attention of the public. He then attempted a periodical paper, called 'The Bee,' which was continued only through eight numbers; and he supplied at the same time some articles to the Critical Review. By one of these he became known to Doctor Smollet; and by him he was introduced to the beneficial acquaintance of Mr. John Newbery. From this liberal bookseller our author soon obtained an engagement as a writer for the Public Ledger, with a salary of a hundred pounds a year; and in this paper he first published ‹The Citizen of the World,' under the title of Chinese Letters.' About this period the intimacy between him and Doctor Johnson commenced; and Fortune seemed at last to regard the man, whom she had hitherto invariably persecuted, with a relenting if not a kind countenance.

Emboldened by the encouragement which he had experienced, Goldsmith now ventured to exchange his small and dark apartment in Green Arbour Court for a more respectable lodging in Wine Office Court, in Fleet Street: at this time also he assumed the title of Doctor, which, desirous as he subsequently was of dropping it, adhered ever afterwards immovably attached to his name.

In his new situation, however, his income proved inadequate to his expenditure: he became embarrassed; and he was finally arrested by his landlady for an arrear of rent. In this distress, he wrote to Johnson for assistance; and, his friend immediately coming and inquiring solicitously on every side for some means of relief, the MS. just then completed, of the Vicar of Wakefield' was produced by its diffident author, and, after a glance over a few of its pages, was instantly recognized by the friend as fully adequate to the occasion. With these sheets therefore in his hand, Johnson hurried to Newbery; and, obtaining from him sixty pounds for them, re

turned without delay to release poor Goldsmith from the gripe of the bailiff.

In the commencement of 1763 Goldsmith removed his residence to a house in Islington, where he wrote successfully for Newbery; and, among other works, produced A History of England, in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son;' which gained considerable celebrity, and which was generally ascribed by the public to the pen of Lord Lyttelton.

In the succeeding year our author again shifted his abode, and seated himself in chambers in the Inner Temple, on the upper floor of the library staircase; and here, with a feeling of improving circumstances, he entered on a style of living superior to what he had hitherto attempted. He was yet, however, very little known beyond the precincts of Paternoster Row. But his next publication, in 1765, diffused his fame over Britain, and placed him at once in the very first class of the writers of his age. This publication was The Traveller, or a Prospect of Society,' a poem, begun during his wanderings in Switzerland, and long since finished; but which had been retained by the diffidence of the poet from the public, and was now surrendered by him with unaffected reluctance to the press. About this time also he published in the St. James's Chronicle, under the title of a ballad, the beautiful and pathetic little poem of The Hermit.'

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In consequence of his present celebrity, his acquaintance was sought by some of the most eminent characters of the day; and he was soon admitted to the intimacy and friendship of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Topham Beauclerc, Bennet Langton, and the whole of that peculiar association of wits and scholars. Of the literary club also, which was then formed under the auspices of Sir J. Reynolds and Johnson, he was chosen one of the first members.

With the laurels which were wreathed around his brow, as a novelist, a critic, and a poet, our author now directed his mind to the stage; and his comedy of 'The Goodnatured Man,' which was acted on the theatre of Covent Garden, from a run of nine nights, brought five hundred pounds into his pocket. With this money, and with some which still lingered in his purse from the produce of his former works, he purchased and handsomely furnished a set of chambers on the ground floor of No. 2, in Brick Court, in the Middle Temple.

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In 1769 the king nominated Goldsmith to the place of historian in the Royal Academy, which was then founded: and in 1770 our author published his second delightful and exquisite poem, The Deserted Village.' For the copy of this production, the bookseller (Griffin, of Catherine Street) presented him with a hundred pound note: but a friend, to whom he immediately related the circumstance, suggesting that the sum was large for so short a composition, our bard concurred in the sentiment; and, returning instantly to the bookseller, insisted on his taking back his note, and giving nothing more than a fair proportion of the profits of the sale. The sale however was abundant, and it is probable that the author was not unrewarded for this instance of his exemplary probity.

Goldsmith's next production was a Life of Parnell,' annexed to a new edition of the works of that elegant poet: and in 1771 he published a ‘History of England from the earliest times to the Death of George II.;' for the copyright of which he received five hundred pounds.

On the 15th of March, 1773, our author appeared again before the public as a dramatic writer, in the comedy of 'She Stoops to Conquer, or the Mistakes of a Night.' This piece was performed at the Covent

Garden Theatre, and by its success, which exceeded the expectations of the writer, produced to him eight hundred pounds. His succeeding publication, in 1774, of A History of the Earth and animated Nature,' was yet more profitable to him, for he disposed of the copy of it for eight hundred and fifty pounds. The income from his pen was certainly at this time very considerable, amounting altogether, as it has been calculated, to not less than eighteen hundred pounds in the year; and he ought consequently to have been rich: but his lavish and indiscriminate bounty, together with a passion for gaming, which all his experience had not been able to subdue, still prevented him from rising much above absolute indigence.

His busy and distressful life was now drawing to a close; and his intercourse with the press was at an end. He wrote, indeed, after the publication which we have last mentioned; but these subsequent works of his, Retaliation,' the 'Haunch of Venison,' and The History of Greece from the earliest Times to the Death of Alexander the Great,' were given to the world when he was no more. He had meditated, and circulated proposals for the great labour of ‘An Universal Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences:' but this mighty project he was forced, very reluctantly, by the discouragement of the booksellers, to abandon. During some of his later years he had occasionally been subject to the strangury; and, this afflicting malady attacking him with peculiar violence in the March of 1774, and inducing a nervous fever, he was compelled to have recourse to medical and scientific aid. But his spirits were shattered and prostrate; and he declared that he was tired of life. He was, consequently, a bad subject for the power of medicine; and his obstinate perseverance in the use of what he prescribed for himself, and

principally of James's powder, baffling the art of his two physicians, Doctor Hawes and Doctor Fordyce, he died on the 4th of April, when he had lived only a few days beyond the fourth month of his forty-sixth year.

The death of a man, who had so largely contributed to the instruction and the amusement of the world, was lamented as a general loss; and his friends intended to honour his remains with a sumptuous funeral in Westminster Abbey. On an examination, however, of his circumstances, they discovered that he had died under the encumbrance of a heavy debt; and they were in consequence deterred from the execution of their design. His body was, therefore, deposited, without the pomp which had been meditated, but with a numerous attendance of friends, in the burial ground of the Temple; and a monument, with his profile on a medallion, from the chisel of Nollekens, and a Latin inscription by the pen of Johnson, was raised, as a tribute to his celebrity, among the illustrious of Britain in the Abbey.

If we regard Goldsmith either as a man or an author, it will be impossible for us not to love and admire him. If there were blemishes in his personal character (and where is the human character without its blemishes?) they were not of a nature to excite our resentment; and they were amply compensated by the probity and the ardent benevolence of his heart. As a writer he stands preeminently high, and challenges our unqualified applause. When we reflect, indeed, on the variety of his works, on the peculiar purity and elegance of his prose composition, on the captivating sweetness and almost unrivaled harmony of his verse, when we contemplate the different powers of mind which he exhibited in their excellence in his multifarious pages, we shall not be able, among his contem

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