how much superior Home, the author of "Douglas," was to Shakspeare in the walk of buskined tragedy. Goldsmith extinguished Wilkie, and quoted some good lines from Home. A review of the "Sublime and Beautiful" delighted Burke. He found something to praise in "Smollett's English History." Of Gray, who is sometimes described as the peculiar object of Goldsmith's hostility, he speaks with great good sense and good feeling the poems he had to review were "The Bard," and the "Progress of Poesy."

"We cannot, without regret," says Goldsmith, "behold talents, so capable of giving pleasure to all, exerted in efforts that, at best, can amuse only the few. We cannot behold this rising poet seeking fame among the learned, without hinting to him the advice that Socrates used to give his scholars-study the people. This study it is that has conducted the great masters of antiquity up to immortality. Pindar himself, of whom our modern lyrist is an imitator, appears entirely guided by it.

He

adapted his work exactly to the dispositions of his countrymen. Irregular, enthusiastic, and quick in transition, he wrote for a people inconstant, of warm imagination, and exquisite sensibility! He chose the most popular subjects, and all his allusions are to customs well known in his days to the meanest persons."

This is not the language of envy; this is not the language of self-seeking vanity. Goldsmith quotes passages from the Bard to support his belief that these odes of Gray are as great "as anything of that species of composition which has hitherto appeared in our language, the Odes of Dryden himself not excepted." The obscure critic had not even the comfort of knowing that this sentence of the highest praise these odes ever ceived had given pleasure to Gray. He, Forster, quotes a letter from Gray to Hurd, in which he says, "he has heard of nobody but an actor and a doctor of divinity professing esteem for them." The actor was Garrick, and the divine was Warburton; and, all things considered, there was not much to be proud of in the praise of either: but they were the fashion, and had a name

re

-Goldsmith was an obscure drudge of the press, and Gray would as soon have thought of thanking the types or the compositor, as of making the slightest inquiry on the subject of the authorship of the review.

The labour and the anxieties of this mode of life were more than Goldsmith could bear; he worked each day "from nine o'clock till two, and, on special days of the week, from an earlier hour till late at night." His articles were altered as suited the whims of Griffith and his wife. When his task was done, he had no home to fly to, and seek to forget his cares. The thing became intolerable. His biographers, who pursue him after death, with as much earnestness as the bailiffs did through life, have been baffled as to where he lodged when his engagement with the Griffiths abruptly terminated. "When I lived among the beggars, in St. Mary.Axe," were the words in which Goldsmith commenced a story, recorded by George Langton, at Sir Joshua Reynolds'; and we wonder the sentence has not sent the detectives inquiring for Oliver among the subjects of Bamfylde Moore Carew, or whoever was the reigning sovereign of the day. Goldsmith's letters were at this time addressed to the TempleExchange coffee-house, near Temple Bar, and his residence is supposed to have been some hiding-hole in the neighbourhood. It is not impossible, as suggested, that he at the time affected to seek some practice as a physician, and that the coffee-house was "his professional place of call; the custom not having passed away of physicians resorting to particular coffeehouses, where, at certain hours of the day, they were to be sought and found, rather than at their own residences, when required to visit patients." Here Grainger, the author of some pleasing poems, and a man whom Johnson loved, Goldsmith's fellowlabourer in the "Monthly Review," was also to be found. Through Grainger was formed an acquaintance with Percy, afterwards bishop of Dromore, who found Goldsmith, in some time after, in Green-Arbour-court, between the Old Bailey and what was lately Flect-market. The court was

approached from Farringdon-street by a number of what, from their steepness, were called "Break-neck steps." The houses, still standing when Prior wrote, "were four stories in height; the attics had casement-windows, and, at one time, they were probably inhabited by a superior class of tenants." "The houses," says Forster, "crumbling and tumbling in Goldsmith's day, were fairly rotted down, some twelve or fifteen years since; and it became necessary, for safety sake, to remove what time had spared; but Mr. Washington Irving was there first, and with reverence had described them for Goldsmith's sake." "It appeared,' he writes in his " Tales of a Traveller," "to be a region of washerwomen, and lines were stretched about the little square to dry."

