CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 or THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1 89 1 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 3493.M82 1911 
 
 The life of Oliver Goldsmith 
 
 3 1924 013 184 340 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013184340 
 
THE LIFE OF 
 
 OLIVER 
 GOLDSMITH 
 
THE LIFE OF 
 
 OLIVER 
 GOLDSMITH 
 
 By FRANK FRANKFORT MOORE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE JESSAMY BRIDE" "THE FATAL 
 GIFT" "A GEORGIAN PAGEANT" ETC. ETC. 
 
 fFITH NINE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON &f CO. 
 
 1911 
 
Printed by 
 
 BALLANTYNE & COMPANY LTD. 
 
 AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS 
 
 Tavistock Street Covent Garden 
 
 London 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction : Boswell on Goldsmith i 
 
 I. The Ireland of Oliver Goldsmith (1728- 
 
 1735) 34 
 
 II. Schooling (1735-1744) 44 
 
 III. At the University (i 744-1 747) 55 
 
 IV. Qualifying for a Degree (i 747-1 749) 68 
 
 V. Qualifying for Immortality (1749-1752) ' ']'] 
 
 VI. A Constant Prodigal (1752) 89 
 
 VII. In Edinburgh (1752-1754) 103 
 
 VIII. In Leyden (1754-1755) 115 
 
 IX. Vagabondage (1755-1756) 124 
 
 X. Physician, Usher, and Drudge (1756-1757) 140 
 
 XL " Being Born an Irishman" (1757) 152 
 
 XII. De Profundis (175 8-1 759) 168 
 
 XIII. His First Book (1759) 183 
 
 XIV. "The Bee" and Others (1759-1760) 190 
 XV. "The Citizen of the World" (1760-1761) 200 
 
 XVI. Signs of Appreciation (1761-1762) 210 
 
 XVII. An Interlude (1762) 222 
 
 XVIII. Schemes and Dreams (1761-1763) 234 
 XIX. " The Vicar of Wakefield " comes on the 
 
 Scene (1763-1764) 244 
 
 XX. " The Traveller " (i 764-1 765) 252 
 XXI. " Experimental Philosophy " and Some* 
 
 THING Else (i 765-1 766) 259 
 
 XXII. In THE Midst of Friends (1766) 275 
 
THE LIFE OF OLIVER 
 GOLDSMITH 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 BOSWELL ON GOLDSMITH 
 
 I 
 
 Oliver Goldsmith has ever been the best loved of English 
 writers. He is the Benjamin of the large family of eighteenth 
 century poets, of whom Dryden was the Jacob and Pope the 
 Judah. We venerate Dryden, we admire Pope, we esteem 
 Young, we quote Gray, we neglect Thomson, we ignore 
 Johnson, we tolerate Cowper, but we love Goldsmith. Really, 
 when we come to consider the whole question of the place 
 occupied by English poets in the affections of their readers, 
 we are led to wonder if the position of Goldsmith is not 
 absolutely unique. The poets since Shakespeare have not 
 made themselves beloved — the majority in the eighteenth 
 century seem to have aimed at making themselves hated, and to 
 have achieved their object without much trouble. When we 
 lay down Pope with a gasp of admiration for his diabolical wit 
 and his genius for flagellation in couplets, we feel inclined to 
 be just as enthusiastic in respect of his power as we would be 
 over the dexterous performance of an adept with the cat-o'- 
 nine-tails. The whistle of the whipcord is in the first line 
 of every couplet, and the flip upon the flesh winds up the 
 second. The six dozen at the grating of the old man-o'-war 
 with the ship's band playing faultless music all the time — 
 that is what we think of when we read Pope's finest satires. 
 The performance makes no call upon our affections. No 
 doubt when Apollo was flaying Marsyas he lightened his labour 
 with a song ; but enraptured though the audience must have 
 
 A 
 
2 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 been by his vocalism, the general effect ' could not but be 
 lessened by the feeling that the satyr was suffering considerable 
 uneasiness. Apollo tore off the flesh to the sound of his own 
 divine music ; but he made no appeal to the affections in 
 the act, though it was referred to with enthusiasm, not by 
 Marsyas, but others, when it became a Topic and an Allegory. 
 Pope wrote of man as a god writing of men. Goldsmith as 
 a man writing of men. 
 
 And what of the others of the seed of Dryden who made 
 up the twelve tribes of poesy in the eighteenth century ? 
 Did any one of them make himself beloved by anything he 
 wrote ? Well, it seems to us that the dispersal of the tribes 
 took place before any one of them had time to assert its claim 
 to autonomy, and only two remained to be reckoned with : 
 the priestly Levi, represented by Young and his friends, and 
 the kingly Judah, represented by Pope and his followers. 
 Most of the others, previous to the great dispersal effected by 
 Time, seem to have merged into one ragged regiment stumbling 
 and staggering into obscurity under the ensign of Issachar. 
 But the most nobly didactic made no more appeal to the 
 affections than did the most polished of the satirists. Even 
 without forgetting that Burns must be included among the 
 poets of the eighteenth century, we may repeat that 
 Goldsmith alone is entitled to be regarded as the poet 
 whom we love. 
 
 And he was the writer of the novel which unquestionably 
 
 is the best loved in the language. It is no matter whether 
 
 The Vicar of Wakefield is the best novel in the language or 
 
 the second best, it is the best loved, and the best deserving 
 
 of being loved. Every character that appears in its pages 
 
 has become our friend, down to the very villain, who only in 
 
 the last lines is rescued from infamy by the author's kindness 
 
 of heart in making him work out his scheme of true repentance 
 
 through the medium of the French horn. The same may be 
 
 said of the comedies, The Good-Natur^d Man and She Stoops to 
 
 Conquer. There is not a character in either of them that we do 
 
 not love, and whom, if it were possible for our friends in fiction 
 
 to pass from us as do our dearest ones in life, we would not as 
 
 sorely miss. In Goldsmith's other imaginative writings, among 
 
 which we may include the greater part of his History of the 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 Earth and Animated Nature, the same endearing qualities may 
 be found without much searching. His essays and sketches 
 also abound in such happy touches of sympathy with the 
 foibles of mankind and such unostentatious toleration of the 
 weaknesses of rogues as tend to good fellowship, and prevent 
 us from having any difficulty in accounting for his holding 
 the place he does in ouir hearts. Some one who, knew him 
 tolerably well affirmed that he was never otherwise than a 
 child. We feel that that description was a true one. He holds 
 the place of a child in the household of authorship, and we 
 feel that we would much rather part with a score of adults 
 than with him. 
 
 This is the Oliver Goldsmith whom we know through his 
 works, and we think that the man himself cannot have been 
 different. But when we read some accounts of him, transmitted 
 to us by a few of his contemporaries, we are amazed to find that 
 we are mistaken in our assumption. We are told that he was a 
 vain empty coxcomb, so overwhelmed with self-conceit that 
 he could not hear without envy of the success of another man, 
 no matter in what direction it was achieved — that he was 
 ungrateful to those who had befriended him most — that he 
 was an accomplished liar, a contemptible braggart, an un- 
 dutiful son, and a bit of a hypocrite into the bargain. He 
 was a plagiarist when he was at his best, and a fool when he 
 was at his worst. He affected a wisdom to which he had no 
 claim, and a learning which he did not possess. He only failed 
 to be an impostor because of his want of ability to frame any 
 scheme that would impose upon the most credulous of 
 humanity. We find, in short, that the man Goldsmith was 
 in every respect exactly the opposite to Goldsmith the writer. 
 
 " Impossible ! " we cry ; bij^t what signifies a protest when 
 Boswell is against us ? And it is to Boswell we are indebted 
 for a curiously circumstantial account of Goldsmith the 
 man, every word of which justifies our taking the most sombre 
 view of his character ; and when Boswell has been quoted 
 it is generally assumed that the last word has been said on 
 any matter incidental to the eighteenth century. Boswell's 
 Life of Johnson has been more widely read and more 
 implicitly believed than all the books on the eighteenth 
 century put together. We are daily assured that it is the 
 
4 7HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 greatest biographical work that exists in any language. Con- 
 cerning Goldsmith we have the testimony of this greatest of 
 biographers that " He had sagacity enough to cultivate 
 assiduously the acquaintance of Johnson, and his faculties 
 were gradually enlarged by the contemplation of such a model. 
 To me and many others," continues Mr. Boswell, " it appeared 
 that he studiously copied the manner of Johnson, though 
 indeed upon a smaller scale. . . . No man had the art of 
 displaying with more advantage as a writer whatever literary 
 acquisitions he made. . . . His mind resembled a fertile 
 but thin soil. No deep root could be struck. The oak of 
 the forest did not grow there ; but the elegant shrubbery 
 and the fragrant parterre appeared in gay succession. It has 
 been generally circulated and believed that he was a mere 
 fool in conversation ; but in truth this has been greatly 
 exaggerated." 
 
 So strongly does Mr. Boswell feel the injurious eflEect which 
 this exaggeration is likely to produce upon such people as 
 might be interested in the personal character of Goldsmith, 
 that he hastens to prevent the possibility of any one being 
 so unjust to Goldsmith as to fancy that he had anything of 
 the fool about him. This is how he pleads for Goldsmith : 
 
 " He had no doubt a more than common shafe of that 
 hurry of ideas, which we often find in his countrymen and 
 which sometimes produces a laughable confusion in expressing 
 them. He was very much what the French call un etourdi, 
 and from vanity and an eager desire of being conspicuous 
 wherever he was, he frequently talked carelessly without 
 knowledge of the subject, or even without thought. His 
 person was short, his countenance coarse and vulgar, his 
 deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy 
 gentleman. Those who were in any way distinguished 
 excited envy in him to so ridiculous an excess that the instances 
 of it are hardly credible. When accompanying two beautiful 
 young ladies and their mother on a tour in France, he was 
 seriously angry that more attention was paid to them than 
 to him ; and once at the exhibition of the Fantoccini in 
 London, when those who sat next to him observed with what 
 dexterity a puppet was made to toss a pike, he could not bear 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 that it should have such praise, and exclaimed with some 
 warmth : ' Pshaw ! I can do it better myself,' He, I am 
 afraid," continues Mr. Boswell — and we see the eyes of the 
 unctuous Scotsman raised from his manuscript as he makes 
 the sorrowful record — " I am afraid " — and we see him 
 shake his head in melancholy retrospect — " He, I am afraid " 
 — and we hear his sigh as he at last brings himself to the 
 point of setting down the mournful truth — " had no settled 
 system of any sort, so that his conduct must not be strictly 
 scrutinised ; but his affections were social and generous, and 
 when he had money he gave it away very liberally. His desire 
 of imaginary consequence predominated over his attention 
 to truth. When he began to rise into notice, he said he had 
 a brother who was Dean of Durham, a fiction so easily detected 
 that it was wonderful how he should have been so inconsiderate 
 as to hazard it. He boasted to me at this time of the power 
 of his pen in commanding money, which I believe was true 
 in a certain degree, though in the instance he gave he was by 
 no means correct. He told me that he had sold a novel for 
 four hundred pounds. This wa:s his* Vicar of Wakefield. 
 But Johnson informed me that he had made the bargain for 
 Goldsmith and that the price was sixty pounds. ' And, sir,' 
 said he, ' a sufficient price too, when it was sold, for then the 
 fame of Goldsmith had not been elevated, as it afterwards 
 was by his Traveller, and the bookseller had such faint hopes 
 of profit by his bargain that he kept the manuscript by him 
 a long time and did not publish it till after The Traveller 
 had appeared. Then, to be sure, it was accidentally worth 
 more money.' " 
 
 BosweU then describes his supping with Goldsmith and 
 Johnson at the " Mitre," and mentions that Goldsmith's re- 
 spectful attachment to Johnson was then at its height, " for his 
 own literary reputation had not yet distinguished him so much 
 as to excite a vain desire of competition with his great master " ; 
 but it would seem that he was not quite repressed by such a 
 consideration, for we are told that he attempted to maintain, 
 " I suppose from an affectation of paradox," Boswell says, 
 " that knowledge was not desirable on its own account, for it 
 often was a source of unhappiness." To which Johnson 
 
6 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 replied, making one of those statements which seem to have 
 appealed to his biographer as revelations only possible to a 
 genius on the verge of ecstasy, " Why, sir, that knowledge 
 may in some cases produce unhappiness, I allow. But upon 
 the whole knowledge, per se, is certainly an object which every 
 man would wish to attain, although perhaps he may not 
 take the trouble necessary for attaining it." 
 
 Later on Boswell tells us how Goldsmith endeavoured to 
 mortify him by strutting before him, and calling out, with 
 an air of superiority " like that of an esoteric over an exoteric 
 disciple of a sage of antiquity, ' I go to Miss Williams ! ' " 
 Miss Williams being one of the bickering mendicant crew 
 to whom the benevolent Johnson gave house room. A short 
 time after his unworthy, if successful, attempt to arouse 
 a passion of envy in the breast of Boswell, a just judgment 
 fell upon Goldsmith, for he himself felt the gnawings of this 
 monster at his vitals. It was upon the occasion of Johnson's 
 first narration of the interview which he had with the King. 
 All the time that the former was describing the moving 
 incidents of that memorable five minutes, we hear that : 
 
 " Dr. Goldsmith remained unmoved upon a sofa at some 
 distance, affecting not to join in the least in the eager curiosity 
 of the company. He assigned as a reason for his gloom and 
 seeming inattention that he apprehended Johnson had relin- 
 quished his purpose of furnishing him with a prologue to his 
 play, with the hopes of which he had been flattered ; but it 
 was strongly suspected that he was fretting with chagrin 
 and envy at the singular honour Dr. Johnson had lately 
 enjoyed." 
 
 Happily, however, he at last succeeded in at least concealing 
 his mortification. " He sprung from the sofa, advanced to 
 Johnson, and in a kind of flutter, from imagining himself 
 in the situation which he had just been hearing described, 
 exclaimed, ' WeU, you acquitted yourself in this conversation 
 better than I should have done ; for I should have bowed 
 and stammered through the whole of it.' " 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 II 
 
 Respecting the extraordinary vanity of Goldsmith, Boswell 
 gives us many anecdotes. Upon one occasion when he was 
 wearing a " bloom-coloured " coat, he " strutted about 
 bragging of his dress, and I believe was seriously vain of it, 
 for his mind was wonderfully prone to such impressions. . . . 
 ' Let me tell you [said Goldsmith], when my tailor brought 
 home my bloom-coloured coat he said, " Sir, I have a favour 
 to beg of you. When any body asks you who made your 
 clothes, be pleased to remember John Filby at the Harrow 
 in Water Lane ! " ' " Whereupon Johnson, who had doubtless 
 been thinking over this ponderous matter, said, " Why, sir, 
 that was because he knew the strange colour would attract 
 crowds to gaze at it, and thus they might hear of him, 
 and see how well he could make a coat even of so absurd a 
 colour." 
 
 Quite a plausible explanation of Mr. Filby's appeal, but 
 posterity has been perturbed by the absence of any information 
 as to whether or not it satisfied Goldsmith. 
 
 Then respecting Goldsmith's constant desire to shine in 
 company without possessing any qualification for doing so, 
 Boswell gives Johnson's opinion. 
 
 " Sir, he is so much afraid of being unnoticed that he often 
 talks merely lest you should forget that he is in the company." 
 Boswell agreed with him, but being very fond of Goldsmith 
 would only go so far as to allow that he " stood forward." 
 " True, sir," said Johnson, " but if a man is to stand forward 
 he should wish to do it, not in an awkward posture, not in 
 rags, not so as that he shall only be exposed to ridicule." 
 But Boswell's love for Goldsmith would not stand this. 
 " For my part I like very well to hear honest Goldsmith talk 
 away carelessly," he boldly affirmed, for if Boswell had a 
 fault at all it was to be found in his recklessness in standing 
 up for his friend, whether his friend " stood forward " or not. 
 Possibly it was because Johnson perceived this that he wound 
 up the discussion by saying simply, " Why, yes, sir ; but he 
 should not like to hear himself." 
 
8 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 It would seem to most people not fully acquainted with 
 Mr. Boswell's methods that, considering how coldly his defence 
 of the weaknesses of his friend Goldsmith was received by 
 Johnson, the topic would have been best kept out of sight ; 
 but it would not have been Hke Mr. Boswell to make an effort 
 in this direction. As a matter of fact it appeared as if he 
 had only to find out a topic that grated upon Johnson to 
 encourage him to recur to it at every spare moment. When 
 the topic was the foible of a friend, Johnson's treatment of 
 it was termed " goring " by Boswell, and to do Johnson 
 justice he was seldom lethargic when his tormentor flaunted 
 a crimson topic in front of him. His horns were usually 
 ready at the " charge," though occasionally when he had 
 enough of it he got home upon Boswell and sent him into the 
 nearest ditch. But the toreador soon was on his feet again, 
 and after wiping off the mud, resumed the attack as if nothing 
 had happened. 
 
 " I told him that Goldsmith had said to me a few days 
 before, ' as I take my shoes from the shoemaker, and my coat 
 from the tailor, so I take my religion from the priest,' " Mr. 
 Boswell informs us, adding, naturally, how deeply he regretted 
 this loose way of talking, and Johnson tried to calm him by 
 saying : 
 
 " Sir, he knows nothing ; he has made up his mind about 
 nothing." 
 
 A few days later Johnson was prodded into the arena again 
 and affirmed that it was amazing how little Goldsmith knew : 
 " He seldom comes where he is not more ignorant than any 
 one else." Considering that he was so constantly in the 
 company of Johnson and Boswell this was only to be expected. 
 But Sir Joshua Reynolds could not help thinking that in 
 these circumstances it was rather strange that there was no 
 man whose company was more liked. But Johnson (according 
 to Boswell) had no difficulty in showing that this very fact 
 bore out his contention. " To be sure, sir, when people 
 find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer 
 their inferior while he is with them, it is most gratifying 
 to them." 
 
 So much for the social attractiveness of Goldsmith's 
 extraordinary fund of ignorance. Unhappily he had no 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 opportunity of gratifying the company in the way Johnson 
 indicated, upon the occasion of a dinner given by the brothers 
 Dilly in the Poultry ; but that was because the company 
 included such a galaxy of brilliant men as Boswell, Johnson, 
 Langton, a Mr. Claxton, the Reverend Dr. Mayo, and the 
 Reverend Mr. Toplady, who, Mr. Augustine Birrell, in an 
 illuminating footnote in his edition of Boswell, tells us was 
 the author of Rock of Ages. It would be absurd to imagine 
 such a company gratified to find themselves in the presence 
 of any one more ignorant than themselves. But the fact was 
 that they were so busy displaying their own ignorance, 
 Goldsmith had not a look in, so to speak. He had not even a 
 chance of hinting to the Reverend Mr. Toplady his ignorance 
 of the fact, well known to the Reverend Mr. Toplady, that 
 the words " blood " and " flowed " are rhymes and also 
 " cure " and " power." 
 
 The conversation which Goldsmith was kept out of had 
 a wide range. It began by Johnson's placing his veto upon 
 exploration in the South Seas, by affirming that, as there were 
 twenty thousand species of insects in Great Britain already, 
 there was no need for explorers to go abroad for entomological 
 research ; and then the conversation passed on to the question 
 of the migration of birds, in the course of which some more 
 cocksure ignorance was displayed by these savants. But 
 when Mr. Boswell, who was never very adroit in joining his 
 flats, started an inconsequential discussion upon Otaheite and 
 the bread-fruit tree, Johnson's wisdom was equal to the strain 
 put upon it, and he affirmed, holding up a slice of a good loaf, 
 that no bread tree could touch that. He went further and 
 declared that " all ignorant savages will laugh when they are 
 told of the advantages of civilised life." Back again to 
 ornithology the talkers in the company went, and the only 
 remark with the smallest approach to erudition in it came 
 from Goldsmith ; on then to the topic of toleration, 
 introduced with great tact by the banderillero Boswell : he 
 saw that there were Dissenters at the table and he knew well 
 what Johnson thought of these gentry. The dart he flung 
 went home, and Johnson tossed the Reverend Dr. Mayo and 
 his associates sky high ; and once again Goldsmith introduced 
 a phrase of reason into the play of verbiage ; but according to 
 
lo THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 Boswell, he was not satisfied, but " sat in restless agitation, 
 from a wish to get in and shine ... he had taken his hat 
 to go away, but remained for some time with it in his hand, 
 like a gamester who at the close of a long night lingers for a 
 little while to see if he can have a favourable opening to 
 finish with success. Once when he was beginning to speak, 
 he found himself overpowered by the loud voice of Johnson 
 who was at the opposite end of the table, and did not perceive 
 Goldsmith's attempt. Thus disappointed of his wish to 
 obtain the attention of the company, Goldsmith in a passion 
 threw down his hat, looking angrily at Johnson and exclaiming 
 in a bitter voice : ' Take it ! ' " The narrator gives us no 
 hint of what he meant by this exclamation " Take it ! " 
 Take what ? One has a vague notion that Mr. Boswell 
 somehow associated the act with the throwing down of the 
 gauntlet of the champion, or perhaps, considering the nation- 
 ality of Goldsmith, with the trailing of a coat with a tail that 
 might be trodden on. His omission in this respect rather 
 tends to neutralise the force of the exclamation. How- 
 ever, Goldsmith had soon an opportunity of venting his 
 own envy and spleen under the pretext of supporting another 
 person. " Toplady was beginning to speak, when Johnson 
 made a sound which Goldsmith fancied was an interruption, 
 and he remarked to Johnson : ' Sir, the gentleman has heard 
 you patiently for an hour, pray allow us now to hear him.' 
 ' Sir,' said Johnson sternly, ' I was not interrupting the 
 gentleman, I was only giving him a signal of my attention. 
 Sir, you are impertinent.' " Goldsmith made no reply, and 
 Johnson spoke for another hour on the doctrine of the Trinity, 
 and on the impiety of introducing such a topic in a mixed 
 company. 
 
 Later on Johnson, with a wink at his friends, apologised 
 to Goldsmith, who had been brooding over the insult ; and 
 Goldsmith, without a wink, said placidly, " It must be much 
 from you, sir, that I take ill." 
 
 " In our way to the club," Boswell adds, " I regretted 
 that Goldsmith would upon every occasion endeavour to 
 shine, by which he often exposed himself, observing that 
 * Goldsmith had a great deal of gold in his cabinet, but 
 not^content with that was always taking out his purse.' 
 
INTRODUCTION ii 
 
 ' Yes, sir,' said Johnson, ' and that so often an empty 
 purse.' " 
 
 Numerous instances Boswell gives of this extraordinary- 
 desire to shine on the part of Goldsmith, and clearly shows 
 that the latter had actually somehow acquired the idea that 
 he had a right to make a remark in the presence of Johnson. 
 " One evening, in a circle of wits " — the narrator was of 
 course the centre of this magic circle — " he found fault with 
 me for talking of Johnson as entitled to the honour of un- 
 questionable superiority. ' Sir,' said he, ' you are for making 
 a monarchy of what should be a republic ! ' " 
 
 ' Again and again Boswell returned to this charge. The 
 jealousy and envy which Goldsmith bore toward Boswell was 
 constantly making itself manifest, and Johnson affirmed, when 
 Boswell pleaded for him with true Boswellian generosity, that 
 one did well to be angry with a man who had such a superabun- 
 dance of an odious quality. And so the great biographer goes on 
 even after the death of Goldsmith, losing no opportunity of 
 showing him in an unfavourable light and of quoting Johnson's 
 cordial concurrence with his own views regarding the odiousness 
 of the man — in fact, as we have shown, he puts himself 
 forward upon some occasions as pleading hard with Johnson 
 to be more tolerant to " honest Dr. Goldsmith " — and the 
 result is that, as " Boswell " only wants the change of a 
 few insignificant consonants to spell " Gospel " to ninety-nine 
 out of every hundred readers nowadays, people begin to be 
 rather ashamed of allowing themselves to have an affection 
 for so unworthy an object as Goldsmith. When they speak 
 of Goldsmith apart from his books they invariably assume an 
 indulgent tone — a sort of kindly compassionate tone, with the 
 smile and the shake of the head which accompany the reference 
 to a good-natured empty-headed scamp. 
 
 The difference between the treatment of Johnson and 
 Goldsmith by modern readers is that, while Johnson the man 
 is held in high esteem, Johnson the writer is referred to 
 apologetically; whereas Goldsmith the writer is accepted 
 with enthusiasm and Goldsmith the man is dismissed with the 
 exclamation with which Washington Irving concludes his 
 sketch of his life, " Poor Goldsmith ! " 
 
 In each case the result is wholly due to the testimony of 
 
12 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 Boswell ; and this testimony is regarded by ex-statesmen and 
 people of that sort, as so unimpeachable that even those students 
 of the eighteenth century who might reasonably be expected 
 to have some power of discrimination, seem to be content 
 to accept Boswell's valuation of Oliver Goldsmith as correct ; 
 at least no protest came from any quarter at the ludicrous 
 design of a recent statue of James Boswell, in which the 
 figure of Goldsmith appears as one of the supporters of the 
 effigy of the man who tried only too successfully to heap 
 contempt upon his memory. 
 
 But perhaps the artist had a more subtle sense of what 
 was appropriate than that with which one might be disposed 
 at first to accredit him. Perhaps he meant his design to be 
 figurative of the attitude of Goldsmith, as well as of the 
 posture of Boswell. Boswell climbed into his place upon the 
 shoulders of his more distinguished friends, and Goldsmith 
 never was. so happy as when he .was trying to help others into 
 better circumstances. Johnson, in a letter to his own bio- 
 grapher three months after Goldsmith's death, asked : " Was 
 ever poet so trusted before ? " " Never," is the answer 
 that would have been returned by any one acquainted with 
 Goldsmith and the extent of his benefactions. All the 
 needy human beings who approached him trusted him to 
 relieve their necessities, no matter how forlorn his own 
 condition might be. " Was ever poet so trusted before ? " 
 We think not. 
 
 Ill 
 
 We have just given it as our opinion that everything 
 contained in Boswell's Life of Johnson has recently come to 
 be accepted by the multitude as absolutely accurate — almost 
 painfully accurate — inartistically accurate — unnecessarily accu- 
 rate. When Boswell gets quite warm in denouncing the absence 
 of scrupulous accuracy in others, he naturally causes his readers 
 to believe the more implicitly every statement made by 
 himself. But it is plain that there is a considerable difference 
 between accuracy of statement and accuracy of judgment. 
 When Boswell assures us that Goldsmith made a fool of himself 
 every time he opened his mouth, that he was consumed by 
 envy, that his life was embittered by his jealousy of others. 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 that he was constantly boasting of achievements which were 
 altogether imaginary, and of the dizzy heights of ecclesiastical 
 dignity reached by fictitious relations of his, we may, if we 
 wish, be satisfied with his intention to tell what he himself 
 believes to be strictly true ; and yet, unless we have confidence 
 in his ability to pronounce an impartial judgment on such 
 points, his statements are valueless to us. The question 
 that has to be decided is this : Was Boswell qualified to 
 pronounce the opinion that he did pronounce in respect of 
 the nature and the character of Goldsmith ? Was he qualified 
 to sift such evidence as was brought under his notice bearing 
 upon the character of Goldsmith ? 
 
 Now, before attempting to consider the question as to 
 whether or not he ever wilfully suppressed for his own purposes 
 pieces of evidence of which he was fully cognisant in writing 
 of certain people, and the question as to whether or not he 
 suppressed portions of certain conversations which he pur- 
 ported to record in full, and certain incidents which tended 
 to throw new light upon the characters of the persons to whom 
 he was referring — before attempting to consider these 
 particular questions, we will try to arrive at some conclusion 
 as to the qualifications of Boswell to pronounce any opinion 
 upon the character of Goldsmith. 
 
 Now it cannot be pretended for a moment that Boswell 
 was the equal in intellect or intellectual achievement of any 
 of the brilliant circle into which he contrived to thrust himself. 
 The only ground upon which he could possibly base a claim 
 to be admitted to the society of men of distinction was his 
 liking for the society of such men and the possession of such 
 a spirit of determination as could not but enable him to 
 surmount every obstacle that threatened to impede his 
 progress toward the distinction of being in the company of 
 the distinguished. Happily he had cultivated those qualities 
 without which the most persevering spirit would have availed 
 him nothing. A youth spent among the sturdy free-speaking 
 inhabitants of the Lowlands of Scotland, with an 
 occasional excursion into the Highlands, afforded him an 
 excellent training for the career which he chose for himself. 
 These " dour " countrymen of his do not mince their words, 
 whether they are criticising their lairds or their lairds' sons, 
 
14 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 and it may be taken for granted that " Auld Auchinleck " 
 the law lord, who was his father, had himself a complete 
 mastery over the local idioms of a raucous, but terribly 
 expressive, tongue. A year or two of such an experience 
 must have acted upon young Boswell as certain chemical 
 processes act upon iron, producing what is technically 
 known as " case hardening." When one has submitted to 
 the frank criticisms of the Scots he can " thole " any- 
 thing, and there is every reason to believe that " Jamie " 
 was insult-proof before he ever started life in England 
 Any one with his aspirations had need to be, as he soon 
 found out. 
 
 But he seems never to have distrusted his. qualifications 
 for success in the role which he undertook to play, and in 
 which he became eminent. He had many escapades from which 
 he emerged if not notorious at least on the v«rge of notoriety. 
 One of his earliest adventures was associated with the celebrated 
 law-suit known as the Douglas Cause. All Scotland was talking 
 of the case, and while it was yet sub judice, young Mr. Boswell, 
 whose father was actually on the Bench and about to deliver 
 his judgment, thought the moment an opportune one for 
 publishing a novel, which was so transparent a reproduction 
 of the particular incidents referred to in the course of the 
 trial, that an application was actually made for the committal 
 of the author for contempt of court. He had had the 
 effrontery to include in one chapter the decision of the 
 judges in favour of the side to which he was attached. For 
 this flagrant attempt to bias the course of justice he narrowly 
 escaped imprisonment. 
 
 But the notoriety which he gained for a time must have 
 more than compensated him for the risk which he ran, and 
 perhaps even for the subsequent interview which he had with 
 " Auld Auchinleck " on the subject. 
 
 Later he made a further advance by espousing the cause 
 of Corsica, which was then in the throes of a revolution. He 
 became again cheaply notorious by appearing in London in 
 the national costume of the island, and visiting the Prime 
 Minister so arrayed. Some time afterwards he attained the 
 distinction of being caricatured under the name of " Corsica 
 Boswell." Perhaps it was the recollection of this escapade 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 that caused him to feel pained at the lack of taste shown 
 by Goldsmith in wearing a coat that made him rather 
 conspicuous among his associates. 
 
 So this ingenious young Scotsman pushed his way onward 
 toward his goal, forcing himself into the company of the great 
 and refusing to accept their repulses as final. He must have 
 had many a check in those days when the great ones were 
 protected in their fastnesses by a bodyguard of lackeys, and 
 so were not easily accessible even to the most pertinacious 
 of their worshippers. But he had his moments of triumph 
 even then, for he was accustomed to snatch in the pit of the 
 theatre a laurel which was denied to him elsewhere. Going 
 early to the playhouse before the curtain was rung up on the 
 legitimate performers, he won a certain reputation for himself 
 by the exercise of his solitary accomplishment, which was the 
 imitation of various animals of the farmyard. It seems that 
 he showed great a.bility as an exponent of the emotional 
 moments of ruminants ; but his success was more marked 
 in sounding the rather restricted diapason of the cow than 
 of any other quadruped in his repertory ; though we should 
 be cautious before coming to a conclusion on this point 
 solely on the evidence which Sir Walter Scott had at his 
 command, to the effect that a countryman of the amateur in 
 the pit called out when he varied his role, " Stick to the coo, 
 mon, stick to the coo ! " 
 
 And then came the happy day when Tom Davies, 
 whose shop Mr. Boswell was accustomed to frequent 
 on the chance of having a word with some of the great men 
 for whose society he yearned, ventured to introduce him to 
 Dr. Johnson. Within five minutes Johnson had insulted him ; 
 but he refused to be snubbed. He had become too well 
 accustomed to that sort of thing to feel mortified simply 
 because the great exponent of intoleration had told him not to 
 interfere with what did not concern him. He asked Johnson's 
 pardon and humbly begged permission to wait upon him. 
 The great man accepted his homage, and Boswell showed 
 that he knew how to make the most of the opportunity that 
 he saw was at hand. He waited upon Johnson the next day 
 and from that day onward. Reluctantly at first, but after- 
 wards with complacency, Johnson brought him within the 
 
1 6 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 charmed circle of his acquaintance, and Boswell took very- 
 good care never to stray far beyond its circumference. 
 
 There can be no doubt vi'hatever that his presence was 
 resented by many of the distinguished circle. 
 
 " Who is that cur that is always following at Johnson's 
 heels ? " some one inquired one day. 
 
 " He is not a cur," replied Goldsmith, " he is only a bur 
 that Tom Davies threw at Johnson as a jest and he has stuck 
 to him ever since." 
 
 It is certain that for years the position occupied 
 by Boswell in the Johnson circle was that of a butt for 
 the exercise of the wits. That really seemed to be the 
 place which he was meant to occupy in life. He was a small 
 man, talkative, and tactless and tasteless. He had never any 
 sense of self-respect, and he had never any perception of what 
 was ludicrous. He never knew when he was being laughed 
 at, and when he himself had made a commonplace remark, 
 he recorded it as if it were a witticism. Goldsmith said of 
 Johnson's wit, quoting from a play of Congreve's, that when his 
 pistol missed fire, he knocked his opponent down with the 
 butt. Of Boswell it might have been said that when his 
 pistol flashed in the pan he believed that he had fired off a 
 solid bullet. ~~ 
 
 He affords us in the course of his magnum opus many 
 instances of the truth of this. We need only give one, however, 
 in this place. It will be remembered that, when he was 
 maintaining to Goldsmith the superiority of Johnson to 
 Burke as a talker. Goldsmith said, " Can he (Johnson) wind 
 round a subject like a serpent, as Burke does ? " and Boswell 
 records with triumph his reply, " Yes, sir, but Johnson is 
 the Hercules who strangled serpents in his cradle." Surely 
 a more perfect example of ineptitude was never recorded 
 against any man. 
 
 But while he gives us in this way plenty of evidence of 
 his own qualifications to be made a butt of by the many 
 brilliant people with whom he came in contact, he is some- 
 what reticent on the subject of their witticism at his expense, 
 and small blame attaches to him on this account. He was 
 under no obligation to the readers of his Life of Johnson 
 to make them aware of the ridicule of which he was the 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 object. Only when he was brow-beaten and insulted by 
 Johnson does he become communicative. He had that 
 elementary sense of art which enabled him to perceive that 
 it is impossible for a tennis player to show his skill in the 
 absence of a ball. He was quite content to play the part of 
 the ball to Johnson's racket. Not a little of the admiration 
 which he has obtained during recent years is due to the fact 
 that he impresses us with a sense of his scrupulousness as a 
 narrator of facts, since he does not hesitate to acquaint us 
 with the particulars of Johnson's wit at his expense. But it 
 really was not until he was exasperated beyond the endurance 
 of the most patient of men, which Johnson was not, that 
 Johnson flung himself upon him, not administering to him a 
 dignified rebuke, but treating him as the " rogue " elephant 
 treats his keeper — ^knocking him down and kneeling on his 
 body or flinging him contemptuously into a ditch, trumpeting 
 in his wrath. 
 
 BosweU is delightfully frank in his narration of the details 
 of such scenes ; but it will be noticed that nearly all that he 
 records were " cabinet " scenes ; Johnson and he are nearly 
 always alone ; he does not hint that Johnson ridiculed him 
 in public. His marvellous memory has been as greatly 
 praised as his extraordinary accuracy, but his memory seems 
 to have strangely failed him in respect of a very interesting 
 scene, which took place at the Thrales' house at Streatham 
 upon the occasion of the first visit of Fanny Burney to that 
 celebrated mansion ; but Miss Burney kept a diary and wrote 
 letters. She gives us in her Memoirs a circumstantial account 
 of the " collation " at which BosweU, Johnson, and others were 
 present. 
 
 " Mr. Boswell," we are told, "had a strong Scotch accent, 
 though by no means strong enough to make him unintelligible 
 to an English ear. He had an odd mock solemnity of tone 
 and manner that he had acquired unconsciously from 
 constantly thinking of, and imitating, Johnson. There 
 was also something slouching in the gait and dress of 
 Mr. Boswell that ridiculously caricatured the same model. 
 His clothes were always too large for him; his hair, or 
 wig, was constantly in a state of negligence ; and he never 
 for a moment sat still or upright in his chair. Every look 
 
1 8 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 and movement betrayed either intentional or involuntary- 
 imitation." 
 
 " As Mr. Boswell was at Streatham only upon a morning 
 visit, a collation was ordered, to which all were assembled. 
 Mr. Boswell was preparing to take a seat that he seemed, by 
 prescription, to consider as his own, next to Dr. Johnson ; 
 but Mr. Seward, who was present, waved his hand for Mr. 
 Boswell to move farther on, saying with a smile : 
 
 " ' Mr. Boswell, that seat is Miss Burney's,' 
 
 " He stared amazed : the asserted claimant was new and 
 unknown to him, and he appeared by no means pleased to 
 resign his prior rights. But after looking round for a minute 
 or two, with an important air of demanding to know the 
 meaning of the innovation, and receiving no satisfaction, he 
 reluctantly, almost resentfully, got another chair, and placed 
 it at the back of the shoulder of Dr. Johnson ; while this new 
 and unheard-of rival quietly seated herself, as if not hearing 
 what was passing, for she shrank from the explanation that 
 she feared might ensue, as she saw a smile stealing over every 
 countenance, that of Dr. Johnson himself not excepted, at 
 the discomfiture and surprise of Mr. Boswell. 
 
 " Mr. Boswell, however, was so situated as not to remark 
 it in the Doctor ; and of every one else, when in that presence, 
 he was unobservant, if not contemptuous. In truth, when he 
 met with Dr. Johnson, he commonly forebore answering 
 anything that went forward, lest he should miss the smallest 
 sound from that voice to which he paid such exclusive, though 
 merited, homage. But the moment that voice burst forth, 
 the attention which it excited in Mr. Boswell amounted 
 almost to pain. His eyes goggled with eagerness ; he leant 
 his ear almost on the shoulder of the Doctor ; and his mouth 
 dropped open to catch every syllable that might be uttered : 
 nay, he seemed not only to dread losing a word, but to be 
 anxious not to miss a breathing ; as if hoping from it, latently 
 or mystically, some information. 
 
 " But when, in a few minutes, Dr. Johnson, whose eye did 
 not follow him and who had concluded him to be at the other 
 end of the table, said something gaily and good-humouredly, 
 by the appellation of Bozzy, and discovered, by the sound of 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 the reply, that Bozzy had planted himself as closely as he 
 could behind and between the elbows of the new usurper 
 and his own, the Doctor turned angrily round upon him, 
 and clapping his hand rather loudly upon his knee, said, in a 
 tone of displeasure : ' What do you do there, sir ? Go to the 
 table, sir ! ' 
 
 " Mr. BosweU instantly, and with an air of affright, obeyed ; 
 and there was something so unusual in such humble submission 
 to so imperious a command, that another smile gleamed its 
 way across every mouth, except that of the Doctor and Mr. 
 BosweU, who now, very unwillingly, took a distant seat. 
 
