1760.

Et. 32.

fortunate tumbler, who, between the acts of tragedies as well

*

as farces, balances a straw upon his nose; and zig-zagging his way home after all is over, through a hundred obstacles from coach-wheels and palanquin-poles, “like a bird in its "flight through the branches of a forest." He is a visitor at the humble pot-house clubs, whose follies and enjoyments he moralises with touching pleasantry. "Were I to be angry "at men for being fools, I could here have found ample "room for declamation; but, alas! I have been a fool myself, and why should I be angry with them for being "something so natural to every child of humanity." Unsparing historian of this folly of his own, he conceals his imprudence as little as his poverty; and his kind heart he has not the choice to conceal. Everywhere it betrays itself. In hours of depression, recalling the disastrous fate of men of genius, and "mighty poets in their misery dead;" in

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"pocket to-night, Polly and the Pickpocket to-morrow night, and Polly and the 'Pickpocket again! I want patience. I will hear no more." Goldsmith took no part whatever in a graver outery which was afterwards levelled against Gay's masterpiece, and which at last, the year before his death, took the form of an application from the magistrates of Bow-street to request the managers of Drury Lane and Covent Garden "not to exhibit this opera, deeming it productive of mis"chief to society." Peake's Memoirs of the Colmans, i. 317.

* All the tumblers, he says, with a sarcastic humour that may be forgiven him in his garret, "from the wonderful dog of knowledge, at present under the "patronage of the nobility, down to the man with the box, who professes to show "the best imitation of nature that was ever seen,' they all live in luxury. "A singing-woman shall collect subscriptions in her own coach-and-six; a fellow "shall make a fortune by tossing a straw from his toe to his nose; one in particular "has found that eating fire was the most ready way to live; and another who "gingles several bells fixed to his cap, is the only man that I know of who has "received emolument from the labours of his head." Letter xlv. The chance of encouragement, now-a-days, Goldsmith had before remarked bitterly-and how often since has the same thought occurred to a struggling man of letters-lies not in the head, but in the heels. "One who jumps up and flourishes his toes three "times before he comes to the ground, may have three hundred a year; he who "flourishes them four times, gets four hundred; but he who arrives at five is "inestimable, and may demand what salary he thinks proper. The female "dancers, too, are valued for this sort of jumping and crossing; and it is a cant "word among them that she deserves most who shows highest." Letter xxi.

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imaginary interviews with booksellers, laughing at their 1760. sordid mistakes; in remonstrances with his own class, Et. 32. warning them of the danger of despising each other; and, in rarer periods of perfect self-reliance, rising to a lofty superiority above the temporary accidents around him, asserting the power and claims of men of letters, and denouncing the short-sightedness of statesmen. "Instead "of complaining that writers are over-paid, when their works procure them a bare subsistence, I should imagine it the duty of a state, not only to encourage their numbers, but "their industry. . . Whatever be the motives which induce men to write, whether avarice or fame, the country becomes "most wise and happy, in which they most serve for "instructors. The countries where sacerdotal instruction "alone is permitted, remain in ignorance, superstition, and hopeless slavery. In England, where there are as many new books published as in all the rest of Europe together, a spirit of freedom and reason reigns among the people: they "have been often known to act like fools, they are generally found to think like men.' "At the close of the same paper he rises into a pathetic eloquence while pleading for those who have thus served and instructed England; men “whom "nature has blest with talents above the rest of mankind; men capable of thinking with precision, and impressing "their thoughts with rapidity; beings who diffuse those regards upon mankind, which others contract and settle upon themselves. These deserve every honour from that community of which they are more peculiarly the children; "to such I would give my heart, since to them I am indebted "for its humanity!" In another letter the subject is more calmly resumed, with frank admission that old wrongs are at

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* Citizen of the World. Letter lxxv.

