OLIVER. GOLDSMITH S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK in,
1765. master of a house in one of the courts in Fleet-street which
jEtTsr. bore his own name ; and where he was able to give lodging
on the ground floor to Miss Williams, and in the garret to
Kobert Levett. It is remembered as a decent house, with stout
old-fashioned mahogany furniture. Goldsmith appears mean-
while to have got into somewhat better chambers in the same
(Garden) court where his library stair-case chambers stood,
which he was able to furnish more decently; and to which
we shortly trace (by the help of Mr. Filby's bills, and their
memoranda of altered suits) the presence of a man-servant.
So passed the year 1765. It was the year in which he had
first felt any advantage of rank arising from literature; and
it closed upon him as he seems to have resolved to make the
most of his growing importance, and enjoy it in all possible
ways. Joseph "Warton, now preparing for the head mastership
1766. of Winchester school, was in London at the opening of 1766,
Mi. 38. and saw something of the society of the club. He had wished
to see Hume ; but Hume, though he had left Paris (where he
had been secretary of the embassy to Lord Hertford, recalled
and sent to Dublin by the new administration), was not yet
in London. A strange Paris " season " it had beeji, and odd
and ill-assorted its assemblage of visitors. There had Sterne,
Foote, Walpole, and Wilkes, been thrown together at the
same dinner-table. There had Hume, with his broad Scotch
accent, his unintelligible French, his imbecile fat face, and
his corpulent body, been the object of enthusiasm without
example, and played the Sultan in pantomimic tableaux, to
the prettiest women of the time.* There had the author
, * " They believe in Mr. Hume," writes Walpole, " the only thing in the world
" that they believe implicitly; which they must do; for I defy them to understand
"any language that he speaks," "Le c61ebre David Hume, grand et gros
" historiographe d' Angleterre, connu et estime par ses ecrits, n'a pas autont de
"talens pour ce genre d' amusemens auquel toutes uos jolies femnies 1'avoient
" decide" propre. II fit son debut chez Madame de T------; on lui avoit destinS