wig sticking on the top of his head, and the sleeves of his shirt and the knees of his breeches hanging loose. "A con"siderable crowd of people gathered round," says Beauclerc, "and were not a little struck by this singular appearance." The hero of the incident would be the last person to be moved by it. The more the state of his toilet dawned upon him, the less likely would he be to notice it. There was no more remarkable trait in Johnson, and certainly none in which he more contrasted with the subject of this narrative, than that, as Miss Reynolds was always surprised to remark in him, no external circumstances ever prompted him to make the least apology for them, or to seem even sensible of their existence. It was not many months after this that he went to see Goldsmith in a new lodging in the locality which not Johnson alone has rendered illustrious, but its association with a line of the greatest names of English literature; the Dorsets, Raleighs, Seldens, Clarendons, Beaumonts, Fords, Marstons, Wycherleys, and Congreves. He had taken rooms on the then library staircase of the Temple. They were a humble set of chambers enough (one Jeffs, the butler of the society, shared them with him); and, on Johnson's prying and peering about in them, after his short-sighted fashion, flattening his face against every object he looked at, Goldsmith's uneasy sense of their deficiencies broke out. "I shall soon be in "better chambers, sir, than these," he said. 66 "Nay, sir," answered Johnson, never mind that. Nil te quæsiveris "extra." Invaluable advice! could Goldsmith, blotting out remembrance of his childhood and youth, and looking solely and steadily on the present and the future, but have dared to act upon it. 1763. Æt. 35. CHAPTER IX. 1763. THE ARREST AND WHAT PRECEDED IT. 1763-1764. GOLDSMITH'S removal from the apartments of Newbery's Et. 35. relative in Wine Office Court, to his new lodging on the library stair-case of the Temple, took place in an early month of 1764, and seems to connect itself with circumstances at the close of 1763 which indicate a less cordial understanding between himself and Newbery. He had ceased writing for the British Magazine; was contemplating an extensive engagement with James Dodsley; and had attempted to open a connection with Tonson of the Strand. The engagement with Dodsley went as far as a formal signed agreement (for a Chronological History of the Lives of eminent Persons of Great Britain and Ireland), in which the initials of medical bachelor are first assumed by him; and at the close of which another intimation of his growing importance appears, in the stipulation that "Oliver "Goldsmith shall print his name to the said work." It was to be in two volumes, octavo, of the size and type of the Universal History; each volume was to contain thirtyfive-sheets; Goldsmith was to be paid at the rate of three guineas a sheet; and the whole was to be delivered in the space of two years at farthest. But nothing came of it. 1763. Dodsley had inserted a cautious proviso that he was not to be required to advance anything till the book should be Et. 35. completed; and hence, in all probability, the book was never begun.* The overture to Tonson had not even so much success. It was a proposition from Goldsmith for a new edition of Pope, which Tonson was so little disposed to entertain that he did not condescend to write his refusal. He sent a printer with a message declining it; delivered with so much insolence, that the messenger received a caning for his pains. The desire to connect himself with Pope, seems to point in the direction of those secret labours which are to prove such wonderment to Hawkins. He was busy at this time with his poem and his novel; and, if there be any truth. in what great fat Doctor Cheyne of Bath told Thomson, that, as you put a bird's eyes out to make it sing the sweeter, you should keep poets poor to animate their * As an example of such agreements, and the first formal evidence of Goldsmith's growing importance with the booksellers, I subjoin Dodsley's. The original is now in the British Museum, Mr. Rogers having lately presented it, along with his more interesting gifts to the nation of Milton's agreement for Paradise Lost and Dryden's for the Fables. "It is agreed between Oliver Goldsmith M.B. on one hand, and "James Dodsley on the other, that Oliver Goldsmith shall write for James Dodsley a book called a Chronological History of the Lives of Eminent Persons of Great "Britain and Ireland, or to that effect, consisting of about two volumes 8vo. about "the same size and letter with the Universal History published in 8vo; for the writing "of which and compiling the same, James Dodsley shall pay Oliver Goldsmith three “guineas for every printed sheet, so that the whole shall be delivered complete "in the space of two years at farthest; James Dodsley, however, shall print the "above work in whatever manner or size he shall think fit, only the Universal "History above mentioned shall be the standard by which Oliver Goldsmith shall 66 expect to be paid. Oliver Goldsmith shall be paid one moiety upon delivery of "the whole copy complete, and the other moiety, one half of it at the conclusion "of six months, and the other half at the expiration of the twelve months next "after the publication of the work, James Dodsley giving, however, upon the "delivery of the whole copy, two notes for the money left unpaid. Each volume "of the above intended work shall not contain more than five-and-thirty sheets, "and if they should contain more, the surplus shall not be paid for by James "Dodsley. Oliver Goldsmith shall print his name to the said work. "March 31st, 1763. "OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 1763. genius, he was in excellent condition for such labour; Et. 35. though it may be, with Thomson, he might think both the birds and the poets happier in the light, and singing sweetest amid luxuriant woods, with the full spring blooming around them.