he termed impecuniosity, and against which he claimed a right to call for relief from the healthier purses of his friends. He was a scribbler for the newspapers, and latterly a dramatic critic, which had probably gained him an invitation to the dinner and reading. The wine and wassail, however, befogged his senses. Scarce had the author got into the second act of his play, when Hiffernan began to nod, and at length snored outright. Bickerstaff was embarrassed, but continued to read in a more elevated tone. The louder Nay, you will always look like a gentleman; but I am talking of your being well or ill dressed.· Well, let me tell you,' said Goldsmith, when the tailor brought home my bloom-colored coat, he said, 'Sir, I have a favor to beg of you; when anybody asks you who made your clothes, be pleased to mention John Filby, at the Harrow, in Water Lane.' Why, sir,' cried Johnson, that was because he knew the strange color would attract crowds to gaze at it, and thus they might hear of him, and see how well he could make a coat of so absurd a color.'' But though Goldsmith might permit this rail he read, the louder Hiffernan snored; until the author came to a pause. "Never mind the brute, Bick, but go on," cried Goldsmith. "Helery on the part of his friends, he was quick to rewould have served Homer just so if he were here and reading his own works." Kenrick, Goldsmith's old enemy, travestied this anecdote in the following lines, pretending that the poet had compared his countryman Bickerstaff to Homer. "What are your Bretons, Romans, Grecians, Compared with thorough-bred Milesians! Step into Griffin's shop, he'll tell ye Of Goldsmith, Bickerstaff, and Kelly. And, take one Irish evidence for t'other, Ev'n Homer's self is but their foster brother." Johnson was a rough consoler to a man when wincing under an attack of this kind. "Never mind, sir," said he to Goldsmith, when he saw that he felt the sting. "A man whose business it is to be talked of is much helped by being attacked. Fame, sir, is a shuttlecock; if it be struck only at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground; to keep it up, it must be struck at both ends." sent any personalities of the kind from strangers. As he was one day walking the Strand in grand array with bag-wig and sword, he excited the merriment of two coxcombs, one of whom called to the other to "look at that fly with a long pin stuck through it." Stung to the quick, Goldsmith's first retort was to caution the passers-by to be on their guard against “that brace of disguised pickpockets"-his next was to step into the middle of the street, where there was room for action, half draw his sword, and beckon the joker, who was armed in like manner, to follow him. This was literally a war of wit which the other had not anticipated. He had no inclination to push the joke to such an extreme, but abandoning the ground, ́ sneaked off with his brother wag ainid the hootings of the spectators. This proneness to finery in dress, however, which Boswell and others of Goldsmith's contemporaries, who did not understand the secret plies of his character, attributed to vanity, arose, we are convinced, from a widely different motive. It Bickerstaff, at the time of which we are speak-was ing was in high vogue, the associate of the first wits of the day; a few years afterward he was obliged to fly the country to escape the punishment of an infamous crime. Johnson expressed great astonishment at hearing the offence for which he had filed. "Why, sir," said Thrale; "he had long been a suspected man." Perhaps there was a knowing look on the part of the eminent brewer, which provoked a somewhat contemptuous reply; By those who look close to the ground," said Johnson, dirt will sometimes be seen; I hope I see things from a greater distance." from a painful idea of his own personal defects, which had been cruelly stamped upon his mind in his boyhood by the sneers and jeers of his playmates, and had been ground deeper into it by rude speeches made to him in every step of his strugglnig career, until it had become a constant cause of awkwardness and embarrassment. This he had experienced the more sensibly since his reputation had elevated him into polite society; and he was constantly endeavoring by the aid of dress to acquire that personal acceptability, if we may use the phrase, which nature had denied him. If ever he betrayed a little self-comWe have already noticed the improvement, or placency on first turning out in a new suit, it may rather the increased expense, of Goldsmith's ward-perhaps have been because he felt as if he had robe since his elevation into polite society. He was fond," says one of his contemporaries, "of exhibiting his muscular little person in the gayest apparel of the day, to which was added a bagwig and sword.' Thus arrayed, he used to figure about in the sunshine in the Temple dens, much to his own satisfaction, but to the amusement of his acquaintances. achieved a triumph over his ugliness. There were circumstances too about the time of which we are treating which may have rendered Goldsmith more than usually attentive to his personal appearance. He had recently made the acGar-quaintance of a most agreeable family from Devonshire, which he met at the house of his friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds. It consisted of Mrs. Horneck, widow of Captain Kane Horneck; two daughters, seventeen and nineteen years of age, and an only son, Charles, the Captain in Lace, as his sisters playfully and somewhat proudly called him, he having lately entered the Guards. The daughters are described as uncommonly beautiful, intelligent, sprightly, and agreeable. Catharine, the eldest, went among her friends by the name of Little Comedy, indicative, very probably, of her disposition. She was engaged to William Henry Bunbury, second son of a Suffolk baronet. The hand and heart of her sister Mary were yet unengaged, although she bore the byname among her friends of the Jessamy Bride. This family was prepared, by their intimacy with Reynolds and his sister, to appreciate the merits Boswell, in his