ports you have heard, and your own suggestions may have brought you false information with respect to my character; it is very possible that the man whom you now regard with detestation may inwardly burn with grateful resentment; it is very possible that, upon a second perusal of the letter I sent you, you may see the workings of a mind strongly agitated with gratitude and jealousy. If such circumstances should appear, at least spare invective, till my book with Mr. Dodsley shall be publish'd,' and then perhaps you may see the bright side of a mind, when my professions shall not appear the dictates of necessity, but

of choice.

3

You seem to think Dr. Milner knew me not.2 Perhaps so; but he was a man I shall ever honour; but I have friendships only with the dead! I ask pardon for taking up so much time; nor shall I add to it by any other professions than that I am,

Sir, your humble servant,

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

P.S.-I shall expect impatiently the result of your resolutions.*

1 The Present State of Polite Learning.'-Ed.

2 The insinuation must have been that Dr. Milner knew not Goldsmith's real character. Griffiths first met our author at Dr. Milner's; see Life,' p. 17.-ED.

3 Forster's transcript reads "friendship.”—ED.

4 Had we the option of publishing this letter and its attendant scandal for the first time, we think we should decline the responsibility. It is a painful matter to give publicity to, even though the fault which it discloses is accompanied by circumstances of such terrible temptation and suffering as, it cannot but be viewed, almost constitute at once the fault's excuse and its atonement. But the letter and its story having already appeared in several works on Goldsmith (though not in Percy's memoir), we suppose it will be best to continue to publish them. The story illustrative of the letter is briefly this, according to Prior. Goldsmith wishing to offer himself as a candidate for an appointment as ship-surgeon, induced his employer, Griffiths, to be security with a tailor for a suit of clothes, to be worn at an examination he was to attend at Surgeon's Hall. The poet failing in his examination, likewise failed in his promise of returning or paying for the clothes; and, what was worse, when the tailor demanded the fulfilment of the bargain, it was found that the clothes had been pawned. Thereupon, Griffiths seems to have written a very abusive and threatening letter to the defaulter; to which the latter replied by a very humble and apologetic one. These

LETTER XII.

TO THE REV. HENRY GOLDSMITH, AT LOWFIELD, NEAR BALLYMORE, IN WESTMEATH, IRELAND.1

DEAR SIR,

[Date, about February, 1759.]

Your punctuality in answering a man whose trade is writing, is more than I had reason to expect; and yet you see me generally fill a whole sheet, which is all the recompense I can make for being so frequently troublesome. The behaviour of Mr. Mills and Mr. Lawder is a little extraordinary. However, their answering neither you nor me is a sufficient indication of their disliking the employment which I assigned them. As their conduct is different from what I had expected, so I have made an alteration in mine. I shall the beginning of next month send over two hundred and fifty books,2 which are all that I fancy can be well sold among you; and I would have you make some distinction in the persons who have subletters are lost, and only Goldsmith's second letter in this unhappy correspondence (the above) has survived. Another version of the circumstances attendant upon the writing of this letter has it that the clothes were pawned to save Goldsmith's landlady's husband from being taken to prison for debt-Goldsmith being in the landlady's debt at the time. (He was then living in Green Arbour Court.) Griffiths in the end seems to have been mollified, and paid (probably over-paid), by work immediately tendered by the poor author for the Review and for publication otherwise. This incident points about the darkest period of our author's career. Two months later his Enquiry' was successfully published, and from that time his fortunes gradually brightened. It seems likely, as Mr. Forster has suggested, that the Memoirs of Voltaire' (mentioned in the next Letter) was part of the work made over to Griffiths in settlement of the above claim. Anyhow, the Voltaire' was advertised in the Public Advertiser of Feb. 7th of this year as to be "speedily published, for R. Griffiths." Griffiths otherwise dabbled in Voltaire literature; notably through two volumes of the French philosopher's works which bear his (Griffiths') name as translator.-ED.

First published by Percy, who dated it “about 1759." Prior and others put the date at February, 1759. The letter is evidently the second of two sent to Henry Goldsmith about the same time. The first is lost.-ED.

