"Good people all, with one accord "The needy seldom passed her door, "She strove the neighbourhood to please, "At church, in silks and satins new, "Her love was sought, I do aver, "But now her wealth and finery fled, The doctors found, when she was dead,---- "Let us lament, in sorrow sore, For Kent Street well may say, That had she lived a twelvemonth more,- The Haunch of Venison, on the other hand, is a poetical letter of thanks to Lord Clare-an easy, jocular epistle, in which the writer has a cut or two at certain of his literary brethren. Then, as he is looking at the venison, and determining not to send it to any such people as Hiffernan or Higgins, who should step in but our old friend Beau Tibbs, or some one remarkably like him in manner and speech ? "While thus I debated, in reverie centred, An acquaintance, a friend as he called himself, entered; And he smiled as he looked at the venison and me. We'll have Johnson, and Burke; all the wits will be there; And now that I think on't, as I am a sinner! We wanted this venison to make out the dinner. We need not follow the vanished venison-which did not make its appearance at the banquet any more than did Johnson or Burke-further than to say that if Lord Clare did not make it good to the poet he did not deserve to have his name associated with such a clever and careless jeu d'esprit. CHAPTER XVI. SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. BUT the writing of smart verses could not keep Dr. Goldsmith alive, more especially as dinnerparties, Ranelagh masquerades, and similar diversions pressed heavily on his finances. When his History of England appeared, the literary cut-throats of the day accused him of having been bribed by the Government to betray the liberties of the people: a foolish charge. What Goldsmith got for the English History was the sum originally stipulated for, and now no doubt all spent; with a further sum of fifty guineas for an abridgment of the work. Then, by this time, he had persuaded Griffin to advance him the whole of the eight hundred guineas for the Animated Nature, though he had only done about a third part of the book. the instigation of Newbery he had begun a story after the manner of the Vicar of Wakefield; but it appears that such chapters as he had written were not deemed At 1 "God knows I had no thought for or against liberty in my head; my whole aim being to make up a book of a decent size that, as Squire Richard says, 'would do no harm to nobody.'"-Goldsmith to Langton, September, 1771. to be promising; and the undertaking was abandoned. The fact is, Goldsmith was now thinking of another method of replenishing his purse. The Vicar of Wakefield had brought him little but reputation; the Good-natured Man had brought him £500. It was to the stage that he now looked for assistance out of the financial slough in which he was plunged. He was engaged in writing a comedy; and that comedy was She Stoops to Conquer. In the Dedication to Johnson which was prefixed to this play on its appearance in type, Goldsmith hints that the attempt to write a comedy not of the sentimental order then in fashion, was a hazardous thing; and also that Colman, who saw the piece in its various stages, was of this opinion too. Colman threw cold water on the undertaking from the very beginning. It was only extreme pressure on the part of Goldsmith's friends that induced-or rather compelledhim to accept the comedy; and that, after he had kept the unfortunate author in the tortures of suspense for month after month. But although Goldsmith knew the danger, he was resolved to face it. hated the sentimentalists and all their works; and determined to keep his new comedy faithful to nature, whether people called it low or not. His object was to raise a genuine, hearty laugh; not to write a piece for school declamation; and he had enough confidence in himself to do the work in his own way. Moreover he took the earliest possible opportunity, in writing this piece, of poking fun at the sensitive creatures who had been shocked by the " vulgarity" of The Goodnatured Man. "Bravo! Bravo!" cry the jolly companions of Tony Lumpkin, when that promising buckeen He has finished his song at the Three Pigeons; then follows criticism : "First Fellow. The squire has got spunk in him. Second Fel. I loves to hear him sing, bekeays he never gives us nothing that's low. Third Fel. O damn anything that's low, I cannot bear it. Fourth Fel. The genteel thing is the genteel thing any time if so be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly. Third Fel. I likes the maxum of it, Master Muggins. What, though I am obligated to dance a bear, a man may be a gentleman for all that. May this be my poison, if my bear ever dances but to the very genteelest of tunes; Water Parted,' or the 'The Minuet in Ariadne."" Indeed, Goldsmith, however he might figure in society, was always capable of holding his own when he had his pen in his hand. And even at the outset of this comedy one sees how much he has gained in literary confidence since the writing of the Good-natured Man. Here there is no anxious stiffness at all; but a brisk, free conversation, full of point that is not too formal, and yet conveying all the information that has usually to be crammed into a first scene. In taking as the groundwork of his plot that old adventure that had befallen himself his mistaking a squire's house for an inn-he was hampering himself with something that was not the less improbable because it had actually happened; but we begin to forget all the improbabilities through the naturalness of the people to whom we are introduced, and the brisk movement and life of the piece. but Fashions in dramatic literature may come and go ; the wholesome good-natured fun of She Stoops to Conquer |