1758.

ascended Break-neck Steps; far different his mournful conviction, that, but to flee from the misery that surrounded t. 30. him, no office could be mean, no possible endurance hard. His determination was taken at once: probably grounded on the knowledge of some passages in the life of Smollett, and of his recent acquaintance Grainger. He would present himself at Surgeons' Hall for examination as a hospital mate: an appointment sufficiently undesirable, to be found always of tolerably easy attainment by the duly qualified.

But he must have decent clothes to present himself in: the solitary suit in which he crept between the court and the coffee-house, being only fit for service after nightfall. He had no resource but to apply to Griffiths, with whom he had still some small existing connection, and from whom his recent acceptance at the Critical, increasing his value with a vulgar mind, might help in exacting aid. The bookseller, to whom the precise temporary purpose for which the clothes were wanted does not seem to have been told, consented to furnish them on certain conditions. Goldsmith was to write at once four articles (he had given three to the Critical) for the Monthly Review. Griffiths would then become security with a tailor for a new suit of clothes; which were either to be returned, or the debt for them discharged, within a given time. This pauper proposal acceded to, Goldsmith doubtless returned to Green Arbour Court with the four books under his arm.

They were: Some Enquiries Concerning the First Inhabitants of Europe,* by a member of the Society of Antiquaries, known afterwards as Francis Wise, and Thomas Warton's friend; Anselm Bayly's Introduction to Languages; the

Pentalogia of Doctor Burton ;* and a new Translation of Et. 30. Cicero's Tusculan Disputations. The notices of them thus extorted made due appearance, as the first four articles of the Monthly Review for December 1758; the tailor was then called in, and the compact completed.

Equipped in his new suit, and one can well imagine with what an anxious, hopeful, quaking heart, Goldsmith offered himself for examination at Surgeons' Hall (the new building erected six years before in the Old Bailey), on the 21st December." The beadle called my name," says Roderick Random, when he found himself in similar condition at that place of torture," with a voice that made me tremble as much as if it had been the sound of the last trumpet: "however there was no remedy: I was conducted into a 'large hall, where I saw about a dozen of grim faces sitting "at a long table, one of whom bade me come forward in "such an imperious tone, that I was actually for a minute

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or two bereft of my senses." Whether the same process, conducted through a like memorable scene, bereft poor Goldsmith altogether of his, cannot now be ascertained. All that is known, is told in a dry extract from the books of the College of Surgeons. "At a Court of Examiners held at the Theatre 21st December, 1758. Present" .. the names are not given, but there is a long list of the candidates who passed, in the midst of which these occur: "James Bernard, mate to an hospital. Oliver Goldsmith, found "not qualified for ditto." A rumour of this rejection long existed, and on a hint from Maton the king's physician, the above entry was found.‡

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A harder sentence, a more cruel doom, than this at the

*

Monthly Review, xix. 522, December 1758.
Prior, i. 281-2.

+ Ibid, 524.

time must have seemed, even the Old Bailey has not often 1758. been witness to; yet, far from blaming that worthy Et.30. court of examiners, should we not rather feel that much praise is due to them? That they really did their duty in rejecting the short, thick, dull, ungainly, over-anxious, overdressed, simple looking Irishman who presented himself that memorable day, can hardly, I think, be doubted; but unconsciously they also did a great deal more. They found him not qualified to be a surgeon's mate, and left him qualified to heal the wounds and abridge the sufferings of all the world. They found him querulous with adversity, given up to irresolute fears, too much blinded with failures and sorrows to see the divine uses to which they tended still; and from all this, their sternly just and awful decision drove him resolutely back. While the door of the surgeons' hall was shut upon him that day, the gate of the beautiful mountain was slowly opening. Much of the valley of the shadow he had still indeed to pass; but every outlet save the one was closed upon him, it was idle any longer to strike or struggle against the visions which sprang up in his desolate path, and as he so passed steadily if not cheerily on, he saw them fade and become impalpable before him. Steadily, then, if not cheerily, for some months more! "Sir," said Johnson, "the man who has vigour may walk to the East just as well as to the West, if he happens to turn his head that way."* So, honour to the court of examiners, I say, for that, whether he would or would not, they turned back his head to the East! The hopes and promise of the world have a perpetual springtime there; and Goldsmith was hereafter to enjoy them, briefly for himself, but for the world eternally.

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* Boswell's Life, iv. 24.

CHAPTER V.

1758. Æt. 30.

an

DISCIPLINE OF SORROW.

1758-1759.

It was four days after the rejection at Surgeons' Hall, the Christmas day of 1758, when, to the ordinary filth and noise of number twelve in Green Arbour Court, there was added unusual lamentation and sorrow. An incident had occurred, of which, painful as were the consequences involved in it, the precise details can but be surmised and guessed at, and must be received with that allowance, though doubtless in the main correct. It would appear that the keeper of this wretched lodging had been suddenly dragged by bailiffs from his home on the previous night, and his wife, with loud wailings, now sought the room of her poorer lodger. He was in debt to the unfortunate couple, who, for the amusement of their children by his flute, had been kind to him according to their miserable means: and it was the woman's sobbing petition that he should try to help them. There was but one way; and in the hope, through Hamilton or Griffiths, to be able still to meet the tailor's debt, the gay suit in which he went to Surgeons' Hall, and in which he was dressed for his doleful holiday, appears to have been put off and carried to the pawnbroker's. Nor had a week

passed, before the pangs of his own destitution sharply 1758. struck him again; and, without other remaining means of Et. 30. earthly aid, for death had taken in Doctor Milner his apparently last friend, he carried the four books he had recently reviewed for Griffiths to a neighbouring house, and left them in pledge with an acquaintance for a trifling loan.* It was hardly done when a letter from Griffiths was put into his hand, peremptorily demanding the return of the books and the suit of clothes, or instant payment for both.

Goldsmith's answer, and the bookseller's violent retort, are to be presumed from the poor debtor's second letter: the only one preserved of this unseemly correspondence. He appears first to have written in a tone of mixed astonishment, anger, and solicitation; to have prayed for some delay; and to have been met by coarse insult, threats, and the shameless imputation of crime. These forced from him the rejoinder found in the bookseller's papers, endorsed by Griffiths with the writer's name, and as "Rec. in Jan" 1759;" which passed afterwards into the manuscript collections of Mr. Heber, and is now in my possession. All concealment is ended here, and stern plain truth is told.

"Sir," wrote Goldsmith, "I know of no misery but a gaol to which my own imprudencies and your letter seem to point. I have seen it " inevitable these three or four weeks, and, by heavens! request it as "a favour, as a favour that may prevent somewhat more fatal. I

* Prior, i. 326-8.

+ The appearance of this remarkable letter harmonises with its contents. There is nothing of the freedom or boldness of hand in it which one may perceive in his ordinary manuscript. To the kindness of my friend the Rev. Chauncy Hare Townshend, I owe the possession of this most interesting of all the Goldsmith papers that have been preserved to our time, and I have been careful of the strictest accuracy in the copy above given. The pointing is imperfect and confused, nor is there any break or paragraph from the first line to the signature; but it is printed exactly as written.