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1765.

is uneasy without swift renewal of the pleasurable excitement, with no less than three similar suits, not less expensive, Et. 37. Goldsmith amazed his friends in the next six months. The dignity he was obliged to put on with these fine clothes, indeed, left him this as their only enjoyment; for he had found it much harder to give up the actual reality of his old humble haunts, of his tea at the White-conduit, of his alehouse club at Islington, of his nights at the Wrekin or St Giles's, than to blot their innocent but vulgar names from his now genteeler page. In truth, he would say (in truth was a favourite phrase of his, interposes Cooke, who relates the anecdote), one has to make vast sacrifices for good company's sake; "for here am I shut out of several places

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where I used to play the fool very agreeably."* Nor is it quite clear that the most moderate accession of good company, professionally speaking, rewarded this reluctant gravity. The only instance remembered of his practice, was in the case of a Mrs. Sidebotham, described as one of his recent acquaintance of the better sort; whose waiting-woman was often afterwards known to relate with what a ludicrous assumption of dignity he would show off his cloak and his cane, as he strutted with his queer little figure, stuck through as with a huge pin by his wandering sword, into the sickroom of her mistress. At last it one day happened, that, his opinion differing somewhat from the apothecary's in attendance, the lady thought her apothecary the safer counsellor and Goldsmith quitted the house in high indignation. He would leave off prescribing for his friends, he said. "Do so, "my dear Doctor," observed Beauclerc. "Whenever you

"undertake to kill, let it only be your enemies." Upon the whole this seems to have been the close of Doctor Goldsmith's professional practice.

*Europ. Mag. xxiv.

CHAPTER XII.

1765.

Et. 37.

NEWS FOR THE CLUB OF VARIOUS KINDS AND FROM VARIOUS PLACES.

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1765-1766.

THE literary engagements of Doctor Oliver Goldsmith were meanwhile going on with Newbery; and towards the close of the year he appears to have completed a compilation of a kind somewhat novel to him, induced in all probability by his concurrent professional attempts. It was "A Survey of Experimental Philosophy, considered in its present state of improvement ;" and Newbery paid him sixty guineas for it.* He also took great interest at this time in the proceedings of the Society of Arts; and is supposed, from the many small advances entered in Newbery's memoranda as made in connection with that Society, to have contributed sundry reports and disquisitions on its proceedings and affairs, to a

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* I give the memorandum (Newbery MSS. Prior, ii. 102-3) of books lent to Goldsmith for the purpose of this compilation. "Sent to Dr. Goldsmith, Sept. 11th, "1765, from Canbery (Canonbury) House the copy of the Philosophy to be revised, "with the Abbé Nollet's Philosophy, and to have an account added of Hale's "Ventilation, together with the following books. 1. Pemberton's Newton, 4to. "2. Two pamphlets of Mr. Franklin's on Electricity. 3. 1 of Ferguson's Astronomy, 4to. 4. D'Alembert's Treatise of Fluids, 4to. 5. Martin's Philosophy, "3 vols. 8vo. 6. Ferguson's Lectures, ditto. 7. Helsham's ditto. 8. Kiel's "Introduction, ditto. 9. Kiel's Astronomy, ditto. 10. Nature Displayed, 7 vols. "12mo. 11. Nollet's Philosophy, 3 vols. 12mo."

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+ See ante, 302, note. Besides the entries there given, others exist having reference to 1765, as for example: "Lent Dr. Goldsmith, at the Society of Arts, "and to pay arrears, 31 38."

new commercial and agricultural magazine in which the busy 1765. publisher had engaged. It was certainly not an idle year with with Et.37. him; though what remains in proof of his employment may be scant and indifferent enough. Johnson's blind pensioner, Miss Williams, had for several months been getting together a subscription volume of Miscellanies, to which Goldsmith had promised a poem; and she complains that she found him always too busy to redeem his promise, and was continually put off with a "Leave it to me." Nor was Johnson, who had made like promises, much better. "Well, we'll think "about it," was his form of excuse.* With Johnson, in truth, a year of most unusual exertion had succeeded his year of visitings, and he had at last completed, nine years later than he promised it, his edition of Shakspeare. It came out in October, in eight octavo volumes; and was bitterly assailed (nor, it may be admitted, without a certain coarse smartness) by Kenrick, who, in one of the notes to his attack, coupling "learned doctors of Dublin," with "doctorial dignities of "Rheims and Louvain," may have meant a sarcasm at Goldsmith. I have indicated the latter place as the probable source of his medical degree; and, three months before, Dublin University had conferred a doctorship on Johnson, though not until ten years later, when Oxford did him similar honour, did he consent to acknowledge the title. He had now, I may add, left his Temple chambers, and become

* The poor old lady was more nervous about having received and spent her subscription halfcrowns than Johnson felt about his subscription guineas (ante, 219); "but," she said to Lady Knight, "what can I do? the Doctor [Johnson] always 66 puts me off with 'Well, we'll think about it;' and Goldsmith says, 'Leave it 66 6 to me.'" Boswell, iii. 9.

