concert.

Poor Goldsmith! what a time must he have had of it, with his quiet
Disposition and nervous habits, penned up in this den of noise and
vulgarity. How strange that while every sight and sound was sufficient
to embitter the heart and fill it with misanthropy, his pen should be
dropping the honey of Hybla. Yet it is more than probable that he drew
many of his inimitable pictures of low life from the scenes which
surrounded him in this abode. The circumstance of Mrs. Tibbs being
obliged to wash her husband's two shirts in a neighbor's house, who
refused to lend her washtub, may have been no sport of fancy, but a
fact passing under his own eye. His landlady may have sat for the
picture, and Beau Tibbs' scanty wardrobe have been a facsimile of his
own.

It was with some difficulty that we found our way to Dribble's
lodgings. They were up two pair of stairs, in a room that looked upon
the court, and when we entered he was seated on the edge of his bed,
writing at a broken table. He received us, however, with a free, open,
poor devil air, that was irresistible. It is true he did at first
appear slightly confused; buttoned up his waistcoat a little higher and
tucked in a stray frill of linen. But he recollected himself in an
instant; gave a half swagger, half leer, as he stepped forth to receive
us; drew a three-legged stool for Mr. Buckthorne; pointed me to a
lumbering old damask chair that looked like a dethroned monarch in
exile, and bade us welcome to his garret.

We soon got engaged in conversation. Buckthorne and he had much to say
about early school scenes; and as nothing opens a man's heart more than
recollections of the kind, we soon drew from him a brief outline of his
literary career.

THE POOR DEVIL AUTHOR.

I began life unluckily by being the wag and bright fellow at school;
and I had the farther misfortune of becoming the great genius of my
native village. My father was a country attorney, and intended that I
should succeed him in business; but I had too much genius to study, and
he was too fond of my genius to force it into the traces. So I fell
into bad company and took to bad habits. Do not mistake me. I mean that
I fell into the company of village literati and village blues, and took
to writing village poetry.

It was quite the fashion in the village to be literary. We had a little
knot of choice spirits who assembled frequently together, formed
ourselves into a Literary, Scientific,