2 The Present State of Polite Learning in Europe,' of which Percy says the subscription price was 58.—ED.

scribed. The money, which will amount to sixty pounds, may be left with Mr. Bradley, as soon as possible. I am not certain but I shall quickly have occasion for it. I have met with no disappointment with respect to my East India voyage, nor are my resolutions altered; though, at the same time, I must confess, it gives me some pain to think I am almost beginning the world at the age of thirty-one. Though I never had a day's sickness since I saw you, yet I am not that strong active man you once knew me. You scarcely can conceive how much eight years of disappointment, anguish, and study, have worn me down. If I remember right, you are seven or eight years older than me, yet, I dare venture to say, that if a stranger saw us both, he would pay me the honours of seniority. Imagine to yourself a pale melancholy visage, with two great wrinkles between the eye-brows, with an eye disgustingly severe, and a big wig, and you may have a perfect picture of my present appearance. On the other hand, I conceive you as perfectly sleek and healthy, passing many a happy day among your own children, or those who knew you a child. Since I knew what it was to be a man, this is a pleasure I have not known. I have passed my days among a parcel of cool designing beings, and have contracted all their suspicious manner in my own behaviour.1 I should actually be as unfit for the society of my friends at home, as I detest that which I am obliged to partake of here. I can now neither partake of the pleasure of a revel, nor contribute to raise its jollity. I can neither laugh nor drink; have contracted a hesitating, disagreeable manner of speaking, and a visage that looks ill-nature itself; in short, I have thought myself into a settled melancholy, and an utter disgust of all that life brings with it. Whence this romantic turn that all our family are possessed with? whence this love for every place and every country but that in which we reside? for every occupation but our own? this desire of fortune, and yet this eagerness to dissipate? I perceive, my dear Sir, that I am, at intervals, for indulging this splenetic manner, and following my own taste, regardless of yours.

1 This is all gratis dictum, for there never was a character so unsuspicious and so unguarded as the writer's. -PERCY's Memoir.

The reasons you have given me for breeding up your son a scholar are judicious and convincing. I should, however, be glad to know for what particular profession he is designed. If he be assiduous, and divested of strong passions (for passions in youth always lead to pleasure), he may do very well in your college; for, it must be owned, that the industrious poor have good encouragement there, perhaps better than in any other in Europe. But, if he has ambition, strong passions, and an exquisite sensibility of contempt, do not send him there, unless you have no other trade for him except your own. It is impossible to conceive how much may be done by a proper education at home. A boy, for instance, who understands perfectly well Latin, French, arithmetic, and the principles of the civil law, and can write a fine hand, has an education that may qualify him for any undertaking. And these parts of learning should be carefully inculcated, let him be designed for whatever calling he will. Above all things, let him never touch a romance or novel; these paint beauty in colours more charming than nature, and describe happiness that man never tastes. How delusive, how destructive, are those pictures of consummate bliss!1 They teach the youthful mind to sigh after beauty and happiness which never existed; to despise the little good which fortune has mixed in our cup, by expecting more than she ever gave; and, in general, take the word of a man who has seen the world, and has studied human nature more by experience than precept—take my word for it, I say, that books teach us very little of the world. The greatest merit in a state of poverty would only serve to make the possessor ridiculous-may distress, but cannot relieve him. Frugality, and even avarice, in the lower orders of mankind, are true ambition.2 These afford the

only ladder for the poor to rise to preferment. Teach then, my dear Sir, to your son thrift and economy. Let his poor wandering uncle's example be placed before his eyes. I had learned from books to be disinterested and

1 Similar advice is given in the 'Citizen of the World,' Letter LXXXIII.-ED.

2 Compare with the curious defence of misers in two places in the 'Bee,' pp. 355 and 381 of our vol. ii.—ED.

generous, before I was taught from experience the necessity of being prudent. I had contracted the habits and notions of a philosopher, while I was exposing myself to the insidious approaches of cunning; and often by being, even with my narrow finances, charitable to excess, I forgot the rules of justice, and placed myself in the very situation of the wretch who thanked me for my bounty. When I am in the remotest part of the world, tell him this, and perhaps he may improve from my example. But I find myself again falling into my gloomy habits of thinking.

My mother, I am informed, is almost blind: even though I had the utmost inclination to return home, under such circumstances I could not; for to behold her in distress, without a capacity of relieving her from it, would add too much to my splenetic habit. Your last letter was much too short; it should have answered some queries I had made in my former. Just sit down as I do, and write forward till you have filled all your paper; it requires no thought, at least from the ease with which my own sentiments rise when they are addressed to you. For believe me, my head has no share in all I write; my heart dictates the whole. Pray, give my love to Bob Bryanton, and entreat him, from me, not to drink. My dear Sir, give me some account about poor Jenny.' Yet her husband loves her; if so, she cannot be unhappy.

I know not whether I should tell you-yet why should I conceal these trifles, or indeed any thing from you?There is a book of mine will be published in a few days, the life of a very extraordinary man-no less than the great Voltaire. You know already by the title, that it is no more than a catch-penny.2 However, I spent but four weeks on the whole performance, for which I received twenty pounds. When published, I shall take some

1 His youngest sister, who married unfortunately.-PERCY. Mrs. Johnston; her marriage, like that of Mrs. Hodson, was private, but in pecuniary matters much less fortunate.-PRIOR.

2 This character of the performance was deemed by Percy a sufficient reason for not including it in the edition of the Works' published by him. The Voltaire Memoirs, however, are interesting in many ways, and we accordingly give them in the fourth volume of the present edition. Mr. Forster said of the work that it gave the best account of Voltaire in England with which he was acquainted.—ED.