Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 2.djvu/192

 I88 GOLDSMITH. to dine at Dr. Milner's table with Mr. Ralph Griffiths, the proprietor of the Monthly Review, who invited him to write articles of criticism for that respectable publica tion. The terms of this engagement were a liberal salary, together with his board and lodging, which were secured to him for a year by a written agreement. In this capacity, however, he continued only seven or eight months, the constant drudgery to which it confined him not agreeing with the poet's disposition, who declared, that he wrote for his employer every day from nine o'clock till two. He now took a miserable apartment in Green Arbour-court, Little Old Bailey, amidst the dwellings of indigence; and in this wretched hovel completed his “Inquiry into the present State of Polite Literature in Europe,” which was published in 1759, by Dodsley. This work was well received, and in the following October, he commenced a weekly publication, “The Bee,” but which terminated at the eighth number. Some articles which he contributed about this time to the Critical Review, introduced him to the acquaintance of Dr. Smollett, then editor of the British Magazine; and for that work Goldsmith wrote most of those “Essays,” which were afterwards collected and published in a separate volume. Smollett also introduced him to Mr. Newberry, by whom he was engaged at a salary of 100l. a year, to write for the Public Ledger a series of periodical essays. These he termed “Chinese Letters;” and they were afterwards collected and published in two volumes, under the title of “The Citizen of the World.” The liberality of his en gagement with Newberry now induced him to desert his humble apartment in Green Arbour-court, and to hire decent lodgings in Wine Office-court, Fleet-street, where he finished his excellent novel, “The Vicar of Wakefield.” But such was his thoughtless dissipation, that he was in continual apprehensions of arrest, which at length took place, for arrears of rent. Under these circumstances, poor Goldsmith summoned resolution to send a message to Dr. Johnson, with whom he had lately formed an