fairer friend, for that favour,-to Miss Richland. Would she complete our joy, and make the man she has honoured by her friendship happy in her love, I should then forget all, and be as blest as the welfare of my dearest kinsman

can make me.

Miss Richland. After what is past, it would be but affectation to pretend to indifference. Yes, I will own an attachment, which I find was more than friendship. And if my entreaties cannot alter his resolution to quit the country, I will even try-if my hand has not power to detain him. (Giving her hand.)

Honeywood. Heavens! how can I have deserved all this? How express my happiness-my gratitude? A moment like this overpays an age of apprehension.

Croaker. Well, now I see content in every face; but Heaven send we be all better this day three months!

Sir William. Henceforth, nephew, learn to respect yourself. He who seeks only for applause from without, has all his happiness in another's keeping.

Honeywood. Yes, Sir, I now too plainly perceive my errors my vanity, in attempting to please all by fearing to offend any: my meanness, in approving folly, lest fools should disapprove. Henceforth, therefore, it shall be my study to reserve my pity for real distress; my friendship for true merit; and my love for her who first taught me what it is to be happy. [Exeunt omnes.

EPILOGUE;1

SPOKEN BY MRS. BULKLEY.

As puffing quacks some caitiff wretch procure
To swear the pill, or drop, has wrought a cure;
Thus, on the stage, our play-wrights still depend
For Epilogues and Prologues on some friend,

The author, in expectation of an Epilogue from a friend at Oxford, deferred writing one himself till the very last hour. What is here offered, owes all its success to the graceful manner of the actress who spoke it.-GOLDSMITH.

Who knows each art of coaxing up the town,
And makes full many a bitter pill go down.
Conscious of this, our bard has gone about,
And teased each rhyming friend to help him out.
An Epilogue! things can't go on without it!

It could not fail, would you but set about it.

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Young man," cries one, (a bard laid up in clover,) "Alas! young man, my writing days are over! Let boys play tricks, and kick the straw, not I; Your brother Doctor, there, perhaps, may try." "What I, dear Sir?" the Doctor interposes, "What, plant my thistle, Sir, among his roses! No, no, I've other contests to maintain;

To-night I head our troops at Warwick-Lane.'
Go ask your manager "Who, me! Your pardon;
Those things are not our forte at Covent Garden."
Our author's friends, thus placed at happy distance,
Give him good words indeed, but no assistance.
As some unhappy wight, at some new play,
At the pit door stands elbowing a way,

While oft, with many a smile, and many a shrug,
He eyes the centre, where his friends sit snug;
His simpering friends, with pleasure in their eyes,
Sink as he sinks, and as he rises rise:

He nods, they nod; he cringes, they grimace;
But not a soul will budge to give him place.
Since, then, unhelp'd, our bard must now conform
"To 'bide the pelting of this pitt'less storm,"
Blame where you must, be candid where you can,
And be each critic the Good-Natured Man:2

Where was the College of Physicians at that time. A vignette view of the building adorns vol. ii. of Dr. William Munk's' Roll of the Royal College of Physicians.' Perhaps Goldsmith's "brother Doctor" was Dr., afterwards Sir George, Baker, who, Dr. Munk records, filled in succession many important offices in the College of Physicians, and to whom Goldsmith addressed his Reply to an Invitation to Dinner: ' see Poems, p. 93.-ED.

2 In the earliest editions the last line ran :

"And view with favour, the 'Good-Natur'd Man.""

Mr. Piozzi has told the following story of Goldsmith's demeanour after the first performance of this his first play :-" Returning home one day from dining at the chaplain's table, he [Dr. Johnson] told me, that Dr.

