1772.

"decent lines in the whole of it. What stuff are these!" Æt. 44. And then he quoted, as prose, Pierre's scornful reproach to the womanish Jaffier. "What feminine tales hast thou been listening to, of unair'd shirts, catarrhs, and tooth-ache, "got by thin-soled shoes?" To which the unconvinced disputant sturdily replied, "True! To be sure! That is "very like Shakspeare."* Goldsmith had no great knowledge of the higher secrets of criticism, and was guilty of very monstrous and very silly heresies against the master-poet (as in his paper on metaphor in the Essays); but here his notion was right enough. He meant to say that Shakspeare had the art possessed only by the greatest poets, of placing in natural connection the extremes of the familiar and imaginative which Garrick would have done well to remember before he began to botch Hamlet. Another impression which remained with Northcote's old age, derived from these scenes of his youth, was that the "set" at Sir Joshua's were somewhat intolerant of such as did not belong to their party, jealous of enlarging it, and chary of admitting merit to any new comer. Thus he remembered a new poem coming out that was sent to Reynolds, who had instructed his servant Ralph to bring it in after dinner : when presently Goldsmith laid hold of it, fell into a rage with it before he had read a dozen lines, and exclaiming, "what wretched stuff is here! what cursed nonsense that

* Life of Reynolds, i. 288. Northcote seems long to have remembered this. He asked Hazlitt towards the close of his life what he thought of the Vicar of Wakefield; Hazlitt replied characteristically, "what everybody else did;" on which Northcote added that there was that mixture of the ludicrous and the pathetic running through it which particularly delighted him, because it gave a stronger resemblance to nature; and went on to say that he thought this justified Shakspeare in mingling up farce and tragedy together. Life itself was a tragi-comedy. Instead of being pure, everything was chequered. If you went to an execution, you would perhaps see an apple-woman in the greatest distress, because her stall was overturned, at which you could not help smiling. See Conversations, 169-70.

1772.

"is!" kept all the while cutting at every line almost through the paper with his thumb nail. "Nay, nay," said Et. 44. Sir Joshua, snatching the volume, "don't do so: you shall "not spoil my book, neither."* In like manner, Northcote adds, he recollects their making a dead set at Cumberland. They never admitted him as one of themselves; they excluded him from the club; Reynolds never asked him to dinner; and from any room where he was, Goldsmith would have flung out as if a dragon had been there. It was not till his life was just about to close that he became tolerant of the condescending attentions of the fretful Cumberland.

To these recollections of Northcote, some by Mr. Cradock may be added. When it was proposed one day to go down to Lichfield, and, in honour of Johnson and Garrick, act the Beaux Stratagem among themselves there, all the famous people of the club taking part in it, "then," exclaimed Goldsmith, "I shall certainly play Scrub. I should like of "all things to try my hand at that character." § One would have liked no less to have seen him play it, and heard the roar that would have given a personal turn to the cunning serving-man's famous assertion, “I believe they talked of me, "for they laughed consumedly." But his brogue would have been a difficulty. Even Burke's brogue was no small disadvantage to him; and Goldsmith had hardly improved his, since those Dunciad-days when he would object to the

Life of Reynolds, i. 250. In Hazlitt's Conversations of Northcote (274-5) this anecdote is almost literally repeated; as I find in several instances, on comparing the two books; and I suspect, for the most part, that it is fancy rather than memory which in the later book puts the embellishment and variations.

+ Conversations, 275. This is a little overstated; but in substance perhaps correct enough. Cumberland is very courteous in his public mention of Reynolds in his Memoirs, but his private letters exhibit a different tone. See post, Chap. xx. Cradock's Memoirs, i. 209. § Ibid. iv. 283.

VOL. II.

A A

1772.

Æt. 44.

exquisite bad rhyming of key with be ("let key be called kee, " and then it will rhyme with be," said one of his criticisms for Griffiths, "but not otherwise "): indeed, says Cooke, he rather cultivated his brogue than got rid of it.* Malone's authority would have us doubt, too, whether his emphasis, even for Scrub, would always have been right; seeing that, being at dinner one day with him and Johnson, he gave an example to prove that poets ought to read and pronounce verse with more accuracy and spirit than other men, by beginning the ballad At Upton on the Hill with a most emphatic oN. Farquhar's humour, nevertheless, might have gained as much as it lost; and the private play could not have spared such an actor. Richard Burke reinforced the party soon after this with his wit and his whim ‡ (“ now "breaking a jest and now breaking a limb "),-Garrick having succeeded, where Edmund supposed that his own

