ble dwelling, the brother on whose supposed success he had already built his own! Without education, profession, friends, or resource of any kind, it had suddenly occurred to this enterprising Irish

lad, as he lounged in weary idleness round Ballymahon, that as brother Oliver had not been asking for assistance lately, but was now a settled author in London, perhaps he had gotten great men for his friends, and a kind word to one of them might be the making of his fortune. Full of this he scrambled to London as he could, won the secret of the house from the Temple-exchange waiter to whom he confided his relationship, and found the looked-for architect of wealth and honour here! "All in good time, my dear "boy," cried Oliver joyfully, to check the bitterness of despair; "all in good time: I shall be richer by and by. Besides, you see, "I am not in positive want. Addison, let me tell you, wrote his "poem of the Campaign in a garret in the Haymarket, three stories 66 high; and you see I am not come to that yet, for I have only got "to the second story." He made Charles sit and answer questions about his Irish friends; but at this point the light is again withdrawn, and for some two months there is greater darkness than before,

Charles (who certainly had no lack of the adventurous spirit, and so far resembled Oliver, that at the close of a long life of great vicissitude he said he had met with no such friend in adversity as his flute) quitted London in a few days, suddenly and secretly as

he had entered it, and shortly sailed, in a humble capacity it is said, for Jamaica: whence he did not return till after four-andthirty years, to tell this anecdote, and to be described by Malone as not a little like his celebrated brother, even in person, speech, and manner. The next clear view of Oliver is from a letter to his brother-in-law Hodson, with the date of "Temple-exchange "Coffee-house (where you may direct an answer), Dec. 27, 1757;" fortunately kept. The miserable year had brought no happier Christmas to Goldsmith; but he writes with a manly cheerfulness, which offers no selfish affront to the unselfish spirit of the season. Some unsuccessful efforts of this Hodson to raise a subscription in answer to the supplication for Irish aid during the travel abroad, would seem to have been mentioned by Charles; and gratitude, for a little made Goldsmith grateful, prompted the letter. He begins by reminding his kinsman that his last letters to Ireland, and to him in particular, of the date of four years ago, were left unanswered.

My brother Charles, however, informs me of the fatigue you were at in soliciting a subscription to assist me, not only among my friends and relations, but acquaintances in general. Though my pride might feel some repugnance at being thus relieved, yet my gratitude can suffer no diminution. How much am I obliged to you, to them, for such generosity, or (why should not your virtues have their proper name ?) for such charity to me at that juncture... My not receiving that supply was the cause of my present establishment at London. You may easily imagine what difficulties I had to encounter, left as I was without friends, recommendations, money, or impudence; and that in a country where being born an Irishman was sufficient to keep me unemployed. Many in such circumstances would have had recourse to the friar's cord, or the suicide's halter. But, with all my follies, I had principle to resist the one, and resolution to combat the other. I suppose you desire to know my present situation. As there is nothing in it at which I should blush, or which mankind could censure, I see no reason for making it a secret; in short, by a very little practice as a physician, and a very little reputation as a poet, I make a shift to live. Nothing is more apt to introduce us to the gates of the Muses than poverty; but it were well if they only left us at the door. The mischief is, they sometimes choose to give us their company at the entertainment; and Want, instead of being gentleman usher, often turns master of the ceremonies. Thus, upon hearing I write, no doubt you imagine I starve, and the name of an author naturally reminds you of a garret. In this particular I do not think proper to undeceive my friends. But whether I eat or starve, live in a first floor or four pair of stairs high, I still remember them with ardour, nay my very country comes in for a share of my affection.

This glance at the gloomy aspect of his present fortunes would be less pathetic to me if it had been less playful. His Irish friends had shown the charitable wish, however unavailing; and he would not trouble friendly eyes with needless exhibition of his sufferings, or make grim Want the master of other than somewhat cheerful ceremonies. Lightly and quickly, therefore, he passes from the

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subject, to that unaccountable fondness for Ireland already mentioned in connection with this letter. What little pleasures he had ever tasted in London, he says, Irish memories had soured. Signora Columba had never poured out for him all the mazes of melody at the opera, that he did not sit and sigh for Lissoy fireside, and Peggy Golden's song of Johnny Armstrong's Last Good Night.

If I climb Hampstead Hill, than where Nature never exhibited a more magnificent prospect, I confess it fine; but then I had rather be placed on the little mount before Lishoy gate, and there take in, to me, the most pleasing horizon in nature. Before Charles came hither, my thoughts sometimes found refuge from severer studies among my friends in Ireland. I fancied strange revolutions at home; but I find it was the rapidity of my own motion, that gave an imaginary one to objects really at rest. No alterations there. Some friends, he tells me, are still lean, but very rich; others very fat, but still very poor. Nay, all the news I hear from [of] you is that you sally out in visits among the neighbours, and sometimes make a migration from the blue bed to the brown. I could from my heart wish that you and she, and Lishoy, and Ballymahon, and all of you, would fairly make a migration into Middlesex : though, upon second thoughts, this might be attended with a few inconveniences; therefore, as the mountain will not come to Mahomet, why, Mahomet shall go to the mountain.

Poet and Physician,—the ragged livery of Grub-street under one high-sounding name, and wretched fee-less patients beneath the other! He was the poet of Hogarth's print, which the common people then hailed with laughter at every print-shop; he was again, it would seem, the poor physician of the patched velvet among hovels of Bankside; and yet it was but pleasant colouring for the comfort of brother-in-law Hodson, when he said that with both he made a shift to live. With even more, he failed to attain that object of humble ambition.

