caught up the jest, with abuse, and, for a punishment, insisted, at the suggestion of the company, that the man should eat the horrible viands himself. A fresh supper was prepared for Oliver, who, soon regretting the vengeance he had taken, ordered "a dram for the poor waiter, who might otherwise get sick from so nauseating a meal." What wild tales of things beyong his immediate cognizance would not a man believe who smelt the dish beneath his nose by the assertions of his friends!

In the lodging in Wine Office Court, Goldsmith, on the 31st of May, 1761, received for the first time to supper the great Samuel Johnson. Percy, who brought about the meeting, called for the sage, and found him in a trim unlike what he had ever witnessed before, his clothes new and his wig nicely powdered. Marvelling why the negligent Johnson should dress himself with such courtly care to visit an indigent author in his humble apartment, Percy ventured to inquire the cause, and received for reply,-"Why, sir, I hear that Goldsmith, who is a very great sloven, justifies his disregard of cleanliness and decency by quoting my practice, and I am desirous this night to show him a better example." An addiction to foppery had been the former as it was the subsequent weakness of Oliver. In Ireland he got the reputation of attempting to dazzle his bishop by a pair of scarlet breeches; in Edinburgh, as we learn from a tailor's bill which Mr. Forster has recovered, he wore "rich sky-blue satin," "fine skyblue shalloon," and silver hat-lace;" on settling in London, he was met by an old schoolfellow in a tarnished suit of green and gold; when his reputation was established, a waiting-woman at a house where he visited remembered him chiefly by the ludicrous ostentation with which he showed off his cloak and cane; and when he was with a party of celebrities, such as Johnson, Reynolds, Garrick, and Murphy, "he strutted about bragging of his bloom-colored coat," and announcing that his tailor, Mr. Filby, had begged to be recommended when admiring spectators asked who made his clothes. From the retort of Johnson that Mr. Filby was thinking of the crowd which would be attracted by the strange hue of the cloth, and of the credit he should get for producing a reputable garment out of so absurd a color, it may be presumed that even for those gayerdressing days it was ridiculously gaudy. It was, therefore, from no indifference to appearances that for a brief interval he resigned himself to a sordid style of dress. His pockets

were empty, his credit nothing, and, making a virtue of necessity, he was glad to justify the meanness of his attire by the example of Johnson. The year 1762 found him still working upon a variety of compilations for Mr. Newberry, of whom he said that "he was the patron of more distressed authors than any man of his time," and a distressed author now and ever after was Oliver Goldsmith. On one occasion this patron paid him twenty guineas-"a sum," he said, "I was so little used to receive in a lump, that I felt myself under the embarrassment of Captain Brazen in the play, whether I should build a privateer or a playhouse with the money. The embarrassment which quickly followed was of an opposite kind, and he had constant recourse to Mr. Newberry for loans. "These paltry advances," Mr. Forster admirably remarks, in language which ought to sink into the mind of every man who makes literature his profession, "are a hopeless entanglement. They bar freedom of judgment on anything proposed, and escape is felt to be impossible. Some dayssome weeks, perhaps have been lost in idleness or illness; the future becomes a mortgage to the past, every hour has its want forestalled upon the labor of the succeeding hour, and Gulliver lies bound in Lilliput."

This was the period of the Cock-lane ghost. A clerk in a public office, prohibited by the law from marrying the sister of his deceased wife, lived with her in concubinage. She died of the small-pox in the early part of 1760, bequeathing her property, which was about a hundred pounds, to her lover. They had previously lodged in Cock-lane with one Parsons, a parish clerk, who borrowed money of his tenant, and, being unable or unwilling to defray the debt, he was sued by his creditor. The grudge which rankled in the mind of Parsons found vent upon the death of the woman, and he set his daughter, a girl of twelve, to assert that she had seen her ghost, and to counterfeit noises which were supposed to come from the "perturbed spirit." The final result to which the device tended was, that the ghost was to knock, twice for a negative and once for an affirmative, and by this means to indicate that she had been poisoned by her paramour, and wished him hanged. The sensation excited by the farce at the commencement of 1762 was immense. Duke of York, Lord Hertford, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, and Horace Walpole, went together in a hackney-coach, and, though it rained in torrents, found the lane

