THE JESSAMY BRIDE

Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “we have eaten an excellent dinner, we are a company of intelligent men—although I allow that we should have difficulty in proving that we are so if it became known that we sat down with a Scotchman—and now pray do not mar the self-satisfaction which intelligent men experience after dining, by making assertions based on ignorance and maintained by sophistry.”

“Why, sir,” cried Goldsmith, “I doubt if the self-satisfaction of even the most intelligent of men—whom I take to be myself—is interfered with by any demonstration of an inferior intellect on the part of another.”

Edmund Burke laughed, understanding the meaning of the twinkle in Goldsmith's eye. Sir Joshua Reynolds, having reproduced—with some care—that twinkle, turned the bell of his ear-trumpet with a smile in the direction of Johnson; but Boswell and Garrick sat with solemn faces. The former showed that he was more impressed than ever with the conviction that Goldsmith was the most blatantly conceited of mankind, and the latter—as Burke perceived in a moment—was solemn in mimicry of Boswell's solemnity. When Johnson had given a roll or two on his chair and had pursed out his lips in the act of speaking, Boswell turned an eager face towards him, putting his left hand behind his ear so that he might not lose a word that might fall from his oracle. Upon Garrick's face was precisely the same expression, but it was his right hand that he put behind his ear.

Goldsmith and Burke laughed together at the marvellous imitation of the Scotchman by the actor, and at exactly the same instant the conscious and unconscious comedians on the other side of the table turned their heads in the direction first of Goldsmith, then of Burke. Both faces were identical as regards expression. It was the expression of a man who is greatly grieved. Then, with the exactitude of two automatic figures worked by the same machinery, they turned their heads again toward Johnson.

“Sir,” said Johnson, “your endeavour to evade the consequences of maintaining a silly argument by thrusting forward a question touching upon mankind in general, suggests an assumption on your part that my intelligence is of an inferior order to your own, and that, sir, I cannot permit to pass unrebuked.”

“Nay, sir,” cried Boswell, eagerly, “I cannot believe that Dr. Goldsmith's intention was so monstrous.”

“And the very fact of your believing that, sir, amounts almost to a positive proof that the contrary is the case,” roared Johnson.

“Pray, sir, do not condemn me on such evidence,” said Goldsmith.

“Men have been hanged on less,” remarked Burke. “But, to return to the original matter, I should like to know upon what facts——”

“Ah, sir, to introduce facts into any controversy on a point of art would indeed be a departure,” said Goldsmith solemnly. “I cannot countenance a proceeding which threatens to strangle the imagination.”

“And you require yours to be particularly healthy just now, Doctor. Did you not tell us that you were about to write a Natural History?” said Garrick.

“Well, I remarked that I had got paid for doing so—that's not just the same thing,” laughed Goldsmith.

“Ah, the money is in hand; the Natural History is left to the imagination,” said Reynolds. “That is the most satisfactory arrangement.”

“Yes, for the author,” said Burke. “Some time ago it was the book which was in hand, and the payment was left to the imagination.”

“These sallies are all very well in their way,” said Garrick, “but their brilliance tends to blind us to the real issue of the question that Dr. Goldsmith introduced, which I take it was, Why should not acting be included among the arts? As a matter of course, the question possesses no more than a casual interest to any of the gentlemen present, with the exception of Mr. Burke and myself. I am an actor and Mr. Burke is a statesman—another branch of the same profession—and therefore we are vitally concerned in the settlement of the question.”

“The matter never rose to the dignity of being a question, sir,” said Johnson. “It must be apparent to the humblest intelligence—nay, even to Boswell's—that acting is a trick, not a profession—a diversion, not an art. I am ashamed of Dr. Goldsmith for having contended to the contrary.”

“It must only have been in sport, sir,” said Boswell mildly.

“Sir, Dr. Goldsmith may have earned reprobation,” cried Johnson, “but he has been guilty of nothing so heinous as to deserve the punishment of having you as his advocate.”

“Oh, sir, surely Mr. Boswell is the best one in the world to pronounce an opinion as to what was said in sport, and what in earnest,” said Goldsmith. “His fine sense of humour——”

“Sir, have you seen the picture which he got painted of himself on his return from Corsica?” shouted Johnson.

“Gentlemen, these diversions may be well enough for you,” said Garrick, “but in my ears they sound as the jests of the crowd must in the ears of a wretch on his way to Tyburn. Think, sirs, of the position occupied by Mr. Burke and myself at the present moment. Are we to be branded as outcasts because we happen to be actors?”

“Undoubtedly you at least are, Davy,” cried Johnson. “And good enough for you too, you rascal!”

“And, for my part, I would rather be an outcast with David Garrick than become chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury,” said Goldsmith.

“Dr. Goldsmith, let me tell you that it is unbecoming in you, who have relations in the church, to make such an assertion,” said Johnson sternly. “What, sir, does friendship occupy a place before religion, in your estimation?”

“The Archbishop could easily get another chaplain, sir, but whither could the stage look for another Garrick?” said Goldsmith.

“Psha! Sir, the puppets which we saw last week in Panton street delighted the town more than ever Mr. Garrick did,” cried Johnson; and when he perceived that Garrick coloured at this sally of his, he lay back in his chair and roared with laughter.

Reynolds took snuff.

“Dr. Goldsmith said he could act as adroitly as the best of the puppets—I heard him myself,” said Boswell.

“That was only his vain boasting which you have so frequently noted with that acuteness of observation that makes you the envy of our circle,” said Burke. “You understand the Irish temperament perfectly, Mr. Boswell. But to resort to the original point raised by Goldsmith; surely, Dr. Johnson, you will allow that an actor of genius is at least on a level with a musician of genius.”

“Sir, I will allow that he is on a level with a fiddler, if that will satisfy you,” replied Johnson.

“Surely, sir, you must allow that Mr. Garrick's art is superior to that of Signor Piozzi, whom we heard play at Dr. Burney's,” said Burke.

“Yes, sir; David Garrick has the good luck to be an Englishman, and Piozzi the ill luck to be an Italian,” replied Johnson. “Sir, 't is no use affecting to maintain that you regard acting as on a level with the arts. I will not put an affront upon your intelligence by supposing that you actually believe what your words would imply.”

“You can take your choice, Mr. Burke,” said Goldsmith: “whether you will have the affront put upon your intelligence or your sincerity.”

“I am sorry that I am compelled to leave the company for a space, just as there seems to be some chance of the argument becoming really interesting to me personally,” said Garrick, rising; “but the fact is that I rashly made an engagement for this hour. I shall be gone for perhaps twenty minutes, and meantime you may be able to come to some agreement on a matter which, I repeat, is one of vital importance to Mr. Burke and myself; and so, sirs, farewell for the present.”

He gave one of those bows of his, to witness which was a liberal education in the days when grace was an art, and left the room.

“If Mr. Garrick's bow does not prove my point, no argument that I can bring forward will produce any impression upon you, sir,” said Goldsmith.

“The dog is well enough,” said Johnson; “but he has need to be kept in his place, and I believe that there is no one whose attempts to keep him in his place he will tolerate as he does mine.”

“And what do you suppose is Mr. Garrick's place, sir?” asked Goldsmith. “Do you believe that if we were all to stand on one another's shoulders, as certain acrobats do, with Garrick on the shoulder of the topmost man, we should succeed in keeping him in his proper place?”

“Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “your question is as ridiculous as anything you have said to-night, and to say so much, sir, is, let me tell you, to say a good deal.”

“What a pity it is that honest Goldsmith is so persistent in his attempts to shine,” whispered Boswell to Burke.

“'Tis a great pity, truly, that a lark should try to make its voice heard in the neighbourhood of a Niagara,” said Burke.

“Pray, sir, what is a Niagara?” asked Boswell.

“A Niagara?” said Burke. “Better ask Dr. Goldsmith; he alluded to it in his latest poem. Dr. Goldsmith, Mr. Boswell wishes to know what a Niagara is.”

“Sir,” said Goldsmith, who had caught every word of the conversation in undertone. “Sir, Niagara is the Dr. Johnson of the New World.”

CHAPTER II.

The conversation took place in the Crown and Anchor tavern in the Strand, where the party had just dined. Dr. Johnson had been quite as good company as usual. There was a general feeling that he had rarely insulted Boswell so frequently in the course of a single evening—but then, Boswell had rarely so laid himself open to insult as he had upon this evening—and when he had finished with the Scotchman, he turned his attention to Garrick, the opportunity being afforded him by Oliver Goldsmith, who had been unguarded enough to say a word or two regarding that which he termed “the art of acting.”

“Dr. Goldsmith, I am ashamed of you, sir,” cried the great dictator. “Who gave you the authority to add to the number of the arts 'the art of acting'? We shall hear of the art of dancing next, and every tumbler who kicks up the sawdust will have the right to call himself an artist. Madame Violante, who gave Peggy Woffington her first lesson on the tight rope, will rank with Miss Kauffman, the painter—nay, every poodle that dances on its hind leg's in public will be an artist.”

It was in vain that Goldsmith endeavoured to show that the admission of acting to the list of arts scarcely entailed such consequences as Johnson asserted would be inevitable, if that admission were once made; it was in vain that Garrick asked if the fact that painting was included among the arts, caused sign painters to claim for themselves the standing of artists; and, if not, why there was any reason to suppose that the tumblers to whom Johnson had alluded would advance their claims to be on a level with the highest interpreters of the emotions of humanity. Dr. Johnson roared down every suggestion that was offered to him most courteously by his friends.

Then, in the exuberance of his spirits, he insulted Boswell and told Burke he did not know what he was talking about. In short, he was thoroughly Johnsonian, and considered himself the best of company, and eminently capable of pronouncing an opinion as to what were the elements of a clubable man.

He had succeeded in driving one of his best friends out of the room, and in reducing the others of the party to silence—all except Boswell, who, as usual, tried to-start him upon a discussion of some subtle point of theology. Boswell seemed invariably to have adopted this course after he had been thoroughly insulted, and to have been, as a rule, very successful in its practice: it usually led to his attaining to the distinction of another rebuke for him to gloat over.

He now thought that the exact moment had come for him to find out what Dr. Johnson thought on the subject of the immortality of the soul.

“Pray, sir,” said he, shifting his chair so as to get between Reynolds' ear-trumpet and his oracle—his jealousy of Sir Joshua's ear-trumpet was as great as his jealousy of Goldsmith. “Pray, sir, is there any evidence among the ancient Egyptians that they believed that the soul of man was imperishable?”

“Sir,” said Johnson, after a huge roll or two, “there is evidence that the ancient Egyptians were in the habit of introducing a memento mori at a feast, lest the partakers of the banquet should become too merry.”

“Well, sir?” said Boswell eagerly, as Johnson made a pause.

“Well, sir, we have no need to go to the trouble of introducing such an object, since Scotchmen are so plentiful in London, and so ready to accept the offer of a dinner,” said Johnson, quite in his pleasantest manner.

Boswell was more elated than the others of the company at this sally. He felt that he, and he only, could succeed in drawing his best from Johnson.

“Nay, Dr. Johnson, you are too hard on the Scotch,” he murmured, but in no deprecatory tone. He seemed to be under the impression that every one present was envying him, and he smiled as if he felt that it was necessary for him to accept with meekness the distinction of which he was the recipient.

“Come, Goldy,” cried Johnson, turning his back upon Boswell, “you must not be silent, or I will think that you feel aggrieved because I got the better of you in the argument.”

“Argument, sir?” said Goldsmith. “I protest that I was not aware that any argument was under consideration. You make short work of another's argument, Doctor.”

“'T is due to the logical faculty which I have in common with Mr. Boswell, sir,” said Johnson, with a twinkle.

“The logical faculty of the elephant when it lies down on its tormentor, the wolf,” muttered Goldsmith, who had just acquired some curious facts for his Animated Nature.

At that moment one of the tavern waiters entered the room with a message to Goldsmith that his cousin, the Dean, had just arrived and was anxious to obtain permission to join the party.

“My cousin, the Dean! What Dean'? What does the man mean?” said Goldsmith, who appeared to be both surprised and confused.

“Why, sir,” said Boswell, “you have told us more than once that you had a cousin who was a dignitary of the church.”

“Have I, indeed?” said Goldsmith. “Then I suppose, if I said so, this must be the very man. A Dean, is he?”

“Sir, it is ill-mannered to keep even a curate waiting in the common room of a tavern,” said Johnson, who was not the man to shrink from any sudden addition to his audience of an evening. “If your relation were an Archbishop, sir, this company would be worthy to receive him. Pray give the order to show him into this room.” Goldsmith seemed lost in thought. He gave a start when Johnson had spoken, and in no very certain tone told the waiter to lead the clergyman up to the room. Oliver's face undoubtedly wore an expression of greater curiosity than that of any of his friends, before the waiter returned, followed by an elderly and somewhat undersized clergyman wearing a full bottomed wig and the bands and apron of a dignitary of the church. He walked stiffly, with an erect carriage that gave a certain dignity to his short figure. His face was white, but his eyebrows were extremely bushy. He had a slight squint in one eye.

The bow which he gave on entering the room was profuse but awkward. It contrasted with the farewell salute of Garrick on leaving the table twenty minutes before. Every one present, with the exception of Oliver, perceived in a moment a family resemblance in the clergyman's bow to that with which Goldsmith was accustomed to receive his friends. A little jerk which the visitor gave in raising his head was laughably like a motion made by Goldsmith, supplemental to his usual bow.

“Gentlemen,” said the visitor, with a wave of his hand, “I entreat of you to be seated.” His voice and accent more than suggested Goldsmith's, although he had only a suspicion of an Irish brogue. If Oliver had made an attempt to disown his relationship, no one in the room would have regarded him as sincere. “Nay, gentlemen, I insist,” continued the stranger; “you embarrass me with your courtesy.”

“Sir,” said Johnson, “you will not find that any company over which I have the honour to preside is found lacking in its duty to the church.”

“I am the humblest of its ministers, sir,” said the stranger, with a deprecatory bow. Then he glanced round the room, and with an exclamation of pleasure went towards Goldsmith. “Ah! I do not need to ask which of this distinguished company is my cousin Nolly—I beg your pardon, Oliver—ah, old times—old times!” He had caught Goldsmith's hands in both his own and was looking into his face with a pathetic air. Goldsmith seemed a little embarrassed. His smile was but the shadow of a smile. The rest of the party averted their heads, for in the long silence that followed the exclamation of the visitor, there was an element of pathos.

Curiously enough, a sudden laugh came from Sir Joshua Reynolds, causing all faces to be turned in his direction. An aspect of stern rebuke was now worn by Dr. Johnson. The painter hastened to apologise.

“I ask your pardon, sir,” he said, gravely, “but—sir, I am a painter—my name is Reynolds—and—well, sir, the family resemblance between you and our dear friend Dr. Goldsmith—a resemblance that perhaps only a painter's eye could detect—seemed to me so extraordinary as you stood together, that——”

“Not another word, sir, I entreat of you,” cried the visitor. “My cousin Oliver and I have not met for—how many years is it, Nolly? Not eleven—no, it cannot be eleven—and yet——”

“Ah, sir,” said Oliver, “time is fugitive—very fugitive.”

He shook his head sadly.

“I am pleased to hear that you have acquired this knowledge, which the wisdom of the ancients has crystallised in a phrase,” said the stranger. “But you must present me to your friends, Noll—Oliver, I mean. You, sir”—he turned to Reynolds—“have told me your name. Am I fortunate enough to be face to face with Sir Joshua Reynolds? Oh, there can be no doubt about it. Oliver dedicated his last poem to you. Sir, I am your servant. And you, sir”—he turned to Burke—“I seem to have seen your face somewhere—it is strangely familiar——”

“That gentleman is Mr. Burke, sir,” said Goldsmith. He was rapidly recovering his embarrassment, and spoke with something of an air of pride, as he made a gesture with his right hand towards Burke. The clergyman made precisely the same gesture with his left hand, crying——

“What, Mr. Edmund Burke, the friend of liberty—the friend of the people?”

“The same, sir,” said Oliver. “He is, besides, the friend of Oliver Goldsmith.”

“Then he is my friend also,” said the clergyman. “Sir, to be in a position to shake you by the hand is the greatest privilege of my life.”

“You do me great honor, sir,” said Burke.

Goldsmith was burning to draw the attention of his relative to Dr. Johnson, who on his side was looking anything but pleased at being so far neglected.

“Mr. Burke, you are our countryman—Oliver's and mine—and I know you are sound on the Royal Marriage Act. I should dearly like to have a talk with you on that iniquitous measure. You opposed it, sir?”

“With all my power, sir,” said Burke. “Give me your hand again, sir. Mrs. Luttrel was an honour to her sex, and it is she who confers an honour upon the Duke of Cumberland, not the other way about.”

“You are with me, Mr. Burke? Eh, what is the matter, Cousin Noll? Why do you work with your arm that way?”

“There are other gentlemen in the room, Mr. Dean,” said Oliver.

“They can wait,” cried Mr. Dean. “They are certain to be inferior to Mr. Burke and Sir Joshua Reynolds. If I should be wrong, they will not feel mortified at what I have said.”

“This is Mr. Boswell, sir,” said Goldsmith.

“Mr. Boswell—of where, sir?”

“Mr. Boswell, of—of Scotland, sir.”

“Scotland, the land where the clergymen write plays for the theatre. Your clergymen might be better employed, Mr.—Mr.——”

“Boswell, sir.”

“Mr. Boswell. Yes, I hope you will look into this matter should you ever visit your country again—a remote possibility, from all that I can learn of your countrymen.”

“Why, sir, since Mr. Home wrote his tragedy of 'Douglas'——” began Boswell, but he was interrupted by the stranger.

“What, you would condone his offence?” he cried. “The fact of your having a mind to do so shows that the clergy of your country are still sadly lax in their duty, sir. They should have taught you better.”

“And this is Dr. Johnson, sir,” said Goldsmith in tones of triumph.

His relation sprang from his seat and advanced to the head of the table, bowing profoundly.

“Dr. Johnson,” he cried, “I have long desired to meet you, sir.”

“I am your servant, Mr. Dean,” said Johnson, towering above him as he got—somewhat awkwardly—upon his feet. “No gentleman of your cloth, sir—leaving aside for the moment all consideration of the eminence in the church to which you have attained—fails to obtain my respect.”

“I am glad of that, sir,” said the Dean. “It shows that you, though a Non-conformist preacher, and, as I understand, abounding in zeal on behalf of the cause of which you are so able an advocate, are not disposed to relinquish the example of the great Wesley in his admiration for the church.”

“Sir,” said Johnson, with great dignity, but with a scowl upon his face. “Sir, you are the victim of an error as gross as it is unaccountable. I am not a Non-conformist—on the contrary, I would give the rogues no quarter.”

“Sir,” said the clergyman, with the air of one administering a rebuke to a subordinate. “Sir, such intoleration is unworthy of an enlightened country and an age of some culture. But I ask your pardon; finding you in the company of distinguished gentlemen, I was, led to believe that you were the great Dr. Johnson, the champion of the rights of conscience. I regret that I was mistaken.”

“Sir!” cried Goldsmith, in great consternation—for Johnson was rendered speechless through being placed in the position of the rebuked, instead of occupying his accustomed place as the rebuker. “Sir, this is the great Dr. Johnson—nay, there is no Dr. Johnson but one.”

“'Tis so like your good nature, Cousin Oliver, to take the side of the weak,” said the clergyman, smiling. “Well, well, we will take the honest gentleman's greatness for granted; and, indeed, he is great in one sense: he is large enough to outweigh you and me put together in one scale. To such greatness we would do well to bow.”

“Heavens, sir!” said Boswell in a whisper that had something of awe in it. “Is it possible that you have never heard of Dr. Samuel Johnson?”

“Alas! sir,” said the stranger, “I am but a country parson. I cannot be expected to know all the men who are called great in London. Of course, Mr. Burke and Sir Joshua Reynolds have a European reputation; but you, Mr.—Mr.—ah! you see I have e'en forgot your worthy name, sir, though I doubt not you are one of London's greatest. Pray, sir, what have you written that entitles you to speak with such freedom in the presence of such gentlemen as Mr. Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and—I add with pride—Oliver Goldsmith?”

“I am the friend of Dr. Johnson, sir,” muttered Boswell.

“And he has doubtless greatness enough—avoirdupois—to serve for both! Pray, Oliver, as the gentleman from Scotland is too modest to speak for himself, tell me what he has written.”

“He has written many excellent works, sir, including an account of Corsica,” said Goldsmith, with some stammering.

“And his friend, Dr. Johnson, has he attained to an equally dizzy altitude in literature?”

“You are surely jesting, sir,” said Goldsmith. “The world is familiar with Dr. Johnson's Dictionary.”

“Alas, I am but a country parson, as you know, Oliver, and I have no need for a dictionary, having been moderately well educated. Has the work appeared recently, Dr. Johnson?”

But Dr. Johnson had turned his back upon the stranger, and had picked up a volume which Tom Davies, the bookseller, had sent to him at the Crown and Anchor, and had buried his face in its pages, bending it, as was his wont, until the stitching had cracked, and the back was already loose.

“Your great friend, Noll, is no lover of books, or he would treat them with greater tenderness,” said the clergyman. “I would fain hope that the purchasers of his dictionary treat it more fairly than he does the work of others. When did he bring out his dictionary?”

“Eighteen years ago,” said Oliver.

“And what books has he written within the intervening years?”

“He has been a constant writer, sir, and is the most highly esteemed of our authors.”

“Nay, sir, but give me a list of his books published within the past eighteen years, so that I may repair my deplorable ignorance. You, cousin, have written many works that the world would not willingly be without; and I hear that you are about to add to that already honourable list; but your friend—oh, you have deceived me, Oliver!—he is no true worker in literature, or he would—nay, he could not, have remained idle all these years. How does he obtain his means of living if he will not use his pen?”

“He has a pension from the King, sir,” stuttered Oliver. “I tell you, sir, he is the most learned man in Europe.”

“His is a sad case,” said the clergyman. “To refrain from administering to him the rebuke which he deserves would be to neglect an obvious duty.” He took a few steps towards Johnson and raised his head. Goldsmith fell into a chair and buried his face in his hands; Boswell's jaw fell; Burke and Reynolds looked by turns grave and amused. “Dr. Johnson,” said the stranger, “I feel that it is my duty as a clergyman to urge upon you to amend your way of life.”

“Sir,” shouted Johnson, “if you were not a clergyman I would say that you were a very impertinent fellow!”

“Your way of receiving a rebuke which your conscience—if you have one—tells you that you have earned, supplements in no small measure the knowledge of your character which I have obtained since entering this room, sir. You may be a man of some parts, Dr. Johnson, but you have acknowledged yourself to be as intolerant in matters of religion as you have proved yourself to be intolerant of rebuke, offered to you in a friendly spirit. It seems to me that your habit is to browbeat your friends into acquiescence with every dictum that comes from your lips, though they are workers—not without honour—at that profession of letters which you despise—nay, sir, do not interrupt me. If you did not despise letters, you would not have allowed eighteen years of your life to pass without printing at least as many books. Think you, sir, that a pension was granted to you by the state to enable you to eat the bread of idleness while your betters are starving in their garrets? Dr. Johnson, if your name should go down to posterity, how do you think you will be regarded by all discriminating men? Do you think that those tavern dinners at which you sit at the head of the table and shout down all who differ from you, will be placed to your credit to balance your love of idleness and your intolerance? That is the question which I leave with you; I pray you to consider it well; and so, sir, I take my leave of you. Gentlemen, Cousin Oliver, farewell, sirs. I trust I have not spoken in vain.”

He made a general bow—an awkward bow—and walked with some dignity to the door. Then he turned and bowed again before leaving the room.

CHAPTER III.

When he had disappeared, the room was very silent.

