severely punished, and in connection with this very Bickerstaff. Some four years after the present date, that wretched man was driven from society with an infamous stain, and Kenrick grossly connected it by allusion with Garrick; to whom at the very time, as we now know, the miserable culprit was writing from his hiding-place the most piteous petition for charity that one human being ever made to another. (I remember that during the interval of my 'small prosperity, I presented you, at different times, with some trifles; their value, I believe, might be about ten 'pounds: these would now feed and clothe me.') An action was commenced against the libeller, and dropped upon ample apology. 'I did not believe him guilty, but did it 'to plague the fellow,' said Kenrick to Thomas Evans. The worthy bookseller never spoke to him again. 6 Scoundrel as he was, it need not be denied that he had some cleverness. Johnson hit it off exactly when he described it as a faculty that made him public, without making him known. He used to lecture at the Devil and other taverns, on every conceivable subject, from Shakespeare to the perpetual motion, which he thought he had discovered; having been, before he got his Scotch doctorship and became Griffiths's hack, a scale or rule-maker. Hence Johnson's quiet answer to his attack on the Shakespeare, that he could not consider himself bound by his rules;' and similar advice Johnson always gave to Goldsmith, the next most frequent object of his attack. Never 'mind, sir,' he would say, at some new venom (for nothing escaped this Ishmael of criticism, not even the Traveller); a man whose business it is to be talked of, is much helped 'by being attacked. Fame, sir, is a shuttlecock: if it be ' struck only at one end of the room, it will soon fall to 'the ground; to keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.' So, too, Boswell remarking to him, four years after the present, that he thought Goldsmith the better for the attacks so frequently made upon him, 'Yes sir,' was the When Goldsmith reply but he does not think so yet. ' and I published each of us something at the same time, we were given to understand that we might review each 'other. Goldsmith was for accepting the offer. I said, no, 'set reviewers at defiance.' Unhappily, his friend never could do this; and even the lesson of retaliation' was learnt too late. Kenrick remained, to the last, his evil genius; and it seems to have been with a sort of uneasy desire to propitiate, that Goldsmith yielded to Griffin's solicitation at the close of the present year, and consented to take part in the editing of a new Gentleman's Journal in which Kenrick was a leading writer, and for which Hiffernan, Kelly, and some others were engaged. It died soon after it was born; and on some one remarking to him what an extraordinary thing so sudden a death was, 'Not ' at all, sir,' he answered: ( a very common case; it died ' of too many Doctors.' An amusing illustration which belongs nearly to this time, of inconvenience sometimes incurred from his Grub Street protégés and pensioners, will properly dismiss for the present this worshipful company of Kenricks and Hiffernans. The hero of the anecdote had all the worst qualities of the tribe; and 'how do you think he served 'me,' said Goldsmith, relating the incident to a friend. Why, sir, after staying away two years, he came one ' evening into my chambers, half drunk, as I was taking 6 6 a glass of wine with Topham Beauclerc and General Oglethorpe; and sitting himself down, with most into'lerable assurance inquired after my health and literary pursuits, as if we were upon the most friendly footing. 'I was at first so much ashamed of ever having known 'such a fellow, that I stifled my resentment, and drew him ' into a conversation on such topics as I knew he could talk upon; in which, to do him justice, he acquitted himself very reputably when all of a sudden, as if recollecting 'something, he pulled two papers out of his pocket, which 'he presented to me with great ceremony, saying, " Here, "my dear friend, is a quarter of a pound of tea, and a "half pound of sugar, I have brought you; for though "it is not in my power at present to pay you the two guineas you so generously lent me, you, nor any man ""else, shall ever have it to say that I want gratitude.” 'This,' added Goldsmith, was too much. I could no 'longer keep in my feelings, but desired him to turn out ' of my chambers directly; which he very coolly did, 'taking up his tea and sugar; and I never saw him after'wards.' Certainly Hogarth should have survived to depict this scene. None other could have given us the 6.66 6.66 fastidious face of Beauclerc, than whom no man ever showed a more uniform and even painful sense of the ridiculous, when the tea and sugar were produced. Oglethorpe was a recent acquaintance, and has become, by the compliment of Pope and in the page of Boswell, an historical name. Now thirty years older than Goldsmith, he survived him full ten years and to the last preserved that 'strong benevolence of soul' which connects his memory with the colonization of Georgia; as well as those Jacobite leanings which involved him in a court-martial after the affair of '45, and subsequently shelved him as a soldier. He entered Parliament, and distinguished himself as much by humane as by high tory crotchets. The sympathies which attracted him to Goldsmith, and continued their intimacy, appear in the commencement of the only letter that survives of their correspondence. 'How just, sir,' writes Oglethorpe, 'were your observations, that the poorest objects were by extreme poverty deprived of the benefit of hospitals erected ' for the relief of the poorest.' And he incloses five pounds for his friend to distribute as he may think proper. Nor were they without the other point of agreement which had attracted Oglethorpe to Johnson. For Goldsmith, though the social bearing of politics always interested him most, and he cared little at any time for its party questions, had something of a half-fanciful Jacobite leaning, dabbled now and then in Jacobite opinions, and was as ready for a hit at the 'Hanoverian rat' as Johnson himself. An anecdote of their stroll one day into Westminster Abbey, has preserved |