1767. Æt. 39. 66 66 the foundation of all Billous complaints. I speak by expeariance. I have been fretted by managers till my gaul has overflow'd like the river Nile ;" and precisely thus it befel Goldsmith. His comedy completed, Kitty's "billous' complaint began; and there was soon an overflow of gall. Matters could not have fallen out worse for any chance of advantageous approach to Garrick, and the new dramatist's thoughts, therefore, turned at first to Covent Garden. While the play was in progress it was undoubtedly intended for Beard. But Covent Garden theatre was in such confusion from Rich's death, and Beard's doubts and deafness, that Goldsmith resolved to make trial of Garrick. They do not seem to have met since their first luckless meeting, but Reynolds now interposed to bring them together; and at the painter's house in Leicester-square, Goldsmith placed in Garrick's hands the manuscript of the Good-Natured Man. Tom Davies was afterwards at some pains to describe what he conceived to have been the tone of their interview, and tells us that the manager, being at all times fully conscious of his own merit, was perhaps more ostentatious of his abilities to serve a dramatic author than became a man of his prudence, but there seems to have been a downright sincerity and passion in her acting, whether of comedy or tragedy, which her audiences could not resist : "Before such merits all objections fly, Nor can I believe, from the accounts which exist of her extraordinary powers, that 66 while the poet, on his side, was as fully persuaded of his own importance and independent greatness. Mr. Garrick expected that the writer would esteem the patronage of "his play as a favour," but " Goldsmith rejected all ideas " of kindness in a bargain that was intended to be of mutual "advantage to both parties."* Both were in error, and providing cares and bitterness for each other; of which the heaviest portion fell naturally on the weakest shoulders. Mere pride must always be injurious to all men; but where it cannot itself afford that the very claim it sets up should succeed, deplorable indeed is its humiliation. Let us admit that, in this matter of patronage, the poet might not improperly have consented at the first, to what with an ill grace he was driven to consent at last. He was possibly too eager to visit upon the actor his resentment of the want of another kind of patronage; and to interpose uneasy remembrances of a former quarrel, before what should have been a real sense of what was due to Garrick, and a proper concession of it. Johnson had no love of patronage, but he would not have counselled this. Often, when most bitter on the same angry theme, and venting with the least scruple his rage at the actor's foppery, would he stop to remind himself of the consideration Garrick needed after all, and of how little in reality he assumed. For then, all generous and tolerant as at heart Johnson was, not a merit or advantage of his fellow-townsman's unexampled success, since the day they entered London together with fourpence between them, but would rise and plead in his behalf. The * Life of Garrick, ii. 153. It was probably with a relation to this matter Goldsmith had remarked to Reynolds that he could not suffer such airs of superiority from one who was only a poor player,” which the kindly Reynolds so quietly rebuked: “No, no, don't "say that; he is no poor player, surely." Northcote's Life, i. 287. + He and another neighbour of mine, one Mr. Johnson, set out this morning 1767. Æt. 39. 1767. popular actor's intercourse with the great,* his absolute Æt. 39. control of crowds of dependants, his sprightliness as a writer and talker equalled by few, his immense acquired wealth, the elevation and social esteem he had conferred upon his calling, and the applause he had for ever had sounded in his ears, and dashed in his face; all would in succession array themselves in Johnson's mind, till he was fain to protest, philosopher as he was, that if all that had happened to him, if lords and ladies had flattered him, if sovereigns and statesmen had petted him, and if the public had adored him, he must have had a couple of fellows with long poles continually walking before him to knock down everybody that stood in the way. "Consider, sir, if all this had happened "to Cibber or Quin, they'd have jumped over the moon." "Yet," he added smiling, "Garrick speaks to us." The "for London together: Davy Garrick to be with you early the next week; and "Mr. Johnson to try his fate with a tragedy, and to see to get himself employed "in some translation, either from the Latin or the French. Johnson is a very good "scholar and poet, and I have great hopes will turn out a fine tragedy writer." So wrote Gilbert Walmsley "to the Rev. Mr. Colson, at his house in Rochester, Kent," from Lichfield on the 2nd March 1736-7. Johnson and Garrick arrived together in London on the 9th March. It was Dr. Barnard (Bishop of Killaloe) who told Boswell the anecdote referred to in the text. At a dinner where himself and Garrick were present, Johnson, fixing a date, remarked, "That was the year when I came to "London with twopence-halfpenny in my pocket." Garrick overhearing him, exclaimed, "Eh? what do you say? with twopence-halfpenny in your pocket?" JOHNSON: "Why, yes; when I came with twopence-halfpenny in my pocket, and thou, Davy, with three-halfpence in thine." Life, i. 110. 66 66 *For one of his parties at Hampton, described by Horace Walpole, see ante, i. 262-3. Admirably did Johnson say, on another occasion, when Wilkes was attacking Garrick in the year after his death as a man who had no friend, "I believe he is "right, sir. Oi piλol, ov piλos-He had friends, but no friend. Garrick was so diffused, he had no man to whom he wished to unbosom himself. He found "people always ready to applaud him, and that always for the same thing so he saw life with great uniformity. Garrick," he continued, "was a very good man, the cheerfullest man of his age; a decent liver in a profession which is supposed to give indulgence to licentiousness; and a man who gave away freely money acquired by himself." Boswell, vii. 261-2. 