The

full of people, and the house so crammed that it was impossible to get in till somebody recognized the Duke. While the phrenzy was proceeding, Dr. Johnson, in conjunction with other persons of eminence, investigated the story. The ghost had never made a sign except when the girl was present and in bed, and, the Doctor obliging her to place her hands above the clothes, the noises | ceased. The spirit having very incautiously promised to strike her own coffin, which was in the church of St. John's, Clerkenwell, the company adjourned to the vault, and called upon her in vain to keep her word. The exposure was complete, and Johnson drew up a statement of the particulars, and published it in the newspapers. The Doctor himself always spoke of his share in detecting the cheat with much satisfaction, but many, with Churchill at their head, laughed at him for thinking it worth a serious refutation. Parsons, for his infamous attempt to procure the death of his former lodger by a judicial murder, was three times set in the pillory at the end of Cock-lane, and imprisoned for a year. The mob, who were more ready "to take the ghost's word" than to listen to Johnson's reasoning, sympathized with Parsons, and collected a subscription for him. An incident which for weeks and weeks was the talk of the town promised to prove a popular topic, and, by an extant receipt for three guineas paid by Newberry, Goldsmith was known to have produced a pamphlet on the subject. The supposed piece, under the title of "The Mystery Revealed," has been lately discovered, and is republished by Mr. Cunningham in Goldsmith's works.

Shortly after Johnson had laid, and Goldsmith chronicled, the Cock-lane ghost, the worn-out author visited Tunbridge and Bath for his health. The king of the latter place, the notorious Beau Nash, had died the year before, and Goldsmith took advantage of the event to write his Life. He speaks in many passages of his personal acquaintance with him; and though it does not appear when or where the meeting occurred, it is either a fact, or he must have received a considerable assistance from the friends of the Beau. The literal report of the conversation, than which nothing can be more dramatic, and of itself conveys a perfect picture of the man, together with the details of his habits and manners, could only have proceeded from a familiar associate. The merit of the biography is less as a piece of composition, a particular in which it is very unequal, than

as a vivid portrait of the vanities, the follies, the vices, and, what was a redeeming trait, the charities of this poor slave and arbiter of fashion. He has neither exalted nor caricatured him. He describes him as what he was "a weak man governing weaker subjects," frivolous, insipid, petulant, and boastful, without steady principles or the lighter talents. People bore with his dominion because he was a useful manager of their amusements, and because they were conscious that they paid him but a mock respect. Goldsmith received for this biography, which is of considerable length, only fourteen guineas.

At the end of 1762, Goldsmith, urged, we suppose, by the necessity for fresher air and more active exercise, hired, in addition to his London lodging, country apartments in Islington from a friend of Newberry's, Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming. To secure the landlady her dues, and to protect Goldsmith from the effects of his own prodigality, it was agreed that the bookseller should pay the board and lodging quarterly, and deduct it from the literary earnings of his author. What little money Oliver fingered was doled out to him in small sums of from one to two guineas at a time. No better arrangement could be made for a man, who, in his own words, was careless of the future, and intent upon enjoying the present; but even this precaution, after a short trial, proved insufficient to ward off the old distresses. In the meanwhile, besides writing sundry miscellanies, he was busy upon a "History of England" for the young, in a series of letters. His mode of compiling was to spend his morning in reading such a portion of Hume, Rapin, and sometimes Kennet, as would furnish matter for a single chapter. He passed the remainder of his day with his friends, and and when he went up to bed wrote off his forenoon preparations with the same facility as a common letter. With such a system there could be no deep research, comprehensive views, or profound thought. Nor does he pretend to anything of the kind. His aim was to produce a pleasing transparent narrative, and in this he succeeded. The "Letters" appeared in 1764 as from a "Nobleman to his Son," and were generally attributed to the first Lord Littleton, whose stiff and heavy composition had no resemblance whatever to the easy and often careless style of Goldsmith. The sale of the book was rapid, and, though superficial and inaccurate, it has never ceased to be a favorite.

