' resentment. you now 'character: it is very possible that the man whom Now, this Ralph Griffiths the bookseller, whom the diploma of some American university as obscure as himself made subsequently Doctor Ralph, was one of the most thriving men of the day. In little more than three years after this, he was able to retire from bookselling, and hand over to Becket the publication of his Review. As time wore on, he became a more and more regular attendant at the meeting-house, rose higher and higher in the world's esteem, and at last kept his two carriages, and lived in style.' But he lived, too, to see the changes of thirty years after the grave had received the author of the Vicar of Wakefield; and though he had some recollec tions of the errors of his youth to disturb his decorous and religious peace of mind: such as having become the proprietor of a most infamous novel, and dictated the praise of it in his Review; such as having exposed himself to the remark reiterated in Grainger's letter to Bishop Percy, that he was not to be trusted in any verbal agreement upon matters of his trade: it may not have been the least bitter of his remembrances, if it ever happened to occur to him, that to Oliver Goldsmith, in the depths of a helpless distress, he had applied the epithets of sharper and villain. From Goldsmith himself they fell harmless. His letter is most affecting: but the truth is manfully outspoken in it, and for that reason it is less painful to me than those in which the truth is concealed. When such a mind is brought to look its sorrow in the face, and understand clearly the condition in which it is; without further doubling, shrinking, or weak compromise with false hopes; it is master of a great gain. In the accession of strength it receives, it may see the sorrow anyway increase, and calm its worst apprehension. The most touching passage of that letter is the reference to his project, and the bright side of his mind it may reveal. I will date from it the true beginning of Goldsmith's literary career. Not till he was past thirty, he was wont to say, did he become really attached to literature: not till then was the discipline of his endurance complete, his wandering impulses settled firmly to the right object of their aptitude, or his real U destiny revealed to him. He might have still to perish in unconquered difficulties, and with the word that was in him unspoken; but it would be at his post, and in a manly effort to speak the word. Whatever the personal weaknesses that yet remain, nor are they few or trifling, his confidence and self-reliance in literary pursuits date from this memorable time. They rise above the cares and cankers of his life, above the lowness of his worldly esteem, far above the squalor of his homes. They take the undying forms which accident or wrong cannot alter or deface; they are tenants of a world where distress and failure are unknown; and perpetual cheerfulness sings around them. The night can never endure so long, but 'at length the morning cometh;' and with these sudden and sharp disappointments of his second London Christmas, there came into Green Arbour Court the first struggling beams of morning. Till all its brightness follows, let him moan and sorrow as he may: the more familiar to himself he makes those images of want and danger, the better he will meet them in the lists where they still await him; the more he cultivates those solitary friendships with the dead, the more elevating and strengthening the influence that will reward him from their graves. The living, busy, prosperous world about him, might indeed have saved him much, by stretching forth its helping hand: but it had not taught him little in its lesson of unrequited expectation, and there was nothing now to distract him with delusive hope from meditation of the wisest form of revenge. The impatient expectation' of the result of Griffiths' resolutions, ended in a contract to write him a Life of Voltaire for a translation of the Henriade he was about to publish the payment being twenty pounds, and the price of the clothes to be deducted from that sum. His brother Henry wrote to him of the Polite Learning scheme, while engaged on this trade task; and the answer he made at its close, written early in February 1759, is in some sort the indication of his altered mind and purpose. There is evidence of his personal weakness in the idle distrusts and suspicion it charges on himself, and in its false pretences to conceal his rejection and sustain his poor Irish credit: yet the general tone of it marks not the less, a new, a sincerer, and a more active epoch in his life. Whilst the quarrel with Griffiths was still proceeding, he had again written of the Polite Learning Essay, and sent some scheme of a new poem to Henry (first fruit of the better uses of his adversity); but absolute silence as to the Coromandel appointment appears to have suggested a doubt in his brother's answer, to which very cursory and slight allusion is made in this reply. The personal portrait, in which the 'big wig' of his Bankside days plays its part, will hardly support his character for personal vanity! "Your punctuality," the letter ran, "in answering a man whose trade is writing, is more than I had reason to expect; and yet you see me generally fill a whole sheet, which is all the recompense I can make for being so frequently troublesome. The behaviour of Mr. Mills and Mr. Lauder is a little extraordinary. However, their answering neither you nor me, is a sufficient indication of their disliking the employment which I assigned them. As their conduct is different from what I had expected, so I have made an alteration in mine. I shall, the beginning of next month, send over two hundred and fifty books, which are all that I fancy can be well sold among you, and I would have you make some distinction in the persons who have subscribed. The money, which will amount to sixty pounds, may be left with Mr. Bradley as soon as possible. I am not certain but I shall quickly have occasion for it. I have met with no disappointment with respect to my East India voyage, nor are my resolutions altered; though at the same time, I must confess, it gives me some pain to think I am almost beginning the world at the age of thirty-one. Though I never had a day's sickness since I saw you, yet I am not that strong active man you once knew me. You scarcely can conceive how much eight years of disappointment, anguish, and study, have worn me down. If I remember right, you are seven or eight years older than me, yet I dare venture to say that if a stranger saw us both he would pay me the honours of seniority. Imagine to yourself a pale melancholy visage, with two great wrinkles between the eyebrows, with an eye disgustingly severe, and a big wig; and you may have a perfect picture of my present appearance. On the other hand, I conceive you as perfectly sleek and healthy, passing many a happy day among your own children, or those who knew you a child. Since I knew what it was to be a man, this is a pleasure I have not known. I have passed my days among a parcel of cool, designing beings, and have contracted all their suspicious manner in my own behaviour. should actually be as unfit for the society of my friends at home, as I detest that which I am obliged to partake of here. I can now neither partake of the pleasure of a revel, nor contribute to raise its jollity. I can neither laugh nor drink; have contracted a hesitating disagreeable manner of speaking, and a visage that looks ill I |