smith, 'I think so too; it is much more than the honest man can afford, or the piece is worth; I have not been easy since I received it; I will therefore go back, and return him his note;' which he actually did, and left it entirely to the bookseller to pay him according to the profits produced by the sale of the poem, which turned out very considerable.

The description of the parish priest (probably intended for a character of his brother Henry) would have done honour to any poet of any age. In this description, the simile of the bird teaching her young to fly, and of the mountain that rises above the storm, are not easily paralleled. The rest of the poem consists of the character of the village schoolmaster, and a description of the village ale-house, both drawn with admirable propriety and force; a descant on the mischiefs of luxury and wealth; the variety of artificial pleasures; the miseries of those, who, for want of employment at home, are driven to settle in new colonies abroad; and concludes with a beautiful apostrophe to poetry.

The Doctor did not reap a profit from his poetical labours equal to those of his prose. The Earl of Lisburne, whose classical taste is well known, one day at a dinner of the Royal Academicians, lamented to the Doctor his neglecting the Muses; and inquired of him, why he forsook poetry, in which he was sure of charming his readers, to compile histories and write novels? The Doctor replied, 'My Lord, by courting the Muses, I shall starve; but by my other labours, I enjoy the luxuries of life.'

During the last rehearsal of his comedy, entitled

She Stoops to Conquer, which Mr. Colman thought would not succeed, on the Doctor's objecting to the repetition of one of Tony Lumpkin's speeches, being apprehensive it might injure the play, the manager, with great keenness replied,' Psha, my dear Doctor, do not be fearful of squibs, when we have been sitting almost these two hours upon a barrel of gunpowder.' The piece, however, contrary to Mr. Colman's expectation, was received with uncommon applause by the audience; and Goldsmith's pride was so hurt by the severity of this observation, that it entirely put an end to his friendship for the gentleman who made it.

The success of the comedy of She Stoops to Conquer, produced a most illiberal personal attack on the author in one of the public prints. Enraged at this abusive publication, Dr. Goldsmith repaired to the house of the publisher; and after remonstrating on the malignity of this attack on his character, began to apply his cane to the shoulders of the publisher, who, making a powerful resistance, from being the defensive, soon became the offensive combatant. Dr. Kenrick, who was sitting in a private room of the publisher's, hearing a noise in the shop, came in, put an end to the fight, and conveyed the Doctor to a coach. The papers instantly teemed with fresh abuse on the impropriety of the Doctor's attempting to beat a person in his own house, on which, in the Daily Advertiser of Wednesday, March 31st, 1773, he inserted the following address:

TO THE PUBLIC.

Lest it should be supposed that I have been willing to correct in others an abuse of which I have been guilty myself, I beg leave to declare, that in all my life I never wrote or dictated a single paragraph, letter, or essay, in a newspaper, except a few moral essays, under the character of a chinese, about ten years ago, in the Ledger; and a letter, to which I signed my name, in the St. James's Chronicle. If the liberty of the press therefore has been abused, I have had no hand in it.

I have always considered the press as the protector of our freedom, as a watchful guardian, capable of uniting the weak against the encroachments of power. What concerns the public most properly admits of a public discussion. But of late, the press has turned from defending public interest, to making inroads upon private life; from combating the strong to overwhelming the fee. ble. No condition is now too obscure for its abuse, and the protector is become the tyrant of the people. In this manner the freedom of the press is beginning to sow the seeds of its own dissolution; the great must oppose it from principle, and the weak from fear; till at last every rank of mankind shall be found to give up its benefits, content with security from its insults.

How to put a stop to this licentiousness, by which all are indiscriminately abused, and by which vice consequently escapes in the general censure, I am unable to tell; all I could wish is, that as the law gives us no protection against the injury, so it should give calumniators no shelter, after having provoked correction. The insults which we receive before the public, by being more open are the more distressing; by treating them with silent contempt, we do not pay a sufficient deference to the opinion of the world; by recurring to legal redress, we too often expose the weakness of the law, which only serves to increase our mortification by failmg to relieve us. In short, every man should singly consider him. self as a guardian of the liberty of the press, and as far as his influence can extend, should endeavour to prevent its licentiousness becoming at last the grave of its freedom.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

Notwithstanding the great success of his pieces, by some of which, it is asserted, upon good authority, that he cleared 18001. in one year, his circumstances were by no means in a prosperous situation; partly owing to the liberality of his disposition, and partly to an unfortunate habit he had contracted of gaming, with the arts of which he was very little acquainted, and consequently became the prey of those who were unprincipled enough to take advantage of his ignorance.

Just before his death, he had formed a design for executing a Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, the prospectus of which he actually printed and distributed among his acquaintance. In this work, several of his literary friends (particularly Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr. Johnson, and Mr. Garrick) had promised to assist, and to furnish him with articles upon different subjects. He had entertained the most sanguine expectations from the success of it. The undertaking, however, did not meet with that encouragement from the booksellers which he had imagined it would receive; and he used to lament this circumstance almost to the last hour of his existence.

He had been for some years afflicted, at different times, with a violent strangury, which contributed not a little to embitter the latter part of his life; and which, united with the vexations he suffered upon other occasions, brought on a kind of habitual despondency. In this unhappy condition, he was attacked by a nervous fever.

On Friday the twenty-fifth of March, 1774, finding himself extremely ill, he sent at eleven o'clock

C

at night for Mr. Hawes, an apothecary, to whom he complained of a violent pain extending all over the fore part of his head; his tongue was moist; he had a cold shivering; and his pulse beat about ninety strokes in a minute. He acquainted him he had taken two ounces of ipecacuanha wine as a vomit, and that it was his intention to take Dr. James's fever powders, which he desired him to send him. Mr. Hawes replied, that in his opinion this medicine was very improper at that time, and begged he would not think of it; but every argument used seemed only to render him more determined in his own opinion.

Mr. Hawes, knowing that in preceding illnesses Dr. Goldsmith always consulted Dr. Fordyce, and that he had expressed the greatest opinion of his abilities as a physician, requested that he might be permitted to send for him. It was a full quarter of an hour before Mr. Hawes could obtain his consent, as the taking Dr. James's powders appeared to be the only object which employed his attention; and even then he endeavoured to throw an obstacle in his way, by saying, that Dr. Fordyce was gone to spend the evening in Gerard-street, 'where,' added he, 'I should also have been, if I had not been indisposed.' Mr. Hawes immediately despatched a messenger, who found Dr. Fordyce at home, and who waited on Dr. Goldsmith directly.

Dr. Fordyce represented the impropriety of taking the powders in his then situation; but he was deaf to all remonstrances, and persisted in his resolution. On Saturday morning, March 26th, Mr. Hawes