66 tating, 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. . . . 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 alehouse. 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 in this way— "The window, patched with paper, lent a ray The game of goose was there exposed to view, "An unpaid reckoning on the frieze was scored, This last letter was written in February 1759, and within a month or two after that date things took a turn for the better with Goldsmith. His writings, hitherto, had been but anonymous hackwork in the Monthly Review, the Literary Magazine, and the Critical Review, with two translations from the French, both for Griffithsone a novel; the other entitled "Memoirs of a Protestant condemned to the Galleys of France for his Religion," published in two volumes in February 1758, under the borrowed name of James Willington. But one consequence of his quarrel with Griffiths had been an engagement to pay off his unsettled score with that bookseller for the suit of clothes, and earn something besides, by writing A Life of Voltaire, to be published along with a new translation of the Henriade. The life and the translation were advertised by Griffiths in February 1759, as then about to appear; and, though this intention was not carried into effect, and both remained to be published in another form, the Life was probably ready by March, if not earlier. But, better still, Goldsmith had for some time been engaged on a little treatise of his own designing, which he intended to be his first avowed publication, and on which, accordingly, he was bestowing pains. The batch of letters to his Irish friends and relatives from which we have quoted had been in great part occasioned by his desire to announce to them this forthcoming performance, and to obtain through them Irish subscribers for English copies in advance, so as to prevent the Dublin booksellers from reprinting it and thus depriving him of the benefits of an Irish sale. Little or nothing seems to have been done in the desired way by his Irish friends when, in April 1759, the book was published in London by the Dodsleys, in a respectable duodecimo, and with the title "An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Eurobe." It is the first publication of Goldsmith's in which one need now look for anything of his real mind, and is still well worth reading. Though his name did not appear on the |title-page, he had no wish to conceal the authorship, but quite the contrary; and, as the notices of it that immediately or soon appeared were on the whole very favourable (with the exception of one in Griffiths's Monthly Review, written by Kenrick, his successor as the hack for that periodical, and full of personal scurrility), the publication attracted attention to Goldsmith and won him some reputation even in the crowded London market of letters. From that date his connexion with Hamilton, the publisher of the Critical Review, and with Smollett, its editor, became closer, and his services as a contributor more in demand with them; and towards the end of the year 1759 there appears even to have been some competition by knowing ones in "the trade" for the use of the light and easy pen which Griffiths had not sufficiently valued. Thus, when in October 1759, the bookseller Wilkie started The Bee, a weekly periodical of essays, dramatic criticisms, &c., price 3d., and also a new magazine called The Lady's Magazine, nominally intended chiefly for lady-readers, who but Goldsmith was the chief essayist and critic in the one, and the principal writer in the other? Not the less for this association with Wilkie in these two periodicals was he a contributor to a third periodical, The Busy Body, started at the same time by another bookseller, Pottinger, and published thrice a week. To be sure, both The Bee and The Busy Body were short-lived-the one reaching but its eighth number, and the other its twelfth. But Goldsmith's papers in them were noted at the time, and those in The Bee were in such demand afterwards that they had to be reprinted; and,| after both periodicals had ceased, there were still the Critical Review and the Lady's Magazine to write for. Acquaintances, too, were multiplying round Goldsmith. Even in his worst distress the sociable creature had made himself at home with his landlord's family; his flute, and sweetmeats, when he had them, were at the service of the children of Green Arbour Court, some of whom grew up to remember him and tell anecdotes of him; and we hear of one person, an ingenious watchmaker of the neighbourhood, who used to spend evenings with him. Then, according to Thackeray's observation that there never was an Irishman so low in circumstances but there was some other Irishman lower still and looking up to him and going errands for him, there were several fellow-countrymen of Goldsmith clinging to him, to be helped by him when he could hardly help himself-especially a certain Ned Purdon, who had been his schoolfellow. At the Temple Coffee House, also, there were opportunities for something like general society. But in the course of 1759 we have more distinct traces of Goldsmith's contact with known men in London. It was in March in that year, just before the publication of Goldsmith's Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning, that