I

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

Oliver Goldsmith, born at Pallas in Ireland in 1728, studied medicine, wandered through Europe, returned to England, emerged through usherhood into literature, and for the last ten years of his life enjoyed sufficient means. He died in 1774. The simplicity of his pathos and the gentleness of his humour have never been equalled.

THE STROLLING PLAYER.

AM fond of amusement, in whatever company it is to be found; and wit, though dressed in rags, is ever pleasing to me. I went some days ago to take a walk in St. James's Park, about the hour in which company leave it to go to dinner. There were but few in the walks, and those who stayed seemed, by their looks, rather more willing to forget that they had an appetite than gain one. I sat down on one of the benches, at the other end of which was seated a man in very shabby clothes.

We continued to groan, to hem, and to cough, as usual upon such occasions; and at last ventured upon conversation. “I beg pardon, sir," cried I, "but I think I have seen you before; your face is familiar to me." "Yes, sir,” replied he, “I have a good familiar face, as my friends tell me. I am as well known in every town in England as the dromedary or live crocodile. You must understand, sir, that I have been these sixteen years Merry Andrew to a puppet-show; last Bartholomew Fair my master and I quarrelled, beat each other, and parted; he to sell his puppets to the pincushion-makers in Rosemary Lane, and I to starve in St. James's Park."

"I am sorry, sir, that a person of your appearance should labour under any difficulties." Oh, sir," returned he, "my appearance is very much at your service; but though I cannot boast of eating much, yet there are few that are merrier: if I had twenty thousand a year, I should be very merry; and, thank the Fates, though not worth a groat, I am very merry still. If I have three pence in my pocket, I never refuse to be my three-halfpence; and if I have no money, I never scorn to be treated by any that are kind enough to pay my reckoning. What think you, sir, of a steak and a tankard? You shall treat me now; and I will treat you again, when I find you in the Park in love with eating, and without money to pay for a dinner."

As I never refuse a small expense for the sake of a merry companion, we instantly adjourned to a neighbouring ale-house, and in a few moments had a frothing tankard and a smoking steak spread on the table before us. It is impossible to express how much the sight of such good cheer improved my companion's vivacity. “I like this dinner, sir,” says he, “for three reasons: first, because I am naturally fond of beef; secondly, because I am hungry; and, thirdly and lastly, because I get it for nothing: no meat eats so sweet as that for which we do not pay."

He therefore now fell to, and his appetite seemed to correspond with his inclination. After dinner was over, he observed that the steak was tough: "and yet, sir," returns he, “bad as it was, it seemed a rump-steak to me. Oh, the delights of poverty and a good appetite! We beggars are the very fondlings of Nature; the rich she treats like an arrant stepmother; they are pleased with nothing: cut a steak from what part you will, and it is insupportably tough; dress it up with pickles, and even pickles cannot procure them an appetite. But the whole creation is filled with good things for the beggar; Calvert's butt outtastes champagne, and Sedgeley's home-brewed excels Tokay. Joy, joy, my blood! though our estates lie nowhere, we have fortunes wherever we go. If an inundation sweeps away half the grounds of Cornwall, I am content-I have no lands there; if the stocks sink, that gives me no uneasiness-I am no Jew." The fellow's vivacity, joined to his poverty, I own, raised my curiosity to know something of his life and circumstances; and

I entreated that he would indulge my desire. "That I will, sir," said he, "and welcome; only let us drink to prevent our sleeping: let us have another tankard while we are awake-let us have another tankard; for, ah, how charming a tankard looks when full!"

Essays.

P. 223, 1. 18. Pincushion makers, to whom their sawdust stuffing would be useful.

P. 224, 1. 8. To be my three-halfpence. This good old phrase, signifying to club or subscribe the amount, is not quite extinct. At a recent inquiry before the magistrate into the death of an unfortunate girl in Westminster, one of the witnesses described himself as having said to another, “If you'll be sixpence, Clara, I'll be sixpence," the proposal being that they should club their money for medicine.

P. 224, L. 25. A rump-steak. It is sad to think that out of London and a few large towns this distinction is not universally known even yet.

P. 224, Il. 31, 32. Calvert is frequent in the eighteenth century writers as a brewer; Sedgeley less common.

Q

EDMUND BURKE.

Edmund Burke was born at Dublin in 1730. A private secretaryship brought him into politics, and he became one of the chief Parliamentary Whigs. His strenuous assaults on Warren Hastings and the French Revolution are the most famous events in his life. Burke spoke well but wrote better, and his political writing has, in the grand style, few equals. He died in 1797.

ON REFORM.

MANY of the changes, by a great misnomer called parlia

mentary reforms, went, not in the intention of all the professors and supporters of them, undoubtedly, but went in their certain, and, in my opinion, not very remote effect, home to the utter destruction of the constitution of this kingdom. Had they taken place, not France, but England, would have had the honour of leading up the death-dance of democratic revolution. Other projects, exactly coincident in time with those, struck at the very existence of the kingdom under any constitution. There are who remember the blind fury of some, and the lamentable helplessness of others; here, a torpid confusion, from a panic fear of the danger; there, the same inaction from a stupid insensibility to it; here, well-wishers to the mischief; there, indifferent lookers-on. At the same time, a sort of national convention, dubious in its nature, and perilous in its example, nosed parliament in the very seat of its authority; sat with a sort of superintendence over it; and little less than dictated to it, not only laws, but, the very form and essence of legisture itself. In Ireland things ran in a still more eccentric

course.

Government was unnerved, confounded, and in a manner suspended. Its equipoise was totally gone. I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of Lord North. He was a man of admirable parts; of general knowledge; of a versatile understanding fitted for every sort of business; of infinite wit and pleasantry; of a delightful temper; and with a mind most perfectly disinterested. But it would be only to degrade myself by a weak adulation, and not to honour the memory of a great man, to deny that he wanted something of the vigilance and spirit of command, that the time required. Indeed, a darkness, next to the fog of this awful day, loured over the whole region. For a little time the helm appeared abandoned—

Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere cœlo,

Nec meminisse viæ media Palinurus in unda.

At that time I was connected with men of high place in the community. They loved liberty as much as the Duke of Bedford can do; and they understood it at least as well. Perhaps their politics, as usual, took a tincture from their character, and they cultivated what they loved. The liberty they pursued was a liberty inseparable from order, from virtue, from morals, and from religion; and was neither hypocritically nor fanatically followed. They did not wish, that liberty, in itself one of the first of blessings, should in its perversion become the greatest curse which could fall upon mankind. To preserve the constitution entire, and practically equal to all the great ends of its reformation, not in one single part, but in all its parts, was to them the first object. Popularity and power they regarded alike. These were with them only different means of obtaining that object; and had no preference over each other in their minds, but as one or the other might afford a surer or a less certain prospect of arriving at that end. It is some consolation to me in the cheerless gloom, which darkens the evening of my life, that with them I commenced my political career, and never for a moment, in reality, nor in appearance, for any length of time, was separated from their good wishes and good opinion.

By what accident it matters not, nor upon what desert, but just then, and in the midst of that hunt of obloquy, which ever has pursued me with a full cry through life, I had obtained a very