Newberry's payments exceeding Gold

smith's earnings, the advances came to an end, and the landlady's bills were left undischarged. She was a woman in whom resolution was unmixed with tenderness, and not withstanding that the arrears were of short continuance, she arrested him at the close of 1764 for her rent. When Boswell expressed his wonder that he who had obtained the title of the "great moralist" should be kind to a man of very bad character, Goldsmith replied -"He has now become miserable, and that insures the protection of Johnson." It was to this steady friend of the miserable that he had recourse in his present dilemma, and when the messenger returned he brought with him a guinea and the assurance that the moralist would soon follow. Johnson found him in a violent passion, the guinea changed, and a bottle of Medeira and a glass before him. As they talked of the means of extricating him from his difficulties, Goldsmith produced a novel he had composed in his snatches of leisure, and Johnson, after glancing his eye through its pages, sallied out and sold it for sixty pounds to James Newberry, the nephew of the bookseller with whom we are already familiar. Oliver paid his rent, rated the landlady, and left her lodgings. Johnson thought himself that the novel would meet with but moderate success, and Newberry's opinion of it was not sufficiently high to induce him to print it. A manuscript which was among the most precious ever penned was thrown aside for the present, and half of Goldsmith's immortality lay exposed to the accidents which grow out of negligence.

But the day was now come when he was to emerge from obscurity, and gain that station among the eminent men of his time for which he had pined so long. "The Traveller," which he had commenced nine years before when he was abroad, and which he had brooded over at intervals with fond solicitude, was at last ready for the press. In 1758, when he was young in authorship, he told his brother Henry that poetry was easier to produce than prose, which can only be taken as an indication that he was not then the ready writer of prose which he quickly became, for to the last he composed poetry with singular slowness. He used to say that he had been four or five years in gathering the incidents of his "Deserted Village," and two years were spent in the process of versifying what he had gleaned. Nobody would have guessed, when "The Traveller" appeared on the 19th of December, 1764, what months of toil lay hid in that little pamphlet of verse, which

seemed as if it had flowed from the author's mind with the same facility that it fell from the reader's tongue. But the labor had not been greater than the reward. In a few weeks it crept into reputation, and was equally admired by the many and the discriminating few. Johnson declared that there had been no such price since the time of Pope, and Fox said later that it was one of the finest poems in the English language. There is perhaps no other which combines an equal amount of ease and polish-which preserves a juster medium between negligence and constraint. The sentiments and language are of the same mild and equable cast. There are no bold flights of fancy, no daring metaphors, no sublime ideas or penetrating maxims. The charm is in the happy selection of the particulars which compose his pictures of men and nature in the different countries of Europe, and in the almost unvarying elegance, and often the exquisite felicity of the language in which these particulars are embodied. Many single lines are unsurpassed for gentle beauty of expression, and for the distinctness of the image which they place before the mind. He excels, too, in those artifices of style by which the repetition of words and phrases adds melody and force. His verse is pitched in the key which suits with the general spirit of his poetry. It is less resounding than that of Johnson, but it has sufficient tulness of tone, and is all but uniformly musical. For this delightful pro

* "There is not," said Langton, "a bad line in that poem of the Traveller; not one of Dryden's careless verses." He must have forgotten the last line of the following couplet, which ought to have

been intolerable to the fine ear of Goldsmith: "As different good, by Art or Nature given,

