Chapter-coffee-house, for Churchill's friend Charles Lloyd, who in his careless way, without a shilling to pay for the entertainment, invited him to sup with some friends of Grub-street and left him to pay the reckoning. A third incident of the same date presents him with a similar party at Blackwall, where so violent a dispute arose about Tristram Shandy at the dinner-table, that personalities led to blows, and the feast ended in a fight. "Why, sir," said Johnson laughing, when Boswell told him some years later of a different kind of fracas in which their friend had been engaged, "I believe it is the first time he has beat; he may have been "beaten before. This, sir, is a new plume to him." If the somewhat doubtful surmise of the beating be correct, the scene of it was Blackwall; and if (a surmise still more doubtful) the story Hawkins tells about the trick played off by Roubiliac, which like all such tricks tells against both the parties to it, be also true, this was the time when it happened. The "little" sculptor, as he is called in the Chinese Letters, being a familiar acquaintance, and fond of music, Goldsmith would play the flute for him; and to such assumed delight on the part of his listener did he do this one day, that Roubiliac, protesting he must copy the air upon the spot, took up a sheet of paper, scored a few lines and spaces (the form of the notes being all he knew of the matter), and with random blotches pretended to take down the time as repeated by the good-natured musician; while gravely, and with great attention, Goldsmith, surveying these musical hieroglyphics, "said they were very correct, and that if he had not seen him do it, he never could have believed his friend capable of writing music "after him." Sir John Hawkins tells the story with much satisfaction. Exposure of an ignorant flute-player, with nothing but vulgar accomplishments of "ear" to bestow upon his friends, yet with an innocent conceit of pretending to the science of music, gives great delight to pompous Hawkins, as a learned historian of crotchets and quavers. It seems more than probable, notwithstanding, that there is not a syllable of truth in the story, for the writer of an address "to the Philological Society of London Sir John Hawkins's Life of Johnson, published in May 1787, tells us that he was "acquainted with a gentleman who knew "Goldsmith well, and has often requested him to play different "pieces from music which he laid before him; and this, "Goldsmith has done with accuracy and precision, while the "gentleman, who is himself musical, looked over him: а "circumstance utterly impossible, if we admit the foolish story "related by Sir John."

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So passed the thoughtless life of Goldsmith in his first year of success; if so may be called the scanty pittance which served to

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expose his foibles but not to protect him from their consequence. So may his life be read in these letters to the Public Ledger ; and still with the comment of pleasure and instruction for others, though at the cost of suffering to himself. His habits as well as thoughts are in them. He is at the theatre, enjoying Garrick's Abel Drugger and laughing at all who call it "low; a little tired of Polly and Macheath; not at all interested by the famous and fortunate tumbler, who, between the acts of tragedies as well as farces, balances a straw upon his nose; and zig-zagging his way home after all is over, through a hundred obstacles from coach-wheels and palanquin-poles, “like a bird in its flight through the branches 66 'of a forest." He is a visitor at the humble pot-house clubs, whose follies and enjoyments he moralises with touching pleasantry. "Were I to be angry at men for being fools, I could here have "found ample room for declamation: but, alas! I have been a "fool myself, and why should I be angry with them for being something so natural to every child of humanity." Unsparing historian of this folly of his own, he conceals his imprudence as little as his poverty; and his kind heart he has not the choice to conceal. Everywhere it betrays itself. In hours of depression, recalling the disastrous fate of men of genius, and "mighty poets "in their misery dead;" in imaginary interviews with booksellers, laughing at their sordid mistakes; in remonstrances with his own class, warning them of the danger of despising each other; and in rarer periods of perfect self-reliance, rising to a lofty superiority above the temporary accidents around him, asserting the power and claims of men of letters, and denouncing the short-sightedness of statesmen. "Instead of complaining that writers are over"paid, when their works procure them a bare subsistence, I "should imagine it the duty of a state, not only to encourage "their numbers but their industry." At the close of the same paper he rises into a pathetic eloquence while pleading for those who in that character have served and instructed England: 66 such I would give my heart, since to them I am indebted for its "humanity!" And in another letter the subject is more calmly resumed, with frank admission that old wrongs are at length in the course of coming right. "At present, the few poets of England no longer depend on the great for subsistence; they have now no other patrons but the public, and the public, collectively "considered, is a good and a generous master. It is, indeed, too "frequently mistaken as to the merits of every candidate for "favour; but to make amends, it is never mistaken long. . . . A man of letters at present, whose works are valuable, is perfectly "sensible of their value. Every polite member of the community, "by buying what he writes, contributes to reward him. The

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"ridicule, therefore, of living in a garret, might have been wit “in the last age, but continues such no longer, because no "longer true."

