WRITTEN BY DR. JOHNSON, SPOKEN BY MR. BENSLEY.2

PRESS'D by the load of life, the weary mind
Surveys the general toil of human kind;
With cool submission joins the laboring train,
And social sorrow loses half its pain:

Our anxious bard, without complaint, may share
This bustling season's epidemic care,
Like Cæsar's pilot,3 dignified by fate,

Toss'd in one common storm with all the great;
Distress'd alike, the statesman and the wit,
When one a borough courts, and one the pit.
The busy candidates for power and fame,
Have hopes, and fears, and wishes, just the same;
Disabled both to combat, or to fly,

Must hear all taunts, and hear without reply.
Uncheck'd, on both loud rabbles vent their rage,
As mongrels bay the lion in a cage.

1 Prologue: This prologue, which reveals unusual melancholy, was the only piece of Johnson's work given to the public in 1768. As first printed the fifth line read "our little bard," but at Goldsmith's request these words were changed. Writers of prologues were not always complimentary. So Garrick refers to an author's play as "his poetic brat." (Prologue to Eugenia.)

2 Mr. Bensley: Robert Bensley (1738-1817) was given his first engagement by Garrick at Drury Lane in 1765. He then went over to Covent Garden. His Iago and Malvolio were said to be very good.

› Cæsar's pilot : The reference is to a story told by Plutarch of Cæsar's voyage across the Adriatic before making battle with Pompey.

Th' offended burgess hoards his angry tale, For that blest year when all that vote may rail; Their schemes of spite the poet's foes dismiss, Till that glad night when all that hate may hiss. "This day the powder'd curls and golden coat," Says swelling Crispin,1 "begg'd a cobbler's vote.” "This night, our wit," the pert apprentice cries, "Lies at my feet I hiss him, and he dies."

The great, 't is true, can charm th' electing tribe ;
The bard may supplicate, but cannot bribe.
Yet, judged by those whose voices ne'er were sold,
He feels no want of ill-persuading gold;

But, confident of praise, if praise be due,
Trusts without fear, to merit, and to you.

1 Crispin A Christian martyr of Rome who became the patron saint of shoemakers. The term is here synonymous with

"shoemaker."

THE GOOD-NATURED MAN

ACT THE FIRST

Scene, AN APARTMENT IN YOUNG HONEYWOOD'S HOUSE. Enter Sir William Honeywood and Jarvis.

Sir William. Good Jarvis, make no apologies for this honest bluntness. Fidelity like yours is the best excuse for every freedom.

Jarvis. I can't help being blunt, and being very angry, too, when I hear you talk of disinheriting so good, so worthy a young gentleman as your nephew, my master. All the world loves him.1

Sir William. Say rather, that he loves all the world; that is his fault..

Jarvis. I am sure there is no part of it more dear to him than you are, though he has not seen you since he was a child.

Sir William. What signifies this affection to me, or how can I be proud of a place in a heart where every sharper and coxcomb find an easy entrance?

Jarvis. I grant you that he is rather too goodnatured; that he's too much every man's man; that he laughs this minute with one, and cries the next with another; but whose instructions may he thank for all this?

Sir William. Not mine, sure? My letters to him

1 All the world loves him: In Mr. Burchell's account of the character of Sir William Thornhill in The Vicar of Wakefield (chap. iii), similar sentiments are expressed.

during my employment in Italy taught him only that philosophy which might prevent, not defend, his errors.

Jarvis. Faith, begging your honor's pardon, I'm sorry they taught him any philosophy at all; it has only served to spoil him. This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey. For my own part, whenever I hear him mention the name on 't, I'm always sure he 's going to play the fool.

Sir William. Don't let us ascribe his faults to his philosophy, I entreat you. No, Jarvis, his good nature arises rather from his fears of offending the importu nate, than his desire of making the deserving happy. Jarvis. What it rises from, I don't know. But, to be sure, everybody has it that asks for it.

1

Sir William. Ay, or that does not ask it. I have been now for some time a concealed spectator 1 of his follies, and find them as boundless as his dissipation.

Jarvis. And yet, faith, he has some fine name or other for them all. He calls his extravagance generosity; and his trusting everybody, universal benevolence. It was but last week he went security for a fellow whose face he scarce knew, and that he called an act of exalted mu - munificence; ay, that was the name he gave it.

mu

Sir William. And upon that I proceed, as my last effort, though with very little hopes to reclaim him. That very fellow has just absconded, and I have taken up the security. Now, my intention is to involve him in fictitious distress, before he has plunged himself into real calamity; to arrest him for that very debt; 2

1 concealed spectator: Note the similarity here to The Vicar of Wakefield, in which also there is an uncle named Sir William who secretly watches the fortunes of his family.

2 arrest him for

debt: Goldsmith himself had been