His kind friend, Cradock, came up to town toward autumn, when all the fashionable world was in the country, to give his wife the benefit of a skillful dentist. He took lodgings in Norfolk Street, to be in Goldsmith's neighborhood, and passed most of his mornings with him. "I found him," he says, "much altered and at times very low. He wished me to look over and revise some of his works; but, with a select friend or two, I was more pressing that he should publish by subscription his two celebrated poems of the Traveler and the Deserted Village, with notes." The idea of Cradock was that the subscription would enable wealthy persons, favorable to Goldsmith, to contribute to his pecuniary relief without wounding his pride. "Goldsmith," said he, "readily gave up to me his private copies, and said, 'Pray do what you please with them.' But while he sat near me, he rather submitted to than encouraged my zealous proceedings. "I one morning called upon him, however, and found him infinitely better than I had expected; and, in a kind of exulting style, he exclaimed, 'Here are some of the best of my prose writings; _I have been hard at work since midnight,_ and I desire you to examine them.' 'These,' said I, 'are excellent indeed.' 'They are,' replied he, 'intended as an introduction to a body of arts and sciences.'" Poor Goldsmith was, in fact, gathering together the fragments of his shipwreck; the notes and essays and memoranda collected for his dictionary, and proposed to found on them a work in two volumes, to be entitled A Survey of Experimental Philosophy. The plan of the subscription came to nothing, and the projected survey never was executed. The head might yet devise, but the heart was failing him; his talent at hoping, which gave him buoyancy to carry out his enterprises, was almost at an end. Cradock's farewell scene with him is told in a simple but touching manner. "The day before I was to set out for Leicestershire I insisted upon his dining with us. He replied, 'I will, but on one condition, that you will not ask me to eat anything.' 'Nay,' said I, 'this answer is absolutely unkind, for I had hoped, as we are supplied from the Crown and Anchor, that you would have named something you might have relished.' 'Well,' was the reply, 'if you will but explain it to Mrs. Cradock, I will certainly wait upon you.'