CHAP. IV.] ESCAPE PKEVENTED.

ascended Break-neck Steps; far different his mournful 1753.
conviction, that, but to flee from the misery that surrounded jEt. so.
him, no office could be mean, no possible endurance hard.
His determination was taken at once: probably grounded
on the knowledge of some passages in the life of Smollett,
and of his recent acquaintance Grainger. He would
present himself at Surgeons' Hall for examination as
a hospital mate: an appointment sufficiently undesirable,
to be found always of tolerably easy attainment by the duly
qualified.

But he must have decent clothes to present himself in :
the solitary suit in which he crept between the court and
the coffee-house, being only fit for service after nightfall.
He had no resource but to apply to Griffiths, with whom
he had still some small existing connection, and from, whom
his recent acceptance at the Critical, increasing his value
with a vulgar mind, might help in exacting aid. The
bookseller, to whom the precise temporary purpose for
which the clothes were wanted does not seem to have been
told, consented to furnish them on certain conditions.
Goldsmith was to write at once four articles (he had given
three to the Critical] for the Monthly Review. Griffiths
would then become security with a tailor for a new suit of
clothes; which were either to be returned, or the debt for
them, discharged, within a given time. This pauper proposal
acceded to, Goldsmith doubtless returned to Green Arbour
Court with the four books under his arm.

They were : Some Enquiries Concerning the First Inha-
bitants of Europe* by a member of the Society of Antiquaries,
known afterwards as Francis Wise, and Thomas Warton's
friend; Anselm Bayly's Introduction to Languages; t the

* Monthly Review, xix. 513, December 1758. f Ibid, 519.r different were the feelings with which he nowteps in. the middle of winter."