little, in connection with Wine Office Court, was he ever likely to forget that Johnson now first visited him there. They had probably met before. I have shown how frequently the thoughts of Goldsmith vibrated to that great Grub-street figure of independence and manhood, which, in an age not remarkable for either, was undoubtedly presented in the person of the author of the English Dictionary. One of the last Chinese Letters had again alluded to the "Johnsons and Smolletts" as veritable poets, though they might never have made a verse in their whole lives; and among the earliest greetings of the new essay-writer, I suspect that Johnson's would be found. The opinion expressed in his generous question of a few years later ("Is there a man, sir, now, who can pen an essay with such ease and elegance as "Goldsmith?"*) he was not the man to wait for the world to help him to. Himself connected with Newbery, and engaged in like occupation, the new adventurer wanted his helping word, and would be therefore sure to have it; nor, if it had not been a hearty one, is Mr. Percy likely to have busied himself to bring about the present meeting. It was arranged by that learned divine; and this was the first time, he says, he had seen them together. The day fixed was the 31st of May 1761, and Goldsmith gave a supper in Wine Office Court in honour of his visitor. 66 Percy called to take up Johnson at Inner Temple Lane, and found him, to his great astonishment, in a marked condition of studied neatness; without his rusty brown suit or his soiled shirt, his loose knee-breeches, his unbuckled shoes, or his old little shrivelled unpowdered wig; and not at all ⚫ Doctor Farr was dining with Reynolds the year before Goldsmith's death, when, in answer to a sneer which had fallen from Mr. (afterwards Lord) Eliot, he heard Johnson fire up in defence of his absent friend, and use, among others, the expression in the text. Prior, i. 367. 1761. Æt. 33. 1761. Æt. 33. 66 likely, as Miss Reynolds tells us his fashion in these days was, to be mistaken for a beggarman. He had been seen in no such respectable garb since he appeared behind Garrick's scenes on the first of the nine nights of Irene, in a scarlet gold-laced waistcoat, and rich gold-laced hat. In fact, says Percy," he had on a new suit of clothes, a new wig nicely 'powdered, and everything about him so perfectly dissimilar "from his usual habits and appearance, that his companion "could not help enquiring the cause of this singular trans"formation. Why, sir,' said Johnson, I hear that Gold"smith, who is a very great sloven, justifies his disregard "of cleanliness and decency by quoting my practice; and "I am desirous this night to show him a better example.' The example was not lost, as extracts from tailors' bills will shortly show; and the anecdote, which offers pleasant proof of the interest already felt by Johnson for his new acquaintance, is our only record connected with that memorable supper. It had no Boswell-historian, and is gone into oblivion. But the friendship which dates from it will never pass away. Percy Memoir, 62, 63. Campbell, writing to Percy about this anecdote when arranging the Memoir, says, "The anecdote of Johnson I had recollected, but had "forgot that it was at Goldsmith's you were to sup. The story of the Vale de "Chambre will, as Lord Bristol says, fill the basket of his absurdities; and "really we may have a hamper full of them." Nichols's Illustrations, vii. 780. Unfortunately the anecdote of the Valet de Chambre has not emerged. To another anecdote, also unluckily lost, Campbell refers in a previous letter to Percy (Ibid, 779). "One thing, however, I could wish, if it met your approbation, that "I had before me some hints respecting the affair of Goldsmith and Perrot: it may, without giving offence, be related; at least so as to embellish the work, by showing more of Goldsmith's character, which he himself has fairly drawn: "fond of enjoying the present, careless of the future, his sentiments those of a man of sense, his actions those of a fool; of fortitude able to stand unmoved "at the bursting of an earthquake, yet of sensibility to be affected by the breaking of a tea-cup.' To which, in a later letter (781) this is added: "Your "sketch of Sir Richard Perrot will come in as an episode towards the conclusion, "with good effect; but there, neither that nor anything that can sully, shall appear as coming from you." So the Perrot anecdote is also lost, and the basket of absurdities by no means full! 666 66 "Farewell," says Milton, at the close of one of his early letters to his friend Gill, "and on Tuesday next expect me "in London among the booksellers."