before, somewhat suddenly thrown up a commission in the Marines, taken to theatrical writing for subsistence, and since obtained repute as the author of Love in a Village and the Maid of the Mill) was just now pressing Colman with his opera of Lionel and Clarissa; and in one of his querulous letters, seems to point at this resumption of intercourse with Garrick, whom he had himself offended by beginning to write for Colman. You told me,' he complains, writing on the 26th January, 1768, 'that the ' end of January would be the best time of the year for me, ' and told me that Mr. Goldsmith's play should come out 'before Christmas. . . The fact is, you broke your word 'with me, in ordering the representation of the Good'natur'd Man in such a manner, as that it must unavoidably interfere with my opera. . . At the reading, it was said that the Good-natur'd Man should appear the 'Wednesday after; but at the same time it was whispered 'to me, that it was privately determined not to bring it out 'till the Saturday fortnight, and there was even a promise given to Mr. Kelly that it should not appear till after 'his nights were over.'

If such a promise had been given (and circumstances justify the suspicion), Goldsmith had better reason than has been hitherto supposed, for that dissatisfaction with Colman and difference with Kelly which attended the performance of his comedy. Kelly had been taken up by Garrick, in avowed and not very generous rivalry to himself; it was the town talk, some weeks before either performance

a month before the death of the elder Newbery, that Burke read the comedy of the Good-natur'd Man ; and thus, with mirth and sadness for its ushers, the last division of Goldsmith's life comes in. The bond of old and longcontinued service, chequered as its retrospect was with mean and mortifying incidents, could hardly, without some regret, be snapped; nor could the long-attempted trial of the theatre, painful as its outset had been, without some sense of cheerfulness and hope approach its consummation. Newbery died on the 22nd of December, 1767; and the performance of the comedy was now promised for the 28th of the following January.

Unavailingly, for special reasons, had Goldsmith attempted to get it acted before Christmas. Quarrels had broken out among the new proprietary of the theatre, and these were made excuses for delay. Colman had properly insisted on his right, as manager, to cast the part of Imogen to Mrs. Yates, rather than to a pretty-faced simpering lady (Mrs. Lesingham) whom his brother proprietor, Harris, 'protected;' and the violence of the dispute became so notorious, and threatened such danger to the new management, that the papers describe Garrick 'growing taller' on the strength of it. Tall enough he certainly grew, to overlook something of the bitterness of Colman's first desertion of him; and civilities, perhaps arising from a sort of common interest in the issue of the Lesingham dispute, soon after recommenced between the rival managers. Bickerstaff (a clever and facile Irishman, who had, ten years

before, somewhat suddenly thrown up a commission in the Marines, taken to theatrical writing for subsistence, and since obtained repute as the author of Love in a Village and the Maid of the Mill) was just now pressing Colman with his opera of Lionel and Clarissa; and in one of his querulous letters, seems to point at this resumption of intercourse with Garrick, whom he had himself offended by beginning to write for Colman. 'You told me,' he complains, writing on the 26th January, 1768, 'that the ' end of January would be the best time of the year for me, ' and told me that Mr. Goldsmith's play should come out 'before Christmas. . . The fact is, you broke your word 'with me, in ordering the representation of the Good'natur'd Man in such a manner, as that it must unavoidably interfere with my opera. . . At the reading, it was 'said that the Good-natur'd Man should appear the

Wednesday after; but at the same time it was whispered 'to me, that it was privately determined not to bring it out 'till the Saturday fortnight, and there was even a promise given to Mr. Kelly that it should not appear till after 'his nights were over?'

If such a promise had been given (and circumstances justify the suspicion), Goldsmith had better reason than has been hitherto supposed, for that dissatisfaction with Colman and difference with Kelly which attended the performance of his comedy. Kelly had been taken up by Garrick, in avowed and not very generous rivalry to himself; it was the town talk, some weeks before either performance

took place, that the two comedies, written as they were by men well known to each other and who had lived the same sort of life, were to be pitted against each other; and so broadly were they opposed in character and style, that the first in the field, supposing it well received, could hardly fail to be a stumbling-block to its successor. Kelly had sounded the depths of sentimentalism. I have glanced at the origin of that school as of much earlier date; nor can it be doubted that it was with Steele the unlucky notion began, of setting comedy to reform the morals, instead of imitating the manners of the age. Fielding slily glances at this, when he makes Parson Adams declare the Conscious Lovers to be the only play fit for a Christian to see, and as good as a sermon; and in so witty and fine a writer as Steele, so great a mistake is only to be explained by the intolerable grossness into which the theatre had fallen in his day. For often does it happen in such reaction, that good and bad suffer together; and that while one has the sting taken out of it, the other loses energy and manhood. Where a sickly sensibility overspreads both vice and virtue, we are in the right to care as little for the one as for the other; since it is Life that the stage and its actors should present to us, and not anybody's moral or sentimental view of it. A most masterly critic of our time, Hazlitt, has disposed of Steele's pretensions as a comic dramatist; and poor Kelly, who has not survived to our time, must be disinterred to have his pretensions judged: yet the stage continues to suffer,

even now, from the dregs of the sentimental school; and it would not greatly surprise me to see the comedy with which Kelly's brief career of glory began, again lift up a sickly head amongst us.

One

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It is not an easy matter to describe that comedy. can hardly disentangle, from the maze of cant and makebelieve in which all the people are involved, what it precisely is they drive at ; but the main business seems to be, that there are three couples in search of themselves throughout the five acts, and enveloped in such a haze or mist of False Delicacy (the title of the piece) that they do not, till the last, succeed in finding themselves. There is a Lord who has been refused, for no reason on earth, by a Lady Betty who loves him; and who, with as little reason and as much delicacy on his own side, transfers his proposals to a friend of Lady Betty's whom he does not love, and selects her ladyship to convey the transfer. There is Lady Betty's friend, who, being in love elsewhere, is shocked to receive his lordship's proposals; but, being under great obligations to Lady Betty, cannot in delicacy think of opposing what she fancies her ladyship has set her heart upon. There is a mild young gentleman, who is knocked hither and thither like a shuttlecock; now engaged to this young lady whom he does not love, now dismissed by that whom he does; and made at last the convenient means of restoring, with all proper delicacy, Lady Betty to his lordship. There is a young lady who in delicacy ought to marry the mild young gentleman, but indelicately prefers