LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA IRVINE PR 44V MISCELLANIES Oliver Goldsmifh. MISCELLANIES BY AUSTIN DOBSON Ipsa varietate tentamus ffficere, tit alia aliis, qucedam fortasse omnibus placean PLINY TO PATERNUS NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1898 Copyright, 1898, BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY. JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. CONTENTS. PAGE GOLDSMITH'S POEMS AND PLAYS 7 ANGELO'S "REMINISCENCES" 33 THE LATEST LIFE. OF STEELE 57 THE AUTHOR OF " MONSIEUR TONSON " ... 87 BOSWELL'S PREDECESSORS AND EDITORS . . . 109 AN ENGLISH ENGRAVER IN PARIS 144 THE " VICAR OF WAKEFIELD " AND ITS ILLUS- TRATORS 165 OLD WHITEHALL 183 LUTTRELL'S " LETTERS TO JULIA " 203 CHANGES AT CHARING CROSS 220 JOHN GAY 239 AT LEICESTER FIELDS 275 MARTEILHE'S "MEMOIRS" 306 MISCELLANIES GOLDSMITH'S POEMS AND PLAYS. '"THIRTY years of taking-in; fifteen years of giving-out ; that, in brief, is Oliver Goldsmith's story. When, in 1758, his failure to pass at Surgeons' Hall finally threw him on letters for a living, the thirty years were finished, and the fifteen years had been begun. What was to come he knew not ; but, from his bare- walled lodging in Green-Arbour-Court, he could at least look back upon a sufficiently diversified past. He had been an idle, orchard-robbing schoolboy ; a tuneful but intractable sizar of Trinity ; a lounging, loitering, fair-haunting, flute-playing Irish " buckeen." He had knocked at the doors of both Law and Divinity, and crossed the threshold of neither. He had set out for London and stopped at Dublin ; he had started for America and arrived at Cork. He had been many things : a medical student, a strolling musician, an apothecary, a corrector 8 Miscellanies. of the press, an usher at a Peckham " academy." Judged by ordinary standards, he had wantonly wasted his time. And yet, as things fell out, it is doubtful whether his parti-coloured experi- ences were not of more service to him than any he could have obtained if his progress had been less erratic. Had he fulfilled the modest expec- tations of his family, he would probably have remained a simple curate in Westmeath, eking out his " forty pounds a year " by farming a field or two, migrating contentedly at the fitting sea- son from the " blue bed to the brown," and (it may be) subsisting vaguely as a local poet upon the tradition of some youthful couplets to a pretty cousin, who had married a richer man. As it was, if he could not be said to have " seen life steadily, and seen it whole," he had, at all events, inspected it pretty closely in parts ; and, at a time when he was most impressible, had pre- served the impress of many things, which, in his turn, he was to re-impress upon his writings. " No man" says one of his biographers 1 " ever put so much of himself into his books as Goldsmith." To his last hour he was drawing upon the thoughts and reviving the memories of that "unhallowed time" when, to all appear- ance, he was hopelessly squandering his oppor- 1 Forster's Life, Bk. ii., ch. vi. Goldsmith's Poems and Plays. 9 tunities. To do as Goldsmith did would scarcely enable a man to write a " Vicar of Wakefield " or a "Deserted Village," cer- tainly his practice cannot be preached with safety " to those that eddy round and round." But viewing his entire career, it is difficult not to see how one part seems to have been an in- dispensable preparation for the other, and to marvel once more (with the philosopher Square) at "the eternal Fitness of Things." The events of Goldsmith's life have been too often narrated to need repetition, and we shall not resort to the well-worn device of re- peating them in order to say so. But the prog- ress of time, advancing some things and effacing others, lends a fresh aspect even to master- pieces ; for which reason it is always possible to speak of a writer's work. In this instance we shall restrict ourselves to Goldsmith's Poems and Plays. And, with regard to both, what strikes one first is the extreme tardiness of that late blossoming upon which Johnson commented. When a man succeeds as Goldsmith succeeded, friends and critics speedily discover that he had shown signs of excellence even from his boyish years. But setting aside those half-mythical ballads for the Dublin street-singers, and some io Miscellanies. doubtful verses for Jane Contarine, there is no definite evidence that, from a doggerel couplet in his childhood to an epigram not much better than doggerel composed when he was five and twenty, he had written a line of verse of the slightest importance ; and even five years later, although he refers to himself in a private letter as a " poet," it must have been solely upon the strength of the unpublished fragment of " The Traveller," which, in the interval, he had sent to his brother Henry from abroad. It is even more remarkable that although so skilful a corre- spondent must have been fully sensible of his gifts until under the pressure of circum- stances he drifted into literature, the craft of letters seems never to have been his ambition. He thinks of turning lawyer, physician, clergy- man, anything but author ; and when at last he engages in that profession, it is to free himself from a scholastic slavery which he seems to have always regarded with peculiar bitterness, yet to which, after a first unsatisfactory trial of what was to be his true vocation, he unhesitatingly returned. If he went back anew to the pen, it was only to enable him to escape from it more effectually, and he was prepared to go as far as Coromandel. But Literature, " toute entire d sa proie attache'e," refused to relinquish him ; and, Goldsmith's Poems and Plays. n although he continued to make spasmodic efforts to extricate himself from the toils, detained him to the day of his death. If there is no evidence that he had written much when he entered upon what has been called his second period, he had not the less formed his opinions on many literary questions. Much of the matter of the " Polite Learning" is plainly manufactured ad hoc; but in its refer- ences to authorship and criticism, there is an individual note which is absent elsewhere ; and when he speaks of the tyranny of publishers, the petty standards of criticism, and the forlorn and precarious existence of the hapless writer for bread, he is evidently reproducing a condition of things with which he had become familiar during his brief bondage on the " Monthly Review." As to his personal views on poetry in particular, it is easy to collect them from this and later utterances. Against blank verse he objects from the first, as suited only to the sublimest themes, which is a polite way of shelving it altogether ; while in favour of rhyme he alleges perhaps borrowing his illustration from Montaigne that the very restriction stimulates the fancy, as a fountain plays highest when the aperture is diminished. Blank verse, too (he asserts), im- ports into poetry a "disgusting solemnity of 1 2 Miscellanies. manner" which is fatal to "agreeable trifling," an objection intimately connected with the feeling which afterwards, made him the champion on the stage of character and humour. Among the poets who were his contemporaries and im- mediate predecessors, his likes and dislikes were strong. He fretted at the fashion which Gray's " Elegy" set in poetry ; he considered it a fine poem, but " overloaded with epithet," and he deplored the remoteness and want of emotion which distinguished the Pindaric Odes. Yet from many indications in his own writings he seems to have genuinely appreciated the work of Collins. Churchill, and Churchill's satire, he detested. With Young he had some personal acquaintance, and had evidently read his " Night Thoughts " with attention. Of the poets of the last age, he admired Dryden, Pope, and Gay, but more than any of these, if imitation is to be regarded as the surest proof of sympathy, Prior, Addison, and Swift. By his inclinations and his training, indeed, he belonged to this school. But he was in advance of it in thinking that poetry, however didactic after the fashion of his own day, should be simple in its utterance and directed at the many rather than at the few. This is what he meant when, from the critical elevation of Griffiths' back parlour, he recom- Goldsmith's Poems and Plays. 13 mended Gray to take the advice of Isocrates, and " study the people." If, with these ideas, he had been able to divest himself of the "warbling groves" and "finny deeps" of the Popesque vocabulary (of much of the more "mechanic art " of that supreme artificer he did successfully divest himself), it would have needed but little to make him a prominent pioneer of the new school which was coming with Cowper. As it is, his poetical attitude is a little that intermedi- ate one of Longfellow's maiden, " Standing, with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet." Most of his minor and earlier pieces are imitative. In "A New Simile," and "The Logicians Refuted" (if that be his) Swift is his acknowledged model; in "The Double Trans- formation" it is Prior, modified by certain theories personal to himself. He was evidently well acquainted with collections such as the " M6nagiana," and with the French minor poets of the eighteenth century, many of which latter were among his books at his death. These he had carefully studied, probably during his con- tinental wanderings, and from them he derives, like Prior, something of his grace and metrical buoyancy. The " Elegy on the Death of a 14 Miscellanies. Mad Dog," and " Madam Blaize," are both more or less constructed on the old French popular song of the hero of Pavia, Jacques de Chabannes, Seigneur de la Palice (sometimes Galisse), with, in the case of the former, a tag from an epigram by Voltaire, the original of which is in the Greek Anthology, though Vol- taire simply "conveyed" his version from an anonymous French predecessor. Similarly the lively stanzas "To Iris in Bow Street," the lines to Myra, the quatrain called " A South American Ode," and that "On a Beautiful Youth struck blind with Lightning," are all confessed or unconfessed translations. If Gold- smith had lived to collect his own works, it is possible that he would have announced the source of his inspiration in these instances as well as in one or two other cases, the epitaph on Ned Purdon, for example, where it has been reserved to his editors to discover his obli- gations. On the other hand, he might have contended, with perfect justice, that whatever the source of his ideas, he had made them his own when he got them ; and certainly in lilt and lightness, the lines "To Iris" are infinitely superior to those of La Monnoye on which they are based. But even a fervent admirer may admit that, dwelling as he did in this very vitre- Goldsmith's Poems and Plays. 15 ous palace of Gallic adaptation, one does not expect to find him throwing stones at Prior for borrowing from the French, or commenting solemnly in the Life of Parnell upon the heinous- ness of plagiarism. "It was the fashion," he says, " with the wits of the last age, to conceal the places from whence they took their hints or their subjects. A trifling acknowledgment would have made that lawful prize which may now be considered as plunder." He might judi- ciously have added to this latter sentence the quotation which he struck out of the second issue of the "Polite Learning," " Haud inexpertus loquor." Of his longer pieces, "The Traveller " was apparently suggested to him by Addison's " Let- ter from Italy to Lord Halifax," a poem to which, in his preliminary notes to the " Beauties of English Poesy," he gives significant praise. "There is in it," he says, " a strain of political thinking that was, at that time, new in our country." He obviously intended that "The Traveller " should be admired for the same rea- son ; and both in that poem and its successor, " The Deserted Village," he lays stress upon the political import of his work. The one, we are told, is to illustrate the position that the happiness of the subject is independent of the goodness of the 1 6 Miscellanies. sovereign ; the other, to deplore the increase of luxury, and the miseries of depopulation. But, as a crowd of commentators have pointed out, it is hazardous for a poet to meddle with " po- litical thinking," however much, under George the Second, it may have been needful to proclaim a serious purpose. If Goldsmith had depended solely upon the professedly didactic part of his attempt, his work would be as dead as " Free- dom," or "Sympathy," or any other of Dods- ley's forgotten quartos. Fortunately he did more than this. Sensibly or insensibly, he suffused his work with that philanthropy which is " not learned by the royal road of tracts and platform speeches and monthly magazines," but by per- sonal commerce with poverty and sorrow ; and he made his appeal to that clinging love of country, of old association, of "home-bred happiness," of innocent pleasure, which, with Englishmen, is never made in vain. Employing the couplet of Pope and Johnson, he has added to his meas- ure a suavity that belonged to neither ; but the beauty of his humanity and the tender melancholy of his wistful retrospect hold us more strongly and securely than the studious finish of his style. " Vingt fois sur le me 1 tier remeite\ votre ou- vrage," said the arch-critic whose name, ac- cording to Keats, the school of Pope displayed Goldsmith's Poems and Plays. 17 upon their "decrepit standard." Even in "The Traveller" and "The Deserted Village," there are indications of over-labour; but in a poem which comes between them the once famous " Edwin and Angelina " Goldsmith certainly carried out Boileau's maxim to the full. The first privately printed version differs considerably from that in the first edition of the "Vicar;" this again is altered in the fourth ; and there are other varia- tions in the piece as printed in the " Poems for Young Ladies." "As to my ' Hermit,'" said the poet complacently, " that poem, Cradock, cannot be amended," and undoubtedly it has been skilfully wrought. But it is impossible to look upon it now with the unpurged eyes of those upon whom the " Reliques of Ancient Poetry" had but recently dawned, still less to endorse the verdict of Sir John Hawkins that "it is one of the finest poems of the lyric kind that our language has to boast of." Its over-soft prettiness is too much that of the chromo-litho- graph, or the Parian bust (the porcelain, not the marble), and its " beautiful simplicity" is in parts perilously close upon that inanity which Johnson, whose sturdy good sense not even friendship could silence, declared to be the characteristic of much of Percy's collection. It is instructive as a study of poetical progress to contrast it 1 8 Miscellanies. with a ballad of our own day in the same measure, the "Talking Oak" of Tennyson. The remaining poems of Goldsmith, excluding the " Captivity," and the admittedly occasional " Threnodia Augustalis," are not open to the charge of fictitious simplicity, or of that hyper- elaboration which, in the words of the poet just mentioned, makes for the " ripe and rotten." The gallery of kit-cats in " Retaliation," and the delightful bonhomie of "The Haunch of Veni- son," need no commendation. In kindly humour and not unkindly satire Goldsmith was at his best, and the imperishable portraits of Burke and Garrick and Reynolds, and the inimitable dinner at which Lord Clare's pasty was not, are as well known as any of the stock passages of "The Deserted Village" or "The Traveller" though they have never been babbled " in extremis vicis " by successive generations of schoolboys. It is usually said, probably with truth, that in these poems and the delightful "Letter to Mrs. Bun- bury," Goldsmith's metre was suggested by the cantering anapests of the " New Bath Guide," and it is to be observed that " Little Comedy's " invitation is to the same favourite tune. But it is also the fact that a line of the once popular lyric of " Ally Croaker," " Too dull for a wit, too grave for a joker, " Goldsmith's Poems and Plays. 19 has a kind of echo in the " Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit " of Burke's portrait in " Retaliation." What is still more remarkable is that Gray's " Sketch of his own Character," the resemblance of which to Goldsmith has been pointed out by his editors, begins, " Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune." Whether Goldsmith was thinking of Anstey or " Ally Croaker," it is at least worthy of passing notice that an Irish song of no particular literary merit should have succeeded in haunting the two foremost poets of their day. Poetry brought Goldsmith fame, but money only indirectly. Those Saturnian days of the subscription-edition, when Pope and Gay and Prior counted their gains by thousands, were over and gone. He had arrived, it has been truly said, too late for the Patron, and too early for the Public. Of his lighter pieces, the best were posthumous ; the rest were either paid for at hack prices or not at all. For " The Deserted Village " Griffin gave him a hundred guineas, a sum so unexampled as to have prompted the pleasant legend that he returned it. For "The Traveller" the only payment that can be defi- so Miscellanies. nitely traced is ^21. " I cannot afford to court the draggle-tail muses," he said laughingly to Lord Lisburn ; " they would let me starve ; but by my other labours I can make shift to eat, and drink, and have good clothes." It was in his " other labours " that his poems helped him. The booksellers, who would not or could not remun- erate him adequately for delayed production and minute revision, were willing enough to secure the sanction of his name for humbler journey- work. If he was ill-paid for "The Traveller," he was not ill-paid for the " Beauties of English Poesy " or the " History of Animated Nature." Yet notwithstanding his ready pen, and his skill as a compiler, his life was a treadmill. " While you are nibbling about elegant phrases, I am obliged to write half a volume," he told his friend Cradock ; and it was but natural that he should desire to escape into walks where he might accomplish something "for his own hand," by which, at the same time, he might exist. Fiction he had already essayed. Nearly two years before " The Traveller " appeared, he had written a story about the length of " Joseph Andrews," for which he had received little more than a third of the sum paid by Andrew Millar to Fielding for his burlesque of Richardson's " Pamela." But obscure circumstances delayed Goldsmith's Poems and Plays. 21 the publication of the " Vicar of Wakefield " for four years, and when at last it was issued, its first burst of success a success, as far as can be ascertained, productive of no further profit to its author was followed by a long period during which the sales were languid and un- certain. There remained the stage, with its two- fold allurement of fame and fortune, both payable at sight, added to which it was always possible that a popular play, in those days when plays were bought to read, might find a brisk market in pamphlet form. The prospect was a tempting one, and it is scarcely surprising that Goldsmith, weary of the " dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood," and conscious of better things within him, should engage in that most tantalising of all enterprises, the pursuit of dramatic success. For acting and actors he had always shown a decided partiality. 1 Vague stories, based, in all probability, upon the references to strolling 1 This is not inconsistent with the splenetic utterances in the letters to Daniel Hodson, first made public in the " Great Writers " life of Goldsmith, where he speaks of the stage as " an abominable resource which neither became a man of honour, nor a man of sense." Those letters were written when the production of " The Good-Natur'd Man" had supplied him with abundant practical evidence of the vexations and difficulties of theatrical ambition. 22 Miscellanies. players in his writings, hinted that he himself had once worn the comic sock as "Scrub" in "The Beaux 1 Stratagem;" and it is clear that soon after he arrived in England, he had com- pleted a tragedy, for he read it in manuscript to a friend. That he had been besides an acute and observant playgoer is plain from his excel- lent account in "The Bee" of Mademoiselle Clairon, whom he had seen at Paris, and from his sensible notes in the same periodical on " gestic lore " as exhibited on the English stage. In his " Polite Learning in Europe," he had followed up Ralph's " Case of Authors by Pro- fession," by protesting against the despotism of managers, and the unenlightened but economical policy of producing only the works of deceased playwrights ; and he was equally opposed to the growing tendency on the part of the public a tendency dating from Richardson and the French come'die larmoyantc to substitute sham sensi- bility and superficial refinement for that humour- ous delineation of manners which, with all their errors of morality and taste, had been the chief aim of Congreve and his contemporaries. To the fact that what was now known as " genteel comedy" had almost wholly supplanted this elder and better manner, must be attributed his deferred entry upon a field so obviously adapted Goldsmith's Poems and Plays. 23 to his gifts. But when, in 1766, the "Clandes- tine Marriage " of Garrick and Colman, with its evergreen "Lord Ogleby," seemed to herald a return to the side of laughter as opposed to that of tears, he took heart of grace, and, calling to mind something of the old inconsiderate benevo- lence which had been the Goldsmith family- failing, set about his first comedy, " The Good- Natur'd Man." Even without experiment, no one could have known better than Goldsmith upon what a sea of troubles he had embarked. Those obstacles which, more than thirty years before, had been so graphically described in Fielding's " Pas- quin," which Goldsmith himself had indicated with equal accuracy in his earliest book, still lay in the way of all dramatic purpose, and he was to avoid none of them. When he submitted his completed work to Garrick, the all-powerful actor, who liked neither piece nor author, blew hot and cold so long that Goldsmith at last, in despair, transferred it to Colman. But, as if fate was inexorable, Colman, after accepting it effusively, also grew dilatory, and ultimately entered into a tacit league with Garrick not to produce it at Covent Garden until his former rival had brought out at Drury Lane a comedy by Goldsmith's countryman, Hugh Kelly, a sen- 24 Miscellanies. timentalist of the first water. Upon the heels of the enthusiastic reception which Garrick's administrative tact secured for the superfine en- tanglements of " False Delicacy," came limping "The Good-Natur'd Man" of Goldsmith, wet- blanketed beforehand by a sombre prologue from Johnson. No first appearance could have been less favourable. Until it was finally saved in the fourth act by the excellent art of Shuter as " Croaker," its fate hung trembling in the balance, and even then one of its scenes not afterwards reckoned the worst had to be with- drawn in deference to the delicate scruples of an audience which could not suffer such inferior beings as bailiffs to come between the wind and its gentility. Yet, in spite of all these disad- vantages, "The Good-Natur'd Man" obtained a hearing, besides bringing its author about five hundred pounds, a sum far larger than anything he had ever made by poetry or fiction. That the superior success of " False Deli- cacy," with its mincing morality and jumble of inadequate motives, was wholly temporary and accidental is evident from the fact that, to use a felicitous phrase, it has now to be disinterred in order to be discussed. But, notwithstanding one's instinctive sympathy for Goldsmith in his struggles with the managers, it is not equally Goldsmith's Poems and Plays. 2^ clear that everything considered, "The Good- Natur'd Man " was unfairly treated by the pub- lic. Because Kelly's play was praised too much, it by no means follows that Goldsmith's play was praised too little. With all the advantage of its author's reputation, it has never since passed into the repertoire, and, if it had something of the freshness of a first effort, it had also its in- experience. The chief character, Honeywood, the weak and amiable " good-natur'd man," never stands very firmly on his feet, and the first actor of the part, Garrick's promising young rival, Powell, failed, or disdained to make it a stage success. On the other hand, " Croaker," an admitted elaboration of Johnson's sketch of " Suspirius " in the Rambler, is a first-rate comic creation, and the charlatan " Lofty," a sort of " Beau-Tibbs-above-Stairs," is almost as good. But, as Garrick's keen eye saw, to have a sec- ond male figure of greater importance than the central personage was a serious error of judg- ment, added to which neither " Miss Richland " nor " Mrs. Croaker " ever establishes any hold upon the audience. Last of all, the plot, such as it is, cannot be described as either particularly ingenious or particularly novel. In another way the merit of the piece is, however, incon- testable. It is written with all the perspicuous 26 Miscellanies. grace of Goldsmith's easy pen, and, in the absence of stage-craft, sparkles with neat and effective epigrams. One of these may be men- tioned as illustrating the writer's curious (per- haps unconscious) habit of repeating ideas which had pleased him. He had quoted in his " Polite Learning" the exquisitely rhythmical close of Sir William Temple's prose essay on " Poetry," and in "The Bee" it still seems to haunt him. In " The Good-Natur'd Man" he has absorbed it altogether, for he places it, without inverted commas, in the lips of Croaker. 1 But if its lack of constructive power and its errors of conception make it impossible to re- gard " The Good-Natur'd Man " as a substantial gain to humourous drama, it was undoubtedly a formidable attack upon that "mawkish drab of spurious breed," Sentimental Comedy, and its success was amply sufficient to justify a second trial. That Goldsmith did not forthwith make this renewed effort must be attributed partly to the recollection of his difficulties in getting his first play produced, partly to the fact that, his dra- matic gains exhausted, he was almost immediately involved in a sequence of laborious taskwork. 1 In the same way he annexes, both in " The Hermit " and " The Citizen of the World," a quotation from Young. Goldsmith's Poems and Plays. 27 Still, he had never abandoned his ambition to re- store humour and character to the stage ; and as time went on, the sense of his past discourage- ments grew fainter, while the success of " The Deserted Village " increased his importance as an author. Sentimentalism, in the meantime, had still a majority: Kelly, it is true, was now no longer to be feared. His sudden good for- tune had swept him into the ranks of the party- writers, with the result that the damning of his next play, "A Word to the Wise," had been exaggerated into a political necessity. But the school which he represented had been recruited by a much abler man, Richard Cumberland, and it was probably the favourable reception of Cumberland's "West Indian" that stimulated Goldsmith into striking one more blow for legiti- mate comedy. At all events, in the autumn of the year in which " The West Indian " was pro- duced, he is hard at work in the lanes at Hen- don and Edgware, "studying jests with a most tragical countenance" for a successor to "The Good-Natur'd Man." To the modern spectator of " She Stoops to Conquer," with its unflagging humour and bus- tling action, it must seem almost inconceivable that its stage qualities can ever have been ques- tioned. Yet questioned they undoubtedly were, 28 Miscellanies. and Goldsmith was spared none of his former humiliations. Even from the outset, all was against him. His difference with Garrick had long been adjusted, and the Drury Lane mana- ger would now probably have accepted a new play from his pen, especially as that astute ob- server had already detected signs of a reaction in the public taste. But Goldsmith was morally bound to Colman and Covent Garden ; and Colman, in whose hands he placed his manu- script, proved even more disheartening and un- manageable than Garrick had been in the past. Before he had come to his decision, the close of 1772 had arrived. Early in the following year, under the irritation of suspense and suggested amendments combined, Goldsmith hastily trans- ferred his proposal to Garrick; but, by John- son's advice, as hastily withdrew it. Only by the express interposition of Johnson was Col- man at last induced to make a distinct promise to bring out the play at a specific date. To be- lieve in it, he could not be persuaded, and his contagious anticipations of its failure passed in- sensibly to the actors, who, one after another, shuffled out of their parts. Even over the epi- logue there were vexatious disputes, and when at last, in March, 1773, "She Stoops to Con- quer" was performed, its leading actor had pre- Goldsmith's Poems and Plays. 29 viously held no more exalted position than that of ground-harlequin, while one of its most promi- nent characters had simply been a post-boy in ''The Good-Natur'd Man." But once fairly upon the boards neither lukewarm actors nor an adverse manager had any further influence over it, and the doubts of every one vanished in the uninterrupted applause of the audience. When, a few days later, it was printed with a brief and grateful dedication to its best friend, Johnson, the world already knew with certainty that a fresh masterpiece had been added to the roll of English Dramatic Literature, and that " genteel comedy " had received a decisive blow. The effect of this blow, it must be admitted, had been aided not a little by the appearance, only a week or two earlier, of Foote's clever puppet-show of "The Handsome Housemaid; or, Piety in Pattens," which was openly di- rected at Kelly and his following. But ridicule by itself, without some sample of a worthier substitute, could not have sufficed to displace a persistent fashion. This timely antidote " She Stoops to Conquer," in the most unmistakable way, afforded. From end to end of the piece there is not a sickly or a maudlin word. Even Sheridan, writing " The Rivals " two years later, thought it politic to insert " Faulkland " and jo Miscellanies. "Julia" for the benefit of the sentimentalists. Goldsmith made no such concession, and his wholesome, hearty merriment put to flight the Comedy of Tears, even as the Coquecigrues vanished before the large-lunged laugh of Pan- tagruel. If, as Johnson feared, the plot bor- dered slightly upon farce and of what good comedy may this not be said? at least it can be urged that its most farcical incident, the mis- taking of a gentleman's house for an inn, had really happened, since it had happened to the writer himself. But the superfine objections of Walpole and his friends are now ancient history, history so ancient that it is scarcely credited, while Goldsmith's manly assertion (after Field- ing) of the author's right " to stoop among the low to copy nature," has been ratified by suc- cessive generations of novelists and playwrights. What is beyond dispute is the healthy atmo- sphere, the skilful setting, the lasting freshness and fidelity to human nature of the persons of his drama. Not content with the finished por- traits of the Hardcastles (a Vicar and Mrs. Primrose promoted to the squirearchy), not content with the incomparable and unapproach- able Tony, the author has managed to make attractive what is too often insipid, his heroines and their lovers. Miss Hardcastle and Miss Goldsmith's Poems and Plays. 31 Neville are not only charming young women, but charming characters, while Marlow and Hastings are much more than stage young men. And let it be remembered it cannot be too often remembered that in returning to those Farquhars and Vanbrughs " of the last age," who differed so widely from the Kellys and Cumberlands of his own, Goldsmith has brought back no taint of their baser part. Depending solely for its avowed intention to " make an audience merry," upon the simple development of its humourous incident, his play (wonderful to relate ! ) attains its end without resorting to impure suggestion or equivocal intrigue. In- deed, there is but one married woman in the piece, and she traverses it without a stain upon her character. " She Stoops to Conquer" is Goldsmith's last dramatic work, for the trifling sketch of "The Grumbler " had never more than a grateful pur- pose. When, only a year later, the little funeral procession from 2, Brick Court laid him in his unknown grave in the Temple burying-ground, the new comedy of which he had written so hopefully to Garrick was still non-existent. Would it have been better than its last fortunate predecessor? would those early reserves of memory and experience have still proved in- 3 2 Miscellanies. exhaustible ? The question cannot be answered. Through debt, and drudgery, and depression, the writer's genius had still advanced, and these might yet have proved powerless to check his progress. But at least it was given to him to end upon his best, and not to outlive it. For, in that critical sense which estimates the value of a work by its excellence at all points, it can scarcely be contested that " She Stoops to Conquer" is his best production. In spite of their beauty and humanity, the lasting quality of " The Traveller " and " The Deserted Village " is seriously prejudiced by his half-way attitude between the poetry of convention and the poetry of nature between the gradus epithet of Pope and the direct vocabulary of Wordsworth. With the " Vicar of Wakefield " again, immortal though it be, it is less his art that holds us than his charm, his humour, and his tenderness, which tempt us to forget his inconsistency and his errors of haste. In " She Stoops to Conquer," neither defect of art nor defect of nature forbids us to give unqualified admiration to a work which lapse of time has shown to be still unrivalled in its kind. ANGELO'S "REMINISCENCES." IN the year 175 (it is not possible to fix the date more precisely), there was what would now be called a public assault of arms at one of the great hotels of pre-revolutionary Paris. Among the amateurs who took part in it for there were amateurs as well as professionals was a foreign $ro[&g& of the Duke de Niver- nais, that amiable and courteous nobleman who subsequently visited this country at the close of the Seven Years' War, in the character of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary from His Most Christian Majesty, Louis XV. The stranger, who was in the prime of life, was of graceful figure and address, and his name had been no sooner announced than an English lady, then visiting the French capital, and possessed of great vivacity and considerable personal attractions, stepped forward and pre- sented him with a bunch of roses. He received it with becoming gallantry, fastened it carefully on his left breast, and forthwith declared that he would defend it against all comers. What 3 34 Miscellanies. is more, he kept his promise. He afterwards " fenced with several of the first masters, not one of whom," says the narrator of the story, " could disturb a single leaf of the bouquet." The lady was the celebrated Mrs. Margaret Woffington, then in the height of her fame as a beauty and an actress ; the gentleman was an Italian, travelling for his pleasure. He was the son of a well-to-do merchant at Leghorn, and and he was called Dominico Angelo Malevolti Tremamondo. Shortly after the foregoing incident, Signer Dominico Angelo Malevolti Tremamondo ("I love" says Goldsmith of Miss Carolina Wil- elmina Amelia Skeggs "to give the whole name ! " ) transported his foil and his good looks to this country. In addition to his proficiency as a fencer, he was "a master of equitation," having been a pupil of the then famous scientific horseman, Teillagory 1 the elder. These were accomplishments which speedily procured for him both popularity and patrons in London. He became in a few months fauyer to Henry Her- bert, tenth Earl of Pembroke, who was not only an accomplished cavalier himself, but was then, or was soon to be, lieutenant-colonel of Elliot's Light Horse, a crack dragoon regiment, which, 1 Here and elsewhere we correct Angelo's spelling. Angela's "Reminiscences." 