re
trees and a pump, the water of which is excellent, cold--with brandy;
and not very insipid without." He sends Manning some of his little
books, to give him "some idea of European literature." It is in this
letter that he speaks of Braham and his singing, and jokes "on titles of
honour," exemplifying the eleven gradations, by which Mr. C. Lamb rose
in succession to be Baron, Marquis, Duke, Emperor Lamb, and finally Pope
Innocent; and other lively matters fit to solace an English
mathematician self-banished to China. The same year Mary Lamb describes
her brother taking to water like a hungry otter--abstaining from all
spirituous liquors, but with the most indifferent result, as he became
full of cramps and rheumatism, and so cold internally that fire could
not warm him. It is but just to Lamb to mention that this ascetic
period was brief. This same year Lamb wrote his fine essays on Hogarth
and the tragedies of Shakespeare. He was already getting weary of the
dull routine of official work at the India House.

[Illustration: GOLDSMITH'S TOMB IN 1860 (_see page 171_).]

Goldsmith came to the Temple, early in 1764, from Wine Office Court. It
was a hard year with him, though he published "The Traveller," and
opened fruitless negotiations with Dodsley and Tonson. "He took," says
Mr. Forster, "rooms on the then library-staircase of the Temple. They
were a humble set of chambers enough (one Jeffs, the butler of the
society, shared them with him), and on Johnson's prying and peering
about in them, after his short-sighted fashion flattening his face
against every object he looked at, Goldsmith's uneasy sense of their
deficiencies broke out. 'I shall soon be in better chambers, sir, than
these,' he said. 'Nay, sir,' answered Johnson, 'never mind that--_nil te
quaesiveris extra_.'" He soon hurried off to the quiet of Islington, as
some say, to secretly write the erudite history of "Goody Two-Shoes" for
Newbery. In 1765 various publications, or perhaps the money for "The
Vicar," enabled the author to move to larger chambers in Garden Court,
close to his first set, and one of the most agreeable localities in the
Temple. He now carried out his threat to Johnson--started a man-servant,
and ran into debt with his usual gay and thoughtless vanity to Mr.
Filby, the tailor, of Water Lane, for coats of divers colours. Goldsmith
began to feel his importance, and determined to show it. In 1766 "The
Vicar of Wakefield" (price five shillings