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He had no resource but to apply to Griffiths, with whom he had still some small existing relation, 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 returned to Green Arbour Court with the four books under his arm.

They were: Some Enquiries Concerning the First Inhabitants of Europe, by Francis Wise the antiquarian, Thomas Warton's friend; Anselm Bayly's Introduction to Languages; the Pentalogia of Doctor Burton; and a new Translation of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations. The notices of them thus extorted made due appearance in the Monthly Review for December 1758; the tailor was then called in; and the compact completed.

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Equipped in his new suit, and with an anxious, hopeful, quaking heart, Goldsmith offered himself for examination at Surgeons' Hall 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 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 not qualified for 'ditto.' A rumour of this rejection long existed, and on a hint from Maton the king's physician, Mr. Prior succeeded in discovering it.

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Honour to that Court of Examiners, I say, to the end of time! 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 stern 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 in

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deed 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. A man who has any 'kind of vigour,' said Johnson, 'can walk to the East as 'well as to the West, if he happens to turn his head that 'way.' Honour to the Court of Examiners, 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.

It was four days after the rejection, Christmas Day of 1758, when, to the ordinary filth and noise of number twelve in Green Arbour Court, there was added an unusual

lamentation and sorrow. The

landford had been suddenly dragged by bailiffs from his home on the previous night, and his poor wife with loud wailings sought the room of her poorer lodger. He was in debt to the unfortunate couple, who, for the amusement of their children by his flute, had been kind to him

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according to their miserable means: and it was now

her sobbing petition that he should try to help them. There was but one way; and in the hope, through Hamilton or Griffiths, to be able still to meet the tailor's debt, the gay suit in which he went to Surgeons' Hall, and in which he was dressed for his doleful holiday, was put off and carried to the pawnbroker's. Nor had a week passed, before the pangs of his own destitution sharply struck him again; and, without other remaining means of earthly aid, for death had taken in Doctor Milner his apparently last friend, he carried the four books he had recently reviewed for Griffiths to a neighbouring house, and left them in pledge with an acquaintance for a trifling loan. It was hardly done when a letter from Griffiths was put into his hand, peremptorily demanding the return of the books and the suit of clothes, or instant payment for both.

Goldsmith's answer, and the bookseller's violent retort, are to be presumed from the poor creditor's second letter: the only one preserved of this unseemly correspondence. He appears to have written in a tone of mixed astonishment, anger, and solicitation; to have prayed for some delay; and to have been met by coarse insult, threats, and the shameless imputation of crime. These forced from him the rejoinder found in the bookseller's papers; endorsed as received in January 1759'; and passed by his family into the manuscript collections of Mr. Heber. All concealment is ended now, and stern plain truth is told.

'Sir,' wrote Goldsmith, 'I know of no misery but a

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'gaol to which my own imprudences and your letter seem 'to point. I have seen it inevitable these three or four 'weeks, and, by heavens! request it as a favour; as a favour 'that may prevent somewhat more fatal. I have been 'some years struggling with a wretched being; with all 'that contempt which indigence brings with it; with all 'those strong passions which make contempt insupportable. 'What, then, has a gaol that is formidable? I shall at 'least have the society of wretches, and such is, to me, 'true society. I tell you again and again, I am now 'neither able nor willing to pay you a farthing, but I will

be punctual to any appointment you or the tailor shall 'make thus far, at least, I do not act the sharper, since, 'unable to pay my debts one way, I would willingly give 'some security another. No, sir, had I been a sharper, 'had I been possessed of less good nature and native generosity, I might surely now have been in better cir'cumstances. I am guilty, I own, of meannesses which 'poverty unavoidably brings with it: my reflections are 'filled with repentance for my imprudence, but not with any remorse for being a villain. That may be a character 'you unjustly charge me with. Your books, I can assure 'you, are neither pawned nor sold, but in the custody of

a friend from whom my necessities obliged me to borrow

some money whatever becomes of my person, you shall ' have them in a month. It is very possible both the ' reports you have heard, and your own suggestions, may 'have brought you false information with respect to my

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