"ridicule, therefore, of living in a garret, might have been wit "in the last age, but continues such no longer, because no "longer true." The quiet composure of this passage exhibits the healthiest aspect of his mind. Bookseller and public are confronted calmly, and the consequences fairly challenged. It is indeed very obvious, at the close of this first year of the Public Ledger, that increasing opportunities of employment (to say nothing of the constant robbery of his writings by pirate magazine-men) were really teaching him his value, and suggesting hopes he had not earlier dared to entertain. He resumed his connection with the Lady's Magazine, and became its editor: publishing in it, among other writings known and unknown, what he had written of his Life of Voltaire; and retiring from its editorship at the close of a year, when he had raised its circulation (if Mr. Wilkie's advertisements are to be believed) to three thousand three hundred. He continued his contributions, meanwhile, to the British Magazine; from which he was not wholly separated till two months before poor Smollett, pining for the loss of his only daughter, went upon the continent (in 1763) never to return to a fixed or settled residence in London. He furnished other booksellers with occasional compilation-prefaces; he compiled for Newbery, in four duodecimo volumes, A Poetical Dictionary, or the Beauties of the English Poets alphabetically displayed (now a very rare book, but with a preface which pleasantly reveals his hand); and he gave some papers (among them a Life of Christ and Lives of the Fathers, re-published with his name, in shilling pamphlets, a few months after his death) to a so-called Christian Magazine, undertaken by Newbery in connection with the macaroni parson Dodd, and conducted by that villainous pretender as an organ of fashionable divinity. It seems to follow as of course upon these engagements, that the room in Green Arbour-court should at last be exchanged for one of greater comfort. He had left that place in the later months of 1760, and gone into what were called respectable lodgings in Wine Office-court, Fleet-street. The house belonged to a relative of Newbery's, and he occupied two rooms in it for nearly two years. CHAPTER V. 1761. Æt. 33. FELLOWSHIP WITH JOHNSON. 1761-1762. A CIRCUMSTANCE occurred in the new abode of which Goldsmith had now taken possession in Wine Office-court, which must have endeared it always to his remembrance; but more deeply associated with the wretched habitation he had left behind him in Green Arbour-court, were days of a most forlorn misery as well as of a manly resolution, and, round that beggarly dwelling ("the shades," as he used to call it in the more prosperous aftertime), and all connected with it, there crowded to the last the kindest memories of his gentle and true nature. Thus, when bookseller Davies tells us, after his death, how tender and compassionate he was; how no unhappy person ever sued to him for relief. without obtaining it, if he had anything to give; and how he would borrow, rather than not relieve the distressed, he adds that "the poor woman with whom he had "lodged during his obscurity, several years in Green Arbour"court, by his death lost an excellent friend; for the Doctor "often supplied her with food from his own table, and visited her "frequently, with the sole purpose to be kind to her." As little, in connection with Wine Office-court, was he ever likely to forget that Johnson now first visited him there. They had probably met before. I have shown how frequently the thoughts of Goldsmith vibrated to that great Grub-street figure of independence and manhood, which, in an age not remarkable for either, was undoubtedly presented in the person of the author of the English Dictionary. One of the last Chinese Letters had again alluded to the "Johnsons and Smolletts " as veritable poets, though they might never have made a verse in their whole lives; and among the earliest greetings of the new essay-writer, I suspect that Johnson's would be found. The opinion expressed in his generous question of a few years later (" Is there a man, sir, now, "who can pen an essay with such ease and elegance as Gold"smith?") he was not the man to wait for the world to help him to. Himself connected with Newbery, and engaged in like occupation, the new adventurer wanted his helping word and would be therefore sure to have it; nor, if it had not been a hearty one, is Mr. Percy likely to have busied himself to bring about the present meeting. It was arranged by that learned divine; and this was the first, time, he says, he had seen them together. The day fixed was the 31st of May 1761, and Goldsmith gave a supper in Wine Office-court in honour of his visitor. Percy called to take up Johnson at Inner Temple-lane, and found him, to his great astonishment, in a marked condition of studied neatness; without his rusty brown suit, or his soiled shirt, his loose knee-breeches, his unbuckled shoes, or his old little shrivelled unpowdered wig; and not at all likely, as Miss Reynolds tells us his fashion in these days was, to be mistaken for a beggarman. He had been seen in no such respectable garb since he appeared behind Garrick's scenes on the first of the nine nights of Irene, in a scarlet gold-laced waistcoat, and rich gold-laced hat. In fact, says Percy, "he had on a new suit of clothes, a new wig "nicely powdered, and everything about him so perfectly dissimilar "from his usual habits and appearance, that his companion could "not help enquiring the cause of this singular transformation. "Why, sir,' said 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 example was not lost, as extracts from tailors' bills will shortly show; and the anecdote, which offers pleasant proof of the interest already felt by Johnson for his new acquaintance, is our only record connected with that memorable supper. It had no Boswell-historian, and is gone into oblivion; but the friendship which dates from it will never pass away. Writing to Percy about that supper when arranging the memoir which bears his name, Doctor Campbell says, "The anecdote of "Johnson I had recollected, but had forgot that it was at Gold"smith's you were to sup. The story of the Valet de Chambre "will, as Lord Bristol says, fill the basket of his absurdities; and "really we may have a hamper full of them." Unfortunately the story of the