OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK m.
1766. " perhaps any man at his first appearance ever gained before.
Mi. 38. " His speeches have filled the town with wonder." *
Ten clays after the date of this letter came out an
advertisement in the St. James's Chronicle, which affected
the town with neither wonder nor curiosity, though not
without matter for both to the members of the club. " In
" a few days will be published," it said, " in two volumes,
" twelves, price six shillings bound, or five shillings sewed,
" The Vicar of Wahefield.. A tale, supposed to be written
" by himself. Printed for F. Newbery at the Crown in
" Paternoster Bow.", This was the manuscript story sold
to Newbery's nephew fifteen months before; and it seems
impossible satisfactorily to account for the bookseller's
delay. Johnson says that not till now had the Traveller's
success made the publication worth while; but eight months
were passed, even now, since the Traveller had reached its
fourth edition. We are left to conjecture; and the most
likely supposition will probably be, that the delay was conse-
quent on business arrangements between the younger and
elder Newbery. Goldsmith had certainly not claimed the
interval for any purpose of retouching his work; t and can
hardly have failed to desire speedy publication, for what had
been to him a labour of love as rare as the Traveller itself.
But the elder Newbery may have interposed some claim to
a property in the novel, and objected to its appearance con-
temporaneously with the Traveller. He often took part in
this way in his nephew's affairs; and thus, for a translation
of a French book on philosophy which the nephew published
* JSasweU, ii. 320-1.
t My opinion on this point is strengthened by a communication of Doctor Parr's
to Percy. The Doctor, mentioning some instances of haste or carelessness in the
Vicar, was told by Goldsmith that it was not from want of time they had not been
corrected ("as Newbery kept it by him in manuscript two years before he published