trong
adverse reasons had not existed, Johnson would surely have carried it
to the elder Newbery. He did not do this. He went with it to Francis
Newbery, the nephew; does not seem to have given a very brilliant
account of the "merit" he had perceived in it--four years after its
author's death he told Reynolds that he did not think it would have had
much success--and rather with regard to Goldsmith's immediate want than
to any confident sense of the value of the copy, asked and obtained the
L60. "And, sir," he said afterwards, "a sufficient price, too, when it
was sold, for then the fame of Goldsmith had not been elevated, as it
afterwards was, by his 'Traveller,' and the bookseller had faint hopes
of profit by his bargain. After 'The Traveller,' to be sure, it was
accidentally worth more money."

[Illustration: WINE OFFICE COURT AND THE "CHESHIRE CHEESE" (_see page
122_).]

On the poem, meanwhile, the elder Newbery _had_ consented to speculate,
and this circumstance may have made it hopeless to appeal to him with a
second work of fancy. For, on that very day of the arrest, "The
Traveller" lay completed in the poet's desk. The dream of eight years,
the solace and sustainment of his exile and poverty, verged at last to
fulfilment or extinction, and the hopes and fears which centred in it
doubtless mingled on that miserable day with the fumes of the Madeira.
In the excitement of putting it to press, which followed immediately
after, the nameless novel recedes altogether from the view, but will
reappear in due time. Johnson approved the verses more than the novel;
read the proof-sheets for his friend; substituted here and there, in
more emphatic testimony of general approval, a line of his own; prepared
a brief but hearty notice for the _Critical Review_, which was to appear
simultaneously with the poem, and, as the day of publication drew near,
bade Goldsmith be of good heart.

Oliver Goldsmith came first to London in 1756, a raw Irish student,
aged twenty-eight. He was just fresh from Italy and Switzerland. He had
heard Voltaire talk, had won a degree at Louvaine or Padua, had been
"bear leader" to the stingy nephew of a rich pawnbroker, and had played
the flute at the door of Flemish peasants for a draught of beer and a
crust of bread. No city of golden pavement did London prove to those
worn and dusty feet. Almost a beggar had Oliver been, then an
apothecary's journeyman and quack doctor, next a reader of proofs for