with a body capable of sustaining every fatigue, and a heart not easily terrified at danger.

In 1761, when Lord Bute became prime minister on the accession of George the Third, Goldsmith drew up a memorial on the subject, suggesting the advantages to be derived from a mission to those countries solely for useful and scientific purposes; and, the better to ensure success, he preceded his application to the government by an ingenious essay to the same effect in the Public Ledger."

His memorial and his essay were fruitless, his project most probably being deemed the dream of a visionary. Still it continued to haunt his mind, and he would often talk of making an expedition to Aleppo some time or other, when his means were greater, to inquire into the arts peculiar to the East, and to bring home such as might be valuable. Johnson, who knew how little poor Goldsmith was fitted by scientific lore for this favourite scheme of his fancy, scoffed at the project when it was mentioned to him. Of all men," said he, "Goldsmith is the most unfit to go out upon such an inquiry, for he is utterly ignorant of such arts as we already possess, and, consequently, could not know what would be accessious to our present stock of mechanical knowledge. Sir, he would bring home a grinding barrow, which you see in every street in London, and think that he had furnished a wonderful improvement."

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His connexion with Newbery, the bookseller, now led him into a variety of temporary jobs, such as a pamphlet on the Cock-lane Ghost, a "Life of Beau Nash," the famous master of ceremonies at Bath, &c. One of the best things for his fame, however, was the remodelling and republication of his Chinese Letters," under the title of The Citizen of the World," a work which has long since taken its merited stand among the classics of the English language. "Few works," it has been observed by one of his biographers, "exhibit a nicer perception or more delicate delineation of life and manners. Wit, humour, and sentiment pervade every page; the vices and follies of the day are touched with the most playful and diverting satire; and English characteristics, in endless variety, are hit off with the pencil of a master." In seeking materials for his varied views of life, he often mingled in strange scenes and got involved in whimsical situations. In the summer of 1762, he was one of the thousands who went to see the Cherokee chiefs, whom he mentions in one of his writings. The Indians made their appearance in grand costumes, hideously painted and besmeared. In the course of the visit Gold-mith made one of the chiefs a present, who, in the ecstacy of his gratitude, gave him an embrace, that left his face well bedaubed with oil and red ochre. Towards the close of 1762 he removed to "merry Islington," then a country village, though now swallowed up in omniverous London. He went there for the benefit of country air, his health being injured by literary application and confinement, and to be near his chief employer, Mr. Newbery, who resided in the Canonbury House. In this neighbourhood he used to take his solitary rambles, sometimes extending his walks to the gardens of the White Conduit House," so famous among the essayists of the last century. While strolling one day in these gardens, he met three females of the family of a respectable tradesman, to whom he was under some obligation. With his prompt disposition to oblige he conducted them about the garden, treated them to tea, and ran up a bill in the most open-handed manner imaginable; it was only when he came to pay that he found himself in one of his old dilemmas he had not the wherewithal in his pocket. A scene of perplexity now took place between him and the waiter, in the midst of which came up some of his acquaintances, in whose eyes he wished to stand particularly well. This completed his mortification. There was no concealing the awkwardness of his position--the sneers of the waiter

revealed it. His acquaintances amused themselves for some time at his expense, professing their inability to relieve him. When, however, they had enjoyed their banter, the waiter was paid, and poor Goldsmith enabled to convoy off the ladies with flying colours.

Among the various productions thrown off by him for the booksellers during this growing period of his reputation, was a small work in two volumes, entitled "The History of England, in a series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son." It was digested from Hume, Rapin, Carte, and Kennet. These authors he would read in the morning; make a few notes; ramble with a friend into the country about the skirts of "merry Islington;" return to a temporary dinner and cheerful evening; and before going to bed, write off what had arranged itself in his head from the studies of the morning. In this way he took a more general view of the subject, and wrote in a more free and fluent style than if he had been mousing at the time among authorities. The work, like many others written by him in the earlier part of his literary career, was anonymous. Some attributed it to Lord Chesterfield, others to Lord Orrery, and others to Lord Lyttleton. The latter seemed to be pleased to be the putative father, and never disowned the bantling thus laid at his door; and well might he have been proud to be considered capable of producing what has been well-pronounced "the most finished and elegant summary of English history in the same compass that has been or is likely to be written."

