of the Mr. Trip; but there was a genial good-heartedness in both, which makes it natural and pleasant to have to single out these two men, as the first active friends and patrons of the author of the unsuccessful Bee. Their offers were of course accepted; and it seems to imply something, however slight, of a worldly advance in connection with them, that, in the month which followed, the luckless Bee was issued in an independent form by the Dodsleys, and Kenrick received instructions from Mr. Ralph Griffiths to treat it in the Monthly Review as the work of an ingenious person.

The 1st of January, 1760, saw the first venture launched. It was published for sixpence, embellished 'with curious copperplates,' and entitled 'The British

Magazine, or Monthly Repository for Gentlemen and 'Ladies. By T. Smollett, M.D., and others.' It was dedicated with much fervour to Mr. Pitt; and Mr. Pitt's interest (greatly to the spleen of Horace Walpole, who thinks the matter worthy of mention in his Memoirs of George the Second) enabled Smollett to put it forth with a royal license, granted in consideration of the fact that Doctor Smollett had 'represented to his Majesty that he 'has been at great labour and expense in writing original pieces himself, and engaging other gentlemen to write original pieces.' The Doctor, in truth, had but lately left the 'Bench,' at the close of that three months' imprisonment for libel into which his spirited avowal of the authorship of a criticism on Admiral Knowles had betrayed him; and the

king's patronage had probably been sought as a counterpoise to the king's prison. But the punishment had not been without its uses. In the nature of Smollett, to the last, there were not a few of the heedless impulses of boyhood; and from this three months' steady gaze on the sadder side of things, he seems to have turned with tempered and gentler thoughts. In the first number of the British Magazine was the opening of the tale which contained his most feminine heroine (Aurelia Darnel), and the most amiable and gentlemanly of his heroes (Sir Launcelot Greaves); for, though Sir Launcelot is mad, wise thoughts have made him so; and in the hope to remedy evils which 'the law cannot reach, to detect fraud and treason, to 'abase insolence, to mortify pride, to discourage slander, 'to disgrace immodesty, and to stigmatise ingratitude,' he stumbles through his odd adventures. There is a pleasure in connecting this alliance of Smollett and Goldsmith, with the first approach of our great humourist to that milder humanity and more genial wisdom which shed its mellow rays on Mathew Bramble.

Nor were the services engaged from Oliver unworthy of his friend's Sir Launcelot. Side by side with the kindly enthusiast, appeared some of the most agreeable of the Essays which were afterwards re-published with their writer's name; and many which were never connected with it, until half a century after the writer's death. Here Mr. Rigmarole fell into that Boar's Head Reverie in Eastcheap, since so many times dreamt over, and so full of kindly

rebuke to undiscriminating praisers of the past. Here the shabby man in St. James's Park (Goldsmith, like Justice Woodcock, loved a vagabond) recounted his strolling adventures with a vivacity undisturbed by poverty; and, with his Merry-Andrew, Bajazet, and Wildair, laughed at Garrick in his glory. Here journey was made to the Fountain in whose waters sense and genius mingled, and by whose side the traveller found Johnson and Gray (a pity it did not prove so!) giving and receiving fame. And here, above all, the poor, hearty, wooden-legged beggar, first charmed the world with a philosophy of content and cheerfulness which no misfortune could subdue. This was he who had lost his leg and the use of his hand, and was obliged to beg, but with these exceptions blessed his stars for knowing no reason to complain: some had lost both legs and an eye, but thank Heaven it was not so bad with him. This was he who remarked that people might say this and that of being in gaol, but when he was found guilty of being poor, and was sent to Newgate, he found it as agreeable a place as ever he was in, in all his life who fought the French in six pitched battles, and verily believed, that, but for some good reason or other, his captain would have given him promotion and made him a corporal: who was beaten cruelly by a boatswain, but the boatswain did it without considering what he was about: who slept on a bed of boards in a French prison, but with a warm blanket about him, because, as he remarked, he always loved to lie well: and to whom, when he came to sum

up and balance his life's adventures, it occurred that had he had the good fortune to have lost his leg and the use of his hand on board a king's ship, and not a privateer, he should have had his sixpence a week for the rest of his days; but that was not his chance; one man was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and another with a wooden ladle: 'however, blessed be God, I enjoy good 'health.' This was as wise philosophy as Candide's, at which Europe was then laughing heartily; and it is worth mention that from the countrymen of Voltaire this little essay should first have derived its fame. So popular in France was the humble optimist,' as his translator called him, that he is not unlikely to have visited even the halls of Les Delices; to be read there, as everywhere, with mirth upon the face and tenderness at the heart; perhaps to reawaken recollections of the ungainly, wandering scholar.

Of upwards of twenty essays thus contributed to Smollett's magazine, few were republished by Goldsmith; but from other causes, certainly, than lack of merit. One was a criticism of two rival singers, two Polly Peachums then dividing Vauxhall, so pleasantly worded that neither could take offence; but of temporary interest chiefly. Another was a caution against violent courtships, from a true story in the family of his uncle Contarine; perhaps thought too private for reappearance in more permanent form. A third (not reproduced, it may be, lest the wooden-legged philosopher should lose in popularity by a companion less popular than himself) described, as a contrast to the

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happiness of the maimed and luckless soldier, the miseries of a healthy half-pay officer of unexpected fortune, unable to bear the transition from moderate to extravagant means, and rendered so insensible by unused indulgences that he had come to see Falstaff without a smile and the Orphan without emotion. A fourth was a little history of seduction, hasty and abrupt; but in which the hero bore such resemblance to the immortal family of the Primroses, as to have fitly merged and been forgotten in their later glory.

The last of these detached essays which I shall mention for the present, did not appear in the British Magazine, but much concerned it; and though not reckoned worthy of preservation by its writer, is evidence not to be omitted of his hearty feeling to Smollett, and ready resource to serve a friend. It was in plain words a puff of the British Magazine and its projector; and a puff of as witty pretension as ever visited the ingenious brain of the yet unborn friend of Mr. Dangle. It purported to describe a Wow-wow; a kind of newspaper club of a country town, to which the writer amusingly described himself driven, by his unavailing efforts to find anybody anywhere else. All were at the Wow-wow, from the apothecary to the drawer of the tavern; and there he found, inspired by pipes and newspapers, such a smoke and fire of political discussion, such a setting right of all the mistakes of the generals in the war, such a battle, conducted with chalk, upon the blunders of Finck and Daun, and such quidnunc explosions against the Dutch in Pondicherry, that infallibly the