« From the time of Goldsmith's leaving Edinburgh in the year 1754, I never saw him till the year 1756, when I was in London attending the hospitals and lectures: early in January he called upon me one morning before I was up, and on my entering the room I recognized my old acquaintance, dressed in a rusty full-trimmed black suit, with his pockets full of papers, which instantly reminded me of the poet in Garrick's farce of Lethe. After we had finished our breakfast he drew from his pocket part of a tragedy, which he said he had brought for my correction. In vain I pleaded inability, when he began to read, and every part on which I expressed a doubt as to the propriety, was immediately blotted out. I then more earnestly pressed him not to trust to my judgment, but to take the opinion of persons better qualified to decide on dramatic compositions. He now told me that he had submitted his production, so far as he had written, to Mr Richardson, the author of Clarissa, on which I peremptorily declined offering another criticism on the performance. The name and subject of the tragedy have unfortunately escaped my memory, neither do I recollect, with exactness, how much he had written, though I am inclined to believe that he had not completed the third act; I never heard whether he afterwards finished it. In this visit, I remember his relating a strange Quixotic scheme he had in contemplation, of going to decipher the inscriptions on the Written Mountains, though he was altogether ignorant of Arabic, or the language in which they might be supposed to be written. The salary of three hundred pounds per annum, which had been left for the purpose, was the temptation !»

With regard to the sketch of a tragedy here alluded to, the piece never was completed, nor did he afterwards attempt any thing in the same line. His project respecting the Written Mountains, was certainly an undertaking of a most extravagant description; but, if we consider how little qualified he was for such a task, it can hardly be supposed that the scheme ever entered seriously into his mind. It was not unusual with him to hazard opinions and adopt resolutions, without much consideration, and often without calculating the means to the end. VOL. I.

Goldsmith," said Boswell, « had a more than common share of that hurry of ideas which we often find in his countrymen. He was very much what the French call un étourdi, and from vanity and an eager desire of being conspicuous, wherever he was, he frequently talked carelessly, without knowledge of the subject, or even without thought." The extravagant scheme respecting the Written Mountains, however, seems soon to have given way to a more rational undertaking at home; and, notwithstanding our author's boast, in his letter to Mr Hodson, of being « too rich to need assistance," we find him, about this time, induced to relinquish his medical practice, and undertake the management of the classical school at Peckham. The master, Dr Milner, having been seized with a severe illness, was unable to attend to the duties of his charge; and it had been necessary to procure a person, of classical attainments, to preside over the establishment, while deprived of his own support. The son of the doctor having studied with Goldsmith at Edinburgh, knew his abilities as a scholar, and recommended him to his father as a person well qualified for the situation. Our author accordingly took charge of the school, and acquitted himself in the management so much to the satisfaction of his employer, that he engaged to procure a medical appointment for him under the East India Company. Dr Milner had considerable influence with some of the directors, and afterwards made good his promise, for, by his means, through the interest of the director Mr Jones, Goldsmith was appointed physician to one of the factories in India, in the year 1758.

This appointment seems, for a while, to have filled the vivid imagination of our author with splendid dreams of futurity. The princely fortunes acquired by some individuals in the Indies flattered him with the hope of similar success; and accordingly we find him bending his whole soul to the accomplishment of this new undertaking. The chief obstacle that stood in the way was the expense of his equipment for so long a voyage; but his << Present State of Polite Literature in Europe » had been, for some time, preparing for the press; and he seems to have relied that the profits of that work would afford the means of enabling

him to embark. Proposals were immediately drawn up, and published, to print the work by subscription. These he circulated with indefatigable zeal and industry. He wrote to his friends in Ireland to promote the subscription in that country, and, in the correspondence with them, he evinces the greatest anxiety for its success. In the following letter he explains his situation and prospects, and shows how much he had set his heart on the expedition to the East. It is without date, but written some time in 1758, or in the early part of 1759, and addressed to Mr Daniel Hodson, his brother-in-law.

