In February, 1756, Goldsmith was again in England; and, within a few weeks, he had found

his

way to London. There, except for short intervals, the remainder of his life was spent.

The first three years of this period are buried in an obscurity, through which there emerge glimpses of much and constant misery. We discover, with great uncertainty of dates and order, several attempts at pursuits other than literary. Perhaps he was for a short while a strolling player: certainly he was a chemist's shopman in Monument Yard : he was a country-usher, probably in Kent: and he was more than once employed similarly in the school of a Dr. Milner at Peckham. He is conjectured to have at one time corrected the press in the printing-house of Richardson the novelist : and, assisted by a loan from a college-friend, he endeavoured in vain to establish a humble medical practice on the Bankside in Southwark. Speedily. after this, his professional aspirations were rudely extinguished. A surgical appointment to Coromandel, in the Company's service, obtained through Dr. Milner, came to nothing, for reasons which do not directly appear. Hereupon, though he must have read “Roderick Random," he was driven to think of being a surgeon's mate in the navy. But, alas! the record of examinations at the College of Surgeons bears, on the date of 21st December, 1758, these words: "Oliver Goldsmith, found not qualified."

When he sought these medical appointments, he had had experience of authorship, and was desirous to escape from it. The leading periodicals were

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then two. Of the "Critical Review," Smollett was the editor the "Monthly Review" was edited by the proprietor and publisher Griffiths, assisted actively by his wife. Introduced to Griffiths by Dr. Milner, Goldsmith was, in February, 1757, engaged to write criticisms for his Review, receiving a small salary, and boarding in the bookseller's house. Griffiths' memoranda have enabled the collectors of Goldsmith's works to identify a good many essays as contributed under this agreement : and several of these are well worth study for their merits, not less than as illustrative of the writer's mental history. Though the engagement was for a year, his regular working for the Review lasted only seven months. The employer said the scribe was idle and proud: the scribe said the employer and the lady were uncivil to him, starved him, and (worst of all) mutilated and interpolated his writings. A total breach did not ensue. Goldsmith continued to supply Griffiths with translations from the French. But the secession from the periodical opened up to him the "Critical Review," to which he began to contribute in the end of 1758. About the same time there broke out a humiliating quarrel, which shows painfully how little way Goldsmith had made in the world, at the close of his third year in London. Requiring a suit of clothes for his appearance at the College of Surgeons, he obtained it on Griffiths' security. Four days after his re

jection, the poor man with whom he lodged was arrested for a small debt; and the lodger was tempted, by the tears of the family, to pawn the clothes for money to pay the demand. In another week his own necessities drove him to pledging with an acquaintance four books, which Griffiths, again employing him as a critic, had lent him to be reviewed. Immediately the bookseller angrily demanded the books and clothes, or payment of their value and there has been preserved a letter of Goldsmith's, affecting, but not exactly candid, which was sent in the course of the correspondence.

The sky began to clear up. The three years beginning with 1759 raised Goldsmith into a position, in which, though unfortunately it was not solid enough for his wavering footsteps, a man particularly prudent might have stood firm. The booksellers had learned to value him as an excellent workman: nor was it likely to be a disqualification in their eyes, that his hopeless incapacity in money-matters was sure to put him constantly at their mercy. Some of the leading professional authors welcomed cordially a man who could no longer be confounded with the herd. Smollett, who was still fighting bravely against the difficulties he was never able to overcome, made his acquaintance in the end of 1759, and secured him as a regular coadjutor. In the summer of 1761, Johnson, whose troubles were nearly over

(the pension was given him in the year after), supped in the first decent lodging which poor Goldsmith was able to occupy.

Those three years gave birth, with all those that followed, to many pieces of task-work not worth naming here, and probably to some that have not been identified. But he now wrote with hope and courage. He drudged and copied when there was not room for anything better: he cheerfully threw away wit and thinking on ephemeral criticisms of worthless books: and he speculated and imagined originally whenever originality could find a vent. In April, 1759, appeared his "Enquiry into the present state of Polite Learning in Europe;" an essay fulfilling very imperfectly the promise of its title, but spirited and interesting, abundant in miscellaneous knowledge, shrewd observation, and striking hints towards general principles. In the same year he put on foot a periodical called "The Bee," which, though it did not survive its eighth number, contained some of his liveliest essays. In one of them the text is the maxim commonly fathered on Talleyrand; that the use of language to man is that of concealing his thoughts: but he characteristically turns aside from the serious philosophy which the irony veils, to work up from it diverting rules for the guidance of gentlemen who are out at elbows.-The year 1760 would, by itself, have sufficed to make Goldsmith an English classic..