CHAP. IV.] THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD.

to return to a fixed or settled residence in London. He 1760.
furnished other booksellers with occasional compilation- JEt.32,
prefaces; * he compiled for Newbery, in four duodecimo
volumes, A Poetical Dictionary, or the Beauties of the
English Poets alphabetically displayed ;f and he gave some
papers (among them, a Life of Christ and Lives of the Fathers,
re-published with his name, in shilling pamphlets, a few
months after his death) to a so-called Christian Magazine,
undertaken by Newbery in connection with the macaroni
parson Dodd, and conducted by that villainous pretender as
an organ of fashionable divinity.

It seems to follow as of course upon these engagements,
that the room in Green Arbour Court should at last be
exchanged for one of greater comfort. He had left that
place in the later months of 1760, and gone into what were
called respectable lodgings in Wine Office Court, Fleet-
street. The house belonged to a relative of Newbery's, and
he occupied two rooms in it for nearly two years.

* Of course these prefaces were always strictly taskwork. To seek to connect
them in any way with the work prefaced, would be generally labour in vain. The
moral of them is in a remark of Johnson's, when Boswell, admiring greatly his
preface to RoWs Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, asked him whether he knew
much of Bolt and of his work. '' Sir," said Johnson, '' I never saw the man, and
" never read the book. The booksellers wanted a Preface to a Dictionary of Trade
" and Commerce. I knew very well what such a Dictionary should be, and I wrote
" a Preface accordingly." JBoswett, ii. 125.

•\" Mr. Grossley possesses a copy of this selection, which is rare and very little
known, and says of it (Notes and Queries, v. 534) that "the preface is evidently
'' written by Goldsmith, and with his usual elegance and spirit; and the selection
" which follows is one of the best that has ever yet been made." old wrongs are at