35 by the way, numbered among its corporals the future Astley of the Westminster Bridge Road Amphitheatre. Lord Pembroke had private maneges both in the neighbourhood of his house in Whitehall Gardens (part of the present No. 7), and at his family seat of Wilton, near Salis- bury. At first his e"cuyer confined himself to teaching riding ; but a chance encounter at the Thatched House Tavern with Dr. Keys, a well- known Irish fencer, in which he vanquished his antagonist, determined his choice of the calling of a maitre d'armes. His first pupil was the Duke of Devonshire. Later he was engaged by the Princess of Wales to instruct the young princes in horsemanship and the use of the small sword, for which purposes premises were provided in Leicester Fields, within two doors from Hogarth's dwelling in the east corner. Before many years were over, Dominico Angelo for he seems to have discarded first one and then the other of his last two names setup a riding school of his own in Soho. But previously to all this, and apparently not long after his arrival in London, he had fallen in love with, and taken to wife, the daughter of an English naval officer. Judging from the picture of her which Rey- nolds painted in 1766, the bride (who was a minor) must have been as handsome as her 3 6 Miscellanies. husband. The marriage took place in February, 1755, at St. George's, Hanover Square, the register of which duly records the union, by license of the Archbishop of Canterbury, of Domenico Angelo Malevolti, bachelor, and Elizabeth Johnson, spinster. The pair had a son, the Henry Angelo from whose disorgan- ised and gossiping " Reminiscences" 1 most of the foregoing particulars are derived. Harry Angelo, so he was called, is not explicit as to the date of his birth, which probably took place at the end of 1755 or the beginning of 1756. It seems at first to have been intended that he should enter the Navy ; and, as a matter of fact, he was actually enrolled by Captain Augustus Hervey (Lady Hervey's second son) on the books of the Dragon man-of war in the capacity of midshipman, thereby becoming en- titled, at an extremely tender age, to some twenty-five guineas prize money. After a short period under Dr. Rose of Chiswick, the transla- tor of Sallust, he went to Eton, where his father taught fencing ; and at Eton he remained for some years. Two of his school-fellows were Nathan and Carrington Garrick, the actor's 1 " Reminiscences of Henry Angelo, with Memoirs of his late Father and Friends," 2 vols., London : Colburn and Bentley, 1830. Angela's "Reminiscences." 37 nephews ; and young Angelo had pleasant mem- ories of their uncle's visits to Eton, where, be- ing a friend of the elder Angelo, he would regale all three boys sumptuously at the Christopher inn, and amuse them with quips and recitations. 1 Harry Angelo had even the good fortune, while at Eton, to be taken to that solemn tom- foolery, the Stratford Jubilee of 1769, in which his father doubled the part of Mark Antony with that of director of fireworks. Another occasional visitor to the school, magnificently frogged and braided after the fashion of his kind, was the Italian quack Dominicetti, also a family friend, who treated the boys royally. But perhaps the most interesting memories of young Angelo's Eton days are those which recall a holiday spent at Amesbury with his father and mother, as the guest of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry. In his old age he could clearly picture the tall, thin figure of the taciturn Duke, in high leather gaiters, short-skirted frock, and gold-laced hat ; and he 1 Apparently Garrick often did this. Once, at Hamp- ton, he read Chaucer's " Cock and Fox " to the boys after supper, and then, having recited Goldsmith's " Hermit," fell asleep in his arm-chair. Thereupon Mrs. Garrick, taking off her lace apron, fondly placed it over his face, and motioned her young friends away to bed. 3 8 Miscellanies, well remembered the Duchess, then nearly eighty, but still energetic and garrulous, in a Quaker-coloured silk and black hood. He also remembered that he was allowed (like Gay before him) to fish for carp in the Amesbury water. When he was entering his seventeenth year, Harry Angelo was sent to Paris to learn French. He was placed en pension in the Rue Poupd with a M. Boileau, a half-starved maitre de langue, who, since he is seriously likened by his pupil to the Apothecary in " Romeo and Juliet." must really have resembled the typical French- man as depicted by Smollett and Rowlandson. Boileau was a conscientious teacher, but a mis- erable caterer ; and young Angelo, after nar- rowly escaping collapse from starvation and close confinement, was eventually removed from his care. He passed, in the first instance, to a M. Liviez, whose wife was English, and (notwith- standing an undeniable squint) of a shape suffi- cently elegant to have served as the model for Roubillac's figure of Eloquence on the Argyll tomb at Westminster Abbey. M. Liviez had been a dancer, and ballet-master at a London theatre. At this date he was a bon vivant, who collected prints. He was also subject to fits of hypochondria (probably caused by over-eating), Angela's "Reminiscences." 39 when he would imagine himself Apollo, and fiddle feverishly to the nine Muses, typified for the nonce by a hemicycle of chairs. As both he and his wife preferred to speak English, they made no pretence to teach their lodger French ; but, from the point of commissariat, the change from the Rue Poup6 to the Rue Battois was " removal from Purgatory to Paradise." While Angelo was in Paris, Garrick sent him an intro- duction to Preville, whom Sterne describes as " Mercury himself," and who was, indeed, in some respects Garrick's rival. Pre'ville knew Foote ; and when Foote came to the French capital, he invited Angelo to a supper, at which Preville was present. Foote, binding Angelo to secrecy, delighted the company by mimick- ing their common acquaintance, the great Ros- cius ; and Pre'ville in his turn imitated the leading French comedians. All this was not very fa- vourable to proficiency in the French language, which Angelo would probably have learned better in M. Boileau's garret. On the other hand, under Motet, then the champion pareur of the Continent, he became an expert swords- man able, and only too willing, to take part in the encounters which, in the Paris of the day, were as common as street rows in London. But apart from swallowing the button and some 40 Miscellanies. inches of a foil when fencing with Lord Masse- reene in the Prison of the Abbaye (where that nobleman was unhappily in durance for debt), he seems to have enjoyed an exceptional immun- ity from accidents of all kinds. He returned to London in 1775. ^ s home at this time was at Carlisle House, 1 in King's Square Court (now Carlisle Street), Soho. It was a spacious old Caroline mansion of red brick, which had belonged to the Howard family, and had been bought by Dominico Angelo from Lord Delaval, brother of Foote's patron, the Sir Francis to whom he dedicated his comedy of " Taste." There were lofty rooms with en- riched ceilings ; there was a marble-floored hall ; there was a grand decorated staircase painted by Salvator's pupil, Henry Cook. In this building, at the beginning of 1763, its new owner had opened his fencing school, and subsequently, in the garden at the back, had erected stables and a manege, which extended to Wardour Street. Between pupils, resident and otherwise, and troops of friends, Carlisle House must always 1 Not to be confounded with Carlisle House on the other side of Soho Square, which was occupied from 1760 to 1778 by the enterprising Mrs. Teresa Cornelys, whose ballroom was in Sutton Street, on the site of the present Roman Catholic Church of St. Patrick. Angela's "Reminiscences." 41 have been well filled and animated. Garrick, who was accustomed to consult the elder Angelo on matters of costume and stage machinery, was often a visitor, and presented his adviser with a magnificent silver goblet (long preserved by the Angelos as an heirloom), which held three bottles of Burgundy. Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his father were also friends, and it was from Dominico Angelo that the younger man, as a boy at Harrow, acquired that use of the small sword which was to stand him in such good stead in his later duel with Captain Mathews. Wilkes, again, resplendent in his favourite scar- let and gold, not seldom looked in on his way from his Westminster or Kensington houses ; and Foote, the Chevalier D'lion, and General Paoli were constant guests. Home Tooke, who lived hard by in Dean Street, was another intimate ; and, when he was not discussing con- temporary politics with Wilkes and Tom Sheri- dan, would sometimes enliven the company by singing a parody on " God save the King," which was not entirely to the loyal taste of the elder Angelo. Bach of the harpsichord. 1 with Abel of 1 This was John Christian Bach, Bach's son, familiarly known as " English Bach." Angelo calls him Sebastian, but John Sebastian Bach died in 1750. Bach and Abel jointly conducted Mrs. Cornelys' concerts. 42 Miscellanies. the viol-da-gamba, were next-door neighbours and free of the house ; Bartolozzi the engraver, and his inseparable Cipriani, were on an almost equally favoured footing. Another habitut was Gainsborough, whose passion for music is his- torical, and from whom any one could extract a sketch in return for a song or a tune. The walls of Abel's room were covered by drawings ac- quired in this manner, and pinned loosely to the paper-hangings, drawings which afterwards fetched their price at Langford's in the Piazza. Besides these, came Philip de Loutherbourg, whom Dominico Angelo had introduced to Gar- rick as scene painter for Drury Lane ; and Canaletto, whom he had known at Venice ; and Zoffany ; and George Stubbs, the author of the " Anatomy of the Horse," who carried on his studies in the Carlisle House Riding School, no doubt taking for model, among others, that famous white charger Monarch, of which the presentment survives to posterity, under King William III. of immortal memory, in West's " Battle of the Boyne." 1 " All the celebrated horse painters of the last, and some of the vet- erans of the present age," says the author of the 1 The " Battle of the Boyne " was engraved by John Hall, Raimbach's master. See post, " An English En- graver in Paris." Angela's "Reminiscences." 45 "Reminiscences," "were constant visitors at our table or at the man&ge." Lastly, an enthusi- astic, though scarcely artistic, amateur of the Carlisle Street stud was the corpulent " Hero of Culloden," otherwise " Billy the Butcher." If not the greatest, he was certainly the heaviest prince in Christendom, since he rode some four- and-twenty stone, and, as a boy, Harry Angelo well remembered the significant sidelong dip of the carriage when His Royal Highness poised his ponderous body on the step. An establishment upon the scale and tradi- tions of Carlisle House (and there was also a "cake-house " or country-box at Acton, for which Zoffany painted decorations) could only have been maintained at considerable expense. But in this respect Dominico Angelo seems to have been unusually fortunate, even for a foreigner. Within a short period after his arrival in England his income, according to his son, was over two thousand a year ; and this sum, in the height of his prosperity, was nearly doubled. After Harry Angelo's account of his life in Paris, his records, always disconnected, grow looser in chronology ; added to which, it is never quite easy to distinguish his personal recollections from the mere floating hearsay of a retentive but capricious memory. One of his earliest 44 Miscellanies. experiences, however, on returning to England, must have been his attendance, in December, 1775, at the trial, in the Old Bailey, of Mrs. Margaret Caroline Rudd, for complicity in the forgery for which the Brothers Perreau were subsequently hanged. 1 His description of this fair-haired siren suggests a humbler Becky Sharp or Valerie Marneffe, and there can be little doubt that, as he implies, she owed her unde- served acquittal to the " irresistible power of fascination" which captivated Boswell, and inter- ested even his "illustrious Friend." Another incident at which Angelo assisted shortly after- wards, and which it is also possible to place precisely, was the riot that, in February, 1776, accompanied the attempt to produce at Drury Lane Parson Bate's unpopular opera of " The Blackamoor wash'd White." Angelo was one of a boxful of the author's supporters, who were forced to retire under the furious cannonade of "apples, oranges, and other such missiles," to which they were exposed. But a still more important theatrical event was his presence on 1 One wonders whether Thackeray was thinking of this cause cetebre in " Denis Duval," where there is a Miss Rudge and a Farmer Perreau. Angelo, it may be added, was present at the hanging at Tyburn of M. de la Motte, an actual character in the same book. Angela's "Reminiscences." 45 that historic June 10, 1776, when Garrick bade farewell to the stage. He and his mother were in Mrs. Garrick's box, and the two ladies con- tinued sobbing so long after they had quitted the house as to prompt the ironic comment of the elder Angelo that they could not have grieved more at the great man's funeral itself. Harry Angelo was also a spectator of the prog- ress to Tyburn, in the following February, of the unfortunate Dr. Dodd, to whom, and to the horrors of " Execution Day" in general, he de- votes some of the latter pages of his first volume. " His [Dodd's] corpse-like appearance produced an awful picture of human woe. Tens of thou- sands of hats, which formed a black mass, as the coach advanced were taken off simultane- ously, and so many tragic faces exhibited a spectacle the effect of which is beyond the power of words to describe. Thus the proces- sion travelled onwards through the multitude, whose silence added to the awfulness of the scene." Two years later Angelo witnessed the execution of another clergyman. James Hack- man, who was hanged for shooting Lord Sand- wich's mistress, Miss Martha Reay. The murder it will be remembered took place in the Piazza at Covent Garden, as the lady was leaving the theatre, and Angelo, according to his 46 Miscellanies. own account, had only quitted it himself a few minutes before. He afterwards saw the body of the hapless criminal under dissection at Sur- geons' Hall, a gruesome testimony to the truth of Hogarth's final plate in the " Four Stages of Cruelty." The above, the Gordon riots of '80, and the burning in '92 of Wyatt's Pantheon, are some of the few things in Angelo's first volume which it is practicable to date with certainty. The second volume is scarcely more than a sequence of headed paragraphs, roughly parcelled into sec- tions, and difficult to sample. Like his father (who died at Eton in 1802), he became a " mas- ter of the sword," and like him, again, he lived upon terms of quasi-familiarity with many titled practitioners of that art, being, indeed, upon one occasion the guest of the Duke of Sussex at the extremely select Neapolitan Club, an honour which as the Prince of Wales was also present seems to have been afterwards regarded as too good to be believed. Like Dominico Angelo, also, he had an extensive ac- quaintance with the artists and actors of his day. He had himself learned drawing at Eton under the Prince's master, Alexander Cozens, the apostle of " blottesque," and had studied a little with Bartolozzi and Cipriani. He had even Angela's "Reminiscences." 47 ventured upon a few caricatures, in particular one of Lady Queensberry's black protege", Sou- bise ; and he was intimate with Thomas Rowland- son, whom he had known from boyhood, and followed to his grave in April, 1827. When Rowlandson was on his continental travels, An- gelo was living in Paris, and he possessed many of the drawings which his friend executed at this time. In London they were frequently companions at Vauxhall and other places of amusement, where Rowlandson's busy pencil found its field of activity ; and together they often heard the chimes at midnight in the house at Beaufort Buildings inhabited by Rowland- son's fat Maecenas, the banker Mitchel, one of whose favourite guests was Peter Pindar. An- gelo gives a good many anecdotes which have been utilised by Rowlandson's biographers ; but perhaps the least hackneyed record of their alliance is contained in the pages which describe their joint visit to Portsmouth to see the French prizes after Lord Howe's victory of the ist June, 1794. Angelo got down first, and went on board the largest French vessel, the Sans Pareil (80 guns). He gives a graphic account of the appalling devastation, the decks ploughed up by the round shot, the masts gone by the board, the miserable boyish crew, the hogshead 48 Miscellanies. of spirits to keep up their courage in action, the jumble of dead and dying in the 'tween decks, and above all, the terrible, sickening stench. On Howe's vessel, the Queen Charlotte, on the contrary, there was scarcely a trace of battle, though another ship, the Brunswick, had suffered to a considerable extent. Rowlandson joined Angelo at Portsmouth, and they witnessed to- gether the landing of the prisoners. Afterwards they visited Forton, where, upon leaving one of the sick wards, Rowlandson made a ghastly study of a dying " Mounseer" sitting up in bed to write his will, a priest with a crucifix at his side. By this time Angelo had had enough of the horrors of war, and he returned to town, leaving Rowlandson to go on to Southampton to make so he says sketches of Lord Moira's embarkation for La Vende'e. Here, however, the writer's recollection must have failed him, for Lord Moira's fruitless expedition was nearly a year old. What Rowlandson no doubt saw was his Lordship's departure for Ostend to join the Duke of York. Angelo speaks highly of the for Rowlandson unusual finish and spirit of these drawings, with their boatloads of soldiers and studies of shipping. They were purchased by Fores of Piccadilly, but do not appear to have been reproduced. There is, Angela's " Reminiscences.'" 49 however, at South Kensington a sketch by Rowlandson of the French prizes coming into Portsmouth, which must have been made at this date. Another associate of Angelo, and also of Rowlandson, was John (or more familiarly, Jack) Bannister, the actor. Bannister and Rowlandson had been students together at the Royal Academy, and had combined in wor- rying, by mimicry and caricature, gruff Richard Wilson, who had succeeded Frank Hayman as librarian. In the subsequent pranks of this practical joking age, Angelo, who had known them both from boyhood, often made a third ; and he was present upon an occasion which was as unfeignedly pathetic as Garrick's famous fare- well, the farewell of Bannister to the stage. Many of the anecdotes contained in the enter- tainment which preceded this leave-taking namely, " Bannister's Budget," were included by permission in the "Reminiscences;" and Angelo, who had learned elocution from Tom Sheridan, and was an excellent amateur actor, more than once played for Bannister's benefits, notably at the Italian Opera House in 1792 as Mrs. Cole in Footers " Minor," and in 1800 before the Royal Family at Windsor as Papillon in " The Liar," also by Foote. On this latter 4 $o Miscellanies. occasion the bill records that Mr. H. Angelo, " by particular desire," obliged with " A Solo Duet ; or, Ballad Singers in Cranbourn Alley." These were by no means his only dramatic essays. At the pretty little private theatre which, in 1788, that emphatically lively nobleman, Rich- ard, seventh Earl of Barrymore, erected at War- grave-on-Thames, he was a frequent performer. His first, or one of his first parts, was that of Dick in Vanbrugh's " Confederacy," when Barrymore played Brass ; and a later and favourite impersonation was Worsdale's rdle of Lady Pentweazel in Foote's " Taste." Angelo is careful, however, to explain that the exigencies of his professional engagements did not permit him to go to the full length of the Wargrave Court of Comus some of whose revels must have closely resembled that " blind hookey " by which the footman in "The Newcomes" described the doings of Lord Farintosh. As he seems, nevertheless, to have accompanied Barrymore to low spouting clubs like Jacob's Well ; to have driven with him at night through the long strag- gling street of Colnbrook, while his sportive Lordship was industriously " fanning the day- lights," i.e. breaking the windows to right and left with his whip ; and to have serenaded Mrs. Fitzherbert in his company at Brighton, he Angela's u Reminiscences." $i had certainly sufficient opportunities for studying the "caprices and eccentricities" of this illus- trious and erratic specimen of what the late Mortimer Collins was wont to describe as the " strong generation." Besides acting at War- grave, he had also often joined in the private theatricals at Brandenburgh House, then the Hammersmith home of Lord Berkeley's sister, that Margravine of Anspach whose comedy of ''The Sleep- Walker " Walpole had printed at the Strawberry Hill Press. Lastly, he was a mem- ber of the short-lived Pic-Nic Society inaugu- rated by Lady Buckinghamshire, an association which combined balls and private plays with suppers on the principle of the line in Gold- smith's " Retaliation", " Each guest brought his dish, and the feast was united." Lady Buckinghamshire, a large personage, with a good digestion and an unlimited appetite for pleasure, was one of the three card-loving leaders of fashion satirised so mercilessly by Gillray as "Faro's Daughters," her fellow-sinners being Lady Archer and Mrs. Concannon. But whatever may have happened over the green tables at St. James's Square, " gaming" says Angelo "formed no part of the plan of the Pic-Nics." Not the less, they had their ele- 5 2 Miscellanies. ment of chance. It was the practice to draw lots for furnishing the supper, an arrangement which, if it sometimes permitted the drawers to escape with a pound cake or a bag of China oranges, as often imposed upon them the en- forced provision of a dozen of champagne or a three-guinea Perigord pie. It would take a lengthy article to exhaust the budget of these chaotic memories, even if one made rigid selection of those incidents only in which the writer affirms that he was personally concerned. Not a few of the stories, however, are common property, and are told as well else- where. For instance, Angelo repeats the anec- dote of Goldsmith's " Croaker," Shuter, who, following for his " Cries of London " a par- ticularly musical vendor of silver eels, found to his vexation that on this particular occasion the man was unaccountably mute. Questioning him at length, the poor fellow explained, with a burst of tears, that his vife had died that day, and that he could not cry. This is related in Taylor's " Records," and no doubt in a dozen places besides. Similarly, the anecdote of Hayman the painter, and the Marquis of Granby, both gouty, having a bout with the gloves previous to a sitting, is to be found in the " Somerset House Gazette " of " Ephraim Hardcastle " Angela's "Reminiscences." 53 (W. H. Pyne) ; and it has been suggested, we know not upon what authority, that Pyne had a good deal to do with Angelo's chronicles. Be this as it may, there are plenty of anecdotes which are so obviously connected with the nar- rator that, even if all the make-weights be dis- carded, a residue remains which is far too large to be dealt with here. We shall confine our- selves to the few pages which refer to Byron, whom Angelo seems to have known well. Byron, who had been one of Angelo's pupils at Harrow, had interested himself in establishing Angelo as a fencing master at Cambridge, where he entertained him and Theodore Hook at din- ner, seeing them off himself afterwards by the London stage, duly fortified with stirrup cups of the famous St. John's College beer. When later Byron left Cambridge for town, Angelo seems to have taken great pains to find a book which his noble friend wanted in order to decide a wager, and his eventual success increased the favour in which he stood. He was subse- quently in the habit of giving Byron lessons at the Albany in the broadsword, a fearsome exercise which was chosen in view of the pupil's tendency to flesh, and for which he elaborately handicapped himself with furs and flannels. Of these relations between Angelo and Byron at 54 Miscellanies. this date a memento is still said to survive at Mr. John Murray's in Albemarle Street. It is a screen made by Angelo for his patron. On one side are all the eminent pugilists from Broughton to Jackson ; on the other the great actors from Betterton to Kean. When Byron left the country in 1816 the screen was sold with his effects, and so passed into the pious hands of its present possessor. Reference has already been made to what Mr. Egerton Castle accurately describes as Angelo's " graceful ease " in eluding dates, and it should be added that he gives very few particulars re- specting his personal history or his professional establishments. At first, it may be assumed, he taught fencing at his father's school in Carlisle Street. Later on, the salle d'armes which he men- tions oftenest is that formerly belonging to the Frenchman Redas in the Opera House buildings at the corner of the Haymarket, almost facing the Orange Coffee House, then the chosen re- sort of foreigners of all sorts. When the Opera was burned down in 1789, these rooms were de- stroyed, and Angelo apparently transferred his quarters to Bond Street. Under the heading " My Own Boastings," he gives a list of his titled and aristocratic pupils to the year 1817, and it is certainly an imposing one. " In the Angela's "Reminiscences." 55 year of [Edmund] Kean's benefit" [1825?] he strained his thigh when fencing with the actor, and was thenceforth obliged "to bid adieu to the practical exertions of the science." His last years seem to have been passed in retirement at a village near Bath, and from his description of his means as " a small annuity " it must be pre- sumed that he was poor. He had been married, and he speaks of two of his sons to whom the Duke of York had given commissions in the army ; but that is all he says on the subject. Beside the two volumes of "Reminiscences," he compiled another miscellany of memories en- titled " Angelo's Pic-Nic," to which George Cruikshank contributed a characteristic frontis- piece. He also published a translation in smaller form of his father's " Ecole des Armes," a magnificent subscription folio which had first appeared in I76}. 1 The translation was by Rowlandson, and the book so produced was afterwards inserted under the head Escrime in the "Encyclopedic" of Diderot and D'Alem- bert. Rowlandson also etched twenty-four 1 Dominico Angelo, Lord Pembroke, and the Chevalier D'lion stood as models for the illustrations to this book, which were designed by Gwynn the painter. They were engraved by Grignion, Ryland, and Raimbach's master, Hall. 5 6 Miscellanies. plates for Angelo on the use of the Hungarian and Highland broadsword, which were put forth in 1798-9 by T. Egerton of the Military Library near Whitehall, the adventurous pub- lisher who subsequently issued the first three novels of Jane Austen. THE LATEST LIFE OF STEELE. ONE of the things that most pleased Lord Macaulay in connection with his famous article in the Edinburgh on Miss Aikin's " Life of Addison," was the confirmation of a minor statement which he had risked upon internal evidence. He had asserted confidently that Addison could never have spoken of Steele in the " Old Whig " as " Little Dickey ; " and by a stroke of good fortune, a few days after his article appeared, he found the evidence he re- quired. At a bookstall in Holborn he happened upon Chetwood's " History of the Stage," and promptly discovered that " Little Dickey" was the nickname of Henry Morris, a diminutive actor who had made his first appearance as "Dicky" in Farquhar's "Constant Couple." Norris it may be added must have been a familiar figure to both Addison and Steele, be- cause, besides taking a female part in "The Funeral," he had played Mr. Tipkin in " The Tender Husband," which contained " many applauded strokes" from Addison's hand ; and, $8 Miscellanies. only three years before Addison wrote the " Old Whig," had also acted in Addison's own comedy of " The Drummer." But the anecdote, with its tardy exposure of a time-honoured blunder, aptly illustrates the main function of the modern biographer who deals with the great men of the last century. Rightly or wrongly no doubt rightly as regards their leading characteristics a certain conception of them has passed into currency, and it is no longer practicable to alter it materially. A " new view," if sufficiently in- genious or paradoxical, may appear to hold its own for a moment, but, as a rule, it lasts no longer. Swift, Addison, Pope, Steele, Field- ing, Goldsmith, Johnson, remain essentially what the common consent of the past has left them, and the utmost that latter-day industry can effect lies in the rectification of minute facts, and the tracing out of neglected threads of inquiry. Especially may it concern itself with that literary nettoyage & sec which has for its object the atten- uation, and, if possible, the entire dispersing, of doubtful or discreditable tradition. Of this method of biography, the " Life of Steele," 1 by Mr. George A. Aitken is a favour- able, and even typical, example. That Mr. 1 The Life of Richard Steele. By George A. Aitken, 2 vols., London: Isbister, 1889. The Latest Life of Steele. 59 Aitken is an enthusiast is plain ; but he is also an enthusiast of exceptional patience, acuteness, and tenacity of purpose. He manifestly set out determined to know all that could possibly be known about Steele, and for some five years (to judge by his first advertisements) he laboured unvveariedly at his task. The mere authorities referred to in his notes constitute an ample liter- ature of the period, while the consultation of registers, the rummaging of records, and the general disturbance of contemporary pamphlets and documents which his inquiries must obvi- ously have entailed, are fairly enough to take one's breath away. That in these days of hasty research and hastier publication such a train of investigation should have been undertaken at all, is remarkable ; that so prolonged and arduous a:i effort should have been selected as the diploma-work of a young and previously untried writer, is more remarkable still. It would have been discouraging in the last degree if so much industry and perseverance had been barren of result, and it is satisfactory to find that Mr. Aitken has been fortunate enough to add con- siderably to the existing material respecting Steele. In the pages that follow it is proposed, not so much to recapitulate Steele's story, as to emphasise, in their order, some of the more im- 60 Miscellanies. portant discoveries which are due to his latest biographer. Richard Steele, as we know already, was born at Dublin in March, 1672 (N. S.), being thus about six weeks older than Addison, who first saw the light in the following May. Beyond some vague references in the Tatler, nothing definite has hitherto been ascertained about his parents, although his father (also Richard Steele) was reported to have been a lawyer. But Mr. Aitken's investigations establish the fact that one Richard Steele, of Mountain (Monkstown), an attorney, was married in 1670 to a widow named Elinor Symes. These were Steele's father and mother. Steele himself tells us (Tatter, No. 181) that the former died when he was " not quite five years of age," and his mother, apparently, did not long survive her husband. The boy fell into the charge of his uncle, Henry Gascoigne, secretary to the first and second Dukes of Ormond. Gascoigne, con- cerning whom Mr. Aitken has recovered many particulars, had married a sister of one of Steele's parents. Through Ormond's influence his nephew was placed, in November, 1684, upon the foundation at the Charterhouse. Two years later he was joined there by Addison. It was then the reign of Dr. Thomas Walker, after- The Latest Life of Steele. 61 wards " the ingenious T. W." of the Spectator, but nothing has been recovered as to Steele's school-days. In November, 1689, he was elected to Christ Church, Oxford, with the usual exhi- bition of a boy on the Charterhouse foundation, and he matriculated in March, 1690, Addison, then a demy at Magdalen, having preceded him. Letters already printed by Mr. Wills and others show that Steele tried hard for a studentship at Christ Church ; but eventually he became a post-master at Merton, his college-tutor being Dr. Welbore Ellis, to whom he subsequently refers in the preface to the " Christian Hero." Of his intercourse with Addison at Smithfield and Oxford no record has come to light, and it is therefore still open to the essayist to piece the imperfections of this period by fictitious scores with the apple-woman or imaginary musings on the Merton terraces. But, in any such excur- sions in search of the picturesque, the fact that Steele was older instead of younger than Addi- son cannot safely be disregarded. Why Richard Steele quitted the University to become a " gentleman of the army " still remains obscure. His University career, if not brilliant, had been respectable, and he left Merton with the love of " the whole Society." Perhaps, like his compatriot Goldsmith, he preferred a red coat 62 Miscellanies. to a black one. At all events, in 1694, his rest- less Irish spirit prompted him to enlist as a cadet in the second troop of Horse Guards, then com- manded by his uncle's patron, James Butler, second Duke of Ormond. When he thus " mounted a war-horse, with a great sword in his hand, and planted himself behind King Wil- liam the Third against Lewis the Fourteenth " he lost (he says) " the succession to a very good estate in the county of Wexford in Ireland ; " for which, failing further particulars, we may perhaps provisionally read " castle in Spain." His next appearance was among the crowd of minstrels who, in black-framed folio, mourned Queen Mary's death. Already he had written verse, and had even burned an entire comedy at college. The chief interest, however, of "The Procession," which was the particular name of this particular " melodious tear," was its diplo- matic dedication to John, Lord Cutts, himself a versifier, and what was more important, also the newly appointed colonel of the Coldstream Guards. Cutts speedily sought out his anony- mous panegyrist, took him into his household, and eventually offered him a standard in his regiment. There is evidence, in the shape of transcripts from the Blenheim MSS., that Steele was acting as Cults' secretary circa 1696-7 (a The Latest Life of Steele. 