Valet de Chambre has not emerged; and to another anecdote, also unluckily lost, Campbell refers in a previous letter to Percy: "One thing, however, I could wish, if it met "your approbation, that I had before me some hints respecting "the affair of Goldsmith and Perrot: it may without giving "offence, be related; at least so as to embellish the work, by 66 'showing more of Goldsmith's character, which he himself has "fairly drawn: fond of enjoying the present, careless of the "future, his sentiments those of a man of sense, his actions those """of a fool; of fortitude able to stand unmoved at the bursting of "an earthquake, yet of sensibility to be affected by the breaking "of a tea-cup."" To which, in a later letter, this is added: "Your "sketch of Sir Richard Perrot will come in as an episode towards "the conclusion, with good effect; but there, neither that nor "anything that can sully, shall appear as coming from you." So the Perrot anecdote is also lost, and the basket of absurdities by no means full! 66 Farewell," says Milton, at the close of one of his early letters to his friend Gill, “and on Tuesday next expect me in London "among the booksellers." The booksellers were of little mark in Milton's days; but the presence of such men among them began a social change important to both, and not ill expressed in an incident of the days I am describing, when Horace Walpole met the wealthy representative of the profits of Paradise Lost at a great party at the Speaker's, while Johnson was appealing to public charity for the last destitute descendant of Milton. But from the now existing compact between trade and letters, the popular element could not wholly be excluded; and, to even the weariest drudge, hope was a part of it. From the loopholes of Paternoster-row, he could catch glimpses of the world. Churchill had emerged, and Sterne, for a few brief years; and but that Johnson had sunk into idleness, he might have been reaping a harvest more continuous than theirs, and yet less dependent on the trade. Drudgery is not good, but flattery and falsehood are worse; and it had become plain to Goldsmith, even since the days of the Enquiry, how much better it was for men of letters to live by the labour of their hands till more original labour became popular with trading patrons, than to wait with their hands across, as Johnson contemptuously described it, till great men came to feed them. Whatever the call that Newbery or any other bookseller made, then, he was there to answer it. He had the comfort of remembering that the patron had himself patrons; that something of their higher influence had been attracted to his Chinese Letters; and that he was not slaving altogether without hope. His first undertaking in 1762 was a pamphlet on the Cock Lane Ghost, for which Newbery paid him three guineas: but whether, with Johnson, he thought the impudent imposture worth grave enquiry; or, with Hogarth, turned it to wise purposes of satire; or only laughed at it, as Churchill did; it is not quite certain that the pamphlet has survived to inform But if, as appears probable, a tract on the Mystery Reveal'd published by Newbery's neighbour, Bristow, be Goldsmith's threeguinea contribution, the last is the most correct surmise. It is however, a poor production. His next labour, which has been attributed to him on the authority of "several personal acquaint"ances," was the revision of a History of Mechlenburgh from the first settlement of the Vandals in that country, which the settlement of the young Queen Charlotte in this country was expected to 1762. Æt. 34. us. 66 Illness "Dr make popular; and for which, according to his ordinary rates of payment, he would have received 201. This may have been that first great advance "in a lump" which to his monied inexperience seemed a sum so enormous as to require the grandest schemes for disposing of it. For a subsequent payment of 10l., he assisted Newbery with an Art of Poetry on a New Plan, or in other words, a compilation of poetical extracts; and concurrently with this, Mr. Newbery begged leave to offer to the young gentlemen and ladies of these kingdoms a Compendium of Biography, or a history of the lives of those great personages, both ancient and modern, who are most worthy of their esteem and imitation, and most likely to inspire their minds with a love of virtue; for which offering to the juvenile mind, beginning with an abridgment of Plutarch, he was to pay Goldsmith at the rate of about eight pounds a volume. The volumes were brief, published monthly, and meant to have gone through many months if the scheme had thriven; but it fell before Dilly's British Plutarch, and perished with the seventh volume. Nor did it run without danger even this ignoble career. fell upon the compiler in the middle of the fifth volume. "Sir," he wrote to Newbery, "As I have been out of order for some time past and am still not quite recovered, the fifth volume "of Plutarch's lives remains unfinished. I fear I shall not be able "to do it, unless there be an actual necessity and that none else 66 can be found. If therefore you would send it to Mr. Collier I "should esteem it a kindness, and will pay for whatever it may 66 come to. N. B. I received twelve guineas for the two Volumes. "I am, Sir, Your obliged humble servt, OLIVER GOLDSMITH. Pray "let me have an answer." The answer was not favourable. Twelve guineas had been advanced, the two volumes were due, and Mr. Collier, though an ingenious man, was not Mr. Goldsmith. "Sir," returned the latter coldly, on a scrap of paper unsealed, and sent evidently by hand, "One Volume is done, namely the "fourth. When I said I should be glad Mr. Collier would do the "fifth for me, I only demanded it as a favour; but if he cannot "conveniently do it, tho' I have kept my chamber these three "weeks and am not yet quite recovered, yet I will do it. I send "it per bearer, and if the affair puts you to the least inconvenience "return it, and it shall be done immediately. I am, &c. O. G. "The Printer has the Copy of the rest." To this, his good nature having returned, Newbery acceded; and the book was finished by Mr. Collier, to whom a share of the pittance advanced had of course to be returned. These paltry advances are a hopeless entanglement. They bar freedom of judgment on anything proposed, and escape is felt to be impossible. Some days, some weeks perhaps, have been lost in M |