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Goldsmith had given a very comical and unnecessarily exact recital there of his own feelings when his play was hissed; telling the company how he went indeed to the Literary Club at night, and chatted gaily among his friends as if nothing had happened amiss; that to impress them still more forcibly with an idea of his magnanimity, he even sung his favourite song about an old woman tossed in a blanket seventeen times as high as the moon;' but all this while I was suffering horrid tortures,' said he, and verily believe that if I had put a bit into my mouth it would have strangled me on the spot, I was so excessively ill; but I made more noise than usual to cover all that; and so they never perceived my not eating, nor I believe at all imagined to themselves the anguish of my heart; but when all were gone except Johnson here, I burst out a-crying, and even swore by that I would never write

6

again.' 'All which, Doctor,' says Mr. Johnson, amazed at his odd frankness, 'I thought had been a secret between you and me; and I am sure I would not have said any thing about it for the world."" See Piozzi's 'Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson,' 1786, p. 245.-ED.

THE BAILIFFS' SCENE (Act III.: see also Goldsmith's Preface to the play.) It seems that this scene, the one hissed, and in consequence omitted after the first representation, though printed in the earliest editions of the play, was restored to the stage in 1773-soon after the production of 'She Stoops to Conquer.' Genest records that on May 3, 1773, the performance being for the benefit of Mrs. Green, the original Mrs. Hardcastle, The Good-Natured Man' was given with, "by particular desire," the bailiffs' scene "restored." Upon this occasion Morris and Quick were the bailiffs, and Lee Lewes played Lofty for the "first time."-ED.

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER;

OR,

THE MISTAKES OF A NIGHT,

A COMEDY.1

[DEDICATION.]

TO SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

DEAR SIR,-By inscribing this slight performance to you, I do not mean so much to compliment you as myself. It may do me some honour to inform the public, that I have lived many years in intimacy with you. It may serve the interests of mankind also to inform them, that the greatest wit may be found in a character, without impairing the most unaffected piety.

I have, particularly, reason to thank you for your partiality to this performance. The undertaking a comedy, not merely sentimental, was very dangerous; and Mr. Colman, who saw this piece in its various stages, always thought it so. However, I ventured to trust it to the public; and, though it was necessarily delayed till late in the season, I have every reason to be grateful.

I am, dear Sir,

Your most sincere friend

And admirer,

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

She Stoops to Conquer' was represented for the first time, March 15, 1773. It was very successful, and became a stock play. The author's friends had some difficulty in fixing upon a name for it: Goldsmith himself originally entitled it The Old House a New Inn.'—B. See Goldsmith's essay on 'Sentimental and Laughing Comedy,' in vol. i., also note at p. 218.-ED.

2 On March 4, eleven days before the first performance of this comedy, Dr. Johnson wrote to the Rev. Mr. White:-" Goldsmith has a new comedy in rehearsal at Covent Garden, to which the manager [the elder Colman] predicts ill success. I hope he will be mistaken. I think it deserves a very kind reception."-BOSWELL'S Johnson (Bohn's edition), vol. iii., p. 244.-ED.

1 Lee Lewes, also famous as harlequin. He took the part of Young Marlow on its being refused by " Gentleman" Smith. Goldsmith testified to the success of the young actor by writing an epilogue for his benefit performance: see it in the Poems. Lee Lewes also travelled with an entertainment of the 'Mathews at Home' order, and published his 'Memoirs' in four volumes. The latter work, curiously enough, makes no mention of Goldsmith. Sir Walter Scott gives several anecdotes of our author purporting to be from these Memoirs.' These anecdotes, however, are not in Lewes's 'Memoirs,' but in Cooke's anecdotes, published in the European Magazine, vol. xxiv., p. 17, &c.—ED.

2 The character of Tony Lumpkin first made this actor famous. Similarly, as in Lee Lewes's case, Quick took his part on its refusal by the actor who should have taken it-Woodward, who spoke the Prologue. For more concerning John Quick, see our introductory note to The Grumbler,' p. 295.-ED.

3 Mrs. Bulkley was also the original Miss Richland in 'The GoodNatured Man.' See Goldsmith's note on this actress at p. 213; also see the notes to the epilogues at the end of the present play, pp. 289-90.-ED.