memoirs, has rendered one of his suits forever famous. That worthy, on the 16th of October in this same year, gave a dinner to Johnson, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Garrick, Murphy, Bickerstaff, and Davies. Goldsmith was generally apt to bustle in at the last moment, when the guests were taking their seats at table, but on this occasion he was unusually early. While waiting for some lingerers to arrive," he strutted about," says Boswell, "bragging of his dress, and I believe, was seriously vain of it, for his mind was undoubtedly prone to such impressions. Come, come,' said Garrick, talk no more of that. You are perhaps the worst-eh, eh?' Goldsmith was eagerly attempting to interrupt him, when Garrick went on, laughing ironically, of Goldsmith. The poet had always been a chosen friend of the eminent painter, and Miss Reynolds, as we have shown, ever since she had heard his poem of "The Traveller" read aloud, had ceased to consider him ugly. The Hornecks were equally capable of forgetting his person in admiring his works. On becoming acquainted with him, too, they were delighted with his guileless simplicity; his buoyant good-nature and his innate benevolence, and an enduring intimacy soon sprang up between them. For once poor Goldsmith had met with polite society with which he was perfectly at home, and by which he was fully appreciated; for once he had met with lovely women, to whom his ugly features were not repulsive. A proof of the easy and playful terms in which he was with them remains in a whimsical epistle in verse, of which the following was the occasion. A dinner was to be given to their family by a Dr. Baker, a friend of their mother's, at which Reynolds and Angelica Kauffman were to be present. The young ladies were eager to have Goldsmith of the party, and their intimacy with Dr. Baker allowing them to take the liberty, they wrote a joint invitation to the poet at the last moment. It came too late, and drew from him the following reply; on the top of which was scrawled, "This is a poem! This is a copy of verses !" Your mandate I got, You may all go to pot; But alas! your good worships, how could they be wiser, When both have been spoil'd in to-day's Advertiser ?* It has been intimated that the intimacy of poor Goldsmith with the Miss Hornecks, which began in so sprightly a vein, gradually assumed something of a more tender nature, and that he was not insensible to the fascinations of the younger sister. This may account for some of the phenomena which about this time appeared in his wardrobe and toilet. During the first year of his acquaintance with these lovely girls, the tell-tale book of his tailor, Mr. William Filby, displays entries of four or five full suits, beside separate articles of dress. Among the items we find a green half-trimmed frock and breeches, lined with silk; a queen's blue dress suit; a half dress suit of ratteen, lined with satin; a pair of silk stocking * The following lines had appeared in that day's Advertiser, on the portrait of Sir Joshua by Angelica Kauffman : While fair Angelica, with matchless grace, breeches, and another pair of a bloom color. Alas! poor Goldsmith! how much of this silken finery was dictated, not by vanity, but humble consciousness of thy defects; how much of it was to atone for the uncouthness of thy person, and to win favor in the eyes of the Jessamy Bride! But when the likeness she hath done for thee, CHAPTER XXVI. GOLDSMITH IN THE TEMPLE—JUDGE DAY AND GRATTAN-LABOR AND DISSIPATION--PUBLICATION OF THE ROMAN HISTORY-OPINIONS OF IT -HISTORY OF ANIMATED NATURE-TEMPLE ROOKERY-ANECDOTES OF A SPIDER. 44 IN the winter of 1768-69 Goldsmith occupied himself at his quarters in the Temple, slowly "building up" his Roman History. We have pleasant views of him in this learned and halfcloistered retreat of wit and lawyers and legal students, in the reminiscences of Judge Day of the Irish Bench, who in his advanced age delighted to recall the days of his youth, when he was a templar, and to speak of the kindness with which he and his fellow-student, Grattan, were treated by the poet. "I was just arrived from college," said he, full freighted with academic gleanings, and our author did not disdain to receive from me some opinions and hints toward his Greek and Roman histories. Being then a young man, I felt much flattered by the notice of so celebrated a person. He took great delight in the conversation of Grattan, whose brilliancy in the morning of life furnished full earnest of the unrivalled splendor which awaited his meridian; and finding us dwelling together in Essex Court, near himself, where he frequently visited my immortal friend, his warm heart became naturally prepossessed toward the associate of one whom he so much admired." The judge goes on, in his reminiscences, to give a picture of Goldsmith's social habits, similar in style to those already furnished. He frequented much the Grecian Coffee-House, then the favorite resort of the Irish and Lancashire Templars. He delighted in collecting his friends around him at evening parties at his chambers, where he entertained them with a cordial and unostentatious hospitality. "Occasionally," adds the judge, "he amused them with his flute, or with whist, neither of which he played well, particularly the latter, but, on losing his money, he never lost his temper. In a run of bad luck and worse play, he would fling his cards upon the floor and exclaim, Byefore George, I ought forever to renounce thee, fickle, faithless Fortune." The judge was aware at the time that all the learned labor of poor Goldsmith upon his Roman History was mere hack work to recruit his exhausted finances. "His purse replenished, adds he, "by labors of this kind, the season of relaxation and pleasure took its turn, in attending the theatres, Ranelagh, Vauxhall, and other scenes of gayety and amusement, Whenever his funds were dissipated—and they fled more rapidly from being the dupe of many artful persons, male and female, who practised upon his benevo- ¦ lence he returned to his literary labors, and shut himself up from society to provide fresh