ife of Voltaire"; the payment being twenty pounds,
with the price of the clothes to be deducted from the sum.

In the autumn of 1759 Goldsmith commenced, for bookseller Wilkie, of St.
Paul's Churchyard, the weekly writing of "The Bee," a threepenny
magazine of essays. It ended with its eighth number, for the public
would not buy it. At the same time he was writing for Mr. Pottinger's
"Busybody," and Mr. Wilkie's "Lady's Magazine." "The Bee," though
unsuccessful, brought Goldsmith useful friends--Smollett and Garrick,
and Mr. Newbery, the publisher--and with the New Year (1760) he was
working with Smollett on "The British Magazine," and, immediately
afterwards, on Newbery's "Public Ledger," a daily newspaper, for which
he wrote two articles a week at a guinea for each article. Among the
articles were the series that still divert and instruct us--"The Citizen
of the World." This was the title given when the "Letters from a Chinese
Philosopher in London to his Friend in the East" were republished by
Newbery, at the end of the year. Goldsmith now began to know his own
value as a writer.

_IV.--Social and Literary Success_

His widening reputation brought him into association and friendship with
Johnson, to whom he was introduced by Dr. Percy, the collector of the
"Reliques of Ancient English Poetry." Goldsmith gave a supper in honour
of his visitor, and when Percy called on Johnson to accompany him to
their host's lodgings, to his great astonishment he found Johnson in a
new suit of clothes, with a new wig, nicely powdered, perfectly
dissimilar from his usual appearance. On being asked the cause of this
transformation Johnson replied, "Why, sir, I hear that Goldsmith, who is
a very great sloven, justifies his disregard of cleanliness and decency
by quoting my practice; and I am desirous this night to show him a
better example."

Johnson was perhaps the first literary man of the times who estimated
Goldsmith according to his true merits as a writer and thinker, and he
was repaid by an affectionate devotion that was never worn out during
the later years when the Dictator was too ready to make a butt of the
unready Irishman. Goldsmith now joined the group of literary friends who
gathered frequently at the shop of Tom Davies, the bookseller, where
Johnson and Boswell first met, and he was one of the famous Literary
Club which grew out of these meetings.

"Sir," said Johnson to Boswell, at one of their first meetings,