corner of St. Paul's Churchyard and Ludgate-street. He is described by a contemporary as "the philanthropic bookseller, with the red-pimpled face." His shop, afterwards Mr. Harris's, another clever provider of juvenilia, is now occupied by Messrs. Griffith and Farran, who, by progressing with the times, fully maintain the reputation for children's books which this spot has enjoyed for more than a century.

Newbery started, on Jan. 12, 1760, the Public Ledger newspaper, which still exists as a commercial journal. It commenced with a literary reputation, for Goldsmith contributed to it his Citizen of the World; and he proved so adroit, and withal so diligent, that Newbery charged himself thenceforth for several years in providing occupation for Oliver's pen.

In the course of 1762, he produced for Newbery a pamphlet on the Cock-lane Ghost, for which he received three guineas. This pamphlet is printed, for the first time in Goldsmith's Collected Works, in Mr. Peter Cunningham's edition. Goldsmith next produced a History of Mecklenburg, suggested by the arrival of Queen Charlotte, 201.; the English Plutarch, 2 vols. 457.; Abridgment of the History of England, (the smallest of four from this pen,) two guineas; a Life of Beau Nash, 14 guineas; and miscellaneous papers, which raised his revenue from St. Paul's Churchyard in all to 1207.

SMOLLETT AND GOLDSMITH.

In 1760, Goldsmith engaged with Dr. Smollett, who was about to start the British Magazine. Smollett was a schemer and speculator in literature, and intent upon enterprises that had money rather than reputation in view. Goldsmith has a good-humoured hit at this propensity in one of his papers in the Bee, in which he represents Johnson, Hume, and others, taking seats in the stage-coach bound for Fame, while Smollett prefers that destined for Riches.

GOLDSMITH'S CLUBS.

However Oliver might court the learned circle, he was ill at ease there; yet he had some social resorts in which he indemnified himself for this restraint by indulging his humour without control. One of these was a shilling whist club, which met at the Devil Tavern, which stood upon the site of Child's-place, Temple Bar. The company delighted in

T

practical jokes, of which Goldsmith was often the butt. One night, he came to the club in a hackney-coach, when he gave the driver a guinea instead of a shilling. He set this down as a dead loss; but on the next club night, he was told that a person at the street-door wanted to speak to him; he went out, and to his surprise and delight, the coachman had brought back the guinea! To reward such honesty, he collected a small sum from the Club, and largely increased it from his own purse, and with this reward sent away the coachman. He was still loud in his praise, when one of the Club asked to see the returned guinea. To Goldsmith's confusion, it proved to be a counterfeit. The laughter which succeeded showed him that the whole was a hoax, and the pretended coachman as much a counterfeit as the guinea. He was so disconcerted, it is said, that he soon beat a retreat for the evening.

Another of those free-and-easy clubs met on Wednesday evenings at the Globe Tavern in Fleet Street; it was somewhat in the style of the Three Jolly Pigeons: songs, jokes, dramatic imitations, burlesque parodies, and broad sallies of humour. Here a huge "tun of man," by the name of Gordon, used to delight Goldsmith by singing the jovial song of "Nottingham Ale," and looking like a butt of it. Here, too, a wealthy pig-butcher aspired to be on the most sociable footing with the author; and here was Tom King, the comedian, recently risen to consequence by his performance of Lord Ogleby, in the new comedy of the Clandestine Marriage. A member of more note was one Hugh Kelly, a second-rate author, who was a kind of competitor of Goldsmith's, but a low one; for Johnson used to speak of him as a man who had written more than he had read. Another noted frequenter of the Globe and Devil taverns was one Glover, who, having failed in the medical profession, took to the stage; but having succeeded in restoring to life a malefactor who had just been executed, he abandoned the stage, and resumed his wig and cane, and came to London to dabble in physic and literature. He used to amuse the company by his story-telling and mimicry, giving capital imitations of Garrick, Foote, Colman, Sterne, and others. He seldom happened to have money enough to pay his reckoning, but was always sure to find some ready purse among those who had been amused by his humours. Goldsmith, of course, was one of the readiest. It was through him that Glover was

admitted to the Wednesday Club. Glover, however, was especially shocked by the free-and-easy tone in which Goldsmith was addressed by the pig-butcher, "Come, Noll," would he say, as he pledged him, "here's my service to you, old boy!"

It was not always, however, that the humour of these associates was to his taste: as they became boisterous in their merriment, he was apt to become depressed. "The company of fools," says he, in one of his Essays, "may at first make us smile; but at last never fails of making us melancholy." "Often he would become moody," says Glover, " and would leave the party abruptly, to go home, and brood over his misfortune."

"THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD."

The story of the production of this delicious little novel, is one of the best known episodes in Goldsmith's history. No incident of an author's life has become more popular: painters have transferred it to their canvas, and biographers to their pages, and our anecdote life of the novelist would be incomplete without it.