The reputation of Goldsmith, it will be perceived, grew slowly; he was known and estimated by a few; but he had not those brilliant though fallacious qualities which flash upon the public, and excite loud but transient applause. His works were more read than cited; and the charm of style, for which he was especially noted, was more apt to be felt than talked about. He used often to repine, in a half-humorous, half-querulous manner, at his tardiness in gaining the laurels which he felt to be his due. "The public," he would exclaim, "will never do me justice; whenever I write anything, they make a point to know nothing about me."

About the beginning of 1763 he became acquainted with Boswell, whose literary gossipings were destined to have a deleterous effect upon his reputation. Boswell was at that time a young man, light, buoyant, pushing, and presumptuous. He had a morbid passion for mingling in the society of men noted for wit and learning, and had just arrived from Scotland, bent upon making his way into the literary circles of the metropolis. An intimacy with Dr. Johnson, the great literary luminary of the day, was the crowning object of his aspiring and somewhat ludicrous ambition. He expected to meet him at a dinner to which he was invited at Davies, the bookseller's, but was disappointed. Goldsmith was present, but he was not as yet sufficiently renowned to excite the reverence of Boswell. "At this time," says he in his notes, “I think he had published nothing with his name, though it was pretty generally understood that one Dr. Goldsmith was the author of An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe,' and of The Citizen of the World,' a series of letters supposed to be written from London by a Chinese."

A conversation took place at a table between Goldsmith and Mr. Robert Dodsley, compiler of the wellknown collection of modern poetry, as to the merits of the current poetry of the day. Goldsmith declared there was none of superior merit. Dodsley cited his own collection in proof of the contrary. It is true," said he, "we can boast of no palaces now-a-days, like Dryden's Ode to St. Cecilia's Day,' but we have villages composed of very pretty houses." Goldsmith, however, maintained that there was nothing above mediocrity, an opinion in which Johnson, to whom it was repeated, concurred, and with reason, for the era was one of the dead levels of British poetry.

At Reynolds's house Goldsmith mingled in a higher range of company than he had been accustomed to. The fame of this celebrated artist, and his amenity of manners, were gathering round him men of talents of all kinds, and the increasing affluence of his circumstances enabled him to give full indulgence to his hospitable disposition. Poor Goldsmith had not yet, like Dr. Johnson, acquired reputation enough to atone for his external defects and his want of the air of good society. Miss Reynolds used to inveigh against his personal appear ance, which gave her the idea, she said, of a low mechanic, a journeyman tailor. One evening, at a large supper party, being called upon to give as a toast the ugliest mau she knew, she gave Dr. Goldsmith, upon which a lady who sat opposite, and whom she had never met before, shook hands with her across the table, and hoped to become better acquainted."

We have a graphic and amusing picture of Reynolds's hospitable but motley establishment, in an account given by a Mr. Courtenay to Sir James Mackintosh; though it speaks of a time after Reynolds had received the honour of knighthood. "There was something sin gular," said he, in the style and economy of Sir Joshua's table that contributed to pleasantry and good humour-a coarse, inelegant plenty, without any regard to order and arrangement. At five o'clock precisely dinner was served, whether all the invited guests were arrived or not. Sir Joshua was never so fashionably ill-bred as to wait an hour, perhaps, for two or three persons of rank or title, and put the rest of the company out of humour by this invidious distinction. His invitations, however, did not regulate the number of his guests. Many dropped in uninvited. A table prepared for seven or eight was often compelled to contain fifteen or sixteen. There was a consequent deficiency of knives, forks, plates, and glasses. The attendance was in the same style, and those who were knowing in the ways of the house took care, on sitting down, to call instantly for beer, bread, or wine, that they might secure a supply before the first course was over. He was once prevailed on to furnish the table with decanters and glasses at dinner, to save time and prevent confusion. These gradually were demolished in the course of service, and were never replaced. These trifling embarrassments, however, only served to enhance the hilarity and singular pleasure of the entertainment. The wine, cookery, and dishes were but little attended to; nor was the fish or venison ever talked of or recommended. Amidst this convivial animated bustle among his guests our host sat perfectly composed; always attentive to what was said, never minding what was ate or drank, but left every one at perfect liberty to scramble for himself."

