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GOLDSMITH
BY
WILLIAM BLACK
English Men of Letters
EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY
London
MACMILLAN AND CO
1878
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER II.
SCHOOL AND COLLEGE
CHAPTER III.
IDLENESS, AND FOREIGN TRAVEL
CHAPTER IV.
EARLY STRUGGLES.--HACK-WRITING
CHAPTER V.
BEGINNING OF AUTHORSHIP.--THE BEE
CHAPTER VI.
PERSONAL TRAITS
CHAPTER VII.
THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD.--BEAU NASH
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ARREST
CHAPTER IX.
THE TRAVELLER
CHAPTER X.
MISCELLANEOUS WRITING
CHAPTER XI.
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD
CHAPTER XII.
THE GOOD-NATURED MAN
CHAPTER XIII.
GOLDSMITH IN SOCIETY
CHAPTER XIV.
THE DESERTED VILLAGE
CHAPTER XV.
OCCASIONAL WRITINGS
CHAPTER XVI.
SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER
CHAPTER XVII.
INCREASING DIFFICULTIES.--THE END
* * * * *
GOLDSMITH
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
"Innocently to amuse the imagination in this dream of life is wisdom."
So wrote Oliver Goldsmith; and surely among those who have earned the
world's gratitude by this ministration he must be accorded a
conspicuous place. If, in these delightful writings of his, he mostly
avoids the darker problems of existence--if the mystery of the tragic
and apparently unmerited and unrequited suffering in the world is
rarely touched upon--we can pardon the omission for the sake of the
gentle optimism that would rather look on the kindly side of life.
"You come hot and tired from the day's battle, and this sweet minstrel
sings to you," says Mr. Thackeray. "Who could harm the kind vagrant
harper? Whom did he ever hurt? He carries no weapon save the harp on
which he plays to you; and with which he delights great and humble,
young and old, the captains in the tents, or the soldiers round the
fire, or the women and children in the villages, at whose porches he
stops and sings his simple songs of love and beauty." And it is to be
suspected--it is to be hoped, at least--that the cheerfulness which
shines like sunlight through Goldsmith's writings, did not altogether
desert himself even in the most trying hours of his wayward and
troubled career. He had, with all his sensitiveness, a fine
happy-go-lucky disposition; was ready for a frolic when he had a
guinea, and, when he had none, could turn a sentence on the humorous
side of starvation; and certainly never attributed to the injustice or
neglect of society misfortunes the origin of which lay nearer home.
Of course, a very dark picture might be drawn of Goldsmith's life; and
the sufferings that he undoubtedly endured have been made a whip with
which to lash the ingratitude of a world not too quick to recognise
the claims of genius. He has been put before us, without any brighter
lights to the picture, as the most unfortunate of poor devils; the
heart-broken usher; the hack ground down by sordid booksellers; the
starving occupant of successive garrets. This is the aspect of
Goldsmith's career which naturally attracts Mr. Forster. Mr. Forster
seems to have been haunted throughout his life by the idea that
Providence had some especial spite against literary persons; and that,
in a measure to compensate them for their sad lot, society should be
very kind to them, while the Government of the day might make them
Companions of the Bath or give them posts in the Civil Service. In the
otherwise copious, thorough, and valuable _Life and Times of Oliver
Goldsmith_, we find an almost humiliating insistance on the complaint
that Oliver Goldsmith did not receive greater recognition and larger
sums of money from his contemporaries. Goldsmith is here "the poor
neglected sizar"; his "marked ill-fortune" attends him constantly; he
shares "the evil destinies of men of letters"; he was one of those who
"struggled into fame without the aid of English institutions"; in
short, "he wrote, and paid the penalty." Nay, even Christianity itself
is impeached on account of the persecution suffered by poor Goldsmith.
"There had been a Christian religion extant for seventeen-hundred and
fifty-seven years," writes Mr. Forster, "the world having been
acquainted, for even so long, with its spiritual necessities and
responsibilities; yet here, in the middle of the eighteenth century,
was the eminence ordinarily conceded to a spiritual teacher, to one of
those men who come upon the earth to lift their fellow-men above its
miry ways. He is up in a garret, writing for bread he cannot get, and
dunned for a milkscore he cannot pay." That Christianity might have
been worse employed than in paying the milkman's score is true enough,
for then the milkman would have come by his own; but that
Christianity, or the state, or society should be scolded because an
author suffers the natural consequences of his allowing his
expenditure to exceed his income, seems a little hard. And this is a
sort of writing that is peculiarly inappropriate in the case of
Goldsmith, who, if ever any man was author of his own misfortunes, may
fairly have the charge brought against him. "Men of genius," says Mr.
Forster, "can more easily starve, than the world, with safety to
itself, can continue to neglect and starve them." Perhaps so; but the
English nation, which has always had a regard and even love for
Oliver Goldsmith, that is quite peculiar in the history of literature,
and which has been glad to overlook his faults and follies, and eager
to sympathise with him in the many miseries of his career, will be
slow to believe that it is responsible for any starvation that
Goldsmith may have endured.
However, the key-note has been firmly struck, and it still vibrates.
Goldsmith was the unluckiest of mortals, the hapless victim of
circumstances. "Yielding to that united pressure of labour, penury,
and sorrow, with a frame exhausted by unremitting and ill-rewarded
drudgery, Goldsmith was indebted to the forbearance of creditors for a
peaceful burial." But what, now, if some foreigner strange to the
traditions of English literature--some Japanese student, for example,
or the New Zealander come before his time--were to go over the
ascertained facts of Goldsmith's life, and were suddenly to announce
to us, with the happy audacity of ignorance, that he, Goldsmith, was a
quite exceptionally fortunate person? "Why," he might say, "I find
that in a country where the vast majority of people are born to
labour, Oliver Goldsmith was never asked to do a stroke of work
towards the earning of his own living until he had arrived at man's
estate. All that was expected of him, as a youth and as a young man,
was that he should equip himself fully for the battle of life. He was
maintained at college until he had taken his degree. Again and again
he was furnished with funds for further study and foreign travel; and
again and again he gambled his opportunities away. The constant
kindness of his uncle only made him the best begging-letter-writer
the world has seen. In the midst of his debt and distress as a
bookseller's drudge, he receives L400 for three nights' performance of
_The Good-Natured Man_; he immediately purchases chambers in Brick
Court for L400; and forthwith begins to borrow as before. It is true
that he died owing L2000, and was indebted to the forbearance of
creditors for a peaceful burial; but it appears that during the last
seven years of his life he had been earning an annual income
equivalent to L800 of English currency.[1] He was a man liberally and
affectionately brought up, who had many relatives and many friends,
and who had the proud satisfaction--which has been denied to many men
of genius--of knowing for years before he died that his merits as a
writer had been recognised by the great bulk of his countrymen. And
yet this strange English nation is inclined to suspect that it treated
him rather badly; and Christianity is attacked because it did not pay
Goldsmith's milkscore."
[Footnote 1: The calculation is Lord Macaulay's: see his _Biographical_
_Essays_.]
Our Japanese friend may be exaggerating; but his position is after all
fairly tenable. It may at least be looked at, before entering on the
following brief _resume_ of the leading facts in Goldsmith's life, if
only to restore our equanimity. For, naturally, it is not pleasant to
think that any previous generation, however neglectful of the claims
of literary persons (as compared with the claims of such wretched
creatures as physicians, men of science, artists, engineers, and so
forth) should so cruelly have ill-treated one whom we all love now.
This inheritance of ingratitude is more than we can bear. Is it true
that Goldsmith was so harshly dealt with by those barbarian ancestors
of ours?
CHAPTER II.
SCHOOL AND COLLEGE.
The Goldsmiths were of English descent; Goldsmith's father was a
Protestant clergyman in a poor little village in the county of
Longford; and when Oliver, one of several children, was born in this
village of Pallas, or Pallasmore, on the 10th November, 1728, the Rev.
Charles Goldsmith was passing rich on L40 a year. But a couple of
years later Mr. Goldsmith succeeded to a more lucrative living; and
forthwith removed his family to the village of Lissoy, in the county
of Westmeath.
Here at once our interest in the story begins: is this Lissoy the
sweet Auburn that we have known and loved since our childhood? Lord
Macaulay, with a great deal of vehemence, avers that it is not; that
there never was any such hamlet as Auburn in Ireland; that _The
Deserted Village_ is a hopelessly incongruous poem; and that
Goldsmith, in combining a description of a probably Kentish village
with a description of an Irish ejectment, "has produced something
which never was, and never will be, seen in any part of the world."
This criticism is ingenious and plausible, but it is unsound, for it
happens to overlook one of the radical facts of human nature--the
magnifying delight of the mind in what is long remembered and remote.
What was it that the imagination of Goldsmith, in his life-long
banishment, could not see when he looked back to the home of his
childhood, and his early friends, and the sports and occupations of
his youth? Lissoy was no doubt a poor enough Irish village; and
perhaps the farms were not too well cultivated; and perhaps the
village preacher, who was so dear to all the country round, had to
administer many a thrashing to a certain graceless son of his; and
perhaps Paddy Byrne was something of a pedant; and no doubt pigs ran
over the "nicely sanded floor" of the inn; and no doubt the village
statesmen occasionally indulged in a free fight. But do you think that
was the Lissoy that Goldsmith thought of in his dreary lodgings in
Fleet-Street courts? No. It was the Lissoy where the vagrant lad had
first seen the "primrose peep beneath the thorn"; where he had
listened to the mysterious call of the bittern by the unfrequented
river; it was a Lissoy still ringing with the glad laughter of young
people in the twilight hours; it was a Lissoy for ever beautiful, and
tender, and far away. The grown-up Goldsmith had not to go to any
Kentish village for a model; the familiar scenes of his youth,
regarded with all the wistfulness and longing of an exile, became
glorified enough. "If I go to the opera where Signora Colomba pours
out all the mazes of melody," he writes to Mr. Hodson, "I sit and sigh
for Lissoy's fireside, and _Johnny Armstrong's Last Good Night_ from
Peggy Golden."
There was but little in the circumstances of Goldsmith's early life
likely to fit him for, or to lead him into, a literary career; in
fact, he did not take to literature until he had tried pretty nearly
everything else as a method of earning a living. If he was intended
for anything, it was no doubt his father's wish that he should enter
the Church; and he got such education as the poor Irish clergyman--who
was not a very provident person--could afford. The child Goldsmith was
first of all taught his alphabet at home, by a maid-servant, who was
also a relation of the family; then, at the age of six, he was sent to
that village school which, with its profound and learned master, he
has made familiar to all of us; and after that he was sent further
a-field for his learning, being moved from this to the other
boarding-school as the occasion demanded. Goldsmith's school-life
could not have been altogether a pleasant time for him. We hear,
indeed, of his being concerned in a good many frolics--robbing
orchards, and the like; and it is said that he attained proficiency in
the game of fives. But a shy and sensitive lad like Goldsmith, who was
eagerly desirous of being thought well of, and whose appearance only
invited the thoughtless but cruel ridicule of his schoolmates, must
have suffered a good deal. He was little, pitted with the small-pox,
and awkward; and schoolboys are amazingly frank. He was not strong
enough to thrash them into respect of him; he had no big brother to
become his champion; his pocket-money was not lavish enough to enable
him to buy over enemies or subsidise allies.
