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Let us linger a little in Green-arbour-court-a place consecrated by the genins and the poverty of Goldsmith, but recently obliterated in the course of modern improve ments. The writer of this memoir visited it not many years since on a literary pilgrimage, and may be excused for repeating a description of it which he has heretofore inserted in another publication. "It then existed in its pristine state, and was a small square of tall and miserable houses, the very intestines of which seemed turned inside out, to judge from the old garments and frippery that fluttered from every window. It appeared to be a region of washerwomen, and lines were stretched across the little square, on which clothes were dangling to dry. "Just as we entered the square a scuffle took place between two viragoes about a disputed right to a washtub, and immediately the whole community was in a hubbub. Heads in mob caps popped out of every window, and such a clamour of tongues ensued that I was fain to stop my ears. Every Amazon took part with one or other of the disputants, and brandished her arms, dripping with soapsuds, and fired away from her window as from the embrasure of a fortress; while the screams of children nestled and cradled in every procreant chamber of this hive, waking with the noise, set up their shrill pipes to swell the general concert."

While in these forlorn quarters, suffering under extreme depression of spirits, caused by his failure at Surgeons' Hall, the disappointment of his hopes, and his harsh collisions with Griffiths, Goldsmith wrote the following letter to his brother Henry, some parts of which are most touchingly mournful.

"DEAR SIR,-Your punctuality in answering a man whose trade is writing, is more than I had reason to expect; and yet you generally see me fill a whole sheet, which is all the recompense I can make for being so frequently troublesome. The behaviour of Mr. Wells and Mr. Lawder is a little extraordinary. However, their answering neither you nor me is a sufficient indication of their disliking the employment which I assigned them. As their conduct is different from what I had expected, so I have made an alteration in mine. I shall, the beginning of next month, send over two hundred and fifty books,* which are all that I fancy can be well sold among you, and I would have you make some distinction in the persons who have subscribed. The money, which will amount to sixty pounds, may be left with Mr. Bradley as soon as possible. I am not certain but I shall quick'y have occasion for it.

"I have met with no disappointment with respect to my East India voyage, nor are my resolutions altered; thongh, at the same time, I must confess it gives me some pain to think that I am almost beginning the world at the age of thirty-one. Though I never had a day's sickness since I saw you, yet I am not that strong, active man you once knew me. You scarcely can conceive how much eight years of disappointment, anguish, and study have worn me down. If I remember right you are seven or eight years older than me, yet I dare venture to say, that if a stranger saw us both he would pay me the honours of seniority. Imagine to yourself a pale, melancholy visage, with two great wrinkles between the eyebrows, with an eye disgustingly severe, and a big wig; and you may have a perfect picture of my present appearance. On the other hand, I conceive you as perfectly sleek and healthy, passing many a happy day among your own children, or those who knew you a child.

"Since I knew what it was to be a man, this is a

The "Inquiry into Polite Literature." His previous remarks apply to the subscription.

pleasure I have not known. I have passed my days among a parcel of cool, designing beings, and have contracted all their suspicious manner in my own behaviour. I should actually be as unfit for the society of my friends at home, as I detest that which I am obliged to partake of here. I can now neither partake of the pleasure of a revel, nor contribute to raise its jollity. I can neither laugh nor drink-have contracted a hesitating, disagree able manner of speaking, and a visage that looks illnature itself; in short, I have thought myself into a settled melancholy, and an utter disgust of all that life brings with it. Whence this romantic turn that all our family are possessed with? Whence this love for every place and every country but that in which we reside— for every occupation but our own? This desire of fortune, and yet this eagerness to dissipate? I perceive, my dear sir, that I am at intervals for indulging this splenetic manner, and following my own taste regardless of

yours.

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The reasons you have given me for breeding up your son a scholar are judicious and convincing; I should, however, be glad to know for what particular profession he is designed. If he be assiduous and divested of strong passions (for passions in youth always lead to pleasure), he may do very well in your college; for it must be owned that the industrious poor have good encouragement there-perhaps better than in any other in Europe. But if he has ambition, strong passions, and an exquisite sensibility of contempt, do not send him there, unless you have no other trade for him but your own. It is impossible to conceive how much may be done by proper education at home. A boy, for instance, who understands perfectly well Latin, French, arithmetic, and the principles of the civil law, and can write a fine hand, has an education that may qualify him for any undertaking; and these parts of learning should be carefully inculcated, let him be designed for whatever calling he will.

