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'they have made a colony.' Nor will we doubt that from this wall-girt grove, too, came many a thought that carried him back to childhood, made him free of solitudes explored in boyish days, and re-peopled deserted villages. It was better than watching the spiders amid the dirt of Green Arbour Court; for though his grove was city planted, and scant of the foliage of the forest, there was Fancy to piece out for him, transcending these, far other groves and other trees,

Annihilating all that's made

To a green thought in a green shade.

Let us leave him to this happiness for a time; before we pass to the few short years of labour, enjoyment, and sorrow, in which his mortal existence closed.

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BOOK THE FOURTH.

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

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

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