44

coveries were to be made there, and many useful inventions in the arts brought back to the stock of European knowledge. Thus, in Siberian Tartary," observes he in one of his writings, "the natives extract a strong spirit from milk, which is a secret probably unknown to the chemists of Europe. In the most savage parts of India they are possessed of the secret of dying vegetable substances scarlet, and that of refining lead into a metal which, for hardness and color, is little inferior to silver."

Goldsmith adds a description of the kind of person suited to such an enterprise, in which he evidently had himself in view.

"He should be a man of philosophical turn, one apt to deduce consequences of general utility from particular occurrences; neither swoln with pride, nor hardened by prejudice; neither wedded to one particular system, nor instructed only in one particular science; neither wholly a botanist, nor quite an antiquarian; his mind should be tinctured with miscellaneous knowledge, and his manners humanized by an intercourse with men. He should be in some measure an enthusiast to the design; fond of travelling, from a rapid imagination and an innate love of change; furnished with a body capable of sustaining every fatigue, and a heart not easily terrified at danger."

In 1761, when Lord Bute became prime minister on the accession of George the Third, Goldsmith drew up a memorial on the subject, suggesting the advantages to be derived from a mission to those countries solely for useful and scientific purposes; and, the better to insure success, he preceded his application to the government by an ingenious essay to the same effect in the Public Ledger. His memorial and his essay were fruitless, his project most probably being deemed the dream of a visionary Still it continued to haunt his mind, and he would often talk of making an expedition to Aleppo some time or other, when his means were greater, to inquire into the arts peculiar to the East, and to bring home such as might be valuable. Johnson, who knew how little poor Goldsmith was fitted by scientific lore for this favorite scheme of his fancy, scoffed at the project when it was mentioned to him. "Of all men," said he, "Goldsmith is the most unfit to go out upon such an inquiry, for he is utterly ignorant of such arts as we already possess, and consequently, could not know what would be accessions to our present stock of mechanical knowledge. Sir, he would bring home a grinding barrow, which you see in every street in London, and think that he nad furnished a wonderful improvement.' His connection with Newbery the bookseller now led him into a variety of temporary jobs, such as a pamphlet on the Cock-lane Ghost, a Life of Beau Nash, the famous Master of Ceremonies at Bath, etc.; one of the best things for his fame, however, was the remodelling and republication of his Chinese Letters under the title of "The Citizen of the World," a work which has long since taken its merited stand among the classics of the English language. "Few works,' it has been observed by one of his biographers, exhibit a nicer perception, or more delicate delineation of life and manners. Wit, humor, and sentiment pervade every page; the vices and follies of the day are touched with the most playful and diverting satire; and English characteristics, in endless variety, are hit off with the pencil of a master."

44

In seeking materials for his varied views of life, he often mingled in strange scenes and got involved in whimsical situations. In the summer

so fa

of 1762 he was one of the thousands who went to see the Cherokee chiefs, whom he mentions in one of his writings. The Indians made their appearance in grand costume, hideously painted and besmeared. In the course of the visit Goldsmith made one of the chiefs a present, who, in the ecstasy of his gratitude, gave him an embrace that left his face well bedaubed with oil and red ochre. Toward the close of 1762 he removed to "merry Islington," then a country village, though now swallowed up in omnivorous London. He went there for the benefit of country air, his health being injured by literary application and confinement, and to be near his chief employer, Mr. Newbery, who resided in the Canonbury House. In this neighborhood he used to take his solitary rambles, sometimes extending his walks to the gardens of the White Conduit House,' mous among the essayists of the last century. While strolling one day in these gardens, he met three females of the family of a respectable tradesman to whom he was under some obligation. With his prompt disposition to oblige, he conducted them about the garden, treated them to tea, and ran up a bill in the most open-handed manner imaginable; it was only when he came to pay that he found himself in one of his old dilemmas -he had not the wherewithal in his pocket. A scene of perplexity now took place between him and the waiter, in the midst of which came up some of his acquaintances, in whose eyes he wished to stand particularly well. This completed his mortification. There was no concealing the awkwardness of his position. The sneers of the waiter revealed it. His acquaintances amused themselves for some time at his expense, professing their inability to relieve him. When, however, they had enjoyed their banter, the waiter was paid, and poor Goldsmith enabled to convoy off the ladies with flying colors.

