The Complete Poetical Works | Page 9

his final exit. It is a pleasantly gossiping, and not
unedifying little book, which still holds a respectable place among its
author's minor works. But a recently discovered entry in an old ledger
shows that during the latter half of 1762 he must have planned, if he
had not, indeed, already in part composed, a far more important effort,
'The Vicar of Wakefield'. For on the 28th of October in this year he
sold to one Benjamin Collins, printer, of Salisbury, for 21 pounds, a
third in a work with that title, further described as '2 vols. 12mo.' How
this little circumstance, discovered by Mr. Charles Welsh when
preparing his Life of John Newbery, is to be brought into agreement
with the time-honoured story, related (with variations) by Boswell and
others, to the effect that Johnson negotiated the sale of the manuscript
for Goldsmith when the latter was arrested for rent by his incensed

landlady--has not yet been satisfactorily suggested. Possibly the
solution is a simple one, referable to some of those intricate
arrangements favoured by 'the Trade' at a time when not one but half a
score publishers' names figured in an imprint. At present, the fact that
Collins bought a third share of the book from the author for twenty
guineas, and the statement that Johnson transferred the entire
manuscript to a bookseller for sixty pounds, seem irreconcilable. That
'The Vicar of Wakefield' was nevertheless written, or was being written,
in 1762, is demonstrable from internal evidence.
About Christmas in the same year Goldsmith moved into lodgings at
Islington, his landlady being one Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming, a friend of
Newbery, to whose generalship this step seems attributable. From the
curious accounts printed by Prior and Forster, it is clear that the
publisher was Mrs. Fleming's paymaster, punctually deducting his
disbursements from the account current between himself and
Goldsmith, an arrangement which as plainly indicates the foresight of
the one as it implies the improvidence of the other. Of the work which
Goldsmith did for the businesslike and not unkindly little man, there is
no very definite evidence; but various prefaces, introductions, and the
like, belong to this time; and he undoubtedly was the author of the
excellent 'History of England in a Series of Letters addressed by a
Nobleman to his Son', published anonymously in June, 1764, and long
attributed, for the grace of its style, to Lyttelton, Chesterfield, Orrery,
and other patrician pens. Meanwhile his range of acquaintance was
growing larger. The establishment, at the beginning of 1764, of the
famous association known afterwards as the 'Literary Club' brought
him into intimate relations with Beauclerk, Reynolds, Langton, Burke,
and others. Hogarth, too, is said to have visited him at Islington, and to
have painted the portrait of Mrs. Fleming. Later in the same year,
incited thereto by the success of Christopher Smart's 'Hannah', he wrote
the Oratorio of 'The Captivity', now to be found in most editions of his
poems, but never set to music. Then after the slow growth of months,
was issued on the 19th December the elaboration of that fragmentary
sketch which he had sent years before to his brother Henry from the
Continent, the poem entitled 'The Traveller; or, A Prospect of Society'.

In the notes appended to 'The Traveller' in the present volume, its
origin and progress are sufficiently explained. Its success was
immediate and enduring. The beauty of the descriptive passages, the
subtle simplicity of the language, the sweetness and finish of the
versification, found ready admirers,--perhaps all the more because of
the contrast they afforded to the rough and strenuous sounds with
which Charles Churchill had lately filled the public ear. Johnson, who
contributed a few lines at the close, proclaimed 'The Traveller' to be the
best poem since the death of Pope; and it is certainly not easy to find its
equal among the works of contemporary bards. It at once raised
Goldsmith from the condition of a clever newspaper essayist, or--as
men like Sir John Hawkins would have said--a mere 'bookseller's
drudge,' to the foremost rank among the poets of the day. Another
result of its success was the revival of some of his earlier work, which,
however neglected by the author, had been freely appropriated by the
discerning pirate. In June, 1765, Griffin and Newbery published a little
volume of 'Essays by Mr. Goldsmith', including some of the best of his
contributions to 'The Bee', 'The Busy Body', 'The Public Ledger', and
'The British Magazine', besides 'The Double Transformation' and 'The
Logicians Refuted,' two pieces of verse in imitation of Prior and Swift,
which have not been traced to an earlier source. To the same year
belongs the first version of a poem which he himself regarded as his
best work, and which still retains something of its former