"Above all things, let him never touch a romance or novel; these paint beauty in colours more charming than nature, and describe happiness that man never tastes. How delusive, how destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss! They teach the youthful mind to sigh after beauty and happiness that never existed-to despise the little good which fortune has mixed in our cup, by expecting more than she ever gave; and, in general, take the word of a man who has seen the world, and who has studied human nature more by experience than precept-take my word for it, I say, that books teach us very little of the world. The greatest merit in a state of poverty would only serve to make the possessor ridiculous-may distress, but cannot relieve him. Frugality, and even avarice, in the lower orders of mankind are true ambition. These afford the only ladder for the poor to rise to preferment. Teach then, my dear sir, to your son-thrift and economy. Let his poor wandering uncle's example be placed before his eyes. I had learned from books to be disinterested and generous, before I was taught from experience the necessity of being prudent. I had contracted the habits and notions of a philosopher, while I was exposing myself to the approaches of insidious cunning; and often by being, even with my narrow finances, charitable to excess, I forgot the rules of justice, and placed myself in the very situa tion of the wretch who thanked me for my bounty. When I am in the remotest part of the world, tell him this, and perhaps he may improve from my example. But I find myself again falling into my gloomy habits of thinking.

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My mother, I am informed, is almost blind; even though I had the utmost inclination to return home, under such circumstances I could not, for to behold her in distress without a capacity of relieving her from it would add much to my splenetic habit. Your last letter was much too short; it should have answered some

queries I had made in my former. Just sit down as I do, and write forward until you have filled all your paper. It requires no thought, at least from the ease with which my own sentiments rise when they are addressed to you. For believe me, my head has no share in all I write; my heart dictates the whole. Pray give my love to Bob Bryanton, and entreat him from me not to drink. My dear sir, give me some account about poor Jenny. Yet her husband loves her: if so, she cannot be unhappy.

"I know not whether I should tell you yet why should I conceal these trifles, or, indeed, anything from you? There is a book of mine will be published in a few days, the life of a very extraordinary man-no less than the great Voltaire. You know already by the title that it is no more than a catchpeuny. However, I spent but four weeks on the whole performance, for which I received twenty pounds, When published, I shall take some method of conveying it to you, unless you may think it dear of the postage, which may amount to four or five shillings. However, I fear you will not find an equivalent of amusement.

"Your last letter, I repeat it, was too short; you should have given me your opinion of the design of the heroicomical poem which I sent you. You remember, I intended to introduce the hero of the poem as lying in a paltry alehouse. You may take the following specimen of the manner, which I flatter myself is quite original. The room in which he lies may be described somewhat in this way

The window, patch'd with paper, lent a ray
That feebly show'd the state in which he lay;
The sanded floor, that grits beneath the tread,
The humid wall with paltry pictures spread;
The game of goose was there exposed to view,
And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew;
The Seasons, framed with listing, found a place,
And Prussia's monarch show'd his lamp-black face.
The morn was cold; he views with keen desire

A rusty grate, unconscious of a fire;

An unpaid reckoning on the frieze was scored,

And five crack'd teacups dress'd the chimney-board.

"And now imagine, after his soliloqy, the landlord to make his appearance in order to dun him for the reckoning:

Not with that face, so servile and so gay, That welcomes every stranger that can pay; With sulky eye he smoked the patient man, Then pull'd his breeches tight, and thus began. "All this is taken, you see, from nature. It is a good remark of Montaigne's, that the wisest men often have friends with whom they do not care how much they play the fool. Take my present follies as instances of my regard. Poetry is a much easier and more agreeable species of composition than prose; and, could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet. I am resolved to leave no space, though I should fill it up only by telling you, what you very well know already-I mean that I am your most affectionate friend and brother,

"OLIVER GOLDSMITH."

The "Life of Voltaire," alluded to in the latter part of the preceding letter, was the literary job undertaken to satisfy the demands of Griffiths. It was to have preceded a translation of the Henriade, by Ned Purdon, Goldsmith's old schoolmate, who starved rather than lived by the exercise of his pen, and often tasked Goldsmith's scanty means to relieve his hunger. His miserable career was summed up by our poet in the following lines, written some years after the time we are treat

His sister, Mrs. Johnston; her marriage, like that of Mrs. Hodson, was private, but in pecuniary matters much less for

tanate.

