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influence. He was his relative, had been his fellowcollegian, and was a prosperous, wealthy man. 'Dear

Sir,' he begins, in a letter dated from the Temple Exchange Coffee House, on the 7th August, and discovered by Bishop Percy,

"You have quitted, I find, that plan of life which you once intended to pursue, and given up ambition for domestic tranquillity. Were I to consult your satisfaction alone in this change, I have the utmost reason to congratulate your choice; but when I consider my own, I cannot avoid feeling some regret that one of my few friends has declined a pursuit in which he had every reason to expect success. The truth is, like the rest of the world, I am self-interested in my concern; and do not so much consider the happiness you have acquired as the honour I have probably lost in the change. I have often let my fancy loose when you were the subject, and have imagined you gracing the bench, or thundering at the bar; while I have taken no small pride to myself, and whispered all that I could come near that this was my cousin. Instead of this, it seems you are merely contented to be a happy man; to be esteemed only by your acquaintance; to cultivate your paternal acres; to take unmolested a nap under one of your own hawthorns, or in Mrs. Mills' bedchamber, which even a poet must confess is rather the more comfortable place of the two. But however your resolutions may be altered with regard to your situation in life, I persuade myself they are unalterable with respect to your friends in it. I cannot think the world has taken such entire possession of that heart (once so susceptible of friendship), as not to have left a corner there for a friend or two; but I flatter myself that even I have my place among the number. This I have a claim to from the similitude of our dispositions; or setting that aside, I can demand it as a right by the most equitable law in nature: I mean that of

retaliation for indeed you have more than your share in mine. I am a man of few professions; and yet this very instant I cannot avoid the painful apprehension that my present professions (which speak not half my feelings) should be considered only a pretext to cover a request, as I have a request to make. No, my dear Ned, I know you are too generous to think so; and you know me too proud to stoop to unnecessary insincerity. I have a request, it is true, to make; but as I know to whom I am a petitioner, I make it without diffidence or confusion. It is in short this: I am going to publish a book in London, entitled An Essay on the Present State of Taste and Literature in Europe. Every work published here, the printers in Ireland republish without giving the author the least consideration for his copy. I would in this respect disappoint their avarice, and have all the additional advantages that may result from the sale of my performance there, to myself. The book is now printing in London; and I have requested Dr. Radcliff, Mr. Lawder, Mr. Bryanton, my brother Mr. Henry Goldsmith, and brother-in-law Mr. Hodson, to circulate my proposals among their acquaintance. The same request I now make to you; and have accordingly given directions to Mr. Bradley, bookseller in Dame-street, Dublin, to send you a hundred proposals. Whatever subscriptions pursuant to those proposals, you may receive, when collected may be transmitted to Mr. Bradley, who will give a receipt for the money, and be accountable for the books. I shall not, by a paltry apology, excuse myself for putting you to this trouble. Were I not convinced that you found more pleasure in doing good-natured things than uneasiness in being employed in them, I should not have singled you out on this occasion. It is probable you would comply with such a request if it tended to the encouragement of any man of learning whatsoever; what then, may not he expect who has claims of family and friendship to enforce his? I am, dear Sir, your sincere friend and humble servant, OLIVER GOLDSMITH."

What indeed may he not freely expect, who is to receive nothing! Nevertheless, there is a worse fool's paradise than that of expectation. To teach our tears the easiest way to flow, should be no unvalued part of this world's wisdom: Hope is a good friend, even when the only one : and Goldsmith was not the worse for expecting, though he received nothing. Mr. Mills left his poor requests unheeded, and his letter unacknowledged. Sharking booksellers and starving authors might devour each other before he would interpose; being a man, as his old sizarrelative delicately hinted, with paternal acres as well as boyish friendships to cultivate, and fewer thorns of the world to struggle with, than hawthorns of his own to sleep under. He lived to repent it certainly, and to profess great veneration for the distinguished writer to whom he boasted relationship; but Goldsmith had no more pleasant hopes or friendly correspondences to fling away upon Mr. Mills of Roscommon. Not that even this letter, as it seems to me, had been one of very confident expectation. Unusual effort is manifest in it; a reluctance to bring unseemly fancies between the wind and Mr. Mills' gentility; a conventional style of balance between the 'pleasure' and the uneasiness' it talks about; in short, a forced suppression of everything in his own state that may affront the acres and the hawthorns.

Seven days afterward he wrote to Bryanton, with a curious contrast of tone and manner. Even Bryanton had not inquired for him since the scenes of happier years.

The affectionate rememberings of the lonely wanderer, as of the struggling author, he had in carelessness, if not in coldness, passed without return. Yet here heart spoke to heart; buoyant, unreserved, and sanguine. That sorrow lay beneath the greetings, was not to be concealed; else had the words which cheerily rose above it, been less sincere. But see, and make profit of it: how, depressed by unavailing labours, and patiently awaiting the disastrous issue of defeat and flight, he shows to the last a bright and cordial happiness of soul, unconquered and unconquerable.

'I have heard it remarked,' he begins, in a letter also dated from the Temple Coffee House, which Mr. Prior obtained from Bryanton's son-in-law the Rev. Doctor Handcock, and in which, where the paper is torn or has been worn away by time, there are several erasures the reader will easily supply,

"I believe by yourself, that they who are drunk, or out of their wits, fancy every body else in the same condition. Mine is a friendship that neither distance nor time can efface, which is probably the reason that, for the soul of me, I can't avoid thinking yours of the same complexion; and yet I have many reasons for being of a contrary opinion, else why in so long an absence was I never made a partner in your concerns? To hear of your successes would have given me the utmost pleasure; and a communication of your very disappointments would divide the uneasiness I too frequently feel for my own. Indeed, my dear Bob, you don't conceive how unkindly you have treated one whose circumstances afford him few prospects of pleasure, except those reflected from the happiness of his friends. However, since you have not let me hear from you, I

....

have in some measure disappointed your neglect by frequently thinking of you. Every day do I remember the calm anecdotes of your life, from the fireside to the easy-chair: recall the various adventures that first cemented our friendship; the school, the college, or the tavern: preside in fancy over your cards: and am displeased at your bad play when the rubber goes against you, though not with all that agony of soul as when I once was your partner. Is it not strange that two of such like affections should be so much separated and so differently employed as we are? You seem placed at the centre of fortune's wheel, and, let it revolve never so fast, are insensible of the motion. I seem to have been tied to the circumference, and . . . . disagreeably round like a whore in a whirligig. . . . down with an intention to chide, and yet methinks.... my resentment already. The truth is, I am a . . . . regard to you: I may attempt to bluster. . . . . Anacreon, my heart is respondent only to softer affections. And yet, now I think on 't again, I will be angry. God's curse, sir! who am I? Eh! what am I? Do you know whom you have offended? A man whose character may one of these days be mentioned with profound respect in a German Comment or Dutch Dictionary; whose name you will probably hear ushered in by a Doctissimus Doctissimorum, or heel-pieced with a long Latin termination. Think how Goldsmithius, or Gubblegurchius, or some such sound, as rough as a nutmeg-grater, will become me. Think of that! God's curse, sir! who am I? I must own my ill-natured contemporaries have not hitherto paid me those honours I have had such just reason to expect. I have not yet seen my face reflected in all the lively display of red and white paints on any sign-posts in the suburbs. Your handkerchief weavers seem as yet unacquainted with my merits or my physiognomy, and the very snuff-box makers appear to have forgot their respect. Tell them all from me, they are a set of Gothic, barbarous, ignorant scoundrels. There will come a day, no doubt it will: I beg you

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