Among the various productions thrown off by him for the booksellers during this growing period of his reputation, was a small work in two volumes, entitled The History of England, in a series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son.'' It was digested from Hume, Rapin, Carte, and Kennet. These authors he would read in the morning; make a few notes; ramble with a friend into the country about the skirts of "merry Islington;" return to a temperate dinner and cheerful evening; and, before going to bed, write off what had arranged itself in his head from the studies of the morning. In this way he took a more general view of the subject, and wrote in a more free and fluent style than if he had been mousing at the time among authorities. The work, like many others written by him in the earlier part of his literary career, was anonymous. Some attributed it to Lord Chesterfield, others to Lord Orrery, and others to Lord Lyttelton. The latter seemed pleased to be the putative father, and never disowned the bantling thus laid at his door; and well might he have been proud to be considered capable of producing what has been well pronounced the most finished and elegant summary of English history in the same compass that has been or is likely to be written."

The reputation of Goldsmith, it will be perceived, grew slowly; he was known and estimated by a few; but he had not those brilliant though fallacious qualities which flash upon the public, and excite loud but transient applause. His works were more read than cited; and the charm of style, for which he was especially noted, was more apt to be felt than talked about. He used

often to repine, in a half-humorous, half-querulous manner, at his tardiness in gaining the laurels which he felt to be his due. "The public," he would exclaim, "will never do me justice; whenever I write anything they make a point to know nothing about it.'

About the beginning of 1763 he became acquainted with Boswell, whose literary gossipings were destined to have a deleterious effect upon his reputation. Boswell was at that time a young man, light, buoyant, pushing, and presumptuous. He had a morbid passion for mingling in the society of men noted for wit and learning, and had just arrived from Scotland, bent upon making his way into the literary circles of the metropolis. An intimacy with Dr. Johnson, the great literary luminary of the day, was the crowning object of his aspiring and somewhat ludicrous ambition. He expected to meet him at a dinner to which he was invited at Davies the bookseller's, but was disappointed. Goldsmith was present, but he was not as yet sufficiently renowned to excite the reverence of Boswell. "At this time," says he in his notes, "I think he had published nothing with his name, though it was pretty generally understood that one Dr. Goldsmith was the author of An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe,' and of The Citizen of the World,' a series of letters supposed to be written from London by a Chinese.'

A conversation took place at table between Goldsmith and Mr. Robert Dodsley, compiler of the well-known collection of modern poetry, as to the merits of the current poetry of the day. Goldsmith declared there was none of superior merit. Dodsley cited his own collection in proof of the contrary. "It is true," said he, we can boast

of no palaces nowadays, like Dryden's Ode to St. Cecilia's Day, but we have villages composed of very pretty houses.' Goldsmith, however,

maintained that there was nothing above mediocrity, an opinion in which Johnson, to whom it was repeated, concurred, and with reason, for the era was one of the dead levels of British poetry.

Boswell has made no note of this conversation; he was an unitarian in his literary devotion, and disposed to worship none but Johnson. Little Davies endeavored to console him for his disappointment, and to stay the stomach of his curiosity, by giving him imitations of the great lexicographer; mouthing his words, rolling his head, and assuming as ponderous a manner as his petty person would permit. Boswell was shortly afterward made happy by an introduction to Johnson, of whom he became the obsequious satellite. From him he likewise imbibed a more favorable opinion of Goldsmith's merits, though he was fain to consider them derived in a great measure from his Magnus Apollo. "He had sagacity enough,' says he, to cultivate assiduously the acquaintance of Johnson, and his faculties were gradually enlarged by the contemplation of such a model. To me and many others it appeared that he studiously copied the manner of Johnson, though, indeed, upon a smaller scale.' So on another occasion he calls him" one of the brightest ornaments of the Johnsonian school." "His respectful attachment to Johnson," adds he, was then at its height; for his own literary reputation had not yet distinguished him so much as to excite a vain desire of competition with his great master."

