Mr. Prior, in 1820, going into a small shop in the Clapham Road to purchase the first edition of Goldsmith's Essays, lying in the window, found the woman in the shop an old neighbor of the poet's. She said she was a near relative of the woman who kept the house in Green-arbor Court, and, at the age of seven or eight, went frequently thither; one of the inducements to which was the cakes and sweetmeats given to her and other children of the family by the gentleman who lodged there. These they duly valued at the moment, but when afterward considered as the gift of one so eminent, the recollection became the source of pride and boast. Another of his amusements consisted in assembling these children in his room, and inducing them to dance to the music of his flute. Of this instrument, as a relaxation from study, he was fond. He was usually shut up in the room during the day, went out in the evenings, and preserved regular hours. His habits otherwise were sociable, and he had several visitors. One of the companions whose society gave him particular pleasure was a respectable watchmaker, residing in the same court, celebrated for the possession of much wit and humor; qualities which, as they distinguish his own writings, he professes to have sought and cultivated wherever they were to be found. Here the woman related that Goldsmith's landlord having fallen into difficulties, was at length arrested; and Goldsmith, who owed a small sum of money for rent, being applied to by his wife to assist in the release of her husband, found that, although without money, he did not want resources. A new suit of clothes was consigned to the pawnbroker, and the amount raised, proving much more than sufficient to discharge his own debt, was handed over for the release of the prisoner. What is most singular is, that this effort of active benevolence to rescue a debtor from jail, gave, in all probability, rise to a charge against him of dishonesty. As we have said, Goldsmith, proposing to go out to India, took his examination at Surgeon's Hall. To make a creditable appearance there, he had borrowed money of Griffiths, the bookseller, for a new suit of clothes. These clothes Griffiths soon afterward discovered hanging at a pawnbroker's door. As Goldsmith had lost the situation he had boasted of when he borrowed this money, and kept his own not very flattering secret of the cause of the loss--his rejection at Surgeon's Hall--Griffiths, a man of coarse mind, at once jumped to the conclusion that it was all a piece of trickery. He demanded an explanation of Goldsmith; Goldsmith refused to give it. He demanded the return of his money; Goldsmith, of course, had it not. They came to a fierce and violent, and, as it proved, irreconcilable quarrel, and Goldsmith disdaining to explain the real circumstances, long bore the disgrace of duplicity as the result of his generous act.