* What alone seems certain as to that matter, be it light or dark, is that the song, if a true song, will make itself audible. There is a note among Newbery's papers with the date of the 17th of December 1763, which states Goldsmith to have received twenty-five guineas from the publisher, for which he promises to account. At this time, too, he disappears from his usual haunts, and is supposed to have been in concealment somewhere. Certainly he was in distress, and on a less secure footing with Newbery than at the commencement of the year. Yet it is also at this time we find * Goldsmith's philosophy on this subject appears in that delightfully written book, the Animated Nature, and is very much opposed to fat Dr. Cheyne's. "The music of every bird in captivity produces no very pleasing sensations: it "is but the mirth of a little animal insensible of its unfortunate situation. It is "the landscape, the grove, the golden break of day, the contest upon the haw"thorn, the fluttering from branch to branch, the soaring in the air, and the answering of its young, that gives the bird's song its true relish. These united, "improve each other, and raise the mind to a state of the highest, yet most “harmless exultation. Nothing can in this situation of mind be more pleasing "than to see the lark warbling on the wing; raising its note as it soars, until it 66 seems lost in the immense heights above us; the note continuing, the bird itself unseen; to see it then descending with a swell as it comes from the clouds, yet "sinking by degrees as it approaches its nest; the spot where all its affections "are centred, the spot that has prompted all this joy." iv. 261-2. In the same chapter Goldsmith incidentally contributes his experience to what Charles Fox, Coleridge, and other famous men have since written on the song of the nightingale. "For weeks "together, if undisturbed, they sit upon the same tree; and Shakspeare rightly "describes the nightingale sitting nightly in the same place, which I have "frequently observed she seldom departs from.. Her note is soft, various, and "interrupted; she seldom holds it without a pause above the time that one can "count twenty. The nightingale's pausing song would be the proper epithet for "this bird's music with us, which is more pleasing than the warbling of any other "bird, because it is heard at a time when all the rest are silent. iv. 256-7. These passages, exquisite in feeling, in expression emulate the music they describe. A brief letter of Goldsmith's with which I was favoured after this part of my narrative was printed in my first edition, gave strong corroboration to the state 1763. him busied with others' distresses, and helping to relieve them. Among his own papers at his death was found the Et. 35. copy of an appeal to the public for poor Kit Smart,* who had married Newbery's step-daughter ten years before, and had since, with his eccentricities and imprudences, wearied out all his friends but Goldsmith and Johnson. Very recently, as a last resource, he had been taken to a mad-house; and it was under this restraint, while pens and ink were denied to him, that he indented on the walls of his cell with a key, his Song to David. His friends accounted for the excellence of ments made in it. It would seem that between the date of his leaving Wine Office Court in "an early month of 1764" (ante, 364), and his return to Islington at "the beginning of April" in that year (post, 369), he had occupied, while his attic in library staircase of the Temple was preparing, a temporary lodging in Gray's Inn; and that the engagement with the Dodsleys which I have described as opened at this time, had actually proceeded as far as the preparation of copy, and the claim for advance of money. This, as well as the sharp poverty he was suffering, appears from the brief note to James Dodsley, which has been communicated to me by my friend Mr. Peter Cunningham, whose success in matters of literary research is as little to be questioned as the vivacity and ease with which he imparts his discoveries. "Sir," it runs, being dated from "Gray's Inn," and addressed "to Mr. James Dodesley in Pall Mall," on the 10th of March 1764, "I shall take it as a favour if you can let me have ten guineas per "bearer, for which I promise to account. I am, sir, your humble servant, "OLIVER GOLDSMITH. P.S. I shall call to see you on Wednesday next with copy, "&c." Whether the money was advanced, or the copy supplied, does not appear. * Percy calls it (Letter to Malone, Oct. 17, 1786) "a paper which he wrote to "set about a subscription for poor Smart, the mad poet." For a very whimsical account of Smart's vagaries, while yet a resident fellow of Pembroke in Cambridge, written in Gray's quaint thoughtful way, see Works, iii. 42. He describes him amusing himself with a comedy of his own writing, which, "he says, is inimitable, "true sterling wit, and humour by God; and he can't hear the Prologue without "being ready to die with laughter. He acts five parts himself, and is only sorry "he can't do all the rest. . . . All this, you see, must come to a Jayl, or Bedlam, "and that without any help, almost without pity." And see Correspondence of Gray and Mason, 169, 175; and Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes, 260. + Boswell did great wrong to Smart by making him the hero of the ever famous comparison with Derrick. (Life, viii. 182-3.) It was of Boyce and Derrick that Johnson was asked at Lord Shelburne's which he thought the best poet. "Sir, "there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea!" The question was put by Morgann (who wrote the admirable Essay on Falstaff), expressly to provoke Johnson out of an argument he had taken up, "from the spirit "of contradiction," to prove the merits of Derrick as a writer. |