* The booksellers were of little mark in Milton's days; but the presence of such men among them began a social change important to both, and not ill expressed in an incident of the days I am describing, when Horace Walpole met the wealthy representative of the profits of Paradise Lost at a great party at the Speaker's, while Johnson was appealing to public charity for the last destitute descendant of Milton. But from the now existing compact between trade and letters, the popular element could not wholly be excluded; and, to even the weariest drudge, hope was a part of it. From the loopholes of Paternoster Row, he could catch glimpses of the world. Churchill had emerged, and Sterne, for a few brief years; and but that Johnson had sunk into idleness, he might have been reaping a harvest more continuous than theirs, and yet less dependent on the trade. Drudgery is not good, but flattery and falsehood are worse; and it had become plain to Goldsmith, even since the days of the Enquiry, how much better it was for men of letters to live by the labour of their hands till more original labour became popular with trading patrons, than to wait with their hands across, as Johnson contemptuously described it, till great men came to feed them. t Whatever the call that Newbery or any other Todd's Milton, vii. 176-7. And see Aubrey's Letters and Lives, ii. 285, 440. Gill is the "infamous Gill" whose "railing rhymes " against himself Ben Jonson with so much reason bitterly abuses. See them in Wood's Athena Oxonienses (ed. 1813) ii, 597-8; but incorrectly attributed to Gill's father, whom he succeeded as master of St. Paul's. + Occasions for observing with what cheerful acquiescence Goldsmith hereafter accepted these relations of author and bookseller, will frequently occur. According to his friend Cooke, indeed, it seems to have been a favourite topic with him to "tell pleasant stories of Mr. Newbery, who, he said, was the patron of more "distressed authors than any man of his time." Europ. Mag. xxiv. 92. 1761. Et. 33. 1761. bookseller made, then, he was there to answer it. He had Et. 33. the comfort of remembering that the patron had himself patrons; that something of their higher influence had been attracted to his Chinese Letters; and that he was not slaving altogether without hope. 1762. Et. 34. His first undertaking in 1762 was a pamphlet on the Cock Lane Ghost, for which Newbery paid him three guineas: but whether, with Johnson, he thought the impudent imposture worth grave enquiry; or, with Hogarth, turned it to wise purposes of satire; or only laughed at it, as Churchill did; the pamphlet has not with certainty survived to inform us. His next labour, which has been attributed to him on the authority of“ several personal acquaintances," was the revision of a History of Mechlenburgh from the first settlement of the Vandals in that country, which the settlement of the young Queen Charlotte in this country was expected to make popular; and for which, according to his ordinary rates of payment, he would have received £20. This may have been that first great advance "in a lump" which seemed to his monied inexperience a sum so enormous as to require the grandest schemes for disposing of it. For a subsequent payment of £10, he assisted Newbery with an Art of Poetry on a New Plan, or in other words, a compilation of poetical extracts; and concurrently with this, Mr. Newbery begged leave to offer to the young gentlemen A pamphlet on the subject published by Bristow, who was a neighbour of Newbery's and with whom he had occasional connexion, has been assumed to be that for which Goldsmith was paid; and Mr. Crossley, who possesses a copy of that pamphlet, says (Notes and Queries, v. 77) that he thinks the beginning and conclusion, "though evidently written in haste, are not without marks of "Goldsmith's serious and playful manner.' Of course all this can only be conjecture, but it is at the least very unlikely that Newbery should have declined to issue what he had consented to pay Goldsmith for writing; and that Bristow published for him is certain, for at his shop the Public Ledger was first sold. Europ. Mag. xxiv. 92. + Prior i. 388. 1762. and ladies of these kingdoms a Compendium of Biography, or an history of the lives of those great personages, both Et. 34. ancient and modern, who are most worthy of their esteem and imitation, and most likely to inspire their minds with a love of virtue; for which offering to the juvenile mind, beginning with an abridgment of Plutarch, he was to pay Goldsmith at the rate of about eight pounds a volume. The volumes were brief, published monthly, and meant to have gone through many months if the scheme had thriven; but it fell before Dilly's British Plutarch, and perished with the seventh volume. Nor did it run without danger even this ignoble career. Illness fell upon the compiler in the middle of the fifth volume. "Dear Sir," he wrote to Newbery, "As I have "been out of order for some time past, and am still not "quite recovered, the fifth volume of Plutarch's Lives "remains unfinished. I fear I shall not be able to do it unless there be an actual necessity, and that none else can "be found. If therefore you would send it to Mr. Collier, I should esteem it a kindness, and I will pay for whatever "it may come to. N.B. I received twelve guineas for the two volumes. I am, Sir, Your obliged, humble servant, "OLIVER GOLDSMITH. Pray let me have an answer." The answer was not favourable. Twelve guineas had been advanced, the two volumes were due, and Mr. Collier, though an ingenious man, was not Mr. Goldsmith. "Sir," returned the latter coldly, "One volume is done, namely the fourth. "When I said I should be glad Mr. Collier would do "the fifth for me, I only demanded it as a favour; but if "he cannot conveniently do it, though I have kept my chamber these three weeks, and am not quite recovered, yet I will do it. I send it per bearer; and if the affair puts you to the least inconvenience, return it, and it shall 66 06 66 |