was another point of friendliest and most general agreement. 'Renny dear,' now a mature and very fidgetty little dame of seven-and-thirty, had never been noted for her beauty; and few would associate such a thing with the seamed, scarred face of Johnson; but the preponderating ugliness of Goldsmith was a thing admitted and allowed for all to fling a stone at, however brittle their own habitations. Miss Reynolds had founded her admiring tribute on what she had herself said at a party in her brother's house some days before. She was asked for her toast after supper, as the custom was; and not answering readily, was required to give the ugliest man she knew. Without further hesitation she named Goldsmith; on which the Mrs. Cholmondeley of that day, with a sudden burst of sympathy, rose up on the other side of the table and reached across to shake hands with her. Thus,' exclaimed Johnson, who was present, and whose wit at his friend's expense expense was rewarded with a roar, thus the ancients, on the com'mencements of their friendships, used to sacrifice a beast 'betwixt them.' Poor Goldsmith! It was not till the sacrifice was more complete, and the grave had closed over it, that the 'partiality' of his friends ceased to take these equivocal shapes. There is not a bad line in that poem of 'the Traveller,' said Langton, as they sat talking together at Reynolds's, four years after the poet's death; 'not one ' of Dryden's careless verses.' 'I was glad,' interposed Reynolds, 'to hear Charles Fox say it was one of the 'first poems in the English language.' 'Why was you

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glad?' rejoined Langton; you surely had no doubt of 'this before?' 'No,' exclaimed Johnson, decisively; 'the merit of the Traveller is so well established, that 'Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure 'diminish it.'

The

Not very obvious at the first, however, was its progress to this decisive eminence. From the first it had its select admirers, but their circle somewhat slowly widened. 'beauties of this poem,' observed the principal literary newspaper of the day, the St. James' Chronicle, two months after its publication, are so great and various, 'that we cannot but be surprised they have not been ' able to recommend it to more general notice.' Goldsmith began to think he had come too late into the world then existing, for any share of its poetical distinctions; that Pope and others had taken up the places; and that as but few at any one period can possess poetical reputation, he had hardly, in his own time, the chance of obtaining it. That,' said Johnson, when this saying was related to him, 'is one of the most sensible things 'I have ever heard of Goldsmith. It is difficult to get literary fame, and it is every day getting more difficult.' Nevertheless, though slowly, the poem seems to have advanced steadily. A month after the notice in the St. James' Chronicle, a second edition was published; a third was more quickly called for; a fourth was issued in August; and the ninth had appeared in the year when the poet died. That anything more substantial

than fame arose to him out of these editions, is, however, very questionable: the only payment that can with certainty be traced in Newbery's papers as for Copy of the 'Traveller a poem,' leaves it more than doubtful, whether for twenty guineas Goldsmith had not surrendered all his interest in it; except that which, with each successive edition, still prompted the limæ labor. Between the first and last, thirty-six new lines had been added, and fourteen of the old cancelled. Some of the erasures would now, perhaps, raise a smile. No honest thought disappeared, no manly word for the oppressed. The 'wanton judge' and his 'penal statutes' remained; indignant denunciations of the tyrannies of wealth, sorrowful and angry protestings that laws grind the poor and rich men rule 'the law,' were still undisturbed. But words quietly vanished, here and there, that had spoken too plainly of the sordid past; and no longer did the poet proclaim, in speaking of the great, that, 'inly satisfied,' above their pomps he held his ragged pride.' The rags went the way of the confession of poverty in the Polite Learning; and of those hints of humble habits which were common in the Busy Body and the British Magazine, but are found no longer in Essays by Mr. Goldsmith.

With that title, and the motto 'Collecta Revirescunt,' a three-shilling duodecimo volume of those re-published Essays was now issued by Mr. Newbery and Mr. Griffin, who paid him each ten guineas for liberty to offer this tribute to the growing reputation of the Traveller. He

As

corrected expressions, as I have said; lifted Islington teagardens into supper at Vauxhall; exalted the stroll in White Conduit to a walk in the Parks; and, in an amusing preface, disclaimed any more ambitious motive than one of self-preservation in collecting such fragments. many entertainers of the public, he said, had been partly living upon him for some years, he was now resolved to try if he could not live a little upon himself; and he compared his case to that of the fat man he had heard of in a shipwreck, who, when the sailors, pressed by famine, were taking slices off him to satisfy their hunger, insisted, with great justice, on having the first cut for himself. 'Most of these Essays,' continued Goldsmith, 'have been 'regularly reprinted twice or thrice a year, and conveyed 'to the public through the kennel of some engaging com'pilation. If there be a pride in multiplied editions, I 'have seen some of my labours sixteen times reprinted, ' and claimed by different parents as their own. I have 'seen them flourished at the beginning with praise, and 'signed at the end with the names of Philautos, Phila'lethes, Phileleutheros, and Philanthropos.' Names that already figured, as the reader will hardly need to be reminded, in those adventures of a philosophic vagabond which formed part of the little manuscript novel now lying, apparently little cared for, on the dusty shelves of Mr. Francis Newbery.

Another piece of writing which belongs to this period, and which did not find its way to the public till the

appearance of the novel, to whose pages (with the title of the Hermit) it had been transferred, was the ballad of Edwin and Angelina. It was suggested, as I have said, in the course of his ballad discussions with Percy in preparation of the Reliques, and written before the Traveller appeared. Without informing any of us,' says Hawkins, again referring to the Club, he wrote and addressed to 'the Countess, afterwards Duchess, of Northumberland, one of the first poems of the lyric kind that our language 'has to boast of.' A charming poem undoubtedly it is, if not quite this; delightful for its simple and mingled flow of incident and imagery; for the pathetic softness and sweetness of its tone; and for its easy, artless grace. He had taken pains with it, and set more than common store by it himself; so that when, some two years hence, his old enemy Kenrick taking advantage of its appearance in the novel, assumed the character of 'Detector' in the public prints, denounced it as a plagiarism from the Reliques, and entreated the public to compare the insipidity of Doctor Goldsmith's negus with the genuine flavour of Mr. Percy's champagne, he thought it worth while, even against that assailant, to defend his own originality. The poem it was charged to have copied, was a composition by Percy of stanzas old and new (much modern writing entered into the 'ancient' reliques; the editor publishing among them, for example, his friend Grainger's entirely modern and exquisite ballad of Bryan and Pereene) and Goldsmith's answer was to the effect that he did not think there was