'my acquaintance,' exclaimed Goldsmith, whether in rags or lace, whether in Kent-street or the Mall, whether at Smyrna or St. Giles's, might I advise you as a friend, never seem in want of the favour you solicit. Apply to every passion but pity for redress. You may find relief 'from vanity, from self-interest, or from avarice, but 'seldom from compassion.' Following this were three wellwritten characters. Of Father Feyjoo, whose popular essays against degrading superstitions have since procured him the title of the Spanish Addison; of Alexandrian Hypatia, afterwards immortalized by Gibbon; and of Lysippus, an imaginary representative of some peculiarities in the essayist himself, and timely assertor of the ordinary virtues as opposed to what are commonly mistaken for the great ones.

Still the churlish public would not buy the Bee; and the fourth number's opening article was a good-humoured comment on that fact. Not a newspaper or magazine, he said, that had not left him far behind; they had got to Islington at least, while the sound of Bow bell still stayed in his ears; nevertheless, if it were only to spite all Grub'street,' he was resolved to write on; and he made lighthearted announcement to the world of what he had written to Bryanton. If the present generation will not hear

my voice, hearken, O Posterity! to you I call, and from 'you I expect redress! What rapture will it not give, to ' have the Scaligers, Daciers, and Warburtons of future 'times commenting with admiration upon every line I

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now write, and working away those ignorant creatures 'who offer to arraign my merit, with all the virulence

' of learned reproach. Ay, my friends, let them feel it; 'call names; never spare them; they deserve it all, and 'ten times more.' In a like playful tone are his closing threats, that, if not better supported he must throw off all connection with taste, and fairly address his countrymen in the engaging style and manner of other periodical pamphlets. He will change his title into the Royal Bee, he says, the Anti-gallican Bee, or the Bee's Magazine. He will lay in a proper stock of popular topics; such as encomiums on the King of Prussia, invectives against the Queen of Hungary and the French, the necessity of a militia, our undoubted sovereignty of the seas, reflections upon the present state of affairs, a dissertation upon liberty, some seasonable thoughts upon the intended bridge of Blackfriars, and an address to Britons; the history of an old woman whose tooth grew three inches long, shall not be omitted; nor an ode upon our 'victories ;' nor a rebus; nor an acrostic upon Miss Peggy P-; nor a journal of the weather: and he will wind up the whole, so that the public shall have no choice but to purchase, with four extraordinary pages of letterpress, a beautiful map of England, and two prints curiously coloured from nature. Such was the booksellers' literature of the day the profitable contribution of Paternosterrow and Grub-street, to the world's intellectual cultivation.

:

While he satirized it thus good-naturedly, Goldsmith

took care to append graver remarks on the more serious matter it involved, and which with his own experience lay so near his heart. But in no querulous spirit. He is now content to have found out the reason why mediocrity should have its rewards at once, and excellence be paid in reversion. There is in these earliest essays something more pleasing than even their undoubted elegance and humour, in that condition of mind. If neglects and injuries are still to be his portion, you do not now despair that he will turn them to commodities.

by his cries and complainings you shall hereafter trace him

to his neglected, ill-furnished, wretched home. As he watches its naked cobwebbed walls, he finds matter for amusement to the readers of the Bee, in watching the spiders that have refuge there; and in his fourth number puts forth an instructive paper on the habits and predatory life of that most wary, ingenious, hungry, and persevering insect.

It is not

He was not to be daunted, now. Looking closely into his life, one finds that other works beside this of the Bee were eking out its scanty supplies. He was writing for the Busy Body, published thrice a week for twopence, by worthy Mr. Pottinger, and brought out but three days

after the Bee. He was writing for the Lady's Magazine, started not many days later, by persevering Mr. Wilkie, in the hope of propping up the Bee. He had taken his place, and would go to his journey's end. Since the Pleasure stage coach had not opened its door to him, he had mounted the waggon of Industry; not yet despairing, it might be, to be overtaken again by his old Vanity Whim; and, with such help, even hopeful to come up with the landau of Riches, and find lodgment at last in the Fame Machine. We note this pleasant current of his thoughts in the Bee's fifth number. There, in that last conveyance he places Addison, Steele, Swift, Pope, and Congreve; and, vainly stretching out a number of his own little blue-backed book to entice the goodly company, resolves to be useful since he may not be ambitious, and to earn by assiduity what merit does not open to him. But not the less cheerfully does he concede to others, what for himself he may not yet command. He shuts Fame's door, indeed, on Arthur Murphy, but opens it to Hume and to Johnson: he closes it against Smollett's History, but opens it to his Peregrine Pickle and his Roderick Random. And with this paper, I doubt not, began his first fellowship of letters in a higher than the Grub-street region. Shortly after this, I trace Smollett to his door; and, for what he had said of the author of the Rambler, Johnson soon grasped his hand. This was a very grave personage, whom at some distance I took for one of the 'most reserved and even disagreeable figures I had seen;

'but as he approached, his appearance improved; and 'when I could distinguish him thoroughly, I perceived 'that in spite of the severity of his brow, he had one ' of the most goodnatured countenances that could be 'imagined.' In that sentence lay the germ of one of the pleasantest of literary friendships.

The poor essayist's habits, however, know little change as yet. His single chair and his window-bench have but to accommodate Mr. Wilkie's devil, waiting for proofs; or Mr. Wilkie himself, resolute for arrears of copy. The landlady of Green Arbour Court remembered one festivity there, which seems to have been highly characteristic. A 'gentleman' called on a certain evening, and asking to see her lodger, went unannounced up stairs. She then heard Goldsmith's room door pushed open, closed again sharply from within, and the key turned in the lock; after this, the sound of a somewhat noisy altercation reached her; but it soon subsided; and to her surprise, not unmingled with alarm, the perfect silence that followed continued for more than three hours. It was a great relief to her, she said, when the door was again opened, and the 'gentleman,' descending more cheerfully than he had entered, sent her out to a neighbouring tavern for some supper. Mr. Wilkie or Mr. Pottinger had obtained his arrears, and could afford a little comforting reward to the starving author.

Perhaps he carried off with him that mirthful paper on the Clubs of London, to which a pleasant imagination most