63 circumstance of which, by the way, there is confirmation in Carleton's " Memoirs 1 ' 1 ) ; and it has hitherto been supposed that by his employ- er's interest for Cults gave him little but pat- ronage he became a captain in Lucas's Fusi- leers. Here, however, Mr. Aitken's cautious method discloses an unsuspected error. Steele is spoken of as a captain as early as 1700, and " Lord Lucas's Regiment of Foot" (not speci- fically " Fusileers ") was only raised in February, 1702. If, therefore, before this date Steele had any right to the title of captain, it must have been as captain in the Coldstream Guards. Unfortunately, all efforts to trace him in the records of that regiment have hitherto proved unsuccessful. Neither as captain nor as ensign could its historian, General MacKinnon, though naturally watchful on the point, find any mention of his name. By 1700 the former post-master of Merton had become a seasoned man about town, a rec- ognised wit, and an habitual frequenter of Will's. " Dick Steel is yours," writes Congreve to a 1 "At the time appointed" (says Carleton, writing at the date of the Assassination Plot of 1696) " I waited on his lordship [Lord Cults], where I met Mr. Steel (now Sir Richard, and at that time his secretary), who immedi- ately introduced me." (" Memoirs," 1728, ch. iii.) 64 Miscellanies. friend early in the year. Already, too, there are indications that he had begun to feel the "want of pence which vexes public men." From this, however, as well as his part in the coffee-house crusade against Dryden's " Quack Maurus," Blackmore, we must pass to Mr. Aitken's next rectification. That Steele fought a duel is already known. That it was forced upon him, that he endeavoured in every honour- able way to evade it, and that finally, by mis- adventure, he all but killed his man, have been often circumstantially related. But the date of the occurrence has always been a mystery. Calling Luttrell and the Flying-Post to his aid, Mr. Aitken has ascertained that the place was Hyde Park, the time June 16, 1700, and the other principal an Irishman, named Kelly. Luttrell's description of Steele as " Capt. Steele, of the Lord Cutts regiment," is confirmatory of the assumption that he was a captain in the Guards. Whether this was his only " affair of honour," or whether there were others, is doubtful ; but it is not improbable that the re- pentant spirit engendered by this event, for his adversary's life long hung trembling in the bal- ance, is closely connected with the publication, if not the preparation, of the " Christian Hero," which made its appearance a few months later. The Latest Life of Steele. 65 Upon the scheme of this curious and by no means uninstructive manual, once so nearly for- gotten as to be described as a poem, it is not necessary to linger now. But it may be noted that it was dated from, the Tower Guard, where it was written, and that the governor of the Tower was the Lord Lucas in whose regiment Steele became an officer. The year of which the first months witnessed the publication of the "Christian Hero" wit- nessed in its close the production of Steele's first play, and, inconsequently enough, the one was the cause of the other. It was an almost inevitable result of the book that many of the author's former associates were alienated from him, while others, not nicely sensitive to the distinction drawn in Boileau's ami de la verlu, pluidt que vertueux, maliciously contrasted his precepts with his practice. Finding himself "slighted" (he says) "instead of being encour- aged, for his declarations as to religion," it be- came " incumbent upon him to enliven his char- acter, for which reason he writ the comedy called ' The Funeral,' in which (though full of incidents that move laughter) Virtue and Vice appear just as they ought to do." In other words, Steele endeavoured to swell that tide of reformation which Collier had set flowing by his S 66 Miscellanies. "Short View of the Immorality and Profane- ness of the English Stage," and he followed up his first effort of 1701 by the " Lying Lover" (1705) and the " Tender Husband" (1705), the second of which was avowedly written " in the severity Collier required." His connection with the purification of the contemporary drama, however, would lead us too far from the special subject of this paper, the revised facts of his biography. Among these, the order of the plays as given above is an important item. Owing to some traditional misconception, the " Lying Lover," which was a rather over-emphatic pro- test against duelling, was believed by all the older writers to be the last of Steele's early dra- matic efforts. As a natural consequence, its being " damned for its piety" was made respon- sible for the author's long abstinence from the task of theatrical regeneration. Unfortunately for logic, the facts which, in this instance, Mr. Aitken has extended rather than discovered, are diametrically opposed to any such convenient arrangement. The "Tender Husband," and not the " Lying Lover," was the last of Steele's first three plays, that is to say, the moralised Collier mixture was succeeded by a strong infu- sion of Moliere, while, so far from leaving off writing for the stage, there is abundant evidence The Latest Life of Steele. 67 that, but for other cares and more absorbing occupations, Steele would speedily have pro- ceeded to ''enliven his character" with a fresh comedy. Indeed, in a very instructive suit against Christopher Rich of Drury Lane, which Mr. Aitken has exhumed from the Chancery Pleadings in the Record Office, mention is made of what may well have been the performance in question. It was to have treated a subject essayed both by Gay and Mrs. Centlivre, the " Election of Gotham." The Chancery suit above referred to, which arose out of the profits of the "Tender Hus- band," began in 1707. Early in 1702 Steele had become a captain in Lucas's, and between that date and 1704 must have spent a consider- able portion of his time at Landguard Fort, do- ing garrison duty with his company. He lodged, according to report, in a farmhouse at Walton. Mr. Aitken prints from various sources several new letters which belong to this period, to- gether with some account of another in the long series of lawsuits about money with which Steele's biography begins to be plentifully be- sprinkled. In an autograph now in the Mor- rison collection, we find him certifying with Addison to the unimpeachable character of one " Margery Maplesden, late Sutler at the Tilt- 68 Miscellanies. yard Guard," and we get passing glances of him at the Kit Cat Club and elsewhere. Perhaps we are right, too, in placing about this date the account of his search for the " philosopher's stone." The details of this episode in his career rest mainly upon the narrative of Mrs. De la Riviere Manley, the author of that " cornucopia of scandal," the " New Atalantis ; " but there is little doubt that there was ground for the story, since Steele himself, in later life, printed, with- out contradiction, a reference to it in Town Talk, and it is besides connected with the next of Mr. Aitken's discoveries. According to "Rivella," an empiric, who found the sanguine Steele " a bubble to his mind," engaged him in the pursuit of the magnum arcanum. Furnaces were built without delay, and Steele's available resources began to vanish rapidly. In these transactions Mrs. Manley's husband played an ambiguous part, and, if we are to believe her, she herself impersonated the Dea ex machina, and warned Steele that he was being duped. It was not too soon. He only just saved his last negotiable property, his commis- sion, and had to go into hiding. " Fortune," Mrs. Manley continues, "did more for him in his adversity than would have lain in her way in prosperity ; she threw him to seek for refuge The Latest Life of Steele. 69 in a house where was a lady with very large possessions ; he married her, she settled all upon him, and died soon after." This and to some extent it is a corrobora- tion of the story was Steele's first wife, who until now has been little more than a shifting shadow in his biography. Her actual personal- ity still remains veiled ; but Mr. Aitken with infinite pains has ascertained her name, and a number of facts about her family. She was a West Indian widow called Margaret Stretch, who had inherited an estate in Barbados of ;8)O a year from her brother, Major Ford. Steele married her in the spring of 1705, and buried her two years later. There is some indication that her death was caused by a fright given her (when enceinte) by Steele's only sister, who was insane ; but upon this point nothing definite can be affirmed. Looking to the cir- cumstances in which (as narrated by Mrs. Manley) the acquaintanceship began, it is not improbable that the personal charms of the lady had less to do with the marriage than the beaux yeux de sa cassette. In any case Steele can scarcely escape the imputation which usually attaches to the union of a needy bachelor with a wealthy widow, and, as will presently be seen, he was not long inconsolable. 70 Miscellanies. Whether, even at the time of the marriage, the Barbados estate was really productive of much ready money may be doubted. But in August, 1706, Steele was appointed Gentle- man Waiter to Queen Anne's consort, Prince George of Denmark, and a few weeks after his wife's death, through the recommendation of Arthur Mainwaring, one of the members of the Kit Cat Club, Harley, then a Secretary of State, gave him the post of Gazetteer with an in- creased salary of ^300 a year. " The writer of the ' Gazette ' now," says Hearne in May, 1707, "is Captain Steel", who is the author of several romantic things, and is accounted an ingenious man." As " Captain Steele " he con- tinued for many years to be known, but it is assumed that he left the army before his second marriage, which now followed. To his first wife's funeral had come as mourner a lady of about nine and twenty, the daughter of a de- ceased gentleman of Wales, and the Miss Mary Scurlock who has since become historical as the " Prue " of the well-known Steele letters in the British Museum. That she was an heiress, and, as Mrs. Manleysays, a " cried-up beauty, 1 ' was known, though in the absence of definite pictorial assurance of the latter fact, it has hitherto been difficult to see her with the admir- The Latest Life of Steele. 71 ing eyes of the enthusiastic writer who signs himself her " most obsequious obedient hus- band." But while unable to add greatly to our knowledge of her character, Mr. Aitken has succeeded in discovering and copying her por- trait by Kneller, a portrait which sufficiently jus- tifies her husband's raptures. In Sir Godfrey's "animated canvas," she is shown as a very beau- tiful brunette, in a cinnamon satin dress, with a high, almost too high, forehead, and dark, bril- liant eyes. Steele's phrase " little wife " must have been a "dear diminutive," for she is not especially petite, but rather what Fielding's Mrs. James would style " a very fine person of a woman," and she has an arch, humourous expres- sion which suggests the wit with which she is credited. From the absence of a ring it has been conjectured that the portrait was taken before marriage. But Kneller was much more likely to have painted Mrs. Steele than Miss Scurlock, and the simple explanation may be either that rings were neglected or that the hands were painted in from a model. As in the case of Mrs. Stretch, Mr. Aitken has collected a mass of information about Mrs. Steele's rela- tions. His good luck has also helped him to one veritable find. In her letter to her mother announcing her engagement, Miss Scurlock re- 72 Miscellanies. fers scornfully to a certain " wretched impudence, H. O.," who had recently written to her. This was manifestly a rejected but still importunate suitor, although the precise measure of his implied iniquity remained unrevealed. From documents now first printed by Mr. Aitken, it seems that his name was Henry Owen of Glassalt, Carmar- thenshire, and that he was an embarrassed wid- ower of (in the circuitous language of the law) " thirty, thirty-five, or forty years of age at the most " that is to say, he was over forty. Miss Scurlock had known him as a neighbour from childhood, and for four or five years past, at Bath, at London, and at other places, he, being a needy man with an entailed estate, had been besieging her with his addresses. Only two years before her engagement to Steele, finding her obdurate, he had trumped up a suit against her for breach of contract of marriage, which apparently was not successful. The "Libel" and "Answer," which Mr. Aitken prints from the records of the Consistorial Court of London, are more curious than edify- ing, and tend to show that Owen was rather a cur. But the whole story is useful indirectly as suggesting that Miss Scurlock's constitu- tional prudery was not the only reason why she surrounded Steele's worship of her with so The Latest Life of Steele. 7? much mystery. Abhorrence of "public do- ings " in " changing the name of lover for hus- band " was certainly superficially justifiable in the circumstances. A gentleman who had brought a suit against her in 1704 for breach of contract, and was still pestering her in August, 1707, with his unpalatable attentions, was quite capable of putting awkward obstacles in the way of that other ardent wooer from Lord Sunderland's office in Whitehall, who, in order to pay his court to " the beautifullest object in the world," was confessedly neglecting the " Gazette " and the latest news from Ostend. According to the license the marriage was to have taken place at St. Margaret's, Westmin- ster ; but the registers of that church, as well as those of St. James's, Piccadilly, and St. Martin's- in-the-Fields, have been fruitlessly searched for the record, and it is clear that, for some days, the ceremony was kept a secret, pending the arrival from Wales of Mrs. Scurlock's consent. It probably took place on the 9th of September, 1707, the day after the license was granted. In the previous month of August, Steele had rented a house, now no longer standing, in Bury Street, close to the turning out of Jermyn Street. This was a quarter of the town described by contem- porary advertisements as in close proximity " to 74 Miscellanies. St. James's Church, Chapel, Park, Palace, Cof- fee and Chocolate Houses" in other words, it was in the very heart of the beau monde ; and here Steele, moreover, would be within easy distance of the Court, and the Cockpit at Whitehall. He appears to have begun his estab- lishment upon the lavish footing of a gentleman whose expectations are larger than his means, and whose wife's dignity demands, if not " the gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares " of Pope's Pamela, at least a chariot, a lady's-maid, and an adequate equipment of cinnamon satin. On paper his yearly income from all sources. Mrs. Scurlock's allowance not included, was about ;i2)O. But by far the largest portion of this was derived from the Barbados property, which, besides being encumbered by legacies, seems to have made irregular returns. His salary as Gazetteer was also subject to " deduc- tions," and as with the modest pay of a captain in Lucas's he had dabbled in alchemy, he was probably considerably in debt. The prospect was not a cheerful one, either for him or for " Prue," as he soon begins to call his more cir- cumspect better-half, and the signs of trouble are speedily present. Always irrepressibly san- guine, and generally without ready money, he is constantly turning some pecuniary corner or The Latest Life of Steele. 75 other, not without anticipations and borrowings that bring their inevitable train of actions and bailiffs. All this has to be gently tempered to the apprehensive " Prue," who, to her other luxuries, contrives to add a confidante, described as Mrs. (probably here it means Miss) Binns. Meanwhile her husband, bustling to and fro, now detained in his passage by a friend (and a "pint of wine"), now, it is to be feared, attentively "shadowed" by the watchful " shoulder-dabbers," scribbles off, from re- mote "blind taverns" and other casual coigns of vantage, a string of notes and notelets de- signed to keep his " Absolute Governess " at Bury Street minutely acquainted with his doings. Through all of these the "dusky strand" of the " West Indian business" in other words, the protracted negotiation for the sale of the Barba- dos property winds languidly and inextricably. Steele's letters to his wife, accessible in the reprints by Nichols of 1787 and 1809, are, how- ever, too well known to need description, and although Mr. Aitken has collated them with the originals, he does not profess to have made any material addition to their riches. As they pro- gress, they record more than one of the various attempts at advancement with which their writer, egged on by his ambition and his embarrass- 76 Miscellanies. ments, is perpetually preoccupied. To-day it is a gentleman-ushership that seems within his reach, to-morrow he is hoping to be Under- secretary, vice Addison promoted to Ireland. Then the strange disquieting figure of Swift ap- pears upon the scene, not, as it seems, to exer- cise its usual power of fascination over " Prue," by whom Swift declares later Steele is governed " most abominably, as bad as Marl- borough." With April, 1709, comes the estab- lishment of the Taller, and we enter upon thrice-gleaned ground. The period covered by "Mr. Bickerstaffs Lucubrations" and their successor, the Spectator, lighted as it is by stray side-rays from the wonderful "Journal to Stella," offers few opportunities for fresh illumi- nation. Mr. Aitken's account of the inception of the two papers, and of their several imitators, is copious and careful, but beyond printing from the Blenheim MSS. some interesting accounts of Tonson, bearing upon the sale of the collected editions, and, from the British Museum, an assignment to Buckley the bookseller of a share in the Spectator, he adds nothing that is abso- lutely new to what has already been collected by Drake, Percy, Chalmers, Nichols, and other writers. With respect to the unexplained ces- sation of the Tatler, he apparently inclines to The Latest Life of Steele. 77 the view that it was in some sort the result of an understanding with Harley, by which Steele, having been deprived of his Gazetteership as a caution, was allowed to retain, quamdiu se bene gesserit, his recently acquired appointment as Commissioner of Stamps. But it is not probable that we shall ever know much more of a trans- action concerning which Addison was uncon- sulted, and Swift uninformed. With all his customary openness, Steele could, if he pleased, keep his own counsel, and he seems to have done so on this occasion. Nor are we really any wiser as to the reasons for the termination of the Spectator in December, 1712, except that we know it to have been pre- meditated, since the Guardian was projected before the Spectator ceased to appear. From the Berkeley letters among Lord Egmont's MSS., we learn that Steele was once more dallying with his first love, the stage ; and from the same source that, either early in February or late in January, the death of his mother-in-law had put him in possession of ^oo per annum. To this improvement in his affairs is doubtless traceable that increased spirit of independence which precipitated what all lovers of letters must regard as his disastrous plunge into politics. Whatever the origin of the Guardian, and how- 78 Miscellanies. ever sincere its opening protests of neutrality, the situation was far too strained for one who, having a journal at his command, had been from his youth a partisan of the Revolution, and had already made rash entry into party quarrels. Before May, 1713, he was involved in bitter hos- tilities with Swift, arising out of a Tory attack on the Nottinghams for their desertion to the Whigs. A few weeks later found him insisting upon the demolition, under the Treaty of Utrecht, of the harbour and fortifications of Dunkirk, which demolition, it was shrewdly suspected, the Ministry were intending to forego. In June he had resigned his Commissionership of Stamps, and in August he was elected member for the borough of Stockbridge. Almost concurrently he issued a pamphlet entitled "The Importance of Dunkirk consider'd." Swift, henceforth hanging always upon his traces, retorted with one of his cleverest pamphlets, "The Impor- tance of the Guardian considered," and the " underspur-leathers" of the Tory press began also to ply their pens against Steele, who by this time had dropped the Guardian fora professedly political organ, the Englishman. Shortly after- wards he issued " The Crisis," a pamphlet on the Hanoverian succession, which Swift followed by his masterly " Publick Spirit of the Whigs." The Latest Life of Steele. 79 No sooner had Steele taken his seat in the House in February than he found that in the eyes of those in power he was a marked man. He was at once impeached for seditious utter- ances in " The Crisis," and, though he seems to have made an able defence, was expelled. Then, after a few doubtful months, Queen Anne died, his party came into power, and his troubles as a politician were at an end. In his best pamphlet, his " Apology for Himself and his Writings," he has given an account of this part of his career. That career, as far as literature is concerned, may be said to close with the publication of the " Apology," in October, 1714. Not many months afterwards, on presenting an address, he was knighted by King George. During the rest of his life, which was prolonged to September, 1729, when he died at Carmarthen, he continued to publish various periodicals and tracts, none of which is of great importance. In December, 1718, Lady Steele died, and four years later her husband produced a fourth comedy, that "Conscious Lovers" which honest Parson Adams declared to be (in parts) " almost solemn enough for a sermon," but which is neverthe- less, perhaps by reason of Gibber's collabora- tion, one of the best constructed of his plays. Part of Mr. Aitken's second volume is occu- 8o Miscellanies. pied by Steele's connection, as patentee and manager, with Drury Lane Theatre, concern- ing which he has brought together much curious and hitherto unpublished information. Other points upon which new light is thrown are the publication of " The Ladies Library, 1 ' the establishment of the " Censorium," Steele's application for the Mastership of the Charter- house, Mr. John Rollos and his mechanical hoop-petticoat, the failure of Steele's once fa- mous contrivance, the Fish-Pool, his connection with the Dyers, etc. But it would be impos- sible to schedule in detail the numerous in- stances in which Mr. Aitken has been able either to supplement the existing material or to supersede it by new. A careful and exhaustive bibliography is not the least of his achievements. As regards Steele's character, Mr. Aitken's inquiries further enforce the conclusion that in any estimate of it, considerable allowance must be made for the influence of that miserable and malicious contemporary gossip, of which, as Fielding says, the "only basis is lying." For much of this, Steele's ill-starred excursion into faction is obviously responsible. "Scandal be- tween Whig and Tory," said the ingenuous and experienced author of the " New Atalantis," " goes for nothing," and apart from her specific The Latest Life of Sleele. 81 recantation in the dedication to " Lucius," this sentiment alone should suffice to discredit her, at all events in the absence of anything like corroborative evidence. The attacks of Dennis and the rest are as worthless. We know that Steele was not "descended from a trooper's horse," and we know that he was not " born at Carrickfergus " (whatever social disqualification that particular accident may entail). Why should we listen to the circulators of these or other stories those of Savage, for example? With respect to Swift, the most dangerous be- cause the most powerful detractor, it is clear, from the way in which he speaks of Steele and Steele's abilities before the strife of party had estranged them, that, if they had never quarrelled, he would have ranked him only a little lower than Addison. 1 And if Steele has suffered from scan- dal and misrepresentation, he has also suffered from his own admissions. The perfect frankness and freedom of his letters has been accepted too literally. Charming and unique as they are, 1 Swift's extraordinary pertinacity of hatred to Steele cannot wholly be explained by his sense of Steele's in- gratitude. Steele had wounded him hopelessly in his most vulnerable part he had laughed at his pretensions to political omnipotency, and he had (as Swift thought) also challenged his Christianity. 6 82 Miscellanies. they leave upon many, who do not sufficiently bear in mind their extremely familiar character, an ill-defined impression that he was over-uxorious, over-sentimental. But a man is not necessarily this for a few extravagant billets-doux, or many irreproachable persons who now, in the time- honoured words of Mr. Micawber, "walk erect before their fellow-men," would incur the like condemnation. Again, it is, to all appearance, chiefly due to the careless candour of some half- dozen of these documents that Steele has been branded as a drunkard. The fact is that, in an age when to take too much wine was no dis- grace, he was neither better nor worse than his contemporaries ; and there is besides definite evidence that he was easily overcome far more easily than Addison. As regards his money difficulties, they cannot be denied. But they were the difficulties of improvidence and not of profligacy, of a man who, with Fielding's joy of life and Goldsmith's " knack of hoping," always rated an uncertain income at its highest and not at its average amount, and who, moreover, paid his debts before he died. For the rest, upon the question of his general personality, it will suffice to cite one unimpeachable witness, whose testimony has only of late years come to light. Berkeley, who wrote for the Guardian, and The Latest Life of Steele. 83 visited Steele much at Bloomsbury (where he saw nothing of Savage's bailiffs in livery), speaks expressly, in a letter to Sir John Perceval, of his love and consideration for his wife, of the gen- erosity and benevolence of his temper, of his cheerfulness, his wit, and his good sense. He should hold it, he says, a sufficient recompense for writing the "Treatise on Human Know- ledge " that it gained him "some share in the friendship of so worthy a man." The praise of Berkeley Berkeley, to whom Pope gives " every virtue under heaven," and who is cer- tainly one of the noblest figures of the century outweighs whole cartloads of Grub-street scandal and skip-kennel pamphleteers. With Steele's standing as a man of letters we are on surer ground, since his own works speak for him without the distortions of tradition. To the character of poet he made no pretence, nor could he, although witness the Horatian lines to Marlborough, which Mr. Aitken now dates 1709 he possessed the eighteenth-century fac- ulty of easy octosyllabics. Of his plays it has been said that they resemble essays rather than dramas, a judgment which sets one wondering what would have been the critic's opinion if Steele had never written the Spectator, and the Taller. It is perhaps more to the point 84 Miscellanies. that their perception of strongly marked humour- ous character is far more obvious than their stage-craft, and that their shortcomings in this latter respect are heightened by Steele's debata- ble endeavours not (as Cowper says) " to let down the pulpit to the level of the stage," but to lift the stage to a level with the pulpit. As a political writer, his honesty and enthusiasm were not sufficient to secure him permanent success in a line where they are not always thrice-armed that have their quarrel just ; and it is no discredit to him that he was unable to contend against the deadly irony of Swift. It is as an essayist that he will be best remembered. In the past, it has been too much the practice to regard him as the humbler associate of Addi- son. We now know that he deserves a much higher place ; that Addison, in fact, was quite as much indebted to Steele's inventive gifts as Steele could possibly have been indebted to Addison's sublimating spirit. It may be that he was a more negligent writer than Addison ; it may be that he was inferior as a literary artist ; but the genuineness of his feelings frequently carries him farther. Not a few of his lay ser- mons on anger, pride, flattery, magnanimity, and so forth, are unrivalled in their kind. He ral- lied the follies of society with unfailing tact and The Latest Life of Steele. 85 good-humour ; he rebuked its vices with ad- mirable courage and dignity ; and he wrote of women and children as, in his day, no writer had hitherto dared to do. As the first painter of domesticity, the modern novel owes him much. But modern journalism owes him more, since to use some words of his great ad- versary he "refined it first, and showed its use." Mr. Aitken's book has been described in the title to this paper as the "latest" Life of Steele. It will probably be the "last." No one, at all events, is likely to approach the subject again with the same indefatigable energy of research. To many of us, indeed, Biography, conceived in this uncompromising fashion, would be a thing impossible. To shrink from no investigation, however tedious, to take nothing at second- hand, to verify everything, to cross-examine everything, to leave no smallest stone unturned in the establishment of the most infinitesimal fact these are conditions which presuppose a literary constitution of iron. It is but just to note that the method has its drawbacks. So nar- row an attention to minutiae tends to impair the selective power, and the defect of Mr. Aitken's work is, almost of necessity, its superabundance. It will be said that his determination to discover 86 Miscellanies. has sometimes carried him too far afield ; that much of these two handsome volumes might with advantage have been committed to the safe- keeping of an appendix ; that the mass of detail, in short, is out of proportion to its actual rele- vance. To this, in all likelihood, the author would answer that his book is not designed (in Lander's phrase) to lie " With summer sweets, with albums gaily drest, Where poodle snifts at flower between the leaves;" that he does not put it forward as a study or critical monograph ; but that it is a leisurely and conscientious effort, reproducing much out- of-the-way information which is the lawful prize of his individual bow and spear ; and that, rather than lose again what has been so painfully acquired, he is prepared to risk the charge of surplusage, content if his labours be recognised as the fullest and most trustworthy existing con- tribution towards the life and achievements of a distinguished man of letters who died nearly one hundred and seventy years ago. And this recognition his labours undoubtedly deserve. THE AUTHOR OF "MONSIEUR TONSON." " "TV TEVER have a porch to your paper." 1\ Acting upon this excellent maxim of the late Master of Balliol, we may at once ex- plain that " Monsieur Tonson " is the title of a long-popular recitation. It recounts, in rhyme of the Wolcot and Colman order, how, in the heyday of hoaxes and practical joking, a wag, called King in the verses, persecutes an unhappy French refugee in St. Giles's with repeated nightly inquiries for an imaginary " Mr. Thomp- son, 1 ' until at length his maddened victim flies the house. And here comes in the effective point of the story. After a protracted absence abroad, the tormentor returns to London, when the whim seizes him to knock once more at the old door with the old question. By an extraordinary coincidence the Frenchman has just resumed residence in his former dwelling. 88 Miscellanies. Without one thought of the relentless foe, Who, fiend-like, haunted him so long ago, Just in his former trim he now appears : The waistcoat and the nightcap seemed the same, With rushlight, as before, he creeping came, And KING'S detested voice astonish'd hears, the result being that he takes flight again, " and ne'er is heard of more." The author of this jeu cTesprit was John Taylor, the oculist and jour- nalist ; and it originated in a current anecdote, either actually founded on fact or invented by a Governor of Jamaica. After a prosperous career in prose, Taylor versified it for Fawcett, the comedian, who was giving recitations at the Freemasons' Tavern. It had an extraordinary vogue ; was turned by Moncrieff into a farce (in which Gatti, and afterwards Matthews, took the leading part of Monsieur Morbleu, the Frenchman) ; was illustrated by Robert Cruik- shank, and still, we are told, makes furtive appearance in popular " Reciters." By describ- ing himself on the title-page of his memoirs as " Author of ' Monsieur Tonson,' " its writer plainly regarded the poem as his passport to fame ; and whether one agrees with him or not, it may safely be taken as a pretext for some ac- count of the gossiping and discursive volumes which contain his recollections. The Author of "Monsieur Tonson." 89 John Taylor's grandfather, also John, was a person of considerable importance in his day, being indeed none other than the notorious oculist, or " Ophthalmiater," known as the " Chevalier " Taylor. Irreverent persons seem to have hinted that, as a matter of fact, this new- fangled Ophthalmiater meant no more than old Quack "writ large ; " and one William Hogarth, generally on the side of the irreverent, hitched the Chevalier into a well-known satirical etching which collectors entitle indifferently " Consulta- tion of Physicians" or "Company of Under- takers." Here the gifted recipient (as per advertisement) of so many distinctions " Pon- tifical, Imperial, and Royal," appears ignobly with Mrs. Sarah Mapp, the Epsom bone-setter, and that famous Dr. Joshua Ward, referred to by Fielding, whose pill (like a much-vaunted nostrum of our own day) had the property of posting at once to the part affected. Yet the Chevalier, despite inordinate vanity, and a fond- ness for fine clothes which made him fair game for the mocker, was undoubtedly a man of ability. "He has a good person, is a natural orator, and has a facility of learning foreign languages" says Dr. King, who met him at Tunbridge ; and apart from the circumstance that he had been a pupil of Cheselden the anatomist, he was really 90 Miscellanies. a very skilful operator for cataract, and wrote a long list of works or pamphlets on the eye. He was a familiar figure in the different Courts of Europe for his cures, real and imaginary, the story of which he relates without showing any " remarkable diffidence in recording his own tal- ents and attainments," says his grandson in three volumes of Memoirs, 1 having a longer title- page than that of " Pamela." Judging from his own account (which should probably be taken with the fullest allowance of cautionary salt), his experiences must have been peculiar, and his visit- ing list unusually varied. He asserts, without much detail, that he knew Lord Bath and Jack Sheppard ; Mary Tofts, the Godalming rabbit- breeder, and Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. 1 " The History of the Travels and Adventures of the Chevalier John Taylor, Ophthalmiater . . . Author of 45 works in different Languages : the Produce for upwards of Thirty years, of the greatest Practice in the Cure of distempered Eyes, of any in the Age we live [sic] Who has been in every Court, Kingdom, Province, State, City, and Town of the least Consideration in all Europe, with- out exception. Written by Himself . . . Qui Visum Vitam Dat. London : J. Williams, 1761-2." This must not be confounded with the " Life " in two volumes pub- lished by Cooper in 1761, a coarse catchpenny invention by Lord Chesterfield's profligate protege, the bricklayer poet, Henry Jones. The Author of "Monsieur Tonson." 