jostling the names of crowned heads and ambassadors, figured as the "Author of the Traveller." Pleasanter are the anecdotes which tell of his love for the young, and anxiety to have them for his readers. It was matter of pride to one with as gentle a spirit and a heart as wise as his own, the late Charles Lamb, to remember that the old woman who taught him his letters, had in her own school-girl days been patted on the head by Goldsmith. Visiting where she stayed one day, he found her reading his selection of Poems for Young Ladies, praised her fondness for poetry, and sent her his own poem to encourage it. The son of Hoole, Ariosto's translator, remembered a similar incident in his father's house. Other amusing traits might be added, strongly resembling such as already have been told. Booksellers would get him to recommend books, misguiding him as to the grounds of recommendation; and though everybody had been laughing at the exaggerated accounts of Patagonians nine feet high, brought home by Commodore Byron's party, Goldsmith earnestly protested that he had talked with the carpenter of the commodore's ship (a "sensible, understanding man, and I believe extremely faithful "), and by him had been assured, in the most solemn manner, of the truth of the relation. Nor was it altogether romance, though the honest carpenter made the most of what he had seen. Even the last survey of those coasts, though it does not establish the assertions of Magalhaens and Byron, leaves it quite certain that the Patagonians far exceed the height of ordinary men, and that the believers in this possibility were not nearly such fools as the majority too readily supposed. CHAPTER XV. THE GREAT WORLD AND ITS RULERS. 1766. THE eleventh year of Goldsmith's London struggle was now coming to a close, amid strange excitement and change, which may only here be so far pursued as to exhibit its re- Et. 38. 1766. action on literature and its cultivators. What Garrick had reported of the ministry in the summer, was in the main correct. Though it had not broken to pieces, the King had exploded it; and there was Pitt and a new arrangement." The word was not ill chosen. Changes of ministry were now brought about without the conflict of principles or party, and by no better means than might be used for "arrangement" of the royal bed-chamber. Lord Rockingham had hardly taken office when the Duke of Cumberland's death left him defenceless against palace intrigues; and their busy fomentors, the "king's friends" whom Burke has gibbetted in his Thoughts on Discontents, very speedily destroyed him. His Stamp Act repeal bill, his America trading bill, his resolution against General Warrants, and his Seizure of Papers' bill, were the signal for royal favour to every creeping placeman who opposed them; and on the failure of the latter bill Grafton threw up his office, saying Pitt alone could save them. Pitt's fame as well as peace would have profited, had he consented to do that. But against his better self, the King's appeals had enlisted his pride; he had not strength, amid failing health, to conquer the impulse of vanity; he did not see that the real object aimed at, was no alliance of the throne with the people, but subordination of everything, including the great houses, to the throne; and in an evil hour he consented to be Prime Minister, with the title of the Earl of Chatham. Rockingham retired, with hands as clean as when he entered office, without asking for honour, place, or pension for any of his friends, and with that phalanx of friends unbroken. It was in vain that Chatham attempted to separate the party from its chief. This was steadily resisted. Savile, Dowdeswell, Lord John Cavendish, the Duke of Richmond, the Duke of Portland, Fitzherbert, and Charles Yorke (Burke could only refuse future office, he had none to resign), persisted in resigning office; and the only important members of the late administration who remained, were the two whom Cumberland had induced to join it, General Conway (with whom William Burke remained as undersecretary) and the Duke of Grafton. With these, though strongly opposed in views as well as temper, were now associated two men of remarkable talents, personal adherents of Chatham; Lord Camden as Chancellor, and Lord Shelburne as a Secretary of State: the latter a young but not untried statesman, nor alone distinguished for political ability, but also for such rare tastes and independent originality of character, that men of science and letters, such men as even Goldsmith, had come to regard him as a friend. The next ingredient in the strange compound was Charles Townshend, at once perhaps the cleverest and undoubtedly the most dangerous man in the whole kingdom. Admirably did Horace Walpole remark that his good humour turned away hatred from him, but his levity intercepted love. He was made Chancellor of the Exchequer, with the lead of the House of Commons; and his opinions no man knew, save that they were simply the opinions of the House of Commons. He had with equal ability advocated every shade of opinion, as the majority had with equal impartiality voted; and certainly no man, for his brief reign, was ever so popular in it, or so nearly approached to itself in the extravagance of his inconsistencies. But a man is not remembered in history for his mere predominance there; and he who exactly suits that audience, and "hits the house between wind and water," may be found to have lost a nobler hearing, and to have missed much worthier aims. Little spoken of indeed as Charles Townshend now is, it seems necessary to call to mind, when any modern writer pauses at his once famous name, that as well in the copious abundance of his faults as in the wonderful brilliancy of his parts he had far outstripped competition; and must have ranked, even beyond the circle of his contemporaries, for the most knowing man of their age, but for his ignorance of "common truth, common "sincerity, common honesty, common modesty, common steadiness, “common courage, and common sense." Wanting these qualities, and having every other in surprising abundance, he most thoroughly completed the charm of powerful trouble which Chatham was now preparing; and in which every shade of patriot and courtier, king's-friend and republican, tory and whig, treacherous ally and open enemy, were at length most ingeniously united. Nobody knew anybody in this memorable cabinet, and all its members hated each other. Soon did even its author turn sullenly away from the monstrous prodigy he had created, and leave it to work its mischief unrestrained. Poor Conway first took the alarm, and got the Duke of Grafton to urge the necessity of having some one in the lower house, on whom real reliance could be placed. There