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his patients consequently outnumbered his fees. To eke out his scanty means he turned author, and, as he says, "with a very little practice as a physician, and a very little reputation as a poet, contrived to live." At this time he projected the writing of a tragedy, then considered almost a necessary first step in an author's career, and even finished some parts of it. It was submitted for correction to Richardson the novelist; but, whether from his discouragement, or some other cause, it was never completed. We do not think that Goldsmith had the nerve of mind, the depth of feeling, the concentration of purpose, or the power of imagination, necessary to the construction of a first-rate tragedy;- he could not have got beyond a clever melodrama. At this time he entertained a far more ridiculous project—that of visiting the famous Written Rocks, in the Syrian wilderness, and (without knowing a word of Arabic!) deciphering their inscriptions: but "from this long and ambitious flight into the deserts of Arabia, he settled down into the management of a classical school at Peckham." Here he acquitted himself admirably, and his employer offered him a medical appointment in India, which flattered Goldsmith's fancy with a vision of descending showers of rubies, gold, and barbaric pearl. Meantime he could not provide himself with the needful equipment for his voyage, and although he issued proposals for publishing by subscription his "Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Literature in Europe," he was unable to procure the necessary means. He threw up, therefore, the appointment, and began to apply himself with greater diligence to literature, in which he was becoming rapidly popular. He wrote for the British Magazine, and for various other journals; he published The Bee; for a while he engaged himself as a regular contributor to the Monthly Review, then under the care of a Mr Griffiths, who gave him board, lodging, and a good salary for five hours' work a day; but Goldsmith tired of the drudgery in a few months, and dissolved the agreement. Newberry (afterwards commemorated in the "Vicar of Wakefield" as a "redfaced old gentleman, the friend of all mankind ") then engaged him at a salary of a hundred pounds a year, and he spent his spare time in writing the Chinese letters ("Citizen of the

World") for the Public Ledger, and assisting Smollett in his care of the British Magazine and Critical Review.

He had hitherto been very poor, and, as late as 1759, was inhabiting a wretched room in Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey, where he had only one chair, and was surrounded by paupers. He began now, however, to emerge from this caterpillar condition, and was soon to don his "bloom-coloured coat," and to become, if not the most beauteous or graceful, the most curious insect that ever fluttered his wings in the sunshine of public favour. In 1761 he took better lodgings in Wine-office Court, Fleet Street, where he entertained Dr Johnson, Dr Percy, and some other celebrities. About this time the famous incident occurred of Goldsmith's being arrested for debt. It was a case of distress then common among literary men, but rendered ludicrous by the circumstance of his landlady proffering herself as the alternative of his not paying her bill! Dr Johnson came at his call, having first forwarded a guinea. This, ere he arrived, Goldsmith had melted down into a bottle of Madeira, in which he was preparing to drown his sorrows, when the Doctor entered, instantly put the cork in the bottle, begged Goldsmith to be calm, inquired into his resources, found he had a novel in MS., glanced at it, saw its merit, went out, and sold it for sixty pounds. It is satisfactory to know that upon receiving the money and discharging the account, Goldsmith rated the landlady soundly, not merely, we presume, for her hard-hearted attempt to imprison him, but for the impudent expedient she had proposed for his deliverance! The novel was "The Vicar of Wakefield!" Johnson had obtained the sixty pounds for it with difficulty, and principally on the credit of his own name; and so doubtful was the bookseller of its success, that it was not published till "The Traveller" had established its author's reputation.

Between this incident and the publishing of his poem, nothing remarkable occurred in Goldsmith's history. He lived chiefly in Islington, revising, translating, and correcting various publications, such as an Art of Poetry, in 2 vols., a life of Beau Nash, and a collection of essays which had originally appeared in various periodicals. At length, in 1765, "The

Traveller," which had been partly composed in Switzerland, and been subjected to Johnson's critical eye, was launched amid loud applause. It was, in technical language, a “decided hit," and made him famous in circles where his name was previously unknown. Notwithstanding its success, his restless disposition continued, and he was on the very point of setting out for Aleppo, for the purpose "of collecting all the arts of life which were possessed by the oriental nations, to enrich and adorn his native country," in which case, according to Johnson, he would probably have brought back a wheel-barrow as a new discovery of the Syrians! He could not, however, get his noble friends and patrons to aid him in this ridiculous project, and was forced to remain at home.

