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lay beneath the greetings, was not to be concealed; else had the words which cheerily rose above it been perhaps less t. 30. 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.

"Dear Sir, I have heard it remark'd," he begins (in a letter also dated from the Temple coffee-house,* which Mr. Prior obtained from Bryanton's son-in-law, the reverend Doctor Handcock of Dublin, and in which, where the paper is torn or has been worn away by time, there are several erasures that the reader will easily supply),

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"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

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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

* August 14, 1758.

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"at the centre of fortune's wheel, and let it revolve never so fast, seem "insensible of the motion. I seem to have been tied to the circumference, and.... disagreeably round like an 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

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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

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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 may live a couple of "hundred years longer only to see the day-when the Scaligers and "Daciers will vindicate my character, give learned editions of my labours, and bless the times with copious comments on the text. You "shall see how they will fish up the heavy scoundrels who disregard me now, or will then offer to cavil at my productions. How will they bewail the times that suffered so much genius to lie neglected.* "If ever my works find their way to Tartary or China, I know the consequence. Suppose one of your Chinese Owanowitzers instructing one of your Tartarian Chianobacchhi-you see I use Chinese names "to show my own erudition, as I shall soon make our Chinese talk "like an Englishman to show his. This may be the subject of the "lecture:

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"Oliver Goldsmith flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. "He lived to be an hundred and three years old.... age may justly be

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'styled the sun of ..... and the Confucius of Europe..

"learned world, were anonymous, and have probably been lost, because

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"united with those of others. The first avowed piece the world has of "his is entitled an Essay on the present State of Taste and Literature "'in Europe,'-a work well worth its weight in diamonds. In this "he profoundly explains what learning is, and what learning is not. "In this he proves that blockheads are not men of wit, and yet that men of "wit are actually blockheads.

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"But as I choose neither to tire my Chinese Philosopher, nor you, 66 nor myself, I must discontinue the oration, in order to give you a good pause for admiration; and I find myself most violently disposed "to admire too. Let me, then, stop my fancy to take a view of my "future self; and, as the boys say, light down to see myself on horse"back. Well, now I am down, where the devil is I? Oh Gods! "Gods! here in a garret, writing for bread, and expecting to be dunned "for a milk-score ! However, dear Bob, whether in penury or "affluence, serious or gay, I am ever wholly thine,

"OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

...

"Give my-no, not compliments neither, but something . . . most warm and sincere wish that you can conceive, to your mother, "Mrs. Bryanton, to Miss Bryanton, to yourself; and if there be a "favourite dog in the family, let me be remembered to it."

"In a garret, writing for bread, and expecting to be "dunned for a milk-score." Such was the ordinary fate of letters in that age. There had been a Christian religion extant for now seventeen hundred and fifty-seven years; for so long a time had the world been acquainted with its spiritual responsibilities and necessities; yet here, in the middle of the eighteenth century, was the eminence. ordinarily conceded to the spiritual teacher, to the man who comes upon the earth to lift his fellow men above its miry ways. He is up in a garret, writing for bread he cannot get, and dunned for a milk-score he cannot pay. And age after age, the prosperous man comfortably contemplates it,

*

"There came into my company an old fellow not particularly smart, so that he was easily recognised as belonging to the class of men of letters, whom the "rich commonly hate. 'I am a poet,' said he. But why, then, so badly 666 'dressed?' 'For this reason, the love of knowledge never made a man rich."" Petronius; who wrote in the reign of Nero.

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decently regrets it, and is glad to think it no business of his; and in that year of grace and of Goldsmith's suffering, had doubtless adorned his dining-room with the Distrest Poet of the inimitable Mr. Hogarth, and invited laughter from easy guests at the garret and the milk-score. Yet could they, those worthy men, have known the danger to even their worldliest comforts then impending, perhaps they had not laughed so heartily. For, were not these very citizens to be indebted to Goldsmith in after years, for cheerful hours, and happy thoughts, and fancies that would smooth life's path to their children's children? And now, without a friend, with hardly bread to eat, and uncheered by a hearty word or a smile to help him on, he sits in his melancholy garret, and those fancies die within him. It is but an accident now, that the good Vicar shall be born, that the Man in Black shall dispense his charities, that Croaker shall grieve, Tony Lumpkin laugh, or the sweet soft echo of the Deserted Village come for ever back upon the heart, in charity, and kindness, and sympathy with the poor. For, despair is in the garret; and the poet, overmastered by distress, seeks only the means of flight and exile. With a day-dream to his old Irish playfellow, a sigh for the "heavy scoundrels" who disregard him, and a wail for the age to which genius is a mark of mockery; he turns to that first avowed piece, which, being also his last, is to prove that " blockheads are not men of wit, and yet that "men of wit are actually blockheads."

A proposition which men of wit have laboured at from early times; have proved in theory, and worked out in practice. "How many base men," shrieked one of them in Elizabeth's day, who felt that his wit had but made him the greater blockhead, "how many base men, that want

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"those parts I have, do enjoy content at will, and have "wealth at command! I call to mind a cobbler, that is t.30. "worth five hundred pounds; an hostler, that has built a

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goodly inn; a carman in a leather pilche, that has whipt

a thousand pounds out of his horse's tail: and I ask if I "have more than these. Am I not better born? am I not "better brought up? yea, and better favoured! And yet "am I for ever to sit up late, and rise early, and contend "with the cold, and converse with scarcity, and be a

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beggar? How am I crossed, or whence is this curse, "that a scrivener should be better paid than a scholar!"* Poor Nash! he had not even Goldsmith's fortitude, and his doleful outcry for money was a lamentable exhibition, out of which no good could come. But the feeling in the miserable man's heart, struck at the root of a secret discontent which not the strongest men can resist altogether; and which Goldsmith did not affect to repress, when he found himself, as he says, "starving in those streets where Butler "and Otway starved before him."

The words are in a letter, written the day after that to Bryanton, bearing the same date of Temple Exchange coffee-house, and sent to Mrs. Lawder; the Jane Contarine of his happy old Kilmore time. Mr. Mills afterwards begged this letter of the Lawders, and from the friend to whom he gave it, Lord Carleton's nephew, it was copied for Bishop Percy by Edmund Malone. As in those already given, the

Thomas Nash, in his Pierce Pennilesse. Let me quote, too, that good old English gentleman, whose lamentations had already found earlier record in one of the writings of Wolsey's correspondent, Richard Pace. "These foolish letters "will end in some bad business. I fairly wish all this learning at the devil. All "learned men are poor; even the most learned Erasmus, I hear, is poor; and in "one of his letters calls the vile hag Poverty his wife. By 'r lady I had rather "my son were hanged than that he should become a man of letters. We ought "to teach our sons better things."

↑ August 15, 1758.

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