What beautiful instances does the garrulous Boswell give of the goodness of heart of Johnson, and the passing homage to it by Goldsmith. They were speaking of a Mr. Levett, long an inmate of

Johnson's house and a dependent on his bounty; but who, Boswell thought, must be an irksome charge upon him. "He is poor and honest," said Goldsmith, "which is recommendation enough to Johnson.'

Boswell mentioned another person of a very bad character, and wondered at Johnson's kindness to him. He is now become miserable," said Goldsmith," and that insures the protection of Johnson. Encomiums like these speak almost as much for the heart of him who praises as of him who is praised.

Subsequently, when Boswell had become more intense in his literary idolatry, he affected to undervalue Goldsmith, and a lurking hostility to him is discernible throughout his writings, which some have attributed to a silly spirit of jealousy of the superior esteem evinced for the poet by Dr. Johnson. We have a gleam of this in his account of the first evening he spent in company with those two eminent authors at their famous resort, the Mitre Tavern, in Fleet Street. This took place on the 1st of July, 1763. The trio supped together, and passed some time in literary conversation. On quitting the tavern, Johnson, who had now been sociably acquainted with Goldsmith for two years, and knew his merits, took him with him to drink tea with his blind pensioner, Miss Williams, a high privilege among his intimates and admirers. To Boswell, a recent acquaintance whose intrusive sycophancy had not yet made its way into his confidential intimacy, he gave no invitation. Boswell felt it with all the jealousy of a little mind. "Dr. Goldsmith," says he, in his memoirs, "being a privileged man, went with him, strutting away, and calling to me with an air of superiority, like that of an esoteric over an exoteric disciple of a sage of antiquity, I go to Miss Williams.' I confess I then envied him this mighty privilege, of which he seemed to be so proud; but it was not long before I obtained the same mark of distinction.'

Obtained! but how? not like Goldsmith, by the force of unpretending but congenial merit, but by a course of the most pushing, contriving, and spaniel-like subserviency. Really, the ambition of the man to illustrate his mental insignificance, by continually placing himself in juxtaposition with the great lexicographer, has something in it perfectly ludicrous. Never, since the days of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, has there been presented to the world a more whimsically contrasted pair of associates than Johnson and Boswell.

"Who is this Scotch cur at Johnson's heels?" asked some one when Boswell had worked his way into incessant companionship. 'He is not a cur, replied Goldsmith," you are too severe; he is only a bur. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of sticking."

CHAPTER XIV.

HOGARTH A VISITOR AT ISLINGTON-HIS CHARACTER STREET STUDIES-SYMPATHIES BETWEEN AUTHORS AND PAINTERS-SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS-HIS CHARACTER-HIS DINNERSTHE LITERARY CLUB-ITS MEMBERS-JOHN. SON'S REVELS WITH LANKEY AND BEAU-GOLDSMITH AT THE CLUB.

AMONG the intimates who used to visit the poet occasionally in his retreat at Islington, was Hogarth the painter. Goldsmith had spoken well of

him in his essays in the Public Ledger, and this formed the first link in their friendship. He was at this time upward of sixty years of age, and is described as a stout, active, bustling little man, in a sky-blue coat, satirical and dogmatic, yet full of real benevolence and the love of human nature. He was the moralist and philosopher of the pencil; like Goldsmith he had sounded the depths of vice and misery, without being polluted by them; and though his picturings had not the pervading amenity of those of the essayist, and dwelt more on the crimes and vices than the follies and humors of mankind, yet they were all calculated, in like manner, to fill the mind with instruction and precept, and to make the heart better.

