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1767.

at the writer's own infirmities. Nor is there any disposition to make light of them. Perhaps the errors which arise from Et. 39. easiness of disposition, and tend to unintentional confusions of right and wrong, have never been touched with a happier severity. Splendid as they seem, and borrowing still the name from some neighbouring duty, they are shown for what they really are; and not all our liking for good-nature, nor all the mirth it gives us in this comedy, can prevent our seeing, with its help, that there is a charity which may be a great injustice, a sort of benevolence for which weakness would be the better name, and friendship that may be nothing but credulity. In Croaker we have the contrast and foil to this, and one of the best drawn characters of modern comedy. In the way of wit, Wycherly or Congreve have done few things better; and Farquhar himself could not have surpassed the heartiness of it, or thrown into the croaking a more unctuous enjoyment. We feel it to be a perfect satisfaction to be miserable with Croaker. His friend Dick Doleful was quite right when he discovered that he rhymed to joker. The

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"to their welfare, I will go on with my scribbling with pleasure; though my
"health is at present so precarious that I am really afraid to undertake the whole
(for much is wanted) lest the business should be retarded by my leaving London
"or the kingdom. What could you possibly mean by saying that the mischief to the
poor innocent family would not be so great as my anger teaches me to believe?
"Surely these, Sir John, were the dictates of your anger and not mine, and I will
venture to say that now it is passed you are sorry that you said it, as barbarity
"is as great a stranger to my nature as falsehood is to yours.
If you have
"obliged and honored me I thank you - that you never were in the way to be
"obliged by me is certain, or I should certainly have done it. Some reciprocal
"acts of kindness passed between your Brother and me too trifling to be men-
"tioned-but his praise is fame. You might have guessed at my warmth to you
"and yours, by the pleasure I had in the discovery of the lost treasure. What
'you have said kindly, I will remember; what unkindly, I will forget. I will not
"say Farewell. D. GARRICK." In another letter, less good-natured, and which
on better thoughts Garrick appears to have withheld, the actor ridicules the
angry magistrate's style of passing from the third to the first person in his letters.
He does not appear to have known that this was an ordinary habit with Sir John.
See Grenville Correspondence, ii. 366-7.

1767.

Rambler's brief sketch of "Suspirius the screech-owl" Et. 39. supplied some hints for the character;* but the masterly invention, and rich breadth of comedy, which made a living man out of this half page of a book, were entirely Goldsmith's. It is the business of the stage to deal with what lies about us most familiarly, humanitas humanissima; and it is the test of a dramatist of genius that he should make matters

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* "Johnson told me that he acknowledged this to him." Boswell, i. 250. Again, "I observed it was the Suspirius of his Rambler (No. 59). He said Gold"smith had owned he had borrowed it from thence." iii. 38. I would venture to say, notwithstanding, that Goldsmith seems to have borrowed more largely from one of his own essays, in filling in the rich touches of the character, than from anything of Johnson's. In the sketch of the philosopher in the Citizen of the World, for example (Letter xcii), whose science has only the effect of making him miserable, we are continually reminded of Croaker (now and then, too, of Swift's immortal Laputa), and his glorious absurdities. Let me quote one or two entries from the doleful philosopher's diary. "The moon is, I find, at her old pranks. Her appulses, librations, and other irregularities indeed amaze me. My daughter, too, "is this morning gone off with a grenadier. No way surprising. I was never "able to give her a relish for wisdom. She ever promised to be a mere expletive "in the creation. But the moon, the moon gives me real uneasiness." "The "obliquity of the equator with the ecliptic is now twenty minutes less than when "it was observed two thousand years ago by Piteas. If this be the case, in six "thousand the obliquity will be still less by a whole degree, . . and in the space "of about one million of years, England will actually travel to the Antarctic pole. "I shudder at the change! How shall our unhappy grandchildren endure the "hideous climate! A million of years will soon be accomplished: they are but a moment when compared to eternity; then shall our charming country, as I may say, in a moment of time, resemble the hideous wilderness of Nova "Zembla. To-night, by my calculation, the long-predicted comet is to make "its first appearance. Heavens! what terrors are impending over our little dim "speck of earth! Dreadful visitation! Are we to be scorched in its fires, or "only smothered in the vapour of its tail? That is the question! Thought"less mortals, go build houses, plant orchards, purchase estates, for to-morrow But what if the comet should not come ? you die. That would be equally "fatal. Comets are servants which periodically return to supply the sun with "fuel. If our sun, therefore, should be disappointed of the expected supply, "and all his fuel be in the mean time burnt out, he must expire like an exhausted 66 taper. What a miserable situation must our earth be in without his enliven"ing rays! . . . The comet has not yet appeared. I am sorry for it: first, sorry "because my calculation is false; secondly, sorry lest the sun should want fuel; "thirdly, sorry lest the wits should laugh at our erroneous predictions; and, "fourthly, sorry because if it appears to-night, it must necessarily come within "the sphere of the earth's attraction; and Heaven help the unhappy country on "which it happens to fall!"

