Chinese Letters, being a familiar acquaintance, and fond of music, Goldsmith would play the flute for him; and to such assumed delight on the part of his listener did he do this one day, that Roubiliac, protesting he must copy the air upon the spot, took up a sheet of paper, scored a few lines and spaces (the form of the notes being all he knew of the matter), and with random blotches pretended to take down the time as repeated by the good-natured musician; while gravely, and with great attention, Goldsmith, surveying these musical hieroglyphics,

said they were very correct, and that if he had not seen 'him do it, he never could have believed his friend capable ' of writing music after him.' Sir John Hawkins tells the story with much satisfaction. Exposure of an ignorant flute-player, with nothing but vulgar accomplishments of 'ear' to bestow upon his friends, gives great delight to pompous Hawkins, as a learned historian of music.

So passed the thoughtless life of Goldsmith in his first year of success if so may be called the scanty pittance which served to expose his foibles, but not to protect him from their consequence. So may his life be read in these Letters to the Public Ledger; and still with the comment of pleasure and instruction for others, though at the cost of suffering to himself. His habits as well as thoughts are in them. He is at the theatre, enjoying Garrick's Abel Drugger and laughing at all who call it 'low'; a little tired of Polly and Macheath; not at all interested by the famous and fortunate tumbler who, between the acts of

tragedies as well as farces, balances a straw upon his nose; and zig-zagging his way home after all is over, through a hundred obstacles from coach-wheels and palanquinpoles, like a bird in its flight through the branches of a 'forest.' He is a visitor at the humble pot-house clubs, whose follies and enjoyments he moralizes with touching pleasantry. 'Were I to be angry at men for being fools, I 'could here have found ample room for declamation; but, 'alas! I have been a fool myself, and why should I be 'angry with them for being something so natural to every 'child of humanity.' Unsparing historian of this folly of his own, he conceals his imprudence as little as his poverty; and his kind heart he has not the choice to conceal. Everywhere it betrays itself. In hours of depression, recalling the disastrous fate of men of genius, and mighty poets in 'their misery dead;' in imaginary interviews with booksellers, laughing at their sordid mistakes; in remonstrances with his own class, warning them of the danger of despising each other; and in rarer periods of perfect self-reliance, asserting the power and claims of men of letters, and denouncing the short-sightedness of statesmen. Instead of ' complaining that writers are over-paid, when their works procure them a bare subsistence, I should imagine it the duty of a State not only to encourage their numbers, but 'their industry. . . A man of letters at present, whose 'works are valuable, is perfectly sensible of their value. 'Every polite member of the community, by buying what 'he writes, contributes to reward him. The ridicule of

living in a garret might have been wit in the last age, but continues such no longer.'

The quiet composure of this passage exhibits the healthiest aspect of his mind. Bookseller and public are confronted calmly, and the consequences fairly challenged. It is indeed very obvious, at the close of this first year of the Public Ledger, that increasing opportunities of employment (to say nothing of the constant robbery of his writings by pirate magazine-men) were really teaching him his value, and suggesting hopes he had not earlier dared to entertain. He resumed his connection with the Lady's Magazine, and became its editor: publishing in it, among other writings known and unknown, what he had written of his Life of Voltaire; and retiring from its editorship at the close of a year, when he had raised its circulation (if Mr. Wilkie's advertisements are to be believed) to three thousand three hundred. He continued his contributions, meanwhile, to the British Magazine; from which he was not wholly separated till two months before poor Smollett, pining for the loss of his only daughter, went upon the continent (in 1763) never to return to a fixed or settled residence in London. He furnished other booksellers with occasional compilation-prefaces; and he gave some papers (among them a Life of Christ and Lives of the Fathers, re-published with his name, in shilling pamphlets, a few months after his death) to a so-called Christian Magazine, undertaken by Newbery in connection with the macaroni parson Dodd, and conducted by that villanous

pretender as an organ of fashionable divinity. It seems to follow as of course upon these engagements, that the room in Green Arbour Court should at last be exchanged for one of greater comfort. He had left that place in the later months of 1760, and gone into what were called respectable lodgings in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street. The house belonged to a relative of Newbery's, and he occupied two rooms in it for nearly two years.

A circumstance occurred in this new abode which must have endeared it always to his remembrance; but more deeply associated with the wretched habitation he had left, were days of a most forlorn misery as well as of a manly resolution, and round that beggarly dwelling, and all connected with it, there crowded to the last the kindest memories of his gentle and true nature. Thus, when bookseller Davies tells us, after his death, how tender and compassionate he was; how no unhappy person ever sued to him for relief, without obtaining it if he had anything to give; and how he would borrow, rather than not relieve the distressed: he adds that 'the poor woman with whom he had lodged during his obscurity several years in Green Arbour Court, 'by his death lost an excellent friend; for the Doctor ' often supplied her with food from his own table, and 'visited her frequently with the sole purpose to be kind to 'her.' As little, in connection with Wine Office Court, could he forget that Johnson first visited him there.

They had probably met before. I have shown how frequently the thoughts of Goldsmith vibrated to that

great Grub Street figure of independence and manhood, which, in an age not remarkable for either, was undoubtedly presented in the person of the author of the English Dictionary. One of the last Chinese Letters had again alluded to the Johnsons and Smolletts' as veritable poets, though they might never have made a verse in their whole lives; and among the earliest greetings of the new essay-writer, I suspect that Johnson's would be found. The opinion expressed in his generous question of a few years later (Is there a man, sir, now, who can pen an essay with such ease and elegance as Goldsmith ?") he was not the man to wait for the world to help him to. Himself connected with Newbery, and engaged in like occupation, the new adventurer wanted his helping word, and would be therefore sure to have it; nor, if it had not been a hearty one, is Doctor Percy likely to have busied himself to bring about the present meeting. It was arranged by that grave divine. It was the first time, he says, he had seen them together. The day fixed was the 31st of May 1761, and Goldsmith gave a supper in Wine Office Court in honour of his visitor.

Percy called to take up Johnson at Inner Temple Lane, and found him, to his great astonishment, in a marked condition of cleanliness and neatness; without his rusty brown suit or his soiled shirt, his loose knee-breeches, his unbuckled shoes, or his old little shrivelled unpowdered wig; and not at all likely, as Miss Reynolds tells us his fashion in these days was, to be mistaken for a beggarman. He had been