mr. Thrale said, in answer to Johnson's astonishment, that he had "long been a suspected man. 'By those who look close to the ground, dirt will "be seen, sir,' was the lofty reply; 'I hope I see things from a greater distance.' Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes, 168. + See Garr. Corr. i. 477. VOL. II. M |