Out of the casual but frequent meeting of men of talent at this hospitable board rose that association of wits, authors, scholars, and statesmen, renowned as the Literary Club. Reynolds was the first to propose a regular association of the kind, and was eagerly seconded by Johnson, who proposed as a model a club which he had formed many years previously in Ivy-lane, but which was now extinct. Like that club the number of members was limited to nine. They were to meet and sup together once a week, on Monday night, at the Turk's Head in Gerard-street, Soho, and two members were to constitute a meeting. It took a regular form in the year 1764, but did not receive its literary appellation until several years afterwards.

The original members were Reynolds, Johnson, Burke, Dr. Nugent, Bennet Langton, Topham Beauclerc, Chamier, Hawkins, and Goldsmith; and here a few words concerning some of the members may be acceptable. Burke was at that time about thirty-three years of age; he had mingled a little in politics, and been under-secretary to Hamilton at Dublin, but was again a writer for the booksellers, and as yet but in the dawning of his fame. Dr. Nugent was his father-in

law, a Roman Catholic, and a physician of talent and instruction. Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Hawkins was admitted into this association from having been a member of Johnson's Ivy-lane club. Originally an attorney, he had retired from the practice of the law, in conse quence of a large fortune which fell to him in the right of his wife, and was now a Madlesex magistrate. He was, moreover, a dabbler in literature and music, and was actually engaged on a history of music, which he subsequently published in five ponderons volumes. To him we are also indebted for a biography of Johnson, which appeared after the death of that eminent man. Hawkins was as mean and parsimonious as he was pompous and conceited. He forbore to partake of the suppers at the club, and begged, therefore, to be excused from paying his share of the reckoning. And was he excused?" asked Dr. Burney of Johnson. "Oh yes, for no man is angry at another for being inferior to himself. We all scorned him and admitted his plea. Yet I really believe him to be an honest man at the bottom, though to be sure he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must be owned he has a tendency to savageness." He did not remain above two or three years in the club; being in a manner elbowed out in consequence of his rudeness to Burke.

Mr. Anthony Chamier was secretary in the war-office, and a friend of Beauclerc, by whom he was proposed. We have left our mention of Beunet Langton and Topham Beauclerc until the last, because we have most to say about them. They were doubtless induced to join the club through their devotion to Johnson, and the intimacy of these two very young and aristocratic young men with the stern and somewhat melancholy moralist is among the curiosities of literature.

Bennet Langton was of an ancient family, who held their ancestral estate of Langton in Lincolnshire—a great title to respect with Johnson. Langton, sir," he would say, has a grant of free warren from Henry the Second; and Cardinal Stephen Langton, in King John's reign, was of this family.'

Langton was of a mild, contemplative, enthusiastic nature. When but eighteen years of age, he was so delighted with reading Johnson's Rambler," that he came to London chiefly with a view to obtain an introduction to the author. Boswell gives us an account of his first interview, which took place in the morning. It is not often that the personal appearance of an author agrees with the preconceived ideas of his admirer. Langton, from perusing the writings of Johnson, expected to find him a decent, well-dressed-in short a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of which, down from his bedchamber, about noon, came, as newly risen, a large uncouth figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely covered his head, and his clothes hanging loose about him. But his conversation was so rich, so animated, and so forcible, and his religious and political notions so congenial with those in which Langton had been educated, that he conceived for him that veneration and attachment which he ever preserved.

