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 that became afterwards more famous, the titled people who jostled against writers and 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 sparkling at all times with Mrs. Montagu's diamonds and bows. 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 tavern in Soho. This was that once famous Jack's, since Walker's, in Dean-street, kept by a singer of Garrick's company (Jack Roberts), and patronised by Garrick and his friends, which, in all but the life that departed from it when they departed, to this day exists unchanged; quite unvexed by disturbance or improvement; haunted by the ghosts of guests that are gone, but not much visited by guests that live; a venerable relic of the still life of Goldsmith's age possessed by an owner who is venerable as itself, and whose memory, faithful to the past, now lives altogether with the shades that inhabit there. (That was written in 1848. It now, in 1855, exists no longer; the venerable Walker having become himself a shadow.) Of many pleasant "tête-à-tête suppers"

this was the scene; and here Goldsmith would seem boldly to have perpetrated very ancient sallies of wit, to half-grumbling halflaughing accompaniment from Johnson. "Sir," said the sage one night, as they supped off rumps and kidneys, "these rumps are pretty little things; but then a man must eat a great many of "them before he fills his belly." "Aye, but how many of them," asked Goldsmith innocently, "would reach to the moon?" "To "the moon!" laughed Johnson; "ah, Goldy, I fear that exceeds "your calculation." "Not at all, sir," says Goldsmith, "I think "I could tell." "Pray then, sir," says the other, "let us hear.” "Why," and here Goldsmith instinctively, no doubt, got as far from Johnson as he could, "one, if it were long enough.” “Well, "sir, I have deserved it," growled the philosopher. "I should not "have provoked so foolish an answer by so foolish a question.”

But Goldsmith's mirth is from a heart now ill at ease. Every day's uncertainty as to his comedy is become fraught with serious consequence to him, and Colman still delays his answer. The recollection of former mortifications no doubt sadly recurred, and with it came back the old distrusts and bitter self-misgivings. Cooke informs us that Goldsmith accidentally, at this time, met with an old acquaintance in a chop-house (most probably himself, for he elsewhere complains that the Doctor's acquisition of more important friends had made their latter intercourse infrequent), and mentioning that he had written a comedy about which the manager seemed to have great doubts, asked him to listen to the plot and give him his candid opinion of it. The Doctor, Cooke proceeds, then began to tell the particulars of his plot, in his strange, uncouth, deranged manner, from which his friend the critic could only make out that the principal part of the business turned upon one gentleman mistaking the house of another for an inn; at which the critic shook his head and said "he was afraid "the audience, under their then sentimental impressions, would "think it too broad and farcical for comedy." Goldsmith looked very serious at this; paused for some time; and at last, taking the other by the hand, "piteously" exclaimed, "I am much "obliged to you, my dear friend, for the candour of your opinion: "but it is all I can do ; for, alas, I find that my genius, if ever I "had any, has of late totally deserted me. Alas, poor Goldy! It was the feeling that prompted this, and no other, which also prompted his innocent, vain absurdities; and which made him even think, if the same friend's account is to be accepted gravely, that "speechifying" was all a knack, and that he knew of nothing to prevent himself making any day quite as good a speech as Edmund Burke. "How well this post-boy drives," said Johnson to Boswell, rubbing his hands with joy for the rapid motion :

now if Goldy were here, he'd say he could drive better." And simply because he could not drive at all. Sadly distrusting what he could do, he thought to set the balance straight by bragging of what he could not do.

CHAPTER XIV.

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. 1772-1773.

1772. Et. 44.

NEVER was anything like a tone of doleful distrust so little called for, as in the case of the comedy of She Stoops to Conquer. Goldsmith had here again, as in the Good Natured Man, taken his stand on the sincere broad ground of character and humour, where time has fixed him so firmly ; and the final critical verdict has passed which may spare any other criticism on this last legacy of laughter he was now to leave us. Many are the sterling comedies that hold possession of the stage, cleverly exacting much calm enjoyment, while they chasten all tendency to intemperate mirth: but the family of the Hardcastles, Young Marlow, and Tony Lumpkin, are not akin to those. Let the manager be chary of introducing them, who desires to keep the enjoyment of his audience within merely reasonable bounds. When Mr. Hardcastle, anxious to initiate Diggory and his too familiar fellow-servants into the small decorums of social life, warns them against talkativeness, and tells them that if he should happen to say a good thing or tell a good story at table, they are not all of them to burst out laughing as if they formed part of the company, Diggory makes prompt answer, "Then ecod, your << worship must not tell the story of Ould Grouse in the Gun-Room ; "I can't help laughing at that.. he! he he! . . . for the soul "of me. We have laughed at that these twenty years. . ha! ha! "ha!" and his worship, joining in the laugh, admits the story is a good one (surely it must have been a real one, and can no FSA exhume it, so as to tell us what it was ?) and consents to make it an exception. So must exception be made now and then, in the case of comedies. With muscles only imperceptibly moved, we may sit out some dozen volumes or so of Mrs. Inchbald's Collection: but at She Stoops to Conquer, we expand into a roar. The "Three "jolly Pigeons" itself never had greater fun going forward in it; and, though genteel critics have objected to the comedy that it contains low characters, just as Mrs. Hardcastle objected to the ale-house, the whole spirit of the disapproval seems to fade before

Tony's sensible remark, when his mother wants him to desert the Pigeons and disappoint the low fellows. "As for disappointing "them, I should not so much mind; but I can't abide to disapઃઃ point myself."

