kind to clever men before now, has visited Mr. Johnson in spunging-houses, and might be serviceable to a poor

physician. For his master is no less than Mr. Samuel Richardson, of Salisbury Court and Parsons Green, printer, and author of Clarissa. The hint is successful: and Goldsmith, appointed reader and corrector to the press in Salisbury Court; admitted now and then to the parlour of Richardson himself; grimly smiled upon by its chief literary ornament, great poet of the day, the author of the Night Thoughts; sees hope in Literature once more.

He begins a tragedy. With what modest expectation; with what cheerful, simple-hearted deference to critical objection; another of his Edinburgh fellow-students will relate to us.

"From the time of Goldsmith's leaving Edinburgh, in the year 1754," says Dr. Farr, "I never saw him till 1756, when I was in London, attending the hospitals and lectures. He called upon me one morning before I was up, and on my entering the room, I recognised my old acquaintance, dressed in a rusty black suit with his pockets full of papers. After we had finished our breakfast, he drew from his pocket a part of a tragedy, which he said he had brought for my correction; in vain I pleaded inability; he began to read, and every part on which I expressed a doubt as to the propriety, was immediately blotted out. I then more earnestly entreated him not to trust to my judgment, but to the opinion of persons better qualified to decide on dramatic composition; on which he told me he had submitted his production, so far as he had written, to Mr. Richardson, the author of Clarissa; when I peremptorily declined offering another criticism upon the performance. The name and subject of the tragedy have unfortunately escaped my memory; neither do I recollect with exactness how much he had written, though I am inclined to believe he had not completed the third act. I never heard whether he afterwards finished it. In this visit, I remember his relating a strange Quixotic scheme he had in contemplation, of going to decipher the inscriptions on the Written Mountains; though he was altogether ignorant of Arabic, or the language in which they might be supposed to be written. The salary of £300 per annum, which had been left for the purpose, was the temptation."

Temptation indeed! The head may well be full of projects of any kind, when the pockets are only full of papers. But

not, alas, to decipher inscriptions on the Written Mountains; only to preside over pot-hooks at Peckham; was doomed to be the lot of Goldsmith. One Doctor Milner kept a school there; his son was among these young Edinburgh students come up to their London examinations; and thus it happened that the office of Assistant at the Peckham Academy befell. All my ambition now is to live,' he said, in the words of his Vagabond; and was installed. This was about the beginning of 1757. An attempt has been made to show that it was an earlier year, but on grounds too unsafe to oppose to known dates in the life. The good people of Peckham have also cherished traditions of Goldsmith House, as what was once the school is now fondly designated: which may not safely be admitted here. Broken window-panes have been religiously kept, for the supposed treasure of his hand-writing; and old gentlemen, once Doctor Milner's scholars, have claimed, against every reasonable evidence, the honour of having been whipped by the author of the Vicar of Wakefield. But nothing is with certainty known, save what the schoolmaster's daughter has related.

At the end of the century Miss Milner was still alive, and told what she recollected of their old usher. He was very good-natured, she said; played all kinds of tricks on the servants and the boys, of which he had no lack of return in kind; told entertaining stories; and amused every body with his flute. With his small salary, he was always in advance. It went for the most part, Miss Milner

added, on the day he received it; in relief to beggars,

This is putting the best face upon the matter, as it was natural Miss Milner should. But in sober fact, it was even his bitterest time, this Peckham time. He could think in after years of his beggary, but not of his slavery, without shame. Oh, that is all a holiday at Peckham,' said one of the Langtons carelessly, in the common proverbial phrase: but Goldsmith reddened, and asked if it was meant to offend him. Nor can we fail to recall the tone in which he afterwards alluded to this mode of life. When, two years later, he tried to persuade people that a schoolmaster was of more importance in the state than to be neglected and left to starve, he described what he had. known too well. The usher is generally the laughing'stock of the school. Every trick is played upon him; 'the oddity of his manner, his dress, or his language, is a 'fund of eternal ridicule; the master himself now and then

'cannot avoid joining in the laugh; and the poor wretch, 'eternally resenting this ill usage, lives in a state of war 'with all the family. This is a very proper person, is it 'not, to give children a relish for learning? They must 'esteem learning very much, when they see its professors 'used with such ceremony?' So, too, and with more direct reason, was it understood to refer to the Peckham discomforts, when he talked of the poor usher obliged to sleep in the same bed with the French teacher, 'who 'disturbs him for an hour every night in papering and filleting his hair; and stinks worse than a carrion with 'his rancid pomatums, when he lays his head beside him 'on the bolster.' Who will not think, moreover, of George Primrose and his cousin? Ay!' cried he, this 'is indeed a very pretty career that has been chalked out 'for you. I have been an usher at a boarding-school 'myself; and may I die by an anodyne necklace, but I 'had rather be under-turnkey in Newgate. I was up 'early and late: I was browbeat by the master, hated for 'my ugly face by the mistress, worried by the boys.' Finally, in the only anecdote that rests on other safe authority than Miss Milner's, there is quite sufficient reason in fact, for adoption of the same tone.

6

Mr. Samuel Bishop, whose sons have had distinction in the church, was a Peckham scholar, and Mr. Prior tells the story as he had it from one of the sons. 'When 'amusing his younger companions during play hours 'with the flute, and expatiating on the pleasures derived

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