following is his description of the poet's squalid apartment: “I called on Goldsmith at his lodgings in March, 1759, and found him writing his 'Inquiry,' in a miserable, dirty-looking room, in which there was but one chair; and when, from civility, he resigned it to me, he himself was obliged to sit in the window. While we were conversing together, some one tapped gently at the door, and, being desired to come in, a poor ragged little girl, of a very becoming demeanor, entered the room, and, dropping a courtesy, said, 'My mamma sends her compliments, and begs the favor of you to lend her a chamber-pot full of coals.''

We are reminded in this anecdote of Goldsmith's picture of the lodgings of Beau Tibbs, and of the peep into the secrets of a make-shift establishment given to a visitor by the blundering old Scotch woman.

"By this time we were arrived as high as the stairs would permit us to ascend, till we came to what he was facetiously pleased to call the first floor down the chimney; and, knocking at the door, a voice from within demanded 'Who's there?' My conductor answered that it was him. But this not satisfying the querist, the voice again repeated the demand, to which he answered louder than before; and now the door was opened by an old woman with cautious reluctance.

"When we got in, he welcomed me to his house with great ceremony; and, turning to the old woman, asked where was her lady. 'Good troth,' replied she, in a pe

culiar dialect, 'she's washing your twa shirts at the next door, because they have taken an oath against lending the tub any longer.' 'My two shirts,' cried he, in a tone that faltered with confusion; what does the idiot mean?" 'I ken what I mean weel enough,' replied the other; 'she's washing your twa shirts at the next door, because 'Fire and fury! no more of thy stupid explanations,' cried he; 'go and inform her we have company. Were that Scotch hag to be for ever in my family, she would never learn politeness, nor forget that absurd poisonous accent of hers, or testify the smallest specimen of breeding or high life; and yet it is very surprising too, as I had her from a Parliament man, a friend of mine from the Highlands, one of the politest men in the world; but that's a secret.'

Let us linger a little in Green Arbor Court, a place consecrated by the genius and the poverty of Goldsmith, but recently obliterated in the course of modern improvements. The writer of this memoir visited it not many years since on a literary pilgrimage, and may be excused for repeating a description of it which he has heretofore inserted in another publication. "It then existed in its pristine state, and was a small square of tall and miserable houses, the very intestines of which seemed turned inside out, to judge from the old garments and frippery that fluttered from every window. It ap

* Citizen of the World, letter iv.

peared to be a region of washerwomen, and lines were stretched about the little square, on which clothes were dangling to dry.

"Just as we entered the square, a scuffle took place between two viragoes about a disputed right to a washtub, and immediately the whole community was in a hubbub. Heads in mob-caps popped out of every window, and such a clamor of tongues ensued that I was fain to stop my ears. Every amazon took part with one or other of the disputants, and brandished her arms, dripping with soapsuds, and fired away from her window as from the embrasure of a fortress; while the screams of children nestled and cradled in every procreant chamber of this hive, waking with the noise, set up their shrill pipes to swell the general concert.” *

While in these forlorn quarters, suffering under extreme depression of spirits, caused by his failure at Surgeons' Hall, the disappointment of his hopes, and his harsh collisions with Griffiths, Goldsmith wrote the following letter to his brother Henry, some parts of which are most touchingly mournful.

"DEAR SIR,

"Your punctuality in answering a man whose trade is writing, is more than I had reason to expect; and yet you see me generally fill a whole sheet, which is all the

* Tales of a Traveller.