Suddenly Goldsmith, who had remained sitting at the table with his face buried in his hands, started up, crying out, “'Rasse-las, Prince of Abyssinia'! How could I be so great a fool as to forget that he published 'Rasselas' since the Dictionary?” He ran to the door and opened it, calling downstairs: “'Rasselas, Prince of Abysinia'!” “Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia'!”

“Sir!” came the roar of Dr. Johnson. “Close that door and return to your chair, if you desire to retain even the smallest amount of the respect which your friends once had for you. Cease your bawling, sir, and behave decently.”

Goldsmith shut the door.

“I did you a gross injustice, sir,” said he, returning slowly to the table. “I allowed that man to assume that you had published no book since your Dictionary. The fact is, that I was so disturbed at the moment I forgot your 'Rasselas.'”

“If you had mentioned that book, you would but have added to the force of your relation's contention, Dr. Goldsmith,” said Johnson. “If I am suspected of being an idle dog, the fact that I have printed a small volume of no particular merit will not convince my accuser of my industry.”

“Those who know you, sir,” cried Goldsmith, “do not need any evidence of your industry. As for that man——”

“Let the man alone, sir,” thundered Johnson.

“Pray, why should he let the man alone, sir?” said Boswell.

“Because, in the first place, sir, the man is a clergyman, in rank next to a Bishop; in the second place, he is a relative of Dr. Goldsmith's; and, in the third place, he was justified in his remarks.”

“Oh, no, sir,” said Boswell. “We deny your generous plea of justification. Idle! Think of the dedications which you have written even within the year.”

“Psha! Sir, the more I think of them the—well, the less I think of them, if you will allow me the paradox,” said Johnson. “Sir, the man is right, and there's an end on't. Dr. Goldsmith, you will convey my compliments to your cousin, and assure him of my good will. I can forgive him for everything, sir, except his ignorance respecting my Dictionary. Pray what is his name, sir?”

“His name, sir, his name?” faltered Goldsmith.

“Yes, sir, his name. Surely the man has a name,” said Johnson.

“His name, sir, is—is—God help me, sir, I know not what is his name.”

“Nonsense, Dr. Goldsmith! He is your cousin and a Dean. Mr. Boswell tells me that he has heard you refer to him in conversation; if you did so in a spirit of boasting, you erred.”

For some moments Goldsmith was silent. Then, without looking up, he said in a low tone:

“The man is no cousin of mine; I have no relative who is a Dean.”

“Nay, Dr. Goldsmith, you need not deny it,” cried Boswell. “You boasted of him quite recently, and in the presence of Mr. Garrick, too.”

“Mr. Boswell's ear is acute, Goldsmith,” said Burke with a smile.

“His ears are so long, sir, one is not surprised to find the unities of nature are maintained when one hears his voice,” remarked Goldsmith in a low tone.

“Here comes Mr. Garrick himself,” said Reynolds as the door was opened and Garrick returned, bowing in his usual pleasant manner as he advanced to the chair which he had vacated not more than half an hour before. “Mr. Garrick is an impartial witness on this point.”

“Whatever he may be on some other points,” remarked Burke.

“Gentlemen,” said Garrick, “you seem to be somewhat less harmonious than you were when I was compelled to hurry away to keep my appointment. May I inquire the reason of the difference?”

“You may not, sir!” shouted Johnson, seeing that Boswell was burning to acquaint Garrick with what had occurred. Johnson quickly perceived that it would be well to keep the visit of the clergyman a secret, and he knew that it would have no chance of remaining one for long if Garrick were to hear of it. He could imagine Garrick burlesquing the whole scene for the entertainment of the Burney girls or the Horneck family. He had heard more than once of the diversion which his old pupil at Lichfield had created by his mimicry of certain scenes in which he, Johnson, played an important part. He had been congratulating himself upon the fortunate absence of the actor during the visit of the clergyman.

“You may tell Mr. Garrick nothing, sir,” he repeated, as Garrick looked with a blank expression of interrogation around the company.

“Sir,” said Boswell, “my veracity is called in question.”

“What is a question of your veracity, sir, in comparison with the issues that have been in the balance during the past half-hour?” cried Johnson.

“Nay, sir, one question,” said Burke, seeing that Boswell had collapsed. “Mr. Garrick—have you heard Dr. Goldsmith boast of having a Dean for a relative?”

“Why, no, sir,” replied Garrick; “but I heard him say that he had a brother who deserved to be a Dean.”

“And so I had,” cried Goldsmith. “Alas! I cannot say that I have now. My poor brother died a country clergyman a few years ago.”

“I am a blind man so far as evidence bearing upon things seen is concerned,” said Johnson; “but it seemed to me that some of the man's gestures—nay, some of the tones of his voice as well—resembled those of Dr. Goldsmith. I should like to know if any one at the table noticed the similarity to which I allude.”

“I certainly noticed it,” cried Boswell eagerly.

“Your evidence is not admissible, sir,” said Johnson. “What does Sir Joshua Reynolds say?”

“Why, sir,” said Reynolds with a laugh, and a glance towards Garrick, “I confess that I noticed the resemblance and was struck by it, both as regards the man's gestures and his voice. But I am as convinced that he was no relation of Dr. Goldsmith's as I am of my own existence.”

“But if not, sir, how can you account for——”

Boswell's inquiry was promptly checked by Johnson.

“Be silent, sir,” he thundered. “If you have left your manners in Scotland in an impulse of generosity, you have done a foolish thing, for the gift was meagre out of all proportion to the needs of your country in that respect. Sir, let me tell you that the last word has been spoken touching this incident. I will consider any further reference to it in the light of a personal affront.”

After a rather awkward pause, Garrick said:

“I begin to suspect that I have been more highly diverted during the past half-hour than any of this company.”

“Well, Davy,” said Johnson, “the accuracy of your suspicion is wholly dependent on your disposition to be entertained. Where have you been, sir, and of what nature was your diversion?”

“Sir,” said Garrick, “I have been with a poet.”

“So have we, sir—with the greatest poet alive—the author of 'The Deserted Village'—and yet you enter to find us immoderately glum,” said Johnson. He was anxious to show his friend Goldsmith that he did not regard him as accountable for the visit of the clergyman whom he quite believed to be Oliver's cousin, in spite of the repudiation of the relationship by Goldsmith himself, and the asseveration of Reynolds.

“Ah, sir, mine was not a poet such as Dr. Goldsmith,” said Garrick. “Mine was only a sort of poet.”

“And pray, sir, what is a sort of poet?” asked Boswell.

“A sort of poet, sir, is one who writes a sort of poetry,” replied Garrick.

He then began a circumstantial account of how he had made an appointment for the hour at which he had left his friends, with a gentleman who was anxious to read to him some portions of a play which he had just written. The meeting was to take place in a neighbouring coffee-house in the Strand; but even though the distance which he had to traverse was short, it had been the scene of more than one adventure, which, narrated by Garrick, proved comical to an extraordinary degree.

“A few yards away I almost ran into the arms of a clergyman—he wore the bands and apron of a Dean,” he continued, “not seeming to notice the little start which his announcement caused in some directions. The man grasped me by the arm,” he continued, “doubtless recognising me from my portraits—for he said he had never seen me act—and then began an harangue on the text of neglected opportunities. It seemed, however, that he had no more apparent example of my sins in this direction than my neglect to produce Dr. Goldsmith's 'Good-Natured Man.' Faith, gentlemen, he took it quite as a family grievance.” Suddenly he paused, and looked around the party; only Reynolds was laughing, all the rest were grave. A thought seemed to strike the narrator. “What!” he cried, “it is not possible that this was, after all, Dr. Goldsmith's cousin, the Dean, regarding whom you interrogated me just now? If so,'tis an extraordinary coincidence that I should have encountered him—unless—good heavens, gentlemen! is it the case that he came here when I had thrown him off?”

“Sir,” cried Oliver, “I affirm that no relation of mine, Dean or no Dean, entered this room!”

“Then, sir, you may look to find him at your chambers in Brick Court on your return,” said Garrick. “Oh, yes, Doctor!—a small man with the family bow of the Goldsmiths—something like this.” He gave a comical reproduction of the salutation of the clergyman.

“I tell you, sir, once and for all, that the man is no relation of mine,” protested Goldsmith.

“And let that be the end of the matter,” declared Johnson, with no lack of decisiveness in his voice.

“Oh, sir, I assure you I have no desire to meet the gentleman again,” laughed Garrick. “I got rid of him by a feint, just as he was endeavouring to force me to promise a production of a dramatic version of 'The Deserted Village'—he said he had the version at his lodging, and meant to read it to his cousin—I ask your pardon, sir, but he said 'cousin.'”

“Sir, let us have no more of this—cousin or no cousin,” roared Johnson.

“That is my prayer, sir—I utter it with all my heart and soul,” said Garrick. “It was about my poet I meant to speak—my poet and his play. What think you of the South Seas and the visit of Lieutenant Cook as the subject of a tragedy in blank verse, Dr. Johnson?”

“I think, Davy, that the subject represents so magnificent a scheme of theatrical bankruptcy you would do well to hand it over to that scoundrel Foote,” said Johnson pleasantly. He was by this time quite himself again, and ready to pronounce an opinion on any question with that finality which carried conviction with it—yes, to James Boswell.

For the next half-hour Garrick entertained his friends with the details of his interview with the poet who—according to his account—had designed the drama of “Otaheite” in order to afford Garrick an opportunity of playing the part of a cannibal king, dressed mainly in feathers, and beating time alternately with a club and a tomahawk, while he delivered a series of blank verse soliloquies and apostrophes to Mars, Vulcan and Diana.

“The monarch was especially devoted to Diana,” said Garrick. “My poet explained that, being a hunter, he would naturally find it greatly to his advantage to say a good word now and again for the chaste goddess; and when I inquired how it was possible that his Majesty of Otaheite could know anything about Diana, he said the Romans and the South Sea Islanders were equally Pagans, and that, as such, they had equal rights in the Pagan mythology; it would be monstrously unjust to assume that the Romans should claim a monopoly of Diana.”

Boswell interrupted him to express the opinion that the poet's contention was quite untenable, and Garrick said it was a great relief to his mind to have so erudite a scholar as Boswell on his side in the argument, though he admitted that he thought there was a good deal in the poet's argument.

He adroitly led on his victim to enter into a serious argument on the question of the possibility of the Otaheitans having any definite notion of the character and responsibilities assigned to Diana in the Roman mythology; and after keeping the party in roars of laughter for half an hour, he delighted Boswell by assuring him that his eloquence and the force of his arguments had removed whatever misgivings he, Garrick, originally had, that he was doing the poet an injustice in declining his tragedy.

When the party were about to separate, Goldsmith drew Johnson apart—greatly to the pique of Boswell—and said—

“Dr. Johnson, I have a great favour to ask of you, sir, and I hope you will see your way to grant it, though I do not deserve any favour from you.”

“You deserve no favour, Goldy,” said Johnson, laying his hand on the little man's shoulder, “and therefore, sir, you make a man who grants you one so well satisfied with himself he should regard himself your debtor. Pray, sir, make me your debtor by giving me a chance of granting you a favour.”

“You say everything better than any living man, sir,” cried Goldsmith. “How long would it take me to compose so graceful a sentence, do you suppose? You are the man whom I most highly respect, sir, and I am anxious to obtain your permission to dedicate to you the comedy which I have written and Mr. Colman is about to produce.”

“Dr. Goldsmith,” said Johnson, “we have been good friends for several years now.”

“Long before Mr. Boswell came to town, sir.”

“Undoubtedly, sir—long before you became recognised as the most melodious of our poets—the most diverting of our play-writers. I wrote the prologue to your first play, Goldy, and I'll stand sponsor for your second—nay, sir, not only so, but I'll also go to see it, and if it be damned, I'll drink punch with you all night and talk of my tragedy of 'Irene,' which was also damned; there's my hand on it, Dr. Goldsmith.”

Goldsmith pressed the great hand with both of his own, and tears were in his eyes and his voice as he said—

“Your generosity overpowers me, sir.”

CHAPTER IV.

Boswell, who was standing to one side watching—-his eyes full of curiosity and his ears strained to catch by chance a word—the little scene that was being enacted in a corner of the room, took good care that Johnson should be in his charge going home. This walk to Johnson's house necessitated a walk back to his own lodgings in Piccadilly; but this was nothing to Boswell, who had every confidence in his own capability to extract from his great patron some account of the secrets which had been exchanged in the corner.

For once, however, he found himself unable to effect his object—nay, when he began his operations with his accustomed lightness of touch, Johnson turned upon him, saying—

“Sir, I observe what is your aim, and I take this opportunity to tell you that if you make any further references, direct or indirect, to man, woman or child, to the occurrences of this evening, you will cease to be a friend of mine. I have been humiliated sufficiently by a stranger, who had every right to speak as he did, but I refuse to be humiliated by you, sir.”

Boswell expressed himself willing to give the amplest security for his good behaviour. He had great hope of conferring upon his patron a month of inconvenience in making a tour of the west coast of Scotland during the summer.

The others of the party went northward by one of the streets off the Strand into Coventry street, and thence toward Sir Joshua's house in Leicester Square, Burke walking in front with his arm through Goldsmith's, and Garrick some way behind with Reynolds. Goldsmith was very eloquent in his references to the magnanimity of Johnson, who, he said, in spite of the fact that he had been grossly insulted by an impostor calling himself his, Goldsmith's, cousin, had consented to receive the dedication of the new comedy. Burke, who understood the temperament of his countryman, felt that he himself might surpass in eloquence even Oliver Goldsmith if he took for his text the magnanimity of the author of “The Good Natured Man.” He, however, refrained from the attempt to prove to his companion that there were other ways by which a man could gain a reputation for generosity than by permitting the most distinguished writer of the age to dedicate a comedy to him.

Of the other couple Garrick was rattling away in the highest spirits, quite regardless of the position of Reynolds's ear-trumpet. Reynolds was as silent as Burke for a considerable time; but then, stopping at a corner so as to allow Goldsmith and his companion to get out of ear-shot, he laid his hand on Garrick's arm, laughing heartily as he said—

“You are a pretty rascal, David, to play such a trick upon your best friends. You are a pretty rascal, and a great genius, Davy—the greatest genius alive. There never has been such an actor as you, Davy, and there never will be another such.”

“Sir,” said Garrick, with an overdone expression of embarrassment upon his face, every gesture that he made corresponding. “Sir, I protest that you are speaking in parables. I admit the genius, if you insist upon it, but as for the rascality—well, it is possible, I suppose, to be both a great genius and a great rascal; there was our friend Benvenuto, for example, but——”

“Only a combination of genius and rascality could have hit upon such a device as that bow which you made, Davy,” said Reynolds. “It presented before my eyes a long vista of Goldsmiths—all made in the same fashion as our friend on in front, and all striving—-and not unsuccessfully, either—to maintain the family tradition of the Goldsmith bow. And then your imitation of your imitation of the same movement—how did we contain ourselves—Burke and I?”

“You fancy that Burke saw through the Dean, also?” said Garrick.

“I'm convinced that he did.”

“But he will not tell Johnson, I would fain hope.”

“You are very anxious that Johnson should not know how it was he was tricked. But you do not mind how you pain a much more generous man.”

“You mean Goldsmith? Faith, sir, I do mind it greatly. If I were not certain that he would forthwith hasten to tell Johnson, I would go to him and confess all, asking his forgiveness. But he would tell Johnson and never forgive me, so I'll e'en hold my tongue.”

“You will not lose a night's rest through brooding on Goldsmith's pain, David.”

“It was an impulse of the moment that caused me to adopt that device, my friend. Johnson is past all argument, sir. That sickening sycophant, Boswell, may find happiness in being insulted by him, but there are others who think that the Doctor has no more right than any ordinary man to offer an affront to those whom the rest of the world respects.”

“He will allow no one but himself to attack you, Davy.”

“And by my soul, sir, I would rather that he allowed every one else to attack me if he refrained from it himself. Where is the generosity of a man who, with the force and influence of a dozen men, will not allow a bad word to be said about you, but says himself more than the whole dozen could say in as many years? Sir, do the pheasants, which our friend Mr. Bunbury breeds so successfully, regard him as a pattern of generosity because he won't let a dozen of his farmers have a shot at them, but preserves them for his own unerring gun? By the Lord Harry, I would rather, if I were a pheasant, be shot at by the blunderbusses of a dozen yokels than by the fowling-piece of one good marksman, such as Bunbury. On the same principle, I have no particular liking to be preserved to make sport for the heavy broadsides that come from that literary three-decker, Johnson.”

“I have sympathy with your contentions, David; but we all allow your old schoolmaster a license which would be permitted to no one else.”

“That license is not a game license, Sir Joshua; and so I have made up my mind that if he says anything more about the profession of an actor being a degrading-one—about an actor being on the level with a fiddler—nay, one of the puppets of Panton street, I will teach my old schoolmaster a more useful lesson than he ever taught to me. I think it is probable that he is at this very moment pondering upon those plain truths which were told to him by the Dean.”

“And poor Goldsmith has been talking so incessantly and so earnestly to Burke, I am convinced that he feels greatly pained as well as puzzled by that inopportune visit of the clergyman who exhibited such striking characteristics of the Goldsmith family.”

“Nay, did I not bear testimony in his favour—declaring that he had never alluded to a relation who was a Dean?”

“Oh, yes; you did your best to place us all at our ease, sir. You were magnanimous, David—as magnanimous as the surgeon who cuts off an arm, plunges the stump into boiling pitch, and then gives the patient a grain or two of opium to make him sleep. But I should not say a word: I have seen you in your best part, Mr. Garrick, and I can give the heartiest commendation to your powers as a comedian, while condemning with equal force the immorality of the whole proceeding.”

They had now arrived at Reynolds's house in Leicester Square, Goldsmith and Burke—the former still talking eagerly—having waited for them to come up.

“Gentlemen,” said Reynolds, “you have all gone out of your accustomed way to leave me at my own door. I insist on your entering to have some refreshment. Mr. Burke, you will not refuse to enter and pronounce an opinion as to the portrait at which I am engaged of the charming Lady Betty Hamilton.”

“O matre pulchra filia pulchrior” said Goldsmith; but there was not much aptness in the quotation, the mother of Lady Betty having been the loveliest of the sisters Gunning, who had married first the Duke of Hamilton, and, later, the Duke of Argyll.

Before they had rung the bell the hall door was opened by Sir Joshua's servant, Ralph, and a young man, very elegantly dressed, was shown out by the servant.

He at once recognised Sir Joshua and then Garrick.

“Ah, my dear Sir Joshua,” he cried, “I have to entreat your forgiveness for having taken the liberty of going into your painting-room in your absence.”

“Your Lordship has every claim upon my consideration,” said Sir Joshua. “I cannot doubt which of my poor efforts drew you thither.”

“The fact is, Sir Joshua, I promised her Grace three days ago to see the picture, and as I think it likely that I shall meet her tonight, I made a point of coming hither. The Duchess of Argyll is not easily put aside when she commences to catechise a poor man, sir.”

“I cannot hope, my Lord, that the picture of Lady Betty commended itself to your Lordship's eye,” said Sir Joshua.

“The picture is a beauty, my dear Sir Joshua,” said the young man, but with no great show of ardour. “It pleases me greatly. Your macaw is also a beauty. A capital notion of painting a macaw on a pedestal by the side of the lady, is it not, Mr. Garrick—two birds with the one stone, you know?”

“True, sir,” said Garrick. “Lady Betty is a bird of Paradise.”

“That's as neatly said as if it were part of a play,” said the young man. “Talking of plays, there is going to be a pretty comedy enacted at the Pantheon to-night.”

“Is it not a mask?” said Garrick.

“Nay, finer sport even than that,” laughed the youth. “We are going to do more for the drama in an hour, Mr. Garrick, than you have done in twenty years, sir.”

“At the Pantheon, Lord Stanley?” inquired Garrick.

“Come to the Pantheon and you shall see all that there is to be seen,” cried Lord Stanley. “Who are your friends? Have I had the honour to be acquainted with them?”

“Your Lordship must have met Mr. Burke and Dr. Goldsmith,” said Garrick.

“I have often longed for that privilege,” said Lord Stanley, bowing in reply to the salutation of the others. “Mr. Burke's speech on the Marriage Bill was a fine effort, and Mr. Goldsmith's comedy has always been my favourite. I hear that you are at present engaged upon another, Dr. Goldsmith. That is good news, sir. Oh, 't were a great pity if so distinguished a party missed the sport which is on foot tonight! Let me invite you all to the Pantheon—here are tickets to the show. You will give me a box at your theatre, Garrick, in exchange, on the night when Mr. Goldsmith's new play is produced.”

“Alas, my Lord,” said Garrick, “that privilege will be in the hands of Mr. Col-man.”

“What, at t' other house? Mr. Garrick, I'm ashamed of you. Nevertheless, you will come to the comedy at the Pantheon to-night. I must hasten to act my part. But we shall meet there, I trust.”

He bowed with his hat in his hand to the group, and hastened away with an air of mystery.

“What does he mean?” asked Reynolds.

“That is what I have been asking myself,” replied Garrick. “By heavens, I have it!” he cried after a pause of a few moments. “I have heard rumours of what some of our young bloods swore to do, since the managers of the Pantheon, in an outburst of virtuous indignation at the orgies of Vauxhall and Ranelagh, issued their sheet of regulations prohibiting the entrance of actresses to their rotunda. Lord Conway, I heard, was the leader of the scheme, and it seems that this young Stanley is also one of the plot. Let us hasten to witness the sport. I would not miss being-present for the world.”

“I am not so eager,” said Sir Joshua. “I have my work to engage me early in the morning, and I have lost all interest in such follies as seem to be on foot.”

“I have not, thank heaven!” cried Garrick; “nor has Dr. Goldsmith, I'll swear. As for Burke—well, being a member of Parliament, he is a seasoned rascal; and so good-night to you, good Mr. President.”

“We need a frolic,” cried Goldsmith. “God knows we had a dull enough dinner at the Crown and Anchor.”

“An Irishman and a frolic are like—well, let us say like Lady Betty and your macaw, Sir Joshua,” said Burke. “They go together very naturally.”

CHAPTER V.

Sir Joshua entered his house, and the others hastened northward to the Oxford road, where the Pantheon had scarcely been opened more than a year for the entertainment of the fashionable world—a more fashionable world, it was hoped, than was in the habit of appearing at Ranelagh and Vauxhall. From a hundred to a hundred and fifty years ago, rank and fashion sought their entertainment almost exclusively at the Assembly Rooms when the weather failed to allow of their meeting at the two great public gardens. But as the government of the majority of these places invariably became lax—there was only one Beau Nash who had the cleverness to perceive that an autocracy was the only possible form of government for such assemblies—the committee of the Pantheon determined to frame so strict a code of rules, bearing upon the admission of visitors, as should, they believed, prevent the place from falling to the low level of the gardens.

In addition to the charge of half-a-guinea for admission to the rotunda, there were rules which gave the committee the option of practically excluding any person whose presence they might regard as not tending to maintain the high character of the Pantheon; and it was announced in the most decisive way that upon no consideration would actresses be allowed to enter.

The announcements made to this effect were regarded in some directions as eminently salutary. They were applauded by all persons who were sufficiently strict to prevent their wives or daughters from going to those entertainments that possessed little or no supervision. Such persons understood the world and the period so indifferently as to be optimists in regard to the question of the possibility of combining Puritanism and promiscuous entertainments terminating long after midnight. They hailed the arrival of the time when innocent recreation would not be incompatible with the display of the richest dresses or the most sumptuous figures.

But there was another, and a more numerous set, who were very cynical on the subject of the regulation of beauty and fashion at the Pantheon. The best of this set shrugged their shoulders, and expressed the belief that the supervised entertainments would be vastly dull. The worst of them published verses full of cheap sarcasm, and proper names with asterisks artfully introduced in place of vowels, so as to evade the possibility of actions for libel when their allusions were more than usually scandalous.

