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OLIYBR GOLDSMITHS LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK II.
1758. Pentalogia of Doctor Burton;* and.a new Translation of
M^o. Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, f The notices of them thus
extorted made due appearance, as the first four articles of
the Monthly Review for December 1758; the tailor was
then called in, and the compact completed,
Equipped in his new suit, and one can well imagine with
what an anxious, hopeful, quaking heart, Goldsmith offered himself for examination at Surgeons' Hall (the new building erected six years before in the Old Bailey), on the 21st December. " The beadle called my name," says Roderick Eandom, when he found himself in similar condition at that place of torture, " with a voice that made me tremble " as much as if it had been the sound of the last trumpet: " however there was no remedy: I was conducted into a " large hall, where I saw about a dozen of grim faces sitting " at a long table, one of whom bade me come forward in " such an imperious tone, that I was actually for a minute '•' or two bereft of ray senses." Whether the same process, conducted through a like memorable scene, bereft poor Goldsmith altogether of his, cannot now be ascertained. All that is known, is told in a dry extract from the books of the College of Surgeons. "At a Court of Examiners held "at the Theatre 21s£ December, 1758. Present" . . the names are not given, but there is a long list of the candidates who passed, in the midst of which these occur: " James " Bernard, mate to an hospital. Oliver Goldsmith, found " not qualified for ditto." A rumour of this rejection long existed, and on a hint from Maton the king's physician, the above entry was found.J A harder sentence, a more cruel doom, than this at the
* Monthly Review, six. 522, December 1758. f Hid, 524.
J Prior, i. 281-2.
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