nformed a company of his friends that he had heard a
very good story, but would not repeat it, because they would be sure
to miss the point of it?

This vein of playful and sarcastic self-depreciation is continually
cropping up in his essay writing, as, for example, in the passage
already quoted from No. IV. of the _Bee_: "I conclude, that what my
reputation wants in extent, is made up by its solidity. _Minus juvat
gloria lata quam magna_. I have great satisfaction in considering the
delicacy and discernment of those readers I have, and in ascribing my
want of popularity to the ignorance or inattention of those I have
not." But here, no doubt, he remembers that he is addressing the world
at large, which contains many foolish persons; and so, that the
delicate raillery may not be mistaken, he immediately adds, "All the
world may forsake an author, but vanity will never forsake him." That
he expected a quicker apprehension on the part of his intimates and
acquaintances, and that he was frequently disappointed, seems pretty
clear from those very stories of his "blunders." We may reasonably
suspect, at all events, that Goldsmith was not quite so much of a fool
as he looked; and it is far from improbable that when the ungainly
Irishman was called in to make sport for the Philistines--and there
were a good many Philistines in those days, if all stories be
true--and when they imagined they had put him out of countenance, he
was really standing aghast, and wondering how it could have pleased
Providence to create such helpless stupidity.

CHAPTER VII.

The Citizen of the World.--Beau Nash.

Meanwhile, to return to his literary work, the _Citizen of the World_
had grown out of his contributions to the _Public Ledger_, a daily
newspaper started by Mr. Newbery, another bookseller in St. Paul's
Churchyard. Goldsmith was engaged to write for this paper two letters
a week at a guinea a-piece; and these letters were, after a short time
(1760), written in the character of a Chinese who had come to study
European civilisation. It may be noted that Goldsmith had in the
_Monthly Review_, in mentioning Voltaire's memoirs of French writers,
quoted a passage about Montesquieu's _Lettres Persanes_ as follows:
"It is written in imitation of the _Siamese Letters_ of Du Freny and
of the _Turkish Spy_; but it is an imitation which shows what the
originals should have been. The success their works met with was, for
the most part, owing