66 "enough to enable a man to live in London without being "contemptible. He allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen. "He said a man might live in a garret at eighteenpence a week ; "few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did, it was easy to say, Sir, I am to be found at such a place. By "spending threepence in a coffee-house, he might be for some "hours every day in very good company; he might dine for sixpence, "breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper. "On clean-shirt day, he could go abroad and pay visits." Nor were these the holiday theories of one to whom the practice of poverty was not still familiar. Here lay the singular worth of Johnson's example: that the world of enemies as well as friends were beginning, in a poor man, to recognise an intellectual chief and potentate of literature, a man who had the right to rule them. "He and I were never cater-cousins," wrote Smollett to Wilkes a month or two before the date to which I have brought this narrative, and in the same letter Smollett calls him the "Great Cham "of literature." Yet the great cham's poverty was obliged in this very year to surrender Gough-square for a humbler lodging in Gray's Inn that same Gough-square in Fleet-street, where Doctor Burney had found him amid a chaos of Greek folios, and with the moderate accommodation of one deal writing-desk and a chair and a half; the entire seat offered to his visitor, and himself tottering on its three-legged and one-armed fellow. Nay, some few brief years before, he had been placed under arrest for five pounds eighteen shillings; though already he had written London, the Vanity of Human Wishes, and the Rambler, and was author of The English Dictionary. : Now, week by week, in a paper of Mr. John Newbery's, he sent forth the Idler. What he was, and what with a serious earnestness, be it wrong or right, he had come into the world to say and do, were at last becoming evident to all. Colleges were glad to have him visit them, and a small enthusiastic circle was gradually forming around him. The Reynoldses, Bennet Langtons, and Topham Beauclercs, had thus early given in their allegiance; and Arthur Murphy was full of wonder at his submitting to contradiction, when they dined together this last Christmas day with young Mr. Burke of Wimpole-street. But not more known or conspicuous was the consideration thus exacted, than the poverty which still waited on it, and claimed its share. So might literature avenge herself, in this penniless champion, for the disgrace of the money-bags of Walpole and Pelham. "I have "several times called on Johnson," wrote Grainger to Percy, some months before the present date, "to pay him part of your subcrip“tion" (for his edition of Shakespeare). "I say part, because he 66 "never thinks of working if he has a couple of guineas in his pocket." And again a month later: "As to his Shakespeare, "movet, sed non promovet. I shall feed him occasionally with "guineas." It was thus the good Mr. Newbery found it best to feed him too; and in that worthy publisher's papers many memoranda of the present year were found, in record of Lent Mr. Johnson one pound one. For, in his worst distress, it was still but of literature Mr. Johnson begged or borrowed: to her he was indebted for his poverty, and to her only would he owe his independence. When his mother was dying, he did not ask his friend Mr. Reynolds, the fashionable painter in receipt of thousands, for the six guineas he sent to comfort her death-bed: it was the advance of a printer. When, in the present year, she died, he paid the expenses of her funeral with the manuscript of Rasselas. So schooled to regard the struggle of life and literature as one, and in midst of all apparent disadvantage to venerate its worth and sacredness, the author of the Enquiry into the State of Polite Learning stepped cheerfully forward into the market of books, and offered his wares for sale. Bookseller Wilkie, of the Bible in St. Paul's-churchyard, a spirited man in his way, and one of the foremost of magazine speculators, proposed a weekly publication of original essays, something in the Rambler form, but once instead of twice a week, and with greater variety of matter. Goldsmith assented; and on Saturday the 6th of October, 1759, there appeared, price threepence, to be continued every Saturday, The Bee. 66 Floriferis ut Apes in saltibus omnia libant was its motto; learned, yet of pleasant promise; taken from Lucretius. It was printed "neatly," as the advertisement in the London Chronicle of the 29th September had promised that it should be; "in crown octavo, and on good paper, containing 66 two sheets or thirty-two pages, stitched in blue covers." In other respects also it kept the bookseller's advertised promise; consisting of a variety of essays on the amusements, follies, "and vices in fashion, particularly the most recent topics of "conversation, remarks on theatrical exhibitions, memoirs of "modern literature, &c. &c." And on the back of the blue cover, Mr. Wilkie begged leave to inform the public "that every "twelve numbers would make a handsome pocket volume, at the "end of which should be given an emblematical frontispiece, "title, and table of contents." So there was reasonable hope at starting; and no doubt a long line of handsome pocket volumes already jostled each other, in Goldsmith's lively brain. The first number, it must be said, was of good promise. One finds a lack of its wisdom and its lightness in books "stitched in "blue covers "" now. The introduction disclaimed relationship to the magazine trade and family; refused to tempt its readers with "three beautiful prints, curiously coloured from nature," or to take any kind of merit from "its bulk or its frontispiece;” and invoked for itself, with mixed mirth and earnestness, a class of readers that should know the distinction between a bon-mot for White's, and a jest for the Cat and Bagpipes in St. Giles's. There was a letter on the Poles; a notice of the death of Voltaire's victim, Maupertuis; and, under the title of Alcander and Septimius, a popular version of that beautiful tale of Boccaccio, which afterwards suggested to a writer who belonged to Goldsmith's country, took early inspiration from his genius, and bore up uncrushed against as desperate poverty by the force of his example, the manly and earnest tragedy of Gisippus. Nor, since the delightful gossip of Cibber had raised the curtain on the Mountforts, Nokeses, and Bettertons of a past age, had any such just or lively writing on the theatres been given to the world, as the playhouse criticism of the Bee. : The first of his papers on this subject pointed out the superiority of French comic acting over English, and its causes, and had some happy illustrations from his own experience. His later remarks, on the want of general stage discipline in England ("dirty-shirted guards rolling their eyes round upon the audience, "instead