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"till he was at last set free at the intercession of the "Court of Great Britain. Translated from the Original, Et. 30. “just published at the Hague, by James Willington." James Willington was in reality Oliver Goldsmith.* The property of the book belonged to Griffiths, who valued one name quite as much as the other; and the position of the translator appears in the subsequent assignment of the manuscript, at no small profit to Griffiths, by the Paternoster-Row bookseller to bookseller Dilly of the Poultry, for the sum of twenty guineas. But though the translator's name might pass for Willington, the writer could only write as Goldsmith; though with bitterness he calls. himself "the obscure prefacer," the preface is clear, graceful, and characteristic, as in brighter days. The book cannot be recommended, he says, "as a grateful entertainment to "the readers of reigning romance, as it is strictly true. "No events are here to astonish; no unexpected incidents to surprise; no such high-finished pictures, as captivate "the imagination and have made fiction fashionable. Our "reader must be content with the simple exhibition of "truth, and consequently of nature; he must be satisfied to

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see vice triumphant and virtue in distress; to see men "punished or rewarded, not as his wishes, but as Provi"dence has thought proper to direct; for all here wears "the face of sincerity." He glances at the scenes of dungeon, rack, and scaffold through which the narrative will pass, and calls them but a part of the accumulated wretchedness of a miscalled glorious time, "while Louis, surnamed "the Great, was feasting at Versailles, fed with the incense

* Willington, it would seem, from an entry in the register of Trinity College (Prior, i. 253-4), was the name of one of Goldsmith's fellow students in Dublin. + Life by Isaac Reed (Ed. of Poems, 1795), p. xv. Aikin's Life, p. xvi.

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Æt. 30.

"of flattery, or sunk in the lewd embraces of a prostitute. Can an Englishman hear this," continued Goldsmith, in a passage which shows with what spirit he at this time entered. into the popular feeling of the day, "and not burn with indignation against those foes to religion, to liberty, and "his country? And should not every attempt to promote "this generous indignation meet at least indulgence, though "it should not deserve applause. Could the present perform"ance teach an individual to value his religion, by contrasting "it with the furious spirit of Popery; could it contribute to "make him enamoured of liberty, by showing their unhappy "situation whose possessions are held by so precarious a “tenure as tyrannical caprice; could it promote his zeal in "the cause of humanity, or give him a wish to imitate the "virtues of the sufferer, or redress the injuries of oppression; then, indeed, the author will not have wrote in vain."

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But why stood "James Willington" on the title page of this book, instead of " Oliver Goldsmith," since the names were both unknown? The question will not admit of a doubtful answer, though a braver I could wish to have given. At this point there is evidence of despair.

Not without well-earned knowledge had Goldsmith passed through the task-work of the Monthly Review; faculties which lay unused within him, were by this time not unknown; and a stronger man, with a higher constancy and fortitude, might with that knowledge have pushed resolutely on, and, conquering the fate of those who look back when their objects are forward, found earlier sight of the singing tree and the golden water. But to him it seemed hopeless to climb any further up the desperate steep; over the dark obstructions which the world is glad to interpose between itself and the best labourers in its service, he had not as yet

1758.

risen high enough to see the glimmering of light beyond; -even lower, therefore, than the school-room at Doctor Et. 30. Milner's, from which he had been taken to his literary toil, he thought himself now descended; and in a sudden sense of misery more intolerable, might have cried with Edgar, O gods! who is't can say "I am at the worst"?

I am worse than e'er I was.

He returned to Doctor Milner's;-if ever, from thence, again to return to literature, to embrace it for choice and with a braver heart endure its worst necessities.

There came that time; and when, eighteen months after the present date, he was writing the Bee, he thus turned into pleasant fiction the incidents now described. "I was once "induced to show my indignation against the public, by 'discontinuing my endeavours to please; and was bravely resolved, like Raleigh, to vex them by burning my manu"scripts in a passion. Upon recollection, however, I "considered what set or body of people would be displeased "at my rashness. The sun, after so sad an accident, might "shine next morning as bright as usual; men might laugh "and sing the next day, and transact business as before, "and not a single creature feel any regret but myself. "I reflected upon the story of a minister, who, in the reign of Charles II, upon a certain occasion resigned all his posts, and retired into the country in a fit of resentment. But, as he had not given the world entirely up with his ambition, he sent a messenger to town, to see how the "courtiers would bear his resignation. Upon the messenger's

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return he was asked, whether there appeared any com"motion at court? To which he replied, there were very "great ones. 'Ay,' says the minister, I knew my friends. would make a bustle; all petitioning the king for my

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1758.

Et. 30.

"restoration I presume?' 'No, sir,' replied the messenger, "they are only petitioning his majesty to be put in your "place.' In the same manner, should I retire in indignation, "instead of having Apollo in mourning, or the Muses in a "fit of the spleen; instead of having the learned world "apostrophising at my untimely decease; perhaps all Grub "Street might laugh at my fall, and self-approving dignity "* Worse might never be able to shield me from ridicule."

than ridicule had he spared himself, with timely aid of these better thoughts; but they came too late. He made his melancholy journey to Peckham, and knocked at Doctor Milner's door.

of old, with suffering, Milner saw what he

The schoolmaster was not an unkind or unfriendly man, and would in any circumstances, there is little doubt, have given Goldsmith the shelter he sought. It happened now that he had special need of him: sickness disabling himself from the proper school-attendance. So, again installed poor usher, week passed over week as contempt, and many forms of care. endured; was moved by it; and told him that as soon as health enabled himself to resume the duties of the school, he would exert an influence to place his usher in some medical appointment at a foreign station. He knew an East India director, a Mr. Jones, through whom it might be done.f Before all things it was what Goldsmith fervently desired.

And now, with something like the prospect of a settled. future to bear him up against the uncongenial and uncertain present, what leisure he had for other than school labour he gave to a literary project of his own designing. This was natural for we cling with a strange new fondness to what we must soon abandon, and it is the strong resolve to + Percy Memoir, 45.

*The Bec, iv.

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separate which most often has made separation impossible. Nor, apart from this, is there ground for the feeling of Et. 30. surprise, or the charge of vacillating purpose. His daily bread provided here, literature again presented itself to his thoughts as in his foreign wanderings; and to have left better record of himself than the garbled page of Griffiths's Review, would be a comfort in his exile. Some part of his late experience, so dearly bought, should be freely told; with it could be arranged and combined, what store of literary fruit he had gathered in his travel; and no longer commanded by a bookseller, or overawed by an old woman, he might frankly deliver to the world some wholesome truths of the decay of letters and the rewards of genius. In this spirit he conceived the Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe. And if he had reason bitterly to feel, in his own case, that he had failed to break down the barriers which encircled the profession of literature, here might a helping hand be stretched forth to the relief of others, still struggling for a better fate in its difficult environments.

With this design another expectation arose,—that the publication, properly managed, might give him means for the outfit his appointment would render necessary. And he bethought him of his Irish friends. The zeal so lately professed might now be exerted with effect, and without greatly plaguing either their pockets or his own pride. In those days, and indeed until the Act of Union was passed, the English writer had no copyright in Ireland: it being a part of the independence of Irish booksellers to steal from English authors, and of the Irish parliament to protect the theft; just as, not twenty years before this date, that excellent native parliament had, on the attempt of a Catholic