'appeared in our language, the Odes of Dryden himself 'not excepted.' Certainly to the two exceptions which, while Goldsmith wrote, Gray was describing to Hurd ("My friends tell me that the Odes do not succeed, and 'write me many topics of consolation on that head: I 'have heard of nobody but an actor and a doctor of 'divinity that profess their esteem for them '), might with some reason have been added, the poor monthly critic of The Dunciad.

With this Number of the Review, completing the fifth month of his engagement, his labours suddenly closed. The circumstances were never clearly explained; but that a serious quarrel had arisen with his employer, there is no reason to doubt. Griffiths accused him of idleness: said he affected an independence which did not become his condition, and left his desk before the day was done. Goldsmith retorted, that from the bookseller he had suffered impertinence, and from his wife privation; that Mr. Griffiths withheld common respect, and Mrs. Griffiths the most ordinary comforts; that they both tampered with his articles, and as it suited their ignorance or convenience wholly altered them; and, finally, that no part of the contract had been broken by himself, having always worked incessantly every day from nine o'clock till two, and on special days of the week from an earlier hour until late at night. Proof of the most curious part of this counter-statement, as to interpolation of the articles, was in the possession of his first biographers; and as it now

appears, from a published letter of Dr. Campbell to Bishop Percy, was at the last moment, in fear of abuse from the Review, suppressed.

But notwithstanding the quarrel, and Goldsmith's departure from the house, Griffiths retained his hold. Later events will show this; and that probably some small advance was his method of effecting it. It enabled him to keep up the appearance of civility when Goldsmith left his door; and to keep back the purpose of injury and insult till it could fall with heavier effect. The opportunity was not lost when it came, nor did the bookseller's malice end with the writer's death. Superintend the Monthly Review!' cried Griffiths, noticing, in the Number for August 1774, a brief memoir of Goldsmith in which his connection with the work was so described. 'We are authorised to say that this is a 'very mistaken assertion. The Doctor had his merit as a 'man of letters; but alas! those that knew him must 'smile at the idea of such a Superintendent of a concern 'which most obviously required some degree of prudence, 'as well as a competent acquaintance with the world. It 'is, however, true that he had for a while a seat at our 'board; and that, so far as his knowledge of books 'extended, he was not an unuseful assistant.'

And so; without this belauded prudence; without this treasure of a competent acquaintance with the world; into that wide, friendless, desolate world, the poor writer, the not unuseful assistant, was launched again. How or where he lived for the next few months, is matter of great

uncertainty. But his letters were addressed to the Temple Exchange Coffee-House, near Temple-Bar, where the 'George' he celebrates in one of his Essays took charge of them; the garret where he wrote and slept is supposed to have been in one of the courts near the neighbouring Salisbury Square; Doctor Kippis, one of the Monthly Reviewers, 'was impressed by some faint recollection of 'his having made translations from the French, among 'others of a tale from Voltaire;' and the recollection is made stronger by one of his autographs in Heber's Collection, which purports to be a receipt from Mr. Ralph Griffiths for ten guineas, probably signed a day or two before he left the Monthly, for translation of a book Another writer in the

entitled Memoirs of my Lady B. Review, Doctor James Grainger, to whom his residence at The Dunciad had made him known; and of whom the translation of Tibullus, the Ode to Solitude, and the poem of the Sugar-Cane, have kept a memory very pleasant, though very limited; made the same Coffee-House his place of call, and often saw Goldsmith there. The month in which he separated from Griffiths was that in which Newberry's Literary Magazine lost Johnson's services; but this seems the only ground for a surmise that those services were replaced by Goldsmith's. The book itself shows little mark of his hand until his admitted connection with it, some months later.

Toiling thus through an obscurity dark as the life itself, the inquirer finds on a sudden a glimpse of light,

which for an instant places him in that garret near Salisbury Square. Its inmate sits alone in wretched drudgery, when the door opens, and a raw-looking country youth of twenty stands doubtfully on the doleful threshold. Goldsmith sees at once his youngest brother Charles; but Charles cannot bring himself to see, in the occupier of this miserable dwelling, the brother on whose supposed success he had already built his own! Without educa

tion, profession, friends, or resource of any kind, it had suddenly occurred to this enterprising Irish lad, as he lounged in weary idleness round Ballymahon, that as brother Oliver had not been asking for assistance lately, but was now a settled author in London, perhaps he had

gotten great men for his friends, and a kind word to one. of them might be the making of his fortune. Full of this, he scrambled to London as he could, won the secret of the house from the Temple Exchange waiter to whom he confided his relationship, and found the looked-for architect of wealth and honour, here! All in good time, my 'dear boy,' cried Oliver joyfully, to check the bitterness of despair. All in good time: I shall be richer by and by. 'Beside you see, I am not in positive want. Addison, 'let me tell you, wrote his poem of the Campaign in a 'garret in the Haymarket, three stories high; and you 'see I am not come to that yet, for I have only got to 'the second story.' He made Charles sit and answer questions about his Irish friends: but at this point the light is again withdrawn, and for some two months there is greater darkness than before.

Charles quitted London in a few days, suddenly and secretly as he had entered it, and shortly sailed, in a 'humble capacity' it is said, for Jamaica: whence he did not return till after thirty years, to tell this anecdote. The next clear view of Oliver is from a letter to his brother-in-law Hodson, with the date of Temple. 'Exchange Coffee-House (where you may direct an an'swer), Dec. 27, 1757' fortunately kept. The miserable year had brought no happier Christmas to Goldsmith; but he writes with a manly cheerfulness, which offers no selfish affront to the unselfish spirit of the season. Some unsuccessful efforts of this Hodson to raise a subscription,