In similar circumstances it has sometimes happened that a boy
physically inferior to his companions has consoled himself by proving
his mental prowess--has scored off his failure at cricket by the
taking of prizes, and has revenged himself for a drubbing by writing a
lampoon. But even this last resource was not open to Goldsmith. He was
a dull boy; "a stupid, heavy blockhead," is Dr. Strean's phrase in
summing up the estimate formed of young Goldsmith by his
contemporaries at school. Of course, as soon as he became famous,
everybody began to hunt up recollections of his having said or done
this or that, in order to prove that there were signs of the coming
greatness. People began to remember that he had been suspected of
scribbling verses, which he burned. What schoolboy has not done the
like? We know how the biographers of great painters point out to us
that their hero early showed the bent of his mind by drawing the
figures of animals on doors and walls with a piece of chalk; as to
which it may be observed that, if every schoolboy who scribbled verses
and sketched in chalk on a brick wall, were to grow up a genius, poems
and pictures would be plentiful enough. However, there is the
apparently authenticated anecdote of young Goldsmith's turning the
tables on the fiddler at his uncle's dancing-party. The fiddler,
struck by the odd look of the boy who was capering about the room,
called out "AEsop!" whereupon Goldsmith is said to have instantly
replied,
"Our herald hath proclaimed this saying,
See AEsop dancing and his monkey playing!"
But even if this story be true, it is worth nothing as an augury; for
quickness of repartee was precisely the accomplishment which the adult
Goldsmith conspicuously lacked. Put a pen into his hand, and shut him
up in a room: then he was master of the situation--nothing could be
more incisive, polished, and easy than his playful sarcasm. But in
society any fool could get the better of him by a sudden question
followed by a horse-laugh. All through his life--even after he had
become one of the most famous of living writers--Goldsmith suffered
from want of self-confidence. He was too anxious to please. In his
eager acquiescence, he would blunder into any trap that was laid for
him. A grain or two of the stolid self-sufficiency of the blockheads
who laughed at him would not only have improved his character, but
would have considerably added to the happiness of his life.
As a natural consequence of this timidity, Goldsmith, when opportunity
served, assumed airs of magnificent importance. Every one knows the
story of the mistake on which _She Stoops to Conquer_ is founded.
Getting free at last from all the turmoil, and anxieties, and
mortifications of school-life, and returning home on a lent hack, the
released schoolboy is feeling very grand indeed. He is now sixteen,
would fain pass for a man, and has a whole golden guinea in his
pocket. And so he takes the journey very leisurely until, getting
benighted in a certain village, he asks the way to the "best house,"
and is directed by a facetious person to the house of the squire. The
squire by good luck falls in with the joke; and then we have a very
pretty comedy indeed--the impecunious schoolboy playing the part of a
fine gentleman on the strength of his solitary guinea, ordering a
bottle of wine after his supper, and inviting his landlord and his
landlord's wife and daughter to join him in the supper-room. The
contrast, in _She Stoops to Conquer_, between Marlow's embarrassed
diffidence on certain occasions and his audacious effrontery on
others, found many a parallel in the incidents of Goldsmith's own
life; and it is not improbable that the writer of the comedy was
thinking of some of his own experiences, when he made Miss Hardcastle
say to her timid suitor: "A want of courage upon some occasions
assumes the appearance of ignorance, and betrays us when we most want
to excel."
It was, perhaps, just as well that the supper, and bottle of wine, and
lodging at Squire Featherston's had not to be paid for out of the
schoolboy's guinea; for young Goldsmith was now on his way to college,
and the funds at the disposal of the Goldsmith family were not over
abundant. Goldsmith's sister having married the son of a well-to do
man, her father considered it a point of honour that she should have a
dowry: and in giving her a sum of L400 he so crippled the means of the
family, that Goldsmith had to be sent to college not as a pensioner
but as a sizar. It appears that the young gentleman's pride revolted
against this proposal; and that he was won over to consent only by the
persuasions of his uncle Contarine, who himself had been a sizar. So
Goldsmith, now in his eighteenth year, went to Dublin; managed somehow
or other--though he was the last in the list--to pass the necessary
examination; and entered upon his college career (1745.)
How he lived, and what he learned, at Trinity College, are both
largely matters of conjecture; the chief features of such record as we
have are the various means of raising a little money to which the
poor sizar had to resort; a continual quarrelling with his tutor, an
ill-conditioned brute, who baited Goldsmith and occasionally beat him;
and a chance frolic when funds were forthcoming. It was while he was
at Trinity College that his father died; so that Goldsmith was
rendered more than ever dependent on the kindness of his uncle
Contarine, who throughout seems to have taken much interest in his
odd, ungainly nephew. A loan from a friend or a visit to the
pawnbroker tided over the severer difficulties; and then from time to
time the writing of street-ballads, for which he got five shillings
a-piece at a certain repository, came in to help. It was a
happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth sort of existence, involving a good deal
of hardship and humiliation, but having its frolics and gaieties
notwithstanding. One of these was pretty near to putting an end to his
collegiate career altogether. He had, smarting under a public
admonition for having been concerned in a riot, taken seriously to his
studies and had competed for a scholarship. He missed the scholarship,
but gained an exhibition of the value of thirty shillings; whereupon
he collected a number of friends of both sexes in his rooms, and
proceeded to have high jinks there. In the midst of the dancing and
uproar, in comes his tutor, in such a passion that he knocks Goldsmith
down. This insult, received before his friends, was too much for the
unlucky sizar, who, the very next day, sold his books, ran away from
college, and ultimately, after having been on the verge of starvation
once or twice, made his way to Lissoy. Here his brother got hold of
him; persuaded him to go back; and the escapade was condoned somehow.
Goldsmith remained at Trinity College until he took his degree (1749.)
He was again lowest in the list; but still he had passed; and he must
have learned something. He was now twenty-one, with all the world
before him; and the question was as to how he was to employ such
knowledge as he had acquired.
CHAPTER III.
IDLENESS, AND FOREIGN TRAVEL.
But Goldsmith was not in any hurry to acquire either wealth or fame.
He had a happy knack of enjoying the present hour--especially when
there were one or two boon companions with him, and a pack of cards to
be found; and, after his return to his mother's house, he appears to
have entered upon the business of idleness with much philosophical
satisfaction. If he was not quite such an unlettered clown as he has
described in Tony Lumpkin, he had at least all Tony Lumpkin's high
spirits and love of joking and idling; and he was surrounded at the
ale-house by just such a company of admirers as used to meet at the
famous Three Pigeons. Sometimes he helped in his brother's school;
sometimes he went errands for his mother; occasionally he would sit
and meditatively play the flute--for the day was to be passed somehow;
then in the evening came the assemblage in Conway's inn, with the
glass, and the pipe, and the cards, and the uproarious jest or song.
"But Scripture saith an ending to all fine things must be," and the
friends of this jovial young "buckeen" began to tire of his idleness
and his recurrent visits. They gave him hints that he might set about
doing something to provide himself with a living; and the first thing
they thought of was that he should go into the Church--perhaps as a
sort of purification-house after George Conway's inn. Accordingly
Goldsmith, who appears to have been a most good-natured and compliant
youth, did make application to the Bishop of Elphin. There is some
doubt about the precise reasons which induced the Bishop to decline
Goldsmith's application, but at any rate the Church was denied the aid
of the young man's eloquence and erudition. Then he tried teaching,
and through the good offices of his uncle he obtained a tutorship
which he held for a considerable time--long enough, indeed, to enable
him to amass a sum of thirty pounds. When he quarrelled with his
patron, and once more "took the world for his pillow," as the Gaelic
stories say, he had this sum in his pocket and was possessed of a good
horse.
He started away from Ballymahon, where his mother was now living, with
some vague notion of making his fortune as casual circumstance might
direct. The expedition came to a premature end; and he returned
without the money, and on the back of a wretched animal, telling his
mother a cock-and-bull story of the most amusing simplicity. "If Uncle
Contarine believed those letters," says Mr. Thackeray, "---- if
Oliver's mother believed that story which the youth related of his
going to Cork, with the purpose of embarking for America; of his
having paid his passage-money, and having sent his kit on board; of
the anonymous captain sailing away with Oliver's valuable luggage, in
a nameless ship, never to return; if Uncle Contarine and the mother at
Ballymahon believed his stories, they must have been a very simple
pair; as it was a very simple rogue indeed who cheated them." Indeed,
if any one is anxious to fill up this hiatus in Goldsmith's life, the
best thing he can do is to discard Goldsmith's suspicious record of
his adventures, and put in its place the faithful record of the
adventures of Mr. Barry Lyndon, when that modest youth left his
mother's house and rode to Dublin, with a certain number of guineas in
his pocket. But whether Uncle Contarine believed the story or no, he
was ready to give the young gentleman another chance; and this time it
was the legal profession that was chosen. Goldsmith got fifty pounds
from his uncle, and reached Dublin. In a remarkably brief space of
time he had gambled away the fifty pounds, and was on his way back to
Ballymahon, where his mother's reception of him was not very cordial,
though his uncle forgave him, and was once more ready to start him in
life. But in what direction? Teaching, the Church, and the law had
lost their attractions for him. Well, this time it was medicine. In
fact, any sort of project was capable of drawing forth the good old
uncle's bounty. The funds were again forthcoming; Goldsmith started
for Edinburgh, and now (1752) saw Ireland for the last time.
He lived, and he informed his uncle that he studied, in Edinburgh for
a year and a half; at the end of which time it appeared to him that
his knowledge of medicine would be much improved by foreign travel.
There was Albinus, for example, "the great professor of Leyden," as he
wrote to the credulous uncle, from whom he would doubtless learn
much. When, having got another twenty pounds for travelling expenses,
he did reach Leyden (1754), he mentioned Gaubius, the chemical
professor. Gaubius is also a good name. That his intercourse with
these learned persons, and the serious nature of his studies, were not
incompatible with a little light relaxation in the way of gambling is
not impossible. On one occasion, it is said, he was so lucky that he
came to a fellow student with his pockets full of money; and was
induced to resolve never to play again--a resolution broken about as
soon as made. Of course he lost all his winnings, and more; and had to
borrow a trifling sum to get himself out of the place. Then an
incident occurs which is highly characteristic of the better side of
Goldsmith's nature. He had just got this money, and was about to leave
Leyden, when, as Mr. Forster writes, "he passed a florist's garden on
his return, and seeing some rare and high-priced flower, which his
uncle Contarine, an enthusiast in such things, had often spoken and
been in search of, he ran in without other thought than of immediate
pleasure to his kindest friend, bought a parcel of the roots, and sent
them off to Ireland." He had a guinea in his pocket when he started on
the grand tour.
Of this notable period in Goldsmith's life (1755-6) very little is
known, though a good deal has been guessed. A minute record of all the
personal adventures that befell the wayfarer as he trudged from
country to country, a diary of the odd humours and fancies that must
have occurred to him in his solitary pilgrimages, would be of quite
inestimable value; but even the letters that Goldsmith wrote home from
time to time are lost; while _The Traveller_ consists chiefly of a
series of philosophical reflections on the government of various
states, more likely to have engaged the attention of a Fleet-Street
author, living in an atmosphere of books, than to have occupied the
mind of a tramp anxious about his supper and his night's lodging.
Boswell says he "disputed" his way through Europe. It is much more
probable that he begged his way through Europe. The romantic version,
which has been made the subject of many a charming picture, is that he
was entertained by the peasantry whom he had delighted with his
playing on the flute. It is quite probable that Goldsmith, whose
imagination had been captivated by the story of how Baron von Holberg
had as a young man really passed through France, Germany, and Holland
in this Orpheus-like manner, may have put a flute in his pocket when
he left Leyden; but it is far from safe to assume, as is generally
done, that Goldsmith was himself the hero of the adventures described
in Chapter XX. of the _Vicar of Wakefield_. It is the more to be
regretted that we have no authentic record of these devious
wanderings, that by this time Goldsmith had acquired, as is shown in
other letters, a polished, easy, and graceful style, with a very
considerable faculty of humorous observation. Those ingenious letters
to his uncle (they usually included a little hint about money) were,
in fact, a trifle too literary both in substance and in form; we could
even now, looking at them with a pardonable curiosity, have spared a
little of their formal antithesis for some more precise information
about the writer and his surroundings.