1760. length in the course of coming right. "At present, the few Et. 32. "poets of England no longer depend on the great for subsistence; they have now no other patrons but the public,

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“and the public, collectively considered, is a good and a generous master. It is, indeed, too frequently mistaken as to the merits of every candidate for favour; but to make “amends, it is never mistaken long. . . A man of letters at “present, whose works are valuable, is perfectly sensible of "their value. Every polite member of the community, by

buying what he writes, contributes to reward him. The "ridicule, therefore, of living in a garret, might have been "wit in the last age, but continues such no longer, because no longer true."

The quiet composure of this passage exhibits the healthiest aspect of his mind. Bookseller and public are confronted calmly, and the consequences fairly challenged. It is indeed very obvious, at the close of this first year of the Public Ledger, that increasing opportunities of employment (to say nothing of the constant robbery of his writings by pirate magazine-men) were really teaching him his value, and suggesting hopes he had not earlier dared to entertain. He resumed his connection with the Lady's Magazine, and became its editor: publishing in it, among other writings known and unknown, what he had written of his Life of Voltaire; and retiring from its editorship at the close of a year, when he had raised its circulation (if Mr. Wilkie's advertisements are to be believed) to three thousand three hundred. He continued his contributions, meanwhile, to the British Magazine; from which he was not wholly separated till two months before poor Smollett, pining for the loss of his only daughter, went upon the continent (in 1763) never

1760.

to return to a fixed or settled residence in London. He furnished other booksellers with occasional compilation- Et. 32. prefaces; he compiled for Newbery, in four duodecimo volumes, A Poetical Dictionary, or the Beauties of the English Poets alphabetically displayed; † and he gave some papers (among them a Life of Christ and Lives of the Fathers, re-published with his name, in shilling pamphlets, a few months after his death) to a so-called Christian Magazine, undertaken by Newbery in connection with the macaroni parson Dodd, and conducted by that villainous pretender as an organ of fashionable divinity.

It seems to follow as of course upon these engagements, that the room in Green Arbour Court should at last be exchanged for one of greater comfort. He had left that place in the later months of 1760, and gone into what were called respectable lodgings in Wine Office Court, Fleetstreet. The house belonged to a relative of Newbery's, and he occupied two rooms in it for nearly two years.

* Of course these prefaces were always strictly taskwork. To seek to connect them in any way with the work prefaced, would be generally labour in vain. The moral of them is in a remark of Johnson's, when Boswell, admiring greatly his preface to Roll's Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, asked him whether he knew much of Rolt and of his work. "Sir," said Johnson, "I never saw the man, and never read the book. The booksellers wanted a Preface to a Dictionary of Trade "and Commerce. I knew very well what such a Dictionary should be, and I wrote a Preface accordingly." Boswell, ii. 125.

Mr. Crossley possesses a copy of this selection, which is rare and very little known, and says of it (Notes and Queries, v. 534) that "the preface is evidently "written by Goldsmith, and with his usual elegance and spirit; and the selection "which follows is one of the best that has ever yet been made."

CHAPTER V.

1761.

Æt. 33.

FELLOWSHIP WITH JOHNSON.

1761-1762.

A CIRCUMSTANCE occurred in the new abode of which Goldsmith had now taken possession in Wine Office Court, which must have endeared it always to his remembrance; but more deeply associated with the wretched habitation he had left behind him in Green Arbour Court, were days of a most forlorn misery as well as of a manly resolution, and, round that beggarly dwelling (" the shades," as he used to call it in the more prosperous aftertime), and all connected with it, there crowded to the last the kindest memories of his gentle and true nature. Thus, when bookseller Davies tells us, after his death, how tender and compassionate he was; how no unhappy person ever sued to him for relief without obtaining it, if he had anything to give; and how he would borrow, rather than not relieve the distressed, he adds that "the poor woman with whom he had lodged during his obscurity, several years in Green Arbour Court, by his "death lost an excellent friend; for the Doctor often supplied her with food from his own table, and visited her frequently, with the sole purpose to be kind to her."* As

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