To different nations, makes their blessings even." The passage cost him considerable trouble, for he expunged the version which stands in the first edition, and the couplet we have quoted makes part of the second attempt. The few additions he owed to Johnson are excellent, and one line especially, which he introduced into Goldsmith's description of the wanderer lost in the forest, and dreading destruction from Indians or wild beasts, is admirable for its terseness, its melody, and the vivid picture which it presents of a man struggling between terror and fatigue.

later received the title of the "Literary Club," but which at first was called the "Turk's Head Club," from the name of the tavern where it met.* It was settled by its founders, Johnson and Reynolds, that it should consist of such men that, if only two of them attended, they should have the abil

"The Traveller" was inscribed to the brother to whom the first sketch was sent from Switzerland, and who is addressed in the opening lines of the poem in as magical language as was ever dictated by genius and affection combined. Henry Goldsmith was seven years older than Oliver, and something of the respect which would be paid to a parent seems to have mingled with the fraternal love of the younger; for not only in his public dedication, but in a private letter, he calls him "Dear Sir." He soon afterwards gave a proof of his attachment. The LordLieutenant of Ireland-the Eail of Northumberland-hearing that the author of "The Traveller" was a native of that country, sent for him, and offered to promote his advancement, to which Goldsmith replied that he had a brother, a clergyman, who stood in need of help. "As for myself," said Oliver to Sir John Hawkins, who was waiting in the outer room, I look to the booksellers for support; they are my best friends, and I am not inclined to forsake them for others." He was feeling then the first flush of satisfaction from the increased estimation in which he was held by the trade, and the more liberal offers which came thick upon him; but the power of his name only served in the end to increase his embarrassments. He employed it to raise larger sums and contract more numerous obligations, while the money was quickly spent and the obligations remained. In the compassion which is excited by the distresses of Goldsmith, it must never be forgotten that many of them were the result of his own misconduct; and we fear, if a debtor and creditor account were struck, it would be found at the close that in money dealings he had been guilty of greater injustice to others than had ever been committed against himself.

66

In 1763 was established what many years

among the nine original members, and owed this honor to the influence and recommendation of Johnson, who in the same year said of him to Boswell, "He is one of the first men we now have as an author, and he is a very worthy man too. He has been loose in his principles, but he is coming right." But this opinion of his literary attainments was that of Johnson himself, and not of the world. What he had hitherto written had been published anonymously, and, if Hawkins is to be believed, when he was mentioned for the club, the notion prevailed that he was a mere bookseller's drudge, incapable of anything higher than translating or compiling. Admitted at first upon sufferance, he was now become, by the publication of his poem, among the ornaments of the society. The attention he began to receive is shown in his amusing and characteristic speech when Kelly introduced himself to him at the Temple Exchange Coffeehouse, and asked him to dinner. "I would with pleasure," said Goldsmith, "accept your kind invitation, but, to tell you the truth, my dear boy, my Traveller' has found me a home in so many places, that I am engaged, I believe, three days. Let me see-to-day I dine with Edmund Burke, to-morrow with Dr. Nugent, and the next day with Topham Beauclerk; but I'll tell you what I'll do for you, I'll dine with you Saturday." About the same time Lloyd, the friend of Churchill, accosted him in a tavern, and, claiming his acquaintance as a brother poet, invited him to a supper-party in the evening. Long after midnight Goldsmith heard the voice of his host in altercation with a man in the passage, and, hastening to the support of his new friend, found that the landlord of the house, to whom Lloyd was already in debt, was refusing to trust him for the reckoning. "Pho, pho, my dear boy !" exclaimed Goldsmith, "let's have no more words about the matter;" and turning to the landlord asked him if he would take his pledge for the amount. "Most certainly, Doctor," said the man, "and for as

*The most accurate and complete account of the early history of the Literary Club which has yet appeared will be found in the volumes of Mr. Forster.

much more as you like." "Why, then," rejoined Lloyd, "send in another cast of wine, and add it to the bill." With this bill the landlord presented himself in due course at Goldsmith's door, and he discovered too late that the evening's entertainment had in every sense of the word been at his expense.

