smith's earnings, the advances came to an end, and the landlady's bills were left undischarged. She was a woman in whom resolution was unmixed with tenderness, and notwithstanding that the arrears were of short continuance, she arrested him at the close of 1764 for her rent. When Boswell expressed his wonder that he who had obtained the title of the "great moralist" should be kind to a man of very bad character, Goldsmith replied "He has now become miserable, and that insures the protection of Johnson." It was to this steady friend of the miserable that he had recourse in his present dilemma, and when the messenger returned he brought with him a guinea and the assurance that the moralist would soon follow. Johnson found him in a violent passion, the guinea changed, and a bottle of Medeira and a glass before him. As they talked of the means of extricating him from his difficulties, Goldsmith produced a novel he had composed in his snatches of leisure, and Johnson, after glancing his eye through its pages, sallied out and sold it for sixty pounds to James Newberry, the nephew of the bookseller with whom we are already familiar. Oliver paid his rent, rated the landlady, and left her lodgings. Johnson thought himself that the novel would meet with but moderate success, and Newberry's opinion of it was not sufficiently high to induce him to print it. A manuscript which was among the most precious ever penned was thrown aside for the present, and half of Goldsmith's immortality lay exposed to the accidents which grow out of negligence.

But the day was now come when he was to emerge from obscurity, and gain that station among the eminent men of his time for which he had pined so long. "The Traveller," which he had commenced nine years before when he was abroad, and which he had brooded over at intervals with fond solicitude, was at last ready for the press. In 1758, when he was young in authorship, he told his brother Henry that poetry was easier to produce than prose, which can only be taken as an indication that he was not then the ready writer of prose which he quickly became, for to the last he composed poetry with singular slowness. He used to say that he had been four or five years in gathering the incidents of his "Deserted Village," and two years were spent in the process of versifying what he had gleaned. Nobody would have guessed, when "The Traveller" appeared on the 19th

The hat monthe of tail lex

There while above the giddy tempest flies, And all around distressful yells arise, The pensive exile, bending with his woe, To stop too fearful, and too faint to go, Casts a long look where England's glories shine, And bids his bosom sympathize with mine." The expression in the last of these lines is affected,

duction, which he had been nine years in bringing to maturity, and which passed through nine editions during his life, he received of Mr. Newberry twenty guineas. Whether he received to himself any further share of the profits is uncertain; but we question if an obscure author, which he then was, would obtain a larger equivalent in the present day for the copyright of a poem of the same length and merit. It is the success of the publication which makes the sum appear small, while Newberry had to consider the risk of loss as well as the chance of gain. Johnson got but ten guineas for his "London," and only five more for his "Vanity of Human Wishes."

"The Traveller" was inscribed to the brother to whom the first sketch was sent from Switzerland, and who is addressed in the opening lines of the poem in as magical language as was ever dictated by genius and affection combined. Henry Goldsmith was seven years older than Oliver, and something of the respect which would be paid to a parent seems to have mingled with the fraternal love of the younger; for not only in his public dedication, but in a private letter, he calls him "Dear Sir." He soon afterwards gave a proof of his attachment. The LordLieutenant of Ireland-the Earl of Northumberland-hearing that the author of "The Traveller" was a native of that country, sent for him, and offered to promote his advancement, to which Goldsmith replied that he had a brother, a clergyman, who stood in need of help. "As for myself," said Oliver to Sir John Hawkins, who was waiting in the outer room, "I look to the booksellers for support; they are my best friends, and I am not inclined to forsake them for others." He was feeling then the first flush of satisfaction from the increased estimation in which he was held by the trade, and the more liberal offers which came thick upon him; but the power of his name only served in the end to increase his embarrassments. He employed it to raise larger sums and contract more numerous obligations, while the money was quickly spent and the obligations remained. In the compassion which is excited by the distresses of Goldsmith, it must never be forgotten that many of them were the result of his own misconduct; and we fear, if a debtor and creditor account were struck, it would be found at the close that in money dealings he had been guilty of greater injustice to others than had ever been committed against himself.