91 He also professed acquaintance with Marshals Saxe and Keith ; with Pollnitz of the " Virgin- ians ; " with Theodore, the bankrupt King of Corsica ; with Boerhaave, Albinus, Linnaeus, Pope, Voltaire, Metastasio, La Fontaine, etc. (If the fabulist be intended, there is clearly some mistake, since La Fontaine departed this life about eight years before the Chevalier was born.) He was a witness, he says, of the execution of Counsellor Christopher Layer for high treason, and he affirms that he was actually present in the Old Bailey upon that memorable occasion when Blake (alias Blue-skin) tried to cut the throat of Jonathan Wild. Having seen many men and cities, and full of honours chiefly of foreign manufacture the Chevalier died in a convent at Prague in 1780. At the time of his death, it may be noted, the famous Ophthalmiater was himself blind. He can scarcely be said to have wanted a vales sacer, for Churchill mentions him in "The Ghost: " Behold the CHEVALIER As well prepar'd, beyond all doubt, To put Eyes in, as put them out. And Walpole gave him a not very happy epigram : 92 Miscellanies. Why Taylor the quack calls himself Chevalier, 'T is not easy a reason to render ; Unless blinding eyes, that he thinks to make clear, Demonstrates he 's but a Pretender. His only son, John Taylor the Second, was also an oculist, but not of equal eminence, al- though one of his cures that of a boy born blind obtained the honours of a pamphlet by Oldys the antiquary, and a portrait by Worlidge the etcher. At the Chevalier's death John Tay- lor applied for the post, which his father had held, of oculist to the King, but the appoint- ment was given to the Baron de Wenzel, one of the Chevalier's pupils, who had been fortunate enough to operate successfully on the old Duke of Bedford, of " Junius" notoriety. To John Taylor the Second succeeded John Taylor the Third, the " Author of ' Monsieur Tonson.' " Beginning life as an oculist, like his father and grandfather, he achieved considerable reputation in that capacity, and by good luck obtained at Wenzel's death the very appointment which his father had failed to secure. But in mid-career he relinquished his profession for journalism. For many years he was proprietor and editor of the Sun newspaper, and in 1827 he also pub- lished a couple of volumes of prologues, epi- logues, sonnets, and occasional verses. His The Author of "Monsieur Tonson." 93 chief reputation, however, was that of a racon- teur. " In his latter days," says the Literary Gazette, in its obituary notice of May 19, 1832, he ' was, perhaps, as entertaining in conversa- tion, with anecdote, playfulness, and satire, as any man within the bills of mortality." Many of his good things are preserved in the two vol- umes of " Records of My Life " which appeared shortly after his death, 1 to the compilation of which he was impelled by the perfidy of a former partner and the invitation of an " eminent pub- lisher," presumably Mr. Edward Bull, of Holies Street, whose imprint the volumes bear. His recollections are set down without any other method than a certain rough grouping ; they have the garrulity and the repetitions of the advanced age at which they were penned ; but they contain, in addition to a good deal that he had heard from others, much that had come within his own experiences. As he professes strict veracity, it is from the latter class that we shall chiefly make selection, beginning as in duty bound, with the anecdotes of literary men. 1 " Records of my Life ; by the late John Taylor, Esquire, Author of ' Monsieur Tonson.' " 2 vols. Lon- don : Bull, 1832. The copy belonging to the present writer contains, besides inserted photographs, " Addenda " by John Stirling Taylor, the author's son. 94 Miscellanies. Concerning Johnson and Goldsmith he has not much to say beyond the fact that, as a boy, he had once delivered a letter for the latter at the Temple, but without seeing him. It is, how- ever, to the "Author of ' Monsieur Tonson" that we owe the historic episode of the borrowed guinea slipped under the door, which recurs so prominently in all Goldsmith's biographies ; while he tells one anecdote of Johnson which, as far as we can discover, has escaped Dr. Birkbeck Hill. According to Dr. Messenger Monsey, physician of Chelsea Hospital a rough, Abernethy sort of man, whom his admirers compared with Swift upon one occasion, when the age of George III. was under discussion, Johnson burst in with a " Pooh ! what does it signify when such an animal was born, or whether he had ever been born at all?" an ultra-Jacobital utter- ance which the Whig narrator did not neglect to accentuate by reminding his hearers that to this very " usurper" Johnson subsequently owed his pension. But as Monsey did not like the Doc- tor, and Taylor calls him a " literary hippopota- mus," the incident is probably exaggerated. Then there is a story of Dr. Parr, in which is concerned another of the Johnson circle, Ed- mund Burke. During the Hastings trial Parr was effusive (Taylor says "diffusive ") about the The Author of ''Monsieur Tonson." 95 speeches of Sheridan and Fox, but silent as to Burke's, a circumstance which led that distin- guished orator to suggest interrogatively that he presumed Parr found it faultless. " Not so, Edmund," was the reply, in Parr's best John- sonese ; " your speech was oppressed by epithet, dislocated by parenthesis, and debilitated by amplification," a knock-me-down answer to which " Edmund " made no recorded re- joinder. There is a touch of the lexicographic manner in another anecdote, this time of Hugh Kelly, the stay-maker turned dramatist and bar- rister, who was so proud of his silver that he kept even his spurs upon the sideboard. Ex- amining a lady at the trial of George Barring- ton, the pick-pocket, Kelly inquired elaborately, " Pray, madam, how could you, in the immensity of the crowd, determine the identity of the man ? " As he found that his question was wholly unin- telligible to the witness, he reduced it to " How do you know he was the man?" "Because," came the prompt reply, " I caught his hand in my pocket." Taylor apparently knew both the Bos- wells, father and son, and, indeed, playfully claims part-authorship in the famous " Life" upon the ground that he had suggested the substitution of " comprehending " for "containing" in the title-page; and certainly if that be proof 96 Miscellanies. " comprehending " is there, and " containing " is not. 1 He had also relations with Wilkes, whom he praises for his wit and learning. For his learning we have the evidence of his "Catullus/ 1 but his wit seems, like much wit of his day, to have been largely based upon bad manners. Once a certain over-goaded Sir Watkin Lewes said angrily to him, " I '11 be your butt no longer." Wilkes at once mercilessly retorted, " With all my heart. I never like an empty one." Wolcot and Caleb Whitefoord of the " Cross Readings," Richard Owen Cambridge and Rich- ard Cumberland all figure in the " Records." Taylor thinks that the famous Whitefoord addi- tion to " Retaliation " was really by Goldsmith a supposition which is not shared by modern Goldsmith critics. Of Wolcot there is a lengthy account, the most striking part of which refers to his last hours. Taylor asked him, on his death-bed, whether anything could be done for him. " His answer, delivered in a deep and strong tone, was, ' Bring back my youth,' " after which futile request he fell into the sleep in which he died. Cambridge Taylor seems to have known but slightly, and apart from a long 1 For exact title, see post, " Boswell's Predecessors and Editors." The Author of " Monsieur Tonson." 97 story, for the authenticity of which he does not vouch, has nothing menjprable to say of him, except that he declared he had written his " Scribleriad " while under the hands of his hairdresser, a piece of fine-gentleman affecta- tion which recalls Moliere's poetaster. But Taylor tells a story of Cumberland which is at least well invented. Once so it runs Cum- berland stumbled on entering a box at Drury Lane Theatre, and Sheridan sprang to his assist- ance. " Ah, sir! " said the writer of the "West Indian," " you are the only man to assist a fall- ing author." " Rising, you mean," returned Sheridan, thus, either by malice or misadventure, employing almost the exact words which, in the Critic, he had put into the mouth of " Sir Fret- ful Plagiary," a character admittedly modelled upon Cumberland himself. Sheridan, too, sup- plies more than one page of these recollections, and their writer professes to have been present when he (Sheridan) spoke as follows concerning a pamphleteer who had written against him : "I suppose that Mr. thinks I am angry with him, but he is mistaken, for I never har- bour resentment. If his punishment depended on me, I would show him that the dignity of my mind was superior to all vindictive feelings. Far should I be from wishing to inflict a capital 7 98 Miscellanies. punishment upon him, grounded on his attack upon me ; but yet on account of his general character and conduct, and as a warning to others, I would merely order him to be publicly whipped three times, to be placed in the pillory four times, to be confined in prison seven years, and then, as he would enjoy freedom the more after so long a confinement, I would have him transported for life." At the date of the above deliverance, the scene of which was a tavern in Portugal Street, perhaps the now vanished Grange public house, Sheridan was lessee of Drury Lane Theatre. In later years Taylor was to become acquainted with another Drury Lane magnate, Lord Byron, with whom he corresponded and exchanged poems. Concerning Lady Byron he reports that Mrs. Siddons, whom he regarded as an unimpeachable authority, assured him that if she had no other reason to admire his Lord- ship's judgment and taste, she should be fully convinced of both by his choice of a wife, a sentiment which should certainly be set down to the credit of a lady who is by no means over- praised. Among the Portugal Street roisterers was Richard Wilson, the painter. According to Taylor he must have been vintner as well, since most of the wine came from his cellar in Lin- The Author of "Monsieur Tonson." 1 99 coin's Inn Fields (Great Queen Street), the company having condemned the tavern bever- ages. Apart from the fact that Wilson's " fa- vourite fluid," like Churchill's, was porter, this particular is more out of keeping with his tra- ditional lack of pence than another, also related by Taylor, in which he says that, upon one occasion, having procured Wilson a commission, he was obliged to lend him the money to buy brushes and canvas. With artists, however. Taylor's acquaintance was not large. He knew Peters the academician, afterwards the Rev. ; and he knew Ozias Humphry the miniaturist, who in his old age became totally blind. With West and his rival Opie (who, like Wilson, lived in Queen Street) he was apparently on familiar terms, and he was often the guest of the former at the dinners which the Royal Academy of that day were accustomed to have on the anniversary of Queen Charlotte's birthday. Of West he speaks warmly ; does not mention his vanity, and attrib- utes much of his baiting by Peter Pindar to that satirist's partiality for Opie. Fuseli, an- other resident in Great Queen Street, and Northcote, also flit through the record ; and there is reference to a supper at Reynolds's, where it was idly debated whether Johnson would have written the " Reflections on the ioo Miscellanies. French Revolution " better than Burke, and where on the topic De morluis Reynolds propounded the practical dictum that " the dead were nothing, and the living everything, " a sentiment which shows him to have been in agreement with the On doit des dgards aux vivants of Voltaire. But, on the whole, the an- nalist's memories of artists are of meagre inter- est, and the only compact anecdote related of a member of the profession refers to the archi- tect known popularly as " Capability" Brown. Once when Lord Chatham, disabled by the gout, was hobbling painfully down the stairs of St. James's Palace, Brown had the good fortune to assist him to his carriage. Lord Chatham thanked him, adding pleasantly, " Now, sir, go and adorn your country." To which Brown the capable retorted neatly, " Go you, my Lord, and save it." Of anecdotes of actors and actresses the Author of "Monsieur Tonson " has no lack. As already stated, he was much in request for prologues and epilogues ; he was an active and intelligent dramatic critic, and he was, more- over, intimate with most of the leading players of his day. To make any adequate summary of so large a body of theatrical gossip would be difficult ; but a few stories may be selected con- The Author of "Monsieur Tonson." 101 cerning some of the older men. Of Garrick, whom Taylor's father had seen when he first came out at Goodman's Fields, and regarded as the Shakespeare of actors, he tells a number of stories which, unfamiliar when the " Records" were published, are now fairly well-known. Taylor was, however, the first, we believe, to record that effective anecdote of Mrs. Clive, who, watching Garrick from behind the scenes, between smiles and tears, burst at last into em- phatic and audible expression of her belief that he could "act a gridiron; 1 ' and Taylor also says that once, when his father was performing an operation for cataract, Garrick, who was present, so enthralled the nervous patient by his humour, that he forgot both his fears and his pain. Of Garrick's Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Pritchard, Taylor, deriving his information from his father, speaks highly, and considers that Johnson degraded her memory by describing her as " an ignorant woman, who talked of her gownd." (Mrs. Pritchard had acted the hero- ine in the great man's Irene, and it is possible that he was prejudiced.) To Macklin, another celebrated Macbeth, being, indeed, the first who performed that part in the old Scottish garb, Taylor makes frequent reference. He saw him in lago, in Sir Paul Pliant of the Double 1 02 Miscellanies. Dealer, and in other characters ; but held that he was "too theoretical for nature. He had three pauses in his acting the first, moderate ; the second, twice as long; but his last, or ' grand pause,' as he styled it, was so long that the prompter on one occasion, thinking his memory failed, repeated the cue . . . several times, and at last so loud as to be heard by the audience." Whereupon Macklin in a passion rushed from the stage and knocked him down, exclaiming, " The fellow interrupted me in my grand pause ! " Quin, Macklin's rival, was also given to inordinate pauses, and once, while act- ing Horatio in Rowe's " Fair Penitent " (the play in which George Primrose of Wakefield was to have made his dbut), he delayed so long to reply to the challenge of Lothario that a man in the gallery bawled out, " Why don't you give the gentleman an answer, whether you will or no?" Taylor cites a good many instances of Quin's gourmandise, and of his ready, but rather full-flavoured wit. He is perhaps best when on his dignity. Once at Allen's of Prior Park (Fielding's " Allworthy "), the imperious War- burton attempted to degrade the guest into the actor by insidiously pressing Quin to recite something. Quin accordingly spoke a speech from Otway's " Venice Preserved " which con- tained the lines, The Author of "Monsieur Tonson." 103 " Honest men Are the soft easy cushions on which knaves Repose and fatten, " delivering them with so unmistakable an appli- cation to Allen and Warburton respectively that he was never again troubled by the divine for a specimen of his declamatory powers. Another story told by Taylor of Quin may be quoted, because it introduces Mrs. Clive. She had in- vited Quin to stay at Cliveden (Little Straw- berry), of which the appointments were on as minute a scale as those of Petit-Trianon. When he had inspected the garden, she asked him if he had noticed a tiny piece of water which she called her pond. " Yes, Kate," he replied, " I have seen your basin, but did not see a wash- ball." Taylor seems surprised that Walpole should have been so much attracted to Mrs. Clive, whose personal charms were small, and whose manners, he alleges, were rough and vul- gar. He quotes, with apparent approval, some unpublished lines by Peter Pindar, criticis- ing the epitaph in which Walpole declared that Comedy had died with his friend : " Horace, of Strawberry Hill I mean, not Rome, Lo ! all thy geese are swans, I do presume ; Truth and thy verses seem not to agree ; 104 Miscellanies. Know Comedy is hearty, all alive ; The Comic Muse no more expired with Clive Than dame Humility will die with thee." But one need no more swear to the truth of an epitaph than of a song. Catharine Clive had both humour and good-humour ; her indefati- gable needle was continually employed in the decoration of Walpole's Gothic museum, and it may be concluded that he knew perfectly what he was about. As a near neighbour, a blue stocking might have been wearisome, a beauty dangerous, and she was probably of far more use to him than either. Except for the "gridiron" anecdote, how- ever, Mrs. Clive does not play any material part in Taylor's chronicle. With a later luminary, Miss Farren, he was not actually acquainted, although he had met her once with Lord Derby (whom she ultimately married), and had admired her genuine sensibility in Miss Lee's " Chapter of Accidents." But he seems to have been on intimate terms with Mrs. Abington, both in her prime and also in her decline, for he was pres- ent when she degraded herself by acting Scrub in the " Beaux' Stratagem ; " * and he had dined with her at Mrs. Jordan's, when she talked 1 There is a caricature of Mrs. Abington in this part by James Sayer. The Author of "Monsieur Tonson." 105 unceasingly and enthusiastically of Garrick, a circumstance which, considering the trouble she had given him in his lifetime, may perhaps be regarded in the light of an expiatory exercise. Taylor also knew Mrs. Siddons, of whom he speaks warmly, saying that he had been inti- mate with her for years, and had " many of her letters, with which even her request would not induce him to part." He was, as a matter of fact, connected with the Kemble family by mar- riage, his first wife, Mrs. Duill, having been a Miss Satchell, whose sister had married Stephen Kemble, a huge Trulliber of a man who could act Falstaff without stuffing, and had gone through all the experiences of a strolling player, even to lunching in a Yorkshire turnip-field. 1 Of John Kemble, and Charles Kemble and his wife there is much in the " Records," but most of it has grown familiar by repetition. There is also much of other actors and actresses, as might be expected from one who had seen Doddas Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Lewis as Mer- cutio, " Gentleman " Smith as Charles in the "School for Scandal," and Palmer Lamb's 1 Stephen George Kemble died in June, 1822. While manager of the Newcastle Theatre, he was on intimate terms with Thomas Bewick, who engraved a portrait of him as Falstaff for a benefit ticket. 106 Miscellanies. Jack Palmer as Sneer in the " Critic." Tay- lor's portrait, in the poem called " The Stage," of the last-named performer may serve as an example of its writer's powers as a rival of Lloyd and Churchill : " Where travell'd fops, too nice for nature grown, Are sway'd by affectation's whims alone ; Where the sly knave, usurping honour's guise, By secret villainy attempts to rise ; Or where the footman, negligently gay, His master's modish airs would fain display ; But chiefly where the rake, in higher life, Cajoles the husband to seduce the wife, And, fraught with art, but plausible to sight, The libertine and hypocrite unite PALMER from life the faithful portrait draws, And calls unrivall'd for our warm applause." In the foregoing plunges into the Taylorian bran-pie, we have, as promised at the outset, depended rather upon the writer's personal experiences than upon his miscellaneous anec- dotes. But we have by no means exhausted the personal experiences. Not to mention polit- ical magnates like Lord Chatham and Lord Chesterfield, whom we have almost entirely neglected, there are many references to char- acters difficult to classify, but no less diverting to recall. As a boy, Taylor had seen Coan, the Norfolk dwarf of Churchill's Rosciad The Author of "Monsieur Tonson" 107 (" Whilst to six feet the vig'rous stripling grown, Declares that GARRICK is another COAN " ), then lodging at a tavern in the Five Fields (now Eaton Square) kept by one of the Pinchbecks who invented the metal of that name ; and he remembered the boxer Buckhorse, a debased specimen of humanity, whose humour consisted in permitting the Eton and Westminster boys to punch his battered features at the modest rate of a shilling the blow. 1 He had also visited the famous Mrs. Teresa Cornelys, when that favourite of the Nobility and Gentry had fallen upon evil days, and was subsisting pre- cariously as a purveyor of asses' milk at Knights- bridge ; he had known intimately a certain Mr. Donaldson, who, like Horace Walpole, had gone in danger of his life from the " gentleman high- wayman," James Maclean ; and at Angelo's in Carlisle Street, Soho, he had frequently met the Chevalier D'Eon in his woman's dress, but old, and equally decayed in manners and means. It is singular that the Author of " Monsieur Ton- son," with all his dramatic proclivities, should 1 Buckhorse can hardly have been familiar with Roman law. But twenty-five pieces of copper (about the value of a shilling) was the legal tender, or solatium, for a blow on the face (cf. the story of Veratius in Gibbon's forty- fourth chapter). io8 Miscellanies. never have attempted a play. As far as can be ascertained, however, his sole contribution to stage literature, prologues and epilogues ex- cepted, was the lines for the rhyming Butler in Mrs. Inchbald's " Lovers' Vows," that version of Kotzebue's "Das Kind der Liebe " which figures so conspicuously in Miss Austen's "Mansfield Park." "Lovers' Vows" would appear to be fertile in suggestion, for it was in playing this piece that Charles Kean fell in love with his future wife, Miss Ellen Tree, sister of the musical Maria (Mrs. Bradshaw), who lives for ever in Henry LuttrelPs happy epigram : " On this Tree when a nightingale settles and sings, The Tree will return her as good as she brings." BOSWELL'S PREDECESSORS AND EDITORS. V\7 RITING to Pope in July, 1728, concern- V ing the annotation of the Dunciad, Swift comments upon the prompt oblivion which overtakes the minor details of contemporary history. " Twenty miles from London nobody understands hints, initial letters, or town facts and passages ; and in a few years not even those who live in London." A somewhat similar opinion was expressed by Johnson. " In sixty or seventy years, or less," he said, "all works which describe manners require notes." His own biography is a striking case in point. Almost from the beginning the editorial pen was freely exercised upon it, and long before the lesser term he mentions, it was already to use an expressive phrase of Beaumarchais " rongde d'extraits et couverte de critiques." With Mr. Croker's edition of 1851 it might have been thought that the endurable limits of illus- tration and interpretation had been reached, and for some time, indeed, that opinion seems to no Miscellanies. have obtained. But within a comparatively brief period three other editions of importance have made their appearance, each of which has its specific merits, while four and twenty years ago was published another (reissued in 1888), which had, at least, the merit of an excellent plan. Boswell's book itself may now, in Par- liamentary language, be taken for " read." As Johnson said of Goldsmith's Traveller, " its merit is established, and individual praise or censure can neither augment nor diminish it." But the publication, in Colonel Grant's excel- lent brief memoir, of the first systematic bibliog- raphy of Johnson's works, coupled with the almost simultaneous issue by Mr. H. R. Tedder, the able and accomplished librarian to the Athenaeum Club, of a bibliography of Boswell's masterpiece, affords a sufficient pretext for some review of Boswell's editors and predecessors. Johnson died on the evening of Monday, December 13, 1784. According to a letter dated May $, 1785, from Michael Lort to Bishop Percy, printed in Nichols' " Literary Illustrations," the first Life appeared on the day following the death. But this is a manifest mistake, as reference to contemporary news- papers, or even to the pamphlet itself, should have sufficed to show. At p. 120 is an account BosweWs Predecessors and Editors, in of Johnson's funeral, which did not take place until Monday, December 20. Moreover, the portrait by T. Trotter, for which Johnson is said to have sat " some time since," is dated the i6th, and in an article in the Gentleman's Magazine for December it is expressly stated that the book "was announced before the Doctor had been two days dead," and appeared on the ninth morning after his death. It may even be doubtful if this is strictly accurate, as the first notification of the pamphlet in the Pub- lic Advertiser appears on Thursday, the 2jrd, and promises its publication that week. Its title is "The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., with Occasional Remarks on his Writings, an Authentic Copy of his Will, and a Catalogue of his Works, &c.," 1785. It is an octavo of iv- 144 pages, and its publisher was the G. Kears- ley, of 46 Fleet Street, who issued so many of Goldsmith's works. Its author, too, is sup- posed to have been the William Cook who subsequently wrote recollections of Goldsmith in the European Magazine for 1793. In Kears- ley's advertisement great pains are taken to avert the possible charge of catchpenny haste, by the statement that the book had been drawn up for some time, but had been withheld from motives of delicacy. This anticipatory defence 112 Miscellanies. is, however, somewhat neutralized by a com- munication in the Gentleman's Magazine for December, in which certain of its errors are excused upon the ground of " hurry." It professes, nevertheless, to be " a sketch, warm from the life," and, although speedily superseded by more leisurely efforts, is certainly not with- out interest as the earliest of its kind, even if it be not quite so early as it has hitherto been affirmed to be. Cook's Life was followed by articles in the European and the Gentleman s Magazines for December, which, according to the fashion of those days, appeared at the end and not at the beginning of the month. That in the European Magazine, which was more critical than bio- graphical, was continued through several num- bers, and contains nothing to distinguish it from the respectable and laborious journey-work of the period. The sketch in the Gentleman's Maga- \im is of a far more meritorious character, and was from the pen of Tom Tyers, the "Tom Restless" of the Idler, and the son of Jon- athan, " the founder of that excellent place of publick amusement, Vauxhall Gardens." Tyers had really known Johnson with a certain degree of intimacy, and even Boswell is obliged to admit that Tyers lived with his illustrious friend Boswell's Predecessors and Editors. 1 1 3 u in as easy a manner as almost any of his very numerous acquaintance." He has certainly not caught Johnson's style, as his memories are couched in abrupt shorthand sentences which are the reverse of Johnsonese. But apart from a certain vanity of classical quotation, with which he seems to have been twitted by his contempo- raries, " Tom Restless " writes like a gentleman, and is fully entitled to the praise of having pro- duced the first animated sketch of Johnson, who, from a sentence towards the close, appears to have anticipated that Tyers might be one day " called upon to assist a posthumous account of him." Mr. Napier says that Tyers continued his sketch in the Gentleman s Magazine for Jan- uary, 1785. This is not quite exact, and is in- deed practically contradicted by Mrs. Napier, since in the valuable volume of " Johnsoniana" which accompanies her husband's edition, she prints no more than is to be found in the December number. What Tyers really did was to insert a number of minor corrections in the annual supplement to the Gentleman s Mag- a^ine, and in the following number. Without a close examination of contemporary advertisement sheets it would be difficult to fix precisely the date of publication of the next biography. It is a small duodecimo of 197 H4 Miscellanies. pages, entitled " Memoirs of the Life and Writ- ings of the Late Dr. Samuel Johnson." The title-page is dated 1785. In the Preface men- tion is made of assistance rendered by Thomas Davies, the actor-bookseller of Russell Street, Covent Garden, who is described as "the late." The book must therefore have appeared after Thursday, May $, when Davies died. Its author is supposed to have been the Rev. William Shaw, "a modest and a decent man," referred to in Boswell as the compiler of " an Erse Grammar," subsequently issued in 1788 as "An Analysis of the Gaelic Language." Colour is given to this supposition by the fact that another of the per- sons who supplied information was Mr. Elphin- ston, by whom Shaw was introduced to Johnson, and by the references made to the Ossianic con- troversy, in which Shaw did battle on Johnson's side against Macpherson. For the book itself, it is, like most of the pre-Boswellian efforts, Tyers's sketch excepted, mainly critical, and makes no attempt to reproduce Johnson's talk or sayings. Chit-chat and personal characteristics are, however, somewhat more fully represented in what neglecting for the moment Boswell's "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides" may be regarded as the next effort in the biographi- BosweWs Predecessors and Editors. 115 cal sequence, the famous " Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D., during the Last Twenty Years of his Life," by Hesther Lynch Piozzi, which was published in March, 1786. Written in Italy, where she was then living, it was printed in London. Its success, as might perhaps have been anticipated from the author's long connection with Johnson, was exceptional. The first edition, like that of Fielding's "Amelia," was exhausted on the day of publication, and other editions followed rapidly. Boswell, as may be guessed, was not well disposed towards the work of his fortunate rival, and in his own book is at considerable pains to expose her "mistaken notion of Dr. Johnson's character," while his coadjutor, Malone, who tells us that she made '-)QO by the " Anecdotes," plainly calls her both "inaccurate and artful." We, who are neither editors nor biographers of Boswell, need not assume so censorious an attitude. That Mrs. Piozzi, by habit of mind, and from the circumstances under which her narrative was compiled, was negligent in her facts (she even blunders as to the date when she first met Johnson) may be admitted, and it is not in- conceivable that, as Mrs. Napier says in the " Prefatory Notice" to her " Johnsoniana," her account would have been " more tender and 1 1 6 Miscellanies. true if it had been given by Mrs. Thrale instead of Mrs. Piozzi." But the cumulative effect of her vivacious and disconnected recollections (even Malone admits them to be "lively") is rather corroborative of, than at variance with, that produced by Johnson's more serious biogra- phers. Her opportunities were great, perhaps greater than those of any of her contemporaries, her intercourse with Johnson was most un- restrained and unconventional, and notwith- standing all its faults, her little volume remains an essential part of Johnsonian literature. Boswell, whose magnum opus we are now approaching, so fills the foreground with his fame that the partial obliteration of his prede- cessors is almost a necessary consequence. In this way Sir John Hawkins, whose " Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.," 1787, comes next in importance to Mrs. Piozzi's " Anecdotes," has suffered considerably ; and his book, which im- mediately after Johnson's death was advertised as " forthcoming," is, to use the words of a re- cent writer, " spoken of with contempt by many who have never taken the trouble to do more than turn over its leaves." That the author seems to have been extremely unpopular can scarcely be denied. Malone, who accumulates a page of his characteristics, says that Percy BosiveWs Predecessors and Editors. 117 called him "most detestable," Reynolds, "ab- solutely dishonest," and Dyer, " mischievous, uncharitable, and malignant," to which garland of dispraise the recorder adds, as his own con- tribution, that he was "rigid and sanctimonious." Johnson, too, styled him " an unclubable man." But against all this censure it must be remem- bered that he was selected as one of the first members of "The Club " (to whose promoters his peculiarities can scarcely have been unknown, for he had belonged to the earlier association in Ivy Lane), and that Johnson appointed him one of his executors. Boswell, whose vanity Hawkins had wounded by the slight and supercilious way in which he spoke of him in the " Life," could scarcely be supposed to feel kindly to him ; and though he professes to have modified what he said of this particular rival on account of his death, we have no means of knowing how much he suppressed. He gives, nevertheless, what on the whole is a not unfair idea of Hawkins's volume. "However inade- quate and improper," he says, "as a Life of Dr. Johnson, and however discredited by unpardon- able inaccuracies in other respects, [it] contains a collection of curious anecdotes and observa- tions which few men but its authour could have brought together." What is commendatory in n8 Miscellanies. this verdict is not exaggerated, and those who care enough for Johnson to travel beyond Bos- well will certainly find Hawkins by no means so "ponderous" as Boswell would have us to believe. Many of the particulars he gives are certainly not to be found elsewhere, and his knowledge of the seamy side of letters in Geor- gian London was " extensive and peculiar." To speak of Hawkins after Mrs. Piozzi is a course more convenient than chronological, as it involves the neglect of an intermediate biogra- pher. But the " Essay on the Life, Character, and Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson," from the pen of the Rev. Joseph Towers, which comes between them in 1786, has no serious import. It treats more of the writings than the character and life, and, except as the respectable effort of an educated man, need not detain us from Boswell himself, whose first offering at the shrine of his adoration was made in September, 1785, when he published the "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D." The tour, of which Johnson had him- self given an account in his "Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland," had taken place as far back as 1773, and Boswell's journal had lain by him ever since. But the manuscript had been lent to different persons, to Mrs. Thrale Bosiv ell's Predecessors and Editors. 