of keeping them fixed upon the actors"); on skilful management of gesture (in which he excepts Garrick and Mrs. Clive from his censure, placing them on a level with the French); and in explanation of the ill-success of the English operatic stage, where he touches the springs that operate to this hour; still further demonstrate how competent he was to this department of criticism. But, like Hume's Epigoniad effort, all this was uphill work his first Bee had an idle time of it, and greater favour was asked for the second in a paid-for newspaper paragraph of particular earnestness. "The public," said this advertisement, which had a pathetic turn in it, “is requested to compare this with other periodical per"formances which more pompously solicit their attention. "perusal it be found deficient either in humour, elegance, or variety, the author will readily acquiesce in their censure. It "is possible the reader may sometimes draw a prize, and even "should it turn up a blank it costs him but threepence." number the second, for that small sum, was a most agreeable little lesson on Dress, against fault-finders and dealers in ridicule, proving by example of cousin Hannah that such folks are themselves the most ridiculous; and a much sounder notion of a patriot If upon In 66 king than Bolingbroke's, in homely sketches of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, in remark on the difficulties of so educating princes that "the superior dignity of man to that of royalty" should be their leading lesson, and in warning against the folly of entrusting a charge so sacred to men "who themselves have acted in a sphere too high to know mankind." A delightful essay in the same number, with Cardinal de Retz and Dick Wildgoose side by side, to prove that pleasure is in ourselves, not in the objects offered for our amusement, and that philosophy should force the trade of happiness when nature has denied the means, also well deserves mention. 66 The third number opened with a paper on the Use of Language : to which the grave philologist resorting, found language he was little used to. It was a plea for the poor: an essay to prove that he who best knew how to conceal his necessities and desires, was the most likely person to find redress, and that the true use of speech was not to express wants, but conceal them. All of us have known the Jack Spindle of this exquisite sketch, some perhaps relieved him; and many have undergone the truth of his life's philosophy, that to have much, or to seem to have it, is the only way to have more, since it is the man who has no occasion to borrow, that alone finds numbers willing to lend. “You then, O ye beggars of my acquaintance," exclaimed Goldsmith, "whether in rags or lace, "whether in Kent-street or the Mall, whether at Smyrna or St. "Giles's, might I advise you as a friend, never seem in want of the "favour you solicit. Apply to every passion but pity for redress. "You may find relief from vanity, from self-interest, or from avarice, "but seldom from compassion." Following this were three wellwritten characters ;-of Father Feyjoo, whose popular essays against degrading superstitions have since procured him the title of the Spanish Addison; of Alexandrian Hypatia, afterwards immortalised by Gibbon; and of Lysippus, an imaginary representative of some peculiarities in the essayist himself, and timely assertor of the ordinary virtues as opposed to what are commonly mistaken for the great ones. Still the churlish public would not buy the Bee; and the fourth number's opening article was a good-humoured comment on that fact. Not a newspaper or magazine, he said, that had not left him far behind; they had got to Islington at least, while the sound of Bow bell still stayed in his ears: nevertheless, "if it were only to 'spite all Grub-street," he was resolved to write on; and he made light-hearted announcement to the world of what he had written to Bryanton. "If the present generation will not hear my voice, "hearken, O Posterity! to you I call, and from you I expect "redress! What rapture will it not give, to have the Scaligers, 66 66 دو "Daciers, and Warburtons of future times commenting with admi"ration upon every line I now write, and working away those "ignorant creatures who offer to arraign my merit, with all the viru"lence of learned reproach. Ay, my friends, let them feel it; call names; never spare them; they deserve it all, and ten times more. In a like playful tone are his closing threats, that, if not better supported he must throw off all connection with taste, and fairly address his countrymen in the engaging style and manner of other periodical pamphlets. He will change his title into the Royal Bee, he says, the Anti-gallican Bee, or the Bee's Magazine. He will lay in a proper stock of popular topics; such as encomiums. on the King of Prussia, invectives against the Queen of Hungary and the French, the necessity of a militia, our undoubted sovereignty of the seas, reflections upon the present state of affairs, a dissertation upon liberty, some seasonable thoughts upon the intended bridge of Blackfriars, and an address to Britons. The history of an old woman whose tooth grew three inches long shall not be omitted, nor an ode upon "our victories," nor a rebus, nor an acrostic upon Miss Peggy P—, nor a journal of the weather. And he will wind up the whole, so that the public shall have no choice but to purchase, with four extraordinary pages of letterpress, a beautiful map of England, and two prints curiously coloured from nature. Such was the booksellers' literature of the day: the profitable contribution of Paternoster-row and Grub-street, to the world's intellectual cultivation. While he satirised it thus good-naturedly, Goldsmith took care also to append graver remarks on the more serious matter it involved, and which with his own experience lay so near his heart; but in no querulous spirit. He is now content to have found out the reason why mediocrity should have its rewards at once, and excellence be paid in reversion. There is, in these earliest essays, something more pleasing than even their undoubted elegance and humour, in that condition of mind. If neglects and injuries are still to be his portion, you do not now despair that he will turn them to commodities. It is not by his cries and complainings you shall hereafter trace him to his neglected, ill-furnished, wretched home. As he watches its naked cobwebbed walls, he finds matter for amusement to the readers of the Bee, in watching the spiders that have refuge there; and in his fourth number puts forth an instructive paper on the habits and predatory life of that most wary, ingenious, hungry, and persevering insect. He was not to be daunted, now. Looking closely into his life, one finds that other works beside this of the Bee were ekeing out its scanty supplies. He was writing for the Busy Body, published thrice a week for twopence by worthy Mr. Pottinger, and brought |