Hogarth does not appear to have had much of the rural feeling with which Goldsmith was so amply endowed, and may not have accompanied | him in his strolls about hedges and green lanes; but he was a fit companion with whom to explore the mazes of London, in which he was continually on the look-out for character and incident. One of Hogarth's admirers speaks of having come upon him in Castle Street, engaged in one of his street studies, watching two boys who were quarrelling; patting one on the back who flinched, and endeavoring to spirit him up to a fresh encounter. "At him again! D- him, if I would take it of him! at him again !"

A frail memorial of this intimacy between the painter and the poet exists in a portrait in oil, called Goldsmith's Hostess." It is supposed to have been painted by Hogarth in the course of his visits to Islington, and given by him to the poet as a means of paying his landlady. There are no friendships among men of talents more likely to be sincere than those between painters and poets. Possessed of the same qualities of mind, governed by the same principles of taste and natural laws of grace and beauty, but applying them to different yet mutually illustrative arts, they are constantly in sympathy and never in collision with

each other.

A still more congenial intimacy of the kind was that contracted by Goldsmith with Mr. afterward Sir Joshua Reynolds. The latter was now about forty years of age, a few years older than the poet, whom he charmed by the blandness and benignity of his manners, and the nobleness and generosity of his disposition, as much as he did by the graces of his pencil and the magic of his coloring. They were men of kindred genius, excelling in corresponding qualities of their several arts, for style in writing is what color is in painting; both are innate endowments, and equally magical in their effects. Certain graces and harmonies of both may be acquired by diligent study and imitation, but only in a limited degree; whereas by their natural possessors they are exercised spontaneously, almost unconsciously, and with ever-varying fascination. Reynolds soon understood and appreciated the merits of Goldsmith, and a sincere and lasting friendship ensued between them.

At Reynolds's house Goldsmith mingled in a higher range of company than he had been accustomed to. The fame of this celebrated artist, and his amenity of manners, were gathering round him men of talents of all kinds, and the increasing affluence of his circumstances enabled him to give full indulgence to his hospitable disposition. Poor Goldsmith had not yet, like Dr. Johnson, acquired reputation enough to atone for his external defects and his want of the air of good society. Miss Reynolds used to inveigh against his personal appearance, which gave her the idea, she said, of a

low mechanic, a journeyman tailor. One evening at a large supper party, being called upon to give as a toast, the ugliest man she knew, she gave Dr. Goldsmith, upon which a lady who sat opposite, and whom she had never met before, shook hands with her across the table, and "hoped to become better acquainted."

We have a graphic and amusing picture of Reynolds's hospitable but motley establishment, in an account given by a Mr. Courtenay to Sir James Mackintosh; though it speaks of a time after Reynolds had received the honor of knighthood. "There was something singular," said he, “in the style and economy of Sir Joshua's table that contributed to pleasantry and good-humor, a coarse, inelegant plenty, without any regard to order and arrangement. At five o'clock precisely, dinner was served, whether all the invited guests were arrived or not. Sir Joshua was never so fashionably ill-bred as to wait an hour perhaps for two or three persons of rank or title, and put the rest of the company out of humor by this invidious distinction. His invitations, however, did not regulate the number of his guests. Many dropped in uninvited. A table prepared for seven or eight was often compelled to contain fifteen or sixteen. There was a consequent deficiency of knives, forks, plates, and glasses. The attendance was in the same style, and those who were knowing in the ways of the house took care on sitting down to call instantly for beer, bread, or wine, that they might secure a supply before the first course was over. He was once prevailed on to furnish the table with decanters and glasses at dinner, to save time and prevent confusion. These gradually were demolished in the course of service, and were never replaced. These trifling embarrassments, however, only served to enhance the hilarity and singular pleasure of the entertainment. The wine, cookery and dishes were but little attended to; nor was the fish or venison ever talked of or recommended. Amid this convivial animated bustle among his guests, our host sat perfectly composed; always attentive to what was said, never minding what was ate or drank, but left every one at perfect liberty to scramble

for himself.'