While the ladies of the committee were applauding one another and declaring that neither threats nor sarcasms would prevail against their resolution, an informal meeting was held at White's of the persons who affirmed that they were more affected than any others by the carrying out of the new regulations; and at the meeting they resolved to make the management aware of the mistake into which they had fallen in endeavouring to discriminate between the classes of their patrons.

When Garrick and his friends reached the Oxford road, as the thoroughfare was then called, the result of this meeting was making itself felt. The road was crowded with people who seemed waiting for something unusual to occur, though of what form it was to assume no one seemed to be aware. The crowd were at any rate good-humoured. They cheered heartily every coach that rolled by bearing splendidly dressed ladies to the Pantheon and to other and less public entertainments. They waved their hats over the chairs which, similarly burdened, went swinging along between the bearers, footmen walking on each side and link-boys running in advance, the glare of their torches giving additional redness to the faces of the hot fellows who had the chair-straps over their shoulders. Every now and again an officer of the Guards would come in for the cheers of the people, and occasionally a jostling match took place between some supercilious young beau and the apprentices, through the midst of whom he attempted to force his way. More than once swords flashed beneath the sickly illumination of the lamps, but the drawers of the weapons regretted their impetuosity the next minute, for they were quickly disarmed, either by the crowd closing with them or jolting them into the kennel, which at no time was savoury. Once, however, a tall young fellow, who had been struck by a stick, drew his sword and stood against a lamp-post preparatory to charging the crowd. It looked as if those who interfered with him would suffer, and a space was soon cleared in front of him. At that instant, however, he was thrown to the ground by the assault of a previously unseen foe: a boy dropped upon him from the lamp-post and sent his sword flying, while the crowd cheered and jeered in turn.

At intervals a roar would arise, and the people would part before the frantic flight of a pickpocket, pursued and belaboured in his rush by a dozen apprentices, who carried sticks and straps, and were well able to use both.

But a few minutes after Garrick, Goldsmith and Burke reached the road, all the energies of the crowds seemed to be directed upon one object, and there was a cry of, “Here they come—here she comes—a cheer for Mrs. Baddeley!”

“O Lord,” cried Garrick, “they have gone so far as to choose Sophia Baddeley for their experiment!”

“Their notion clearly is not to do things by degrees,” said Goldsmith. “They might have begun with a less conspicuous person than Mrs. Baddeley. There are many gradations in colour between black and white.”

“But not between black and White's,” said Burke. “This notion is well worthy of the wit of White's.”

“Sophia is not among the gradations that Goldsmith speaks of,” said Garrick. “But whatever be the result of this jerk into prominence, it cannot fail to increase her popularity at the playhouse.”

“That's the standpoint from which a good manager regards such a scene as this,” said Burke. “Sophia will claim an extra twenty guineas a week after to-night.”

“By my soul!” cried Goldsmith, “she looks as if she would give double that sum to be safe at home in bed.”

The cheers of the crowd increased as the chair containing Mrs. Baddeley, the actress, was borne along, the lady smiling in a half-hearted way through her paint. On each side of the chair, but some short distance in front, were four link-boys in various liveries, shining with gold and silver lace. In place of footmen, however, there walked two rows of gentlemen on each side of the chair. They were all splendidly dressed, and they carried their swords drawn. At the head of the escort on one side was the well known young Lord Conway, and at the other side Mr. Hanger, equally well known as a leader of fashion. Lord Stanley was immediately behind his friend Conway, and almost every other member of the lady's escort was a young nobleman or the heir to a peerage.

The lines extended to a second chair, in which Mrs. Abington was seated, smiling——“Very much more naturally than Mrs. Baddeley,” Burke remarked.

“Oh, yes,” cried Goldsmith, “she was always the better actress. I am fortunate in having her in my new comedy.”

“The Duchesses have become jealous of the sway of Mrs. Abington,” said Garrick, alluding to the fact that the fashions in dress had been for several years controlled by that lovely and accomplished actress.

“And young Lord Conway and his friends have become tired of the sway of the Duchesses,” said Burke.

“My Lord Stanley looked as if he were pretty nigh weary of his Duchess's sway,” said Garrick. “I wonder if he fancies that his joining that band will emancipate him.”

“If so he is in error,” said Burke. “The Duchess of Argyll will never let him out of her clutches till he is safely married to the Lady Betty.”

“Till then, do you say?” said Goldsmith. “Faith, sir, if he fancies he will escape from her clutches by marrying her daughter he must have had a very limited experience of life. Still, I think the lovely young lady is most to be pitied. You heard the cold way he talked of her picture to Reynolds.”

The engagement of Lord Stanley, the heir to the earldom of Derby, to Lady Betty Hamilton, though not formally announced, was understood to be a fait accompli; but there were rumours that the young man had of late been making an effort to release himself—that it was only with difficulty the Duchess managed to secure his attendance in public upon her daughter, whose portrait was being painted by Reynolds.

The picturesque procession went slowly along amid the cheers of the crowds, and certainly not without many expressions of familiarity and friendliness toward the two ladies whose beauty of countenance and of dress was made apparent by the flambeaux of the link-boys, which also gleamed upon the thin blades of the ladies' escort. The actresses were plainly more popular than the committee of the Pantheon.

It was only when the crowds were closing in on the end of the procession that a voice cried—

“Woe unto them! Woe unto Aholah and Aholibah! Woe unto ye who follow them to your own destruction! Turn back ere it be too late!” The discordant note came from a Methodist preacher who considered the moment a seasonable one for an admonition against the frivolities of the town.

The people did not seem to agree with him in this matter. They sent up a shout of laughter, and half a dozen youths began a travesty of a Methodist service, introducing all the hysterical cries and moans with which the early followers of Wesley punctuated their prayers. In another direction a ribald parody of a Methodist hymn was sung by women as well as men; but above all the mockery the stern, strident voice of the preacher was heard.

“By my soul,” said Garrick, “that effect is strikingly dramatic. I should like to find some one who would give me a play with such a scene.”

A good-looking young officer in the uniform of the Guards, who was in the act of hurrying past where Garrick and his friends stood, turned suddenly round.

“I'll take your order, sir,” he cried. “Only you will have to pay me handsomely.”

“What, Captain Horneck? Is 't possible that you are a straggler from the escort of the two ladies who are being feted to-night?” said Garrick.

“Hush, man, for Heaven's sake,” cried Captain Horneck—Goldsmith's “Captain in lace.”

“If Mr. Burke had a suspicion that I was associated with such a rout he would, as the guardian of my purse if not of my person, give notice to my Lord Albemarle's trustees, and then the Lord only knows what would happen.” Then he turned to Goldsmith. “Come along, Nolly, my friend,” he cried, putting his arm through Oliver's; “if you want a scene for your new comedy you will find it in the Pantheon to-night. You are not wearing the peach-bloom coat, to be sure, but, Lord, sir! you are not to be resisted, whatever you wear.”

“You, at any rate, are not to be resisted, my gallant Captain,” said Goldsmith. “I have half a mind to see the sport when the ladies' chairs stop at the porch of the Pantheon.”

“As a matter of course you will come,” said young Horneck. “Let us hasten out of range of that howling. What a time for a fellow to begin to preach!”

He hurried Oliver away, taking charge of him through the crowd with his arm across his shoulder. Garrick and Burke followed as rapidly as they could, and Charles Horneck explained to them, as well as to his companion, that he would have been in the escort of the actress, but for the fact that he was about to marry the orphan daughter of Lord Albemarle, and that his mother had entreated him not to do anything that might jeopardise the match.

“You are more discreet than Lord Stanley,” said Garrick.

“Nay,” said Goldsmith. “'Tis not a question of discretion, but of the means to an end. Our Captain in lace fears that his joining the escort would offend his charming bride, but Lord Stanley is only afraid that his act in the same direction will not offend his Duchess.”

“You have hit the nail on the head, as usual, Nolly,” said the Captain. “Poor Stanley is anxious to fly from his charmer through any loop-hole. But he'll not succeed. Why, sir, I'll wager that if her daughter Betty and the Duke were to die, her Grace would marry him herself.”

“Ay, assuming that a third Duke was not forthcoming,” said Burke.

CHAPTER VI.

The party found, on approaching the Pantheon, the advantage of being under the guidance of Captain Horneck. Without his aid they would have had considerable difficulty getting near the porch of the building, where the crowds were most dense. The young guardsman, however, pushed his way quite good-humouredly, but not the less effectively, through the people, and was followed by Goldsmith, Garrick and Burke being a little way behind. But as soon as the latter couple came within the light of the hundred lamps which hung around the porch, they were recognised and cheered by the crowd, who made a passage for them to the entrance just as Mrs. Baddeley's chair was set down.

The doors had been hastily closed and half-a-dozen constables stationed in front with their staves. The gentlemen of the escort formed in a line on each side of her chair to the doors, and when the lady stepped out—she could not be persuaded to do so for some time—and walked between the ranks of her admirers, they took off their hats and lowered the points of their swords, bowing to the ground with greater courtesy than they would have shown to either of the royal Duchesses, who just at that period were doing their best to obtain some recognition.

Mrs. Baddeley had rehearsed the “business” of the part which she had to play, but she was so nervous that she forgot her words on finding herself confronted by the constables. She caught sight of Garrick standing at one side of the door with his hat swept behind him as he bowed with exquisite irony as she stopped short, and the force of habit was too much for her. Forgetting that she was playing the part of a grande dame, she turned in an agony of fright to Garrick, raising her hands—one holding a lace handkerchief, the other a fan—crying—

“La! Mr. Garrick, I'm so fluttered that I've forgot my words. Where's the prompter, sir? Pray, what am I to say now?”

“Nay, madam, I am not responsible for this production,” said Garrick gravely, and there was a roar of laughter from the people around the porch.

The young gentlemen who had their swords drawn were, however, extremely serious. They began to perceive the possibility of their heroic plan collapsing into a merry burlesque, and so young Mr. Hanger sprang to the side of the lady.

“Madam,” he cried, “honour me by accepting my escort into the Pantheon. What do you mean, sirrah, by shutting that door in the face of a lady visitor?” he shouted to the liveried porter.

“Sir, we have orders from the management to permit no players to enter,” replied the man.

“Nevertheless, you will permit this lady to enter,” said the young gentleman. “Come, sir, open the doors without a moment's delay.”

“I cannot act contrary to my orders, sir,” replied the man.

“Nay, Mr. Hanger,” replied the frightened actress, “I wish not to be the cause of a disturbance. Pray, sir, let me return to my chair.”

“Gentlemen,” cried Mr. Hanger to his friends, “I know that it is not your will that we should come in active contest with the representatives of authority; but am I right in assuming that it is your desire that our honoured friend, Mrs. Baddeley, should enter the Pantheon?” When the cries of assent came to an end he continued, “Then, sirs, the responsibility for bloodshed rests with those who oppose us. Swords to the front! You will touch no man with a point unless he oppose you. Should a constable assault any of this company you will run him through without mercy. Now, gentlemen.”

In an instant thirty sword-blades were radiating from the lady, and in that fashion an advance was made upon the constables, who for a few moments stood irresolute, but then—the points of a dozen swords were within a yard of their breasts—lowered their staves and slipped quietly aside. The porter, finding himself thus deserted, made no attempt to withstand single-handed an attack converging upon the doors; he hastily went through the porch, leaving the doors wide apart.

To the sound of roars of laughter and shouts of congratulation from the thousands who blocked the road, Mrs. Baddeley and her escort walked through the porch and on to the rotunda beyond, the swords being sheathed at the entrance.

It seemed as if all the rank and fashion of the town had come to the rotunda this night. Peeresses were on the raised dais by the score, some of them laughing, others shaking their heads and doing their best to look scandalised. Only one matron, however, felt it imperative to leave the assembly and to take her daughters with her. She was a lady whose first husband had divorced her, and her daughters were excessively plain, in spite of their masks of paint and powder.

The Duchess of Argyll stood in the centre of the dais by the side of her daughter, Lady Betty Hamilton, her figure as graceful as it had been twenty years before, when she and her sister Maria, who became Countess of Coventry, could not walk down the Mall unless under the protection of a body of soldiers, so closely were they pressed by the fashionable mob anxious to catch a glimpse of the beautiful Miss Gunnings. She had no touch of carmine or powder to obscure the transparency of her complexion, and her wonderful long eyelashes needed no darkening to add to their silken effect. Her neck and shoulders were white, not with the cold whiteness of snow, but with the pearl-like charm of the white rose. The solid roundness of her arms, and the grace of every movement that she made with them, added to the delight of those who looked upon that lovely woman.

Her daughter had only a measure of her mother's charm. Her features were small, and though her figure was pleasing, she suggested nothing of the Duchess's elegance and distinction.

Both mother and daughter looked at first with scorn in their eyes at the lady who stood at one of the doors of the rotunda, surrounded by her body guard; but when they perceived that Lord Stanley was next to her, they exchanged a few words, and the scorn left their eyes. The Duchess even smiled at Lady Ancaster, who stood near her, and Lady Ancaster shrugged her shoulders almost as naturally as if she had been a Frenchwoman.

Cynical people who had been watching the Duchess's change of countenance also shrugged their shoulders (indifferently), saying—

“Her Grace will not be inexorable; the son-in-law upon whom she has set her heart, and tried to set her daughter's heart as well, must not be frightened away.”

Captain Horneck had gone up to his fiancee.

“You were not in that creature's train, I hope,” said the lady.

“I? Dear child, for what do you take me?” he said. “No, I certainly was not in her train. I was with my friend Dr. Goldsmith.”

“If you had been among that woman's escort, I should never have forgiven you the impropriety,” said she.

(She was inflexible as a girl, but before she had been married more than a year she had run away with her husband's friend, Mr. Scawen.)

By this time Lord Conway had had an interview with the management, and now returned with two of the gentlemen who comprised that body to where Mrs. Baddeley was standing simpering among her admirers.

“Madam,” said Lord Conway, “these gentlemen are anxious to offer you their sincere apologies for the conduct of their servants to-night, and to express the hope that you and your friends will frequently honour them by your patronage.”

And those were the very words uttered by the spokesman of the management, with many humble bows, in the presence of the smiling actress.

“And now you can send for Mrs. Abing-ton,” said Lord Stanley. “She agreed to wait in her chair until this matter was settled.”

“She can take very good care of herself,” said Mrs. Baddeley somewhat curtly. Her fright had now vanished, and she was not disposed to underrate the importance of her victory. She had no particular wish to divide the honours attached to her position with another woman, much less with one who was usually regarded as better-looking than herself. “Mrs. Abington is a little timid, my Lord,” she continued; “she may not find herself quite at home in this assembly.'Tis a monstrous fine place, to be sure; but for my part, I think Vauxhall is richer and in better taste.”

But in spite of the indifference of Mrs. Baddeley, a message was conveyed to Mrs. Abington, who had not left her chair, informing her of the honours which were being done to the lady who had entered the room, and when this news reached her she lost not a moment in hurrying through the porch to the side of her sister actress.

And then a remarkable incident occurred, for the Duchess of Argyll and Lady Ancaster stepped down from their dais and went to the two actresses, offering them hands, and expressing the desire to see them frequently at the assemblies in the rotunda.

The actresses made stage courtesies and returned thanks for the condescension of the great ladies. The cynical ones laughed and shrugged their shoulders once more.

Only Lord Stanley looked chagrined. He perceived that the Duchess was disposed to regard his freak in the most liberal spirit, and he knew that the point of view of the Duchess was the point of view of the Duchess's daughter. He felt rather sad as he reflected upon the laxity of mothers with daughters yet unmarried. Could it be that eligible suitors were growing scarce?

Garrick was highly amused at the little scene that was being played under his eyes; he considered himself a pretty fair judge of comedy, and he was compelled to acknowledge that he had never witnessed any more highly finished exhibition of this form of art.

His friend Goldsmith had not waited at the door for the arrival of Mrs. Abington. He was not wearing any of the gorgeous costumes in which he liked to appear at places of amusement, and so he did not intend to remain in the rotunda for longer than a few minutes; he was only curious to see what would be the result of the bold action of Lord Conway and his friends. But when he was watching the act of condescension on the part of the Duchess and the Countess, and had had his laugh with Burke, he heard a merry voice behind him saying—

“Is Dr. Goldsmith a modern Marius, weeping over the ruin of the Pantheon?”

“Nay,” cried another voice, “Dr. Goldsmith is contemplating the writing of a history of the attempted reformation of society in the eighteenth century, through the agency of a Greek temple known as the Pantheon on the Oxford road.”

He turned and stood face to face with two lovely laughing girls and a handsome elder lady, who was pretending to look scandalised.

“Ah, my dear Jessamy Bride—and my sweet Little Comedy!” he cried, as the girls caught each a hand of his. He had dropped his hat in the act of making his bow to Mrs. Horneck, the mother of the two girls, Mary and Katherine—the latter the wife of Mr. Bunbury. “Mrs. Horneck, madam, I am your servant—and don't I look your servant, too,” he added, remembering that he was not wearing his usual gala dress.

“You look always the same good friend,” said the lady.

“Nay,” laughed Mrs. Bunbury, “if he were your servant he would take care, for the honour of the house, that he was splendidly dressed; it is not that snuff-coloured suit we should have on him, but something gorgeous. What would you say to a peach-bloom coat, Dr. Goldsmith?”

(His coat of this tint had become a family joke among the Hornecks and Bun-burys.)

“Well, if the bloom remain on the peach it would be well enough in your company, madam,” said Goldsmith, with a face of humorous gravity. “But a peach with the bloom off would be more congenial to the Pantheon after to-night.” He gave a glance in the direction of the group of actresses and their admirers.

Mrs. Horneck looked serious, her two daughters looked demurely down.

“The air is tainted,” said Goldsmith, solemnly.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Bunbury, with a charming mock demureness. “'T is as you say: the Pantheon will soon become as amusing as Ranelagh.”

“I said not so, madam,” cried Goldsmith, shaking-his head. “As amusing—-amusing——”

“As Ranelagh. Those were your exact words, Doctor, I assure you,” protested Little Comedy. “Were they not, Mary?”

“Oh, undoubtedly those were his words—only he did not utter them,” replied the Jessamy Bride.

“There, now, you will not surely deny your words in the face of two such witnesses!” said Mrs. Bunbury.

“I could deny nothing to two such faces,” said Goldsmith, “even though one of the faces is that of a little dunce who could talk of Marius weeping over the Pantheon.”

“And why should not he weep over the Pantheon if he saw good cause for it?” she inquired, with her chin in the air.

“Ah, why not indeed? Only he was never within reach of it, my dear,” said Goldsmith.

“Psha! I daresay Marius was no better than he need be,” cried the young lady.

“Few men are even so good as it is necessary for them to be,” said Oliver.

“That depends upon their own views as to the need of being good,” remarked Mary.

“And so I say that Marius most likely made many excursions to the Pantheon without the knowledge of his biographer,” cried her sister, with an air of worldly wisdom of which a recent bride was so well qualified to be an exponent.

“'Twere vain to attempt to contend against such wisdom,” said Goldsmith.

“Nay, all things are possible, with a Professor of Ancient History to the Royal Academy of Arts,” said a lady who had come up with Burke at that moment—a small but very elegant lady with distinction in every movement, and withal having eyes sparkling with humour.

Goldsmith bowed low—again over his fallen hat, on the crown of which Little Comedy set a very dainty foot with an aspect of the sweetest unconsciousness. She was a tom-boy down to the sole of that dainty foot.

“In the presence of Mrs. Thrale,” Goldsmith began, but seeing the ill-treatment to which his hat was subjected, he became confused, and the compliment which he had been elaborating dwindled away in a murmur.

“Is it not the business of a professor to contend with wisdom, Dr. Goldsmith?” said Mrs. Thrale.

“Madam, if you say that it is so, I will prove that you are wrong by declining to argue out the matter with you,” said the Professor of Ancient History.

Miss Horneck's face shone with appreciation of her dear friend's quickness; but the lively Mrs. Thrale was, as usual, too much engrossed in her own efforts to be brilliant to be able to pay any attention to the words of so clumsy a person as Oliver Goldsmith, and one who, moreover, declined to join with so many other distinguished persons in accepting her patronage.

She found it to her advantage to launch into a series of sarcasms—most of which had been said at least once before—at the expense of the Duchess of Argyll and Lady Ancaster, and finding that Goldsmith was more busily, engaged in listening to Mrs. Bunbury's mock apologies for the injury she had done to his hat than in attending to her jeux d'esprit, she turned her back upon him, and gave Burke and Mrs. Horneck the benefit of her remarks.

Goldsmith continued taking part in the fun made by Little Comedy, pointing out to her the details of his hat's disfigurement, when, suddenly turning in the direction of Mary Horneck, who was standing behind her mother, the jocular remark died on his lips. He saw the expression of dismay—worse than dismay—which was on the girl's face as she gazed across the rotunda.

CHAPTER VII.

Goldsmith followed the direction of her eyes and saw that their object was a man in the uniform of an officer, who was chatting with Mrs. Abingdon. He was a showily handsome man, though his face bore evidence of some dissipated years, and there was an undoubted swagger in his bearing.

Meanwhile Goldsmith watched him. The man caught sight of Miss Horneck and gave a slight start, his jaw falling for an instant—only for an instant, however; then he recovered himself and made an elaborate bow to the girl across the room.

Goldsmith turned to Miss Horneck and perceived that her face had become white; she returned very coldly the man's recognition, and only after the lapse of some seconds. Goldsmith possessed naturally both delicacy of feeling and tact. He did not allow the girl to see that he had been a witness of a rencontre which evidently was painful to her; but he spoke to her sister, who was amusing her husband by a scarcely noticeable imitation of a certain great lady known to both of them; and, professing himself woefully ignorant as to the personnel of the majority of the people who were present, inquired first what was the name of a gentleman wearing a star and talking to a group of apparently interested ladies, and then of the officer whom he had seen make that elaborate bow.

Mrs. Bunbury was able to tell him who was the gentleman with the star, but after glancing casually at the other man, she shook her head.

“I have never seen him before,” she said. “I don't think he can be any one in particular. The people whom we don't know are usually nobodies—until we come to know them.”

“That is quite reasonable,” said he. “It is a distinction to become your friend. It will be remembered in my favour when my efforts as Professor at the Academy are forgotten.”

His last sentence was unheard, for Mrs. Bunbury was giving all her attention to her sister, of whose face she had just caught a glimpse.

“Heavens, child!” she whispered to her, “what is the matter with you?”

“What should be the matter with me?” said Mary. “What, except—oh, this place is stifling! And the managers boasted that it would be cool and well ventilated at all times!”

“My dear girl, you'll be quite right when I take you into the air,” said Bunbury.

“No, no; I do not need to leave the rotunda; I shall be myself in a moment,” said the girl somewhat huskily and spasmodically. “For heaven's sake don't stare so, child,” she added to her sister, making a pitiful attempt to laugh.

“But, my dear——” began Mrs. Bunbury; she was interrupted by Mary.

“Nay,” she cried, “I will not have our mother alarmed, and—well, every one knows what a tongue Mrs. Thrale has. Oh, no; already the faintness has passed away. What should one fear with a doctor in one's company? Come, Dr. Goldsmith, you are a sensible person. You do not make a fuss. Lend me your arm, if you please.”

“With all pleasure in life,” cried Oliver.

He offered her his arm, and she laid her hand upon it. He could feel how greatly she was trembling.

When they had taken a few steps away Mary looked back at her sister and Bunbury and smiled reassuringly at them. Her companion saw that, immediately afterwards, her glance went in the direction of the officer who had bowed to her.

“Take me up to one of the galleries, my dear friend,” she said. “Take me somewhere—some place away from here—any place away from here.”

He brought her to an alcove off one of the galleries where only one sconce with wax candles was alight.