119 among the rest. " I am glad you read Boswell's journal," said Johnson to her; ''you are now sufficiently informed of the whole transaction, and need not regret that you did not make the tour to the Hebrides." A more emphatic tes- timony is contained in the "Journal" itself. Johnson, we are told, perused it diligently from day to day, and declared that he took great delight in doing so. " It might be printed," he said, "were the subject fit for printing," and further on he forbade Boswell to contract it. In his dedication to Malone, whose acquaint- ance he made in Baldwin's printing office while correcting the proofs, Boswell showed that he was conscious of the strong point of his work, "the numerous conversations, which (he said) form the most valuable part." In the third edi- tion, dated August, 1786, the success of the book justified an ampler note of gratification : " I will venture to predict, that this specimen of the colloquial talents and extemporaneous effusions of my illustrious fellow-traveller will become still more valuable, when, by the lapse of time, he shall have become an ANCIENT ; when all those who can now bear testimony to the transcendent powers of his mind shall have passed away ; and no other memorial of this great and good man shall remain but the follow- 1 20 Miscellanies. ing Journal, the other anecdotes and letters preserved by his friends, and those incompar- able works, which have for many years been in the highest estimation, and will be read and admired as long as the English language shall be spoken or understood." Whether this varia- tion of Exegi monumentum is justifiable or not and certainly some of the "incomparable works," have but faintly fulfilled their promise of perpe- tuity Boswell's accentuation of his distinctive excellence, his admirably characteristic records of conversations, is unanswerable evidence of a settled purpose and a definite aim. On a fly-leaf of the " Tour to the Hebrides " (not as Mr. Napier seems to suppose, confined to the third edition) was announced as "prepar- ing for the press " the greater work by which the "Tour" was succeeded in 1791. At first it was to have been comprised in one quarto volume, but it ultimately made its appearance in two. The publisher was Charles Dilly, in the Poultry, and the title-page ran as follows : "The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., com- prehending an Account of his Studies and numer- ous Works, in chronological Order ; a Series of his Epistolary Correspondence and Conversa- tions with many eminent Persons ; and various original Pieces of his Composition, never be- Boswelis Predecessors and Editors. 121 fore published. The whole exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great-Brit- ain, for near half a Century, during which he flourished." In the dedication to Sir Joshua Reynolds, referring to the earlier book, Boswell dwells upon a difference of treatment which distinguishes the "Life" from its predecessor. In the "Tour" he had, it seems, been too open in his communications, freely exhibiting to the world the dexterity of Johnson's wit, even when that wit was exercised upon himself. His frankness had in some quarters been mistaken for insensi- bility, and he has therefore in the " Life" been " more reserved," and though he tells nothing but the truth, has still kept in his mind that the whole truth is not always to be exposed. In the Advertisement which succeeds he enlarges upon the difficulties of his task, and the labour involved in the arrangement and collection of material ; and he expresses his obligations to Malone, who had heard nearly all the book in manuscript, and had revised about half of it in type. Seventeen hundred copies of it were printed, and although the price in boards was two guineas, between May (when the book appeared) and August twelve hundred of these had been sold. Boswell, who gives this infor- 122 Miscellanies. mation to his friend Temple, in a letter dated the 22nd of the latter month, expected that the entire impression would be disposed of before Christmas. This hope, however, does not appear to have been realised, since the second edition in three volumes octavo, considerably revised, and in- cluding "eight sheets of additional matter," was not published until July, 1793. During the progress of the work through the press many additional letters and anecdotes had come to hand, which were inserted in an introduction and appendix. These numerous improvements were at the same time printed in quarto form for the benefit of the purchasers of the issue of 1791, and sold at half-a-crown, under the title of "The Principal Corrections and Additions to the First Edition of Mr. Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson." As in the "Tour to the Hebrides," the success of his labours inspired their author with a greater exultation of prefatory language. Referring to the death of Reynolds, which had taken place in the interval between the first and second editions, he says that Sir Joshua had read the book, and given " the strongest testimony to its fidelity." He has Johnsonised the land, he says farther on, and he trusts " they will not only talk but think Johnson." BoswelVs Predecessors and Editors. 123 He was still busily amending and retouching for a third edition when he died, on May 19, 1795, at his house, then No. 47, but now (or recently) No. 122, Great Portland Street. His task was taken up by Malone, who had been his adviser from the first, and under Malone's superintendence was issued, "revised and augmented," the third edition of 1799. From the fact that it contains Boswell's latest touches, this edition is held to be the most de- sirable by Johnson students. Boswell's friends contributed several notes, some of which were the work of the author's second son, James, then a student at Brasenose College, Oxford. Fourth, fifth, and sixth editions followed, all under the editorship of Malone. Then, shortly after the publication in 181 1 of the last of these, Malone himself died. Seventh, eighth, and ninth editions, all avowedly or unavowedly reproducing Malone's last issue, subsequently appeared, the ninth having some additions by Alexander Chalmers. Then came what is known as the "Oxford" edition, by F. P. Walesby, of Wadham College, which contained some fresh recollections of Johnson and some stray particu- lars as to Boswell, whose portrait, for the first time, is added. A tiny issue in one volume, small octavo, beautifully printed in double col- 1 24 Miscellanies. umns at the Chiswick Press, is the only one that needs mention previous to the historical edition by the Right Honourable John Wilson Croker, published in 1831. As will be seen, the foregoing paragraphs deal more with Johnson's earlier biographers than with the main subject of this paper, Bos- well's editors. But the earlier biographers are, if not the chief, at least no inconsiderable part of the material employed by those editors, and by none more conspicuously, more ably, and at the same time more unhappily, than by the one whose labours attracted the censure of Macaulay and Carlyle. What is most distinctive in Bos- well is Boswell's method and Boswell's manner. Long before, Johnson had touched upon this personal quality when writing of the Corsican tour. " Your History/' he said, " is like other histories, but your Journal is in a very high degree curious and delightful. . . . Your His- tory was copied from books ; your Journal rose out of your own experience and observation. You express images which operated strongly upon yourself, and you have impressed them with great force upon your readers." From less friendly critics the verdict was the same. Walpole, though caustic and flippant, speaks to like purport ; and Gray, who has been " pleased Boswells Predecessors and Editors. 12$ and moved strangely," declares it proves what he has always maintained, "that any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity." This faculty of communicating his impressions accurately to his reader is BoswelTs most conspicuous gift. Present in his first book, it was more present in his second, and when he began his great biography it had reached its highest point. So individual is his manner, so unique his method of collecting and arranging his information, that to disturb the native character of his narrative by interpolating foreign material, must of necessity impair its specific character and imperil its personal note. Yet, by some strange freak of fate, this was just the very treatment to which it was subjected. From the very outset indeed, it would seem, his text was considerably " edited.' 1 Boswell, like many writers of his temperament, was fond of stimulating his flagging invention by miscella- neous advice, and it is plain from the comparison of his finished work with his rough notes, that in order to make his anecdotes more direct and effective he freely manipulated his reminiscences. But it is quite probable and this is a point that we do not remember to have seen touched on that much of the trimming which his ii6 Miscellanies. records received is attributable to Malone. At all events, when Malone took up the editing after Boswell's death, he is known to have made many minor alterations in the process of " settling the text," and it is only reasonable to suppose that he had done the same thing in the author's lifetime, a supposition which would ac- count for some at least of the variations which have been observed between Boswell's anec- dotes in their earliest and their latest forms. But the admitted alterations of Malone were but trifles compared with the extraordinary re- adjustment which the book, as Malone left it, received at the hands of Mr. Croker. Not con- tent with working freely upon the text itself compressing, omitting, transposing, as seemed good in his eyes by a process almost incon- ceivable in a critic and litterateur of admitted experience, he liberally interlarded it with long extracts and letters from Hawkins, Piozzi, Cum- berland, Murphy, and others of Boswell's prede- cessors and successors, and so turned into an irregular patchwork what the author had left a continuous and methodical design. Further- more he incorporated with it, among other things, under its date of occurrence, the separate volume of the "Tour to the Hebrides," having first polled and trimmed that work according to Boswells Predecessors and Editors. 127 his taste and fancy. Finally, he added and this is the least questionable of his acts an inordinate number of footnotes. Many of these, it must be conceded, are of the highest value. Penned at a time when memories of Johnson and his contemporaries were still fresh in men's minds, and collected by a writer whose industry and curiosity were as exceptional as his equip- ment and opportunities, they must always re- main an inestimable magazine of Johnsoniana. Their worst fault is that they are more a ware- house than a treasury, and that they exhibit less of literary resource than literary incontinence. But if the intrinsic worth of Croker's volumi- nous annotations has survived the verbal artillery of Macaulay and Carlyle, it has luckily been otherwise with his remodelling of Boswell's text, the principles of which were virtually abandoned in the second edition of 1835. Un- fortunately, the execution of this concession to popular opinion was only partial. Although the majority of the passages added to the text were rearranged as foot-notes or distributed into ap- pendices, the Scotch "tour" still upreared it- self in the midst as a huge stumbling-block, while the journey to Wales and the letters of Johnson and Mrs. Thrale were retained. In 1847, when Mr. Croker prepared his definite 1 28 Miscellanies. edition, he continued impenitent to this extent, although he speaks in his " Advertisement " of abridgment and alteration. Nay, he even ac- quiesced in the perpetuation of another enor- mity which dates from the edition of 1835 (an edition which he only partly superintended), the breaking up of the book into chapters. This was a violation of Boswell's plan which it is impossible to describe except as an act of Van- dalism. " Divisions into books and chapters," says Mr. Napier, unanswerably (if somewhat grandiloquently), " are, as it were, articulations in the organic whole of a literary composition ; and this special form cannot be super-induced merely externally." Yet, all these drawbacks to the contrary, Mr. Croker's edition enjoyed a long popularity, and the edition just referred to was reprinted as late as 1876. It would be beyond our province to trace the post-Crokerian issues of Boswell's book, which, with the exception of an illustrated edition un- der the superintendence of Dr. Robert Car- ruthers, author of the life of Pope, were mainly reprints of Malone. But from what has gone before, it will be surmised that the presentation, as far as practicable, of Boswell's unsophisti- cated text must sooner or later become the ambition of the modern editor. In this praise- BosiveWs Predecessors and Editors. 129 worthy enterprise the pioneer appears to have been Mr. Percy Fitzgerald. In May, 1874, acting with the encouragement and countenance of Carlyle, to whom his work was dedicated, he published with Messrs. Bickers an edition of Boswell's " Life " in three volumes, of which the object was to exhibit Boswell's text in its first published form, and at the same time to show the alterations made or contemplated by him in the two subsequent editions with which he was concerned. Thus the reader was en- abled to follow the process of revision in the author's mind, and to derive additional satis- faction from the spectacle of the naff and highly ingenuous motives which prompted many of Boswell's rectifications and re-adjustments. As was inevitable in such a plan, the " tour to the Hebrides" was placed by itself at the end, an arrangement which had also been followed by Carruthers ; the " Diary of a Tour in Wales," which Mr. Croker had turned into chap. xlvi. of his compilation, disappeared altogether; and the interpolated letters knew their place no more. The division into chapters also vanished with the restoration of the original text, which, together with Boswell's spelling, punctuation, paragraphs, and other special characteristics, were religiously preserved. By this arrange- 9 1 30 Miscellanies. ment, taken in connection with the foot-notes exhibiting the variations, the reader was placed in the position of a person having before him at one view the editions of 1791, 1793, and 1799, as well as the separate " Corrections and Additions" issued by Boswell in 1793. Mr. Fitzgerald also appended certain notes of his own ; but, wherever they occurred on the same page as Boswell's work, carefully fenced them off by a line of demarcation from what was legitimate Bosweil. Upon these notes, gener- ally brief and apposite, it is not necessary to dwell. The noticeable characteristic of Mr. Fitzgerald's edition is its loyalty to Boswell, and for that, if for that only, the lovers of John- son owe him a deep debt of gratitude. 1 In 1880, six years after the first appearance of the above edition of Boswell's " Life," Mr. Fitzgerald published, under the title of " Crok- er's Boswell and Boswell," a volume which was apparently the outcome of his earlier labours in this field. With the first part of this, which treats mainly of the feud between Macaulay and Croker, and the peculiarities and defects 1 Mr. Fitzgerald's edition of Boswell was re-issued in 1888, with a new and interesting preface, to which was added the valuable Bibliography by Mr. H. R. Tedder, referred to at the beginning of this paper. BoswelVs Predecessors and Editors. 131 of the latter as an editor, we have no imme- diate concern. But the second part, which exhibits Boswell at his work, collects much valuable information with respect to his method of note-making, and, with the assistance of the curious memoranda belonging to the late Lord Houghton, published in 1874 by the Grampian Club under the title of " Boswelliana," shows how much judicious correction and adroit com- pression went to produce these " literary and characteristical anecdotes . . . told with au- thenticity, and in a lively manner," which, as Boswell explained to his friend Temple, were to form the staple of his work. Other chapters of equal interest deal with Boswell's strange antipathies and second thoughts, both of which themes, and the former especially, are of no small importance to the minute student of his labours. We have mentioned this book of Mr. Fitzgerald's, because, among the many pro- ductions of his indefatigable pen, it is the one which has always interested us most, and it is obviously, as he declares in his preface, written con amore. That the reproduction of Boswell neat to use a convenient vulgarism had attracted closer attention to the defects of Croker's con- coction may be fairly assumed, and the volume 1 3 2 Miscellanies. just mentioned probably, and certainly among specialists, enforced this impression. Accord- ingly, in 1884, a new edition of the " Life," upon which the editor, the late Rev. Alexander Napier, vicar of Holkham, had been engaged for many years, was issued by Messrs. George Bell and Sons. It was illustrated by facsimiles, steel engravings and portraits, and was received with considerable, and even, in some quarters, exaggerated, enthusiasm. In this edition the arrangement of Boswell's text was strictly fol- lowed, and the tours in Wales and Scotland were printed separately. Many of Croker's notes were withdrawn or abridged, and Mr. Napier, in pursuance of a theory, which is as sound as it is unusual, also omitted all those in which his predecessor had considered it his duty " to act as censor on Boswell " and even on Johnson himself. The editor's duty, said Mr. Napier, " is to subordinate himself to his author, and admit that only which elucidates his author's meaning. ... It cannot be the duty of an editor to insult the writer whose book he edits. I confess that the notes of Mr. Croker which most offend are those in which, not sel- dom, he delights let me be allowed to use a familiar colloquialism to snub ' Mr. Boswell.'" In this deliverance no reasonable reader can fail BosweWs Predecessors and Editors. 1^3 to concur. Besides the editing of Croker, how- ever, Mr. Napier added many useful notes of his own, as well as some very interesting ap- pendices. One of these reproduces the auto- biographical sketch of Johnson prefixed by Richard Wright of Lichfield, in 180^, to Miss Hill Boothby's letters ; another deals with that mysterious "History of Prince Titi " which figures in Macaulay's review of Croker's first edition ; a third successfully dissipates the leg- endary account of a meeting between Ursa Major and Adam Smith, which represents those " grave and reverend seignors " as engaged in competitive Billingsgate. " Carleton's Me- moirs," Theophilus Gibber's " Lives of the Poets," and the daughters of Mauritius Lowe are also treated of in this, the newest part of Mr. Napier's labours. But his edition also includes a valuable supple- ment in the shape of a volume of " Johnsoniana," collected and edited by Mrs. Napier, whose praiseworthy plan is to avoid merely fragmentary " sayings " and " anecdotes," and, as far as pos- sible, to give only complete articles. Thus Mrs. Napier opens with Mrs. Piozzi's book, and then goes on to reprint Hawkins' collection of apophthegms, the Hill Boothby correspondence, Tyers' sketch from the Gentleman's Magazine, 134 Miscellanies. the essay published by Arthur Murphy in 1792 for his edition of Johnson's works, and various recollections and so forth collected from Rey- nolds, Cumberland, Madame D'Arblay, Hannah More, Percy, and others. But her freshest trouvaille is the diary of a certain Dr. Thomas Campbell, an Irishman who visited England in 1775, and, afterthe fashion of the time, recorded his impressions. This diary has a curious his- tory. Carried to Australia by some of its writer's descendants, it was peaceably travelling towards dissolution when it was unearthed behind an old press in one of the offices of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. In 18^4 it was published at Sydney by Mr. Samuel Raymond, and from that date until 1884 does not seem to have been reprinted in England. Dr. Campbell had some repute as an historian, and it was he who pre- pared for Percy the memoir of Goldsmith which, in 1837, was in the possession of Mr. Prior, and formed the first sketch for the straggling com- pilation afterwards prefixed to the well-known edition of Goldsmith's works dated 1801. Campbell's avowed object in coming to London was to " see the lions," and his notes are suf- ficiently amusing. He lodged at the Grecian Coffee House, and at the Hummums in Covent Garden, where once appeared the ghost of BosweWs Predecessors and Editors. 13$ Johnson's dissolute relative, Parson Ford, the " fortem validumque combibonem Laetantem super amphora repleta " of Vincent Bourne's hendecasyllabics ; he saw Woodward in Hoadly's " Suspicious Husband," and Garrick as Lusignan and Lear, in which latter character Dr. Campbell, contradicting all received tradition, considered " he could not display himself." He went to the auction-rooms in the Piazza ; he went to the Foundling and the Temple and Dr. Dodd's Chapel ; he went to Ranelagh and the Pantheon, where he watched those lapsed lovers, Lady Grosvenor and the Duke of Cumberland, carefully avoiding each other. He dined often at Thrale's, meeting Boswell and Baretti, and Murphy and Johnson. With the great man he was not impressed, and his portrait affords an example of Johnson as he struck an unsympathetic contemporary. Accord- ing to Dr. Campbell this was his picture : " He has the aspect of an Idiot, without the faintest ray of sense gleaming from any one feature with the most awkward garb, and un- powdered grey wig, on one side only of his head he is for ever dancing the devil's jig, and sometimes he makes the most driveling effort to whistle some thought in his absent paroxisms. 136 Miscellanies. He came up to me and took me by the hand, then sat down upon a sofa, and mumbled out that ' he had heard two papers had appeared against him in the course of this week one of which was that he was to go to Ireland next summer in order to abuse the hospitality of that place also [a reference to the recently published " Journey to the Western Islands " ].' His awk- wardness at table is just what Chesterfield de- scribed, and his roughness of manners kept pace with that. When Mrs. Thrale quoted something from Foster's ' Sermons ' he flew in a passion, and said that Foster was a man of mean ability, and of no original thinking. All which tho' I took to be most true, yet I held it not meet to have it so set down." From this it will be perceived that Dr. Campbell was of those who identified the "respectable Hottentot" of Chesterfield's letters with the "great Lexicog- rapher," an identification which Dr. Birkbeck Hill, in "Dr. Johnson: His Friends and His Critics," has successfully shown to be untenable. Towards the close of 1884 Mr. Napier's edition was reissued in the " Standard Library," making six small volumes, in which some only of the portrait illustrations of the first issue were reproduced. The chief addition consisted of a series of seven letters from Boswell to his friend BosweWs Predecessors and Editors. 137 Sir David Dalrymple. Extracts from this very interesting correspondence, bearing upon Bos- well's first acquaintance with his Mentor, had appeared in the volume of "Boswelliana" already mentioned, but they had been but ex- tracts. Mr. Napier gave the letters in extenso. Two years later Professor Henry Morley pub- lished, in five exceedingly handsome volumes, what, from the fact of its decoration by portraits from the brush of Sir Joshua, he christened the " Reynolds" edition. In common with all Pro- fessor Morley's work, the editing of this issue was thoroughly straightforward and sensible. A new and noticeable feature was the prefixing to each of the prefaces of the different editors a succinct account of the writer. At the end came an essay entitled the " Spirit of Johnson," to which can scarcely be denied the merit claimed for it by a competent critic of being " one of the best descriptions of Johnson's character that has ever been written." There were also elaborate indices, of which one can only say in their dispraise that they were less elaborate than that prepared by the editor who follows Pro- fessor Morlev. Like Mr. Napier, Mr. Morley was largely indebted to Croker, and like Mr. Napier he freely pruned his predecessor's luxuriance. 138 Miscellanies. Colonel Francis Grant's excellent little me- moir in the "Great Writers" series deserves mention, because, although exceedingly unpre- tentious, it is the work of one who, to borrow Boswell's epithet for Malone, is certainly " Johnsonianissimus." It is impossible to turn his anecdotical pages without seeing that he is steeped in the literature of the period, and that, for him, the personages of the Boswellian drama have all the reality of living friends. His volume, too, includes a valuable bibliography by Mr. John P. Anderson of Johnson's works, which, in point of time, preceded the special bibliography of Boswell's " Life" in Mr. Fitz- gerald's reprint. And this brings us to the last work on our list, the sumptuous edition by Dr. George Birkbeck Hill, issued in 1887 from the Clarendon Press, a work which was received with an almost universal chorus of praise. That Dr. Birkbeck Hill's book is " unlivre de bonne foi" there can indeed be little doubt. He is well known as a devoted worshipper at Johnson's shrine. He has been for years a persistent re- viewer of books on this subject (especially Mr. Fitzgerald's), and his essays (collected in 1878 from the Cornhill and other periodicals under the title of "Dr. Johnson: His Friends and His Critics"), bear that unmistakable stamp BoswelVs Predecessors and Editors. 139 which denotes the writer who has not crammed his subject for the purpose of preparing an arti- cle, but who has, so to speak, let the article write itself out of the fulness of his resources. Besides these he edited, in 1879, Boswell's " Journal of a Tour to Corsica " and his corres- pondence with Andrew Erskine. But he has crowned his former labours by this sumptuous edition with its excellent typography, its hand- some page, and its exhaustive index, which last, we can well believe, must have cost him, as he says, " many months' heavy work." That he himself executed this "sublunary task," as a recent writer has described it, is matter for con- gratulation ; that he has also verified it page by page in proof almost entitles him to a Montyon prize for exceptional literary virtue. Our only regret is that his " Preface" is touched a little too strongly with the sense of his unquestioned industry and conscientiousness. However legiti- mate it may be, the public is always somewhat impatient of the superbia qucesita mentis. More- over, it is an extremely difficult thing to display judiciously, and, after all, as Carlyle said of Croker's attempt, the editing of Bosvvell is "a praiseworthy but no miraculous procedure." This note of self-gratulation in Dr. Birkbeck Hill's introductory words is, however, but a 140 Miscellanies. trifling drawback when contrasted with the real merits of a work which, in these days of piping- hot publication, has much of the leisurely grace of eighteenth-century scholarship. The labour not only the labour of which the result re- mains on record, but that bloomless and fruitless labour with which everyone who has been en- gaged in editorial drudgery can sympathise must have been unprecedented. Nothing could be more ungracious than to smear the petty blot of an occasional inaccuracy across the wide field which has been explored so observantly cer- tainly it could not be the desire of those who have ever experienced the multiplied chances of error involved by transcription, press-correction, revision, and re-revision. At the same time we frankly own that we think Dr. Birkbeck Hill's edition has not escaped a dangerous defect of its qualities. It unquestionably errs on the side of excess. " I have sought," he says, "to follow him [Johnson] wherever a remark of his re- quired illustration, and have read through many a book that I might trace to its source a refer- ence or an allusion." And he has no doubt been frequently very fortunate, notably in his identification of the quotation which Johnson made when he heard the Highland girl of Nairne singing at her spinning-wheel, in his solution of Boswelis Predecessors and Editors. 141 " loplolly," and in half a dozen similar cases. But, as regards "remarks that require illustra- tion," there are manifestly two methods, the moderate and the immoderate. By the one nothing but such reference or elucidation as ex- plains the text is admissible ; by the other any- thing that can possibly be connected with it is drawn into its train, and the motley notes tread upon each other's heels much as, in the fairy tale, the three girls, the parson, and the sexton follow the fellow with the golden goose. To the latter of these methods rather than the former Dr. Birkbeck Hill "seriously inclines," and almost any portion of his book would serve to supply a case in point. Take, for instance, the note at page 269, vol. i., to the verse which Boswell quotes from Garrick's well-known " Ode on Mr. Pelham." Neither Malone nor Croker has anything upon this, and as Boswell himself tells us that Pelham died on the day on which Mallet's edition of Lord Bolingbroke's works came out, and as the first line of his paragraph gives the exact date of the event, it is difficult to see what ground, and certainly what pressing need, there could be for further comment. Yet Dr. Birkbeck Hill has no less than four " illus- trations." First he tells us, from Walpole's letters, that Pelham died of a surfeit. This 142 Miscellanies. suggests another quotation from Johnson him- self about the death of Pope, which introduces the story of the potted lampreys. Then comes a passage from Fielding's " Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon," to the effect that he (Fielding) was at his worst when Pelham died. Lastly comes a second quotation from Walpole, this time from his " George II.," in which we are told that the king said he should now " have no more peace," because Pelham was dead. The recondite eru- dition of all this is incontestable, but its utility is more than doubtful. Dr. Birkbeck Hill's method is seen more serviceably at work in a note on Reynolds's visit to Devonshire in 1762. First we get a record how Northcote, "with great satisfaction to his mind," touched the skirt of Sir Joshua's coat, and this quite naturally re- calls the well-known anecdote how Reynolds himself in his youth had grasped the hand of the great Mr. Pope at Christie's. The transition to Pope's own visit as a boy of twelve to Dryden at Will's Coffee House thus becomes an easy one. " Who touched old Northcote's hand ? " says Dr. Birkbeck Hill. " Has the apostolic suc- cession been continued? " and then he goes on to add : " Since writing these lines I have read with pleasure the following passage in Mr. Ruskin's ' Prseterita,' chap. i. p. 16: 'When Boswells Predecessors and Editors. 14 5 at three-and-a-half I was taken to have my por- trait painted by Mr. Northcote, I had not been ten minutes alone with him before I asked him why there were holes in his carpet.' Dryden, Pope, Reynolds, Northcote, Ruskin, so runs the chain of genius, with only one weak link in it.' 1 This is an excellent specimen of the concate- nated process at the best. We are bound to add that there are many as good. We are moreover bound to admit that the examples of its abuse are by no means obtrusive. Dr. Birkbeck Hill, in short, has done his work thoroughly. His appendices e. g. those on Johnson's Debates in Parliament, and on George Psalmanazar are practically exhaustive, and he has left no stone unturned in his labour of interpretation. If in the result of that labour there is something of what Croker called " surplusage," it must also be conceded that Boswell's famous book has never before been annotated with equal enthusiasm, learning, and industry. 1 1 Since this paper was first published, Dr. Birkbeck Hill has largely supplemented his Johnson labours by two volumes of letters (1892), and two more of "John- sonian Miscellanies " ( 1 897 ) . There have also been several other issues of Boswell's " Life,'' notably an edition in one volume by Mr. Fitzgerald, which is a marvel of cheapness, but that of Dr. Birkbeck Hill is still unri- valled in its kind. AN ENGLISH ENGRAVER IN PARIS. IT is a curious fact and, if it has not been already recorded, must assuredly have been remarked that Fate seems always to pro- vide the eminent painter with his special and particular interpreter on steel or copper. Thus, around Reynolds are the great mezzotinters, MacArdell, Fisher, Watson, Valentine Green. Gainsborough has his nephew Gainsborough Dupont ; Constable his Lucas. For Wilson there is Woollett; for Stothard there are Heath and Finden. To come to later days, there is Turner with his Willmores and Goodalls, and Landseer with his brother and (no pun intended) his Cousens. Similarly, for Wilkie (after Bur- net), the born translator into dot and line seems to have been Abraham Raimbach. It was Raim- bach who engraved "The Rent Day," " Blind Man's Buff," "The Village Politicians," and the majority of Sir David's chief works, and it is of Raimbach that we now propose to speak. Concerning his work as a craftsman, these pages An English Engraver in Paris. 145 could scarcely be expected to treat ; and his life, the life of a man occupied continuously in a sedentary pursuit, and residing, like Stothard, almost entirely in one place, affords but little incident to invite the chronicler of the pictur- esque. But he nevertheless left behind him a privately printed memoir, of which a portion at least is not without its interest, the interest attaching to every truthful record of occurrences which time has pushed backward into that per- spective which transforms the trivial. In 1802 he went to Paris for a couple of months. The visits of foreigners to England have not been unattractive ; and the visit of an Englishman to France, shortly after the Revolution, may also with a few preliminary words as to the tourist supply its memorabilia. Raimbach was born on February 16, 1776, in Cecil Court, St. Martin's Lane, Westminster, a spot remarkable as far as we can remember for nothing but the fact that Mrs. Hogarth mere had died there some forty years before. His father was a naturalised Swiss ; his mother a Warwickshire woman, who claimed descent from Richard Burbage, the actor of Shakespeare's day. His childhood was uneventful, save for two incidents. One of these was his falling, as a baby, out of a second-floor window, when 146 Miscellanies. he was miraculously " ballooned " by his long- clothes ; the other, his being roused as a little boy of four by the roar of the Gordon rioters as they rushed through the streets, calling to the sleeping inhabitants to light up their windows. After a modest education, chiefly at the Library School of St. Martin's where Charles Mathews the Elder was his schoolfellow, and Listen after- wards held a post as master he was formally apprenticed to Ravenefs pupil, John Hall, his- torical engraver to George the Third, and pop- ularly regarded as the legitimate successor of Woollett. Hall was a man of more than ordi- nary cultivation, one of whose daughters had married the composer Stephen Storace, the Storace who wrote the music to Colman's " Iron Chest," and (as Raimbach recollected) superintended the rehearsals thereof from a sedan-chair, in which, arrayed in flannels, he was carried on to the stage. Hall in his day had been introduced to Garrick ; and he was sometimes visited by John Kemble, who im- pressed the young apprentice with his solemn and sepulchral enunciation, and his manifest inability to forget, even in private life, that he was not before the footlights. Another remem- bered visitor was Sheridan, nervously solicitous lest Hall, who was engraving his portrait, should An English Engraver in Paris. 