This connecting link between Shakespeare, Garrick, and Sarah Siddons is one of the most interesting incidents in connection with the Adelphi. Garrick is also responsible for a side-light on the life of Oliver Goldsmith. Forster, in his _Life and Times of Goldsmith_, says that the alteration of his first comedy for Garrick, even upon Garrick's own conditions, seems to have suddenly occurred to the impecunious author as a means of raising money. Goldsmith's two letters on the subject by chance survived and were transcribed by Forster, who, in regard to the first one, says that: "As well in the manner as in the matter of it, the writer's distress is very painfully visible. It has every appearance, even to the wafer hastily thrust into it, of having been the sudden suggestion of necessity; it is addressed without date[39] or place to the Adelphi; nor is it unlikely to have been delivered there by the messenger of a sponging-house. "'My Dear Sir,--Your saying you would play my _Good-Natured Man_ makes me wish it. The money you advanced me upon Newbery's note I have the mortification to find is not yet paid, but he says he will in two or three days. What I mean by this letter is to lend me sixty pound, for which I will give you Newbery's note, so that the whole of my debt will be an hundred, for which you shall have Newbery's note as a security. This may be paid either from my alteration if my benefit should come to so much, but at any rate I will take care you shall not be a loser. I will give you a new character in my comedy and knock out Lofty, which does not do, and will make such other alterations as you direct.--I am yours, "'Oliver Goldsmith. "'I beg an answer.' "This letter is indorsed in Garrick's handwriting as '_Goldsmith's parlaver_.' But though it would thus appear to have inspired but little sympathy or confidence, and the sacrifice of Lofty had come too late and been too reluctant, Garrick's answer, begged so earnestly, was not unfavourable. He evaded the altered comedy; spoke of the new one already mentioned between them; and offered the money required on Goldsmith's own acceptance.... The second note exhibits such manifest improvement in the writing as a sudden removal of a sore anxiety might occasion; but the writer's usual epistolary neatness is still absent. It is hastily folded up in three-cornered shape, is also sealed with wafer, and also indorsed by Garrick, '_Goldsmith's parlaver_.'