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to the apprentices at Sadler's Wells. But I am afraid of this levelling. What have artisans to do with Beethoven? and why do they want Shakspere's Lear? Tate's brong ht down the pit; and you boasted that Cordelia, from the time of Tate, always retired with victory and felicity,'

Johnson.-Sir, I talked some nonsense then, and wrote some too. Why do you talk nonsense now when you know better? It is in an age when there is great general igno rance, and partial refinement, that botchers like Tate dare to meddle with such as Shakspere. Those violins that we hear up-stairs tell us that taste is spreading, and knowledge

too.

Gentleman's

Cave. We sold fifteen thousand of the Magazine' when you, Sir, wrote the Debates. The number is not so large now.

Johnson.-No, Sir, how should it be? Your Magazine was then to the public what newspapers have become since -but how wretchedly we supplied the want!

Cave.-Ah, Mr. Johnson-I beg pardon, Doctor -- they have never anything in their newspapers equal to your Debates, for felicities of expression, for the structure of sentences, happy at once for point, dignity, and elegance,' My worthy successor in the Magazine truly described your Debates.

Johnson.-Don't make me wretched, Mr. Cavo. I was penitent, even in the body, for imposing on the world, in making arguments and conjuring up answers for speakers in Parliament. There was no truth in them, Sir, But now-Prior, may I trouble you for The Times.' Look here, Mr. Cave. There are twenty columns that would fill two of your Magazines, and not a word there printed was spoken at this time yesterday; and the reporters have invented no lies, as we invented.

Garrick.-But they polish a bit-and put in what looks to me very like the prompter's work. And after all, there is not much eloquence.

Johnson.-Sir, a great, earnest, busy people have no time for eloquence. They want facts, Sir, facts. The reporters

may properly polish. There is an essential difference between speaking and writing. There are redundancies to prune away-connecting words to supply. They do their work well, those reporters.

Cave.-Don't you think, Sir, that Parliament was right to prevent us publishing the debates?

Johnson.-Wise, as the Stuarts were; but not wise for the time when you kept the press going over the way. The days of public opinion were coming quickly; and to imagine five hundred gentlemen sitting at Westminster to legislate in secret, when a whole nation was beginning to read, is to imagine a ship becalmed in a North-wester. The safety-valves of opinion have been opened-never again to be closed.

Cave. But the Magazine, Sir. It lives yet. It ought to sell thousands, where I sold hundreds.

Johnson. That is, that caviare should sell better than potatoes. The people want good things, but they want cheap things. They want things of universal application. They don't want your pretty verses to Pastora-your charades, your rebuses, your tombstone learning, you dissertations on a Roman urn, by Dr. Pegge. They want what they can understand and take an interest in. Sir, if had the power to act in this world, I would set up a new halfpenny magazine, and you should print it,--and we would sell millions, Sir, millions.

Cave. You would not lower yourself to the multitude? Johnson.-Lower myself? I would try to elevate myself. Do you think that if I had known my trade, we should have sold only five hundred of the Rambler?' I was speaking to the multitude then. But I could not speak to the middle and working classes as writers speak now. talked grand, Sir; and the few readers said, 'grea moralist,' and went to sleep.

Garrick.-Would you write a novel, now?

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Johnson.-Yes, Sir. Do you think that I couldn't have written a novel if I had chosen to descend from what thought my dignity; when you, and I, and Savage, knew

the town and all its queer ways as well as Defoe, and better than Smollett? Goldy wrote a novel. It is the most popular book in the language. And chiefly because Goldy wrote that book, for which I got him a hundred pounds, his peach-blossom coat is immortal. His Life

Garrick.-I don't observe that any one has written my Life since Tom Davies. I cannot help feeling

Johnson. As much feeling as Punch '-forgive me, Davy. Poor Goldsmith's vanity was mortified enough in this wicked world; but he has his consolations now. Here he comes, as gay as ever,-with Eliza on one arm, and Fanny on the other.

The tobacco-smoke vanished-and with it, Mr. Moses Browne. My place was changed. I sat at a tea-table with the ladies opposite me.

Madame D'Arblay.-Is your tea agreeable, Doctor?

