CHAPTER III.

OVERTURES FROM SMOLLETT AND MR. NEWBERY.

1759—1760.

BUT, at the door of Mr. Oliver Goldsmith, Doctor Smollett
1759. and Mr. Newbery have been waiting us all this while, and
jEt. 31. neither of them helonged to that leisurely class which can
very well afford to wait. The Doctor was full of energy and
movement always, as one of his own headlong heroes; and
who rernemhers not the philanthropic bookseller in the
Vicar of Wakefield, the good-natured man with the red-
pimpled face, who had no sooner alighted hut he was in haste
to be gone, " for he was ever on business of the utmost impor-
" tance, and was at that time actually compiling materials
" for the history of one Mr. Thomas Trip." But not on
Mr. Thomas Trip's affairs had the child-loving publisher*
now ventured up Break-neck Steps; and upon other than
the old Critical business was the author of Peregrine Pickle
a visitor in Green Arbour Court. Both had new and im-
portant schemes in hand, and with both it was an object to
secure the alliance and services of Goldsmith. Smollett had

* "He called himself their friend," says Doctor Primrose, "but he was the
"friend of all mankind... he had published for me against the Deuterogamists
" of the age, and from him I borrowed a few pieces." And see Nichols's Literary
Anecdotes, iii. 731-2.