I

« Dear Sir,—You cannot expect regularity in one who is regular in nothing. Nay, were I forced to love you by rule, I dare venture to say, I could never do it sincerely. Take me then with all my faults. Let me write when I please ; for you see say what I please, and am only thinking aloud when writing to you. I suppose you have heard of my intention of going to the East Indies. The place of my destination is one of the factories on the coast of Coromandel, and I go in the quality of physician and surgeon; for which the Company has signed my warrant, which has already cost me ten pounds. I must also pay fifty pounds for my passage, and ten pounds for my sea-stores; and the other incidental expenses of my equipment will amount to sixty or seventy pounds more. The salary is but trifling, viz. one hundred pounds per annum ; but the other advantages, if a person be prudent, are considerable. The practice of the place, if I am rightly informed, generally amounts to not less than one thousand pounds per annum, for which the appointed physician has an exclusive privilege. This, with the advantages resulting from trade, with the high interest which money bears, viz. twenty per cent., are the inducements which persuade me to undergo the fatigues of the sea, the dangers of war, and the still greater dangers of the climate; which induce me to leave a place where I am every day gaining friends and esteem, and where I might enjoy all the conveniencies of life. I am certainly wrong not to be contented with what I already possess, trifling as it is; for should I ask myself one serious question, What is it I want? —what can I answer? My desires are as capricious as the big

C.

bellied woman's who longed for a piece of her husband's nose. I have no certainty, it is true; but why cannot I do as some men of more merit, who have lived on more precarious terms? Scarron used jestingly to call himself the Marquis of Quenault, which was the name of the bookseller that employed him: and why may not I assert my privilege and quality on the same pretensions? Yet, upon deliberation, whatever airs I give myself on this side of the water, my dignity, I fancy, would be evaporated before I reached the other. I know you have in Ireland a very indifferent idea of a man who writes for bread, though Swift and Steele did so in the earliest part of their lives. You imagine, I suppose, that every author by profession lives in a garret, wears shabby clothes, and converses with the meanest company. Yet I do not believe there is one single writer, who has abilities to translate a French novel, that does not keep better company, wear finer clothes, and live more genteelly, than many who pride themselves for nothing else in Ireland. I confess it again, my dear Dan, that nothing but the wildest ambition could prevail on me to leave the enjoyment of that refined conversation which I am sometimes permitted to partake in, for uncertain fortune, and paltry show. You cannot conceive how I am sometimes divided. To leave all that is dear to me gives me pain; but when I consider I may possibly acquire a genteel independence for life; when I think of that dignity which philosophy claims, to raise itself above contempt and ridicule; when I think thus, I eagerly long to embrace every opportunity of separating myself from the vulgar, as much in my circumstances as I am already in my sentiments. I am going to publish a book, for an account of which I refer you to a letter which I wrote to my brother Goldsmith. Circulate for me among your acquaintance a hundred proposals, which I have given orders may be sent to you; and if, in pursuance of such circulation, you should receive any subscriptions, let them, when collected, be transmitted to Mr Bradley, who will give a receipt for the same.

*

<< I know not how my desire of seeing Ireland, which had so long slept, has again revived with so much ardour. So weak is my temper, and so unsteady, that I am frequently tempted, particularly when low-spirited, to return home, and leave my fortune, though just beginning to look kinder. But it shall not be. In five or six years I hope to indulge these transports. I find I want constitution, and a strong steady disposition, which alone makes men great. I will, however, correct my faults, since I am conscious of them."

The following letter to Edward Mills, Esq. dated Temple Exchange Coffee-house, August 7, 1759, gives the title of the book he was about to publish, as stated in the foregoing letter.

« DEAR SIR,—You have quitted, I find, that plan of life which you once intended to pursue, and given up ambition for domestic tranquillity. Were I to consult your satisfaction alone in this change, I have the utmost reason to congratulate your choice; but when I consider my own, I cannot avoid feeling some regret, that one of my few friends has declined a pursuit in which he had every reason to expect success. The truth is, like the rest of the world, I am self-interested in my concern; and do not so much consider the happiness you have acquired, as the honour I have probably lost in the change. I have often let my fancy loose when you were the subject, and have imagined you gracing the bench, or thundering at the bar; while I have taken no small pride to myself, and whispered all that I could come near, that this was my cousin. Instead of this, it seems you are contented to be merely a happy man; to be esteemed only by your acquaintance; to cultivate your paternal acres; to take unmolested a nap under one of your own hawthorns, or in Mrs Mills's bed-chamber, which, even a poet must confess, is rather the most comfortable place of the two.

« But, however your resolutions may be altered with respect to your situation in life, I persuade myself they are unalterable with regard to your friends in it. I cannot think the world has taken such entire possession of that heart (once so susceptible of friendship), as not to have left a corner there for a friend or two; but I flatter myself that I even have my place among the