 " But ever restless when not at the side of Dr. Johnson, 
 he presently recollected something that he wished to exhibit ; 
 and, hastily rising, was running away in its search, when the 
 Doctor, calling after him, authoritatively said : ' What are 
 you thinking of, sir ? Why do you get up before the cloth 
 is removed ? — Come back to your place, sir ! ' 
 
 " Again, and with equal obsequiousness, Mr. BosweU did 
 as he was bid ; when the Doctor, pursing his lips not to betray 
 rising risibiUty, muttered half to himself : ' Running about 
 in the middle of meals ! One would take you for a Branghton.' 
 " * A Branghton, sir ? ' repeated Mr. BosweU, with 
 earnestness ; ' what is a Branghton, sir ? ' 
 
 " ' Where have you lived, sir ? ' cried the Doctor, laughing ; 
 ' and what company have you kept, not to know that ? ' 
 
 " Mr. BosweU, now doubly curious, yet always apprehensive 
 of faUing into some disgrace with Dr. Johnson, said, in a low 
 tone, which he knew the Doctor could not hear, to Mrs. 
 Thrale : ' Pray, ma'am, what's a Branghton ? Do me the 
 favour to tell me ! Is it some animal hereabouts ? ' 
 
 " Mrs. Thrale only laughed heartily, but without answering 
 as she saw one of her guests uneasily fearful of an explanation. 
 But Mr. Seward cried : ' I'U teU you, BosweU— I'U teU you ! 
 — if you wiU walk with me into the paddock ; only let us wait 
 tiU the table is cleared, or I shaU be taken for a Branghton too ! ' 
 " They soon went off together ; and Mr. BosweU, no 
 doubt, was fuUy informed of the road that had led to the 
 usurpation by which he had thus been annoyed." 
 
 Now this brUliant little sketch indicates pretty clearly. 
 
20 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 we think, the fact that Johnson was as ready as any of the 
 rest of his circle to cast ridicule upon Boswell in public as well 
 as in private. It would not have been like Johnson to dis- 
 criminate in this respect. He admitted that he liked what 
 is nowadays called " a gallery," and always played up to it. 
 Who can doubt that he admitted the companionship of 
 Boswell through the artistic sense of the value of a background ? 
 There is no avoiding the fact that Boswell was regarded 
 by Johnson and his associates as a highly ridiculous person. 
 He is never referred to by his contemporaries as a man whose 
 judgment was worth anything ; and the publication of his 
 Life of Johnson confirmed the impression which a personal 
 acquaintance with him had produced. Had he ever found 
 himself in such a situation as allowed of his expressing an 
 opinion upon the character of such a man as Oliver Goldsmith, 
 he would have been regarded as a presumptuous charlatan 
 by the few who might take him seriously, but by the great 
 majority of his acquaintance his opinion would certainly have 
 been accepted as a joke to convulse the coffee houses and be 
 passed on from the " Mitre " in Fleet Street to the " Bear " 
 in St. James's Street. 
 
 IV 
 
 But surely we need no further evidence of the incapacity 
 of Boswell to discriminate upon any question of character or 
 ability, than may be derived from the instances he gives upon 
 which his conclusions were founded. He assures us that 
 Goldsmith was always endeavouring to shine in company, 
 but that he possessed no qualification for shining. Now if 
 he had had any sense he would have stopped there ; but he 
 was unwise enough to quote Goldsmith's attempts, and that 
 is just where he made the mistake ; for every one must allow 
 that the instances he gives of Goldsmith's conversation are 
 distinctly the most brilliant of any that he records. The 
 incredible nonsense which is gravely chronicled by Boswell 
 is only relieved by the sensible, the apt, the humourous, or 
 the witty interpolations of Goldsmith. Not a single instance 
 of Goldsmith's stupidity given by Boswell produces any other 
 impression than that the stupidity was not on Goldsmith's 
 side. He gives no instance of Johnson's having an argument 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 with Goldsmith in which the latter failed to get the best of it. 
 BosweU was alone in believing the contrary. 
 
 What is the value of the judgment of a person whose 
 faculty of discrimination is exercised only to induce conviction 
 of just the opposite to his contention ? We might have taken 
 Goldsmith's stupidity for granted were it not for the means 
 adopted by his critic to force it upon us. 
 
 So much for BosweU's testimony on the subject of Gold- 
 smith's incapacity to take the place which such a man might 
 reasonably be expected to occupy in the company of such 
 intellects as had made him their friend. But when we have 
 become suspicious of the biographer's capacity to judge on 
 this point, we refuse to accept without further consideration 
 the reference to his other failings made on the same authority. 
 For instance, that circumstantial account already referred to 
 which he gave of Goldsmith being extremely angry because 
 of the obvious attention paid by some officers at Lille to the 
 two charming young women and their equally charming 
 young mother, who had chosen him to be their travelling 
 companion on a trip to France — is not that story worth the 
 curious consideration of any one anxious to learn the truth 
 about that remarkable Irishman Oliver Goldsmith ? 
 
 The first question that we are disposed to ask is probably 
 that which the observant French officers asked : 
 
 " Que diable fait il dans cette galere ? " 
 
 How did it come that that awkward Irish lout found 
 himself in the company of three of the handsomest and most 
 fastidious Englishwomen of the century ? Of their beauty 
 there luckily can be no question. The faces of the Horneck 
 sisters have excited the admiration of the world for more than 
 a hundred years — ever since Reynolds painted them side by 
 side in one picture and then on separate canvasses. They 
 were exquisite creatures belonging to a good family, and 
 they were admitted to the best society in England. Their 
 brother, who was in the Guards, married the daughter of a 
 peer, and they themselves made good matches. How did it 
 come that such persons of taste and fashion chose so silly and 
 contemptible a companion as the Goldsmith of BosweU, when 
 they took their excursion to France ? 
 
 Hiat is one mystery which BosweU made no attempt to 
 
22 JHE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 explain, and which certainly admits of no explanation on any 
 basis of fact suggested by him. 
 
 But, neglecting that question for the moment, one 
 naturally inquires if the narrator of the story was present at 
 the scene which he describes, and if not, on whose authority 
 did he give the story ? Obviously it must have come in the 
 first instance from one of the ladies of the party. But 
 immediately after its publication in Boswell's Life, one of 
 these ladies wrote denying its accuracy and affirming that, 
 so far from Goldsmith's having been affected in the way 
 stated by BosweU, he had made a jest of the incident, and 
 that no one could ever have imagined from the way Goldsmith 
 treated it that he was serious. 
 
 After reading this " disclaimer " we begin to have an ink- 
 ling of Boswell's methods and to entertain the gravest suspicion 
 of his honesty. If we do not, we are compelled to accept 
 the only alternative explanation of these stories of his about 
 Goldsmith, and this is that Boswell was the dupe of some 
 humourist who knew that no incident was too ridiculous for 
 him to accept as the truth or too extravagant for him to 
 record. 
 
 As for the tale which he says he had from a " dignitary of the 
 church," whose name, by the way, he was careful to conceal, 
 though there was no reason why he should do so, that Gold- 
 smith had boasted to the said " dignitary " of the Dean of 
 Durham being his uncle, it is surely not worth a second thought. 
 One has to go to a creation of Goldsmith himself to find a 
 parallel to this absurdity. " If you mind him, he'U persuade 
 you that his mother was an alderman and his aunt a justice 
 of peace," says Tony Lumpkin. We wonder that Boswell 
 does not give us a story of Goldsmith's boasting that his 
 mother was an alderman. The idea of his telling a dignitary 
 of the church of all people in the world that the Dean of 
 Durham was his uncle would not be more childish. Only 
 an imbecile, which certainly Goldsmith was not, would be 
 guilty of telling a falsehood to the most likely person in the 
 world to detect its inaccuracy ; and Boswell's accepting such 
 a story even on the evidence of the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 himself, suggests a want of judgment unmatched except by 
 Boswell himself. Possibly what did happen was that Gold- 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 smith made a remark to the dignitary of the church that he 
 himself had many close connections with the church, his 
 father, brother, and uncle being clergymen, and his cousin 
 being Dean of Cloyne. That Boswell should think it necessary 
 to tell the other story only suggests his difficulty in finding 
 evidence sufficient to sustain his contention as to Goldsmith's 
 boasting. The same may be said of his story of Goldsmith's 
 having told him that he had sold a novel for four hundred 
 pounds. Why should he have been such a fool, knowing that 
 BosweU had only to ask Johnson, who had done the selling, 
 the sum that he had received ? 
 
 Why should the man who could truthfully boast of making 
 j^5oo out of a play brag of having received j^ioo less for a 
 work six times as long ? That is what Boswell does not 
 tell us. 
 
 It is not, however, until Mr. Boswell gives us the tale of 
 Goldsmith's swelling in pride, strutting in front of him like 
 a Gilray caricature of Prince Orgoglio, because of his going 
 to drink tea with the peevish old woman whose affliction 
 necessitated her finding out a way of preventing the cups from 
 being filled to overflowing, that he reaches the reductio ad 
 absurdum in his instances of Goldsmith's boastfulness. It 
 might be fancied that his own acquaintance with the fact 
 that Mrs. Williams' tea was flavoured with Mrs. WiUiams' 
 finger-tips would have prompted him to pause before writing 
 of Goldsmith's exhibition of pride at being so dubiously 
 privileged as to be this lady's guest. But he frankly admits 
 that Goldsmith's boastfulness stung him deeply, since he 
 himself had not been invited to the entertainment, and this 
 confession is illuminating. It lets us see at once what was 
 in his mind, not merely at that incautious moment, but 
 upon other occasions when he jotted down something to the 
 detriment of a man or woman to whom Johnson showed favour. 
 
 Hitherto we have been assuming that Boswell wrote of 
 Goldsmith according to his lights ; we have only pointed out 
 how indiscriminating was his judgment — how badly qualified 
 he was to pronounce an opinion upon the character of the 
 man whom he assailed, and how even the evidence which he 
 brings forward in support of his contentions proves just the 
 opposite to what he meant to prove. We have not yet con- 
 
24 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 sidered the question as to whether or not Boswell wrote in 
 good faith according to his lights respecting Oliver Goldsmith. 
 
 It may be pointed out that, while he said a great deal 
 against Goldsmith, he said much in his favour, and recorded 
 Johnson's doing the same. Such a contention is certainly a 
 reasonable one to advance in defence of Boswell ; but when 
 it is looked into, the result will be, we think, to confirm the 
 opinion which was very freely expressed upon the Life when 
 it first appeared. The work was received with derision by 
 those who were most competent to pronounce an opinion upon 
 it, and the writer was treated with such contempt that he 
 was practically ostracised. His judgments upon his con- 
 temporaries were ridiculed by critics who were acquainted with 
 the persons, and the opinions which he had put in the mouth 
 of Johnson were denounced as slanders. Horace Walpole, 
 writing immediately after the appearance of the book, protested 
 against the atrocious form of publishing a libel, attributing 
 it to a person who was dead and so could not be proceeded 
 against. But the general feeling that seemed to prevail in 
 England was that the book was too ridiculous to be treated 
 seriously. It was thoroughly ridiculed, and the nonsense pages 
 attributed to Johnson — the nonsense which Johnson is made 
 to talk, the commonplaceness of the conversation solemnly 
 recorded, and the foolishness of the criticisms attributed to 
 him were made the subject of parodies innumerable, some of 
 them of quite exceptional merit. But the malice of the writer 
 was everywhere accepted as obvious. He was regarded as a 
 mean, petty libeller who had sought to pay oflF old grudges 
 through the medium of a biography of a great man. 
 
 And what was the effect upon Boswell of this criticism by 
 his contemporaries ? He behaved as does the mean man 
 who is found out. Bishop Percy, in a letter recently published 
 in Miss Alice Gaussen's Life of the man who had been intimate 
 with both Johnson and Boswell, tells us what happened. 
 Writing in a " cautionary " way to the editor of Sir John 
 Stonehouse's memoirs he says : 
 
 " You may not perhaps have heard of the fate of the late 
 biographer of Johnson (Boswell) or what occasioned his death, 
 which soon followed that publication. In consequence of 
 
INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 his violating the primal law of civil society In publishing a 
 man's unreserved correspondence and unguarded conversation, 
 he became so shunned and scouted ... he was so studiously 
 excluded from all decent company that he was driven into 
 deplorable habits of drinking which speedily terminated a 
 life that seemed formed for a long duration." 
 
 It is greatly to be feared that the evidence of this letter 
 must be regarded as conclusive. At any rate it is well known 
 that the Boswell family would never permit the Life of Johnson 
 to be alluded to in their presence. It was regarded as an 
 indiscretion too serious to be even so much as named among 
 them — a skeleton which was never to have its cupboard door 
 opened. 
 
 Of course readers of the great biography have long ago 
 ceased to discuss whether or not the writer showed either 
 taste, tact, or discretion in his methods ; they have, as a matter 
 of fact, so far from deploring all that Walpole deplored, stood 
 up and called Boswell blessed for those many lapses of which he 
 was guilty from the straight paths of the fastidious, for they 
 recognised that, by so doing, he was able to give to the world 
 a picture of certain phases of English life in the eighteenth 
 century unsurpassed in virility by any that has ever been 
 painted by a writer of the time. The enormous value 
 of the Life was not appreciated during the century ; hence 
 it was criticised from quite a different standpoint from 
 that from which we must consider it nowadays. But the 
 danger of going to the opposite extreme of adulation has 
 not, we think, been wholly avoided by modern critics. They 
 have been content, we repeat, to accept everything in 
 the Life as though it had the authority of a divine inspira- 
 tion. Most people read the book as if it were absolutely 
 authoritative on all matters, and in the spirit which 
 animated the Scottish Bible student who affirmed that if the 
 Book said that Jonah had swallowed the whale and not the 
 whale Jonah, he would believe it without question. They 
 do not stop to consider what manner of man he was that wrote 
 the book, or whether or not he allowed himself to be biassed 
 by his own feelings and his own failings when he found himself 
 in a position to pay back certain old scores. Thus it is that 
 
26 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 great injustice is done to the memory of several persons who 
 had the misfortune to be Boswell's enemies, and assuredly 
 no one has suffered more in this way than Goldsmith. 
 
 Mean, spiteful, and unscrupulous, Boswell concealed his 
 malice with the proverbial caution of his race. He gives a 
 casual reader the impression that his desire to teU the truth, 
 the exact truth, and nothing but the truth is his one aim, 
 and that no one feels more pained than himself when this 
 truth is not wholly palatable to the people whom he names 
 or to their friends. He really does this with amazing skiU, 
 and if we had not found out from other sources that certain 
 persons were his enemies we should have considerable diffi- 
 culty in discovering this fact from his references to them. 
 There is Baretti, for instance. Well, no fact could be more 
 fully established than that of the enmity existing between 
 this man and BosweU. But one might read the whole of 
 Johnson's Life without having a suspicion of it. AU that 
 one would suspect was that Baretti was an acquaintance 
 of Johnson's, and that Johnson was benevolent enough to 
 interest himself on his behalf when he was in danger of being 
 hanged, but that reaUy Johnson did not care greatly whether 
 he was hanged or not. Boswell is very scrupulous to write 
 nothing that would seem to be to the detriment of Baretti ; 
 but he rather more than suggests that Johnson did not think 
 very much of him. 
 
 It will be remembered that Baretti, who had been one of 
 Johnson's most intimate associates long before BosweU con- 
 trived to become acquainted with the great man, had, when 
 attacked by some ruffians at night in the Haymarket, stabbed 
 one of them when defending himself. He was tried for 
 murder at the Old Bailey and acquitted by a jury of English- 
 men, he having waived his right as an alien to a panel of aliens 
 and Englishmen in equal numbers. He was a friend of all 
 the distinguished men in the Johnson circle, several of whom 
 formed themselves into a committee to give evidence on his 
 behalf. One can easily understand how, in these circumstances, 
 little else should be talked about than the forthcoming trial. 
 But Boswell takes very good care that no one shall fancy 
 that Baretti was of any particular importance. He does not 
 even mention the fact that Baretti had acted in self-defence 
 
INTRODUCTION 27 
 
 against a blackguardly ruffian. He merely states that he had 
 " stabbed a man in the street." He is, however, circumstantial 
 in his account of his own conversation with Johnson on the 
 night before the trial. He shows us Johnson talking on various 
 subjects with more or less good sense — ^his sneering at Garrick, 
 and making a mock of Gibber ; on the callousness exhibited by 
 criminals at Tyburn, and of the manner in which he (Johnson) 
 meant to conduct himself on his deathbed ; of the vice of 
 Foote's mimicry, and the likelihood of his being an infidel ; of 
 the merits of Congreve, and the demerits of Shakespeare, who 
 " Never has six lines together without a fault " ; of Young's 
 Night Thoughts and the fact that a decrease of chaplains meant 
 a diminution of religion. Only a few words are devoted to 
 the subject which must certainly have been uppermost in 
 Johnson's mind. He makes Johnson say quite casually when 
 speaking of " our feeling for the distresses of others," " Why, 
 there is Baretti who is to be tried for his life to-morrow, 
 friends have risen up for him on every side ; yet if he should 
 be hanged, none of them will eat a slice of plum pudding the 
 less." And this casual remark (as if Johnson had said, " By 
 the bye, Baretti is to be tried for murder to-morrow ") 
 reminded Boswell that he had dined with Foote, who showed 
 him a letter in which Tom Davies had told him that he had 
 not been able to sleep from the concern he felt on account of 
 " this sad affair of Baretti," and in which he recommended 
 Foote to a respectable young man who sold pickles. " Ay, 
 sir," said Johnson, " here you have a specimen of human 
 sympathy ; a friend hanged and a cucumber pickled. We 
 know not whether Baretti or the pickle-man has kept Davies 
 from sleep." 
 
 Now there we have a finished example of Boswell's malicious 
 intention. He shows himself far more willing that his 
 readers should believe that Johnson was a coarse cynic, 
 ridiculing the existence of all human sympathy, especially 
 when expressed in respect of the fate of one of his oldest 
 friends, than that they should get the impression that Baretti 
 was of sufficient importance to interest Johnson. 
 
 His account of Johnson's indifference upon this occasion 
 has been brought forward in some directions as a proof of the 
 hardness of Johnson's heart ; but it is nothing of the kind. 
 
28 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 It is only a proof of the insidious way in which Boswell tried 
 to pay off old scores. He had always detested Baretti and 
 was heard to declare that he hoped the man would be hanged. 
 But neither Boswell nor any one else can convince us that 
 Johnson would spend weeks of his life discussing with Burke, 
 Murphy, Reynolds, Goldsmith, Fitzherbert, and others how 
 best he could bring about the acquittal of Baretti, and then 
 at the last moment affect a cynical indifference to his fate. 
 
 In connection with the subject of Baretti Boswell takes 
 very good care that Goldsmith shall get no credit through 
 his association with the case. Goldsmith played the most 
 important part of any one in helping Baretti in his hour of 
 trouble, hurrying to his side when he was arrested and driving 
 him to Lord Mansfield's where a successful application for bail 
 was made. Goldsmith also gave evidence at- the trial ; but 
 every word of this is carefully suppressed by Boswell. No, 
 it would never do to make it appear that Baretti occupied 
 any place in Johnson's affections, or that Goldsmith's evidence 
 in what he calls " the awful Sessions house " could be worth 
 anything. What he gives us in place of the suppressed facts 
 is Johnson's unsuppressed admiration for the attainments of 
 Mr. BosweU, and his advice to him to compile a folio on the 
 antiquities of Scotland. 
 
 It is in this way that Boswell pays off old scores ; and so 
 complete a master of the art was he that a casual reader is 
 conscious only of a sense of his straining every point in order 
 to be fair. The art of his malice is to be found in his conceal- 
 ment of every malicious intention. He makes Johnson say 
 something bitter about one of his (BosweU's) enemies, and 
 then he quotes himself taking the part of the iU-treated 
 person — indeed, sometimes going so far in this way as to call 
 for a rebuke from the great man. 
 
 He exhibits himself as standing up manfully for Goldsmith, 
 for Garrick, for Foote, for Mrs. Montague and many others 
 when Johnson has been " down on them " ; but he takes very 
 good care that the impression which his advocacy produces 
 upon a reader is that, though his kindness of heart prompted 
 him to do what he could for the people, yet he had such a very 
 bad case he had no chance of success. Another of his arts 
 was that of the advocatus diaboli ; he provokes Johnson to 
 
INTRODUCTION 29 
 
 say something stinging about a person, by starting the con- 
 versation with a silly eulogy of the person whom he is anxious 
 to see scalped, or at least mauled ; then he still ventures to 
 differ from the Dictator, bringing forward as an example of 
 the person's worthiness something that he knows perfectly 
 well to be that person's weakest point, or, more frequently, 
 some colourless virtue which is common to all mediocrity. 
 Here he gives Johnson a chance which the latter rarely neglects. 
 Boswell is left as Johnson once threatened to leave Foote, with- 
 out a leg to stand on, and the one whose cause he affects to be 
 championing is shown to be a dunce or a scoundrel — perhaps 
 both. But his own good feeling and his natural kindliness 
 of disposition force him to confide in his reader that, in spite 
 of all Johnson said, he himself still believes that the person 
 under discussion was really not so very bad after all. 
 
 BoswelL adopted a system that worked so well as to make it 
 unnecessary for him to say a bad word about any one. He 
 knew exactly how to go about making Johnson say it. All 
 that remained for him was to discharge his duty as a pained 
 but faithful recorder of the conversation. No biographer ever 
 approached him in skill in the exercise of his talent in this way. 
 We have already given an excellent example of his complete 
 mastery of an art in which by constant practice he had 
 acquired an unenviable dexterity. When he had led Johnson 
 on to declare that Goldsmith was an empty chatterbox, he 
 exclaimed that for his part he was always glad to hear " honest 
 Dr. Goldsmith talk." 
 
 And the most subtle part of his scheme for paying off 
 Goldsmith for his presumption in allowing himself to be 
 chosen as the cherished friend and companion of the two most 
 charming girls in town, or it may be for having qualified to 
 write Johnson's life — either reason would be quite sufficient 
 for him — appears to us to be found in the care with which he 
 avoided suggesting anything to Goldsmith's detriment on any 
 point on which the judgment of his readers could be exer- 
 cised, giving them a chance of differing from him. He was 
 too far-seeing to chronicle a word against the works of " honest 
 Dir. Goldsmith." He perceived that he had no chance of 
 getting even with Goldsmith by sneering at The Deserted 
 Village, The Vicar of Wakefield, or She Stoops to Conquer ; 
 
30 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 if he had done so, or if he had chronicled Johnson's doing so, 
 he knew very well that he and Johnson would have been set 
 down as a pair of dunces ; for these works the whole world 
 could read and pronounce upon without the need for an 
 illuminating word from either Johnson or his BosweU. 
 But the man Goldsmith was quite another matter. BosweU 
 knew that he was on safe ground in describing him as 
 a foolish, awkward, empty lout, a prey to envy on the most 
 insignificant pretext, and consumed by vanity on points on 
 which vanity was inexcusable. He knew that he might deplore 
 the laxity of Goldsmith's ethics of life and his indifference to 
 the forms of religion, the world had no means of contradicting 
 anything that he might say on these matters. To be sure 
 a good many people who were intimate with Goldsmith did 
 contradict him on all these matters, but he trusted to his 
 show of friendliness to Goldsmith even in the face of Johnson's 
 opposition to convince the world of his constant probity. 
 The mistake that he made was, as we have pointed out, in 
 referring to the silliness of Goldsmith's conversation and then 
 in quoting the things that Goldsmith said. But that was the 
 only mistake he made in carrying out his scheme. In the 
 case of other people — Garrick and Foote for example — 
 Boswell was indifferent to the fact that when he led his Samson 
 to the pillars of his enemies and gave him the sign to demolish 
 them, his hero was himself overwhelmed by his own act ; 
 he did not mind if Johnson's reputation as a critic or a moralist 
 crumbled away in his hour of victory over Garrick or Percy 
 or Robertson ; but he took very good care that he ran no 
 such risks in respect of Goldsmith ; he showed Johnson 
 thoroughly appreciative of all matters in this connection of 
 which the world was appreciative ; it was only on such points 
 as the world knew nothing of that he recorded Johnson's 
 depreciation of his " honest Dr. Goldsmith." 
 
 It cannot be said that Boswell singled out Goldsmith for 
 treatment in the exercise of his role as advocatus diaboli. 
 Garrick, Mrs. Montague, Dr. Percy, and Mrs. Thrale were 
 also made his victims. If Goldsmith only had been 
 
INTRODUCTION 31 
 
 singled out for this treatment there might be some diiE- 
 culty in proving that Boswell was guilty of adopting the 
 course which we have attributed to him. But one has 
 only to read with some attention any part of his work to 
 become aware of the fact that he was an adept in the 
 art of making Johnson say something that he wished him 
 to say to the detriment of a man or woman to whom he 
 himself owed a grudge. His conscience would not permit 
 him to make any straightforward misstatement, if we may 
 be allowed to use the phrase, about a person, in the name of 
 Johnson ; and so we believe that Johnson did actually say all 
 that he attributed to him ; but it will, we are sure, be perfectly 
 plain to any one who reads his Life critically and not casually 
 that, while the voice was the voice of Johnson, the sentiment 
 was the sentiment of Boswell. Boswell jotted down only 
 such parts of his conversation as suited his own purpose, 
 which was to record Johnson's opinion to the detriment of 
 the person who was presumably the subject of their conversa- 
 tion. His conscience was very generous on the subject of 
 omission, though scrupulous (with lapses) in dealing with 
 actualities. That was due to his early training. 
 
 We have already given a characteristic example of his 
 methods in connection with the case of Baretti ; and before 
 dismissing the subject, we may give another in which Garrick 
 was the victim. Boswell hated Garrick, the reason probably 
 being that that supreme farceur in private availed himself of 
 innumerable opportunities of imitating Boswell's imitation 
 of Johnson — he could do it when Boswell was standing by and 
 only dimly aware, by the laughter of the people about him, 
 that anything particular was going on. Possibly to the day 
 of his death he never knew exactly why his friends were 
 convulsed when Garrick and he were perhaps engaged in 
 what he believed to be a serious conversation ; but in the course 
 of time he had a vague feeling that he was being made a fool 
 of. He had his revenge. His turn came, and he paid off his 
 old scores with interest. He was constantly forcing Garrick 
 as a topic upon Johnson, and the result is that the idea that 
 Johnson detested Garrick and failed to appreciate him as an 
 actor is pretty firmly established. 
 
 " I complained," Boswell says, " that he had not mentioned 
 
32 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 Garrick in his preface to Shakespeare, and asked him if he did 
 not admire him." (He asked him this after he and Garricik 
 and Johnson had been together almost daily for years ! As if 
 he had never had an opportunity before of learning what 
 Johnson thought of Garrick, whose schoolmaster he had been.) 
 " Yes, as ' a poor player who frets and struts his hour upon 
 the stage,' as a shadow," Johnson replied — only we are sure that 
 he quoted Shakespeare correctly, for the mixing up of the words 
 is undoubtedly Boswell's. " But has he not brought Shakes- 
 peare into notice ? " Mr. Boswell reasoned with him ; as if 
 he did not know long ago just what Johnson thought on this 
 particular point. " Sir, to allow that would be to lampoon 
 the age," cried Johnson ; adding gratuitously, " Many of 
 Shakespeare's plays are the worse for being acted ; Macbeth, 
 for instance." " What, sir," said the amazed Boswell, 
 affecting that this theory had been sprung upon him. " What, 
 sir, is nothing gained by decoration and acting ? Indeed, I 
 do wish that you had mentioned Garrick." " My dear sir, 
 had I mentioned him I must have mentioned many more ; 
 Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Cibber — nay, and Mr. Gibber, too ; 
 he too altered Shakespeare," Johnson replied, and Boswell 
 had achieved his aim. He had got Johnson to say enough 
 for him to quote, making the world aware of the fact that 
 while he, BosweU, was liberal enough to think very highly of 
 Garrick, his friend Dr. Johnson, whose opinion was regarded 
 as extremely valuable, would not allow that Garrick was 
 anything more than Mrs. Pritchard, a very clever actress, 
 or Mrs. Cibber, a very beautiful one, or Mr. Cibber, who, in 
 addition to being poet laureate, was made the second hero of 
 Pope's Dunciad. 
 
 It is unnecessary to give further instances of Boswell's 
 scheme of retaliation. It is enough for us to get an inkling 
 of his habitual resort to the tactics for which he was so 
 thoroughly denounced by Walpole, to induce us to be cautious 
 in reading his Life of Johnson, and to prevent our accepting 
 without reserve, as so many people have done and are still 
 doing, the criticisms of Goldsmith which are chronicled on 
 the authority of Johnson. 
 
 Respecting those personal traits of Goldsmith which made 
 
INTRODUCTION 33 
 
 him seem a puzzle to a number of the Englishmen who came 
 in contact with him, and to a greater number of North 
 Britons, but which would be quite easily understood in 
 Ireland, a good deal remains to be said ; and it is to be hoped 
 that the attempt which we will make later on to reconcile 
 those forms of humour which he exercised so freely, with 
 the varying accounts that were given of him by some of his 
 contemporaries, will be thought worthy of consideration. 
 But as it is from Boswell that so many casual students 
 derive the foundation of their knowledge of Goldsmith, we 
 have thought it advisable before entering into an incidental 
 account of his life, in the course of which we shall have to refer 
 to this point upon almost every page, to give as fully as possible 
 our reasons for rejecting, without any reserve, most of the 
 statements respecting him which appear in Boswell's Life 
 of Johnson, but which do not in our judgment seem capable 
 of being reconciled with the facts of his career, the nature 
 of his work, or his character as a man. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE IRELAND OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 1728-1735 
 
 The exact place of birth of Oliver Goldsmith is as indefinite 
 as the exact place of his burial. In the inscription on the 
 memorial tablet in Westminster Abbey, written by Dr. 
 Johnson, Pallas in the County Longford is given as his 
 birthplace ; but in the Registry of Trinity College Dublin, 
 " Olivarius Goldsmith, Filius Caroli, Clerici," is vaguely 
 entered as " natus in comitatu Westmeath." The year after 
 his death, the Reverend Thomas Campbell, in his Historical 
 Survey of the South of Ireland, stated that Roscommon had the 
 honour of being the poet's birthplace ; and this means that 
 he accepted the story current in the neighbourhood, that his 
 mother had been staying at the rectory of her father, the 
 Reverend Oliver Jones, in the small town of Elphin in this 
 county, when her son was born, and not at her husband's 
 dilapidated house at Pallasmore, in Longford. Although 
 Dr. Johnson, with Westminster Abbey at his back, may not 
 be lightly regarded as an opponent, we think that the claims 
 of Elphin to the contested honour are stronger than those 
 of Pallas. 
 
 The date of the birth which appears upon the tablet in 
 Westminster Abbey is November 29, 1731. This is certainly 
 an error. The leaf of the Goldsmith Family Bible, examined 
 by Prior, who wrote the first complete biography of the poet, 
 gave November 10, 1728, as the date of his birth. So far as 
 the year is concerned, this is corroborated by the Registry 
 of Trinity College Dublin. Oliver Goldsmith's father, the 
 Reverend Charles Goldsmith, was curate-in-charge of Pallas- 
 more, a hamlet on a ford of the River Inny. .There was also 
 a Pallasbeg — the affixes more and beg correspond in the Irish 
 
 34 
 
THE IRELAND OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 35 
 
 language to the magna and farva which still qualify some 
 villages in England — ^but Pallas the little had only the signi- 
 ficance of a small townland, consequently there was rarely 
 need to allude in fuU to Pallas the great. 
 
 The Goldsmiths had for several generations been con- 
 nected with this particular neighbourhood. They were not, 
 of course, Irish ; but it is not known to which of the " settle- 
 ments " that had so unsettling an influence on the country 
 they belonged. They may have come from England in the 
 train of some of those Elizabethan adventurers who were 
 granted the confiscated estates of the great chief Desmond, 
 or even earlier still. Prior believed that he had traced the 
 family back to one John Goldsmith, who in 1541 occupied 
 the office of " searcher " at the important seaport of Galway. 
 However this may be, there is abundance of evidence to show 
 that for some generations there were representatives of the 
 family in the County Roscommon, and that several of them 
 were connected with the Church. 
 
 As curate-in-charge of Pallas in the Parish of Forgney, 
 Charles Goldsmith had the doubtful privilege of occupy- 
 ing one of the most wretched of Irish parsonages and 
 of cultivating (in the Irish fashion) one of the most 
 wretched of glebes. It is diificult to believe that there 
 had at any time been need for a Protestant clergyman 
 at the place ; but it is not unlikely that at some period 
 the existence of a church had constituted a shadowy excuse 
 for providing a trifling addition to the income of a Protestant 
 pluralist, and it remained to crumble away even from its 
 original insignificance. Well into the latter half of the nine- 
 teenth century such dilapidated excuses for the drawing of 
 stipends were to be found in many parts of the island, and a 
 clergyman discharging the duty of " reading himself in," as 
 the ceremony was termed, surrounded by roofless walls, to a 
 congregation composed of the parish clerk and a donkey, the 
 former making the responses, and the latter browsing on 
 thistles, was not unknown. 
 
 The emoluments attached to the curacy of Pallas amounted, 
 it has been stated, to forty pounds a year exactly ; but per- 
 haps the calculation upon which these figures were based 
 was metrical rather than arithmetical : they were probably 
 
36 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 suggested by the sum named in a poem, the charm of which 
 is certainly not dependent upon the accuracy of its statistics. 
 The parson in The Deserted Village was said to be, as every 
 one knows. 
 
 Passing rich with forty poundj a year. 
 
 Certainly a more unpromising soil for the root of a phrase 
 that has served the purposes of oratory and literature almost 
 daily for nearly a hundred and fifty years, than that of PaUas 
 can scarcely be imagined. There are other features of Ireland 
 besides the Lakes of KUlarney. The grandeur of the scenery 
 ,of the coast washed by the Atlantic has its contrast among the 
 thousands of acres of bog in the middle of the island. Bleak- 
 ness and damp desolation confront one in every direction 
 that one may look in some of those parts, where, through the 
 negligence of ages and the absence of any scheme of artificial 
 drainage, the water of the many streams flowing into the 
 great Shannon or one of its lakes, spreads over miles of the flat 
 country after the winter rains, which are constant, and after 
 the summer deluges, which are daily. The depressing effect 
 of such scenery and such a climate can easily be pictured. 
 Squalor must prevail among the inhabitants of these regions, 
 for the natural conditions of their life leave them, as they 
 themselves say, with no heart for anything. 
 
 In the centre of this area of depression the Reverend 
 Charles Goldsmith, who, through his son Oliver, became the 
 best known clergyman in Ireland, lived for thirteen years. He 
 does not seem to have possessed any greater claim to distinc- 
 tion than does the faithful priest who labours within his parish 
 and makes the temporal as weU as the eternal concerns of 
 his flock his own. That he was able to live for so long at Pallas 
 indicates his possession of humility, and of no greater ambition 
 than extended five miles from his own parish into that known 
 as Kilkenny West, where, at the village of Lissoy, the church 
 to which he was attached was situated. After fifteen or 
 sixteen years he probably felt that, on being appointed its 
 rector, the world could have no higher prize in store for 
 him ; and he settled down to become pointed to by all the 
 world as the best type that ever lived of the faithful pastor. 
 
 He had not, however, waited for his promotion to get 
 
THE IRELAND OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 37 
 
 married. The wife whom he took to share his dilapidated 
 farmhouse was the daughter of a clergyman named Oliver 
 Jones who kept the diocesan school at Elphin which he had 
 attended. Her uncle was the rector of Kilkenny West, and 
 this fact doubtless had something to do with Charles 
 Goldsmith's succession to the living. From May 171 8 until 
 the autumn of 1730 he remained at Pallas, and in spite of the 
 burden of four children, his son Oliver — given out of com- 
 pliment to the Reverend Mr. Jones, the name most hated by 
 the Irish — being the youngest, he does not seem to have run 
 into debt. In 1730 he crossed the borderline of the Counties 
 Longford and Westmeath and settled at Lissoy in the com- 
 parative affluence of two hundred pounds a year. Here three 
 other children were born. The change from Pallas was a dis- 
 tinct improvement in many respects, apart from any monetary 
 consideration. The village of Lissoy, though only a few miles 
 away from Pallas, had some elements of picturesqueness about 
 it, and its immediate surroundings were less monotonous than 
 the dreary environment of the other village. It still possesses 
 a few of the features which are touched upon in the beautiful 
 description of Auburn ; and this distinction it shares with 
 probably some hundreds of country places both in England 
 and Ireland. To attempt to identify the village described by 
 any poet who lived before Wordsworth would be as hazardous 
 a venture as to identify Windsor Forest from Pope's poem, 
 if he had not provided us with a clue on the title-page. Many 
 of the lines of Ihe Deserted Village were undoubtedly suggested 
 by Goldsmith's recollections of Lissoy, and possibly some 
 complaint made about the depredations of a local landlord, 
 in a letter which he received from his brother, suggested the 
 humble tragedy of the poem, but it would be quite possible 
 for a hundred villages in England to substantiate their claim 
 to be the original of Auburn, were the question to be decided 
 solely because of their answering to the details of identification 
 supplied by the author. A good many, too, could produce 
 their nightingale, and we all know that in that case Lissoy 
 would be early disqualified for competing for the coveted 
 position. But for that matter, could any one have seen the 
 Irish village as it actually existed when Goldsmith lived in his 
 father's rectory, assuredly it never would have entered any 
 
38 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 one's head that Goldsmith had it in his mind when he described 
 the " loveliest village of the plain." Hogarth and Teniers 
 were able to make pictures out of the actualities of village 
 squalor ; but the sensitive Watteau and Fragonard would 
 have shrunk from so uncongenial a task. Goldsmith had no 
 idea of reproducing the unsavoury incidents of village life in 
 Ireland in the eighteenth century when he wrote The Deserted 
 Village ; but though it may be uiitrue to Lissoy in many of its 
 details, it is still true to nature in its spirit, ^its sentiment, 
 and above all, its characterisation. 
 
 Oliver Goldsmith lived at this place for several years ; 
 more than half his lifetime was spent in Ireland ; and yet it 
 seems to have been thought remarkable by a good many people 
 that he should possess so many of the characteristics of the 
 Irish, and little emphasis has been laid by his biographers upon 
 the fact that it was during these years in Ireland that his 
 character was formed — that he acquired those traits which, 
 engrafted upon such a nature as he inherited, caused him to be 
 the most unfortunate as well as the best loved of men. The 
 Ireland in which he was born was not so strangely different 
 from the Ireland of to-day — that is, in the district where his 
 early years were passed. For some hundreds of years before 
 his birth the island was either in the throes of a struggle or 
 in the throes of recovering from the effects of a struggle. 
 Sometimes the conflict was between rival factions of the Irish 
 — a proceeding which was made the excuse for English inter- 
 vention upon more than one momentous occasion — but more 
 frequently it was between the original race and the invading 
 power. 
 
