a not unuseful assistant" to
Griffiths, he kept up an irregular business association with that
literary slave-driver. He also became a contributor to Newbery's
"Literary Magazine." At last, in despair, he turned again from the
miseries of Grub Street to Dr. Milner's school-room at Peckham, and,
after another brief period of teaching, Dr. Milner secured for him the
promise of an appointment as medical officer to one of the East India
Company's factories on the coast of Coromandel. Partly to utilise his
travel experiences in a more formal manner than had yet been possible,
and partly to provide funds for his equipment for foreign service, he
now wrote his "Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in
Europe," and, leaving Dr. Milner's, became a contributor to Hamilton's
"Critical Review," a rival to Griffiths's "Monthly." In these days he
lived in a garret in Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey, with a single chair
in the room, and a window seat for himself if a visitor occupied the
chair. For some unknown reason the Coromandel appointment was withdrawn,
and failure in an examination as a hospital-mate left no hope except in
literature.

The turning-point of Goldsmith's life was reached when Griffiths became
security for a new suit of clothes in which that unfortunate
hospital-mate examination might be attended. On Griffiths finding that
the new suit had been pawned to free the poet's landlady from the
bailiffs, he abused him as a sharper and a villain, and threatened to
proceed against him by law as a criminal. This attack forced from
Goldsmith the rejoinder, "Sir, I know of no misery but a jail to which
my own imprudences and your letter seem to point. I have seen it
inevitable these three or four weeks, and, by heavens! regard it as a
favour, as a favour that may prevent somewhat more fatal. I tell you
again and again I am now neither able nor willing to pay you a farthing,
but I will be punctual to any appointment you or the tailor shall make;
thus far at least I do not act the sharper, since, unable to pay my
debts one way, I would willingly give some security another. No, sir;
had I been a sharper, had I been possessed of less good nature and
native generosity, I might surely now have been in better circumstances.
My reflections are filled with repentance for my imprudence, but not
with any remorse for being a villain."

The result of this correspondence was that Goldsmith contracted to write
for Griffiths a "L