"no writer, ha!"" Hawkins might hear all this, however, with better grace than any one else; for that worthy magistrate took little interest in the Club. In a letter written shortly after, Johnson specially mentions him as remiss in attendance, while he admits that he is himself not over diligent. Dyer, Doctor Nugent, Doctor 'Goldsmith, and Mr. Reynolds,' he adds, ' are very con'stant.'

Without its dignified doctorial prefix, Goldsmith's name is now seldom mentioned; even Newbery is careful to preserve it in memoranda of books lent for purposes of compilation; and he does not seem, himself, to have again laid it wholly aside. Indeed he now made a brief effort, at the suggestion of Reynolds, to make positive professional use of it. It was much to have a regular calling, said the successful painter; it gave a man social rank, and consideration in the world. Advantage should be taken of the growing popularity of the Traveller. To be at once physician and man of letters, was the most natural thing possible: there were the Arbuthnots and Garths, to say nothing of Cowley himself, among the dead; there were the Akensides, Graingers, Armstrongs, and Smolletts, still among the living; and where was the degree in medicine belonging to any of them, to which the degree in poetry or wit had not given more glad acceptance? Out came Goldsmith accordingly (in the June of this year, according to the account books of Mr. William Filby the tailor), in purple silk small-clothes, a handsome scarlet roquelaure buttoned

to his chin, and with all the additional importance derivable from a full dress professional wig, a sword, and a goldheaded cane. The style of the coat and small-clothes may be presumed from the 'four guineas and a half' paid for them; and as a child with its new toy is uneasy without swift renewal of the pleasurable excitement, with no less than three similar suits, not less expensive, Goldsmith amazed his friends in the next six months. The dignity he was obliged to put on with these fine clothes, indeed, left him this as their only enjoyment; for he had found it much harder to give up the actual reality of his old humble haunts, of his tea at the White Conduit, of his ale-house club at Islington, of his nights at the Wrekin or St. Giles's, than to blot their innocent but vulgar names from his now genteeler page. In truth, he would say, one has to make vast sacrifices for good company's sake; 'for here am I 'shut out of several places where I used to play the fool very agreeably. Nor is it quite clear that the most moderate accession of good company, professionally speaking, rewarded this reluctant gravity. The only instance remembered of his practice, was in the case of a Mrs. Sidebotham, described as one of his recent acquaintance of the better sort; whose waiting-woman was often afterwards known to relate with what a ludicrous assumption of dignity he would show off his cloak and his cane, as he strutted with his queer little figure, stuck through as with a huge pin by his wandering sword, into the sick-room of her mistress. At last it one day happened, that, his

opinion differing somewhat from the apothecary's in attendance, the lady thought her apothecary the safer counsellor, and Goldsmith quitted the house in high indignation. He would leave off prescribing for his friends, he said. 'Do so, my dear Doctor,' observed Beauclerc. 'Whenever 'you undertake to kill, let it only be your enemies.'

His literary engagements were meanwhile going on with Newbery; and toward the close of the year he seems to have completed a compilation of a kind somewhat novel to him, induced in all probability by his concurrent professional attempts. It was 'A Survey of Experimental

'Philosophy, considered in its present state of improve

'ment;' and Newbery paid him sixty guineas for it. He also took great interest at this time in the proceedings of the Society of Arts; and is supposed, from the many small advances entered in Newbery's memoranda as made in connection with that Society, to have contributed sundry reports and disquisitions on its proceedings and affairs, to a new commercial and agricultural magazine in which the busy publisher had engaged. It was certainly not an idle year with him; though what remains in proof of his employment is scant and indifferent enough. Johnson's blind pensioner, Miss Williams, had for several months been getting together a subscription volume of Miscellanies, to which he had promised a poem; and complains that she found him always too busy to redeem his promise, and was continually put off with a 'Leave it 'to me.' Nor was Johnson, who had made like promises, much better. Well, we'll think about it,' was his form of excuse. With Johnson, in truth, a year of most unusual exertion had succeeded his year of visitings, and he had at last completed, nine years later than he promised it, his Edition of Shakespeare. It came out in October, in eight octavo volumes; and was bitterly assailed (nor, it may be admitted, without a certain coarse smartness) by Kenrick, who, in one of the notes to his attack, coupling 'learned doctors of Dublin,' with doctorial dignities ' of Rheims and Louvain,' may have meant a sarcasm at Goldsmith. I have indicated the latter place as the

probable source of his medical degree; and, three months before, Dublin University had conferred a doctorship on Johnson, though not until ten years later, when Oxford did him similar honour, did he consent to assume the title. He had now, I may add, left his Temple chambers, and become master of a house in one of the courts in Fleet Street which bore his own name; and where he was able to give lodging on the ground floor to Miss Williams, and in the garret to Robert Levet. It is remembered as a decent house, with stout old-fashioned mahogany furniture. Goldsmith appears meanwhile to have got into somewhat better chambers in the same (Garden) court where his library stair-case chambers stood; which he was able to furnish more decently; and to which we shortly trace (by the help of Mr. Filby's bills, and their memoranda of altered suits) the presence of a man-servant.

So passed the year 1765. It was the year in which he had first felt any advantage of rank arising from Literature; and it closed upon him as he seems to have resolved to make the most of his growing importance, and enjoy it in all possible ways. Joseph Warton, now preparing for the head mastership of Winchester school, was in London at the opening of 1766, and saw something of the society of the Club. He had wished to see Hume; but Hume, though he had left Paris (where he had been secretary of the embassy to Lord Hertford, recalled and sent to Dublin by the new administration), was not yet in London. A strange Paris 'season' it had been, and odd

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