147 needlessly emphasise that facial " efflorescence " so familiar in Gillray's caricatures which the too-truthful Sir Joshua had neglected to disguise. Sheridan, however, could only have appeared occasionally in the altitudes of Hall's study. But the three flights which ascended to it were often climbed by other contemporaries. Ben- jamin West (whose " Cromwell dissolving the Long Parliament" Hall engraved), Opie and Northcote, Flaxman and Westall, all came fre- quently on business and pleasure, while the eclectic arts were represented by George Stee- vens (the Shakespeare critic), John Ireland, (the Hogarth commentator), and Dibdin's " Quis- quilius," George Baker, the print-collector and laceman of St. Paul's Churchyard. These, with Storace and his theatrical circle, must have made variety enough in a wearisome craft (for Hall's larger plates were many months in hand), and their conversation and opinions no doubt con- spired to fill the young apprentice with a life- long interest in art and the stage. When at length, in August, 1/96, his period of servitude came to an end, the professional outlook was by no means a cheerful one. The French Revolu- tion was engrossing all men's thoughts, and the peaceful arts that ars longa of the engraver in 148 Miscellanies. particular were at their lowest ebb, the only patrons of prints being the booksellers. Young Raimbach's first definite employment was on Cooke's "Tales of the Genii," a task which, it may be added, was even more precarious than usual, inasmuch as it was Cooke's custom, by prearrangement, not to pay for the work if he did not approve it when finished. Fortunately, in this instance, he did approve, and Raimbach continued from time to time to reproduce for him in copper the designs for books of Thurston, the elder Corbould, and Madame D'Arblay's clever cousin, Edward Burney. He had long been an assiduous Royal Academy student, and he speedily "doubled" his profession by min- iature-painting, in which "having," as he modestly says, "some facility of execution and the very common power [?] of making an in- veterate likeness " (at three guineas a head) he attained considerable success. Then, at the end of 1 80 1, he procured a commission to exe- cute three plates from Smirke's paintings for Forster's " Arabian Nights." He had for some time been lodging with a French modeller in Charles Street, and by this means had improved an already respectable acquaintance with the French language. With the proceeds of his three plates in his pocket, about 70, he set An English Engraver in Paris. 149 out in July, 1802, for a fortnight's visit to Paris. The short-lived Peace of Amiens, patched up by the Addington ministry, had been signed in the preceding March, and the route to the Con- tinent, closed for ten or twelve years, was again open. The result was a rush across the Chan- nel of all sorts and conditions of Englishmen, eager to note the changes resulting from the Revolution. Among these, the number of painters was considerable, West, Turner, Flaxman, Shee, and Opie being all included. Securing a passport from the Secretary of State's office a preliminary precaution which, in those days, meant an outlay of ?.,<,$. Raimbach set out via Brighton and Dieppe. Competition, at this time, had reduced the coach fare to the former place to half a guinea inside. On July 9 he embarked for Dieppe in a little vessel, landing in France on the following day during a glorious sunrise, but drenched to the skin. His first impressions of the French were not unlike those of Hogarth fifty years before. The filth and slovenliness of the people, the number and shameless importunity of the beggars, the dragging of loaded carts and the bearing of heavy burdens by the weaker sex all these, with the brusque revolutionary manners and the 150 Miscellanies. savage sans-culottism of the men, were things for which not even the long ear-pendants and picturesque Norman caps of the women could entirely atone. From Dieppe the traveller pro- ceeded to Rouen in a ramshackle cabriolet, drawn by two ill-matched but wiry horses which went better than they looked. At Rouen he arrived in time for a bread riot, promptly sup- pressed by the soldiery ; and he inspected several churches, among others St. Maclou, being no doubt attracted thereto by the famous door- carvings of Jean Goujon. Then, on the im- pjriale of a diligence, he made his way through the delightful landscape of Northern France, by Pontoise and St. Denis, "cemetery of mon- archs," to Paris, which he reached on the evening of the I2th. At Paris he took up his quarters in that " dirt- iest and noisiest of streets," the Rue Montor- gueil, where, twenty-two years before, Beranger had been born. Here he was keenly sensible of those exhalations in which the French capital competed with the " Auld Reekie " of the eigh- teenth-century, although, in this instance, they were blended and complicated with another odour, that of cookery. But, notwithstanding an abhorrence of "evil smells "quite equal to that of Queen Elizabeth, he speedily became An English Engraver in Paris. 151 acclimatised, and pleasantly appreciative of the bright, cheerful, many-coloured life of the Pari- sian boulevards and the social attractions of the table d'hdte. In the capital, too, he found that the people were less brutal, short-spoken, and surly than in the provinces, and that the Revo- lution, which had disfigured their palaces and monuments, 1 had not wholly effaced their tradi- tional politeness. On the second day after his arrival took place the annual fetes of July in memory of the destruction of the Bastille. There were to be reviews and illuminations, fireworks on the Pont Neuf, dancing and mdts de cocagne in the Champs-Elysees and Place Vend6me, and free plays and concerts in the Tuileries gardens. But the weather was finer than the show. "The fireworks on the bridge would not go off; the concert in the garden could not be heard, and the illuminations, though in good taste, were not sufficiently general to mark a decided national feeling." It is consoling to our insular self- esteem that neither this celebration, nor that in- augurating Bonaparte as First Consul, which took place shortly afterwards, could be com- 1 The Tuileries still bore the words, "dix d'Aofit" painted in white letters wherever the cannon-balls had struck. Arthur Moore was looking on (Journal, 1793, i. 26). 1 5 2 Miscellanies. pared, in the opinion of this observer, with the Jubilee of George the Third, or the Coronation of George the Fourth, at both of which he sub- sequently assisted. He was naturally anxious to get a glimpse of the famous First Consul, but of this he had little hope, as Bonaparte seldom appeared in public except at a review or a theatre, and in the latter case always without previous announce- ment. After fruitless attempts to see the "modern Attila " at the Opera and Theatre Fran- cais, Raimbach was at length fortunate enough to effect his object at an inspection of the garri- son of Paris in the Place du Carrousel, where he paid six francs for a seat at a first-floor window. After five-and-thirty years he still remembered vividly the small, thin, grave figure, in the blue unornamented uniform, plain cocked hat, white pantaloons and jockey boots, which, sur- rounded by a brilliant staff (among whom the Mameluke Roustan was conspicuous by his eastern costume), rode rapidly down the lines at a hand-canter on Marengo, made a brief speech to the soldiers, saluted them with mili- tary formality, and then passed back under the archway of the Tuileries. Napoleon at this date was about thirty-two. Raimbach never saw him again, and beyond a casual inspection An English Engraver in Paris. i$} of the ladies of the Bonaparte family at Notre Dame, enjoyed no second opportunity of study- ing the ruling race. But there were many things of compensating interest. At the Jardin des Plantes, for instance, there was an enormous female elephant, which had been transferred by right of conquest from the Stadtholder's collec- tion at the Hague, and had brought its English keeper with it into captivity. Then there were the noble halls and galleries of the Louvre, crowded with the fruits of French victories (" les fruits de nos victoires! "), statues and pictures of all countries, and all exhibited free of charge to an exultant public. The Apollo Belvedere from the Vatican was already in- stalled, and while Raimbach was still at Paris arrived the famous Venus de' Medici. Prob- ably so splendid a "loan collection" had never before been brought together. It was this no doubt which attracted so many English artists to Paris, where French spolia- tion enabled them to study comparatively a pic- torial collocation which nothing but the Grand Tour could otherwise have presented to them. Here, in all their glory, were Rembrandt and Rubens, with the best of the Dutch and Flemish schools. Raphael's glorious ' ' Transfiguration ; " the great rival altarpiece of Domenichino, the i $4 Miscellanies. " Communion of St. Jerome ; " Correggio's "Marriage of St. Catherine," all these, to- gether with many of the choicest specimens of the Carracci, of Guido, of Albano, of Guercino, were at this time to be seen in the long gallery of the Louvre, which Raimbach not only visited frequently, but drew in almost daily. In the magnificent Hall of Antiques, besides, he made the acquaintance of more than one contempo- rary French painter. Isabey, the miniaturist ; Carle Vernet ; his greater son, Horace, at this time a bright boy of thirteen or fourteen, were all then living in apartments adjoining the gal- leries, and in some cases at Government expense To the illustrious leader of the new Imperio- Classical School, which had succeeded with its wide-striding and brickdust-coloured nudities to the rosy mignardises of Fragonard and Boucher, Raimbach was not, however, introduced. M. Jacques Louis David, whose friendship with Robespierre had not only acquainted him with the interior of a prison, but had also brought him perilously close to the guillotine itself, was for the moment living in prudent seclusion, dividing his attentions between his palette and his violoncello. Meanwhile, a good example of his manner, "The Sabines" (which Raimbach calls " Rape of the Sabines"), executed imme- An English Engraver in Paris. 155 diately after his release from the Luxembourg, and popularly supposed to allude to the heroic efforts which Madame David had made for her husband's safety, was at this time being exhib- ited to a public who were divided between enthusiasm for the subject and indignation at the door-money door-money apparently having never before been charged for showing a pic- ture. Of David's pupils and followers, Gerard, Girodet, Gros, Gu6rin, Ingres, and the rest, Raimbach also speaks, but, as in the case of the master himself, more from hearsay than personal experience. On the other hand, one of his own compatriots, Benjamin West, the favourite painter of George the Third (Of modern works he makes a jest Except the works of Mr. West), was very much en Evidence in public places. He had succeeded Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy, and the diplomatic French notabilities were doing their best to flatter him into the belief that Bonaparte was not only the greatest of men but of art collectors. Indeed, the First Consul himself favoured this idea by personally commending West's own " Death on the Pale Horse," the finished sketch of which he had brought with him from England to ex- 156 Miscellanies. hibit at the Salon. West, whose weakness was "more than female vanity," was by no means backward in acknowledging these politic, if not perfidious, attentions, which he accepted without suspicion. " Wherever I went," he said simply, " people looked at me, and ministers and men of influence in the State were constantly in my company. I was one day in the Louvre all eyes were upon me, and I could not help ob- serving to Charles Fox, who happened to be walking with me, how strong was the love of Art and admiration of its professors in France." Fox, whose reputation as an orator and a patriot had preceded him, was naturally the observed of all observers, and he was besides the object of special attentions on the part of Bonaparte. Fox's chief mission to Paris, according to his biographer, Lord Russell, was to search the archives for his " History of the Revolution of 1688." But transcribing the correspondence of Barillon did not so exclusively occupy him as to divert him from the charms of the Theatre Francais, or, as it was at this time called, the "Theatre de la Re'publique." Fox went fre- quently to see that queen of tragedy Mile. Duchesnois, of whom it was said, " qu'elle avail des larmes dans la voix." a He saw her 1 Thackeray, who applies this to Gay, quotes it of Rubini. An English Engraver in Paris. 157 in " Andromaque " and " Phedre," and as Roxane in " Bajazet." Raimbach also, as might be anticipated from the schoolfellow of Charles Mathevvs and the admirer of Kemble, did not neglect the French theatres, which, he notes, were at this time more numerous than in all the other capitals of Europe put to- gether. At the Grand Opera, then rechristened "Theatre de la Re'publique et des Arts," he heard the opera of " Anacre'on," in which the principal male singer was Francois Lays, or Lais, and the foremost female that Mile. Maill- ard to whom tradition assigned the part of the Goddess of Reason at the celebration of 1793, which celebration, indeed, had been arranged by Lais with the prophet of the cult, Chaumette. Raimbach, however, thought little, as a singer, of the lady, who had just succeeded to the place of her preceptress, the accomplished Mile. St. Huberti, who, as Countess d'Entraigues, was cruelly murdered with her husband at Barnes Terrace some few years later by an Italian valet. 1 But he was charmed with the vocalisation of Lais, and delighted with the ballet, which included the elder Vestris (" Diou" 1 In 1812. There is an account of this tragedy in the " Walk from London to Kew " of Sir Richard Phillips, 1817. i $8 Miscellanies. de la danse) and Mme. Gardel. In particular the young engraver remembered an English hornpipe, executed in a jockey's dress by one Beaupre, which excelled anything of the kind he had ever seen in his own country. At the Theatre Frangais, possibly because his tastes lay rather in comedy than tragedy, Raimbach says nothing of Racine and Mile. Duchesnois. But he speaks of Monvel, the sole survivor of the old school of the Lekains and Previlles and Barons, as still charming in spite of age and loss of teeth ; and he also saw that practical joker and pet of the Parisians, Dugazon, who must have been almost as diminutive as Addison's "little Dickey," Henry Morris. 1 But after PreVille he was the prince of stage valets, and despite a tendency to exaggeration (which Raimbach duly chronicles), almost perfect in his own line. Another stage luminary men- tioned by Raimbach is Monvel's daughter, Mile. Mars, at this time only three-and-twenty, 1 It was Dugazon who cajoled the original Bartholo of the Earlier, Desessarts (who was enormously fat), into applying for the post of elephant to the Court. When the irate Desessarts afterwards challenged him, Dugazon, by gravely chalking a circle upon his adversary, and propos- ing that all punctures outside the ring should count for nothing, turned the whole affair into ridicule. An English Engraver in Paris. 159 and not yet displaying those supreme quali- ties which afterwards made her unrivalled in Europe. But she was already seductive as an ingenue ; and her performance of AngeTique in " La Fausse Agnes " of NeYicault Destouches (which Arthur Murphy afterwards borrowed for his farce of the " Citizen)/' is declared by Raimbach to have been " replete with grace and good taste." Finally, Raimbach saw the First Consul's tragedian, Talma, then in the height of his powers, and continuing success- fully those reforms of costume and declamation which he was supposed to have learned in England. John Kemble, who was also visiting Paris, where he was hospitably entertained by the French actors, was now in his turn taking hints from Talma, for it was observable that when he got back to London he adopted Talma's costume for the Orestes of the " Dis- tressed Mother." The Italian Opera, of course, was not open, and of the remaining actors Raimbach says not very much. At the Vaudeville he saw Laporte, the leading harlequin of the day, and at Picart's Theatre in the Rue Feydeau witnessed what must have been the "Tom Jones a Londres" of M. Desforges, in which Picart himself, who was a better author than actor, took the part of 160 Miscellanies. the so-called " Squire Westiern." This repre- sentation, as might be expected, was amusing for its absurdities rather than its merits. But it can hardly have been more ridiculous to an Englishman than Poinsinet's earlier Com^die Lyrique, where Western and " Tami Jone" pursue the flying hart to the accompaniment of cars de chasse and the orthodox French hallali. Another (unconsciously) theatrical exhibition which Raimbach occasionally attended, was the Tribunal, one of the new Legislative bodies that at this time held its sittings in the Palais Royal, then, on that account, re-christened Palais du Tribunal. Here he met with the notorious Lewis Goldsmith, not, as afterwards, the inveterale assailant of Napoleon, but for the moment actively engaged in editing a paper called " The Argus ; or, London Reviewed in Paris,' 1 which attacked the war and the Eng- lish Government. At the Tribunal Goldsmith poinled out several of the minor men of the Revolution to Raimbach. Bui il was a colour- less assembly, wholly in the power of the im- perious First Consul, and its meetings had litlle inslruction fora stranger. Goldsmith, however, was not the sole compatriot Raimbach met in the Palais Royal. In the salons litUraires he came frequently in contact with Thomas Hoi- An English Engraver in Paris. 161 croft, of the " Road to Ruin." Holcroft had married a French wife, had a family, and was engaged in preparing those " Travels in France/' which Sir Richard Phillips afterwards published. Holcroft was a friend of Opie (then also in Paris), who painted the portrait of him now at St. Martin's Place ; but from Raimbach's account he must have been far more petulant and irri- table than befitted the austere philosopher of his writings. Of another person whom Raimbach mentions he gives a rosier account than is given generally. At the Cafe Jacob in the Rue Jacob, an obscure cabaret in an obscure street, was frequently to be seen the once redoubtable Thomas Paine, then about sixty-five. Contem- poraries represent him at this date as not only fallen upon evil days, but dirty in his person and unduly addicted to spirits. That the general appearance of the author of the " Rights of Man" was "mean and poverty-stricken," and that he was " much withered and care- worn," Raimbach admits, and he moreover adds that " he had sunk into complete insignifi- cance, and was quite unnoticed by the Govern- ment." But he also describes him as " fluent in speech, of mild and gentle demeanour, clear and distinct in enunciation," and endowed with an "exceedingly soft and agreeable voice" 1 62 Miscellanies. words which, in this connection, somehow remind one of Lord Foppington's philosophic eulogy of Miss Hoyden. Certainly they scarcely suggest the red-nosed and dilapidated personage who drank brandy and declaimed against Religion in his cups with whom modern records have acquainted us. Raimbach's remaining experiences must be rapidly summarised. He attended the Palais de Justice, and was much impressed by the French forensic oratory. Concerning the ora- tory of the pulpit he is not equally enthusiastic, observing, indeed, that he should think the cause of religion derived little support from the eloquence of the clergy. But it must be re- membered that at this period most of the priests were expatriated, and many of the churches were still used as warehouses and stables. One close by him in the Rue Montorgueil was, as a matter of fact, employed as a saddler's shop. He was much interested in the now dispersed col- lection brought together in the Muse'e des Mon- uments in the Petits-Augustins by M. Alexandre Lenoir, the artist and antiquary. This consisted of such monumental efforts as had escaped the fury of the Terror escaping, it should be added, only miserably mutilated and defaced. Lenoir, who had received a severe bayonet An English Engraver in Paris. 163 wound in attempting to defend the tomb of Richelieu, had admirably arranged these waifs and strays, and the collection of eighteenth century sculpture was especially notable, as were also the specimens of stained glass. Among Raimbach's personal experiences came the suc- cessful consumption at VeYy's in the Palais Royal of a fricassee of frogs. But this was done in ignorance, and not of set purpose, as in the case of the epicure, Charles Lamb, who speaks of them as " the nicest little delicate things." Raimbach's return to England, somewhat precipi- tated by the fury of the First Consul at the attacks upon him in the Morning Chronicle, was made by the Picardy route. At Calais he spent a day at the historical Lion d'Argent, 1 where Hogarth and so many of his fellow countrymen had been before him, and he reached Dover shortly after- wards, giving, with his party, three ringing cheers at once more treading upon English soil. He had been absent two months instead of two weeks. His impressions de voyage, which oc- cupy nearly half his " Memoirs," would have gained in permanent charm if he had described more and reflected less. All the same, his trip l Mrs. Carter (Memoirs, i. 253) says, in June, 1763: " I am sorry to say it, but it is fact, that the Lion d'Argent at Calais is a much better inn than any I saw at Dover." 164 Miscellanies. to Paris as a young man in 1802 was the one event of his career, for though he went abroad again on two or three occasions, received a gold medal from the Salon in 1814, for his engraving of "The Village Politicians," was fSted by Baron Gerard in 1825, and made a Correspond- ing Member of the Institute ten years later, the rest of his recollections are comparatively un- interesting, except for his intercourse with Wilkie, of whom he wrote a brief biography. He died in January, 1843, in his sixty-seventh year. THE "VICAR OF WAKEFIELD" AND ITS ILLUSTRATORS. NOT many years since, & propos of a certain volume of epistolary parodies, the para- graphists were busily discussing the different aspects which the characters of fiction present to different readers. It was shown that, not only as regards the fainter and less strongly drawn figures, the Frank Osbaldistones, the Clive Newcomes, the David Copperfields, but even as regards what Gautier would have called " the grotesques," the Costigans, the Swivellers, the Gamps, each admirer, in his separate " study of imagination," had his own idea, which was not that of another. What is true of the intellectual perception is equally true of the pictorial. Nothing is more notable than the diversities afforded by the same book when illustrated by different artists. Contrast for a moment the Don Quixotes of Smirke, of Tony Johannot, of Gustave Dore" ; contrast the Fal- staffs of Kenny Meadows, of Sir John Gilbert, 1 66 Miscellanies. of Mr. Edwin A. Abbey. Or, to take a better instance, compare the contemporary illustrations of Dickens with the modern designs of (say) Charles Green or Frederick Barnard. The variations, it will at once be manifest, are not the mere variations arising from ampler resource or from fuller academic skill on the part of the younger men. It is not alone that they have conquered the inner secret of Du Maurier's artistic stumbling-blocks the irreconcilable chimney-pot hat, the " terrible trousers," the unspeakable evening clothes of the Victorian era : it is that their point of view is different. Nay, in the case of Barnard, one of the first, if not the first, of modern humorous designers, although he is studiously loyal to the Dickens tradition as revealed by "Phiz" and Cruik- shank, he is at the same time as unlike them as it is well possible to be. To this individual and personal attitude of the artist must be added, among other things, the further fact that each age has a trick of investing the book it decorates with something of its own temperament and at- mosphere. It may faithfully endeavour to revive costume ; it may reproduce accessory with the utmost care ; but it can never look with the old eyes, or see exactly in the old way. Of these positions, the " Vicar of Wakefield " is as good The "Vicar of Wake field" 167 an example as any. Between its earlier illus- trated editions and those of the last half century the gulf is wide ; while the portraits of Dr. Primrose as presented by Rovvlandson on the one hand and Stothard on the other are as strik- ingly in contrast as any of the cases above indi- cated. We shall add what is practically a fresh chapter to a hackneyed history if for a page or two we attempt to give some account of Gold- smith's story considered exclusively in its aspect as an illustrated book. To the first edition of 1766 there were no illustrations. The two duodecimo volumes "on grey paper with blunt type," printed at Salis- bury in that year "by B. Collins, for F. New- bery," were without embellishments of any kind ; and the sixth issue of 1779 had been reached be- fore we come to the earliest native attempt at any pictorial realisation of the characters. In the following year appeared the first illustrated English edition, being two tiny booklets bearing the imprint of one J. Wenman, of 144 Fleet Street, and containing a couple of poorly-exe- cuted frontispieces by the miniaturist, Daniel Dodd. They represent the Vicar taking leave of George, and Olivia and the Landlady a choice of subjects in which the artist had many subsequent imitators. The designs have little 1 68 Miscellanies. distinction but that of priority, and can claim no higher merit than attaches to the cheap adorn- ments of a cheap publication. Dodd is seen to greater advantage in one of the two plates which, about the same date, figured in Harri- son's " Novelist's Magazine," and also in the octavo edition of the " Vicar," printed for the same publisher in 1781. These plates have the pretty old-fashioned ornamental framework which the elder Heath and his colleagues had borrowed from the French vignettists. Dodd illustrates the episode of the pocket-book, while his companion Walker, at once engraver and designer, selects the second rescue of Sophia at the precise moment when BurchelFs "great stick" has shivered the small sword of Mr. Timothy Baxter. Walker's design is the better of the two ; but their main interest is that of costume-pieces, and in both the story is told by gesture rather than by expression. So natural is it to associate the grace of Stothard with the grace of Goldsmith, that one almost resents the fact that, in the collection for which he did so much, the task of illustrating the " Vicar " fell into other hands. But as his first re- lations with Harrison's " Magazine" are alleged to have originated in an application made to him to correct a drawing by Dodd for " Joseph The "Vicar of Wake field" 169 Andrews," 1 it is probable that, before he began to work regularly for the publisher, the plates for the " Vicar " had already been arranged for. Yet it was not long before he was engaged upon the book. In 1792* was published an octavo edition, the plates of which were beautifully en- graved by Basire's pupil and Blake's partner, James Parker. Stothard's designs, six in num- ber, illustrate the Vicar taking leave of George, the Rescue of Sophia from Drowning, the Honey- suckle Arbour, the Vicar and Olivia, the Prison Sermon, and the Family Party at the end. The best of them, perhaps, is that in which Olivia's father, with an inexpressible tenderness of ges- ture, lifts the half-sinking, half-kneeling form of his repentant daughter. But though none can be said to be wanting in that grace which is the unfailing characteristic of the artist, upon the whole they are not chefs-d'oeuvre. Certainly they are not as good as the best of the " Clar- issa' 1 series in Harrison; they are not even better than the illustrations to Sterne, the origi- nals of which are at South Kensington. In- 1 Pye's "Patronage of British Art," 1845, PP- 247-8. 2 An imaginary frontispiece portrait of the Vicar, pre- fixed to a one-volume issue of 1790, has not been here regarded as entitling the book to rank as an " illustrated " edition. There is no artist's name to the print. 1 70 Miscellanies. deed, there is at South Kensington a circular composition by Stothard from the " Vicar" a lightly-washed sketch in Indian ink which surpasses them all. The moment selected is ob- scure ; but the persons represented are plainly the Wakefield family, Sir William Thornhill and the 'Squire. The 'Squire is speaking, Olivia hides her face in her mother's lap, Dr. Prim- rose listens with bent head, and the ci-devant Mr. Burchell looks sternly at his nephew. The entire group, which is admirable in refinement and composition, has all the serene gravity of a drawing by Flaxman. Besides the above, and a pair of plates to be mentioned presently, Stothard did a set of twenty-four minute head- pieces to a Memorandum Book for 1805 (or thereabouts), all of which were derived from Goldsmith's novel, and these probably do not exhaust his efforts in this direction. After the Stothard of 1792 comes a succession of editions more or less illustrated. In 1793 Cooke published the "Vicar" in his "Select Novels," with a vignette and plate by R. Cor- bould, and a plate by Anker Smith. The last, which depicts " Olivia rejecting with disdain the offer of a Purse of Money from 'Squire Thorn- hill," is not only a dainty little picture, but serves to exemplify some of the remarks at the The "Vicar of Wakefield." 171 outset of this paper. Seven-and-twenty years later, the same design was re-engraved as the frontispiece of an edition published by Dean and Munday, and the costumes were modernised to date. The 'Squire Thornhill of 1793 has a three- cornered hat and ruffles ; in 1820 he wears whiskers, a stiff cravat with a little collar, and a cocked hat set athwartships. Olivia, who dis- dained him in 1793 in a cap and sash, disdains him in 1820 in her own hair and a high waist. Corbould's illustrations to these volumes are commonplace. But he does better in the five plates which he supplied to Whittingham's edi- tion of 1800, three of which, the Honeysuckle Arbour, Moses starting on his Journey, and Olivia and the Landlady, are pleasant enough. In 1808 followed an edition with a charming frontispiece by Stothard, in which the Vicar with his arm in a sling is endeavouring to recon- cile Mrs. Primrose to Olivia. There is also a vignette by the same hand. These, engraved at first by Heath, were repeated in 1813 by J. Romney. In the same year the book appeared in the " Mirror of Amusement " with three plates by that artistic Jack-of-all-trades, William Marshall Craig, sometime drawing-master to the Princess Charlotte of Wales. There are also edi- tions in 1812, 1823, and 1824, with frontispieces 172 Miscellanies. by the Academician, Thomas Uwins. But, as an interpreter of Goldsmith, the painter of the once-popular " Chapeau de Brigand " is not inspiriting. In following the line of engravers on copper, soon to be superseded by steel, we have ne- glected the sister art of engraving upon wood, of which the revival is practically synchronous with Harrison's " Magazine." The first edition of the "Vicar" decorated with what Horace Walpole contemptuously called " wooden cuts," is dated 1798. It has seven designs, three of which are by an unknown person called Egin- ton, and the remainder by Thomas Bewick, by whom all of them are engraved. Eginton may be at once dismissed ; but Bewick's own work, notwithstanding his genuine admiration for Goldsmith, arouses no particular enthusiasm. He was too original to be the illustrator of other men's ideas, and his designs, though fair speci- mens of his technique as a xylographer, are poor as artistic conceptions. The most successful is the Procession to Church, the stubbornness of Blackberry, as may be imagined, being effec- tively rendered. Frontispieces by Bewick also appear in editions of 1810 and 1812; and be- tween 1807 and 1810 the records speak of three American issues with woodcuts by Bewick's The "Vicar of Wake field" 173 trans-Atlantic imitator, Alexander Anderson. Whether these were or were not merely copies of Bewick, like much of Anderson's work, can- not be affirmed without inspection. Nor, for the same reason, is it possible to refer with certainty to the edition illustrated by Thurston and engraved by Bewick's pupil, Luke Clennell, of which Linton speaks in his " Masters of Wood Engraving " as containing a " ' Mr. Bur- chell in the hayfield reading to the two Primrose girls,' full of drawing and daylight," which should be worth seeing. But the triumph of woodcut copies at this date is undoubtedly the so-called " Whittingham's edition" of 1815. This is illustrated by thirty-seven woodcuts and tailpieces engraved by the prince of modern wood-engravers, John Thompson. The artist's name has been modestly withheld, and the de- signs are sometimes attributed to Thurston, but they are not entirely in his manner, and we are inclined to assign them to Samuel Williams. In any case, they are unpretending little pieces, simple in treatment, and sympathetic in char- acter. The Vicar Consoled by his Little Boys, and the Two Girls and the Fortune-teller, may be cited as favourable examples. But the scale is too small for much play of expression. " Whittingham's edition " was very popular, and 174 Miscellanies. copies are by no means rare. It was certainly republished in 1822 and 1825, and probably there are other issues. And so we come to that most extraordinary of contributions by a popu- lar designer to the embellishment of a popular author, the " Vicar" of Thomas Rowlandson. Rowlandson was primarily a caricaturist, and his " Vicar" is a caricature. He was not with- out artistic power ; he could, if he liked, draw a beautiful woman (it is true that his ideal generally deserves those epithets of " plantureux, luxuri- ant, exuberant" which the painter in " Gerfaut " gives to the charms of Mile. Reine Gobillot) ; but he did not care to modify his ordinary style. Consequently he illustrated Goldsmith's master- piece as he illustrated Combe's " Doctor Syn- tax," and the result is a pictorial outrage. The unhappy Primrose family romp through his pages, vulgarised by all sorts of indignities, and the reader reaches the last of the " twenty-four coloured plates " which Ackermann put forth in 1817, and again in 1823, as one escaping from a nightmare. It is only necessary to glance at Stothard's charming little plate of Hunt the Slipper in Rogers's " Pleasures of Memory" of 1802 to see how far from the Goldsmith spirit is Rowlandson's treatment of the same pastime. Where he is most endurable, is where his de- The "Vicar of Wakefield." 175 signs to the "Vicar" have the least relation to the personages of the book, as, for example, in " A Connoisseur Mellowing the Tone of a Picture," which is simply a humorous print neither better nor worse than any of the other humorous prints with which he was wont to fill the windows of the " Repository of Arts" in Piccadilly. It is a relief to turn from the rotundities of Rowlandson to the edition which immediately followed that known to collectors as Sharpe's. It contains five illustrations by Richard Westall, engraved on copper by Corbould, Warren, Romney, and others. Westall's designs are of the school of Stothard that is to say, they are graceful and elegant rather than humorous ; but they are most beautifully rendered by their engravers. The Honeysuckle Arbour (George Corbould), where the girls lean across the table to watch the labouring stag as it pants past, is one of the most brilliant little pictures we can remember. In 1829, William Finden re- engraved the whole of these designs on steel, slightly reducing them in size, and the merits of the two methods may be compared. It is hard to adjudge the palm. Finden's fifth plate especially, depicting Sophia's return to the Vicar in Prison, is a miracle of executive delicacy. 