that when the booksellers engaged Johnson for their first scheme of an Edition and Memoir, the project was defeated by a dispute about the value of the copyright of She Stoops to Conquer. The other larger debt to the trade,' which had suggested to Goldsmith his project of a Dictionary, he had now no means of discharging but by hard, drudging, unassisted labour. His so favourite project, though he had now obtained promises of co-operation from Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds, had been finally rejected. Davies, who represented the craft on the occasion, whose own business had not been very prosperous, and many of whose copyrights had already passed to Cadell, gives us the reason of their adverse decision. He says that though they had the best opinion of the Doctor's abilities, yet they were startled at the bulk, importance, and expense of so great an undertaking, the fate of which was to depend upon the industry of a man with whose indolence of temper and method of procrastination they had long been acquainted. He adds, in further justification of the refusal, that upon every emergency halfa-dozen projects would present themselves to Goldsmith's mind, which, straightway communicated to the men they were to enrich, at once obtained him money on the mere faith of his great reputation: but the money was generally spent long before the new work was half finished, perhaps before it was begun; and hence arose continual expostulation and reproach on the one side, and much anger and vehemence on the other. Johnson described the same trans actions, after all were over, in one of his emphatic sentences. 'He had raised money and squandered it, by every artifice ' of acquisition and folly of expense. But let not his frailties 'be remembered: he was a very great man.' Hopeless of the scheme on which he had built so much, the alteration of his first comedy for Garrick, even upon Garrick's own conditions, would now seem to have suddenly presented itself as one of these 'artifices of acquisition.' He wrote to the manager of Drury Lane. The letter has by chance survived, is obligingly communicated to me by its present possessor (Mr. Bullock of Islington), and of the scanty collection so preserved is probably the worst composed and the worst written. As well in the manner as the matter of it, the writer's distress is very painfully visible. It has every appearance, even to the wafer hastily thrust into it, of having been the sudden suggestion of necessity; it is addressed, without date of time or place, to the Adelphi (where Garrick had lately purchased the centre house of the newly built terrace); nor is it unlikely to have been delivered there by the messenger of a sponginghouse. A fac-simile of its signature, which may be compared with Goldsmith's ordinary hand-writing in a previous page, will shew the writer's agitation, and perhaps account for the vague distraction of his grammar. MY DEAR SIR, Your saying you would play my Good-natured Man makes me wish it. The money you advanced me upon Newbery's note I have the mortification to find is not yet paid, but he says he will in two or three days. What I mean by this letter is to lend me sixty pound for which I will give you Newbery's note, so that the whole of my debt will be an hundred for which you shall have Newbery's note as a security. This may be paid either from my alteration if my benefit should come to so much, but at any rate I will take care you shall not be a loser. I will give you a new character in my comedy and knock out Lofty which does not do, and will make such other alterations as you direct. The letter is indorsed in Garrick's handwriting as Goldsmith's parlaver. But though it would thus appear to have inspired little sympathy or confidence, and the sacrifice of Lofty had come too late and been too reluctant, Garrick's answer, begged so earnestly, was not unfavourable. He evaded the altered comedy; spoke of the new one already mentioned between them; and offered the money required on Goldsmith's own acceptance. The small security of one of Newbery's notes (though the publisher, with his experience of the comedy in hand, would doubtless gladly have taken his chance of the renovated comedy), he had some time proved. Poor Goldsmith was enthusiastic in acknowledgment. Nor let it be thought he is acting unfairly to Newbery, in the advice he sends with his thanks. The publisher had frankly accepted the chances of a certain copyright, and had no right to wait the issue of those chances before he assumed the liability they imposed. "MY DEAR FRIEND, I thank you! I wish I could do something to serve you. I shall have a comedy for you in a season or two at farthest that I believe will be worth your acceptance, for I fancy I will make it a fine thing. You shall have the refusal. I wish you would not take up Newbery's note but let Waller tease him, without however coming to extremities; let him haggle after him and he will get it. I will draw upon you one month after date for sixty pound and your acceptance will be ready money, part of which I want to go down to Barton with. May God preserve my honest little man, for he has my heart. Ever, OLIVER GOLDSMITH." Barton was a gleam of sunshine in his darkest days. There, if no where else, he could still strive to be, as in his younger time, 'well when he was not ill, and pleased 'when he was not angry.' It was the precious maxim of Reynolds, as it had been the selectest wisdom of Sir William Temple. Reynolds himself, too, their temporary disagreement forgotten, gave him much of his society on his return: seeing, as he said afterward, the change in his manner; how greatly he then seemed to need the escape from his own thoughts; and with what a look of distress he would suddenly start from the midst of social scenes he continued still passionately fond of, to go home and brood over his misfortunes. The last gay picture in Goldsmith's life is of himself and Sir Joshua at Vauxhall. And not the least memorable figures in that sauntering crowd, though it numbered princes and ambassadors then; and on its tide and |