OLIYEK GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES, [BOOK n.
1757. He was man-of-letters, then, at last; but liad gratified
JEfc29. no passion, and attained no object of ambition. The hope
of greatness and distinction, day-star of his wanderings and
his privations, was at this hour, more than it had ever been,
dim, distant, cold. A practical scheme of literary life had
as yet struck no root in his mind; and the assertion of
later years, that he was past thirty before he was really
attached to literature and sensible that he had found his
vocation in it, is no doubt true. What the conditions of his
present employment were, he'knew well: that if he had
dared to indulge any hopes of finer texture, if he had shown
the fragments of his poem, if he had produced the acts of
the tragedy read to Richardson, Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths
must have taken immediate counsel on the expenses of his
board. He was there, as he had been in other places of
servitude, because the dogs of hunger were at his heels.*
* In a paper full of eloquence and humour which Mr. De Quincey wrote upon the
subject of this biography in the North, British, Review, so different an opinion, is
formed from that which I offer of this Griffiths-agreement, as •well as of iny con-
trast between the position of the man-of-letters in Groldsmith's day and that of the
men of Queen Anne, while the grounds of difference are so amusingly expressed, that
the reader will probably thank me for quoting the passage. I should premise that
Smart's agreement, alluded to in the outset, will be found described, post, Book iii.
Chap. x. "The pauperised (or Grub Street) section of the literary body, at the date of
" Goldsmith's taking service amongst it, was (in Mr. Forster's estimate) at its very
'' lowest point of depression. And one comic presumption in favour of that notion
"we ourselves remember; viz., that Smart, the prose translator of Horace, and a
" well-built scholar, actually let himself out to a monthly journal on a regular
"lease of ninety-nine years. What could move the rapacious publisher to draw
"the lease for this monstrous term of years, we cannot conjecture. Surely the villain
" might have been content with three score years and ten. But think, reader, of
"poor Smart two years after, upon another publisher's applying to him vainly for
"contributions, and angrily demanding what possible objection could be made to
" offers so liberal, being reduced to answer — 'no objection, sir, whatever, except
"an unexpired term of ninety-seven years yet to run.' The bookseller saw that
"he must not apply again in that century; and, in fact, Smart eould no longer let
"himself, but must be sublet (if let at all) by the original lessee. Query now—
"was Smart entitled to vote as a freeholder, and Smart's children (if any were
"born during the currency of the lease) would they be serfs, and ascripti
"prdo ? Goldsmith's own terms of self-conveyance to Griffiths — the terms we