seldom equalled for its ludicrous inaptness by even Bozzy himself. All which would be amusing enough, if it had rested there; but, straight from the Temple, Boswell took himself to Fleet-street, and, with repetition of what had passed, his common habit, no doubt revived Johnson's bitterness. For this had not wholly subsided even a week or two later, when, on Mrs. Thrale alluding to his future biographer, he asked, "And who will be my biographer, do you "think?" "Goldsmith, no doubt,” replied Mrs. Thrale; "and he will "do it the best among us." "The dog would write it best, to be "sure," was Johnson's half-jesting half-bitter rejoinder, "but his "particular malice towards me, and general disregard of truth, would "make the book useless to all, and injurious to my character."

Uttered carelessly enough, no doubt ("nobody, at times, talks "more laxly than I do," he said candidly to Boswell), and with small thought that his gay little mistress would turn authoress, and put it in a book! What Mrs. Thrale herself adds, indeed, would hardly have been said, if Johnson had spoken at all seriously. "Oh! as to that," said I, "we should all fasten upon "him, and force him to do you justice; but the worst is, the "doctor does not know your life." Let such things, in short, be taken always with the wise comment which Johnson himself supplied to them, in an invaluable remark of his ten years later. "I am not an uncandid nor am I a severe man. I sometimes say

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more than I mean, in jest; and people are apt to believe me "serious. However, I am more candid than I was when I was 66 younger. As I know more of mankind, I expect less of them; "and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms "than I was formerly." He loved Goldsmith when he so spoke of him, and had no doubt of Goldsmith's affection ;-but he spoke with momentary bitterness; of the "something after death," whether a biography or matter more serious, he never spoke patiently; and no man's quarrels, at all times, had in them so much of lovers' quarrels. "Sir," he said to Boswell, with a faltering voice, when Beauclerc was in his last illness, "I would walk "to the extremity of the diameter of the earth to save Beauclerc :" yet with no one more bitterly than Beauclerc, did he altercate in moments of difference. Nor was his fervent tribute, "The earth, "sir, does not bear a worthier man than Bennet Langton," less sincere, because one of his most favourite topics of talk to Boswell was the little weaknesses of their worthy friend.

And now, approaching as I am to the conclusion of my book, let me take the opportunity of saying, that, with an admiration for Boswell's biography confirmed and extended by my late repeated study of it, I am more than ever convinced that not a few of those opinions of Johnson's put forth in it which appear

most repulsive or extravagant, would for the most part lose that character if Boswell had accompanied them always with the provocation or incitement under which they were delivered. But certainly he does not invariably do this, any more than he is at all times careful to distinguish when things are said in irony or jest. To illustrate my meaning, I quote a short passage from a conversation in which Boswell appears to have been boring Johnson by trying to prove that the highest sort of praise might yet, in particular circumstances, be resorted to without the suspicion of exaggeration. "Thus," he continues, one might "say of Mr. Edmund Burke, he is a very wonderful man;" to which Johnson retorted, "No, sir, you would not be safe, if "another man had a mind perversely to contradict. He might 'Where is all the wonder? Burke is, to be sure, a “man of uncommon abilities; with a great quantity of matter "in his mind, and a great fluency of language in his mouth. "But we are not to be stunned and astonished by him.' So you

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answer,

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see, sir, even Burke would suffer, not from any fault of his own, "but from your folly." I cannot help regarding this last remark as the real clue to a great deal that offends against good taste in Boswell's extraordinary book. Men and things,-and poor Goldsmith and his affairs very prominently among both,-over and over again "suffer not from any fault of their own," but from Boswell's teasing, pertinacious, harassing, and foolish way of dragging them forward. He was always disregarding that excellent saying of Mrs. Thrale's, formerly quoted, in which she tells as that to praise anything, even what he liked, extravagantly, was generally displeasing to Johnson. Boswell himself was continually falling into this scrape; and hence his own frequent confession that "it is not improbable that, if one had taken the other side, "he might have reasoned differently." The real truth was that, solong as, by any sort or kind of pestering or of excitement, he elicited one of Johnson's peculiarities, the more harsh or decisive the better, he did not care what or who might be sacrificed in the process. If he could ever discover a tender place, on that he was sure to fix himself; and any hesitation or misgiving about a particular subject, was pretty sure to be turned the wrong way if he proceeded to meddle with it. In regard to Goldsmith, too, the mere prevalence of a suspicion that he would be Johnson's biographer was of course discomforting; and there is doubtless some truth in Sir Walter Scott's suggestion, that "rivalry for Johnson's good "graces" in regard to this possible point of contention, might account for many of the impressions which Boswell, who naturally was neither an ill-natured nor an unjust man, received from such intercourse as he had with Johnson's earlier and older friend.

CHAPTER XVII.

DRUDGERY AND DEPRESSION. 1773.

1773.

Æt. 45.

THE first volume of the Grecian History appears to have been finished by Goldsmith soon after Boswell left London, and Griffin, on behalf of the "trade," was then induced to make further advances. An agreement dated on the 22nd of June, states 250l. as the sum agreed and paid for the two volumes; but from this payment had doubtless been deducted some part of the heavy debt for which the author was already in arrear. The rest of that debt it seemed hopeless to satisfy by mere drudgery of his own, never more than doubtfully rewarded at best; and the idea now first occurred to poor Goldsmith of a work that he might edit, for which he might procure contributions from his friends, and in which, without any great labour of the pen, the mere influence of his name and repute might suffice to bring a liberal return. It is pleasant to find Garrick helping him

in this, and the other acknowledging that service in most affectionate terms. Garrick had induced Doctor Burney to promise a paper on Music for the scheme, which was that of a Popular Dictionary of Arts and Sciences.

