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, Lords Rockingham and Camden* 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 that he might hear the exact truth from himself, he * Camden, in one of his speeches contesting the bill, made a considerable sensation by the way in which he pointed out the inconvenience and injustice that might arise from the proposal to extend its provisions to all the descendants of George II, who, according to the common process of descent, might be expected in a few generations to amount to many thousands; in support of which he mentioned that he knew an undoubted legitimate descendant of a King of England who was then keeping an alehouse. Camden greatly understated the case, however, if the poet Gray's computation was right, "that there must go a million of ancestors in twenty "generations, to everybody's composition." In our own day a curious volume has been published descriptive of individuals who have the right to quarter the royal arms, from which it appears that the princely blood of Plantagenet now flows through the humblest veins, and the noble dust of the Tudors presides in person over beer-barrels. It shows us carpenters, sextons, saddlers, shoemakers, butchers, upholsterers, and tailors, among the descendants of the sons of Edward the First, and Edward the Third. One of its transformations, however, I am disposed to think less remarkable than at first would appear. It exhibits to us a man taking toll at a turnpike, almost under the very walls of those feudal towers that gave the name to the barony of which he is a coheir. But what, after all, were his ancestors the feudal barons, what are kings themselves, but toll and tax collectors on a great scale? See a little quarto entitled Royal Descents, published by Nichols and Nichols, in 1846. Æt. 45. 1773. Æt. 45. 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 afterwards 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 * It must have been about this time, too, that the dinner was given by Thrale at his brewery, which Northcote has mentioned, but of which no other record appears to have been kept, when "Sir Joshua, Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick, "Edmund Burke, Baretti, and others, dined on beef-steaks broiled on the coppers, "seated in a newly-made brewing vessel, sufficiently capacious to contain the company "conveniently." Life of Reynolds, i. 317. + Boswell, iii. 270-1. 1773. Garrick's vanity was another topic started at this dinner; and Johnson, while he accounted for it, and justified it, by Et. 45. the many bellows that had blown the fire, was interrupted by the "and such bellows too!" of Boswell, who proceeded to count up the notes of famous people (enough to turn his head) that he had persuaded Garrick to show him"Lord Mansfield with his cheeks like to burst, Lord "Chatham like an Eolus "-all which praises Johnson quietly explained with a ready adaptation of a line in Congreve, "True. When he whom everybody else flatters, "flatters me, then I am truly happy." Whereupon quick little Mrs. Thrale reminded him that he was here. only adapting Congreve. "Yes, madam," he replied, “in "the Way of the World. "If there's delight in love, 'tis when I see That heart which others bleed for, bleed for me!" 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 1773. "produces more amusement than anybody." This emboldEt. 45. ened Boswell to hazard the analogy of a lawyer with a player, the one exhibiting for his fee as the other for his shilling; whereon Johnson roughly seized him, turned the laugh against him, and covered his own retreat. "Why, "sir, what does this prove? 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 * Johnson's allusion was not to the piece of wit he mentions, but to the History of John Bull. Pleasantly contrasting with this vociferous attack on Boswell, is the high-bred courtesy with which Reynolds comes to his relief: "Mr. Boswell 66 thinking that the profession of a lawyer being unquestionably honourable, if he "can show the profession of a player to be more honourable, he proves his argu"ment." iii. 277. "I repeated this sally to Garrick," he tells us, on a similar occasion to the present, "and wondered to find his sensibility as a writer not a little irritated by "it. To soothe him, I observed that Johnson spared none of us," &c. iii. 79. Somewhat later, he narrates another; and then adds: "He was always jealous "that Johnson spoke lightly of him. I recollect his exhibiting him to me one "day, as if saying, 'Davy has some convivial pleasantry about him, but 'tis a futile "fellow;' which he uttered perfectly with the tone and air of Johnson." v. 264. On the other hand it is worth quoting what is said by Mrs. Hannah More, when, writing to her sister in April 1786 of the "fashion" which Mrs. Piozzi's just published Anecdotes had become, she strongly objects to the occasional harsh things reported in them against Garrick. "This new-fashioned biography seems to value 'itself upon perpetuating everything that is injurious and detracting. I perfectly "recollect the candid answer Garrick once made to my inquiry why Johnson was so often harsh and unkind in his speeches, both of and to him. Why, Nine,' "he replied, "it is very natural; is it not to be expected he should be angry, that "I, who have so much less merit than he, should have had so much greater 666 success?'" Memoirs, ii. 16. On the other hand, see Boswell, vii. 137-8. his angriest, he would only pay him off* by exhibiting his fondness for his old wife, Tetty, in their earlier London or Lichfield days; or he might show him using the most uncouth gesticulations 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 delivery of the celebrated lines of Ovid, "Os homini sublime dedit,-cœlumque tueri Jussit, et erectos ad sidera—tollere vultus,†' 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 * He was always the more considerate to this prejudice against players, exhibited so strongly in the life of Savage, and never wholly dropped in later life, because of Johnson's absolute ignorance, according to him, of what the art of acting really was. He had made no advance in this respect since the old days in Lichfield, when he would say of the Sir Harry Wildair of the theatre, "there is a courtly "vivacity about the fellow,"-the actor who played the part, sir, pursued Garrick, being, in fact, the most vulgar ruffian that ever went on the boards. Boswell, vi. 98. On the other hand, we recognise a shrewd and well-felt piece of criticism when Johnson says of Garrick's Archer, "He does not play it well, sir. "The gentleman should break through the footman, which is not the case as he "does it." We listen with less confidence when he says that Garrick could "represent all modes of life but that of an easy fine-bred gentleman," iv. 132, because our confidence is greater in Garrick's than in Johnson's experience of that kind of gossamer existence. Of which, let me add, the translation by Dryden, where with the addition of a single word he puts a Christian elevation and grandeur into the noble thought of the old Pagan, Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes Beholds his own hereditary skies, Ov. Met. i. line 13. deserves to be not less celebrated. VOL. II. Boswell, v. 264, and see vi. 96. D D 1773. Æt. 45. |