Out of the casual but frequent meeting of men of talent at this hospitable board rose that association of wits, authors, scholars, and statesmen, renowned as the Literary Club. Reynolds was the first to propose a regular association of the kind, and was eagerly seconded by Johnson, who proposed as a model a club which he had formed many years previously in Ivy Lane, but which was now extinct. Like that club the number of members was limited to nine. They were to meet and sup together once a week, on Monday night, at the Turk's Head on Gerard Street, Soho, and two members were to constitute a meeting. It took a regular form in the year 1764, but did not receive its literary appellation until several years afterward.

The original members were Reynolds, Johnson, Burke, Dr. Nugent, Bennet Langton, Topham Beauclerc, Chamier, Hawkins, and Goldsmith ;. and here a few words concerning some of the members may be acceptable. Burke was at that. time about thirty-three years of age; he had mingled a little in politics, and been Under Secretary to Hamilton at Dublin, but was again a writer for the booksellers, and as yet but in the dawning of his fame. Dr. Nugent was his fatherin-law, in-law, a Roman Catholic, and a physician of talent and instruction. Mr. afterward Sir John

Hawkins was admitted into this association from having been a member of Johnson's Ivy Lane club. Originally an attorney, he had retired from the practice of the law, in consequence of a large fortune which fell to him in right of his wife, and was now a Middlesex magistrate. He was, moreover, a dabbler in literature and music, and was actually engaged on a history of music, which he subsequently published in five ponderous volumes. To him we are also indebted for a biography of Johnson, which appeared after the death of that eminent man. Hawkins was as mean and parsimonious as he was pompous and conceited. He forbore to partake of the suppers at the club, and begged therefore to be excused from paying his share of the reckoning, And was he excused ?" asked Dr. Burney of Johnson. "Oh yes, for no man is angry at another for being inferior to himself. We all scorned him and admitted his plea. Yet I really believe him to be an honest man at bottom, though to be sure he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must be owned he has a tendency to savageness." He did not remain above two or three years in the club; being in a manner elbowed out in consequence of his rudeness to Burke.

They

Mr. Anthony Chamier was secretary in the War Office, and a friend of Beauclerc, by whom he was proposed. We have left our mention of Bennet Langton and Topham Beauclerc until the last, because we have most to say about them. were doubtless induced to join the club through their devotion to Johnson, and the intimacy of these two very young and aristocratic young men with the stern and somewhat melancholy moralist is among the curiosities of literature.

"

Bennet Langton was of an ancient family, who held their ancestral estate of Langton in Lincolnshire, a great title to respect with Johnson. "Langton, sir,' he would say, has a grant of free warren from Henry the Second; and Cardinal Stephen Langton, in King John's reign, was of this family."

Langton was of a mild, contemplative, enthusiastic nature. When but eighteen years of age he was so delighted with reading Johnson's "Rambler," that he came to London chiefly with a view to obtain an introduction to the author. Boswell gives us an account of his first interview, which took place in the morning. It is not often that the personal appearance of an author agrees with the preconceived ideas of his admirer. Langton, from perusing the writings of Johnson, expected to find him a decent, well dressed, in short a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of which, down from his bed chamber about noon, came, as newly risen, a large uncouth figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely covered his head, and his clothes hanging loose about him. But his conversation was so rich, so animated, and so forcible, and his religious and political notions so congenial with those in which Langton had been educated, that he conceived for him that veneration and attachment which he ever preserved.