"He expressed himself upon common subjects with a plainness bordering upon rusticity, and often in words very ill chosen. He rather cultivated (than "endeavoured to get rid of) his brogue." European Magazine, xxiv. 258. At the same time the proof of a spoken brogue from a supposed written one, such as I have glanced at in the text, is seldom to be relied on. Pope might be proved an Irishman indisputably in this way; and it might be shown, from numberless such rhymes in his Satires, that Young's Castalian spring had been largely filled from the Liffey. It is necessary to keep in mind, too, what Johnson says: "I remember... "when I published the plan for my Dictionary, Lord Chesterfield told me that the "word great should be pronounced so as to rhyme to state; and Sir William Yonge "sent me word that it should be pronounced so as to rhyme to seat, and that none "but an Irishman would pronounce it grait. Now here were two men of the "highest rank, the one, the best speaker in the House of Lords, the other, the "best speaker in the House of Commons, differing entirely." iii. 191. "He was

Malone's Life of Dryden prefixed to his prose writings, i. 518. "immediately called upon to support his argument by an example; a request with "which he readily complied; and he repeated the first stanza of the ballad "beginning with the words 'At Upton on the Hill,' with such false emphasis, by "marking the word on very strongly, that all the company agreed he had by no means established his position."

"Here lies honest Richard, whose fate I must sigh at ;

Alas! that such frolic should now be so quiet.

What spirits were his! what wit and what whim!

Now breaking a jest and now breaking a limb;

influence had failed, in getting from Lord North another year's leave of absence from Grenada*,-and his return led to the establishment of a temporary dining-club at the St. James's coffee-house, the limited numbers of the Gerrardstreet club excluding both him and Garrick from present membership there. Cumberland, who became afterwards. an occasional guest, correctly attributes its origin to Burke, though he misstates everything else connected with it; t and here Cradock, mistaking it for the club, remembered to have heard much animated talk, in which Richard Burke made himself very prominent, and seemed the most free and easy of the company. Its members, who had the privilege of introducing strangers to their meetings, used to dine at each other's houses also, less frequently; and Goldsmith indulged himself now and then in very oddly assorted assemblages at his chambers after the dinner, which, in allusion to the fashionable ball-rooms of the day, he called his "little Cornelys."

More rarely, at meetings which became afterwards more famous, the titled people who jostled against writers and

Now wrangling and grumbling to keep up the ball;

Now teazing and vexing-yet laughing at all!

In short, so provoking a devil was Dick,

That we wish'd him full ten times a day at Old Nick;

But, missing his mirth and agreeable vein,

As often we wish'd to have Dick back again." Retaliation.

* See the Letter of Sir Grey Cooper, in Garrick Correspondence, i. 418. + I quote the remark of Northcote (Life of Reynolds, i. 214) on Cumberland's inflated account of it. "Such a society might no doubt have been highly agree"able; but its description, thus strongly marked by Mr. Cumberland, seems "rather drawn up in contradistinction to the Literary Club, of which he was not 66 a member. This society at the British coffee-house must, however, with the "exception of Johnson's conversation, have made him amends for any exclusion "from the other for here were Foote, Fitzherbert, Garrick, Macpherson; Doctors "Carlisle, Robinson, and Beattie; Caleb Whitefoord; and though last, not least, "Sir Joshua Reynolds, who introduced Goldsmith as a member immediately "previous to the representation of She Stoops to Conquer."

1772.

Et. 44.

1772. Et. 44.

artists at Shelburne-house in Berkeley-square, might be seen wondering or smiling at the simple-looking Irishman who had written the Deserted Village. There were Mrs. Vesey's parties, too, more choice and select than Mrs. Montagu's, her friend and imitator; and at both we have traces of Goldsmith-" your wild genius," as Mrs. Vesey's statelier friend Mrs. Carter calls him.* These ladies had got the notion of their blue-stocking routs from the Du Duffands, and L'Espinasses, at the last French peace; but alas! the Montesquieus, Voltaires, and Du Châtelets, the De Launays, Hainaults, De Choiseuls, and Condorcets, were not always forthcoming in Hill-street or Portman-square. In truth they seem to have been dull enough, those much-talked about ré-unions; though sometimes enlivened by Mrs. Vesey's forgetfulness of her own name, and at all times sparkling with Mrs. Montagu's diamonds and bows.t Mrs. Thrale's were better; and though the lively little lady made a favourite jest of Goldsmith's simple ways, he passed happy days with Johnson both in Southwark and Streatham.

Still, perhaps, his happiest time was when he had Johnson to himself; when there were no listeners to talk for; when, to his half-childish frolicking absurdities, Johnson lowered all that was predominant or intolerant in his great fine nature; and together they came sporting from Gerrard-street to the Temple, or, when the club did not meet, had supper by themselves at an adjoining

* Letters, iv. 110.

+ See Wraxall's Memoirs, i. 144-68. I must quote that admirable distinction which Johnson made a few years later, when a coolness arose between himself and Mrs. Montagu, and he lost even the moderate satisfaction of these réunions. "Mrs. Montagu has dropt me," he said to Boswell. "Now, Sir, there are people "whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by." He certainly was vain, adds his biographer, of the society of ladies, and could make himself very agreeable to them when he chose it. viii. 46-7.