George Colman the younger became, at Westminster, the schoolfellow and associate of the present Archbishop of York, the Marquess of Anglesea, the late Earl of Buckinghamshire, Doctor Robert Willis, Mr. Reynolds, his brother dramatist, the present Earl Somers, and many other persons, who have since, like himself, become distinguished members of society.
The account which Mr. Colman gives of his introduction by his father to Johnson, Goldsmith, and Foote, when a child, is so highly graphic, and so strongly characteristic of the man, that we give an abridgement of it here:
"On the day of my introduction," says Colman, "Dr. Johnson was asked to dinner at my father's house in Soho-square, and the erudite savage came a full hour before his time. My father, having dressed himself hastily, took me with him into the drawing-room.
"On our entrance, we found Johnson sitting in a fauteuil of rose-coloured satin. He was dressed in a rusty suit of brown, cloth dittos, with black worsted stockings; his old yellow wig was of formidable dimensions; and the learned head which sustained it rolled about in a seemingly paralytic motion; but, in the performance of its orbit, it inclined chiefly to one shoulder.
"He deigned not to rise on our entrance; and we stood before him while he and my father talked. There was soon a pause in the colloquy; and my father, making his advantage of it, took me by the hand, and said,—'Dr. Johnson, this is a little Colman.' The doctor bestowed a slight ungracious glance upon me, and, continuing the rotary motion of his head, renewed the previous conversation. Again there was a pause;—again the anxious father, who had failed in his first effort, seized the opportunity for pushing his progeny, with—'This is my son, Dr. Johnson.' The great man's contempt for me was now roused to wrath; and, knitting his brows, he exclaimed in a voice of thunder, 'I see him, sir!' He then fell back in his rose-coloured satin fauteuil, as if giving himself up to meditation; implying that he would not be further plagued, either with an old fool or a young one.
"After this rude rebuff from the doctor, I had the additional felicity to be placed next to him at dinner: he was silent over his meal; but I observed that he was, as Shylock says of Lancelot Gobbo, 'a huge feeder;' and during the display of his voracity, (which was worthy of Bolt Court,) the perspiration fell in copious drops from his visage upon the table-cloth."
"Oliver Goldsmith, several years before my luckless presentation to Johnson, proved how 'doctors differ.' I was only five years old when Goldsmith took me on his knee, while he was drinking coffee, one evening, with my father, and began to play with me; which amiable act I returned with the ingratitude of a peevish brat, by giving him a very smart slap in the face; it must have been a tingler, for it left the marks of my little spiteful paw upon his cheek. This infantile outrage was followed by summary justice; and I was locked up by my indignant father in an adjoining room, to undergo solitary imprisonment in the dark. Here I began to howl and scream most abominably; which was no bad step towards liberation, since those who were not inclined to pity me might be likely to set me free, for the purpose of abating a nuisance.
"At length a generous friend appeared to extricate me from jeopardy, and that generous friend was no other than the man I had so wantonly molested by assault and battery; it was the tender-hearted doctor himself, with a lighted candle in his hand, and a smile upon his countenance, which was still partially red from the effects of my petulance. I sulked and sobbed, and he fondled and soothed; till I began to brighten. Goldsmith, who, in regard to children, was like the village preacher he has so beautifully described,—for
'Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed,'—
seized the propitious moment of returning good-humour; so he put down the candle, and began to conjure. He placed three hats, which happened to be in the room, upon the carpet, and a shilling under each: the shillings he told me, were England, France, and Spain. 'Hey, presto, cockolorum!' cried the doctor,—and, lo! on uncovering the shillings which had been dispersed, each beneath a separate hat, they were all found congregated under one. I was no politician at five years old, and, therefore, might not have wondered at the sudden revolution which brought England, France, and Spain all under one crown; but, as I was also no conjuror, it amazed me beyond measure. Astonishment might have amounted to awe for one who appeared to me gifted with the power of performing miracles, if the good-nature of the man had not obviated my dread of the magician; but, from that time, whenever the doctor came to visit my father,