will be "a strong 66 phalanx of able personages against us," he said; "and among "those whom Mr. Conway wishes to see support him is Mr. Burke, "the readiest man on all points perhaps in the whole house." Burke had been a member little more than six months when this was written; yet, even among the men who thus felt his usefulness, there was as little idea of recognising his claim to an office of any importance, as of offering to make him prime minister. His own wish had been, as soon as it became certain that the Rockinghams must resign, to obtain an appointment which happened then to be vacant, and to have held which, however quickly surrendered, would have increased his parliamentary consideration; but he failed in the attempt, and was styled, by the vehement Bishop of Chester, nothing short of a "madman" to have made it. "Here "is an Irishman," wrote Colonel Lee in the following month to the Prince Royal of Poland, "sprung up in the House of Commons, "who has astonished every body by the power of his eloquence, "and his comprehensive knowledge in all our exterior and "internal politics, and commercial interests. He wants nothing "but that sort of dignity annexed to rank and property in England, "to make him the most considerable man in the lower house." Wanting that, however, he wanted all, so far as office was concerned. Well might Walpole say that the narrowness of his fortune kept him down. The great families disowned him. Not many weeks after this letter was written, the amiable but irresolute Conway himself (from whose service, greatly to his honour, William Burke soon afterwards retired, and was replaced by David Hume), irritated by his predominance, jeered at him in public debate as 66 an Irish adventurer:" though, within a month, seventy-seven Lancaster merchants had publicly thanked him for his strenuous efforts to relieve the burdens on trade and commerce; and Grafton had even gone so far as to urge upon Chatham, that he looked upon it he was a most material man to gain, even at the price of some office a trifle higher than that of a lordship at the Board of Trade. The attempt was made, and failed; and it was well that it did so. It was well that when America again was taxed, Burke should have been free to enter his protest against it; that when the public liberties were again invaded, Burke should have had the power to defend them; that when the elective franchise was trampled under foot, and five several free elections were counted void, Burke, amidst even some defection of his friends, should have had the freedom, as he had the courage, to proclaim the constitution violated, and allegiance endangered; that when Townshend began to make public ridicule of his colleagues, and raise the laugh of the House of Commons against the Graftons and Conways, Burke should have met him with a wit as keen as his own, and a laugh more likely to endure; and that throughout those counterintrigues into which the palace intrigues now drove the great families, which would have shamed the morality of the highway, and which engaged the three "gangs" of the Bedfords, the TempleGrenvilles, and the Court, in a profligate and desperate conflict of venality, rapacity, and falsehood, Burke and the Rockinghams should have held aloof, and escaped contamination of the baseness that so rode at the top of the world. What chance had quiet literature of attention or success, amid such scenes and struggles as thus disgraced and lowered the public men of England? What hope of hearing or consideration could fall to its professors from the class that should have led the nation, when, instead of leading it, they were but offering it high examples of venality and falsehood? What possibility now existed of any kind of reward for those who had dignified their calling, and snatched it from the servitude it had so long lain under? By such labours as Johnson's had been, and as Goldsmith's continued to be, they had provided for another generation of writers, if not for themselves, surer friends and better paymasters than either patron or publisher; nor was it possible for men of letters again to become, what Sir Robert Walpole made and would have kept them. Never again with abject servility, as Goldsmith pithily expresses it, could they importune his Grace, Nor ever cringe to men in place, Nor undertake a dirty job, Nor draw the quill to write for Bob; but what had been the effect of the change on Walpole's successors, the ministers and governors of the nation? Had they stooped to pick up the hack-livery which the Goldsmiths had flung down, and put it on to serve themselves? It seemed so. No other interest did they appear to take in the condition or the uses of literature, but as a vast engine of libel, available only for the sordid trafficking, shameless corruption, and servile submission, which in turn ruled all the factions. George Grenville had used it, to assail Conway and the Rockinghams; two new-made deans had resorted to it, to uphold their patron Grafton; parson Scott had made a firebrand of it, to fling destruction at the enemies of Sandwich; Lord Temple had not scrupled to employ it, for the purpose of blackening his brother and his brother-in-law; and it had helped the unblushing Rigby to show, by jovial abuse of everybody all round, how entirely and exclusively he was his Grace the Duke of Bedford's, her Grace the Duchess's, and the whole House of Woburn's. Every month, every week, had its periodical calumny. The unwieldy column of quarto and octavo, the light squadron of pamphlet and flying sheet, alike kept up the fire. "Faction only "fills the town with pamphlets," wrote Johnson soon after this date, "and greater subjects are forgotten in the noise of discord." "Politics and abuse," confesses one who stood behind the scenes, "have totally corrupted our taste. We might as well be given 'up to controversial divinity. Nobody thinks of writing a line "that is to last beyond the next fortnight;' or of listening, he might have added, to a line so written. The same authority, a politician and man of rank, left an account of the literature of the day, in which half a line is given to Goldsmith as "the correct "author of the Traveller," another to Smollett as a profligate hireling and abusive Jacobite writer, and a third to Johnson as a lumber of mean opinions and prostituted learning but in which Mrs. Macauley's History is compared to Robertson's, Mr. Richard Bentley's Patriotism held next in merit to the Dunciad, and Mr. Dalrymple's Rodondo counted hardly inferior to Hudibras ; in which Mr. Hoole is discovered to be a poet, and an elegant five shilling quarto which had appeared within the last few months with the title of the New Bath Guide, is proclaimed to have : Horace |