A member of more note was one Hugh Kelly, a second-rate author, who, as he became a kind of competitor of Goldsmith’s, deserves particular mention. He was an Irishman, about twenty-eight years of age, originally apprenticed to a staymaker in Dublin; then writer to a London attorney; then a Grub Street hack, scribbling for magazines and newspapers. Of late he had set up for theatrical censor and satirist, and, in a paper called Thespis, in emulation of Churchill’s Rosciad, had harassed many of the poor actors without mercy, and often without wit; but had lavished his incense on Garrick, who, in consequence, took him into favor. He was the author of several works of superficial merit, but which had sufficient vogue to inflate his vanity. This, however, must have been mortified on his first introduction to Johnson; after sitting a short time he got up to take leave, expressing a fear that a longer visit might be troublesome. “Not in the least, sir,” said the surly moralist, “I had forgotten you were in the room.” Johnson used to speak of him as a man who had written more than he had read.
A prime wag of this club was one of Goldsmith’s poor countrymen and hangers-on, by the name of Glover. He had originally been educated for the medical profession, but had taken in early life to the stage, though apparently without much success. While performing at Cork, he undertook, partly in jest, to restore life to the body of a malefactor, who had just been executed. To the astonishment of every one, himself among the number, he succeeded. The miracle took wind. He abandoned the stage, resumed the wig and cane, and considered his fortune as secure. Unluckily, there were not many dead people to be restored to life in Ireland; his practice did not equal his expectation, so he came to London, where he continued to dabble indifferently, and rather unprofitably, in physic and literature.
He was a great frequenter of the Globe and Devil taverns, where he used to amuse the company by his talent at story-telling and his powers of mimicry, giving capital imitations of Garrick, Foote, Coleman, Sterne, and other public characters of the day. He seldom happened to have money enough to pay his reckoning, but was always sure to find some ready purse among those who had been amused by his humors. Goldsmith, of course, was one of the readiest. It was through him that Glover was admitted to the Wednesday Club, of which his theatrical imitations became the delight. Glover, however, was a little anxious for the dignity of his patron, which appeared to him to suffer from the overfamiliarity of some of the members of the club. He was especially shocked by the free and easy tone in which Goldsmith was addressed by the pig butcher: “Come, Noll,” would he say, as he pledged him, “here’s my service to you, old boy.”
Glover whispered to Goldsmith that he “should not allow such liberties.” “Let him alone,” was the reply, “you’ll see how civilly I’ll let him down.” After a time, he called out, with marked ceremony and politeness, “Mr. B., I have the honor of drinking your good health.” Alas! dignity was not poor Goldsmith’s forte: he could keep no one at a distance. “Thank’ee, thank’ee, Noll,” nodded the pig-butcher, scarce taking the pipe out of his mouth. “I don’t see the effect of your reproof,” whispered Glover. “I give it up,” replied Goldsmith, with a good-humored shrug, “I ought to have known before now there is no putting a pig in the right way.”
Johnson used to be severe upon Goldsmith for mingling in these motley circles, observing that, having been originally poor, he had contracted a love for low company. Goldsmith, however, was guided not by a taste for what was low, but for what was comic and characteristic. It was the feeling of the artist; the feeling which furnished out some of his best scenes in familiar life; the feeling with which “rare Ben Jonson” sought those very haunts and circles in days of yore, to study “Every Man in His Humor.”
It was not always, however, that the humor of these associates was to his taste: as they became boisterous in their merriment he was apt to become depressed. “The company of fools,” says he, in one of his essays, “may at first make us smile; but at last never fails of making us melancholy.” “Often he would become moody,” says Glover, “and would leave the party abruptly to go home and brood over his misfortune.”
It is possible, however, that he went home for quite a different purpose; to commit to paper some scene or passage suggested for his comedy of The Good-Natured Man. The elaboration of humor is often a most serious task; and we have never witnessed a more perfect picture of mental misery than was once presented to us by a popular dramatic writer—still, we hope, living—whom we found in the agonies of producing a farce which subsequently set the theaters in a roar.