Langton went to pursue his studies at Trinity College, Oxford, where Johnson saw much of him during a visit which he paid to the university. He found him in close intimacy with Topham Beauclerc, a youth two years older than himself. very gay and dissipated, and wondered what sympathies could draw two young men together of such opposite characters. On becoming acquainted with Beauclerc, he found that, rake though he was, he possessed an ardent love of literature, an acute understanding, polished wit, innate gentility, aud high aristocratic breeding. He was, moreover, the only son of Lord Sidney Beauclerc, and grandson of the Duke of St. Albans, and was thought in some particulars to have a resemblance to Charles the Second. These where high reccommendations with Johnson; and when the youth testified a profound respect for him,

and an ardent admiration of his talents, the conquest was complete, so that in a "short time," says Boswell, "the moral, pious Johnson and the gay, dissipated Beauclere were companions."

The intimacy begun in college chambers was plea surably continued when the youths came to town during the vacations. The uncouth, unwieldy moralist was flattered at finding himself an object of idolatary to two high-born, high-bred young men, and, throwing gravity aside, was ready to join in their vagaries and play the part of a young man upon town." Such at least is the picture given of him by Boswell on one occasion, when Beauclerc and Langton, having supped together at a tavern, determined to give Johnson a rouse at three o'clock in the morning. They accordingly rapped violently at the door of his chambers in the Temple. The indignant sage sallied forth in his shirt, poker in hand, and a little black wig on the top of his head instead of helmet, prepared to wreak vengeance on the assailants of his castle; but when his two young friends, Lankey and Beau, as he used to call them, presented themselves, summoning him forth to a morning ramble, his whole manner changed. "What, is it you, ye dogs?" cried he; faith I'll have a frisk with you!" So said, so done. They sallied forth together into Covent Garden; figured among the green grocers and fruit women, just come in from the country with their hampers; repaired to a neighbouring tavern, where Johnson brewed a bowl of bishop (a favourite beverage with him), grew merry over his cups, and anathematised sleep in two lines from Lord Lansdowne's drinking

song:*

to "

Short, very short, be then thy reign,

For I'm in haste to laugh and drink again. They then took boat again, rowed to Billingsgate, and Johnson and Beauclerc determined, like "mad wags," keep it up" for the rest of the day. Langton, how ever, the most sober-minded of the three, pleaded an engagement to breakfast with some young ladies; whereupon the great moralist reproached him with "leaving his social friends to go and sit with a set of wretched un-ideal girls."

This madcap freak of the great lexicographer made a sensation, as may well be supposed, among his intimates. "I heard of your frolic t'other night," said Garrick to him; "you'll be in the Chronicle.' He uttered worse forebodings to others. "I shall have my old friend to bail out of the roundhouse," said he. Johnson, however, valued himself upon having thus enacted a chapter in the Rake's Progress," and crowed over Garrick on the occasion He durst not do such a thing!" chuckled he; his wife would not let him!"

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When these two young men entered the club, Langton was about twenty-two, and Beauclerc about twenty-four years of age, and both were launched on London life. Langton, however, was still the mild, enthusiastic scholar, steeped to the lips in Greek, with fine conversational powers, and an invaluable talent for listening. He was upwards of six feet high, and very spare. "Oh! that we could sketch him," exclaimed Miss Hawkins, in her Memoirs, with his mild countenance, his elegant features, and his sweet smile, sitting with one leg twisted round the other, as if fearing to occupy more space than was equitable; his person inclining forward, as if want ing strength to support his weight, and his arms crossed over his bosom, or his hands locked together on his knee." Beauclerc, on such occasions, sportively compared him to a stork in Raphael's Cartoons, standing on one leg. Beauclerc was more a man upon town," a lounger in St. James's-street, an associate with George Selwyn, with Walpole, and other aristocratic wits; a man of fashion at court; a casual frequenter of the gaming-table; yet, with all this, he alternated in the easiest and happiest manner the scholar and the man of letters; lounged into the club with the most perfect

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self-possession, bringing with him the careless grace and polished wit of high-bred society, but making himself cordially at home among his learned fellow-members.

