inhabited by a superior class of tenants." "The ern.' houses," says Forster, "crumbling and tumbling printing-office, or the black magician who employed him, and who took this means of securing Goldsmith's finishing some job for which the press was waiting.

till Goldsmith's name was sale.

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sure to attract a regard for cleanliness and decency by quoting my practice, and I am desirous this night of showing him a better example.' Tolerably as all this looks in print, it is quite plain that the man who dresses himself decently, in order to give a moral lesson to another, has been practising a useful lesson of morality himself. Percy's story, read as it has been by the biographers, tells as much against Johnson as against Goldsmith. The probability is that Johnson replied to a jesting inquiry by a jest; and that, if there was any serious thought at all in his mind when he dressed for supper, it was that of paying some compliment-not very distinctly present before his own mind, nor very possible to be communicated to another without more talk than the thing was worth—to Goldsmith and his guests. Johnson, met in his study, undressed, and Johnson, in full puff for a party, were, we take it, dif

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was not

The Irish book-pirates of the day reprinted every work that appeared in England, of a size and price not beyond their capital. Goldsmith, when about publishing his "Inquiry," thought by a subscription for part of the English impression among his Irish friends, that he could secure to himself some part of the profits of any Irish sale the work might have, and to this calculation we owe some half-dozen letters written to his Irish relatives. The letters of Goldsmith are so excellent," says Mr. Mitford, in his graceful memoir of the poet, "that it is to be hoped his next biographer will delight us with an increased collection of them." A few, not, however, of very important value, have been added both by Mr. Prior and Mr. Forster. The letters form a great charm in all these biographies of Gold-ferent things. As to the moral lesson, its effects smith. There is in every one of them the sort of pathetic gayety that gives us the truest character of the man. "These letters," says Wills, admirable for their style, but far more so for the deep insight they give into the affections and spirit of the writer. A deeper and broader range of thought might easily be found in many published" Though I have never had a day's sickness since letters, and a more keen and polished play of fancy, but never a more pure and true expression of the pride and tenderness of our nature. It is perhaps a fancy, but there is often in Goldsmith's poetry and letters, a singular common power of bringing up the writer's self to the eye and breast of the reader, in the same way that many writers convey graphic touches of locality. There is a peculiar reality in those unstudied and artless, yet powerful flashes of feeling, which come by surprise, and for a moment seem to recall the past or absent; they are, throughout his writings, but more especially his poetic writings, charged with some undefined attraction, not found in other writers, that identifies the reader with the poet, and seems to convey the heart and imagination into the localities he describes or alludes to."

were likely, if we are to regard such things as having any effect at all, pretty much what Mr. Forster "The example," he says, are suggests. lost, as extracts from tailors' bills will shortly show." In one of Goldsmith's letters to his brother Henry, written two years before this, he had said,

I saw you, I am not that strong, active man you once knew me. You scarcely can conceive how much eight years of disappointment, anguish, and study, have worn me down. If I remember right, you are seven or eight years older than me, yet I dare venture to say, if a stranger saw us both, he would pay me the honors of seniority. Imagine to yourself a pale, melancholy visage, with two great wrinkles between the eyebrows, with an eye disgustingly severe, and a bag wig, and you have a perfect picture of my present appearance." Of the obscure toils that were breaking down his stubborn health, Mr. Forster gives such record as is now attainable. That he was over-worked and underpaid, he also gives abundant proof; but for this last the booksellers are not in fault. They can but sell what the public will buy; and they, in truth, in rendering it possible for such men as Johnson and Goldsmith to live, are advancing a capital which may never be repaid. That Goldsmith's health was sinking, and that he was living beyond his means, trifling as his expenses were, is proved by his correspondence with Newbery, for whom he was now compiling "Arts of Poetry," and "British Plutarchs."

