oes not incline us
to believe that it was an especially miserable period of his
existence. His abundant cheerfulness does not seem to have at any time
deserted him; and what with tricks, and jokes, and playing of the
flute, the dull routine of instructing the unruly young gentlemen at
Dr. Milner's was got through somehow.

When Goldsmith left the Peckham school to try hack-writing in
Paternoster Row, he was going further to fare worse. Griffiths the
bookseller, when he met Goldsmith at Dr. Milner's dinner-table and
invited him to become a reviewer, was doing a service to the English
nation--for it was in this period of machine-work that Goldsmith
discovered that happy faculty of literary expression that led to the
composition of his masterpieces--but he was doing little immediate
service to Goldsmith.

The newly-captured hack was boarded and lodged at Griffiths' house in
Paternoster Row (1757); he was to have a small salary in consideration
of remorselessly constant work; and--what was the hardest condition of
all--he was to have his writings revised by Mrs. Griffiths. Mr.
Forster justly remarks that though at last Goldsmith had thus become a
man-of-letters, he "had gratified no passion and attained no object of
ambition." He had taken to literature, as so many others have done,
merely as a last resource. And if it is true that literature at first
treated Goldsmith harshly, made him work hard, and gave him
comparatively little for what he did, at least it must be said that
his experience was not a singular one. Mr. Forster says that
literature was at that time in a transition state: "The patron was
gone, and the public had not come." But when Goldsmith began to do
better than hack-work, he found a public speedily enough. If, as Lord
Macaulay computes, Goldsmith received in the last seven years of his
life what was equivalent to L5,600 of our money, even the villain
booksellers cannot be accused of having starved him. At the outset of
his literary career he received no large sums, for he had achieved no
reputation; but he got the market-rate for his work. We have around us
at this moment plenty of hacks who do not earn much more than their
board and lodging with a small salary.

For the rest, we have no means of knowing whether Goldsmith got
through his work with ease or with difficulty; but it is obvious,
looking over the reviews which he is believed to have written for
Griffiths' magazine, that he readily acquired