In 1763 was established what many years

later received the title of the " Literary Club," but which at first was called the "Turk's Head Club," from the name of the tavern where it met.* It was settled by its founders, Johnson and Reynolds, that it should consist of such men that, if only two of them attended, they should have the ability to entertain one another. Goldsmith was among the nine original members, and owed this honor to the influence and recommendation of Johnson, who in the same year said of him to Boswell, "He is one of the first men we now have as an author, and he is a very worthy man too. He has been loose in his principles, but he is coming right." But this opinion of his literary attainments was that of Johnson himself, and not of the world. What he had hitherto written had been published anonymously, and, if Hawkins is to be believed, when he was mentioned for the club, the notion prevailed that he was a mere bookseller's drudge, incapable of anything higher than translating or compiling. Admitted at first upon sufferance, he was now become, by the publication of his poem, among the ornaments of the society. The attention he began to receive is shown in his amusing and characteristic speech when Kelly introduced himself to him at the Temple Exchange Coffeehouse, and asked him to dinner. "I would with pleasure," said Goldsmith, "accept your kind invitation, but, to tell you the truth, my dear boy, my Traveller' has found me a home in so many places, that I am engaged, I believe, three days. Let me see-to-day I dine with Edmund Burke, to-morrow with Dr. Nugent, and the next day with Topham Beauclerk; but I'll tell you what I'll do for you, I'll dine with you Saturday." About the same time Lloyd, the friend of Churchill, accosted him in a tavern, and, claiming his acquaintance as a brother poet, invited him to a supper-party in the evening. Long after midnight Goldsmith heard the voice of his host in altercation with a man in the passage, and, hastening to the support of his new friend, found that the landlord of the house, to whom Lloyd was already in debt, was refusing to trust him for the reckoning. "Pho, pho, my dear boy !" exclaimed Goldsmith, "let's have no more words about the matter;" and turning to the landlord asked him if he would take his pledge for the amount. "Most certainly, Doctor," said the man, "and for as

* The most accurate and complete account of the early history of the Literary Club which has yet appeared will be found in the volumes of Mr. Forster.

Goldsmith, in the early part of 1764, left his town lodging in Wine-Office Court, for Garden Court, in the Temple, where he shared his rooms with the butler of the society. Ashamed of their mean appearance, he observed apologetically to Johnson, "I shall soon be in better chambers, Sir, than these." "Nay, Sir," said Johnson," never mind that. Nil te quæsiveris extra." When the sudden success of the "Traveller" changed his position in the world, he removed to more decent apartments in the same court. His country quarters were, first in a room of Canonbury Tower, Islington, and next in a small house in the Edgeware Road, which he shared with one Bott, a barrister, described by Cooke as an intimate literary friend."His labors during 1765, and a large portion of 1766, have left little trace, and, unless we had known that he was compelled to write to live, we should have inferred that he had resigned himself to the indolent enjoyment of his fame. It is conjectured, from a memorandum by Newberry, that he drew up at this time the rough draught of the work entitled "A Survey of Experimental Philosophy," which was not published till after his

On the 27th of March, 1766, the "Vicar of Wakefield," appeared, and ran through three editions in the year. Its excellence, therefore, was recognized at once, but it was not at first what it has since become, one of the most popular books in the English language. Garrick said there was nothing to be learned from it; Johnson called it "a mere fanciful performance;" and Burke, in praising it, seems to have specified its pathos as its distinguishing merit. When Johnson said it was fanciful, he alluded, we presume, to the construction of the story, which is full of improbabilities. The accumulated miseries which befal the vicar and his family, and their strange and rapid return to prosperity, have often been mentioned as passing the bounds of ordinary experience. The majority, indeed, of the principal incidents arise from a series of chances, which, separately, were not unlikely to happen, but which in conjunction cease to be natural. When the vicar is supping with the servants at the fine mansion, and the master and mistress unexpectedly return, it saves him from discomfiture that they enter accompanied by the object of his son's attachment, Miss Arabella Wilmot. When the whole party go to witness the performance of the strolling players, this son stands before him as one of the actors. When he continues his journey, and stops at night at a little public-house, he hears the landlady abuse a poor lodger in the garret, and recognizes his lost daughter in the supplicant's

in several particulars are overdone. The simplicity of the vicar is delightful, but when he mistakes such a servant as Goldsmith has drawn for the owner of the house, and such women of the town for London fine ladies, the credulity of Dr. Primrose is much too great for that of the reader. Sir William Thornhill is represented as a good and sensible man, but he shows himself to be neither when he abandons his estate to a monster like his nephew, and permits the vicar to be crushed by miseries he could have averted or relieved. Yet in spite of these and numerous other blemishes of the same description, the story, from first to last, leaves a pervading sense of beauty upon the mind. This is in a large degree due to the running commentary of wise and gentle sentiments which gives the tone to the narrative, and to the charm of the serene and finished style, of what is by far the finest specimen of Goldsmith's prose. If an objection is to be made, it is that the neatness is so uniform that it grows monotonous. But its highest excellence is as a representation of domestic life, painted with the smoothness and minute fidelity of a Dutch picture. It is a phase of humanity which lies within the experience, and carries with it the sympathy, of nearly all the world, and is not the less relished that the family, with more than an ordinary amount of the amiability, have their full share of the petty weaknesses of their class. The vicar is the most perfect character in the book, but while we love him for his benevolence, his resignation, and his cheerfulness, we smile at the contrast between the sense of his conversation and the simplicity of his conduct, at the wise maxims which he utters on every occasion, and which on every occasion are overruled by the pertinacity of his wife and daughters. Nothing else in the tale equals the skill and humor with which Goldsmith has depicted the vanities and stratagems of the female part of the establishment, and especially of poor Mrs. Primrose herself, whom he barely manages to redeem from contempt. The nature, however, which he describes, is what lies chiefly upon the surface. He did not attempt to sound the depths of the heart, which is the faculty that Johnson valued most in a novelist, and the want of it in Goldsmith was a principal cause of his low estimation of the Vicar of Wakefield." Much as Oliver had seen of life, he had no great power of seizing character. He never was able to travel far beyond the circle of his early home. The vicar was his father, and out of his not very

