CHAP. IX.] THE ARREST AND WHAT PRECEDED IT.
regard to Goldsmith's immediate want, than to any confident 1704.
sense of the value of the copy, asked and ohtained the sixty jEtTio
pounds. " And sir," he said to Boswell afterwards, " a suf-
" ficient price too, when it was sold; for then the fame of
" Goldsmith had not been elevated, as it afterwards was, by
" his Traveller; and the bookseller had such faint hopes of
" profit by his bargain that he kept the manuscript by him a
" long time, and did not publish it till after the Traveller
" had appeared. Then, to be sure, it was accidentally worth
" more money." *
On the poem, meanwhile, the elder Newbery had consented
to speculate; and this circumstance may have made it hope-
less to appeal to him with a second work of fancy. For, on
that very day of the arrest, the Traveller lay completed in
the poet's desk. The dream of eight years, the solace and
sustainment of his exile and poverty, verged at last to fulfil-
ment or extinction; and the hopes and fears which centered
in it, doubtless mingled on that miserable day with the fumes
of the madeira! In the excitement of putting it to press,
which followed immediately after, the nameless novel recedes
altogether from the view; but will reappear in due time.
Johnson approved the verses more than the novel; read the
proof-sheets for his friend; substituted here and there, in
more emphatic testimony of general approval, a line of his
own; prepared a brief but hearty notice for the Critical
Revieiv, which was to appear simultaneously with the poem;
and, as the day of publication approached, bade Goldsmith
be of good cheer.
* JBomuett, ii. 193.