With the year 1757, the prospects of Goldsmith brightened, and the papers which filled the pockets of the rusty black coat began to get abroad. He wrote several articles for the “Monthly Review,” translated the “Mémoires d’un Protestant,” and composed his “Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe.” The object of the work was special. He had obtained the appointment of physician to a factory on the coast of Coromandel, and was providing funds for the voyage. A considerable sum was needed. The Company’s warrant cost ten pounds, and the passage and equipment required one hundred and thirty pounds in addition; but the emoluments were expected to be large. The salary was one hundred pounds; the average returns of the general practice amounted to a thousand; there was an opening for commercial enterprise, and invested money brought twenty per cent. These were flattering inducements; but time deadened their charm, and he shrank from so distant a banishment, and beginning life again at the age of thirty-one. Eight years of anxiety and trial had done their work on his face and temper. His picture of himself was most discouraging. He had “contracted a hesitating, disagreeable manner of speaking, and a visage that looked ill-nature itself.” Home news deepened his melancholy, for his mother was almost blind. The “Enquiry” appeared, without the Author’s name, April, 1759--a small volume, price half-a-crown; and in the autumn of the same year, the commencement of a weekly paper, called “The Bee,” afforded him an opportunity of showing his skill as an Editor. His plan was to “rove from flower to flower, with seeming inattention, but concealed choice, expatiate over all the beauties of the season, and make his industry his amusement.” The “Bee” expired with its eighth number, but he was more successful in his next enterprise. To the “Public Ledger,” of which the first number appeared January 12th, 1760, Goldsmith contributed one hundred and twenty-three letters, which were afterwards collected as the “Citizen of the World.” The last day of May, 1761, was memorable in his life, as witnessing the commencement of his intimacy with Johnson. His miscellaneous productions in 1762-4 included a “Life of Richard Nash, of Bath,” an “Introduction to Natural History,” an “Abridgment of Plutarch,” a “History of England,” and the “Traveller.” For the poem he received only twenty guineas, but the applause of its readers was loud and unanimous. “I was glad,” said Sir Joshua, “to hear Sir Charles Fox say it was one of the finest poems in the English language.” A fourth edition was required within eight months, and the Author lived to see the ninth. In 1764, he wrote the “Captivity,” for which the sum of ten guineas was paid by Dodsley.