The projected poem, of which the above are specimens, appears never to have been completed.

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Here lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery freed,
Who long was a bookseller's hack;

He led such a damnable life in this world,

I don't think he'll wish to come back.

The memoir and translation, though advertised to form a volume, were not published together, but appeared separately in a magazine.

As to the heroi-comical poem, also cited in the foregoing letter, it appears to have perished in embryo. Had it been brought to maturity we should have had further traits of autobiography; the room already described was probably his own squalid quarters in Greenarbour-court; and in a subsequent morsel of the poem we have the poet himself, under the euphonious name of Scroggin

Where the Red Lion peering o'er the way,
Invites each passing stranger that can pay;
Where Calvert's butt and Parson's black champaigne
Regale the drabs and bloods of Drury Lane:
There, in a lonely room, from bailiffs snug,
The muse found Scroggin stretch'd beneath a rug;
A nightcap deck'd his brow instead of bay,
A cap by night, a stocking all the day.

It is to be regretted that this poetical conception was not carried out; like the author's other writings, it might have abounded with pictures of life and touches of na ture drawn from his own observation and experience, and mellowed by his own humane and tolerant spirit; and might have been a worthy companion, or rather con trast, to his Traveller" and "Deserted Village," and have remained in the language a first-rate specimen of the mock-heroic.

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CHAP. XI.

Publication of "The Inquiry"-Attacked by Griffiths' ReviewKenrick, the literary Ishmaelite-Periodical literature-Goldsmith's Essays-Garrick as a Mnager-Smollett and his schemes Change of lodgings-The Robin Hood club.

Towards the end of March, 1759, the treatise on which Goldsmith had laid so much stress, on which he at one time had calculated to defray the expenses of his outfit to India, and to which he had adverted in his correspondence with Griffiths, made its appearance. It was pub lished by the Dodsleys, and entitled An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe."

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In the present day, when the whole field of contemporary literature is so widely surveyed and amply discussed, and when the current productions of every country are constantly collated and ably criticised, a treatise like that of Goldsmith would be considered as extremely limited and unsatisfactory; but at that time it possessed novelty in its views and wideness in its scope, and being endued with the peculiar charm of style inseparable from the author, it commanded public attention and a profitable sale. As it was the most important productiou that had yet come from Goldsmith's pen, he was anxious to have the credit of it; yet it appeared without his name on the title-page. The authorship, however, was well-known throughout the world of letters, and the author had now grown into sufficient literary importance to become an object of hostility to the underlings of the press. One of the most virulent attacks upon him was in a criticism on this treatise, and appeared in the "Monthly Review," to which he himself had been recently a contributor. It slandered him as a man, while it decried him as an author, and accused him by inuendo of "labouring under the infamy of having, by the vilest and meane-t actions, forfeited all pretensions to honour and honesty," and of practising "those acts which bring the sharper to the cart's-tail or the pillory."

It will be remembered that the Review was owned by Griffiths the bookseller, with whom Goldsmith had recently had a misunderstanding. The criticism, therefore, was no doubt dictated by the lingerings of resentment; and the imputations upon Goldsmith's character for honour and honesty, and the vile and mean actions hinted at, could only allude to the unfortunate pawning of the clothes. All this, too, was after Griffiths had received the affecting letters from Goldsmith, drawing a picture of his poverty and perplexities, and after the latter had made him a literary compensation. Griffiths, in fact, was sensible of the falsehood and extravagance of the attack, and tried to exonerate himself by declaring that the criticism was written by a person in his employ; but we see no difference in atrocity between him who wields the knife and him who hires the cutthroat. It may be well, however, in passing, to bestow our mite of notoriety upon the miscreant who launched the slander. He deserves it for a long course of dastardly and venomous attacks, not merely upon Goldsmith, but upon most of the successful authors of the day. His name was Kenrick. He was originally a mechanic, but possessing some degree of talent and industry, applied himself to literature as a profession. This he pursued for many years, and tried his hand in every department of prose and poetry; he wrote plays and satires, philosophical tracts, critical dissertations, and works on philology; nothing from his pen ever rose to first-rate excellence, or gained him a popular name, though he received from some university the degree of Doctor of Laws. Dr. Johnson characterised his literary career in one short sentence: "Sir, he is one of the many who have made themselves public without making themselves known."