The work had been no hasty effort, but a labour of love, whenever the author could shift off the yoke of translation or compilation. It is thought to have been commenced so early as 1761, and it lay by him until the spring of 1763. The circumstances attending its sale are too singular to be told in any other words than those of Johnson, as reported by Boswell:

"I received one morning," says Johnson, "a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion: I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him 80 ill."

Mrs. Piozzi gives the same anecdote with some variations; among others, that Johnson found Goldsmith with his bottle

of Madeira in the evening, not the morning; and Mr. Croker inclines to adopt this more favourable account.

Another version of the story is that Goldsmith insisted on the landlady joining him in a bowl of punch.

The novel in question was the Vicar of Wakefield; the bookseller to whom Johnson sold it was Francis Newbery, nephew to John. When he completed the bargain, which he probably entered into partly from compassion, partly from deference to Johnson's judgment, he had so little confidence in the value of his purchase, that the Vicar of Wakefield remained in manuscript until the publication of the Traveller had established the fame of the author.

For some of the incidents of the Vicar of Wakefield, Goldsmith "unquestionably taxed his recollections of early life. The primitive habits of Lissoy and Kilkenny-West furnished hints which, when applied to the interior of an English vicarage, were thought, and perhaps truly, inappropriate or overcharged. As usual also we find much of himself. The adventures of George Primrose were without doubt nearly similar to his own. He makes Sir William Thornhill also travel over the continent of Europe on foot, and return about the age of thirty, his own age nearly when the same feat was performed. The character of the vicar is a more extended draught of the pastor in the Deserted Village, and meant, as was said by the family, for his father. private marriages of two of his sisters may have supplied hints in detailing the conduct of Olivia. Burchell was the name of one of his connexions by marriage."-(Washington Irving.)

The

Nearly two years elapsed ere the Vicar of Wakefield was published; when it rapidly obtained a popularity which has lasted down to our time, and which is likely to last as long as our language. It came out on the 27th of March, 1766; before the end of May a second edition was called for; in three months more, a third; and so it went on, widening in a popularity that has never flagged.

Yet Johnson was deceived as to its succeeding: speaking of the work to Boswell, some time subsequent to its publication, he observed, "I myself did not think it would have had much success. It was written and sold to a bookseller before the Traveller, but published after, so little expectation had the bookseller from it. Had it been sold after the Traveller, he might have had twice as much money, though sixty guineas was no mean price."

Samuel Rogers declared that of all the books which,

through the fitful changes of three generations, he had seen rise and fall, the charm of the Vicar of Wakefield had alone continued as at first, and could he revisit the world after an interval of many more generations, he should as surely look to find it undiminished. Nor has its celebrity been confined to Great Britain. Though so exclusively a picture of British scenes and manners, it has been translated into almost every language, and everywhere its charm has been the same. Goethe, the great genius of Germany, declared, in his eightyfirst year, that it was his delight at the age of twenty; that it had, in a manner, formed a part of his education, influencing his taste and feelings throughout life; and that he had recently read it again from beginning to end-with renewed delight, and with a grateful sense of the early benefit derived from it.

GOLDSMITH AT ISLINGTON.

The Tower of Canonbury House was let out in apartments from an early period. Sir John Hawkins churlishly says:

Of the booksellers whom he (Goldsmith) styled his friends, Mr. Newbery was one. This person had apartments at Canonbury House, where Goldsmith often lay concealed from his creditors.

Mr. Forster in his very interesting Life and Adventures, gives the following resumé of Oliver's residence at this then suburban village:

With a view to health, and perhaps to be near Newbery, for whom his pen was at that time chiefly employed, Goldsmith removed to this neighbourhood to board and lodge, in the house of a Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming, at the close of the year 1762, probably about Christmas. The sum stipulated for this accommodation was fifty pounds a year, at that period equal to twice the amount now, which the publisher, as cashbearer to the poet, paid quarterly, taking credit for such payments in tne settlement of their accounts. The lady whose inmate he became is represented in a picture, which appeared in the winter exhibition of the works of deceased artists of Britain, in 1832. It was named "Goldsmith's Hostess," and is said to have been painted by Hogarth. At Islington the bard continued a resident till towards the end of 1764, for it appears that he was still living there in September of that year. Whether his removal thence was occasioned by his arrest, or threatened arrest, which took place about February or March, 1764, by the landlady, or whether this event occurred whilst he was in temporary lodgings in London, is doubtful; probably the latter; for it is not likely that having been an inmate so long, and with Newbery as responsible paymaster, Mrs. Fleming would have had recourse to such an expedient.-(See Prior's Life of Goldsmith.) Goldsmith is remarkable for the frequent mention made of Islington in his writings: and to this village, where he spent much of his time, he was very partial.