He never, himself, actually assumed it. It was in recognition of the completion of his Shakspeare that Dublin University did itself the honour to send him the doctor's diploma, which Oxford (his own University) had not the grace to do till ten years later, on the nomination of Lord North. It is certain, however, and not a little curious, remembering how world-famous this dignity became in his person, that he never called himself anything but "Mr. Johnson" to the close of his life.

1765.

master of a house in one of the courts in Fleet-street which Et. 37. bore his own name; and where he was able to give lodging on the ground floor to Miss Williams, and in the garret to Robert Levett. It is remembered as a decent house, with stout old-fashioned mahogany furniture. Goldsmith appears meanwhile to have got into somewhat better chambers in the same (Garden) court where his library stair-case chambers stood, which he was able to furnish more decently; and to which we shortly trace (by the help of Mr. Filby's bills, and their memoranda of altered suits) the presence of a man-servant.

1766.

Æt. 38.

So passed the year 1765. It was the year in which he had first felt any advantage of rank arising from literature; and it closed upon him as he seems to have resolved to make the most of his growing importance, and enjoy it in all possible ways. Joseph Warton, now preparing for the head mastership of Winchester school, was in London at the opening of 1766, and saw something of the society of the club. He had wished to see Hume; but Hume, though he had left Paris (where he had been secretary of the embassy to Lord Hertford, recalled and sent to Dublin by the new administration), was not yet in London. A strange Paris "season" it had been, and odd and ill-assorted its assemblage of visitors. There had Sterne, Foote, Walpole, and Wilkes, been thrown together at the same dinner-table. There had Hume, with his broad Scotch accent, his unintelligible French, his imbecile fat face, and his corpulent body, been the object of enthusiasm without example, and played the Sultan in pantomimic tableaux to the prettiest women of the time.* There had the author

"They believe in Mr. Hume," writes Walpole, "the only thing in the world "that they believe implicitly; which they must do; for I defy them to understand "any language that he speaks." "Le célèbre David Hume, grand et gros "historiographe d' Angleterre, connu et estimé par ses écrits, n'a pas autant de "talens pour ce genre d' amusemens auquel toutes nos jolies femmes l'avoient "décidé propre. Il fit son début chez Madame de T; on lui avoit destiné

1766.

of the Heloise and the Contrat Social, half crazed with the passionate admiration which had welcomed his Emile, and Et. 38. flattered out of the rest of his wits by the persecution that followed it, stalked about with all Paris at his heels, in a caftan and Armenian robes, and so enchanted the Scotch historian and sage, to whom he seemed a sort of better Socrates, that he had offered him a home in England.* There was the young painter student, Barry, writing modest letters on his way to Rome, where William and Edmund Burke had subscribed out of their limited means to send him. There was the young lion-hunting Boswell, more pompous and conceited than ever; as little laden with law from Utrecht, where he has studied since we saw him last, as with heroism from Corsica, where he has visited Pascal Paoli, or with wit from Ferney, where he has been to see Voltaire; pushing his way into every salon, inflicting him

"le rôle d'un Sultan assis entre deux esclaves, employant toute son éloquence pour s'en faire aimer; les trouvant inexorables, il devoit chercher le sujet de "leurs peines, et de leur résistance: on le place sur un sopha entre les deux "plus jolies femmes de Paris, il les regarde attentivement, il se frappe le ventre "et les genoux a' plusieurs reprises, et ne trouve jamais autre chose a' leur dire 66 que Eh bien! mes demoiselles... Eh bien! vous voilà donc... Eh bien ! "vous voilà. . . vous voilà ici?' Cette phrase dura un quart d'heure, sans 66 qu'il pût en sortir. Une d'elles se leva d' impatience: 'Ah!' dit elle, 'je m'en "'étois bien doutée, cet homme n'est bon qu' à manger du veau!' Depuis ce "temps il est reléqué au rôle de spectateur, et n'en est par moins fêté et "cajolé." Mémoires et Correspondence de Madame d' Epinay, iii. 284.

* "I find him," says the too impressible philosopher, "mild, and gentle, and "modest, and good-humoured; and he has more the behaviour of a man of the "world, than any of the learned here, except M. de Buffon; who, in his figure, "and air, and deportment, answers your idea of a marechal of France, rather "than that of a philosopher. M. Rousseau is of a small stature, and would rather "be ugly, had he not the finest physiognomy in the world: I mean the most expressive countenance. . . His Armenian dress is not affectation. He has had an "infirmity from his infancy, which makes breeches inconvenient for him." Burton's Hume, ii. 299, 302. In connection with this passage it may be worth adding that Buffon was the only known French writer of this period whom Johnson declared he would care to cross the sea to visit, and (as his reason for not going) "I can find in "Buffon's book all that he can say." Boswell, iv. 247. He never speaks of Voltaire without unconsciously betraying a sort of uneasy fear of his vivacity and scorn.

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