1772. again to have driven him back; for, besides the Edgeware Et. 44. labours just 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 (so-called, but strictly Lieutenant) Thompson and other members of the old Wednesday-club: and comprised a highly humorous paper of imaginary Scotch marriages, for which he stole some sentences from the Landlady in the Good Natured Man; 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, as full of good humour as of hard-hitting, on the sentimental school of comedy. *For an account of Thompson, who through Garrick's interest with Lord Sandwich and Sir Edward Hawke, obtained a command, and died a Commodore off the coast of Africa, see Gar. Cor. i. 402, and Percival Stockdale's Memoirs, ii. 26-8. As I may probably not again refer to this latter book, I here mention an affecting remark of Johnson's recorded in it which may help to make us very tolerant of whatever occasional harshnesses have been attributed to him here or elsewhere. The subject of drinking being mentioned, and Mrs. Williams wondering what pleasure men could take in making beasts of themselves, Johnson replied that very strong inducements existed to such excess, "for he who makes a beast "of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." (ii. 109.) On another occasion, however, in the year before Goldsmith's death, he gave a happier turn to the same subject. The passage is as curious and characteristic as anything Boswell has preserved for us. "Dr. Johnson observed, that our drinking less "than our ancestors was owing to the change from ale to wine. I remember, he "added, when all the decent people in Lichfield got drunk every night, and were "not the worse thought of. Ale was cheap, so you pressed strongly. When a 66 man must bring a bottle of wine, he is is not in such haste. . . . I remember when "people in England changed a shirt only once a week: a Pandour, when he gets "a shirt, greases it to make it last. Formerly, good tradesmen had no fire but "in the kitchen; never in the parlour, except on Sunday. My father, who was a "magistrate of Lichfield, lived thus. They never began to have a fire in the "parlour, but on leaving off business, or some great revolution of their life.”— Bos. iv. 55-6. CHAPTER XIV. PUPPETS AT DRURY LANE AND ELSEWHERE. 1772. 1772. THE resolute attack on sentimental comedy which I have traced to Goldsmith's hand in the new magazine, showed Et. 44. chiefly his own renewed anxieties in the direction of the stage. Another successful venture there, was indeed become almost his only hope 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 the year before, and which in the interval had been re-cast 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 1772. Æt. 44. 66 66 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 favourites. "My literary favourites," Garrick cleverly retorted, "are men of the greatest honour and genius in this nation, and have all had the honour, with myself, of being particularly abused by you. Your pretence of my having, "in conjunction with Doctor Goldsmith and others, abused you in the Morning Chronicle, I most solemnly protest is 66 false ; nay more, I never saw such abuse, or heard of it, till "within this hour." That still he has his laugh against Goldsmith seems also obvious enough, but it is all in good humour. A little before this date Richard Burke was writing to him from Grenada, to which after more than one "absence" in London, he was again returned, and after perpetrating a bad joke which he protests he thinks witty, "Let Goldsmith," he adds, "when he comes from France, be the judge. I 66 'hope that he will not leave his poetry there: let him 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 66 * A correspondent who signs himself "D. W-s," writes on the 2nd Oct. 1772 to warn Garrick that a very bitter letter against him, just published by Bladon, had been written by a young man who is making himself known as a first-rate genius. "I who know your merits as well as your faults, would wish you would take "method to undeceive this young man. His ears are always filled with accounts "of your villany. His name is Williams; he is intimate at Captain Pye's. Gold"smith knows him, and I have seen him go into Johnson's, but perhaps it was for "music. Rice, the instructor of English, was with him last night in the front "box of Drury-lane, and they seemed very intimate.” Garrick Correspondence, i. 487. What makes the signature of this letter rather curious, is the fact that John Kemble has written on his copy of the Letter to Garrick alluded to (now in the British Museum) the name of David Williams, as its writer. For a memoir of Williams, see Chalmers, and the Gent. Mag. for 1816. + Garrick Correspondence, ii. 341. In the same letter Garrick tells Kenrick : "Sir, I would have honoured you by giving the satisfaction of a gentleman, if you "could (as Shakspeare says) have screwed your courage to the sticking place, to "have taken it." 66 "between me and his old or new acquired accomplishments 1772. of any other kind.”* And far better would Garrick have Et. 44. 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 Garrick's life was committed at the end of this year. He had of late, needlessly suspecting a failure in his own continued powers of attraction, greatly overdone the ornamentalt part of his scenery and general management; but this was a venial fault. I refer to a graver trespass on good taste, which threw into the shadow all former like transgressions. He had, in other years, Gar. Correspondence, i. 401-2. + I have before me such a pleasant unpublished letter from the great painter Gainsborough remonstrating with him on this point, and altogether so characteristic of the writer, that I think it worth subjoining, postscript and all. Indeed in the postscript, containing allusion to the fine portrait of Garrick which Gainsborough had lately painted, some will probably find the principal reason why the rest of the letter was written. "SUNDAY MORNING (1772.) MY DEAR SIR, "When the streets are paved with Brilliants, and the skies made of Rainbows, "I suppose you'll be contented and satisfied with red, blue, and yellow. It "appears to me that Fashion, let it consist of false or true taste, will have its "run like a runaway horse; for when eyes and ears are thoroughly debauched "by glare and noise, the returning to modest truth will seem very gloomy "for a time, and I know you are cursedly puzzled how to make this retreat "without putting out your lights, and losing the advantage of all our new "discoveries of transparent painting, &c. &c.-how to satisfy your tawdry friends "whilst you steal back into the mild evening gleam and quiet middle term. "I'll tell you, my sprightly Genius, how this is to be done-maintain all your light, but spare the poor abused colors till the eye rests and recovers. 'Keep up your music by supplying the place of Noise by more sound, more "harmony and more tune, and split that cursed Fife and Drum. Whatever so "great a Genius as Mr. Garrick may say or do to support our false taste, he must "feel the truth of what I am now saying, that neither our Plays, Paintings, or "Music are any longer real works of invention, but the abuse of Nature's lights "and what has already been invented in former times. Adieu my dear Friend. Any commands to Bath.-T. G. A word to the wise; if you let your Portrait hang up so high only to consult your Room, it never can look without a "hardness of countenance, and the painting flat; it was calculated for breast"high, and will never have its effect or likeness otherwise." 66 1772. made many foul assaults upon Shakspeare in the way of stage Et. 44. adaptation; he had without scruple turned plays into operas, and comedies into farces; he had professed to correct with his own trash, the trash of Davenant, Cibber, and Tate; he had profaned the affecting catastrophe of Romeo and Juliet, made a pantomime of the Midsummer Night's Dream, and given what Bishop Warburton had the bad taste to call "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 imprudent 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 M. de Voltaire himself, who doubtless suggested it, 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 anybody 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 See his Memorandum to Sir W. Young; Garrick Correspondence, ii. 126. "This play of Shakspeare, in particular," he has the cool impertinence to write, "resembles a looking-glass exposed for sale, which reflects alternately the "funeral and the puppet-show, the venerable beggar soliciting charity, and the 66 blackguard rascal picking a pocket." And again: "I cannot answer for our 66 good friends in the gallery. You had better throw what remains of the piece into "a farce, to appear immediately afterwards. No foreigner who should happen to |