Here Percy found him. “I called on Goldsmith," said he, "at his lodgings, in March, 1759, and found him writing his Inquiry [Inquiry into the present state of Polite Learning,' 1759], in a miserable, dirty-looking room, in which there was but one chair, and when, from civility, he resigned it to me, he was himself obliged to sit in the window. While we were conversing together, some one gently tapped at the door, and, being desired to come in, a poor, ragged girl of a very becoming demeanor, entered the room, and, dropping a courtesy, said, 'My mamma sends her compliments, and begs the favour of you to lend her a chamberpot full of coals.'" Other recollections of this period of Goldsmith's life have been gathered by Mr. Prior, which we think Mr. Forster ought not to have omitted. In 1820 the owner of a small shop in Clapham-road, communicated to Mr. Prior, or a friend of his, "that she was a relation of the woman with whom Goldsmith lodged in Green-Arbour-court: that at the age of seven or eight years she frequently went thither, one of the inducements to which was the cakes and sweetmeats given to her and the other children of the family by the gentleman who lodged there. He was fond of assembling those children in his room, and inducing them to dance to the music of his flute. Of this instrument, as a relaxation from study, he was fond. He was usually shut up in the room

during the day, went out in the evening, and preserved regular hours. He had several visitors. One of the companions whose society gave him particular pleasure, was a watchmaker residing in the same court, celebrated for wit and humour." She added that Goldsmith's landlord being arrested for debt, a suit of clothes from Goldsmith's room was sent to the pawnbroker's, to supply the immediate exigency; and it is some confirmation of the accuracy of her recollection, that a letter of Goldsmith's remains, in which he replies to a complaint of Griffith's, who, it seems, obtained credit for him for clothes in which to make his appearance as a candidate for some situation, and which clothes Griffith accused Goldsmith of having made away with. Another anecdote rests on the same authority. A visitor was shewn to his room. "Soon after his having

The

entered it, voices, as if in altercation, were heard by the people below; the key of the door at the same moment being turned within the room. Late in the evening the door was unlocked, and supper ordered from a neighbouring tavern."* visitor was the devil of an adjoining printing-office, or the black magician who employed him, and who took this means of securing Goldsmith's finishing some job for which the press was waiting.

We see no reason whatever for distrusting any part of this narrative. It falls in with every thing we know of Goldsmith's character. It confirms what is proved in many other ways, and, what the very bulk of his works would alone establish, the exceeding industry with which he toiled. Society Goldsmith loved, but it was of little moment to him how it was formedthe children of the court in which he lived, the watchmaker, the printer's devil, everybody was welcome-everybody was made happy and contributed to his happiness. Indeed we have no doubt whatever that this was the happiest time of his life, for it is a mistake to imagine that a period of struggle and of labour-our appointed lotmay not be a time of great happiness. "To struggle," says an eloquent writer in the North British Review,† "is not to suffer. Heaven grants to

few of us a life of untroubled prosperity, and grants it least of all to its favourites." At this time were written most of his essays. In a passage of the "Vicar of Wakefield," George Primrose describes his fortunes-and they were Goldsmith's. "I was obliged to write for bread, but I was unqualified for a profession, where mere industry was to insure success. I could not subdue my lurking passion for applause, but usually consumed that time in efforts after excellence, which takes up but little room, when it should have been more advantageously employed in the diffusive productions of fruitful mediocrity. My little piece would therefore come forth in the midst of periodical publications unnoticed and unknown. The public were more importantly employed than to observe the easy simplicity of my style or the harmony of my periods. Sheet after sheet was thrown off to oblivion. My essays were buried among essays upon liberty, eastern tales, and cures for the bite of a mad dog; while Philautos, Philalethes, Phileleutheros, and Philanthropos, all wrote better, because they wrote faster than I." This passage occurs almost in the same words in the preface to Goldsmith's Essays when he published them in a collected form. He adds that Philautos and the rest "have kindly stood sponsors to my productions, and to flatter me the more, have always past them as their own. As they have partly lived on me for some years, let me now try if I cannot live a little upon myself. I would desire, in this case, to imitate that fat man whom I have somewhere heard of in a shipwreck, who, when the sailors, pressed by famine, were taking slices from his posteriors to satisfy their hunger, insisted with great justice on having the first cut for himself." The first appearance of those essays were in the periodical magazines. They were not collected till Goldsmith's name was sure to attract a sale.