“Why should you tremble, my dear girl?” said he. “What is there to be afraid of? I am your friend—you know that I would die to save you from the least trouble.”

“Trouble? Who said anything about trouble?” she cried. “I am in no trouble—only for the trouble I am giving you, dear Goldsmith. And you did not come in the bloom-tinted coat after all.”

He made no reply to her spasmodic utterances. The long silence was broken only by the playing of the band, following Madame Agujari's song—the hum of voices and laughter from the well-dressed mob in the rotunda and around the galleries.

At last the girl put her hand again upon his arm, saying—

“I wonder what you think of this business, my dear friend—I wonder what you think of your Jessamy Bride.”

“I think nothing but what is good of you, my dear,” said he tenderly. “But if you can tell me of the matter that troubles you, I think I may be able to make you see that it should not be a trouble to you for a moment. Why, what can possibly have happened since we were all so merry in France together?”

“Nothing—nothing has happened—I give you my word upon it,” she said. “Oh, I feel that you are altogether right. I have no cause to be frightened—no cause to be troubled. Why, if it came to fighting, have not I a brother? Ah, I had much better say nothing more. You could not understand—psha! there is nothing to be understood, dear Dr. Goldsmith; girls are foolish creatures.”

“Is it nothing to you that we have been friends so long, dear child?” said he. “Is it not possible for you to let me have your confidence? Think if it be possible, Mary. I am not a wise man where my own affairs are concerned, but I feel that for others—for you, my dear—ah, child, don't you know that if you share a secret trouble with another its poignancy is blunted?”

“I have never had consolation except from you,” said the girl. “But this—this—oh, my friend, by what means did you look into a woman's soul to enable you to write those lines—

'When lovely woman stoops to folly,

And finds too late. . . '?”

There was a long pause before he started up, with his hand pressed to his forehead. He looked at her strangely for a moment, and then walked slowly away from her with his head bent. Before he had taken more than a dozen steps, however, he stopped, and, after another moment of indecision, hastened back to her and offered her his hand, saying—

“I am but a man; I can think nothing of you but what is good.”

“Yes,” she said; “it is only a woman who can think everything that is evil about a woman. It is not by men that women are deceived to their own destruction, but by women.”

She sprang to her feet and laid her hand upon his arm once again.

“Let us go away,” she said. “I am sick of this place. There is no corner of it that is not penetrated by the Agujari's singing. Was there ever any singing so detestable? And they pay her fifty guineas a song! I would pay fifty guineas to get out of earshot of the best of her efforts.” Her laugh had a shrill note that caused it to sound very pitiful to the man who heard it.

He spoke no word, but led her tenderly back to where her mother was standing with Burke and her son.

“I do hope that you have not missed Agujari's last song,” said Mrs. Horneck. “We have been entranced with its melody.”

“Oh, no; I have missed no note of it—no note. Was there ever anything so delicious—so liquid-sweet? Is it not time that we went homeward, mother? I do feel a little tired, in spite of the Agujari.”

“At what an admirable period we have arrived in the world's history!” said Burke. “It is the young miss in these days who insists on her mother's keeping good hours. How wise we are all growing!”

“Mary was always a wise little person,” said Mrs. Horneck.

“Wise? Oh, let us go home!” said the girl wearily.

“Dr. Goldsmith will, I am sure, direct our coach to be called,” said her mother.

Goldsmith bowed and pressed his way to the door, where he told the janitor to call for Mrs. Horneck's coach.

He led Mary out of the rotunda, Burke having gone before with the elder lady. Goldsmith did not fail to notice the look of apprehension on the girl's face as her eyes wandered around the crowd in the porch. He could hear the little sigh of relief that she gave after her scrutiny.

The coach had drawn up at the entrance, and the little party went out into the region of flaring links and pitch-scented smoke. While Goldsmith was in the act of helping Mary Horneck up the steps, he was furtively glancing around, and before she had got into a position for seating herself by the side of her mother, he dropped her hand in so clumsy a way that several of the onlookers laughed. Then he retreated, bowing awkwardly, and, to crown his stupidity, he turned round so rapidly and unexpectedly that he ran violently full-tilt against a gentleman in uniform, who was hurrying to the side of the chariot as if to take leave of the ladies.

The crowd roared as the officer lost his footing for a moment and staggered among the loiterers in the porch, not recovering himself until the vehicle had driven away. Even then Goldsmith, with disordered wig, was barring the way to the coach, profusely apologising for his awkwardness.

“Curse you for a lout!” cried the officer.

Goldsmith put his hat on his head.

“Look you, sir!” he said. “I have offered you my humblest apologies for the accident. If you do not choose to accept them, you have but got to say as much and I am at your service. My name is Goldsmith, sir—Oliver Goldsmith—and my friend is Mr. Edmund Burke. I flatter myself that we are both as well known and of as high repute as yourself, whoever you may be.”

The onlookers in the porch laughed, those outside gave an encouraging cheer, while the chairmen and linkmen, who were nearly all Irish, shouted “Well done, your Honour! The little Doctor and Mr. Burke forever!” For both Goldsmith and Burke were as popular with the mob as they were in society.

While Goldsmith stood facing the scowling officer, an elderly gentleman, in the uniform of a general and with his breast covered with orders, stepped out from the side of the porch and shook Oliver by the hand. Then he turned to his opponent, saying—

“Dr. Goldsmith is my friend, sir. If you have any quarrel with him you can let me hear from you. I am General Oglethorpe.”

“Or if it suits you better, sir,” said another gentleman coming to Goldsmith's side, “you can send your friend to my house. My name is Lord Clare.”

“My Lord,” cried the man, bowing with a little swagger, “I have no quarrel with Dr. Goldsmith. He has no warmer admirer than myself. If in the heat of the moment I made use of any expression that one gentleman might not make use of toward another, I ask Dr. Goldsmith's pardon. I have the honour to wish your Lordship good-night.”

He bowed and made his exit.

CHAPTER VIII.

When Goldsmith reached his chambers in Brick Court, he found awaiting him a letter from Colman, the lessee of Covent Garden Theatre, to let him know that Woodward and Mrs. Abington had resigned their parts in his comedy which had been in rehearsal for a week, and that he, Colman, felt they were right in doing so, as the failure of the piece was so inevitable. He hoped that Dr. Goldsmith would be discreet enough to sanction its withdrawal while its withdrawal was still possible.

He read this letter—one of several which he had received from Colman during the week prophesying disaster—without impatience, and threw it aside without a further thought. He had no thought for anything save the expression that had been on the face of Mary Horneck as she had spoken his lines—

“When lovely woman stoops to folly,

And finds too late....”

“Too late——” She had not got beyond those words. Her voice had broken, as he had often believed that his beloved Olivia's voice had broken, when trying to sing her song in which a woman's despair is enshrined for all ages. Her voice had broken, though not with the stress of tears. It would not have been so full of despair if tears had been in her eyes. Where there are tears there is hope. But her voice....

What was he to believe? What was he to think regarding that sweet girl who had, since the first day he had known her, treated him as no other human being had ever treated him? The whole family of the Hornecks had shown themselves to be his best friends. They insisted on his placing himself on the most familiar footing in regard to their house, and when Little Comedy married she maintained the pleasant intimacy with him which had begun at Sir Joshua Reynolds's dinner-table. The days that he spent at the Bunburys' house at Barton were among the pleasantest of his life.

But, fond though he was of Mrs. Bun-bury, her sister Mary, his “Jessamy Bride,” drew him to her by a deeper and warmer affection. He had felt from the first hour of meeting her that she understood his nature—that in her he had at last found some one who could give him the sympathy which he sought. More than once she had proved to him that she recognised the greatness of his nature—his simplicity, his generosity, the tenderness of his heart for all things that suffered, his trustfulness, that caused him to be so frequently imposed upon, his intolerance of hypocrisy and false sentiment, though false sentiment was the note of the most successful productions of the day. Above all, he felt that she recognised his true attitude in relation to English literature. If he was compelled to work in uncongenial channels in order to earn his daily bread, he himself never forgot what he owed to English literature. How nobly he discharged this debt his “Traveller,” “The Vicar of Wakefield,” “The Deserted Village,” and “The Good Natured Man” testified at intervals. He felt that he was the truest poet, the sincerest dramatist, of the period, and he never allowed the work which he was compelled to do for the booksellers to turn him aside from his high aims.

It was because Mary Horneck proved to him daily that she understood what his aims were he regarded her as different from all the rest of the world. She did not talk to him of sympathising with him, but she understood him and sympathised with him.

As he lay back in his chair now asking himself what he should think of her, he recalled every day that he had passed in her company, from the time of their first meeting at Reynolds's house until he had accompanied her and her mother and sister on the tour through France. He remembered how, the previous year, she had stirred his heart on returning from a long visit to her native Devonshire by a clasp of the hand and a look of gratitude, as she spoke the name of the book which he had sent to her with a letter. “The Vicar of Wakefield” was the book, and she had said—

“You can never, never know what it has been to me—what it has done for me.” Her eyes had at that time been full of tears of gratitude—of affection, and the sound of her voice and the sight of her liquid eyes had overcome him. He knew there was a bond between them that would not be easily severed.

But there were no tears in her eyes as she spoke the words of Olivia's song.

What was he to think of her?

One moment she had been overflowing with girlish merriment, and then, on glancing across the hall, her face had become pale and her mood had changed from one of merriment to one of despair—the despair of a bird that finds itself in the net of the fowler.

What was he to think of her?

He would not wrong her by a single thought. He thought no longer of her, but of the man whose sudden appearance before her eyes had, he felt certain, brought about her change of mood.

It was his certainty of feeling on this matter that had caused him to guard her jealously from the approach of that man, and, when he saw him going toward the coach, to prevent his further advance by the readiest means in his power. He had had no time to elaborate any scheme to keep the man away from Mary Horneck, and he had been forced to adopt the most rudimentary scheme to carry out his purpose.

Well, he reflected upon the fact that if the scheme was rudimentary it had proved extremely effective. He had kept the man apart from the girls, and he only regretted that the man had been so easily led to regard the occurrence as an accident. He would have dearly liked to run the man through some vital part.

What was that man to Mary Horneck that she should be in terror at the very sight of him? That was the question which presented itself to him, and his too vivid imagination had no difficulty in suggesting a number of answers to it, but through all he kept his word to her: he thought no ill of her. He could not entertain a thought of her that was not wholly good. He felt that her concern was on account of some one else who might be in the power of that man. He knew how generous she was—how sympathetic. He had told her some of his own troubles, and though he did so lightly, as was his custom, she had been deeply affected on hearing of them. Might it not then be that the trouble which affected her was not her own, but another's?

Before he went to bed he had brought himself to take this view of the incident of the evening, and he felt much easier in his mind.

Only he felt a twinge of regret when he reflected that the fellow whose appearance had deprived Mary Horneck of an evening's pleasure had escaped with no greater inconvenience than would be the result of an ordinary shaking. His contempt for the man increased as he recalled how he had declined to prolong the quarrel. If he had been anything of a man he would have perceived that he was insulted, not by accident but design, and would have been ready to fight.

Whatever might be the nature of Mary Horneck's trouble, the killing of the man would be a step in the right direction.

It was not until his servant, John Eyles, had awakened him in the morning that he recollected receiving a letter from Colman which contained some unpleasant news. He could not at first remember the details of the news, but he was certain that on receiving it he had a definite idea that it was unpleasant. When he now read Colman's letter for the second time he found that his recollection of his first impression was not at fault. It was just his luck: no man was in the habit of writing more joyous letters or receiving more depressing than Goldsmith.

He hurried off to the theatre and found Colman in his most disagreeable mood. The actor and actress who had resigned their parts were just those to whom he was looking, Colman declared, to pull the play through. He could not, however, blame them, he frankly admitted. They were, he said, dependent for a livelihood upon their association with success on the stage, and it could not be otherwise than prejudicial to their best interests to be connected with a failure.

This was too much, even for the long suffering Goldsmith.

“Is it not somewhat premature to talk of the failure of a play that has not yet been produced, Mr. Colman?” he said.

“It might be in respect to most plays, sir,” replied Colman; “but in regard to this particular play, I don't think that one need be afraid to anticipate by a week or two the verdict of the playgoers. Two things in this world are inevitable, sir: death and the damning of your comedy.”

“I shall try to bear both with fortitude,” said Goldsmith quietly, though he was inwardly very indignant with the manager for his gratuitous predictions of failure—predictions which from the first his attitude in regard to the play had contributed to realise. “I should like to have a talk with Mrs. Abington and Woodward,” he added.

“They are in the green room,” said the manager. “I must say that I was in hope, Dr. Goldsmith, that your critical judgment of your own work would enable you to see your way to withdraw it.”

“I decline to withdraw it, sir,” said Goldsmith.

“I have been a manager now for some years,” said Colman, “and, speaking from the experience which I have gained at this theatre, I say without hesitation that I never had a piece offered to me which promised so complete a disaster as this, sir. Why, 'tis like no other comedy that was ever wrote.”

“That is a feature which I think the playgoers will not be slow to appreciate,” said Goldsmith. “Good Lord! Mr. Colman, cannot you see that what the people want nowadays is a novelty?”

“Ay, sir; but there are novelties and novelties, and this novelty of yours is not to their taste.'T is not a comedy of the pothouse that's the novelty genteel people want in these days; and mark my words, sir, the bringing on of that vulgar young boor—what's the fellow's name?—Lumpkin, in his pothouse, and the unworthy sneers against the refinement and sensibility of the period—the fellow who talks of his bear only dancing to the genteelest of tunes—all this, Dr. Goldsmith, I pledge you my word and reputation as a manager, will bring about an early fall of the curtain.”

“An early fall of the curtain?”

“Even so, sir; for the people in the house will not permit another scene beyond that of your pothouse to be set.”

“Let me tell you, Mr. Colman, that the Three Pigeons is an hostelry, not a pothouse.”

“The playgoers will damn it if it were e'en a Bishop's palace.”

“Which you think most secure against such a fate. Nay, sir, let us not apply the doctrine of predestination to a comedy. Men have gone mad through believing that they had no chance of being saved from the Pit. Pray let not us take so gloomy a view of the hereafter of our play.”

“Of your play, sir, by your leave. I have no mind to accept even a share of its paternity, though I know that I cannot escape blame for having anything to do with its production.”

“If you are so anxious to decline the responsibilities of a father in respect to it, sir, I must beg that you will not feel called upon to act with the cruelty of a step-father towards it.”

Goldsmith bowed in his pleasantest manner as he left the manager's office and went to the green room.

CHAPTER IX.

The attitude of Colman in regard to the comedy was quite in keeping with the traditions of the stage of the eighteenth century, nor was it so contrary to the traditions of the nineteenth century. Colman, like the rest of his profession—not even excepting Garrick—possessed only a small amount of knowledge as to what playgoers desired to have presented to them. Whatever successes he achieved were certainly not due to his own acumen. He had no idea that audiences had grown tired of stilted blank verse tragedies and comedies constructed on the most conventional lines, with plentiful allusions to heathen deities, but a plentiful lack of human nature. Such plays had succeeded in his hands previously, and he could see no reason why he should substitute for them anything more natural. He had no idea that playgoers were ready to hail with pleasure a comedy founded upon scenes of everyday life, not upon the spurious sentimentality of an artificial age.

He had produced “The Good Natured Man” some years before, and had made money by the transaction. But the shrieks of the shallow critics who had condemned the introduction of the low-life personages into that play were still ringing in his ears; so, when he found that the leading characteristics of these personages were not only introduced but actually intensified in the new comedy, which the author had named provisionally “The Mistakes of a Night,” he at first declined to have anything to do with it. But, fortunately, Goldsmith had influential friends—friends who, like Dr. Johnson and Bishop Percy, had recognised his genius when he was living in a garret and before he had written anything beyond a few desultory essays—and they brought all their influence to bear upon the Covent Garden manager. He accepted the comedy, but laid it aside for several months, and only grudgingly, at last, consented to put it in rehearsal.

Daily, when Goldsmith attended the rehearsals, the manager did his best to depreciate the piece, shaking his head over some scenes, shrugging his shoulders over others, and asking the author if he actually meant to allow certain portions of the dialogue to be spoken as he had written them.

This attitude would have discouraged a man less certain of his position than Goldsmith. It did not discourage him, however, but its effect was soon perceptible upon the members of the company. They rehearsed in a half-hearted way, and accepted Goldsmith's suggestions with demur.

At the end of a week Gentleman Smith, who had been cast for Young Marlow, threw up the part, and Colman inquired of Goldsmith if he was serious in his intention to continue rehearsing the piece. In a moment Goldsmith assured him that he meant to perform his part of the contract with the manager, and that he would tolerate no backing out of that same contract by the manager. At his friend Shuter's suggestion, the part was handed over to Lee Lewes.

After this, it might at least have been expected that Colman would make the best of what he believed to be a bad matter, and give the play every chance of success. On the contrary, however, he was stupid even for the manager of a theatre, and was at the pains to decry the play upon every possible occasion. Having predicted failure for it, he seemed determined to do his best to cause his prophecies to be realized. At rehearsal he provoked Goldsmith almost beyond endurance by his sneers, and actually encouraged the members of his own company in their frivolous complaints regarding their dialogue. He spoke the truth to Goldsmith when he said he was not surprised that Woodward and Mrs. Abington had thrown up their parts: he would have been greatly surprised if they had continued rehearsing.

When the unfortunate author now entered the green room, the buzz of conversation which had been audible outside ceased in an instant. He knew that he had formed the subject of the conversation, and he could not doubt what was its nature. For a moment he was tempted to turn round and go back to Colman in order to tell him that he would withdraw the play. The temptation lasted but a moment, however: the spirit of determination which had carried him through many difficulties—that spirit which Reynolds appreciated and had embodied in his portrait—came to his aid. He walked boldly into the green room and shook hands with both Woodward and Mrs. Abington.

“I am greatly mortified at the news which I have just had from Mr. Colman,” he said; “but I am sure that you have not taken this serious step without due consideration, so I need say no more about it. Mr. Colman will be unable to attend this rehearsal, but he is under an agreement with me to produce my comedy within a certain period, and he will therefore sanction any step I may take on his behalf. Mr. Quick will, I hope, honour me by reading the part of Tony Lumpkin and Mrs. Bulk-ley that of Miss Hardcastle, so that there need be no delay in the rehearsal.”

The members of the company were somewhat startled by the tone adopted by the man who had previously been anything but fluent in his speech, and who had submitted with patience to the sneers of the manager. They now began to perceive something of the character of the man whose life had been a fierce struggle with adversity, but who even in his wretched garret knew what was due to himself and to his art, and did not hesitate to kick downstairs the emissary from the government that offered him employment as a libeller.

“Sir,” cried the impulsive Mrs. Bulkley, putting out her hand to him—“Sir, you are not only a genius, you are a man as well, and it will not be my fault if this comedy of yours does not turn out a success. You have been badly treated, Dr. Goldsmith, and you have borne your ill-treatment nobly. For myself, sir, I say that I shall be proud to appear in your piece.”

“Madam,” said Goldsmith, “you overwhelm me with your kindness. As for ill-treatment, I have nothing to complain of so far as the ladies and gentlemen of the company are concerned, and any one who ventures to assert that I bear ill-will toward Mr. Woodward and Mrs. Abington I shall regard as having put an affront upon me. Before a fortnight has passed I know that they will be overcome by chagrin at their rejection of the opportunity that was offered them of being associated with the success of this play, for it will be a success, in spite of the untoward circumstances incidental to its birth.”

He bowed several times around the company, and he did it so awkwardly that he immediately gained the sympathy and good-will of all the actors: they reflected how much better they could do it, and that, of course, caused them to feel well disposed towards Goldsmith.

“You mean to give the comedy another name, sir, I think,” said Shuter, who was cast for the part of Old Hardcastle.

“You may be sure that a name will be forthcoming,” said Goldsmith. “Lord, sir, I am too good a Christian not to know that if an accident was to happen to my bantling before it is christened it would be damned to a certainty.”

The rehearsal this day was the most promising that had yet taken place. Col-man did not put in an appearance, consequently the disheartening influence of his presence was not felt. The broadly comical scenes were acted with some spirit, and though it was quite apparent to Goldsmith that none of the company believed that the play would be a success, yet the members did not work, as they had worked hitherto, on the assumption that its failure was inevitable.

On the whole, he left the theatre with a lighter heart than he had had since the first rehearsal. It was not until he returned to his chambers to dress for the evening that he recollected he had not yet arrived at a wholly satisfactory solution of the question which had kept him awake during the greater part of the night.

The words that Mary Horneck had spoken and the look there was in her eyes at the same moment had yet to be explained.

He seated himself at his desk with his hand to his head, his elbow resting on a sheet of paper placed ready for his pen. After half-an-hour's thought his hand went mechanically to his tray of pens. Picking one up with a sigh, he began to write.

Verse after verse appeared upon the paper—the love-song of a man who feels that love is shut out from his life for evermore, but whose only consolation in life is love.

After an hour's fluent writing he laid down the pen and once again rested his head on his hand. He had not the courage to read what he had written. His desk was full of such verses, written with unaffected sincerity when every one around him was engaged in composing verses which were regarded worthy of admiration only in proportion as they were artificial.

He wondered, as he sat there, what would be the result of his sending to Mary Horneck one of those poems which his heart had sung to her. Would she be shocked at his presumption in venturing to love her? Would his delightful relations with her and her family be changed when it became known that he had not been satisfied with the friendship which he had enjoyed for some years, but had hoped for a response to his deeper feeling?

His heart sank as he asked himself the question.

“How is it that I seem ridiculous as a lover even to myself?” he muttered. “Why has God laid upon me the curse of being a poet? A poet is the chronicler of the loves of others, but it is thought madness should he himself look for the consolation of love. It is the irony of life that the man who is most capable of deep feeling should be forced to live in loneliness. How the world would pity a great painter who was struck blind—a great orator struck dumb! But the poet shut out from love receives no pity—no pity on earth—no pity in heaven.”

He bowed his head down to his hands, and remained in that attitude for an hour. Then he suddenly sprang to his feet. He caught up the paper which he had just covered with verses, and was in the act of tearing it. He did not tear the sheet quite across, however; it fell from his hand to the desk and lay there, a slight current of air from a window making the torn edge rise and fall as though it lay upon the beating heart of a woman whose lover was beside her—that was what the quivering motion suggested to the poet who watched it.

“And I would have torn it in pieces and made a ruin of it!” he said. “Alas! alas! for the poor torn, fluttering heart!”

He dressed himself and went out, but to none of his accustomed haunts, where he would have been certain to meet with some of the distinguished men who were rejoiced to be regarded as his friends. In his mood he knew that friendship could afford him no solace.

He knew that to offer a man friendship when love is in his heart is like giving a loaf of bread to one who is dying of thirst.

CHAPTER X.

For the next two days Goldsmith was fully occupied making such changes in his play as were suggested to him in the course of the rehearsals. The alterations were not radical, but he felt that they would be improvements, and his judgment was rarely at fault. Moreover, he was quick to perceive in what direction the strong points and the weak points of the various members of the company lay, and he had no hesitation in altering the dialogue so as to give them a better chance of displaying their gifts. But not a line of what Colman called the “pot-house scene” would he change, not a word of the scene where the farm servants are being trained to wait at table would he allow to be omitted.

Colman declined to appear upon the stage during the rehearsals. He seems to have spent all his spare time walking from coffee house to coffee house talking about the play, its vulgarity, and the certainty of the fate that was in store for it. It would have been impossible, had he not adopted this remarkable course, for the people of the town to become aware, as they certainly did, what were his ideas regarding the comedy. When it was produced with extraordinary success, the papers held the manager up to ridicule daily for his false predictions, and every day a new set of lampoons came from the coffee-house wits on the same subject.

