imsically dismal figure in nature than a man of real modesty, who
assumes an air of impudence--who, while his heart beats with anxiety,
studies ease and affects good-humour. In this situation, however, a
periodical writer often finds himself upon his first attempt to
address the public in form. All his power of pleasing is damped by
solicitude, and his cheerfulness dashed with apprehension. Impressed
with the terrors of the tribunal before which he is going to appear,
his natural humour turns to pertness, and for real wit he is obliged
to substitute vivacity. His first publication draws a crowd; they part
dissatisfied; and the author, never more to be indulged with a
favourable hearing, is left to condemn the indelicacy of his own
address or their want of discernment. For my part, as I was never
distinguished for address, and have often even blundered in making my
bow, such bodings as these had like to have totally repressed my
ambition. I was at a loss whether to give the public specious
promises, or give none; whether to be merry or sad on this solemn
occasion. If I should decline all merit, it was too probable the hasty
reader might have taken me at my word. If, on the other hand, like
labourers in the magazine trade, I had, with modest impudence, humbly
presumed to promise an epitome of all the good things that ever were
said or written, this might have disgusted those readers I most desire
to please. Had I been merry, I might have been censured as vastly low;
and had I been sorrowful, I might have been left to mourn in solitude
and silence; in short, whichever way I turned, nothing presented but
prospects of terror, despair, chandlers' shops, and waste paper."

And it is just possible that if Goldsmith had kept to this vein of
familiar _causerie_, the public might in time have been attracted by
its quaintness. But no doubt Mr. Wilkie would have stared aghast; and
so we find Goldsmith, as soon as his introductory bow is made, setting
seriously about the business of magazine-making. Very soon, however,
both Mr. Wilkie and his editor perceived that the public had not been
taken by their venture. The chief cause of the failure, as it appears
to any one who looks over the magazine now, would seem to be the lack
of any definite purpose. There was no marked feature to arrest public
attention, while many things were discarded on which the popularity of
other periodicals had been based. There was no scandal to appeal to
the