[BOOK II.

age as well as he. But what shall I say? His mind was too active an inhabitant not to disorder the feeble mansion of its abode: for the richest jewels soonest wear their settings. Yet who but the fool would lament his condition! He now forgets the calamities of life. Perhaps indulgent Heaven has given him a foretaste of that tranquillity here, which he so well deserves hereafter.... But I must come to business; for business, as one of my maxims tells me, must be minded or lost. I am going to publish in London, a book entitled The Present State of Taste and Literature in Europe. The booksellers in Ireland republish every performance there without making the author any consideration. I would, in this respect, disappoint their avarice, and have all the profits of my labour to myself. I must therefore request Mr. Lauder to circulate among his friends and acquaintances a hundred of my proposals, which I have given the bookseller, Mr. Bradley in Dame Street, directions to send to him. If, in pursuance of such circulation, he should receive any subscriptions, I entreat, when collected, they may be sent to Mr. Bradley, as aforesaid, who will give a receipt, and be accountable for the work, or a return of the subscription. If this request (which, if it be complied with, will in some measure be an encouragement to a man of learning) should be disagreeable or troublesome, I would not press it; for I would be the last man on earth to have my labours go a-begging; but if I know Mr. Lauder (and sure I ought to know him), he will accept the employment with pleasure. All I can say.. if he writes a book, I will get him two hundred subscribers, and those of the best wits in Europe. Whether this request is complied with or not, I shall not be uneasy; but there is one petition I must make to him and to you, which I solicit with the warmest ardour, and in which I cannot bear a refusal. I mean, dear Madam, that I may be allowed to subscribe myself, your ever affectionate and obliged kinsman, OLIVER GOLDSMITH, Now see

how I blot and blunder, when I am asking a favour."

In none of these letters, it will be observed, is allusion made to the expected appointment. To make jesting boast of a visionary influence with two hundred of the best wits in Europe, was pleasanter than to make grave confession of himself, as a wit taking sudden flight from the scene of defeat and failure. It was the old besetting weakness. But shortly after the date of the last letter, the appointment was received. It was that of medical officer to one of the factories on the coast of Coromandel; was forwarded by Doctor Milner's friend, Mr. Jones, an East India Director; and the worthy schoolmaster did not outlive more than a few weeks this honest redemption of his promise. It was now necessary that the matter should be broken to his Irish friends; and he wrote to his brother Henry. The letter is lost; but some passages of one of nearly the same date to Mr. Hodson, have had a better fortune.

'Dear Sir,' it began, in obvious allusion to some staid and rather gratuitous reproach from the prosperous brother-in-law, 'You cannot expect regularity in one who is 'regular in nothing. Nay, were I forced to love you by ' rule, I dare venture to say I could never do it sincerely. 'Take me, then, with all my faults. Let me write when I 'please; for you see I say what I please, and am only think'ing aloud when writing to you. I suppose you have heard ' of my intention of going to the East Indies. The place 6 of my destination is one of the factories on the coast of Coromandel, and I go in quality of physician and surgeon;

'for which the Company has signed my warrant, which 'has already cost me ten pounds. I must also pay fifty 'pounds for my passage, and ten pounds for my sea stores; and the other incidental expenses of my equipment will 'amount to sixty or seventy pounds more. The salary 'is but trifling, namely a hundred pounds a year; 'but the other advantages, if a person be prudent, are 'considerable. The practice of the place, if I am rightly 'informed, generally amounts to not less than a thousand 'pounds a year, for which the appointed physician 'has an exclusive privilege. This, with the advantages ' resulting from trade, and the high interest which money 'bears (namely twenty per cent), are the inducements 'which persuade me to undergo the fatigues of sea, the dangers of war, and the still greater dangers of the 'climate; which induce me to leave a place where I am 'every day gaining friends and esteem, and where I ' might enjoy all the conveniences of life.'

The time for fine clothes had not come; but the same weakness prompted fine words, in that hour of dire extremity. Of the 'friends and esteem' he was gaining; of the conveniences of life' that were awaiting him to enjoy; these pages have told, and have more to tell. But why, in the confident hope of brighter days, dwell on the darkness of the past? or show the squalor that still surrounded him? Of already sufficiently low esteem were wit and intellect in Ireland, to give purse-fed ignorance another triumph over them, or again needlessly invite to

himself the contempts and sneers of old. Yet, though the sadness he almost wholly suppressed while the appointment was but in expectation, there was now less reason to indulge; to seem other than he was, even thus, was an effort far from successful, and marked with a somewhat painful distraction of feeling and phrase this letter to Mr. Hodson.

"I am certainly wrong," he continues, "not to be contented with what I already possess, trifling as it is; for should I ask myself one serious question, what is it I want? what can I answer. My desires are as capricious as the big-bellied woman's, who longed for a piece of her husband's nose. I have no certainty, it is true; but why cannot I do as some men of more merit, who have lived on more precarious terms? Scarron used jestingly to call himself the Marquis of Quenault, which was the name of the bookseller who employed him; and why may not I assert my privilege and quality on the same pretensions? Yet, upon deliberation, whatever airs I give myself on this side of the water, my dignity, I fancy, would be evaporated before I reached the other. I know you have in Ireland a very indifferent idea of a man who writes for bread, though Swift and Steele did so in the earliest part of their lives. You imagine, I suppose, that every author by profession lives in a garret, wears shabby clothes, and converses with the meanest company. Yet I do not believe there is one single writer who has abilities to translate a French novel, that does not keep better company, wear finer cloths, and live more genteelly, than many who pride themselves for nothing else in Ireland. I confess it again, my dear Dan, that nothing but the wildest ambition could prevail on me to leave the enjoyment of the refined conversation which I am sometimes permitted to partake in, for uncertain fortune and paltry show.

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You cannot conceive how I am sometimes divided. To leave all that is dear to me gives me pain; but when I consider I may possibly acquire a genteel independance for life; when I think of that dignity which philosophy claims, to raise itself above contempt and ridicule; when I think thus, I eagerly long to embrace every opportunity of separating myself from the vulgar, as much in my circumstances as I am already in my sentiments. I am going to publish a book, for an account of which I refer you to a letter which I wrote my brother Goldsmith. Circulate for me among your acquaintances a hundred proposals, which I have given orders may be sent to you; and if, in pursuance of such circulation, you should receive any subscriptions, let them, when collected, be transmitted to Mr. Bradley, who will give you a receipt for the same. I know not how my desire of seeing Ireland, which had so long slept, has again revived with so much ardour. So weak is my temper, and so unsteady, that I am frequently tempted, particularly when low spirited, to return home and leave my fortune, though just beginning to look kinder. But it shall not be. In five or six years I expect to indulge these transports. I find I want constitution, and a strong steady disposition, which alone makes men great. I will, however, correct my faults, since I am conscious of them."

With such professions weakness continues to indulge itself, and faults are perpetuated. But great allowances are due. Of the state of Irish society, which he knew so well and so often sarcastically painted, these Irish friends, and the circle he addressed through them, were clearly very notable specimens: his prosperous brother-in-law, for whom his youth had been embittered with loss and worldly disadvantage, and whose most solid repayment of help came in shape of a prudent maxim or news of an abortive