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1767.

of this kind, in themselves the least remote, appear to be the most original. No one had seen him on the stage before; Et. 39. yet every one had known, or been, his own Croaker. For all the world is for ever croaking, more or less; and only a few know why. "Never mind the world," says the excellent

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Mrs. Croaker to her too anxious lord; never mind the "world, my dear, you were never in a pleasanter place in "your life." On the other hand who does not feel that Mr. Croaker is also right after his fashion? "There's the "advantage of fretting away our misfortunes before-hand, “we never feel them when they come." In excellent harmony with these imaginary misfortunes, too, are the ideal acquaintance of Lofty; as new to the stage, and as commonly met with in the street. Jack Lofty is the first of the family of Jack Brags, who have since been so laughtermoving in books as well as theatres; nor is his mirth without a moral. "I begin to find that the man who first invented "the art of speaking truth, was a much cunninger fellow "than I thought him." It was Mrs. Inchbald's favourite character; when it fell into the hands of the admirable Lewis, on the play's reproduction half a century since, it became a general favourite; and when a proposed revival of the comedy was interrupted eleven years ago by the abrupt termination of the best theatrical management within my recollection, it was the character selected for personation by the great actor who held Garrick's office and power in the theatre.*

Yet on the unlucky Lofty it was, that the weight of Garrick's hostile criticism descended. He pointed out that according to the construction of the comedy, its important

* This allusion is to Mr. Macready, who contemplated the revival of the GoodNatured Man during his last season at Drury Lane.

1767. figures were Croaker and Honeywood; that anything which Et. 39. drew off attention from them must damage the theatrical

effect; and that a new character should be introduced, not to divide interest or laughter with theirs, but to bring out their special contrasts more broadly. It was a criticism unworthy of Garrick, because founded on the most limited stage notions; yet he adhered to it pertinaciously. He would play the alteration, if made; but he would not play the comedy as it stood. Goldsmith made in the first instance very violent objections; softened into remonstrance and persuasion, which he found equally unavailing; is described to have written many letters, which displayed in more than the confusion of their language and the unsteadiness of their writing, the anxiety and eagerness of the writer; and at last, under the bitter goad of his pecuniary wants, is understood to have made partial concession. But it had come too late. The alterations were certainly not made, though the comedy remained some time longer in Garrick's hands. There was

a long fluctuation between doubt and encouragement, says the Percy Memoir, "with his usual uncertainty." The truth appears to have been, that the more Garrick examined the comedy, the less available to his views he found it; and he was at last driven to an expedient he had before found serviceable, when more had been promised than he was able to perform, and his authorial relations were become somewhat complex. He proposed a sort of arbitration. But poor Goldsmith smarted more under this than any other part of the tedious negotiation; and, on Garrick's proceeding to name for his arbitrator, Whitehead the laureat, who was acting at the time as his "reader" of new plays for Drury Lane, a dispute of so much vehemence and anger ensued, that the services of Burke as well as Reynolds were needed to moderate

1767.

the disputants. Of all the manager's slights of the poet, this was forgotten last; and occasion to recall it was always Et. 39. seized with bitterness. There was in the following year a hideously unintelligible play called Zingis, forced upon Garrick by a "distinguished officer in the Indian service," and by Garrick forced nine nights upon the public, as to which the same process again took place, under resolute protest from the gallant author. "I think it very unnecessary,' said the gallant Col. Alexander Dow, and being a stronger man than Goldsmith he carried his point, "to submit the tragedy to any man's judgment but yours . . . . I know not "in what manner Doctor Goldsmith came to a knowledge of "this transaction; but it is certain that he mentioned it "publicly last night at Ranelagh, to a gentleman who asked me in a jeering manner, What sentence the committee of "critics had passed on my play? "*

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Such was the state of affairs, and of feeling, between Garrick and Goldsmith, when a piece of news came suddenly to their knowledge, in no small degree interesting to both. Beard's uncertainty as to his own and his father-in-law's property in Covent Garden had closed at last, in a very unexpected arrangement. Early in the May of this year Colman's mother (who was sister to Lady Bath) died, leaving him a legacy of six thousand pounds; and this strengthened him for a step, of which it is probable that Garrick, in a letter already quoted, threw out the first brooding germ. They had but patched and darned their quarrel; and on the occasion of a comedy by Colman from Voltaire (The English Merchant) produced in this preceding February, new rents had shown themselves. Meanwhile it was reported that two men of mere business, named Harris and Rutherford, were + Ibid, i. 252.

* Garrick Correspondence, i. 306.

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