passage, and ten pounds for my sea stores; and the other incidental expenses of my equipment will amount to 601. or 70l. more. The salary is but trifling, viz. 1007. per annum; but the other advantages, if a person be prudent, are considerable. The practice of the place, if I am rightly informed, generally amounts to not less than one thousand pounds per ann., for which the appointed physician has an exclusive privilege. This, with the advantages resulting from trade, with the high interest which money bears, viz. 201. per cent, are the inducements which persuade me to undergo the fatigues of sea, the dangers of war, and the still greater dangers of the climate-which induce me to leave a place where I am every day gaining friends and esteem, and where I might enjoy all the conveniences of life. I am certainly wrong not to be contented with what I already possess, trifling as it is; for should I ask myself one serious question,—What is it I want?—what can I answer? My desires are capricious as the big-bellied woman's, who longed for a piece of her husband's nose. I have no certainty, it is true; but why cannot I do as some men of more merit, who have lived on more precarious terms? Scarron used jestingly to call himself the Marquis of Quenault, which was the name of the bookseller that employed him and why may not I assert my privilege and quality on the same pretensions? Yet, upon deliberation, whatever airs I give myself on this side of the water, my dignity, I fancy, would be evaporated before I reached the other. I know you have in Ireland a very indifferent idea of a man who writes for bread; though Swift and Steele did so in the earliest part of their lives. You imagine, I suppose, that every author by profession lives in a garret, wears shabby clothes, and converses with the meanest company. Yet I do not believe there is one single writer, who has abilities to translate a French novel,' that does not keep better company, wear finer clothes, and live more genteelly, than many who pride themselves for nothing else in Ireland. I confess it again, my dear Dan,

:

1 Prior thought that this allusion perhaps pointed the date of Goldsmith's translation of the Memoirs of my Lady B.,' one of his lost works. See the receipt for the payment made for this work with the Memoranda at the end of the present volume.-ED.

that nothing but the wildest ambition could prevail on me to leave the enjoyment of that refined conversation which I am sometimes admitted to partake in, for uncertain fortune and paltry show. You cannot conceive how I am sometimes divided: to leave all that is dear to me gives me pain; but when I consider I may possibly acquire a genteel independence for life—when I think of that dignity which philosophy claims, to raise itself above contempt and ridicule-when I think thus, I eagerly long to embrace every opportunity of separating myself from the vulgar, as much in my circumstances, as I am already in my sentiments. I am going to publish a book, for an account of which I refer you to a letter which I wrote to my brother Goldsmith. Circulate for me among your acquaintance a hundred proposals, which I have given orders may be sent to you; and if, in pursuance of such circulation, you should receive any subscriptions, let them, when collected, be transmitted to Mr. Bradley, who will give a receipt for the same.

[Omitting here what relates to private family affairs, he then adds:- -]1

1

I know not how my desire of seeing Ireland, which had so long slept, has again revived with so much ardour. So weak is my temper, and so unsteady, that I am frequently tempted, particularly when low-spirited, to return home and leave my fortune, though just beginning to look kinder. But it shall not be. In five or six years I hope to indulge these transports. I find I want constitution, and a strong steady disposition, which alone makes men great. I will, however, correct my faults, since I am conscious of them.2

This omission note is just as it occurs in the Percy Memoir.-Ed. 2 The letter has no signature in Percy; and this perhaps indicates another omission, cither from loss or the mention of more "family matters."-ED.

SIR,

LETTER XI.

TO MR. RALPH GRIFFITHS.1

[Jan. 1759.]

I know of no misery but a gaol to which my own imprudences and your letter seem to point. I have seen it inevitable these three or four weeks, and, by heavens ! request it as a favour-as a favour that may prevent somewhat more fatal. I have been some years struggling with a wretched being, with all that contempt that indigence brings with it, with all those strong passions which make contempt insupportable. What, then, has a gaol that is formidable? I shall at least have the society of wretches, and such is, to me, true society. I tell you again and again, I am now neither able nor willing to pay you a farthing, but I will be punctual to any appointment you or the tailor shall make; thus far, at least, I do not act the sharper, since, unable to pay my debts one way, I would willingly give some security another. No, Sir, had I been a sharper, had I been possessed of less good nature and native generosity, I might surely now have been in better circumstances. I am guilty, I own, of meannesses which poverty unavoidably brings with it: my reflections are filled with repentance for my imprudence, but not with any remorse for being a villain; that may be a character you unjustly charge me with. Your books, I can assure you, are neither pawn'd nor sold, but in the custody of a friend from whom my necessities oblig'd me to borrow some money: whatever becomes of my person, you shall have them in a month. It is very possible both the re

2

1 Mr. Ralph Griffiths was the proprietor of the Monthly Review, the magazine for which Goldsmith was writing at this time. The letter is undated, but it is endorsed in Griffiths' hand," Recd. in Jan. 1759." Prior published it from the original, then in the Heber collection.-ED. 2 Cunningham conjectures that the "books" were the four reviewed by Goldsmith in the Monthly Review for December, 1758. These were, it will be seen from our collection of the Criticisms in vol. iv.-Wise's Enquiries,' Bayly's Introduction to Languages,' Burton's Greek Tragedies,' and Cicero's 'Tusculan Disputations.'-ED.

6

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 5s.-ED.