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1771.

fashionable follies of the day, indulged now and then by the gravest people.* "Johnson often went to Ranelagh," says Et. 43. Mr. Maxwell, "which he deemed a place of innocent recrea"tion." "I am a great friend to these public amusements, "sir," he said to Boswell; "they keep people from vice." + Poor Goldsmith had often to repent such pleasures, notwithstanding. Sir Joshua found him one morning, on entering his chambers unannounced, walking quickly about from room to room, making a foot-ball of a bundle which he deliberately kicked before him; and on enquiry found it was a masquerade dress, bought when he could ill afford it, and for which he was thus doing penance. He was too poor to have anything in his possession that was not useful to him, he said to Reynolds; and he was therefore taking out the value of his extravagance in exercise.

* See Chronicles of Fashion, ii. 231.

+ Boswell's Life, iii. 202.

He had sometimes to do penance, too, in other forms. His peculiarities of person and manner would for the most part betray him, whatever his disguise might be, and he would be singled out and played upon by men who could better sustain their disguise than himself. In this way he would have to listen to gross abuse of his own writings, by the side of extravagant praise of those of others whom he most bitterly disliked. He would also overhear himself misquoted, and parodied, and at last, in the hopeless impossibility of retaliation, has been seen abruptly to quit the place amid the hardly disguised laughter of his persecutors. Among his acquaintance at this time was a Mr. James Brooke (related to the author of the Fool of Quality, and himself somewhat notorious for having conducted the North Briton for Wilkes), whose daughter became afterwards resident in the family of Mr. John Taylor, from whose Records (i. 118) I take the following. "The Miss Clara Brooke whom I "have &c. . who lived some time in my father's family, being once annoyed at a "masquerade by the noisy gaiety of Goldsmith, who laughed heartily at some of "the jokes with which he assailed her, was induced in answer to repeat his own "line in the Deserted Village,

'And the loud laugh which spoke the vacant mind.' "Goldsmith was quite abashed at the application, and retired; as if by the word "vacant he rather meant barren, than free from care." This last remark pleasantly suggests a new reading for the celebrated line, which would make it much more true than the ordinary reading does. Some of the most famous living writers with whom I am acquainted are as famous for the loud laugh as for the well-stored mind, and Johnson, we have just heard, had a laugh like a rhinoceros, though what that particular laugh may be Tom Davies does not explain.

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Æt. 43.

Other allusions to a habit which did not admit of even so much practical repentance, are incidentally made in the letters of the time. Judge Day has mentioned that he was fond of whist, and adds that he played it particularly ill; but in losing his money he never lost his temper. In a run of bad luck and worse play, he would fling his cards upon the floor, and exclaim " Byefore George! I ought for ever to renounce "thee, fickle, faithless Fortune!" I have traced the origin of this card-playing to the idle days of Ballymahon; and that the love of it continued to beset him, there is no ground for questioning. But it may well be doubted if anything like a grave imputation of gambling could with fairness be raised upon it. Mr. Cradock, who made his acquaintance at the close of this year, tells us "his greatest real fault was, that "if he had thirty pounds in his pocket, he would go into "certain companies in the country, and in hopes of doubling "the sum, would generally return to town without any part "of it: "* and another acquaintance tells us that the " certain companies" were supposed to be Beauclerc and men of that stamp. But this only provokes a smile. The class to which Beauclerc belonged, were the men like Charles Fox or Lord Stavordale, Lord March or Lord Carlisle, whose nightly gains and losses at Almacks, which had now taken the pas of White's, were at this time the town talk; and though Goldsmith could as little afford thirty pounds lost in as many nights at loo, as Lord Stavordale or Charles Fox eleven thousand lost by one hand at hazard, the reproach of

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* Memoirs, i. 232.

+ Lord Holland had to pay £140,000 to clear Charles's gambling debts before he was twenty-five. Gibbon describes him (in a letter to Lord Sheffield 8th Feb. 1771) on the eve of that debate for relieving the clergy from subscription to the thirty-nine articles, in which he made one of the most remarkable of his youthful speeches. "I congratulate you on the late victory of our dear mama, the Church of England. ".. By the bye, Charles Fox prepared himself for that holy work, by passing

putting it in risk with as much recklessness does not seem really chargeable to him. When Garrick accused him of it, he was smarting under an attack upon himself, and avowedly retaliating. The extent of the folly is great enough, when merely described as the indulgence among private friends, at an utterly thoughtless cost, of a real love of card-playing. Such it seems to have been; * and as such it will shortly meet us at the Bunburys', the Chambers's, and other houses he visited; where, poorer than any one he was in the habit of meeting, he invariably played worse than any one, generally

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"twenty-two hours in the pious exercise of hazard; his devotion cost him only
"about five hundred pounds an hour, -in all, eleven thousand pounds." "The
"young men of the age," writes Horace Walpole, "lose five, ten, fifteen
"thousand pounds in an evening there. Lord Stavordale" (he was the eldest son
of Lord Ilchester), "not one-and-twenty, lost eleven thousand there, last Tuesday,
"but recovered it by one great hand at hazard. He swore a great oath-'Now if
"I had been playing deep, I might have won millions.' His cousin, Charles
'Fox, shines equally there and in the House of Commons. He was twenty-one
"yesterday se'nnight; and is already one of our best speakers. Yesterday he was
"made a Lord of the Admiralty." Letters to Mann, ii. 81-82. In another letter he
illustrates more whimsically the foibles of the hopeful young squadron of maccaronis.
"I must tell you of a set of young men of fashion, who, dining lately at the
"St. Alban's tavern, thought the noise of the coaches troublesome. They ordered
"the street to be littered with straw, as is done for women that lie in. The bill
"from the Haymarket amounted to fifty shillings a-piece: methinks I am glad
"the Carabiniers, and the Grenadiers of France are cashiered, -the sight of
"them before a tavern would make our young men miscarry."

