Who, born for the universe, narrow'd his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.
Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat,
To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote;
Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining,
And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining.
Though equal to all things, for all things unfit:
Too nice for a statesman; too proud for a wit;
For a patriot, too cool; for a drudge, disobedient ;
And too fond of the right, to pursue the expedient.
In short, 'twas his fate, unemploy'd, or in place, sir,
To eat mutton cold, and cut blocks with a razor.

Tommy Townshend had confirmed in the last session the claim he formerly put forward to a mention here. Again he had attacked Johnson, with allusion to his Falkland Islands pamphlet, as a pensioner paid to abuse the opposition; and again Burke had remained silent, leaving his friend's defence this time to Wedderburne, a recent deserter from the Whigs. And yet he might fairly enough, if less anxious at the moment for Townshend's go-between service, have spurned the charge against the great pamphleteer, that his pension had lately been increased to reward a hireling advocacy. Johnson laughed at it himself when Boswell named it to him, and said (justly enough) that Lord North had no such friendly disposition that way. But he added a curious illustration of the temper of the time. A certain airy lady' (Mrs. Cholmondely, Peg Woffington's sister, formerly named as one of Goldsmith's personal critics) had given him proof that even the private visitings of members of parliament were now watched; and when he went himself to the prime minister on the business.

of that pamphlet, though he went after dark and with all possible secrecy, he was quietly told in a day or two, 'Well! you have been with Lord North.'

Some such suspicion against even poor Goldsmith, unpensioned as he was, broke out on the appearance of his English History in August. Yet a more innocent production could hardly have been imagined. It was simply a compilation, in his easy flowing style, from four historians he impartially characterised in his preface; and with as little of the feeling of being influenced by any, this book throughout had been written. They have each,' he says, speaking of Rapin, Carte, Smollett, and Hume, 'their pecu'liar admirers, in proportion as the reader is studious of political antiquities, fond of minute anecdote, a warm 'partizan, or a deliberate reasoner.' Nevertheless, passages of very harmless narrative were displayed in the papers as of very questionable tendency; he was asked if he meant to be the tool of a minister, as well as the drudge of a bookseller; he was reminded that the favour of a generous public (so generous at other people's cost), was better than the best of pensions; and he finally was warned against betraying his country for base and scandalous pay.' The poor publisher became alarmed, and a formal defence of the book appeared in the Public Advertiser. Tom was himself a critic, and had taken the field full armed for his friend (and his property). Have you seen,' he says in a letter to Granger, an impartial account of Goldsmith's

History of England? If you want to know who was

'the writer of it, you will find him in Russell Street: 'but Mum!'

Meanwhile Goldsmith had been steadily working at his new labour, had nearly finished his comedy, and was too quiet and busy in his country lodging to be much disturbed by those noises elsewhere. The farm-house still stands on a gentle eminence in what is called Hyde Lane, leading to Kenton, about three hundred yards from Hyde village, and looking over a pretty country in the direction of Hendon; and when Mr. Prior went in search of it some years since, he found still living in the neighbourhood the son of the farmer (a Mr. Selby) with whom the poet lodged, and in whose family the property of the house and farm remained. He found traditions of Goldsmith surviving, too: how he used now and then to wander into the kitchen from his own room in fits of study or abstraction, and the parlour used to be given up to him when he had visitors to tea; how Reynolds and Johnson had come out there, and he had once taken the young folks of the farm to see some strolling players at Hendon; how he had come home one night without his shoes, having left them stuck fast in a slough; and how he had an evil habit of reading in bed, and of putting out his candle by flinging his slipper at it. It is certain he was fond of this humble place. He told Johnson and Boswell that he believed the farmer's family thought him an odd character, similar to that in which The Spectator appeared to his landlady and her children. He was The Gentleman. And so content for the

neighbourhood, and took a single room in a farmer's house near the six mile stone on the Edgeware Road. It so suited his modest wants and means, and he liked the farmer's family so much, that he returned to it the following summer to write his Natural History, 'carrying down his books in two returned post chaises'; and it was then that Boswell's curiosity was moved to go and see the place, taking with him Mr. Mickle, translator of the Lusiad and author of the ballad of Cumnor Hall. Goldsmith was not ' at home; but having a curiosity to see his apartment 'we went in, and found curious scraps of descriptions of 'animals, scrawled upon the wall with a black-lead pencil.' Leaving him and his labours here, events which preceded the publication of his English History bring us back for a while to London.

Burke had just resumed those farmer occupations at Beaconsfield into which he threw himself with as much energy as if they had been party politics, after a session of unprecedented violence, but which had not ended in vehement speeches alone. Impelled and supported by the excitement out of doors, which had risen to unexampled height, and high above whose loudest storm the triumphant thunder of Junius was heard rattling against the treasury benches, he, and the minority with whom he acted, had been able at last to crush Lord North's majorities. The battle of the session was fought upon the right of the press to publish reports of what was passing in Parliament; and if Junius and Wilkes had done nothing more than help us to

a few years' earlier enjoyment of that popular right, such brawling ills as undoubtedly attended them might claim to have received expiation. It was in vain that Lord North walked out into the lobby with his splendid majorities; the opposition went back two hundred years for a precedent, and, strong in public opinion, invoked the orders of the house against its own tyranny. On the question of bringing what Colonel Onslow, with a proper sense of sport, called 'three brace' of printers to the bar, Burke and Barré divided three and twenty times; and when they left the house at the close of the struggle, between five and six o'clock in the morning of Saturday the 12th of March, they knew that the privilege was won. 'Posterity,' exclaimed Burke, 'will 'bless the pertinaciousness of this day.' In which faith he was quite content to receive the abuse of his contemporaries. It was not sparing. Conway recommended him to carry that line of tactics in future to Hockley in the Hole. Charles Fox grieved that he should turn the house into a beargarden. George Onslow asked what else but ignorance of its orders could the house expect from a man who was not descended from parliamentary men. Burke owned the insolent impeachment. 'I am not descended from members of 'parliament,' he said. 'I am not descended from any dis'tinguished character whatever. My father left me nothing ' in the world but good principles, good instruction, good 'example, which I have not departed from.' Nor was it in the house alone that such attacks were made. A churchman who had been his early associate, and was god-father