CHAP. ix.J THE ARREST AND WHAT PRECEDED IT.
Mm busied witli others' distresses, and helping to relieve 1763.
them. Among his own papers at his death was found the .ffit.35.
copy of an appeal to the public for poor Kit Smart,* who had
married Newbery's step-daughter ten years before, and had
since, with Ms eccentricities and imprudences, wearied out
all his friends but Goldsmith and Johnson. Very recently,
as a last resource, he had been taken to a mad-house; and it
was under this restraint, while pens and ink were denied to
Mm, that he indented on the walls of his cell with a key, his
Song to Damcl.\ His friends accounted for the excellence of
ments made in it. It would seem that between the date of his leading Wine
Office Court in " an early month of 1764 " (ante, 364), and his return to Islington at
" the beginning of April" in that year (post, 369), he had occupied, while his attic in
library staircase of the Temple was preparing, a temporary lodging in Gray's Inn;
and that the engagement with the Dodsleys which I have described as opened at
this time, had actually proceeded as far as the preparation of copy, and the claim
for advance of money. This, as well as the sharp poverty he was suffering,
appears from the brief note to James Dodsley, which has been communicated to
me by my friend Mr. Peter Cunningham, whose success in matters of literary
research is as little to be questioned as the vivacity and ease with which he
imparts his discoveries. "Sir," it runs, being dated from "Gray's Inn,"
and addressed " to Mr. James Dodesley in Pall Mall," on the 10th of March
1764, "I shall take it as a favour if you can let me have ten guineas per
" bearer, for which I promise to account. I am, sir, your humble servant,
" OUTER GOLDSMITH. P.S. I shall call to see you on Wednesday next with copy,
" &e." Whether the money was advanced, or the copy supplied, does not appear.
* Percy calls it (Letter to Malone, Oct. 17, 1786) " a paper which he wrote to
" set about a subscription for poor Smart, the mad poet." For a very whimsical
account of Smart's vagaries, while yet a resident fellow of Pembroke in Cambridge,
written in -Gray's quaint thoughtful way, see Work, iii. 42. He describes him
amusing himself with a comedy of his own writing, which, " Jie says, is inimitable,
" true sterling wit, and humour by God ; and he can't hear the Prologue without
" being ready to die with laughter. He acts five parts himself, and is only sorry
" he can't do all the rest. . . . All this, you see, must come to a Jayl, or Bedlam,
" and that without any help, almost without pity." And see Correspondence of
Gray and Mason, 169, 175; and Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes, 260.
H- Boswell did great wrong to Smart by making him the hero of the ever famous
comparison with Derrick. (Life, viii. 182-3.) It was of Boyce and Derrick that
Johnson was asked at Lord Shelburne's which he thought the best poet. " Sir,
" there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea J" The
question was put by Morgann (who wrote the admirable Essay on Fahtaff), ex-
pressly to provoke Johnson out of an argument he had taken up, "from the spirit
" of contradiction," to prove the merits of Derrick as a writer.