loved to pay festive visits on solitary and supperless days. Perhaps that paper on Public Rejoicings for 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 grieftaught sympathy, so much of the 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 shews 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 even up 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. 'Stran'gers, wanderers, and orphans,' too destitute for redress, too wretched for pity. Poor shivering girls' who had

seen happier days, and been flattered into beauty and into sin. Poor houseless creatures,' to whom the world,

D D

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 sorrow. The slightest misfortunes of the great, 'the most imaginary uneasiness of the rich, are aggravated 'with all the power of eloquence to engage attention; the poor weep unheeded, persecuted by every subordinate species of tyranny, and every law which gives others 'security becomes an enemy to them.' 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.

It was a resolution very manifest in his next literary labour. On the 29th of November, the Bee's brief life closed, with its eighth number; and in the following month its editor was sought out both by Doctor Smollett and by Mr. John Newbery 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 Drury Lane.

Goldsmith was passionately fond of the Theatre. In 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 a wise writer, that being happy, and seeing others happy, for two hours, is a duration of bliss not at all to be slighted by so short-lived a creature as man, it is certain 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.

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 acknowledge 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 what'ever; and the single consideration that there is no alter'native but to fly from him, in case of any neglect or 'contempt, to Mr. Rich, is enough to deter any man in his

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'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 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 distinctions 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 con'tinence 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 poor Ned Purdon drew up a number of anonymous suggestions as to 'how Mr. Garrick ought to behave.'

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 his time, was fairly exposed to it. I have turned to the playbills of the season directly preceding the appearance of Mr. Ralph's pamphlet, and find, amidst revivals of Fletcher's Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, and Shirley's