scribed. 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 quickly have occasion for it. I have met with no disappointment with respect to my East India voyage, nor are my resolutions altered; though, at the same time, I must confess, it gives me some pain to think 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 eye-brows, 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 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.1 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, disagreeable manner of speaking, and a visage that looks ill-nature 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.

1 This is all gratis dictum, for there never was a character so unsuspicious and so unguarded as the writer's.-PERCY'S Memoir.

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 except your own. It is impossible to conceive how much may be done by a 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!1 They teach the youthful mind to sigh after beauty and happiness which 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 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

1 Similar advice is given in the Citizen of the World,' Letter LXXXIII.-ED.

2 Compare with the curious defence of misers in two places in the 'Bee,' pp. 355 and 381 of our vol. ii.—ED.

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 insidious approaches of 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 situation 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.

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 too 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 till 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. 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.1 Yet her hus

band loves her; if so, she cannot be unhappy.

For

I know not whether I should tell you-yet why should I conceal these trifles, or indeed any thing 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 catch-penny.2 However, I spent but four weeks on the whole performance, for which I received twenty pounds. When published, I shall take some

1 His youngest sister, who married unfortunately.-PERCY. Mrs. Johnston; her marriage, like that of Mrs. Hodson, was private, but in pecuniary matters much less fortunate.-PRIOR.

2 This character of the performance was deemed by Percy a sufficient reason for not including it in the edition of the Works' published by him. The Voltaire Memoirs, however, are interesting in many ways, and we accordingly give them in the fourth volume of the present edition. Mr. Forster said of the work that it gave the best account of Voltaire in England with which he was acquainted.-ED.

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 equivalence of amusement. Your last letter, I repeat it, was too short; you should have given me your opinion of the design of the heroi-comical poem which I sent you. You remember I intended to introduce the hero of the poem as lying in a paltry ale-house. 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 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 reck'ning on the frieze was scored,

And five crack'd tea-cups dress'd the chimney board.'

And now imagine, after his soliloquy, 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 smok'd the patient man,

Then pull'd his breeches tight, and thus began, &c.

All this is taken, you see, from nature. It is a good remark of Montaign'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 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.

These lines re-appear, with additions, in the 'Description of an Author's Bed-chamber,' ' Poems,' vol. ii. p. 82, and in the Citizen of the World,' Letter XXX.-ED.

LETTER XIII.

TO MR. NEWBERY, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD.1

DEAR SIR,

[About March, 1762.]

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 can be found. If therefore you would send it to Mr. Collier,2 I should esteem it a kindness, and will pay for whatever it may come to.-N.B. I received twelve guineas for the two volumes.

I am, Sir, your obliged,

Humble servant,

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, though I have kept my chamber these three weeks, and am not quite recovered, yet I will do it. I send it per bearer; and if the affair puts you to the

1 The dates of this and the following note are shown to be about March, 1762, by Goldsmith's receipt for payment for the work mentioned, which receipt is among the Newbery papers, and bears date March 5, 1762 (see p. 478). The notes were first printed by Prior, 1837, from the originals then in the possession of Mr. John Murray, sen., the publisher.-ED.

2 Mr. Joseph Collyer, a compiler and translator for the booksellers of the time. In 1767 he translated Bodmer's Noah.'-ED.