The Irish book-pirates of the day reprinted every work that appeared in England, of a size and price not beyond their capital. Goldsmith, when about publishing his "Inquiry," thought by a subscription for part of the English impression among his Irish friends, that he could secure to himself some part of the profits of any Irish sale the work might have,

and to this calculation we owe some half-dozen letters written to his Irish relatives. "The letters of Goldsmith are so excellent," says Mr. Mitford, in his graceful memoir of the poet, "that it is to be hoped his next biographer will delight us with an increased collection of them." A few, not, however, of very important value, have been added both by Mr. Prior and Mr. Forster. The letters form a great charm in all these biographies of Goldsmith. There is in every one of them the sort of pathetic gaiety that gives us the truest character of the man. "These letters," says Wills, "are admirable for their style, but far more so for the deep insight they give into the affections and spirit of the writer. A deeper and broader range of thought might easily be found in many published letters, and a more keen and polished play of fancy, but never a more pure and true expression of the pride and tenderness of our nature. It is perhaps a fancy, but there is often in Goldsmith's poetry and letters, a singular common power of bringing up the writer's self to the eye and breast of the reader, in the same way that many writers convey graphic touches of locality. There is a peculiar reality in those unstudied and artless, yet powerful flashes of feeling, which come by surprise, and for a moment seem to recall the past or absent; they are, throughout his writings, but more especially his poetic writings, charged with some undefined attraction, not found in other writers, that identifies the reader with the poet, and seems to convey the heart and imagination into the localities he describes or alludes to."

Goldsmith's power, felt by the public even before his name was known, and his industry, on which his booksellers could safely rely to supply them rapidly with the ready ware suited to their customers, secured him continued employment in the magazines of the day. It was not his fault, nor that of the booksellers, that the rewards of literature were scanty. Such as they were he had his fair share of them. He changes his lodgings for better apartments, and we find eminent literary men at his parties. A joke of Johnson's is recorded by Bishop Percy, as if it were a mighty matter. Percy called on Johnson to take him to Gold

smith's, and found him sprucely drest. "He had on," says Percy, “a new suit of clothes, a new wig, nicely powdered, and everything so dissimilar from his usual habits, that I could not resist the impulse of inquiring into the cause of such rigid regard in him to exterior appearances. Why sir,' said Johnson, I hear that Goldsmith, who is averygreat sloven, justifies his disregard for cleanliness and decency by quoting my practice, and I am desirous this night of showing him a better example."" Tolerably as all this looks in print, it is quite plain that the man who dresses himself decently, in order to give a moral lesson to another, has been practising a useful lesson of morality himself. Percy's story, read as it has been by the biographers, tells as much against Johnson as against Goldsmith. The probability is that Johnson replied to a jesting inquiry by a jest; and that, if there was any serious thought at all in his mind when he dressed for supper, it was that of paying some compliment -not very distinctly present before his own mind, nor very possible to be communicated to another without more talk than the thing was worth-to Goldsmith and his guests. Johnson, met in his study, undressed, and Johnson, in full puff for a party, were, we take it, different things. As to the moral lesson, its effects were likely, if we are to regard such things as having any effect at all, pretty much what Mr. Forster suggests. "The example,"

he says, "was not lost, as extracts from tailors' bills will shortly show." In one of Goldsmith's letters to his brother Henry, written two years before this, he had said, "Though I have never had a day's sickness since I saw you, 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, 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 eyebrows, with an eye disgustingly severe, and a bag wig, and you have a perfect picture of my present appearance." Of the obscure toils that were breaking down his stubborn health, Mr. Forster gives such record as is now attainable. That he was over-worked

and under-paid, he also gives abundant proof; but for this last the booksellers are not in fault. They can but sell what the public will buy; and they in truth, in rendering it possible for such men as Johnson and Goldsmith to live, are advancing a capital which may never be repaid. That Goldsmith's health was sinking, and that he was living beyond his means, trifling as his expenses were, is proved by his correspondence with Newbery, for whom he was now compiling "Arts of Poetry," and "British Plutarchs."

Change of scene is prescribed, and Goldsmith is traced, about this time, to Tunbridge Wells and Bath. His occupation follows him, and the death of Beau Nash suggests to the bookseller the fitness of a book while the name fills the public ear. Well, he manufactures an octavo of 234 pages, and the following memorandum remains among the papers of Newbery's family; "Received from Mr. Newbery, at different times, and for which gave receipts, fourteen guineas, which is in full for the copy of the life of Mr. Nash."

