ANECDOTE OF DR. GOLDSMITH.
Those in the least acquainted with the private character of the doctor, knew that economy and foresight were not amongst the catalogue of his virtues. In the suite of his pensioners (and he generally enlarged his list as he enlarged his finances) was the late unfortunate Jack Pilkington, of scribbling memory, who had served the doctor so many tricks, that he despaired of getting any more money from him, without coming out with a chef d’œuvre once for all. He accordingly called on the doctor one morning, and running about the room in a fit of joy, told him his fortune was made, “How so, Jack?” says the doctor. “Why,” says Jack, “the duchess of Marlborough, you must know, has long had a strange penchant for a pair of white mice; now, as I knew they were sometimes to be had in the East Indies, I commissioned a friend of mine, who was going out then, to get them for me, and he is this morning arrived with two of the most beautiful little animals in nature.” After Jack had finished this account with a transport of joy, he lengthened his visage by telling the doctor all was ruined, for without two guineas to buy a cage for the mice, he could not present them. The doctor unfortunately, as he said himself, had but half a guinea in the world, which he offered him. But Pilkington was not to be beat out of his scheme; he perceived the doctor’s watch hanging up in his room, and after premising on the indelicacy of the proposal, hinted, that if he could spare that watch for a week, he could raise a few guineas on it, which he would repay him with gratitude. The doctor would not be the means of spoiling a man’s fortune for such a trifle. He accordingly took down the watch, and gave it to him, which Jack immediately took to the pawn-brokers, raised what he could on it, and never once looked after the doctor, till he sent to borrow another half guinea from him on his death-bed; which the other, under such circumstances, very generously sent him.