But though the members of the company rehearsed the play loyally, some of them were doubtful about the scene at the Three Pigeons, and did not hesitate to express their fears to Goldsmith. They wondered if he might not see his way to substitute for that scene one which could not possibly be thought offensive by any section of playgoers. Was it not a pity, one of them asked him, to run a chance of failure when it might be so easily avoided?

To all of these remonstrances he had but one answer: the play must stand or fall by the scenes which were regarded as ungenteel. He had written it, he said, for the sake of expressing his convictions through the medium of these particular scenes, and he was content to accept the verdict of the playgoers on the point in question. Why he had brought on those scenes so early in the play was that the playgoers might know not to expect a sentimental piece, but one that was meant to introduce a natural school of comedy, with no pretence to be anything but a copy of the manners of the day, with no fine writing in the dialogue, but only the broadest and heartiest fun.

“If the scenes are ungenteel,” said he, “it is because nature is made up of ungenteel things. Your modern gentleman is, to my mind, much less interesting than your ungenteel person; and I believe that Tony Lumpkin when admirably represented, as he will be by Mr. Quick, will be a greater favourite with all who come to the playhouse than the finest gentleman who ever uttered an artificial sentiment to fall exquisitely on the ear of a boarding-school miss. So, by my faith! I'll not interfere with his romping.”

He was fluent and decisive on this point, as he was on every other point on which he had made up his mind. He only stammered and stuttered when he did not know what he was about to say, and this frequently arose from his over-sensitiveness in regard to the feelings of others—a disability which could never be laid to the charge of Dr. Johnson, who was, in consequence, delightfully fluent.

On the evening of the third rehearsal of the play with the amended cast, he went to Reynolds's house in Leicester Square to dine. He knew that the Horneck family would be there, and he looked forward with some degree of apprehension to his meeting with Mary. He felt that she might think he looked for some explanation of her strange words spoken when he was by her side at the Pantheon. But he wanted no explanation from her. The words still lay as a burden upon his heart, but he felt that it would pain her to attempt an explanation of them, and he was quite content that matters should remain as they were. Whatever the words might have meant, it was impossible that they could mean anything that might cause him to think of her with less reverence and affection.

He arrived early at Reynolds's house, but it did not take him long to find out that he was not the first arrival. From the large drawingroom there came to his ears the sound of laughter—such laughter as caused him to remark to the servant—

“I perceive that Mr. Garrick is already in the house, Ralph.”

“Mr. Garrick has been here with the young ladies for the past half-hour, sir,” replied Ralph.

“I shouldn't wonder if, on inquiry, it were found that he has been entertaining them,” said Goldsmith.

Ralph, who knew perfectly well what was the exact form that the entertainment assumed, busied himself hanging up the visitor's hat.

The fact was that, for the previous quarter of an hour, Garrick had been keeping Mary Horneck and her sister, and even Miss Reynolds, in fits of laughter by his burlesque account of Goldsmith's interview with an amanuensis who had been recommended to him with a view of saving him much manual labour. Goldsmith had told him the story originally, and the imagination of Garrick was quite equal to the duty of supplying all the details necessary for the burlesque. He pretended to be the amanuensis entering the room in which Goldsmith was supposed to be seated working laboriously at his “Animated Nature.”

“Good morning, sir, good morning,” he cried, pretending to take off his gloves and shake the dust off them with the most perfect self-possession, previous to laying them in his hat on a chair. “Now mind you don't sit there, Dr. Goldsmith,” he continued, raising a warning finger. A little motion of his body, and the pert amanuensis, with his mincing ways, was transformed into the awkward Goldsmith, shy and self-conscious in the presence of a stranger, hastening with clumsy politeness to get him a chair, and, of course, dragging forward the very one on which the man had placed his hat. “Now, now, now, what are you about?”—once more Garrick was the amanuensis. “Did not I warn you to be careful about that chair, sir? Eh? I only told you not to sit in it? Sir, that excuse is a mere quibble—a mere quibble. This must not occur again, or I shall be forced to dismiss you, and where will you be then, my good sir? Now to business, Doctor; but first you will tell your man to make me a cup of chocolate—with milk, sir—plenty of milk, and two lumps of sugar—plantation sugar, sir; I flatter myself that I am a patriot—none of your foreign manufactures for me. And now that I think on't, your laundress would do well to wash and iron my ruffles for me; and mind you tell her to be careful of the one with the tear in it”—this shouted half-way out of the door through which he had shown Goldsmith hurrying with the ruffles and the order for the chocolate. Then came the monologue of the amanuensis strolling about the room, passing his sneering remarks at the furniture—opening a letter which had just come by post, and reading it sotto voce. It was supposed to be from Filby, the tailor, and to state that the field-marshal's uniform in which Dr. Goldsmith meant to appear at the next masked ball at the Haymarket would be ready in a few days, and to inquire if Dr. Goldsmith had made up his mind as to the exact orders which he meant to wear, ending with a compliment upon Dr. Goldsmith's good taste and discrimination in choosing a costume which was so well adapted to his physique, and a humble suggestion that it should be worn upon the occasion of the first performance of the new comedy, when the writer hoped no objection would be raised to the hanging of a board in front of the author's box with “Made by Filby” printed on it.

Garrick's reading of the imaginary letter, stumbling over certain words—giving an odd turn and a ludicrous misreading to a phrase here and there, and finally his turning over the letter and mumbling a postscript alluding to the length of time that had passed since the writer had received a payment on account, could not have been surpassed. The effect of the comedy upon the people in the room was immeasurably heightened by the entrance of Goldsmith in the flesh, when Garrick, as the amanuensis, immediately walked to him gravely with the scrap of paper which had done duty as the letter, in his hand, asking him if what was written there in black and white about the field-marshal's uniform was correct, and if he meant to agree to Filby's request to wear it on the first night of the comedy.

Goldsmith perceived that Garrick was giving an example of the impromptu entertainment in which he delighted, and at once entered into the spirit of the scene, saying-“Why, yes, sir; I have come to the conclusion that more credit should be given to a man who has brought to a successful issue a campaign against the prejudices and stupidities of the manager of a playhouse than to the generalissimo of an army in the field, so why should not I wear a field-marshal's uniform, sir?”

The laugh was against Garrick, which pleased him greatly, for he knew that Goldsmith would feel that he was sharing in the entertainment, and would not regard it as a burlesque upon himself personally. In an instant, however, the actor had ceased to be the supercilious amanuensis, and became David Garrick, crying—

“Nay, sir, you are out of the play altogether. You are presuming to reply to the amanuensis, which, I need scarcely tell a gentleman of your experience, is a preposterous idea, and out of all consistency with nature.”

Goldsmith had shaken hands with all his friends, and being quite elated at the success of his reply to the brilliant Garrick, did not mind much what might follow.

At what did actually follow Goldsmith laughed as heartily as any one in the room.

“Come, sir,” said the amanuensis, “we have no time to waste over empty civilities. We have our 'Animated Nature' to proceed with; we cannot keep the world waiting any longer; it matters not about the booksellers, 'tis the world we think of. What is this?”—picking up an imaginary paper—“'The derivation of the name of the elephant has taxed the ingeniousness of many able writers, but there can be no doubt in the mind of any one who has seen that noble creature, as I have, in its native woods, careering nimbly from branch to branch of the largest trees in search of the butterflies, which form its sole food, that the name elephant is but a corruption of elegant, the movements of the animal being as singularly graceful as its shape is in accordance with all accepted ideas of symmetry.' Sir, this is mighty fine, but your style lacks animation. A writer on 'Animated Nature' should be himself both animated and natural, as one who translates Buffon should himself be a buffoon.”

In this strain of nonsense Garrick went on for the next ten minutes, leading up to a simulated dispute between Goldsmith and his amanuensis as to whether a dog lived on land or water. The dispute waxed warmer and warmer, until at last blows were exchanged and the amanuensis kicked Goldsmith through the door and down the stairs. The bumping of the imaginary man from step to step was heard in the drawing-room, and then the amanuensis entered, smiling and rubbing his hands as he remarked—

“The impertinent fellow! To presume to dictate to his amanuensis! Lord! what's the world coming to when a common literary man presumes to dictate to his amanuensis?”

Such buffoonery was what Garrick loved. At Dr. Burney's new house, around the corner in St. Martin's street, he used to keep the household in roars of laughter—as one delightful member of the household has recorded—over his burlesque auctions of books, and his imitations of Dr. Johnson.

“And all this,” said Goldsmith, “came out of the paltry story which I told him of how I hired an amanuensis, but found myself dumb the moment he sat down to work, so that, after making a number of excuses which I knew he saw through, I found it to my advantage to give the man a guinea and send him away.”

CHAPTER XI.

Goldsmith was delighted to find that the Jessamy Bride seemed free from care. He had gone to Reynolds' in fear and trembling lest he should hear that she was unable to join the party; but now he found her in as merry a mood as he had ever known her to be in. He was seated by her side at dinner, and he was glad to find that there was upon her no trace of the mysterious mood that had spoiled his pleasure at the Pantheon.

She had, of course, heard of the troubles at the playhouse, and she told him that nothing would induce her ever to speak to Colman, though she said that she and Little Comedy, when they had first heard of the intention of the manager to withdraw the piece, had resolved to go together to the theatre and demand its immediate production on the finest scale possible.

“There's still great need for some one who will be able to influence Colman in that respect,” said Goldsmith. “Only to-day, when I ventured to talk of a fresh scene being painted, He told me that it was not his intention to proceed to such expense for a piece that would not be played for longer than a small portion of one evening.”

“The monster!” cried the girl. “I should like to talk to him as I feel about this. What, is he mad enough to expect that playgoers will tolerate his wretched old scenery in a new comedy? Oh, clearly he needs some one to be near him who will speak plainly to him and tell him how contemptible he is. Your friend Dr. Johnson should go to him. The occasion is one that demands the powers of a man who has a whole dictionary at his back—yes, Dr. Johnson should go to him and threaten that if he does not behave handsomely he will, in his next edition of the Dictionary, define a scoundrel as a playhouse manager who keeps an author in suspense for months, and then produces his comedy so ungenerously as to make its failure a certainty. But, no, your play will be the greater success on account of its having to overcome all the obstacles which Mr. Colman has placed in its way.”

“I know, dear child, that if it depended on your good will it would be the greatest success of the century,” said he.

“And so it will be—oh, it must be! Little Comedy and I will—oh, we shall insist on the playgoers liking it! We will sit in front of a box and lead all the applause, and we will, besides, keep stern eyes fixed upon any one who may have the bad taste to decline to follow us.”

“You are kindness itself, my dear; and meanwhile, if you would come to the remaining rehearsals, and spend all your spare time thinking out a suitable name for the play you would be conferring an additional favour upon an ill-treated author.”

“I will do both, and it will be strange if I do not succeed in at least one of the two enterprises—the first being the changing of the mistakes of a manager into the success of a night, and the second the changing of the 'Mistakes of a Night' into the success of a manager—ay, and of an author as well.”

“Admirably spoke!” cried the author. “I have a mind to let the name 'The Mistakes of a Night' stand, you have made such a pretty play upon it.”

“No, no; that is not the kind of play to fill the theatre,” said she. “Oh, do not be afraid; it will be very strange if between us we cannot hit upon a title that will deserve, if not a coronet, at least a wreath of laurel.” Sir Joshua, who was sitting at the head of the table, not far away, had put up his ear-trumpet between the courses, and caught a word or two of the girl's sentence.

“I presume that you are still discussing the great title question,” said he. “You need not do so. Have I not given you my assurance that 'The Belle's Stratagem' is the best name that the play could receive?”

“Nay, that title Dr. Goldsmith holds to be one of the 'mistakes of a Knight!'” said Mr. Bunbury in a low tone. He delighted in a pun, but did not like too many people to hear him make one.

“'The Belle's Stratagem' I hold to be a good enough title until we get a better,” said Goldsmith. “I have confidence in the ingenuity of Miss Horneck to discover the better one.”

“Nay, I protest if you do not take my title I shall go to the playhouse and damn the play,” said Reynolds. “I have given it its proper name, and if it appears in public under any other it will have earned the reprobation of all honest folk who detest an alias.”

“Then that name shall stand,” said Goldsmith. “I give you my word, Sir Joshua, I would rather see my play succeed under your title than have it damned under a title given to it by the next best man to you in England.”

“That is very well said, indeed,” remarked Sir Joshua. “It gives evidence of a certain generosity of feeling on your part which all should respect.”

Miss Kauffman, who sat at Sir Joshua's right, smiled a trifle vaguely, for she had not quite understood the drift of Goldsmith's phrase, but from the other end of the table there came quite an outburst of laughter. Garrick sat there with Mrs. Bunbury and Baretti, to whom he was telling an imaginary story of Ould Grouse in the gun-room.

Dr. Burney, who sat at the other side of the table, had ventured to question the likelihood of an audience's apprehending the humour of the story at which Diggory had only hinted. He wondered if the story should not be told for the benefit of the playgoers.

A gentleman whom Bunbury had brought to dinner—his name was Colonel Gwyn, and it was known that he was a great admirer of Mary Horneck—took up the question quite seriously.

“For my part,” he said, “I admit frankly that I have never heard the story of Grouse in the gun-room.”

“Is it possible, sir?” cried Garrick. “What, you mean to say that you are not familiar with the reply of Ould Grouse to the young woman who asked him how he found his way into the gun-room when the door was locked—that about every gun having a lock, and so forth?”

“No, sir,” cried Colonel Gwyn. “I had no idea that the story was a familiar one. It seems interesting, too.”

“Oh, 't is amazingly interesting,” said Garrick. “But you are an army man, Colonel Gwyn; you have heard it frequently told over the mess-table.”

“I protest, sir,” said Colonel Gwyn, “I know so little about it that I fancied Ould Grouse was the name of a dog—I have myself known of sporting dogs called Grouse.”

“Oh, Colonel, you surprise me,” cried Garrick. “Ould Grouse a dog! Pray do not hint so much to Dr. Goldsmith. He is a very sensitive man, and would feel greatly hurt by such a suggestion. I believe that Dr. Goldsmith was an intimate friend of Ould Grouse and felt his death severely.”

“Then he is dead?” said Gwyn. “That, sir, gives a melancholy interest to the narrative.”

“A particularly pathetic interest, sir,” said Garrick, shaking his head. “I was not among his intimates, Colonel Gwyn, but when I reflect that that dear simple-minded old soul is gone from us—that the gunroom door is now open, but that within there is silence—no sound of the dear old feet that were wont to patter and potter—you will pardon my emotion, madam”—He turned with streaming eyes to Miss Reynolds, who forthwith became sympathetically affected, her voice breaking as she endeavoured to assure Garrick that his emotion, so far from requiring an apology, did him honour. Bunbury, who was ready to roar, could not do so now without seeming to laugh at the feeling of his hostess, and his wife had too high an appreciation of comedy not to be able to keep her face perfectly grave, while a sob or two that he seemed quite unable to suppress came from the napkin which Garrick held up to his face. Baretti said something in Italian to Dr. Burney across the table, about the melancholy nature of the party, and then Garrick dropped his napkin, saying—

“'T is selfish to repine, and he himself—dear old soul!—would be the last to countenance a show of melancholy; for, as his remarks in the gun-room testify, Colonel Gwyn, he had a fine sense of humour. I fancy I see him, the broad smile lighting up his homely features, as he delivered that sly thrust at his questioner, for it is perfectly well known, Colonel, that so far as poaching was concerned the other man had no particular character in the neighbourhood.”

“Oh, Grouse was a poacher, then,” said the Colonel.

“Well, if the truth must be told—but no, the man is dead and gone now,” cried Garrick, “and it is more generous only to remember, as we all do, the nimbleness of his wit—the genial mirth which ran through the gun-room after that famous sally of his. It seems that honest homely fun is dying out in England; the country stands in need of an Ould Grouse or two just now, and let us hope that when the story of that quiet, yet thoroughly jovial, remark of his in the gun-room comes to be told in the comedy, there will be a revival of the good old days when men were not afraid to joke, sir, and——”

“But so far as I can gather from what Mrs. Bunbury, who heard the comedy read, has told me, the story of Ould Grouse in the gun-room is never actually narrated, but only hinted at,” said Gwyn.

“That makes little matter, sir,” said Garrick. “The untold story of Ould Grouse in the gun-room will be more heartily laughed at during the next year or two than the best story of which every detail is given.”

“At any rate, Colonel Gwyn,” said Mrs. Bunbury, “after the pains which Mr. Garrick has taken to acquaint you with the amplest particulars of the story you cannot in future profess to be unacquainted with it.” Colonel Gwyn looked puzzled.

“I protest, madam,” said he, “that up to the present—ah! I fear that the very familiarity of Mr. Garrick with the story has caused him to be led to take too much for granted. I do not question the humour, mind you—I fancy that I am as quick as most men to see a joke, but——”

This was too much for Bunbury and Burney. They both roared with laughter, which increased in volume as the puzzled look upon Colonel Gwyn's face was taken up by Garrick, as he glanced first at Burney and then at Little Comedy's husband. Poor Miss Reynolds, who could never quite make out what was going on around her in that strange household where she had been thrown by an ironical fate, looked gravely at the ultra-grave Garrick, and then smiled artificially at Dr. Burney with a view of assuring him that she understood perfectly how he came to be merry.

“Colonel Gwyn,” said Garrick, “these gentlemen seem to have their own reasons for merriment, but I think you and I can better discriminate when to laugh and when to refrain from laughter. And yet—ah, I perceive they are recalling the story of Ould Grouse in the gun-room, and that, sure enough, would convulse an Egyptian mummy or a statue of Nestor; and the funny part of the business is yet to come, for up to the present I don't believe that I told you that the man had actually been married for some years.”

He laughed so heartily that Colonel Gwyn could not refrain from joining in, though his laughter was a good deal less hearty than that of any of the others who had enjoyed Garrick's whimsical fun.

When the men were left alone at the table, there was some little embarrassment owing to the deficiency of glass, for Sir Joshua, who was hospitable to a fault, keeping an open house and dining his friends every evening, could never be persuaded to replace the glass which chanced to be broken. Garrick made an excuse of the shortness of port-glasses at his end of the table to move up beside Goldsmith, whom he cheered by telling him that he had already given a lesson to Woodward regarding the speaking of the prologue which he, Garrick, had written for the comedy. He said he believed Woodward would repeat the lines very effectively. When Goldsmith mentioned that Colman declined to have a single scene painted for the production, both Sir Joshua and Garrick were indignant.

“You would have done well to leave the piece in my hands, Noll,” said the latter, alluding to the circumstance of Goldsmith's having sent the play to him on Colman's first refusal to produce it.

“Ah, Davy, my friend,” Goldsmith replied, “I feel more at my ease in reflecting that in another week I shall know the worst—or the best. If the play had remained with you I should feel like a condemned criminal for the next year or two.”

In the drawing-room that evening Garrick and Goldsmith got up the entertainment, which was possibly the most diverting one ever seen in a room.

Goldsmith sat on Garrick's knees with a table-cloth drawn over his head and body, leaving his arms only exposed. Garrick then began reciting long sentimental soliloquies from certain plays, which Goldsmith was supposed to illustrate by his gestures. The form of the entertainment has survived, and sometimes by chance it becomes humourous. But with Garrick repeating the lines and thrilling his audience by his marvellous change of expression as no audience has since been thrilled, and with Goldsmith burlesquing with inappropriately extravagant and wholly amusing gestures the passionate deliverances, it can easily be believed that Sir Joshua's guests were convulsed.

After some time of this division of labour, the position of the two playmates was reversed. It was Garrick who sat on Goldsmith's knees and did the gesticulating, while the poet attempted to deliver his lines after the manner of the player. The effect was even more ludicrous than that of the previous combination; and then, in the middle of an affecting passage from Addison's “Cato,” Goldsmith began to sing the song which he had been compelled to omit from the part of Miss Hardcastle, owing to Mrs. Bulkley's not being a singer. Of course Garrick's gestures during the delivery of the song were marvellously ingenious, and an additional element of attraction was introduced by Dr. Burney, who hastily seated himself at the pianoforte and interwove a medley accompaniment, introducing all the airs then popular, but without prejudice to the harmonies of the accompaniment.

Reynolds stood by the side of his friend, Miss Kauffman, and when this marvellous fooling had come to an end, except for the extra diversion caused by Garrick's declining to leave Goldsmith's knees—he begged the lady to favour the company with an Italian song which she was accustomed to sing to the accompaniment of a guitar. But Miss Angelica shook her head.

“Pray add your entreaties to mine, Miss Horneck,” said Sir Joshua to the Jessamy Bride. “Entreat our Angel of Art to give us the pleasure of hearing her sing.”

Miss Horneck rose, and made an elaborate curtsey before the smiling Angelica.

“Oh, Madame Angel, live forever!” she cried. “Will your Majesty condescend to let us hear your angelic voice? You have already deigned to captivate our souls by the exercise of one art; will you now stoop to conquer our savage hearts by the exercise of another?”

A sudden cry startled the company, and at the same instant Garrick was thrown on his hands and knees on the floor by the act of Goldsmith's springing to his feet.

“By the Lord, I've got it!” shouted Goldsmith. “The Jessamy Bride has given it to me, as I knew she would—the title of my comedy—she has just said it: 'She Stoops to Conquer.'”

CHAPTER XII.

As a matter of course, Colman objected to the new title when Goldsmith communicated it to him the next day; but the latter was firm on this particular point. He had given the play its name, he said, and he would not alter it now on any consideration.

Colman once again shrugged his shoulders. The production of the play gave him so much practice at shrugging, Goldsmith expressed his regret at not being able to introduce the part of a Frenchman, which he said he believed the manager would play to perfection.

But when Johnson, who attended the rehearsal with Miss Reynolds, the whole Horneck family, Cradock and Murphy, asserted, as he did with his customary emphasis, that no better title than “She Stoops to Conquer” could be found for the comedy, Colman made no further objections, and the rehearsal was proceeded with.

“Nay, sir,” cried Johnson, when Goldsmith was leaving his party in a box in order to go upon the stage, “Nay, sir, you shall not desert us. You must stay by us to let us know when the jests are spoken, so that we may be fully qualified to laugh at the right moments when the theatre is filled. Why, Goldy, you would not leave us to our own resources?”

“I will be the Lieutenant Cook of the comedy, Dr. Johnson,” said Miss Horneck—Lieutenant Cook and his discoveries constituted the chief topics of the hour. “I believe that I know so much of the dialogue as will enable me to pilot you, not merely to the Otaheite of a jest, but to a whole archipelago of wit.”

“Otaheite is a name of good omen,” said Cradock. “It is suggestive of palms, and 'palmam qui meruit ferat.'”

“Sir,” said Johnson, “you should know better than to quote Latin in the presence of ladies. Though your remark is not quite so bad as I expected it would be, yet let me tell you, sir, that unless the wit in the comedy is a good deal livelier than yours, it will have a poor chance with the playgoers.”

“Oh, sir, Dr. Goldsmith's wit is greatly superior to mine,” laughed Cradock. “Otherwise it would be my comedy that would be in rehearsal, and Dr. Goldsmith would be merely on a level with us who constitute his critics.”

Goldsmith had gone on the stage and the rehearsal had begun, so that Johnson was enabled, by pretending to give all his attention to the opening dialogue, to hide his lack of an effective reply to Cradock for his insolence in suggesting that they were both on the same level as critics.

Before Shuter, as Old Hardcastle, had more than begun to drill his servants, the mighty laughter of Dr. Johnson was shaking the box. Every outburst was like the exploding of a bomb, or, as Cradock put it, the broadside coming from the carronade of a three-decker. He had laughed and applauded during the scene at the Three Pigeons—especially the satirical sallies directed against the sentimentalists—but it was the drilling of the servants that excited him most, and he inquired of Miss Horneck—

“Pray what is the story of Ould Grouse in the gun-room, my dear?”