Soured by his own want of success, jealous of the success of others, his natural irritability of temper increased by habits of intemperance, he at length abandoned himself to the practice of reviewing, and became one of the Ishmaelites of the press. In this, his malignant bitterness soon gave him a notoriety which his talents had never been able to attain. We shall dismiss him for the present with the following sketch of him, by the hand of one of his contemporaries :

Dreaming of genius which he never had,
Half wit, half fool, half critic, and half mad;
Seizing, like Shirley, on the poet's lyre,
With all his rage, but not one spark of fire;
Eager for slaughter, and resolved to tear

From others' brows that wreath he must not wearNext Kenrick came, all furious and replete With brandy, malice, pertness, and conceit; Unskill'd in classic lore, through envy blind To all that's beauteous, learned, or refined; For faults alone, behold this savage prowl, With reason's offal glut his ravening soul; Pleased with his prey, its inmost blood he drinks, And mumbles, paws, and turns it-till it stinks. The British press about this time was extravagantly fruitful of periodical publications. That "oldest inhabitant," the "Gentleman's Magazine," almost coeval with St. John's Gate, which graced its title page, had long been elbowed by magazines and reviews of all kinds; Johnson's "Rambler" had introduced the fashion of periodical essays, which he had followed up in his "Adventurer" and "Idler." Imitations had sprung up on every side, under every variety of name; until British literature was entirely overrun by a weedy and transient efflorescence. Many of these rival periodicals choked each other almost at the outset, and few of them have escaped oblivion.

as

Goldsmith wrote for some of the most successful, such The Bee," "The Busy Body," and "The Lady's Magazine." His essays, though characterised by his delightful style, his pure, benevolent morality, and his mellow, unobtrusive humour, did not produce equal effect at first with more garish writings of infinitely less

value; they did not "strike," as it is termed; but they had that rare and enduring merit which rises in estimation on every perusal. They gradually stole upon the heart of the public, were copied into numerous contemporary publications, and now they are garnered up among the choice productions of British literature. In his "Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning," Goldsmith had given offence to David Garrick, at that time the autocrat of the drama, and was doomed to experience its effects. A clamour had been raised against Garrick for exercising a despotism over the stage, and bringing forward nothing but old plays, to the exclusion of original productions. Walpole joined in this charge "Garrick," said he, is treating the town as it deserves and likes to be treated, with scenes, fire-works, and his own writings. A good new play I never expect to see more; nor have seen since the Provoked Husband,' which came out when I was at school." Goldsmith, who was extremely fond of the theatre, and felt the evils of this system, inveighed in his treatise against the wrongs experienced by authors at the hands of managers. "Our poet's performance," said he, must undergo a process truly chemical before it is presented to the public. It must be tried in the manager's firestrained through a licenser-suffer from repeated corrections, till it may be mere caput mortuum when it arrives before the public." Again" Getting a play on even in three or four years is a privilege reserved only for the happy few who have the arts of courting the manager as well as the muse-who have adulation to please his vanity, powerful patrons to support their merit, or money to indemnify disappointment. Saxon ancestors had but one name for a wit and a witch. I would not dispute the propriety of uniting those characters then; but the man who under present discouragements ventures to write for the stage, whatever claim he may have to the appellation of a wit, has at least no right to be called a conjuror." But a passage which perhaps touched more sensibly than all the rest on the sensibilities of Garrick was the following:

Our

"I have no particular spleen against the fellow who sweeps the stage with the broom, or the hero who brushes it with his train. It were a matter of indiffer ence to me whether our heroines are in keeping or our candle-snuffers burn their fingers, did not such make a great part of public care and polite conversation. Our actors assume all that state off the stage which they do on it; and, to use an expression borrowed from the green-room, every one is up in his part. I am sorry to say it, they seem to forget their real characters."

