tion with his wife. But none knew better than his quondam friend Sandwich what other business he was likely to have in hand. Though he had declined during the summer a 'genteel letter' from Paoli, offering him a regiment in Corsica to advance the cause of liberty, he had put himself in motion at the first reasonable prospect of another campaign for liberty (and Wilkes) at home. No one could doubt that the struggle would be a sharp one, and the first care of ministers was directed to the press.

Parson Scott, Sandwich's chaplain, went about to negociate for writers; and a great many years afterward, when he was a rich old Doctor of Divinity, related an anecdote which was to illustrate the folly of men who are ignorant of the world, but which also illustrates the subject of these pages, and that picture of the time, literary and social, of which its politics form a necessary part. He had gone to Goldsmith, among others, to induce him to write in favour of the administration. 'I found him,' he said, 'in a miserable 'set of chambers in the Temple. I told him my authority; 'I told him that I was empowered to pay most liberally for 'his exertions; and, would you believe it! he was so absurd 'as to say, "I can earn as much as will supply my wants ""without writing for any party; the assistance you "" is therefore unnecessary to me." And so I left him,' added the Reverend Doctor Scott indignantly, in his 'garret.'

offer

An impatience very natural to the holy man (who within four years had his reward in two fat crown livings), as a

like emotion had been to worthy Hawkins; but on the other hand, a patience very natural to Goldsmith, and worthy of a noble remembrance. He knew, if ever man did, the chances he embraced in rejecting that offer. It is an easy transition from what the ministry were willing to do, if they could get return in kind; to what, in the opposite case, they found it impossible to do. Poor Smollett had lately returned from foreign travel with shattered health and spirits, which he had vainly attempted to recruit in his native Scottish air; and, feeling that a milder climate was his only hope, was now preparing again to go abroad for probably the last time, with hardly a hope of recovery and very scanty means of support. He stated his case to Hume, and Hume went to Lord Shelburne. The matter was very simple. The consulships of Leghorn and of Nice were both vacant at this very time; and could either be obtained for Smollett, there might yet be hope for his broken health, or for quiet and death should come. But this could not be. promised to the Spanish ambassador, Leghorn was under pledge to a friend of lawyer Dunning's, and there was no possibility of help for the author of Peregrine Pickle. In that state he was left till the following summer when, with the prospect now certain which earlier he had hoped might be averted, he wrote to bid Hume farewell before departing to 'perpetual exile;' and Hume could only grieve and say to his brother man of letters, that the indifference ' of ministers towards literature, which has been long, and

repose till

Nice was

'indeed always, the case in England, gives little prospect 'of any alteration in this particular.' There was nothing for it but that this writer of genius, worn out in the service of booksellers, to whom his labours had been largely profitable; of the public, whose hours of leisure or of pain he had lightened; and of patrons, who at his utmost need deserted him; should pass abroad to labour, and to die. One year longer he stayed in England; published and proclaimed, in his last political romance, the universal falsehood of faction, his own remorse for having helped to sustain it, his farewell to the rascally age,' and the contempt for the Butes as well as Chathams it had for ever inspired him with; and in another year, having meanwhile written Humphry Clinker, was buried in the churchyard at Leghorn.

Such a possible fate as this, common in all times in England and at that time nearly universal, was something to reflect upon in those Garden Court chambers, which Mr. Scott, swelling with his brace of livings, can only deign to call a 'garret.' A poor enough abode they were, perhaps deserving only a little less contemptuous name; and here Goldsmith found himself, after twelve years of hard struggle, doubtless unable at all times to repress (what is so often the unavailing bitterness of the successful as well as unsuccessful man) the consideration of what he had done compared with what he might have done. The chances still remain, nevertheless, that he might not have done it; and the greater probability is that most people do what they are

qualified to do, in the condition of existence imposed upon them. It is very doubtful to me, upon the whole, if Goldsmith, placed as he was throughout life, could have done better than he did. Beginning with not even the choice which Fielding admits was his, of hackney writer or hackney coachman, he has fought his way at last to consideration and esteem. But he bears upon him the scars of his twelve years' conflict; of the mean sorrows through which he has passed, and of the cheap indulgences he has sought relief and help from. There is nothing plastic in his nature now. He is forty. His manners and habits are completely formed; and in them any further success can make little favourable change, whatever it may effect for his mind or his genius. The distrusts which were taught him in his darkest humiliations, cling around him still; and by the fitful changes and sudden necessities which have encouraged the weakness of his natural disposition, his really generous and most affectionate nature will still continue to be obscured. It was made matter of surprise and objection against him that though his poems are replete with fine moral sentiments and bespeak a great dignity of mind, yet he had no sense of the shames, or dread of the evils of poverty. How should he? and to what good end? Would it have been wisely done to engage in a useless conflict, to contest with what too plainly was his destiny, and gnaw the file for ever? It is true that poverty brings along with it many disreputable compliances, disingenuous shifts and resources, most sordid and dire necessities;

1

much, that, even while it helps to vindicate personal independence, may not be consistent with perfect self-respect. It is not a soil propitious to virtue and straightforwardness, often as they hardily grow there; and it is well that it should be escaped from, as soon as may be. But there are worse evils. There is a worse subjection to poverty than the ceasing to regard it with dread or with shame. There is that submission to it which is implied in a servile adulation of wealth, to the exclusion of every sense of disgrace but that of being poor; and there is, on the other hand, a familiarity with it, a careless but not unmanly relation with its wants and shames, which, rightly used, may leave infinite enduring pleasure for its every transitory pain. Where is to be found, for example, such an intimate knowledge of the poor, such ready and hearty sympathy with their joys and sorrows, such a strong social sentiment with what the kindliest observers too little heed, such zeal for all that can impart

An hour's importance to the poor man's heart,

as in Goldsmith's writings? It is the real dignity of 'mind' which only poverty can teach so well; and when his friends admired it in his books, they might have questioned the value of their accompanying regret. Genius often effects its highest gains in a balance of what the world counts for disadvantage and loss; and it has fairly been made matter of doubt if Pope's body had been less crooked, whether his verses would have been so straight.