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heart were the natural bonds of a mutual sympathy and fast alliance, should throughout their lives have wholly lost the sense of this first unlucky meeting. As Goldsmith himself removed from the second edition of the Polite Learning much of the remark that had given Garrick most offence, and in the ordinary copies it is now no longer found, it may the more freely be admitted that the grounds of offence were not altogether imaginary. Indeed, besides what I have quoted, there were incidental expressions yet more likely to breed resentment in a sensitive, quick nature. 'I am not at present writing for a 'party,' said Goldsmith, but above theatrical connexions

' in every sense of the expression. I have no particular ' spleen against the fellow who sweeps the stage with the 'besom, or the hero who brushes it with his train. It were a matter of indifference to me, whether our heroines ' are in keeping, or our candle-snuffers burn their fingers, 'did not such make a great part of public care and polite conversation. Our actors assume all that state off the stage which they do on it; and, to use an expression 'borrowed from the green-room, every one is up in his 'part. I am sorry to say it, they seem to forget their 'real characters.' With sorrow is it also to be said, that here the writer was manifestly wrong. Mr. Ralph's 'implements' and 'harlequins' were not less tasteful and considerate, than this jeering tone.

There is no intellectual art so peculiarly circumstanced as that of the actor. If, in the hurried glare which sur

rounds him, each vanity and foible that he has comes forth in strong relief, it is hard to grudge him the better incidents to that brilliant lot for which he pays so dearly. His triumphs had need be bright and dazzling, for their fires are spent as soon as kindled; his enjoyments intense, for of all mental influences they wither soonest. He may plant in infinite hearts the seeds of goodness, of ideal beauty, and of practical virtue; but with their fruits his name will not be remembered, or remembered only as a name. And surely, if he devotes a genius that might command success in any profession, to one whose rewards, if they come at all, must be immediate as the pleasure and instruction it diffuses, it is a short-sighted temper that would eclipse the pleasure and deny the rewards.

The point of view at this time taken by Goldsmith was, in fact, obscured by his own unlucky fortunes; but the injustice he shrunk from committing in the case of the prosperous painter, Mr. Reynolds, he should not thus carelessly have inflicted on the prosperous actor, Mr. Garrick. The one artist might have claimed to be a painter of portraits, as the other was. Uneasy relations, indeed, which only exist between author and actor, have had a manifest tendency at all times unfairly to disparage the actor's intellectual claims, and to set any of the inferior arts above them. Nevertheless, the odds might be made more even. The deepest and rarest beauties of poetry are those which the actor cannot grasp; but, in the actor's startling triumphs, whether of movement, gesture, look, or tone,

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Thus, were accounts fairly

the author has no great share.
struck with the literary class, a Garrick might be honestly
left between the gentle and grand superiority of a Shak-
speare on the one hand, who, from the heights of his
immeasurable genius, smiles down help and fellowship upon
him; and the eternal petulance and pretensions of an
Arthur Murphy on the other, who, from the round of a
ladder to which of himself he never could have mounted,
looks down with ludicrous contempt on what Mr. Ralph
would call the implements' of his elevation.

But Doctor Smollett and Mr. Newbery have been waiting us all this while, and neither of them belonged to that leisurely class which can very well afford to wait. The Doctor was full of energy and movement always, as one of his own headlong heroes; and who remembers not the philanthropic bookseller in the Vicar of Wakefield, the good-natured man with the red-pimpled face, who had no sooner alighted but he was in haste to be gone, 'for he was ever on business of the utmost importance, ' and was at that time actually compiling materials for the 'history of Mr. Thomas Trip.' But not on Mr. Thomas Trip's affairs had the child-loving publisher now ventured up Breakneck Stairs; and upon other than the old Critical business was the author of Peregrine Pickle a visitor in Green Arbour Court. Both had new and important schemes in hand, and with both it was an object to secure the alliance and services of Goldsmith. Smollett had at all times not a little of the Pickle in him, and Newbery much

of the Mr. Trip; but there was a genial good-heartedness in both, which makes it natural and pleasant to have to single out these two men, as the first active friends and patrons of the author of the unsuccessful Bee. Their offers were of course accepted; and it seems to imply something, however slight, of a worldly advance in connection with them, that, in the month which followed, the luckless Bee was issued in an independent form by the Dodsleys, and Kenrick received instructions from Mr. Ralph Griffiths to treat it in the Monthly Review as the work of an ingenious person.

The 1st of January, 1760, saw the first venture launched. It was published for sixpence, embellished 'with curious copperplates,' and entitled 'The British 'Magazine, or Monthly Repository for Gentlemen and 'Ladies. By T. Smollett, M.D., and others.' It was dedicated with much fervour to Mr. Pitt; and Mr. Pitt's interest (greatly to the spleen of Horace Walpole, who thinks the matter worthy of mention in his Memoirs of George the Second) enabled Smollett to put it forth with a royal license, granted in consideration of the fact that Doctor Smollett had 'represented to his Majesty that he 'has been at great labour and expense in writing original 'pieces himself, and engaging other gentlemen to write original pieces.' The Doctor, in truth, had but lately left the 'Bench,' at the close of that three months' imprisonment for libel into which his spirited avowal of the authorship of a criticism on Admiral Knowles had betrayed him; and the

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king's patronage had probably been sought as a counterpoise to the king's prison. But the punishment had not been without its uses. In the nature of Smollett, to the last, there were not a few of the heedless impulses of boyhood; and from this three months' steady gaze on the sadder side of things, he seems to have turned with tempered and gentler thoughts. In the first number of the British Magazine was the opening of the tale which contained his most feminine heroine (Aurelia Darnel), and the most amiable and gentlemanly of his heroes (Sir Launcelot Greaves); for, though Sir Launcelot is mad, wise thoughts have made him so; and in the hope to 'remedy evils which the law cannot reach, to detect fraud and treason, to 'abase insolence, to mortify pride, to discourage slander, 'to disgrace immodesty, and to stigmatise ingratitude,' he stumbles through his odd adventures. There is a pleasure in connecting this alliance of Smollett and Goldsmith, with the first approach of our great humourist to that milder humanity and more genial wisdom which shed its mellow rays on Mathew Bramble.

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Nor were the services engaged from Oliver unworthy of his friend's Sir Launcelot. Side by side with the kindly enthusiast, appeared some of the most agreeable of the Essays which were afterwards re-published with their writer's name; and many which were never connected with it, until half a century after the writer's death. Here Mr. Rigmarole fell into that Boar's Head Reverie in Eastcheap, since so many times dreamt over, and so full of kindly

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