1758. Et. 30. "restoration I presume?' 'No, sir,' replied the messenger, 66 6 66 they are only petitioning his majesty to be put in your "place.' In the same manner, should I retire in indignation, "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 school-attendance. So, again installed poor usher, week passed over week as of old, with suffering, Milner saw what he contempt, and many forms of care. 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 + Percy Memoir, 45. * The Bee, iv. separate which most often has made separation impossible. 1758. Nor, apart from this, is there ground for the feeling of Et. 30. 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 and combined, what store of literary fruit he had gathered in his travel; and no longer commanded by a bookseller, or overawed by an old woman, he might frankly deliver to the world some wholesome truths of the decay of letters and the rewards of genius. In this spirit he conceived the Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe. And if he had reason bitterly to feel, in his own case, that he had failed to break down 1 the barriers which encircled the profession of literature, here might a helping hand be stretched forth to the relief of others, still struggling for a better fate in its difficult environments. With this design another expectation arose,-that the publication, properly managed, might give him means for the outfit his appointment would render necessary. And he bethought him of his Irish friends. The zeal so lately professed might now be exerted with effect, and without greatly plaguing either their pockets or his own pride. In those days, and indeed until the Act of Union was passed, the English writer had no copyright in Ireland: it being a part of the independence of Irish booksellers to steal from English authors, and of the Irish parliament to protect the theft; just as, not twenty years before this date, that excellent native parliament had, on the attempt of a Catholic 1758. to recover estates which in the manner of the booksellers Æt. 30. a Protestant had seized, voted "all barristers, solicitors, 66 attorneys and proctors, who should be concerned for him," public enemies! But, that serviceable use might be made of the early transmission to Ireland of a set of English copies of the Enquiry, by one who had zealous private friends there, was Goldsmith's not unreasonable feeling; and he would try this, when the time came. Meanwhile he began the work; and it was probably to some extent advanced, when, with little savings from the school, and renewed assurances of the foreign appointment, Doctor Milner released him from duties which the necessity (during the Doctor's illness) of flogging the boys as well as teaching them, appears to have made more intolerable to the childloving usher. The reverend Mr. Mitford knew a lady whose husband had been at this time under Goldsmith's cane; but with no very serious consequence. Escape from the school might not have been so easy, but for the lessening chances of Doctor Milner's recovery having made more permanent arrangements advisable. Some doubt has been expressed indeed, whether the worthy schoolmaster's illness had not already ended fatally; and if the kindness I have recorded should not rather be attributed to his son and successor in the school, Mr. George Milner. But other circumstances clearly invalidate this, and show that it must have been the elder Milner's. In August 1758, however, Goldsmith again had bidden him adieu; and once more had secured a respectable town address for his letters, and, among the Graingers and Kippises and other tavern acquaintance, obtained the old facilities for correspondence with his friends, at the Temple Exchange coffee-house, Temple-bar. CHAPTER III. ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE FROM LITERATURE. 1758. GRAINGER, his friend Percy,* and others of the Griffiths connection, were at this time busy upon a new magazine: begun with the present year, and dedicated to the "great "Mr. Pitt," whose successful coercion of the king made him just now more than ever the darling of the people. Griffiths was one of the publishing partners in The Grand Magazine of Universal Intelligence and Monthly Chronicle of our own Times and perhaps on this account, as well as for the known contributions of some of his acquaintance,† traces of Goldsmith's hand have been sought in the work; in my opinion without success. In truth the first number was hardly out when he went back to the Peckham school; and on his return to London, though he probably eked out his poor savings by casual writings here and there, it is certain that on the foreign appointment his hopes continued steadily fixed, and that the work which was to aid him in his escape from literature (the completion of the Enquiry into the State * "My beloved friend," was Percy's description of Grainger, nearly forty years after the present date. Nichols's Illustrations, vii. 71. In the Grand Magazine first appeared Grainger's exquisite ballad of Bryan and Pereene, and other contributions which Bishop Percy describes in a letter to Dr. Anderson. Nichols's Illustrations, vii. 75. 1758. Et.30. 1758. of Polite Learning, or, as he called it before publication, the Et. 30. Essay on the Present State of Taste and Literature), occupied nearly all his thoughts. He was again in London, and again working with the pen; but he was no longer the bookseller's slave, nor was literary toil his impassable and hopeless doom. Therefore, in the confidence of swift liberation, and the hope of the new career that brightened in his sanguine heart, he addressed himself cheerily enough to the design in hand, and began solicitation of his Irish friends. Edward Mills he thought of first, as a person of some influence. He was his relative, had been his fellowcollegian, and was a prosperous, wealthy man. "Dear Sir," he begins, in a letter dated from the Temple Exchange coffee-house, on the 7th of August, and published by Bishop Percy: * 66 66 "You have quitted, I find, that plan of life which you once intended "to pursue; and given up ambition for domestic tranquillity. Were "I to consult your satisfaction alone in this change, I have the utmost reason to congratulate your choice; but when I consider my own, "I cannot avoid feeling some regret, that one of my few friends has "declined a pursuit, in which he had every reason to expect success. "The truth is, like the rest of the world, I am self-interested in my concern; and do not so much consider the happiness you have acquired, as the honour I have probably lost in the change. I have "often let my fancy loose when you were the subject, and have imagined you gracing the bench, or thundering at the bar; while "I have taken no small pride to myself, and whispered all that I could 66 come near, that this was my cousin. Instead of this, it seems you are " contented to be merely an happy man; to be esteemed only by your acquaintance-to cultivate your paternal acres-to take unmolested a nap under one of your own hawthorns, or in Mrs. Mills's bed"chamber, which even a poet must confess, is rather the most "comfortable place of the two. 66 "But however your resolutions may be altered with regard to your * Percy Memoir, 50-2. The date there given is 1759, an obvious misprint for 1758. |