The strangest thing about this strange journey all over Europe was
the failure of Goldsmith to pick up even a common and ordinary
acquaintance with the familiar facts of natural history. The ignorance
on this point of the author of the _Animated Nature_ was a constant
subject of jest among Goldsmith's friends. They declared he could not
tell the difference between any two sorts of barndoor fowl until he
saw them cooked and on the table. But it may be said prematurely here
that, even when he is wrong as to his facts or his sweeping
generalisations, one is inclined to forgive him on account of the
quaint gracefulness and point of his style. When Mr. Burchell says,
"This rule seems to extend even to other animals: the little vermin
race are ever treacherous, cruel, and cowardly, whilst those endowed
with strength and power are generous, brave, and gentle," we scarcely
stop to reflect that the merlin, which is not much bigger than a
thrush, has an extraordinary courage and spirit, while the lion, if
all stories be true, is, unless when goaded by hunger, an abject
skulker. Elsewhere, indeed, in the _Animated Nature_, Goldsmith gives
credit to the smaller birds for a good deal of valour, and then goes
on to say, with a charming freedom,--"But their contentions are
sometimes of a gentler nature. Two male birds shall strive in song
till, after a long struggle, the loudest shall entirely silence the
other. During these contentions the female sits an attentive silent
auditor, and often rewards the loudest songster with her company
during the season." Yet even this description of the battle of the
bards, with the queen of love as arbiter, is scarcely so amusing as
his happy-go-lucky notions with regard to the variability of species.
The philosopher, flute in hand, who went wandering from the canals of
Holland to the ice-ribbed falls of the Rhine, may have heard from time
to time that contest between singing-birds which he so imaginatively
describes; but it was clearly the Fleet-Street author, living among
books, who arrived at the conclusion that intermarriage of species is
common among small birds and rare among big birds. Quoting some lines
of Addison's which express the belief that birds are a virtuous
race--that the nightingale, for example, does not covet the wife of
his neighbour, the blackbird--Goldsmith goes on to observe,--"But
whatever may be the poet's opinion, the probability is against this
fidelity among the smaller tenants of the grove. The great birds are
much more true to their species than these; and, of consequence, the
varieties among them are more few. Of the ostrich, the cassowary, and
the eagle, there are but few species; and no arts that man can use
could probably induce them to mix with each other."
What he did bring back from his foreign travels was a medical degree.
Where he got it, and how he got it, are alike matters of pure
conjecture; but it is extremely improbable that--whatever he might
have been willing to write home from Padua or Louvain, in order to
coax another remittance from his Irish friends--he would afterwards,
in the presence of such men as Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds, wear sham
honours. It is much more probable that, on his finding those supplies
from Ireland running ominously short, the philosophic vagabond
determined to prove to his correspondents that he was really at work
somewhere, instead of merely idling away his time, begging or
borrowing the wherewithal to pass him from town to town. That he did
see something of the foreign universities is evident from his own
writings; there are touches of description here and there which he
could not well have got from books. With this degree, and with such
book-learning and such knowledge of nature and human nature as he had
chosen or managed to pick up during all those years, he was now called
upon to begin life for himself. The Irish supplies stopped altogether.
His letters were left unanswered. And so Goldsmith somehow or other
got back to London (February 1, 1756), and had to cast about for some
way of earning his daily bread.
CHAPTER IV.
Early Struggles.--Hack-writing.
Here ensued a very dark period in his life. He was alone in London,
without friends, without money, without introductions; his appearance
was the reverse of prepossessing; and, even despite that medical
degree and his acquaintance with the learned Albinus and the learned
Gaubius, he had practically nothing of any value to offer for sale in
the great labour-market of the world. How he managed to live at all is
a mystery: it is certain that he must have endured a great deal of
want; and one may well sympathise with so gentle and sensitive a
creature reduced to such straits, without inquiring too curiously into
the causes of his misfortunes. If, on the one hand, we cannot accuse
society, or Christianity, or the English government of injustice and
cruelty because Goldsmith had gambled away his chances and was now
called on to pay the penalty, on the other hand, we had better, before
blaming Goldsmith himself, inquire into the origin of those defects of
character which produced such results. As this would involve an
_excursus_ into the controversy between Necessity and Free-will,
probably most people would rather leave it alone. It may safely be
said in any case that, while Goldsmith's faults and follies, of which
he himself had to suffer the consequences, are patent enough, his
character on the whole was distinctly a lovable one. Goldsmith was his
own enemy, and everybody else's friend: that is not a serious
indictment, as things go. He was quite well aware of his weaknesses;
and he was also--it may be hinted--aware of the good-nature which he
put forward as condonation. If some foreigner were to ask how it is
that so thoroughly a commercial people as the English are--strict in
the acknowledgment and payment of debt--should have always betrayed a
sneaking fondness for the character of the good-humoured scapegrace
whose hand is in everybody's pocket, and who throws away other
people's money with the most charming air in the world, Goldsmith
might be pointed to as one of many literary teachers whose own
circumstances were not likely to make them severe censors of the
Charles Surfaces, or lenient judges of the Joseph Surfaces of the
world. Be merry while you may; let to-morrow take care of itself;
share your last guinea with any one, even if the poor drones of
society--the butcher, and baker, and milkman with his score--have to
suffer; do anything you like, so long as you keep the heart warm. All
this is a delightful philosophy. It has its moments of misery--its
periods of reaction--but it has its moments of high delight. When we
are invited to contemplate the "evil destinies of men of letters," we
ought to be shown the flood-tides as well as the ebb-tides. The tavern
gaiety; the brand new coat and lace and sword; the midnight frolics,
with jolly companions every one--these, however brief and
intermittent, should not be wholly left out of the picture. Of course
it is very dreadful to hear of poor Boyse lying in bed with nothing
but a blanket over him, and with his arms thrust through two holes in
the blanket, so that he could write--perhaps a continuation of his
poem on the _Deity_. But then we should be shown Boyse when he was
spending the money collected by Dr. Johnson to get the poor
scribbler's clothes out of pawn; and we should also be shown him, with
his hands through the holes in the blanket, enjoying the mushrooms and
truffles on which, as a little garniture for "his last scrap of beef,"
he had just laid out his last half-guinea.
There were but few truffles--probably there was but little beef--for
Goldsmith during this sombre period. "His threadbare coat, his uncouth
figure, and Hibernian dialect caused him to meet with repeated
refusals." But at length he got some employment in a chemist's shop,
and this was a start. Then he tried practising in a small way on his
own account in Southwark. Here he made the acquaintance of a printer's
workman; and through him he was engaged as corrector of the press in
the establishment of Mr. Samuel Richardson. Being so near to
literature, he caught the infection; and naturally began with a
tragedy. This tragedy was shown to the author of _Clarissa Harlowe_;
but it only went the way of many similar first inspiritings of the
Muse. Then Goldsmith drifted to Peckham, where we find him (1757)
installed as usher at Dr. Milner's school. Goldsmith as usher has been
the object of much sympathy; and he would certainly deserve it, if we
are to assume that his description of an usher's position in the
_Bee_, and in George Primrose's advice to his cousin, was a full and
accurate description of his life at Peckham. "Browbeat by the master,
hated for my ugly face by the mistress, worried by the boys"--if that
was his life, he was much to be pitied. But we cannot believe it. The
Milners were exceedingly kind to Goldsmith. It was at the intercession
of young Milner, who had been his fellow-student at Edinburgh, that
Goldsmith got the situation, which at all events kept him out of the
reach of immediate want. It was through the Milners that he was
introduced to Griffiths, who gave him a chance of trying a literary
career--as a hack-writer of reviews and so forth. When, having got
tired of that, Goldsmith was again floating vaguely on the waves of
chance, where did he find a harbour but in that very school at
Peckham? And we have the direct testimony of the youngest of Dr.
Milner's daughters, that this Irish usher of theirs was a remarkably
cheerful, and even facetious person, constantly playing tricks and
practical jokes, amusing the boys by telling stories and by
performances on the flute, living a careless life, and always in
advance of his salary. Any beggars, or group of children, even the
very boys who played back practical jokes on him, were welcome to a
share of what small funds he had; and we all know how Mrs. Milner
good-naturedly said one day, "You had better, Mr. Goldsmith, let me
keep your money for you, as I do for some of the young gentlemen;" and
how he answered with much simplicity, "In truth, Madam, there is equal
need." With Goldsmith's love of approbation and extreme sensitiveness
he no doubt suffered deeply from many slights, now as at other times;
but what we know of his life in the Peckham school does not incline us
to believe that it was an especially miserable period of his
existence. His abundant cheerfulness does not seem to have at any time
deserted him; and what with tricks, and jokes, and playing of the
flute, the dull routine of instructing the unruly young gentlemen at
Dr. Milner's was got through somehow.
When Goldsmith left the Peckham school to try hack-writing in
Paternoster Row, he was going further to fare worse. Griffiths the
bookseller, when he met Goldsmith at Dr. Milner's dinner-table and
invited him to become a reviewer, was doing a service to the English
nation--for it was in this period of machine-work that Goldsmith
discovered that happy faculty of literary expression that led to the
composition of his masterpieces--but he was doing little immediate
service to Goldsmith.
The newly-captured hack was boarded and lodged at Griffiths' house in
Paternoster Row (1757); he was to have a small salary in consideration
of remorselessly constant work; and--what was the hardest condition of
all--he was to have his writings revised by Mrs. Griffiths. Mr.
Forster justly remarks that though at last Goldsmith had thus become a
man-of-letters, he "had gratified no passion and attained no object of
ambition." He had taken to literature, as so many others have done,
merely as a last resource. And if it is true that literature at first
treated Goldsmith harshly, made him work hard, and gave him
comparatively little for what he did, at least it must be said that
his experience was not a singular one. Mr. Forster says that
literature was at that time in a transition state: "The patron was
gone, and the public had not come." But when Goldsmith began to do
better than hack-work, he found a public speedily enough. If, as Lord
Macaulay computes, Goldsmith received in the last seven years of his
life what was equivalent to L5,600 of our money, even the villain
booksellers cannot be accused of having starved him. At the outset of
his literary career he received no large sums, for he had achieved no
reputation; but he got the market-rate for his work. We have around us
at this moment plenty of hacks who do not earn much more than their
board and lodging with a small salary.
For the rest, we have no means of knowing whether Goldsmith got
through his work with ease or with difficulty; but it is obvious,
looking over the reviews which he is believed to have written for
Griffiths' magazine, that he readily acquired the professional
critic's airs of superiority, along with a few tricks of the trade, no
doubt taught him by Griffiths. Several of these reviews, for example,
are merely epitomes of the contents of the books reviewed, with some
vague suggestion that the writer might, if he had been less careful,
have done worse, and, if he had been more careful, might have done
better. Who does not remember how the philosophic vagabond was taught
to become a cognoscento? "The whole secret consisted in a strict
adherence to two rules: the one always to observe that the picture
might have been better if the painter had taken more pains; and the
other to praise the works of Pietro Perugino." It is amusing to
observe the different estimates formed of the function of criticism by
Goldsmith the critic, and by Goldsmith the author. Goldsmith, sitting
at Griffiths' desk, naturally magnifies his office, and announces his
opinion that "to direct our taste, and conduct the poet up to
perfection, has ever been the true critic's province." But Goldsmith
the author, when he comes to inquire into the existing state of Polite
Learning in Europe, finds in criticism not a help but a danger. It is
"the natural destroyer of polite learning." And again, in the _Citizen
of the World_, he exclaims against the pretensions of the critic. "If
any choose to be critics, it is but saying they are critics; and from
that time forward they become invested with full power and authority
over every caitiff who aims at their instruction or entertainment."
