seller to whom Johnson carried the manuscript was not Newbery himself—who, if all had been right between him and Goldsmith, would naturally have been first applied to-but his nephew, Francis Newbery, of Paternoster Row. In giving 60/. for it this younger bookseller must have been influenced as much by Johnson's recommendations as by any notion he could have had for himself of the worth of what he had bought. For, though it was the manuscript of the Vicar of Wakefield, it was thrown aside as soon as purchased, to wait young Mr. Newbery's convenience. For the present, therefore, all the satisfaction Goldsmith derived from the exquisite little tale which for a year or two he had been quietly and carefully writing at intervals, by way of relief from his compilations and task-work, was the immediate 60. brought him by Johnson. Fortunately, however, he had another thing by him, similarly written for his own pleasure, and according to his own best ideas of literary art. This was his poem of the Traveller, the idea of which had occurred to him nine years before during his own continental wanderings, and some fragments of which he had then written and sent home from Switzerland to his brother Henry. On this poem, as well as on the Vicar of Wakefield, he had been for some time engaged in his Islington lodgings, writing it slowly, and bringing it to the last degree of finish, but so diffident of its success as to say nothing about it to his friends. Reynolds, indeed, once visiting him, found him bending over something at his desk, and at the same time holding up his finger in rebuke every now and then to a little dog he was teaching to sit on its haunches in a corner of the room; and, on looking over his shoulder at the manuscript, he could see that it was a poem and was able to read and remember one couplet. At length, probably at the very time of Johnson's visit of rescue, Goldsmith took Johnson into his confidence in the matter of the poem too. It was highly approved by that judge, who even added a line or two of his own; the elder Newbery, who may already have been spoken to about it, did not mind promising twenty guineas for it; and on the 19th of December, 1764, it was published, price one shilling and sixpence, with this title, "The Traveller; or a Prospect of Society: A Poem. By Oliver Goldsmith, M.B." It was the first publication of Goldsmith's that bore his name, and it was dedicated, in terms of beautiful affection, to his brother, the Rev. Henry Goldsmith.

The publication of the Traveller was an epoch in Goldsmith's life. Now, at last, at the age of six-and-thirty, he stood forth, not as an essayist, compiler, and miscellaneous prose-humorist, half-hidden by a habit of the anonymous, but avowedly as a candidate for those higher and finer honours that belong to the name of English Poet. The time was unusually favourable. Poor as Britain had been, during the whole of the preceding portion of the eighteenth century, in poetry, as it had once been understood and as it came to be understood again-with Pope as its all-ruling tradition in the world of verse, and only Thomson and one or two more recollected as powers of variation-there was perhaps no point in the century when the British Muse, such as she had come to be, was doing less, or had so nearly ceased to do anything, or to have any good opinion of herself, as precisely about the year 1764. Young was dying; Gray was recluse and indolent; Johnson had long given over his

metrical experimentations on any except the most inconsiderable scale; Akenside Armstrong, Smollett, and others less known, had pretty well revealed the amo of their worth in poetry; and Churchill, after his ferocious blaze of what was real rage and declamation in metre, though conventionally it was called poetry, was prem turely dead and defunct. Into this lull came Goldsmith's short, but carefully-finishe poem. It was no innovation in apparent form, for the verse was that heroic rhyn couplet which the eighteenth century had adopted as the one and only true for save for such lesser themes as would run into stanzas or gurgle into the mechani paroxysms that were called Pindarics. But Goldsmith, as the dedication to E brother shows, really meant the poem as something new in spirit and in stylereturn to simplicity and truth of feeling, and, above all, a protest against Churchi and the wretched reduction of poetry, as in his case, to the one principle, "indign | facit versus." And the public was wonderfully ready for such an appeal to its f literary instincts, and welcomed Goldsmith's poem beyond his utmost expectaties It was widely and highly praised in the Reviews, the general verdict being that the had been nothing so fine in verse since the time of Pope; even poems were publish in commendation of it; and the author's high-mindedness in dedicating it to brother, a poor Irish parson, rather than to any noble or wealthy patron, did escape notice. A second edition was called for in March 1765, and a third in t following August; and, before Goldsmith died, he was to revise it again and ag with slight corrections throughout, till it reached its ninth edition. Of course, by:. this Goldsmith benefited socially. The author of the Traveller was not a man tol thought of or looked at with indifference. People who had known him before, to whom he had been little more than a laughing-stock, began to see what it was him that deeper observers, like Johnson and Burke, had all along recognised. shall never more think Mr. Goldsmith ugly," said Miss Reynolds, Joshua's siste after Johnson had read the poem aloud in her hearing from beginning to end. F even the deeper observers themselves were roused to a higher opinion of Gold genius. When Reynolds afterwards hinted to Johnson that perhaps the war reception of the poem was due to the partiality of Goldsmith's friends, "Nay, Sir, said Johnson candidly, in a reply which reflected even on himself, "the partiality his friends was always against him: it was with difficulty we could give him: hearing." Johnson's own opinion of Goldy from this time forward was that he w distinctly one of the chiefs of British Literature.