These strictures were considered by Garrick as intended for himself, and they were rankling in his mind when Goldsmith waited upon him, and solicited his vote for the vacant secretaryship of the Society of Arts, of which the manager was a member. Garrick, puffed up by his dramatic renown and his intimacy with the great, and knowing Goldsmith only by his budding reputation, may not have considered him of sufficient importance to be conciliated. In reply to his solicitations, he observed that he could hardly expect his friendly exertions after the unprovoked attack he had made upon his management. Goldsmith replied that he had indulged in no personalities, and had only spoken what he believed to be the truth. He made no further apology nor application, failed to get the appointment, and considered Garrick his enemy. In the second edition of this treatise he expunged or modified the passages which had given the manager offence; but though the author and actor became intimate in after years, this false step at the outset of their intercourse was never forgotten.

About this time Goldsmith engaged with Dr. Smollett, who was about to launch the British Magazine. Smollett was a complete schemer and speculator in literature, and intent upon enterprises that had money rather than reputation in view. Goldsmith has a good-humoured

hit at his propensity in one of his papers in the "Bee," in which he represents Johnson, Hume, and others taking seats in the stage-coach bound for Fame, while Smollett prefers that destined for Riches.

Another prominent employer of Goldsmith was Mr. John Newbery, who engaged him to contribute occasional essays to a newspaper entitled the "Public Ledger," which made its first appearance on the 12th of January, 1760. His most valuable and characteristic contributions to this paper were his "Chinese Letters," subsequently modified into the “Citizen of the World." These lucubrations attracted general attention; they were reprinted in the various periodical publications of the day, and met with great applause. The name of the author, however, was as yet but little known.

Being now easier in circumstances, and in the receipt of frequent sums from the booksellers, Goldsmith, about the middle of 1760, emerged from his dismal abode in Green-arbour-court, and took respectable apartments in Wine-office-court, Fleet street.

Still he continued to look back with considerate benevolence to the poor hostess whose necessities he had relieved by pawning his gala coat, for we are told that he often supplied her with food from his own table, and visited her frequently with the sole purpose to be kind to her."

He now became a member of a debating club, called the Robin Hood," which used to meet near Temple Bar, and in which Burke, while yet a Temple student, had first tried his powers. Goldsmith spoke here occasionally, and is recorded in the Robin Hood archives as "a candid disputant, with a clear head and an honest heart, though coming but seldom to the society." His relish was for clubs of a rore social, jovial nature, and he was never fond of argument. An amusing anecdote is told of his first introduction to the club, by Samuel Derrick, an Irish acquaintance of some humour. On entering, Goldsmith was struck with the self-important appearance of the chairman, ensconced in a large gilt chair. This," said he, "must be the Lord-Chancellor at least." No, no,” replied Derrick, "he's only master of the rolls."-The chairman was a baker.

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In his new lodgings in Wine-office-court Goldsmith began to receive visits of ceremony, and to entertain his literary friends. Among the latter he now numbered several naines of note, such as Guthrie, Murphy, Christopher Smart, and Bickerstaff. He had also a numerous class of hangers-on, the small fry of literature; who, knowing his almost utter incapacity to refuse a pecuniary request, were apt, now that he was considered flush, to levy continual taxes upon his purse.

Among others, one Pilkington, an old college acquaint ance, but now a shifting adventurer, duped him in the most ludicrous manner. He called on him with a face full of perplexity. A lady of the first rank having an extraordinary fancy for curious animals, for which she was willing to give enormous sums, he had procured a couple of white mice to be forwarded to her from India. They were actually on board of a ship in the river. Her grace had been apprised of her arrival, and was all impatience to see them. Unfortunately he had no cage to put them in, nor clothes to appear in before a lady of her rank. Two guineas would be sufficient for his purpose, but where were two guineas to be procured?

The simple heart of Goldsmith was touched; but, alas! he had but half-a-guinea in his pocket. It was unfor

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tunate, but, after a pause, his friend suggested, with some hesitation," that money might be raised upon his watch; it would be but the loan of a few hours.' So said, so done; the watch was delivered to the worthy Mr. Pilkington to be pledged at a neighbouring pawnbroker's; but nothing further was ever seen of him, the watch, or the white mice. The next that Goldsmith heard of the poor shifting scapegrace, he was on his death-bed, starv ing with want; upon which, forgetting or forgiving the trick he had played upon him, he sent him a guinea. Indeed, he used often to relate with great humour the foregoing anecdote of his credulity, and was ultimately in some degree indemnitied, by its suggesting to him the amusing little story of Prince Boubennin and the White Mouse in the Citizen of the World."