This at least may be said, that in these early essays contributed to
the _Monthly Review_ there is much more of Goldsmith the critic than
of Goldsmith the author. They are somewhat laboured performances. They
are almost devoid of the sly and delicate humour that afterwards
marked Goldsmith's best prose work. We find throughout his trick of
antithesis; but here it is forced and formal, whereas afterwards he
lent to this habit of writing the subtle surprise of epigram. They
have the true manner of authority, nevertheless. He says of Home's
_Douglas_--"Those parts of nature, and that rural simplicity with
which the author was, perhaps, best acquainted, are not unhappily
described; and hence we are led to conjecture, that a more universal
knowledge of nature will probably increase his powers of description."
If the author had written otherwise, he would have written
differently; had he known more, he would not have been so ignorant;
the tragedy is a tragedy, but why did not the author make it a
comedy?--this sort of criticism has been heard of even in our own day.
However, Goldsmith pounded away at his newly-found work, under the eye
of the exacting bookseller and his learned wife. We find him dealing
with Scandinavian (here called Celtic) mythology, though he does not
adventure on much comment of his own; then he engages Smollett's
_History of England_, but mostly in the way of extract; anon we find
him reviewing _A Journal of Eight Days' Journey_, by Jonas Hanway, of
whom Johnson said that he made some reputation by travelling abroad,
and lost it all by travelling at home. Then again we find him writing
a disquisition on _Some Enquiries concerning the First Inhabitants,
Language, Religion, Learning, and Letters of Europe_, by a Mr. Wise,
who, along with his critic, appears to have got into hopeless
confusion in believing Basque and Armorican to be the remains of the
same ancient language. The last phrase of a note appended to this
review by Goldsmith probably indicates his own humble estimate of his
work at this time. "It is more our business," he says, "to exhibit the
opinions of the learned than to controvert them." In fact he was
employed to boil down books for people who did not wish to spend more
on literature than the price of a magazine. Though he was new to the
trade, it is probable he did it as well as any other.
At the end of five months, Goldsmith and Griffiths quarrelled and
separated. Griffiths said Goldsmith was idle; Goldsmith said Griffiths
was impertinent; probably the editorial supervision exercised by Mrs.
Griffiths had something to do with the dire contention. From
Paternoster Row Goldsmith removed to a garret in Fleet Street; had his
letters addressed to a coffee-house; and apparently supported himself
by further hack-work, his connection with Griffiths not being quite
severed. Then he drifted back to Peckham again; and was once more
installed as usher, Dr. Milner being in especial want of an assistant
at this time. Goldsmith's lingering about the gates of literature had
not inspired him with any great ambition to enter the enchanted land.
But at the same time he thought he saw in literature a means by which
a little ready money might be made, in order to help him on to
something more definite and substantial; and this goal was now put
before him by Dr. Milner, in the shape of a medical appointment on the
Coromandel coast. It was in the hope of obtaining this appointment,
that he set about composing that _Enquiry into the Present State of
Polite Learning in Europe_, which is now interesting to us as the
first of his more ambitious works. As the book grew under his hands,
he began to cast about for subscribers; and from the Fleet-Street
coffee-house--he had again left the Peckham school--he addressed to
his friends and relatives a series of letters of the most charming
humour, which might have drawn subscriptions from a millstone. To his
brother-in-law, Mr. Hodson, he sent a glowing account of the great
fortune in store for him on the Coromandel coast. "The salary is but
trifling," he writes, "namely L100 per annum, but the other
advantages, if a person be prudent, are considerable. The practice of
the place, if I am rightly informed, generally amounts to not less
than L1,000 per annum, for which the appointed physician has an
exclusive privilege. This, with the advantages resulting from trade,
and the high interest which money bears, viz. 20 per cent., are the
inducements which persuade me to undergo the fatigues of sea, the
dangers of war, and the still greater dangers of the climate; which
induce me to leave a place where I am every day gaining friends and
esteem, and where I might enjoy all the conveniences of life."
The surprising part of this episode in Goldsmith's life is that he did
really receive the appointment; in fact he was called upon to pay L10
for the appointment-warrant. In this emergency he went to the
proprietor of the _Critical Review_, the rival of the _Monthly_, and
obtained some money for certain anonymous work which need not be
mentioned in detail here. He also moved into another garret, this time
in Green-Arbour Court, Fleet Street, in a wilderness of slums. The
Coromandel project, however, on which so many hopes had been built,
fell through. No explanation of the collapse could be got from either
Goldsmith himself, or from Dr. Milner. Mr. Forster suggests that
Goldsmith's inability to raise money for his outfit may have been made
the excuse for transferring the appointment to another; and that is
probable enough; but it is also probable that the need for such an
excuse was based on the discovery that Goldsmith was not properly
qualified for the post. And this seems the more likely, that Goldsmith
immediately afterwards resolved to challenge examination at Surgeons'
Hall. He undertook to write four articles for the _Monthly Review_;
Griffiths became surety to a tailor for a fine suit of clothes; and
thus equipped, Goldsmith presented himself at Surgeons' Hall. He only
wanted to be passed as hospital mate; but even that modest ambition
was unfulfilled. He was found not qualified; and returned, with his
fine clothes, to his Fleet-Street den. He was now thirty years of age
(1758); and had found no definite occupation in the world.
CHAPTER V.
BEGINNING OF AUTHORSHIP.--THE BEE.
During the period that now ensued, and amid much quarrelling with
Griffiths and hack-writing for the _Critical Review_, Goldsmith
managed to get his _Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning
in Europe_ completed; and it is from the publication of that work, on
the 2nd of April, 1759, that we may date the beginning of Goldsmith's
career as an author. The book was published anonymously; but Goldsmith
was not at all anxious to disclaim the parentage of his first-born;
and in Grub Street and its environs, at least, the authorship of the
book was no secret. Moreover there was that in it which was likely to
provoke the literary tribe to plenty of fierce talking. The _Enquiry_
is neither more nor less than an endeavour to prove that criticism has
in all ages been the deadly enemy of art and literature; coupled with
an appeal to authors to draw their inspiration from nature rather than
from books, and varied here and there by a gentle sigh over the loss
of that patronage, in the sunshine of which men of genius were wont to
bask. Goldsmith, not having been an author himself, could not have
suffered much at the hands of the critics; so that it is not to be
supposed that personal feeling dictated this fierce onslaught on the
whole tribe of critics, compilers, and commentators. They are
represented to us as rank weeds, growing up to choke all
manifestations of true art. "Ancient learning," we are told at the
outset, "may be distinguished into three periods: its commencement, or
the age of poets; its maturity, or the age of philosophers; and its
decline, or the age of critics." Then our guide carries us into the
dark ages; and, with lantern in hand, shows us the creatures swarming
there in the sluggish pools--"commentators, compilers, polemic
divines, and intricate metaphysicians." We come to Italy: look at the
affectations with which the Virtuosi and Filosofi have enchained the
free spirit of poetry. "Poetry is no longer among them an imitation of
what we see, but of what a visionary might wish. The zephyr breathes
the most exquisite perfume; the trees wear eternal verdure; fawns, and
dryads, and hamadryads, stand ready to fan the sultry shepherdess, who
has forgot, indeed, the prettiness with which Guarini's shepherdesses
have been reproached, but is so simple and innocent as often to have
no meaning. Happy country, where the pastoral age begins to
revive!--where the wits even of Rome are united into a rural group of
nymphs and swains, under the appellation of modern Arcadians!--where
in the midst of porticoes, processions, and cavalcades, abbes turned
shepherds and shepherdesses without sheep indulge their innocent
_divertimenti_!"
In Germany the ponderous volumes of the commentators next come in for
animadversion; and here we find an epigram, the quaint simplicity of
which is peculiarly characteristic of Goldsmith. "Were angels to write
books," he remarks, "they never would write folios." But Germany gets
credit for the money spent by her potentates on learned institutions;
and it is perhaps England that is delicately hinted at in these words:
"Had the fourth part of the immense sum above-mentioned been given in
proper rewards to genius, in some neighbouring countries, it would
have rendered the name of the donor immortal, and added to the real
interests of society." Indeed, when we come to England, we find that
men of letters are in a bad way, owing to the prevalence of critics,
the tyranny of booksellers, and the absence of patrons. "The author,
when unpatronized by the great, has naturally recourse to the
bookseller. There cannot perhaps be imagined a combination more
prejudicial to taste than this. It is the interest of the one to allow
as little for writing, and of the other to write as much as possible.
Accordingly, tedious compilations and periodical magazines are the
result of their joint endeavours. In these circumstances the author
bids adieu to fame, writes for bread, and for that only. Imagination
is seldom called in. He sits down to address the venal muse with the
most phlegmatic apathy; and, as we are told of the Russian, courts his
mistress by falling asleep in her lap. His reputation never spreads in
a wider circle than that of the trade, who generally value him, not
for the fineness of his compositions, but the quantity he works off in
a given time.
"A long habit of writing for bread thus turns the ambition of every
author at last into avarice. He finds that he has written many years,
that the public are scarcely acquainted even with his name; he
despairs of applause, and turns to profit, which invites him. He finds
that money procures all those advantages, that respect, and that ease
which he vainly expected from fame. Thus the man who, under the
protection of the great, might have done honour to humanity, when only
patronized by the bookseller, becomes a thing little superior to the
fellow who works at the press."
Nor was he afraid to attack the critics of his own day, though he knew
that the two Reviews for which he had recently been writing would have
something to say about his own _Enquiry_. This is how he disposes of
the _Critical_ and the _Monthly_: "We have two literary Reviews in
London, with critical newspapers and magazines without number. The
compilers of these resemble the commoners of Rome; they are all for
levelling property, not by increasing their own, but by diminishing
that of others. The man who has any good-nature in his disposition
must, however, be somewhat displeased to see distinguished reputations
often the sport of ignorance,--to see, by one false pleasantry, the
future peace of a worthy man's life disturbed, and this only because
he has unsuccessfully attempted to instruct or amuse us. Though
ill-nature is far from being wit, yet it is generally laughed at as
such. The critic enjoys the triumph, and ascribes to his parts what is
only due to his effrontery. I fire with indignation, when I see
persons wholly destitute of education and genius indent to the press,
and thus turn book-makers, adding to the sin of criticism the sin of
ignorance also; whose trade is a bad one, and who are bad workmen in
the trade." Indeed there was a good deal of random hitting in the
_Enquiry_, which was sure to provoke resentment. Why, for example,
should he have gone out of his way to insult the highly respectable
class of people who excel in mathematical studies? "This seems a
science," he observes, "to which the meanest intellects are equal. I
forget who it is that says 'All men might understand mathematics if
they would.'" There was also in the first edition of the _Enquiry_ a
somewhat ungenerous attack on stage-managers, actors, actresses, and
theatrical things in general; but this was afterwards wisely excised.
