nor could complaints that were also loudest in those boyish days at Lissoy, of certain reckless and unsparing evictions by which one General Naper had persisted in improving his estate, have passed altogether from Goldsmith's memory. But there was nothing local in his present aim; or if there was, it was the rustic life and rural scenery of England. It is quite natural that Irish enthusiasts should have found out the fence, the furze, the thorn, the decent church, the never-failing brook, the busy mill; it was to be expected that pilgrims should have borne away every vestige of the first hawthorn they could lay their hands on; it was perfectly reasonable, and in the way of business, to rebuild the village inn as Mr. Hogan did, and fix broken tea cups in the wall that pilgrims might not carry them away, and to christen his speculation by the name of Auburn. All this, as Walter Scott has said, 'is a pleasing tribute to the poet in the land of his fathers;' but it certainly is no more.

Such tribute as the poem itself was, its author offered to Sir Joshua Reynolds, dedicating it to him. 'Setting 'interest aside,' he wrote, to which I never paid much 'attention, I must be indulged at present in following my 'affections. The only dedication I ever made was to my 'brother, because I loved him better than most other men. 'He is since dead. Permit me to inscribe this poem to 'you.' How gratefully this was received, and how strongly it cemented an already fast friendship, needs not be said. The great painter could not rest till he had made public acknowledgment and return. He painted his picture of

Resignation, had it engraved by Thomas Watson, and

inscribed upon it these words: This attempt to express a 'character in the Deserted Village is dedicated to Doctor Goldsmith, by his sincere friend and admirer, Joshua 'Reynolds.'

What Griffin paid for the poem is very doubtful. Cooke tells the story which Walter Scott believed and repeated, that he had stipulated for a hundred pounds, and returned part of it on some one telling him that five shillings a couplet was more than any poetry ever written was worth, and could only ruin the poor bookseller who gave it; but this is not very credible, though Bishop Percy tells us it would have been quite in character.' It is presumable, however, that the sum was small; and that it was not without reason he told Lord Lisburn, on receiving complimentary inquiries after a new poem at the Academy dinner, 'I cannot 'afford to court the draggle-tail muses, my Lord; they will 'let me starve: but by plain prose I can make shift to eat, ' and drink, and wear good clothes.' Something to the same effect, indeed, in the poem itself, had mightily stirred the comment and curiosity of the critics. They called them excellent but alarming lines.'

And thou, sweet Poetry! thou loveliest maid,
Still first to fly where sensual joys invade :
Unfit, in these degenerate times of shame,
To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame;
Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried,
My shame in crowds, my solitary pride:
Thou source of all my bliss, and all my woe,
That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so;

cry.

Thou guide, by which the nobler arts excel,
Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well!

Apollo and the Muses forbid! was the general critical What! shall the writer of such a poem as this, 'the 'subject of a young and generous king, who loves, che'rishes and understands the fine arts, shall he be obliged to 'drudge for booksellers, shall he be starved into abandon'ment of poetry?' Even so. There was no help for it; and it became him to be grateful that there were booksellers to drudge for. No author can be poor who understands the 'arts of booksellers. Without this necessary knowledge, 'the greatest genius may starve; and with it, the greatest 'dunce live in splendour. This knowledge I have pretty 'well dipped into.' Thus, in this very month of May 1770, the most eager young aspirant for literary fame that ever trod the flinty streets of London, was writing home to his country friends. But, alas! his lip was not wetted with the knowledge he fancied he had dipped so deep into. With Goldsmith it was otherwise. He had drank long and weary draughts; had tasted alike the sweetness and the bitterness of the cup; and, no longer sanguine or ambitious, had yet reason to confess himself not wholly discontented. In many cases it is better to want than to have, and in almost all it is better to want than to ask. At the least he could make shift, as he said to Lord Lisburn, to eat, and drink, and wear good clothes. The days which had now come to him were not splendid, but neither were they starving days; and they had also brought him such respectful hearing,

that of what his really starving days had been he could now dare to speak out, in the hope of saving others. He lost no opportunity of doing it. Not even to his Natural History did he turn, without venting upon this sorrowful theme, in sentences that sounded strangely amid his talk of beasts and birds, what lay so near his heart. "The lower race 'of animals, when satisfied, for the instant moment, are 'perfectly happy; but it is otherwise with man. His mind 'anticipates distress, and feels the pang of want even before 'it arrests him. Thus the mind being continually harassed 'by the situation, it at length influences the constitution, ' and unfits it for all its functions. Some cruel disorder, 'but no way like hunger, seizes the unhappy sufferer; so 'that almost all those men who have thus long lived by 'chance, and whose every day may be considered as an happy escape from famine, are known at last to die in reality, 'of a disorder caused by hunger, but which, in the common 'language, is often called a broken heart. Some of these I have known myself when very little able to relieve them; and I have been told, by a very active and worthy magis'trate, that the number of such as die in London for want, 'is much greater than one would imagine; I think he 'talked of two thousand in a year.' If this was written now, as he afterwards told Langton these earlier portions of the Animated Nature were, Goldsmith little imagined the immortal name which was now to be added to the melancholy list. The writer of the sanguine letter I have quoted was doomed to be the next victim. He had not

been in London many days, when he so supposed he had mastered the booksellers; and in little less than three months after those hopeful tidings home, he yielded up his brain to the terrible disorder of which Goldsmith had seen so much: so unlike hunger, though hunger-bred. Gallantly had he worked in those three months: projected histories of England, and voluminous histories of London; written for Magazines, Registers, and Museums endless, the London, the Town and Country, the Middlesex Freeholders', the Court and City; composed a musical burlesque burletta; launched into politics on both sides; contributed sixteen songs for ten and sixpence; received gladly two shillings for an article; lived on a halfpenny roll, or a penny tart, and a glass of water a-day, enjoying now and then a sheep's tongue; invented all the while brave letters about his happiness and success to the only creatures that loved him, his grandmother, mother, and sister at Bristol; even sent them, out of his so many pence a-day, bits of china, fans, and a gown and then, one fatal morning, after many bitter disappointments (one of them precisely what Goldsmith had himself undergone, in as desperate distress), having gone some three days without food, and refused his poor landlady's invitation to dinner, he was found dead in his miserable room, the floor thickly strewn with scraps of manuscripts he had destroyed, a pocket-book memorandum lying near him to the effect that the booksellers owed him eleven pounds, and the cup which had held arsenic and water still grasped in his hand. It was in a wretched little street