CHAP. V.] DISCIPLINE OF SORROW.

passed, before the pangs of his own destitution sharply 1753.
struck him again; and, without other remaining means of J3t. 30.
earthly aid, for death had taken in Doctor Milner his
apparently last friend, he carried the four books he had
recently reviewed for Griffiths to a neighbouring house, and
left them in pledge with an acquaintance for a trifling loan.*
It was hardly done when a letter from Griffiths was put into
his hand, peremptorily demanding the return of the books
and the suit of clothes, or instant payment for both.

Goldsmith's answer, and the bookseller's violent retort,
are to be presumed from the poor debtor's second letter:
the only one preserved of this unseemly correspondence. He
appears first to have written in a tone of mixed astonishment,
anger, and solicitation; to have prayed for some delay; and
to have been met by coarse insult, threats, and the shameless
imputation of crime. These forced from him the rejoinder
found in the bookseller's papers, endorsed by Griffiths
with the writer's name, and as " Red1' in Jany' 1759; "
which passed afterwards into the manuscript collections of
Mr. Heber, and is now in my possession.t All concealment
is ended here, and stern plain truth is told.

" Sir," wrote Goldsmith, u I know of no misery but a gaol to which.
" my own imprudencies and your letter seem to point. I have seen it
" inevitable these three or four weeks, and, by heavens ! request it as
" a favour, as a favour that may prevent somewhat more fatal. I

* Prior, i. 326-8.

•f Tlie appearance of this remarkable letter harmonises with its contents. There
is nothing of the freedom or boldness of hand in it which one may perceive in his
ordinary manuscript. To the kindness of my Mend the Rev. Chauncy Hare
Townshend, I owe the possession of this most interesting of all the Goldsmith
papers that have been preserved to our time, and I. have been careful of the
strictest accuracy in the copy above given. The pointing is imperfect and confused,
nor is there any break or paragraph from the first line to the signature; but it is
printed exactly as written.re