account of him with gratitude for the epitaph he bestowed on me in his poem called Retaliation. It was upon a proposal started by Edmund Burke, that a party of friends, who had dined together at Sir Joshua Reynolds' and my house, should meet at the St. James's Coffee-house, which accordingly took place, and was occasionally repeated with much festivity and good fellowship. Dr. Bernard, Dean of Derry, a very amiable and old friend of mine, Dr. Douglas, since Bishop of Salisbury, Johnson, David Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund and Richard Burke, Hickey, with two or three others constituted our party. At one of these meetings an idea was suggested of extemporary epitaphs upon the parties present; pen and ink were called for, and Garrick off hand wrote an epitaph with a good deal of humour upon poor Goldsmith, who was the first in jest, as he proved to be in reality, that we committed to the grave. The dean also gave him an epitaph, and Sir Joshua illuminated the dean's verses with a sketch of his bust in pen and ink inimitably caricatured. Neither Johnson, nor Burke wrote any thing, and when I perceived Oliver was rather sore, and seemed to watch me with that kind of attention, which indicated his expectation of something in the same kind of burlesque with their's, I thought it time to press the joke no further, and wrote a few couplets at a side table, which when I had finished and was

called upon by the company to exhibit, Goldsmith with much agitation besought me to spare him, and I was about to tear them, when Johnson wrested them out of my hand, and in a loud voice read them at the table. I have now lost all recollection of them, and in fact they were little worth remembering, but as they were serious and complimentary, the effect they had upon Goldsmith was the more pleasing for being so entirely unexpected. The concluding line, which is the only one I can call to mind, was

"All mourn the poet, I lament the man."

"This I recollect, because he repeated it several times, and seemed much gratified by it. At our next meeting he produced his epitaphs as they stand in the little posthumous poem above-mentioned, and this was the last time he ever enjoyed the company of his friends.

"As he had served up the company under the similitude of various sorts of meat, I had in the mean time figured them under that of liquors, which little poem I rather think was printed, but of this I am not sure. Goldsmith sickened and died, and we had one concluding meeting at my house, when it was decided to publish his Retaliation, and Johnson at the same time undertook to write an epitaph for our lamented friend, to whom we proposed to erect a monument by subscription in Westminster-Abbey. This epitaph

Johnson executed: but in the criticism, that was attempted against it, and in the Round-Robin signed at Mr. Beauclerc's house I had no part. I had no acquaintance with that gentleman, and was never in his house in my life.

"Thus died Oliver Goldsmith, in his chambers in the Temple, at a period of life, when his genius was yet in its vigour, and fortune seemed disposed to smile upon him. I have heard Dr. Johnson relate, with infinite humour, the circumstance of his rescuing him from a ridiculous dilemma by the purchase money of his Vicar of Wakefield, which he sold on his behalf to Dodsley, and, as I think, for the sum of ten pounds only. He had run up a debt with his landlady, for board and lodging, of some few pounds, and was at his wits-end how to wipe off the score and keep a roof over his head, except by closing with a very staggering proposal on her part, and taking his creditor to wife, whose charms were very far from alluring, whilst her demands were extremely urgent. In this crisis of his fate he was found by Johnson in the act of meditating on the melancholy alternative before him. He shewed Johnson his manuscript of the Vicar of Wakefield, but seemed to be without any plan, or even hope, of raising money upon the disposal of it; when Johnson cast his eye upon it, he discovered something that gave him hope, and immediately took it to Dodsley, who paid down the price above-mentioned in ready money, and added an eventual condition

upon its future sale. Johnson described the precautions he took in concealing the amount of the sum he had in hand, which he prudently administered to him by a guinea at a time. In the event he paid off the landlady's score, and redeemed the person of his friend from her embraces. Goldsmith had the joy of finding his ingenious work succeed beyond his hopes, and from that time began to place a confidence in the resources of his talents, which thenceforward enabled him to keep his station in society, and cultivate the friendship of many eminent persons, who, whilst they smiled at his eccentricities, esteemed him for his genius and good qualities."

Cumberland affirms, in one part of his Memoirs, that he regularly read Boswell's Life of Johnson once a year. It may be wondered, therefore, that he should fall into so gross a mistake, as to state that Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield was sold for ten pounds, when he might have learned, from two passages in that work, that Johnson disposed of it for sixty guineas.

He repeats, also, the same account of Goldsmith's situation when he sent to Johnson and shewed him his last resource in his manuscript, as had been given by Mrs. Piozzi in her Anecdotes, and which Boswell pronounced to be false. The testimonies for the two relations seem to be nearly equal. Mrs. Piozzi and Cumberland tell their's from positive recollection: Boswell does the same,

and he produces one totally different. Where does the truth lie? Johnson was a rigid observer of fidelity in all that he told; and as two witnesses are entitled to more credibility than one, where there is an equal respectability in all, we must suppose that the inaccuracy is in Boswell, and that the exact account is to be found in Cumberland and Mrs. Piozzi. What increases the confusion is, that Sir John Hawkins, who also professes to tell what Johnson told, has given a narrative which differs from both.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree?

It is to be regretted that Cumberland did not preserve his lines upon Goldsmith, produced on the occasion, as he has stated it. He thanks him, however, with gratitude for the epitaph which Goldsmith bestowed upon him in his posthumous poem of Retaliation. From this it may be conjectured that he considered the lines as encomiastic: but though some of them certainly are, there are others which I think convey more censure than praise. Let the reader judge:

Here Cumberland lies, having acted his parts,
The Terence of England, the mender of hearts;
A flattering painter, who made it his care
To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are;
His gallants are all faultless, his women divine,

And comedy wonders at being so fine:

Like a tragedy queen he has dizen'd her out,

Or rather like tragedy giving a rout.