He now took lodgings in the Temple, and his "Vicar of Wakefield" appeared. It at once became universally, as it will be for ever, popular. In summer he had a hired house on the Edgeware Road, and compiled a History of England in a series of letters, which was published without his name. In 1768 he wrote "The Good-natured Man," which, rejected by Garrick, was produced at Covent Garden by Colman. It was not very successful, although it ran nine nights, and produced five hundred pounds for the author-which sum he spent in furnishing his chambers, and in supplying the wants of a constant levée of poor countrymen who crowded around him. His charity was always as unbounded as it was often unwise. He continued his plan of compiling histories for the booksellers; and few of us have not derived our first knowledge of the principal facts in ancient history from his sketchy but agreeable Greek and Roman histories. He relieved the drudgery of this task-work by writing his delightful "Deserted Village," which forms such a pendant to "The Traveller," as (magna componere parvis) the "Odyssey forms to the "Iliad." About this time, in company with the Misses Horneck, he took a trip to Paris; and we cannot but fancy him reviewing with much interest some of the scenes he had traversed as a poor wanderer a few years before. On his return he was appointed Professor of Ancient Painting in the Royal Academy-a situation to which were annexed no duties and no salary. He produced afterwards, for the booksellers,

two elegant, if rather flimsy, lives,-the one of Parnell, and the other of Bolingbroke; besides making a selection-not the most select-of English poetry for young ladies' boardingschools, which raised for a time an outcry against him.

He began now a larger work than any he had previously attempted. This was his "History of Animated Nature," a daring undertaking for one who, if Johnson may be believed, "did not know a goose from a turkey, except at table!" The book was written principally at his country lodgings, and appeared in 1774. It is full of fine descriptions, blended with the most absurd fables which imposture ever retailed or gullibility ever swallowed. Goldsmith found the marvellous in old travellers. Buffon, his great rival, found it in the real facts of nature. He knew that truth is stranger than fiction; and if our readers would understand the meaning of the words of Tennyson-"The fairy tales of science"-let them read the French author's splendid and glowing pictures of the birds which flutter amid the branches of the American forests, like living flames, or "atoms of the rainbow; " and of the animals which glare, stalk, or wallow amid the tremendous solitudes, the prairies, mountains, jungles, and swamps of the tropical or arctic regions. They will thus, too, see the difference between the descriptions of a mere amateur and those of a scientific artist; and between a man of fine fancy, and one of powerful imagination, for we may fearlessly call Buffon-not excepting even Humboldt and Audubon-the Laureate of the living world of Nature.

In 1773, Colman, after long delay and many predictions of failure, produced "She Stoops to Conquer." Goldsmith's friends assembled in great force to support it-Dr Johnson, taking the chair at a preliminary dinner, whence, after expending more wit than the play itself contained, they adjourned to the theatre-and succeeded, along with the really laughable incidents, and the inimitable character of Tony Lumpkin, in taking the house by storm. The comedy ran like wildfire, and produced him eight hundred pounds. This year he realised, in all, about eighteen hundred pounds; but his renewed passion for play, and his careless dissipated habits, speedily exhausted it. The same year, provoked by an attack

in a publication of Evans the bookseller, he attempted to chastise him. He was no match, however, for the sturdy Welshman; and poor Goldsmith was not only battered and bruised, but narrowly escaped a prosecution for assault.

"Retaliation" was his last production. It was written," but not printed, before its author's death. That was now rapidly approaching. Goldsmith was not, it must be granted, a well-conducted man. He was not, perhaps, the habitual slave of any one evil habit, except that of gaming, but his life was in the last degree careless and unmethodical. He had, too, been often cheated; and had contracted debts amounting to two thousand pounds. This preyed heavily on his mind, and hurried on his dissolution. In the spring of 1774 he was seized with a nervous fever. He foolishly persisted in taking James's powders, contrary to advice. Various eminent physicians attended him (one of whom, seeing him worse than the degree of his fever accounted for, asked if his mind was at ease-he replied, it was not); but their efforts were in vain; and on the 4th April, at the age of forty-five, he breathed his last. His death was a severe blow to that brilliant circle of which he had been long the love, the admiration, the wonder, and the sport. Burke shed tears at the news. Reynolds dropped his pencil, and painted no more that day. Johnson said, "Goldy was wild, sir-very wildbut he is so NO MORE." He was buried privately in the Temple burying-ground, on the 9th of April. The Literary Club erected a monument to his memory, which was chiselled by Nollekens, placed beside that of Gay, the English Goldsmith-as Goldsmith was the Irish Gay-and adorned by a Latin inscription from the pen of Johnson, which, in a few sternly-sculptured and limited lines, draws a perfect portrait of his gifted friend.

A whole jest-book might be filled with anecdotes of Goldsmith, the common biographies of whom, indeed, read like jest-books. To them, for a thousand floating stories, we must refer our readers. In character, he was the strangest of compounds at once the most amiable, the vainest, and the most envious of men. He doted on children, and hated the majority

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