 It is as difficult for people nowadays to form a picture of 
 the condition of Ireland previous to the conquest by England 
 as it is for them to appreciate the glories of the early ItaHan 
 republics from a casual visit to the chief cities to-day ; and, 
 curiously enough, it is among the archives of these places of 
 splendid decay rather than those of England that one must 
 search for confirmation of the vague traditions of the place 
 Ireland occupied in the enterprises of civilisation. English 
 historians have been long in crediting the stories of her brilliant 
 past, but that was only because they failed to look in the 
 right direction for such records as Would have enabled them 
 
THE IRELAND OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 39 
 
 to correct some of their misstatements. It is now beyond 
 the region of surmise that up to the fourteenth century the 
 trade of Ireland with foreign countries was very great. Her 
 splendid harbours were crowded with ships, and her products 
 were exchanged for those of France, Spain, Italy, and the 
 Netherlands. In several of the chief towns, especially the 
 seaports, abundant traces remain of the advanced civilisation 
 of tlie inhabitants and of their connection with European 
 culture. It could scarcely have been otherwise. The island 
 had a language and a literature of its own, as well as a definite 
 school of art, a school of music, and a school of poetry. Thus 
 it occupied a place of distinction in the estimation of other 
 centres of high culture. 
 
 It has never, we think, been made quite plain that it was 
 the wealth of Ireland that first attracted the attention of 
 England. It was regarded in early Tudor times, when the 
 spirit of adventure was rife, as a sort of El Dorado, only one 
 that was within easy reach of English ships. The spirit of 
 adventure was the spirit of plunder, and there never was a time 
 when robbery outside the boundary of one's own country 
 was so universally regarded as praiseworthy. Spain had been 
 plundering in America for more than a hundred years, and 
 England had organised expeditions for the plundering of the 
 plunderers. Unless one has been made aware of the wealth 
 of Ireland one is quite incapable of understanding why 
 England should have taken so much trouble to conquer the 
 island, and to keep the people in a condition of subjection. 
 If Ireland had been a poor country, or if her industry and 
 enterprise had not been regarded as a serious menace to 
 English trade, it is certain that England would not have taken 
 the enormous trouble she did to get a footing on the island 
 and to maintain that foothold. Unfortunately, however, her 
 rulers thought that the only sure foothold that could be found 
 was on the necks of the people, and the result was, as is well 
 known, deplorable. If both nations had recognised the fact 
 that a strong alliance on terms of perfect equality would be 
 of mutual advantage, stimulating industry and commerce 
 on both sides of the channel, the result would have been to 
 make that United Kingdom without a rival in importance in 
 the world. Unhappily, however, there seemed to be no 
 
40 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 desire on either side to accept the possibility of the existence 
 of any other relationship between them than that of invaders 
 and invaded. 
 
 The story of the years that intervened between the earliest 
 attempts made to subjugate the Irish and the beginning of 
 the nineteenth century is the most wretched that was ever 
 written by the swords of an invader with the heart-blood of 
 the invaded. Massacres were followed by retaliating slaughters 
 of men, women, and children, and the best families of the 
 original Irish were expatriated, finding in France, Spain and 
 America a welcome, and living to take part with them in the 
 old fight against England. Those who remained in Ireland 
 were subjected to such acts of injustice as would be incredible 
 were they not fully authenticated by reference to the statute 
 books of many reigns. 
 
 The incidents of their oppression after a time came to be 
 accepted by the people as the natural order of things ; but the 
 taking of such a view of matters marks their degeneracy. The 
 Ireland of Goldsmith's early years contained a native population 
 who were forbidden by law to receive even a rudimentary 
 education ; and scattered in groups among them, were the 
 descendants of the English who had been sent to drive out 
 the native-born people, and who as Protestants were allowed 
 certain privileges, that of education being chief. But when 
 a ship is sinking it sinks with the people of the quarterdeck 
 as well as with those of the forecastle. The privilege of taking 
 their meals in the cuddy is a precious one, but it does not 
 prevent the privileged ones from being submerged. The 
 wretched state of things in the country was participated in 
 by the Protestant groups as well as by the Roman Catholic 
 population ; and in many parts of the island south of a small 
 area in Ulster, where the effects of the struggle of 1688 were 
 to raise up a barbed barrier between the two races, very 
 little real animosity existed. The struggle to make some 
 sort of a living was common to both parties, and the same 
 hand-to-mouth existence was the only one possible to 
 either. As it was impossible to save anything, thriftlessness 
 became a habit, and as a man did not know the hour when 
 he might stand in sore need of relief, he was accustomed to 
 give freely when h« found a penny in his pocket. The traditional 
 
THE IRELAND OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 41 
 
 hospitality and generosity of the native Irish were acquired 
 by the English settlers and practised as freely; and, no one 
 having any experience of the workings of justice, it became 
 the habit of all to be generous before being just. Life under 
 common conditions developed common traits ; and thus it 
 was that, as the followers of Strongbow became proverbially 
 more Irish than the Irish themselves, so the later settlers 
 became undistinguishable from the native born : their 
 English virtues of prudence and diligence had become atrophied 
 through disuse ; they knew that the ship was sinking, and they 
 jettisoned their social virtues to lighten her for a while. 
 They were only passengers, but why should they not join hands 
 with the thoughtless, merry, original ship's company on deck 
 so long as their heads kept above water ? 
 
 This was the condition of things in the isolated regions of 
 the interior of Ireland in Goldsmith's early years. There was 
 no distinctive trait to mark the Joneses, the Greens, or the 
 Goldsmiths from the O'Farrells of O'Farrell's country, as 
 the northern part of Meath was called, or the ferocious 
 O'Flahertys of O'Flaherty's country in the west, or the 
 O'Reillys of O'Reilly's country to the east. They all had a 
 common interest in the land, and that was to get through life as 
 easily as possible, and to get as much fun out of it as they could. 
 The few resident landowners in that part of the country, or 
 indeed in almost any other part, were not of much account. 
 Why should these gentlemen of spirit isolate themselves 
 among the bogs when they could hire agents to squeeze the 
 rents out of their tenants to be squandered in the lively 
 society to be found in Dublin ? And so the priests, whose 
 existence was contrary to law, celebrated the Mass by open 
 stealth, so to speak, and looked after the morals of their flocks, 
 living on excellent terms with the Protestant parsons, and 
 giving offence to none. 
 
 These priests, being withheld from education in an island 
 where the towns were named from the colleges round which 
 they were built, and where in the early days the very peasants, 
 men and women, could converse in Latin, went to qualify for 
 their office at some of the foreign seminaries. It was from 
 one of them that Oliver Goldsmith became a linguist. He 
 spoke French fluently, and, perhaps, Italian as well. 
 
42 miE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 Chief of all the virtues which the priests endeavoured to 
 inculcate was virtue. The lapses from the straight path 
 were rare on the part of their flock. The means which they 
 employed for excluding the evil tended to the maintenance of 
 virtue and thriftlessness. The priests were then, as they 
 have remained ever since, the great matchmakers in their 
 own communities ; they were practically the sole instigators 
 and arbiters of the matrimonial ventures of their people ; and 
 they took care that the boys and girls under their guidance 
 ran no risk except that of starvation. Marriages between 
 boys of seventeen years and girls of sixteen kept them living in 
 a condition of virtuous squalor in all parts of the land. They 
 increased with that celerity which has been characteristic of 
 an oppressed race since the days of Israel in Egypt. Rarely 
 had either of the parties to the contract a voice in the trans- 
 action until it was ready to be carried out. The priest looked 
 out for a likely girl for a likely lad, and then approached the 
 parents, not with a suggestion but with the authority of the 
 Church issuing a mandate, and rarely were the consequences 
 of disobedience faced by either of the families. It may be 
 said that this absence of all the romance of love-making 
 scarcely bears out what has been written about the Irish as 
 a romantic race ; but a little consideration of the matter 
 must show that the element of romance entered very largely 
 into these matrimonial arrangements, only it was the romance 
 of the gambler in place of the romance of the lover. Seldom, 
 however, did the judgment of the matchmaker show itself at 
 fault ; but the racial consequences of obedience were direful. 
 The population increased with such extraordinary rapidity 
 during the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth 
 century, that nature's most desperate remedy for over-popula- 
 tion overwhelmed the land, and within a few months famine 
 had neutralised the growth of a hundred years ; and not only 
 so, it went much further, and put in motion the machinery 
 for such a dispersal of the surplus as has rarely been recorded 
 in the history of any people, a dispersal which showed few signs 
 of decrease up to the year 1909. 
 
 Such was the Ireland of Oliver Goldsmith's youth, and of 
 such an Ireland he was the natural product. It was his life 
 under the conditions of living which prevailed at Lissoy that 
 
1HE IRELAND OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 43 
 
 influenced his career. His outlook did not differ to any 
 extent from that of the people about him. An implicit trust 
 in Providence makes the most improvident of people ; but when 
 a man occupies the position of a local providence, his condition 
 becomes hopeless, owing to the onerous character of the 
 obligations imposed upon him hy the role. There can be 
 little doubt that this was the part which his father was 
 encouraged to play ; and he played it to the entire satisfaction 
 of the neighbourhood. That was very well so far as it went ; 
 but such a position as he occupied should only be a life one ; 
 an attempt to establish a dynasty on such a basis is certain to 
 end in disaster. The father of the Goldsmiths believed in 
 the hereditary principle in this connection ; he taught his 
 children the unworldly doctrine that it is more blessed to 
 give than to receive, and the result was to unfit them for 
 worldly success. One of the most prominent characteristics 
 of the world is worldliness, but Charles Goldsmith led his 
 children to believe exactly the opposite; and the result 
 was that one of them lived miserably as a genius and another 
 starved as a carpenter. There was not a member of the 
 family that did not " go under." The worldliness of the 
 world was too much for them, seeing that they had been 
 taught from their infancy that unworldliness is the most 
 important of virtues. The others were all probably as truly 
 loved within their circle, which was bounded by the tiny 
 town of Elphin in the north and the obscure village of 
 Ballymahon in the south, as Oliver Goldsmith was by his 
 circle, which even in his own day was bounded only by the 
 circumference of the globe ; but all became equally sub- 
 merged by the stress and strain of life in a world that was 
 made for the worldly. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 SCHOOLING 
 
 1735-1744 
 
 Oliver Goldsmith passed his boyhood in his father's parish, 
 and unconsciously qualified himself for the part which he 
 afterwards played in the world. Superstition is only another 
 name for imagination, and their superstitions and traditions 
 were aU that was left to the community in which he lived. 
 The legends attached to even the most commonplace localities 
 in Ireland are innumerable. The ghosts, the fairies, the 
 leprechauns, and quite a large family of local freaks of the 
 same unsubstantial nature were ever present with the 
 people, and the tales of their appearances to certain 
 favoured — or unfavoured — persons and the consequences, 
 disastrous or lucky, were circulated nightly when the cabins 
 were illuminated only by a " sod " of turf that glowed on the 
 hearth. The supernatural has always played a part in the 
 daily life of the remote communities in Ireland to a much 
 greater extent than it ever has in England ; and the appre- 
 ciation of this element is the beginning of all poetry. 
 
 And then there were the traditional dances of the country, 
 brisker and more complicated in the variety of their steps than 
 any in the world — the Irish jigs, with subtle suggestions of 
 challenge and surrender, in which the music is made by the 
 feet, note by note, and carried on from measure to measure. 
 Dancing contests took place in the open air, on a floor 
 improvised by removing a wooden door from its hinges — if any 
 door in the village retained its hinges — and laying it flat on 
 the green sward — very green in some parts of Ireland, and 
 usually sodden. The music was supplied by the travelling 
 fiddler and perhaps by a local player on the bagpipes, that 
 softly plaintive Irish instrument whose delicate notes bore 
 
 44 
 
SCHOOLING 45 
 
 no resemblance to the loud raucous sounds produced by the 
 Highland pipes. 
 
 And the old melodies of the country, of which only a few 
 hundred survive to make us aware of the fact that at one 
 time Ireland was from north to south a land of minstrelsy, 
 must have been familiar to Goldsmith from his childhood, 
 and familiarity with them doubtless contributed to the culture 
 of that perfect musical sensitiveness which he possessed in a 
 larger measure than any poet of his century. 
 
 All the conditions under which he* lived at Lissoy went 
 to the making of Goldsmith the poet, as well as of Goldsmith 
 the man. He was extremely sensitive at every period of his 
 life. His mind and his imagination were receptive to an 
 extraordinary degree. Though no doubt the Protestantism 
 of his family renounced the superstitions of the native Irish, 
 yet they were only renounced, not denounced by the kindly 
 clergyman, and the atmosphere was saturated with them. 
 Oliver Goldsmith must have drunk deep of them and of the 
 romances told to him of the river and the lake and the sedge 
 and the bog and the glen — every place had its story-legend, 
 and to a receptive boy a legend is more real than the news of 
 yesterday. He learned to sing, and he learned to play the 
 flute. There can scarcely be a doubt that he became moder- 
 ately proficient both in singing and playing. A foolish person, 
 writing about him after his death, told a story of a piece of 
 musical notation being put in his hands with view to dis- 
 cover whether or not he could read it ; and the result was, 
 we are told, that he pretended to do so, but held the notes 
 upside down. As if a student like Goldsmith would remain in 
 ignorance of rudiments that could be mastered in an hour ! 
 The man might as well have talked of Goldsmith holding a 
 book upside down. The truth was that he could sing, dance, 
 and play the flute, and that he acquired a knowledge of these 
 arts as he acquired his coUoquial knowledge of French and 
 Italian, from professors (of a sort) in his own neighbourhood. 
 Years afterwards he was able to present to Boswell the music of 
 the Irish melody to which he had put words, to be sung by 
 the representative of Miss Hardcastle. It was omitted on 
 account of Mrs. Bulkley not being a vocalist. 
 
 But in these early years he was also getting a poet's 
 
46 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 training in the open-air life which he must have led. His 
 love for natural scenery never forsook him. When he had 
 arduous work to do he ever hastened to the country to do it 
 — to Islington or to his retreat on the Edgware Road. The 
 Vicar of Wakefield, She Stoop to Conquer, the histories, and 
 Animated Nature were all written in the midst of fields. 
 With Lissoy as a centre he must have taken many excursions. 
 He found abundance of matter to interest him in all 
 directions. The lake, Lough Ree, which was only a few 
 miles from his home, is seventeen miles long and at places 
 seven broad. It lies in the vaUey of the great Shannon, 
 surrounded by low hiUs, and studded with islands of the 
 brightest emerald at its northern shallows. Bay after bay 
 breaks up the low coastline on its western shore, and here 
 and there a long narrow arm reaches out from the undulations 
 of the green shore to the undulations of the grey waters. 
 On one of them stands the venerable ruin of St. John's Castle 
 and a short way oflF, on shelving sand, are the remains of 
 St. John's church, its ivy-clad walls standing up from a 
 valley of mighty weeds. The lake is swarming with fish, 
 for its waters are on the direct route of the salmon that may 
 be seen flashing over the rapids higher up on the river, on 
 their way to the spawning beds, and the sedges along the 
 shallows on both banks and around the many islands are the 
 haunts of thousands of wildfowl. The stUlness of the summer 
 night as one lies awake in a boat midway between the shores, 
 is broken at intervals by the plaintive triple whistle of the 
 curlew, the hoarse note of the great mallard, flying so close 
 to the surface that the flip of the smitten water is heard 
 rippUng away into the distance ; and then the weird barking 
 of a flock of wild geese moving athwart the bands of moonlight. 
 After a space of silence one hears the splash of a fish — a second 
 and a third, and after another interval the air is fuU of the 
 winnowing of the wings of some huge bird flying across the 
 flat lake, the mass of its shape but dimly seen as it sails 
 slowly overhead. 
 
 Only a few hours' sail past the picturesque town of Athlone, 
 where the lake narrows into the river, the splendid ruin of 
 Clon-mac-nois — the college of the sons of the nobles — stands 
 on a height on one bank of the Shannon, and further south 
 

 ^^.g^^t^.^llt3IfflL 
 
 Till'; SiiANN'TN A-r AniijiXF 
 
 /■;-,<„, n ph,'t.:;-ra/'ll I'V II'. .V:,w;/sA 
 
SCHOOLING 47 
 
 still is Clonfert Abbey, not yet a ruin, an ancient church 
 with a carved doorway of great beauty. These places must 
 have formed the objective of many of Oliver Goldsmith's 
 excursions when he was living at Lissoy. The wide country 
 stretching for miles away from the lake and the river, with 
 only a group of thatched cottages here and there, was full 
 of wild life, which he had many opportunities of studying, 
 not in academic fashion, but as boys and savages study it ; 
 and this is pretty much the way in which the wild things 
 study men — to get the better of them in the contest for life 
 that is being perpetually waged. Goldsmith has given us 
 many instances of the closeness and the accuracy of his 
 observation of Nature, and it was probably his recollection of 
 his attainments in this direction during his early life that 
 enabled him to make the success that he did of his Natural 
 History. The work was crowded with mistakes — so has every 
 Natural History been, and so has every medical book been, 
 though each may seem to be the last word that can be said on 
 the subject. Human knowledge of science is progressive, 
 and one generation laughs at the ignorance of another. Buff on 
 was a great naturalist and yet he stated that cows shed their 
 horns every second year. White of Selborne was a great 
 naturalist and yet he affirmed that swallows remain embedded 
 in the mud at the bottom of ponds during the winter. 
 Goldsmith was not a great naturalist, but he was quite abreast of 
 his time in knowledge of the subject acquired from books, 
 and in an intimate observation of wild life in various forms 
 during his years spent in the heart of a wild country at the 
 most receptive period of his youth. Of course Dr. Johnson 
 was prepared to say definitely — he had spent the most of his 
 time in definitions — ^what were Goldsmith's qualifications 
 for writing on Animated Nature. " Sir," Boswell reports him 
 saying, " he will make it as interesting as a Persian tale, but he 
 knows nothing of his subject. If he knows a cow from a 
 horse, it is the most." 
 
 Dr. Johnson spoke with his accustomed arrogance and 
 with rather more than his accustomed ignorance of the character 
 of the people with whom he was in daily association. Gold- 
 smith proved himself fully qualified to deal with a subject 
 of enormous range just as it should be dealt with for popular 
 
48 T:HE life of OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 use ; and undoubtedly his Irish years spent in the open air 
 on the banks of Lough Ree and the Shannon, fowling and fishing 
 and bird-nesting and hunting as boys hunt, gave him confidence 
 in handling his subject, when he ventured away from Buffon 
 whom he made his guide. 
 
 The stories of this portion of his life which are given by 
 those distinguished biographers of Goldsmith whose research in 
 the matter of dates and details is as admirable as their judgment 
 on most questions bearing upon his history, are not remarkable. 
 When his father removed to his new parish and his income of 
 two hundred pounds a year — disqualifying himself by its accept- 
 ance for the " passing rich " standard — Oliver Goldsmith was 
 but two years old. The elder son, Henry, was eight. The old 
 woman named Elizabeth Delap, who had occupied in the 
 rectory menage a. position the nature of which will be under- 
 stood in Ireland rather better than in England, was a relation 
 who had probably taken a fancy to the children, and from 
 being a frequent visitor to the nursery had drifted into the 
 place of nursery governess, with most likely an occasional 
 excursion to the kitchen and thence to the laundry. A few 
 generations ago there was scarcely a house— certainly no 
 rectory — ^in the more inaccessible parts of Ireland that did not 
 include at least one dependent of this type, whose duties 
 Dr. Johnson himself would not have ventured to define. 
 This good woman was accustomed, after Goldsmith had 
 become famous and had been dead for years, to entertain her 
 visitors with anecdotes of the great man when a child. She 
 it was who had first put a book into the hands that had 
 afterwards written so many — a good many more we fancy than 
 Mrs. Delap had found time to read. Of course he was a stupid 
 child — according to this class of informant great men and 
 women are usually either precocious to an extraordinary 
 degree or stupid to the same extreme. It altogether depends 
 upon the informant ; the subject of the information has 
 nothing to do with the matter. It is greatly to be regretted 
 that there is no means for determining by certain birth-marks 
 when a child is destined to achieve greatness in after life, so 
 that the people around it may begin to make notes of its lispings 
 for future biographers. It is understood that some of the 
 Roman Emperors appeared in their cradles with a halo lambent 
 
SCHOOLING 49 
 
 over their pillows. Of course this was a sufficient indication 
 of future greatness to cause every one who was around them 
 to be on the alert to chronicle their earliest words and doings. 
 The only drawback to the acceptance of such a sign as definite 
 is the fact that every mother who sees her child — especially 
 her first child — flying asleep in its cradle, sees that very halo 
 surrounding the little head, and begins to chronicle its 
 precocities so urgently that her friends hasten to the other 
 side of the street when they see her coming. 
 
 We have all met this Mrs. Delap, who at the age of ninety 
 was still telling stories of Oliver Goldsmith's childhood, and 
 mixing them up, we may rest assured, with the stories of his 
 elder brother Henry, or his younger brothers Charley and 
 Maurice. In any case the good woman had nothing that was 
 worth the telling. She put a book into Oliver Goldsmith's 
 hand, that was all. It was when he was six that he was sent 
 to the cabin school of Thomas Byrne, a man who, having 
 retired from the army with the rank of quartermaster, possibly 
 thought himself fully qualified to act as schoolmaster. He 
 had taken part in Marlborough's campaigns and doubtless 
 made his boys respect him as an indispensable factor in the 
 achievement of such victories as he won with the respectful 
 co-operation of the great Duke ; but it would be going 
 too far to assume that Quartermaster Byrne was better 
 qualified to tell anything of the politics bearing upon the 
 Spanish campaign than was old Kaspar to explain " What 
 they killed each other for " in the Low Countries. It may, 
 however, be taken for granted that he had abandoned the 
 reprehensible practice attributed to " our army in Flanders " 
 by a non-commissioned officer named Trim who had been 
 through that profitless war ; otherwise the clergyman would 
 not have allowed his son to sit in front of his desk — if he 
 had a desk. He was wise enough not to allow the old man's 
 reputation as a raconteur to disqualify him as a teacher of the 
 rudiments to the boy who lived to make him as well known 
 as the Duke himself and much more highly respected. 
 
 The perfect picture of the schoolmaster in The Deserted 
 Village was undoubtedly inspired by the poet's recollections 
 of Thomas Byrne ; but equally certain is it that the school 
 was an English village school and not the cabin where Thomas 
 
so 7HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 Byrne " shouldered his crutch and showed how fields were 
 won." Goldsmith's sister, Mrs. Hodson, who contributed 
 some interesting chapters to Bishop Percy's Memoir of the 
 poet, attributed his vagrant tendencies to the influence of 
 Byrne. If she was right, her statement leaves us in the 
 condition of not quite knowing whether we should be grateful 
 to the man or blame him. If Goldsmith had never acquired 
 the deplorable habits of a vagrant the world would have been 
 the poorer by a poem which it could ill spare. 
 
 Writing about her brother when he was under the in- 
 fluence of Byrne, Catherine Hodson states with great emphasis 
 that the child showed such signs of genius as " quickly engaged 
 the notice of all the friends of the family, many of whom 
 were in the Church " — and, therefore, we suppose, fully 
 qualified to pronounce an opinion on what is admittedly a 
 very delicate question. However, as it may be taken for granted 
 that his uncle Contarine was one of the ecclesiastical syndicate 
 alluded to, her statement must be credited, for this gentleman 
 subsequently showed in the most practical way his belief 
 that the boy would turn out, if not a genius, at any rate a 
 credit to the family — not exactly the same thing. His father 
 was not so greatly impressed as the rest of the family by 
 observing the boy's fondness for books, and made up his mind 
 to apprentice him to a tradesman when he would be old enough. 
 He did not consider himself justified in spending money upon 
 the education of more than one son, and his eldest was meant 
 for the University of Dublin to qualify him for taking orders. 
 But it soon became plain that even the education for a 
 tradesman's apprentice was beyond the Byrne curriculum, so 
 the boy was removed to the day-school of the Reverend 
 Mr. Griffin, at Elphin, a home being provided for him in 
 the house of his uncle on his father's side, John Goldsmith 
 of Ballyoughter, a mile or two away. 
 
 From the family of this gentleman comes the anecdote 
 of his brilliancy at the age of nine. One evening he was 
 dancing a hornpipe at a children's party, for which the music 
 was supplied by another clever, but much older, boy, who, 
 noting how Oliver had been greatly disfigured by smallpox, 
 thought he saw his chance, and forthwith began to allude to 
 him as iEsop. For some time Oliver paid no attention to 
 
SCHOOLING 5 1 
 
 him — a hornpipe is a somewhat absorbing thing — but at last 
 he stopped suddenly, and pointing to the musician cried, 
 quite pat : 
 
 Our herald hath proclaimed this saying, 
 See ^sop dancing and his monkey playing. 
 
 It may at once be said that if Goldsmith really did make 
 the couplet, it represented a bitterness of satire of which he 
 was never afterwards guilty. He never attempted a satire 
 in verse until he wrote his Retaliation and then he proved 
 that, as he did everything else he attempted with his pen 
 better than any other man, so he did satire. Brilliancy of 
 wit without a point of malice, a sting without the poison of 
 a sting — this was Goldsmith's satire, and we do not know 
 where to look for its parallel in English literature. 
 
 Mrs. Hodson goes on to say that it was his smartness dis- 
 played in the couplet that caused his father to be persuaded into 
 an agreement to allow him to go to the University ; perhaps 
 his decision in this respect was influenced more powerfully by 
 the offer of the good uncle Contarine to contribute to the 
 expense than by the example of the boy's cleverness of 
 repartee which had been brought under his notice. 
 
 After some years he was taken from the Elphin academy, 
 where it is said he had suffered a good deal from the gibes 
 of his schoolfellows. He probably found that they were not 
 silenced by an intellectual effort such as had brought about the 
 discomfiture of the fiddler. The only repartee that a school 
 boy admits to be effective is the result of physical rather than 
 mental dexterity, and it may be taken for granted from some 
 incidents of the poet's maturity that he was fully qualified 
 to reply through the medium that appealed to his tormentors. 
 But the truth probably is that he did not suffer more by the 
 gibes of his schoolfellows at his scarred features than he would 
 have done if he had had red hair — abhorred by the Irish 
 — ^with instinctive memories of the Danes — as well as by the 
 English boy — or large ears or an infirmity of sight. These 
 schoolboy " sufferings " are never very poignant unless 
 the , boy is an ill-conditioned cub, which Oliver Goldsmith 
 never was. The boy is father to the man, and the ill- 
 conditioned boy usually grows into an ill-conditioned man ; 
 so it cannot be doubted that, even though there may have been 
 
52 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 an Elphin ring formed to tease him, he found his days at the 
 school to pass as pleasantly as was consistent with a conscious- 
 ness of habitual work. At the Elphin academy he laid the 
 foundation of that solid, if not profound, scholarship which 
 permitted of his taking a place among the scholars who became 
 his friends in after life. 
 
 When he was nearly twelve years of age, he was taken from 
 Elphin and sent to a school in the comparatively large and 
 important town of Athlone, only a few miles from his father's 
 house. It was kept by a clergyman named Campbell, who had 
 a great reputation — it may have extended as far as Mullingar 
 in one direction and Ballinasloe in another — as a Latin scholar. 
 With many opportunities of visiting Lissoy he probably 
 found Athlone a more congenial place than Elphin ; but Mr. 
 Campbell's health becoming impaired he was forced to give 
 up his school and his boys were dispersed. Oliver Goldsmith 
 was sent to another parson-teacher named Hughes, who lived 
 at Edgeworthstown in the County Longford, and who, it 
 would appear, was the most sympathetic and appreciative of 
 all his masters. It seems rather remarkable that with so 
 many clergymen giving up their spare time to teaching in 
 these places, the Reverend Charles Goldsmith never made the 
 attempt to undertake the education of his son Oliver at home. 
 If with his large family he found his resources of living so 
 straightened as to necessitate his accepting of contributions 
 from his relations in order to send Oliver to the University, 
 it might be thought that he would have been glad of the 
 chance of saving the school expenses by teaching his sons 
 himself. He was certainly fully qualified to do so ; but it 
 is quite likely that so practical a means of economising never 
 occurred to so unpractical a man. At any rate his younger 
 son remained for some time on the friendliest footing with the 
 Reverend Patrick Hughes at Edgeworthstown. 
 
 It was probably his consciousness of being on such excellent 
 terms with Mr. Hughes that gave him that idea of his own 
 importance which led to one of the happiest of the many 
 adventures of his life. His sister tells the story. Upon the 
 occasion of his leaving home for his last term at the school, some 
 friend had given him a guinea, and on his way to Edgeworths- 
 town, which was about twenty miles from his father's house, 
 
SCHOOLING 53 
 
 he had diverted himself the whole day by viewing the gentle- 
 men's seats on the road, until, at the fall of night, he found 
 himself in a small town named Ardagh. Here he inquired 
 for the best house in the place, meaning an inn, but his 
 bumptious simplicity being taken advantage of by a local 
 humourist, he was directed to the house of a private gentle- 
 man, where, calling for somebody to take his horse and 
 lead him to the stable, he alighted and was shown into the 
 parlour, being supposed to be a guest come to visit the 
 master, whom he found sitting by a good fire. This gentleman 
 immediately discovered Oliver's mistake, and being a man 
 of humour and also learning from him the name of his father, 
 who happened to be among his acquaintance, he encouraged 
 the deception. Oliver accordingly called about him, ordered a 
 good supper, and generously invited the master, his wife, and 
 daughters to partake of it ; treated them with a bottle or two of 
 wine, and when going to bed ordered a hot cake to be prepared 
 for his breakfast; nor was it till, at his departure, when he 
 called for the bill, that he found he had been hospitably 
 entertained in a private family. 
 
 A happier accident never happened. How it was made 
 the foundation for the best comedy of the century is a matter 
 of history. No one who has had any experience of how an 
 incident of such a type lives in the recollection of an Irish 
 household and an Irish village, can doubt that for years it 
 was a standing joke at Lissoy against Oliver. One can see the 
 solemn face of Mr. Byrne, with only the merest twinkle in 
 one of his eyes as he greets his old pupil at the next time 
 of their meeting, and inquires if he found the accommodation 
 good at the inns on the way to Edgeworthstown. We can hear 
 the voice of Mrs. Delap expressing her fear that he will think 
 the simple fare of the rectory commonplace when compared 
 with the luxurious suppers which he has been ordering in other 
 people's houses ; and we may be sure that for many a night 
 when he had gone upstairs to bed, a brother or a sister shouted 
 after him an inquiry if he wouldn't like a hot cake for breakfast. 
 The memory of such incidents dies hard in those districts of 
 Ireland. In some cases we have known, on a far less substantial 
 basis than that of Goldsmith's Mistakes of a Night, such 
 badinage as can only be found in Ireland has been continued 
 
54 ^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 for over forty years. Sometimes an elderly man will be 
 found bearing a nickname which he received as a youth by 
 reason of his connection with an incident that told against 
 him. 
 
 That Oliver Goldsmith should have remembered and 
 made use of an adventure that showed him in a most ridiculous 
 light was characteristic of the man and of his nationality. 
 It proves very clearly that he could never have been the ill- 
 conditioned person Boswell and others have tried to make 
 out that he was. But the possibility of a man's recalling 
 and working up a story founded upon his own ridiculous 
 blunder could only occur to the mind of a man who was 
 made genial by a sense of humour. Humour for humour's 
 sake has ever been the weakness of the Irish, and it was because 
 Oliver Goldsmith possessed a much stronger sense of all that 
 constitutes the elements of humour than did the people with 
 whom he associated during the last ten years of his life, that he 
 was so misunderstood by many of them. He was not the less 
 beloved on this account, but it is apparent that a good deal 
 of the affection bestowed upon him was of the nature of that 
 given to a child who is occasionally very silly, but with a good 
 heart. 
 
 The name of the wag who played Tony Lumpkin's trick 
 upon Goldsmith is said to have been Cornelius Kelly — beyond 
 a doubt he was never known within his own circle by any 
 other name than Corney Kelly, almost as good a name as Tony 
 Lumpkin. The gentleman who had the spirit to enter into 
 the humour of the situation was said to be a Mr. Featherstone, 
 and the accuracy of the whole story was vouched for by one 
 of his descendants, Sir Thomas Featherstone. 
 
 The next year Oliver Goldsmith went to the University 
 of Dublin, entering as a sizar on June ii, 1744, at the age 
 of sixteen. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY 
 1744— 1747 
 
 The City of Dublin during the middle of the eighteenth 
 century must have possessed many attractions in the eyes of 
 pleasure-seekers. The easy prodigality of the Irish gentry 
 found its vent in the capital, and the result was a season of 
 gaiety that lasted from the beginning of January to the end 
 of December. The rival hospitalities of the various distin- 
 guished residents were imitated with no abatement of spirit 
 by the tradesmen and shopkeepers ; and when the few 
 appeared in all the brilliancy of silks and satins, the many 
 appeared in all the glory that still clings to the " cast-offs," 
 by judicious pinnings where the original buttons and hooks 
 have been wrenched off. Dublin was ever the city whose 
 fashion was that of the cast-off garment, which in its original 
 condition had been splendid and unpaid for. In the 
 middle of the eighteenth century it had about it some- 
 thing of the character of Paris a hundred years later. It 
 had about it a good deal of the flash of the Second Empire, 
 as regards the many grades of society that it contained, 
 the aim of each being to get into the one a little higher and 
 to keep the one a little lower in its place. Hospitality was 
 lavish in every direction, and in all grades of society ; no 
 question of means or money being considered in connection 
 with the exercise of this traditional virtue of the Irish ; for 
 was not a contemptuous disregard for mercenary details — 
 except perhaps in respect of the collection of rack-rents — 
 also a tradition with the Irish gentry ? 
 
 The city was until 1760 one of the most poorly built 
 and dirtiest in Europe. The rivalry between the wealthy 
 in the building of mansibns, causing square after square 
 
 SS 
 
56 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 of noble stone-built houses to be laid out in the classical style 
 of architecture which was finding favour on the other side of 
 the channel, began about the beginning of the third quarter 
 of the century, when Italian workers in marble and stucco 
 were imported by the score to give the interior of perfectly 
 proportioned rooms the semblance of the apartments of the 
 most famous Roman villas. The ceilings, the doors, the stair- 
 case, the mantelpieces, and the floors were alike admirable. 
 Such forms of decoration as survived the ill-treatment of the 
 occupants when these mansions were turned into tenement 
 houses, with families of the lowest class of vagrants in every 
 room, made it to the advantage of dealers, in the last quarter 
 of the nineteenth century, to purchase and break up a whole 
 house in order to secure these memorials of past splendour. 
 Cipriani and Angelina Kauffman, as well as a number of 
 less accomplished artists, were brought to Dublin, and traces 
 of their work may still be seen in several interiors. The 
 furniture was in keeping with the mural decorations, and the 
 patronage of art in many other forms reached a point 
 that would have meant prosperity to trade had patronage 
 and payment meant the same thing. But the patronage 
 was that of the prodigal — less costly to the patron than to his 
 frotege. 
 
 This period of refinement (of a sort) may be said to 
 have begun with the Viceregency of that elegant roue, the 
 Earl of Chesterfield, who, when Johnson went patron-hunting 
 for his dictionary, kept him waiting in an ante-room and thus 
 was the means of obtaining for the world the finest specimen 
 extant of the complete letter-writer. Previous to Lord 
 Chesterfield's coming to Dublin Castle, society in the city 
 was permeated with that sort of gaiety which is the result of 
 constant drinking. Any form of entertainment that had not 
 an intimate association with the bottle was unknown. Party 
 feeling ran high, and that was an element which the fellowship 
 of one bottle allayed, but the indiscretion of a second inflamed : 
 with the third or fourth, per capita, came the brawl. The 
 gaiety of a brawl, with pistol shots and the flash of steel, might 
 be indulged in every night in every grade of society in Dublin. 
 That was what was called fun. There was no such thing 
 known as a banquet without bloodshed. The coarseness of 
 
A1 THE UNIFERSIir 57 
 
 the habits of the best society was astonishing to the English 
 visitors in the Viceregal entourage ; and this was possibly why 
 the moment appeared an opportune one for the publication 
 of a volume on etiquette, entitled Hints to Introduce Decorum 
 at City Feasts and Sunday Ordinaries in Dublin, and there 
 cannot be a doubt that the author's judgment was correct on 
 this point, and his volume did not appear too soon. Among 
 the hints which he considers advisable to oflFer for his readers is 
 not to be too eager for the first cut from any joint at a ban- 
 quet, and not to have a plate heaped with meat and vegetables. 
 Two pounds weight, roughly speaking, he suggests as reason- 
 able, but he adds, " to start with." He goes so far as to consider 
 it inadvisable " to drag the leg of a fowl through your teeth 
 in order to secure your property in it, and then lay it by to 
 pick at your leisure." He discountenances throwing rejected 
 " scraps of meat off your plate into the dish." Arthur Murphy 
 mentions that " the tables groaned with abundance, but there 
 was neither order nor good taste in the establishments." 
 Burgundy was usually drunk during dinner, which began as 
 early as two o'clock, and then whisky punch was freely indulged 
 in until long past midnight. 
 
 But undoubtedly the influence of Chesterfield upon all 
 classes was a refining one. He did much to allay at least the 
 quarrelsome features of politics and religion in the city, and 
 it was he who made elegance rather than profusion the fashion. 
 The scheme of building which induced such a rivalry between 
 the leading families, was begun during his last year at the 
 Castle, though it was not perfected until Lord Charlemont 
 showed what could be done by good taste combined with 
 knowledge ; and in quick succession there sprang into existence 
 a set of classical palaces equal to any that were to be found 
 in London. But long before the benign influence of Chester- 
 field came to beautify the city, the pleasure-loving people 
 had their courts, their assemblies, their routs, and their 
 gaming-rooms. They had a pretty fair conceit of themselves 
 as patrons of the drama, and they carried their zeal for its 
 welfare to such a length that every theatre-manager became 
 bankrupt, and the most capable of them all, Thomas Sheridan, 
 the father of another and later theatre-manager in London, 
 had his house wrecked by them. For a full century the English 
 
58 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 stage got from Dublin its greatest ornaments, and the Dublin 
 people discussed the theatre, fdted the artists of the theatre, 
 and in fact did everything for the theatre short of going to 
 the theatre. 
 
 Such was Dublin and such was its people when Oliver 
 Goldsmith entered at Trinity College, whose Provost, Dr. 
 Andrews, owed his position, not to his ripe scholarship, but 
 to his friendship for Margaret Woffington ; but as it was a 
 group of the students who had discovered this charming 
 actress when no more than a child and had got up a purse 
 to enable her to be educated, it is difficult to accept the 
 report which was current at the time, to the effect that she 
 bargained with him to receive the sum of five thousand 
 pounds as a reward for her services on behalf of higher 
 education in Ireland. 
 