The quiet composure of this passage exhibits the healthiest aspect of his mind. Bookseller and public are confronted calmly, and the consequences fairly challenged. It is indeed very obvious, at the close of this first year of the Public Ledger, that increasing opportunities of employment (to say nothing of the constant robbery of his writings by pirate magazine-men) were really teaching him his value, and suggesting hopes he had not earlier dared to entertain. He resumed his connection with the Lady's Magazine, and became its editor: publishing in it, among other writings known and unknown, what he had written of his Life of Voltaire; and retiring from its editorship at the close of a year, when he had raised its circulation (if Mr. Wilkie's advertisements are to be believed) to three thousand three hundred. He continued his contributions, meanwhile, to the British Magazine; from which he was not wholly separated till two months before poor Smollett, pining for the loss of his only daughter, went upon the continent (in 1763) never to return to a fixed or settled residence in London. He furnished other booksellers with occasional compilation-prefaces; he compiled for Newbery, in four duodecimo volumes, A Poetical Dictionary, or the Beauties of the English Poets alphabetically displayed (now a very rare book, but with a preface which pleasantly reveals his hand); and he gave some papers (among them a Life of Christ and Lives of the Fathers, re-published with his name, in shilling pamphlets, a few months after his death) to a so-called Christian Magazine, undertaken by Newbery in connection with the macaroni parson Dodd, and conducted by that villainous pretender as an organ of fashionable divinity.

It seems to follow as of course upon these engagements, that the room in Green Arbour-court should at last be exchanged for one of greater comfort. He had left that place in the later months of 1760, and gone into what were called respectable lodgings in Wine Office-court, Fleet-street. The house belonged to a relative of Newbery's, and he occupied two rooms in it for nearly two years.

CHAPTER V.

FELLOWSHIP WITH JOHNSON. 1761-1762.

A CIRCUMSTANCE occurred in the new abode of which Goldsmith had now taken possession in Wine Office-court, which 1761. must have endeared it always to his remembrance; but Et. 33. more deeply associated with the wretched habitation he had left behind him in Green Arbour-court, were days of a most forlorn misery as well as of a manly resolution, and, round that beggarly dwelling (" the shades," as he used to call it in the more prosperous aftertime), and all connected with it, there crowded to the last the kindest memories of his gentle and true nature. Thus, when bookseller Davies tells us, after his death, how tender and compassionate he was; how no unhappy person ever sued to him for relief without obtaining it, if he had anything to give; and how he would borrow, rather than not relieve the distressed, he adds that "the poor woman with whom he had "lodged during his obscurity, several years in Green Arbour"court, by his death lost an excellent friend; for the Doctor "often supplied her with food from his own table, and visited her "frequently, with the sole purpose to be kind to her.” As little, in connection with Wine Office-court, was he ever likely to forget that Johnson now first visited him there.

They had probably met before. I have shown how frequently the thoughts of Goldsmith vibrated to that great Grub-street figure of independence and manhood, which, in an age not remarkable for either, was undoubtedly presented in the person of the author of the English Dictionary. One of the last Chinese Letters had again alluded to the "Johnsons and Smolletts " as veritable poets, though they might never have made a verse in their whole lives; and among the earliest greetings of the new essay-writer, I suspect that Johnson's would be found. The opinion expressed in his generous question of a few years later (" Is there a man, sir, now, "who can pen an essay with such ease and elegance as Gold"smith?") he was not the man to wait for the world to help him to. Himself connected with Newbery, and engaged in like occupation, the new adventurer wanted his helping word and would be therefore sure to have it; nor, if it had not been a hearty one, is Mr. Percy likely to have busied himself to bring about the present meeting. It was arranged by that learned divine ; and

The

this was the first time, he says, he had seen them together. day fixed was the 31st of May 1761, and Goldsmith gave a supper in Wine Office-court in honour of his visitor.

Percy called to take up Johnson at Inner Temple-lane, and found him, to his great astonishment, in a marked condition of studied neatness; without his rusty brown suit, or his soiled shirt, his loose knee-breeches, his unbuckled shoes, or his old little shrivelled unpowdered wig; and not at all likely, as Miss Reynolds tells us his fashion in these days was, to be mistaken for a beggarman. He had been seen in no such respectable garb since he appeared behind Garrick's scenes on the first of the nine nights of Irene, in a scarlet gold-laced waistcoat, and rich gold-laced hat. In fact, says Percy, "he had on a new suit of clothes, a new wig "nicely powdered, and everything about him so perfectly dissimilar "from his usual habits and appearance, that his companion could "not help enquiring the cause of this singular transformation. “Why, sir,' said Johnson, 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.' The example was not lost, as extracts from tailors' bills will shortly show; and the anecdote, which offers pleasant proof of the interest already felt by Johnson for his new acquaintance, is our only record connected with that memorable supper. It had no Boswell-historian, and is gone into but the friendship which dates from it will never

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oblivion ;

pass away.

6

Writing to Percy about that supper when arranging the memoir which bears his name, Doctor Campbell says, "The anecdote of "Johnson I had recollected, but had forgot that it was at Gold"smith's you were to sup. The story of the Valet de Chambre

will, as Lord Bristol says, fill the basket of his absurdities; and "really we may have a hamper full of them." Unfortunately the story of the Valet de Chambre has not emerged; and to another anecdote, also unluckily lost, Campbell refers in a previous letter to Percy : "One thing, however, I could wish, if it met "your approbation, that I had before me some hints respecting "the affair of Goldsmith and Perrot: it may without giving "offence, be related; at least so as to embellish the work, by showing more of Goldsmith's character, which he himself has fairly drawn: 'fond of enjoying the present, careless of the "future, his sentiments those of a man of sense, his actions those "of a fool; of fortitude able to stand unmoved at the bursting of an earthquake, yet of sensibility to be affected by the breaking "of a tea-cup.'" To which, in a later letter, this is added: "Your "sketch of Sir Richard Perrot will come in as an episode towards

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