with his plain full narrative, please again and again; while the more cumbrous writer, still interposing himself before what you wish to know, is crushed with his own weight, and buried under his own ornaments. 'Goldsmith's abridge

ment,' he added, 'is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say that if you compare 'him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman His'tory, you will find that he excels Vertot. Sir, he has the 'art of compiling, and of saying everything he has to say, in a pleasing manner. He is now writing a Natural His'tory, and will make it as entertaining as a Persian Tale.'

For this Natural History the first agreement dates as early as the close of February in the present year, five years before it was completed and published. It is made between Griffin and Goldsmith: and stipulates that the history is to be in eight volumes, each containing upwards of four hundred pages in pica; that for each, a hundred guincas are to be paid on its delivery in manuscript; that 'Doctor Goldsmith is to set about the work immediately, ' and to finish the whole as soon as he conveniently can;' and that if the work makes less than eight volumes the 'Doctor is to be paid in proportion.' Soon after the agreement the book was begun, but it was worked at in occasional intervals only; for when the first month's sale of the Roman History had established its success, Davies tempted him with an offer of five hundred pounds for a four volume History of England (to be 'written and com'piled in the space of two years;' but not to be paid for

till delivered, and the printer has given his opinion that the proper quantity is written'), and this later labour superseded the earlier. There is no reason to believe that any money was advanced on the English History; and the discovery of the specific agreement enables us to test the truth of one of Miss Hawkins's most delicate anecdotes. She says that soon after Goldsmith had contracted with the booksellers for this particular compilation, for which he was to be paid five hundred guineas, he went to Mr. Cadell and told him he was in imminent danger of being arrested; that Cadell immediately called a meeting of the proprietors, and prevailed on them to advance him a considerable part of the sum, which, by the original agreement, he was not entitled to till a twelvemonth after the publication of his work; and that on a day which Mr. Cadell had named for giving the needy author an answer, Goldsmith came and received the money, under pretence of instantly satisfying his creditors; whereupon Cadell, to discover the truth of his pretext, watched whither he went, and after following him to Hyde Park Corner, saw him get into a postchaise, ' in which a woman of the town was waiting for him, with 'whom, it afterwards appeared, he went to Bath to dissipate 'what he had thus fraudulently obtained.' It has been seen that Cadell had nothing to do with the matter; and it may be presumed that the good-natured lady's other facts rest on as slender a foundation.

Nevertheless, it would be idle to deny the charge of dissipation altogether. It is clear that with the present

year he passed into habits of needless expense; used the influence of a popularity which was never higher than now, to obtain means for their thoughtless indulgence; and involved himself in responsibilities which at last overwhelmed him. He exchanged his simple habits, says Cooke, for those of the great; he commenced quite a man of lettered ease and consequence; he was obliged to run into debt; 'and his debts rendered him at times so melan'choly and dejected, that I am sure he felt himself a very 'unhappy man.' One of these sad involvements occurred in the autumn; when, being pressed for some portion of the loan expended on his chambers, he exacted from Griffin an advance of five hundred guineas for the first five volumes of the Natural History, which the bookseller was obliged to make up by disposing of shares to other booksellers, and which Goldsmith had wholly expended before half-adozen chapters were written. For he had laid the subject aside to go on with his English History; though not unwarned of the unpopularity the latter might involve him in, so mad was the excitement of the time. Would he be a Hume or a Mrs. Macauley? He would be neither, he said; he objected equally to both.

Against Party it is certain that Goldsmith always set himself, and it was the theme on which he joined Johnson against Burke; but he differed from Johnson in this, that in real truth he went with neither faction. Yet surely, if ever even faction could be invested with a something manly and defensible, it was now. The most thoughtful, the most

retired, the least excitable of men, were suddenly aroused to some interest in it. A friend of Gray relates that he had an appointment to meet the poet at his lodgings in Jermyn Street, and found him so deeply plunged in the columns of a newspaper (which with his dinner had been sent him from a neighbouring tavern), that his attention was with difficulty drawn from it. Take this,' said he, in a tone of excitement; here is such writing as I never 'before saw in a newspaper.' It was the first letter with the signature of Junius. But it was not what now we must associate with Junius; not the reckless calumnies and scandals, not the personal spites and hatreds; not such halting liberalism as his praise to the taxation of America, and his protest against the disfranchisement of Old Sarum; which then so completely seized upon the reason as well as temper of men. It was the startling manifestation of power and courage; the sense that unscrupulous ministers had now an unscrupulous enemy; that here was knowledge of even the worst chicaneries of office, which not the most sneering official could make light of; that no minister in either house, no courtier at St. James's, no obsequious judge at Westminster, no supercilious secretary in any of the offices, could hereafter feel himself safe from treachery and betrayal; and that what hitherto had been a vulgar half-articulate cry from the Brentford hustings, or at best, a faint whisper imperfectly echoed from St. Stephens, was now made the property and enjoyment of every section of the people of the educated by its exquisite

polish, of the vulgar by its relish of malice, of the great middle-class by its animated plainness, vigorous shrewdness, and dogged perseverance. I will be heard,' cried Burke in the House of Commons, in the course of what he wittily called the fifth act of the tragi-comedy acted by his majesty's servants for the benefit of Mr. Wilkes, at the expense of the constitution: 'I will be heard. I will throw open those doors and tell the people of England that 'when a man is addressing the chair on their behalf, the 'attention of the speaker is engaged.' . . but 'great noise ' and members talking' were too much for even that impetuous spirit; he was not heard; nor till the publication of Sir Henry Cavendish's Notes six years since, had the English people any detailed means of knowing what had passed in the most exciting debates ever known within their house. But the gap was filled by Junius. By those celebrated letters, reprinted and circulated in every possible shape, the people were made parties, in its progress, to much of what was doing in St. Stephens; in the house itself, the popular element was made of greater practical importance; the democratic spirit throughout the country was strengthened; and the right of the newspapers to report the debates was at last secured.

Horace Walpole, hopeless of his cousin Conway for a premier, had left politics now; but he saw all this, and saw it with alarm. To meet this year at the same dinnertable the Duc de Rochefoucault and Mrs. Macauley (whose statue the Rector of St. Stephens Walbrook had just set