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lady of Green Arbour Court remembered one festivity there, which seems to have been highly characteristic. A Æt. 31. "gentleman" called on a certain evening, and asking to see her lodger, went unannounced up stairs. She then heard Goldsmith's room door pushed open, closed again sharply from within, and the key turned in the lock; after this, the sound of a somewhat noisy altercation reached her; but it soon subsided; and to her surprise, not unmingled with alarm, the perfect silence that followed continued for more than three hours. It was a great relief to her, she said, when the door was again opened, and the "gentleman," descending more cheerfully than he had entered, sent her out to a neighbouring tavern for some supper.* Mr. Wilkie or Mr. Pottinger had obtained his arrears, and could afford a little comforting reward to the starving author.

Perhaps he carried off with him that mirthful paper on the clubs of London, to which a pleasant imagination most loved to pay festive visits on solitary and supperless days. Perhaps that paper on public rejoicings for a victory which. described the writer's lonely wanderings a few nights before, from Ludgate-hill to Charing-cross, through crowded and illuminated streets, past punch-houses and coffee-houses, and where excited shoe-makers, thinking wood to be nothing like leather, were asking with frightful oaths what ever would become of religion if the wooden-soled French papishes came over! Perhaps that more affecting lonely journey through the London streets, which the Bee soon after published with the title of the City Night Piece,† in which there was so much of the past struggle and the lesson it had left, so much of the grief-taught sympathy, so much of the

* Prior, i. 328, 329.

+ The greater portion of this striking paper was repeated in Letter cxvii of the Citizen of the World.

1759.

Et. 31.

secret of the genius, of tolerant, gentle-hearted Goldsmith.
What he was to the end of his London life, when miserable
outcasts had cause with the great and learned to lament
him, this paper shows him to have been at its beginning.
The kind-hearted man would wander through the streets at
night, to console and reassure the misery he could not
otherwise give help to. While he thought of the rich and

happy who were at rest; while he looked up even to the
wretched roof that gave shelter to himself; he could not
bear to think of those to whom the streets were the
only home.
"Strangers, wanderers, and orphans," too
humble in their circumstances to expect redress, too com-
pletely and utterly wretched for pity;-" poor shivering
girls" who had seen happier days, and been flattered into
beauty and into sin, now lying peradventure at the very
doors of their betrayers;—"poor houseless creatures" to
whom the world, responsible for their guilt, gives reproaches
but will not give relief. These were teachers in life's
truths, who spoke with a sterner and wiser voice than that
of mere personal suffering. "The slightest misfortunes of
"the great, the most imaginary uneasiness of the rich, are
aggravated with all the power of eloquence, and held up
"to engage our attention and sympathetic sorrow. The
poor weep unheeded, persecuted by every subordinate
species of tyranny; and every law which gives others
"security, becomes an enemy to them. Why was this heart
of mine formed with so much sensibility, or why was not
"my fortune adapted to its impulse?" In thoughts like
these, and in confirmed resolution to make the poor his
clients and write down those tyrannies of law, the night
wanderings of the thoughtful writer not unprofitably ended.

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It was a resolution very manifest in his next literary labour.

CHAPTER II.

DAVID GARRICK.

1759.

1759.

On the 29th of November, the Bee's brief life closed, with its eighth number; and in the following month its editor, Et. 31. Mr. Oliver Goldsmith, was sought out both by that distinguished author Doctor Smollett, and by Mr. John Newbery the bookseller, of St. Paul's-churchyard. But as he had . meanwhile made earnest application to Mr. David Garrick for his interest in an election at the Society of Arts, it will be best to describe at once the circumstances involved in that application, and its result on the poor author's subsequent intercourse with the rich manager and proprietor of the theatre royal in Drury Lane.

In

Goldsmith was passionately fond of the theatre. prosperous days, it will ring with his humour and cheerfulness; in these struggling times, it was the help and refuge of his loneliness. We have seen him steal out of his garret to hear Columba sing: and if she fell short of the good old music he had learnt to love at Lissoy, the other admiration he was taught there, of happy human faces, at the theatre was always in his reach. If there is truth in what was said by Sir Richard Steele, that being happy, and seeing others happy, for two hours, is a duration of bliss not at all to be

1759.

slighted by so short-lived creature as man, it is certain Et. 31. that he who despises the theatre adds short-sightedness to short life.* If he is a rich man, he will be richer for hearing there of what account the poor may be; if he is a poor man, he will not be poorer for the knowledge that those above him have their human sympathies. Sir Thomas Overbury held a somewhat strong opinion as to this; thinking the playhouse more necessary in a well-governed commonwealth than the school, because men were better taught by example than by precept: and it seems at any rate, however light the disregard it has fallen into now, of at least equal importance with many of the questions which in these days form and dissolve governments, whether a high and healthy entertainment, the nature of which, conservative of all kindly relations between man and man, is to encourage, refine, and diffuse humanity, might not claim, in some degree, the care and countenance of the State.

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This grave remark occurs to me here, because grave disappointments in connection with it will occur hereafter; and already even Garrick's fame and strength had been shaken by his difficult relations with men of letters. "I am as much an admirer of Mr. Garrick," said Mr. Ralph, in his Case of Authors by Profession, published in 1758, "and his "excellences, as I ought to be: and I envy him no part of "his good fortune. But then, though I am free to acknow"ledge he was made for the stage, I cannot be brought to "think the stage was made only for him; or that the fate of every dramatic writer ought either to be at his mercy, or "that of any other manager whatever; and the single

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* "At all other assemblies," says Johnson characteristically (in The Idler), "he that comes to receive delight, will be expected to give it; but in the theatre, nothing is necessary to the amusement of two hours, but to sit down and be "willing to be pleased."

"consideration that there is no alternative but to fly from "him, in case of any neglect or contempt, to Mr. Rich, is enough to deter any man in his senses from embarking a "second time on such a hopeless voyage." Manifestly, however, this was neither the fault of Rich nor of Garrick, but of the system which left both to shift as they could, and made self-protection the primary law. "The

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manager," he continues, admitting the whole question at issue in his complaints, "whether player or harlequin, must "be the sole pivot on which the whole machine is both to move and rest; there is no drawback on the profit of the night in old plays; and any access of reputation to a dead author, carries no impertinent claims and invidious disItinctions along with it. When the playhouse is named," he added bitterly, "I make it a point to pull off my hat, " and think myself obliged to the lowest implement belonging "to it. I am ready to make my best acknowledgments "to a harlequin, who has continence enough to look upon an author in the green-room, of what consideration soever, without laughing at him." Other pamphlets followed in the cry; and Ned Purdon drew up a number of anonymous suggestions as to "how Mr. Garrick ought to "behave." *

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It was employment of this tone which introduced needless elements of bitterness. The charge was a simple one, and might have been stated simply. No doubt Garrick, in common with every manager-actor, before or since hist time, was fairly exposed to it. I have turned to the playbills of the season directly preceding the appearance of

For which he was afterwards obliged to apologise to the people abused, and to promise the public, by advertisement, never to offend again in the like manner. Monthly Review, xxi. 368.

1759.

Æt. 31.