'suffer from repeated corrections, till it may be a mere 'caput mortuum when it arrives before the public. It may 'be said that we have a sufficient number of plays upon 'our theatres already, and therefore there is no need of 'new ones. But are they sufficiently good? And is the 'credit of our age nothing? Must our present times pass 'away unnoticed by posterity? If these are matters of 'indifference, it then signifies nothing, whether we are to 'be entertained with the actor or the poet; with fine senti'ments or painted canvas; or whether the dancer or the 'carpenter be constituted master of the ceremonies. How

is it at present? Old pieces are revived, and scarcely 'any new ones admitted. The actor is ever in our eye, 'the poet seldom permitted to appear; and the stage, 'instead of serving the people, is made subservient to the 'interests of avarice. Getting a play on even in three or 'four years, is a privilege reserved only for the happy few 'who have the arts of courting the Manager as well as the 'Muse: who have adulation to please his vanity, powerful 'patrons to support their merit, or money to indemnify 'disappointment. Our Saxon ancestors had but one name 'for a wit and a witch. I will not dispute the propriety of uniting those characters then but the man who, 'under the present discouragements, ventures to write for 'the stage, whatever claim he may have to the appellation ' of a wit, at least has no right to be called a conjuror.'

It is impossible to think Goldsmith wholly justified in this; but it is unquestionable that the feeling which

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pervades the extract, as well as the pamphlet of Mr. Ralph, was now becoming general with the literary class, and tended greatly to embitter the successes of Garrick's later life. In connection with it, at the same time, a regret will always arise, remembering the differences of a Goldsmith and a Ralph, that the lively irritable actor should have been indiscriminate in the resentments it provoked, and unable, in any instance, to conceive a better actuating motive than the envy his prosperity had excited. Thomas Davies tells us, that when, somewhere about the time of his connection with the Bee, Goldsmith sought to obtain, what a struggling man of letters was thought to have some claim to, the vacant Secretaryship of the Society of Arts, Garrick made answer to a personal application for his vote, 'that Mr. Goldsmith having taken pains to 'deprive himself of his assistance by an unprovoked 'attack upon his management of the theatre in his State ' of Learning, it was impossible he could lay claim to any ' recommendation from himself.' Davies adds, that 'Gold'smith, instead of making an apology for his conduct, 'either from misinformation or misconception, bluntly replied, "In truth he had spoken his mind, and believed "what he said was very right." The manager dismissed 'him with civility.'

He might with wisdom have done more. The blunt reply, in a generous man's interpretation, should at least have blunted the fancied wrong. It is painful to think that neither of these famous men, whose cheerful gaieties of

heart were the natural bonds of a mutual sympathy and fast alliance, should throughout their lives have wholly lost the sense of this first unlucky meeting. As Goldsmith himself removed from the second edition of the Polite Learning much of the remark that had given Garrick most offence, and in the ordinary copies it is now no longer found, it may the more freely be admitted that the grounds of offence were not altogether imaginary. Indeed, besides what I have quoted, there were incidental expressions yet more likely to breed resentment in a sensitive, quick nature. I am not at present writing for a 'party,' said Goldsmith, 'but above theatrical connexions 'in every sense of the expression. I have no particular ' spleen against the fellow who sweeps the stage with the 'besom, or the hero who brushes it with his train. It 'were a matter of indifference to me, whether our heroines 'are in keeping, or our candle-snuffers burn their fingers, 'did not such make a great part of public care and polite 'conversation. Our actors assume all that state off the stage which they do on it; and, to use an expression 'borrowed from the green-room, every one is up in his 'part. I am sorry to say it, they seem to forget their 'real characters.' With sorrow is it also to be said, that here the writer was manifestly wrong. Mr. Ralph's 'implements' and 'harlequins' were not less tasteful and considerate, than this jeering tone.

There is no intellectual art so peculiarly circumstanced as that of the actor. If, in the hurried glare which sur

rounds him, each vanity and foible that he has comes forth in strong relief, it is hard to grudge him the better incidents to that brilliant lot for which he pays so dearly. His triumphs had need be bright and dazzling, for their fires are spent as soon as kindled; his enjoyments intense, for of all mental influences they wither soonest. He may plant in infinite hearts the seeds of goodness, of ideal beauty, and of practical virtue; but with their fruits his name will not be remembered, or remembered only as a name. And surely, if he devotes a genius that might command success in any profession, to one whose rewards, if they come at all, must be immediate as the pleasure and instruction it diffuses, it is a short-sighted temper that would eclipse the pleasure and deny the rewards.

The point of view at this time taken by Goldsmith was, in fact, obscured by his own unlucky fortunes; but the injustice he shrunk from committing in the case of the prosperous painter, Mr. Reynolds, he should not thus carelessly have inflicted on the prosperous actor, Mr. Garrick. The one artist might have claimed to be a painter of portraits, as the other was. Uneasy relations, indeed, which only exist between author and actor, have had a manifest tendency at all times unfairly to disparage the actor's intellectual claims, and to set any of the inferior arts above them. Nevertheless, the odds might be made more even. The deepest and rarest beauties of poetry are those which the actor cannot grasp; but, in the actor's startling triumphs, whether of movement, gesture, look, or tone,

the author has no great share. Thus, were accounts fairly struck with the literary class, a Garrick might be honestly left between the gentle and grand superiority of a Shakspeare on the one hand, who, from the heights of his immeasurable genius, smiles down help and fellowship upon him; and the eternal petulance and pretensions of an Arthur Murphy on the other, who, from the round of a ladder to which of himself he never could have mounted, looks down with ludicrous contempt on what Mr. Ralph would call the 'implements' of his elevation.

But Doctor Smollett and Mr. Newbery have been waiting us all this while, and neither of them belonged to that leisurely class which can very well afford to wait. The Doctor was full of energy and movement always, as one of his own headlong heroes; and who remembers not the philanthropic bookseller in the Vicar of Wakefield, the good-natured man with the red-pimpled face, who had no sooner alighted but he was in haste to be gone, for he was ever on business of the utmost importance, ' and was at that time actually compiling materials for the 'history of Mr. Thomas Trip.' But not on Mr. Thomas Trip's affairs had the child-loving publisher now ventured up Breakneck Stairs; and upon other than the old Critical business was the author of Peregrine Pickle a visitor in Green Arbour Court. Both had new and important schemes in hand, and with both it was an object to secure the alliance and services of Goldsmith. Smollett had at all times not a little of the Pickle in him, and Newbery much