It is not to be wondered at that, on the whole, the _Enquiry_ should
have been severely handled in certain quarters. Smollett, who reviewed
it in the _Critical Review_, appears to have kept his temper pretty
well for a Scotchman; but Kenrick, a hack employed by Griffiths to
maltreat the book in the _Monthly Review_, flourished his bludgeon in
a brave manner. The coarse personalities and malevolent insinuations
of this bully no doubt hurt Goldsmith considerably; but, as we look at
them now, they are only remarkable for their dulness. If Griffiths had
had another Goldsmith to reply to Goldsmith, the retort would have
been better worth reading: one can imagine the playful sarcasm that
would have been dealt out to this new writer, who, in the very act of
protesting against criticism, proclaimed himself a critic. But
Goldsmiths are not always to be had when wanted; while Kenricks can be
bought at any moment for a guinea or two a head.
Goldsmith had not chosen literature as the occupation of his life; he
had only fallen back on it, when other projects failed. But it is
quite possible that now, as he began to take up some slight position
as an author, the old ambition of distinguishing himself--which had
flickered before his imagination from time to time--began to enter
into his calculations along with the more pressing business of earning
a livelihood. And he was soon to have an opportunity of appealing to a
wider public than could have been expected for that erudite treatise
on the arts of Europe. Mr. Wilkie, a bookseller in St. Paul's
Churchyard, proposed to start a weekly magazine, price threepence, to
contain essays, short stories, letters on the topics of the day, and
so forth, more or less after the manner of the _Spectator_. He asked
Goldsmith to become sole contributor. Here, indeed, was a very good
opening; for, although there were many magazines in the field, the
public had just then a fancy for literature in small doses; while
Goldsmith, in entering into the competition, would not be hampered by
the dulness of collaborateurs. He closed with Wilkie's offer; and on
the 6th of October, 1759, appeared the first number of the _Bee_.
For us now there is a curious autobiographical interest in the opening
sentences of the first number; but surely even the public of the day
must have imagined that the new writer who was now addressing them,
was not to be confounded with the common herd of magazine-hacks. What
could be more delightful than this odd mixture of modesty, humour, and
an anxious desire to please?--"There is not, perhaps, a more
whimsically dismal figure in nature than a man of real modesty, who
assumes an air of impudence--who, while his heart beats with anxiety,
studies ease and affects good-humour. In this situation, however, a
periodical writer often finds himself upon his first attempt to
address the public in form. All his power of pleasing is damped by
solicitude, and his cheerfulness dashed with apprehension. Impressed
with the terrors of the tribunal before which he is going to appear,
his natural humour turns to pertness, and for real wit he is obliged
to substitute vivacity. His first publication draws a crowd; they part
dissatisfied; and the author, never more to be indulged with a
favourable hearing, is left to condemn the indelicacy of his own
address or their want of discernment. For my part, as I was never
distinguished for address, and have often even blundered in making my
bow, such bodings as these had like to have totally repressed my
ambition. I was at a loss whether to give the public specious
promises, or give none; whether to be merry or sad on this solemn
occasion. If I should decline all merit, it was too probable the hasty
reader might have taken me at my word. If, on the other hand, like
labourers in the magazine trade, I had, with modest impudence, humbly
presumed to promise an epitome of all the good things that ever were
said or written, this might have disgusted those readers I most desire
to please. Had I been merry, I might have been censured as vastly low;
and had I been sorrowful, I might have been left to mourn in solitude
and silence; in short, whichever way I turned, nothing presented but
prospects of terror, despair, chandlers' shops, and waste paper."
And it is just possible that if Goldsmith had kept to this vein of
familiar _causerie_, the public might in time have been attracted by
its quaintness. But no doubt Mr. Wilkie would have stared aghast; and
so we find Goldsmith, as soon as his introductory bow is made, setting
seriously about the business of magazine-making. Very soon, however,
both Mr. Wilkie and his editor perceived that the public had not been
taken by their venture. The chief cause of the failure, as it appears
to any one who looks over the magazine now, would seem to be the lack
of any definite purpose. There was no marked feature to arrest public
attention, while many things were discarded on which the popularity of
other periodicals had been based. There was no scandal to appeal to
the key-hole and back-door element in human nature; there were no
libels and gross personalities to delight the mean and envious; there
were no fine airs of fashion to charm milliners anxious to know how
the great talked, and posed, and dressed; and there was no solemn and
pompous erudition to impress the minds of those serious and sensible
people who buy literature as they buy butter, by its weight. At the
beginning of No. IV. he admits that the new magazine has not been a
success; and, in doing so, returns to that vein of whimsical, personal
humour with which he had started: "Were I to measure the merit of my
present undertaking by its success or the rapidity of its sale, I
might be led to form conclusions by no means favourable to the pride
of an author. Should I estimate my fame by its extent, every newspaper
and magazine would leave me far behind. Their fame is diffused in a
very wide circle--that of some as far as Islington, and some yet
farther still; while mine, I sincerely believe, has hardly travelled
beyond the sound of Bow Bell; and, while the works of others fly like
unpinioned swans, I find my own move as heavily as a new-plucked
goose. Still, however, I have as much pride as they who have ten times
as many readers. It is impossible to repeat all the agreeable
delusions in which a disappointed author is apt to find comfort. I
conclude, that what my reputation wants in extent is made up by its
solidity. _Minus juvat gloria lata quam magna._ I have great
satisfaction in considering the delicacy and discernment of those
readers I have, and in ascribing my want of popularity to the
ignorance or inattention of those I have not. All the world may
forsake an author, but vanity will never forsake him. Yet,
notwithstanding so sincere a confession, I was once induced to show my
indignation against the public, by discontinuing my endeavours to
please; and was bravely resolved, like Raleigh, to vex them by burning
my manuscript in a passion. Upon recollection, however, I considered
what set or body of people would be displeased at my rashness. The
sun, after so sad an accident, might shine next morning as bright as
usual; men might laugh and sing the next day, and transact business as
before, and not a single creature feel any regret but myself."
Goldsmith was certainly more at home in this sort of writing, than in
gravely lecturing people against the vice of gambling; in warning
tradesmen how ill it became them to be seen at races; in demonstrating
that justice is a higher virtue than generosity; and in proving that
the avaricious are the true benefactors of society. But even as he
confesses the failure of his new magazine, he seems determined to show
the public what sort of writer this is, whom as yet they have not
regarded too favourably. It is in No. IV. of the _Bee_ that the famous
_City Night Piece_ occurs. No doubt that strange little fragment of
description was the result of some sudden and aimless fancy, striking
the occupant of the lonely garret in the middle of the night. The
present tense, which he seldom used--and the abuse of which is one of
the detestable vices of modern literature--adds to the mysterious
solemnity of the recital:--
"The clock has just struck two, the expiring taper rises and sinks in
the socket, the watchman forgets the hour in slumber, the laborious
and the happy are at rest, and nothing wakes but meditation, guilt,
revelry, and despair. The drunkard once more fills the destroying
bowl, the robber walks his midnight round, and the suicide lifts his
guilty arm against his own sacred person.
"Let me no longer waste the night over the page of antiquity or the
sallies of contemporary genius, but pursue the solitary walk, where
Vanity, ever changing, but a few hours past walked before me--where
she kept up the pageant, and now, like a froward child, seems hushed
with her own importunities.
"What a gloom hangs all around! The dying lamp feebly emits a yellow
gleam; no sound is heard but of the chiming clock, or the distant
watch-dog. All the bustle of human pride is forgotten; an hour like
this may well display the emptiness of human vanity.
"There will come a time, when this temporary solitude may be made
continual, and the city itself, like its inhabitants, fade away, and
leave a desert in its room.
"What cities, as great as this, have once triumphed in existence, had
their victories as great, joy as just and as unbounded; and, with
short-sighted presumption, promised themselves immortality! Posterity
can hardly trace the situation of some; the sorrowful traveller
wanders over the awful ruins of others; and, as he beholds, he learns
wisdom, and feels the transience of every sublunary possession.
"'Here,' he cries, 'stood their citadel, now grown over with weeds;
there their senate-house, but now the haunt of every noxious reptile;
temples and theatres stood here, now only an undistinguished heap of
ruin. They are fallen, for luxury and avarice first made them feeble.
The rewards of the state were conferred on amusing, and not on useful,
members of society. Their riches and opulence invited the invaders,
who, though at first repulsed, returned again, conquered by
perseverance, and at last swept the defendants into undistinguished
destruction.'"
CHAPTER VI.
PERSONAL TRAITS.
The foregoing extracts will sufficiently show what were the chief
characteristics of Goldsmith's writing at this time--the grace and
ease of style, a gentle and sometimes pathetic thoughtfulness, and,
above all, when he speaks in the first person, a delightful vein of
humorous self-disclosure. Moreover, these qualities, if they were not
immediately profitable to the booksellers, were beginning to gain for
him the recognition of some of the well-known men of the day. Percy,
afterwards Bishop of Dromore, had made his way to the miserable garret
of the poor author. Smollett, whose novels Goldsmith preferred to his
History, was anxious to secure his services as a contributor to the
forthcoming _British Magazine_. Burke had spoken of the pleasure given
him by Goldsmith's review of the _Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas
of the Sublime and Beautiful_. But, to crown all, the great Cham
himself sought out this obscure author, who had on several occasions
spoken with reverence and admiration of his works; and so began what
is perhaps the most interesting literary friendship on record. At what
precise date Johnson first made Goldsmith's acquaintance, is not
known; Mr. Forster is right in assuming that they had met before the
supper in Wine-Office Court, at which Mr. Percy was present. It is a
thousand pities that Boswell had not by this time made his appearance
in London. Johnson, Goldsmith, and all the rest of them are only
ghosts until the pertinacious young laird of Auchinleck comes on the
scene to give them colour, and life, and form. It is odd enough that
the very first remarks of Goldsmith's which Boswell jotted down in his
notebook, should refer to Johnson's systematic kindness towards the
poor and wretched. "He had increased my admiration of the goodness of
Johnson's heart by incidental remarks in the course of conversation,
such as, when I mentioned Mr. Levett, whom he entertained under his
roof, 'He is poor and honest, which is recommendation enough to
Johnson'; and when I wondered that he was very kind to a man of whom I
had heard a very bad character, 'He is now become miserable, and that
ensures the protection of Johnson.'"
For the rest, Boswell was not well-disposed towards Goldsmith, whom he
regarded with a jealousy equal to his admiration of Johnson; but it is
probable that his description of the personal appearance of the
awkward and ungainly Irishman is in the main correct. And here also it
may be said that Boswell's love of truth and accuracy compelled him to
make this admission: "It has been generally circulated and believed
that he (Goldsmith) was a mere fool in conversation; but, in truth,
this has been greatly exaggerated." On this exaggeration--seeing that
the contributor to the _British Magazine_ and the _Public Ledger_ was
now becoming better known among his fellow authors--a word or two may
fitly be said here. It pleased Goldsmith's contemporaries, who were
not all of them celebrated for their ready wit, to regard him as a
hopeless and incurable fool, who by some strange chance could produce
literature, the merits of which he could not himself understand. To
Horace Walpole we owe the phrase which describes Goldsmith as an
"inspired idiot." Innumerable stories are told of Goldsmith's
blunders; of his forced attempts to shine in conversation; of poor
Poll talking nonsense, when all the world was wondering at the beauty
of his writing. In one case we are told he was content to admit, when
dictated to, that this, and not that, was what he really had meant in
a particular phrase. Now there can be no question that Goldsmith,
conscious of his pitted face, his brogue, and his ungainly figure, was
exceedingly nervous and sensitive in society, and was anxious, as such
people mostly are, to cover his shyness by an appearance of ease, if
not even of swagger; and there can be as little question that he
occasionally did and said very awkward and blundering things. But our
Japanese friend, whom we mentioned in our opening pages, looking
through the record that is preserved to us of those blunders which are
supposed to be most conclusive as to this aspect of Goldsmith's
character, would certainly stare. "Good heavens," he would cry, "did
men ever live who were so thick-headed as not to see the humour of
this or that 'blunder'; or were they so beset with the notion that
Goldsmith was only a fool, that they must needs be blind?" Take one
well-known instance. He goes to France with Mrs. Horneck and her two
daughters, the latter very handsome young ladies. At Lille the two
girls and Goldsmith are standing at the window of the hotel,
overlooking the square in which are some soldiers; and naturally the
beautiful young Englishwomen attract some attention. Thereupon
Goldsmith turns indignantly away, remarking that elsewhere he also has
his admirers. Now what surgical instrument was needed to get this
harmless little joke into any sane person's head? Boswell may perhaps
be pardoned for pretending to take the incident _au serieux_; for as
has just been said, in his profound adoration of Johnson, he was
devoured by jealousy of Goldsmith; but that any other mortal should
have failed to see what was meant by this little bit of humorous
flattery is almost incredible. No wonder that one of the sisters
afterwards referring to this "playful jest," should have expressed her
astonishment at finding it put down as a proof of Goldsmith's envious
disposition. But even after that disclaimer, we find Mr. Croker, as
quoted by Mr. Forster, solemnly doubting "whether the vexation so
seriously exhibited by Goldsmith was real or assumed"!
