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solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do 'not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to 'confess obligations where no benefit has been received; or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron, which Providence has enabled 'me to do for myself.'

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And from this man, even now, there was nothing to separate the humblest of literary workmen. Here were his words, as a trumpet, to call them to the field; and there he was, in person, to animate the struggle. To what, then, should he first look, who, hitherto a compelled and reluctant dweller on the threshold of literature, was now of his own resolute choice advancing within to try his fortune, if not to this great, unyielding figure of Samuel Johnson, for courage and sustainment? There, beyond a doubt, were the thoughts of Oliver Goldsmith now. With poverty, not simply endured, but made a badge of honour; with independence, though but a bookseller's servant; without remonstrance or uneasy resistance, should even the worst attendants of the garret continue to be his lot for ever. 'He assured 'me,' says the author of the Rambler of his friend Ofellus, that thirty pounds a year was enough to enable a man to live in London without being contemptible. 'He allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen. He 'said a man might live in a garret at eighteenpence a 'week; few people would inquire where he lodged; and 'if they did, it was easy to say, Sir, I am to be found at

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'such a place. By spending threepence in a coffee-house, 'he might be for some hours every day in very good company; he might dine for sixpence, breakfast on 'bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper. 'On clean-shirt day, he could go abroad and pay visits.' Nor were these the holiday theories of one to whom the practice of poverty was not still familiar. Here lay the singular worth of Johnson's example: that the world of enemies as well as friends were beginning, in a poor man, to recognise an intellectual chief and potentate of literature, a man who had the right to rule them. He and I were ( never cater-cousins,' wrote Smollett to Wilkes a month or two before the date to which I have brought this narrative; and in that letter, Smollett calls him the 'GREAT CHAM ' of literature.' Yet the Great Cham's poverty was obliged in this very year to surrender Gough-square for Gray's Inn: Gough-square in Fleet-street, where Doctor Burney had found him amid a chaos of Greek folios, and with the moderate accommodation of one deal writing-desk and a chair and a half; the entire seat offered to his visiter, and himself tottering on its three-legg'd and onearm'd fellow. Nay, some few brief years before, he had been placed under arrest for five pounds eighteen shillings; though he had written London, the Vanity of Human Wishes, and the Rambler, and was author of The English Dictionary.

Now, week by week, in a paper of Mr. John Newbery's, he sent forth the Idler. What he was, and what with a

serious earnestness, be it wrong or right, he had come into the world to say and do, were at last becoming evident to all. Colleges were glad to have him visit them, and a small enthusiastic circle was gradually forming around him. The Reynoldses, Bennet Langtons, and Topham Beauclercs had already given in their allegiance; and Arthur Murphy was full of wonder at his submitting to contradiction, when they dined together this last Christmas day with young Mr. Burke of Wimpole-street. But not more known or conspicuous was the consideration thus exacted, than the poverty which still waited on it, and claimed its share. So might Literature avenge herself in this penniless champion, for the disgrace of the money-bags of Walpole and Pelham. I have several times called on Johnson,' wrote Grainger to Percy, some months before the present date, 'to pay him part of your subscription for his Shakspeare. 'I say part, because he never thinks of working if he has a couple of guineas in his pocket: I shall feed him

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occasionally with guineas.' It was thus the good Mr. Newbery found it best to feed him too; and in that worthy publisher's papers many memoranda of the present year were found, in record of Lent Mr. Johnson one pound one. For in his worst distress, it was still but of Literature Mr. Johnson begged or borrowed: to her he was indebted for his poverty, and to her only would he owe his independence. When his mother was dying, he did not ask his friend Mr. Reynolds, the fashionable painter in receipt of thousands, for the six guineas he sent

to comfort her death-bed: it was the advance of a printer. When, in the present year, she died, he paid the expenses of her funeral with the manuscript of Rasselas.

So schooled to regard the struggle of Life and Literature as one, and in midst of all apparent disadvantage to venerate its worth and sacredness, the author of the Enquiry into the State of Polite Learning stepped cheerfully forward into the market of books, and offered his wares for sale. Bookseller Wilkie, of the Bible in St. Paul's Churchyard, a spirited man in his way, and one of the foremost of magazine speculators, proposed a weekly publication of original essays, something in the Rambler form, but once instead of twice a week, and with greater variety of matter. Goldsmith assented; and on Saturday the 6th of October, 1759, there appeared, price threepence, to be continued every Saturday, The Bee.

Floriferis ut apes saltibus omnia libant
Omnia nos itidem

was its motto; learned, yet of pleasant promise; taken from Lucretius. It was printed neatly,' as the advertisement in the London Chronicle of the 29th September had promised that it should be; 'in crown octavo, and on good paper, 'containing two sheets or thirty-two pages, stitched in 'blue covers.' In other respects also it kept the bookseller's advertised promise; 'consisting of a variety of essays ' on the amusements, follies, and vices in fashion, par'ticularly the most recent topics of conversation, remarks 'on theatrical exhibitions, memoirs of modern literature,

' &c., &c.' And on the back of the blue cover, Mr. Wilkie begged leave to inform the public 'that every twelve 'numbers would make a handsome pocket volume, at 'the end of which should be given an emblematical frontispiece, title, and table of contents.' So there was reasonable hope at starting; and no doubt a long line of volumes already jostled each other, in Goldsmith's lively brain.

The first number, it must be said, was of good promise. One finds a lack of its wisdom and its lightness in books 'stitched in blue covers' now. The introduction disclaimed relationship to the magazine trade and family; refused to tempt its readers with 'three beautiful prints, curiously coloured from nature,' or to take any kind of merit from its bulk or its frontispiece;' and invoked for itself, with mixed mirth and earnestness, a class of readers that should know the distinction between a bon-mot for White's, and a jest for the Cat and Bagpipes in St. Giles's. There was a letter on the Poles; a notice of the death of Voltaire's victim, Maupertuis; and, under the title of Alcander and Septimius, a popular version of that beautiful tale of Boccacio, which afterwards suggested to a writer who belonged to Goldsmith's country, took early inspiration from his genius, and bore up uncrushed against as desperate poverty by the force of his example, the manly and earnest tragedy of Gisippus. Nor, since the delightful gossip of Cibber had raised the curtain on the Monforts, Nokeses, and Bettertons of a past age, had any such

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