III.—­Physic, Teaching, and Authorship

Landing at Dover without a farthing in his pocket, the traveller took ten days to reach London, where an uncertain story says he gained subsistence for a few months as an usher, under a feigned name.  At last a chemist of the name of Jacob, at the corner of Monument Yard, engaged him.  While employed among the drugs he met an old Edinburgh fellow-student, Owen Sleigh, who, “with a heart as warm as ever, shared his home and friendship.”  Goldsmith now began to practise as a physician in a humble way, and through one of his patients was introduced to Richardson and appointed for a short time reader and corrector to his press in Salisbury Court.  Next we find him at Peckham Academy, acting as assistant to Dr. Milner, whose son had been at Edinburgh.

Milner was a contributor to the “Monthly Review,” published by Griffiths, the bookseller, and at Milner’s table Griffiths and Goldsmith met, with the result that Goldsmith entered into an agreement to devote himself to the “Monthly Review” for a year.  In fulfilment of that agreement Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths provided him with bed and board in Paternoster Row, and, at the age of nine-and-twenty, he began his work as an author by profession.

The twelve months’ agreement was not carried out.  At the end of five months Goldsmith left the “Monthly Review.”  During that period he had reviewed Professor Mallet’s translations of Scandinavian poetry and mythology; Home’s tragedy of “Douglas,” Burke’s “Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,” Smollett’s “Complete History of England,” and Gray’s “Odes.”  Though he was no longer “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.