"The book," says Mr. Forster, "is neither uninstructive nor unamusing, and it is difficult not to connect some points of the biographer's own history with its oddly-mixed anecdotes of silliness and shrewdness, taste and tawdriness, the blossom-coloured coats, and gambling debts, vanity, carelessness, and good-heartedness. The latter quality in its hero was foiled by a want of prudence which deprived it of half its value; and the extenuation is so frequently and so earnestly set forth in connexion with the fault, as, with what we now know of the writer, to convey a sort of uneasy personal reference." There is something in all this, but something that Goldsmith would not quite like, or quite assent to. Goldsmith's preface to the book, which Mr. Forster does not quote, mentions that "the reader will have the satisfaction of perusing an account that is genuine, and not the work of imagination, as biographical writings too commonly are." In the year 1762, there is reason to believe that Goldsmith had commenced the "Vicar of Wakefield."

He was still, however, hard at work with one task of compilation or another. Some confusion exists in the mention of his Histories of England, of which he had published several un

der several names. This year Newbery took lodgings for him at Islington, and here he wrote what is called "The History of England, in a series of letters from a nobleman to his son." The authorship was referred to every nobleman whose name the booksellers thought might help to sell the book. Lord Chesterfield, who at one time stood sponsor for the "Whole Duty of Man," did the same service for "The Letters" for awhile. Lord Orrery was named, and then Lord Lyttleton. The book was a good book, notwithstandingwas alive and kicking in the days of the Reform Bill, and is likely to live till the repeal of the Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland. With reference to one of these Histories of England (not "The Letters"), Goldsmith says, some years after

this

"I have been a good deal abused in the newspapers for betraying the liberties of the people. God knows, I had no thought for or against liberty in my head-my whole aim being to make up a book of a decent size, that, as Squire Richard says, 'would do no harm to nobody.' However, they set me down as an arrant Tory, and consequently an honest man. When you come to look at any part of it [his letter is to Bennet Langton] you'll say that I am a sour Whig." [Mr. Forster prints this, or his devil prints it, sore Whig.]

At this period was instituted the Literary Club-or, "The Club," as it was called-of which we may take some future opportunity of referring our readers to the existing notices. Mr. Forster's is an exceedingly pleasant account of it and Goldsmith's connexion with it; but nothing can supply the place of Boswell. Hogarth is found visiting Goldsmith at Islington; and the portrait, known by the name of "Goldsmith's Hostess," is supposed to have been done for his landlady of Islington in one of these visits. Geoffrey Crayon's poor devil author was afterwards located among Goldsmith's haunts, and a writer, whom neither Mr. Forster nor Mr. Prior seem to have looked at, Mr. Hone, or a contributor of his to "The Every-day Book" in 1831, tells us that Mr. Symes, bailiff of the manor of Isling

ton, says

"That his mother-in-law, Mrs. Evans, who had lived there three-and

The difficulty of ascertaining any precise fact is illustrated by Mr. Forster's account of this residence at Islington. He will have it that here Goldsmith was arrested by Mrs. Fleming, Goldsmith's hostess, and that this was the scene where Johnson, finding him in duress, visited him, and assisted in selling the "Vicar of Wakefield." Of this story, the only part that has been, we think, wholly disproved, is that which connects Mrs. Fleming with it; and this fact of her disconnexion with the matter, established by her great generosity to Goldsmith, as exhibited in her accounts, preserved among Newbery's papers, and utterly irreconcilable with the documents published by Prior, makes it almost certain that the incident occurred not at Islington, but in Goldsmith's town lodgings, to which we know he returned. Mr. Prior doubts the place of the occurrence; but for this, we should regard it as free from doubt, and fix the scene in Goldsmith's town. lodg ings. Mr. Forster doubts the person; nay, is certain that Mrs. Fleming is the person. Notwithstanding his doubt, or rather certainty, we are quite certain that poor Mrs. Fleming was guiltless of this indignity-whether actually offered, or only meditatedfor this, too, is matter of grave debate. Boswell tells us, that one morning Goldsmith had sent him a message that he had been arrested by his landlady for rent. He sent him a guinea, and promised to go to him directly. He found him having changed the guinea and a bottle of Madeira before him. Johnson considered the means of extricating him; was shown "The Vicar of Wakefield," which he took to a bookseller's, and sold for £60. "I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady for using him so ill." Mrs. Piozzi, telling the same story, makes the time evening; and represents Goldsmith, when the affair of the arrest was settled,