rebuffs. After some experience in a chemist's shop, he managed to engage himself as proof-reader to Samuel Richardson, who was then at the height of his fame as the author of the first great English novel, Pamela. Thence he drifted into school-teaching, and at length into the work of writing for the booksellers. "Hack-work," they called it; and it was a miserably paid business. The time was inauspicious for the man who would win his living by authorship; "the patron was going, and the public had not yet come." Goldsmith" lived on Grub Street," as the cant phrase went; he wrote critical articles and reviews in their nature superficial and controversial, and managed for some time to eke out an existence. He " compiled with a flowing pen " histories of Greece, Rome, and England; biographies of Nash and Voltaire.

Futile Schemes. He had not yet found his place in the world. He broke away from his first employer, and tried teaching again. Then an opportunity came for a medical appointment to the Coromandel Coast, on the east side of India. The better to enforce his case, Goldsmith began a work to be called An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe. He did actually obtain the appointment; but for some reason the project fell through. It is probable that the candidate, in spite of his medical degree, was found to be unqualified for the post. Shortly afterwards (1758) he tried for a position in a London hospital, but failed to pass the examinations.

A Definite Path. Finally, however, a definite path opened before him. The publication of the Enquiry in 1759 committed him to the life of a man of letters. This, his first considerable publication, was a treatise on

the arts of Europe. It contained an attack upon the professional literary critics: they are men, he said, "whose trade is a bad one, and who are bad workmen in the trade." But Goldsmith himself had been a critic, and the inconsistency of his position soon brought reprisals from those whom he attacked. The chief enemy thus raised was one Kenrick, who lost no opportunity of abusing him then and afterwards.

The Bee." Of higher quality than the Enquiry was a new venture which was next put through. A bookseller in London asked him to become sole contributor to a weekly magazine of the Spectator type. This work Goldsmith readily undertook, and the first issue of The Bee, as the periodical was called, came out on October 6, 1759. But it was not destined to succeed-principally through the lack of a definite aim and policy. The work that Goldsmith did for it showed in no small degree the charm of style which he later brought to perfection. Here are a few lines from No. 4, called City Night Piece.

"The clock has just struck two, the expiring taper rises and sinks in the socket, the watchman forgets the hour in slumber, the laborious and the happy are at rest, and nothing wakes but meditation, guilt, revelry, and despair. The drunkard fills once more the destroying bowl, the robber walks his midnight round, and the suicide lifts his guilty arm against his own sacred person.

“What a gloom hangs all around! The dying lamp feebly emits a yellow gleam; no sound is heard but of the chiming clock, or the distant watch-dog. All the bustle of human pride is forgotten; an hour like this may well display the emptiness of human vanity.

"There will come a time, when this temporary solitude may be made continual, and the city itself, like its inhabitants, fade away and leave a desert in its room."

"The Citizen of the World."

This passage suggests

Such

the method of the "familiar essay," which Goldsmith was presently to handle in a manner peculiarly his own. His mastery of the form, and his command of delicate satire, are seen in a series published originally in a London newspaper and reissued under the title of The Citizen of the World. The writer imagines a philosopher from China, who visits England and writes home letters commenting on the characteristic features of the national life. a setting, while not new, afforded ample scope for amusing criticism. After a time there appears a mysterious" Man in Black." Under a rough exterior this character conceals a keen intellect and a kindly heart, and acts as guide, counselor, and friend to the stranger from China. Like the Philosophic Vagabond in The Vicar of Wakefield, he reflects something of Goldsmith's experience of life; he is, all in all, a person whose acquaintance it is well to make.

Dr. Johnson. The quality of Goldsmith's writing won for him some friends whose fellowship was great gain to him. Most interesting and most prominent of them all was Doctor Samuel Johnson. The sane and vigorous personality of this man dominates the literature of the time; his wonderful goodness of heart is writ large in the story of his life. Sometime in 1761, he sought out Goldsmith. This action was taken before the appearance of any of the work by which Goldsmith's name is familiar to us to-day; it is convincing proof both of his literary ability and of the good Doctor's critical judgment. Their meeting took place before James Boswell began those records of Johnson's life which were eventually to form the most remarkable biography in the English language;