Of course this is an extreme case; but there are others very similar.
"He affected," says Hawkins, "Johnson's style and manner of
conversation, and, when he had uttered, as he often would, a laboured
sentence, so tumid as to be scarce intelligible, would ask if that was
not truly Johnsonian?" Is it not truly dismal to find such an
utterance coming from a presumably reasonable human being? It is not
to be wondered at that Goldsmith grew shy--and in some cases had to
ward off the acquaintance of certain of his neighbours as being too
intrusive--if he ran the risk of having his odd and grave humours so
densely mistranslated. The fact is this, that Goldsmith was possessed
of a very subtle quality of humour, which is at all times rare, but
which is perhaps more frequently to be found in Irishmen than among
other folks. It consists in the satire of the pretence and pomposities
of others by means of a sort of exaggerated and playful
self-depreciation. It is a most delicate and most delightful form of
humour; but it is very apt to be misconstrued by the dull. Who can
doubt that Goldsmith was good-naturedly laughing at himself, his own
plain face, his vanity, and his blunders, when he professed to be
jealous of the admiration excited by the Miss Hornecks; when he
gravely drew attention to the splendid colours of his coat; or when he
no less gravely informed a company of his friends that he had heard a
very good story, but would not repeat it, because they would be sure
to miss the point of it?
This vein of playful and sarcastic self-depreciation is continually
cropping up in his essay writing, as, for example, in the passage
already quoted from No. IV. of the _Bee_: "I conclude, that what my
reputation wants in extent, is made up by its solidity. _Minus juvat
gloria lata quam magna_. I have great satisfaction in considering the
delicacy and discernment of those readers I have, and in ascribing my
want of popularity to the ignorance or inattention of those I have
not." But here, no doubt, he remembers that he is addressing the world
at large, which contains many foolish persons; and so, that the
delicate raillery may not be mistaken, he immediately adds, "All the
world may forsake an author, but vanity will never forsake him." That
he expected a quicker apprehension on the part of his intimates and
acquaintances, and that he was frequently disappointed, seems pretty
clear from those very stories of his "blunders." We may reasonably
suspect, at all events, that Goldsmith was not quite so much of a fool
as he looked; and it is far from improbable that when the ungainly
Irishman was called in to make sport for the Philistines--and there
were a good many Philistines in those days, if all stories be
true--and when they imagined they had put him out of countenance, he
was really standing aghast, and wondering how it could have pleased
Providence to create such helpless stupidity.
CHAPTER VII.
The Citizen of the World.--Beau Nash.
Meanwhile, to return to his literary work, the _Citizen of the World_
had grown out of his contributions to the _Public Ledger_, a daily
newspaper started by Mr. Newbery, another bookseller in St. Paul's
Churchyard. Goldsmith was engaged to write for this paper two letters
a week at a guinea a-piece; and these letters were, after a short time
(1760), written in the character of a Chinese who had come to study
European civilisation. It may be noted that Goldsmith had in the
_Monthly Review_, in mentioning Voltaire's memoirs of French writers,
quoted a passage about Montesquieu's _Lettres Persanes_ as follows:
"It is written in imitation of the _Siamese Letters_ of Du Freny and
of the _Turkish Spy_; but it is an imitation which shows what the
originals should have been. The success their works met with was, for
the most part, owing to the foreign air of their performances; the
success of the _Persian Letters_ arose from the delicacy of their
satire. That satire which in the mouth of an Asiatic is poignant,
would lose all its force when coming from an European." And it must
certainly be said that the charm of the strictures of the _Citizen of
the World_ lies wholly in their delicate satire, and not at all in any
foreign air which the author may have tried to lend to these
performances. The disguise is very apparent. In those garrulous,
vivacious, whimsical, and sometimes serious papers, Lien Chi Altangi,
writing to Fum Hoam in Pekin, does not so much describe the aspects of
European civilisation which would naturally surprise a Chinese, as he
expresses the dissatisfaction of a European with certain phases of the
civilisation visible everywhere around him. It is not a Chinaman, but
a Fleet-Street author by profession, who resents the competition of
noble amateurs whose works--otherwise bitter pills enough--are gilded
by their titles:--"A nobleman has but to take a pen, ink, and paper,
write away through three large volumes, and then sign his name to the
title-page; though the whole might have been before more disgusting
than his own rent-roll, yet signing his name and title gives value to
the deed, title being alone equivalent to taste, imagination, and
genius. As soon as a piece, therefore, is published, the first
questions are--Who is the author? Does he keep a coach? Where lies his
estate? What sort of a table does he keep? If he happens to be poor
and unqualified for such a scrutiny, he and his works sink into
irremediable obscurity, and too late he finds, that having fed upon
turtle is a more ready way to fame than having digested Tully. The
poor devil against whom fashion has set its face vainly alleges that
he has been bred in every part of Europe where knowledge was to be
sold; that he has grown pale in the study of nature and himself. His
works may please upon the perusal, but his pretensions to fame are
entirely disregarded. He is treated like a fiddler, whose music,
though liked, is not much praised, because he lives by it; while a
gentleman performer, though the most wretched scraper alive, throws
the audience into raptures. The fiddler, indeed, may in such a case
console himself by thinking, that while the other goes off with all
the praise, he runs away with all the money. But here the parallel
drops; for while the nobleman triumphs in unmerited applause, the
author by profession steals off with--nothing."
At the same time it must be allowed that the utterance of these
strictures through the mouth of a Chinese admits of a certain
_naivete_, which on occasion heightens the sarcasm. Lien Chi
accompanies the Man in Black to a theatre to see an English play. Here
is part of the performance:--"I was going to second his remarks, when
my attention was engrossed by a new object; a man came in balancing a
straw upon his nose, and the audience were clapping their hands in all
the raptures of applause. 'To what purpose,' cried I, 'does this
unmeaning figure make his appearance? is he a part of the
plot?'--'Unmeaning do you call him?' replied my friend in black; 'this
is one of the most important characters of the whole play; nothing
pleases the people more than seeing a straw balanced: there is a great
deal of meaning in a straw: there is something suited to every
apprehension in the sight; and a fellow possessed of talents like
these is sure of making his fortune.' The third act now began with an
actor who came to inform us that he was the villain of the play, and
intended to show strange things before all was over. He was joined by
another who seemed as much disposed for mischief as he; their
intrigues continued through this whole division. 'If that be a
villain,' said I, 'he must be a very stupid one to tell his secrets
without being asked; such soliloquies of late are never admitted in
China.' The noise of clapping interrupted me once more; a child six
years old was learning to dance on the stage, which gave the ladies
and mandarins infinite satisfaction. 'I am sorry,' said I, 'to see the
pretty creature so early learning so bad a trade; dancing being, I
presume, as contemptible here as in China.'--'Quite the reverse,'
interrupted my companion; 'dancing is a very reputable and genteel
employment here; men have a greater chance for encouragement from the
merit of their heels than their heads. One who jumps up and nourishes
his toes three times before he comes to the ground may have three
hundred a year: he who flourishes them four times, gets four hundred;
but he who arrives at five is inestimable, and may demand what salary
he thinks proper. The female dancers, too, are valued for this sort of
jumping and crossing; and it is a cant word amongst them, that she
deserves most who shows highest. But the fourth act is begun; let us
be attentive.'"
The Man in Black here mentioned is one of the notable features of this
series of papers. The mysterious person whose acquaintance the
Chinaman made in Westminster Abbey, and who concealed such a wonderful
goodness of heart under a rough and forbidding exterior, is a charming
character indeed; and it is impossible to praise too highly the vein
of subtle sarcasm in which he preaches worldly wisdom. But to assume
that any part of his history which he disclosed to the Chinaman was a
piece of autobiographical writing on the part of Goldsmith, is a very
hazardous thing. A writer of fiction must necessarily use such
materials as have come within his own experience; and Goldsmith's
experience--or his use of those materials--was extremely limited:
witness how often a pet fancy, like his remembrance of _Johnny
Armstrong's Last Good Night_, is repeated. "That of these simple
elements," writes Professor Masson, in his _Memoir of Goldsmith_,
prefixed to an edition of his works, "he made so many charming
combinations, really differing from each other, and all, though
suggested by fact, yet hung so sweetly in an ideal air, proved what an
artist he was, and was better than much that is commonly called
invention. In short, if there is a sameness of effect in Goldsmith's
writings, it is because they consist of poetry and truth, humour and
pathos, from his own life, and the supply from such a life as his was
not inexhaustible."
The question of invention is easily disposed of. Any child can invent
a world transcending human experience by the simple combination of
ideas which are in themselves incongruous--a world in which the horses
have each five feet, in which the grass is blue and the sky green, in
which seas are balanced on the peaks of mountains. The result is
unbelievable and worthless. But the writer of imaginative literature
uses his own experiences and the experiences of others, so that his
combination of ideas in themselves compatible shall appear so natural
and believable that the reader--although these incidents and
characters never did actually exist--is as much interested in them as
if they had existed. The mischief of it is that the reader sometimes
thinks himself very clever, and, recognising a little bit of the story
as having happened to the author, jumps to the conclusion that such
and such a passage is necessarily autobiographical. Hence it is that
Goldsmith has been hastily identified with the Philosophic Vagabond in
the _Vicar of Wakefield_, and with the Man in Black in the _Citizen of
the World_. That he may have used certain experiences in the one, and
that he may perhaps have given in the other a sort of fancy sketch of
a person suggested by some trait in his own character, is possible
enough; but further assertion of likeness is impossible. That the Man
in Black had one of Goldsmith's little weaknesses is obvious enough:
we find him just a trifle too conscious of his own kindliness and
generosity. The Vicar of Wakefield himself is not without a spice of
this amiable vanity. As for Goldsmith, every one must remember his
reply to Griffiths' accusation: "No, sir, had I been a sharper, _had I
been possessed of less good nature and native generosity_, I might
surely now have been in better circumstances."