* I find no authority for supposing that gambling to any extent went on in the rooms which were open at this time on the site of the once celebrated Button's (now forming part of the Hummums), and to which the following allusion occurs in a preface by Mr. Till, a coin-dealer, to a book entitled Descriptive Particulars of English Coronation Medals. "The room in which I conduct my business, as a "coin-dealer" [17 Russell-street, then], "is that which in 1764,—by a general sub"scription among nearly seven hundred of the nobility, foreign ministers, gentry, "and geniuses of the age,-became the card-room and place of meeting for many "of the now illustrious dead, till 1768, when a voluntary subscription among its "members induced Mr. Haines, the proprietor, to take in the next room westward "as a coffee-room; and the whole floor, en suite, was converted into card and "conversation rooms. Here assembled Doctor Johnson, Garrick, Murphy, Doctor "Dodd, Doctor Goldsmith, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Foote, Moody, Count Bruhl, Sir "Philip Francis, George Colman the elder, the Dukes of Northumberland and "Montague, Lord Rodney, George Steevens, Warner, and many others, all of "whom have long since passed to that 'bourne from whence no traveller returns."

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lost, and always more than he could afford to lose. Let no Et. 43. reproach really merited be withheld, in yet connecting the habit with a worthier inducement than the love of mad excitement or of miserable gain. "I am sorry," said Johnson, "I have not learned to play at cards. It is very useful in "life. It generates kindness, and consolidates society." * If that innocent design was ever the inducement of any man, it may fairly be assumed for Goldsmith,

His part in his English History completed, there was nothing to prevent his betaking himself to the country; but it was not for amusement he now went there. He was resolved again to write for the theatre. His necessities were the first motive; but the determination to try another fall with sentimental comedy, no doubt very strongly influenced him. Poor Kelly's splendid career had come to a somewhat ignominious close. No sooner had his sudden success given promise of a rising man, than the hacks of the ministry laid hold of him, using him as the newspaper hack they had attempted to make of Goldsmith; and when Garrick announced his next comedy, A Word to the Wise, a word to a much wider audience, exasperated by his servile support of their feeble and profligate rulers, went rapidly round the town, and sealed poor Kelly's fate. His play was hardly listened to. His melancholy satisfaction was that he had

* Boswell (who adds "he certainly could not mean deep play "), v. 157. At a later period, however, he had even a word to say for deep play. "Depend upon "it, sir, this is mere talk. Who is ruined by gaming? You will not find six 'instances in an age. There is a strange rout made about deep play; whereas 'you have many more people ruined by adventurous trade, and yet we do not "hear such an outcry against it." vi. 141. Apropos of which Boswell thinks it right to add, "He would sometimes in conversation maintain opinions which he was sensible were wrong, but in supporting which, his reasoning and wit would "be most conspicuous. He would begin thus: Why, sir, as to the good or evil "of card playing'-'Now,' said Garrick, 'he is thinking which side he shall take.""

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Here I may quote what is said of Kelly, by Tom Davies, in regard to both his

1771.

fallen before liberty and Wilkes, not before laughter and wit; but the sentence was a decisive one. Passed at Drury Et. 43. Lane in 1770, he had, with a new play, attempted its reversal

at Covent Garden in the present year; but to little better purpose, though his name had been carefully concealed, and

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a young American clergyman not yet arrived in England" put forward as the author. On the fall of Hugh Kelly, however, there had arisen a more formidable antagonist in the person of Richard Cumberland. He came into the field with every social advantage. He was the son and great grandson of a bishop; his mother was the celebrated Bentley's daughter; he had himself held a fellowship of Trinity; and, connected as private secretary with Lord Halifax, he had passed through the subordinate political offices, when weariness of waiting for promotion turned his thoughts to the stage. His first comedy, ushered in by a prologue in which he attacked all contemporary dramatists, and complimented Garrick as "the "immortal actor," was played at Covent Garden; and Garrick being present, and charmed with the unexpected compliment (for in earlier days he had rejected a tragedy by Cumberland), Fitzherbert, in whose box he was, made the author and actor known to each other, a sudden friendship was struck up, and Cumberland's second comedy secured for

rapid changes of fortune. On the whole it is very creditable to him, as are other traits which will appear at the close of my narrative. "No man ever profited

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more by a sudden change of fortune in his favour; prosperity caused an imme"diate and remarkable alteration in his whole conduct from a low, petulant, "absurd, and ill-bred censurer, he was transformed to the humane, affable, good"natured, well-bred man. His conversation was lively and agreeable; he had an uncommon stock of ready language; and though not deeply read, what he said was generally worthy of attention. He sometimes indeed, from an attempt to assume uncommon politeness, and a superabundance of benevolence, became "rather tiresome and luscious in his compliments. The fate of his comedies was "as uncommon as his sudden elevation from distress to affluence was surprising." Mr. Davies means that they tumbled down as rapidly as their author was raised up. Life of Garrick, ii. 145-6.

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