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In this year Goldsmith became personally acquainted with Dr. Johnson, toward whom he was drawn by strong sympathies, though their natures were widely different. Both had struggled from early life with poverty, but had struggled in different ways. Goldsmith--buoyant, heedless, sanguine, tolerant of evils and easily pleased-had shifted along by any temporary expedient; cast down at every turn, but rising again with indomitable good humour, and still carried forward by his talent of hoping. Johnson-melancholy and hypochondriacal, and prone to apprehend the worst, yet sternly resolute to battle with and conquer it-had made his way doggedly and gloomily, but with a noble principle of self-reliance and a disregard of foreign aid. Both had been irregular at college-Goldsmith, as we have shown, from the levity of his nature and his social and convivial habits; Johnson, from his acerbity and gloom. When in after life the latter heard himself spoken of as gay and frolicsome at college, because he had joined in some riotous excesses there, Ah, sir!" repiied he, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook or frolic. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit. So I disregarded all power and all authority."

Goldsmith's poverty was never accompanied by bitterness; but neither was it accompanied by the guardian pride which kept Johnson from falling into the degrading shifts of poverty. Goldsmith had an unfortunate facilityat borrowing, and helping himself along by the contributious of his friends; no doubt trusting, in his hopeful way, of one day making retribution. Johnson never hoped, and therefore never borrowed. In his sternest trials he proudly bore the ills he could not master. In his youth, when some unknown friend, seeing his shoes completely worn out, left a new pair at his chamber door, he disdained to accept the booù, and threw them away.

Though, like Goldsmith, an immethodical student, he had imbibed deeper draughts of knowledge, and made himself a riper scholar. While Goldsmith's happy constitution and genial humours carried him abroad into sunshine and enjoyment, Johnson's physical infirmities and mental gloom drove him upon himself to the resources of reading and meditation; threw a deeper though darker enthusiasm into his mind, and stored a retentive memory with all kinds of knowledge.

After several years of youth passed in the country as usher, teacher, and an occasional writer for the press, Johnson, when twenty-eight years of age, came up to London with a half-written tragedy in his pocket; and David Garrick, late his pupil, and several years his junior, as a companion-both poor and penniless--both, like Goldsmith, seeking their fortunes in the metropolis. "We rode and tied," said Garrick sportively in after years of prosperity, when he spoke of their humble wayfaring. I came to London," said Johnson," with twopence-halfpenny in my pocket." "Eh, whats that you say?" cried Garrick, with twopence-halfpenny in your pocket?" Why, yes; I came with twopence-halfpenny in my pocket, and thou, Davy, with but three-halfpence

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in thine." Nor was there much exaggeration in the picture; for so poor were they in purse and credit, that after their arrival they had with difficulty raised five pounds, by giving their joint note to a bookseller in the Strand.

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Many, many years had Johnson gone on obscurely in London, fighting his way by his literature and his wit;" enduring all the hardships and the miseries of a Grub-street writer: so destitute at one time, that he and Savage the poet had walked all night about St. James's square, both too poor to pay for a night's lodging, yet both full of poetry and patriotism, and determined to stand by their country; so shabby in dress at another time, that wi.en he dined at Cave's, his bookseller, when there was prosperous company, he could not make his appearance at table, but had his dinner handed to him

behind a screen.

Yet through all the long and dreary struggle, often diseased in mind as well as in body, he had been resoJutely self-dependent, and proudly self-respectful; he had fulfilled his college vow-he had " fought his way by his literature and his wit." His "Rambler" and Idler" had made him the great moralist of the age, and his" Dictionary and History of the English Language," that stupendous monument of individual labour, had excited the admiration of the learned world. He was now at the head of intellectual society; and had become as distinguished by his conversational as his literary powers. He had become as much an autocrat in his sphere as his fellow-wayfarer and adventurer Garrick had become of the stage, and had been humorously dubbed by Smollett "The Great Cham of Literature."

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Such was Dr. Johnson, when, on the 31st of May, 1761, he was to make his appearance as a guest at a literary supper given by Goldsmith, to a numerous party at his new lodgings in Wine-office-court. It was the opening of their acquaintance. Johnson had felt and acknowledged the merit of Goldsmith as an author, and been pleased by the honourable mention made of himself in the Bee" and the Chinese Letters." Dr. Percy called upon Johnson to take him to Goldsmith's lodgings; he found Johnson arrayed with unusual care in a new suit of clothes, a new hat, and a well-powdered wig; and could not but notice his uncommon spruceness. "Why, sir," replied Johnson, “I hear that Goldsmith, who is a very great sloven, justifies his disregard of cleanliness and decency by quoting my practice, and I am desirous this night to show him a better example.”