 The impression produced upon the mind of an imaginative 
 boy, fresh from the dulness of a country viUage, on suddenly 
 finding himself in the centre of this new form of life, can 
 without difficulty be understood. The brilliance of the 
 scenes which took place before his eyes every hour of 
 the day in the centre of that city where everything was 
 showy, must never have been forgotten by him. The boy 
 who had never seen a vehicle more startling than a country 
 chaise with wheels broad enough to pass through the 
 quagmires of the Irish roads, must have gazed in amaze- 
 ment at the splendid equipages of the Peers and Members of 
 Parliament which passed through the noble entrances to their 
 chambers on the other side of the college gates. The gilded 
 coach of the Lord- Lieutenant with its six horses and outriders 
 in gorgeous liveries, with its cavalry escort in all the bravery 
 of helmet and sabre, driving down the broad thoroughfare 
 known as the College Green, straight for the college gates; 
 the guard turning out in front of the Houses of Parliament, 
 with the colours and the band to salute his Excellency as the 
 retinue flashed by ; the noble chariots painted in all colours, 
 and with panels carved and gilded in many devices, every 
 vehicle with four horses and postilions, and half a dozen 
 silken lackeys clinging in a double row on the footboard 
 behind ; the graceful chairs, the window of each framing the 
 wonderful face and the lower part of the head-dress of such a 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITT 59 
 
 lady as he had never seen even in the height of the season 
 at Athlone itself ; the groups on horse and on foot of those 
 who followed the followers of fashion, and so believed them- 
 selves to be of the same rank, on their way to the bridge 
 that led to the spacious Malt— Oliver Goldsmith must have 
 stood at the college gate, where it was said he was most 
 frequently to be found, lost in wonder at the moving scenes 
 and the glitter of a life the like of which he had never thought 
 to look upon. 
 
 The scenes of glitter and gaiety have dissolved into the 
 emptiness of the void ; the gorgeous creatures in velvet and 
 lace turned out to be nonentities ; the very name of the Lord- 
 Lieutenant makes no appeal to us nowadays. They were all 
 shadows, and like shadows they passed away. One only 
 in that scene remains to-day, a reality, an immortal — a 
 small, thick-set, plain-faced boy, clad in dingy garments 
 of country make, gazing out upon the flowing stream, 
 vivid and full of colour, which rolled past him, his heart 
 full of envy of the least of those nonentities that flaunted 
 a nobleman's cast-off coat of satin in his face. Oliver 
 Goldsmith, the only sombre speck upon the scene, is the 
 sole survivor to-day. 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that it was this impression of 
 the importance of fine clothes which he gained when standing 
 at the College gate, that afflicted him for so many years. He 
 had inherited from his father no ambition to shine in the 
 world, except perhaps in conversation ; but assuredly he made 
 up his mind that if he ever had money enough, he would 
 appear in as brilliant a coat as was worn by any of the gentle- 
 men's gentlemen who swaggered down the College Green. 
 It is pretty certain that his ambition in this direction was 
 amply achieved. There can hardly have been a Filby-cut 
 peach-bloom coat in all Dublin lackeydom. 
 
 He had not reached the University without the need for 
 a great eflFort to be made on his behalf by all the family. The 
 resources of the Lissoy rectory had just been subjected to a 
 rather severe strain. Henry Goldsmith had left college, 
 having obtained a scholarship of considerable value. He had 
 followed the example of the priest-ridden boys and girls in 
 his neighbourhood and married before he was twenty. He 
 
6o THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 had then become tutor to the son of a gentleman of property 
 at St. John's, a place on the banks of Lough Ree, and the 
 pupil, on becoming acquainted with the Goldsmith family, 
 fell in love with Catherine and induced her to marry him 
 privately. Of course the secret did not long remain one ; and 
 on its being discovered the more angry and more indignant 
 parent was not, as might have been supposed, Mr. Hodson, 
 the father of the boy, but Mr. Goldsmith, the father of the 
 girl. He had an impression that the honour of the family 
 was tarnished by this act on the part of his daughter and that 
 it could only be restored by his presenting her with a 
 marriage portion of four hundred pounds. Whether or not the 
 father of the young man had said some sharp words about the 
 boy's having been entrapped into a marriage with a penniless 
 girl, the fact remains that the elder Goldsmith's view of the 
 transaction was as absurd in its relation to the claims of his 
 daughter as it was unjust to the other members of his household. 
 It was, however, quite typical of the unpractical head of the 
 Goldsmith family. That the young man's father, Daniel 
 Hodson, should have accepted on behalf of the son a bond 
 for a sum which he could not but know entailed an enormous 
 sacrifice on the part of the poor parson, causes one to feel that 
 however humble the Goldsmith family were, the girl had 
 degraded herself by marrying the son of so despicable a person 
 as this Mr. Daniel Hodson of St. John's, Co. Roscommon. 
 
 That bond made all the difference in the world to the 
 future of Oliver Goldsmith, though not the smallest allusion 
 was ever made by him to this fact either in a letter to his 
 sister or in one to his brother. Of course it could hardly 
 be expected that a boy of fourteen or fifteen should have 
 the worldly wisdom to utter a protest against a means of 
 upholding the honour of the family at the expense of one 
 of its members, or to suggest that it would be much more 
 dishonourable to jeopardise the future of a son than to coun- 
 tenance the marriage of a dowerless daughter to a man whose 
 parents were wealthy. It possibly never occurred to the son, 
 who was to play the part of little Isaac in the sacrifice which 
 his father felt called upon to make, that he was being treated 
 inconsiderately in this business ; but even though we know 
 that his worldly wisdom at any time of his life was not greater 
 
AT THE UNIVERSHT 61 
 
 than that of an average boy of fifteen or sixteen who has 
 been brought up in England, not in America, still no one 
 would have blamed him if now and again, when he remembered 
 all that he had suffered by the transfer of the money from 
 the fund for his education to the pocket of a wealthy man 
 who got a good wife into the bargain, he had grumbled. 
 But no murmur ever came from Goldsmith ; he allowed 
 himself to be bound to the altar and no ram caught by the 
 horns in the thicket made a timely appearance on his behalf. 
 It may also be remarked that there is no record of his sister's 
 having said a word on the subject, or of this precious Hodson 
 family, who pocketed his four hundred pounds, though they 
 had no need for it, seeking to do anything for him or for 
 the other Goldsmiths who were subsequently in great straits 
 for money. On the contrary, it was Oliver Goldsmith who, 
 in after life, fed and clothed his sister's son for more than a 
 whole year in London. 
 
 The sum for which Charles Goldsmith gave the bond 
 represented two years of his income, and his son Henry had 
 accepted the responsibilities connected with the " forty 
 pounds a year " tradition in which the Goldsmiths seemed 
 to have a sort of vested interest, so that if Oliver was to be 
 sent to the University it was plain that he must be entered 
 as a sizar. And even adopting such a course, it was necessary 
 to appeal to the generosity of the benevolent uncle Contarinc, 
 a man whose unwearying kindness to Goldsmith will ever 
 cause his name to be remembered with respect. This 
 Thomas Contarine was a clergyman who held the benefice 
 of Kilmore, near Carrick-on-Shannon, and had married Charles 
 Goldsmith's sister. He was said to be a lineal descendant of the 
 Contarini family of Venice, one member of which had, while 
 belonging to a monastic order, eloped with a nun, and after 
 marrying her, escaped to France and afterwards to England. 
 His wife dying of small-pox, he married a Miss Chaloner of 
 Chester, and, joining the Church of England, was ordained 
 and obtained a living near Elphin. From one of his sons 
 Thomas Contarine was descended. He had only one child, 
 a daughter, so that he was in the position of the well-to-do 
 uncle, only with more generosity than is usually found in 
 connection with such a centre of family hopes as that relation 
 
6z THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 is made by his nephews and nieces. He had contributed, 
 with a cousin named Green, to the expenses of Oliver's school- 
 ing, and now he came forward with his purse to enable the boy 
 to go to the University. But in spite of all, considering the 
 liability for the four hundred pound bond incurred by the 
 father, his entrance at Trinity in any other capacity than that 
 of sizar was impossible, and the consequence was that Oliver 
 Goldsmith's coUege days were among 'the most miserable of 
 his life, and, just at the most critical time, he ran the chance 
 of having his character warped, and his whole nature changed. 
 As it was he came through the ordeal, but certainly not 
 unscathed. 
 
 Every one who has been to a public school and an English 
 University will acknowledge that the element of snobbery is 
 cultivated at both to an extent unknown elsewhere. It is 
 of course possible for a boy to become extremely popular at 
 either, if he possesses in himself the elements of popularity, 
 irrespective of his family and condition in life ; but as snobbery 
 really means only the exercise of the primeval instinct of being 
 on the most friendly terms with the well-born and the influen- 
 tial, and as schoolboys are closer to the instincts of the primeval 
 than are their fathers who have lived in the world for some 
 time and learned that the battle is not always to the strong, 
 they are usually very primeval in their bearing toward those 
 whom they believe to be their inferiors. The " rankers " in 
 these educational regiments have still, in spite of the spread 
 of a new and more liberal spirit, a bad time when mingling 
 with those who have rank on their side ; and there is still no 
 place where class prejudice runs so deep as in the classroom. 
 
 Now if one can imagine an institution where these pre- 
 judices exist to an abnormal extent, and far beyond anything 
 known in an English University, one will come within 
 measurable distance of understanding what Trinity College 
 Dublin was in the middle of the eighteenth century. We 
 have heard of Irish pride, and we have had many proofs of 
 its survival in every part of Ireland up to the present day ; 
 and what must it have been when exercised by those sons of 
 the " Protestant ascendancy " who alone were allowed to 
 participate in the very doubtful advantages of a college 
 education ? We Jfiijovy that Trinity College was Imperium 
 
AT THE UNIFERSITT 63 
 
 Imperio — it had been for centuries an aggregation of 
 iusiveness in comparison with which " White's " was 
 ommon tap-room and the later " Almack's " a beer- 
 p in the Borough. The college, though situated in 
 
 very centre of Dublin, was a separate and distinct cor- 
 ation in itself. It had its own laws and its own rulers, 
 
 only upon some notable occasion, such as the celebration 
 the Battle of the Boyne, did the College join hands with 
 
 City by sending representatives — half a dozen accredited 
 . some hundreds independent — to the procession that 
 rched round the statue of William III. and saluted the 
 len figure of the great Prince of Orange. The CoUege 
 upied, in fact, the position of the Embassy of a foreign 
 vcT, the occupants of which are, while within its precincts, 
 enable only to their own laws. 
 
 The " town and gown " amenities of the Universities on 
 other side of the Channel had their parallel in the relations 
 ting between the " Collegians " and the Roman Catholic 
 zens of Dublin. Rows and riots were of frequent occur- 
 :e ; but this was in Ireland, and in Ireland it was generally 
 lerstood that no such good feeling exists as that which has 
 n cemented by bloodshed. The City was proud of the 
 it displayed by the " Trinity boys," and enjoyed a friendly 
 .t with them every now and again ; and certainly if it was 
 dble to write a complete history of the freaks and fun 
 the Irish type) that originated within the precincts of the 
 lege during half a century, there would be no difficulty 
 believing that the gaiety (of the Irish type) of Dublin 
 dd have suffered an eclipse if the students had not con- 
 uted to it out of their own inexhaustible stores. 
 But the strain of providing vivacious novelties for the 
 2rtainment of an appreciative people, though tolerably 
 ;re, did not interfere greatly with the culture of that 
 it of intolerance which the youth of the ascendancy felt it 
 be their duty to maintain ; and when such an element 
 ts behind closed doors it is apt to work as an explosive does 
 ;onfinement. The classification of the students provided 
 ;ady means by which an ascendancy within an ascendancy 
 Id be cultivated, and thus afford a vent without opening 
 
 College doors for the expansion of the vanity of those 
 
64 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 who were disposed to be arrogant. There were three grades 
 of students — fellow-commoners, pensioners, and sizars ; and 
 these represented grades of rank, not of scholarship — they did 
 not even represent comparisons of social rank, but only 
 comparisons of opulence. The fellow-commoners paid about 
 double the amount of fees of the second grade, while the 
 sizars escaped with a small charge. But the privilege paid 
 for by the fellow-commoners included the wearing of a 
 cap with a tassel, dining with the Fellows, and some less 
 striking perquisites ; the pensioners were only allowed the 
 ordinary privileges of the College, but the sizars were com- 
 pelled to wear the stuff gown and cap of a servitor and to 
 perform the duties of a housemaid upstairs and those of the 
 medijeval scullion or kitchen knave in the Fellows' hall. 
 
 This system has worked indifferently well at other Uni- 
 versities, and the list of sizars who have attained distinction 
 in many directions is a long one. But no list is available of 
 those poor and high-spirited youths who could not bring 
 themselves to submit to the badges of a menial and to the 
 certainty of hourly humiliations, and who consequently were 
 compelled to forego the longed-for privileges of a University 
 training, to place a curb upon their legitimate ambition, and 
 to turn into some uncongenial walk of life with no chance 
 of distinction in the end. 
 
 However the system worked elsewhere, at Trinity College 
 Dublin during the middle years of the eighteenth century 
 the position of a sizar could never have been otherwise than 
 a constant source of humiliation to the student who held 
 it. The Irish youth has ever been high-spirited, and in the 
 eighteenth century the prejudice against engaging in any 
 work that was not considered " fit for a gentleman " was 
 practically universal. The professions were sneered at, with the 
 exception of that of arms and that of the Church ; an attorney- 
 at-law was looked on in Ireland pretty much as a negro is 
 in the Southern States of America ; a physician was on a 
 social level with a horse-dealer ; and as a matter of course 
 any man connected however remotely with commerce would 
 never presume to sit down in the same room as " a gentleman." 
 These were the views not merely of the Protestant ascendancy 
 in Ireland but of the Catholic decadents. They joined hands 
 
AT THE UNIVERSHT 65 
 
 hese social questions of grade, and they had even a varietj^ 
 rades of gentleman. They had " a gentleman," " a real 
 :leman," " a gentleman to the backbone," and two or 
 e other varieties. From their earliest years the gentry 
 
 been educated in these class distinctions, and lost no 
 ortunity of showing by their sneers and gibes at their 
 feriors " that in this form of education they had perfected 
 nselves, however neglectful they might be of what they 
 :uled as " book learning." 
 
 Under conditions of companionship with such young men, 
 m easily be understood that the life led by the sizars of 
 lity College must have been one of constant mortification, 
 be sure, it may be said that the discipline of servitude is 
 illent for a boy, and that if one is earnest in his desire to 
 :ate himself, he will not mind sweeping out passages with 
 oom or carrying up dishes of meat from the kitchen. A 
 1 many of the sizars were made of such stuff as caused 
 n to be indifferent to any suggestion of degradation while 
 harging their duties ; there are thousands of men in 
 land to-day who are quite indifferent to the shame of 
 king with a gang in a prison yard. But what of the others ? 
 It of the man with some sense of self-respect, with some 
 ng? 
 
 We. know something of what Oliver Goldsmith must have 
 ;red in these years, because we know how extremely 
 itive he was at all times — so sensitive as to make it impossible 
 bim to listen to the whine of a beggar without responding 
 ;, even though he knew that the appeal came to him from 
 mpostor. He suffered daily and almost hourly. He was 
 ;uled by the students who were graded above him, and 
 ited by a savage named Wilder who was the Fellow under 
 im he had entered the University. His life must have been 
 ;rable while at this College, whose greatest claim to distinc- 
 
 is, in the eyes of a good number of people in the world to- 
 
 to be derived from Oliver Goldsmith's connection with it. 
 rly a hundred years after his death the authorities of 
 
 seat of learning became aware of the fact that their 
 ismith connection was one of their most valuable assets, 
 o speak ; and now a statue of smooth beauty, possessing 
 
 characteristic features of Goldsmith, stands in hi» 
 
66 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 honour within the College gates. Oxford was more con- 
 sistent in regard to its expelled Shelley, for it only admitted 
 his Memorial to a place where it was hoped no one would 
 see it. Oxford had the spirit of the decayed gentlewonj^n, 
 who cried her muffins in so low a voice that she hoped no one 
 would hear her. 
 
 Only now and again are we made aware of all that Oliver 
 Goldsmith suffered at CoUege. He was never extravagant 
 in his abuse of any one — he was especially moderate in the 
 case of any one who had abused him ; and he was ready to 
 forget any injury done to him; but one passage in a letter 
 written to his brother regarding the education of a nephew 
 gives us a momentary glimpse of his feeling respecting 
 the system of which he was a victim at Trinity College. If 
 your son " has ambition, strong passions, and an exquisite 
 sensibility of contempt," he wrote, " do not send him to your 
 college, unless you have no other trade for him except your 
 own." In the same letter, however, he takes care to be just, 
 admitting that at Trinity College " the industrious poor have 
 good encouragement, perhaps better than any other in Europe." 
 But the system he strongly condemns in a paragraph in his 
 Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning. Under 
 the conditions it imposes it is an anomaly " that men should 
 be at once learning the liberal arts, and at the same time 
 treated as slaves ; at once studying freedom and practising 
 servitude." 
 
 If, however, it could be shown that the end justified the 
 means in Goldsmith's case — that he acquired during his 
 sizarship a large amount of scholarship at the expense of 
 a little dignity — we should not feel so greatly inclined to 
 sympathise with him. But his sizarship did not mean 
 scholarship. His toil in the class-rooms was that to which 
 the Romans applied the word cerumna. It was dispiriting. 
 He could have done much better as a student at home. In 
 the letter to his brother from which we have just quoted, 
 he says — and we cannot doubt that he had his own case in 
 his mind : 
 
 " It is impossible to conceive how much may be done by 
 a proper education at home. A boy, for instance, who 
 
AT THE UNIFERSHr 6j 
 
 irstands perfectly well Latin, French, arithmetic, and 
 principles of the civil law, and can write a fine hand, has 
 education that may qualify him for any undertaking, 
 these parts of learning should be carefuUy inculcated, 
 im be designed for whatever calling he will." 
 
 The class-room, so far from holding out any attraction, 
 been made such a place of horror to him that he shunned 
 The vulgar savage who presided there bore a name which 
 ptly suggested his disposition that it might have been 
 nted for him by Oliver Goldsmith himself — Theaker 
 ier. He was one of the most notorious of Dublin's 
 ies, and his reputation in this direction was earned by 
 lets outside the College as well as in his class-room. It 
 lated of him that upon one occasion he was accidentally 
 hed by the end of the whip of a hackney coachman, 
 forthwith he leaped upon the driver and was only pre- 
 ed from throttling him by the interposition of the crowd 
 gathered about him. This contemptible representative 
 le scholarship of the University seemed to have had the 
 net of the buUy in singling out the small, plain-faced, shy 
 sensitive sizar to be the object of his malice, and he lost 
 ipportunity of humiliating him in the presence of his 
 mates. He jeered at him, and encouraged the other 
 ents to jeer at him, and when the shy boy became 
 ied and failed to return a coherent reply to his questions, 
 nimicked him, and renewed his gibes, the model upon 
 m his style was founded being, we fancy, the Jeffreys 
 loody Assize fame. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 QUALIFYING FOR A DEGREE 
 1747— 1749 
 
 Humiliated and discouraged in every way, Oliver Goldsmith 
 neglected his work and became one of the loungers around 
 the College gate. Shut out from the life of the University, 
 and without a friend under its roof, he was driven to the city 
 in search of people with whom he could associate on terms 
 of equality. Such a search need never be fruitless in such a 
 city as Dublin. The College boys have always been popular 
 with the citizens, and naturally the least desirable of these 
 are the most ready to welcome a visitor bearing only the cre- 
 dentials of studentship. It does not appear that Goldsmith 
 made any actually disreputable acquaintance, but it may be 
 taken for granted that he did not make any that would be con- 
 sidered by the University authorities to reflect honour upon 
 his choice. 
 
 It was not, however, by reason of his doubtful associates 
 outside the College, but on account of his connection with 
 some of those within its precincts that he found himself 
 one day within measurable distance of expulsion. The 
 incident goes far to show that he must have become almost 
 reckless through his ill-treatment by Wilder. 
 
 Bearing out what we have stated respecting the pretensions 
 of the College to be imferium in imperio, it seems to have 
 become an understood thing that the King's writ, so far 
 as it referred to arrest for debt, did not run within the 
 entrance gates ; but one day in June 1747, either through 
 ignorance or in defiance of this assumption, two bailifis 
 arrested a student in his rooms, and carried him off to the 
 customary sponging-house. As soon as the news of this 
 infringement of their traditional privileges spread abroad 
 
 68 
 
QUALIFYING FOR A DEGREE 69 
 
 among the undergraduates they held a very informal meeting, 
 and early the same night sallied out in great force to obtain 
 satisfaction for such an insult. They apparently needed no 
 guide to the likely places where the bailiffs would be found, 
 and having unearthed the chief delinquent, they carried him 
 through the streets and the College gates, and soused him 
 in the cistern beneath the University pump. 
 
 This was, however, considered quite too tame an ending 
 for an incident that seemed at the outset so promising of 
 excitement, and these lads of spirit marched forth, an- 
 nouncing their intention of breaking into the old prison known 
 as the Black Dog — a prophetical burlesque of the revolutionary 
 cry that sounded through Europe forty-two years later — 
 " a la Bastille I" The result was a riot neither more nor less 
 severe than the usual undergraduate brawl to which the 
 streets of Dublin had for long been accustomed ; but some 
 of the townspeople lost their lives, and it was necessary for 
 the College authorities to take cognisance of the unfortunate 
 incident. An investigation was held and it was proved — to 
 the satisfaction, we have no doubt, of Theaker Wilder — that 
 Oliver Goldsmith was mixed up with the business. His 
 connection with it was, however, shown not to have been 
 active ; for while several of the students were expelled, 
 he was only admonished in public. 
 
 It seems to us that the recklessness which drove him into 
 the thick of the crowd upon this occasion was due to the treat- 
 ment to which he was constantly subjected by Wilder. His 
 sister wrote that this man had continued to persecute him 
 " with unremitting cruelty ; especially at the quarterly 
 examinations, when he would insult him before his fellow 
 students by sarcastic taunts and ironical applauses of the 
 severest malignity." In the early part of the same year also 
 his father died, and he was thus left with no one to whom 
 he had any right to look to defray his College expenses. For 
 some time he must have been absolutely penniless, while 
 his relations were discussing what was to be done with him. 
 It was discovered by his earliest biographers that he had taken 
 to writing ballads — those of the type that, well on into the 
 next century, were hawked in long ill-printed slips through 
 the streets, and sung to popular airs by the vendors. Five 
 
70 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 shillings apiece was, it seems, the market price paid to the 
 author for these things. It is quite likely that Goldsmith's 
 were worth their money. At any rate he neglected no oppor- 
 tunity of increasing his qualifications for reaching eminence in 
 this branch of literature ; for it is said that he was accustomed 
 to steal out of College at night and, after finding the particular 
 street where his ballads were being sung, to listen to the 
 criticisms of the audience upon the composition. We have 
 no means of learning whether as a rule these were encouraging 
 or otherwise to him. But the money he got by this means 
 was handy — there can be no doubt about that. 
 
 The result of the conferences of his relations was that by 
 contributions from all available sources — and they could not 
 have been many — he was enabled to remain at the University, 
 his generous uncle Contarine being as usual the largest con- 
 tributor to this end. But it may be assumed that it was 
 a starvation dole that passed into the boy's hands. Even 
 with the help of the most munificent patron of his street 
 ballads, he must have felt a step lower down in the scale 
 than the wretches who hawked them in the gutter, until he 
 acquired that recklessness which has drivf n men of his tempera- 
 ment to the bottle — either the quick one of prussic acid or the 
 slow one of alcohol. It was, we think, under such an influence 
 that he acted when, on winning a thirty-shilling exhibition 
 at the College, he invited a medley crowd from the streets to 
 his room to celebrate the event by a supper. " Let us eat 
 and drink for to-morrow we die," has ever been the shout 
 of the reckless. 
 
 The entertainment took place — at least an instalment of 
 what was promised ; but then it took another turn, on the 
 dramatic entrance of Dr. Wilder. What would be the action 
 of the man who had almost throttled to death an able-bodied 
 Dublin Jarvey for an accidental and trifling affront, on bursting 
 into the miserable sizar's room, could not be doubted. His 
 fury took the form of a personal assault upon Oliver Gold- 
 smith, When he had denounced his guests — ^probably boys 
 and girls of Oliver's own age — Wilder caught him by the 
 collar and beat him unmercifully with his cane without even 
 waiting until his guests had time to disperse. 
 
 This incident brought matters to a climax. The next 
 
QUALIFYING FOR A DEGREE 71 
 
 day he left the College, sold his books and his clothes, and 
 set out for America — he rather thought that America was 
 his destination, but he was not sure. The sequel of the 
 adventure showed that his uncertainty on this point was fully 
 justified. He had doubtless many sympathisers with him in 
 Dublin, and he possibly became aware for the first time of 
 the satisfaction to be derived from listening to unrestrained 
 demonstrations in his favour. We know how easily the 
 friendliness of the Irish becomes emotional, and we know 
 how the language of the emotions becomes progressive in 
 vehemence. Emotion, real or simulated, calls for some form 
 of expression, and the sound of this expression adds fuel to the 
 feelings that inspired it, until the original glow has become a 
 roaring furnace ; and the sympathy which, at the outset, took 
 the form of a hearty shake of the hand, needs floods of tears, 
 gesticulation, and overwhelming embraces to do justice to it, 
 when the one who inspired it is at hand — ^with half-a-crown to 
 expend on refreshment ; for such demonstrations are usually 
 exhausting. 
 
 We may be sure that Oliver Goldsmith, having freed 
 himself from the tyranny of the College rules, and in the 
 midst of his Dublin- circle with a few pounds in his pocket, 
 felt amply consoled for the degradations heaped upon him by 
 the savage Wilder, and proud to belong to a people who 
 could feel so deeply for him. At any rate, he could not tear 
 himself away from them even to go to the American 
 colonies. But possibly finding that the demonstrations were 
 decreasing in sympathy with the decrease of his ready cash, 
 the moment of separation came and he started for America 
 with a shilling in his pocket. 
 
 A few days of privation and some of starvation had their 
 effect upon him. (He told Reynolds years afterwards that a 
 handful of grey peas formed the most delicious meal of his 
 lifetime. It was given to him by a girl at a wake in a house 
 on his journey southward.) His expedition terminated at his 
 brother's house in Lissoy. Years afterwards he wrote : 
 
 Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, 
 My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee ; 
 Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain 
 And drags at each remove a lengthening chain. 
 
72 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 Blest be that spot, where cheerful guests retire 
 To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire : 
 Blest that abode, where want and pain repair, 
 And every stranger finds a ready chair : 
 Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crown'd, 
 Where all the ruddy family around 
 Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail. 
 Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale ; 
 Or press the bashful stranger to his food 
 And learn the luxury of doing good. 
 
 The man who wrote The Traveller " where Alpine solitudes 
 ascend " may have had in his mind at that moment a vivid 
 recollection of the end of his first expedition. 
 
 His brother Henry had not succeeded to the living of 
 Kilkenny West on the death of their father ; it is said that he 
 reoccupied the curate's house at Pallas ; but it is probable 
 that it was at the Lissoy parsonage, which remained in the 
 family, having been taken by the Daniel Hodson who had 
 married Catherine, that the brothers met at this time, and 
 the younger was wisely advised to forget the Wilder incident 
 and return to Dublin. It is stated by his sister that a raf- 
 frochement was established by the intervention of Henry 
 between Oliver and his tutor ; it was, she says, " something 
 of a reconciliation," and the phrase was a happy one. It 
 was a reconciliation of a kind — the kind that is brought about 
 between a prisoner and his jailer when the former has escaped 
 from his cell and is brought back. Such a man as Wilder does 
 not change his nature in a day ; he had now additional grounds 
 for taunting his pupil, and it is impossible for us to think 
 that he failed to perceive how he stood in this respect. The 
 only means by which such a savage can be tanled were forth- 
 coming a few years later. He was engaged in a drunken 
 brawl with some boon companions, and got knocked on the 
 head. Such an end to such a man must have long been 
 foreseen. He was taken by the enemy for a sizar and treated 
 with no more courtesy than he had shown to such wretches 
 as were compelled to come in contact with him. 
 
 It is pretty certain that Oliver Goldsmith referred at some 
 length to his College life in a confidential memoir which 
 Bishop Percy persuaded him to write. But in this matter he 
 
QUALIFYING FOR A DEGREE 73 
 
 was as unfortunate as usual ; for Percy, believing that Johnson 
 was the man to write the life of his old friend, put the manu- 
 script into Johnson's hands. That was the last that any one 
 connected with the transaction saw of it, for Johnson was so 
 little impressed with a sense of its importance that he forgot 
 all about it, and on inquiry being made by Percy respecting 
 the document, failed to find it, and it has not been found 
 since. Johnson most likely laid it down in some coffee-house 
 to engage in the brow-beating of a friend, and the import- 
 ance of adding to his many controversial victories engrossed 
 his attention to the exclusion of minor matters. These 
 chapters from the autobiography of Oliver Goldsmith dealing 
 with his College life would certainly have formed one of the 
 most interesting documents ever printed. They probably lit 
 the fire in the common room of the " Mitre " tavern. 
 
 But one may be sure that Goldsmith did not treat Wilder 
 as he had been treated by that person. We know how gentle 
 was his scheme of Retaliation when the chance was offered to 
 him. He would probably have dismissed this man with a few 
 lines of half-serious banter. The only story that he told to 
 Percy respecting his treatment by Wilder is against himself 
 rather than against Wilder. 
 
 During the ^remainder of his course at the University he 
 had many opportunities of practising that vicious benevolence 
 which he had inherited from his father. Various anecdotes 
 survive to show that he was quite as foolish in this respect 
 in Dublin as he was in later years in London. The Irish 
 beggars knew him well, and the man who could not hold out 
 against the importunities of a London mendicant had little 
 chance when face to face with an Irish one. He gave away the 
 very garments off his back when his slender store of cash was 
 exhausted, as were his borrowing powers and the patience of 
 his friends. Upon one occasion he actually brought down 
 his bed-clothes to a poor woman who told him a piteous 
 story, and he was thus forced to cut open his bed and make a 
 nest for himself among the feathers. It is doubtful if he 
 really felt that he was a fool before the morning, though he 
 may have had a suspicion of it as the temperature decreased. 
 
 It must have been a sorry day for the beggars of Dublin 
 when Oliver Goldsmith took his degree of Bachelor of Arts 
 
74 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 on February 7, 1749 — two years later than it was possible 
 for him to have graduated, though even then he was only a 
 few months past twenty. 
 
 It is scarcely possible to believe that any graduate of the 
 University of Dublin ever got through the usual course with 
 less distinction than was achieved by Oliver Goldsmith, or, 
 indeed, we may add, having acquired a less amount of what is 
 termed scholarship. It was not during his stay at Trinity 
 that he formed that acquaintance with the classics which, 
 without ever degenerating into actual scholarship, was 
 tolerably intimate, and, as we have suggested in a previous 
 chapter, convenient to be held by one who was constantly 
 mingling with scholars. Of many other subjects he had a 
 journeyman's knowledge, not a master's. He was not highly 
 scientific in any of his investigations, nor was he highly critical 
 when regarded from the standpoint of a critic ; he was only 
 a common-sense critic of life and literature and the drama ; 
 he was never anything higher in this way ; and the conse- 
 quence is that he never ceases to be interesting, though he 
 sometimes may cease to be accurate. Scholarship is progressive, 
 science never stands stiU for a moment, and even criticism 
 advances. The scholars of to-day smile at those of yesterday. 
 The scientific men of to-morrow will spend most of their 
 time correcting the mistakes of those of to-day, and the critics 
 of the day after will probably reverse all the decisions of 
 their predecessors. But the man who was human a thousand 
 years ago is as human to-day when he speaks to human beings ; 
 and that is how it comes that the sentences of Goldsmith and 
 Shakespeare and a few others are set in the language of the 
 English people — ^jewels in a cincture that binds worlds together. 
 
 He left the University without having deteriorated by his 
 connection with it ; and that was something. If he had 
 found in its class-room sympathetic teachers, he might have 
 received such encouragement as would have caused him to 
 become a scholar and nothing more. Happily he escaped that 
 fate, though only at the cost of some years of discomfort 
 and humiliation. If he had become a great scholar he would 
 have written differently : scholarship might possibly have 
 been the richer, but the world would certainly have been 
 the poorer. 
 
QUALIFTING FOR A DEGREE 75 
 
 Several men who afterwards reached positions of some 
 distinction were at Trinity College at the same time as 
 Goldsmith, and lived to boast of the fact. But what did 
 their boast amount to ? Why, simply to a confession that 
 they were as incapable as their teachers of recognising promise 
 in an unaccustomed form. It is the appearance of the Un- 
 accustomed that frightens the authorities. These conservators 
 of the Normal have always shaken at the apparition of the 
 Unusual, and at Trinity College in Goldsmith's day their 
 example was followed by the rank and file of the class-rooms. 
 These fellow-students of his were not to be blamed for any 
 want of capacity or want of discernment in the matter. Boys 
 do not go to College in order to hunt for geniuses in country-cut 
 clothes, and with pock-marked faces. They only seek to get 
 through the necessary years with as little trouble as possible ; 
 and the majority spend their time in an endeavour to find out 
 what is actually the smallest amount of knowledge that will 
 satisfy their examiners. Besides, the mathematical alumni will 
 at any time, by reference to their statistics, be able to show them 
 that if one is on the search for genius, it is not within the 
 precincts of a University that one has much chance of finding it. 
 
 Flood, one of the many great Irish orators, was a fellow- 
 commoner at Trinity when Goldsmith was there, but he 
 admitted that he had never seen anything of the sizar. 
 Edmund Burke, however, who was there for at least two of 
 Goldsmith's years, said he recollected perfectly well seeing 
 him, but that was all. Several bishops, too, were accustomed, 
 after Goldsmith's death, to talk of the dear old Trinity days 
 when he had been in the same class-room with them. They 
 did not say whether or not they had joined in the laughter 
 that greeted Wilder's sallies at his expense. The claims of 
 early acquaintanceship with men who have become great are 
 as ancient as the places that competed for the honour of 
 being the birthplace of Homer, " Through which the living 
 Homer begged his bread." The list of the men who were 
 at College with Goldsmith is simply the list of men who had 
 a chance of making him their friend but neglected it. The 
 truth is that he was not in the right " set," and to get into 
 the wrong " set " at Trinity College Dublin, was to be guilty 
 of an irretrievable mistake. It is to be feared that in Dublin 
 
^e THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 City the social position of his acquaintances did not show any 
 marked contrast to that of his College associates. It seemed 
 quite plausible to him that a village clergyman should during 
 his travels allow himself to become the guest of a pack of 
 domestics masquerading as the owners of the house where 
 they were in service. It is quite likely that this experience 
 of Dr. Primrose had once been his own. No man could be 
 more easily imposed upon than he was, and certainly no man 
 submitted with a better grace to be the victim of an im- 
 position. His view of the humour of a situation was quite 
 an impersonal one. He could never see that because the 
 laugh was against himself he should not join in it. He never 
 could see that the humour of a situation was affected by the 
 accident of the part of the over-credulous simpleton being 
 played by himself. If he never did actually exchange a 
 good horse for a gross of green spectacles with silver rims 
 and in shagreen cases, he certainly engaged in many equally 
 shrewd transactions, and he seemed not merely to take the 
 exposure in good part, but to be thoroughly amused at the 
 figure he cut as the victim of Mr. Jenkinson or even a less 
 astute impostor. In this respect he differed considerably 
 from the general run of people who thoroughly enjoy seeing 
 their nearest neighbour imposed upon, but fail to perceive 
 the humourous aspects of being victimised themselves. 
 
 And so Oliver Goldsmith left the University and began 
 his education in the world. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 QUALIFYING FOR IMMORTALITY 
 
 1749—1752 
 
 The next three years Oliver Goldsmith passed in what one 
 of his biographers calls " idleness." They were the most 
 important years of his whole life. Beyond a doubt it was 
 during these years that he became the Oliver Goldsmith who 
 wrote the most natural English that ever came from a poet, 
 a noveUst, a dramatist, or an essayist — the Oliver Goldsmith 
 who, before the days when his ability as a writer was recognised 
 by the world, became the friend and beloved companion of 
 some of the greatest men in England. It was during these 
 years of idleness that he was qualifying for the inheritance 
 which became his without his asking for it. 
 
 It is not alone Goldsmith's style as a writer that places 
 him in the front rank of the men of his own century ; it is his 
 possessing something behind his style, which goes by the name 
 of genius ; and the truth is forced upon us that it was just 
 during these years of " idleness " that his genius had a chance 
 of coming to life, so to speak — of " taking possession " of him : 
 the temptation to use the analogy of the form that was 
 adopted in accounting for demoniac possession is too strong to 
 be resisted when one is considering the question of the develop- 
 ment of genius. It was in these idle years that he learned, 
 though without realising it, all that was necessary for him to 
 learn. It was during these years that he acquired his way 
 of looking at things, his perfect sense of proportion, so that 
 he never shocks by exaggerating any detail — ^his grasp of 
 character and of incident — that happy appreciation of the 
 mingling of the elements of seriousness and comedy in daily life 
 — of the comedy of vanity, and the humour of pretence — of the 
 divine beauty of simplicity and of the subtleties of unconscious 
 
 11 
 
78 ^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 hypocrisy — ^he learned much in these years ; and incidentally 
 he learned, a good many people will think, how long-suffering 
 may be .the relatives of a genius who is gifted, apparently, 
 with an unlimited capacity for idling. The entertainment of 
 an angel unawares is an experience that falls to the lot of some 
 people now and again ; but all our recollection of incidents 
 that have been so described tends to arouse our sympathy 
 for the entrepreneurs, and to induce us to feel that they were 
 not greatly to blame for being unaware of the fact that their 
 visitants were of celestial origin. It is the same in regard to 
 the entertaining of a genius. One would like to be on the 
 side of the angels and on the side of the geniuses, but not 
 when it comes to the practical business of entertainment. 
 
 Such a life as he led at this time would scarcely have been 
 possible had he lived in England or in Scotland ; but Ireland 
 had for centuries been the field of the vagrant — the home of 
 the thriftless — the paradise of the lazy. On the other side of 
 the channel there might be a village here and there with its 
 habitual idler, a young fellow whose many neglected oppor- 
 tunities of " doing well " were daily commented on by the 
 occupants of the ale-house settle when he had slouched out 
 of the room, and whose thriftlessness was the burden of the 
 complaints of the people at whose expense he was living. 
 Such men are not unknown in England and — but much more 
 rarely — in Scotland even in the present age of " get on or get 
 off." But in Ireland there is scarcely a village where some 
 examples of the thriftless type may not stUl be found, though 
 the famines of the past century have done much to thin them 
 down. In Goldsmith's time the conditions of life in the villages 
 were such as gave a youth who was so inclined a chance of 
 realising the loafer's ideal heaven whose inhabitants "go on 
 doing nothing for ever and ever." The village was a'Commune. 
 Public opinion was strenuously opposed to every system of 
 saving ; and the man who had a guinea felt as bound to 
 share it with his neighbours as does a schoolboy to make an 
 equal division of the contents of his hamper from home in 
 the dormitory. It was accounted not merely ungracious but 
 unnatural as well for any family to slaughter a pig without 
 distributing portions of the carcase all round the place. A 
 present of fish from the river or the lake was made an excuse 
 
QUALIFTING FOR IMMOMALHT 79 
 
 for a feast from which none was excluded, and a gift of game 
 from the squire to the parson was equivalent to a donation to 
 the whole village — so far as it went. 
 
