over his attention to truth. When he began to rise into notice he said he had a brother who was Dean of Durham (1); a fiction so easily detected, that it is wonderful how he should have been so inconsiderate as to hazard it. He boasted to me at this time of the power of his pen in commanding money, which I believe was true in a certain degree, though in the instance he gave he was by no means correct. He told me that he had sold a novel for four hundred pounds. This was his "Vicar of Wakefield." But Johnson informed me, that he had made the bargain for Goldsmith, and the price was sixty pounds. "And, Sir," said he, "a sufficient price too, when it was sold; for then the fame of Goldsmith had not been elevated, as it afterwards was, by his 'Traveller;' and the bookseller had such 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. Then, to be sure, it was accidentally worth more money."

Mrs. Piozzi and Sir John Hawkins (2) have strangely mis-stated the history of Goldsmith's situation and

(1) I am willing to hope that there may have been some mistake as to this anecdote, though I had it from a dignitary of the church. Dr. Isaac Goldsmith, his near relation, was Dean of Cloyne in 1747.

(2) Anecdotes, p. 119. Life, 420. How Mr. Boswell, who affects such extreme accuracy, should say that Hawkins has strangely mis-stated this affair is very surprising; what Hawkins says (Life, p. 420.), is merely that, under a pressing necessity, he wrote the Vicar of Wakefield, and sold it to Newberry for 40%. Hawkins's account is not in any respect inconsistent with Boswell's; and the difference between the prices stated, even if Hawkins be in error, is surely not sufficient to justify the charge of a strange mis-statement.-C.

Johnson's friendly interference, when this novel was sold. I shall give it authentically from Johnson's own exact narration:

“I received one morning 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 got 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 that 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 so ill." (1)

(1) It may not be improper to annex here Mrs. Piozzi's account of this transaction, in her own words, as a specimen of the extreme inaccuracy with which all her anecdotes of Dr. Johnson are related, or rather discoloured and distorted:

"I have forgotten the year, but it could scarcely, I think, be later than 1765 or 1766, that he was called abruptly from our house after dinner, and, returning in about three hours, said he had been with an enraged author, whose landlady pressed him for payment within doors, while the bailiffs beset him without; that he was drinking himself drunk with Madeira, to drown care, and fretting over a novel, which, when finished, was to be his whole fortune; but he could not get it done for distraction, nor could he step out of doors to offer it for sale. Mr. Johnson, therefore, sent away the bottle, and went to the bookseller, recommending the perform.

VOL. II.

My next meeting with Johnson was on Friday the 1st of July, when he and I and Dr. Goldsmith supped at the Mitre. I was before this time pretty, well acquainted with Goldsmith, who was one of the brightest ornaments of the Johnsonian school. (1) Goldsmith's respectful attachment to Johnson was then at its height; for his own literary reputation had not yet distinguished him so much as to excite a vain desire of competition with his great master. He had increased my admiration of the goodness of Johnson's heart, by incidental remarks in the course of conversation; such as, when I mentioned Mr. Levet, whom he entertained under his roof, " He is poor and honest, which is recommendation enough to Johnson;" and when I wondered that he was very kind to a man of whom I had heard a very bad character, "He is now become miserable, and that insures the protection of Johnson."

Goldsmith attempting this evening to maintain, I suppose from an affectation of paradox, “that knowledge was not desirable on its own account, for it often was a source of unhappiness." JOHNSON.

ance, and desiring some immediate relief; which, when he brought back to the writer, he called the woman of the house directly to partake of punch, and pass their time in merriment." Anecdotes, p. 119. BOSWELL.

The greatest discrepancy between the two stories is the time of the day at which it happened; and, unluckily, the admitted fact of the bottle of Madeira seems to render Mrs. Piozzi's version the more probable of the two. If, according to Mr. Boswell's account, Goldsmith had, in the morning, changed Johnson's charitable guinea for the purpose of getting a bottle of Madeira, we cannot complain that Mrs. Piozzi represents him as "drinking himself drunk with Madeira;" which Mr. Boswell thinks so violently inaccurate, as to deserve being marked in italics. CROKER.

(1) [See the note at the end of this chapter.]