While the Traveller was passing through the press, Goldsmith had written h pretty ballad of "Edwin and Angelina," afterwards introduced into the Vi of Wakefield, under its present title of "The Hermit." This little compositio was occasioned by his interest in the collection of ballads and other old Englis poems which his friend, the Rev. Thomas Percy, was then busy with, and which was published in 1765 under its ever famous name of The Reliques. Goldsmith ha shown his ballad to Percy, who was then chaplain to the Earl, afterwards Duke, Northumberland; and the Countess of Northumberland had taken such a fancy it as to have copies privately printed for herself and her friends. It was expecte

that something advantageous to Goldy might arise from this introduction to the Northumberland family—especially as the Earl was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, had all sorts of offices on the Irish establishment at his disposal, and might easily, with public approval, have given some sinecure to one who was not only a popular author, but an Irishman to boot. Goldsmith did have an interview with the Earl at Northumberland House, received compliments from him on his Traveller, and was informed that the Earl had heard he was a native of Ireland, and would be glad to do him any kindness. Instead of improving the occasion for himself, "this idiot in the affairs of the world," as Sir John Hawkins calls him, only told the Earl he had a brother in Ireland, a poor clergyman, who stood in much need of help. "As for myself," he said afterwards in telling the story to Sir John, "I have no dependence on the promises of great men: I look to the booksellers for support." This was no mere affectation on Goldy's part; it was really true. With the exception of Mr. Robert Nugent, afterwards Lord Nugent, Viscount Clare and Earl Nugent-a jovial, elderly Irishman, of great wealth, and free-and-easy politics, who admired Goldsmith, and was always glad to see him at his seat at Gosfield Hall, Essex-Goldsmith never cared to trouble any of the "great people" with his intimacy. And the utmost that came to him from this friendship, besides a week of country air now and then, was the appearance, once or twice, of a haunch of venison in his chambers in town. For, of course, Goldsmith was now done with Islington and Mrs. Fleming. The Temple, now and thenceforth, was his established place of residence. He had had rough temporary accommodation here, as we have seen, on the library staircase," in 1764; and this he is found exchanging, in or about 1765, for superior chambers in the same court-i.e., Garden Court. These he retained till 1768.

In June 1765 Goldsmith, to take advantage of his new popularity, published, with his name, and under the title of Essays, and with the motto Collecta Revirescunt," a selection from his anonymous papers in the Bee, the Busy-Body, the Lady's Magazine, the British Magazine, &c. Other people, he says in the preface, had been reprinting these trifles of his, and living on the pillage, and now he reclaimed the best of them. The republication was in one duodecimo volume, for which Newbery and Griffin, who were the joint-publishers, gave him ten guineas each. Then, again, through the rest of that year and the whole of 1766 and 1767,-his Traveller having brought him more applause than cash-he relapses, for cash-purposes, into hackwork, compilation, and translation. He thought of translating the Lusiad, but, his ignorance of Portuguese being a slight obstacle, left that undertaking for Mickle. Among the compilations which he did execute we hear of such things as A Survey of Experimental Philosophy and a Short English Grammar for Newbery, a translation of a French History of Philosophy (Physical Speculations) for Francis Newbery, a collection of Poems for Young Ladies for Payne of Paternoster Row, and another poetical collection in two volumes for Griffin called Beauties of English Poetry. For this last, to which he gave his name, he received a considerable sum; but the sale of the collection, which

was otherwise a tasteful one, is said to have suffered from the admission into it of two pieces of Prior not deemed fit for family reading. And what, all this while, had become of the Vicar of Wakefield? It emerged from the younger Newbery's shop in the very midst of the compilations just named-viz. on the 27th of March, 1766, or fifteen months after the Traveller had been out. The Vicar of Wakefield : A Tale; supposed to be written by himself-such was the title under which the little prose masterpiece announced itself. With less of acclamation than had hailed the Traveller, but gently, quietly, and surely, as it was read in households, and its charming sweetness felt wherever it was read, the Tale made its way. There was: second edition in May, a third in August, and before Goldsmith died the sixth edition was in circulation.