Goldsmith's power, felt by the public even before his name was known, and his industry, on which his booksellers could safely rely to supply them rapidly with the ready ware suited to their customers, secured him continued employment in the magazines of the day. It was not his fault, nor that of the booksellers, that the rewards of literature were scanty. Such as they were he had his fair share of them. He changes his lodgings for better apartments, and we find eminent literary men at his parties. A joke of Johnson's is recorded by Bishop Percy, as if it were a mighty matter. Percy called on Johnson to take him to Goldsmith's, and found him sprucely drest. "He had on," says Percy, "a new suit of clothes, a new wig, nicely powdered, and everything so dissimilar from his usual habits, that I could not resist the impulse of inquiring into the cause of such rigid regard in him to exterior appearances. 'Why, sir,' said Johnson, I hear that Gold- "The book," says Mr. Forster, " is neither unsmith, who is a very great sloven, justifies his dis-instructive nor unamusing, and it is difficult not to

Change of scene is prescribed, and Goldsmith is traced, about this time, to Tunbridge Wells and Bath. His occupation follows him, and the death of Beau Nash suggests to the bookseller the fitness of a book while the name fills the public ear. Well, he manufactures an octavo of 234 pages, and the following memorandum remains among the papers of Newbery's family: "Received from Mr. Newbery, at different times, and for which gave receipts, fourteen guineas, which is in full for the copy of the life of Mr. Nash."

first floor. Mrs. Tapps affirmed that it was there he wrote his "Deserted Village," and slept in a large press-bedstead, placed in the eastern corner.

connect some points of the biographer's own his- | Forster nor Mr. Prior seem to have looked at, Mr. tory with its oddly-mixed anecdotes of silliness and Hone, or a contributor of his to "The Every-day shrewdness, taste and tawdriness, the blossom-col- Book" in 1831, tells us that Mr. Symes, bailiff of ored coats, and gambling debts, vanity, careless- the manor of Islington, says, ness, and good-heartedness. The latter quality in That his mother-in-law, Mrs. Evans, who had its hero was foiled by a want of prudence which lived there three-and-thirty years, and was wife to deprived it of half its value; and the extenuation the former bailiff, often told him that her aunt, Mrs. is so frequently and so earnestly set forth in con- Tapps, a seventy years' inhabitant of the tower, nection with the fault, as, with what we now know was accustomed to talk much about Goldsmith and of the writer, to convey a sort of uneasy personal his apartment. It was the old oak-room on the reference." There is something in all this, but something that Goldsmith would not quite like, or quite assent to. Goldsmith's preface to the book, which Mr. Forster does not quote, mentions that The difficulty of ascertaining any precise fact is "the reader will have the satisfaction of perusing illustrated by Mr. Forster's account of this resian account that is genuine, and not the work of dence at Islington. He will have it that here Goldimagination, as biographical writings too common-smith was arrested by Mrs. Fleming, Goldsmith's ly are." In the year 1762, there is reason to be- hostess, and that this was the scene where Johnlieve that Goldsmith had commenced the "Vicar son, finding him in duress, visited him, and assisted of Wakefield." in selling the "Vicar of Wakefield." Of this story, He was still, however, hard at work with one the only part that has been, we think, wholly distask of compilation or another. Some confusion proved, is that which connects Mrs. Fleming with exists in the mention of his Histories of England, it; and this fact of her disconnection with the matof which he had published several under several ter, established by her great generosity to GoldDames. This year Newbery took lodgings for him smith, as exhibited in her accounts, preserved at Islington, and here he wrote what is called among Newbery's papers, and utterly irreconcila"The History of England, in a series of letters ble with the documents published by Prior, makes from a nobleman to his son." The authorship it almost certain that the incident occurred not at was referred to every nobleman whose name the Islington, but in Goldsmith's town lodgings, to booksellers thought might help to sell the book. which we know he returned. Mr. Prior doubts the Lord Chesterfield, who at one time stood sponsor place of the occurrence; but for this, we should for the "Whole Duty of Man," did the same ser- regard it as free from doubt, and fix the scene in vice for "The Letters" for a while. Lord Orrery Goldsmith's town lodgings. Mr. Forster doubts was named, and then Lord Lyttleton. The book the person; nay, is certain that Mrs. Fleming is was a good book, notwithstanding-was alive and the person. Notwithstanding his doubt, or rather kicking in the days of the reform bill, and is likely certainty, we are quite certain that poor Mrs. Flemto live till the repeal of the legislative union be- ing was guiltless of this indignity—whether actutween Great Britain and Ireland. With reference ally offered, or only meditated-for this, too, is to one of these Histories of England, (not "The matter of grave debate. Boswell tells us, that one Letters,") Goldsmith says, some years after this-morning Goldsmith had sent him a message that he

