book will be forgotten in ten years, while Voltaire's fame will last for ever. Take care it does not perpetuate this picture to the shame of such a man as you." This noble and high-minded rebuke is the only instance on record of any reproachful words between the poet and the painter; and we are happy to find that it did not destroy the harmony of their intercourse.

TOIL WITHOUT HOPE.

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CHAPTER XLIII.

Toil without hope.-The Poet in the green-room-in the flower gardenat Vauxhall-dissipation without gayety.-Cradock in town-friendly sympathy-a parting scene-an invitation to pleasure.

THWARTED in the plans and disappointed in the hopes which had recently cheered and animated him, Goldsmith found the labor at his half-finished tasks doubly irksome from the consciousness that the completion of them could not relieve him from his pecuniary embarrassments. His impaired health, also, rendered him less capable than formerly of sedentary application, and continual perplexities disturbed the flow of thought necessary for original composition. He lost his usual gayety and good-humor, and became, at times, peevish and irritable. Too proud of spirit to seek sympathy or relief from his friends, for the pecuniary difficulties he had brought upon himself by his errors and extravagance; and unwilling, perhaps, to make known their amount. he buried his cares and anxieties in his own bosom, and endca vored in company to keep up his usual air of gayety and unconcern. This gave his conduct an appearance of fitfulness and caprice, varying suddenly from moodiness to mirth, and from silent gravity to shallow laughter; causing surprise and ridicule in those who were not aware of the sickness of heart which las beneath.

His poetical reputation, too, was sometimes a disadvantage to him; it drew upon him a notoriety which he was not always in the mood or the vein to act up to. "Good heaveL3, Mr. Foote," exclaimed an actress at the Haymarket theatre, "what humdrum kind of man Dr. Goldsmith appears in our green-room compared with the figure he makes in his poetry!" "The reason

of that, madam." replied Foote, "is because the muses are better company than the players."

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Beauclerc's letters to his friend, Lord Charlemont, who was absent in Ireland, give us now and then an indication of the whereabout of the poet during the present year. "I have been but once to the club since you left England," writes he; we were entertained, as usual, with Goldsmith's absurdity." With Beauclerc every thing was absurd that was not polished and pointed. In another letter he threatens, unless Lord Charlemont returns to England, to bring over the whole club, and let them loose upon him to drive him home by their peculiar habits of annoyance-Johnson shall spoil his books; Goldsmith shall pull his flowers; and last, and most intolerable of all, Boswell shall-talk to him. It would appear that the poet, who had a passion for flowers, was apt to pass much of his time in the garden when on a visit to a country seat, much to the detriment of the flower-beds and the despair of the gardener.

The summer wore heavily away with Goldsmith. He had not his usual solace of a country retreat; his health was impaired and his spirits depressed. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who perceived the state of his mind, kindly gave him much of his company. the course of their interchange of thought, Goldsmith suggested to him the story of Ugolino, as a subject for his pencil. The painting founded on it remains a memento of their friendship.

In

DISSIPATION WITHOUT GAYETY.

355

On the 4th of August we find them together at Vauxhall; at that time a place in high vogue, and which had once been to Goldsmith a scene of oriental splendor and delight. We have, in fact, in the Citizen of the World, a picture of it as it had struck him in former years and in his happier moods "Upon entering the gardens," says the Chinese philosopher, "I found every sense occupied with more than expected pleasure; the lights every where glimmering through the scarcely-moving trees; the fullbodied concert bursting on the stillness of the night; the natural concert of the birds in the more retired part of the grove, vieing with that which was formed by art; the company gayly dressed, looking satisfaction, and the tables spread with various delicacies, all conspired to fill my imagination with the visionary happiness of the Arabian lawgiver, and lifted me into an ecstasy of admiration."*

Every thing now, however, is seen with different eyes; with him it is dissipation without pleasure; and he finds it impossible any longer, by mingling in the gay and giddy throng of apparently prosperous and happy beings, to escape from the carking care which is clinging to his heart.

His kind friend, Cradock, came up to town towards autumn, when all the fashionable world was in the country, to give his wife the benefit of a skilful dentist. He took lodgings in Norfolk-street, to be in Goldsmith's neighborhood, and passed most of his mornings with him. "I found him," he says, " much altered and at times very low. He wished me to look over and revise some of his works; but, with a select friend or two, I was more pressing that he should publish by subscription his two celebrated poems of the Traveller and the Deserted Village with

• Citizer of the World. Let. LXXI.

notes." The idea of Cradock was, that the subscription would enable wealthy persons, favorable to Goldsmith, to contribute to his pecuniary relief without wounding his pride. "Goldsmith." said he, "readily gave up to me his private copies, and said, 'Pray do what you please with them.' But whilst he sat near me, he rather submitted to than encouraged my zealous proceedings.

"I one morning called upon him, however, and found him infinitely better than I had expected; and, in a kind of exulting style, he exclaimed, 'Here are some of the best of my prose writings; I have been hard at work since midnight, and I desire you to examine them.' 'These,' said I, 'are excellent indeed.' 'They are,' replied he, 'intended as an introduction to a body of arts and sciences.'"

Poor Goldsmith was, in fact, gathering together the frag ments of his shipwreck; the notes and essays, and memoranda collected for his dictionary, and proposed to found on them a work in two volumes, to be entitled "A Survey of Experimental Philosophy."

The plan of the subscription came to nothing, and the projected survey never was executed. The head might yet devise, but the heart was failing him; his talent at hoping, which gave him buoyancy to carry out his enterprises, was almost at an end. Cradock's farewell scene with him is told in a simple but touching manner

"The day before I was to set out for Leicestershire, I insisted upon his dining with us. He replied, 'I will, but on one condition, that you will not ask me to eat any thing.' 'Nay,' said I,

this answer is absolutely unkind, for I had hoped, as we are supplied from the Crown and Anchor, that you would have named something you might have relished.' 'Well,' was the reply. 'if