the Rev. Mr. Percy, afterwards Bishop Percy of the Ballads, paid that first memorable visit to him in Green Arbour Court, the queer incidents of which he used afterwards to describe. From that day Percy and Goldsmith were friends for life. Garrick's first encounter with Goldsmith was several months later, and much less pleasant. The secretaryship of the Society of Arts being vacant, It was a Goldsmith was anxious to obtain the post, and waited on the great actor to solicit his vote and interest. Garrick, it is said, reminded him of a passage in his Polite Learning, and asked how he could expect his support after that. passage in which, while discussing the prospects of the drama, Goldsmith had expressed rather sharply the common complaint then made against theatre-managers, that they neglected contemporary talent and lived on old stock-plays which cost them nothing. "Indeed," said Goldy bluntly, "I spoke my mind, and believe I said what was very right." And so they parted civilly, and it was long before Garrick and Goldsmith came really together. Quite otherwise it was between Goldsmith and Smollett. It is pleasant to think of these two, perhaps the most strongly contrasted humorists and men of genius of their day-the simple, gentlehearted, sweet-styled Irishman, and the bold, splenetically-independent, irascible, richly-inventive, rough-writing, but sombre and melancholic Scotchman-to think of these two as knit together by some mutual regard, when Smollett was already in the full bustle of his fame and industry, and Goldy was struggling and needed employment. During the whole of 1759, as we have seen, they had been, to some extent, fellow-workmen. And in the end of that year there was a visit of Smollett, along with the bookseller Newbery of St. Paul's Churchyard, to Goldsmith's lodgings in Green Arbour Court, which led to important results. Though London already swarmed with periodicals, the indefatigable Smollett, then recently released from his three months' imprisonment for libel, had projected a new sixpenny monthly, to be called The British Magazine; and Newbery, besides having an interest in this magazine, had resolved on the larger attempt of a daily newspaper, price 24d., to be called The Public Ledger. It was to secure Goldsmith's services in both these undertakings that they had called upon him. Accordingly, from the first appearance of the British Magazine, on the 1st of January, 1760, with a fervid dedication to Pitt, and the unusual distinction of a royal licence to Dr. Smollett as its editor, Goldsmith was a regular contributor to its pages-his essays and criticisms forming perhaps the chief attraction of the magazine after Smollett's novel of "Sir Lancelot Greaves," which appeared there in successive instalments till its conclusion in December 1761. Goldsmith's contributions to this magazine extended even into 1762, and included at least twenty separate essays, of which some were in his most charming style. But it was in the Public Ledger that he made his great hit. He had been engaged by Newbery to furnish for this newspaper an article of some amusing kind twice a week, to be paid for at the rate of a guinea per article. He had already written one or two articles to suit, when the idea struck him of bringing on the scene an imaginary philosophic Chinaman, resident in London after long wanderings from home, and of making the adventures of this Chinaman, and his observations of men and things in the Western world, as recorded in letters supposed to be written by him to friends in China, together with the replies of these friends, the material for a series of papers which should consist of character-sketches, social satire, and whimsical reflection on all sorts of subjects, connected by a slight thread of story. He had always had a fancy for China and the Chinese, and an anticipation of this idea will be found in one of his letters from which we have already quoted. The first of Goldsmith's "Chinese Letters," as they came soon to be called, appeared in the Ledger on the 24th of Jan. 1760, with no intimation that there was to be a series of them; the second appeared on the 29th; the third on the 31st; and from that date so eagerly were they expected, and so much did they contribute to the sale of the Ledger, that Newbery gave them the most conspicuous place in the paper. Ninety-eight letters in all appeared in the course of 1760; and these, completed by subsequent stragglers in the Ledger, and by the incorporation of other papers in the same vein published elsewhere, formed eventually that delightful, if somewhat too lengthy, Citizen of the World, whose place among our English classics is now sure after more than a hundred years. It was while all London was reading the "Chinese Letters" and becoming fond of the philosophic Chinaman, and his friends, the Gentleman in Black, Beau Tibbs, and the rest, that George II. died, and his grandson, George III., began his reign. The glorious ministry of Pitt was brought to an abrupt end soon after, and the favourite Bute came into power, drawing Scotchmen in his train, and rousing the unanimous execration of all England against everything that was or could be called Scottish. A change probably as important to Goldsmith personally as the change of king and of