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OLITIE GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. JBOOK u.
qfPoUte Learning, or, as he called it before publication, the
the Present State of Taste and Literature], occupied nearly all his thoughts. He was again in London, and again working with the pen ; but he was no longer the bookseller's slave, nor was literary toil his impassable and hopeless doom. Therefore, in the confidence of swift liberation, and the hope of the new career that brightened in his sanguine heart, he addressed himself cheerily enough to the design in hand, and began solicitation of his Irish friends.
Edward Mills he thought of first, as a person of some
influence. He was Ms relative, had been his fellow- collegian, and was a prosperous, wealthy man. " Dear Sir," he begins, in a letter dated from the Temple'Exchange coffee-house, on the 7th of August, and published by Bishop Percy: *
e you. have quitted, I find, that plan of life which you once intended
K to pursue ; and given up ambition for domestic tranquillity. "Were
* I to consult your satisfaction alone in this change, I have the utmost
w reason to congratulate your choice; but when I consider my own, " I cannot avoid feeHng some regret, that one of my few friends has " declined a pursuit, in which he had every reason to expect success. G The truth is, like the rest of the world, I am self-interested in my u concern; and do not so much consider the happiness you have " acquired, as the honour I have probahly lost in the change. I have
* often let my fancy loose when you were the subject, and have
* iraagjaed you gracing the bench, or thundering at the bar; while
a I hare taken no small pride to myself, and whispered all that I could " «aae aeaar, fltat this was my cousin. Instead of this, it seems you are u ecwteaied to be merely an happy man ; to be esteemed only by your *' acqauatgaee—to cultivate your paternal acres—to take unmolested u a nap under on® of your own hawthorns, or in Mrs. Mills's bed- tt chamber, which even a poet must confess, is rather the most |
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** Bat however your resolutions may be altered with regard to your
* Percy Memoir, 50-2. The date taerfe gwen is 1759, an obvious misprint for
1768, - : |
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