 It can easily be believed that, becoming accustomed to 
 these conditions of life, Oliver Goldsmith could scarcely fail 
 to have strengthened those habits of thriftlessness and benevo- 
 lence which he had inherited from his father. Borrowing 
 from one person to lend to another became part of his nature. 
 Running into debt in order to supply the wants of people who 
 had no claim whatever upon his charity, spending money 
 lavishly when he had earned it only with the greatest diffi- 
 culty — these were the habits which he acquired during his 
 idle years in Ireland, and which clung to him for the rest 
 of his life, and finally strangled him after dragging him more 
 than once down into the deepest depths of misery and humilia- 
 tion. That constant borrowing which marked his career 
 in London cannot but have shocked his English friends and 
 associates, who were unacquainted with the fact that in 
 Ireland it was as natural for a man who wanted money to 
 borrow it from a neighbour, as it was for him to lend it, if 
 he chanced to have it, when it came to be his neighbour's turn 
 to borrow. There was no question of shame or shyness or 
 humiliation in such transactions, as Goldsmith had learned to 
 conduct them in his native Ireland ; and to his dying day he 
 never quite mastered those elements of the science of economics 
 which show with absolute lucidity — to a logical minded, man 
 — the unsoundness of the Irish system, even without the need 
 to bring forward the condition of the Irish people as an 
 example of its failure. When a man is in need of money the 
 easiest way of getting it is for him to borrow it from his 
 neighbour ; and Oliver Goldsmith, being brought up as one 
 of the most easy-going people in the world, allowed 
 economics to go by the board while he went to his neighbour. 
 That was how he came to die in penury, at the age of forty- 
 six, when he was actually earning more money than any man 
 who lived by literature in his day. 
 
 But in considering any question, economical or ethical, 
 in connection with the life of a man of genius, one finds 
 oneself constantly puzzled what view to take and to 
 suggest that others should take, of his conduct — ^his foolish- 
 
8o <IHE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 ness, his thriftlessness, his idleness, and even his vices. 
 (Without his vices the world would never have known that 
 many a man was a genius.) Can we reasonably say that it 
 was a great pity that Oliver Goldsmith had not more "ballast " ? 
 (That is what some one has said about him ; forgetting that 
 ballast is a worthless material which is put into an empty ship 
 to give it stability when no goods of any value are stowed 
 aboard it.) If he had had more ballast he would have taken 
 high honours at the University, and perhaps, with good luck, 
 have become a dignified nonentity in a country rectory. 
 That is the fate of the men with " ballast." Can we wish 
 that he had been taught practical economics instead of vicious 
 benevolence by his father ? In that case he might have gone 
 into the grocery business, and by judicious adulterations have 
 acquired a competence, with the certainty of an afternoon 
 doze in a warm back-parlour. Can we wish that he had had 
 a stern father instead of an easy-going one f In that case he 
 might have lived till he was eighty, but we should have had 
 no Ficar of Wakefield. Can we wish, in short, that he had 
 been otherwise than he was ? In that case we should have had 
 no Oliver Goldsmith. 
 
 It is indeed impossible to say, in reviewing the lives of 
 men of genius, that it was a great pity they were not 
 " steady " or high principled, or living under different con- 
 ditions, or more happily married, or with a sounder digestion. 
 We cannot even wish that they had been less foolish at times, 
 or more constant in their loves, or less frequently fooled 
 by plain women. We have no great hesitation in speaking 
 definitely regarding ordinary men : if they neglect their 
 opportunities we can safely denounce them ; if they are bad 
 husbands we have a right to shake our heads at them ; if they 
 are thriftless we can give them good advice ; and if they are 
 failures we can send them to the devil and have done with 
 them. But we can only accept the fruits of a genius and 
 be thankful. 
 
 The worst of this matter of genius and its freaks is that we 
 have no means of differentiating on the spot between the 
 freaks of a genius and the freaks of a fool ; and thus it is we 
 find that the people who were in touch with a man who turned 
 out to be a genius, treated him as if he were an ordinary person, 
 
QUALIFYING FOR IMMORTALITY 8i 
 
 capable of being reasoned with and given good advice founded 
 upon a long experience of the commonplace. Such people are 
 certainly not to be blamed by posterity if it is recorded that 
 they regarded his aberrations with suspicion or even with 
 contempt. But no charge of having adopted an aggressive 
 attitude toward Oliver Goldsmith during his years of idleness, 
 when he lived upon their bounty, could ever be brought 
 against his relations. On the contrary, it must seem to many 
 persons acquainted only with life in English villages, that they 
 treated him with an amount of generosity that was absolutely 
 reprehensible. But, we repeat, the custom in Ireland was, 
 and still is in some localities, to give every idler a chance of 
 pursuing a career of idleness ; and only very rarely does such an 
 one fail to take advantage of the laxity of his friends. It does 
 not appear to have occurred to any of his relations that when 
 Oliver Goldsmith came among them they might have turned 
 a cold shoulder to him or suggested to him the advisability 
 of taking up some employment for a living. To be sure he 
 must even then have been a lively and entertaining young man. 
 But liveliness is not a livelihood. If it were, few Irishmen 
 would be without a competence. But even if he had been 
 dull as an Ulsterman — the very antithesis to an Irishman — 
 he would still have been allowed " the run of the kitchen," 
 to make use of the local idiom, in every house in the neighbour- 
 hood of Lissoy and Ballymahon. He had " a fine time of it " 
 during these years he spent on his round of visits. 
 
 It would appear that, on his leaving the University, there 
 was a consultation at BaUymahon, where his widowed mother 
 now lived in a small cottage, on the subject of his future — 
 not his immediate future, of course, for it was taken for granted 
 that that must be indefinite, but his future so far as a pro- 
 fession was concerned. He belonged to a family of clergymen. 
 His father had enjoyed for thirteen years an income of forty 
 pounds, and his brother was at that moment living up to the 
 same standard of luxury. With such examples of the rewards 
 offered by a devotion to the service of the Church, it must have 
 seemed strange to his friends that he should reject the proposal 
 made to him by his uncle and other members of his family, 
 that he should take holy orders, resisting even the temptation 
 of possible emoluments on the same scale as that which may 
 
 F 
 
82 ^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 have become the family tradition. The genial frankness of 
 the confessions of a certain " Man in Black " are very useful 
 to a biographer who fails to fathom the mystery of his turning 
 away from the rosy prospect offered to him by the Church : 
 " To be obliged to wear a long wig when I liked a short one, 
 or a black coat when I generally dressed in brown, I thought 
 such a restraint upon my liberty that I absolutely rejected the 
 proposal" (to become a parson), confessed the autobiographical 
 " Man in Black." 
 
 One is relieved to find that his unwillingness to associate 
 himself with the Church was not due to the influence of any 
 heterodox views on his part, acquired since he had signed the 
 Articles in the form required by his College. He was neither 
 an Agnostic nor a Freethinker — Dr. Johnson would probably 
 have said about him as he did of Foote, that he had not been 
 a thinker at aU on the subject of doctrine. He certainly felt, 
 however, that his own disinclination to enter the Church 
 should not weigh against the advice of a relative to whom he 
 owed so much as he did to his uncle Contarine ; and so he 
 eventually agreed to prepare for holy orders. 
 
 And this is how he set about it : 
 
 From his mother's cottage he put himself in touch with 
 every social movement in connection with the intellectual life 
 at BaUymahon, becoming chairman of a club of young men, 
 who foregathered formally once a week and as often as possible 
 informally at the village ale-house to make merry with song 
 and music and, we doubt not — for BaUymahon is in the heart 
 of Ireland — with dance, to swop stories and to drink punch. 
 One of his few CoUege friends, Robert Bryanton, a sort of 
 cousin, who lived in the neighbourhood, and had a fine taste in 
 whisky, became his constant companion, supporting him — 
 when not in actual need of physical support himself — in the 
 chair on club nights and going for long walks with him along the 
 banks of the river or the lake, hunting the otter with him, and 
 fishing for trout. Who were the other members of the club 
 it is not easy to say — even if their names were known we 
 should be no wiser ; but of what type they were, no one who 
 knows Ireland can have much doubt. It has been suggested 
 that The Three Pigeons owed its existence to Conway's ale- 
 house, and that the " several shabby fellows " who were 
 
QUALIFTING FOR IMMORTJLITT 83 
 
 " discovered " " with punch, and tobacco " at the former, 
 were suggested by the company at the latter. But we cannot 
 think that Mr. Muggins and Mr. Slang — the fellow who 
 couldn't bear anything that was low, and who though " obli- 
 gated to dance a bear," felt that " a man may be a gentleman 
 for all that," and would never permit the animal to dance 
 " but to the very genteelest of tunes ; ' Water Parted ' or the 
 Minuet in Ariadne " — we cannot think that these enter- 
 taining persons ever entered the club-room except perhaps 
 for a few minutes. No, full of gentlemanly feeling and all 
 though they may have been, they were not of the club. The 
 young men who drank their punch and sang their songs and 
 had their rubbers of whist together were more of the type 
 of Bob Bryanton and Dan Hodson, the sons of well-to-do 
 people in the neighbourhood. But all the same his intimacy 
 with them and the reputation which he may have gained for 
 singing a good song, dancing a jig, playing the flute, or even 
 for the general soundness of his decisions when any nice 
 question of decorum was submitted to him as chairman, 
 could not possibly turn the balance in his favour should any 
 moderately scrupulous prelate be uncertain as to his qualifica- 
 tions for taking orders. 
 
 It could not be suggested, however, that the possession of 
 these qualities would cause his immediate rejection, for just 
 about this time a French dancing-master who had retired from 
 the active work of his profession endeavoured to get some in- 
 fluential friends to do something for him in Ireland and put 
 him on an easy way of living. Several situations were 
 proposed for him, but it was found that he was amazingly 
 disqualified to fill any one of them. At last a happy idea 
 occurred to his patron : Why not put him into the Church ? 
 The man was ordained in a month and presented with a good 
 living. 
 
 But it must not be supposed that Oliver Goldsmith devoted 
 himself exclusively to the advancement of the interests of the 
 Ballymahon ale-house club. He acted as his mother's house- 
 keeper for some time, and the experience that he gained in 
 this capacity must have been valuable to him in checking the 
 bills of his London landlady in after years. The exact extent 
 of the transactions wjth which he was associated in the BaUy- 
 
84 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 mahon menage may be gauged by reference to some of the 
 pages of an account-book bought by Mr. Shaw Mason at an 
 auction at that town. This is an example given in 1818 by 
 that industrious collector of Goldsmith statistics : 
 
 Mrs. Goldsmith to Sarah Shore. Dr. 
 
 Jan. 16. 
 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 Brought forward 
 
 15 
 
 6 
 
 Half an ounce of green tea 
 
 
 
 3i 
 
 A quarter of a pound of lump sugar 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 A pound of Jamaica sugar 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 An ounce of green tea 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 Half a pound of rice 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 A quarter of an ounce of green tea 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 This example of the res angusta domi of his Irish years 
 may be compared with his later transactions with Mrs. 
 Fleming, his Islington landlady. 
 
 It has been assumed that during the years he was waiting to 
 qualify (by age) for his ordination, he helped his brother Henry 
 at the school which the latter had started. Perhaps he did ; 
 but we have our doubts on this point. We are strongly 
 inclined to believe that his brother kept him on the other side 
 of the schoolhouse door. Oliver Goldsmith detested teaching 
 boys, and it is difficult to believe that the school was so large 
 as to need a second master. No ; any attempt to' make out 
 that he was " usefully employed " — that is the phrase which 
 his apologists would use — at this time must be received with 
 caution. But he was qualifying to become the Oliver Gold- 
 smith of The Vicar of Wakefield, the Oliver Goldsmith of 
 She Stoops to Conquer, the Oliver Goldsmith of The Deserted 
 Village, the Oliver Goldsmith of the flute-playing tour 
 through Europe ; so that, on consideration, we are bound to 
 confess that he was usefully employed during these years of 
 probation. 
 
 His long walks, sometimes with Bob Bryanton but more 
 frequently alone, through the country and by the sedges of the 
 lake, gave him a love of Nature and developed his powers of 
 observation. He acquired more than a sportsman's knowledge 
 of ornithology, and he used it to advantage when he had an 
 
QUALIFTING FOR IMMOMALHT 85 
 
 opportunity. His paper on insect life proved that he was a 
 close observer, and he was able to strike out for himself 
 independent of, and indeed in opposition to, BuflEon when he 
 wrote of the habits of the otter. 
 
 It is also likely that during these years he came in contact 
 with many persons who had had an intimate acquaintance 
 with a man who was certainly something of a musical genius. 
 This was Carolan, the Irish harper, a truly remarkable person, 
 about whose powers Irish tradition absolutely glows. Indeed, 
 considering how many patrons Carolan had in Roscommon, it 
 is possible that Goldsmith had heard him when a child. It 
 must be accounted somewhat strange that Ireland, which in 
 mediaeval times was known all over Europe as the home of bards, 
 should yet have given birth to no really great poet or musician 
 within the years of its subjugation. From those national 
 melodies which have survived to the present day, mainly 
 through the exertions of Bunting and of Thomas Moore, who 
 wrote some exquisite lyrics to suit them, and occasionally, we 
 believe, took undue liberties with the music to accommodate it 
 to his metres, we know that there must have been composers 
 of the greatest power in the old days ; but the English-writing 
 poets have never shown more than a mediocre ability. Great 
 executants on any musical instrument have never been of 
 Irish birth, possibly because the national instrument, the harp, 
 had small capabilities beyond those needed as an accompani- 
 ment to a singer. The bird Carolan was both a composer 
 and a performer far above the average of his own day, though 
 probably inferior in every way to Bunting, who lived well 
 into the nineteenth century. Goldsmith devotes one of his 
 essays to this man, and tells the anecdote of Carolan's being 
 the guest of a nobleman in the country and meeting one 
 evening a distinguished English violinist, challenged him 
 after the manner of mediaeval bards, to a contest of skill. 
 " To carry the jest forward," wrote Goldsmith, " his lordship 
 persuaded the musician to accept the challenge, and he 
 accordingly played over on his fiddle the Fifth Concerto of 
 Vivaldi. Carolan, immediately taking his harp, played over 
 the piece after him, without missing a note, though he had 
 never heard it before ; which produced some surprise ; but 
 their astonishment increased when he assured them that he 
 
86 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 could make a concerto in the same taste himself, which he 
 instantly composed, and that with such spirit and elegance, 
 that it may compare (for we have it still) with the finest 
 compositions of Italy." 
 
 This tradition, which, in its exaggeration, is thoroughly 
 characteristic of most traditions of the country, must have im- 
 pressed Goldsmith when it first came under his notice during 
 these years of idleness — except of observation and develop- 
 ment ; his recollection of it after a long lapse of time helps to 
 show in how many directions his sympathies tended when he 
 had plenty of leisure for thinking and for feeling. 
 
 But in a letter which he wrote long afterwards to Daniel 
 Hodson he shows that he had never been under any illusions 
 as to the desirability of Ireland as a place of abode for a man 
 of some culture and intellect ; though he wrote of it with 
 all the feeling of an Irishman for Ireland when he is living 
 away from it. He thinks it unaccountable that a man should 
 have an affection for a place, when he " never received when in it 
 above common civility, who never brought anything out of it 
 except his brogue and his blunders. . . . Let me ask myself 
 what gives me a wish to see Ireland again ? The country is a 
 fine one perhaps ? No. There are good company in Ireland ? 
 No. . . . Then perhaps there's more wit and learning 
 among the Irish .'' Oh, Lord, no. There has been more 
 money spent in the encouragement of the Padareen mare in 
 one season than given in rewards to learned men since the 
 time of Usher. All their productions in learning amount to 
 perhaps a translation, or a few tracts in divinity ; and all 
 their productions in wit, to just nothing at all." 
 
 He had very little idea when he was writing this letter 
 that the pen which he held was to contribute so largely to 
 the removal of the reproaches he directed against Ireland in 
 respect of wit and culture and good company. 
 
 But though it suited him in this letter to write as if 
 he were suggesting that no good thing could be found in 
 Ireland — he ended it in the best Irish style by explaining his 
 fondness for the undesirable island on the grounds that his 
 dear brother-in-law and a few other people whom he loved 
 were still there — he was fully appreciative of the humours 
 of the people among whom he had lived for over twenty 
 
QUALIFYING FOR IMMORTALHT 87 
 
 years. His plays and his books are full of Irish character 
 and Irish humour ; and he had himself come away from the 
 island in full possession of many of the ways and traits of the 
 Irish people. It would, perhaps, have been better for him- 
 self if he had had fewer. If, for instance, he had been able 
 to get rid of that conversational idiom which is quite common 
 in almost every part of Ireland, but is scarcely known in 
 England — that most subtle species of irony which so bewildered, 
 not only BosweU, but many of his other associates in 
 London, he would not have run the chance of being so greatly 
 misunderstood and misrepresented as he was. It need only 
 be noted in this place that among the fruits of these years 
 of mingling with the people of Ireland, his acquiring this 
 particular idiom must be given a prominent place. It will be 
 more convenient to deal with this matter when we are con- 
 sidering the consequences of his indiscriminate exercise of 
 this curious form of Irish humour ; as a form of Irish humour it 
 undoubtedly must be accepted, though as Goldsmith was the 
 Irishman who employed it for his own diversion and his own 
 undoing in England to a far greater extent than any other 
 Irishman, it might almost be called " Goldsmith's idiom." 
 
 So the years of his probation passed and he was fully 
 qualified (by age) to present himself as a candidate for Holy 
 Orders. 
 
 Perhaps he may have had some misgivings as to what 
 the result would be ; but he had lived long enough in 
 Ireland to become aware of the liberality of the prelates of 
 the Established Church in passing candidates who were even 
 more grossly unqualified than himself to bring credit to the 
 cloth, and so he had no reason to be absolutely certain that 
 he would be rejected. He may have kept up his spirits by 
 his knowledge of the fact that he was going before a bishop 
 who was known to be conscientious and even scrupulous in 
 the discharge of his duty. He may have elected to go before 
 the Bishop of Elphin on this account, so as to increase his 
 chances of rejection ; and he may even have made assurance 
 doubly sure by appearing before his lordship, as Dr. Strean 
 said he did, in crimson breeches ; but this was surely an 
 unnecessary precaution to take : he was certainly so amply 
 disqualified in other respects that he had no need to resort to 
 
88 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 so glaring an evidence of his unsuitability. Oliver Goldsmith's 
 putting on crimson breeches for this occasion would be like 
 a squat actor of sixty going to play the part of Romeo, and 
 taking the trouble to get himself up as King Lear. 
 
 He was not kept long in suspense. The Bishop of Elphin 
 fully justified the confidence which he had placed in his 
 discretion by rejecting his application. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 A CONSTANT PRODIGAL 
 1752 
 
 It is, however, one thing for a man who, knowing himself to 
 have no " bent " in the direction of the Church as a profession, 
 to come out from the presence of the examiner with a laugh 
 in his sleeve, but it is quite another matter for this man to go 
 smilingly back to the relations who have been supporting him 
 for several years — much longer than their combined opulence 
 could afford. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that even Bob Bryanton congratu- 
 lated Oliver Goldsmith on the result of his interview with the 
 bishop, though Goldsmith must have been a companion with 
 whom he could ill dispense from his country strolls, or the 
 ale-house hearth. As for his poor mother, and his brother, 
 and sister, and uncle, to say nothing of his brother-in-law 
 and his other relations, they must all have looked askance 
 at him when he made his appearance among them with the 
 story of his failure on his face. But the scene of the comedy 
 was laid in Ireland, and there was no outburst of indignation 
 against a man who had failed, though we do not doubt that, 
 Irishlike, the innocent bishop was thoroughly denounced, and 
 his scruples sneered at ; nor would there be any lack in the 
 memory of some of the circle, of notorious instances of men 
 being accepted for orders who were far more highly disqualified 
 for the Church than poor Oliver. It is he himself in his 
 character of the " Man in Black " who tells us that at every 
 signal proof which he gave of his incapacity to succeed in life, 
 his relations only said that it was a pity, for he had not a bit 
 of harm in him. Certainly more long-suffering relations than 
 those vdth whom Goldsmith was blessed, the most persistent 
 
 idler could never wish to have at his back. Nothing seemed 
 
 89 
 
90 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 to put these good people out. No word of reproach did any 
 of them address to him. The chances really are that they 
 believed him to be one of the most unfortunate young men 
 in the three counties ; but so far as his relations were concerned 
 he was one of the most fortunate of men, and possibly this 
 was the worst position that a young man of his temperament 
 could find himself in. Possibly if he had had the doors of 
 Ballymahon and Lissoy shut in his face he would have 
 developed that backbone which, under the stress of similar 
 circumstances, other men with a liking for a simple life of 
 independence at the expense of some one else, have suddenly 
 found themselves to possess, though previously, having had 
 no occasion to give any thought to their position among 
 vertibrates, they had not suspected its existence. But here 
 one finds oneself applying the steel-yard standard, which was 
 made for the ordinary, to the abnormal — applying the ordeal 
 of the Pix to a pixie. It would be about as reasonable to 
 prescribe a schoolboy's regimen to a fairy as to say with any 
 degree of definiteness what would have been good for Oliver 
 Goldsmith. Even allowing that a glimpse of closed doors, 
 offered to him on his return from his interview with the 
 Bishop of Elphin, would have given him the backbone 
 which we hear is so essential to any one striving to reach that 
 vague and ever-shifting goal known as success in life, the world 
 would have had no Oliver Goldsmith, for Oliver Goldsmith 
 with a backbone would not be the Oliver Goldsmith whom 
 we know. 
 
 Perhaps, on the whole, one would be safest in affirming 
 that a little sternness on the part of his relatives would have 
 made a man of him. Yes, it might have made a man of him ; 
 but fortunately that consummation was never achieved. He 
 remained a child to the end of his life The spectacle of one 
 who belonged wholly to the realm of fancy going before the 
 Bishop of Elphin praying for ordination and a fat living is 
 to our eyes a grotesque one. It suggests Titania's wooing 
 of Bottom. If the Elphin Bishop had spelt the name of his 
 see phonetically Goldsmith would have had a chance. 
 
 He was back in his brother's house, and once more there 
 was a consultation, and, as usual, the good Uncle Contarine 
 came to his help, though there is really no reason to believe 
 
A CONSTANT PRODIGAL 91 
 
 that he was calling for help in a louder tone than a whisper. 
 But Uncle Contarine was truly kind. He saw that his nephew 
 had had a long enough spell of idleness. He had in his pocket 
 an offer from a gentleman of some position in his neighbour- 
 hood, who stood in need of a tutor for his sons, with no 
 prejudices against taking a hand at cards when he was wanted. 
 His relations took great care that the offer of such an appoint- 
 ment was not rejected ; and Oliver entered upon his duties 
 as speedily as possible. What he taught or whom he taught 
 in the house of this Mr. Flinn, we have no means of learning ; 
 but after remaining in the situation for a year he quitted 
 it at a moment's notice, after accusing some member of the 
 household of cheating at cards. 
 
 He had, however, done very well for himself — we are not 
 in a position to speak for his pupils — during his term of 
 tutorship. Very different indeed was his condition now 
 from that which had been his when he had first entered 
 the house. He had thirty guineas in his pocket, the result 
 of his teaching or of his card-playing, or of both, and in 
 addition he had a good horse. So that on the whole, we do 
 not think that he had reason to complain of any want of 
 liberality on the part of Mr. Flinn. 
 
 On riding to the house of one of his relations and giving 
 them his account of the final scene at the Flinns', it would 
 appear that he did not get quite so warm a welcome as he 
 expected ; and after a very brief stay in his mother's cottage, 
 he turned his horse's head southward and rode straight to 
 the City of Cork. 
 
 Of course, the story of how he parted from the Flinns 
 quickly came to the ears of all the Goldsmith connection, and 
 they were doubtless shaking their heads and saying it was a 
 great pity, because there was no harm in him and he was 
 certainly very good-natured, while they looked up and down 
 the road expecting to see the figure of the solitary horseman 
 returning to lodge with them for an indefinite period. 
 But when he did not appear after the lapse of a day or two, 
 they began to feel uneasy, and when weeks went by without 
 any tidings reaching them of his whereabouts and his in- 
 tentions, they became alarmed. Previously, we fancy, they 
 were alarmed at the prospect of having to put up with him 
 
92 7HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 for another year or two. His sister, Catherine Hodson, 
 tells of the trouble they were all in ; but what we should 
 like would be a report of the views of the various 
 members of the family in regard to this episode in 
 his life. Did any of them imagine that he felt so strongly 
 that he had made a fool of himself that he could not face 
 them f Or did any one suggest that at last he had found 
 sense, and had made up his mind not to run the chance of 
 frittering away his thirty pounds at Ballymahon ? 
 
 Some explanation is needed in regard to his conduct in 
 this transaction. But it never will be forthcoming. It was 
 most unlike Goldsmith to make such a move as was attributed 
 to him ; but the sequel cannot be so described. On the con- 
 trary, it was eminently characteristic of Oliver Goldsmith ; for 
 one morning, six weeks after he had shaken the dust of the 
 Flinns' avenue off his feet, he entered Ballymahon village--^ 
 solitary figure on horseback, but not the heroic figure which hm 
 been looked for when it was known that he had been gallan™ 
 mounted and with a pouch full of gold. In place of his gotm 
 horse he was astride of a miserable animal that could scarceW 
 carry him to his mother's door ; his clothes were in tattei^ 
 and it soon became plain that he was starving. 
 
 From the hints which his sister let drop in her brief but 
 suggestive account of his return, we can have no difficiOTJ 
 in drawing a complete and consistent picture of the occu3 
 rences that led to his putting into writing what passes as a 
 narrative of his adventures at this time. 
 
 Although his poor mother must have been overjoyed to 
 see him again, after being for weeks in the depths of despair 
 respecting him, yet there can be no doubt that, when she 
 learned that he had no money and no prospects, she expressed 
 her opinion on the situation with a vehemence that was 
 not only pardonable and natural, but praiseworthy as well, 
 unless she had meant to play the part of the mother of 
 the prodigal son. But Oliver had become so accustomed 
 to the indulgences granted to the prodigal, it seemed that 
 he expected a premium to be attached to prodigality ; and 
 he felt greatly hurt by her remarks, so much so, in fact, that 
 we are pretty sure he left the cottage and hastened to the 
 house of his brother, where he was received as cordially as 
 
';^." , ' :;. •-<«i»i''*^«- ,: ,; " V>^^F^^ap; - 
 
 ^\'■^•'~'l^^l■iJ\ 
 
 Ballymahon. 
 
 /■>-n«/ a- ^lunagrapli l,y 11'. S',vans/on. 
 
A CONSTANT PRODIGAL 93 
 
 ever, and where, no doubt, he met his sister and his brother- 
 in-law, Daniel Hodson the younger. After due discussion, 
 it was resolved that Oliver should be asked to write out and 
 lay before his mother a full account of his adventures of the 
 previous six weeks, with a view to reconcile her to his return 
 under the deplorable conditions of which she had become 
 superficially aware. 
 
 He agreed to do so ; and his success in this way we are 
 disposed to regard as marking an important point in his 
 life ; for it was, we are convinced, his success over this com- 
 position that made him aware for the first time of what he 
 could do with a pen in hand. In every portion of this 
 document there is visible the growth of a narrative under the 
 impulse of the imagination of a writer who has just become 
 aware of his own powers. We are persuaded that he was 
 astonished at the evolution of his story — at the easy way 
 in which it worked itself out, moving naturally from detail 
 to detail, with the delightful contrasts of the humourous 
 and the stern, with all its firm touches of character, its 
 suggestions of the grotesque, and at least one perfect bit of 
 pathos, the whole linked together by niceties of language, 
 graceful and appropriate expressions, and in a style as un- 
 affected as it was lucid. He could not have been otherwise 
 than astonished at so charming a result of his sitting down at 
 the suggestion of his brother and sister to write to their mother 
 an exculpatory letter ; and thus he was for the first time made 
 aware of his endowments — his exquisite style of writing, and 
 the colour and glow of life which he was able to impart to 
 every scene that his imagination painted. 
 
 Mr. John Forster, whose caution constituted one of his 
 greatest qualifications as a biographer, refers to this narrative ; 
 but as he was unable to find a copy in Goldsmith's hand- 
 writing, he thought it prudent only to print it in the Appendix 
 to his biography ; at the same time he suggests no doubt 
 as to its authenticity. It would, we think, be impossible 
 for any one possessing even the smallest amount of critical 
 judgment to do so. It has the Goldsmith touch in every 
 line, with just enough crudity about it to convey the 
 impression of immaturity — not the immaturity of Byron's 
 Hours of Idleness compared with his Fourth Canto of Child^ 
 
94 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 Harolds 'Pilgrimage, not the immaturity of Wordsworth's 
 Lucy Gray compared with his Sonnet on Westminster Bridge, 
 but an immaturity that can only be detected by a careful 
 study of its phrases. That is the most astonishing thing 
 about it, the delicate quality of its immaturity. It is a salad 
 that contains every ingredient prescribed in the recipe, and 
 that only needs the soufir of garlic to make it perfect. So 
 far as its general style is concerned, it is as thoroughly 
 Goldsmith as is The Vicar of Wakefield. 
 
 We quote it in full in order that readers may have an 
 opportunity of forming an opinion on a point which we think 
 must be acknowledged to be one of the greatest interest : 
 
 "My Dear Mother, 
 
 " If you will sit down and calmly listen to what I 
 say, you shall be fuUy resolved in every one of those 
 many questions you have asked me. I went to Cork 
 and converted my horse, which you prize so much higher 
 than Fiddleback, into cash, took my passage in a ship bound 
 for America, and, at the same time, paid the captain for my 
 freight and all the other expenses of my voyage. But it so 
 happened that the wind did not answer for three weeks; 
 and you know, mother, that I could not command the ele- 
 ments. My misfortune was that when the wind served I 
 happened to be with a party in the country, and my friend 
 the captain never inquired after me, but set sail with as 
 much indifference as if I had been on board. The remainder 
 of my time I employed in the city and its environs ; viewing 
 everything curious, and you know no one can starve while 
 he has money in his pocket. 
 
 " Reduced, however, to my last two guineas, I began to 
 think of my dear mother and friends whom I had left behind 
 me, and so bought that generous beast, Fiddleback, and 
 made adieu to Cork with only five shillings in my pocket. 
 This to be sure was but a scanty allowance for man and horse 
 towards a journey of above a hundred miles ; but I did not 
 despair ; for I knew I must find friends on the road. 
 
 " I recollected particularly an old and faithful acquaintance 
 I made at college, who had often and earnestly pressed me to 
 spend a. summer with him, and he lived but eight miles from 
 
A C0NSTAN1 PRODIGAL 95 
 
 Cork. This circumstance of vicinity he would expatiate 
 on to me with peculiar emphasis. ' We shall,' says he, ' enjoy 
 the delights of both city and country, and you shall command 
 my purse and my stable.' 
 
 " However, upon the way I met a poor woman all in 
 tears, who told me her husband had been arrested for a debt 
 he was not able to pay, and that his eight children must now 
 starve, bereaved as they were of his industry, which had 
 been their only support. I thought myself at home, being 
 not far from my good friend's house, and therefore parted 
 with a moiety of all my store ; and pray, mother, ought I 
 not to have given her the other half-crown, for what she 
 got would be of little use to her ? — However, I soon arrived 
 at the mansion of my affectionate friend, guarded by the 
 vigilance of a huge mastiff, who flew at me and would have 
 torn me to pieces but for the assistance of a woman, whose 
 countenance was not less grim than that of the dog ; yet 
 she with great humanity relieved me from the jaws of this 
 Cerberus, and was prevailed on to carry up my name to her 
 master. 
 
 " Without suffering me to wait long, my old friend, who 
 was then recovering from a severe fit of sickness, came down 
 in his night-cap, night-gown, and slippers, and embraced 
 me with the most cordial welcome, showed me in, and, after 
 giving me a history of his indisposition, assured me that he 
 considered himself peculiarly fortunate in having under his 
 roof the man he most loved on earth, and whose stay with 
 him must, above all things, contribute to his perfect 
 recovery. I now repented sorely I had not given the poor 
 woman the other half-crown, as I thought all my bills of 
 humanity would be punctually answered by this worthy man. 
 I revealed to him my whole soul ; I opened to him all my 
 distresses ; and freely owned that I had but one half-crown 
 in my pocket ; but that now, like a ship after weathering 
 out the storm, I considered myself secure in a safe and hos- 
 pitable harbour. He made no answer, but walked about 
 the room, rubbing his hands as one in deep study. This I 
 imputed to the sympathetic feelings of a tender heart, which 
 increased my esteem for him, and, as that increased, I gave 
 the most favourable interpretation to his silence. I con- 
 
96 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 strued it into delicacy of sentiment, as if he dreaded to wound 
 my pride by expressing his commiseration in words, leaving 
 his generous conduct to speak for itself. 
 
 " It now approached six o'clock in the evening, and as I 
 had eaten no breakfast, and as my spirits were raised, my 
 appetite for dinner grew uncommonly keen. At length the 
 old woman came into the room with two plates, one spoon, 
 and a dirty cloth, which she laid upon the table. This appear- 
 ance, without increasing my spirits, did not diminish my 
 appetite. My protectress soon returned with a small bowl 
 of sago, a small porringer of sour milk, a loaf of stale brown 
 bread, and the heel, of an old cheese all over crawling with 
 mites. My friend apologised that his illness obliged him to 
 live on slops, and that better fare was not in the house; 
 observing, at the same time, that a milk diet was certainly 
 the most healthful. At eight o'clock he again recommended 
 a regular life, declaring that for his part he would lie down 
 with the lamb and rise with the lark. My hunger was at 
 this time so exceedingly sharp that I wished for another 
 slice of the loaf, but was obliged to go to bed without even 
 that refreshment. 
 
 " This lenten entertainment I had received made me 
 resolve to depart as soon as possible ; accordingly next morn- 
 ing, when I spoke of going, he did nor oppose my resolution ; 
 he rather commended my design, adding some very sage 
 counsel upon the occasion. * To be sure,' said he, ' the 
 longer you stay away from your mother the more you will 
 grieve her and your other friends ; and possibly they are 
 already afflicted at hearing of this foolish expedition you have 
 made.' Notwithstanding all this, and without any hope 
 of softening such a sordid heart, I again renewed the tale of 
 my distress, and asking ' how he thought I could travel above 
 a hundred miles upon one half-crown ? ' I begged to borrow 
 a single guinea, which I assured him should be repaid with 
 thanks. ' And you know, sir,' said I, * it is no more than I 
 have often done for you.' To which he firmly answered : 
 ' Why look you, Mr. Goldsmith, that is neither here nor 
 there. I have paid you all you ever lent me, and this sick- 
 ness of mine has left me bare of cash. But I have thought 
 myself of a conveyance for you ; sell your horse, and I will 
 
A CONSTANT PRODIGAL 97 
 
 furnish you with a much better one to ride on.' I readily 
 grasped at this proposal, and begged to see the nag, on which 
 he led me to his bedchamber, and from under the bed he 
 pulled out a stout oak stick. ' Here he is,' said he ; ' take 
 this in your hand and it will carry you to your mother's with 
 more safety than such a horse as you ride.' I was in doubt, 
 when I got it into my hand, whether I should not, in the 
 first place, apply it to his pate ; but a rap at the street door 
 made the wretch fly to it, and when I returned to the parlour, 
 he introduced me, as if nothing of the kind had happened, to 
 the gentleman who entered, as Mr. Goldsmith, his most 
 ingenious and worthy friend, of whom he had so often heard 
 him speak with rapture. I could scarcely compose myself ; and 
 must have betrayed indignation in my mien to the stranger 
 who was a counsellor-at-law in the neighbourhood, a man of 
 engaging aspect and polite address. 
 
 " After spending an hour, he asked my friend and me to 
 dine with him at his house. This I declined at first, as I 
 wished to have no further communication with my hos- 
 pitable friend ; but at the solicitation of both I at last con- 
 sented, determined as I was by two motives ; one, that I 
 was prejudiced in favour of the looks and manner of the 
 counsellor : and the other, that I stood in need of a com- 
 fortable dinner. And there, indeed, I found everything 
 that I could wish, abundance without profusion, and ele- 
 gance without affectation. In the evening, when my old 
 friend, who had eaten very plentifully at his neighbour's 
 table, but talked again of lying down with the lamb, made 
 a motion to me for retiring, our generous host requested I 
 should take a bed with him, upon which I plainly told my old 
 friend that he might go home and take care of the horse he 
 had given me, but that I should never re-enter his doors. 
 He went away with a laugh, leaving me to add this to the 
 other little things the counsellor already knew of his plausible 
 neighbour. 
 
 " And now, my dear mother, I found sufficient to recon- 
 cile me to all my follies ; for here I spent three whole days. 
 The counsellor had two sweet girls to his daughters, who 
 played enchantingly on the harpsichord : and yet it was but 
 a melancholy pleasure I felt the first time I heard them ; 
 
98 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 for that being the first time also that either of them had 
 touched the instrument since their mother's death, I saw 
 the tears in silence trickle down their father's cheeks. I 
 every day endeavoured to go away, but every day was pressed 
 and obliged to stay. On my going, the counsellor offered 
 me his purse, with a horse and servant to convey me home ; 
 but the latter I declined, and only took a guinea to bear my 
 necessary expenses on the road. 
 
 " Oliver Goldsmith. 
 " To Mrs. Anne Goldsmith 
 " Ballymahon." 
 
 The question of the accuracy or the inaccuracy of this 
 charming narrative of a dramatic series of incidents is not 
 one that concerns us greatly ; but we are certainly inclined 
 to think that it is artistically credible in every particular. 
 No one can have lived long in the world without becoming 
 aware of the fact that every class of man has his own type of 
 adventures awaiting him, and the incidents narrated with 
 such spirit by Oliver Goldsmith in this letter are distinctly 
 of the type that we associate with his name. That is the 
 extent of the freedom we take in considering the question 
 of accuracy in connection with an interesting and well told 
 story. 
 
 How could such a letter fail to accomplish its aim ? It 
 did not fail. If his mother fell short of a complete appre- 
 ciation of its charm of style, her heart did not remain 
 closed to such an appeal as the writer made to her in so 
 insinuating a form, and a reconciliation followed. He returned 
 to his mother's cottage, and possibly the horse, Fiddlebact, 
 had, like his master, a few days in clover, unless the hunt 
 kennels were within easy walking distance from BaUymahon. 
 
 Before the prodigal had got the taste of the veal cutlet 
 off his mouth, his friends were making further efforts to help 
 him to earn his living ; and after a short family council, it 
 was decided that the law offered them the best chance of 
 ridding themselves of the burthen of his keep. Once again 
 Uncle Contarine came forward with a purse in his hand. 
 Fifty guineas were given to the unpromising nephew, and it 
 was expected that with this sum he was to pay the expenses 
 
A CONSTANT PRODIGAL <)g 
 
 incidental to his reading at the Inns of Court until he should 
 be fully qualified to starve as a barrister. 
 