The gay lettered rake maintained his sway over Johnson, who was fascinated by that air of the world, that ineffable tone of good society in which he felt himself deficient, especially as the possessor of it always paid homage to his superior talent. Beauclerc," he would say, using a quotation from Pope, "has a love of folly, but a scorn of fools; everything he does shows the one, and everything he says the other." Beauclerc delighted in rallying the stern moralist, of whom others stood in awe, and no one, according to Boswell, could take equal liberty with him with impunity. Johnson, it is well known, was often shabby and negligent in his dress, and not over-cleanly in his person On receiving a pension from the crown, his friends vied with each other in respectful congratulations. Beauclerc simply scanned his person with a whimsical glance, and hoped that, like Falstaff, “he'd in future purge and live cleanly like a gentleman." Johnson took the hint with unexpected good humour, and profited by it.

Still Beauclerc's satirical vein, which darted shafts on every side, was not always tolerated by Johnson. “Sir," said he, on one occasion, "you never open your mouth but with intention to give pain; and you have often given me pain, not from the power of what you have said, but from seeing your intention."

When it was at first proposed to enrol Goldsmith among the members of this association, there seems to have been some demur; at least so says the pompous Hawkins. "As he wrote for the booksellers, we of the club looked on him as a mere literary drudge, equal to the task of compiling and translating, but little capable of original, and still less of poetical composition."

Even for some time after his admission, he continued to be regarded in a dubious light by some of the members. Johnson and Reynolds, of course, were well aware of his merits, nor was Burke a stranger to them; but to the others he was as yet a sealed book, and the outside was not prepossessing. His ungainly person and awkward manners were against him with men accustomed to the graces of society, and he was not sufficiently at home to give play to his humour, and to that bonhommie which won the hearts of all who knew him. He felt strange and out of place in this sphere; he felt at times the cool satirical eye of the courtly Beauclerc scanning him, and the more he attempted to appear at his ease the more awkward he became.

CHAP. XV.

Johnson a monitor to Goldsmith-Finds him in distress with his landlady-Relieved by the "Vicar of Wakefield "-The ora. torio-Poem of "The Traveller"-The poet and his dogSuccess of the poem-Astonishment of the club-Observations on the poem.

Johnson had now become one of Goldsmith's best friends and advisers. He knew all the weak points of his character, but he knew also his merits; and while he would rebuke him like a child, and rail at his errors and follies, he would suffer no one else to undervalue him. Goldsmith knew the soundness of his judgment and his practical benevolence, and often sought his counsel and aid amid the difficulties into which his heedlessness was continually plunging him.

"I received one morning," says Johnson, 66 a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was

in a violent passion: I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him

so ill"

Goldsmith distrusted his qualifications to succeed in poetry, and doubted the disposition of the public mind in regard to it. "I fear," said he, "I have come too late into the world; Pope and other poets have taken up the places in the Temple of fame; and as few at any period can possess poetical reputation, a man of genius can now hardly acquire it." Again, on another occasion he observes Of all kinds of ambition, as things are now circumstanced, perhaps that which pursues poetical fame is the wildest. What from the increased refine ment of the times, from the diversity of judgment produced by opposing systems of criticism, and from the more prevalent divisions of opinion influenced by party, the strongest and happiest efforts can expect to please but in a very narrow circle."

