CHAP. Vi.J PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB STEEET.

friend or acquaintance, without the knowledge or comfort
of even one kind face, in the lonely, terrible, LONDON
streets.

He thought he might find employment as an usher; and
there is a dark uncertain kind of story, of his getting a
bare subsistence in this way for some few months, under a
feigned name : which had involved him in a worse distress
but for the judicious silence*of the Dublin Doctor (Kadcliff),
fellow of the college and joint-tutor with Wilder, to whom he
had been suddenly required to apply for a character, and
whose good-humoured acquiescence in his private appeal
saved him from suspicion of imposture. Goldsmith showed
his gratitude by a long, and, it is said, a most delightful
letter to Badcliff, descriptive of his travels; now unhappily
destroyed.* He also wrote again to Ins more familiar Irish

the -writer rejoined (St. James1 Chronicle, April 12, 14, 1774), "We never said
"that lie set up in Ireland. The country town alluded to is an English town, the
"name of which is forgotten. But the "writer of this and the former paragraph
"assures the public that he had the anecdote from the Doctor's own mouth."
Mr. Prior has quoted this, i. 201.

* Percy's friend, Campbell (in his Survey of the South of Ireland, 286-9), gives
an account of this incident from the recollections of RadclifPs widow, but in ante-
dating it before his foreign travel makes an evident mistake, which is silently
corrected in the Percy Memoir, 37, where reference is made to Campbell's "book.
I now quote the latter : " Upon his .first going to England, he was in such»distress,
' that te would gladly have become an usher to a country school; but so destitute
' was tie of friends to recommend him, that he could not without difficulty obtain
' even this low department, The master of the school scrupled to employ him
' without some testimonial of his past life. • Goldsmith referred him to his tutor
' at college for a character; but all this while he went under a feigned name.
' From this resource, therefore, one would think that little in his favour could be
' ever hoped for; but he only wanted to serve a present exigency ; an ushership
' was not his object. In this strait, he wrote a letter to Dr. Radcliff, imploring
' him, as he tendered the welfare of an old pupil, not to answer a letter which he
' would probably receive, the same post with his own, from the schoolmaster. He
' added that he had good reasons for concealing both from him and the rest of the
' world las name, and the real state of the case ; every circumstance of which he
' promised to communicate on some future occasion. His tutor, embarrassed
' enough, to know what answer he should give, resolved at last to give none.' And
'thus was poor Goldsmith snatched from between the horns of his presentis in 1750, and never set foot in the capital