CHAP. I.] WRITING THE BEE.

prints curiously coloured from nature. Such was the book- 1759.
sellers' literature of the day : the profitable contribution of JEt.si.
Paternoster-row and Grub-street, to the world's intellectual
cultivation.

While he satirised it thus good-naturedly, Goldsmith took
care also to append graver remarks on the more serious matter
it involved, and which with his own experience lay so near
his heart; but in no querulous spirit. He is now content
to have found out the reason why mediocrity should have
its rewards at once, and excellence be paid in reversion.
There is in these earliest essays something more pleasing
than even their undoubted elegance and humour, in that
condition of mind. If neglects and injuries are still to be
his portion, you do not now despair that he will turn them
to commodities. It is not by his cries and complainings
you shall hereafter trace him to his neglected, ill-furnished,
wretched home. As he watches its naked cobwebbed walls,
he finds matter for amusement to the readers of the Bee, in
watching the spiders that have refuge there; and in Ms
fourth number puts forth an instructive paper on the habits
and predatory life of that most wary, ingenious, hungry, and
persevering insect.

He was not to be daunted, now. Looking closely into
his life, one finds that other works beside this of the Bee
were eking out its scanty supplies. He was writing for the
Busy Body, published thrice a week for twopence by worthy
Mr. Pottinger, and brought out but three days after the
Bee. He was writing for the Lady's Magazine, started not
many days later by persevering Mr. Wilkie, in the hope of
propping up the Bee. He had taken his place, and would
go to his journey's end. Since the " pleasure stage coach "
had not opened its door to him, he had mounted " thebeautiful map of England, and two