untouched. They are not to tell for so many pitiful items in the drudgery for existence. They are to catch the 'heart, and strike for honest fame.'

He thought poorly, with exceptions already named in this narrative, of the poetry of the day. He regarded Churchill's astonishing success as a mere proof of the rage of faction; and did not hesitate to call his satires lampoons, and his force turbulence. Fawkes and Woty were now compiling their Poetical Calendar, and through Johnson, who contributed, they asked if he would contribute; but he declined. Between himself and Fawkes, who was rector of a small Kentish village he had occasionally visited, civilities had passed; but he shrunk from the Fawkes and Woty poetical school, and did not hesitate to say so. He dined at the close of the year at Davies's, in company with Robert Dodsley, where the matter came into discussion. This is not a poetical 'age,' said Goldsmith; there is no poetry produced in it.' 'Nay,' returned Dodsley, have you seen my 'Collection. You may not be able to find palaces in 'it, like Dryden's Ode, but you have villages composed 'of very pretty houses, such as the Spleen.' Johnson was not present; but when the conversation was reported to him, he remarked that Dodsley had said the same thing as Goldsmith, only in a softer manner.

Another guest, beside Dodsley, was present at Davies's dinner-table that day. A youth of two-and-twenty, the son of a Scottish judge and respectable old whig Laird,

urged to enter the law but eager to bestow himself on the army, had come up at the end of the year from Edinburgh to see Johnson and the London wits, and not a little anxious that Johnson and the London wits should see him. Attending Sheridan's summer lectures in the northern city, he had heard wonderful things from the lecturer about the solemn and ponderous lexicographer; what he said, and what he did, and how he would talk over his port wine and his tea until three or four o'clock in the morning. It was in the nature of this new admirer that port wine and late hours should throw a new halo over any object of his admiration; and it was with desperate resolve to accomplish an introduction which he had tried and failed in two years before, that he was now again in London. But he had again been baffled. Johnson's sneer at Sheridan's pension having brought coolness between the old friends, that way there was no access; and though Davies had arranged this dinner with the hope of getting his great friend to come, his great friend had found other matters to attend to. James Boswell was not yet to see Samuel Johnson. He saw only Oliver Goldsmith, and was doubtless much disappointed.

Perhaps the feeling was mutual, if Oliver gave a thought to this new acquaintance; and strange enough the dinner must have been. As Goldsmith discussed poetry with Dodsley, Davies, mouthing his words and rolling his head at Boswell, delighted that eager and social gentleman with imitations of Johnson; while, as the bottle emptied

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itself more freely, sudden loquacity, conceited coxcombry, and officious airs of consequence, came as freely pouring forth from the youthful Scot. He had to tell them all he had seen in London, and all that had seen him. How Wilkes had said 'how d'ye do' to him, and Churchill had shaken hands with him (Scotchman though he was); how he had been to the Bedford to see that comical fellow Foote, and heard him dashing away at everybody and everything ('have you had good success in Dublin, 'Mr. Foote?' 'Poh! Damn 'em! There was not a

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shilling in the country, except what the Duke of 'Bedford, and I, and Mr. Rigby have brought away'); how he had seen Garrick in the new farce of the Farmer's Return, and gone and peeped over Hogarth's shoulder as he sketched little David in the Farmer; and how, above all, he had on another night attracted general attention and given prodigious entertainment in the Drury-lane pit, by extempore imitations of the lowing of a cow. 'The 'universal cry of the galleries,' said he, gravely describing the incident some few years afterward, 'was, encore the cow! 'encore the cow! In the pride of my heart I attempted 'imitations of some other animals, but with very inferior 'effect.' A Scotch friend was with him, and gave sensible advice. Stick to the cow, mon,' he said; and the advice was not lost altogether. He stuck afterwards to his cow (in other words, to what he could best achieve) pretty closely; though Goldsmith, among others, had no small reason to regret, that he should also, doing the cow so well,

still with very inferior effect' attempt imitations of other animals.

But little does Goldsmith or any other man suspect as yet, that within this wine-bibbing, tavern babbler, this meddling, conceited, inquisitive, loquacious lion hunter, this bloated and vain young Scot, lie qualities of reverence, real insight, quick observation, and marvellous memory, which, strangely assorted as they are with those other meaner habits, and parasitical, self-complacent absurdities, will one day connect his name eternally with the men of genius of his time, and enable him to influence posterity in its judgments on them. They seem to have met occasionally before Boswell returned to Edinburgh; but only two of Goldsmith's answers to the other's perpetual and restless questionings, remain to indicate the nature of their intercourse. There lived at this time with Johnson, a strange, silent, grotesque companion, whom he had supported for many years, and continued to keep with him till death; and Boswell could not possibly conceive what the claim of that insignificant Robert Levet could be, on the great object of his own veneration. 'He is poor and honest,' was Goldsmith's answer, which is recommendation enough for Johnson.' Discovery of another object of the great man's charity, however, seemed difficult to be reconciled with this; for here was a man of whom James Boswell had heard a very bad and dishonest character, and, in almost the same breath, that Johnson had been kind to him also. 'He is now become

'miserable,' was Goldsmith's quiet explanation, and that 'ensures the protection of Johnson.'

Newbery's memoranda and account books carry us, at the close of 1762, to a country lodging in Islington, kept by a stout and elderly lady named Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming, and inhabited by Oliver Goldsmith. He is said to have moved here to be near the publisher, who had chambers at the time in Canonbury Tower; but he had doubtless a stronger inducement in thus escaping, for weeks together, from the crowded noise of Wine Office Court (where he retained a lodging for town uses), to comparative quiet and healthy air. There were still green fields and lanes in Islington. Glimpses were discernible yet, even of the old time when the Tower was Elizabeth's hunting seat, and the country all about was woodland. There were walks where houses were not, nor terraces, nor taverns; and where stolen hours might be given to precious thought, in the intervals of toilsome labour.

That he had come here with designs of labour, more constant and unremitting than ever, new and closer arrangements with Newbery would seem to indicate. The publisher made himself, with certain prudent limitations, Mrs. Fleming's paymaster; board and lodging were to be charged £50 a year (the reader has to keep in mind that this would be now nearly double that amount), and, when the state of their accounts permitted it, to be paid each quarter by Mr. Newbery; the publisher taking credit for