in which Johnson, being appealed to, took part against Garrick, as he was seldom disinclined to do. Pretty Mrs. Davies may have helped his inclination here; for when seized with his old moody abstraction, as was not unusual, in the bookseller's parlour, and he began to blow, and tootoo, and mutter prayers to be delivered from temptation, Davies would whisper his wife with waggish humour, 'You, my dear, are the cause of this.' But, be the cause what it might, the pompous little bibliopole never afterwards lost favour; and it became as natural for men interested in Johnson or those who clustered round him, to repair to Davies the bookseller's in Russell Street, as for those who wanted to hear of George Selwyn, Lord March, or Lord Carlisle, to call at Betty the fruiterer's in St. James' Street.

A frequent visitor was Goldsmith; his thick, short, clumsy figure, and his awkward though genial manners, oddly contrasting with Doctor Percy's, precise, reserved, and stately. The high bred and courtly Beauclerc might deign to saunter in. Often would be seen there, the broad, fat face of Foote, with wicked humour flashing from the eye; and sometimes the mild long face of Bennet Langton, filled with humanity and gentleness. There had Goldsmith met a rarer visitor, the bland and gracious Reynolds, soon after his first introduction to him, a few months back, in Johnson's chambers; and there would even Warburton drive in his equipage besprinkled with mitres,' on some proud business of his own, after calling on Garrick in

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Southampton Street. For Garrick himself, it was perhaps the only place of meeting he cared to avoid, in that neighbourhood which had so profited and been gladdened by his genius; in which his name was oftener resounded than that of any other human being; and throughout which we are told there was a fondness for him, that, as his sprightly figure passed along, 'darted electrically from shop to shop.' What the great actor said some years later, indeed, he already seems to have fancied: that 'he 'believed most authors who frequented Mr. Davies's shop 'met merely to abuse him.' Encouraged, meanwhile, by the authors, Davies grew in amusing importance; affected the insides as well outsides of books; set up for a critic, discussed themes of scholarship; inflicted upon everyone his experiences of the Edinburgh university; and when George Steevens called one day to buy the Oxford Homer, which he had seen tossing about upon his shelves, was told by the modest bookseller that he had but one, and kept it for his own reading.

Poor Goldsmith's pretensions, as yet, were small in the scale of such conceit; being but the best of the essay writers, not the less bound on that account to unrepining drudgery, somewhat awkward in his manners, and laughed at for a careless simplicity. Such the character he was first seen in here, and he found its impressions always oddly mingled with whatever respect or consideration he challenged in later life. Only Johnson saw into that life as yet, or could measure what the past had been

to him; and few so well as Goldsmith had reason to know the great heart which beat so gently under those harsh manners. The friendship of Johnson was his first relish of fame; he repaid it with affection and deference of no ordinary kind; and so commonly were they seen together, now that Johnson's change of fortune brought him more into the world, that when a caricature of the Idler was threatened this summer by the Haymarket Aristophanes, the Citizen of the World was to be a puppet too. 'What is the common price of an oak stick, sir?' asked Johnson, when he heard of it. 'Sixpence,' answered Davies. 'Why then, sir, give me leave to send your 'servant to purchase me a shilling one. I'll have a 'double quantity; for I am told Foote means to take me off, as he calls it, and I am determined the fellow shall 'not do it with impunity.' The Orators came out without the attraction promised: attacking, instead, a celebrated Dublin printer, George Faulkner, who consoled himself (pending his prosecution of the libeller) by pirating the libel and selling it most extensively; while the satirist had the more doubtful consolation of reflecting, three years later, that his 'taking off' of Faulkner's one leg would have been much more perfect, could he have waited till the surgeon had taken off his own. It was the first dramatic piece, I may add, in which actors were stationed among the audience, and spoke from the public boxes.

It had been suggested by a debating society called the Robin Hood, somewhat famous in those days, which used

to meet near Temple Bar; with which the connection of Burke's earliest eloquence may make it famous still, since it had numbered among its members that eager Temple student, whose public life was now at last beginning with under-secretary Hamilton in Dublin; and to which Goldsmith was introduced by Samuel Derrick, his acquaintance and countryman. Struck by the eloquence and imposing aspect of the president, who sat in a large gilt chair, he thought Nature had meant him for a lord chancellor. 'No, no,' whispered Derrick, who knew him to be a wealthy baker from the city, 'only for a master of the rolls.' Goldsmith was little of an orator; but till Derrick went away to succeed Beau Nash at Bath, seems to have continued his visits, and even spoke occasionally; for he figures in an account of the members published at about this time, as a candid disputant, with a clear 'head and an honest heart, though coming but seldom to 'the society.' The honest heart was worn upon his sleeve, whatever his society might be. He could not even visit the three Cherokees, whom all the world were at this time visiting, without leaving the savage chiefs a trace of it. He gave them some trifle' they did not look for; and so did the gift, or the manner of it, please them, that with a sudden embrace they covered his cheeks with the oil and ochre that plentifully bedaubed their own, and left him to discover, by the laughter which greeted him in the street, the extent and fervour of their gratitude.

Not always so grateful, however, did Goldsmith find the

objects of his always ready kindness. One of the members of this Robin Hood was Peter Annet, a man, who, though ingenious and deserving in other respects, became unhappily notorious by a kind of fanatic crusade against the Bible, for which (publishing weekly papers against the Book of Genesis) he stood twice this year in the pillory, and was now undergoing imprisonment in the King's Bench. To Annet's rooms in that prison we trace Goldsmith. He had brought Newbery with him to conclude the purchase of a child's book on grammar by the prisoner, hoping so to relieve his distress; but on the prudent bookseller suggesting that no name should appear on the title page, and Goldsmith agreeing that circumstances made this advisable, Annet accused them both of cowardice and rejected their assistance with contempt. What the amount of Newbery's assistance would have been, or how much he was likely to have given for the Child's Grammar, it is difficult to say. For the 'completion of a History of England,' he had just given Goldsmith two guineas: which munificent payment was exactly contemporaneous with the completion of another kind of history, on more expensive terms, by Paymaster Henry Fox; from whom twenty-five thousand pounds had gone in one morning, at the formal rate of £200 a vote, to patriotic voters for the Peace.

There is reason to believe (from another of the bookseller's memoranda) that the two guineas was for 'seventy-nine leaves' of addition to a school history, comprising the reign of George the Second, and paid at the rate of eight shillings