1758.

Green Arbour Court. He found it a small square of tall and miserable houses, the very intestines of which Et. 30. seemed turned inside out, to judge from the old garments

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and frippery that fluttered from every window. "It appeared," he says, in his Tales of a Traveller, "to be a region of washerwomen, and lines were stretched about "the little square, on which clothes were dangling to dry." The disputed right to a wash-tub was going on when he entered; heads in mob-caps were protruded from every window; and the loud clatter of vulgar tongues was assisted by the shrill pipes of swarming children, nestled and cradled in every procreant chamber of the hive. The whole scene, in short, was one of whose unchanged resemblance to the scenes of former days I have since found curious corroboration, in a magazine engraving of the place nigh half a century old. * Here were the tall faded houses, with heads out of window at every story; the dirty neglected children; the bawling slipshod women; in one corner, clothes hanging to dry, and in another the cure of smoky chimneys announced. Without question, the same squalid, squalling colony, which it then was, it had been in Goldsmith's time. He would compromise with the children for occasional cessation of their noise, by occasional cakes or sweetmeats, or by a tune upon his flute, for which all the court assembled; he would talk pleasantly with the poorest of his neighbours, and was long recollected to have greatly enjoyed the talk of a working watchmaker in the court; every night, he would risk his neck at those steep stone stairs; every day, for his clothes had become too ragged to

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See the frontispiece to vol. xliii of the European Magazine.

+ Ward, in his London Spy, talks of "returning down stairs with as much

care and caution of tumbling head-foremost, as he that goes down Green Arbour "Court steps in the middle of winter."

1758.

submit to daylight scrutiny, he would keep within his dirty, Et. 30. naked, unfurnished room, with its single wooden chair and window bench. And that was Goldsmith's home.

On a certain night in the beginning of November 1758, his ascent of Break-neck Steps must have had unwonted gloom. He had learnt the failure of his new hope: the Coromandel appointment was his no longer. In what way this mischance so unexpectedly occurred, it would now be hopeless to enquire. No explanation could be had from the dying Doctor Milner; none was given by himself; he always afterwards withheld allusion to it, with even studious care. It is quite possible, though no authority exists for the assertion, that doubts may have arisen of his competence to discharge the duties of the appointment; what followed a few months later, indeed, will be seen to give warrant for such a surmise; but even supposing this to have been the real motive, there is no ground for suspecting that such a motive was alleged. The most likely supposition would probably be, that failure in getting together means for his outfit with sufficient promptitude, was made convenient excuse for transferring the favour to another. That it was any failure of his own courage at the prospect of so long an exile, or that he never proposed more by his original scheme than a foreign flight for two or three years, has no other or better foundation than the Hodson letter: on which authority it would also follow, that he remained contented with what he already possessed, subdued his capricious. wants, and turned to the friends, the esteem, the refined conversation, and all the conveniences of life, which awaited him in Green Arbour Court, with a new and virtuous resolve of quiet thankfulness.

Alas! far different were the feelings with which he now

1758.

ascended Break-neck Steps; far different his mournful conviction, that, but to flee from the misery that surrounded t. 30. him, no office could be mean, no possible endurance hard. His determination was taken at once: probably grounded on the knowledge of some passages in the life of Smollett, and of his recent acquaintance Grainger. He would present himself at Surgeons' Hall for examination as a hospital mate: an appointment sufficiently undesirable, to be found always of tolerably easy attainment by the duly qualified.

But he must have decent clothes to present himself in: the solitary suit in which he crept between the court and the coffee-house, being only fit for service after nightfall. He had no resource but to apply to Griffiths, with whom he had still some small existing connection, and from whom his recent acceptance at the Critical, increasing his value with a vulgar mind, might help in exacting aid. The bookseller, to whom the precise temporary purpose for which the clothes were wanted does not seem to have been told, consented to furnish them on certain conditions. Goldsmith was to write at once four articles (he had given three to the Critical) for the Monthly Review. Griffiths would then become security with a tailor for a new suit of clothes; which were either to be returned, or the debt for them discharged, within a given time. This pauper proposal acceded to, Goldsmith doubtless returned to Green Arbour Court with the four books under his arm.

They were: Some Enquiries Concerning the First Inhabitants of Europe,* by a member of the Society of Antiquaries, known afterwards as Francis Wise, and Thomas Warton's friend; Anselm Bayly's Introduction to Languages; the

Monthly Review, xix. 513, December 1758.

+ Ibid, 519.

1758.

Pentalogia of Doctor Burton;* and a new Translation of Et. 30. Cicero's Tusculan Disputations. The notices of them thus extorted made due appearance, as the first four articles of the Monthly Review for December 1758; the tailor was then called in, and the compact completed.

Equipped in his new suit, and one can well imagine with what an anxious, hopeful, quaking heart, Goldsmith offered himself for examination at Surgeons' Hall (the new building erected six years before in the Old Bailey), on the 21st December. "The beadle called my name," says Roderick Random, when he found himself in similar condition at that place of torture, "with a voice that made me tremble "as much as if it had been the sound of the last trumpet: "however there was no remedy: I was conducted into a

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large hall, where I saw about a dozen of grim faces sitting "at a long table, one of whom bade me come forward in "such an imperious tone, that I was actually for a minute

or two bereft of my senses." Whether the same process, conducted through a like memorable scene, bereft poor Goldsmith altogether of his, cannot now be ascertained. All that is known, is told in a dry extract from the books of the College of Surgeons. "At a Court of Examiners held "at the Theatre 21st December, 1758. Present" . . the names are not given, but there is a long list of the candidates who passed, in the midst of which these occur: "James "Bernard, mate to an hospital. Oliver Goldsmith, found

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not qualified for ditto." A rumour of this rejection long existed, and on a hint from Maton the king's physician, the above entry was found.‡

A harder sentence, a more cruel doom, than this at the

#

Monthly Review, xix. 522, December 1758.

Prior, i. 281-2.

+ Ibid, 524.

1758.

time must have seemed, even the Old Bailey has not often been witness to; yet, far from blaming that worthy Et. 30. court of examiners, should we not rather feel that much praise is due to them? That they really did their duty in rejecting the short, thick, dull, ungainly, over-anxious, overdressed, simple looking Irishman who presented himself that memorable day, can hardly, I think, be doubted; but unconsciously they also did a great deal more. They found him not qualified to be a surgeon's mate, and left him qualified to heal the wounds and abridge the sufferings of all the world. They found him querulous with adversity, given up to irresolute fears, too much blinded with failures and sorrows to see the divine uses to which they tended still; and from all this, their sternly just and awful decision drove him resolutely back. While the door of the surgeons' hall was shut upon him that day, the gate of the beautiful mountain was slowly opening. Much of the valley of the shadow he had still indeed to pass; but every outlet save the one was closed upon him, it was idle any longer to strike or struggle against the visions which sprang up in his desolate path, and as he so passed steadily if not cheerily on, he saw them fade and become impalpable before him. Steadily, then, if not cheerily, for some months more! "Sir," said Johnson, "the man who has vigour may walk to the East just as "well as to the West, if he happens to turn his head that "way."* So, honour to the court of examiners, I say, for that, whether he would or would not, they turned back his head to the East! The hopes and promise of the world have a perpetual springtime there; and Goldsmith was hereafter to enjoy them, briefly for himself, but for the world eternally.

Boswell's Life, iv. 24.