have shown to be absurdly over-stated. The purse he had so often to take out, was not so often empty. What Johnson says may be true of the few last years of his life, that he was at no pains to fill his mind with knowledge; that, transplanting it from one place to another, it did not settle, and so he could not tell what was in his own books: but it should be limited by those years of his life, judged by the distractions which then beset him, and accompanied with the admission which Johnson did not omit, that the world had taught him knowledge where books had not; that whatever he wrote he did better than any other man could do; that he well deserved his place in Westminster Abbey, and that every year he lived he would have deserved it better. It is astonishing how many thoughts, familiar now as household words, originated with Goldsmith, even to the famous saying that it was to conceal our thoughts that language had been given us; while, loose and ill considered as much of his philosophy occasionally is, his Essays and Citizen of the World contain views of life. and economy, political and social, which for subtlety and truth Burke never surpassed, nor the far-seeing wisdom of Adam Smith himself. To that fragmentary way of writing, the resource of his days of poverty, his present narrow necessities seemed again to have driven him back; for beside the Edgeware labours named, the latest of the Essays in the collection which now bears that title were written in the present year. They appeared in a new magazine, started by his acquaintance Captain Thompson and other members of the old

Wednesday's club: and comprised a humorous paper of imaginary Scotch marriages; a whimsical narrative of a noted sleep-walker; a gracefully written notice of Shenstone's Leasowes, full of sympathy for the kind thoughtful poet; and a capital attack on the sentimental school of comedy.

The latter showed his renewed anxieties in the direction of the stage. It was almost his only hope indeed, in the desperate distress to which he appeared to be verging; yet the old fears had been interposed by Colman, on the old hackneyed ground. The comedy of which the first draught had been completed a year before, and which in the interval had been recast and strengthened, was now in the hands of the Covent Garden manager; whose tedious suspended judgments made Goldsmith long for even Garrick's tender mercies. Indeed he had no present reason to think that the Drury Lane manager would not have treated him with unusual consideration, if his previous promise had not bound him to the other house. For the recent good understanding between them continued, and is observable in many little incidents of the time. The libellers who knew Garrick's weakness, for example, now assailed him through the side of Goldsmith; and not only was the latter accused of harbouring low writers busied in abusing his new ally (which Garrick had sense enough to laugh at), but Kenrick accused them both of conspiring against himself, and taunted the Drury Lane manager with his new literary favorites.' It is true, Garrick cleverly retorted, 'my literary favorites are

'men of the greatest honour and genius in this nation, and ' have all had the honour of being particularly abused by 'you. But your pretence of my having, in conjunction 'with Doctor Goldsmith, abused you in the Morning Chro'nicle, I most solemnly protest is false.' That still he has his laugh against Goldsmith seems also obvious enough, but it is all in good humour. Let him,' writes his correspondent Richard Burke from Grenada (where Edmund had obtained him an appointment while the Rockinghams were in power), bring home as many French airs as he pleases; I would have his song continue to be plain English. His poetry is all I can now have a concern 'in. Half the convex world intrudes between me and 'his old or new acquired accomplishments.' And better would Garrick have employed himself in giving Goldsmith practical proof, in connection with his new comedy, of the new interest in him which his Correspondence thus evinces, than in pursuing that luckless labour of management which just now excluded every other. One of the greatest mistakes of his life was committed at the end of this year. He had made many foul assaults upon Shakespeare in the way of stage adaptation; had without scruple turned plays into operas, and comedies into farces; had professed to correct with his own trash, the trash of Davenant, Cibber, and Tate; had profaned the affecting catastrophe of Romeo, made a pantomime of the Midsummer Dream, and given what Bishop Warburton called an elegant form to that monstrous composition' the Winter's Tale: but he did

not achieve his master-stroke till the close of the present year, when he produced Hamlet with Alterations. This he very justly characterised as the most impudent thing he had ever done in his life; but having sworn, as he says, not to leave the stage till he had rescued 'that noble play 'from all the rubbish of the fifth act,' he had cleared off the rubbish in a way that Voltaire himself might have envied. The Grave-diggers were gone, Osrick was gone, Yorick was gone; Hamlet had come back from England such a very tiger, that any body hearing his ohs and ahs, his startling exclamations and furious resolves, would have taken him for Cibber's Richard: more deplorable than all, men of wit and knowledge were found to second this mountebank impertinence; and even George Steevens (it is difficult to believe he was not laughing at Garrick, as he laughed at everybody) recommended that the omissions should be thrown into a farce, to be acted immediately after the tragedy. But though the stage was degraded by this absurdity for eight years, its author never dared to print it; for it was greatly 'disliked by the million,' says Mr. Victor the prompter, 'who love Shakespeare with all his glorious absurdities, and 'will not suffer a bold intruder to cut him up.' Not long before, Foote had proposed a parody on the Stratford Ode, in which a fellow to represent the nation should do homage to Garrick, reverentially repeating 'A nation's taste depends on you, perhaps a nation's virtue too;' to which Garrick should graciously answer Cock-a-doodle-doo!' Hamlet with Additions now justified Foote's witty malice: and its

author had better never have gone to France, nor heard the name of Voltaire.

France had this year, in Burke, a visitor from a more real stage; yet who brought back such visions of the court he had seen at Versailles, and of the young dauphiness Marie Antoinette, as might better have become one of Garrick's enchanted palaces than that hideous mockery of the Trianon. He saw little but an age of chivalry extant still, where something should have been visible to him of an age of starvation and retribution: and through the glittering formal state that surrounded the pomp of Louis the well-beloved, not a shadow of the antic Hunger, mocking the state and grinning at the pomp, would seem to have revealed itself to Edmund Burke. 'Beautiful' says Carlyle, in his immortal History, beautiful if seen from afar, resplendent 'like a sun; seen near at hand, a mere sun's atmosphere, hiding darkness, confused ferment of ruin!' Sixteen years earlier, Goldsmith had seen it near at hand: and now he and Burke were together on his friend's return; and together visited an exhibition in the Haymarket which had in it about as much reality as that Versailles show. This was The Puppets in Panton Street. Great was the celebrity of those small, well-pulled, ingenious performers; for nobody could detect the wires. Burke praised the dexterity of one puppet in particular, who tossed a pike with military precision; and Psha!' remarked Goldsmith with some warmth, 'I can do it better myself.' Boswell would have us believe that he was seriously jealous of those so famous