1758. Et. 30.

In February, 1758, two duodecimos appeared with this most explanatory title :

The Memoirs of a Protestant, condemned to the Galleys of France for his Religion. Written by himself. Comprehending an account of the various distresses he suffered in slavery, and his constancy in supporting almost every cruelty that bigoted zeal could inflict, or human nature sustain. Also a description of the Galleys, and the service in which they are employed. The whole interspersed with anecdotes relative to the general history of the times for a period of thirteen years, during which the author continued in slavery till he was at last set free at the intercession of the Court of Great Britain. Translated from the Original, just published at the Hague, by James Willington.

James Willington was in reality Oliver Goldsmith. The property of the book belonged to Griffiths, who valued one name quite as much as the other; and the position of the translator appears in the subsequent assignment of the manuscript, at no small profit to Griffiths, by the Paternoster-row bookseller to bookseller Dilly of

the Poultry, for the sum of twenty guineas. But though the translator's name might pass for Willington, the writer could only write as Goldsmith; and though with bitterness he calls himself "the "obscure prefacer," the preface is clear, graceful, and characteristic, as in brighter days. The book cannot be recommended, he says, as a grateful entertainment to the readers of reigning romance, for it is strictly true. "No events are here to astonish; no unex"pected incidents to surprise; no such high-finished pictures, as "captivate the imagination and have made fiction fashionable. "Our reader must be content with the simple exhibition of truth, "and consequently of nature; he must be satisfied to see vice triumphant and virtue in distress; to see men punished or rewarded, not as his wishes, but as Providence has thought proper to direct; for all here wears the face of sincerity." Then, with a spirit that shows how strongly he entered into the popular feeling of the day, he contrasts popery and absolute power with the rational religion and moderate constitutionalism of England; glances at the scenes of dungeon, rack, and scaffold through which the narrative will pass; and calls them but a part of the accumulated wretchedness of a miscalled glorious time, "while Louis, surnamed "the Great, was feasting at Versailles, fed with the incense of "flattery, or sunk in the lewd embraces of a prostitute."

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But why stood "James Willington on the title page of this book, instead of "Oliver Goldsmith," since the names were both unknown? The question will not admit of a doubtful answer, though a braver I could wish to have given. At this point there is evidence of despair.

Not without well-earned knowledge had Goldsmith passed through the task-work of the Monthly Review: faculties which lay unused within him, were by this time not unknown; and a stronger man, with a higher constancy and fortitude, might with that knowledge have pushed resolutely on, and, conquering the fate of those who look back when their objects are forward, found earlier sight of the singing tree and the golden water. But to him it seemed hopeless to climb any further up the desperate steep; over the dark obstructions which the world is glad to interpose between itself and the best labourers in its service, he had not as yet risen high enough to see the glimmering of light beyond: even lower, therefore, than the school-room at Doctor Milner's, from which he had been taken to his literary toil, he thought himself now descended; and in a sudden sense of misery more intolerable, might have cried with Edgar,

O gods! who is't can say "I am at the worst ?"

I am worse than e'er I was.

He returned to Doctor Milner's ;—if ever, from thence, again to return to literature, to embrace it for choice and with a braver heart endure its worst necessities.

There came that time; and when, eighteen months after the present date, he was writing the Bee, he thus turned into pleasant fiction the incidents now described.

I was once induced to show my indignation against the public, by discontinuing my endeavours to please; and was bravely resolved, like Raleigh, to vex them by burning my manuscripts in a passion. Upon recollection, however, I considered what set or body of people would be displeased at my rashness. The sun, after so sad an accident, might shine next morning as bright as usual; men might laugh and sing the next day, and transact business as before, and not a single creature feel any regret but myself. . . . Instead of having Apollo in mourning, or the Muses in a fit of the spleen; instead of having the learned world apostrophising at my untimely decease; perhaps all Grub-street might laugh at my fall, and self-approving dignity might never be able to shield me from ridicule.

Worse than ridicule had he spared himself, with timely aid of these better thoughts; but they came too late. He made his melancholy journey to Peckham, and knocked at Doctor Milner's door.

The schoolmaster was not an unkind or unfriendly man, and would in any circumstances, there is little doubt, have given Goldsmith the shelter he sought. It happened now that he had special need of him: sickness disabling himself from the proper schoolattendance, So, again installed poor usher, week passed over week as of old, with suffering, contempt, and many forms of care. Milner saw what he endured; was moved by it; and told him that as soon as health enabled himself to resume the duties of the school, he would exert an influence to place his usher in some medical appointment at a foreign station. He knew an East India director, a Mr. Jones, through whom it might be done, Before all things it was what Goldsmith fervently desired.

And now, with something like the prospect of a settled future to bear him up against the uncongenial and uncertain present, what leisure he had for other than school labour, he gave to a literary project of his own designing. This was natural for we cling with a strange new fondness to what we must soon abandon, and it is the strong resolve to separate which most often has made separation impossible. Nor, apart from this, is there ground for the feeling of surprise, or the charge of vacillating purpose. His daily bread provided here, literature again presented itself to his thoughts as in his foreign wanderings; and to have left better record of himself than the garbled page of Griffiths's Review, would be a comfort in his exile. Some part of his late experience, so dearly bought, should be freely told; with it could be arranged