CHAPTER II.

DAVID GAKRICK.
1759.

ON the 39th of November, the Bee's brief life closed, with 1759.
its eighth number; and in the following month its editor, Mi, 31.
Mr. Oliver Goldsmith, was sought out both by that dis-
tinguished author Doctor Smollett, and by Mr. John Newbery
the bookseller, of St. Paul's-churchyard. But as he had
meanwhile made earnest application to Mr. David Garrick
for his interest in an election at the Society of Arts, it will
be best to describe at once the circumstances involved in
that application, and its result on the poor author's sub-
sequent intercourse with the rich manager and proprietor of
the theatre royal in Drury Lane.

Goldsmith was passionately fond of the theatre. In
prosperous days, it will ring with his humour and cheerful-
ness ; in these struggling times, it was the help and refuge
of his loneliness. We have seen him steal out of his garret
to hear Columba sing: and if she fell short of the good old
music he had learnt to love at Lissoy, the other admiration
he was taught there, of happy human faces, at the theatre
was always in his reach. If there is truth in what was said
by Sir Richard Steele, that being happy, and seeing others
happy, for two hours, is a duration of bliss not at all to beh, are