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pounds, and was at his wits'-end how to wipe off the score and keep a roof over his head, except by closing with a very staggering proposal on her part, and taking his creditor to wife, whose charms were very far from alluring, while her demands were extremely urgent. In this crifis of his fate he was found by Johnson in the act of meditating on the melancholy alternative before him. He showed Johnson his manuscript of The Vicar of Wakefield, but feemed to be without any plan, or even hope, of raifing money upon the disposal of it; when Johnson caft his eye upon it, he discovered fomething that gave him hope, and immediately took it to Dodfley, who paid down the price above-mentioned in ready money, and added an eventual condition upon its future fale. Johnson described the precautions he took in concealing the amount of the fum he had in hand, which he prudently administered to him by a guinea at a time. In the event be paid off the landlady's fcore, and redeemed the person of his friend from her embraces."

In all thefe varying accounts—the discrepancies of which fcarcely deferve minute attention—it will be remarked that no reference is made to Goldsmith himself as the fource of information, while all the writers, Hawkins excepted, profefs to have obtained their data direct from Johnson, the only other actor in the drama. It is also manifest that each narrator reproduces, in more or less accurate form, one and the fame incident. Goldsmith's necessity, Johnson's intervention, the confequent fale of a book in manufcript, these features are common to them all. The difference confifts in the details which each adds, alters or omits; and it becomes a queftion which, on the whole, is most worthy of credit. In this refpect Bofwell has greatly the

advantage over his competitors. His method of reporting, though by no means perfect, was unusually painstaking and exact. His chronicle is, in addition, that of a man to whom chronicling was a felf-imposed function; and who was not recording his random recollections, or reviving the faded impreffions of half-forgotten things. Cumberland's femiapocryphal Memoirs were compofed when he was a feptuagenarian, and a feptuagenarian, moreover, who had apparently neglected to read Bofwell's Life; Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes were jotted down in Italy, far from JohnJon's contemporaries, and long after the events to which they relate; while the jumbled paragraphs of Sir John Hawkins plainly bear upon them the marks either of imperfect information or imperfect apprehenfion. Bofwell's Story alone wears an air of veracity, and it has generally been regarded as the accepted verfion.

Bofwell, however, makes one notable omission—he gives no date for the incident he defcribes. Mrs. Piozzi, or, as it will be most convenient to call her, Mrs. Thrale, thinks that it could not have been later than 1765 or 1766. It was, demonftrably, earlier than this. "The bookfeller," Johnson told Bofwell," had fuch faint hopes of profit by his bargain, that he kept the manuscript by him a long time, and did not publish it till after the Traveller had appeared." "It was written and fold to a bookfeller before his Traveller, but published after," he fays again, in terms that could scarcely be more explicit. The Traveller-Goldsmith's first long poem-appeared on the 19th December, 1764. Thus we get a definite date before which the fale must have taken place; and GoldSmith's biographers, while refraining from anything like authoritative statement, seem to have practically de

cided that it cannot have been much before—in fact that, as one of them fays, it was “late in 1764." And, indeed, this would feem to follow naturally from any attempt to reconcile the evidence of the two witnesses beft acquainted with the facts, Bofwell and Mrs. Thrale. Johnson, whofe prefence is essential to the story, was away with Percy in Northamptonshire during part of June, July, and Auguft, and had not returned to London on the 19th of the last-mentioned month, when he wrote a letter to Reynolds, which Bofwell prints. After he got back, he made the acquaintance, for the first time, of Thrale and his wife. If, fetting afide minor inconfiftencies, it be affumed that Mrs. Thrale can scarcely have been mistaken in dating the occurrence after her first acquaintance with the great man, we are driven to the conclufion that Goldsmith's arrest by his landlady must have taken place at fome time between Auguft the 19th and December the 19th, 1764. This would favour the conjecture now from habit almost regarded as an established fact, that the landlady was Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming, and that the lodging was the room at Islington which, as the accounts printed by Prior and Forfter incontestably prove, Goldfmith occupied during April, May, and June in 1764, and perhaps later. Up to June, John Newbery the bookfeller, for whom the author of the Vicar was chiefly working, had, by arrangement, paid his bills for board and lodging; and it has not unreasonably been concluded that Goldsmith's misadventure arose from the temporary withdrawal of John Newbery's aid.

Unfortunately the minutest pin-prick from a fact or date is generally fatal to the most artfully inflated furFrom an ancient account-book, which is at present

miles.

in the keeping of Mr. Charles Welsh,* but formerly belonged to one B. Collins, Printer, of Salisbury, it feems that, as far back as the 28th of October, 1762, the said B. Collins had purchased of " Dr. Goldsmith, the Author," for £21, a third share in the Vicar of Wakefield. The problem, therefore, becomes one, not of reconciling Bofwell's ftory with that of Mrs. Thrale, who must be left henceforth in undisturbed enjoyment of her reputation for what Johnson himself ftigmatised as her " laxity of narration," but of bringing Bofwell's story into agreement with the fresh information contributed to the question by this hitherto unrevealed tranfaction of B. Collins of Salifbury. It must be confessed that the solution is not an easy one. Still, the record in Collins's account-book is fupported by feveral collateral circumstances. The reference in chapter ix. of the Vicar to the famous "mufical glasses" which were in full vogue circa 1761-62, and that in chapter xix. to Arthur Murphy's paper, the Auditor; which only began its career on the 10th June, 1762, Seem to point unmistakably to the middle of that year as the date at or about which the book was being written. Then, again, when it was ultimately printed, Collins himSelf was the printer; and he was undoubtedly at some time poffeffed of a third fhare in it, becaufe, as will presently

*Mr. Welf is a member of the firm of Griffith, Farran, Okeden and Welf, of St. Paul's Churchyard, the latest fucceffors to John Newbery. He is at present engaged upon a long-expected life of the old bookfeller and publisher, in which it is hoped some of these knotty questions may receive their definite difentanglement.

be fhewn, he afterwards fold a third share. Lastly, the price which he paid for his third share in 1762, putting guineas for pounds, correfponds with a third of the price which, according to Bofwell's account, Johnfon obtained for the manufcript. In order to harmonise the facts, we must therefore affume that the unnamed bookfeller of Johnson, at his preffing solicitation, advanced the whole of the price agreed upon, leaving the question of the partners in his venture for fubfequent fettlement. Or it may be, that when Johnson said "I brought Goldsmith the money," he did not mean the whole fum, but an instalment. In this way the statement of Collins that he purchased his third share from the author would be explained; and the apparent abjence of any receipt on Goldsmith's part for the £60 fatisfactorily accounted for.

W

But who was Johnson's unnamed bookfeller? Hawkins fays Newbery; Cumberland, Dodfley. The circumStances feem to point to John Newbery. He had already employed, and continued to employ Goldsmith; and it may be that the arrangement by which he afterwards paid for Goldsmith's board and lodging at Mrs. Fleming's in Iflington was the outcome of this experience of the author's manners and customs. On the other hand, his

*Mrs. Fleming, it may be obferved, in the above circumftances, is wholly cleared from her traditional reputation as an arbitrary landlady, fince Goldsmith's first residence in her house appears to have been fubfequent to the 28th October, 1762. (Cf. Forfler's Life, Bk. iii., chap. vii.)

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