Did Johnson join? the lexicographer upstairs lumbering about like a big boy: the jurist below, poring over his mouldy books, and grumbling at the levity and noise of such a royster! We have here a curious pair of pictures in our literary history. Goldsmith, like a true poet, loved the country, and often made what he called a shoemaker's holiday. A few friends were invited to a good breakfast on a summer's morning, after which they went off to Blackheath, Wandsworth, or some other suburban village, to revel together among green trees and yellow fields, and to drink in the delicious liquid air floating under the blue skies. We fancy the poet, with dusty feet, and with a large nosegay stuck in his bosom, coming back at night, through the crowded street, to his sombre lodgings in Brick-court; his memory lighted up with pleasant images which haunt him in his dreams, and come forth with helpful ministration when the next day he sits down to write an essay or a lay. Besides other works, Goldsmith wrote his "History of Rome" in the Temple. Among "the wits, lawyers, and legal students" who associated with Goldsmith in his half-cloistered retreat, was Judge Day, of the Irish bench, who often would talk of the poet's kindness to him and Grattan. "I was just arrived from college," said he, “full freighted with academic gleanings; and our author did not disdain to receive from me some opinions and thoughts towards his Greek and Roman histories. Being then a young man, I felt much flattered by the notice of so celebrated a person. He took great delight in the conversation of Grattan, whose brilliancy in the morning of life furnished full earnest of the unrivalled splendour which swelled his meridian; and finding us dwelling together in Essex-court, near himself, where he frequently visited my immortal friend, his warm heart became naturally prepossessed towards the associate of one whom he so much admired." The judge goes on, as Irving tells us, to give a picture of Goldsmith's social habits: he frequented much the

Grecian coffee-house, then the favourite resort of Irish and Lancashire templars he delighted in collecting his friends around him at evening parties in his chambers, where he entertained them with a cordial and unostentatious hospitality.

Several London taverns are associated with Goldsmith, and among the rest, one in Dean-street, kept by a singer of the name of Roberts. We mention that spot, because it was there that a conversation took place between Goldsmith and Johnson, which supplied some wit, often imitated since. The sage philosopher was discussing some kidneys with immense satisfaction, observing as he swallowed the savoury morsels, "These are pretty little things; but a man must eat a great many of them before he is filled." "Ay; but how many of them," asked the merry poet, with affected simplicity, "would reach to the moon?" "To the moon! Ah, sir, that I fear exceeds your calculation." "Not at all, sir; I think I could tell." 66 'Pray then, sir, let me hear." Why, sir, one; if it were long enough." Johnson growled for a time at finding himself caught in such a trite schoolboy trap. "Well, sir," he said at length, "I have deserved it. I should not have provoked so foolish an answer by so foolish a question."

Ranelagh Gardens, then the resort of the fashionable, offered strong attractions to the pleasure-loving Goldsmith; and doubtless often when reflecting on his visits, he felt how true were Johnson's words in one of his grave moods: "Alas, sir, these are only struggles for happiness. When I first entered Ranelagh, it gave an expansion and gay sensation to my mind, such as I never experienced anywhere else. But as Xerxes wept when he viewed his immense army, and considered that not one of that great multitude would be alive a hundred years afterwards, so it went to my heart to consider that there was not one in all that brilliant circle that was not afraid to go home and think."

At last, Goldsmith had to go home and die. He expired in his

room at the Temple, on the 4th of April, in his forty-sixth year. Poor women, whom he had generously relieved, stood sobbing outside the door in which lay the poet's corpse: but we cannot forget that there were others who mourned his removal for a very different reason. "Of poor Goldsmith," said Johnson, in a letter to Boswell, "there is little to be told more than the papers have made public. He died of a fever, made, I am afraid, more violent by uneasiness of mind. His debts began to be heavy, and all his resources were exhausted. Sir Joshua Reynolds is of opinion that he owed no less than two thousand pounds." He was buried in the ground of the Temple church; and as we think of the poet's dust so near us, when we are passing along Fleet-street, there come mingled with his memory solemn thoughts of the high ends of human life which he so sadly missed, or rather never seemed to aim at. We cannot write poems or essays like him whose shade we have just met, and to whose genius we do honour; but, with very humble talents, we may serve our generation according to the will of God. Neither literary nor any other form of worldly fame may guard our grave and write our epitaph; but a better immortality awaits us if we be numbered among those whom God counts righteous through faith in his Son.

"Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust."

X. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

THE history of English art presents a remarkable contrast to the history of English literature. Upon the dawn of the revival of letters, our Chaucer rose in resplendent beauty to vie with the Italian Boccaccio. The age of Camoens and Tasso, was also the age of Spenser, Shakspeare, and Jonson. While Molière,

Corneille, and Racine were writing their comedies, Bacon was laying the foundations of true philosophy, Milton was creating his grand epics, and Dryden was pouring out his "full resounding lines. But where, during that period, were the masters of British Art? There must indeed have been within our shores men of architectural genius to rear the magnificent edifices of the later mediæval age, the remains of which ever awaken admiration, even in uncultivated minds; but, after the decline and fall of the spirit of gothic architecture, no man appeared in England worthy of being esteemed a master in the art of building, till Sir Christopher Wren began to cultivate a taste for Italian forms and methods of construction. But he shines in his own department in solitary grandeur. Sculpture suffered a worse fate. With the exception of some beautiful mediæval statues by unknown hands, which still adorn our cathedrals, no English work of merit proceeded from the chisel through long centuries. No English name of note appears in the annals of statuary before the eighteenth century. Painting, so far as native talent is concerned, was scarcely better. son, the Scottish Vandyke as he is called, who career in Edinburgh in 1628, in a measure rescues the northern part of our isle from the imputation of utter sterility of artistic taste and skill; but no painter of indigenous growth appeared on this side the Tweed worthy of being ranked with him, till a much later period. The names and works of Holbein, Rubens, Vandyke, Lely, and Sir Godfrey Kneller, if we may associate such unequal names and works, became successively celebrated enough in England, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but these were all foreign. No native artist of commanding power appeared till the following century. It is singular that the eighteenth century, the age of a perfect bathos in architecture, and during the latter half by no means pre-eminent in literature, should have witnessed the rise of English sculpture and painting.

George Jamiecommenced his

Leicester Fields, as they were once called, and the region round about, contained the nursery of the latter beautiful art; and the facts just dotted down very naturally occur to us, as we walk through that bustling neighbourhood, so very unpicturesque and inartistic in appearance. Hogarth—who in so striking and original a manner depicted the manners of his age, performing with his pencil what Chaucer accomplished with his pen, and leading the way in English painting as the other did in English poetry— resided on the east side of the square, in a house which stood upon the site of the Sabloniere hotel. It bore the sign of the Golden Head, cut by the whimsical artist himself out of pieces of cork, and then glued together. A story is told by Cole, in his curious collection of scraps, illustrative alike of the painter and the times in which he lived. "When I sat to Hogarth, the custom of giving vails to servants was not discontinued. On taking leave of the painter at the door, I offered his servant a small gratuity, but the man very politely refused it, telling me it would be as much as the loss of his place if his master knew it. This was so uncommon and liberal, in a man of Hogarth's profession at that time of day, that it struck me, as nothing of the kind had happened to me before."

But the shade of another name pertaining to the history of the same art-less original, perhaps, but in some respects more illustrious-meets us in the commencement of his career not far from Leicester Fields, and then fixes itself within a house which still exists on the west side. To some reminiscences of that distinguished man, preserved by admiring biographers, this paper is devoted.

In Great Queen-street there are two houses, now numbered 55 and 56, which were originally one. There, in the year 1740, lived Thomas Hudson, at that time a painter of great note; and there, in the October of that year, was Joshua Reynolds placed under him, as a pupil for instruction in an art for which he had already