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CHAP. X] THE TEA VELLER AND WHAT FOLLOWED IT.
sufficed to alter his view as to the terms and relations on 1765.
which literature could hereafter hope to stand with the -fit, 37. great; and the precise value of Lord Northumberland's offer seems in itself somewhat doubtful. Percy, indeed, took a subsequent opportunity of stating that he had discussed the subject with the earl; and had received an assurance that if the latter could have known how to serve Goldsmith (it does not seem to have occurred to Percy that one mode had already been suggested without any effect), if he had been made aware, for example, that he wished to travel, " he would have procured him a sufficient " salary on the Irish establishnient, and have had it con- " tinned to him during his travels."* But this was not said till after Goldsmith's death; when many ways of serving him, meanwhile, had been suffered to pass by unheeded; and when his poor struggling brother, for whom he begged thus explicitly the earl's patronage, had also sunk un- noticed to the grave. The booksellers, on the other hand, were patrons with whom success at once established claims, independent and incontrovertible; and the Traveller, to a less sanguine heart than its writer's, already seemed to sepa- rate, with a broad white line, the past from that which was to come. No Griffiths bondage could again await him. He had no longer any personal bitterness, therefore, to oppose to Johnson's general allegiance to the "trade;" though, at the same time, with Johnson, he made special and large reserva- tions. For instance, there was old Gardener the bookseller. Even Griffiths, by the side of Gardener, looked less ill- favoured. This was he who had gone to Kit Smart in the depths of his poverty, and drawn him into the most astounding agreement on record. It was not discovered till
* Percy Memoir, 66.
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