CHAPTER II. MAKING SHIFT TO EXIST. 1757-1758. WITH the number of the Monthly Review which completed the fifth month of Goldsmith's engagement with Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths, his labours suddenly closed. The circumstances were never clearly explained; but that a serious quarrel had arisen with his employer, there is no reason to doubt. Griffiths accused him of idleness; said he affected an independence which did not become his condition, and left his desk before the day was done;-nor would the reproach appear to be groundless, if the amount of his labour for Griffiths were to be measured by those portions only which have been traced; but this would be simply absurd, for the mass of it undoubtedly has perished. For himself Goldsmith retorted, that from the bookseller he had suffered impertinence, and from his wife privation; that Mr. Griffiths withheld common respect, and Mrs. Griffiths the most ordinary comforts;* that they both tampered with In his extreme desire to work out and complete his favourable view of the Griffiths lease or agreement, Mr. De Quincey thus philosophises the probable effect for good exerted over Goldsmith even by the "antiquated female critic" herself. The passage is supplementary to that which I have quoted ante, 102-4. "We see little to have altered in the lease-that was fair enough; only as regarded "the execution of the lease, we really must have protested, under any circum 1757. Æt. 29. 1757. his articles, and, as it suited their ignorance or convenience, Et. 29. wholly altered them; and, finally, that no part of the contract had been broken by himself, he having always worked incessantly every day from nine o'clock till two,* and on special days of the week from an earlier hour until late at night. Proof of the most curious part of this counterstatement, as to interpolation of the articles, was in the possession of his first biographers; and as it now appears, from a published letter of Doctor Campbell to Bishop Percy, was at the last moment, in fear of abuse from reviewers, suppressed.t "stances, against Mrs. Dr. Griffiths. That woman would have broken the back +"Having mentioned Griffiths," writes Campbell to Percy, in the course of his But notwithstanding the quarrel, and Goldsmith's departure from the house, Griffiths retained his hold. Later events will show this; and that probably some small advance was his method of effecting it. It enabled him to keep up the appearance of civility when Goldsmith left his door; and to keep back the purpose of injury and insult till it could fall with heavier effect. The opportunity was not lost when it came, nor did the bookseller's malice end with the writer's death. Superintend the Monthly Review!" cried Griffiths, noticing, in the number for August 1774, a brief memoir of Goldsmith professing to have been "written "from personal knowledge," in which his connection with the work was so described. "We are authorised to say "that the author is very much mistaken in his assertion. "The Doctor had his merit, as a man of letters; but alas! "those who knew him must smile at the idea of such a super"intendent of a concern which most obviously required "some degree of prudence, as well as a competent acquaint"ance ance with the world. It is, however, true that he had, "for a while, a seat at our board; and that, so far as his "knowledge of books extended, he was not an unuseful "assistant." And so, without this belauded prudence, without this treasure of a competent acquaintance with the world; into that wide, friendless, desolate world, the poor writer, the not unuseful assistant, was launched again. How or compilation of the Memoir, "I will confess to you that the circumstance of him "and his wife (I mean their altering and interpolating Goldsmith's criticisms on "books for the Review) puzzles me. It is one of the most valuable anecdotes "before me, and my conscience bids me report it, but my fears whisper to me that "all the Reviews will abuse me for so doing. But who's afraid?" The worthy Dr. Campbell himself was afraid it would seem; for certainly no such anecdote appeared. See Nichols's Illustrations, vii. 781. Monthly Review, li. 161. 1757. Et. 29. 1757. Et. 29. where he lived for the next few months, is matter of great uncertainty. But his letters were addressed to the Temple Exchange coffee-house, near Temple-bar, where the "George" he celebrates in one of his essays took charge of them; the garret where he wrote and slept is supposed to have been in one of the courts near the neighbouring Salisbury-square; Doctor Kippis, one of the Monthly Reviewers, "was impressed by some faint recol"lection of his having made translations from the French, among others of a tale from Voltaire;" and the recol. lection is made stronger by one of his autographs formerly in Heber's collection, which purports to be a receipt from Mr. Ralph Griffiths for ten guineas, probably signed a day or two before he left the Monthly, for translation of a book entitled Memoirs of my Lady B.* Another writer in the Review, Doctor James Grainger, to whom his residence at the sign of the Dunciad had made him known, and of whom the translation of Tibullus, the Ode to Solitude, the ballad of Bryan and Pereene, and the poem of the SugarCane, have kept a memory very pleasant though very limited, made the same coffee-house his place of call, and often saw Goldsmith there. The month in which he separated from Griffiths was that in which Newbery's Literary Magazine lost Johnson's services; but this seems the * Prior, 279. "My poor worthy friend, Dr. Grainger, who resided for many years at St. "Christopher's, assured me," &c. &c. Animated Nature, v. 155. "An agree "able man," ," said Johnson; "a man who would do any good that was in his 66 power." "One of the most generous, friendly, and benevolent men I ever "knew," said Percy: "it was to him that I owed my first acquaintance "with Johnson." "A man of modesty and reserve" (said a writer in the Westminster Magazine of 1773, who might have been Goldsmith); "but, in spite "of a broad provincial dialect, extremely pleasing in his conversation. He was " tall, and of a lathy make; plain-featured, and deeply marked with the small 66 pox; his eyes were quiet and keen; his temper generous and good-natured; and "he was an able man in the knowledge of his profession." 1757. only ground for a surmise that those services were replaced. by Goldsmith's. The magazine itself shows little mark of his Et. 29. hand, until his admitted connection with it some months later. Toiling thus through an obscurity dark as the life itself, the inquirer finds on a sudden a glimpse of light, which for an instant places him in that garret near Salisbury-square. Its inmate sits alone in wretched drudgery, when the door opens, and a raw-looking country youth of twenty stands doubtfully on the doleful threshold. Goldsmith sees at once his youngest brother Charles; but Charles cannot bring himself to see, in the occupier of this miserable dwelling, the brother on whose supposed success he had already built his own! Without education, profession, friends, or resource of any kind, it had suddenly occurred to this enterprising Irish lad, as he lounged in weary idleness round Ballymahon, that as brother Oliver had not been asking for assistance lately, but was now a settled author in London, perhaps he had gotten great men for his friends, and a kind word to one of them might be the making of his fortune. Full of this he scrambled to London as he could, won the secret of the house from the Temple Exchange waiter to whom he confided his relationship, and found the looked-for architect of wealth and honour, here!* "All in good time, my dear boy," cried * "Having heard of his brother Noll mixing in the first society in London, he "took it for granted that his fortune was made, and that he could soon make "a brother's also he therefore left home without notice; but soon found, "on his arrival in London, that the picture he had formed of his brother's "situation was too highly coloured, that Noll would not introduce him to his "great friends, and in fact, that, although out of a jail, he was also often out of "a lodging." Northcote's Life of Reynolds, i. 332-3. I may add, on the authority of a letter of Malone's, that some thirty or forty years after this incident Charles was thought greatly to resemble his celebrated brother in person, speech, and manner; and it will be observed from the succeeding note, that he had at that time many habits and tastes like his, such as the love of flute-playing, and a frequent resort to it from painful thoughts. K |