 Oliver took the money, set off to Dublin with it, and 
 meeting in that city one of his Roscommon friends, promptly 
 lost every penny of it over a game of cards. He wrote a 
 penitent letter to his uncle, was quickly forgiven by this 
 benevolent man, and furnished with the means of returning 
 to Ballymahon. It was not to Ballymahon he returned, 
 however, but to his brother's house at Pallas — his mother 
 positively refused to admit him to her cottage, and no one 
 could blame her for doing so, least of all her scapegrace 
 son. It is plain that the patience of all his relatives, with 
 the exception perhaps of his uncle, was completely exhausted 
 by this time ; for soon there came a disagreement with his 
 brother. There was a sister-in-law in the house, it must 
 be remembered, and the forty-pounds-a-year tradition still 
 clung tenaciously to the household at Pallas, and the income 
 was not much to maintain a stock of patience on, in addition 
 to a strong young man, who had planted himself down in 
 the parlour and looked for regular meals. The breaking 
 strain of his brother's endurance had been reached at last. 
 A sensible wife, when she also discharges the duties of cook, 
 has usually a word or two to say to her husband when they 
 are alone at night on the subject of the extra mouth to feed 
 without any extra money being forthcoming for this pur- 
 pose. The result was inevitable in the home of the poor 
 curate. There was a difference of opinion on some point 
 between the brothers, and a distinct quarrel, the effect of 
 which was to cause Oliver to leave the house and hasten to 
 the only door which was left open for his entering — that of 
 his uncle Contarine, at Kilmore. Here he seems ever to 
 have been welcome, and it was undoubtedly the pleasantest 
 home in the whole connection. There was a Miss Contarine 
 who played the harpsichord vastly well and she had possibly 
 some music arranged for the harpsichord and flute. There 
 were duets sounding at odd times in the vicarage parlour 
 in those days, and doubtless a solo now and again — Johnny 
 Armstrong's Last Good-night, [and it * may be some new 
 words to some local melodies. 
 
 And so the days passed aU too quickly for the young man 
 
loo THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 — he was scarcely twenty-four, and without the least sense of 
 responsibility — and perhaps for the young woman as well: 
 she was a few years older, and it naay be in some measure 
 responsive, though she was probably at this time engaged 
 to the man whom she married early the following year — 
 until there arrived at the Vicarage a distinguished relative 
 and guest, the Dean of Cloyne. This dignitary seems to 
 have been a sort of arbiter elegantiarum of the family, and 
 he may have been entreated by the humbler clerics in the 
 connection to say what was to be done with the unpromising 
 young man. He had apparently no trouble in giving his 
 decision on the question : there could be no doubt that he 
 would have a future as a medical practitioner. This was 
 what Dean Goldsmith decided. Upon what data he based his 
 judgment we have no means of finding out. It may be that 
 he concluded that, as Oliver had essayed the Church and the law 
 without success, he would do well to give physic a trial. The 
 whole business of choosing a profession for Oliver Goldsmith 
 has a very Irish air about it. The moment that the Bishop 
 of Elphin declines to accept the responsibility of vouching 
 for his qualifications for holy orders it is taken for granted 
 that the Church has been given a fair trial ; as if every one 
 in the family believed that there was no way of entering the 
 Church except through the Elphin porch. Then because 
 he allows a sharper to get the better of him when 
 on his way to qualify for the law, it is at once assumed that 
 the law is closed to him. To be sure, it must be admitted 
 that the fact of his allowing the other man to play the part 
 of the sharper gives an air of reiasonableness to the assumption 
 that he would never become a successful lawyer ; but it could 
 scarcely be said that either the Church or the law had been 
 given a fair^! trial. 
 
 The truth is that Oliver Goldsmith was about the most 
 unpractical person in Ireland, and he was surrounded by 
 relations who knew no more of the world than could be gained 
 by an intimate association with the affairs of Ballymahon 
 or the like. They were as kindly a folk as ever lived, and 
 patient beyond all reason ; but in worldly wisdom they were 
 on the level of a child. Not one of them had the least quali- 
 fication for " getting on " and most of them were endowed 
 
A CONSTANT PRODIGAL loi 
 
 with those qualities — nearly all estimable — which tend in 
 the other direction. A complete absence of ambition seems 
 to have marked the whole Goldsmith connection, Oliver Gold- 
 smith included. They seemed to ask for nothing except 
 to be allowed to live, and the attempt to gain even so small 
 a concession from the world occupied all their time. Oliver 
 Goldsmith himself was quite devoid of ambition. He had 
 no ambition to become a great writer. He only became a 
 great writer to keep himself from starvation. 
 
 The Dean of the family was on a level with his relations, 
 so far as his capacity to pronounce an opinion on a question 
 of the capacity of another was concerned. There never 
 was a man less likely to succeed as a physician than Oliver 
 Goldsmith. Even the few days' acquaintance which the Dean 
 had with him should have made this fact plain. Uncle 
 Contarine had, however, confidence in the man's judgment 
 — ^the confidence which a humble country rector used 
 in the old days to have in his Bishop or in the nearest 
 dignitary of the Church — and he at once made his nephew 
 an oflfer to defray the expense of his medical education. 
 As might have been expected from his previous exhibi- 
 tions of docility, the nephew at once accepted the offer. 
 In some parts of Ireland stiU, preparing for a profession has 
 become a profession in itself. Goldsmith when in Dublin 
 had doubtless become acquainted with the many fascinations 
 of this easy-going scheme of life. He had already spent 
 two years longer than was necessary to qualify for his degree at 
 Trinity College, and a further three years qualifying for the 
 profession which makes the smallest demands upon a candidate ; 
 and now he was, of course, quite as ready to spend a few 
 more years qualifying for medicine as he had been to qualify 
 for law. Such complacency as he showed in entering upon 
 a new course of study — to put his own interpretation upon 
 the phrase — was part of his nature. He himself had no idea 
 what profession he was fitted for ; but he knew that he was 
 fully qualified by an open mind to spend some interesting 
 years in a strange place at the expense of some one else. He 
 had heard of Edinburgh, and he knew that it was as distant 
 as London from Ballymahon, though comparative distances 
 are not officially calculated from that centre ; and so he 
 
102 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 probably felt that he would have as complete a sense of 
 travel by going to the one to study medicine as by going to 
 the other to study law. 
 
 He was grateful to his uncle Contarine, and his other 
 relations were gladly reconciled to him and to his prospect 
 of leaving Ireland for an indefinite period. 
 
 It was in October 1752 that he started for Edinburgh. 
 The duration of the journey in those days was usually only a 
 little longer than is that of a voyage to New York in these days. 
 And like many persons who leave Ireland on the latter journey, 
 he never saw his native land again. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 IN EDINBURGH . :; , 
 
 1752-1754 
 
 Only one letter written bv Oliver Goldsmith when he was 
 stiU in Ireland was preserved, and even of this the original, 
 as we have already mentioned, was not to be found when 
 Prior was diligently collecting materials for his biography. 
 Of the hundreds of letters which he states in one place he 
 wrote to his friends in Ireland without receiving a reply, a 
 few were kept, and three of the most interesting of these 
 deal with his life in Edinburgh, and show pretty clearly 
 that the writer's mind was bent upon study, but ethnological 
 rather than anatoraical. It is more than likely that he wrote 
 from Edinburgh to his brother Henry, his sister Catherine, his 
 mother, and many of his old associates, but all the letters were 
 lost or destroyed as worthless with the exception of one to Bob 
 Bryanton and two to his uncle and benefactor. The recipients 
 did not see any special reason why they should be kept. Pos- 
 sibly an uneasy feeling prevailed in the family circle that, 
 Oliver being now at a distance, it might be as well to keep him 
 there, and, by destroying his letters unanswered, get rid of 
 such reminders of the disturbing influence he had once had 
 on their placid hves. They were doubtless warm-hearted, 
 affectionate people, and they had not lost their natural affec- 
 tion for him ; but they felt that it would on the whole be 
 better for him, as well as for themselves, if they were to show 
 him a little coldness. He was not encouraged to write to 
 them, and they destroyed his letters unanswered, so that 
 they could no longer be reproached by seeing them every 
 time they went to their desks. 
 
 We aU know the way worthy and even warm-hearted 
 
 people can bring themselves to regard the menace of an 
 
 103 
 
I04 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 erratic relation, and how they are in constant fear that if 
 he receives the least encouragement, he will return some day 
 to settle down upon them. Considering the experience that 
 they had had of OUver during some years, no great blame 
 attaches to any members of his family for their seeming 
 coldness to him when he was at a distance ; only we feel 
 that they might have kept his letters. 
 
 From various sources we learn a good deal about his hfe 
 in Edinburgh, and something even about his medical studies. 
 It becomes perfectly plain that the trend of his mind was to 
 get to know people and to understand them. He was that 
 best of all observers, the man who assimilates unconsciously 
 all the information possible to obtain about a people, and 
 who has a genius for noting the important minutiae in the 
 character either of a person or a family or a people. He 
 shows such power in reproducing these illuminating but 
 dehcate traits that one is amazed to hear of his being imposed 
 upon by very ordinary impostors. He could paint the por- 
 trait of a rascal like Mr. Jenkinson, so that any one meeting 
 such a man would be on guard against him ; but he him- 
 self was constantly being made the victim of Mr. Jenkinson 
 and his confederates. He could draw a finished portrait of 
 Mr. Lofty, and so warn every one who reads The Good-Natur'd 
 Man of the danger of being carried away by a plausible 
 boaster ; and yet we hear of his being constantly taken in 
 by such a man. 
 
 The question that suggests itself from an acquaintance 
 with these facts is. Was he really taken in by such impostors ? 
 Might it not be that he was content to pay a price for his 
 study of these characters ? 
 
 We must confess that the more attention we give to the 
 peculiarities of Goldsmith's nature, and especially to the form 
 of his humour, the more likely does it seem to us that he now 
 and again submitted to the exactions of men whom he could 
 see through, for the sake of the artistic pleasure he derived 
 from studying them. 
 
 This point is suggested, not by reason of any Edinburgh 
 experience of his, but by the power of observation of character 
 which he shows in his letters written in that city. Up to the 
 time of his writing these letters no evidence is forthcoming 
 
IN EDINBURGH 105 
 
 of his ability in any direction. The picture which one forms 
 of him in Ireland is that of a pleasant but an ordinary simple- 
 minded country lad who has failed at everything he has put 
 his hand to, and from whom his relations are justified in fearing 
 there is little to hope. His letter to his mother gives us a 
 hint of his humour and his capabilities of being interesting 
 on paper ; but when we read all that he wrote to Bob Bryanton 
 and, in a different way, to his uncle, we cannot but feel that 
 we are reading the productions of a man possessing powers of 
 observations of the highest order. We feel that he has made 
 strides in his education since he left College, and that the years 
 of fruitful idleness which he passed among the villages of 
 Roscommon — with an occasional disastrous excursion to Cork 
 and DubHn — are nothing to reproach him with. We begin to 
 have an impression that, whatever he may have been when he 
 first went to the University, he is now no fool. To be sure, so 
 far as he is personally concerned it cannot be said that he 
 shows any more likelihood of " getting on in the world " 
 than he ever did ; the fact being that he was never able to 
 turn his powers of observation and his capacity to grasp 
 subtleties of character to his own advantage apart from his 
 hterary work. He suggests, in his career and its accidents, 
 a man who is so busy observing everything to his right hand 
 and to his left that he walks into the ditch that is directly in 
 front of him. Goldsmith could look in every direction but 
 straight ahead ; when he tried to do so he only showed that 
 he had an incurable astigmatism which distorted the objects 
 before him, but when he became colloquial and unscientific 
 and glanced " out of the sides of his eyes " at anything, he 
 saw it clearly and accurately in every detail. 
 
 The incident that is recorded of his first hour in Edinburgh 
 illustrates what we have ventured to suggest as his greatest 
 failing in his walk through life. It is said that the moment 
 his trunk had been deposited at his lodgings, he hastened out 
 to the streets and became so absorbed in observing everything, 
 that it was only when he thought of returning he found that 
 he had neglected to take a note of the street where the lodging- 
 house was situated. There he was on all-fours in the ditch ; 
 but he had learned more of Edinburgh and its people in that 
 evening than an ordinary man could have leiarned, for the 
 
io6 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 ordinary man would have spent the afternoon unpacking and 
 arranging everything for his own comfort in the room he had 
 taken, and the ordinary man would have shown his good 
 sense ; but he would have left no material for an anecdote 
 that people, a hundred and fifty years later, would read and 
 value as indicative of the character of a man about whom 
 every bit of information is regarded as precious. 
 
 Happily Ohver Goldsmith came upon the caddy who had 
 acted as his porter earlier in the day — he had taken his obser- 
 vation of the caddy and recognised him at once — and so he 
 got once more in touch with his trunk. 
 
 He settled down at once to make the most of his time 
 among a strange people. He became a student of the streets, 
 of the peculiarities of the people, and, incidentally, of the 
 School of Medicine. He made friends in many quarters, 
 avoiding, as usual, those who might possibly have been useful 
 in forwarding his interests in the profession for which he was 
 supposed to be qualifying. He seems to have joined with 
 two other medical students in his boarding arrangements, 
 for three is the number mentioned by him as necessary for 
 the consumption of a whole loin of mutton in a week, begin- 
 ning with " brandered chops," going on to a griU, then to 
 cutlets with onion sauce, until the " Heshy parts " were quite 
 consumed, bringing them on to the seventh day, when the 
 bones were used as the basis of a tureen of Scotch broth 
 " and the landlady rested from her labours." His sister, in 
 her narrative, pubhshed in the rambling memoir over which 
 Bishop Percy and his friends had a very pretty quarrel, 
 refers to this cuisine with something like the snifi of a good 
 housekeeper, suggesting that its meagreness caused him to 
 find it expedient to remove to another and more generous 
 house. She did not know that to the great majority of 
 Scotch students the fare which she seemed to think niggardly 
 would have appeared sumptuous. She had clearly heard 
 nothing of the sack of meal in one corner and the sack of 
 potatoes in the other, to provide alternate meals for Edin- 
 burgh students for " the Ministry." 
 
 But it would seem that the new boarding-house had other 
 attractions for the Irish student besides a more varied menu. 
 The boarders were more numerous, and, under the influence 
 
IN EDINBURGH 107 
 
 of a generous diet, were much more sociable here than else- 
 where, and they were not slow to recognise the value of the 
 newcomer as a contributor to their gaiety. The gaiety of 
 Scotch students is something quite different from that of the 
 Irish, but Oliver Goldsmith's associates were sufficiently 
 liberal-minded to be able to admit the possibility of their 
 humour being improved by the admission of a Hibernian 
 strain, and the chances are that they found out that they 
 were right in trying such an experiment. At any rate, we 
 hear that Goldsmith was shortly afterwards admitted a 
 member of the Medical Society without the usual qualifica- 
 tion of reading a paper on a medical subject. His name 
 appears among the members in the books of the Society for 
 January 13, 1753. In none of his letters, however, does he 
 hint at the " dissipations " which his sister laments that he 
 was led into. But in the ears of a prudent sister one clink 
 of a glass coming from downstairs on awaking from her first 
 sleep suggests an orgy, if there are but two or three young 
 men in the house. Her brother Oliver may have had a " dis- 
 sipation" in Edinburgh now and again, but it may be taken 
 for granted that it was a fete maigre — one conducted on the 
 principles of the loin-of-mutton landlady : a little of it went 
 a long way. It was a chastened debauch — a spree on what 
 sailors used to deride under the name of " seven-water grog." 
 It is said that upon one occasion he and a number of friends 
 were together when he suddenly made the dare-devil proposal 
 that they should draw lots which of them should treat the 
 rest to the theatre where a new play was to be performed. 
 The Scotsmen shook their heads. They were ready to carry 
 the ervening's orgy a certain distance, but they knew where to 
 stop. His good sister need not have had an uneasy moment. 
 With such canny young bloods as his companions, the scenes 
 of dissipation could only be painted in a very much diluted 
 tint of red. 
 
 His letters to his cousin Bryanton suggests another form 
 of Scotch gaiety to which he was introduced. He says : 
 
 " The men here have generally high cheek-bones, and are 
 lean and swarthy, fond of action, dancing in particular. Though 
 now I mention dancing, let me say something of their balls 
 
io8 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 which are very frequent here. When a stranger enters the 
 dancing-hall, he sees one end of the room taken up by the 
 ladies, who sit dismally in a groupe by themselves. On the 
 other end stand their pensive partners that are to be : but 
 no more intercourse between the sexes than there is between 
 two countries at war : — the ladies, indeed, may ogle, and the 
 gentlemen sigh, but an embargo is laid on any closer com- 
 merce. At length, to interrupt hostilities, the lady directress 
 or intendant, or what you will, pitches on a gentleman and 
 lady to walk a minuet ; which they perform with a formality 
 that approaches to despondence. After five or six couple 
 have thus walked the gauntlet, all stand up to country dances ; 
 each gentleman furnished with a partner from the aforesaid 
 lady directress ; so they dance much and say nothing, and 
 thus concludes our assembly. I told a Scotch gentleman 
 that such profound silence resembled the ancient procession 
 of the Roman matrons in honour of Ceres, and the Scotch 
 gentleman told me (and 'faith, I beheve he was right) that 
 I was a very great pedant for my pains. 
 
 " Now I am come to the ladies ; and to show that I love 
 Scotland, and everything that belongs to so charming a 
 country, I insist on it, and will give him leave to break my 
 head that denies it, that the Scotch ladies are ten thousand 
 times handsomer and finer than the Irish : — to be sure now 
 I see your sisters Betty and Peggy vastly surprised at my 
 partiality, but tell them flatly I don't value them, or their 
 fine skins, or eyes, or good sense, or — , a potato ; for I say 
 it and will maintain it, and as a convincing proof (I'm in 
 a very great passion) of what I assert, the Scotch ladies 
 say it themselves. But to be less serious ; where will 
 you find a language so pretty become a pretty mouth as the 
 broad Scotch ? And the women here speak it in its highest 
 purity ; for instance, teach one of their young ladies to 
 pronounce ' Whoar wuU I gong ? ' with a becoming wideness of 
 mouth, and I'll lay my life they will wound every hearer. 
 
 " We have no such character here as a coquet ; but, 
 alas ! how many envious prudes ! Some days ago I walked 
 into my Lord Kilcoubry's (don't be surprised, my lord is 
 but a glover), when the Duchess of Hamilton (that fair 
 who sacrificed her beauty to ambition, and her inward peace 
 
IN EDINBURGH 109 
 
 to a title and gilt equipage) passed by in her chariot ; her 
 battered husband, or, more properly, the guardian of her 
 charms, sat by her side. Straight envy began, in the shape 
 of no less than three ladies who sat with me, to find faults 
 in her faultless form. ' For my part,' says the first, ' I think 
 what I always thought, that the Duchess has too much red 
 in her complexion.' ' Madam, I'm of your opinion,' says 
 the second ; ' I think her face has a palish cast too much on 
 the delicate order.' ' And let me tell you,' adds the third 
 lady, whose mouth was puckered up to the size of an issue, 
 ' that the Duchess has fine lips, but she wants a mouth.' At 
 this every lady drew up her mouth as if going to pronounce 
 the letter P." 
 
 From this extract from a lively and generally admirable 
 letter it may be gathered that Goldsmith was not likely to 
 be guilty of any excesses of gaiety at one of these Scottish 
 dances. They differed considerably from those mentioned 
 in Murger's Fie de Boheme. Edinburgh was " a far cry " 
 from the Bohemian capital. 
 
 It is interesting to note in this letter his reference to the 
 Duchess of Hamilton. She was, of course, his country- 
 woman, nee Gunning, the younger of the two beautiful 
 sisters who had during the previous year taken London by 
 storm, and set half the mothers in Ireland borrowing money 
 in order to exploit their beautiful daughters at St. James's. 
 The success of the Gunnings must have formed the chief 
 topic of conversation in every part of Ireland from the day 
 they wSnt to Dublin and were taken under the wing of the 
 Lord-Lieutenant until they made their brilliant, but not 
 too brilliant, matches ; and Castle Coote, their Roscommon 
 home, was within easy distance of Ballymahon. The Duchess 
 of Hamilton, who threw herself away upon a roue — he was said 
 to be a wreck at twenty-five — had made a royal progress to 
 the ducal palace at Edinburgh a short time before Goldsmith 
 recorded having seen her, and when Bob Bryanton passed 
 round the news in his visits to Lissoy and Emlagh his relations 
 must have been as interested as if he had told them that 
 Oliver had seen the king. 
 
 But what were they to say when they heard from Uncle 
 
no T:HE life of OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 Contarine that Oliver had spent every second day for mere 
 than a fortnight at the Duke of Hamilton's, but had felt 
 bound to refuse to continue his visits because of his noticing 
 that " they like me more as a jester than as a companion " ? 
 Well, we know that on hearing this astounding piece of news, 
 his friends would have roared with laughter, for they would 
 have been well aware of the fact that Oliver was himself 
 jesting. He was only making a variant upon a jest which 
 was always quite common in Ireland, and which lasted well 
 into the nineteenth century. When a young fellow returned 
 to his native village after spending a day or two in Dublin, he 
 was asked by every tradesman if he had been visiting the 
 Lord-Lieutenant and, if so, had his Excellency sent by him 
 any kind message. 
 
 Some of Goldsmith's biographers have assumed, on the 
 basis of this paragraph in a letter to his uncle, that he had en- 
 deavoured to augment his uncle's allowance by a tutorship at 
 the Duke of Hamilton's. We do not know whom he would 
 have been tutor to in that household ; but even if there 
 had been any one who stood in need of a tutor, would Oliver 
 Goldsmith have been selected for the office ? We think 
 not. The beautiful Duchess had had enough of Ireland 
 and the Irish to last her for the rest of her life. Walpole 
 referred in more than one of his letters to the Irish brogue 
 of the Gunnings ; but it is quite unlikely that either of 
 them had any but the faintest of brogues. Their father 
 and mother would have taken very good care of this, for 
 the tradition of the " English accent " was very dear to 
 the better class of the English settlers in Ireland. The 
 Duchess of Hamilton had long learned to associate the brogue 
 with the subject race. Her heart would not have warmed to 
 it if she had heard it spoken at the base of the Pentland 
 Hills, as we are given to understand the heart of a true 
 Irishwoman would have done under like conditions. She 
 never wished to hear the brogue again, and as Goldsmith 
 certainly had it, he was the last man in Edinburgh whom she 
 would have admitted to her palace, even though she had 
 great need of a tutor, and tutors were scarce in Edinburgh. 
 When she wanted one for her son she got one in the person 
 of Dr. John Moore, the father of the hero of Corunna. 
 
IN EDINBURGH in 
 
 But it is really unnecessary to go into any question of 
 probabilities in this connection. Every one aware of the 
 many forms assumed by Irish humour will recognise the 
 character of the jest in the letter, and all the more easily, too, 
 on account of the expression of the mock indignation of the 
 writer when the truth dawned upon him that " they " regarded 
 him as a humourist rather than as a companion ; " so I 
 disdained so servile an employment ; 'twas unworthy my 
 calling as a physician." 
 
 In the same letter he makes out a very good case for his 
 going to Paris and Leyden in order to complete his studies ; 
 and we have no difficulty in seeing that the travel thirst was 
 upon him. He had exhausted Edinburgh and the Scots, and 
 wanted a new people to study — ^that was the study that he 
 wanted, though it may have been in good faith that he wrote 
 to his uncle that what was nearest his heart was to have the 
 benefit of the medical instruction imparted to his classes at 
 Paris of " the great Mr. Farhein, Petit, and Du Hammel de 
 Monceau." 
 
 " My dear Uncle, 
 
 "After having spent two winters in Edinburgh, I now 
 prepare to go to France the loth of next February. I 
 have seen aU that this country can exhibit in the medical 
 way, and therefore intend to visit Paris, where the great 
 Mr. Farhein, Petit, and Du Hammel de Monceau instruct 
 their pupils in all the branches of medicine. They speak 
 French, and consequently I shall have much the advantage of 
 most of my countrymen, as I am perfectly acquainted 
 with that language, and few who leave Ireland are so. 
 
 " Since I am upon so pleasing a topic as self-applause, 
 give me leave to say that the circle of science which I have 
 run through, before I undertook the study of physic, is not 
 only useful but absolutely necessary to the making a skilful 
 physician. Such sciences enlarge our understanding, and 
 sharpen our sagacity ; and what is a practitioner without both 
 but an empiric, for never yet was a disorder found entirely 
 the same in two patients. A quack, unable to distinguish 
 the particularities in each disease, prescribes at a venture : 
 if he finds such a disorder may be called by the general name 
 
112 fHE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 of fever for instance, he has a set of remedies which he applies 
 to cure it, nor does he desist till his medicines are run out, or 
 his patient has lost his life. But the skilful physician dis- 
 tinguishes the symptoms, manures the sterility of nature, or 
 prunes her luxuriance ; nor does he depend so much on the 
 efficacy of medicines as on their proper application. I shall 
 spend this spring and summer in Paris, and the beginning of 
 next winter go to Leyden. The great Albinus is stUl alive 
 there, and 'twill be proper to go, though only to have it said 
 that we have studied in so famous an university. 
 
 " As I shall not have another opportunity of receiving 
 money from your bounty till my return to Ireland, so I have 
 drawn for the last sum that I hope I shall ever trouble you 
 for ; 'tis j^20. And now, dear Sir, let me here acknowledge 
 the humility of the station in which you found me ; let me 
 tell how I was despised by most, and hateful to myself. 
 Poverty, hopeless povery, was my lot, and Melancholy was 
 beginning to make me her own. When you — but I stop here, 
 to inquire how your health goes on. How goes my dear 
 cousin Jenny, and has she recovered her late complaint ? 
 How does my poor Jack Goldsmith ? I fear his disorder is 
 of such a nature as he won't easily recover. I wish, my dear 
 Sir, you would make me happy by another letter before I 
 go abroad, for there I shall hardly hear from you. I shall 
 carry just £$'^ to France, with good store of clothes, shirts, &c. 
 &c., and that with economy will serve." 
 
 In a previous letter to his uncle he also shows a great interest 
 in his preparation for his profession ; but we are inclined 
 to think, with his letter to Bob Bryanton before us, and his 
 sister's references to his " wildness," that he exaggerates the 
 isolation of his position in Edinburgh. 
 
 He writes gloomily of having left behind him in Ireland 
 everything worth possessing, friends he loved and " a society 
 that pleased while it instructed." (This allusion is somewhat 
 obscure, it seems to us. Where in the region round about 
 Ballymahon was that fascinating society to be found? If the 
 reference was to the Club at Conway's ale-house, we are not 
 quite sure that it would be recognised even by his uncle.) 
 " Here," he continues, " as recluse as the Turkish Spy at 
 
IN EDINBURGH 113 
 
 Paris, I am almost unknown to everybody, except some few 
 who attend the professors of physic as I do." 
 
 His sister would certainly have been gratified had she 
 seen this letter. She would have known that he had settled 
 down to play the part of a recluse, eager only to make good 
 progress in his study of medicine. At the same time we do 
 not think that she would have gone so far as to be anxious 
 lest his health should suffer through his carrying his love of 
 seclusion to any unreasonable distance. No, she had had 
 some experience of how he had endeavoured to realise his 
 yearning for isolation at Ballymahon, when he took the chair 
 in George Conway's bar-parlour. 
 
 But then comes a part of the same letter which startles 
 one by the force of his criticism of the Edinburgh professors. 
 Without claiming to be acquainted with the individual 
 reputation of the men whom he names, we cannot but feel 
 that such a criticism of each could only have been written 
 by a man possessing the highest powers of observation. 
 
 "Apropos, I shall give you the professors' names, and, as 
 far as occurs to me, their characters ; and first, as most 
 deserving, Mr. Munro, professor of Anatomy. This man 
 has brought the science he teaches to as much perfection as 
 it is capable of ; and not content with barely teaching anatomy, 
 he launches out into all branches of physic, when all his 
 remarks are new and useful. 'Tis he, I may venture to say, 
 that draws hither such a number of students from most parts 
 of the world, even from Russia. He is not only a skilful 
 physician, but an able orator, and delivers things in their 
 nature obscure in so easy a manner that the most unlearned 
 may understand him. Plume, professor of Chemistry, 
 understands his business well, but delivers himself so ill, that 
 he is but little regarded. Alston, professor of Materia 
 Medica, speaks much, but little to the purpose. The pro- 
 fessors of Theory and Practice (of physic) say nothing but what 
 we may find in books laid before us ; and speak that in so 
 drowsy and heavy a manner that their hearers are not many 
 degrees in a better state than their patients. 
 
 " You see then, dear sir, that Munro is the only great man 
 among them ; so that I intend to hear him another winter, 
 
 H 
 
114 "J^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 and go then to hear Albinus, the great professor at Leyden. 
 I read (with satisfaction) a science the most pleasing in nature, 
 so that my labours are tut a relaxation, and, I may truly say, 
 the only thing here that gives me pleasure. How I enjoy 
 the pleasing hope of returning with skill, and to find my 
 friends stand in no need of my assistance ! How many happy 
 years do I wish you ! And nothing but want of health can 
 take from you happiness, since you so well pursue the paths 
 that conduct to virtue." 
 
 The concluding touch of priggishness — elaborated for 
 the Kilmore parsonage — is relieved by the happy expression 
 of his hope that his friends would not require him to display 
 his skiU at their expense. The letter seems to us to be in 
 every respect an able one. But that to Bob Bryanton makes 
 pleasanter reading, because it is not so able but a good deal 
 more natural. 
 
 A few months after writing his last letter, giving his 
 uncle notice that he would draw upon him for a moderate 
 amount, he was ready to leave Edinburgh for the Continent. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IN LEYDEN 
 1754-1755 
 
 When one hears of Goldsmith's making any important move, 
 one naturally awaits an account of an accompanying adventure. 
 His friends had had enough experience of the disasters that 
 attended almost every promising enterprise in which he 
 engaged to prevent them from being surprised to hear that 
 he had reached Leyden only after as many vicissitudes as would 
 form the groundwork for quite an exciting story. Now, 
 given the materials for a good story and given the story-teller 
 in the same connection, it may be assumed that the story 
 wUl be forthcoming. In fact we might go further, and say 
 that, given a good story-teller, the materials for a good story 
 will be forthcoming, and the story itself will come in due 
 course. 
 
 The narrative of his adventures when he set out for the 
 Colonies in America was undoubtedly entertaining, looked 
 at from every point of view, even the point of view of credi- 
 bility. But it was tame in comparison with the story which 
 he was able to teU of his adventures when endeavouring to 
 transfer his devotion to medical study from Edinburgh to 
 Leyden. It indicates pretty plainly, we think, not only 
 that there is something in our theory that every man has his 
 own type of adventure, but that in the case of some men 
 their adventures increase as their capacity for narration 
 matures. Goldsmith's Cork contretemps was a simple one, 
 which, with a little manoeuvring, might happen to any one. 
 The ship in which he was about to sail was windbound, and 
 he had remained ashore expecting the captain to send through 
 the country and collect his passengers when the wind should 
 change. His error arose from this misplaced confidence in 
 
 us 
 
ii6 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 the master mariner and his ignorance of the contingencies 
 of navigation, which compel a seaman, however courteously- 
 inclined he may be, to hoist his sails when he gets the chance 
 of a fair wind and get clear of a tricky harbour. That was 
 a very simple tale of his, and it would have found ready 
 credence if told to a corps so imperfectly acquainted with 
 matters of practical seamanship as the marines. 
 
 But he showed that he could far surpass such an adventure 
 as this if he only set his mind to it. He was at the point of 
 leaving Scotland — doubtless via Leith — ^when he was arrested 
 by baihflfs, the fact being that he had some time before become 
 security for a fellow-student who had either absconded or 
 defaulted, leaving him liable for the amount of the bond. 
 Happily, two of his good friends. Dr. Sleigh and Lauchlan 
 Macleane, came to his assistance, and he embarked in 
 the St. Andrews — Captain John Wall, master — bound for 
 Bordeaux. (From learning the destination of the vessel, one is 
 led to wonder whether he meant to go to Paris, in accordance 
 with his first intention, or to Leyden, which he thought of at 
 a later period. Perhaps the truth is, that he did not care which 
 place he went to, so long as it was a strange place.) But 
 when the vessel had been at sea for two days battling with 
 a gale, the captain found it necessary to put into Newcastle- 
 on-Tyne for shelter. Well, here was a place strange to 
 Goldsmith and thus abounding in possibilities of interest. 
 It more than fulfilled his anticipations. This is his 
 story : 
 
 " We all went ashore to refresh us, after the fatigue of our 
 voyage," he wrote to his uncle. " Seven men and I were 
 one day on shore, and on the following evening, as we were 
 all very merry, the room door bursts open : enter a sergeant 
 and twelve grenadiers with their bayonets screwed, and puts 
 us all under the King's arrest. It seems my company were 
 Scotchmen in the French service, and had been in Scotland 
 to enlist soldiers for the French army. I endeavoured all I 
 could to prove my innocence ; however, I remained in prison 
 with the rest a fortnight, and with difficulty got off even 
 then. Dear sir, keep this all a secret, or at least say it was for 
 debt," he adds, " for if it were once known at the university. 
 
IN LET DEN 117 
 
 I should hardly get a degree." (What University had he 
 in his mind ? Did he wish his uncle to understand that he 
 meant to return to Edinburgh after deserting Munro for 
 Aibinus ?) " But hear how Providence interposed in my 
 favour," he continues. " The ship was gone on to Bourdeaux 
 before I got from prison, and was wrecked at the mouth of 
 the Garonne, and every one of the crew were drowned. It 
 happened the last great storm. There was a ship at that 
 time ready for Holland : I embarked, and in nine days, 
 thank my God, I arrived safe at Rotterdam ; whence I 
 travelled by land to Leyden, and whence I now write." 
 
 Then he goes on from this simple story — ^which, by the 
 way, bears an extraordinary resemblance both in style and 
 matter to the narrative of one Robinson Crusoe, mariner of 
 York — ^to give his uncle a most admirable description of 
 HoUand and the Dutch, though he modestly disclaims any 
 qualification to do so. An acquaintance with the attempt that 
 he made, however, causes one to feel that he was over-modest . 
 Every line that he wrote bearing upon the Dutch carries con- 
 viction with it. After reading this part of the letter we feel that 
 he saw everything he wrote about, and that not much which 
 he had a chance of seeing escaped his observation. Of course 
 the question of his range of vision must be taken into considera- 
 tion in expressing an opinion as to the real value of these des- 
 criptions of his. A great people — and the Dutch were for cen- 
 turies a very great people indeed — are not to be understood 
 even by a modest young man who lives in lodgings in Leyden for 
 a month or two ; and it would be absurd to say that Goldsmith 
 ever suggested his appreciation of those traits of character 
 of the Dutch which made them a great people — their well- 
 balanced mind, their steadfastness of purpose, their extra- 
 ordinary patience, and the patriotism which with them was 
 never the passion that patriotism becomes (by fits and starts) 
 with most nations, but which never ceased to be part of the 
 life of the Dutch. These were traits of the people quite 
 beyond the horizon of Goldsmith's vision. But no one who 
 reads his lively description in this letter wiU agree with him 
 in thinking that he was not well qualified to go even much 
 further than he went in his account of the manners of the 
 
ii8 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 country where he found himself for the first time. There is a 
 class of critic who looks with suspicion on everything that is 
 written in a lively vein, and only regards an opinion of value 
 when it is delivered in the dullest prose. By such a person 
 everything that is light is held in light esteem. But frequently 
 some of Goldsmith's liveliest remarks are the result of 
 attentive and accurate observation. Often, too, his imagina- 
 tion is the means of illuminating a page, and a simple statement 
 becomes picturesque and thus doubly impressive. 
 
 In this letter, written to his uncle after he had been in 
 Leyden for a short time, he refers to the way in which errors 
 are handed down from generation to generation by writers 
 who do not take the trouble to collect facts for themselves 
 but are content to repeat what others have previously written, 
 without recording any changes that may have taken place 
 in the meantin;ie. " Any young man who takes it into his 
 head to publish his travels, visits the countries he intends to 
 describe ; passes through them with as much inattention as 
 his valet de chambre, and consequently, not having a fund 
 himself to fill a volume, he applies to those who wrote before 
 him, and gives us the manners of a country, not as he must 
 have seen them, but such as they might have been fifty years 
 before. The modern Dutchman," he continues, " in every- 
 thing imitates a Frenchman, but in his easy, disengaged air, 
 which is the result of keeping polite company. The Dutchman 
 is vastly ceremonious, and is perhaps exactly what a Frenchman 
 might have been in the reign of Louis XIV." 
 
 Here, by this little imaginative touch, his careless and 
 colloquial style shows us the Dutchman exactly as he was 
 seen by the writer. In the same interesting strain he refers 
 to the women of the country, and has a theory to account 
 for their pallor as well as for the ruddy complexion of the 
 men, the latter being due, he thinks, to the continuous smoking 
 by every man, which " drains his superfluous moisture." Later 
 he describes the canal boats. " In these," he says, " you are 
 sure to meet people of all nations. Here the Dutch slumber, 
 the French chatter, and the English play at cards. Any man 
 who likes company may have them to his taste. For my part, 
 I generally detached myself from all society, and was wholly 
 taken up in observing the face of the country." 
 
IN LET DEN 119 
 
 He winds up a delightful letter by a reference to the 
 schools of medicine which he was attending — at the intervals 
 between his excursions on the canals and through the villages 
 on their banks. He is not quite so enthusiastic on the subject 
 of medicine as he led his uncle to fancy he was when writing 
 from Edinburgh, and he complains of the laziness of all the 
 professors. Gaubius, however, he excepted. It is certain 
 that he wrote several letters to his friends in Ireland from 
 Leyden, and if these had only been preserved we should know 
 a good deal more than we do about Dutch home life, as seen 
 through the eyes of an observant young student during the 
 middle of the eighteenth century, and we should have known a 
 good deal more than we do of the observant young student 
 himself. Unhappily, the letters were all written to Irish house- 
 holds. They were most likely used to wind round the ends 
 of candles to make them fit tightly into the sockets of the 
 candlesticks, if not to act as substitutes for the missing glass in 
 the window-frames. 
 
 We should be inclined to wish that Goldsmith had been as 
 careful as Pope to make copies of his letters before posting 
 them, only that we know that such letters would have been 
 very different from the delightful, careless, colloquial, and 
 sometimes ungrammatical, letters from which we have quoted. 
 We cannot see Goldsmith sitting down to copy a couple of 
 pages before sending them off. We cannot even see him 
 sitting down to correct one that he had already written. 
 Pope, perhaps Gray as well, corresponded not with his friends, 
 but with posterity ; and posterity reviews his efforts with 
 critical coldness. There is no vitality in them' — no warmth 
 of life and reality to stir criticism into friendliness. Posterity 
 has a schoolboy's fancy for reading letters that are addressed 
 to some one else. Goldsmith thought of nothing beyond 
 giving a few minutes' entertainment to the simple folk living 
 under the thatched roofs of Kilmore, Lissoy, and Ballymahon ; 
 and, unfortunately, the simple folk accepted his letters at his 
 own valuation. 
 