matter for his bookseller, and fresh supplies for himself.' How completely had the young student discerned the characteristics of poor, genial, generous, drudging, holiday-loving Goldsmith; toiling that he might play; earning his bread by the sweat of his brains, and then throwing it out of the window. The Roman History was published in the middle of May, in two volumes of five hundred pages each. It was brought out without parade or pretension, and was announced as for the use of schools and colleges; but, though a work written for bread, not fame, such is its ease, perspicuity, good sense, and the delightful simplicity of its style, that it was well received by the critics, commanded a prompt and extensive sale, and has ever since remained in the hands of young and old. 66 Johnson, who, as we have before remarked, rarely praised or dispraised things by halves, broke forth in a warm eulogy of the author and the work, in a conversation with Boswell, to the great astonishment of the latter. "Whether we take Goldsmith," said he, as a poet, as a comic writer, or as an historian, he stands in the first class.' Boswell. An historian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age.' Johnson." Why, who are before him?" Boswell.-" Hume-RobertsonLord Lyttleton." Johnson (his antipathy against the Scotch beginning to rise).—" I have not read Hume; but doubtless Goldsmith's History is better than the verbiage of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple. Boswell." Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose history we find such penetration, such painting?'' Johnson.-"Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw, draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces, in a history-piece; he imagines an heroic countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his history. Now Robertson might have put twice as much in his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool; the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir, I always thought Robertson would be crushed with his own weight-would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know; Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second, time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils, Read over your compositions, and whenever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out!' -Goldsmith's abridgment is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot. Sir, he has the art of compiling, and of saying everything he has to say in a pleasing manner. He is now writing a Natural History, and will make it as entertaining as a Persian tale." The Natural History to which Johnson alluded was the "History of Animated Nature," which Goldsmith commenced in 1769, under an engagement with Griffin, the bookseller, to complete it as soon as possible in eight volumes, each containing upward of four hundred pages, in pica; a hundred guineas to be paid to the author on the delivery of each volume in manuscript. He was induced to engage in this work by the urgent solicitations of the booksellers, who had been struck by the sterling merits and captivating style of an introduction which he wrote to Brookes' Natural History. It was Goldsmith's intention originally to make a translation of Pliny, with a popular commentary; but the appearance of Buffon's work induced him to change his plan and make use of that author for a guide and model. Cumberland, speaking of this work, observes : "Distress drove Goldsmith upon undertakings neither congenial with his studies nor worthy of his talents. I remember him when, in his chambers in the Temple, he showed me the beginning of his Animated Nature; it was with a sigh, such as genius draws when hard necessity diverts it from its bent to drudge for bread, and talk of birds, and beasts, and creeping things, which Pidock's showman would have done as well. Poor fellow, he hardly knows an ass from a mule, nor a turkey from a goose, but when he sees it on the table.' Others of Goldsmith's friends entertained similar ideas with respect to his fitness for the task, and they were apt now and then to banter him on the subject, and to amuse themselves with his easy credulity. The custom among the natives of Otaheite of eating dogs being once mentioned in company, Goldsmith observed that a similar custom prevailed in China; that a dog-butcher is as common there as any other butcher; and that when he walks abroad all the dogs fall on him. Johnson." That is not owing to his killing dogs; sir, I remember a butcher at Litchfield, whom a dog that was in the house where I lived always attacked. It is the smell of carnage which provokes this, let the animals he has killed be what they may." Goldsmith." Yes, there is a general abhorrence in animals at the signs of massacre. If you put a tub full of blood into a stable, the horses are likely to go mad." Johnson."I doubt that." Goldsmith." Nay, sir, it is a fact well authenticated." Thrale.-" You had better prove it before you put it into your book on Natural History. You may do it in my stable if you will." Johnson. Nay, sir, I would not have him prove it. If he is content to take his information from others, he may get through his book with little trouble, and without much endangering his reputation. But if he makes experiments for so comprehensive a book as his, there would be no end to them; his erroneous assertions would fall then upon himself; and he might be blamed for not having made experiments as to every particular.' Johnson's original prediction, however, with respect to this work, that Goldsmith would make it as entertaining as a Persian tale, was verified; and though much of it was borrowed from Buffon, and but little of it written from his own observation; though it was by no means profound, and was chargeable with many errors, yet the charms of his style and the play of his happy disposition throughout have continued to render it far more popular and readable than many works on the subject of much greater scope and science. Cumberland was mistaken, however, in his notion of | Goldsmith's ignorance and lack of observpting |