I have been a good deal abused in the newspapers for betraying the liberties of the people. God knows, I had no thought for or against liberty in my head-my whole aim being to make up a book of decent size, that, as Squire Richard says, "would do no harm to nobody." However, they set me down as an arrant tory, and consequently an honest man. When you come to look at any part of it [his letter is to Bennet Langton] you'll say that I am a sour whig. [Mr. Forster prints this, or his devil prints it, sore whig.]

had been arrested by his landlady for rent. He sent him a guinea, and promised to go to him directly. He found him-having changed the guinea

and a bottle of Madeira before him. Johnson considered the means of extricating him; was shown "The Vicar of Wakefield," which he took to a bookseller's, and sold for £60. "I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady for using him so ill." Mrs. Piozzi, telling the same story, makes the time evening; and represents Goldsmith, when the affair of the arrest was settled, drinking punch with the woman of the house. In "Cumberland's Memoirs," we have an additional incident :

At this period was instituted the Literary Club -or, "The Club," as it was called-of which we may take some future opportunity of referring our readers to the existing notices. Mr. Forster's is I have heard Dr. Johnson relate, with infinite an exceedingly pleasant account of it and Goldhumor, the circumstance of his rescuing Goldsmith smith's connection with it; but nothing can supply from a ridiculous dilemma by the purchase-money the place of Boswell. Hogarth is found visiting of "The Vicar of Wakefield." He had run up a Goldsmith at Islington; and the portrait, known score with his landlady of some few pounds, and by the name of "Goldsmith's Hostess," is sup- was at his wits' end how to wipe off the score, and posed to have been done for his landlady of Isling- keep a roof over his head, except by closing with ton in one of these visits. Geoffrey Crayon's poor a very staggering proposal on her part, and taking devil author was afterwards located among Gold- his creditor to wife. smith's haunts, and a writer, whom neither Mr.

It is curious enough that all these narrators of

the story, though each professed to have their in- This, says the biographer, is undoubtedly a very formation from Johnson, tell it differently; and we measured encomium; but it is fair to presume that, have some doubt whether a modern compiler, weav-in according the meed of praise, he must have been ing a story distinct from any of the former, by omit-limited and constrained by the general notoriety of his friendship for the author. ting from each narrative what he finds irreconcilable with the others, is not likely to be further from the actual truth than if he had adopted even the most improbable of the conflicting statements. In narrating a story in Goldsmith's club, and with Goldsmith as an auditor, each successive repetition would be accompanied with some new incident. Cumberland tells the story in connection with the club and club-jokes, and is, with the privilege of a comic author, heightening a little the liveliness. Goldsmith, in his review of a new edition of "The Fairy Queen," had said

There is a strong similitude in the lives of almost all our English poets. The ordinary of Newgate, we are told, has but one story, which serves for the life of every hero that happens to come within the circle of his pastoral care; and, however unworthy the resemblance appears, it may be asserted that the history of one poet might serve, with as little variation, for that of any other.

Steevens tells a story of Johnson himself, very like this of Goldsmith :

Johnson confessed to have been sometimes in the power of bailiffs. Richardson, the author of " Clarissa, was his constant friend on such occasions. "I remember writing to him," said Johnson," from a sponging-house, and was so sure of my deliverance, through his kindness and liberality, that before his reply was brought, I knew I could afford to joke with the rascal who had me in custody, and did so over a pint of adulterated wine, for which, at that instant, I had no money to pay."