Johnson.-Excellent, Madam. Vastly good. Cheaper than ever, I hear.

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Mrs. Carter.-Everything is cheap, Sir-even books are cheap. I saw my Epictetus' on a stall for half-a-crown. The subscription price was a guinea.

Goldsmith.-Yes; there is an American Life of me for a

shilling.

Johnson. And a far better English Life. That generous 'Biography' by Mr. Forster is worth something, after the 'natural shocks that flesh is heir to.'

Goldsmith.-I like the shilling popularity.

Johnson.-If you were to write another book as good as The Vicar,' you would rather grumble to find the people of a mighty continent, who speak and read our noble English, contributing nothing to your reward for the inestimable pleasure which you supply them. But, in truth, the robbery has become mutual; hence, your shilling popularity.

Goldsmith.-I don't understand political economy.

Johnson.-Nor did I, when I wrote the last four lines of your Deserted Village Teach him,'—Yes—

"That trade's empire hastes to swift decay,
As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away;
While self-dependent power can time defy,
As rocks resist the billows and the sky.'

Goldsmith.-Excellent!

Johnson.-No, Sir; there is no such thing in civilisation as self-dependent power.' The savage might have been self-dependent before Columbus; but wherever the needle travels, trade makes even the savage an exchanger. I may have imagined a period when our quays and our docks shall be desolate and ruinous as the choked-up harbours of Carthage or Venice. It was a dream. Trade's proud empire' is going forward to such a conquest as the world never yet saw. Its empire is built upon knowledge. The ends of the earth are brought together by science. Some of the words which you and I wrote, my friend, have winged their way to mighty regions, which were being discovered when you and I talked commonplaces about 'trade's proud empire.' I was angry with Maurice Morgann, for writing of Shakspere- When the hand of Time shall have brushed off his present editors and commentators, the Apalachian mountains, the banks of the Ohio, and the plains of Scioto, shall resound with the accents of this barbarian." He was right, Sir. We shall all-if there is anything good in us-live with the extension of our language; and that extension is the work of tradeAnother cup, if you please, Fanny.

Madame D'Arblay.-Do you think they are reading 'Camilla' on the banks of the Ohio, Doctor?

Goldsmith. Decidedly so-a nation that adores the ladies. Johnson.-Don't flatter, Goldy; for to flatter is to degrade. Fanny, much as I love her, described an ephemeral life. which she had never very accurately observed herself. Nothing can last in literature that is built upon fashions and individualities. Your Doctor Primrose is a representa tive of humanity, whether in villages of Yorkshire or the new cities of the plains of Scioto.

Essay on the Character of Falstaff.

Goldsmith.-Your London' was a picture of a particular period and locality, yet that lives.

Johnson.-It was historically true, Sir; and the local did not forget the universal. I don't want men to write as it they had no dwelling-place and no social habits. But they must feel there is a wider circle than home. All literature is tending to the universal, and the free intercourse of nations will confirm that tendency.

Suddenly the tea vanished. I was alone in the parlour with that man of large stature, Edward Cave; and there he sat opposite me, with his own silver tankard between us, Cave. My service to you, Sir. I help myself freely out of my household cup. You value this?

Dreamer-Certainly. I bought it from a descendant of yours, who was not so well off as you could have wished, and I cherish it as a memorial of one who had worked well for popular literature.

Cave.-Ay-those mills! Johnson said of me, The fortune he left behind him, though large, had been yet larger, had he not rashly and wantonly impaired it by innumerable projects, of which I know not that ever one succeeded.'-For a kind man he judged hardly.

Dreamer.-You are past minding those losses now, Mr. Cave. You did some good in the world, and that is better worth looking back upon, be we dead or alive, than large estates.

Cave. True, Sir. You think I did some good?

Dreamer.-Every man who, in his generation, honestly does his best to advance the intelligence, and promote the happiness, of his countrymen, does some good.

Cave. I am glad you think so. Since my ashes rested in Rugby churchyard, I have heard many opinions against making knowledge too common.

Dreamer.-Heed them not,-they will vanish.

Mr. Cave vanished-for I heard a railway-whistle,

Bless me! I've been dozing.

Again I dozed; and the same scene, with other anachro

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