The Man in Black, in any case, is a delightful character. We detect
the warm and generous nature even in his pretence of having acquired
worldly wisdom: "I now therefore pursued a course of uninterrupted
frugality, seldom wanted a dinner, and was consequently invited to
twenty. I soon began to get the character of a saving hunks that had
money, and insensibly grew into esteem. Neighbours have asked my
advice in the disposal of their daughters; and I have always taken
care not to give any. I have contracted a friendship with an alderman,
only by observing, that if we take a farthing from a thousand pounds
it will be a thousand pounds no longer. I have been invited to a
pawnbroker's table, by pretending to hate gravy; and am now actually
upon treaty of marriage with a rich widow, for only having observed
that the bread was rising. If ever I am asked a question, whether I
know it or not, instead of answering, I only smile and look wise. If a
charity is proposed I go about with the hat, but put nothing in
myself. If a wretch solicits my pity, I observe that the world is
filled with impostors, and take a certain method of not being deceived
by never relieving. In short, I now find the truest way of finding
esteem, even from the indigent, is to give away nothing, and thus have
much in our power to give." This is a very clever piece of writing,
whether it is in strict accordance with the character of the Man in
Black, or not. But there is in these _Public Ledger_ papers another
sketch of character, which is not only consistent in itself, and in
every way admirable, but is of still further interest to us when we
remember that at this time the various personages in the _Vicar of
Wakefield_ were no doubt gradually assuming definite form in
Goldsmith's mind. It is in the figure of Mr. Tibbs, introduced
apparently at haphazard, but at once taking possession of us by its
quaint relief, that we find Goldsmith showing a firmer hand in
character-drawing. With a few happy dramatic touches Mr. Tibbs starts
into life; he speaks for himself; he becomes one of the people whom we
know. And yet, with this concise and sharp portraiture of a human
being, look at the graceful, almost garrulous, ease of the style:--
"Our pursuer soon came up and joined us with all the
familiarity of an old acquaintance. 'My dear Drybone,' cries
he, shaking my friend's hand, 'where have you been hiding
this half a century? Positively I had fancied you were gone
to cultivate matrimony and your estate in the country.'
During the reply I had an opportunity of surveying the
appearance of our new companion: his hat was pinched up with
peculiar smartness; his looks were pale, thin, and sharp;
round his neck he wore a broad black riband, and in his
bosom a buckle studded with glass; his coat was trimmed with
tarnished twist; he wore by his side a sword with a black
hilt; and his stockings of silk, though newly washed, were
grown yellow by long service. I was so much engaged with the
peculiarity of his dress, that I attended only to the latter
part of my friend's reply, in which he complimented Mr.
Tibbs on the taste of his clothes and the bloom in his
countenance. 'Pshaw, pshaw, Will,' cried the figure, 'no
more of that, if you love me: you know I hate flattery,--on
my soul I do; and yet, to be sure, an intimacy with the
great will improve one's appearance, and a course of venison
will fatten; and yet, faith, I despise the great as much as
you do; but there are a great many damn'd honest fellows
among them, and we must not quarrel with one half, because
the other wants weeding. If they were all such as my Lord
Mudler, one of the most good-natured creatures that ever
squeezed a lemon, I should myself be among the number of
their admirers. I was yesterday to dine at the Duchess of
Piccadilly's. My lord was there. "Ned," says he to me,
"Ned," says he, "I'll hold gold to silver, I can tell you
where you were poaching last night." "Poaching, my lord?"
says I: "faith, you have missed already; for I staid at home
and let the girls poach for me. That's my way: I take a fine
woman as some animals do their prey--stand still, and,
swoop, they fall into my mouth."' 'Ah, Tibbs, thou art a
happy fellow,' cried my companion, with looks of infinite
pity; 'I hope your fortune is as much improved as your
understanding, in such company?' 'Improved!' replied the
other: 'you shall know,--but let it go no farther--a great
secret--five hundred a year to begin with--my lord's word of
honour for it. His lordship took me down in his own chariot
yesterday, and we had a _tete-a-tete_ dinner in the country,
where we talked of nothing else.'--'I fancy you forget,
sir,' cried I; 'you told us but this moment of your dining
yesterday in town.'--'Did I say so?' replied he, coolly; 'to
be sure, if I said so, it was so. Dined in town! egad, now I
do remember, I did dine in town; but I dined in the country
too; for you must know, my boys, I ate two dinners. By the
bye, I am grown as nice as the devil in my eating. I'll tell
you a pleasant affair about that: we were a select party of
us to dine at Lady Grogram's,--an affected piece, but let it
go no farther--a secret.--Well, there happened to be no
asafoetida in the sauce to a turkey, upon which, says I,
I'll hold a thousand guineas, and say done, first,
that--But, dear Drybone, you are an honest creature; lend me
half-a-crown for a minute or two, or so, just till ----; but
hearkee, ask me for it the next time we meet, or it may be
twenty to one but I forget to pay you.'"
Returning from those performances to the author of them, we find him a
busy man of letters, becoming more and more in request among the
booksellers, and obtaining recognition among his fellow-writers. He
had moved into better lodgings in Wine Office Court (1760-2); and it
was here that he entertained at supper, as has already been mentioned,
no less distinguished guests than Bishop, then Mr., Percy, and Dr.,
then Mr., Johnson. Every one has heard of the surprise of Percy, on
calling for Johnson, to find the great Cham dressed with quite unusual
smartness. On asking the cause of this "singular transformation,"
Johnson replied, "Why, sir, I hear that Goldsmith, who is a very great
sloven, justifies his disregard of cleanliness and decency by quoting
my practice; and I am desirous this night to show him a better
example." That Goldsmith profited by this example--though the tailors
did not--is clear enough. At times, indeed, he blossomed out into the
splendours of a dandy; and laughed at himself for doing so. But
whether he was in gorgeous or in mean attire, he remained the same
sort of happy-go-lucky creature; working hard by fits and starts;
continually getting money in advance from the booksellers; enjoying
the present hour; and apparently happy enough when not pressed by
debt. That he should have been thus pressed was no necessity of the
case; at all events we need not on this score begin now to abuse the
booksellers or the public of that day. We may dismiss once for all the
oft-repeated charges of ingratitude and neglect.
When Goldsmith was writing those letters in the _Public Ledger_--with
"pleasure and instruction for others," Mr. Forster says, "though at
the cost of suffering to himself"--he was receiving for them alone
what would be equivalent in our day to L200 a year. No man can affirm
that L200 a year is not amply sufficient for all the material wants of
life. Of course there are fine things in the world that that amount of
annual wage cannot purchase. It is a fine thing to sit on the deck of
a yacht on a summer's day, and watch the far islands shining over the
blue; it is a fine thing to drive four-in-hand to Ascot--if you can do
it; it is a fine thing to cower breathless behind a rock and find a
splendid stag coming slowly within sure range. But these things are
not necessary to human happiness: it is possible to do without them
and yet not "suffer." Even if Goldsmith had given half of his
substance away to the poor, there was enough left to cover all the
necessary wants of a human being; and if he chose so to order his
affairs as to incur the suffering of debt, why, that was his own
business, about which nothing further needs be said. It is to be
suspected, indeed, that he did not care to practise those excellent
maxims of prudence and frugality which he frequently preached; but the
world is not much concerned about that now. If Goldsmith had received
ten times as much money as the booksellers gave him, he would still
have died in debt. And it is just possible that we may exaggerate
Goldsmith's sensitiveness on this score. He had had a life-long
familiarity with duns and borrowing; and seemed very contented when
the exigency of the hour was tided over. An angry landlady is
unpleasant, and an arrest is awkward; but in comes an opportune
guinea, and the bottle of Madeira is opened forthwith.
In these rooms in Wine Office Court, and at the suggestion or
entreaty of Newbery, Goldsmith produced a good deal of miscellaneous
writing--pamphlets, tracts, compilations, and what not--of a more or
less marketable kind. It can only be surmised that by this time he may
have formed some idea of producing a book not solely meant for the
market, and that the characters in the _Vicar of Wakefield_ were
already engaging his attention; but the surmise becomes probable
enough when we remember that his project of writing the _Traveller_,
which was not published till 1764, had been formed as far back as
1755, while he was wandering aimlessly about Europe, and that a sketch
of the poem was actually forwarded by him then to his brother Henry in
Ireland. But in the meantime this hack-work, and the habits of life
connected with it, began to tell on Goldsmith's health; and so, for a
time, he left London (1762), and went to Tunbridge and then to Bath.
It is scarcely possible that his modest fame had preceded him to the
latter place of fashion; but it may be that the distinguished folk of
the town received this friend of the great Dr. Johnson with some small
measure of distinction; for we find that his next published work, _The
Life of Richard Nash, Esq._, is respectfully dedicated to the Right
Worshipful the Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen, and Common Council of the
City of Bath. The Life of the recently deceased Master of Ceremonies
was published anonymously (1762); but it was generally understood to
be Goldsmith's; and indeed the secret of the authorship is revealed in
every successive line. Among the minor writings of Goldsmith there is
none more delightful than this: the mock-heroic gravity, the
half-familiar contemptuous good-nature with which he composes this
Funeral March of a Marionette, are extremely whimsical and amusing.
And then what an admirable picture we get of fashionable English
society in the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Bath and Nash
were alike in the heyday of their glory--the fine ladies with their
snuff-boxes, and their passion for play, and their extremely effective
language when they got angry; young bucks come to flourish away their
money, and gain by their losses the sympathy of the fair; sharpers on
the look-out for guineas, and adventurers on the look-out for
weak-minded heiresses; duchesses writing letters in the most doubtful
English, and chair-men swearing at any one who dared to walk home on
foot at night.
No doubt the _Life of Beau Nash_ was a bookseller's book; and it was
made as attractive as possible by the recapitulation of all sorts of
romantic stories about Miss S----n, and Mr. C----e, and Captain
K----g; but throughout we find the historian very much inclined to
laugh at his hero, and only refraining now and again in order to
record in serious language traits indicative of the real goodness of
disposition of that fop and gambler. And the fine ladies and
gentlemen, who lived in that atmosphere of scandal, and intrigue, and
gambling, are also from time to time treated to a little decorous and
respectful raillery. Who does not remember the famous laws of polite
breeding written out by Mr. Nash--Goldsmith hints that neither Mr.
Nash nor his fair correspondent at Blenheim, the Duchess of
Marlborough, excelled in English composition--for the guidance of the
ladies and gentlemen who were under the sway of the King of Bath? "But
were we to give laws to a nursery, we should make them childish
laws," Goldsmith writes gravely. "His statutes, though stupid, were
addressed to fine gentlemen and ladies, and were probably received
with sympathetic approbation. It is certain they were in general
religiously observed by his subjects, and executed by him with
impartiality; neither rank nor fortune shielded the refractory from
his resentment." Nash, however, was not content with prose in
enforcing good manners. Having waged deadly war against the custom of
wearing boots, and having found his ordinary armoury of no avail
against the obduracy of the country squires, he assailed them in the
impassioned language of poetry, and produced the following "Invitation
to the Assembly," which, as Goldsmith remarks, was highly relished by
the nobility at Bath on account of its keenness, severity, and
particularly its good rhymes.
"Come, one and all, to Hoyden Hall,
For there's the assembly this night;
None but prude fools
Mind manners and rules;
We Hoydens do decency slight.
Come, trollops and slatterns,
Cocked hats and white aprons,
This best our modesty suits;
For why should not we
In dress be as free
As Hogs-Norton squires in boots?"
The sarcasm was too much for the squires, who yielded in a body; and
when any stranger through inadvertence presented himself in the
assembly-rooms in boots, Nash was so completely master of the
situation that he would politely step up to the intruder and suggest
that he had forgotten his horse.
