CHAP. VI.] PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB STREET.

" From the time of Goldsmith's leaving Edinburgh, in the year 1754 1757.
" I never saw him till 1756, when I was in London, atteiading the jjj~29,
" hospitals and lectures ; early in January" [1756 is an evident mistake
for 1757] " he called upon me one morning before I was up, and on my
" entering the room, I recognised my old acquaintance, dressed in a
" rusty full-trimmed black suit, with his pockets full of papers, which
" instantly reminded me of the poet in Garrick's farce of Lethe.
a After we had finished our breakfast, he drew from his pocket a part
" of a tragedy; which he said he had brought for my correction ;
" in vain I pleaded inability, when he began to read, and every part
" on which I expressed a doubt as to the propriety, was immediately
" blotted out. I then more earnestly pressed him not to trust to my
"judgment, but to the opinion of persons better qualified to decide on
" dramatic compositions, on which he told me he had submitted his
" production, so far as he had written, to Mr. Bichardson, the author of
" Clarissa, on which I peremptorily declined offering another criticism
" on the performance. The name and subject of the tragedy have
" unfortunately escaped my memory, neither do I recollect with exact-
" ness how much he had written, though I am inclined to believe that
" he had not completed the third act; I never heard whether he after-
" wards finished it. In this visit I. remember his relating a strange
" Quixotic scheme he had in contemplation of going to decipher the
" inscriptions on the written mountains* though he was altogether
" ignorant of Arabic, or the language in which they might be supposed
" to be written. The salary of .£300 per annum, which had been left
" for the purpose, was the temptation! "t

Temptation indeed! The head may well be full of projects
of any kind, when the pockets are only full of papers. But
not, alas, to decipher inscriptions on the written mountains,
only to preside over pot-hooks at Peckham, was doomed to
be the lot of Goldsmith. One Doctor Milner, known still as
the author of Latin and Greek grammars useful in their day,

* Accounts of the •written mountains may be seen in Burckhardt's Syria
606-13 ; they are also referred to in Irby and Mangles' Travels (Ed. 1844), 126 ;
and by many other writers on the East. The inscriptions cover the rocks, some
of them twelve or fifteen feet high, along a range of nearly three leagues, •written
from right to left, in short lines.

"h Percy Memoir; 39, 4-0.nd the real state of the case ; every circumstance of which he