ministry was his removal, towards the end of 1760, from Green Arbour Court to superior lodgings in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street. Here, through the rest of 1760 and through 1761 and 1762, his work for the Public Ledger and the British Magazine continued to be a considerable part of his occupation. Not the whole, however. He had not quitted his hold of the Lady's Magazine; of which periodical, indeed, he appears to have become virtual editor some time in 1760. Among his contributions to it in 1761 were successively-published portions of that Life of Voltaire which he had written for Griffiths two years before, but which had, for some reason or other, remained in manuscript. But, naturally, it was for Newbery that Goldsmith's literary services were now chiefly reserved. This worthy publisher, whose red face, bustling benevolence, and zeal in getting up nice children's books, Goldsmith has celebrated in a well-known passage, did not confine himself merely to children's books and periodicals, but had a flourishing general business besides. He had been for many a year paymaster and advancer of loans to needy men of the literary tribe, including his own son-in-law Christopher Smart, and also Johnson. He was not the man to let Goldsmith, who had done such a stroke of work for him in the Ledger, rust for want of employment. He seems, indeed, to have taken Goldy under a kind of charge, partly for Goldy's benefit, and partly with a view to his own profit. The very lodging in Wine Office Court to which Goldy had removed was in a house the tenant of which was a relative of Newbery's. Here Newbery could have him at command, not only for the Ledger, but for all kinds of miscellaneous work-compilations, pamphlets on this and that, revisions of other people's books, prefaces to such, abridgments of such books as Plutarch's Lives, conclusions of historical manuals left unfinished, translations from the French, and even occasional moral articles for the Christian's Magazine, then edited for Newbery, for circulation among the religious, by poor, unhanged Dr. Dodd. The amount of such work done for Newbery by Goldsmith between 1760 and 1763, and traceable still in cash-accounts between them, is very large; and much remains untraceable. On the whole, though it was dreadful task-work, Goldy found it worth while, in respect of the money it brought him. His receipts at this time, and chiefly from Newbery, may be calculated at what would be equivalent now to about 250%. or 300/. a year; and, though he was generally on the debtor side in Newbery's books, for work paid for in part beforehand, there is yet evidence that the Goldsmith of Wine Office Court was, socially, in a different plight from the Goldsmith of Green Arbour Square. Not only does he frequent the theatres and taverns, attend meetings of the Society of Arts, and drop in on Monday evenings at the famous Robin Hood Debating Society in Butcher Row, where, under the presidency of "the eloquent baker" Caleb Jeacocke, young lawyers and fledgling wits discussed religion and politics; he even "receives" in his own lodging, is sponged upon there for guineas and half-guineas by rascals that know his good nature, and sometimes gives literary suppers. One such supper, given by him in Wine Office Court, is memorable. It was on the 31st of May, 1761. Whether Johnson had met Goldsmith before is uncertain; most probably he had, for the author of the Inquiry into Polite Learning and the Chinese Letters can hardly have remained a stranger to him; but this, at all events, was their first meeting not merely casual. Johnson had accepted Goldsmith's invitation to meet a largish party of friends, and Percy was to accompany him. As the two were walking to Wine Office Court, Percy observed, to his surprise, that Johnson had on "a new suit of clothes," with "a new wig nicely powdered," and everything in style to match. Struck with such a variation from Johnson's usual habits, he ventured a remark on the subject. "Why, sir," said Johnson in reply, "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." And so the two went to Goldy's rooms, and the door was shut behind them and the others; and there was, no doubt, much noise and splendid talk far into the night; but it has not been reported, for there was no Boswell there. But from that day began the immortal intimacy of the gentle Goldsmith with the great Johnson, and all that peculiar radiance over the London of the eighteenth century which we still trace to the conjunction of their figures in its antique streets. Of only three of his contemporaries in the English world of letters had Goldsmith written with admiration approaching to enthusiasm―Smollett, the poet Gray, and Johnson. A recluse at Cambridge, Gray was inaccessible. With Smollett an acquaintance had already been established; but the resident London life of the overworked and melancholic novelist was nearly over, and he was about to be a wanderer thenceforth in search of health. But at last Goldsmith had happened on that most massive and central of the three, towards whom in any case all intellectual London consciously or unconsciously gravitated. Johnson was then in his fifty-second year, living in chambers in Inner Temple Lane-not yet "Dr.," and not yet pensioned, though |