Goldsmith does not magnify the intellectual capacity of his hero; but
he gives him credit for a sort of rude wit that was sometimes
effective enough. His physician, for example, having called on him to
see whether he had followed a prescription that had been sent him the
previous day, was greeted in this fashion: "Followed your
prescription? No. Egad, if I had, I should have broken my neck, for I
flung it out of the two pair of stairs window." For the rest, this
diverting biography contains some excellent warnings against the vice
of gambling; with a particular account of the manner in which the
Government of the day tried by statute after statute to suppress the
tables at Tunbridge and Bath, thereby only driving the sharpers to new
subterfuges. That the Beau was in alliance with sharpers, or, at
least, that he was a sleeping partner in the firm, his biographer
admits; but it is urged on his behalf that he was the most generous of
winners, and again and again interfered to prevent the ruin of some
gambler by whose folly he would himself have profited. His constant
charity was well known; the money so lightly come by was at the
disposal of any one who could prefer a piteous tale. Moreover he made
no scruple about exacting from others that charity which they could
well afford. One may easily guess who was the duchess mentioned in the
following story of Goldsmith's narration:--
"The sums he gave and collected for the Hospital were great,
and his manner of doing it was no less admirable. I am told
that he was once collecting money in Wiltshire's room for
that purpose, when a lady entered, who is more remarkable
for her wit than her charity, and not being able to pass by
him unobserved, she gave him a pat with her fan, and said,
'You must put down a trifle for me, Nash, for I have no
money in my pocket.' 'Yes, madam,' says he, 'that I will
with pleasure, if your grace will tell me when to stop;'
then taking an handful of guineas out of his pocket, he
began to tell them into his white hat--' One, two, three,
four, five ----' 'Hold, hold!' says the duchess, 'consider
what you are about.' 'Consider your rank and fortune,
madam,' says Nash, and continues telling--'six, seven,
eight, nine, ten.' Here the duchess called again, and seemed
angry. 'Pray compose yourself, madam,' cried Nash, 'and
don't interrupt the work of charity,--eleven, twelve,
thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.' Here the duchess stormed, and
caught hold of his hand. 'Peace, madam,' says Nash, 'you
shall have your name written in letters of gold, madam, and
upon the front of the building, madam,--sixteen, seventeen,
eighteen, nineteen, twenty.' 'I won't pay a farthing more,'
says the duchess. 'Charity hides a multitude of sins,'
replies Nash,--'twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three,
twenty-four, twenty-five.' 'Nash,' says she, 'I protest you
frighten me out of my wits. L--d, I shall die!' 'Madam, you
will never die with doing good; and if you do, it will be
the better for you,' answered Nash, and was about to
proceed; but perceiving her grace had lost all patience, a
parley ensued, when he, after much altercation, agreed to
stop his hand and compound with her grace for thirty
guineas. The duchess, however, seemed displeased the whole
evening, and when he came to the table where she was
playing, bid him, 'Stand farther, an ugly devil, for she
hated the sight of him.' But her grace afterwards having a
run of good luck, called Nash to her. 'Come,' says she, 'I
will be friends with you, though you are a fool; and to let
you see I am not angry, there is ten guineas more for your
charity. But this I insist on, that neither my name nor the
sum shall be mentioned.'"
At the ripe age of eighty-seven the "beau of three generations"
breathed his last (1761); and, though he had fallen into poor ways,
there were those alive who remembered his former greatness, and who
chronicled it in a series of epitaphs and poetical lamentations. "One
thing is common almost with all of them," says Goldsmith, "and that is
that Venus, Cupid, and the Graces are commanded to weep, and that Bath
shall never find such another." These effusions are forgotten now; and
so would Beau Nash be also, but for this biography, which, no doubt
meant merely for the book-market of the day, lives and is of permanent
value by reason of the charm of its style, its pervading humour, and
the vivacity of its descriptions of the fashionable follies of the
eighteenth century. _Nullum fere genus scribendi non tetigit. Nullum
quod tetigit non ornavit._ Who but Goldsmith could have written so
delightful a book about such a poor creature as Beau Nash?
CHAPTER VIII.
The Arrest.
It was no doubt owing to Newbery that Goldsmith, after his return to
London, was induced to abandon, temporarily or altogether, his
apartments in Wine Office Court, and take lodgings in the house of a
Mrs. Fleming, who lived somewhere or other in Islington. Newbery had
rooms in Canonbury House, a curious old building that still exists;
and it may have occurred to the publisher that Goldsmith, in this
suburban district, would not only be nearer him for consultation and
so forth, but also might pay more attention to his duties than when he
was among the temptations of Fleet Street. Goldsmith was working
industriously in the service of Newbery at this time (1763-4); in
fact, so completely was the bookseller in possession of the hack, that
Goldsmith's board and lodging in Mrs. Fleming's house, arranged for at
L50 a year, was paid by Newbery himself. Writing prefaces, revising
new editions, contributing reviews--this was the sort of work he
undertook, with more or less content, as the equivalent of the modest
sums Mr. Newbery disbursed for him or handed over as pocket-money. In
the midst of all this drudgery he was now secretly engaged on work
that aimed at something higher than mere payment of bed and board.
The smooth lines of the _Traveller_ were receiving further polish; the
gentle-natured _Vicar_ was writing his simple, quaint, tender story.
And no doubt Goldsmith was spurred to try something better than
hack-work by the associations that he was now forming, chiefly under
the wise and benevolent friendship of Johnson.
Anxious always to be thought well of, he was now beginning to meet
people whose approval was worthy of being sought. He had been
introduced to Reynolds. He had become the friend of Hogarth. He had
even made the acquaintance of Mr. Boswell, from Scotland. Moreover, he
had been invited to become one of the original members of the famous
Club of which so much has been written; his fellow-members being
Reynolds, Johnson, Burke, Hawkins, Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, and Dr.
Nugent. It is almost certain that it was at Johnson's instigation that
he had been admitted into this choice fellowship. Long before either
the _Traveller_ or the _Vicar_ had been heard of, Johnson had
perceived the literary genius that obscurely burned in the uncouth
figure of this Irishman; and was anxious to impress on others
Goldsmith's claims to respect and consideration. In the minute record
kept by Boswell of his first evening with Johnson at the Mitre Tavern,
we find Johnson saying, "Dr. Goldsmith is one of the first men we now
have as an author, and he is a very worthy man too. He has been loose
in his principles, but he is coming right." Johnson took walks with
Goldsmith; did him the honour of disputing with him on all occasions;
bought a copy of the _Life of Nash_ when it appeared--an unusual
compliment for one author to pay another, in their day or in ours;
allowed him to call on Miss Williams, the blind old lady in Bolt
Court; and generally was his friend, counsellor, and champion.
Accordingly, when Mr. Boswell entertained the great Cham to supper at
the Mitre--a sudden quarrel with his landlord having made it
impossible for him to order the banquet at his own house--he was
careful to have Dr. Goldsmith of the company. His guests that evening
were Johnson, Goldsmith, Davies (the actor and bookseller who had
conferred on Boswell the invaluable favour of an introduction to
Johnson), Mr. Eccles, and the Rev. Mr. Ogilvie, a Scotch poet who
deserves our gratitude because it was his inopportune patriotism that
provoked, on this very evening, the memorable epigram about the
high-road leading to England. "Goldsmith," says Boswell, who had not
got over his envy at Goldsmith's being allowed to visit the blind old
pensioner in Bolt-court, "as usual, endeavoured with too much
eagerness to _shine_, and disputed very warmly with Johnson against
the well-known maxim of the British constitution, 'The king can do no
wrong.'" It was a dispute not so much about facts as about
phraseology; and, indeed, there seems to be no great warmth in the
expressions used on either side. Goldsmith affirmed that "what was
morally false could not be politically true;" and that, in short, the
king could by the misuse of his regal power do wrong. Johnson replied,
that, in such a case, the immediate agents of the king were the
persons to be tried and punished for the offence. "The king, though he
should command, cannot force a judge to condemn a man unjustly;
therefore it is the judge whom we prosecute and punish." But when he
stated that the king "is above everything, and there is no power by
which he can be tried," he was surely forgetting an important chapter
in English history. "What did Cromwell do for his country?" he himself
asked, during his subsequent visit to Scotland, of old Auchinleck,
Boswell's father. "God, Doctor," replied the vile Whig, "_he garred
kings ken they had a lith in their necks_."
For some time after this evening Goldsmith drops out of Boswell's
famous memoir; perhaps the compiler was not anxious to give him too
much prominence. They had not liked each other from the outset.
Boswell, vexed by the greater intimacy of Goldsmith with Johnson,
called him a blunderer, a feather-brained person; and described his
appearance in no flattering terms. Goldsmith, on the other hand, on
being asked who was this Scotch cur that followed Johnson's heels,
answered, "He is not a cur: you are too severe--he is only a bur. Tom
Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of
sticking." Boswell would probably have been more tolerant of Goldsmith
as a rival, if he could have known that on a future day he was to have
Johnson all to himself--to carry him to remote wilds and exhibit him
as a portentous literary phenomenon to Highland lairds. It is true
that Johnson, at an early period of his acquaintance with Boswell, did
talk vaguely about a trip to the Hebrides; but the young Scotch
idolater thought it was all too good to be true. The mention of Sir
James Macdonald, says Boswell, "led us to talk of the Western Islands
of Scotland, to visit which he expressed a wish that then appeared to
me a very romantic fancy, which I little thought would be afterwards
realised. He told me that his father had put Martin's account of
those islands into his hands when he was very young, and that he was
highly pleased with it; that he was particularly struck with the St.
Kilda man's notion that the high church of Glasgow had been hollowed
out of a rock; a circumstance to which old Mr. Johnson had directed
his attention." Unfortunately Goldsmith not only disappears from the
pages of Boswell's biography at this time, but also in great measure
from the ken of his companions. He was deeply in debt; no doubt the
fine clothes he had been ordering from Mr. Filby in order that he
might "shine" among those notable persons, had something to do with
it; he had tried the patience of the booksellers; and he had been
devoting a good deal of time to work not intended to elicit immediate
payment. The most patient endeavours to trace out his changes of
lodgings, and the fugitive writings that kept him in daily bread, have
not been very successful. It is to be presumed that Goldsmith had
occasionally to go into hiding to escape from his creditors; and so
was missed from his familiar haunts. We only reach daylight again, to
find Goldsmith being under threat of arrest from his landlady; and for
the particulars of this famous affair it is necessary to return to
Boswell.
Boswell was not in London at that time; but his account was taken down
subsequently from Johnson's narration; and his accuracy in other
matters, his extraordinary memory, and scrupulous care, leave no doubt
in the mind that his version of the story is to be preferred to those
of Mrs. Piozzi and Sir John Hawkins. We may take it that these are
Johnson's own words:-- "I received one morning a message from poor
Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his
power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as
possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I
accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady
had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I
perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle
of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle,
desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by
which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel
ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and
saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return; and, having
gone to a bookseller, sold it for L60. I brought Goldsmith the money,
and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high
tone for having used him so ill."
We do not know who this landlady was--it cannot now be made out
whether the incident occurred at Islington, or in the rooms that
Goldsmith partially occupied in the Temple; but even if Mrs. Fleming
be the landlady in question, she was deserving neither of Goldsmith's
rating nor of the reprimands that have been bestowed upon her by later
writers. Mrs. Fleming had been exceedingly kind to Goldsmith. Again
and again in her bills we find items significantly marked L0 0_s._
0_d._ And if her accounts with her lodger did get hopelessly into
arrear; and if she was annoyed by seeing him go out in fine clothes to
sup at the Mitre; and if, at length, her patience gave way, and she
determined to have her rights in one way or another, she was no worse
than landladies--who are only human beings, and not divinely appointed
protectresses of genius--ordinarily are. Mrs. Piozzi says that when
Johnson came back with the money, Goldsmith "called the woman of the
hous |
