the last couplet but one, the eight concluding lines. The couplet so grafted on his friend's insertion by Goldsmith himself, is worth all that Johnson added; though its historical allusion was somewhat obscure.

The lifted axe, the agonising wheel,

Luke's iron crown, and Damiens' bed of steel.'

Who was Luke, and what was his iron crown, is a question Tom Davies tells us he had often to answer; being a great resource in difficulties of that kind. 'The Doctor 'referred me,' he says, in a letter to the Rev. Mr. Granger (who was compiling his Biographical History, and wished to be exact), 'to a book called Geographie Curieuse, for 'an explanation of Luke's iron crown.' The explanation did not mend matters much. Luke' had been taken simply for the euphony of the line. He was one of two brothers, Zeck, who headed a revolt against the Hungarian nobles, at the opening of the sixteenth century; but though both were tortured, the special horror of the redhot crown was inflicted upon George. 'Doctor Gold'smith says,' adds Davies, he meant by Damiens' iron 'the rack; but I believe the newspapers informed us that 'he was confined in a high tower, and actually obliged 'to lie upon an iron bed.' So little was Davies, any more than Chamier, Johnson, or any one else, disposed to take the poet's meaning on the authority of his own explanation of it.

Nay, sir,' said Johnson very candidly, when it was suggested, some years afterward, that the partiality of its

author's friends might have weighed too much in their judgment of this poem; 'the partiality of his friends was

always against him. It was with difficulty we could give 'him a hearing.' Explanation of much that receives too sharp a judgment in ordinary estimates of his character, seems to be found, as I have said, in this. When partiality takes the shape of pity, we must not wonder if it is met by the vanities, the conceits, the half shame and half bravado, of that kind of self assertion which is but self-distrust disguised. Very difficult did Goldsmith find it to force his way, with even the Traveller in his hand, against these patronising airs and charitable allowances. 'But he imitates you, 'sir,' said Mr. Boswell, when, on return from his Dutch studies, he found this poem had really gone far to make its writer, for the time, more interesting than even Johnson himself. Why no, sir,' Johnson answered. ‘Jack 'Hawkesworth is one of my imitators; but not Goldsmith. 'Goldy, sir, has great merit.' 'But sir,' persisted the staunch disciple, he is much indebted to you for his 'getting so high in the public estimation.' 'Why, sir,' complacently responded the sage, 'he has perhaps got 'sooner to it by his intimacy with me.'

Without the reserves, the merit might sometimes be allowed; but seldom without something of a sting. 'Well, 'I never more shall think Doctor Goldsmith ugly,' was the frank tribute of the sister of Reynolds, after hearing Johnson read the Traveller aloud from the beginning to 'the end of it,' a few days after it was published. Here

was another point of friendliest and most general agreement. 'Renny dear,' now a mature and very fidgetty little dame of seven-and-thirty, had never been noted for her beauty; and few would associate such a thing with the seamed, scarred face of Johnson; but the preponderating ugliness of Goldsmith was a thing admitted and allowed for all to fling a stone at, however brittle their own habitations. Miss Reynolds had founded her admiring tribute on what she had herself said at a party in her brother's house some days before. She was asked for her toast after supper, as the custom was; and not answering readily, was required to give the ugliest man she knew. Without further hesitation she named Goldsmith; on which the Mrs. Cholmondeley of that day, with a sudden burst of sympathy, rose up on the other side of the table and reached across to shake hands with her. 'Thus,' exclaimed Johnson, who was present, and whose wit at his friend's expense was rewarded with a roar, thus the ancients, on the com

mencements of their friendships, used to sacrifice a beast 'betwixt them.' Poor Goldsmith! It was not till the sacrifice was more complete, and the grave had closed over it, that the 'partiality' of his friends ceased to take these equivocal shapes. "There is not a bad line in that poem of 'the Traveller,' said Langton, as they sat talking together at Reynolds's, four years after the poet's death; 'not one ' of Dryden's careless verses.' 'I was glad,' interposed Reynolds, to hear Charles Fox say it was one of the 'first poems in the English language.' 'Why was you

TT

glad?' rejoined Langton; 'you surely had no doubt of 'this before?' 'No,' exclaimed Johnson, decisively; the merit of the Traveller is so well established, that 'Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure ' diminish it.'

Not very obvious at the first, however, was its progress to this decisive eminence. From the first it had its select admirers, but their circle somewhat slowly widened. 'The 'beauties of this poem,' observed the principal literary newspaper of the day, the St. James' Chronicle, two months after its publication, are so great and various, 'that we cannot but be surprised they have not been ' able to recommend it to more general notice.' Goldsmith began to think he had come too late into the world then existing, for any share of its poetical distinctions; that Pope and others had taken up the places; and that as but few at any one period can possess poetical reputation, he had hardly, in his own time, the chance of obtaining it. That,' said Johnson, when this saying was related to him, 'is one of the most sensible things 'I have ever heard of Goldsmith. It is difficult to get literary fame, and it is every day getting more difficult.' Nevertheless, though slowly, the poem seems to have advanced steadily. A month after the notice in the St. James' Chronicle, a second edition was published; a third was more quickly called for; a fourth was issued in August; and the ninth had appeared in the year when the poet died. That anything more substantial

than fame arose to him out of these editions, is, however, very questionable: the only payment that can with certainty be traced in Newbery's papers as for Copy of the 'Traveller a poem,' leaves it more than doubtful, whether for twenty guineas Goldsmith had not surrendered all his interest in it; except that which, with each successive edition, still prompted the limæ labor. Between the first and last, thirty-six new lines had been added, and fourteen of the old cancelled. Some of the erasures would now, perhaps, raise a smile. No honest thought disappeared, no manly word for the oppressed. The 'wanton judge' and his 'penal statutes' remained; indignant denunciations of the tyrannies of wealth, sorrowful and angry protestings that laws grind the poor and rich men rule 'the law,' were still undisturbed. But words quietly vanished, here and there, that had spoken too plainly of the sordid past; and no longer did the poet proclaim, in speaking of the great, that, 'inly satisfied,' above their pomps he held his 'ragged pride.' The rags went the way of the confession of poverty in the Polite Learning; and of those hints of humble habits which were common in the Busy Body and the British Magazine, but are found no longer in Essays by Mr. Goldsmith.

With that title, and the motto 'Collecta Revirescunt,' a three-shilling duodecimo volume of those re-published Essays was now issued by Mr. Newbery and Mr. Griffin, who paid him each ten guineas for liberty to offer this tribute to the growing reputation of the Traveller. He