The acquaintance thus commenced ripened into intimacy in the course of frequent meetings at the shop of Davies, the bookseller, in Russell-street, Covent Garden. As this was one of the great literary gossiping places of the day, especially to the circle over which Johnson presided, it is worthy of some specification. Mr. Thomas Davies, noted in after times as the biographer of Garrick, had originally been on the stage, and though a small man, had enacted tyrannical tragedy with a pomp and magniloquence beyond his size, if we may trust the description given of him by Churchill in Rosciad :"

the

Statesman all over-in plots famous grown.
He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a boue.

This unlucky sentence is said to have crippled him in the midst of his tragic career, and ultimately to have driven him from the stage. He carried into the book selling craft somewhat of the grandiose manner of the stage, and was prone to be mouthy and magniloquent. Churchill had intimated, that while on the stage he was more noted for his pretty wife than his good acting

With him came mighty Davies; on my life
That fellow has a very pretty wife.

"Pretty Mrs. Davies" continued to be the lode-star of his fortunes. Her tea-table became almost as much a literary lounge as her husband's shop. She found favour in the eyes of the Ursa Major of literature by her winning ways, and she poured out for him cups without stint of his favourite beverage. Indeed, it is suggested that she was one leading cause of his habitual resort to this literary haunt. Others were drawn thither for the sake of Johnson's conversation, and thus it became the resort of many of the notorieties of the day. Here might occasionally be seen Bennet Langton, George Stephens, Dr. Percy, celebrated for his ancient ballads, and sometimes Warburton, in prelatic state. Garrick resorted to it for a time, but soon grew shy and suspicions, declaring that most of the authors who frequented Mr. Davies's shop went merely to abuse him. Foote, the Aristophanes of the day, was a frequent visitor; his broad face beaming with fun and waggery, and his satirical eye ever on the look-out for characters and incidents for his farces. He was struck with the old habits and appearances of Johnson and Goldsmith, now so often brought together in Davies's shop. He was about to put on the stage a farce called "The Orators," intended as a hit at the Robin Hood debating club, and resolved to show up the two doctors in it for the entertainment of the town.

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What is the common price of an oak stick, sir," said Johnson to Davies. Sixpence," was the reply. “Why, then, sir, give me leave to send your servant to purchase a shilling one. I'll have a double quantity; for I am told Foote means to take me off, as he calls it, and I am determined he shall not do it with impunity."

Foote had no wish to undergo the criticism of the cudgel, wielded by two such potent hands, so the farce of The Orators" appeared without the caricatures of the lexicographer and the essayist.

CHAP. XIII.

Oriental projects-Literary jobs-The Cherokee Chiefs-Merry Islington and the White Conduit House-Letters on the History of England-James Boswell-Dinner of DaviesAnecdotes of Johnson and Goldsmith.

Notwithstanding his growing success, Goldsmith continued to consider literature as 8 mere make-shift, and his vagrant imagination teemed with schemes and plans of a grand but indefinite nature. One was for visiting the East and exploring the interior of Asia. He had, as has been before observed, a vague notion that valuable discoveries were to be made there, and many useful inventions in the arts brought back to the stock of European knowledge. "Thus, in Siberian Tartary," observes he, in one of his writings, “the natives extract a strong spirit from milk, which is a secret probably unknown to the chemists of Europe. In the most savage parts of India they are possessed of the secret of dyeing vegetable substances scarlet, and that of refining lead into a metal which, for hardness and colour, is little inferior to silver."

Goldsmith adds a description of the kind of person suited to such an enterprise, in which he evidently had himself in view.

"He should be a man of a philosophical turn, one apt to deduce consequences of general utility from particular occurrences; neither swollen with pride nor hardened with prejudice; neither wedded to oue parti cular system, nor instructed only in one particular science; neither wholly a botanist, nor quite an antiquarian; his mind should be tinctured with miscellaneous knowledge, and his manners humanized by an intercourse with men. He should be in some measure an enthusiast to the design; fond of travelling from a rapid imagination and innate love of change; furnished

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