As, by his Traveller, Goldsmith had taken his place among English poets, so by the Vicar of Wakefield he took a place, if not as one of the remarkable group c English "novelists" that distinguished the middle of the eighteenth century (fe: they had all been voluminous in this department), at least, with peculiar conspicuousness, near that group. Richardson had been five years dead; Fielding twelve years; only Smollett of the old three remained, with his Humphry Clinke still to be written. But Sterne, the fourth of the group, had recently flashed int notice-eight volumes of his Tristram Shandy, published between 1759 and 1765 having taken the literary world by storm, and made their strange author, then : middle-aged clergyman of loose notions, the lion of London society for the time being, with dinner engagements always fourteen deep. Not the radiance c Tristram Shandy itself, however, diamond-darting in all colours athwart the literary heaven, could hide the pure soft star of Goldsmith's new creation. How simple this Vicar of Wakefield was, how humorous, how pathetic, how graceful in its manner, how humane in every pulse of its meaning, how truly and deeply good! So said everybody; and gradually into that world of imaginary scenes and beings made familiar to British readers by former works of fiction, and the latest additions to which had been Smollett's and Sterne's inventions, a place of especial regard was found for the ideal Wakefield, the Primrose family, and all their belongings. Moses, with the gross of green spectacles and shagreen cases for which he sold the horse; the philosophical wanderer George; the two daughters, Olivia and Sophia; the bouncing Flamborough girls; Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs, and the other fine lady from London; the rogue Jenkinson and his repentance; the rascally Squire; and the good uncle, Sir William, alias Burchellwho could forget any of them? Above all the good clergyman himself, with his punctilious honour, his boundless benevolence, and his one or two foibles! Who could help laughing over that passage in which he tells how the rogue Jenkinson, in proceeding to swindle him, assails his weak point by asking if he is the great Dr. Primrose who had written so learnedly in favour of monogamy and agains: second marriages? "Never did my heart feel sincerer rapture than at this moment. "Sir,' cried I, the applause of so good a man as I am sure you are adds to "that happiness in my heart which your benevolence has already excited.

You

66

66

66

66

"behold before you, Sir, that Dr. Primrose, the monogamist, whom you have been pleased to call great. You here see that unfortunate divine, who has so long, "and, it would ill become me to say successfully, fought against the deuterogamy "of the age." .'" And the description of the family picture, executed by the travelling painter who took likenesses at fifteen shillings a head! Their neighbours, the Flamboroughs, had been painted, seven of them in all, each holding an orange; but the Primroses would not be painted that way. "We desired to have "something in a brighter style; and, after many debates, at length came to a "unanimous resolution of being drawn together, in one large historical family 'piece. This would be cheaper, as one frame would serve for all, and it would "be infinitely more genteel; for all the families of any taste were now drawn in the same manner. As we did not immediately recollect an historical subject to hit us, we were contented each with being drawn as independent historical figures. 'My wife desired to be represented as Venus, and the painter was desired not to be too frugal of diamonds in her stomacher and hair. The two little ones were to "be as Cupids by her side; while I, in my gown and band, was to present her "with my books on the Whistonian controversy. Olivia would be drawn as an "Amazon sitting upon a bank of flowers, dressed in a green joseph richly laced “with gold, and a whip in her hand. Sophia was to be a shepherdess, with as many sheep as the painter could put in for nothing; and Moses was to be dressed "out with a white hat and feather. Our taste so much pleased the Squire that he "insisted on being put in as one of the family, in the character of Alexander the "Great, at Olivia's feet." But there was no end to the passages that people quoted and continued to quote. Nay, not to Britain alone was the renown of the story confined. There had been French translations of one or two of Goldsmith's anonymous writings before; but the Vicar of Wakefield ran, almost at once, over the Continent. It was four years after its first publication when young Herder in Strasburg read a German translation of it to young Goethe. Every reader of Goethe's Autobiography knows what an impression the beautiful prose-idyll, as he called it, made on the heart and imagination of the glorious youth, and how he used its names and fancies to invest with a poetic haze the realities of his own early German loves. To the end of his days, and after he had long been the monarch of German literature, Goethe retained his affection for the book, and spoke of it as having been an influence of subtle spiritual blessing to him at an important moment of his mental history. Here was praise, indeed, could Goldsmith have heard of it! But Goethe was but twenty years of age when he first read the Vicar of Wakefield, and it is doubtful whether, when Goldsmith died, he knew that there was such a person as Goethe in the world!

66

On the strength of his increasing literary reputation, Goldsmith, even before the publication of his Vicar, had made one more attempt to get into practice as a London physician. He had been advised to this by Reynolds, who thought there were a good many families that might rather like to have the author of the Traveller for their medical man, and was anxious to see his friend in the receipt of a less precarious