arrival, a rhymed satirical fable in anticipation and forestalment of expected Grub Street attacks, wherein he humbly depicted himself as The Sick Monkey, and the whole race of other animals railing at the monkey and his travels. But it was labour all thrown away. Grub Street, when he came, showed no sign of discomposure; and there was but one desire in London and Westminster, to see their favourite actor again.

Let us not be surprised if these intolerable vanities and self-distrusts weighed, with contemporaries of his own grade, against the better qualities of this delightful man, and pressed down the scale. Johnson loved him, but could not show it for hatred of his foppery; Goldsmith admired him, yet was ready to join in any scheme for his mortification and annoyance. Two things had been done in his absence to which he addressed himself with great anxiety on his return. The Covent Garden actors had established a voluntary benefit subscription, to relieve their poorer fellows in distress; and, jealous of such a proposal without previous consultation with himself, he was now throwing all his energy into a similar fund at Drury Lane, which should excel and over-rule the other. Without him too, the Club had been established; but as he could not hope to succeed in setting up a rival to that, he was using every anxious means to secure his own immediate election. Johnson resolutely opposed it. Reynolds first conveyed to him Garrick's wish, to the effect that he liked the idea of the Club excessively, and thought he

should be of them. He'll be of us!'

exclaimed

Johnson; how does he know we will permit him? The first duke in England has no right to hold such 'language.' To Thrale, the next intercessor, he threw out even threats of a blackball; but this moved the worthy brewer to remonstrate warmly; and Johnson, thus hard pressed, picked up somewhat recklessly a line of Pope's, as in self-defence one might pick up a stone by the way-side, without regard to its form or fitness. ‹ Why 'sir, I love my little David dearly, better than all or any of his flatterers do; but surely one ought to sit in a society like ours "unelbow'd by a gamester, ""pimp, or player." Still the subject was not suffered to let drop, and the next who undertook it was Hawkins. He will disturb us, sir, by his buffoonery;' was the only and obdurate answer. Garrick saw that for the present it was hopeless (though at this very time Percy obtained his election); and, with his happier tact and really handsome spirit, visited Johnson as usual, and seemed to withdraw his claim. But he could not conceal his uneasiness.' He 'would often stop at my gate,' says Hawkins, who lived at Twickenham, ' in his way to and from Hampton, with messages from Johnson relating to his Shakespeare, then in the press, and ask such questions as these: "Were

you at the Club on Monday night? What did you ""talk of? Was Johnson there? I suppose he said something of Davy? That Davy was a clever fellow "in his way, full of convivial pleasantry, but no poet,

"no writer, ha!"" Hawkins might hear all this, however, with better grace than any one else; for that worthy magistrate took little interest in the Club. In a letter written shortly after, Johnson specially mentions him as remiss in attendance, while he admits that he is himself not over diligent. 'Dyer, Doctor Nugent, Doctor 'Goldsmith, and Mr. Reynolds,' he adds, ' are very con'stant.'

Without its dignified doctorial prefix, Goldsmith's name is now seldom mentioned; even Newbery is careful to preserve it in memoranda of books lent for purposes of compilation; and he does not seem, himself, to have again laid it wholly aside. Indeed he now made a brief effort, at the suggestion of Reynolds, to make positive professional use of it. It was much to have a regular calling, said the successful painter; it gave a man social rank, and consideration in the world. Advantage should be taken of the growing popularity of the Traveller. To be at once physician and man of letters, was the most natural thing possible: there were the Arbuthnots and Garths, to say nothing of Cowley himself, among the dead; there were the Akensides, Graingers, Armstrongs, and Smolletts, still among the living; and where was the degree in medicine belonging to any of them, to which the degree in poetry or wit had not given more glad acceptance? Out came Goldsmith✔ accordingly (in the June of this year, according to the account books of Mr. William Filby the tailor), in purple silk small-clothes, a handsome scarlet roquelaure buttoned

to his chin, and with all the additional importance derivable from a full dress professional wig, a sword, and a goldheaded cane. The style of the coat and small-clothes may be presumed from the 'four guineas and a half' paid for them; and as a child with its new toy is uneasy without swift renewal of the pleasurable excitement, with no less than three similar suits, not less expensive, Goldsmith amazed his friends in the next six months. The dignity he was obliged to put on with these fine clothes, indeed, left him this as their only enjoyment; for he had found it much harder to give up the actual reality of his old humble haunts, of his tea at the White Conduit, of his ale-house club at Islington, of his nights at the Wrekin or St. Giles's, than to blot their innocent but vulgar names from his now genteeler page. In truth, he would say, one has to make vast sacrifices for good company's sake; for here am I 'shut out of several places where I used to play the fool 'very agreeably.' Nor is it quite clear that the most moderate accession of good company, professionally speaking, rewarded this reluctant gravity. The only instance remembered of his practice, was in the case of a Mrs. Sidebotham, described as one of his recent acquaintance of the better sort; whose waiting-woman was often afterwards known to relate with what a ludicrous assumption of dignity he would show off his cloak and his cane, as he strutted with his queer little figure, stuck through as with a huge pin by his wandering sword, into the sick-room of her mistress. At last it one day happened, that, his

opinion differing somewhat from the apothecary's in attendance, the lady thought her apothecary the safer counsellor, and Goldsmith quitted the house in high indignation. He would leave off prescribing for his friends, he said. 'Do 'so, my dear Doctor,' observed Beauclerc. Whenever 'you undertake to kill, let it only be your enemies.'

His literary engagements were meanwhile going on with Newbery; and toward the close of the year he seems to have completed a compilation of a kind somewhat novel to him, induced in all probability by his concurrent professional attempts. It was A Survey of Experimental