176 Miscellanies. Goldsmith's next illustrators of importance are Cruikshank and Mulready. The contribu- tions of the former are limited to two plates for vol. x. (1832) of Roscoe's " Novelist's Library." They are not successes. The kindly Genius of Broadgrin is hardly as coarse as Rowlandson, but his efforts to make his subjects " comic" at all hazards are not the less disas- trous, and there is little of the Vicar, or Mrs. Primrose, or even Moses, in the sketch with which he illustrates the tragedy of the gross of green spectacles ; while the most salient characteristic of the somewhat more successful Hunt the Slipper is the artist's inveterate ten- dency to make the waists of his women (in the words of Pope's imitation of Prior), " fine by defect, and delicately weak." Mulready's de- signs (1843), excellently interpreted by John Thompson, have a far greater reputation, a reputation heightened not a little by the familiar group of pictures which he elaborated from three of the sketches. Choosing the Wedding Gown, the Whistonian Controversy, and Sophia and Burchell Haymaking, with their unrivalled rendering of texture and material, are among the painter's most successful works in oil ; and it is the fashion to speak of his illustrated " Vicar" as if all of its designs were at the The "Vicar of Wakefield." 177 same artistic level. This is by no means the case. Some of them, e.g., Olivia measuring herself with the 'Squire, have playfulness and charm, but the majority, besides being crowded in composition, are heavy and unattractive. Mulready's paintings, however, and the gener- ally diffused feeling that the domestic note in his work should make him a born illustrator of Goldsmith, have given him a prestige which can- not now be gainsaid. After Mulready follows a crowd of minor illustrators. One of the most successful of these was the clever artist George Thomas ; one of the most disappointing, because his gifts were of so high an order, was G. J. Pinwell. Of Absolon, Anelay, Gilbert, and the rest, it is impossible to speak here, and we must close this rapid summary with brief reference to some of the foreign editions. At the beginning of this paper, in enumerat- ing certain of the causes for the diversities, pleasing or otherwise, which prevail in illus- trated copies of the classics, we purposely re- served one which it is more convenient to treat in connection with those books when "embel- lished" by foreign artists. If, even in the country of birth, each age (as has been well said of translations) " a eu de ce cdtt son belve"~ 12 178 Miscellanies. dere different" it follows that every other coun- try will have its point of view, which will be at variance with that of a native. To say that no book dealing with human nature in the abstract Is capable of being adequately illustrated except in the country of its origin, would be to state a proposition in imminent danger of prompt contradiction. But it may be safely asserted, that, except by an artist who, from long resi- dence or familiarity, has enjoyed unusual facili- ties for assimilating the national atmosphere, no novel of manners (to which class the "Vicar" must undoubtedly be held to belong) can be illustrated with complete success by a foreigner. For this reason, it will not be necessary here to do more than refer briefly to the principal French and German editions. In either country the " Vicar "has had the advantage of being artisti- cally interpreted by draughtsmen of marked ability ; but in both cases the solecisms are thicker than the beauties. It must be admitted, notwithstanding, for Germany, that it was earlier in the field than England. Wenman's edition is dated 1780 ; but it was in 1776 that August Mylius of Berlin issued the first frontispiece of the " Vicar." It is an etching by the " Berlin Hogarth," Daniel Chodowiecki, prefixed to an English reprint of The " Vicar of Wake field." 179 the second edition, and it represents the popular episode of Mr. Burchell and the pocket-book. The poor Vicar is transformed into a loose- lipped, heavy-jowled German pastor in a dress- ing-gown and slippers, while Mr. Burchell becomes a slim personage in top-boots, and such a huntsman's cap as stage tradition assigns to Tony Lumpkin. In the " Almanac Gdnea- logique " for 1777, Chodowiecki returned to this subject, and produced a series of twelve charm- ing plates little marvels of delicate execution upon the same theme. Some of these, e. g., the " Conversation brillante des Dames de la ville" and " George sur le Teatre (sic) recon- noit son Pere " are delightfully quaint. But they are not illustrations of the text and there is no more to say. The same radical objection applies to the illustrations, full of fancy, inge- nuity, and playfulness as they are, of another German, Ludwig Richter. His edition has often been reprinted. But it is sufficient to glance at his barefooted Sophia, making hay, with her straw hat at her back, in order to de- cide against it. One crosses out "Sophia" and writes in " Frederika." She may have lived at Sesenheim, but never at Wakefield. In like manner, the insular mind recoils from the spectacle of the patriarchal Jenkinson studying 180 Miscellanies. the Cosmogony in company with a tankard of a pattern unmistakably Teutonic. In France, to judge by certain entries in Cohen's invaluable "Guide de TAmateur de Livres a Vignettes," the book seems to have been illustrated as early as the end of the last century. Huot and Texier are mentioned as artists, but their works have escaped us. The chief French edition, however, is that which be- longs to the famous series of books with " images incruste"es en plein texte " (as Jules Janin says), inaugurated in 183$ by the " Gil Bias " of Jean Gigoux. The " Vicaire de Wakefield " (Bour- gueleret, 1838), admirably paraphrased by Charles Nodier, was accompanied by ten en- gravings on steel by William Finden after Tony Johannot, and a number of small woodcuts, en- ttes and culs-de-lampe by Janet Lange, Charles Jacque, and C. Marville. 1 As compositions, J channel's contributions are effective, but highly theatrical, while his types are frankly French. Of the woodcuts it may be sufficient to note that when the Vicar and Mrs. Primrose discuss the prospects of the family in the privacy of their own chamber, they do so (in the picture) from two separate four-posters with twisted uprights, 1 To the edition of 1843, which does not contain these woodcuts, is added one by Meissonier. The " Vicar of Wakefield." 181 and a crucifix between them. The same eccen- tricities, though scarcely so naively ignorant, are not entirely absent from the work of two much more modern artists, M. V. A. Poirson and M. Adolphe Lalauze. M. Poirson (Quan- tin, 1885) who, in his own domain, has extraor- dinary skill as a decorative artist, depicts 'Squire Thornhill as a gay young French chasseur with many-buttoned gaiters and a fusil en bandouliere, while the hero of the " Elegy on a Mad Dog " appears in those " wooden shoes" (with straw in them) which for so long a period were to English cobblers the chief terror of a French invasion. M. Lalauze again (Jouaust, 1888), for whose distinguished gifts (in their place) we have the keenest admiration, promotes the whole Wakefield family into the haute noblesse. An elegant Dr. Primrose blesses an elegant George with the air of a Rochefoucauld, while Mrs. Primrose, in the background, with the Bible and cane, is a grande dame. Under the same treat- ment, the scene in the hayfield becomes a fele galante after the fashion of Lancret or Watteau. Upon the whole, dismissing foreign artists for the reason given above, one is forced to the con- clusion that Goldsmith has not hitherto found his fitting pictorial interpreter. Stothard and Mulready have accentuated his graver side ; 1 82 Miscellanies. Cruikshank and Rowlandson have exaggerated his humour. But no single artist in the past, as far as we are aware, has, in any just proportion, combined them both. By the delicate quality of his art, by the alliance in his work of a sim- plicity and playfulness which has a kind of par- allel in Goldsmith's literary style, the late Randolph Caldecott seemed always to suggest that he could, if he would, supply this want. But, apart from the captivating play-book of the " Mad Dog," and a frontispiece in the " Parch- ment Library," Caldecott contributed nothing to the illustration of Goldsmith's novel. 1 1 The foregoing paper, which appeared in the " Eng- lish Illustrated Magazine," for October, 1890, was after- wards reprinted as the Preface to Mr. Hugh Thomson's admirable illustrated edition of the " Vicar " (Macmillan, same year). "LTJuZerd Gfirarf J*Tbt*r Crvft* ^JtJThf Trvamry I337l*0rd Sfi-Offtf \7a7Jkf Xmj*^7^Aaf, Z&3%t0r*f fhambtrtaf. I.TA* aTf 0f2iu.t?l # Cti Lr Sfflf.\-y &nrttt Htft* i&Mur^ 3t. *f fmy UTt> . ? ITimna* J>niA^VSL Sorttt ftrtet-Fatt. taken in ttie Rei&i of CHAHLBS 2*1680. * \Jf.-YC*iffbv* \tS.- ' *> J*r-Vt7fto7n Ei&gprtw 4f U.Jv-Fnvtrtr doom tf ' f4* rf \ if >JIC.ig>ufrtT f?T,,V* (tmtill OxfirrJ OLD WHITEHALL. NOW, when the widening of Parliament Street promises to afford an adequate approach to St. Stephen's, and another imposing range of buildings has arisen at Spring Gardens to match the Foreign and India Offices, it may be worth while to linger for a moment upon some former features of this much-changing locality. In such a retrospect, the Old Banquet- ing-House of Inigo Jones naturally becomes a prominent object. Its massive Northamptonshire stone and classic columns invest it with a dignity of which the towering pile of Whitehall Court can scarcely deprive it ; and it seems to overlook Kent's stumpy Horse Guards opposite much as a nobleman with a pedigree might be expected to survey a neighbour of a newer creation. And yet, impressive though it is, it represents but an insignificant portion of the architect's original design, the imaginative extent of which may be studied in Campbell's " Vitruvius Britan- nicus " and elsewhere. As a matter of fact, the present Banqueting- House was only one out of 1 84 Miscellanies. four similar pavilions in a vast structure of which the ground plan would have extended from the river bank to a point far beyond the Horse Guards, and would have occupied all the space on either side of the road from Horse Guards Avenue to the Mews of Richmond Terrace. It included no fewer than seven splendid internal courts, and the facades towards the park and the Thames the latter especially were of great beauty. But the scheme was beyond the pocket of the first James, for whom, in 1619, it was designed ; and a cheaper modifi- cation, reaching only to the roadway, and pre- pared twenty years later, fared no better with Charles I. The Banqueting-House, which was built in 1619-22, and is common to both schemes, is consequently all that was ever executed of what, in its completed form, would have been a palace among palaces, surpassing the Louvre and the Escurial. Apart from its existing employment as a mili- tary museum, 1 the Banqueting-House to-day serves chiefly as a landmark or key by help of which its ancient environments may be mentally re-constructed. With Gibbons' fine bronze statue of James II., now erected in the enclosure at 1 /. qui enfurent delivre's par r intercession de la Reine ANNE d'Angleterre peu apres la paix d'Utrecht. Les mSmes Personnes nous ont dit, qu'elles ont eu des liaisons personnelles avec lAuleur ; qu'elles ne doutent pas de sa bonne foi 6* de sa probitd ; 6- quelles sont persuaddes, qu'autant que sa me'moire a pu lui rappeller Us fails, cette Relation est ex- acted Opposite the word " creance," in the British Museum copy, is written in an old hand, " Mrs. Dumont & De Superville." As Daniel de Superville Senior was dead in 1757, the De Superville here mentioned was no doubt his son of the same Christian name, a doctor, who, as above suggested, was probably the editor of Marteilhe's manuscripts. After this come nat- urally the details given, from Coquerel and else- where, in M. Paumier's second Preface, and already referred to. Marteilhe, we learn, did not reside permanently in the Netherlands " that Land of Liberty and Happiness," as Marteilhes "Memoirs." 32} Goldsmith renders" Ces heur eases Provinces''' but for some time was in business in London. He died at Cuylenberg, in Guelderland, on the 4th November, 1777, at the age of ninety-three. Little is known about his family ; but it is believed that he had a daughter who was mar- ried at Amsterdam to an English naval officer of distinction, Vice-Admiral Douglas. GENERAL INDEX. GENERAL INDEX. ABBAYE, the Prison of the, 40. Abbey, Edwin A., 166. Abel, 41, 42. Abington, Mrs. Fanny, 104, 34- Absolon, 177. Achilles, Gay's, 270. Ackermann, 174. Adam and Eve Gallery, the, 192. Adams, Parson, 79. Addington ministry, the, 149. Addison, Joseph, Goldsmith's admiration for and imitation of, 12, 15 ; Letter from Italy to Lord Halifax, 15 ; 57, 58, 60, 61, 76, 77,81, 82,84, 158, 245 ; Cato, 256 ; 286. Addison, Life of, Miss Aiken's, 57- Admiralty buildings, the new, 2 34- Agas, Ralph, 221, 222, 231, 277. Agttecheek, Sir Andrew, Docld as, 105. Aiken, Miss, Life of Addison, 57- Aikin, Dr. John, 313, 314. Aitken, George A., Life of Richard Steele, 57-^6; 239. Aix, 259, 260. Albano, 154. Albany, the, 53. Albemarle, Duke of, 186, 187. Albemarle Street, 54. Albinus, 91. Alembert, D', 55. Alexander Le Imaginator, 223. Alhambra, the, 275, 276. Albambra Company, the, -502. Alkrington, 293. Allen's, of Prior Park, 102, 10 ; Alhvorthy, Fielding's, 102. " Almack's," 205, 210, 212. Almanac Gencalogique, the, 179. Alvanley, Lord, 204. Amelia, Fielding's, 115. America, 7. Amesbury, 37, 38, 268, 269. Amiens, the Peace of, 149. Amorevoli, 289. Amsterdam, 308, 325. Anacreon, 157. Analysis of the Gaelic Lan- guage, an, 114. Anatomy of the Horse, Stubbs', 42. Anderson, Alexander, 173. 330 General Index. Anderson, Mr. John P., 138. Andromaque, Duchesnois in, 157. Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL. D., 115. Anelay, 177. Angelica, 304. Angelique, Mile. Mars as, 159. Angelo, Dominico, episode with Mrs. Woffington, 33, 34; a " master of equitation," 34; his school in Soho, 35; his marriage, 35, 36; his son, 36; visits to Eton, 37; 41, 42; his visitors, 41-43; 45 ; death of, 46; his Ecole des Arntes, 55- Angelo, Henry, Reminiscences of, 33-56; his birth, 36; in tke Navy, 36; at Eton, 36; a visit to Amesbury, 37; in Paris, 38, 39; an expert swordsman, 39, 46 ; returns to London, 40 ; his visitors. 41-43 ; early experiences of, 44-46; intimacy with Row- landson, 47-48; other asso- ciates, 49 ; an excellent amateur actor, 49; his dra- matic essays, 50; the "Pic- Nic Society," 51; anecdotes, 52 ; Byron his pupil, 53 ; his " graceful ease " in eluding dates, 54 ; My Own Boast- ings, 54; Angelas Pic-Nic, 55- Angelo's, 107. Angelas Pic-Nic, 55. Animated Nature, 249. Anne, Queen, 70, 79, 186, 237; History of the Reign of, 241; 254, 281, 286,322, 323, 324. Anspach, the Margravine of, 51. Anstey, Christopher, 19. Appius and Virginia, 248. Apollo Belvedere, the, 153. Apology for Himself and his Writings, Steele's, 79. Arabian Nights, Forster's, 148. Arachnc, the Story of, 247. Arawintti, Gay's, 250. Arber, Mr., 245. Arblay, Madame D', 134, 148, 296, 304. Arbuthnot, 252, 254, 255, 259, 262, 267, 268, 270. Archer, Lady, 51. Argns, the, 160. Argyll tomb, the, 38. Aristotle, 254. Arlington, Lord, 196. Arnold, Matthew, 320. Assassination Plot, the, 63. Astley, 35. As to my Hermit, Goldsmith's, 17, 2 6, 37- Atfrauumt, the, 256. Athenaeum Club, the, no. Augusta, Anna, 249. ; Augusta, Princess, 290. Austen, Jane, 56, 108. Australia, 134. Axminster, 256. Aylesbury family, the, 291. B. BACH, John Christian, 41. Bach, John Sebastian, 41. General Index. " Bach Mews," 231. Bagshot Heath, 256. Bajazet, 157. Baker, George, the print-col- lector, 147. Baldwin, 119. Ballad on a Wedding, Suck- ling's, 229. Bailer, Rev. Joseph, 241, 242. Bailer, Mrs., 270. Balliol, the Master of, 87. Bank of England, the, 268. Bannister, John, 49. Bannister's Budget, 49. Banqueting-House, the old, 183, 184, 185, 186, 188, 189, 193, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202. Barbados, 69, 70, 74, 75. Barbier, the, 158. Baretti, 135. Barillon, 156. Barnaby Rudge, Dickens's, 291. Barnard, Frederick, 166. Barnes, Joshua, 286. Barnes Terrace, 157. Barnstaple, 239, 240, 249. Barons, 158. Barrington, George, the pick- pocket, 95. Barry, 296. Barrymore, the Earl of, 50. Earth, Dr. Christian Gottlob, 39- Bartholo, Desessarts as, 158. Bartolozzi, the engraver, 42, 46. Barton, Catherine, 297, 298. JJasire, 169. Bastille, the, 151, Bate, Parson, T/ic Blackamoor washed white, 44. Batelier, 279. Bath, 55, 72, 90, 204, 268. Bathos, the, 301. Battle of La Hague, 296. Battle of the Boyne, West's, 42. Baxter, Mr. Timothy, 168. Bear Street, 294. Beaufort Buildings, 47. Beaumarchais, 109. Beaupre', 158. Beau-Tibbs-abovc-Stairs, 25. Beauties of English Poesy, Goldsmith's, 15, 20. Beaux' Stratagem, the, 22, 104. Becky Sharp, 44. Bedford, the Duke of, 92. Bee, The, periodical started by Goldsmith (1759), 22,26. Beer Buttery, the, 195. Beggar's Opera, Gay's, 264-268, 272. Bell, Messrs. George, and Sons, 132. Bellenden, Mary, 287, 288. Beman and Son, Messrs., 306. B6ranger, 150. Bergerac, 307, 308, 309, 310. Berkeley, Lord, 51, 82, 83, 236, 286. Berkeley letters, the, 77. Berkely, Lady, 28 v Berlin, 178. "Bermudas," the, 232, 233. Betterton, 54. Bewick, Thomas, the engraver, 105, 172, 173. Bibliotheque Nationale of France, the, 307, 310, General Index. Bickers, the Messrs., 129. Bickerstaff, Mr. Isaac, 246. Bickerstaff 1 s Lucubrations, 245. Billingsgate, 133. Billy the Butcher, 43. Binns, Mrs., 75. Biography of Charles /., Lilly's, 224. Birth of the Squire, Gay's, 273- Blackamoor -wasKd White, the, 44- Blackberry, 173. Black-ey'd Susan, Gay's, 260, 273- Blackfriars Bridge, 294. Blackmore, 64. Black Spread-Eagle, the, 243. Blake, 91. Blake, William, the engraver, 169, 265. Blenheim, 285. Blenheim MSS., the, 62, 76. Blessington, Lady, 206. Blind Man's Buff, Raimbach's, 144. Bloomsbury, 83, 231. Blount, Mountjoy, Earl of New- port, 278. " Blue-skin," see Blake, 91. Boarded Gallery, the, 192. Board of Trade, the, 195. Boerhaave, 91. Boileau, M., description of, 38. Boileau, Nicholas, 17, 65. Bolingbroke, Lord, 141, 252, 254. Bolton, Duchess of, 285. Bonaparte, 151, 152, 155, 160. Bond Street, 54. Bonetta, the, sloop, 322. Boothby, Miss Hill, 133. Boswell, James, 44, no, 112, 114; Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 114, 118; 115, 116, 117, 118, 119; Life of Johnson, 120-134 ; death of, 123; 135, 136, 137; Journal of a Tour to Corsica, 139 ; 304- Bosivclliana, 131, 137. Boswells, the, 95. Bos-well's Predecessors and Editors, 96, 109-143. Boucher, 154. Boulogne, 204. Bourgueleret, 180. Bourne, Vincent, 135. Bowling Green, the, 190, 197, 201. Boyle, 229. Bradshaw, Mrs., 108, 262. Brandenburgh House, 51. Brasenose College, 123. Brass, 50. Brick Court, No. 2, 31. Brighton, 50, 149, 210. British Museum, the, 70, 76, 231, 281, 308. British Museum Library, the, 203. Brooks's, 204. Broome, 247. Broughton, 54. Brown, " Capability," 100. Brummell, 210. Brunswick, the, 48. Brunswick, Prince of, 290. Buchard, 295. Buckhorse, the boxer, 107. General Index. Buckingham Court, 237. Buckingham, Duke of, 235, 255,285. Buckingham, Duchess of, 287. Buckinghamshire, Lady, 51. Buckley, 76. Bull, Mr. Edward, 93. Bull Head Tavern, the, 237. Bunbury, 304. Burbage, Richard, the actor, 145. Burdicll, Mr., Goldsmith's, 168, 170, 173, 176, 179, 291. Burford's Panorama, 276. Buridan, 272. Burke, Edmund, 18, 19, 94, 95, 100, 292, 299, 304, 305, 313. Burlington Gardens, 268. Burlington, Lord, 256, 259, 260, 262, 295. Burnet, 144, 192 ; History of the Reformation, 193 ; 284. Burney, Dr. Charles, 296, 299. Burney, Edward, 148. Burney, Fanny, 299. Burnham Beeches, 217. Burton, Dr. Hill, 241 ; History of the Reign of Queen Anne, 241. Bury Street, 73, 75. Butler, 108. Butler, James, 62. Byng, Sir George, 321. Byron, 53, 54, 98, 206, 215, 273- Byron, Lady, 98. C. CAEN, in Normandy, 222. Caermarthen, Marquis of, 291. Cedar's Commentaries, Clarke's, 286. Caf6 Jacob, the, 161. Calais, 163. Calais Gate, 301. Caldecott. Randolph, 182. Calwer, Verlags-Verein, the, 39- Cambridge, 53. Cambridge, Richard Owen, 96 ; the Scribleriad, 97; 293. Cambridge the Everything, 293- Camisard, 308, 309, 310. Campbell, Vitruvius Britanni- cus, 183. Campbell, Colonel John, 288. Campbell, Dr. Thomas, 134, 135. 136- Canaletto, 42, 230. Cannon Row, 237. Canons, 276, 295. Canterbury, the Archbishop of, 36- Captives, the, Gay's, 263. Captivity, Goldsmith's, 18. Carew, 224. Carhampton, the Earl of, 219. Carleton House, 234. Carleton's Memoirs, 63, 133. Carlisle House, 40, 43. Carlisle House Riding School, the, 42. Carlisle Street, 54, 107. Carlyle, Thomas, 124, 127, 129, 139- Carmarthen, 79. Caroline, Princess, 296. Carracci, the, 154. Carrickfcrgus, 81, 334 General Index. Carrington, Lord, 195. Carruthers, Dr. Robert, 128, 129. Carter, Mrs., 163. Case of Authors by Profession, Ralph's, 22. Castle, Mr. Egerton, 54. Castle Street, 303. Castlemaine, Lady, 188, 201. Catherine of Braganza, 192, 199. Catholic Bill, the, 291. Cato, Addison's, 256. Catton, Charles, 301. Catullus, 96. Cavallini, Pietro, 222. Cave, Edward, 240. Cecil Court, 145. Censorium, the, 80. Centlivre, Mrs., 67, 237. Cevennes, 308. Chabannes, Jacques de, Seigneur de la Palice, hero of Pavia, 14. Chalmers, Alexander, 76, 123. Chaloner, 223. Chamfort, 206. Champs-E'lys6es, the, 151. Chandos, the Duke of, 260. CJiapeau de Brigand, Uwins's, 172. Chapel, 74. Chapter of Accidents, Miss Lee's, 104. Charing Cross. 186, 188, 220, 221, 224, 225, 229, 230, 231, 233, 236, 277, 295. Charing Cross, the, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 229, 230, Charing Cross Road, 303. Charles, 209; Smith as, 105. Charles I., 184, 186, 196, 220, 224, 225, 226, 227, 234, 235, 287, 295. Charles II., 187, 193, 194, 199, 200, 225, 227, 279. Charles VI., Emperor, 282. Charles X., 229. Charles, Earl of Halifax, 297. Charles Street, 148, 292. Charlotte, Princess of Wales, 171. Charlotte, Queen, 99, 293. Charmouth, 257. Charterhouse, the, 60, 80. Chateaubriand, Cymodocee, 216. Chatham, Lord, 100, 106. Chaucer, Geoffrey, 37, 221. Chaumette, 157. Cheere, 295. Chelsea Hospital, the, 94. Cheltenham, 204. Cheselden, the anatomist, 89. Chesterfield, Lord, 90, 106, 136, 287. Chetwood, History of the Stage, 5_7- Chichester, the King of , 193. Chiffinch, 192. Chiswick, 36, 262, 301. Chiswick Press, the, 124. Chocolate House, 74. Chodowiecki, Daniel, 178, 179. Christ Church, Oxford, 61. Christian Hero, the, 61, 65. Christie's, 142. Christmas, Gerard, 228. Chudleigh, Miss, 288. Churchill, Charles, the satire of, General Index. 335 12; 91; The Ghost, 91; 99, 1 06; the K os dad, 106. Gibber, Colley, 237, 265. Gibber, Theophilus, 79 ; Lives of the Poets, 133.' Cipriani, 42, 46, 199. Citizen, Murphy's, 159. Citizen of the World, The, Goldsmith's, 26. 318. City Shower, Swift's, 213, 242, 257- Clairon, Mademoiselle, 22. Clandestine Marriage, Garrick and Colman's, 23. Clare, Lord, 18. Clarendon, the Earl of, 253. Clarendon Press, the, 138. Clarissa series, 169. Clarke, Samuel, 286. Clennell, Luke, 173. Cleveland, the Duchess of, 187, 194. Clive, Mrs. Catherine, 101, 103, 104. Cliveden, 103, 290. "Club, the," 117. Coan, the Norfolk dwarf, 106, 107. Cock and Fox, Chaucer's, 37. Cock Lane Ghost, 227, 229. Cockpit, the old, 74, 186, 197. Coffee House, 74. Cohen, 1 80. Colbert, Charles, Marquis do Croissy, 200, 276, 279. Coldstream Guards, the, 62, 63. Cole, Mrs., 49. College of Physicians, 233. College of Surgeons, the, 303. Collier, 65 ; Sliort View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, 66. Collins, B., 167. Collins, Mortimer, 51. Collins, William, Goldsmith's appreciation of the work of, 12. Colman, 23, 28, 87 ; Iron Chest, 146. Colman and Thornton, 313. Colnbrook, 50. Combe, 174. Comedie Lyrique, Poinsinet's, 160. Communion of St. Jerome, Domenichino's, 154. Company of Undertakers, 89. Camus, 50. Concannon, Mrs., 51. Conduitt, John, 298. Conduitt, Mrs., see Barton, Catherine. Confectionary, the, 195. Confederacy, Vanbrugh's, 50. Congreve, William, 22, 63, 257, 266, 289. Connoisseur, Colman and Thornton's, 313. Conscious Lovers, Steele's, 79. Constable, 144. Constant Couple, Farquhar's, 57. Consultation of Physicians, 89. Contarine, Jane, Goldsmith's verses for, 10. Contemplation upon Death, Gay's, 250. Cook, 293. Cook, a criminal, 225. Cook, Henry, the painter. 40, Cook, William, in, ijz, General Index. Cooke, Tales of the Genii, 148 ; 170. Cooke, Captain Henry, 187. Cooper, 90. Copperfield, David, 165. Coquecigrues, 30. Coquerel, M. A., Fils, 307, 311, 3 I2 3 2 4- Coram, Captain, 301. Corbould, George, 175. Corbould, R., 148, 170, 171, 175. Corfe, in Dorsetshire, 222. Cork, 7. Cornaro family, Titian's, 229. Cornelys, Mrs. Theresa, 40 ; her concerts, 41 ; 107, Cornhill, the, 138. Coromandel, 10. Correggio, Marriage of St. Catherine, 154. Corsica, King of, 91. Costigans, the, 165. Council office, the, 189. Cousens, 144. Covent Garden, 23, 28, 45, 114, 134, 221, 238, 301, 303. Coverley, Sir Roger de, 187. Cow Lane, 280. Cowper, William, 13 ; pioneer of the new school, 13 ; 84. Cozens, Alexander, 46. Grace collection, the, 281. Cradock, 17, 20. Craggs, 260. Craig, William Marshall, 171. Creed, Mr., 200. Ciemona, 283. " C'ribbee Islands," 232, 233. Cries of London ,52. Crisis, the, Steele's, 78, 79. Critic, the, 97, 106. Croaker, Shuter as, 24 ; 25, 26. Croaker, Ally, 18, 19. Croaker, Mrs., 25. Crockford 'House, Luttrell's, 204, 217. Crockford's, 204. Croissy, Marquis de, 200, 279. Croker, John Wilson, 109, 124, 126, 127, 130, 131, 132, 133, 137, 139, Hi> I43> 2 99- Cromwell, Henry, 246, 247, 256. Cromwell, Oliver, 199, 224, 236. Cross, Mr., 232. Crosse, Mrs. Andrew, 219. Cross Readings, 96. Cruikshank, George, 55, 166, 176, 182. Cruikshank, Robert, 88. Crundale, Richard de, 222. Cumberland, Duke of, 135, 197, 289. Cumberland, Richard, West In* dian, 27 ; 31, 96, 97, 126, 134. Cunningham, Peter, 198, 225, 238, 278, 295. Curll, Edmund, 227. Cutts, Lord, 62, 63, 64. Cuylenberg, 325. Cymodoc'ee, Chateaubriand's, 216. Czar, the, 291. D. Daily Graphic, the, 316. D'Alembcrt, see Alembert, D '. Dalrymple, Sir David, 137. Danckers, 200. D'Arblay, Madame, see Arblay, Madame D '. General Index. 337 Das Kind der Licbe, Kotzebue, 108. David, Jacques Louis, 154; The Sabines, 154; 155. David, Madame, 155. Davies, Thomas, 114. Davy, Lady, 205. Dean and Murday, Messrs., 171. Dean Street, 41. Death of General Wolfe, 296. Death on the Pale Horse, West's, 155. Debates in Parliaments, John- son's, 143. Delaval, Lord, 40. Dennis, the critic. 81, 248, 259. D'Entraigues, see Entraigues, d'. D'E"on, see E'en, D'. Deptford, 291. Derby, Lord, 104. Desborough, Captain, 282. Desdemona, 224. Deserted Village, Goldsmith's, 9, 15, 17, 18, 19, 27, 32. Desessarts, 158. Desforges, M., Tom Jones h Londres, 159. Desnoyers, the dancing master, 288. Destouches, Nericault, La Fausse Agnls, 159. Devil Tavern, the, 244. Devone, Monsieur, 225. Devonshire, 142, 256. Devonshire, the Duke of, 35. Dial, the, 226. Diary of a Tour in Wales, 129, 132. Dibdin, Charles, the song-writer, 147, 295. Dick, 50. Dickens, Charles, 166, 291. " Dickey, little," Addison's, 158. Dicky, 57. Diderot, 55. Dieppe, 149, 150. Dilly, Charles, 120. Dilly, Edward, 312, 313, 314, 3i5- Diane, 260. Distressed Mother, the, Kem- ble's, 159. Doble, 286. Dr. Johnson ; His Friends and His Critics, Hill's, 136. 138. Doctor Syntax, Combe's, 174. Dodd, the actor, 105. Dodd, Daniel, the miniaturist, 167, 168. Dodd, Dr., execution of, 45. Dodd's Chapel, Dr., 135. Dodington, Bubb, 288. Dodsley's Freedom and Sympa- thy, 16. Domenichino, Comimtnion of St. Jerome, 153. Dominicetti, the Italian quack, 37- Donaldson, Mr., 107. Don Quixote, Smirke's, 165 ; Tony Johannot's, 165 ; Gus- tave Dora's, 165. Dorchester, 257. Dorchester, Countess of, 187. Dordogne, 307. Dore 1 , Gustave, 165. Dorset, 237. Dorset Place, 222, 233. 22 338 General Index. Double Dealer, the, 101. Double Transformation, The, Goldsmith's, 13 ; Prior the model for, 13. Douglas, Charles, 240. Douglas, Home's, 313. Douglas, Vice-Admiral, 325. Dover, 163. Dover, the Duke of, 240. Dragon, the, man-of-war, 36. Drake, 76. Drayton, Michael, 278. Dress, Gay on, 250. Dromore, Bishop of, 229. Drummer, the, Addison's, 58. Drummond's Bank, 237. Drury Lane, 23, 28, 42, 44, 67. Drury Lane Theatre, So, 97, 98, 250, 255, 261. Dryden, John, Goldsmith's ad- miration for the work of, 12; Quack Maurus, 64 ; 142, 143. Dublin, 7, 9, 60, 270, 282. Dublin street-singers, Gold- smith's ballads for, 9. Duchesnois, Mile., 156, 158. Dugazon, 158. Duill, Mrs., 105. Du Maurier, 166. Dumont, Mrs., 324. Duncannon Street, 231. Dunciad, Griffith's, 312, 313, 316, 318. Dunciad, Pope's, 109. Dunkirk, 78, 322. Duperrier, Francois, 194. Dupont, Gainsborough, 144. Dutch school, the, 153. Dyer, 117. Pyers, the, Q, E. EATON SQUARE, 107. Eclogues, Gay's, 273. Ecole des Armes, the elder Angelo's, 55. Ecolcs de Notre Dame de France, 294. Edgeware, 295. Edgware, 27. Edinburgh, the, 57. Edward VI., 192. Ed-win and Angelina, Gold- smith's, 17. Egerton, T., 56. Eginton, 172. Egleton, Mrs., 265. Eglise Reformec, f, 310. Egmont's MSS., Lord, 77. Eighteenth Century Vignettes, Dobson's First Series, 269 ; Second Series, 233 ; Third Series, 237, 288, 293. Eleanor, Queen, 220, 221, 222. Election Entertainment, the, 238. Election of Gotham, the, 67. Elegy, Gray's, 12 ; Goldsmith's criticism of, 12. Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog, Goldsmith's, 14, 15, 181, 182. Elizabeth of Bohemia, 279. Elizabeth, Queen, 150, 185, 221. Elliot's Light Horse, 34. Ellis, Dr. Welbore, 61. Elphinston, Mr., 114. Ehvin, Mr., 250. Embankment, the, 191, Empire, the, 276, General Index. 139 Enfield Old Park, 315. England, 22, 178. English Garner, 245. English Historical Review, the, 320. English Humourists, Thack- eray's, 239. English Illustrated Magazine, 182. Englishman, the, 78. Entraigues, Count d', 157. Entraigues, Countess d', 157. Epigrammatical Petition, Gay's, 253. Fpistle to a Lady, Gay's, 255. Epistle to Bernard Lintott, Gay's, 243, 247. Epistle to Churchill, Lloyd's, 227. Eon, the Chevalier D', 41, 55, 107. Erse Grammar, Shaw's, 114. Erskine, Andrew, 139. Es crime, 55. Escurial, the, 184. Essay on Criticism, 247. Essay on the Life, Character, and Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson, Toilers', 118. Essex, 198. Essex, Countess of, 261. Eton, 36, 46, 107. Eugene, Prince, 276, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286. European Magazine, the, in, 112. Evelina, 299. Evelyn, John, 186, 187, 188, 189 ; his Diary, 190, 191, 19 2 >I93> 194; 20. 202 22 5. 228, 229, 236, 279, 280, 281, 291. Exeter, 256, 259, 260. Exeter Change, 232, 270. F. Fables, Gay's, 263, 273. Fagan, Mr. Louis, 295. Fair Penitent, Rowe's, 102. Faithorne's map, 277. False Delicacy, Hugh Kelly's, 24. Palstaff, Sir John, Stephen Kemble's, 105 ; Kenny Mea- dows', 165 ; Sir John Gil- bert's, 165 ; Edwin A. Abbey's, 166. Fan, the, Gay's, 250, 273. Farintosh, Lord, 50. Faro's Daughters, 51. Farquhar, Constant Couple, 57. Farquhars, the, 31. Farren, Miss, 104. Fauconberg, Lady, 289. Faulkland, 29. Faussans, the, 289. Fawcett, 88. Female Faction, the, 267. Female Phaeton, Prior's, 240. Fenton, 247, 261. Fenton, Lavinia, 265. Ferdinand, Prince of Bruns- wick, 290. Yielding, Henry, his burlesque of Richardson's Pamela, 20 ; Joseph Andrews, 20, 168, 169, 251 ; Pasquin, 23 ; 30, 58, 71, So, 82, 89, 102, 115; Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, 142; 273, 301. 340 General Index. Fife House, 195. Finden, William, the engraver, 144, 175, 180. Fisher, Edward, the mezzo- tinter, 144, 300. Fisher, John, 185. Fisher's Plan, 185, 186, 190, 196. Fish-Pool, the, So. Fitzgerald, Mr. Percy, 129, 130, 131, 138, 143- Fitzherbert, Mrs., 50. Five Fields, the, 107. Fives Court, the, 210. Flanders, 282. Flattery, Gay on, 250. Flaxman, 147, 149, 170. Flemish school, the, 153. Florence, 290. Flying-Post, the, 64. Fontenoy, the battle of, 289. Foote, Samuel, The Handsome Housemaid ; or, Piety in Pat- tens, 29; 39, 40, 41; Taste, 40, 50; Minor, 49; The Liar, 49- Foppington, Lord, 162, 237. Formats potir la Foi, Coquerel's, 37- Ford, Mr. Edward, 315. Ford, Mr. J. W., 315. Ford, Major, 69. Ford, Parson, 135. Ford, Sir Richard, 201. Foreign Offices, the, 183. Fores, of Piccadilly, 48. Forster, Biography of Gold- smith, 8 Arabian Nights, !4S; 3i4,3i5> 3!6, 3i7- " Forster Library," the, 241. Fortescue, 242. Fortescue, Mrs., 270. Forth, the, 321. Forton, 48. Foster, Sermons, 136. Foundling, the, 135. Four Stages of Cruelty, the, Hogarth's, 46. Fox, Charles, 95, 156; History of the Revolution of 1688, 156. Fragonard, 154. France, 180, 229. Franklin, Benjamin, 299, 302. Frederick, Prince of Wales, 276, 288, 290. Frederick the Great. 301. Frederika, 179. Freedom, Dodsley's, 16. Freemasons' Tavern, the, 88. French Revolution, the, 147, 149, 151. Frere, 27^. Friar Pine, the, 301. " Ftibs," the Royal yacht, 282. Fnitc dn Camisard, la, Vidal's, 310. Funeral, the, Steele's, 57, 65. Fuseli, 99. G. GAINSBOROUGH, 42, 144. Gallas, Count, 286. Gamps, the, 765. Gardel, Mme., 158. Garrick, Carrington, 36. Garrick, David, 18, 23, 24, 28, 31, 36, 40; his farewell to the stage, 45, 49; 101, 105, 107, General Index. 135 ; Ode on Mr. Pel/tarn, 141; 146, 302, 304. Garrick, Mrs., 37, 45. Garrick, Nathan, 36. Garrick and Colman's Clandes- tine Marriage, 23; Lord Ogleby, 23. Gascoigne, Henry, 60. Gatti, 88. Gautier, Theophile, 165. Gay, John, 12, 19, 38, 67, 156, 232 ; Life of, 239 ; birth of, 239 ; Poetical Works, 239 ; education of, 240; his school- days, 240, 241 ; apprenticed to a silk mercer, 241 ; Wine, 243; Epistle to Bernard Lintott, 243; the Present State of Wit, 245, 246; his appoint- ment to Monmouth, 248 ; Rural Sports, 249 ; The Wife of Bath, 250 ; on Flattery and Dress, 250; the Fan, 250; A Contemplation upon Death, 250 ; Panthea, 250 ; Araminta, 250 ; The Shep- herd' 1 s Week, 250 ; his ap- pointment to Hanover, 253 ; his Epigrammatical Petition, '253 ; Epistle to a Lady, 255; What

