OLIVER GOLDSMITH S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK in.
1759. at least, while the sound of Bow bell still stayed in his ears :
JEtsi. nevertheless, "if it were only to spite all Grub -street," he
was resolved to write on; and he made light-hearted an-
nouncement to the world of whathe had written to Bryanton.*
" If the present generation will not hear my voice, hearken,
" 0 Posterity! to you I call, and from you I expect redress !
" "What rapture will it not give, to have the Scaligers,
" Daciers, and "Warburtons of future times commenting with
" admiration upon every hue I now write, and working away
" those ignorant creatures who offer to arraign my merit,
" with all the virulence of learned reproach. Ay, my
" friends, let them feel it; call names; never spare them.;
" they deserve it all, and ten times more." In a like playful
tone are his closing threats, that, if not better supported he
must throw off all connection with taste, and fairly address
his countrymen in the engaging style and manner of other,
periodical pamphlets. He will change his title into the
Royal See, he says, the Anti-gallican Bee, or the Bee's
Magazine. He will lay in a proper stock of popular topics;
such as encomiums on the King of Prussia, invectives
against the Queen of Hungary and the French, the necessity
of a militia, our undoubted sovereignty of the seas, reflections
upon the present state of affairs,, a dissertation upon liberty,
some seasonable thoughts upon the intended bridge of
Blaekfriars, and an address to Britons;—the history of an old
woman whose tooth grew three incheg long shall not be
omitted, nor an ode upon "our victories/' nor a rebus,
nor an acrostic upon Miss Peggy P—, nor a journal of the
weather;—and he will wind up the whole, so that the public
shall have no choice but to purchase, with four extraordinary
pages of letterpress, a beautiful map of England, and two
* Ante, p. 146.