CHAP. m. j THEEB YEARS OF IDLENESS.

" of you. Every day do I remeinlber the calm anecdotes 1750.
" of your life, from the fireside to the easy chair: recal Mi. 22
"the various adventures that first cemented our friend-
" ship: the school, the college, or the tavern: preside
" in fancy over your cards : and am displeased at your bad
" play when the rubber goes against you, though not with
" all that agony of soul as when I once was your partner."*
Let the truth then be confessed: and that it was the careless
idleness of fire-side and easy chair, that it was the tavern
excitement of the game at cards, to which Goldsmith so wist-
fully looked back from those first hard London struggles.

It is not an example I would wish to inculcate; nor is this
narrative written with that purpose. To try any such process
for the chance of another Goldsmith would be a somewhat
dangerous attempt. The truth is important to be kept in
view: that genius, representing as it does the perfect health
and victory of the mind, is in no respect allied to these
weaknesses, but, when unhappily connected with them, is in
itself a means to avert their most evil consequence. Of
the associates of Goldsmith in these happy, careless years,
perhaps not one emerged to better fortune, and many sank
to infinitely worse. " Pray give my love to Bob Bryanton,
" and entreat him from me, not to drink," is a passage from
one of his later letters to his brother Henry.f The habit of
drinking he never suffered to overmaster himself;—if the
love of gaining to some trifling extent continued, it was at
least the origin of many thoughts that may have saved others
from like temptation;—and if these irregular early years
unsettled him for the pursuits his friends would have had
him follow, and sent him wandering, with no pursuit, to mix
among the poor and happy of other lands, it is very certain

* See^wsi, Book II. Chap. iii. f See post, Book II. Chap, v, the whining of the lapwing,