3*7, 3 J 9 3 2 3. 3 2 4, 3 2 5- " Goldsmith House," 316. Goldsmith Road, 316. Goldsmith's Poetical Works, 3'3- Goodall, 144. Goodman's Fields, 101. Good-Natur'dMan, The, Gold- smith's first comedy, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29. Gordon rioters, the, 146. Gordon riots, the, 46. Goschen, Mr., 272. Goujon, Jean, the door 3*7, 3' 8 - Grignion, the engraver, 55. Gros, 155. Grosvenor, Lady, 135. Grotius, 254. Grub-street, 83. Grumbler, The, Goldsmith's, 3i- Guardian, the, 77, 78, 82, 250. Guelderland, 325. Guercino, 154. Guerin, 155. Guide de I' Amateur de Livres h Vignettes, Cohen's, 180. Guido, 154. Guiscard, 186. Guizot, Madame, 249. Gunter, Edmund, 189. Gwydyr House, 185. Gwynne, the painter, 55. H. HACKMAN, James, execution of, 45- Haddock, Captain, 323. Hague, the, 153, 282, 283, 306. Halifax, Earl of, 15, 246, 297, 298. Hall, John, 42, 55, 146, 147. Halle, 309. Hall of Antiques, the, 154. Hamilton, Anthony, 187. 344 General Index. Hammersmith, 51. Hampstead, 222. Hampton Court, 198, 201. Handsome Housemaid, The ; or, Piety in Pattens, Foote's, 29. Hanmer, Lady Catherine, 289. Hanmer, Miss, 240. Hanmer, Rev. John, 242. Hanover, Court of, 253. Hanoverian succession, the, 78. Hanway, Jonas, 258. Harcourt, Sir William, 259, 272. " Hardcastle, Ephraim " (W. H. Pyne), 52, 230. Hardcastle, Miss, 30. Hardcastles, the, 30. Hare and Many Friends, the, 269. Harley, 77, 186. Harrison, 168. Harrison, Major- General, 224; 225. Harrison, Mrs., 224. Harrow, 41, 53. Hartley-Row, 256. Hartshorne Lane, 222. Harwich, 321. Hastings, 31. Hastings trial, the, 94. Hatfield Peverell, 198. Hatton, 189. Haunch of Venison, The, Gold- smith's, 18. Hawkins, Sir John, 17, 116, 117, 118, 126, 133. Hayman, Frank, 49, 52. Haymarket, the, 54, 234. Hearne, 286. " Hearts, the Queen of, " 279. Heath, 144, 168, 171. Hebrides, the, 114, 118, 119. Hedge Lane, 221, 277. Hemings' Row, 231. Hendon, 27. Henrietta, Congreve's, 266. Henry 111., 222. Henry VIII., 185, 197, 231. Henry, Prince of Wales, 278. Hentzner, 198. Herbert, Henry, Earl of Pem- broke, 34, 55. Heretical Book, Whiston's, 286. Her Majesty's Theatre, 221. Hermit, Goldsmith's, 37. Hero of Culloden, the, 43. Hervart, M.and Mme. de, 269. Hervey, Captain Augustus, 36. Hervey, Lady, 36, 288. Hervey, Lord, 265, 287, 288. Highgate, 222. Hill, Aaron, the play wright, 243. Hill, Dr. George Birkbeck, 94, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143- Hills, Henry, 243. Hippokekoana, Countess of, 2^9. History of Animated Nature, Goldsmith's, 20. History of Music, Burney's, 299. History of Our Own Times, 316. History of the Reformation, Burnet's, 193. History of the Revolution of 1688, Fox's, 156. History of the Stage, the, Chet- wood's, 57. Hoadly, Suspicious Husband, 135- General Index. 345 Hockley-in-the-Hole, 289. Hodson, Daniel, 21, 317. Hoffmann, 286. Hogarth, William, 35 ; Four Stages of Cruelty, 46 ; 89, 149, 163, 230, 237, 238, 265, 276, 288, 300, 301, 302, 303, 34- Hogarth, Mrs. William, 276, 302. Hogarth, Mrs. (mere), 145. Holbein's Gate, 186, 193, 196, 197. Holborn, 57. Holborn Conduit, 226. Holcroft, Thomas, 160 ; the Road to Ruin, 161 ; Travels in France, 161 ; 296. Holkham, 132. Holland, 285. 308, 323. Holland, Lady, Life of Sydney Smith, 205. Holland, Lord, 204. Holies Street, 93. " Holophusikon," Lever's, 292, 293- Home, 313. Homer, Barnes's, 286. Honeycomb, Will., 258. Honey-wood, Powell as, 25. Hook, Theodore, 53. Horace, 206, 208, 209, 218, 237. Horace, Maittaire's, 241. Horatio, Quin as, 102. Horse Grenadier Guards, the, 292. Horse Guards, the, 62. Horse Guards Avenue, 184, 195. Horse Guard Yard, the, 187, 196. Houghton, Lord, 131. Howard, Henry, Earl of Nort- hampton, 228, 229. Howard, Mrs., 255, 262, 267. Howard family, the, 40. Howe, Lord, 47, 48. Howe, Sophia, 288. Howell, 279. Hoyden, Miss, 162. Huguenot Galley-Slave, the, 3"- Human Life, Rogers', 218. Humber, the, 321. Hummums, the, 134. Humphry, Ozias, the miniatur- ist, 99. Hunter, John, 276, 302; his museum of Comparative and Pathological Anatomy, 303. Hunter, William, 303. Huot, i So. Huth, Mr., 238. Hyde, Catherine, 253, 261. Hyde, Lady Jane, 253, 261. Hyde, Mr., 190. Hyde Park, 64. Hyde Park Corner, 295. I. lago, Macklin as, 101. Idler, the, 112. Iliad. Homer's, 231, 273. " Imperial Resident," the, 281, 286. Imperio-Classical School, the, 154. Importance of Dunkirk Con- sider'd, the, Steele's, 78. Importance of the " Guardian " Considered, the, Swift's, 78. 346 General Index. Inchbald, Mrs., 108. India Office, the, 183. Ingres, 155. Ireland, 62, 76, 136, 298. Ireland, John, the Hogarth com- mentator, 147. Irene, 101. Irish Melodies, 219. Iron Chest, Colman's, 146. Irving, Washington, 229. Isabey, the miniaturist, 154. Isleworth, 228. Isocrates, 13. Italian opera, the, 159. Italian Opera House, the, 49. Ivy Lane, 117. J- JACKSON, 54. Jacob's Well, 50. Jacque, Charles, 180. Jamaica, Governor of, 88. James I., 184, 189, 198, 234. James II., 184, 198, 278, 287. James, Mrs., 71. Janin, Jules, 180. Jansen, Bernard, 228. Jar din des Plantes, the, 153. Jeffery, 204. Jekyll, 204. Jenkinson, 179. Jeremy Diddler, Kenney's, 215 Jermy, Seth, 320, 321, 322. Jermyn Street, 73. Jervas, Charles, 261, 262. Jesse, J. Heneage, 198. Johannot, Tony, 165, 180. John, Lord Cutts, 62. John, Lord Hervey, 265, 288. [ohn of Bologna, 226. Johnson, Elizabeth, marries Dommico Angelo, 36 ; her son, 36. Johnson, Mrs., 282. Johnson, Samuel, 9, 16, 17, 28, 29, 30 ; prologue to The Good Natur^d Man, 24 ; Suspirius, 25; 5 8 > 94, 99, ii> i9> IIO > in, 112; Memoirs of, 114; Anecdotes of, 115; 116, 117, 1 18 ; Essay on the Life, Char- acter, and Writings of, 118; Journey to the Western Is- lands of Scotland, 118; 119; Boswell's Life of, 120-134; 135; His Friends and His Critics, 136; the Spirit of, 137 ; 142 ; Debates in Parlia- ment, 143; 229; Poets, 239 j 249, 272, 299, 304. Jchnsoniana, Mrs. Napier's, 113? "5, T 33- Johnsonian Miscellanies,l\\\\ s, M3- Jones, Henry, 90. Jones, Inigo, 183. Jones, John, 224, 225. Jonson, Ben, 199, 222, 232. Jordaens, 199. Jordan, Mrs., 104. Joseph Andrews, Fielding's, 20, 168, 169, 251. Jouaust, 181. Journal des S^avans, the, 280. Journal of a Tour to Corsica, Boswell's, 139. Journal of a Tour to the Heb- rides, Boswell's, 114, 1 18, I2o r 121, 122, 126, 129. General Index. 347 Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, Fielding's, 142. Journal to Stella, 76. Journey to Exeter, Gay's, 256. Journey to the Western Is- lands of Scotland, Johnson's, 118, 132, 136. Judgment of Paris, the, 289. Julia, 30, 208, 209. Jnniits, 92. K. KAUFFMAN, Angelica, 228. Kean, Charles, 108. Kean, Edmund, 54, 55. Kearsley, G., 1 1 1 . Keats, John, 16. Keble, William, 243. Keith, Marshal, 91. Kelly, 64. Kelly, Hugh, False Delicacy, produced by Garrick at Drury Lane, 24, 25 ; 27 ; A Word to the Wise, 27; 29, 31, 95. Kemblc, Charles, 105. Kemble, John, 105, 146, 157, 159; the Distressed Mother, 159. Kembb, Stephen George, 105. Kenney, Jeremy Diddlcr, 215. Kensington, 296. Kent, 279. Kent, William, 231, 260. Kent's Horse Guards, 183, 184. Kdroualle, Louise Ren6e de, 190. Kevv, 157. Keys, Dr., 35. King, Dr., 89. King's Mews, the, 220, 221, 231, 277, 279. King's Square Court, 40. King Street, 186, 197. King Street Gate, 186, 197. Kirk, Mrs., 187. Kit Cat Club, the, 68, 70, 299. Kitty, Prior's, 261, 269. Kneller, 71, 284. Knightsbridge, 107. Kotzebue, 108. Ladies Library, the, 80. " Lady Louisa of Leicester Square," the, 299. Lady's Last Stake, the, Huth's, 238. La Fausse Agnts, Destouches', 159. La Fontaine, 91, 268, 271. Lalauze, M. Adolphe, 181. Lallah Rookfi, Moore's, 218. Lamb, Charles, 105, 163. Lambert, George, the scene painter, 301. " Lammas," 278. Lammasland. 278. I.a Monnoye, 14. La Motte, M. de, 44. Lampson, Mr. Locker, 217. Lancret. 181. Landguard Fort, 67. Landlady, the, 167, 171. Landor, 86. Landseer, 144, 233. Lange, Janet, 180. Langford's, 42. Languedoc, 308, General Index. La Palice, Seigneur de, see Chabannes, Jacques de. Laporte, 159. La Sabliere, Mme. de, 268. Lauderdale, the Earl of, 190, 218. Laughton, Professor J. K., 320, 322. La Vendee, 48. Layer, Counsellor Christopher, 91. Lays (Lais), Frangois, 157. Lear, Garrick as, 135. Lee, Miss, 104. Le Flcix, 310. Leghorn, 35. Leicester, Earl of, 278, 279, 281. Leicester Fields, 35, 275-305. Leicester House, 276, 278, 279, 280, 281, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294. Leicester Mews, the, 295. Leicester Place, 278, 294, 295. Leicester Square, 275, 276. Leicester Street, 294. Lekains, the, 158. Lenoir, M. Alexandre, 162. Lepel, Mary, 287, 288. Le Sceur, Hubert, 226, 295. Letter from Italy to Lord Hali- fax, Addison's, 15 ; Gold- smith's The Traveller sug- gested by, 15. Letters from a Dandy to a Doll, 216. Letters to Julia, Luttrcll's, 203- 219. Letter to Mrs. Bunbury, Gold- smith's, 1 8. Lever, Sir Ashton, 29?, 293. Lever, Charles, 292. Lewes, Sir Watkin, 96. Lewis, the actor, 105. Lewis, Mrs. Mary, 302. Leypoldt and Holt, Messrs., 3"- Liar, the, Foote's, 49. Library School of St. Martin's, the, 146. Lichfield, 133. Life of Goldsmith, Forster's, 8. Lifeof Parnell, Goldsmith's, 15. Life of Samuel Johnson, Bos- well's, 120-134; the Oxford edition, 123. Lille, 319. Lilly, William, 224. Lincoln, Earl of, 262. Lincoln's Inn Fields, 98, 264. Linnaeus, 91. Linton, 173. Lintott, Bernard, 243, 247, 248. Linwood's Art Needlework. Miss, 276, 292. Lion d' Argent, the, 163. Lions, Landscer's, 233. Lisbon, 142. Lisburn, Lord, 20. Lisle Sti-cet, 278, 294. Listen, 146. Literary Gazette, the, 93. ; Literary Illustrations, Nichols', no. Literary Magazine, the, 317. Litlle Comedy, Goldsmith's, 18. Little Dickey, 57. Little Newport Street, 277. Little Strawberry, 103. Livesay, Richard, the engraver, 702. General Index. Lives of the Poets, Gibber's, 133. Liviez, M., 38. Lloyd, Robert, 106, 227. Locket, 237. Lofty, 25. Logicians Refuted, The, Gold- smith's, 13 ; Swift the model for, 13. Lomsbery, 231. London, 7, 34, 35, 39, 40, 47, 72,87, 109, 115, 134, 157,159. 214, 258, 275, 285, 293, 294, 3 2 3, 325- London and Wise, Messrs., 200. London County Council, 236, 238. London militia, 223. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 13- Long Parliament, the, 223. Long Walk, the, 197. Lord Chamberlain, the. 189, 196, 266. Lord Keeper's Office, the, 189. Lord Ogleby, Garrick and Col- man's, 23. Lort, Michael, no. Lothario, 102. Louis XIV., 62, 279. Louis XIV. et la Revocation, 308. Louis XIV. et le Due de Bour- gogne, Michelet's, 308. Louis XV., 33. Louisa, Princess, 264. Loutherbourg, Philip de, 42. Louvre, the, 153, 154, 156, 184. " Lovers' Vows," Mrs. Inch- bald's, 108. Lowe, Mauritius, 133. Lower Park Road, 316. Lucas, Lord, 65, 144. Lucas's Fusileers, 63, 67. Lucius , 81. Luck, Robert, 240; Miscellany of New Poems, 240 ; 243. Lucy, Mrs. Egleton as, 265. Ludlow Castle, the, English man-of-war, 322. Lumpkin, Tony, 30, 179, 293. Lnsignan, Garrick as, 135. Luttrell, Colonel, 219. Luttrell, Henry, 64, 108; Let- ters to Julia, 203-219; opin- ions of, 205-216; Crockford House, 217; fugitive verses, 217; his lesser pieces, 218, 219. Luxembourg, the, 155. Lydia, 208, 209. Lying Lover, the, Steele's, 66. Lyra Elegantiarum, 217. M. MABUSE, 192. MacArdell, the mezzotinter, 144. Macaulay, T. B., 57, 124, 127, 13, '33i 290. MacKinnon, General, 63. Mackintosh, 204. Macklin, 101, 102. Maclean, James, the "gentle- man highwayman," 107. Macmillan and Co., Messrs., 182, 301. Macpherson, 114. Madame Blaizc, Goldsmith's, 14. Magdalen, 61. Maginn, 232. Maiano, John de, 198. General Index. Maillard, Mile., 157. Mainwaring, Arthur, 70. Maittaire, Horace, 241. Malone, 115, 116, 119, 121, 123, 128, 138, 141, 277. Manchester, 293. Manley, Mr., 68. Manley, Mrs. De la Riviere, 68, 69, 70. Mann, 290. Mansfield Park, Miss Austen's, 108. Mantal, 309. Maplesden, Margery, 67. Mapp, Mrs. Sarah, the Epsom bone-setter, 89. Marengo, 152. Marlborough daughters, the, 285. Marlborough, Duchess of, 90, 266, 268. Marlborough, Duke of, 76, 83, 282, 284, 286. Mar low, 31. Marriage of St. Catherine, Cor- reggio's, 154. Mars, Mile., 158. Marteilhe, Jean, Memoirs of, 306-325. Marvell, Andrew, 189. Marville, C., 180. Mary, Queen, 62. Mason, 304. Masters of Wood Engraving, Linton's, 173. Mathews, Captain, 41. Mathews, Charles, the elder, 146, 157. Matted Gallery, the, 192. Matthews, 88. Maurus, Terentianus, 306. Mazarine, 194. Mead, Dr., 286. Meadows, Kenny, 165. Meissonier, 180. Melcombe, Lord, 288. Memoirs, Carleton's, 63. Memoirs of a Protestant, 306- 3 2 5- Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the late Dr. Samuel Johnson, 114. Memorandum Book for 1805, 170. Menagiana, Goldsmith's ac- quaintance with, 13. Mercutio, Lewis as, 105. Merry Monarch, 225. Merton, 61. Metastasio, 91. Metropolitan Board of Works, the, 236. Mews, the, of Richmond Ter- race, 184. Michelet, 308. Middlesex, Lady, 288, 289. Military Garden, the old, 278. Military Library, the, 56. Millar, Andrew, 20. Milner, Dr. John, 316. Milton, John, 237. Minor, Foote's, 49. Mirror of Amusement, 171. Miscellany of New Poems, Luck's, 240. Mr. Bickerstaff s Lucubrations, 76. Mitchel, the banker, 47. Mohocks, the, 247, 258. Moira, Lord, 48. Moliere, 66, 97. General Index. 35' Molly Mog, Gay's ballad on, 273- Monarch, the famous white charger, 42. Moncrieff, 88. Monk, Duke of Albemarle, 186. Monkstorm, 60. Monmouth, Duchess of, 248, 2 53. 259- Monmouth, Duke of, 187, 248. Monsey, Dr. Messenger, 94. Monsieur Tonson, the author of, 87-108; 217. Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 260. Montagu, 304. Montaigne, n. Montgomery, Earl of, 186, 235. Monthly Review, the, n, 312, 313, 316, 317, 318. Monvel, 158. Moore, Arthur, 151. Moore, Thomas, 204 ; his Diary, 208, 217; Lallah Rookh, 218 ; 219. Morbleu, Monsieur, 88. More, Hannah, 134. Morecombe-lake, 256. Morel-Fatio, Antoine L6on, the marine artist, 310, 311. Morgan, Professor Augustus de, 297. Morley, Professor Henry, 137. Morning, 257. Morning Chronicle, the, 163, Morocco, 200. Morris, Henry, 158. Morrison collection, the, 67. Moses, 171, 176. Motet, the champion farcttr, 39. Moulsey, 210. Mountain, 60. Mulready, 176, 177, 181. Murphy, Arthur, 126, 134, 135 ; the Citizen, 159. Murray, Mr. John, 54, 265. Murray, Sir Robert, 189. Mus6edes Monuments, the, 162. Museum Leverianum, the, 294. My Own Boastings, Angelo's, 54- Mylius, August, 178. Myra, lines to, Goldsmith's, 14. N. NAG'S HEAD YARD, 301. Nairne, the Highland girl of, 140. Nantes, the Edict of, 309. Napier, Rev. Alexander, 113, 120, 128,132, 133, 136, 137. Napier, Mrs., Johnsoniana, i'3> "5> '33- National Gallery, the, 220, 231, 233. 2 38. National Portrait Gallery, the, 231, 261. Neapolitan Club, the, 46, 204. Nelson's Column, 233. Netherlands, the, 312, 324. Neville, Miss, 31. New Atalantis, the, 68, 80. New Bath Guide, Anstey's, 18. Newbury, F., 167. Newcastle Theatre, the, 105. Newcome, dive, 165. Newcomes, the, 50. New Lisle Street, 294. Newmarket, 210. Newport, the Earl of, 278, 352 General Index. Newport House, 277. New Simile, A, Goldsmith's, 13 ; Swift the model for, 13. New South Wales, 134. Newton, Sir Isaac, 276, 296, 298, 299, 300, 301. Newlon: his Friend: and his Niece, 297. Nichols, 75, 76, no, 300, 302. Nicolini, 285. Night, Hogarth's, 237. Nightingale, the, 320, 321, 322. Night Thoughts, Young's, Gold- smith's interest in, 12. Nimes, 310. Nivernais, the Duke de, a for- eign prot6g6 of, 33. Noctes Ambrosiance, the, 206. Nodier, Charles, 180. Nore, the, 282. Normanby, Marquis of, 186. Normandy, 222. N orris, Henry, 57. Northampton House, 228. Northcote, 99, 142, 143, 147. Northern France, 150. Northumberland, Duke of, 228, 229, 230. Northumberland Hotel, 230. Northumberland House, 220, 221, 227, 229, 230, 238. Northumberland Street, 222 227. Norwood, 289. Notre Dame, 153. Nottinghams, the, 78. Novelist's Library, Roscoe's, 176. Novelist's Magazine, Harri- son's, 168, 169, 172. GATES, Titus, 227. O'Brien, Nelly, 304. O'Connor, John. 276. Ode on Mr. Pelhatn, Garrick's, 141. Old Bailey, the, 44, 91, 323. Old Whig, the, 57, 58. Oldys, the antiquary, 92. Oliver Goldsmith ; a Biography, 230. On a Beautiful Youth struck blind with Lightning, Gold- smith's, 14. On the Sublime and Beautiful, Burke's, 313. Opera House buildings, the, 54. " Ophthalmiater," 89. Opie, John, 99, 147, 149, 296. Orange Coffee House, the, 54. Orange Street, 279, 296, 301. Orestes, 159. Ormond, the Dukes of, 60, 62, 187. Osbaldeston, Simon, 235. Osbaldistone, Frank, 165. Ossianic controversy, the, 114. Ostend, 48, 73. Otway, 102. Oudenarde, 285. Overall, Mr. W. H., 277. Ovid, 247. Owen, Henry, 72. Oxford, 61. Oxford, Lord, 253. Oxfordshire, 259, 262. P. PAINE, Thomas, 161 ; Rights of Man, 161. General Index. 353 Palace, 74. Palais de Justice, the, 162. Palais du Tribunal, see Tribu- nat, the. Palais Royal, the, 160, 163. Palmer, Barbara, 189, 193, 224. Palmer, Jack, the actor, 105, 106. Pamela, Pope's, 74. Pamela, Richardson's, 20. Panopticon, the, 276. Pantagruel, 30. Panthea, Gay's, 250. Pantheon, the, 135. Paoli, General, 41. Parchment Library, 182. Paris, 22, 33, 38, 39, 43, 47, 145, 149, 150, 153, 164, 210, 280, 307- Paris, Congreve as, 289. Park, 74. Parker, James, 169. Parkinson, Mr., 293. Park Lane, 316. Parliament Street, 183, 197. Parnell, 313. Parr, Dr., 94, 95. Parsons, 227. Pasqitin, Fielding's, 23. Pastorals, the, 247. Paternoster Row. 314. Patronage of British Art, 169. Paumier, M. Henri, 311, 324. Pavia, 14. " Payne, Honest Tom," 232. Paynes, The Two, Dobson's, 33- Peckham. 8. Peckham Academy, 316. Peel, 220. Pelham, 204. Pelham, Mr., 141, 142. Pembroke, Earl of, 186 ; see also Herbert, Henry. Pennant, 196 ; Some Account of London, 197; 198, 294. Penshurst, 279. Pent-teazel, Lady, 50. Pepys, Samuel, 188, 192, 193, 200; his Diary, 201, 202; 224, 279, 280. Perceval, Sir John, 83. Percies, the palace of, 221, 228. Percy, Algernon, Earl of North- umberland, 228. Percy, Thomas, 17,76, no, 134, 223, 228. Perreau, the Brothers, 44. Perrean, Farmer, 44. Peterborough, Lord, 190. Peters, Cromwell's chaplain, 99, 224, 225. Petersham, 262. Peter the Great, 291. Petits-Augustins, the, 162. Petit-Trianon, 103. Phldre, Duchesnois in, 157. Philip, Earl of Montgomery, 2.35 Philips, Ambrose, Pastorals, 251. Philips, John, Splendid Skill- "'.C, =43- Phillips, Sir Richard, Walk from London to Kev?, 157. "Phiz," 166. Piazza, the, 42. 45, 135. Picart, M., 159. Picart's Theatre, 159. Piccadilly, 48, 73, 175, 262, 295. Pic-Nic Society, the, 51. 2 3 354 General Index. Pimlico, 232. Pinchbecks, the, 107. Pindar, Peter, 47, 99, 103. Pindaric Odes, Thomas Gray's, 12; Goldsmith's criticism of, 12. Pine, 301. Pinwell, G. J., 177. Piozzi, Hesther Lynch, 115, 116, 118, 126, 133, 299. Place du Carrousel, the, 152. Place Vendome, the, 151. Plagiary, Sir Fretful, 97. Pleasures of Memory, Rogers', 174. Pliant, Sir Paul, Macklin as, 101. Poems far Young Ladies, Gold- smith's, 17. Poems of Goldsmith and Par- nell, 313. Poetical Miscellany, Stecle's, 250. Poetry, Temple on, 26. Poets, Johnson's, 239. Poinsinet, Come die Lyriquc, 160. Poirson, M. V. A., 181. Polite Learning in Europe, Goldsmith's, n, 15, 22, 26. Pollnitz, 91. Polly, Miss Fenton as, 265 ; 266, 268. "Poly-Olbion," Drayton's, 278. Pont Neuf, 151. Pontoise, 150. Pope, Alexander, Goldsmith's admiration for the work of, 12; 13, 16, 19, 32, 58, 74, 83, 91, 109, 128, 142, 143, 176, 242, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251. 2 53> 2 55> 2 5 8 2 59> 26 . 262, 263, 266, 269, 270, 271, 273, 288. Portland, Lord, 285. Portsmouth, 47. 48, 49. Portsmouth, Duchess of, 190, 191, 194. Portugal Street, 98. Poultry, the, 120, 312, 314. Powell, as Honey-wood, 25. Praed, W. M., 203. Pratcriia, Ruskin's, 142. Prague, 91. Present State of Wit, Gay's, 245, 246. Preville, 39, 158. Primrose, George, 102, 167, 169, 179, 181. Primrose, Mrs., 30, 171, 176, 180, 181. Primrose, Olivia, 167, 169, 170, 171, i/3) J 77- Primrose, Sophia, 168,169, '73) 175- J 76, 179- Primrose, Doctor, 30, 167, ifio, 170, 171, 173, 175, 176, 179, 180, 181. Prince Arthur, 246. Prince Titi, History of, 133. Principia, the, 297. ; Prior, Matthew, Goldsmith's admiration for and imitation of, 12, 13 ; accuses him of plagiarism, 15; 19, 134, 176, 237 ; Female Phaeton, 240 ; 260, 261, 269, 273, 282, 283, 298, 314. Prior Park. 102. Pritchard, Mrs., 101. Privy-Council Office, the, 186, General Index. 355 Privy Garden, the, iSS, 189, 190, 196. Privy Stairs, the, 192, 193, 201. Procession, the, 62. Procession to Church, Bewick's, J 73- Prue, 70, 74, 75, 76. Pryor, Samuel, 237. Psalmanazar, George, 143. Public Advertiser, the, in, 202. Publick Spirit of the Whigs, Swift's, 78. Pulteney, 259. Punchinello, 225. Purdon, Ned, Goldsmith's epi- taph on, 14. Puttick and Simpson, Messrs., 33- Pye, 169. Pyne, W. H., 53, 230. Q. Quack Maiirus, Dryden's, 64. Quantin, 181. Quarterly Review, the, 311. Queen Charlotte, the, Howe's vessel, 48. Queensberry, the Duchess of, 37, 47, 261, 266, 267, 268, 270, 271. Queensberry, the Duke of, 37, 240, 261, 263, 267, 268, 270. Queen Street, 99. Qnin, the actor, 102, 103. Quisquilius, Dibdin's, 147. R. RACINE, 158. Raimbach, Abraham, 42, 55 ; engravings of, 144 ; birth of, 145 ; childhood of, 145 ; edu- cation of, 146 ; apprenticed to Hall, 146 ; his first definite employment, 148 ; in Paris, 149 ; a view of Napoleon, 152- 163 ; returns to England, 163 ; his Memoirs, 163 ; his death, 164. Ralph, Case of Authors by Pro- fession, 22. Rambach, F. E., 309. Rambler, 25. Ramsay, Allan, 296. Ranelagh, 135, 288. " Rape of the Lock," Miscel- lany, Lintott's, 247. Raphael, Transfiguration, 153. Ravenet, 146. Raymond, Mr. Samuel, 134. Rayner, 240. Reay, Miss Martha, 45. Records of My Life, Taylor's, 5 2 > 93- Redas, the Frenchman, 54. " Red Cross," the, 239. Reed, Isaac, 313, 314. Reflections on the French Revo- lution^ 100. Rehearsal, Buckingham's, 255. Religious Tract Society, the, 311, 318. Reliques of Ancient Poetry, Percy's, 17, 223. Rembrandt, 153. Reminiscences, Angelo's, 33- 56. Rent Day, Raimbach's, 144. " Repository of Arts," 175. Restless, Tom, 112, 113. 356 General Index. Retaliation, Goldsmith's, 1 8, 19, 51,96. Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 18, 35, 99, 100, 117, 121, 134, 137, 142, HS. I 44. 155. 229, 2 76, 277, 299, 3, 302, 33 34, 35- Rhenish Wine House, the, 237. Rich, Christopher, 67, 265, 268. Richard, Earl of Barrymore, 50. Richard II., 231. Richardson, the fire-eater, 280. Richardson, Samuel, Pamela, 20 ; 22. Richelieu, the tomb of, 163. Richland, Miss, 25. Richmond Terrace, Mews, 184, 185, 190. Richter, Ludwig, 179. Rights of Man, Paine's, 161. Rivals, Tlte, Sheridan's, 29. Rivarol, 206. Rivella, 68. Rivett, John, 226. Road to Ruin, Holcroft's, 161, 296. Robe Chamber, the, 192. Roberson & Co., Messrs., 304. Robespierre, 154. Rochefoucauld, 181. Roehampton, 226. Rogers. 174, 204, 205, 206, 2iS; Human Life, 218. Rollos, Mr. John, So. Romeo and Juliet, 38. Romney, J., 171, 175. Rosciad, Churchill's, 106. Roscius, 39. Roscoe, 176. Rose, the Royal gardener, 200. Rose and Crown, the, 312. Rose, Dr., of Chiswick, 36. " Rose" Inn, the, 273. Rotterdam, 306. Roubillac, 38. Rouen, 150. Roustan, Mameluke, 152. Rowe, Fair Penitent of, 102. Rowlandson. Thomas, 38, 47, 4S, 49> 55> l6 7, i/4, i/5, J 7 6 , 182. " Rowley," stallion, 231. Roxane, Duchesnois as, 157. Royal Academy, the, 49, 99, 148, 155, 276, 304. Royal Anne, the, 321. Royal Society, the, 279. Royal United Service Institu- tion, the, 184, 195. Rubens, 153, 199. Rubini, 156. Rucld, Mrs. Margaret Caroline, trial of, 44. Rndge, Miss, 44. " Rummer " Tavern, the, 237. Runciman, Alexander, the painter, 302. Rupert, Prince, 190. Rural Sports, Gay's, 249, 250, 251. Ruskin, John, Prcrterita, 142, 143- Russell, Lord, 156. Russell Street, 114. Ryland, the engraver, 55. S. ST. ANTOINE, M., 231. St. Denis, 150. Sabines, the, David's, 154. General Index. 357 Sabloniere Hotel, the, 300. " Sacharissa," Waller's, 278, 280. St. George's, Hanover Square, 36. St. Germain's, 191. St. Giles, 87, 222. St. Huberti, Mile., 157. St. James's Church, 73, 74. St. James's Palace, 100, 186. St. James's Park, 185, 187, 221. St. James's Park menagerie, 234- St. James's Square, 51, 292. St. John's College beer, 53. St. Maclou Church, the, 150. St. Margaret's, 73. St. Martin's Church, 220, 221, 225, 227, 231, 232, 234. St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, 73. St. Martin's Lane, 145, 234, 277. St. Martin's, the Parish of, 278. St. Martin's Place, 161. St. Martin's Street, 296, 298, 2 99> 3: 3 01 - St. Mary Rounceval, hospital of, 221. St. Patrick, the Roman Catholic Church of, 40. St. Paul's Churchyard, 147. St. Stephen's, 183. Salisbury, England, 35, 167. Salisbury Plain, 256. Salisbury Square, 317. Salon, the French, 156, 164. Salvator, 40. Sandby, Thomas, the architect, 197. Sandwich, Lord, 45, 201. Sans Parcil, the French vessel, 47- Sans Souci Theatre, the, 295. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, 90. Satchel!, Miss, 105. Savage, 81, 83. Savile, Sir George, 276, 291. Savile House, 290, 291, 292. Saxe, Marshal, 91. Sayer. James, 104. .Sayes Court, 291. Schicksal dcr Protcstaitten in Frankreich, Rambach's, 309, 312. School for Scandal, 105. Scot, 225. Scotland Yard, 185, 195, 228. Scottish Office, the, 196. Scribleriad, the, 97. Scriblerus Club, the, 253. Scroope. 225. Scrub, Mrs. Abington as, 104. Scurlock, Miss Mary, marries Richard Steele, 70, 71, 72. Scurlock, Mrs., 73, 74. Seasons, the, 237. Sedley, Catharine, Countess of Dorchester, 287. Sefton, Lord, 217. Sermons, Foster's, 136. Sesenheim, 179. Seven Years' War, the, 33. Sharpe, 175. Shaw, Rev. William, 114. Shee, 149. Shepherd?* Week, Gay's, 250, 251, 252, 254. Sheppard, Jack, 90, 277. Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, The 358 General Index. Rivals, 29; 41, 95, 97, 98, 146, 147. Sheridan, Tom, 41, 49. She Stoops to Conquer, Gold- smith's, 27; first production of. 28 ; its success, 29, 30, 31 ; his last dramatic work, 31 ; his best production, 32. Shield Gallery, the, 192. Short View of the Immorality and Prof oneness of the Eng- lish Stage, Collier's. 66. Shrewsbury, Duke of, 285. Shuter, as Croaker, 24, 25 ; anecdote of, 52. Siddons, Mrs., 98, 105, 304. Sidney Alley, 294. Sigismunda, 238. Simon, John, 284. Sion House, at Isleworth, 228. Sir Tremendous, 259. Sketch of his own Character, Gray's, 19. Sleep-Walker, the, 51. Smirke, Sir Robert, 148, 165, 199. Smith, Adam, 133. Smith, Anker, 170. Smith, " Gentleman," the actor, 105. Smith, J. T., 197 ; Westmin- ster, 197 ; 198. Smith, " Rainy Day," 299. Smith, Sydney, 204; Lady Hol- land's Life of, 205 ; 206. Smith, Thomas, 322, 323. Smithfield, 61, 280. Smollett, 38. Sneer, Palmer as, tob. Soane Museum, the, 238. Societe des Ecoles du Dimanche, the, 310, 311. Society of Antiquaries, the, 197. Society of Artists of Great Britain, the, 238. Society of Arts, the, 300. Soho, 35, 40, 107. Some Account of London, Pen- nant's, 197. Somers, 246. Somerset House Gazette, the, 52. Soubise, 47. South American Ode, A, Gold- smith's, 14. Southampton, 48. South Kensington, 49, 170, 241. Spectator, the, 60, 76, 77, 83, 187, 200, 244, 246, 283, 286. Spence, 266. Spirit of Johnson, the, 137. Spithead, 321. Splendid Shilling, the, Philips's, 243- Spring Gardens, 183, 185, 187, 221, 234, 235, 236, 238. Spy, the, brigantine, 320. ''Squire, the, 170, 177, 181. Squire Westiern, Picart as, 159, 1 60. Squirrel, the, privateer, 322. Stadtholder's collection, the, T 53- Sttige. the. 1 06. Standard Library, the, 136. Steele, Richard, the elder, 60. Steele, Richard, the latest Life of, 57-86; The Funeral, 57; birth of, 60 ; his early life, 60 ; at the Charterhouse, 60 ; the Christian Hero, 61, 65 ; at General Index. 359 Christ Church, 61 ; at Merton, 6 1 ; his intercourse with Addi- son, 61 ; a " gentleman of the army," 61-63; his duel, 64; the Lying Lover, 66 ; the Tender Husband, 66 ; his chancery suit, 67 ; duped, 68; his marriage, 69 ; death of his wife, 69 ; appointed Gentle- man Waiter to Prince George, 70 ; Gazetteer, 70 ; his second marriage, 70-73; his lavish living, 74 ; his income, 74 ; his letters to his wife, 75 ; Commissioner of Stamps, 77 ; dallying with the stage, 77 ; death of his mother-in-law, 77 ; his controversy with Swift, 78 ; in politics, 78 ; impeached, 79; Apology for Himself and his Writings, 79 ; knighted, 79 ; his death, 79 ; Conscious Lovers, 79 ; death of Lady Steele, 79 ; his connection with Drury Lane Theatre, So; new light on the work of, So; his character, 80 ; branded as a drunkard, 82 ; his standing as a man of letters, 83 ; the Tatter, 244 ; 246, 250 ; Poeti- cal Miscellany, 250 ; 255, 256, 257, 283, 284. Steele, Lady, 71 ; death of, 79. Steel Yard, the, 200. Steenie. 235. Steevens, George, the Shake- speare critic, 147, 259. Stella, 245, 283, 298. Steme, 39. 169. Stock, Elliot, 314. Stockbridge, 78, 256. Stocks Market, 226. Stone Gallery, the, 190, 191. Storace, Stephen, 146, 147. Stothard, 144, 145, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 174, 175, 181. Strafford, Lady, 283, 285. Strafford, Lord, 283. Strand, 221. Stratford Jubilee, the, 37. Stratton, 286. Strawberry Hill, 200. Strawberry Hill Press, the, 5 1 Stretch, Margaret, marries Rich- ard Steele, 69 ; her death, 69 7i- Strype, 227. Stuarts, the, 196. Stubbs, George, 42. Suckling, 229. Suffolk. Lady. 255. Suffolk House, 228. Suffolks, the, 228. Sun, The, 92. Sunderland, Countess of, 278 ; the second, 280. Sunderland, Lord, 73. Superville, M. Daniel de, 307, 3 2 4- Surgeons' Hall, 7, 46. Survey of 1592, Agas', 221, 222, 223. Suspicious Husband, Hoadly's, '35- Suspirius, Johnson's, 25. Sussex, the Duke of, 46. Sutton Street, 40. Swan Close, 278. Sweet William's Farewell to 360 General Index. Black Ey'd Susan, Gay's, 260. Swift, Jonathan, Goldsmith's admiration for and imitation of, 12, 13 ; 58, 76, 77, 78 ; the Importance of the " Guar- dian'" considered, 78; Pub- lick Spirit of the Whigs, 78 ; 81, 84, 94, 109 ; City Shower, 213, 242 ; 243, 245, 246, 247, 249, 252, 253, 254, 257, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 270, 271, 273, 282, 286, 298. Sivivellers, the, 165. Sybaris, 209. Sydney, 134. Sydney, Algernon, 278. Sydney, Dorothy, 278. Sydney, Robert, Earl of Leices- ter, 278. Symes, Elinor, 60. Sympathy, Dodsley's, 16. T. TAINE, M., 269. Talcs, Gay's, 273. Tales of the Genii, Cooke's, 148. Talking Oak, Tennyson's, 18. Talma, the tragedian, 159. Taste, Foote's, 40. Tatler, the, 60, 76, 83, 244, 245, 246, 257. Taylor, " Chevalier," see Tay- lor, John, the elder. Taylor, John, the elder, 89-92. Taylor, John, the Second, 92, 101. Taylor, John, the Third, 88; Monsieur Tonson, 87, 88; his grandfather, 89 ; his father, 92 ; an oculist, 92 ; in jour- nalism, 92 ; as a raconteur, 93 ; Records of My Life, 52, 93 ; anecdotes of literary men, 93- 100 ; anecdotes of actors and actresses, 100-106. Taylor, John Stirling, 93. Tedder, Mr. H. R., 110, 130. Teillagory, the elder, 34. Temple, the, 94, 135. Temple Bar, 219, 278. Temple, Sir William, on Poetry, 26, 122, 131. Tender Husband, the, Steele's, 57, 66. Tenison, Archbishop, 300. Tennant, 273. Tennis Court, the, 186, 187, 197. Tennyson, Lord Alfred, Talk- ing Oak, 1 8. Texier, 180. Thackeray, W. M., Denis Du-val, 44 ; 156, 206 ; English Humourists, 2^9. Thames, the, 184, 185, 193, 201, 321, 323. Thatched House Tavern,' the, 35- Theatre de la Republique, the, see Theatre Frangais. Theatre de la Republique et des Arts, the, see Grand Opera, the. Theatre Frangais, the, 152, 156, 158. Theobald, 256. General Index. Theocritus, 251. Theodore, King of Corsica, 91. Thomas, George, 177. Thompson, Mr., 87. Thompson, Mr. Hugh, 182. Thompson, John, 173, 176. Thomson, 271. Thornhill, Sir William, 170, 171, 181. Thrale, Mrs., 116, 118, 127, 136. Thrale's, 135. Three Hours before Marriage, Gay's, 259. Threnodia Augustalis, Gold- smith's, 18. Thurston, 148, 173. "Tickler," 206. Tilt-Yard, the, 186, 196, 197. Tilt-yard Guard, the, 67. " Timon's Villa," 276. Tifkin, Mr., 57. Titian, 228. Tofts, Mary, the Godalming rabbit-breeder, 90. To Iris in Bow Street, Gold- smith's, 14. Tom Jones a Londres, Des- forges', 159. Tompkins, 223. Tonson, 76, 249, 286. Tonson and Lintott, Messrs., 260. Tonson and Watts, Messrs., 241. Tooke, Home, 41. Toplady, 299. Tower Guard, the, 65. Tower of London, the, 65, 200. Towers, Rev. Joseph, 118. Town Talk, 68. Trafalgar Square, 220, 231, 2 33- Transfiguration, Raphael's, !53- Translations, Gay's, 273. Traveller, The, Goldsmith's, 10, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 32, no. Travels in France, Holcroft's, 161. Treasury, the, 187, 189. Treatise on Human Knowl- edge, the, 83. Tree, Miss Ellen, 108, 217. Tremamondo, Dominico Angelo Malevolti, see Angelo, Do- minico. Tribunal, the, 160. Trinity College, 7. Trivia, Gay's, 232, 244, 257, 258. Trotter, T., in. Tuileries Gardens, the, 151, 152. Tunbridge, 89. Tunbridge Wells, 262. Turin, 283. Turner, 144, 149. ' Twos when the Seas were roar- ing. Gay's, 260, 273. Twickenham, 262, 293. Twopenny postboys, 204. Tyburn, 44, 45. Tyers, Jonathan, 112. Tyers, Tom, 112, 113, 114, !33- Tyne, the, 321. U. UNDERBILL, John, 239, 249. Union Club, 221, 233. 362 General Index. Upper Mews Gate, 232. Ursa Major, 133. Utrecht, the Treaty, 78, 282, 3 2 4- Uwins, Thomas, 172. V. Valerie Marneffe, 44. Vanbrugh, 31 ; Confederacy, 50; 237- Van Dyck, 278, 300. Vane Room, the, 192. Van Nost, 295. Van Woortz, M., 308. Vatican, the, 153. Vauxhall, 47. Vauxhall Gardens, 112, 236. Vendee, La, 310. Venetian Senators, Evelyn's, 229. Venice, 42. Venice Preserved, Otway's, 102. Venus de' Medici, the, 153. Veratius, Gibbon's, 107. Vernes, M. Felix, 308, 309, 310. Vernet, Carle, 154. Vernet, Horace, 154. Versailles, 191. Verses, Goldsmith's, for Jane Contarine, 10. Vertue, 197. VeVy's, 163. Vestris, the elder, 157. Vetusta Monumenta, the, 197. Vicar ofWakefield, Goldsmith's, 9, 17, 21, 32, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179. i8. 181, 182, 314. Vidal, M. Franjois, 308, 309, 310 ; La Fuite du Camisard, 310. Village Politicians, Raimbach's, 144, 164. Viner, Sir Robert, 226. Virginians, the, 91. Vitrmius Britannicus, Camp- bell's, 183. Voltaire, 14, 91, 100, 297. W. WADHAM COLLEGE, 123. Wakefield, 102, 179. Wakefield family, 170. Wale, 238. Wales, 70, 73. Wales, the Prince of, 46, 263. Wales, the Princess of, 35, 263. Walesby, F. P., 123. Walker, 265. Walker, the engraver, 168. Walker, Dr. Thomas, 60. Walk from London to Kew, Phillips', 157. Waller, 220, 223, 278. Wallingford House, 234, 235. Walpole, Horace, 30, 51, 91, 103, 107, 124, 141, 142, 172, 200, 225, 226, 229, 290. Walpole, Sir Robert, 262, 265, 266. Walton, 67. Warburton, 102, 103. Ward, Dr. Joshua, 89. Wardour Street, 40. Wardrobe, the old. 195. Wargrave Court, 50. Wargrave-on-'fhames, 50, 51. General Index. 363 Warwick Lane, 233. Watson, the mezzotinter, 144. Watteau, 181. Welch, Saunders, the magis- trate, 301. Welcome from Greece, Gay's, 273- Wenman, J., 167, 178. Wentworth, Peter, 285. Wenzel, Baron de, 92. West, Benjamin, Battle of the Boyne, 42 ; 99 ; Cromwell dis- solving the Long Parliament, 147; 149, 155; Death on the Pale Horse, 155. Westall, Richard, 147, 175. West Indian, Richard Cumber- land, 27, 97. Westmeath, 8. Westminster, 73, 107, 145, 188. Westminster, Smith's, 197. Westminster Abbey, 38, 185, 221, 222, 270, 272. Westminster Bridge Road Am- phitheatre, 35. Westminster Hall, 243. Westminster, Palace of, 220. Westminster Review, the, 239. Weston, Lord High Treasurer. 226. Wexford, the county of, 62. What d 1 ye Call it, Gay's, 255. Wheatley, 202, 295. Whigs, the, 78. Whistlecraft , 204. Whiston, 286. \Vhitcomb Street, 222, 277. Whitefoord, Caleb, 96. Whitehall Bridge, 201. Whitehall Court, 183, 195. Whitehall Gardens, 35, 185, 201. Whitehall Gate, 196. Whitehall, Old, 56, 73, 74, 188, 201, 202, 221, 224, 225. Whitehall Palace, 234. Whitehall Palace Stairs, 191, 193, 195. 282. Whitehall Yard, 196. White's, 204. Whittingham, 170, 173. Wife of Bath, the, Gay's, 250. Wild, Jonathan, 91. Wilkes, 41, 91. Wilkie, Sir David, 144, 164. Wilkins, 234. William III., King, 42, 62. Williams, J., 90. Williams, Samuel, 173. Willington, James, 313, 315, 318. Willmore, 144. Will's Coffee House, 142. Wills, Mr., 61, 63. Wilson, Richard, the painter, 49, 9 8 99. J 44, 235, 301. Wilton, 35. Wiltshire, 268. Windsor, 49, 197, 198. Wine, Gay's, 243. Wine and Walnuts, Hard- castle's, 230. Wine-Cellar, the, 195. Winter, 237. Woffington, Mrs. Margaret, 34. Wokingham, 273. Wolcot, 87, 96. Woodward, 135, 259. Woollett, 144, 146, 295. 364 General Index. Word to the Wise, A, Kelly's, 27. Wordsworth, William, 32. Worlidge, the etcher, 92. Wornum, Mr., 196. Worsdale, the Lady Pent- weazel of, 50. Worsley, Lady, 299. Wright, Richard, 133. Wyatt's Pantheon, burning of, 46. Wylde's Globe, 276. Y. YORK, the Duke of, 48, 55, 191, 193- Young, Edward, Goldsmith's acquaintance with, 12; Night Thoughts, Goldsmith's inter- est in, 12 ; 26. Z. ZOFFANY, 42, 43. Zuccarelli, 228. DATE DUE JANK ) '56 ; JUN ^ cc OECl 5 '67 OP r> f> HIM 1 1^ R fl RECD GAYLORD PRINTED IN USA. 000550442 8