Of the narrators of the story, each has a different account of the sum paid. Hawkins says £40; Boswell, £60; Cumberland, £10; and each quotes Johnson as authority for the sum. Boswell's statement of £60 is probably accurate, as he tells of Johnson's entering into a proof that, considering Goldsmith's name not being, at the period "The Vicar" was sold, of the same value on a title-page as after the publication of "The Traveller," the price was not too little. The bookseller did not publish the work for some two or three years after, which would look as if he was doubtful of its suc

cess.

In December, 1764, "The Traveller" was published, the first of Goldsmith's works that was printed with his name. We have not left ourselves room to do more than refer to Mr. Forster's discussions on the circumstances under which it first appeared. It was dedicated to his brother, and the dedication proves that it had been the subject of his thoughts for many years. Part of the poem had been formerly sent him from Switzerland. Johnson reviewed the poem. The biography prefixed to an edition of the Miscellaneous Works, printed at Edinburgh in 1821, complains of Johnson's review of "The Traveller," in his Critical Review, as not being just to its merits. “It is,” said Johnson, "the finest poem that has ppeared since the time of Pope."

This sentence seems very like nonsense; for it is plain that Johnson intended, in the words quoted, to give the very highest praise. The review was written to announce the fact of the publication. It did it cordially and perfectly. It did it in the best manner-in the only manner that could be truly useful. "He left the poem to speak for itself in the quotations, which amount to a fourth part of its number of lines."*

At first, people would not believe Goldsmith to be the author-it could be no other than Johnson himself, was the cry. At the club, Goldsmith was actually examined as to the meaning of particular passages, and his answers were relied on as proofs that he could not be the author.

"Mr. Goldsmith," asked Chamier, "what do you mean by the last word in the first line of your 'Traveller'

'Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow?'

Poor

Do you mean tardiness of locomotion ?"
Goldsmith, who would say something without
consideration, answered—“ Yes.”
"I"-Johnson is the narrator-" was sitting
by, and said, No, sir, you did not mean tardiness
of locomotion; you meant that sluggishness of
mind which comes upon a man in solitude.' Ah,
exclaimed Goldsmith, that was what I meant.
Chamier believed then that I had written the line
as much as if he had seen me write it."
Goldsmith! It must have been a dreadful thing to
be thus talked down. The language of poetry is
always, when poetry is exquisite, that of latent
association. Goldsmith did mean tardiness of lo-
comotion, though he probably would have shrunk
from such a phrase, but he meant it without
negativing the thought which Johnson expressed,
and which is suggested, and merely suggested in
Goldsmith's language. Poets are the only com-
mentators on poetical language; and in Mitford's
classical edition of Goldsmith's poems-a beautiful
book-the line is illustrated by passages not un-
likely to have been in Goldsmith's mind-

Would have shifted his trumpet, and only take

snuff.

garded as a sort of Irish adventurer; had claims distrusted till proved, and their proof in every possible way resisted. Johnson had suffered most Cradock happened to be with Goldsmith at the of Goldsmith's difficulties, and wished to smooth puppet-show, and expressly tells us that the whole the way for Goldsmith. Boswell, who loved John- thing originated in a joke-a sort of permitted lison, and who had no love for Goldsmith, in spite cense with Goldsmith. "It was always thought of his record of some perhaps misunderstood fair by some persons to make what stories they phrases of Johnson's, has preserved for us evi- pleased of Dr. Goldsmith, and the following was dences of his admiration, exhibited in every possi- freely circulated in ridicule of him :-That he atble way. The very extent to which the club tended the Fantoccini in Panton-street, and that joked with Goldsmith was a proof how he had from envy he wished to excel one of the puppets. won on their affections. We regard as evidence I was of the party, and remember no more than of Goldsmith's good humor and good nature the that the Doctor, the Rev. Mr. Ludlam, of St. kind of stories that Boswell tells with grave imper-John's College, and some others, went together to tinence. see the puppet-show. Here we were all greatly