characters-George Primrose and Sir William Thornhill. Even these materials were not employed for the first time. He had drawn extensively upon them before, in the story of the "Man in Black," and in other portions of his miscellaneous writings. If the male characters were family portraits, there can be little question that Mrs. Primrose had a strong resemblance to his mother, and Olivia and Sophia to his sisters; for since he left Ireland he had never sat at a domestic hearth, and had had no later experience of the female life he describes.*

The pecuniary obligations of Goldsmith continued to increase with his years, and he was recommended to write for the stage,—a successful play at that period producing far larger profits to the author than any other species of literary composition. He acted on the advice, and, having completed in 1767 his comedy of the "Good-natured Man,” offered it to Garrick. Davies informs us that Johnson took pleasure in introducing Goldsmith to his eminent acquaintances, but he had not brought him into contact with his old pupil, for a bad feeling had long existed between the actor and the poet. It was the latter that laid the foundation of the ill-will by commencing with severity upon the treatment which dramatists received from managers in a passage of his "Essay upon Polite Learning" that was aimed at Garrick. Shortly afterwards the office of secretary to the "Society of Arts and Sciences" became vacant, and Goldsmith, not very delicately, called upon the subject of his censure, who was a perfect stranger to him, and requested his vote. The manager replied that he had deprived himself of all claim to his support by

delightful story is the number of subjects it has fur* One indication of the extreme popularity of this nished for pictures, some of which are as beautiful as the book which inspired them. No one who has ever seen it can forget the exquisite work of Mulready, "The Choosing the Wedding Gown," or the masterly painting by Maclise of "Moses and the gross of Green Spectacles," which was in the Academy Exhibition of 1850. Nothing could be more faithful to the spirit of Goldsmith's characters than the expression depicted in each of the countenances in the latter picture, the emotion varying with every member of the group, and as true as it was powerful in all. No pictures are more popular than those which illustrate some literary masterpiece, and none will have a more enduring interest. The beautiful paintings of Mr. Leslie owe their reputation to their intrinsic excellence, but it certainly adds to the delight they afford that they give

form and color to our shadowy ideas of the creations of Cervantes, Goldsmith, and Sterne.

an unprovoked attack. "In truth," Goldsmith said, "he had spoken his mind, and he believed he was very right." They parted with outward civility and mutual irritation, and met no more until they were put into communication by Reynolds, with a view to get the "Good-natured Man" upon the stage. Garrick, according to Davies, expected to be courted, and Goldsmith was determined not to fawn. Differences soon broke out between them. Garrick demanded alterations, Goldsmith was pertinacious in refusing to make them, and gave only a modified consent in the end; Garrick proposed that Whitehead the laureate we cannot say the poet--should arbitrate between them, and Goldsmith rejected the suggestion as an insult. It at last came to an open rupture, and Oliver, after telling the actor that he suspected his conduct to be dictated by revenge for the old offence, withdrew his comedy, and sent it to Colman, the new manager of Covent-Garden theatre, who immediately accepted it. "I cannot help feeling a secret satisfaction," he wrote to his new ally, "that poets for the future are likely to have a protector who declines taking advantage of their dependent situation, and scorns that importance which may be acquired by trifling with their anxieties." A little further experience of the protector of poets changed his opinion. The words with which Garrick concluded his part of the correspondence breathed a kindly spirit. "It has been the business," he said, "and ever will be, of my life to live on the best terms with men of genius, and I know that Dr. Goldsmith will have no reason to change his previous friendly disposition towards me, as I shall be glad of every future opportunity to convince him how much I am his well wisher."

At Covent Garden the play appeared on the 29th of January, 1768, and was opened by a prologue from the pen of Johnson, in which Goldsmith was designated "our little bard." The epithet was as distasteful to his dignity as Pope's "low-born Allen" was to the wealthy proprietor of Prior Park, and Johnson, to humor him, changed it to "anxious." Anxious enough he had reason to be, for the play long hung trembling in the balance, and at the scene of the bailiffs there burst forth a cry of "Low! vulgar!" which had nearly proved fatal to it. The irresistible comicality with which Shuter, who performed the part of Croaker, read the incendiary letter in the fourth act, coupled with the strenuous exertions of the poet's friends,