DR. JOHNSON.-GOLDSMITH.

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both a surprising facility of communicating and applying his intellectual stores, and a wonderful versatility in adapting his explanations and discourses to the subject, and to the capacity of his hearers. "If," said Johnson, "Burke were to go into a stable, and talk for a short time with the ostlers, they would venerate him as the wisest man they had ever seen." Indeed, in every company, of whatever rank or capacity, Burke poured out the fulness of his mind in no stream of pedantry, but in a clear glittering effusion of knowledge.

Though mentioned here in anticipation, Johnson's acquaintance with Burke began somewhat later than just after the publication of the Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. At the house of David Garrick, on Christmas-day 1758, Dr. Johnson first dined in company with Mr. Burke. It was even then observed that the Doctor would, from his new associate, bear contradiction, which he would tolerate from no other person. The principal subject of conversation was Bengal, concerning which, though then a topic hardly known, Burke had ready, accurate, and extensive information.

Among those who hailed the dawn of Edmund Burke's brilliant day, no one came to him with more cordial congratulation— the fervid ebullition of a heart warm and loving to the core-than his former fellow-collegian and ever-devoted friend, poor, excellent, inimitable Oliver Goldsmith, who was then, as indeed he álways was, scribbling for a bare existence from the London publishers—seeking life from those to whom he was about to give things immortal in exchange for daily bread. Strange does it now seem, when one reverts to Goldsmith, and finds him looked down upon by Johnson, Reynolds, Horace Walpole, Garrick, and other celebrities of his day. Johnson loved him, but treated him as he would a wayward and foolish schoolboy. Walpole tempered his admiration by calling him an inspired idiot. Posterity has done Goldsmith justice; for who dreams now of want of sound common sense and the sanest intellect in the author of The De

serted Village, She Stoops to Conquer, and that purest, most perfect of novels, The Vicar of Wakefield, where the writer, with fervid inspiration, rich imagination, and boundless fancy, makes beautifully rational the love of every domestic virtue, and instils into his reader the sweetest philosophy that ever warmed the heart of man? Poor Goldsmith! It was his perfect good-nature and utter want of selfishness, his boyish spirits, and his droll inconsiderateness, that made him appear to men, few of them his equals, none his superiors, as a person more simple and less sensible than he really was. His fond reliance upon others gave an additional semblance of weakness to his character; this confidence he often misplaced, but he showed his discernment when he enthusiastically fixed it on Johnson and Burke. Goldsmith thought them the greatest men in the world. He looked up to, and delighted in their society with all the earnest affection of a schoolboy, feeling something of the awe of school-hours in the presence of the Doctor, while all was pleasure and playtime in his association with Edmund Burke. Goldsmith's poetry presents one well-known and remarkable instance of how he appreciated Burke and Johnson. In the "Haunch of Venison," partially an imitation of the third satire of Boileau, when Goldsmith came to the French poet's line, announcing the non-arrival of the promised grand guests

"Nous n'avons, m'a-t-il dit, ni Lambert ni Molière,”

he put in place of the original names those of the two supreme objects of his own admiration:

"My friend bade me welcome, but struck me quite dumb With tidings that Johnson and Burke would not come." Of Goldsmith's further verse touching Burke and his family, more hereafter.

To another standard writer of comedy, the author of The Man of the World and Love à la Mode, Charles Macklin, Burke owed his first opportunity of speaking before a public audience.

MACKLIN'S SCHEMES.

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Macklin, one of that right royal and right worthy dynasty of actors, which, through Kemble, Siddons, Cooke, and the Keans, has come down to the present day, had had from early life his surfeit of applause, and imagined when he had reached his sixty

third year, while still as stout as ever in fame and constitution, that it was time for him to retire from the stage: he accordingly made, what turned out to be, a temporary secession. In lieu of his profession, he set about executing a scheme of achieving his fortune by the establishment of a tavern and coffee-house in the Piazza, Covent Garden: to this he afterwards added a school of oratory, upon a plan hitherto unknown in England, founded upon the Greek, Roman, French, and Italian societies,

under the title of "the British Inquisition." The first part of this plan was opened on the eleventh of March, 1754, by a public ordinary, which was to take place daily at four o'clock, the price being three shillings each person, with allowance of port, claret, or whatever spirituous liquor the party should choose.

The arrangement of the ordinary was this. Dinner was announced by public advertisement to be ready at four o'clock, and just as that hour struck, a large bell affixed to the top of the house gave notice of the approaching repast. This bell continued ringing for about five minutes; the dinner was then ordered to be dished, and in ten minutes afterwards it appeared upon the table; after that, the outer room door was shut, and no other guest admitted either for love or money. Macklin himself always brought in the first dish, habited in an appropriate suit of clothes, with a napkin slung across his left arm; and he then remained to superintend his waiters, whom previous drilling had accomplished in the art of attending silently and noiselessly, according to a system of signs. This arrangement, it is said, imposed a useful constraint upon the guests, and while the concern lasted, there occurred fewer quarrels than were then unhappily but too usual in such places.

Of the other part of Macklin's scheme, which he called “the British Inquisition," the main features were public discussion, directed by Macklin, on history, literature, art, and science; and lectures of his own on elocution and dramatic action.

The following passages from his first advertisement give further explanation of the plan.

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'At Macklin's great room in Hart Street, Covent Garden, this day, being the 21st November, 1754, will be commenced THE BRITISH INQUISITION.

"The doors will be opened at five, and the lecture will begin precisely at seven o'clock, every Monday and Friday evening. Ladies will be admitted. Price one shilling each person. The first lecture will be on Hamlet.

"N. B. The question to be debated after this day's lecture

BURKE CANDIDATE FOR A PROFESSORSHIP.

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will be, 'Whether the people of Great Britain have profited by their intercourse with, or their imitation of, the French nation?'

"N.B. This evening the public subscription card-room will be opened. Subscriptions taken in by Mr. Macklin."

Both at the ordinary and at the more intellectual entertainment, the company generally consisted of authors, players, templars, and lounging-men about town.

In this "British Inquisition" Burke was a debater, whether a leading one or not is unknown, but certainly so much so to his own satisfaction and advantage, that he recommended Macklin to Alexander Wedderburn, then a seceder from the Scotch bar and a student at the Temple, for Macklin to teach him elocution, and cure him, if possible, of his Northern accent. This pupil, who became Lord Chancellor, and a peer as Baron Loughborough, and eventually Earl of Rosslyn, always acknowledged Macklin's powers as an instructor. The dinner and debating scheme of Macklin ended in bankruptcy—a fortunate result for the public, since its projector returned to the drama and the stage, to delight, when past eighty, his own and future ages with his creation of Sir Pertinax MacSycophant, and to charm, until near his ninetieth year, his audiences with his impersonations of that character and Shylock. Singular enough, Macklin lived through all Burke's subsequent statesman-career, and died two days after him, on the 11th July, 1797.

This chapter should not conclude without mention of two circumstances relative to Burke at this period, though the particulars rest on evidence somewhat obscure. In 1752 or 1753, Burke, during a ramble he took in Scotland to benefit his health, offered himself a candidate for the chair of logic in the University of Glasgow, as the successor of his countryman Dr. Hutchison, who had already shed a lustre over that professorship which Adam Smith and Ferguson were afterwards to make more brilliant still. Whether Burke retired from the scholastic contest or was defeated