one time, that he and Savage the poet had walked all night about St. James's Square, both too poor to pay for a night's lodging, yet both full of poetry and patriotism, and determined to stand by their country; so shabby in dress at another time, that, when he dined at Cave's, his bookseller, when there was prosperous company, he could not make his appearance at table, but had his dinner handed to him behind a screen.

Yet through all the long and dreary struggle, often diseased in mind as well as in body, he had been resolutely self-dependent, and proudly selfrespectful; he had fulfilled his college vow, he had "fought his way by his literature and wit." His "Rambler" and "Idler" had made him the great moralist of the age, and his " Dictionary and History of the English Language," that stupendous monument of individual labor, had excited the admiration of the learned world. He was now at the head of intellectual society; and had become as distinguished by his conversational as his literary powers. He had become as much an autocrat in his sphere as his fellow-wayfarer and adventurer Garrick had become of the stage, and had been humorously dubbed by Smollett, "The Great Cham of Literature."

Such was Dr. Johnson, when on the 31st of May, 1761, he was to make his appearance as a guest at a literary supper given by Goldsmith to a numerous party at his new lodgings in WineOffice Court. It was the opening of their acquaintance. Johnson had felt and acknowledged the merit of Goldsmith as an author, and been

pleased by the honorable mention made of himself in the "Bee" and the Chinese Letters. Dr. Percy called upon Johnson to take him to Goldsmith's lodgings; he found Johnson arrayed with unusual care in a new suit of clothes, a new hat, and a well-powdered wig; and could not but notice his uncommon spruceness. Why, sir," replied 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."

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The acquaintance thus commenced ripened into intimacy in the course of frequent meetings at the shop of Davies, the bookseller, in Russell Street, Covent Garden. As this was one of the great literary gossiping-places of the day, especially to the circle over which Johnson presided, it is worthy of some specification. Mr. Thomas Davies, noted in after-times as the biographer of Garrick, had originally been on the stage, and though a small man, had enacted tyrannical tragedy with a pomp and magniloquence beyond his size, if we may trust the description given of him by Churchill in the "Rosciad":

"Statesman all over-in plots famous grown,

He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a bone."

This unlucky sentence is said to have crippled him in the midst of his tragic career, and ultimately to have driven him from the stage. He carried into the bookselling craft somewhat of the grandiose manner of the stage, and was prone to be mouthy and magniloquent.

DAVIES AND HIS BOOK-SHOP.

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Churchill had intimated, that while on the stage he was more noted for his pretty wife than his good acting:

"With him came mighty Davies; on my life,

That fellow has a very pretty wife."

"Pretty Mrs. Davies" continued to be the loadstar of his fortunes. Her tea-table became almost as much a literary lounge as her husband's shop. She found favor in the eyes of the Ursa Major of literature by her winning ways, as she poured out for him cups without stint of his favorite beverage. Indeed it is suggested that she was one leading cause of his habitual resort to this literary haunt. Others were drawn thither for the sake of Johnson's conversation, and thus it became a resort of many of the notorieties of the day. Here might occasionally be seen Bennet Langton, George Steevens, Dr. Percy, celebrated for his ancient ballads, and sometimes Warburton in prelatic state. Garrick resorted to it for a time, but soon grew shy and suspicious, declaring that most of the authors who frequented Mr. Davies's shop went merely to abuse him.

Foote, the Aristophanes of the day, was a frequent visitor; his broad face beaming with fun and waggery, and his satirical eye ever on the lookout for characters and incidents for his farces. He was struck with the odd habits and appearance of Johnson and Goldsmith, now so often brought together in Davies's shop. He was about to put on the stage a farce called The Orators, intended as a hit at the Robin Hood debating-club,

and resolved to show up the two doctors in it for the entertainment of the town.

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"What is the common price of an oak stick, sir ? " said Johnson to Davies. "Sixpence," was the reply. "Why then, sir, give me leave to send your servant to purchase a shilling one. I'll have a double quantity, for I am told Foote means to take me off as he calls it, and I am determined the fellow shall not do it with impunity."

Foote had no disposition to undergo the criticism of the cudgel wielded by such potent hands, so the farce of "The Orators " appeared without the caricatures of the lexicographer and the essayist.

CHAPTER XIII.

Oriental Projects. - Literary Jobs. - The Cherokee Chiefs.Merry Islington and the White Conduit House. - Letters on the History of England. -James Boswell. - Dinner of Davies. Anecdotes of Johnson and Goldsmith.

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OTWITHSTANDING his growing success, Goldsmith continued to consider literature a mere makeshift, and his vagrant imagination teemed with schemes and plans of a grand but indefinite nature. One was for visiting the East and exploring the interior of Asia. He had, as has been before observed, a vague notion that valuable discoveries were to be made there, and many useful inventions in the arts brought back to the stock of European knowledge." Thus, in Siberian Tartary," observes he, in one of his writings, "the natives extract a strong spirit from milk, which is a secret probably unknown to the chemists of Europe. In the most savage parts of India they are possessed of the secret of dyeing vegetable substances scarlet, and that of refining lead into a metal which, for hardness and color, is little inferior to silver."

Goldsmith adds a description of the kind of person suited to such an enterprise, in which he evidently had himself in view.

"He should be a man of philosophical turn,