66 66 46 + Boswell, vii. 98-100. On the same occasion Johnson asserted Garrick's liberality and charity, though he added, "With his domestic saving we have "nothing to do. I remember drinking tea with him long ago, when Peg Woffing 1767. condescension of patronage was at least a very harmless long pole, and Goldsmith might have taken a few taps from t. 39. it. A mere sensitive though clever thinker like Hans Andersen, fretting behind the scenes, will talk of an actor putting himself in one scale and all the rest of the world in another; but a profoundly just man like Goethe, wise in a theatre as everywhere else, will show you that the actor's love of admiration is a part of his means to please, and that he is nothing if he seem not something to himself and others. Not to be omitted, at the same time, and not to be palliated, is Garrick's large share of blame in this special instance. His first professions should not have merged, as they did, into excuses and delays; but should have taken, either way, a decisive tone. Keeping up fair words of success to Goldsmith, it would seem he gave private assurances to Johnson and Reynolds that the comedy could not possibly succeed. Interviews followed at his own house; explanations, and proposals for alteration; doubtful acquiescence, and doubtful withdrawal of it. Matters stood thus, the season meanwhile passing to its close, when Goldsmith, whose wants had never been so urgent, and whose immediate chances of relieving them had been lost through Garrick's delays, thought himself justified in asking the manager to advance him a small sum upon a note of one of the Newberys. Garrick had at this time renewed his promise to act the play; and was in all probability very glad to lend the money, and profit by what advantage it might offer him. It is certain that soon afterwards he suggested to the 66 ton made it, and he grumbled at her for making it too strong. He had then begun to feel money in his purse, and did not know when he should have enough of it." When he told the same story to Reynolds, he said that Garrick's expostulation to Peg about the tea was in these words, "Why, it is as red as "blood!" And see ante, i. 431. 1767. luckless dramatist, as essential to his success, a series of Et. 39. important alterations which were at once and with some indignation rejected. The leading characters in the piece were three; and are understood to remain, at present, much as when they left Garrick's hands. In Honeywood, who gives the comedy its title,* we have occasional conscious glance, not to be mistaken, *The Good-Natured Man. It is not uninteresting, that, apparently quite unknown to Goldsmith, Fielding should have written a comedy with this precise title a few years before his death. It was the last of his performances for the stage, and its history is rather curious. It was of course handed by Fielding to Garrick, who appears to have asked Sir Charles Hanbury Williams to read it; and on Sir Charles accepting the mission to Russia, the manuscript accompanied him to those inhospitable parts. Meanwhile Garrick had forgotten all about it; the great novelist was dead; and to the inquiries of his brother and friends, who found allusions to it in his papers and wished to recover it, the Drury Lane manager could give no satisfactory clue. But after nearly twenty years, Garrick was asked to look at a tattered and much injured MS. comedy, which Sir Charles Williams was supposed to have written, and had not read a page when he jumped out of his chair with the delighted exclamation, "Why, this is Harry Fielding's lost comedy !" This was two years after Goldsmith's death. In the following year, with alterations by himself and Sheridan, and with one of his prologues full of witty and genial allusion to Fielding's immortal novels, the comedy was acted with only moderate success; but, Goldsmith having meanwhile appropriated the chief title, it was called The Fathers, or, the Good-Natured Man, and so appears in Murphy's edition of Fielding. Connected with it, I regret to add, a bitter dispute arose between Sir John Fielding and Garrick, among whose unpublished papers I find several allusions to it. For example, one of Sir John Fielding's angriest letters is thus endorsed, in Garrick's handwriting: "The beginning of my correspondence with Sir John "Fielding was thus. His brother, the late Mr. Fielding, was my particular Friend; "he had written a Comedy called the Good-Natured Man, which, being lent to his different friends, was lost for twenty years. It luckily fell to my lot to "discover it. Had I found a mine of gold upon my own land, it could not have "given me more pleasure. I immediately went to his brother, Sir John, and told "him the story of my discovery, and immediately with all the warmth imaginable "offered my services to prepare it for the Stage. He thanked me cordially and we parted with mutual expressions of kindness." To this I will add the concluding passages (on the whole very honourable to Garrick) of the letter with which he met Sir John's most petulant explosion. The allusion to "the innocent" is to the family of the great novelist, for whose benefit the comedy was to be put on the stage. "We will if you please not be the trumpets of our own virtues (as "Shakespear says), but take care that the innocent do not suffer by our mistakes. "There shall be no Anathema denounced against them by me. If my thoughts "and alteration of the plan of the Good-Natured Man will be of the least service |