Langton went to pursue his studies at Trinity College, Oxford, where Johnson saw much of him during a visit which he paid to the university. He found him in close intimacy with Topham Beauclerc, a youth two years older than himself, very gay and dissipated, and wondered what sympathies could draw two young men together of such opposite characters. On becoming acquainted with Beauclerc he found that, rake though he was, he possessed an ardent love of literature, an acute understanding, polished wit, innate gentility

and high aristocratic breeding. He was, more. over, the only son of Lord Sidney Beauclerc and grandson of the Duke of St. Albans, and was thought in some particulars to have a resemblance to Charles the Second. These were high recommendations with Johnson, and when the youth testified a profound respect for him and an ardent admiration of his talents the conquest was complete, so that in a "short time," says Boswell, the moral pious Johnson and the gay dissipated Beauclerc were companions."

44

The intimacy begun in college chambers was continued when the youth came to town during the vacations. The uncouth, unwieldy moralist, was flattered at finding himself an object of idolatry to two high-born, high-bred, aristocratic young men, and throwing gravity aside, was ready to join in their vagaries and play the part of a

young man upon town." Such at least is the picture given of him by Boswell on one occasion when Beauclerc and Langton having supped together at a tavern determined to give Johnson a rouse at three o'clock in the morning. They accordingly rapped violently at the door of his chambers in the Temple. The indignant sage sallied forth in his shirt, poker in hand, and a little black wig on the top of his head, instead of helmet; prepared to wreak vengeance on the assailants of his castle; but when his two young friends, Lankey and Beau, as he used to call them, presented themselves, summoning him forth to a morning ramble, his whole manner changed. What, is it you, ye dogs?'' cried he. "Faith, I'll have a frisk with you!"

So said so done. They sallied forth together into Covent Garden; figured among the green grocers and fruit women, just come in from the country with their hampers; repaired to a neighboring tavern, where Johnson brewed a bowl of bishop, a favorite beverage with him, grew merry over his cups, and anathematized sleep in two lines from Lord Lansdowne's drinking song:

"Short, very short, be then thy reign,

For I'm in haste to laugh and drink again." They then took boat again, rowed to Billingsgate, and Johnson and Beauclerc determined, like

mad wags," to "keep it up" for the rest of the day. Langton, however, the most sober-minded of the three, pleaded an engagement to breakfast with some young ladies; whereupon the great moralist reproached him with "leaving his social friends to go and sit with a set of wretched unideal girls.'

46

This madcap freak of the great lexicographer made a sensation, as may well be supposed, among his intimates. "I heard of your frolic t'other night," said Garrick to him ; you'll be in the Chronicle." He uttered worse forebodings to others. "I shall have my old friend to bail out of the round-house," said he. Johnson, however, valued himself upon having thus enacted a chapter in the " Rake's Progress," and crowed over Garrick on the occasion. He durst not do such a thing!"' chuckled he, "his wife would not let him!"

When these two young men entered the club, Langton was about twenty-two, and Beauclerc about twenty-four years of age, and both were launched on London life. Langton, however, was still the mild, enthusiastic scholar, steeped to the lips in Greek, with fine conversational powers, and an invaluable talent for listening. He was upward of six feet high, and very spare. that we could sketch him," exclaims Miss Haw

"Oh !

44

kins, in her Memoirs, "with his mild countenance, his elegant features, and his sweet smile, sitting with one leg twisted round the other, as if fearing to occupy more space than was equitable; his person inclining forward, as if wanting strength to support his weight, and his arms crossed over his bosom, or his hands locked together on his knee." Beauclerc, on such occasions, sportively compared him to a stork in Raphael's Cartoons, standing on one leg. Beauclerc was more a man upon town," a lounger in St. James's Street, an associate with George Selwyn, with Walpole, and other aristocratic wits; a man of fashion at court; a casual frequenter of the gaming-table; yet, with all this, he alternated in the easiest and happiest manner the scholar and the man of letters; lounged into the club with the most perfect self-possession, bringing with him. the careless grace and polished wit of high-bred society, but making himself cordially at home among his learned fellow members.

