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Updated: June 26, 2025
Goldsmith was the author of An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe, and of The Citizen of the World, a series of letters supposed to be written from London by a Chinese." A conversation took place at table between Goldsmith and Mr. Robert Dodsley, compiler of the well-known collection of modern poetry, as to the merits of the current poetry of the day.
With the death of the poet Dodsley one actor fell out of the little comedy. And yet another stepped in at once. You would hardly guess who it was Mary Lackington.
Robert Dodsley, with whatever hints that eminent poet had contributed towards a great literary project, that had been the subject of important consideration in a former reign. The booksellers who contracted with Johnson, single and unaided, for the execution of a work, which in other countries has not been effected but by the co-operating exertions of many, were Mr. Robert Dodsley, Mr.
Dodsley, the bookseller of Pall Mall, provided the sinews of war, and he gave Burke a hundred pounds a year for his survey of the great events which were then passing in the world. The scheme was probably born of the circumstances of the hour, for this was the climax of the Seven Years' War.
'Yon solitary Highland Lass Reaping and singing by herself. 'Verse softens toil, however rude the sound; She feels no biting pang the while she sings; Nor, as she turns the giddy wheel around, Revolves the sad vicissitude of things. Contemplation. London: Printed for R. Dodsley in Pall-mall, and sold by M. Cooper, at the Globe in Paternoster-Row, 1753.
Dodsley, who only a few months before had refused a poem from the same hand. But circumstances were now changed, and Burke's recommendation and support were all-sufficient. Dodsley was all politeness, and though he declined to incur any risk this was doubtless borne by Burke he promised his best endeavours to make the poem a success. The Library was published, anonymously, in June 1781.
In the same year he pub. his famous treatise On the Sublime and Beautiful, which attracted universal attention, and three years later he projected with Dodsley the publisher The Annual Register, for which he continued to write the yearly Survey of Events until 1788.
It was to the memory of Robert Dodsley, the bookseller, Johnson's acquaintance, who, as his tombstone rather superciliously avers, had made a much better figure as an author than "could have been expected in his rank of life." But, after all, it is inevitable that a man's tombstone should look down on him, or, at all events, comport itself towards him "de haut en bas."
The Monthly and the Critical Reviews awarded it a certain amount of faint praise, but the success with the general public seems only to have been slight. When Burke selected this poem to lay before Dodsley, he had already read portions of The Village, and it seems strange that he should have given The Library precedence, for the other was in every respect the more remarkable.
He is represented by his friend Dodsley as a man of great tenderness and generosity, kind to all that were within his influence; but, if once offended, not easily appeased; inattentive to economy, and careless of his expenses; in his person he was larger than the middle-size, with something clumsy in his form; very negligent of his clothes, and remarkable for wearing his grey hair in a particular manner, for he held that the fashion was no rule of dress, and that every man was to suit his appearance to his natural form.
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