Elizabeth Fleming, a friend of
Newbery, to whose generalship this step seems attributable. From the
curious accounts printed by Prior and Forster, it is clear that the
publisher was Mrs. Fleming's paymaster, punctually deducting his
disbursements from the account current between himself and Goldsmith, an
arrangement which as plainly indicates the foresight of the one as it
implies the improvidence of the other. Of the work which Goldsmith did
for the businesslike and not unkindly little man, there is no very
definite evidence; but various prefaces, introductions, and the like,
belong to this time; and he undoubtedly was the author of the excellent
'History of England in a Series of Letters addressed by a Nobleman to
his Son', published anonymously in June, 1764, and long attributed, for
the grace of its style, to Lyttelton, Chesterfield, Orrery, and other
patrician pens. Meanwhile his range of acquaintance was growing larger.
The establishment, at the beginning of 1764, of the famous association
known afterwards as the 'Literary Club' brought him into intimate
relations with Beauclerk, Reynolds, Langton, Burke, and others.
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