 It is not necessary, however, that we should have any other 
 examples of his correspondence before us in order to make us 
 aware of the fact that he was becoming more interested in 
 the means of acquiring general knowledge than special, As 
 
I20 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 soon as he had mastered the elements of medical science, as 
 it was understood in his day, when the barber was fully- 
 qualified to perform the operation of " blooding " — England 
 was bathed in blood at the hands of barbers at certain 
 seasons of the year — he began, without knowing it, to qualify 
 for another profession — the one by which he eventually gained 
 a living, with intervals of starvation. Gradually he began 
 to neglect the professors, and to give his attention to more 
 congenial haunts than the class-rooms. He began to gamble 
 on a small scale, but any scale of gambling is too large for a 
 man who is dependent on the bounty of his friends for the 
 very shirt on his back — he was very definite on the subject 
 of his shirts in one of his letters to his uncle. There is some 
 reason to belieVe that he made an attempt to gain some money 
 by legitimate means to spend illegitimately ; but it is difficult 
 to say definitely that he ever did try to get pupils in English 
 in Leyden. The adventures of the " philosophic vagabond " 
 in The Vicar of Wakefield undoubtedly embodied many of 
 his own experiences, and it will be remembered that one of 
 the enterprises of young Primrose was to amass a fortune by 
 teaching English to the Dutch, who were eager, he was given 
 to understand, to learn that language ; and he might have 
 succeeded, too, had it not been necessary for him to know 
 Dutch to start with. But no one could remain in HoUand, 
 mingling daily with the people as Goldsmith did, without 
 acquiring a certain knowledge of the language — quite sufficient 
 to allow of his making a start at teaching. Every one knows 
 that in England, at any rate, a teacher of a foreign language 
 was regarded, until quite recently, as competent in proportion 
 to his ignorance of English. In Holland, however, even if 
 Goldsmith had known nothing of the Dutch language, he 
 would not have made himself ridiculous had he undertaken 
 to teach English to those pupils who could speak French, 
 and in the eighteenth century in Holland the proportion of 
 the better classes who had a colloquial knowledge of French 
 was much greater even than it is at present, when a stranger 
 who knows that language need never find himself in a 
 difficulty. 
 
 The truth is, that in the case of a writer who makes a 
 practice of em' idying some of his own experiences in those 
 
IN LETDEN 121 
 
 which he causes one of his characters to undergo, a biographer 
 is always puzzled in discriminating between the real and the 
 imaginary adventures. In scores of cases that could be 
 brought forward it has been too hastily assumed that, because 
 , the writer undoubtedly had some of the experiences which 
 he assigns to one of his characters, he must therefore have gone 
 through them aU. In the case of Goldsmith in particular 
 one must be in constant difficulties. A most meagre account 
 — thanks to the culpable carelessness of Johnson and Percy, who 
 were entrusted with the materials for a biography and took no 
 trouble to preserve them — remains to us of many of the most 
 interesting years of his life ; but we do not suppose that there 
 ever was an author who so thoroughly incorporated his personal 
 experiences in his writings as Goldsmith did. But then he 
 was an accomplished artist, and no one understood better than 
 himself how to round off a story, so to speak. And this is 
 wherein the difficulties of his biographer lie : one never 
 knows when the " philosophic vagabond " ceases to be Gold- 
 smith and becomes young Primrose ; one never knows when 
 the " Man in Black " becomes the man in the peach-bloom 
 masterpiece of " Filby, of the Harrow in Water Lane." 
 Goldsmith may have had incipient adventures which, in 
 order to be made thoroughly interesting when narrated in 
 print, had to be given certain turns at places — the high lights 
 put in, and the denouement altered to be in agreement with 
 the tastes of a reader. Every writer who has tried to make 
 use of some of his own experiences in a work of fiction knows, 
 if he has any artistic sense whatsoever, how quickly he travels 
 away from the direct line of his experience until the finished 
 work contains only the merest anatomical outline of the 
 actual adventure. The best writers, it appears to us, have 
 only used their own experiences to build up the skeleton of 
 the character or of the story ; their imagination so surrounds 
 this bare-ribbed thing with flesh and blood that it can only 
 be seen by the aid of the X-rays. This apparatus is, however, 
 not always available for the biographer, and in its absence 
 he is often too ready to feel for a peculiarity in the 
 protruding elbow-bone, and, recognising it, to announce 
 his identification of the figure to which it belongs. 
 
 In the case of Goldsmith one is strongly tempted to 
 
122 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 proceed without the X-rays apparatus, and to take it for 
 granted that the " Three Pigeons " Inn was Conway's ale- 
 house, that Dr. Primrose was in every particular the Reverend 
 Charles Goldsmith, that " sweet Auburn " was Lissoy 
 (without the nightingale), and that the author himself 
 played the dual role of the " Man in Black " and the 
 " philosophic vagabond." It is safer not to travel far in 
 such speculations ; but then the question of where to stop 
 comes in, so that, after all, \ biographer can do no more 
 than fall back on his own judgment in this perplexing and 
 baffling matter. 
 
 It would be impossible to say that a biographer ever acted 
 with more praiseworthy caution in the discharge of an arduous 
 duty than does Mr. John Forster in his Life and Adven- 
 tures of Oliver Goldsmith. In his facts he is never at fault, 
 in questions of judgment some persons may be disposed to 
 think that he is lacking in imagination ; but even if their 
 impressions were well founded it must be allowed that his 
 deficiency is an amiable one, and one that makes for accuracy. 
 It is, however, satisfactory to get out of the misty region of con- 
 jecture and on to the solid ground of fact in considering this 
 period of Goldsmith's career. If it is uncertain whether he 
 ever made an attempt to earn some money by giving tuitions 
 at Leyden, the account of his losing money by gambling may be 
 depended on. It came from one of his fellow students named 
 EUis, a gentleman who afterwards fiUed the post of Clerk to 
 the Irish House of Commons. Dr. Ellis recorded the fact 
 that Goldsmith had met him one morning, having won a 
 considerable sum the previous night at cards. Goldsmith 
 agreed with him that it would be wise to earmark this money 
 to defray the expenses of the remainder of his sojourn at 
 Leyden, and forthwith hastened to the nearest gambling- 
 house, where he promptly lost every stiver. Ellis adds that 
 he had frequently lent Goldsmith small sums, which he 
 invariably repaid. This was the Irish fashion. It came as 
 naturally to Goldsmith to borrow money when he needed it 
 as it did for him to lend money when he had any in hand. A 
 short time after his inevitable foolishness at the gaming-table 
 he called upon Ellis and got another loan ; but before he 
 had gone far he found himself in front of a florist's shop, and 
 
IN LETDEN 123 
 
 seeing in the window some bulbs of a flower of which he knew 
 his uncle was very fond, he bought the lot, paying for them 
 out of the proceeds of his borrowing, and sent them off to 
 the Kilmore Rectory. 
 
 The very next day, according to Dr. Ellis, he left Leyden 
 and set out on his travels. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 VAGABONDAGE 
 
 To say that the counterpart of Oliver Goldsmith in this 
 remarkable tour of his through Europe without money, 
 without luggage, without friends, and without anxiety, never 
 existed would not be correct. The year before he started 
 from Leyden there had died a certain Baron de Holberg, 
 a Dane, who by his own exertions had achieved both distinc- 
 tion and wealth ; and in the accounts of his life which had 
 just been published, it was stated that when he had been a 
 penniless youth he had gone through several European States, 
 begging for instruction, and endeavouring to gain a night's 
 lodging here and there, by singing to the peasant families 
 whose hospitality he sought. Goldsmith himself teUs us 
 in his Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning enough 
 of this remarkable man to allow of our perceiving without 
 much difficulty that the adventurous move on the part of 
 Baron de Holberg had nerved him to follow in his foot- 
 steps, and he did so almost literally from the moment he left 
 Leyden. 
 
 The only difference between Goldsmith and the earlier 
 vagabond was that the one was something of a scholar — at any 
 rate, he had a University degree, and he had made considerable 
 progress in the Irish profession of " going to be a doctor " — 
 while the other was just emerging from illiteracy. But such 
 scholarship as Goldsmith possessed was an asset not worth 
 considering in connection with this undertaking of his. A 
 pair of stout shoes and a rainproof cloak would be of more 
 service to a man starting on foot to see the world than the 
 most intimate acquaintance with the Odes of Horace or an 
 unusual gift of reproducing in English the hendecasyllabics 
 of Catullus would be. Fortunately Goldsmith's scholarship sat 
 
 124 
 
VAGABONDAGE 125 
 
 lightly upon him. It did not cause him to expect any considera- 
 tion beyond what would be allowed to an ordinary traveller on 
 the road. He put his scholarship in his pocket and took out 
 his flute. His flute was his best friend — his only friend. It 
 made its appeal to the world on his behalf, and the world 
 welcomed it. The flute-notes of the traveller procured for him 
 many a night's lodging among the peasants of Europe; and 
 the flute-notes of The Traveller procured for him a permanent 
 dwelling-place in the hearts of all the world ! 
 
 A picturesque figure is that imaginary one of Goldsmith 
 trudging from land to land, piping for the peasants, dancing for 
 them, learning their ways and sharing their coarse bread and sour 
 wine — undeniably a picturesque figure to look back at through 
 the long vista of a century and a half. But any one who wishes 
 to paint a true picture of the man as he appeared a month 
 after his departure from Leyden must paint him as a forlorn 
 beggar in tattered garments, unkempt, unwashed, and un- 
 gainly. He must not be painted as one of the merry pipers 
 beneath the trellised vines of the Sorrento roadway, who 
 appear in brilliant colours on the familiar curtain of a theatre ; 
 he must not be painted as one of the careless group in velvet 
 jackets and glazed leather pumps oVer white stockings who 
 give some action to a scene in an old Italian opera, but are 
 about as like real peasants as the cultivated vocalism of 
 the prima donna is like the lilt of the contadina whom she 
 impersonates. 
 
 Goldsmith must have been in the condition of the most 
 forlorn beggar before he had gone forty miles from Leyden — 
 nay, he must have been in a worse condition than that of any 
 professional tramp ; for the clothes on his back were not the 
 coarse garments meant to withstand the weather, but those 
 that he was accustomed to wear as a student. The month 
 was February, and the roads must have been execrable. The 
 word as applied to the highways of to-day conveys no idea of 
 what the canal tracks must have been in Holland a hundred 
 and fifty years ago, with the breaking up of the long frosts. 
 On the best roads in England at the same period it was almost 
 impossible for one to walk. They could only be traversed by 
 waggons or by coaches that were but one degree better than 
 waggons. They were as uneven as a mountain side, and the 
 
126 JHE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 ruts in winter were usually from two to four feet deep. 
 The mud between these continuous trenches varied according 
 to the geology of the country. In a clay spil it was possible 
 for a horse to get bogged up to its withers, and in a chalky one 
 it was possible for him to get so embedded as to make it 
 necessary to have him hauled out by a team from the plough. 
 The teams at the plough in the worse soil had easier work 
 than the coach horses on the high road. 
 
 Every evening after doing his eight or ten mUes — a good 
 day's walking — he must have arrived at his destination worn 
 out and caked over with mud — the mud of that day adding a 
 fresh layer to the mud of the day before, unless the rain had 
 been sufficiently heavy to wash all away. He must have 
 welcomed a deluge every now and again. To be sure, it 
 left him saturated and filthy, but it must have made him feel 
 less like a pachyderm. 
 
 " Dr. Goldsmith," said Chamier one evening at the club, 
 " what do you mean by the last word in the first line of your 
 Traveller ? 
 
 "Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow 
 
 " Do you mean tardiness of locomotion ? " 
 
 Goldsmith said " Yes." 
 
 " No, sir," cried Johnson ; " you did not mean tardiness 
 of locomotion. You mean that sluggishness of mind which 
 comes upon a man in solitude." 
 
 " Ah ! " exclaimed Goldsmith, " that was what I meant." 
 
 Of course Johnson knew much more about it than the 
 author. But we can imagine what recollections passed 
 through Goldsmith's mind in that foolish pause which 
 followed the question. " Slow" What did the word mean ? 
 What does it convey to any one with even the smallest share 
 of imagination ? How could it possibly apply to the progress 
 of a traveller on foot in early spring on the miry banks of the 
 lazy Scheld ? 
 
 But there the line stands, embodying the poet's recollec- 
 tion of the solitary figure that stood, worn out, resting on 
 his staff, in the centre of the leafless landscape ; or turning 
 away in disappointment from the empty windows of a cottage 
 to which he had been toiling for hours only to arrive and 
 
VAGABONDAGE 127 
 
 find that it had been derelict for months. And no other 
 habitation was in sight. 
 
 Remote, unfriended, melancholy^ slow. 
 
 " No, sir," said Johnson. " You mean that sluggishness 
 of mind which comes upon a man in solitude." 
 
 Just so. Goldsmith sat grimly silent after his ready assent. 
 They knew much more about it all than he could tell them. 
 
 To us there is something heroic beyond the heroism of the 
 usual pursuer of the literary life in his day, in the figure of 
 Oliver Goldsmith plodding along in hardship and humiliation 
 to acquire the knowledge for which he hungered. He cannot 
 have had any plans for his future ; he cannot have had his 
 eyes fixed upon any goal to which he meant to travel, and, 
 having reached it, rest satisfied with the result of his toil. 
 He travelled without any idea of becoming a man of letters 
 in the end, and he had no idea that he had been a poet from 
 the beginning. He did not know that he was going through 
 aU this hardship of travel because he was a poet, and acting 
 under the impulses of a poet. He knew nothing about it. 
 AU that he knew was that he must learn at any cost the things 
 he wanted to learn — the cheerfulness of poverty, the charm 
 of simplicity, the heroism of plodding, and the joy of getting 
 closer every day to the meaning of life, stripped of the 
 artificiaUties of civilisation. It was this travel-time of his life 
 that was his real education. At last he had reached the 
 frontier of the estate to which he was unconsciously the heir, 
 and he found himself on the roadside in Switzerland, with 
 a pen in his hand, writing the first lines of the truest poem 
 that his century had produced. 
 
 Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow. 
 
 " Tardiness of locomotion," " Sluggishness of mind which 
 comes upon a man in soUtude." There did not come upon 
 that man much sluggishness of mind when he sat him down 
 in the majestic solitude of the Alps to write that poem, 
 though he needed the assistance of Johnson to say what he 
 meant by the most expressive word that it contains. 
 
 Goldsmith's exact itinerary is very doubtful ; but it is 
 
128 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 certain that he visited in turn, though in no regular order, 
 Flanders, France, Germany, Switzerland, and various parts 
 of Italy. In his writings and conversation in later years 
 he showed such familiarity with every one of these countries 
 as could only be the result of a close personal observation 
 of the place and its people. He was qualified to write on his 
 arrival in England the most interesting book of European 
 travels that had ever been published. We have no doubt 
 that he approached the booksellers with a proposal for a 
 volume embodying his experiences, and that it was rejected 
 on the spot. The booksellers would shrink from associating 
 themselves with the account of his adventures offered to 
 them by a man who had accomplished the " grand tour " in a 
 style that deprived it of every sense of grandeur. One has 
 only to glance at some of the books of European travellers of 
 that day to become aware of the sort of stuff with which 
 these gentlemen delighted to be associated. The vapid 
 youth in charge of a " governor " — governor was the mascu- 
 line of governess in those days — proceeding languidly and 
 expensively from country to country for a year or two, in a 
 vain attempt to acquire that indefinite quality known as 
 ton, carrying with him in his train a valet de chambre and 
 servants in charge of a waggon-load of trunks — this was the 
 sort of traveller whose observation took the form of platitudes 
 which crystallised into a publication in two or more volumes 
 of print which the booksellers sold by the thousand, when 
 the traveller was a gentleman of good family. The book- 
 sellers loved a title-page with a title upon it, attached to the 
 name of the traveller who professed to be the author, but 
 who was only the person who paid the author and the printer 
 — the latter usually taking precedence in point of payment — 
 a coat-of-arms surmounted by a coronet stamped on the leather 
 cover — this was the book of travels that people liked other 
 people to see lying on their table ; and it had undoubtedly 
 a decorative value ; it was beautifully printed, and not only 
 beautifully, but strongly, bound as well. 
 
 This being so, what chance would a volume have that 
 purported to be the itinerary and experiences of a vagabond 
 doing the " grand tour " in tatters ? 
 
 That is what the booksellers would have been certain 
 
VAGABONDAGE 129 
 
 to ask when Oliver Goldsmith, unknown to fame and known 
 only to famine, went to them with his proposal to write an 
 account of the previous year of his life. They were wrong 
 if they injagined that such a book would not have sold by the 
 ten thousand. They knew their pubUc as little as Colman 
 knew his public when he protested that the vulgarities of 
 Tony Lumpkin and the company at the " Three Pigeons " 
 would not be tolerated. They had had no experience of 
 the capabiUty of genius to transmute the ungenteel into the 
 acceptable. They were mistaken, for as certainly as Gold- 
 smith had written the book of his travels so certainly would 
 it have been accepted as the best travel book of his generation, 
 just as his Vicar of Wakefieli was the best novel, his Deserted 
 Village the best poem, and his She Stoops to Conquer the best 
 comedy of his generation. 
 
 But he found that — according to the booksellers — there 
 was no market for such a work. He had, however, travelled, 
 and he might turn his travels to a genteel account by writing, 
 if he wished, an Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning 
 in Europe ; that was a work there might be some money in — 
 a little money for the author, if he could obtain a patron 
 to permit his arms and coronet to be stamped upon the 
 cover. 
 
 In due course he wrote this Enquiry, and under his hands 
 it turned out to be quite genteel as well as interesting. The 
 marvel is not that it was done so well but that it was done at 
 aU. It bore no stamp of a nobleman upon the cover, but 
 every page bore the stamp of a writer whose literary style 
 had survived the vicissitudes of vagrancy abroad, and was to 
 survive the degradations of drudgery at home. 
 
 From a few portions of this work, as well as from many 
 incidental references in his essays, his novel, his first poem, 
 and his Animated Nature, it is possible to form some idea 
 of the places which Goldsmith visited after leaving Leyden. 
 We should know much more had his cousin, the daughter 
 of his uncle Contarine, preserved the letters which he wrote 
 to her from Louvain, Rouen, and other towns in which he 
 found himself. But she, too, must have been greatly in need 
 of candle-papers, and these precious letters of Goldsmith's 
 shared the fate of those he sent to numerous other friends 
 
130 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 in Ireland. There is a story told by an ingenious Frenchman 
 of a thief who, in order to conceal the bank-notes which he 
 had stolen, wrapped them round the candles in the sconces 
 as the police arrived to search his house. Before he had an 
 opportunity of recovering them, however, the candles were 
 lighted. We cannot doubt that his cousin's house was 
 admirably illuminated, and that the candles were quite firmly 
 fixed in their sockets. 
 
 Ifrom Holland he passed through Flanders, touching at 
 Louvain, where it is beHeved that he obtained his medical 
 degree, though even this is doubtful ; for it would seem that 
 so little interest did his friends take in him, not one of them 
 thought it worth while asking him where he got his diploma, 
 and he himself regarded the distinction so lightly that he 
 never alluded to the place of its origin, and when he had 
 abandoned his last attempt to practice he ceased to call 
 himself " Doctor." His indefatigable early biographers, who in 
 the face of extraordinary difficulties unearthed several curious 
 facts concerning him, were baffled in their attempts to solve 
 this mystery — one might reasonably have believed that it 
 would be the least mysterious incident in which he was 
 concerned — for they found, on applying to the University 
 of Louvain for information, that aU the records of the insti- 
 tution had been destroyed during the revolutionary wars. 
 
 We are inclined to beHeve that it was at Louvain he got 
 his licence to practice, one reason for coming to such a con- 
 clusion being that if ever he had enough money to pay the 
 fees it must have been within a short time after his leaving 
 Leyden and before his uncle's fatal illness, which began when he 
 was in Italy nearly a year later. He must have reaUsed some 
 money by the sale of his books, wardrobe, and general effects on 
 departing from Leyden, and at Louvain he may still have had 
 something left, and resolved to get rid of it, for the first time 
 wisely. It is also possible that his uncle, learning of his last 
 contretemps in Holland, sent him a sum of money, insisting, 
 at the same time, on his spending it in obtaining as speedUy 
 as possible a diploma to practice the prof ession which had been 
 chosen for him. These are, however, the merest conjectures. 
 The syndicate who wrote the memoir which appeared in the 
 edition of his collected works under Bishop Percy's editing, 
 
VAGABONDAGE 131 
 
 suggested the likelihood of his having got his degree at Padua, 
 where, on the same authority, it is stated that he remained for 
 six months. That he had a medical degree there can scarcely 
 be a doubt. When he visited Oxford in the company of 
 Johnson in February 1769 he was admitted a member of the 
 University, ad, eundem gradum, which he said was that of 
 M.B. It is somewhat remarkable that he never made use 
 in ariy way of his Dublin degree of Arts, though it might be 
 fancied that to be B.A. of Trinity CoUege, Dublin, would be 
 held in much higher esteem than to be M.B. of Louvain or 
 Padua. But it must not be forgotten that Johnson himself 
 did not caU himself " Doctor " though he had that degree 
 conferred upon him by Dublin. It was only when his own 
 University of Oxford paid him the same compliment of 
 LL.D. that he assumed the title. 
 
 From Louvain Goldsmith passed on to Brussels, and thence 
 into France. Here he remained some time, and does not seem 
 to have been in want ; he had at any rate enough money to 
 attend the theatre and to resume with RoueUe the study of 
 chemistry. He makes several references to his Paris experi- 
 ences in the course of his writings, and some in Animated 
 Nature to the lecture-rooms of Germany which he seems to 
 have frequented, but under what credentials it is impossible 
 to tell. He reached Switzerland, and had the privUege of 
 being present in a room with Voltaire, whose place as one of 
 the most brilliant, and certainly the most thoughtful, of all 
 the philosophers of his day was fuUy appreciated by Gold- 
 smith. It was probably due to a misprint or to an officious 
 interpolation of an editor that Goldsmith was made in one 
 of his writings to refer to his meeting with Voltaire in Paris. 
 A nineteenth-century author, cultivating literature in the 
 City of Cork, refers to Goldsmith's having " impudently stated 
 that he had met Voltaire in Paris." It would be difficult 
 even for a Cork litterateur to say where Goldsmith's impudence 
 is to be found in connection with this statement, which 
 appeared in a volume that did not even bear Goldsmith's 
 name. If he did not meet Voltaire in Paris, he certainly met 
 him in Geneva. There is impudence in this connection, but 
 it is not on the part of Goldsmith. 
 
 It was during his stay in Switzerland that he began his 
 
132 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 Traveller. Among the " Alpine solitudes " he sketched out 
 the poem and wrote some parts of it. He went to Berne 
 and Basle and climbed Jura ; later there are traces, though 
 never very distinct, of his passing into Italy and visiting 
 Milan, Florence, Verona, Mantua, and Padua. It has been 
 assumed that he was also at Venice for a short time, but the 
 foundation for this assumption may be questioned. If, how- 
 ever, he reached some of these cities of many memories, he must 
 have found himself almost daily at some place of interest — a 
 village surrounded by olives, a ruined remnant of former 
 splendour in the form of an old castle commanding from the 
 summit of a great rock a long vaUey such as " savage 
 Rossa " loved to paint ; a monastery with its weU-cultivated 
 garden of herbs, and its ragged hedges of roses ; a group of 
 peasants' huts huddled comfortably together in the shade of 
 an old wall over which a fruit-tree clambers, throwing out 
 boughs that suggest the horns of the goats browsing on the 
 herbage among the stones. 
 
 Some of the lines in The Traveller suggest a very vivid 
 recollection of an Italian scene : 
 
 As in those domes where Casars once bore sway, 
 Defac'd by time and tott'ring in decay. 
 There in the ruin, heedless of the dead, 
 The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed. 
 
 These lines surely embody a recollection of an actual 
 scene that had stimulated his imagination. He must have 
 become familiar with the usual landscape of Northern Italy, and 
 associated himself more closely than most travellers have a 
 chance of doing with the intimate life of the people. It 
 would scarcely be safe to assume, however, that in the towns 
 he lost no opportunity of becoming acquainted with their 
 treasures of art. 
 
 It was when he was in Italy that he got news of the illness 
 of his uncle and benefactor, Mr. Contarine, and set out 
 for England, not necessarily on this account, for we do not 
 hear that he had occasion to apply to his uncle for money, 
 but simply because he had seen all that he could reasonably 
 hope to see in the accessible parts of Europe. 
 
 How he contrived to support himself all this time it is 
 
VAGABONDAGE 133 
 
 impossible to say with any degree of certainty. We have 
 aheady referred to the great difficulties in the way of any one 
 making an attempt to identify Goldsmith on his travels with 
 one of his characters on foot in the places that he visited. 
 He wrote as an artist, and undoubtedly encountered many 
 adventures about which we hear nothing ; and on the other 
 hand he created many of the adventures of his creations. 
 However humble the expenses of his journeys may have been, 
 they must have been greater than he could defray by begging 
 or borrowing on his various routes. We know how wretchedly 
 poor the peasantry still are in almost every part of Europe 
 that he visited; but in Goldsmith's day their condition was 
 even worse. They might perhaps give him permission to pass 
 a night in an outhouse, if an outhouse were available, and they 
 might have been so grateful to him for his flute-playing as 
 to share with him their evening meal of rye-bread and goat's 
 milk, but they could go no further, and he would stUl have to 
 procure breakfast and dinner on the day following this not 
 excessive hospitality. Even this estimate is founded upon an 
 assumed experience of the most fortunate class of peasantry — 
 that of Northern Italy — and of the most highly favoured in 
 regard to climate. How did he live in the winter months 
 when he found himself in a miserably poor country ? He 
 could not hope to come upon empty outhouses or barns with 
 the same regularity that a traveller comes upon inns in these 
 days. But even if he was so incredibly fortunate, he could 
 not have spent night after night in wet garments under such 
 conditions. 
 
 And these are not the only considerations that make the 
 problem of his maintenance a difficult one to solve. He might 
 possibly have been able to procure his daily bread ; but then 
 comes in the very pertinent question which the Scotsman put 
 to the minister who was assuring him that he had no need to 
 be despondent at the birth of the second set of twins, but 
 to trust in Providence to feed them : " Ay, maun ; but what 
 aboot the claes ? " " What aboot the claes ? " we may ask 
 in considering the question of Goldsmith's means at this time. 
 He was not likely to wear the rough garb of the peasant, 
 serviceable though it might be, and he certainly could not 
 wear it during his sojourn in the towns on his route. His 
 
134 'J^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 town life must be considered quite apart from his vagabond 
 life in Europe. His flute would never be the means of pro- 
 curing for him lodging and board for two or three months at 
 a time, and unless he had been respectably habited he would 
 not have dared to show his face in the lecture-rooms or the 
 theatre, which he undoubtedly frequented. Moreover, it 
 became evident in after years that he had made himself in 
 some measure familiar with the current literature of the 
 countries in which he sojourned, and he could not have done 
 this unless he had been respectably dressed and had money 
 in his pocket. 
 
 It is when one goes into these details of his travels that 
 one finds oneself in difficulties. It is easy to dismiss the sub- 
 ject in a few lines that present him as the picturesque figure 
 of the philosophic vagabond — a sort of eighteenth-century 
 troubadour with aU the engaging qualities of the troubadour 
 of Italian opera, whose guitar is played by a musician in the 
 orchestra, and who can always find a sympathetic circle 
 of supernumeraries to shower gold upon him (with a sus- 
 piciously tinny jingle). It is easy enough to dismiss the 
 question and its responsibilities by saying that he travelled 
 through Europe on foot and maintained himself by playing 
 the German flute alternately with entering into disputations 
 at the Universities which apparently thrived by giving hand- 
 some rewards to disputants. And perhaps, after all, that is the 
 best way out of the difficulties suggested by the question ; for 
 there can be no doubt that he was helped every now and again 
 by his skiU on the flute and possibly by the interest which his 
 story — ^when told by himself — awakened among the authorities 
 of some Universities or colleges in the neighbourhood of which 
 he found himself. And here we may perhaps be pardoned for 
 calling attention to the fact that although BosweU ridiculed his 
 stammering and stuttering and his invariably saying the wrong 
 thing — although BosweU also records Johnson's assurance 
 that Goldsmith knew absolutely nothing, and that people 
 only sought his company because they were pleased to be 
 in the presence of some one more ignorant than themselves, 
 yet he did not ridicule the notion of Goldsmith's supporting 
 himself by disputations at the continental Universities. " He 
 disputed his way through Europe," he records himself as 
 
VAGABONDAGE 135 
 
 saying, when Johnson and he were discussing this point. 
 It would, however, be ridiculous to suppose that Goldsmith 
 sustained himseH by his flute and his disputations under all 
 the varied conditions of his travels. 
 
 An attempt was made to show that he gained some money 
 by becoming " governor " to a young man who was making 
 the grand tour— the son of an English pawnbroker who had 
 inherited an uncle's fortune and a father's caution — a vulgar 
 young cub who had reduced cheese-paring to a science. It 
 was said that he travelled with such a youth as his " philo- 
 sophic vagabond" describes, and the chances are that he 
 actually did so, but only for a very short space of time. It is 
 most likely that he went no further than to take a " lift " 
 with a young man from one country to another ; for even the 
 most economically minded cub would hesitate before engaging 
 as " governor " such a figure as Oliver Goldsmith must have 
 presented on his travels. 
 
 If we might hazard a suggestion on a question which can 
 never be solved in a way that would carry conviction to a 
 critical reader, we would say that Goldsmith supported him- 
 self in the towns by giving tuitions at a very humble rate to 
 a very humble class of the inhabitants, not waiting to " make 
 a connection " — he could not afford to undergo the term of pro- 
 bation so necessary to any one desirous of obtaining permanent 
 employment — but taking whatever pupils he could get for 
 a few months. He could easUy live on a franc or two a day, 
 and he might possibly have made so much in the way we 
 suggest. This is, however, the merest conjecture, and is far 
 from being a plausible one. But at least it should not be 
 rejected on the ground that he was unacquainted with the 
 tongue of the country in sojourning in which he had a chance 
 of trying the experiment. His knowledge of French and other 
 languages was sufficiently accurate to prevent him from making 
 himself as ridiculous as he made out young Primrose to be 
 when he tried to earn a fortune by teaching EngHsh to the 
 Dutch. 
 
 That he borrowed some money from his friends and that 
 his uncle sent him some can scarcely be doubted. After all, 
 considering his way of life and his mode of travel for the year 
 that he passed in this way, the sum of fifty or sixty pounds 
 
136 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 would have served to carry him through his most expensive 
 periods, which he spent in Paris and Padua ; and by the 
 aid of his combined schemes of borrowing, drawing on 
 his uncle, and teaching, he managed somehow to evade 
 starvation — though he must have felt its shadow hanging 
 over him more than once — and to retain enough to pay to the 
 captain of the smack that bore him from Dieppe to Dover in 
 February 1756. 
 
 It should not be taken for granted that he invariably went on 
 foot from country to country and from place to place. It 
 must be remembered that just a year elapsed between his leaving 
 Leyden and his arrival at Dover. Now, if he passed six 
 months, as it is said he did, in Padua, what space of time are 
 we to allow for his stay at Louvain, Paris, Rouen, and Florence ? 
 We know he sojourned for several weeks in Paris ; but even if 
 no more than two months represented the aggregate of the 
 time he gave to all these cities, only four months were available 
 for his traversing on foot at least two thousand miles ! He 
 was a good walker, no doubt, but such a task would have been 
 far beyond his powers. We are inclined to think that the 
 compilers of his Life under the direction of Percy were in 
 error in stating that he was for six months in Padua. We have 
 been unable to find in the course of his works any evidence of 
 his stay at that fascinating town being equal to half the time 
 he spent in Europe after leaving HoUand. If he had been at 
 Padua for so long, we are pretty certain that Padua would 
 take a more prominent place than it does in his references to 
 Italy. Only by the strictest economy of his time could he 
 have covered aU the ground that he did, even assuming, as 
 we must, that he got many a friendly " lift " on his way from 
 town to town. 
 
 The volume of travel which he would have been ready 
 to write on his arrival in England would certainly have been 
 one of the most interesting ever written. He had not only 
 met with many adventures, but he had a capacity for per- 
 ceiving the details of interest in connection with every adven- 
 ture. Every incidental narrative of travel that came from his 
 pen, whether in his novel or his essays, gave evidence of his 
 possession of this faculty to an extraordinary degree. The 
 humour, the pathos, the quaintness — ^he appreciated to the 
 
VAGABONDAGE 137 
 
 full these elements, and he had so keen a sense of artistic 
 balance that he never overloaded a narrative with one element 
 at the sacrifice of another. The evenness of every narrative — 
 its gentle, musical flow, with here and there a wimple of wit 
 or a ripple of humour, cannot but be felt by every reader who 
 has an ear for the even purr and purl of a limpid stream. 
 There is a twinkle every here and there in Goldsmith's easy 
 style which suggests the ray of sunlight that glances through 
 the foliage of the brambles upon the silver surface of the 
 running brook beneath. It gives a reader a little surprise, 
 and helps to increase the raffrochement which should exist 
 between a writer and those for whom he writes. 
 
 This is only looking at the question of the interest and 
 pleasure with which a detailed account of his year's travel 
 would have been read by the many thousands whom his 
 fragmentary passages dealing with this part of his life have 
 delighted. But it is left open for us to say that such a record 
 would have had an extraordinary value when regarded from 
 more important standpoints. The incidental passages in his 
 works referring to his travels make us aware of the fact that 
 he was anything but a superficial observer, but that, on the 
 contrary, he was a sagacious and penetrating student of the 
 life and thought of the communities through which he passed. 
 Unlike many travellers of his day, he was not content with 
 getting in touch with what is called the intellectual life of 
 a people — ^its art, its Uterature, its theatre and its science ; 
 he made himself acquainted with the mode of living of the 
 peasantry in the fields and of the workers in the towns ; he 
 became, through the force of circumstances, as intimately 
 acquainted with them as he was with the modes of the lecture- 
 room or the debating-hall. In his own words he was resolved 
 to see both sides of the picture, and he saw them. 
 
 Almost every reference that he makes in the course of his 
 writings to the places which he visited proves the closeness 
 of his study, the accuracy of his observation, and the sagacity 
 of his conclusions. It is only necessary as an example of his 
 capacity to refer to Letter LV. in the Citizen of the World, 
 in which he gave the result of his observation of the French 
 people with a force that was approached by no other writer 
 in England. 
 
138 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 " As the Swedes are making concealed approaches to 
 despotism, the French, on the other hand, are imperceptibly 
 vindicating themselves into freedom. When I consider that 
 those parliaments (the members of which are all created by 
 the Court, the presidents of which can act only by immediate 
 direction) presume even to mention privileges and freedom, 
 who, tiU of late, received directions from the throne with 
 implicit humility ; — ^when this is considered, I cannot help 
 fancying that the genius of freedom has entered that kingdom 
 in disguise. If they have but three weak monarchs more 
 successively on the throne, the mask will be laid aside, and 
 the country wiU certainly once more be free." 
 
 It is not surprising that this striking passage should have 
 had attention directed to it when the Revolution which Gold- 
 smith foreshadowed, but which did not take place until he 
 had been dead for more than fifteen years, changed the whole 
 aspect of France and the French people. The difference 
 between the soundness and sagacity of Goldsmith's judgment 
 and the shallow dogmatism of Johnson is just that which 
 might be expected, considering the difference there was 
 between the opportunities of the two men for arriving at a 
 just conclusion on a matter that required to be observed 
 directly, and not merely studied with the assistance of a 
 handbook. 
 
 " Sir," said Dr. Johnson, " I would not give half a guinea 
 to live under one form of Government rather than another. 
 It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual. Sir, 
 the danger of the abuse of power is nothing to a private man. 
 What Frenchman is prevented from passing his Ufe as he 
 pleases ? " 
 
 " What Frenchman is prevented from passing his life as he 
 pleases ? " This was the question asked by a great EngHsh- 
 man in 1772, in conversation with a great economist ! Had 
 Goldsmith been present and ventured to make a remark 
 founded on his own acquaintance with the state of things in 
 France, he would doubtless have been shouted down by 
 Johnson and subsequently abused to Boswell as a person 
 whose ignorance was so great as to cause his society to be 
 fascinating only to people who had few chances of meeting 
 
VAGABONDAGE 139 
 
 any one more ignorant than themselves. Of course Johnson 
 knew nothing beyond what was reported to him of the con- 
 dition of France and the French ; but this fact did not 
 prevent him from dogmatising upon both. 
 
 In the same letter in the Citizen of the World there are 
 some admirable remarks about the German Empire and the 
 likelihood of its falling to pieces through the number of the 
 petty states of which it was composed lacking an adequate 
 tie to bind them together and avert the disintegration and 
 dissolution of the whole. Several times during the hundred 
 years following the expression of this opinion its sagacity 
 was proved. The fortunate appearance of a great King of 
 Prussia with a stiU greater adviser behind his throne at the 
 most critical period, saved Germany and rebuilt an empire 
 out of the fragments of petty States that lay scattered around 
 and only waiting to be made good use of by a master-builder. 
 
 But indeed there is scarcely a passage in Goldsmith's writings 
 giving the result of his observations of the countries through 
 which he went or in whose midst he sojourned, that does not 
 force one to believe that, had he published his volume of 
 travel, it would have been the most valuable of its kind, just 
 as his novel, his poem, and his comedy, were each the finest 
 that the century had seen. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 PHYSICIAN, USHER, AND DRUDGE 
 1756—1757 
 
 Whatever may have been the hardships which Oliver Gold- 
 smith encountered during his year of vagabondage on the 
 continent, they could not have been greater than those which 
 he suffered on his way to London from Dover. However 
 great his " tardiness of locomotion " may have been beside 
 " the lazy Scheld or wandering Po," it must have been out- 
 done on his itinerary through Kent. England he found 
 more inhospitable than Carinthia. He found here none 
 of the Irish convents which had given him many a night's 
 shelter in Italy, and he looked in vain for a friendly peasant 
 with a taste for the music of a flute, and ready to offer a 
 supper for a song. He landed at Dover starving, and after 
 being at least three weeks on the road, he reached London 
 still starving. His experiences during these weeks were 
 varied and melancholy. 
 
 As some emigrants without money enough to pay for their 
 passage across the seas worked their way from shore to shore, 
 so he may be said to have worked his way from Dover to 
 London. No one knows in how many characters he figured 
 in order to get food by day and lodging by night. No one 
 knows to what extremities he was reduced to keep himself 
 from actual starvation. There he was, a fully qualified 
 medical practitioner and a graduate in Arts of a University 
 of high rank, and yet it is probable that he could only keep 
 himself alive by picking up stray jobs like any other tramp 
 who hung about the coach-road through Canterbury. He 
 had nothing in view — he had no particular reason to turn 
 toward London, so that there is probably some truth in the 
 
 suggestion, made after his death, that he joined a company 
 
 140 
 
PHTSICIAN, USHER, AND DRUDGE 141 
 
 vagrant barn actors and took .part in some of their per- 
 mances. It is also probable that he applied for a place as 
 istant in a chemist's shop at one of the smaller towns 
 t he reached on his way to London. 
 