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"When accompanying two beautiful young la- entertained, and many idle remarks might possibly dies in France, he was seriously angry," says Bos-be made by all of us during the evening. Mr. well, "that more attention was paid to them than Ludlam afterwards laughingly declared that 'he to him; and, once at the exhibition of the Fan- believed he must shut up all his experiments at toccini, when those who sat next him observed Cambridge and Leicester in future, and take lecwith what dexterity a puppet could top a pike, he tures only during the winter from Fantoccini, and could not bear that it should have such praise, and the expert machinists of both the Royal Theaexclaimed, with warmth- Pshaw! I can do it tres.'" So that the party were, it seems, outvybetter myself." He went home "to supper with ing each other in their praise of the puppets-a Mr. Burke, and broke his shin by attempting to grave professor proposing to take lectures from exhibit to the company how much better he could them in mechanics; Goldsmith's friends probably jump over a stick than the puppets." Northcote amusing themselves in mixing him up in similar told the story of the young ladies, fixing time and jokes, and he enjoying the fun which would probaplace one of the ladies read the story in his bly be increased, could he have contrasted the scene "Memoirs of Reynolds," and complained of the as it actually existed with the lachrymose speculacirculation of a story founded on circumstances tions to which it has given birth. That Goldsmith wholly misunderstood. She afterwards mentioned would have humored such a jest, by enacting the to Prior the actual facts. At Lisle, Goldsmith part ascribed to him, there can be no doubt in the and these English girls were at the window of mind of any one who remembers what Reynolds their hotel, looking at some military manœuvres, said of him-" that on entering a mixed company, when the gallantry of the officers broke forth in- he felt that their awe of him deprived him of the to a variety of compliments intended for the ears enjoyment and freedom of vivacity, and which he of the Irish ladies. Goldsmith seemed amused, made it his endeavor to dispel, by playing wanton but at length, assuming something of a severity and childish pranks, in order to bring himself to of countenance, which was a peculiarity of his the wished-for level." Reynolds' language, or humor often displayed, when not disposed to be rather Northcote's, is no doubt colored by an asjocular, turned off, uttering something to the effect sumption that Goldsmith was vain—very vain—or of what is commonly stated, that, elsewhere, he why the awe? The word, however, is not likely would also have his admirers.'" This," said to have been Goldsmith's; and certainly never was one of the ladies to Mr. Prior, was uttered in there one who so little, even to himself or others, mere playfulness, and I was shocked, many years played the live author. It appears nowhere but afterwards, to see it adduced, in print, as a proof in his letters to his Irish friends, where he overof his envious disposition." Thus one of the stories stated his prospects to them, lest a true statement is decisively got rid of. Boswell's Fantoccini should be interpreted into an application for assiststory, and Goldsmith breaking his shin, in rivalry ance. of the puppets jumping, Forster tells us, "is too pleasant to be objected to; but might he not mean that the puppets jumped even worse than he did? The actual world, and the puppet-show, are, moreover, so much alike, that what was meant for a laugh at the world, might have passed for an attack on the puppet-show." Poor Goldsmith !and is this all that his friend Forster can say for him—and, thus interpreted, is Boswell's story too pleasant to be objected to? For the life of us, we cannot see the fun of his breaking his shins to illustrate a saw of this kind, and we suspect that Reynolds, had he heard this vindication,

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In one of these, after a very humorous description of his future eminence, comes a passage of mingled mirth and pathos-"Let me stop my fancy to take a view of my future self; and, as the boys say, light down to see myself on horseback. Well, now I am down, where the devil is I? Oh, gods! gods! here in a garret, writing for bread, and expecting to be dunned for a milk-score!" Still we have Reynolds' own evidence, of having witnessed a company struck with an awful silence at the entrance of Goldsmith, which was quickly dispelled by his boyish and social manners, and he has then become the plaything and favorite of the company." "Sir