Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/245

 ��passing in corners unseen by any body but himself and that odd old surgeon whom he kept in his house to tend the out-pensioners J , and of whom he said most truly and sublimely, that

In misery's darkest caverns known,

His useful care was ever nigh, Where hopeless anguish pours her groan,

And lonely want retires to die 2.

I have forgotten the year, but it could scarcely I think be later than 1765 or 1766, that he was called abruptly from our house after dinner, and returning in about three hours, said, he had been with an enraged author, whose landlady pressed him for payment within doors, while the bailiffs beset him with out ; that he was drinking himself drunk with Madeira to drown care, and fretting over a novel which when finished was to be his whole fortune ; but he could not get it done for distraction, nor could he step out of doors to offer it to sale. Mr. Johnson there fore set away the bottle, and went to the bookseller, recommend ing the performance, and desiring some immediate relief; which when he brought back to the writer, he called the woman of the house directly to partake of punch, and pass their time in merriment.

It was not till ten years after, I dare say, that something in Dr. Goldsmith's behaviour struck me with an idea that he was the very man, and then Johnson confessed that he was so ; the novel was the charming Vicar of Wakefield 3.

1 Robert Levett. There is no 3 The 'extreme inaccuracy' of this reason to believe that Johnson kept anecdote is shown by Boswell. Ib. him for that purpose. Levett mainly i. 416. Of one fact he was ignorant, supported himself by his practice. Goldsmith sold the Vicar of Wake- Ante, p. 205, n. 2. As Johnson says field in 1762 (ib. i. 415, n. i), two or in his lines on him : three years before Johnson knew the

' The modest wants of every day Thrales. The price paid for it was

The toil of every day supplied.' ;6o. Ib. i. 416. 'A fine first edition

Life, iv. 138. in two vols. bound in red morocco,

2 'In Misery's darkest caverns published in Salisbury in 1766* was

known, sold in June, 1892, for ^96. Daily

His ready help was ever nigh, News, July I, 1892. An autograph

Where hopeless Anguish pour'd letter of Goldsmith to Garrick refer-

his groan, ring to She Stoops to Conquer was

And lonely want retir'd to die.' sold by auction in 1885 for ^34.

Q a There

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