When the members of the company learned that it was the great Dr. Samuel Johnson who was roaring with laughter in the box, they were as much amazed as they were encouraged. Colman, who had come upon the stage out of compliment to Johnson, feeling that his position as an authority regarding the elements of diversion in a play was being undermined in the estimation of his company, remarked—

“Your friend Dr. Johnson will be a friend indeed if he comes in as generous a mood to the first representation. I only hope that the playgoers will not resent his attempt to instruct them on the subject of your wit.”

“I don't think that there is any one alive who will venture to resent the instruction of Dr. Johnson,” said Goldsmith quietly.

The result of this rehearsal and of the three rehearsals that followed it during the week, was more than encouraging to the actors, and it became understood that Woodward and Gentleman Smith were ready to admit their regret at having relinquished the parts for which they had been originally cast. The former had asked to be permitted to speak the prologue, which Garrick had written, and, upon which, as he had told Goldsmith, he had already given a hint or two to Woodward.

The difficulty of the epilogue, however, still remained. The one which Murphy had written for Mrs. Bulkley was objected to by Miss Catley, who threatened to leave the company if Mrs. Bulkley, who had been merely thrust forward to take Mrs. Abington's place, were entrusted with the epilogue; and, when Cradock wrote another for Miss Catley, Mrs. Bulkley declared that if Miss Catley were allowed the distinction which she herself had a right to claim, she would leave the theatre. Goldsmith's ingenuity suggested the writing of an epilogue in which both the ladies were presented in their true characters as quarreling on the subject; but Colman placed his veto upon this idea and also upon another simple epilogue which the author had written. Only on the day preceding the first performance did Goldsmith produce the epilogue which was eventually spoken by Mrs. Bulkley.

“It seems to me to be a pity to waste so much time discussing an epilogue which will never be spoke,” sneered Colman when the last difficulties had been smoothed over.

Goldsmith walked away without another word, and joined his party, consisting of Johnson, Reynolds, Miss Reynolds, the Bunburys and Mary Horneck. Now that he had done all his work connected with the production of the play—when he had not allowed himself to be overcome by the niggardly behaviour of the manager in declining to spend a single penny either upon the dresses or the scenery, that parting sneer of Colman's almost caused him to break down.

Mary Horneck perceived this, and hastened to say something kind to him. She knew so well what would be truly encouraging to him that she did not hesitate for a moment.

“I am glad I am not going to the theatre to-night,” she said; “my dress would be ruined.”

He tried to smile as he asked her for an explanation.

“Why, surely you heard the way the cleaners were laughing at the humour of the play,” she cried. “Oh, yes, all the cleaners dropped their dusters, and stood around the boxes in fits of laughter. I overheard one of the candle-snuffers say that no play he had seen rehearsed for years contained such wit as yours. I also overheard another man cursing Mr. Col-man for a curmudgeon.”

“You did? Thank God for that; 't is a great responsibility off my mind,” said Goldsmith. “Oh, my dear Jessamy Bride, I know how kind you are, and I only hope that your god-child will turn out a credit to me.”

“It is not merely your credit that is involved in the success of this play, sir,” said Johnson. “The credit of your friends, who insisted on Colman's taking the play, is also at stake.”

“And above all,” said Reynolds pleasantly, “the play must be a success in order to put Colman in the wrong.”

“That is the best reason that could be advanced why its success is important to us all,” said Mary. “It would never do for Colman to be in the right. Oh, we need live in no trepidation; all our credits will be saved by Monday night.”

“I wonder if any unworthy man ever had so many worthy friends,” said Goldsmith. “I am overcome by their kindness, and overwhelmed with a sense of my own unworthiness.”

“You will have another thousand friends by Monday night, sir,” cried Johnson. “Your true friend, sir, is the friend who pays for his seat to hear your play.”

“I always held that the best definition of a true friend is the man who, when you are in the hands of bailiffs, comes to see you, but takes care to send a guinea in advance,” said Goldsmith, and every one present knew that he alluded to the occasion upon which he had been befriended by Johnson on the day that “The Vicar of Wakefield” was sold.

“And now,” said Reynolds, “I have to prove how certain we are of the future of your piece by asking you to join us at dinner on Monday previous to the performance.”

“Commonplace people would invite you to supper, sir, to celebrate the success of the play,” said Johnson. “To proffer such an invitation would be to admit that we were only convinced of your worth after the public had attested to it in the most practical way. But we, Dr. Goldsmith, who know your worth, and have known it all these years, wish to show that our esteem remains independent of the verdict of the public. On Monday night, sir, you will find a thousand people who will esteem it an honour to have you to sup with them; but on Monday afternoon you will dine with us.”

“You not only mean better than any other man, sir, you express what you mean better,” said Goldsmith. “A compliment is doubly a compliment coming from Dr. Johnson.”

He was quite overcome, and, observing this, Reynolds and Mary Horneck walked away together, leaving him to compose himself under the shelter of a somewhat protracted analysis by Dr. Johnson of the character of Young Marlow. In the course of a quarter of an hour Goldsmith had sufficiently recovered to be able to perceive for the first time how remarkable a character he had created.

On Monday George Steevens called for Goldsmith to accompany him to the St. James's coffee-house, where the dinner was to take place. He found the author giving the finishing touches to his toilet, his coat being a salmon-pink in tint, and his waistcoat a pale yellow, embroidered with silver. Filby's bills (unpaid, alas!) prevent one from making any mistake on this point.

“Heavens!” cried the visitor. “Have you forgot that you cannot wear colours?”

“Why not?” asked Goldsmith. “Because Woodward is to appear in mourning to speak the prologue, is that any reason why the author of the comedy should also be in black?”

“Nay,” said Steevens, “that is not the reason. How is it possible that you forget the Court is in mourning for the King of Sardinia? That coat of yours is a splendid one, I allow, but if you were to appear in it in front of your box a very bad impression would be produced. I suppose you hope that the King will command a performance.”

Goldsmith's face fell. He looked at the reflection of the gorgeous garments in a mirror and sighed. He had a great weakness for colour in dress. At last he took off the coat and gave another fond look at it before throwing it over the back of a chair.

“It was an inspiration on your part to come for me, my dear friend,” said he. “I would not for a good deal have made such a mistake.”

He reappeared in a few moments in a suit of sober grey, and drove with his friend to the coffee-house, where the party, consisting of Johnson, Reynolds, Edmund and Richard Burke, and Caleb Whitefoord, had already assembled.

It soon became plain that Goldsmith was extremely nervous. He shook hands twice with Richard Burke and asked him if he had heard that the King of Sardinia was dead, adding that it was a constant matter for regret with him that he had not visited Sardinia when on his travels. He expressed a hope that the death of the King of Sardinia would not have so depressing an effect upon playgoers generally as to prejudice their enjoyment of his comedy.

Edmund Burke, understanding his mood, assured him gravely that he did not think one should be apprehensive on this score, adding that it would be quite possible to overestimate the poignancy of the grief which the frequenters of the pit were likely to feel at so melancholy but, after all, so inevitable an occurrence as the decease of a potentate whose name they had probably never heard.

Goldsmith shook his head doubtfully, and said he would try and hope for the best, but still....

Then he hastened to Steevens, who was laughing heartily at a pun of Whitefoord's, and said he was certain that neither of them could have heard that the King of Sardinia was dead, or they would moderate their merriment.

The dinner was a dismal failure, so far as the guest of the party was concerned. He was unable to swallow a morsel, so parched had his throat become through sheer nervousness, and he could not be induced to partake of more than a single glass of wine. He was evermore glancing at the clock and expressing a hope that the dinner would be over in good time to allow of their driving comfortably to the theatre.

Dr. Johnson was at first greatly concerned on learning from Reynolds that Goldsmith was eating nothing; but when Goldsmith, in his nervousness, began to boast of the fine dinners of which he had partaken at Lord Clare's house, and of the splendour of the banquets which took place daily in the common hall of Trinity College, Dublin, Johnson gave all his attention to his own plate, and addressed no further word to him—not even to remind him, as he described the glories of Trinity College to his friend Burke, that Burke had been at the college with him.

While there was still plenty of time to spare even for walking to the theatre, Goldsmith left the room hastily, explaining elaborately that he had forgotten to brush his hat before leaving his chambers, and he meant to have the omission repaired without delay.

He never returned.

CHAPTER XIII.

The party remained in the room for some time, and when at last a waiter from the bar was sent for and requested to tell Dr. Goldsmith, who was having his hat brushed, that his party were ready to leave the house, the man stated that Dr. Goldsmith had left some time ago, hurrying in the direction of Pall Mall.

“Psha! sir,” said Johnson to Burke, “Dr. Goldsmith is little better than a fool.” Johnson did not know what such nervousness as Goldsmith's was.

“Yes,” said Burke, “Dr. Goldsmith is, I suppose, the greatest fool that ever wrote the best poem of a century, the best novel of a century, and let us hope that, after the lapse of a few hours, I may be able to say the best comedy of a century.”

“I suppose we may take it for granted that he has gone to the playhouse?” said Richard Burke.

“It is not wise to take anything for granted so far as Goldsmith is concerned,” said Steevens. “I think that the best course we can adopt is for some of us to go to the playhouse without delay. The play must be looked after; but for myself I mean to look after the author. Gentlemen, Oliver Goldsmith needs to be looked after carefully. No one knows what a burden he has been forced to bear during the past month.”

“You think it is actually possible that he has not preceded us to the playhouse, sir,” said Johnson.

“If I know anything of him, sir,” said Steevens, “the playhouse is just the place which he would most persistently avoid.” There was a long pause before Johnson said in his weightiest manner:

“Sir, we are all his friends; we hold you responsible for his safety.”

“That is very kind of you, sir,” replied Steevens. “But you may rest assured that I will do my best to find him, wherever he may be.”

While the rest of the party set out for Covent Garden Theatre, Steevens hurried off in the opposite direction. He felt that he understood Goldsmith's mood. He believed that he would come upon him sitting alone in some little-frequented coffee house brooding over the probable failure of his play. The cheerful optimism of the man, which enabled him to hold out against Colman and his sneers, would, he was convinced, suffer a relapse when there was no urgent reason for its exercise, and his naturally sanguine temperament would at this critical hour of his life give place to a brooding melancholy, making it impossible for him to put in an appearance at the theatre, and driving him far from his friends. Steevens actually made up his mind that if he failed to find Goldsmith during the next hour or two, he would seek him at his cottage on the Edgware road.

He went on foot from coffee house to coffee house—from Jack's, in Dean street, to the Old Bell, in Westminster—but he failed to discover his friend in one of them. An hour and a half he spent in this way; and all this time roars of laughter from every part of the playhouse—except the one box that held Cumberland and his friends—were greeting the brilliant dialogue, the natural characterisation, and the admirably contrived situations in the best comedy that a century of brilliant authors had witnessed.

The scene comes before one with all the vividness that many able pens have imparted to a description of its details. We see the enormous figure of Dr. Johnson leaning far out of the box nearest the stage, with a hand behind his ear, so as to lose no word spoken on the stage; and as phrase after phrase, sparkling with wit, quivering with humour and vivified with numbers of allusions to the events of the hour, is spoken, he seems to shake the theatre with his laughter.

Reynolds is in the opposite corner, his ear-trumpet resting on the ledge of the box, his face smiling thoughtfully; and between these two notable figures Miss Reynolds is seated bolt upright, and looking rather frightened as the people in the pit look up now and again at the box.

Baretti is in the next box with Angelica Kauffman, Dr. Burney and little Miss Fanny Burney, destined in a year or two to become for a time the most notable woman in England. On the other side of the house Lord Clare occupies a box with his charming tom-boy daughter, who is convulsed with laughter as she hears reference made in the dialogue to the trick which she once played upon the wig of her dear friend the author. General Oglethorpe, who is beside her, holds up his finger in mock reproof, and Lord Camden, standing behind his chair, looks as if he regretted having lost the opportunity of continuing his acquaintance with an author whom every one is so highly honouring at the moment.

Cumberland and his friends are in a lower box, “looking glum,” as one witness asserts, though a good many years later Cumberland boasted of having contributed in so marked a way to the applause as to call forth the resentment of the pit.

In the next box Hugh Kelly, whose most noted success at Drury Lane a few years previously eclipsed Goldsmith's “Good-Natured Man” at “the other house,” sits by the side of Macpherson, the rhapsodist who invented “Ossian.” He glares at Dr. Johnson, who had no hesitation in calling him an impostor.

The Burkes, Edmund and Richard, are in a box with Mrs. Horneck and her younger daughter, who follows breathlessly the words with which she has for long been familiar, and at every shout of laughter that comes from the pit she is moved almost to tears. She is quite unaware of the fact that Colonel Gwyn, sitting alone in another part of the house, has his eyes fixed upon her—earnestly, affectionately. Her brother and his fiancée are in a box with the Bunburys; and in the most important box in the house Mrs. Thrale sits well forward, so that all eyes may be gratified by beholding her. It does not so much matter about her husband, who once thought that the fact of his being the proprietor of a concern whose operations represented the potentialities of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice entitled him to play upon the mother of the Gunnings when she first came to London the most contemptible hoax ever recorded to the eternal discredit of a man. The Duchess of Argyll, mindful of that trick which the cleverness of her mother turned to so good account, does not condescend to notice from her box, where she sits with Lady Betty Hamilton, either the brewer or his pushing wife, though she is acquainted with old General Paoli, whom the latter is patronising between the acts.

What a play! What spectators!

We listen to the one year by year with the same delight that it brought to those who heard it this night for the first time; and we look with delight at the faces of the notable spectators which the brush of the little man with the ear-trumpet in Johnson's box has made immortal.

Those two men in that box were the means of conferring immortality upon their century. Incomparable Johnson, who chose Boswell to be his biographer! Incomparable Reynolds, who, on innumerable canvases, handed down to the next century all the grace and distinction of his own!

And all this time Oliver Goldsmith is pacing with bent head and hands nervously clasped behind him, backward and forward, the broad walk in St. James's Park.

Steevens came upon him there after spending nearly two hours searching for him.

“Don't speak, man, for God's sake,” cried Oliver. “'Tis not so dark but that I can see disaster imprinted on your face. You come to tell me that the comedy is ended—that the curtain was obliged to be rung down in the middle of an act. You come to tell me that my comedy of life is ended.”

“Not I,” said Steevens. “I have not been at the playhouse yet. Why, man, what can be the matter with you? Why did you leave us in the lurch at the coffee house?”

“I don't know what you speak of,” said Goldsmith. “But I beg of you to hasten to the playhouse and carry me the news of the play—don't fear to tell me the worst; I have been in the world of letters for nearly twenty years; I am not easily dismayed.”

“My dear friend,” said Steevens, “I have no intention of going to the playhouse unless you are in my company—I promised so much to Dr. Johnson. What, man, have you no consideration for your friends, leaving yourself out of the question? Have you no consideration for your art, sir?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that perhaps while you are walking here some question may arise on the stage that you, and you only, can decide—are you willing to allow the future of your comedy to depend upon the decision of Colman, who is not the man to let pass a chance of proving himself to be a true prophet? Come, sir, you have shown yourself to be a man, and a great man, too, before to-night. Why should your courage fail you now when I am convinced you are on the eve of achieving a splendid success?”

“It shall not—it shall not!” cried Goldsmith after a short pause. “I'll not give in should the worst come to the worst. I feel that I have something of a man in me still. The years that I have spent in this battle have not crushed me into the earth. I'll go with you, my friend—I'll go with you. Heaven grant that I may yet be in time to avert disaster.”

They hurried together to Charing Cross, where a hackney coach was obtainable. All the time it was lumbering along the uneven streets to Covent Garden, Goldsmith was talking excitedly about the likelihood of the play being wrecked through Colman's taking advantage of his absence to insist on a scene being omitted—or, perhaps, a whole act; and nothing that Steevens could say to comfort him had any effect.

When the vehicle turned the corner into Covent Garden he craned his head out of the window and declared that the people were leaving the playhouse—that his worst fears were realized.

“Nonsense!” cried Steevens, who had put his head out of the other window. “The people you see are only the footmen and linkmen incidental to any performance. What, man, would the coachmen beside us be dozing on their boxes if they were waiting to be called? No, my friend, the comedy has yet to be damned.”

When they got out of the coach Goldsmith hastened round to the stage door, looking into the faces of the people who were lounging around, as if to see in each of them the fate of his play written. He reached the back of the stage and made for where Colman was standing, just as Quick, in the part of Tony Lumpkin, was telling Mrs. Hardcastle that he had driven her forty miles from her own house, when all the time she was within twenty yards of it. In a moment he perceived that the lights were far too strong; unless Mrs. Hardcastle was blind she could not have failed to recognise the familiar features of the scene. The next moment there came a hiss—a solitary hiss from the boxes.

“What's that, Mr. Colman?” whispered the excited author.

“Psha! sir,” said Colman brutally. “Why trouble yourself about a squib when we have all been sitting on a barrel of gunpowder these two hours?”

“That's a lie,” said Shuter, who was in the act of going on the stage as Mr. Hardcastle. “'Tis a lie, Dr. Goldsmith. The success of your play was assured from the first.”

“By God! Mr. Colman, if it is a lie I'll never look on you as a friend while I live!” said Goldsmith.

CHAPTER XIV.

It was a lie, and surely the most cruel and most objectless lie ever uttered. Goldsmith was soon made aware of this. The laughter that followed Tony Lumpkin's pretending to his mother that Mr. Hard-castle was a highwayman was not the laugh of playgoers who have endured four acts of a dull play; it was the laugh of people who have been in a good humour for over two hours, and Goldsmith knew it. He perceived from their laughter that the people in every part of the house were following the comedy with extraordinary interest. Every point in the dialogue was effective—the exquisite complications, the broad fun, the innumerable touches of nature, all were appreciated by an audience whose expression of gratification fell little short of rapture.

When the scene was being shifted Col-man left the stage and did not return to it until it was his duty to come forward after the epilogue was spoken by Mrs. Bulkley and announce the date of the author's night.

As soon as the manager had disappeared Goldsmith had a chance of speaking to several of the actors at intervals as they made their exits, and from them he learned the whole truth regarding the play: from the first scene to the one which was being represented, the performance had been a succession of triumphs, not only for the author, but for every member of the company concerned in the production. With old dresses and scenery familiar to all frequenters of the playhouse, the extraordinary success of the comedy was beyond all question. The allusion to the offensive terms of the Royal Marriage Act was especially relished by the audience, several of the occupants of the pit rising to their feet and cheering for some time—so much Goldsmith learned little by little at intervals from the actors.

“I swore never to look on Colman as my friend again, and I'll keep my word; he has treated me cruelly—more cruelly than he has any idea of,” said Goldsmith to Lee Lewes. “But as for you, Mr. Lewes, I'll do anything that is in my power for you in the future. My poor play owes much to you, sir.”

“Faith then, sir,” cried Lewes, “I'll keep you to your word. My benefit will take place in a short time; I'll ask you for a prologue, Dr. Goldsmith.”

“You shall have the best prologue I ever wrote,” said Goldsmith.

And so he had.

When the house was still cheering at the conclusion of the epilogue, Goldsmith, overcome with emotion, hurried into the green room. Mrs. Abington was the first person whom he met. She held down her head, and affected a guilty look as she glanced at him sideways through half-closed eyes.

“Dr. Goldsmith,” she said in a tone modulated to a point of humility, “I hope in your hour of triumph you will be generous to those who were foolish enough to doubt the greatness of your work. Oh, sir, I pray of you not to increase by your taunts the humiliation which I feel at having resigned my part in your comedy. Believe me, I have been punished sufficiently during the past two hours by hearing the words, which I might have spoken, applauded so rapturously coming from another.”

“Taunts, my dear madam; who speaks of taunts?” said he. “Nay, I have a part in my mind for you already—that is, if you will be good enough to accept it.”

“Oh, sir, you are generosity itself!” cried the actress, offering him both her hands. “I shall not fail to remind you of your promise, Dr. Goldsmith.”

And now the green room was being crowded by the members of the company and the distinguished friends of the author, who were desirous of congratulating him. Dr. Johnson's voice filled the room as his laughter had filled the theatre.

“We perceived the reason of your extraordinary and unusual modesty, Dr. Goldsmith, before your play was many minutes on the stage,” said he. “You dog, you took as your example the Italians who, on the eve of Lent, indulge in a carnival, celebrating their farewell to flesh by a feast. On the same analogy you had a glut of modesty previous to bidding modesty good-bye forever; for to-night's performance will surely make you a coxcomb.”

“Oh, I hope not, sir,” said Goldsmith. “No, you don't hope it, sir,” cried Johnson. “You are thinking at this moment how much better you are than your betters—I see it on your face, you rascal.”

“And he has a right to think so,” said Mrs. Bunbury. “Come, Dr. Goldsmith, speak up, say something insulting to your betters.”

“Certainly, madam,” said Goldsmith. “Where are they?”

“Well said!” cried Edmund Burke.

“Nay, sir,” said Johnson. “Dr. Goldsmith's satire is not strong enough. We expected something more violent. 'Tis like landing one in one's back garden when one has looked for Crackskull Common.”

His mighty laughter echoed through the room and made the pictures shake on the walls.

Mary Horneck had not spoken. She had merely given her friend her hand. She knew that he would understand her unuttered congratulations, and she was not mistaken.

For the next quarter of an hour there was an exchange of graceful wit and gracious compliment between the various persons of distinction in the green room. Mrs. Thrale, with her usual discrimination, conceived the moment to be an opportune one for putting on what she fondly imagined was an Irish brogue, in rallying Goldsmith upon some of the points in his comedy. Miss Kauffman and Signor Baretti spoke Italian into Reynolds's ear-trumpet, and Edmund Burke talked wittily in the background with the Bunburys.

So crowded the room was, no one seemed to notice how an officer in uniform had stolen up to the side of Mary Horneck where she stood behind Mr. Thrale and General Oglethorpe, and had withdrawn her into a corner, saying a whispered word to her. No one seemed to observe the action, though it was noticed by Goldsmith. He kept his eyes fixed upon the girl, and perceived that, while the man was speaking to her, her eyes were turned upon the floor and her left hand was pressed against her heart.

He kept looking at her all the time that Mrs. Thrale was rattling out her inanities, too anxious to see what effect she was producing upon the people within ear-shot to notice that the man whom she was addressing was paying no attention to her.

When the others as well ceased to pay any attention to her, she thought it advisable to bring her prattle to a close.

“Psha! Dr. Goldsmith,” she cried. “We have given you our ears for more than two hours, and yet you refuse to listen to us for as many minutes.”

“I protest, madam, that I have been absorbed,” said Goldsmith. “Yes, you were remarking that——”

“That an Irishman, when he achieves a sudden success, can only be compared to a boy who has robbed an orchard,” said the lady.

“True—very true, madam,” said he. He saw Mary Horneck's hands clasp involuntarily for a moment as she spoke to the man who stood smiling beside her. She was not smiling.

“Yes, 'tis true; but why?” cried Mrs. Thrale, taking care that her voice did not appeal to Goldsmith only.

“Ah, yes; that's just it—why?” said he. Mary Horneck had turned away from the officer, and was coming slowly back to where her sister and Henry Bunbury were standing.

“Why?” said Mrs. Thrale shrilly. “Why? Why is an Irishman who has become suddenly successful like a boy who has robbed an orchard? Why, because his booty so distends his body that any one can perceive he has got in his pockets what he is not entitled to.”

She looked around for appreciation, but failed to find it. She certainly did not perceive any appreciation of her pleasantry on the face of the successful Irishman before her. He was not watching Mary now. All his attention was given to the man to whom she had been talking, and who had gone to the side of Mrs. Abington, where he remained chatting with even more animation than was usual for one to assume in the green room.

“You will join us at supper, Dr. Goldsmith?” said Mr. Thrale.

