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, “Goldsmith is one of the first men we have as an author.”

This was said at a time when all Goldsmith’s best works had yet to be written.  He was still working for the booksellers, and in 1763, issued anonymously a “History of England in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son.”  To various noblemen credit for this popular work was given, including Lord Chesterfield.  Growing success was only an excuse for growing extravagance, and in 1764 Goldsmith was placed temporarily under arrest for debt, probably by his landlady, Mrs. Fleming, with whom he had been living at Islington under an arrangement made by Newbery.  His withdrawal from the town had given him opportunities for congenial labour on “The Traveller” and “The Vicar of Wakefield,” and when Johnson appeared, in answer to his urgent summons, it was the manuscript of “The Vicar” that he carried off, and sold for sixty pounds, to relieve immediate anxieties.

Still, it was “The Traveller” that was first published (December 19, 1764).  Johnson pronounced it a poem to which it would not be easy to find anything equal since the death of Pope.  The predominant impression of “The Traveller” is of its naturalness and facility.  The serene graces of its style, and the mellow flow of its verse, take us captive before we feel the enchantment of its lovely images of various life reflected from its calm, still depths of philosophic contemplation.  A fourth edition was issued by August, and a ninth appeared in the year when the poet died.  The price paid for it by Newbery was, apparently, twenty guineas.

It was in the spring of 1766, fifteen months after it had been acquired by Newbery, that “The Vicar of Wakefield” was published.  No book upon record has obtained a wider popularity, and none is more likely to endure.  It is our first pure example of the simple, domestic novel.  As a refuge from the compiling of books was this book undertaken.  Simple to baldness are the materials used, but Goldsmith threw into the midst of them his own nature, his actual experience, the suffering, discipline, and sweet emotion of his chequered life, and so made them a lesson and a delight to all men.  The book silently forced its way.  No noise was made about it, no trumpets were blown for it, but admiration gathered steadily around it, and by August a third edition had been reached.