CHAP. III.] JOyaCFlt'TO ESCAPE PBCttf MTIRATDIffi.
pasrts I have, do enjoy content at will, and Jter e
I.-.: wealth, at command! I call to mind a cobbler, that is
" worth. five hundred pounds ; an hostler, that has built a
" goodly inn ; a carman in a leather pilche, that has whipt
e( a thousand pounds out of his horse's tail : and I ask if I
" have more than these. Am I not better born ? am I not
" better brought up ? yea, and better favoured 1 And yet
" am I for ever to sit up late, and rise early, arid contend
" with the cold, and converse with scarcity, and be a
" beggar ? How am I crossed, or whence is this curse,
*f that a scrivener should be better paid than a scholar! '••*
Poor Nash! he had not even Goldsmith's fortitude, and
his doleful outcry for money was a lamentable exhibition,
out of which no good could come. But the feeling in the
miserable man's heart, struck at the root of a secret discon-
tent which not the strongest men can resist altogether ; and
which Goldsmith did not affect to repress, when he found
himself, as he says, " starving in those streets where Butler
"and Otway starved before Mm."
The words are in a letter, written the day after that to
Bryanton,f bearing the same date of Temple Exchange
coffee-house, and sent to Mrs, Lawder ; the Jane Contarine
of his happy old Kilmore time. Mr. Mills afterwards begged
this letter of the Lawders, and from the friend to whom he
gave it. Lord Carleton's nephew, it was copied for Bishop
Percy by Edmund Malone, As in those already given, the
* Thomas Nash, in his Pierce Pennttesse. Let me quote, too, that good old
English gentleman, whose lamentations had already found earlier record in one of
the writings of "Wolsey's correspondent, Richard Pace. "These foolish letters
''•will end in some had husiness. I fairly wish all this learning at the deril All
"learned men are poor ; even the most learned Erasmus, I hear, is poor ; and in
" one of his letters calls the vile hag Poverty his wife. By 'r lady I had rather*
"my son were hanged than that he should become a man of letters, We ought
"to teach our sons better things."
f A'ugust 15, i.758.