“Nay, sir!” cried Bunbury; “mine is a prior claim. Dr. Goldsmith agreed some days ago to honour my wife with his company to-night.”

“What did I say, Goldy?” cried Johnson. “Was it not that, after the presentation of the comedy, you would receive a hundred invitations?”

“Well, sir, I have only received two since my play was produced, and one of them I accepted some days ago,” said the Irishman, and Mrs. Thrale hoped she would be able to remember the bull in order to record it as conclusive evidence of Goldsmith's awkwardness of speech.

But Burke, who knew the exact nature of the Irish bull, only smiled. He laughed, however, when Goldsmith, assuming the puzzled expression of the Irishman who adds to the humour of his bull by pretending that it is involuntary, stumbled carefully in his words, simulating a man anxious to explain away a mistake that he has made. Goldsmith excelled at this form of humour but too well; hence, while the pages of every book that refers to him are crowded with his brilliant saying's, the writers quote Garrick's lines in proof—proof positive, mind—that he “talked like poor Poll.” He is the first man on record who has been condemned solely because of the exigencies of rhyme, and that, too, in the doggerel couplet of the most unscrupulous jester of the century.

Mary Horneck seems to have been the only one who understood him thoroughly. She has left her appreciation of his humour on record. The expression which she perceived upon his face immediately after he had given utterance to some delightful witticism—which the recording demons around him delighted to turn against himself—was the expression which makes itself apparent in Reynolds's portrait of him. The man who “talked like poor Poll” was the man who, even before he had done anything in literature except a few insignificant essays, was visited by Bishop Percy, though every visit entailed a climb up a rickety staircase and a seat on a rickety stool in a garret. Perhaps, however, the fastidious Percy was interested in ornithology and was ready to put himself to great inconvenience in order to hear parrot-talk.

While he was preparing to go with the Bunburys, Goldsmith noticed that the man who, after talking with Mary Horneck, had chatted with Mrs. Abington, had disappeared; and when the party whom he was accompanying to supper had left the room he remained for a few moments to make his adieux to the players. He shook hands with Mrs. Abington, saying—

“Have no fear that I shall forget my promise, madam.”

“I shall take good care that you don't, sir,” said she.

“Do not fancy that I shall neglect my own interests!” he cried, bowing as he took a step away from her. When he had taken another step he suddenly returned to her as if a sudden thought had struck him. “Why, if I wasn't going away without asking you what is the name of the gentleman in uniform who was speaking with you just now,” said he. “I fancy I have met him somewhere, and one doesn't want to be rude.”

“His name is Jackson,” she replied. “Yes, Captain Jackson, though the Lord only knows what he is captain of.”

“I have been mistaken; I know no one of that name,” said Goldsmith. “'Tis as well I made sure; one may affront a gentleman as easily by professing to have met him as by forgetting that one has done so.”

When he got outside, he found that Mary Horneck has been so greatly affected by the heat of the playhouse and the excitement of the occasion, she had thought it prudent to go away with the Reynoldses in their coach—her mother had preceded her by nearly half an hour.

The Bunburys found that apparently the excitement of the evening had produced a similar effect upon their guest. Although he admitted having eaten no dinner—Johnson and his friends had been by no means reticent on the subject of the dinner—he was without an appetite for the delightful little supper which awaited him at Mrs. Bunbury's. It was in vain too that his hostess showed herself to be in high spirits, and endeavoured to rally him after her own delightful fashion. He remained almost speechless the whole evening.

“Ah,” said she, “I perceive clearly that your Little Comedy has been quite obscured by your great comedy. But wait until we get you down with us at Barton; you will find the first time we play loo together that a little comedy may become a great tragedy.”

Bunbury declared that he was as poor company during the supper as if his play had been a mortifying failure instead of a triumphant success, and Goldsmith admitted that this was true, taking his departure as soon as he could without being rude.

He walked slowly through the empty streets to his chambers in Brick Court. But it was almost daylight before he went to bed.

All his life he had been looking forward to this night—the night that should put the seal upon his reputation, that should give him an incontestable place at the head of the imaginative writers of his period. And yet, now that the fame for which he had struggled with destiny was within his grasp, he felt more miserable than he had ever felt in his garret.

CHAPTER XV.

What did it all mean?

That was the question which was on his mind when he awoke. It did not refer to the reception given to “She Stoops to Conquer,” which had placed him in the position he had longed for; it had reference solely to the strange incident which had occurred in the green room.

The way Mrs. Abington had referred to the man with whom Mary had been speaking was sufficient to let him know that he was not a man of reputation—he certainly had not seemed to Goldsmith to be a man of reputation either when he had seen him at the Pantheon or in the green room. He had worn an impudent and forward manner which, in spite of his glaring good looks that might possibly make him acceptable in the eyes of such generous ladies as Mrs. Abington, Mrs. Bulkley or Mrs. Woffington, showed that he was a person of no position in society. This conclusion to which Goldsmith had come was confirmed by the fact that no persons of any distinction who had been present at the Pantheon or the playhouse had shown that they were acquainted with him—no one person save only Mary Horneck.

Mary Horneck had by her act bracketed herself with Mrs. Abington and Mrs. Bulk-ley.

This he felt to be a very terrible thing. A month ago it would have been incredible to him that such a thing could be. Mary Horneck had invariably shunned in society those persons—women as well as men—who had shown themselves to be wanting in modesty. She had always detested the man—he was popular enough at that period—who had allowed innuendoes to do duty for wit; and she had also detested the woman—she is popular enough now—who had laughed at and made light of the innuendoes, bordering upon impropriety, of such a man.

And yet she had by her own act placed herself on a level with the least fastidious of the persons for whom she had always professed a contempt. The Duchess of Argyll and Lady Ancaster had, to be sure, shaken hands with the two actresses; but the first named at least had done so for her own ends, and had got pretty well sneered at in consequence. Mary Horneck stood in a very different position from that occupied by the Duchess. While not deficient in charity, she had declined to follow the lead of any leader of fashion in this matter, and had held aloof from the actresses.

And yet he had seen her in secret conversation with a man at whom one of these same actresses had not hesitated to sneer as an impostor—a man who was clearly unacquainted with any other member of her family.

What could this curious incident mean?

The letters which had come from various friends congratulating him upon the success of the comedy lay unheeded by him by the side of those which had arrived—not a post had been missed—from persons who professed the most disinterested friendship for him, and were anxious to borrow from him a trifle until they also had made their success. Men whom he had rescued from starvation, from despair, from suicide, and who had, consequently, been living on him ever since, begged that he would continue his contributions on a more liberal scale now that he had in so marked a way improved his own position. But, for the first time, their letters lay unread and unanswered. (Three days actually passed before he sent his guineas flying to the deserving and the undeserving alike. That was how he contrived to get rid of the thousands of pounds which he had earned since leaving his garret.)

His man servant had never before seen him so depressed as he was when he left his chambers.

He had made up his mind to go to Mary and tell her that he had seen what no one else either in the Pantheon or in the green room had seemed to notice in regard to that man whose name he had learned was Captain Jackson—he would tell her and leave it to her to explain what appeared to him more than mysterious. If any one had told him in respect to another girl all that he had noticed, he would have said that such a matter required no explanation; he had heard of the intrigues of young girls with men of the stamp of that Captain Jackson. With Mary Horneck, however, the matter was not so easily explained. The shrug and the raising of the eyebrows were singularly inappropriate to any consideration of an incident in which she was concerned.

He found before he had gone far from his chambers that the news of the success of the comedy had reached his neighbours. He was met by several of the students of the Temple, with whom he had placed himself on terms of the pleasantest familiarity, and they all greeted him with a cordiality, the sincerity of which was apparent on their beaming faces. Among them was one youth named Grattan, who, being an Irishman, had early found a friend in Goldsmith. He talked years afterward of this early friendship of his.

Then the head porter, Ginger, for whom Goldsmith had always a pleasant word, and whose wife was his laundress—not wholly above suspicion as regards her honesty—stammered his congratulations, and received the crown which he knew was certain; and Goldsmith began to feel what he had always suspected—that there was a great deal of friendliness in the world for men who have become successful.

Long before he had arrived at the house of the Hornecks he was feeling that he would be the happiest man in London or the most miserable before another hour would pass.

He was fortunate enough to find, on arriving at the house, that Mary was alone. Mrs. Horneck and her son had gone out together in the coach some time before, the servant said, admitting him, for he was on terms of such intimacy with the family the man did not think it necessary to inquire if Miss Horneck would see him. The man was grinning from ear to ear as he admitted the visitor.

“I hope, Doctor, that I know my business better than Diggory,” he said, his grin expanding genially.

“Ah! so you were one of the gentlemen in the gallery?” said Goldsmith. “You had my destiny in your keeping for two hours?”

“I thought I'd ha' dropped, sir, when it came to Diggory at the table—and Mr. Marlow's man, sir—as drunk as a lord. 'I don't know what more you want unless you'd have had him soused in a beer barrel,' says he quite cool-like and satisfied—and it's the gentleman's own private house, after all. Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! Didn't Sir Joshua's Ralph laugh till he thought our neighbours would think it undignified-like, and then sent us off worse than ever by trying to look solemn. Only some fools about us said the drunk servant was ungenteel; but young Mr. Northcote—Sir Joshua's young man, sir—he up and says that nature isn't always genteel, and that nature was above gentility, and so forth—I beg your pardon, Doctor, what was I thinking of? Why, sir, Diggory himself couldn't ha' done worse than me—talking so familiar-like, instead of showing you up.”

“Nay, sir,” said Goldsmith, “the patron has the privilege of addressing his humble servant at what length he please. You are one of my patrons, George; but strike me dumb, sir, I'll be patronised by you no longer; and, to put a stop to your airs, I'll give you half a dozen tickets for my benefit, and that will turn the tables on you, my fine fellow.”

“Oh, Doctor, you are too kind, sir,” whispered the man, for he had led the way to the drawingroom door. “I hope I've not been too bold, sir. If I told them in the kitchen about forgetting myself they'd dub me Diggory without more ado. There'll be Diggorys enough in the servants' halls this year, sir.”

In another moment Goldsmith was in the presence of Mary Horneck.

She was seated on a low chair at the window. He could not fail to notice that she looked ill, though it was not until she had risen, trying to smile, that he saw how very ill she was. Her face, which he had scarcely ever seen otherwise than bright, had a worn appearance, her eyes were sunken through much weeping, and there was a frightened look in them that touched him deeply.

“You will believe me when I say how sorry I was not to be able to do honour last night to the one whom I honour most of all men,” she said, giving him her hand. “But it was impossible—oh, quite impossible, for me to sup even with my sister and you. Ah, it was pitiful! considering how I had been looking forward to your night of triumph, my dear friend.”

“It was pitiful, indeed, dear child,” said he. “I was looking forward to that night also—I don't know for how many years—all my life, it seems to me.”

“Never mind!” she cried, with a feeble attempt at brightness. “Never mind! your night of triumph came, and no one can take it away from you now; every one in the town is talking of your comedy and its success.”

“There is no one to whom success is sweeter than it is to me,” said Goldsmith. “But you know me too well, my Jessamy Bride, to think for a single moment that I could enjoy my success when my dearest friend was miserable.”

“I know it,” she said, giving him her hand once more. “I know it, and knowing it last night only made me feel more miserable.”

“What is the matter, Mary?” he asked her after a pause. “Once before I begged of you to tell me if you could. I say again that perhaps I may be able to help you out of your trouble, though I know that I am not a man of many resources.”

“I cannot tell you,” she said slowly, but with great emphasis. “There are some sorrows that a woman must bear alone. It is Heaven's decree that a woman's sorrow is only doubled when she tries to share it with another—either with a sister or with a brother—even so good a friend as Oliver Goldsmith.”

“That such should be your thought shows how deep is your misery,” said he. “I cannot believe that it could be increased by your confiding its origin to me.”

“Ah, I see everything but too plainly,” she cried, throwing herself down on her chair once more and burying her face in her hands. “Why, all my misery arises from the possibility of some one knowing whence it arises. Oh, I have said too much,” she cried piteously. She had sprung to her feet and was standing looking with eager eyes into his. “Pray forget what I have said, my friend. The truth is that I do not know what I say; oh, pray go away—go away and leave me alone with my sorrow—it is my own—no one has a right to it but myself.”

There was actually a note of jealousy in her voice, and there came a little flash from her eyes as she spoke.

“No, I will not go away from you, my poor child,” said he. “You shall tell me first what that man to whom I saw you speak in the green room last night has to do with your sorrow.”

She did not give any visible start when he had spoken. There was a curious look of cunning in her eyes—a look that made him shudder, so foreign was it to her nature, which was ingenuous to a fault.

“A man? Did I speak to a man?” she said slowly, affecting an endeavour to recall a half-forgotten incident of no importance. “Oh, yes, I suppose I spoke to quite a number of men in the green room. How crowded it was! And it became so heated! Ah, how terrible the actresses looked in their paint!—almost as terrible as a lady of quality!”

“Poor child!” said he. “My heart bleeds for you. In striving to hide everything from me you have told me all—all except—listen to me, Mary. Nothing that I can hear—nothing that you can tell me—will cause me to think the least that is ill of you; but I have seen enough to make me aware that that man—Captain Jackson, he calls himself——”

“How did you find out his name?” she said in a whisper. “I did not tell you his name even at the Pantheon.”

“No, you did not; but yet I had no difficulty in finding it out. Tell me why it is that you should be afraid of that man. Do you not know as well as I do that he is a rascal? Good heavens! Mary, could you fail to see rascal written on his countenance for all men and women to read?”

“He is worse than you or any one can imagine, and yet——”

“How has he got you in his power—that is what you are going to tell me.”

“No, no; that is impossible. You do not know what you ask. You do not know me, or you would not ask me to tell you.”

“What would you have me think, child?”

“Think the worst—the worst that your kind heart can think—only leave me—leave me. God may prove less unkind than He seems to me. I may soon die. 'The only way her guilt to cover.'”

“I cannot leave you, and I say again that I refuse to believe anything ill of you. Do you really think that it is possible for me to have written so much as I have written about men and women without being able to know when a woman is altogether good—a man altogether bad? I know you, my dear, and I have seen him. Why should you be afraid of him? Think of the friends you have.”

“It is the thought of them that frightens me. I have friends now, but if they knew all that that man can tell, they would fly from me with loathing. Oh! when I think of it all, I abhor myself. Oh, fool, fool, fool! Was ever woman such a fool before?”

“For God's sake, child, don't talk in that strain.”

“It is the only strain in which I can talk. It is the cry of a wretch who stands on the brink of a precipice and knows that hands are being thrust out behind to push her over.”

She tottered forward with wild eyes, under the influence of her own thought. He caught her and supported her in his arms.

“That shows you, my poor girl, that if there are unkind hands behind you, there are still some hands that are ready to keep your feet from slipping. There are hands that will hold you back from that precipice, or else those who hold them out to you will go over the brink with you. Ah, my dear, dear girl, nothing can happen to make you despair. In another year—perhaps in another month—you will wonder how you could ever have taken so gloomy a view of the present hour.”

A gleam of hope came into her eyes. Only for an instant it remained there, however. Then she shook her head, saying—

“Alas! Alas!”

She seated herself once more, but he retained her hand in one of his own, laying his other caressingly on her head.

“You are surely the sweetest girl that ever lived,” said he. “You fill with your sweetness the world through which I walk. I do not say that it would be a happiness for me to die for you, for you know that if my dying could save you from your trouble I would not shrink from it. What I do say is that I should like to live for you—to live to see happiness once again brought to you. And yet you will tell me nothing—you will not give me a chance of helping you.”

She shook her head sadly.

“I dare not—I dare not,” she said. “I dare not run the chance of forfeiting your regard forever.”

“Good-bye,” he said after a pause.

He felt her fingers press his own for a moment; then he dropped her hand and walked toward the door. Suddenly, however, he returned to her.

“Mary,” he said, “I will seek no more to learn your secret; I will only beg of you to promise me that you will not meet that man again—that you will hold no communication with him. If you were to be seen in the company of such a man—talking to him as I saw you last night—what would people think? The world is always ready to put the worst possible construction upon anything unusual that it sees. You will promise me, my dear?”

“Alas! alas!” she cried piteously. “I cannot make you such a promise. You will not do me the injustice to believe that I spoke to him of my own free will?”

“What, you would have me believe that he possesses sufficient power over you to make you do his bidding? Great God! that can never be!”

“That is what I have said to myself day by day; he cannot possess that power over me—he cannot be such a monster as to. . . oh, I cannot speak to you more! Leave me—leave me! I have been a fool and I must pay the penalty of my folly.” Before he could make a reply, the door was opened and Mrs. Bunbury danced into the room, her mother following more sedately and with a word of remonstrance.

“Nonsense, dear Mamma,” cried Little Comedy. “What Mary needs is some one who will raise her spirits—Dr. Goldsmith, for instance. He has, I am sure, laughed her out of her whimsies. Have you succeeded, Doctor? Nay, you don't look like it, nor does she, poor thing! I felt certain that you would be in the act of reading a new comedy to her, but I protest it would seem as if it was a tragedy that engrossed your attention. He doesn't look particularly like our agreeable Rattle at the present moment, does he, Mamma? And it was the same at supper last night. It might have been fancied that he was celebrating a great failure instead of a huge success.”

For the next quarter of an hour the lively girl chatted away, imitating the various actors who had taken part in the comedy, and giving the author some account of what the friends whom she had met that day said of the piece. He had never before felt the wearisomeness of a perpetually sparkling nature. Her laughter grated upon his ears; her gaiety was out of tune with his mood. He took leave of the family at the first breathing space that the girl permitted him.

CHAPTER XVI.

He felt that the result of his interview with Mary was to render more mysterious than ever the question which he had hoped to solve.

He wondered if he was more clumsy of apprehension than other men, as he had come away from her without learning her secret. He was shrewd enough to know that the majority of men to whom he might give a detailed account of his interview with the girl—a detailed account of his observation of her upon the appearance of Captain Jackson first at the Pantheon, then in the green room of Covent Garden—would have no trouble whatever in accounting for her behaviour upon both occasions. He could see the shrugs of the cynical, the head-shakings of those who professed to be vastly grieved.

Ah, they did not know this one girl. They were ready to lump all womankind together and to suppose that it would be impossible for one woman to be swayed by other impulses than were common to womankind generally.

But he knew this girl, and he felt that it was impossible to believe that she was otherwise than good. Nothing would force him to think anything evil regarding her.

“She is not as others,” was the phrase that was in his mind—the thought that was in his heart.

He did not pause to reflect upon the strangeness of the circumstance that when a man wishes to think the best of a woman he says she is not as other women are.

He did not know enough of men and women to be aware of the fact that when a man makes up his mind that a woman is altogether different from other women, he loves that woman.

He felt greatly grieved to think that he had been unable to search out the heart of her mystery; but the more he recalled of the incidents that had occurred upon the two occasions when that man Jackson had been in the same apartment as Mary Horneck, the more convinced he became that the killing of that man would tend to a happy solution of the question which was puzzling him.

After giving this subject all his thought for the next day or two, he went to his friend Baretti, and presented him with tickets for one of the author's nights for “She Stoops to Conquer.” Baretti was a well known personage in the best literary society in London, having consolidated his reputation by the publication of his English and Italian dictionary. He had been Johnson's friend since his first exile from Italy, and it was through his influence Baretti, on the formation of the Royal Academy, had been appointed Secretary for Foreign Correspondence. To Johnson also he owed the more remunerative appointment of Italian tutor at the Thrales'. He had frequently dined with Goldsmith at his chambers.

Baretti expressed himself grateful for the tickets, and complimented the author of the play upon his success.

“If one may measure the success of a play by the amount of envy it creates in the breasts of others, yours is a huge triumph,” said the Italian.

“Yes,” said Goldsmith quickly, “that is just what I wish to have a word with you about. The fact is, Baretti, I am not so good a swordsman as I should be.”

“What,” cried Baretti, smiling as he looked at the man before him, who had certainly not the physique of the ideal swordsman. “What, do you mean to fight your detractors? Take my advice, my friend, let the pen be your weapon if such is your intention. If you are attacked with the pen you should reply with the same weapon, and with it you may be pretty certain of victory.”

“Ah, yes; but there are cases—well, one never knows what may happen, and a man in my position should be prepared for any emergency. I can do a little sword play—enough to enable me to face a moderately good antagonist. A pair of coxcombs insulted me a few days ago and I retorted in a way that I fancy might be thought effective by some people.”

“How did you retort?”

“Well, I warned the passers-by that the pair were pickpockets disguised as gentlemen.”

“Bacchus! An effective retort! And then——”

“Then I turned down a side street and half drew my sword; but, after making a feint of following me, they gave themselves over to a bout of swearing and went on. What I wish is to be directed by you to any compatriot of yours who would give me lessons in fencing. Do you know of any first-rate master of the art in London?”

The Italian could not avoid laughing, Goldsmith spoke so seriously.

“You would like to find a maestro who would be capable of turning you into a first-rate swordsman within the space of a week?”

“Nay, sir, I am not unreasonable; I would give him a fortnight.”

“Better make it five years.”

“Five years?”

“My dear friend, I pray of you not to make me your first victim if I express to you my opinion that you are not the sort of man who can be made a good swordsman. You were born, not made, a poet, and let me tell you that a man must be a born swordsman if he is to take a front place among swordsmen. I am in the same situation as yourself: I am so short-sighted I could make no stand against an antagonist. No, sir, I shall never kill a man.”

He laughed as men laugh who do not understand what fate has in store for them.

“I have made up my mind to have some lessons,” said Goldsmith, “and I know there are no better teachers than your countrymen, Baretti.”

“Psha!” said Baretti. “There are clever fencers in Italy, just as there are in England. But if you have made up your mind to have an Italian teacher, I shall find out one for you and send him to your chambers. If you are wise, however, you will stick to your pen, which you wield with such dexterity, and leave the more harmless weapon to others of coarser fiber than yourself.”

“There are times when it is necessary for the most pacific of men—nay, even an Irishman—to show himself adroit with a sword,” said Goldsmith; “and so I shall be forever grateful to you for your services towards this end.”

He was about to walk away when a thought seemed to strike him.

“You will add to my debt to you if you allow this matter to go no further than ourselves. You can understand that I have no particular wish to place myself at the mercy of Dr. Johnson or Garrick,” said he. “I fancy I can see Garrick's mimicry of a meeting between me and a fencing master.”

“I shall keep it a secret,” laughed Baretti; “but mind, sir, when you run your first man through the vitals you need not ask me to attend the court as a witness as to your pacific character.”

(When the two did appear in court it was Goldsmith who had been called as a witness on behalf of Baretti, who stood in the dock charged with the murder of a man.)

He felt very much better after leaving Baretti. He felt that he had taken at least one step on behalf of Mary Horneck. He knew his own nature so imperfectly that he thought if he were to engage in a duel with Captain Jackson and disarm him he would not hesitate to run him through a vital part.

He returned to his chambers and found awaiting him a number of papers containing some flattering notices of his comedy, and lampoons upon Colman for his persistent ill treatment of the play. In fact, the topic of the town was Colman's want of judgment in regard to this matter, and so strongly did the critics and lampooners, malicious as well as genial, express themselves, that the manager found life in London unbearable. He posted off to Bath, but only to find that his tormentors had taken good care that his reputation should precede him thither. His chastisement with whips in London was mild in comparison with his chastisement with scorpions at Bath; and now Goldsmith found waiting for him a letter from the unfortunate man imploring the poet to intercede for him, and get the lampooners to refrain from molesting him further.

If Goldsmith had been in a mood to appreciate a triumph he would have enjoyed reading this letter from the man who had given him so many months of pain. He was not, however, in such a mood. He looked for his triumph in another direction.

After dressing he went to the Mitre for dinner, and found in the tavern several of his friends. Cradock had run up from the country, and with him were Whitefoord and Richard Burke.

