destiny revealed to him. He might have still to perish in unconquered difficulties, and with the word that was in him unspoken; but it would be at his post, and in a manly effort to speak the word. Whatever the personal weaknesses that yet remain, nor are they few or trifling, his confidence and self-reliance in literary pursuits date from this memorable time. They rise above the cares and cankers of his life, above the lowness of his worldly esteem, far above the squalor of his homes. They take the undying forms which accident or wrong cannot alter or deface; they are tenants of a world where distress and failure are unknown; and perpetual cheerfulness sings around them. The night can never endure so long, but 'at length the morning cometh ;' and with these sudden and sharp disappointments of his second London Christmas, there came into Green Arbour Court the first struggling beams of morning. Till all its brightness follows, let him moan and sorrow as he may the more familiar to himself he makes those images of want and danger, the better he will meet them in the lists where they still await him; the more he cultivates those solitary friendships with the dead, the more elevating and strengthening the influence that will reward him from their graves. The living, busy, prosperous world about him, might indeed have saved him much, by stretching forth its helping hand : but it had not taught him little in its lesson of unrequited expectation, and there was nothing now to distract him with delusive hope from meditation of the wisest form of revenge. The impatient expectation' of the result of Griffiths' resolutions, ended in a contract to write him a Life of Voltaire for a translation of the Henriade he was about to publish the payment being twenty pounds, and the price of the clothes to be deducted from that sum. His brother Henry wrote to him of the Polite Learning scheme, while engaged on this trade task; and the answer he made at its close, written early in February 1759, is in some sort the indication of his altered mind and purpose. There is evidence of his personal weakness in the idle distrusts and suspicion it charges on himself, and in its false pretences to conceal his rejection and sustain his poor Irish credit: yet the general tone of it marks not the less, a new, a sincerer, and a more active epoch in his life. Whilst the quarrel with Griffiths was still proceeding, he had again written of the Polite Learning Essay, and sent some scheme of a new poem to Henry (first fruit of the better uses of his adversity); but absolute silence as to the Coromandel appointment appears to have suggested a doubt in his brother's answer, to which very cursory and slight allusion is made in this reply. The personal portrait, in which the 'big wig' of his Bankside days plays its part, will hardly support his character for personal vanity! "Your punctuality," the letter ran, "in answering a man whose trade is writing, is more than I had reason to expect; and yet you see me generally fill a whole sheet, which is all the recompense I can make for being so frequently troublesome. The behaviour of Mr. Mills and Mr. Lauder is a little extraordinary. However, 152 LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF Montaigne`s, that the wisest men often have friends with whom they There is a practical condition of mind in this letter, notwithstanding its self-reproachful pictures, and protestations of sorrowful disgust. It is very clear, were it only by the ale-house hero's example, that not all the miseries which surround him will again daunt his perseverance, or tempt him to begin life anew. If the bowl is now to be broken, it will be broken at the fountain. Could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet but as he has made up his mind to live, and on the world's beggarly terms, he will take what practicable When the Man in Black work he can get, and be content with its fare till pleasant employment comes. describes the change of good humour with which he went to his precarious meals; how he forbore rants of spleen at his situation, ceased to call down heaven and the stars to behold him dining on a half-pennyworth of radishes, taught his very companions to believe that he liked salad better than mutton, laughed when he was not in pain, took the world as it went, and read his Tacitus for want of more books and company; it figures some such change as this which I notice here. Whatever the work may be, the resolution to stick to Nature is a good and hopeful one, and will admit of wise application, and many original results. The poem seems to have gone no further: but its cheerful hero reappeared, after some months, in a Club of Authors; protested that the alehouse had been his own bed-chamber often; reintroduced the description with six new lines; Where the Red Lion flaring o'er the way, Invites each passing stranger that can pay; There, in a lonely room, from bailiffs snug, The muse found Scroggen stretch'd beneath a rug. flattered himself that his work should not be of the order of your common epic poems, which come from the press like paper kites in summer; swore that people were sick of your Turnuses and Didos, and wanted an heroical description of Nature; offered, for proof of sound, and sense, and truth, and nature, in the trifling compass of ten syllables, the last of two added lines; A night-cap deck'd his brows instead of bay, A cap by night, a stocking all the day! and having quoted them, was so much elated and selfdelighted, that he was quite unable to proceed. Thus could Goldsmith already turn aside the sharpest edge of poverty; thus wisely consent to be Scroggen till he could be Goldsmith; in the paltry, slovenly pothouse of Drury-lane, give promise of the neat village alehouse their answering neither you nor me, is a sufficient indication of their disliking the employment which I assigned them. As their conduct is different from what I had expected, so I have made an alteration in mine. I shall, the beginning of next month, send over two hundred and fifty books, which are all that I fancy can be well sold among you, and I would have you make some distinction in the persons who have subscribed. The money, which will amount to sixty pounds, may be left with Mr. Bradley as soon as possible. I am not certain but I shall quickly have occasion for it. I have met with no disappointment with respect to my East India voyage, nor are my resolutions altered; though at the same time, I must confess, it gives me some pain to think I am almost beginning the world at the age of thirty-one. Though I never had a day's sickness since I saw you, yet I am not that strong active man you once knew me. You scarcely can conceive how much eight years of disappointment, anguish, and study, have worn me down. If I remember right, you are seven or eight years older than me, yet I dare venture to say that if a stranger saw us both he would pay me the honours of seniority. Imagine to yourself a pale melancholy visage, with two great wrinkles between the eyebrows, with an eye disgustingly severe, and a big wig; and you may have a perfect picture of my present appearance. On the other hand, I conceive you as perfectly sleek and healthy, passing many a happy day among your own children, or those who knew you a child. Since I knew what it was to be a man, this is a pleasure I have not known. I have passed my days among a parcel of cool, designing beings, and have contracted all their suspicious manner in my own behaviour. should actually be as unfit for the society of my friends at home, as I detest that which I am obliged to partake of here. I can now neither partake of the pleasure of a revel, nor contribute to raise its jollity. I can neither laugh nor drink; have contracted a hesitating disagreeable manner of speaking, and a visage that looks ill I |