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In exertions with a view to this project, and in other persevering labours of the desk, the autumn came on. "Here," he said exultingly to Cradock, on the latter entering his chambers one morning, are some of my best prose writings. I have been hard "at work ever since midnight, and I desire you to examine them. "They are intended for an introduction to a body of arts and "sciences." Cradock thought them excellent indeed, but for other admiration they have unluckily not survived. With these proofs of application, anecdotes of carelessness, of the disposition which makes so much of the shadow as well as sunshine of the Irish character, as usual alternate; and Cradock relates that, on one occasion, he and Percy met by appointment in the Temple, at Goldsmith's special request, and found him gone away to Windsor, after leaving an earnest entreaty (with which they complied) that they would complete for him a half-finished proof of his Animated Nature, which lay upon his desk. His once trim chambers had then failen into grievous disorder. Expensive volumes, which, as ne says in his preface to the book just named, had sorely taxed his scanty resources, lay scattered about the tables, and tossing on the

floor. But of books he had never been careful. Hawkins relates that when engaged in his historical researches about music, Goldsmith told him some curious things one night at the club, which, having asked him to reduce to writing, he promised that he would, and desired Hawkins to call at his chambers for them; when, on the latter doing so, he stepped into a closet and tore out of a printed book six leaves, containing the facts he had mentioned. The carelessness, however, was not of books only. Such money as he had might be seen lying exposed in drawers, to which his "occasional man-servant" would resort as a mere matter of course, for means to pay any small bill that happened to be applied for ; and on a visitor once pointing out the danger of this, "What my "dear friend," exclaimed Goldsmith, "do you take Dennis for a "thief?" One John Eyles had lately replaced Dennis ; and was become inheritor of the too tempting confidence reposed in his predecessor, at the time of Percy's visit to the Temple.

The incident of that visit, I may add, shows us how fleeting the Rowley dispute had been; and it was followed by a mark of renewed confidence from Goldsmith, which may also show the fitful despondency under which he was labouring at this time. He asked Percy to be his biographer; told him he should leave him his papers; dictated several incidents of his life to him; and gave him a number of letters and manuscript materials, which were not afterwards so carefully preserved as they might have been. There is no doubt that his spirits were now unusually depressed and uncertain, and that his health had become visibly impaired. Even his temper failed him with his servants; and bursts of passion, altogether strange in him, showed the disorder of his mind. These again he would repent and atone for on the instant; so that his laundress, Mary Ginger, used to contend with John Eyles which of them on such occasions should first fall in his way, knowing well the profitable kindness that would follow the intemperate reproval. From such as now visited him, even men he had formerly most distrusted, he made little concealment of his affairs. "I remember "him when, in his chambers in the Temple," says Cumberland, who had called upon him there, "he showed me the beginning of "his Animated Nature; it was with a sigh, such as genius draws, "when hard necessity diverts it from its bent to drudge for bread, "and talk of birds and beasts and creeping things, which Pidcock's "showmen would have done as well." Cumberland had none of the necessities of the drudge, and his was not the life of the author militant. That he could eat his daily bread without performing some daily task to procure it, was a fact he made always very obvious, and was especially likely to impress on any drudge he was visiting. "You and I have very different motives for resorting to

"the stage. I write for money, and care little about fame," said Goldsmith sorrowfully. His own distress, too, had made even more acute, at this time, his sensibility to the distress of others. He was playing whist one evening at Sir William Chambers's, when, at a critical point of the game, he flung down his cards, ran hastily from the room into the street, as hastily returned, resumed his cards, and went on with the game. He had heard an unfortunate woman attempting to sing in the street; and so did her half-singing, half-sobbing, pierce his heart, that he could not rest till he had relieved her, and sent her away. The other card-players had been conscious of the woman's voice, but not of the wretchedness in its tone which had so affected Goldsmith.

It occurred to some friends to agitate the question of a pension for him. Wedderburne had talked somewhat largely, in his recent defence of Johnson's pension, of the resolve of the ministry no longer to restrict the bounty of the crown by political considerations, provided there was "distinction in the literary world, and "the prospect of approaching distress." No living writer now answered these conditions better than Goldsmith; yet application on his behalf was met by firm refusal. His talent was not a marketable one. "A late nobleman who had been a member of "several administrations," says poor Smollett, "observed to me "that one good writer was of more importance to the government "than twenty placemen in the House of Commons :" but the good writer must have the qualities of the placeman, to enable them to recognise his importance, or induce him to accept their livery. Let me give a notable instance of this, on which some light has been lately thrown. Few things could be adduced more characteristic of the time, or of that low esteem of literature with what were called the distinguished and well-bred people, to the illustration of which I have devoted so many pages of this biography, than a memorial in favour of one of the most worthless of hack-partizans, Shebbeare, which will be found in the Grenville Correspondence (ii. 271), and which absolutely availed to obtain for him his pension of 2001. a year. It is signed by two peers, two baronets, seven county members, four members for towns, and the members for the City and the University of Oxford. It asks for a pension on two grounds. The first is " that he may be enabled to pursue "that laudable inclination which he has of manifesting his zeal for "the service of His Majesty and his government;" in other words, that a rascal should be bribed to support a corrupt administration. The second is that the memorialists "have been informed "that the late Doctor Thomson, Pemberton, Johnson, Smollett, "Hume, Hill, Mallet, and others have had either pensions or "places granted them as Men of Letters," or they would not have