But in truth that objection, strongly as it has been urged, is quite untenable, and the verdict of four generations of playgoers must be held to have definitively passed against the judgment of the fine-gentlemen critics. No one was so bitter about it as Horace Walpole, who protested that the heroine had no more modesty than Lady Bridget, that the author's wit was as much manqué as the lady's, that all the merit was in the comic situations, that, in short, the whole view of the piece was low humour, and no humour was in it. The worth of a man's judgment of what is low, however, is perhaps not unfairly to be tested by comparison with his judgment of what is high, since the terms are but relative after all; and it may be well to interpose, that thinking thus of the author of She Stoops to Conquer, it was the belief of the same fastidious critic that the dramatic works of Mr. Jephson, who had happened to write a play founded on the Castle of Otranto, were destined to live for ages, and that his Law of Lombardy was superior to all Beaumont and Fletcher. How opposite is the truth

to all this (as well in Mr. Goldsmith's as in Mr. Jephson's case), we can all of us now perceive and admit. As contrasted with merely low comedy, Young Marlow belongs to as genuine "high" comedy as anything in Farquhar or Vanbrugh. The idea of the part, with its whimsical bashfulness, its simple mistakes, its awkward dilemmas, is a favourite and familiar one with Goldsmith. To the same family, though marked by traits perfectly distinct, belong Mr. Honeywood; Moses Primrose; and the credulous Chinese Citizen who entrusts his watch to that beautiful young lady in the streets, who with so much generosity takes upon herself the trouble of getting it mended for him. There is as little of the mere farcical in Young Marlow as in any of these. The high comic intention is never lost in the merely ludicrous situation. In the transition from stammering modesty with Miss Hardcastle, to easy familiarity with the supposed barmaid, the character does not lose its identity; for the over-assumption of ease, and the ridiculous want of it, are perceived to have exactly the same origin. The nervous effort is the same in the excess of bashfulness, as when it tries to rattle itself off by an excess of impudence. It is not simply one disguise flung aside for another; the constitutional timidity is kept always ludicrously prominent, but by fine and delicate touches. In like manner, Mr. Hardcastle and his wife have the same degree of what may be called comic dignity. The jovial old squire, with his love for everything that's old, "old

"friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine," not forgetting his own interminable old stories, is just the man to have his house mistaken for an inn; and the man to resent it too, with something festive and enjoying in the very robustness of his rage. There is altogether, let me add, an exuberant heartiness and breadth of genial humour in the comedy, which seems of right to overflow into Tony Lumpkin. He may be farcical, as such lumpish, roaring, uncouth animal spirits have a right to be: but who would abate a bit of Cousin Tony, stupid and cunning as he is, impudent yet sheepish, with his loutish love of low company, and his young-squire sense of his "fortin"? There is never any misgiving about Goldsmith's fun and enjoyment. It is not obtained at the expense of any better thing. He does not snatch a joke out of a misery, or an ugliness, or a mortification; or anything that, apart from the joke, would be likely to give pain; which, with all his airy wit and refinement, was too much the trick of Sheridan. Whether it be enjoyment, or mischief, going on in one of Goldsmith's comedies, the predominant impression is hearty, jovial, and sincere. Though Tony does tie the tail of Mr. Hardcastle's wig to the back of his chair (an incident which was but the counterpart of a trick played on himself during his last visit at Gosfield by the daughter of Lord Clare, which she often related to her son, Lord Nugent), there is only the broader laugh when he wakes and pops his bald head full into old Mrs. Frizzle's face; and nobody feels the worse when the same incorrigible Tony, after fearful joltings down Feather-bed-lane, over Up-and-down Hill, and across Heavy-tree Heath, lodges his mother in the horse-pond. The laugh clears the atmosphere all

round it.

But Colman saw nothing of this, wonderful to say. No laughter, or too much laughter, seemed to be all one to him. He was not to be moved. He had the manuscript of the comedy in his hands for many months, and could not determine to say yes or no. Poor Goldsmith's early dream that poets were to find protection in the Covent-garden manager, had been doomed to have dire awakening. He was impelled at last to lay all his circumstances before him, to describe of what vital moment to its writer the acting of this comedy had become, and to make appeal from the manager's judgment to the mercy of the friend. But to even this he received a general and still evasive answer; reiterating but not specifying objections, and hinting the necessity of taking counsel with other advisers. Thus the matter stood in the middle of January, 1773, when Goldsmith, with a galling sense that the best part of the season was passing, wrote with renewed earnestness to Colman.

1773.

Et. 45.