He was rather chilled at his reception by the party. They were all clearly ill at ease in his presence for some reason of which he was unaware; and when he began to talk of the criticisms which his play had received, the uneasiness of his friends became more apparent.

He could stand this unaccountable behaviour no longer, and inquired what was the reason of their treating him so coldly.

“You were talking about me just before I entered,” said he: “I always know on entering a room if my friends have been talking about me. Now, may I ask what this admirable party were saying regarding me? Tell it to me in your own way. I don't charge you to be frank with me. Frankness I hold to be an excellent cloak for one's real opinion. Tell me all that you can tell—as simply as you can—without prejudice to your own reputation for oratory, Richard. What is the matter, sir?”

Richard Burke usually was the merriest of the company, and the most fluent. But now he looked down, and the tone was far from persuasive in which he said—

“You may trust—whatever may be spoken, or written, about you, Goldsmith—we are your unalterable friends.”

“Psha, sir!” cried Goldsmith, “don't I know that already? Were you not all my friends in my day of adversity, and do you expect me suddenly to overthrow all my ideas of friendship by assuming that now that I have bettered my position in the world my friends will be less friendly?”

“Goldsmith,” said Steevens, “we received a copy of the London Packet half an hour before you entered. We were discussing the most infamous attack that has ever been made upon a distinguished man of letters.”

“At the risk of being thought a conceited puppy, sir, I suppose I may assume that the distinguished man of letters which the article refers to is none other than myself,” said Goldsmith.

“It is a foul and scurrilous slander upon you, sir,” said Steevens. “It is the most contemptible thing ever penned by that scoundrel Kenrick.”

“Do not annoy yourselves on my account, gentlemen,” said Goldsmith. “You know how little I think of anything that Kenrick may write of me. Once I made him eat his words, and the fit of indigestion that that operation caused him is still manifest in all he writes about me. I tell you that it is out of the power of that cur to cause me any inconvenience. Where is the Packet?”

“There is no gain in reading such contemptible stuff,” said Cradock. “Take my advice, Goldsmith, do not seek to become aware of the precise nature of that scoundrel's slanders.”

“Nay, to shirk them would be to suggest that they have the power to sting me,” replied Goldsmith. “And so, sir, let me have the Packet, and you shall see me read the article without blenching. I tell you, Mr. Cradock, no man of letters is deserving of an eulogy who is scared by a detraction.”

“Nay, Goldsmith, but one does not examine under a magnifying glass the garbage that a creature of the kennel flings at one,” said Steevens.

“Come, sirs, I insist,” cried Goldsmith. “Why do I waste time with you?” he added, turning round and going to the door of the room. “I waste time here when I can read the Packet in the bar.”

“Hold, sir,” said Burke. “Here is the thing. If you will read it, you would do well to read it where you will find a dozen hands stretched forth to you in affection and sympathy. Oliver Goldsmith, this is the paper and here are our hands. We look on you as the greatest of English writers—the truest of English poets—the best of Englishmen.”

“You overwhelm me, sir. After this, what does it matter if Kenrick flings himself upon me?”

He took the Packet. It opened automatically, where an imaginary letter to himself, signed “Tom Tickle,” appeared.

He held it up to the light; a smile was at first on his features; he had nerved himself to the ordeal. His friends would not find that he shrank from it—he even smiled, after a manner, as he read the thing—but suddenly his jaw fell, his face became pale. In another second he had crushed the paper between his hands. He crushed it and tore it, and then flung it on the floor and trampled on it. He walked to and fro in the room with bent head. Then he did a strange thing: he removed his sword and placed it in a corner, as if he were going to dine, and, without a word to any of his friends, left the room, carrying with him his cane only.

CHAPTER XVII.

Kenrick's article in the London Packet remains to this day as the vilest example of scurrility published under the form of criticism. All the venom that can be engendered by envy and malice appears in every line of it. It contains no suggestion of literary criticism; it contains no clever phrase. It is the shriek of a vulgar wretch dominated by the demon of jealousy. The note of the Gadarene herd sounds through it, strident and strenuous. It exists as the worst outcome of the period when every garret scribbler emulated “Junius,” both as regards style and method, but only succeeded in producing the shriek of a wildcat, instead of the thunder of the unknown master of vituperation.

Goldsmith read the first part of the scurrility without feeling hurt; but when he came to that vile passage—“For hours the great Goldsmith will stand arranging his grotesque orangoutang figure before a pier-glass. Was but the lovely H———k as much enamoured, you would not sigh, my gentle swain”—his hands tore the paper in fury.

He had received abuse in the past without being affected by it. He did not know much about natural history, but he knew enough to make him aware of the fact that the skunk tribe cannot change their nature. He did not mind any attack that might be made upon himself; but to have the name that he most cherished of all names associated with his in an insult that seemed to him diabolical in the manner of its delivery, was more than he could bear. He felt as if a foul creature had crept behind him and had struck from thence the one who had been kindest to him of all the people in the world.

There was the horrible thing printed for all eyes in the town to read. There was the thing that had in a moment raised a barrier between him and the girl who was all in all to him. How could he look Mary Horneck in the face again? How could he ever meet any member of the family to whom he had been the means of causing so much pain as the Hornecks would undoubtedly feel when they read that vile thing? He felt that he himself was to blame for the appearance of that insult upon the girl. He felt that if the attack had not been made upon him she would certainly have escaped. Yes, that blow had been struck by a hand that stretched over him to her.

His first impulse had sent his hand to his sword. He had shown himself upon several occasions to be a brave man; but instead of drawing his sword he had taken it off and had placed it out of the reach of his hands.

And this was the man who, a few hours earlier in the day, had been assuming that if a certain man were in his power he would not shrink from running him through the body with his sword.

On leaving the Mitre he did not seek any one with whom he might take counsel as to what course it would be wise for him to pursue. He knew that he had adopted a wise course when he had placed his sword in a corner; he felt he did not require any further counsel. His mind was made up as to what he should do, and all that he now feared was that some circumstance might prevent his realising his intention.

He grasped his cane firmly, and walked excitedly to the shop of Evans, the publisher of the London Packet. He arrived almost breathless at the place—it was in Little Queen street—and entered the shop demanding to see Kenrick, who, he knew was employed on the premises. Evans, the publisher, being in a room the door of which was open, and hearing a stranger's voice speaking in a high tone, came out to the shop. Goldsmith met him, asking to see Kenrick; and Evans denied that he was in the house.

“I require you to tell me if Kenrick is the writer of that article upon me which appeared in the Packet of to-day. My name is Goldsmith!” said the visitor.

The shopkeeper smiled.

“Does anything appear about you in the Packet, sir?” he said, over-emphasising the tone of complete ignorance and inquiry.

“You are the publisher of the foul thing, you rascal!” cried Goldsmith, stung by the supercilious smile of the man; “you are the publisher of this gross outrage upon an innocent lady, and, as the ruffian who wrote it struck at her through me, so I strike at him through you.”

He rushed at the man, seized him by the throat, and struck at him with his cane. The bookseller shouted for help while he struggled with his opponent, and Kenrick himself, who had been within the shelter of a small wooden-partitioned office from the moment of Goldsmith's entrance, and had, consequently, overheard every word of the recrimination and all the noise of the scuffle that followed, ran to the help of his paymaster. It was quite in keeping with his cowardly nature to hold back from the cane of Evans's assailant. He did so, and, looking round for a missile to fling at Goldsmith, he caught up a heavy lamp that stood on a table and hurled it at his enemy's head. Missing this mark, however, it struck Evans on the chest and knocked him down, Goldsmith falling over him. This Kenrick perceived to be his chance. He lifted one of the small shop chairs and rushed forward to brain the man whom he had libelled; but, before he could carry out his purpose, a man ran into the shop from the street, and, flinging him and the chair into a corner, caught Goldsmith, who had risen, by the shoulder and hurried him into a hackney-coach, which drove away.

The man was Captain Higgins. When Goldsmith had failed to return to the room in the Mitre where he had left his sword, his friends became uneasy regarding him, and Higgins, suspecting his purpose in leaving the tavern, had hastened to Evans's, hoping to be in time to prevent the assault which he felt certain Goldsmith intended to commit upon the person of Kenrick.

He ordered the coachman to drive to the Temple, and took advantage of the occasion to lecture the excited man upon the impropriety of his conduct. A lecture on the disgrace attached to a public fight, when delivered in a broad Irish brogue, can rarely be effective, and Captain Higgins's counsel of peace only called for Goldsmith's ridicule.

“Don't tell me what I ought to have done or what I ought to have abstained from doing,” cried the still breathless man. “I did what my manhood prompted me to do, and that is just what you would have done yourself, my friend. God knows I didn't mean to harm Evans—it was that reptile Kenrick whom I meant to flail; but when Evans undertook to shelter him, what was left to me, I ask you, sir?”

“You were a fool, Oliver,” said his countryman; “you made a great mistake. Can't you see that you should never go about such things single-handed? You should have brought with you a full-sized friend who would not hesitate to use his fists in the interests of fair play. Why the devil, sir, didn't you give me a hint of what was on your mind when you left the tavern?”

“Because I didn't know myself what was on my mind,” replied Goldsmith. “And, besides,” he added, “I'm not the man to carry bruisers about with me to engage in my quarrels. I don't regret what I have done to-day. I have taught the reptiles a lesson, even though I have to pay for it. Kenrick won't attack me again so long as I am alive.”

He was right. It was when he was lying in his coffin, yet unburied, that Kenrick made his next attack upon him in that scurrility of phrase of which he was a master.

When this curious exponent of the advantages of peace had left him at Brick Court, and his few incidental bruises were attended to by John Eyles, poor Oliver's despondency returned to him. He did not feel very like one who has got the better of another in a quarrel, though he knew that he had done all that he said he had done: he had taught his enemies a lesson.

But then he began to think about Mary Horneck, who had been so grossly insulted simply because of her kindness to him. He felt that if she had been less gracious to him—if she had treated him as Mrs. Thrale, for example, had been accustomed to treat him—regarding him and his defects merely as excuses for displaying her own wit, she would have escaped all mention by Kenrick. Yes, he still felt that he was the cause of her being insulted, and he would never forgive himself for it.

But what did it matter whether he forgave himself or not? It was the forgiveness of Mary Horneck and her friends that he had good reason to think about.

The longer he considered this point the more convinced he became that he had forfeited forever the friendship which he had enjoyed for several years, and which had been a dear consolation to him in his hours of despondency. A barrier had been raised between himself and the Hornecks that could not be surmounted.

He sat down at his desk and wrote a letter to Mary, asking her forgiveness for the insult for which he said he felt himself to be responsible. He could not, he added, expect that in the future it would be allowed to him to remain on the same terms of intimacy with her and her family as had been permitted to him in the past.

Suddenly he recollected the unknown trouble which had been upon the girl when he had last seen her. She was not yet free from that secret sorrow which he had hoped it might be in his power to dispel. He and he only had seen Captain Jackson speaking to her in the green room at Covent Garden, and he only had good reason to believe that her sorrow had originated with that man. Under these circumstances he asked himself if he was justified in leaving her to fight her battle alone. She had not asked him to be her champion, and he felt that if she had done so, it was a very poor champion that he would have made; but still he knew more of her grief than any one else, and he believed he might be able to help her.

He tore up the letter which he had written to her.

“I will not leave her,” he cried. “Whatever may happen—whatever blame people who do not understand may say I have earned, I will not leave her until she has been freed from whatever distress she is in.”

He had scarcely seated himself when his servant announced Captain Horneck.

For an instant Goldsmith was in trepidation. Mary Horneck's brother had no reason to visit him except as he himself had visited Evans and Kenrick. But with the sound of Captain Horneck's voice his trepidation passed away.

“Ha, my little hero!” Horneck cried before he had quite crossed the threshold. “What is this that is the talk of the town? Good Lord! what are things coming to when the men of letters have taken to beating the booksellers?”

“You have heard of it?” said Oliver. “You have heard of the quarrel, but you cannot have heard of the reason for it!”

“What, there is something behind the London Packet, after all?” cried Captain Horneck.

“Something behind it—something behind that slander—the mention of your sister's name, sir? What should be behind it, sir?”

“My dear old Nolly, do you fancy that the friendship which exists between my family and you is too weak to withstand such a strain as this—a strain put upon it by a vulgar scoundrel, whose malice so far as you are concerned is as well known as his envy of your success?”

Goldsmith stared at him for some moments and then at the hand which he was holding out. He seemed to be making an effort to speak, but the words never came. Suddenly he caught Captain Horneck's hand in both of his own, and held it for a moment; but then, quite overcome, he dropped it, and burying his face in his hands he burst into tears.

Horneck watched him for some time, and was himself almost equally affected.

“Come, come, old friend,” he said at last, placing his hand affectionately on Goldsmith's shoulder. “Come, come; this will not do. There is nothing to be so concerned about. What, man! are you so little aware of your own position in the world as to fancy that the Horneck family regard your friendship for them otherwise than an honour? Good heavens, Dr. Goldsmith, don't you perceive that we are making a bold bid for immortality through our names being associated with yours? Who in a hundred years—in fifty years—would know anything of the Horneck family if it were not for their association with you? The name of Oliver Goldsmith will live so long as there is life in English letters, and when your name is spoken the name of your friends the Hornecks will not be forgotten.”

He tried to comfort his unhappy friend, but though he remained at his chambers for half an hour, he got no word from Oliver Goldsmith.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The next day the news of the prompt and vigorous action taken by Goldsmith in respect of the scurrility of Kenrick had spread round the literary circle of which Johnson was the centre, and the general feeling was one of regret that Kenrick had not received the beating instead of Evans. Of course, Johnson, who had threatened two writers with an oak stick, shook his head—and his body as well—in grave disapproval of Goldsmith's use of his cane; but Reynolds, Garrick and the two Burkes were of the opinion that a cane had never been more appropriately used.

What Colman's attitude was in regard to the man who had put thousands of pounds into his pocket may be gathered from the fact that, shortly afterwards, he accepted and produced a play of Kenrick's at his theatre, which was more decisively damned than any play ever produced under Colman's management.

Of course, the act of an author in resenting the scurrility of a man who had delivered his stab under the cloak of criticism, called for a howl of indignation from the scores of hacks who existed at that period—some in the pay of the government others of the opposition—solely by stabbing men of reputation; for the literary cut-throat, in the person of the professional libeller-critic, and the literary cut-purse, in the form of the professional blackmailer, followed as well as preceded Junius.

The howl went up that the liberty of the press was in danger, and the public, who took then, as they do now, but the most languid interest in the quarrels of literature, were forced to become the unwilling audience. When, however, Goldsmith published his letter in the Daily Advertiser—surely the manliest manifesto ever printed—the howls became attenuated, and shortly afterwards died away. It was admitted, even by Dr. Johnson—and so emphatically, too, that his biographer could not avoid recording his judgment—that Goldsmith had increased his reputation by the incident.

(Boswell paid Goldsmith the highest compliment in his power on account of this letter, for he fancied that it had been written by Johnson, and received another rebuke from the latter to gloat over.)

For some days Goldsmith had many visitors at his chambers, including Baretti, who remarked that he took it for granted that he need not now search for the fencingmaster, as his quarrel was over. Goldsmith allowed him to go away under the impression that he had foreseen the quarrel when he had consulted him regarding the fencingmaster.

But at the end of a week, when Evans had been conciliated by the friends of his assailant, Goldsmith, on returning to his chambers one afternoon, found Johnson gravely awaiting his arrival. His hearty welcome was not responded to quite so heartily by his visitor.

“Dr. Goldsmith,” said Johnson, after he had made some of those grotesque movements with which his judicial utterances were invariably accompanied—“Dr. Goldsmith, we have been friends for a good many years, sir.”

“That fact constitutes one of my pleasantest reflections, sir,” said Goldsmith. He spoke with some measure of hesitancy, for he had a feeling that his friend had come to him with a reproof. He had expected him to come rather sooner.

“If our friendship was not such as it is, I would not have come to you to-day, sir, to tell you that you have been a fool,” said Johnson.

“Yes, sir,” said Goldsmith, “you were right in assuming that you could say nothing to me that would offend me; I know that I have been a fool—at many times—in many ways.”

“I suspected that you were a fool before I set out to come hither, sir, and since I entered this room I have convinced myself of the accuracy of my suspicion.”

“If a man suspects that I am a fool before seeing me, sir, what will he do after having seen me?” said Goldsmith.

“Dr. Goldsmith,” resumed Johnson, “it was, believe me, sir, a great pain to me to find, as I did in this room—on that desk—such evidence of your folly as left no doubt on my mind in this matter.”

“What do you mean, sir? My folly—evidence—on that desk? Ah, I know now what you mean. Yes, poor Filby's bill for my last coats and I suppose for a few others that have long ago been worn threadbare. Alas, sir, who could resist Filby's flatteries?”

“Sir,” said Johnson, “you gave me permission several years ago to read any manuscript of yours in prose or verse at which you were engaged.”

“And the result of your so honouring me, Dr. Johnson, has invariably been advantageous to my work. What, sir, have I ever failed in respect for your criticisms? Have I ever failed to make a change that you suggested?”

“It was in consideration of that permission, Dr. Goldsmith, that while waiting for you here to-day, I read several pages in your handwriting,” said Johnson sternly.

Goldsmith glanced at his desk.

“I forget now what work was last under my hand,” said he; “but whatever it was, sir——”

“I have it here, sir,” said Johnson, and Goldsmith for the first time noticed that he held in one of his hands a roll of manuscript. Johnson laid it solemnly on the table, and in a moment Goldsmith perceived that it consisted of a number of the poems which he had written to the Jessamy Bride, but which he had not dared to send to her. He had had them before him on the desk that day while he asked himself what would be the result of sending them to her.

He was considerably disturbed when he discovered what it was that his friend had been reading in his absence, and his attempt to treat the matter lightly only made his confusion appear the greater.

“Oh, those verses, sir,” he stammered; “they are poor things. You will, I fear, find them too obviously defective to merit criticism; they resemble my oldest coat, sir, which I designed to have repaired for my man, but Filby returned it with the remark that it was not worth the cost of repairing. If you were to become a critic of those trifles——”

“They are trifles, Goldsmith, for they represent the trifling of a man of determination with his own future—with his own happiness and the happiness of others.”

“I protest, sir, I scarcely understand——”

“Your confusion, sir, shows that you do understand.”

“Nay, sir, you do not suppose that the lines which a poet writes in the character of a lover should be accepted as damning evidence that his own heart speaks.”

“Goldsmith, I am not the man to be deceived by any literary work that may come under my notice. I have read those verses of yours; sir, your heart throbs in every line.”

“Nay, sir, you would make me believe that my poor attempts to realise the feelings of one who has experienced the tender passion are more happy than I fancied.”

“Sir, this dissimulation is unworthy of you.”

“Sir, I protest that I—that is—no, I shall protest nothing. You have spoken the truth, sir; any dissimulation is unworthy of me. I wrote those verses out of my own heart—God knows if they are the first that came from my heart—I own it, sir. Why should I be ashamed to own it?”

“My poor friend, you have been Fortune's plaything all your life; but I did not think that she was reserving such a blow as this for you.”

“A blow, sir? Nay, I cannot regard as a blow that which has been the sweetest—the only consolation of a life that has known but few consolations.”

“Sir, this will not do. A man has the right to make himself as miserable as he pleases, but he has no right to make others miserable. Dr. Goldsmith, you have ill-repaid the friendship which Miss Horneck and her family have extended to you.”

“I have done nothing for which my conscience reproaches me, Dr. Johnson. What, sir, if I have ventured to love that lady whose name had better remain unspoken by either of us—what if I do love her? Where is the indignity that I do either to her or to the sentiment of friendship? Does one offer an indignity to friendship by loving?”

“My poor friend, you are laying up a future of misery for yourself—yes, and for her too; for she has a kind heart, and if she should come to know—and, indeed, I think she must—that she has been the cause, even though the unwilling cause, of suffering on the part of another, she will not be free from unhappiness.”

“She need not know, she need not know. I have been a bearer of burdens all my life. I will assume without repining this new burden.”

“Nay, sir, if I know your character—and I believe I have known it for some years—you will cast that burden away from you. Life, my dear friend, you and I have found to be not a meadow wherein to sport, but a battle field. We have been in the struggle, you and I, and we have not come out of it unscathed. Come, sir, face boldly this new enemy, and put it to flight before it prove your ruin.”

“Enemy, you call it, sir? You call that which gives everything there is of beauty—everything there is of sweetness—in the life of man—you call it our enemy?”

“I call it your enemy, Goldsmith.”

“Why mine only? What is there about me that makes me different from other men? Why should a poet be looked upon as one who is shut out for evermore from all the tenderness, all the grace of life, when he has proved to the world that he is most capable of all mankind of appreciating tenderness and grace? What trick of nature is this? What paradox for men to vex their souls over? Is the poet to stand aloof from men, evermore looking on happiness through another man's eyes? If you answer 'yes,' then I say that men who are not poets should go down on their knees and thank Heaven that they are not poets. Happy it is for mankind that Heaven has laid on few men the curse of being poets. For myself, I feel that I would rather be a man for an hour than a poet for all time.”

“Come, sir, let us not waste our time railing against Heaven. Let us look at this matter as it stands at present. You have been unfortunate enough to conceive a passion for a lady whose family could never be brought to think of you seriously as a lover. You have been foolish enough to regard their kindness to you—their acceptance of you as a friend—as encouragement in your mad aspirations.”

“You have no right to speak so authoritatively, sir.”

“I have the right as your oldest friend, Goldsmith; and you know I speak only what is true. Does your own conscience, your own intelligence, sir, not tell you that the lady's family would regard her acceptance of you as a lover in the light of the greatest misfortune possible to happen to her? Answer me that question, sir.”

But Goldsmith made no attempt to speak. He only buried his face in his hands, resting his elbows on the table at which he sat.

“You cannot deny what you know to be a fact, sir,” resumed Johnson. “I will not humiliate you by suggesting that the young lady herself would only be moved to laughter were you to make serious advances to her; but I ask you if you think her family would not regard such an attitude on your side as ridiculous—nay, worse—a gross affront.”

Still Goldsmith remained silent, and after a short pause his visitor resumed his discourse.

“The question that remains for you to answer is this, sir: Are you desirous of humiliating yourself in the eyes of your best friends, and of forfeiting their friendship for you, by persisting in your infatuation?”

Goldsmith started up.

“Say no more, sir; for God's sake, say no more,” he cried almost piteously. “Am I, do you fancy, as great a fool as Pope, who did not hesitate to declare himself to Lady Mary? Sir, I have done nothing that the most honourable of men would shrink from doing. There are the verses which I wrote—I could not help writing them—but she does not know that they were ever written. Dr. Johnson, she shall never hear it from me. My history, sir, shall be that of the hopeless lover—a blank—a blank.”

“My poor friend,” said Johnson after a pause—he had laid his hand upon the shoulder of his friend as he seated himself once more at the table—“My poor friend, Providence puts into our hands many cups which are bitter to the taste, but cannot be turned away from. You and I have drank of bitter cups before now, and perhaps we may have to drink of others before we die. To be a man is to suffer; to be a poet means to have double the capacity of men to suffer. You have shown yourself before now worthy of the admiration of all good men by the way you have faced life, by your independence of the patronage of the great. You dedicated 'The Traveller' to your brother, and your last comedy to me. You did not hesitate to turn away from your door the man who came to offer you money for the prostitution of the talents which God has given you. Dr. Goldsmith, you have my respect—you have the respect of every good man. I came to you to-day that you may disappoint those of your detractors who are waiting for you to be guilty of an act that would give them an opportunity of pointing a finger of malice at you. You will not do anything but that which will reflect honour upon yourself, and show all those who are your friends that their friendship for you is well founded. I am assured that I can trust you, sir.”

Goldsmith took the hand that he offered, but said no word.