Among other effects of his growing fame, it was now that he resolved his dress should be worthy of his reputation, and he appeared in purple silk smallclothes, a scarlet greatcoat, and a physician's wig. He carried a gold-headed cane, the badge of his calling, in his hand, and a sword, which was never combined with this professional symbol, hung at his side. The weapon was so disproportioned to his diminutive stature that a coxcomb who passed him in the Strand called to his companion" to look at that fly with a long pin stuck through it." Goldsmith not only descended to a retort, and cautioned the passengers against that "brace of pickpockets," but stepped from the footpath into the roadway, half-drew his sword, and invited the jester to a mortal combat. The fops slunk away amid the hootings of the spectators; and the story has been told as an instance of the manly valor of Goldsmith. Such a vaporing challenge in a crowded street where a duel was impossible seems to us to be only a proof of his extreme indiscretion.

Goldsmith, in the early part of 1764, left his town lodging in Wine-Office Court, for Garden Court, in the Temple, where he shared his rooms with the butler of the society. Ashamed of their mean appearance, he observed apologetically to Johnson, "I shall soon be in better chambers, Sir, than these." "Nay, Sir," said Johnson," never mind that. Nil te quæsiveris extra.' When the sudden success of the "Traveller" changed his position in the world, he removed to more decent apartments in the same court. His country quarters were, first in a room of Canonbury Tower, Islington, and next in a small house in the Edgeware Road, which he shared with one Bott, a barrister, described by Cooke as "an intimate literary friend."His labors during 1765, and a large portion of 1766, have left little trace, and, unless we had known that he was compelled to write to live, we should have inferred that he had resigned himself to the indolent enjoyment of his fame. It is conjectured, from a memorandum by Newberry, that he drew up at this time the rough draught of the work entitled "A Survey of Experimental Philosophy," which was not published till after his death, and which, small as is now its scien

tific value, may still be read with pleasure, for that translucent style and felicity of expression which throw a literary charm over even the rigid facts of natural philosophy. He made a selection of Poems for Young Ladies," in 1766, for which he had ten guineas, and for another compilation of the same kind, in 1767, he was paid fifty. For the latter he told Mr. Cooke he got two hundred pounds, just as three years before he assured Boswell that he had received four hundred for the "Vicar of Wakefield." He must often have paid dearly for these false pretences. The mention of such large sums would invite applications from needy friends, which, with his easy disposition, and his anxiety to make good his boast, he would be unable to resist. Though the two hundred pounds was a fable, he assigned an excellent reason why so slight a task should be so liberally rewarded. "A man," he said, "shows his judgment in these selections, and he may often be twenty years of his life cultivating that judgment.'

a

On the 27th of March, 1766, the "Vicar of Wakefield," appeared, and ran through three editions in the year. Its excellence, therefore, was recognized at once, but it was not at first what it has since become, one of the most popular books in the English language. Garrick said there was nothing to be learned from it; Johnson called it mere fanciful performance;" and Burke, in praising it, seems to have specified its pathos as its distinguishing merit. When Johnson said it was fanciful, he alluded, we presume, to the construction of the story, which is full of improbabilities. The accumulated miseries which befal the vicar and his family, and their strange and rapid return to prosperity, have often been mentioned as passing the bounds of ordinary experience. The majority, indeed, of the principal incidents arise from a series of chances, which, separately, were not unlikely to happen, but which in conjunction cease to be natural. When the vicar is supping with the servants at the fine mansion, and the master and mistress unexpectedly return, it saves him from discomfiture that they enter accompanied by the object of his son's attachment, Miss Arabella Wilmot. When the whole party go to witness the performance of the strolling players, this son stands before him as one of the actors. When he continues his journey, and stops at night at a little public-house, he hears the landlady abuse a poor lodger in the garret, and recognizes his lost daughter in the supplicant's voice. Such wonderful meetings are set