66

The gay yet lettered rake maintained his sway over Johnson, who was fascinated by that air of the world, that ineffable tone of good society in which he felt himself deficient, especially as the possessor of it always paid homage to his superior talent. "Beauclerc," he would say, using a quotation from Pope, has a love of folly, but a scorn of fools; everything he does shows the one, and everything he says the other." Beauclerc delighted in rallying the stern moralist of whom others stood in awe, and no one, according to Boswell, could take equal liberty with him with impunity. Johnson, it is well known, was often shabby and negligent in his dress, and not overcleanly in his person. On receiving a pension from the crown, his friends vied with each other in

respectful congratulations. Beauclerc simply scanned his person with a whimsical glance, and hoped that, like Falstaff, "he'd in future purge and live cleanly like a gentleman." Johnson took the hint with unexpected good humor, and profited by it.

you

Still Beauclerc's satirical vein, which darted shafts on every side, was not always tolerated by Johnson. "Sir," said he on one occasion, never open your mouth but with intention to give pain; and you have often given me pain, not from the power of what you have said, but from seeing your intention.”

44

When it was at first proposed to enroll Goldsmith among the members of this association, there seems to have been some demur; at least so says the pompous Hawkins. As he wrote for the booksellers, we of the club looked on him as a mere literary drudge, equal to the task of compiling and translating, but little capable of original and still less of poetical composition."

Even for some time after his admission, he continued to be regarded in a dubious light by some of the members. Johnson and Reynolds, of course, were well aware of his merits, nor was Burke a stranger to them; but to the others he was as yet a sealed book, and the outside was not prepossessing. His ungainly person and awkward manners were against him with men accustomed to the graces of society, and he was not sufficiently at home to give play to his humor and to that bonhommie which won the hearts of all who knew him. He felt strange and out of place in this new sphere; he felt at times the cool satirical eye of the courtly Beauclerc scanning him, and the more he attempted to appear at his ease, the more awkward he became.

CHAPTER XV.

JOHNSON A MONITOR ΤΟ GOLDSMITH-FINDS HIM IN DISTRESS WITH HIS LANDLADY-RELIEVED BY THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD-THE ORATORIO-POEM OF THE TRAVELLER-THE POET AND HIS DOG-SUCCESS OF THE POEMASTONISHMENT OF THE CLUB-OBSERVATIONS ON THE POEM.

JOHNSON had now become one of Goldsmith's best friends and advisers. He knew all the weak

points of his character, but he knew also his merits; and while he would rebuke him like a child, and rail at his errors and follies, he would suffer no one else to undervalue him. Goldsmith knew the soundness of his judgment and his practical benevolence, and often sought his counsel and aid amid the difficulties into which his heedlessness was continually plunging him.

"I received one morning," says Johnson, “a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion: I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to I looked into it and saw its merit; told the

me.

I

landlady I should soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill."

The novel in question was the "Vicar of Wakefield"; the bookseller to whom Johnson sold it was Francis Newbery, nephew to John. Strange. as it may seem, this captivating work, which has larity in various languages, was so little appreciobtained and preserved an almost unrivalled popuated by the bookseller, that he kept it by him for nearly two years unpublished!

Goldsmith had, as yet, produced nothing of moment in poetry. Among his literary jobs, it is true, was an oratorio entitled "The Captivity," founded on the bondage of the Israelites in Babylon. It was one of those unhappy offsprings of the muse ushered into existence amid the distortions of music. Most of the oratorio has passed into oblivion; but the following song from it will never die :

"The wretch condemned from life to part,
Still, still on hope relies,
And every pang that rends the neart
Bids expectation rise.

"Hope, like the glimmering taper's light,
Illumes and cheers our way;
And still, as darker grows the night,
Emits a brighter ray."

Goldsmith distrusted his qualifications to succeed in poetry, and doubted the disposition of the public mind in regard to it. "I fear," said he, “I have come too late into the world; Pope and other poets have taken up the places in the temple of Fame; and as few at any period can possess poetical reputation, a man of genius can now