At this very time he had by him his poem of "The Traveller." The plan of it, as has already been observed, was conceived many years before, during his travels in Switzerland, and a sketch of it sent from that country to his brother Henry in Ireland. The original outline is said to have embraced a wider scope; but it was probably contracted through diffidence in the process of finishing the parts. It had laid by him for several years in a crude state, and it was with extreme hesitation, and after much revision, that he at length submitted it to Dr. Johnson. The frank and warm approbation of the latter encouraged him to finish it for the press; and Dr. Johnson himself contributed a few lines towards the conclusion.

We hear much about "poet's inspiration," and the "poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling;" but Sir Joshua Reynolds gives an anecdote of Goldsmith while engaged upon his poem, calculated to cure our notions about the ardour of composition. Calling upon the poet one day, he opened the door without ceremony, and found him in the double occupation of turning a couplet and teaching a pet dog to sit upon his haunches. At one time he would glance his eye at his desk, and at another shake his finger at the dog to make him retain his position.

The last lines on the page were still wet; they form a part of the description of Italy—

By sports like these are all their cares beguiled-
The sports of children satisfy the child.

Goldsmith, with his usual good humour, joined in the laugh caused by his whimsical employment, and acknowledged that his boyish sport with the dog suggested the stanza.

The poem was published on the 19th of December, 1764, in a quarto form, by Newbery, and was the first of his works to which Goldsmith prefixed his name. As a testimony of cherished and well-merited affection, he dedicated it to his brother Henry. There is an amusing affectation of indifference as to its fate expressed in the dedication. "What reception a poem may find." says he, “which has neither abuse, party, nor blank verse to support it, I cannot tell, nor am I solicitous to know." The truth is, no one was more emulous and anxious for poetic fame; and never was he more anxious than in the present instance, for it was his grand stake. Dr. Johnson aided the launching of the poem by a favourable notice in the "Critical Review;" other periodical works came out in its favour. Some of the author's friends complained that it did not command instant and wide popularity-that it was a poem to win, not to strike. It went on rapidly increasing in favour; in three months a second edition was issued: shortly afterwards, a third; then a fourth; and, before the year was out, the author was pronounced the best poet of

his time.

The appearance of "The Traveller" at once altered Goldsmith's intellectual standing in the estimation of society; but its effect upon the club, if we may judge from the account given by Hawkins, was most ludicrous. They were lost in astonishment that a newspaper essayist" and "bookseller's drudge" should have written such a poem. On the evening of its announcement to them, Goldsmith had gone away early, after rattling away as usual, and they knew not how to reconcile his heedless garrulity with the serene beauty, the easy grace, the sound good sense, and the occasional elevation of his poetry. They could scarcely believe that such magic numbers had flowed from a man to whom in general, says Johnson, "it was with difficulty they could give a hearing." Well," exclaimed Chamier, "I do believe he wrote this poem himself; and let me tell you, that is believing a great deal."

At the next meeting of the club Chamier sounded the author a little about his poem. "Mr. Goldsmith," said he, "what do you mean by the last word in the first line of your Traveller, remote, unfriended, solitary, slow?" do you mean tardiness of locomotion ?"-"Yes," replied Goldsmith, inconsiderately, being probably flurried at the moment. "No, sir," interposed his protecting friend Johnson, "you did not mean tardiness of locomotion; you meant that sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in solitude."—" Ah !" exclaimed Goldsmith," that was what I meant." Chamier immediately believed that Johnson himself had written the line, and a rumour became prevalent that he was the author of many of the finest passages. This was ultimately set at rest by Johnson himself, who marked with a pencil all the verses he had contributed, nine in number inserted towards the conclusion, and by no means the best in the poem. He moreover, with generous warmth, pronounced it the finest poem that had appeared since the days of Pope.

But one of the highest testimonials to the charm of the poem was given by Miss Reynolds, who had toasted poor Goldsmith as the ugliest man of her acquaintance. Shortly after the appearance of "The Traveller," Dr. Johnson read it aloud from beginning to end in her presence. "Well," exclaimed she, when he had finished, "I never more shall think Dr. Goldsmith ugly!"

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