of my power to perform it; for, as soon at I arrive at Dover, I intend to let the ladies go on, and I will take a countrylodging somewhere near that place in order to do some business. I have so outrun the constable that I must mortify a little to bring it up again. For God's sake, the night you receive this take your pen in your hand and tell me something about yourself and myself, if you know anything that has happened. About Miss Reynolds, about Mr. Bickerstaff, my nephew, or anybody that you regard. I beg you will send to Griffin the bookseller to know if there be any letters left for me, and be so good as to send them to me at Paris. They may perhaps be left for me at the Porter's Lodge, opposite the pump in Temple Lane. The same messenger will do. I expect one from Lord Clare, from Ireland. As for the others, I am not much uneasy about.

"Is there anything I can do for you at Paris? I wish you would tell me. The whole of my own purchases here is one silk coat, which I have put on, and which makes me look like a fool. But no more of that. I find that Colman has gained his lawsuit. I am glad of it. I suppose you often meet. I will soon be among you, better pleased with my situation at home than I ever was before. And yet I must say, that, if anything could make France pleasant, the very good women with whom I am at present would certainly do it. I could say more about that, but I intend showing them the letter before I send it away. What signifies teasing you longer with moral observations, when the business of my writing is over? I have one thing only more to say, and of that I think every hour in the day, namely, that I am your most sincere and most affectionate friend,

"OLIVER GOLDSMITH."

"Direct to me at the Hotel de Danemarc, Rue Jacob, Fauxbourg St. Germains."

}

A word of comment on this letter:

Travelling is, indeed, a very different thing with Goldsmith the poor student at twenty, and Goldsmith the poet and Professor at forty. At twenty, though obliged to trudge on foot from town to town, and country to country, paying for a supper and a bed by a tune on the flute, everything pleased, everything was good; a truckle-bed in a garret was a couch of down, and the homely fare of the peasant a feast fit for an epicure. Now, at forty, when he posts through the country in a carriage, with fair ladies by his side, everything goes wrong: he has to quarrel with postilions, he is cheated by landladies, the hotels are barns, the meat is too tough to be eaten, and he is half poisoned by green peas! A line in his letter explains the secret: "the ladies do not seem to be very fond of what we have seen." "One of our chief amusements is scolding at everything we meet with, and praising everything and every person we have left at home!"the true English travelling amusement. Poor Goldsmith! he has "all his confirmed habits about him"; that is to say, he has recently risen into high life, and acquired high-bred notions; he must be fastidious like his fellow-travellers; he dare not be pleased with what pleased the vulgar tastes of his youth. He is unconsciously illustrating the trait so humorously satirized by him in Ned Tibbs, the shabby beau, who can find "no such dressing as he had at Lord Crump's or Lady Crimp's"; whose very senses have grown genteel, and who no longer "smacks at wretched wine or praises detestable custard." A lurking thorn, too, is worrying him throughout this tour; he has "outrun the constable"; that is to say, his expenses have outrun his means, and he will have to make up for this butterfly flight by toiling like a grub on his return.

Citizen of the World, Letter LXXI.

Another circumstance contributes to mar the pleasure he had promised himself in this excursion. At Paris the party is unexpectedly joined by a Mr. Hickey, a bustling attorney, who is well acquainted with that metropolis and its environs, and insists on playing the cicerone on all occasions. He and Goldsmith did not relish each other, and they have several petty altercations. The lawyer is too much a man of business and method for the careless poet, and is disposed to manage everything. He has perceived Goldsmith's whimsical peculiarities without properly appreciating his merits, and is prone to indulge in broad bantering and raillery at his expense, particularly irksome if indulged in the presence of the ladies. He makes himself merry on his return to England, by giving the following anecdote as illustrative of Goldsmith's vanity:

"Being with a party at Versailles, viewing the waterworks, a question arose among the gentlemen present, whether the distance from whence they stood to one of the little islands was within the compass of a leap. Goldsmith maintained the affirmative; but, being bantered on the subject, and remembering his former prowess as a youth, attempted the leap, but, falling short, descended into the water, to the great amusement of the company."

Was the Jessamy Bride a witness of this unlucky exploit? This same Hickey is the one of whom Goldsmith, some time subsequently, gave a good-humored sketch, in his poem of "The Retaliation."

"Here Hickey reclines, a most blunt, pleasant creature,
And slander itself must allow him good-nature;
He cherish'd his friend, and he relish'd a bumper,
Yet one fault he had, and that one was a thumper.
Perhaps you may ask if the man was a miser;
I answer, No, no, for he always was wiser;

Too courteous, perhaps, or obligingly flat?
His very worst foe can't accuse him of that;
Perhaps he confided in men as they go,

And so was too foolishly honest? Ah, no!

Then what was his failing? Come, tell it, and burn ye—
He was, could he help it? a special attorney."

One of the few remarks extant made by Goldsmith during his tour is the following, of whimsical import, in his "Animated Nature."

"In going through the towns of France, some time since, I could not help observing how much plainer their parrots spoke than ours, and how very distinctly I understood their parrots speak French, when I could not understand our own, though they spoke my native language. I at first ascribed it to the different qualities of the two languages, and was for entering into an elaborate discussion on the vowels and consonants; but a friend that was with me solved the difficulty at once, by assuring me that the French women scarce did anything else the whole day than sit and instruct their feathered pupils; and that the birds were thus distinct in their lessons in consequence of continual schooling."

His tour does not seem to have left in his memory the most fragrant recollections; for, being asked, after his return, whether travelling on the Continent repaid "an Englishman for the privations and annoyances attendant on it," he replied, "I recommend it by all means to the sick, if they are without the sense of smelling, and to the poor if they are without the sense of feeling, and to both if they can discharge from their minds all idea of what in England we term comfort."

It is needless to say that the universal improvement in the art of living on the Continent has at the present day taken away the force of Goldsmith's reply, though even at the time it was more humorous than correct.

CHAPTER XXX

DEATH OF GOLDSMITH'S MOTHER BIOGRAPHY OF PARNELLAGREEMENT WITH DAVIES FOR THE HISTORY OF ROME-LIFE THE HAUNCH OF VENISON.

OF BOLINGBROKE

On his return to England, Goldsmith received the melancholy tidings of the death of his mother. Notwithstanding the fame as an author to which he had attained, she seems to have been disappointed in her early expectations from him. Like others of his family, she had been more vexed by his early follies than pleased by his proofs of genius; and in subsequent years, when he had risen to fame and to intercourse with the great, had been annoyed at the ignorance of the world and want of management, which prevented him from pushing his fortune. He had always, however, been an affectionate son, and in the latter years of her life, when she had become blind, contributed from his precarious resources to prevent her from feeling want.

He now resumed the labors of his pen, which his recent excursion to Paris rendered doubly necessary. We should have mentioned a "Life of Parnell," published by him shortly after the "Deserted Village." It was, as usual, a piece of job-work, hastily got up for pocket-money. Johnson spoke slightingly of it, and the author himself thought proper to apologize for its meagreness,—yet, in so doing, used a simile, which for beauty of imagery and felicity of language is enough of itself to stamp a value upon the essay.

"Such," says he, "is the very unpoetical detail of the life of a poet. Some dates and some few facts, scarcely more interesting than those that make the ornaments of a country