 But when he found himself at last at his journey's end he 
 3 no better off than he had been at Dover. He was with- 
 ; friends or money, and for any one so situated London 
 ;he most terrible place on the face of the globe. It may 
 assumed that he did not make any delay in applying for 
 ;n the humblest situation which could be filled by a 
 ilified physician, who had studied at Edinburgh, Louvain, 
 ris, and Padua. We may be pretty sure that it was only 
 en he found that no apothecary would have anything 
 do with him, that he endeavoured to find employment 
 an usher at a small school : the story that is told of his 
 dified success — success meant to him at this time per- 
 sion to live for another week — is credible, and it was 
 iited by Percy and his friends. In the long catalogue 
 his miseries, however, his usherhood occupies an infini- 
 mal space. The only point of interest in this connection is 
 be found in the fact that, in the reminiscences of a lady 
 D got it from her husband, there is the statement that 
 Idsmith, in acknowledging what may be called a negative 
 of kindness on his part, gave her husband a long and most 
 srting account of his travels on the continent. It is 
 dless to say that this letter shared the fate of all the 
 ers written by Goldsmith on the subject. It was destroyed 
 ost. There was no reason why it should have been kept. 
 t recipient could not have foreseen that every scrap of 
 er bearing the handwriting of Goldsmith would one day 
 regarded as precious. 
 
 After several months, in the dark shadows of which he 
 .ppears from view. Goldsmith is found mixing drugs 
 an apothecary named Jacob at the corner of Monument 
 d on Fish Street Hill. Here he discovered a haven of rest 
 some time, but so stricken with poverty were even his 
 : clothes, that when he went to pay a visit to Doctor 
 gh, who had been in the class-room with him in Edinburgh, 
 was not at once recognised. Afterwards, however, Sleigh 
 ved him great kindness, though it is doubtful if his assisting 
 
142 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 him to " set up " as a practitioner in Bankside, Southwark,, 
 should be accounted an act of genuine philanthropy. But 
 as a physician Goldsmith is next seen — the comic Irish 
 physician of a farce — Garrick dealt with him some years later 
 — in a darned suit of rusty black, making good " business " 
 (in the stage sense only) by concealing a patch on his waistcoat 
 by the aid of his hat. 
 
 There can be no doubt that his Irish brogue destroyed 
 all confidence in him as a physician. Those were the days 
 when the profession of medicine included the profession of 
 humbug — a condition of things which it is unnecessary to 
 say has long ago ceased to exist. The doctor cultivated an 
 air of ponderous wisdom, and spent years in the acquisition 
 of a particular shake of the head which was supposed to suggest 
 as much as Lord Burleigh's nod in the farce. What at the 
 present time would be sufficient to stamp a man as a certain 
 quack was indispensable to success in the medical profession m 
 the eighteenth century. Of course, there were great physicians 
 then who made names for themselves without such adventi- 
 tious aid as the head-shake of wisdom or the hand-shake of 
 learning ; but the stock in trade of the general practitioner 
 differed only slightly from that of the quack. Undoubtedly 
 the public were responsible for the competition that was 
 set up between the qualified doctor and the impudent 
 pretender. In matters of physic the public have ever 
 been fools, and a hundred and fifty years ago they were 
 as easily led by the advertisement of the charlatan as they 
 are now. 
 
 What chance had the ingenuous Dr. Goldsmith with his 
 humourous face and comical twinkle and Irish brogue, in com- 
 petition with one of the pretenders whom he has described — 
 the purse-mouthed fellows who shook their heads and ex- 
 pressed the wish that they had been called in earlier ? It 
 is doubtful if he could ever have learned how to act the part ; 
 and in the meantime he had to face starvation. If he managed 
 to get a shilling out of one patient, we may be sure that he 
 presented it to another, with some advice, gratis, and we may 
 be sure that the shilling was spent and the advice rejected. 
 He continued in this sort of practice and in these practices 
 until in a happy hour he found a patient who was in the 
 
PHTSICUN, USHER, AND DRUDGE 143 
 
 ting office of a Mr. Samuel Richardson, of Salisbury 
 rt, and who had the sagacity to see that the doctor's 
 ness was not so lucrative as would cause him to reject 
 afler of supplemental employment for his leisure. Mr. 
 lardson himself was a gentleman who to his ordinary 
 ness as a printer added that of a novelist, and found 
 
 combination a very happy one — in fact the auxiliary 
 1 became the more important trade with him. The 
 lit of negotiations was that Goldsmith became reader 
 
 corrector to the press to Mr. Samuel Richardson, the 
 bor of Pamela and a large number of equally anaemic stories 
 ;enteel life. 
 
 This was a stimulating move for Goldsmith. He was 
 touch with literature — as represented by Richardson — 
 
 the spell was completed when one day he caught a glimpse 
 the great Doctor Edward Young, the author of those 
 "ky moralisings known as Night Thoughts. A tragedy in 
 ik verse was bound to follow the waving of the magic 
 id — ^with the point dipped in ink — so close to him ; and 
 forthwith assumed the pose of the poet : it came very 
 :h more easily to him than did the pose of the practitioner. 
 
 get a glimpse of him in Doctor Farr's anecdote of his 
 earing in the house of his late fellow student in an old 
 k coat, the pockets of which were overflowing with papers, 
 rying out the traditions of the role, he pulled out his 
 edy and began to read it to his friend. But the friend 
 
 wise. Hearing that the manuscript had been submitted 
 he judgment of Mr. Richardson, he refused to listen to it 
 
 he should be tempted to precede Mr. Richardson in 
 ressing an opinion on its merits. And that is the last 
 ipse which we have of the tragedy or of its author as 
 ier to the press of Mr. Richardson. There is no record of 
 having been discharged by his employer for perpetrating a 
 edy. 
 
 He next comes into view as assistant at the Peckham 
 demy of Dr. Milner, whose son, as well as Sleigh, had been 
 Edinburgh with Goldsmith. He seems to have been very 
 treated here, and to have been a constant source of 
 riment in the household. According to some of the stories 
 
 by the youngest of the ten daughters of Dr. Milner, his 
 
144 'J^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 humour was inexhaustible. He played tricks upon the 
 servants, and amused the boys with his flute. He certainly 
 must have been popular ; and thus it is rather remarkable 
 to hear that in after years the very name of Peckham was 
 hateful to him, and that when he painted the lot of an usher 
 in the most sombre tints he referred to Peckham. " I have 
 been an usher at a boarding-school myself," he makes one of 
 his characters say, " and may I die of an anodyne necklace, 
 but I had rather be under-turnkey in Newgate. I was up 
 early and late ; I was browbeat by the master, hated for my 
 ugly face by the mistress, worried by the boys." 
 
 In a number of the Bee he writes with even greater bitter- 
 ness : " The usher is generally the laughing-stock of the 
 school. Every trick is played upon him ; the oddity of his 
 manner, his dress, or his language is a fund of eternal 
 ridicule. . . . The poor wretch eternally resenting this 
 ill-usage, lives in a state of war with all the family." 
 
 Now, to assume, as some of his biographers have done, 
 that these bitter words were the result of his experience at 
 Peckham, is, we think, to do a great injustice to Dr. Milner 
 and his family, leaving the boys out of the question alto- 
 gether, for, after all, a healthy boy is only a healthy barbarian. 
 It seems to us that his unhappy experience of an usher's life 
 was gained not at Dr. Milner's school at Peckham but at 
 the situation which he obtained the previous year — one 
 which involved his giving a false name, and consequently 
 the writing of a letter to Dr. Radcliff, begging him not to 
 expose his fraud — the negative act of kindness to which we 
 have alluded. It is difficult for any one to reconcile the 
 accounts given on good authority of his life at Peckham, with 
 his own bitter expressions respecting the life of an usher. The 
 man who is " eternally resenting ill-usage " is not the man, 
 even if he should be as fuU of good nature as Goldsmith was, 
 to play amusing tricks upon the servants, or to spend all his 
 salary giving the boys treats of apples and cakes. The man 
 who is living " in a state of war with all the family " of his 
 employer, is not the man who would reply to the motherly 
 remonstrance of his employer's wife for spending his money 
 so foolishly, as Goldsmith replied to Mrs. Milner. " You 
 had better, Mr. Goldsmith, let me keep your money for you 
 
PHTSICIAN, usher, and drudge 145 
 
 as I do for some of the young gentlemen," said Mrs. Milner. 
 " In truth, madam, there is equal need," he replied. 
 
 The character of the relationship between the Milner 
 family and himself is shown by this authentic anecdote ; 
 and it certainly was not one of mutual hostility. Nor can 
 we believe that this motherly lady hated him " for his ugly 
 face " or that these " young gentlemen " whom he treated 
 to sweets and apples were the boys who browbeat him. The 
 story is told of his meeting one of these " young gentlemen " 
 some eleven or twelve years later, when the young gentle- 
 man had grown up and was visiting London with his newly- 
 wedded wife. But Goldsmith recognised him immediately. 
 " Come, my boy," he cried ; " come, Sam, I am delighted 
 to see you, I must treat you to something. What shall it be ? 
 Will you have some apples, Sam ? " 
 
 It is clear that the recollections of the Peckham school 
 which prompted this invitation were not those of an usher 
 whose life had been made wretched by the insolence of the 
 master, the vulgarity of the mistress, or the tyranny of the boys. 
 
 He was on excellent terms with the family ; he took his 
 meals at their table and he was free to join in the conversa- 
 tion even when a visitor was present ; and of this privilege he 
 took advantage one day when a gentleman named Griffiths was 
 a guest. ^"Tjr. Milner and Mr. Griffiths were talking on some 
 literary topic, for the latter was a printer and the proprietor 
 of the Monthly Review, to which the former had contributed. 
 Goldsmith's boldness in introducing his opinion on a sub- 
 ject in which he had so little concern as literature was 
 not reproved. On the contrary, his remarks attracted the 
 attention of the visitor who, after dinner, had an interview 
 with him, and invited him to try his hand at literary work, 
 offering him a " permanent situation " — the desideratum 
 of every one who, though prudent, still has a wish to be 
 connected with literature — if it was found that he had an 
 aptitude for the work of criticism, on the magazine. 
 
 Goldsmith must now and again have had his aspirations. 
 They had taken the form of a sketch of The Traveller 
 which he had sent to his brother Henry from Switzerland, 
 and of that tragedy which he had threatened to read to his 
 friend from Scotland. But a line of his had never yet 
 
146 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 appeared in print ; and Griffiths' oflFer to him must have 
 frightened him by its munificence. The prospect of reading 
 and criticising and not merely having his opinions printed 
 but actually paid for as well, was a dazzling one. He got a 
 book to review by way of giving a sample of his capacity, 
 and he must have felt that all his troubles were at an end 
 when Griffiths decreed that the sample was satisfactory, 
 and that the " permanent situation " was at his disposal 
 at any time. What Dr. Milner may have said on the sub- 
 ject of literature — making literature, not merely printing it — as 
 a profession, is not recorded. When a young man with aspira- 
 tions has a chance of seeing his ideas put forth for all the 
 world to read, nothing that any one may say on the subject 
 affects him. Goldsmith exchanged the drudgery associated 
 with the Peckham school for the duties associated with 
 literature — that was, no doubt, how the exchange appeared 
 to him at the moment. 
 
 The terms of his engagement with his employer were quite 
 satisfactory — on paper. He was to have board and lodging 
 in the Griffiths' house and to receive a salary into the bargain. 
 This meant not merely ease of mind, but positive opulence. 
 He had had some experience of the importance of permanency 
 of board and lodging, mainly through his experience of the 
 uncertainty of both; and he had come to think of anything 
 over and above these necessities in the light of opulence. 
 He must have felt that at last his luck had changed. Pre- 
 vious to going to Peckham he had been full of a scheme for 
 travelling to decipher the inscriptions upon certain " written 
 rocks " in Syria, for he had heard something vague about 
 a salary of ;^300 a year being attached to the work, and 
 the prospect had fascinated him as greatly as the gambling 
 competitions in connection with some modern journaHstic 
 enterprise fascinate the back parlours of to-day. He must 
 now have felt that there was a Providence looking after his 
 interests in preventing him from getting the post which he 
 had hoped for in connection with this highly endowed work 
 of research. After aU, the work of deciphering inscriptions 
 in an unknown language, was bound to come to an end some 
 day, though the chances certainly were that that day would 
 be protracted ; but literature was bound to go on for ever, 
 
PHTSICUN, USHER, AND DRUDGE 147 
 
 and good Mr. Griffiths held English literature in the hoUow 
 of his hand ! 
 
 He remained in the employment of good Mr. Griffiths 
 just five months. The situation did not turn out to be quite 
 what it had promised to be. He was set down to a desk 
 at nine o'clock in the morning and made to work for five 
 hours without intermission, and then he was expected, 
 after an interval, to remain in his garret to do all the odd 
 jobs incidental to the production of the magazine, often 
 working until late at night. But though it was his nature 
 to be " idle " — and Griffiths did not spare him a reproach 
 now and again bearing upon this point — ^he might have con- 
 tinued at his " job " had he been permitted to conduct it under 
 the conditions which he supposed to be inseparable from 
 the production of literature. But when he found out that 
 the permanence of his situation was akin to the permanency 
 of the situation of a slave in the plantations, and that it was 
 so regarded by Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths, he began to see that 
 he had only exchanged the drudgery of Peckham for the 
 slavery of London. 
 
 He could not have been long in the employment of Mr. 
 Griffiths before he became aware of the important fact that 
 there was a Mrs. Griffiths, and that this lady's attention was 
 equally divided between effecting economies in the house and 
 structural alterations in the articles in the magazine. She 
 starved her boarder at the table and she mutilated his work 
 in the printing press. Whether or not her husband would 
 have behaved differently if he had had a free hand, it is im- 
 possible to say. All that is certain is that if he held literary 
 destinies in the hollow of his hand, his wife's hand was free 
 and he was under her thumb. 
 
 Smollett, who was concerned in the production of a rival 
 review, made some remarks about the Griffiths family in 
 which he contrived to say very plainly what he thought of 
 the pair. The man he affirmed to be a poor illiterate creature, 
 and the lady he termed an " antiquated female critic." He 
 was not very hard on them. But he had not that intimate 
 domestic knowledge of them that Goldsmith acquired before 
 he had been long under their roof. Goldsmith was fully 
 qualified to describe them, biit he never did 80 ; he only left 
 
148 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 their house at the end of five months, and, after a brief interval, 
 went back to the school at Peckham where he was greatly- 
 needed. It is said that he had a quarrel with the Griffiths, and 
 complained of the meagre cuisine and the meddling of the lady 
 with what he wrote for the magazine, also accusing her husband 
 of being impertinent to him and failing to treat him with 
 ordinary respect. 
 
 De Quincey writes very strongly on the subject of Gold- 
 smith's slavery under the Griffiths ; but we are inclined 
 to think that an equitable view of the situation is only 
 possible if one considers it in connection with Mr. Griffiths as 
 the proprietor and Oliver Goldsmith as an unknown con- 
 tributor. The moment that one thinks of Oliver Goldsmith as 
 the distinguished author, one's view of the case can scarcely 
 fail to be distorted. We do not doubt that Goldsmith had 
 just cause for complaint — whether he complained or not — 
 and we have no doubt that he felt greatly disappointed when he 
 found out what the literary life, as interpreted by the literary 
 wife of Griffiths, meant ; but we do not think that the " grava- 
 men " of his complaint, to adopt a useful phrase, lay in the 
 mutilation of what he wrote for the magazine. A literary 
 probationer, such as he was at the time, may grumble if so 
 much as a single line that comes from his pen is altered by an 
 editor ; but the ablest writers that ever lived have had to submit 
 to such supervision even after they had become famous. At 
 the present moment there are thousands of literary proba- 
 tioners, some of them of twenty years' probation, who do not 
 think it any grievance to have to submit to the revision of 
 an editor. A few years on a daily newspaper form an 
 excellent discipline for a writer ; and he soon learns that he 
 has no more basis for a grievance on account of a precious 
 half-column of his writing having a blue pencil mark run 
 down it by an editor, than has the captain of a company 
 of infantry, on account of the general's order to march his 
 men to join the reserves instead of going into action imme- 
 diately. If Mr. Griffiths had allowed Goldsmith's articles 
 to appear in his magazine without reading them, he would, 
 considering that Goldsmith was altogether without ex- 
 perience as a writer, have been guilty of gross carelessness. 
 The question of the right of Mrs. Griffiths to interfere is 
 
PHYSICIAN, USHER, AND DRUDGE 149 
 
 quite another one. It can easily be believed that if the 
 woman was vulgar and illiterate and ventured to make her 
 own interpolations in Goldsmith's articles, he should feel 
 aggrieved ; but if she was an able and discriminating lady 
 he had no ground for complaint. But then it will be said that 
 an able and discriminating lady would have discriminated 
 better than she did between the relative importance of the 
 family cuisine and the family magazine, and if this settled the 
 question Mrs. Griffiths must be condemned. For that 
 matter, if she has not actually been condemned she has 
 remained with the indictment hanging over her for a century 
 or so, of having failed to recognise the hand of genius in such 
 writings of Oliver Goldsmith as she " touched up " before 
 allowing them to appear in the Monthly Review. 
 
 We do not really think that, bearing in mind the fact 
 that the articles in the review were unsigned. Goldsmith 
 had reason to feel greatly aggrieved on account of their being 
 severely edited by his employer or his wife ; and we do not 
 believe that, after the first month or two, he did feel greatly 
 aggrieved on this account. As for the conditions under 
 which he was forced to do his writing, we do not think that 
 De Quincey was justified in his abuse of them ; but our 
 toleration is possibly due to our experience of the conditions 
 under which such work is done in these days. To sit at a 
 desk from nine in the morning until two in the afternoon, 
 with an occasional night on duty, would not suggest much 
 hardship to a literary probationer of to-day or, indeed, to a 
 literary practitioner of reputation. There are scores of men 
 in England to-day who write night after night articles for 
 their newspapers every one of which contains a thousand 
 words. In the course of a few years, every man of them 
 " turns out " — that is how they refer to their work — more 
 than Oliver Goldsmith wrote during all his life ! To be sure, 
 it must be admitted that in some cases the quality of the 
 output is inferior to that of Goldsmith at his best ; but we 
 are not now talking of the genius that is accountable for the 
 quality, but of the labour that is accountable for the quantity. 
 
 About the quality of Goldsmith's work for the Monthly 
 Review a good deal might be said. The articles that he 
 wrote in the five numbers were, as we have mentioned, un- 
 
ISO THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 signed ; but to a filed copy the careful Mr. Griffiths appended 
 the names of his " hirelings " — the word employed by Smollett 
 in referring to the writers for his rival. But even if he had 
 neglected to do so it would require the possession of no great 
 astuteness to enable one to identify Goldsmith's work ; a good 
 deal more would be needed to identify the passages interpo- 
 lated by Mr. Griffiths or his wife. The style of the writing 
 and the manner of treating every subject are eminently 
 Goldsmithian. So we may add is the tone of the criticism, 
 and so beyond doubt are the elements of interest which 
 appear on every page. He never was otherwise than interesting, 
 even when dealing with an uninteresting book. But the 
 greatest praise that can be given to his criticisms is to say 
 that they are critical. Eighty or a hundred years later literary 
 critics started the fashion in the great quarterlies of making 
 the incident of their having the name of a book at the head 
 of their articles an excuse for the display of their own erudi- 
 tion or their own views on the period and the persons 
 referred to by the author. A column of innocent criticism 
 was foUowed by thirty or forty pages of matter which had, 
 undoubtedly, a certain connection with the book, but which 
 could not by any possibility be accepted as a criticism of 
 its merits or demerits. These efforts constituted admirable 
 essays ; but they could in no sense be looked on as reviews. 
 They might just as well have been written without dragging 
 in the book which was the pretext for their appearance. But 
 this cannot be said of Goldsmith's work in the Monthly Review. 
 It is distinctly critical and illuminating. Without ever 
 rising to the highest level possible to be reached in this 
 sort of writing, it does so very nearly in some articles ; and, 
 at any rate, in reading it, no one with any power of dis- 
 crimination could doubt that it was the product of a man 
 of sound judgment, wide reading, some scholarship, and 
 good taste. 
 
 Griffiths was a fool to part with the man who could turn 
 out such work — that is, we are convinced, what a compe- 
 tent editor of a review would say after reading his articles. 
 Any editor who understood his business would have held on 
 to Goldsmith and not merely have allowed Goldsmith to 
 hold on to him. Griffiths the printer understood his 
 
PHYSICIAN, USHER, AND DRUDGE 151 
 
 business, but Griffiths the editor was a fool, and Mrs. Griffiths 
 was his wife. As a matter of fact, the ability shown in Gold- 
 smith's articles had attracted the attention of Hamilton, 
 the proprietor of the rival magazine, and it will be seen 
 that when Goldsmith severed his formal connection with 
 Griffiths, he was engaged by Hamilton to write for the Critical 
 Review. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 "^BEING BORN AN IRISHMAN " 
 1757 
 
 We are inclined to believe that Goldsmith endeavoured to 
 return to the duties which he had relinquished at Peckham 
 in favour of the profession of a writer, but that, not being able 
 to resume his position at once, he made an attempt to get a 
 livelihood by promiscuous writing. He fared badly. What 
 he wrote and for whom he wrote cannot be determined. 
 
 And this was a very inopportune moment for him to receive 
 a visit from his brother Charles, who apparently came in 
 upon him without a word of warning. Charles seems to have 
 heard that he was in a good position in London and crossed 
 from Ireland to try what he could do for himself by the aid 
 of his brother Oliver's recommendation, and Oliver was, as 
 usual, cheerful, and tried to make the best of a forlorn hope, 
 but his visitor was not greatly impressed by his references 
 to Otway and Addison. The latter had written his poem 
 The Campaign in a garret, Charles was reminded. That 
 was enough for Charles. Charles disappeared. He worked 
 his way out to Jamaica and did moderately well for himself 
 on that island, but he never saw his brother again. At their 
 interview he mentioned that their brother-in-law, Daniel 
 Hodson, had some time before got contributions in money on 
 behalf of Oliver from various friends in Ireland. This was 
 the first that Oliver had heard of such benefactions ; but he at 
 once wrote to thank Hodson for his kindness in the matter. 
 This letter fortunately was not used as a candle-paper. It 
 gives one the truest insight into the nature of the writer — 
 the gentle, patient, grateful nature of the man who suffered 
 more intensely than most men because he felt more intensely 
 than most men, but whom suflFering could not rob of his smile. 
 
 IS2 
 
"BEING BORN AN IRISHMAN" 153 
 
 "Dear Sir, 
 
 " It may be four years since my last letters went to 
 Ireland, and to you in particular. I received no answer; 
 probably because you never wrote to me. My brother 
 Charles however informs me of the fatigue you were at in 
 soliciting a subscription to assist me, not only among 
 my friends and relations, but acquaintances in general. 
 Though my pride might feel some repugnance at being thus 
 relieved, yet my gratitude can suffer no diminution. How 
 much am I obliged to you, to them, for such generosity, or 
 (why should not your virtues have their proper name ?) for 
 such charity to me at that juncture. Sure I am born to ill- 
 1 fortune to be so much a debtor and unable to repay. But to 
 say no more of this : too many professions of gratitude are 
 often considered as indirect petitions for future favours : let 
 me only add that my not receiving that supply was the cause 
 of my present establishment at London. You may easily 
 imagine what difficulties I had to encounter, left as I was 
 without friends, recommendations, money, or impudence ; 
 and that in a country where being born an Irishman was 
 sufficient to keep me unemployed. Many in such circum- 
 stances would have had recourse to the friar's cord or to the 
 suicide's halter. But, with all my follies, I had principle 
 to resist the one and resolution to combat the other. I 
 suppose you desire to know my present situation. As there 
 is nothing in it at which I should blush, or which mankind 
 could censure, I see no reason for making it a secret ; in 
 short, by a very little practice as a physician, and a very little 
 reputation as a poet, I make a shift to live. Nothing is more 
 apt to introduce us to the gates of the Muses than poverty, 
 but it were well if they only left us at the door. The mischief 
 is, they sometimes choose to give us their company at the 
 entertainment ; and Want, instead of being gentleman- 
 usher, often turns master of the ceremonies. Thus, upon 
 hearing I write, no doubt you imagine I starve ; and the 
 name of an author naturally reminds you of a garret. In 
 this particular I do not think proper to undeceive my friends. 
 But whether I eat or starve, live in a first floor or four pair 
 of stairs high, I still remember them with ardour, nay, my 
 very country comes in for a share of my affection." 
 
154 'J^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 In this pathetic letter we get a hint as to the cause of 
 his want of success in almost every enterprise in which he 
 engaged. " Being born an Irishman was sufficient to keep 
 me unemployed," he wrote ; and there can be no doubt thatj" 
 the prejudices existing at that time in England against the 
 Irish were very great, and it is pretty certain that they were 
 well founded. The examples of the Irish to be met with 
 in London during the eighteenth century and well into the 
 nineteenth were such as caused the name of Irishman to be 
 of evil odour in the nostrils of the people ; and the brilliancy 
 of the little group of which Burke was the centre and which 
 included Goldsmith — after the publication of The Traveller— 
 Tom Sheridan, and, later, his son, and, later still, Thomas 
 Moore, did little to convince people that there are Irishmen 
 and Irishmen. 
 
 This letter also suggests that the writer had been trying 
 to make something out of his poetry. What verses he had 
 written and published at this time we cannot tell ; but 
 possibly if any one had a mind to examine the files of the 
 periodicals of the day, an occasional contribution might be 
 found that would bear to be considered as his work. Most 
 likely it is, however, that he made use of the word " poet " 
 as suggesting to Mr. Hodson more of the wretchedness of 
 his lot than would the words " literary man." Goldsmith 
 would have had to invent the latter, but the former carried 
 its traditions with it even to Dan Hodson of Lissoy. 
 
 Among his labours in these months was a translation entitled 
 Memoirs of a Protestant Condemned to the Galleys of 
 France for his Religion. This work, in two small volumes, 
 bore the name " James WiUington " on the title-page. The 
 name conveyed as much to the public as the name Oliver 
 Goldsmith would have done ; that is all that can be said to 
 account for the use of this pseudonym. There is no reason 
 to fancy that Goldsmith was so confident of his future as a 
 writer as to cause him to be ashamed to have his name 
 associated with a commonplace translation of a commonplace 
 book. With the publication of this thing, he turned his 
 back for a time upon literature and resumed the role of the 
 teacher. Whether he went once more to Dr. Milner or 
 Dr. Milner sent for him, we cannot say, but we find him 
 
"BEING BORN AN IRISHMAN" 155 
 
 back at the school at Peckham, only this time in a more 
 responsible position than that which he had occupied the 
 previous year. The fact was that Dr. Milner was in very bad 
 health and stood greatly in need of a teacher capable of 
 conducting the school at such times as he was indisposed. 
 Thus the connection with Peckham was resumed ; but it 
 was clearly understood that it was not to be permanent. 
 It appeared that Milner had promised Goldsmith to use 
 his influence with a friend of his named Jones, who, in his 
 turn, had influence with the East India Company, to obtain 
 for him the appointment of surgeon to one of their factories 
 on the Coromandel coast, and it was understood that his services 
 at the school would terminate on his qualifying for the post. 
 
 The transaction seems to us to be rather a singular one. 
 But we think that it may appear more plausible if we assume 
 that Dr. Milner's son, who, as has been stated, had been with 
 Goldsmith at Edinburgh, was one of the parties to the arrange- 
 ment. He was in touch with the medical profession, and 
 knowing* of his father's illness as well as of Goldsmith's 
 necessities, he was able to point out the advantages to both 
 of the carrying out of an agreement on the basis just defined. 
 Goldsmith, with his melancholy experiences of London and 
 his longing for foreign travel, must have felt that at last he 
 was on the highway to fortune, via Coromandel, and the 
 Milners must have been glad to renew their connection with 
 a man whom they could trust to carry on the school until 
 the principal should be restored to health. Thus it was that 
 Goldsmith found himself once again at Peckham, but with 
 his eyes turned toward the golden East. 
 
 But there were certain preliminaries to the realisation 
 of his golden dream, and one was the payment of the sum 
 of ten pounds for the warrant, and of more than twice that 
 amount for a proper outfit, though nankeen was a good 
 deal less expensive than the velvet which he loved in 
 gorgeous tints. In order to find all this money he set about 
 writing a work which should appeal to the genteel readers 
 who would have been shocked had he offered to them the 
 incomparable volume of vagrancy that to-day we lament 
 to be without. No doubt he had taken the counsel of the 
 booksellers — Griffiths and the rest — on the subject, and the 
 
iS6 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 result was Jn Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning 
 in Europe. 
 
 The scheme was, we are sure, suggested to him by the 
 booksellers ; but who it was that advised him to take the only 
 real business step that can be recorded against him, in con- 
 nection with this or any other enterprise of his, has never 
 been revealed. If we had not documentary evidence to 
 prove that for once he acted like a man of business, we should 
 refuse to believe that it was possible for him to have broken 
 through the traditions of the man of letters which every day 
 were being strengthened by the incidents in his career. But 
 we actually find him writing to his friends in Ireland asking 
 them to work up subscriptions for the book among their 
 acquaintance. There was no law of copyright in Ireland 
 at that time, and the consequence was that, if a book was 
 successful on the other side of the Channel, it was promptly 
 pirated by the Irish booksellers. Goldsmith was anxious to 
 take the cream of the profits of the Irish sale, and he made 
 the modest estimate of a hundred copies as likely to satisfy 
 the eagerness of his friends to become associated with the 
 success of his first book. 
 
 The result was what every Irishman, save only Oliver 
 Goldsmith, would have predicted : his dear friends ignored 
 his appeal. Some of them, when he had died famous, and 
 when a memorial to him was placed in Westminster Abbey, 
 spent their time boasting of their friendship for " dear old Noll 
 Goldsmith " ; but that was how they interpreted the claims 
 of friendship when he was alive. Five shillings represented 
 the difference between failure and success as an author to 
 Goldsmith, and not one of them would promise to stand by 
 him to this amount ! 
 
 He wrote to his dear Ned Mills and to Bob Bryanton, who 
 had been his companion on so many excursions on the river 
 and the lake ; he wrote to his Jane Lawder, with whom he 
 had played duets at Kilmore, and to his brother-in-law, Daniel 
 Hodson, but the result was the same : no matter in what 
 direction his letters went, no one paid any attention to 
 them. 
 
 So rare, thanks to the neglect of his correspondents, are 
 the surviving letters of Goldsmith and so eminently charac- 
 
''BEING BORN AN IRISHMAN'' 157 
 
 teristic of the man are those that remain, it would be impossible 
 for any biographer to refrain frorrv quoting them. He wrote 
 to Edward Mills as follows : 
 
 " You have quitted, I find, that plan of life which you 
 once intended to pursue ; and given up ambition for domestic 
 tranquillity. Were I to consult your satisfaction alone in 
 this change, I have the utmost reason to congratulate your 
 choice ; but when I consider my own, I cannot avoid feeling 
 some regret, that one of my few friends has declined a pur- 
 suit in which he had every reason to expect success. The 
 truth is, like the rest of the world, I am self-interested in 
 my concern ; and do not so much consider the happiness 
 you have acquired, as the honour I have probably lost in the 
 change. I have often let my fancy loose when you were 
 the subject, and have imagined you gracing the bench, or 
 thundering at the bar ; while I have taken no small pride 
 to myself, and whispered all that I could come near, that 
 this was my cousin. Instead of this, it seems you are con- 
 tented to be merely an happy man ; to be esteemed only by 
 your acquaintance — to cultivate your paternal acres — to 
 take unmolested a nap under one of your own hawthorns, 
 or in Mrs. Mills' bed-chamber, which even a poet must 
 confess is rather the most comfortable place of the two. 
 
 " But however your resolutions may be altered with regard 
 to your situation in life, I persuade myself they are unalter- 
 able with regard to your .friends in it. I cannot think the 
 world has taken such entire possession of that heart (once so 
 susceptible of friendship), as not to have left a corner there 
 for a friend or two ; but I flatter myself that even I have 
 my place among the number. This I have a claim to from 
 the similitude of our dispositions ; or, setting that aside, I can 
 demand it as my right by the most equitable law in nature, I 
 mean that of retaliation : for indeed, you have more than your 
 share in mine. I am a man of few professions, and yet this 
 very instant I cannot avoid the painful apprehension that 
 my present professions (which speak not half my feelings) 
 should be considered only a pretext to cover a request, as I 
 have a request to make. No, my dear Ned, I know you 
 are too generous to think so ; and you know me too proud 
 
158 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 to stoop to mercenary insincerity. I have a request it is 
 true to make ; but, as I know to whom I am a petitioner, 
 I make it without diffidence or confusion. It is in short this, 
 I am going to publish a book in London, entitled An Essay 
 on the Present State of Taste and Literature in Europe. Every 
 work published here the printers in Ireland republish 
 there, without giving the author the least consideration for 
 his copy. I would in this respect disappoint their avarice, 
 and have aU the additional advantages that may result from 
 the sale of my performance there to myself. The book is 
 now printing in London, and I have requested Dr. Radcliff, 
 Mr. Lawder, Mr. Bryanton, my brother Mr. Henry Gold- 
 smith, and brother-in-law Mr. Hodson, to circulate my 
 proposals among their acquaintance. The same request I 
 now make to you ; and have accordingly given directions 
 to Mr. Bradley, bookseller in Dame-street, Dublin, to send 
 you a hundred proposals. Whatever subscriptions pursuant 
 to those proposals you may receive, when collected, may 
 be transmitted to Mr. Bradley, who will give a receipt for 
 the money and be accountable for the books. I shall not, 
 by a paltry apology, excuse myself for putting you to this 
 trouble. Were I not convinced that you found more pleasure 
 in doing good-natured things, than uneasiness at being 
 employed in them, I should not have singled you out on this 
 occasion. It is probable you would comply with such a 
 request, if it tended to the encouragement of any man of 
 learning whatsoever ; what then may not he expect who 
 has claims of family and friendship to enforce his ? 
 " I am, dear sir, your sincere 
 
 " Friend and humble servant, 
 " Oliver Goldsmith." 
 
 Quite in a different vein was his communication to 
 Bryanton. 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 "I have heard it remarked, I believe by yourself, 
 that they who are drunk, or out of their wits, fancy 
 everybody else in the same condition : mine is a friendship 
 that neither distance nor time can efface, which is probably 
 
"BEING BORN AN IRISHMAN'' 159 
 
 the reason that, for the soul of me, I can't avoid thinking yours 
 of the same complexion ; and yet I have many reasons for 
 being of a contrary opinion, else why in so long an absence 
 was I never made a partner in your concerns ? To hear of 
 your successes would have given me the utmost pleasure ; 
 and a communication of your very disappointments would 
 divide the uneasiness I too frequently feel for my own. 
 Indeed, my dear Bob, you don't conceive how unkindly 
 you have treated one whose circumstances afford him few 
 prospects of pleasure, except those reflected from the happi- 
 ness of his friends. However, since you have not let me hear 
 from you, I have in some measure disappointed your neglect 
 by frequently thinking of you. Every day do I remember 
 the calm anecdotes of your life, from the fireside to the easy 
 chair ; recall the various adventures that first cemented 
 our friendship, the school, the college, or the tavern ; pre- 
 side in fancy over your cards ; and am displeased at your 
 bad play when the rubber goes against you, though not with 
 aU that agony of soul as when I once was your partner. 
 
 " Is it not strange that two of such like affections should 
 be so much separated and so differently employed as we are ? 
 You seem placed at the centre of fortune's wheel, and let 
 it revolve never so fast, seem insensible of the motion. I 
 seem to have been tied to the circumference, and . . . dis- 
 agreeably round like ... in a whirligig . . . down 
 with an intention to chide, and yet methinks . . . my 
 resentment already. The truth is, I am a . . . regard to you ; 
 I may attempt to bluster, . . . Anacreon, my heart is respon- 
 dent only to softer affections. And yet, now I think on't 
 again, I will be angry. God's curse, sir ! who am I ? 
 Eh ! what am I ? Do you know whom you have offended ? 
 A man whose character may one of these days be mentioned 
 with profound respect in a German comment or Dutch 
 dictionary ; whose name you will probably hear ushered 
 in by a Doctissimus Doctissimorum, or heel-pieced with 
 a long Latin termination. Think how Goldsmithius, or 
 Gubblegurchius, or some such sound, as rough as a nutmeg- 
 grater, wiU become me ! Think of that ! — God's curse, sir ! 
 who am I ? I must own my ill-natured contemporaries 
 have not hitherto paid me those honours I have had such 
 
i6o THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 just reason to expect. I have not yet seen my face reflected 
 in all the lively display of red and white paints on any sign- 
 posts in the suburbs. Your handkerchief-weavers seem as 
 yet unacquainted with my merits or my physiognomy, and the 
 very snuff-box makers appear to have forgot their respect. 
 Tell them all from me, they are a set of Gothic, barbarous, 
 ignorant scoundrels. There will come a day, no doubt it 
 will — I beg you may live a couple of hundred years longer 
 only to see the day — when the Scaligers and Daciers will 
 vindicate my character, give learned editions of my labours, 
 and bless the times with copious comments on the text. You 
 shall see how they will fish up the heavy scoundrels who dis- 
 regard me now, or will then offer to cavil at my productions, 
 How will they bewail the times that suffered so much genius 
 to lie neglected ! If ever my works find their way to Tartary 
 or China, I know the consequence. Suppose one of your 
 Chinese Owanowitzers instructing one of your Tartarian 
 Chianobacchi — you see I use Chinese names to show my 
 own erudition, as I shall soon make our Chinese talk like an 
 Englishman to show his — this may be the subject of the 
 lecture : 
 
 " Oliver Goldsmith flourished in the eighteenth and 
 nineteenth centuries. He lived to be an hundred and three 
 years old . . . age may justly be styled the sun of . . . 
 and the Confucius of Europe . . . learned world, were 
 anonymous, and have probably been lost, because united with 
 those of others. The first avowed piece the world has of his 
 is entitled an Essay on the Present State of Taste and Literature 
 in Eurofe, — a work well worth its weight in diamonds. In 
 this he profoundly explains what learning is, and what learning 
 is not. In this he proves that blockheads are not men of wit, 
 and yet that men of wit are actually blockheads. 
 
 " But as I choose neither to tire my Chinese Philosopher, 
 nor you, nor myself, I must discontinue the oration, in order 
 to give you a good pause for admiration ; and I find myself 
 most violently disposed to admire too. Let me, then, stop 
 my fancy to take a view of my future self ; and, as the boys 
 say, light down to see myself on horseback. Well, now I am 
 down, where the devil is I ? Oh Gods ! Gods ! Here in a 
 garret, writing for bread and expecting to be dunned for a 
 
"BEING BORN AN IRISHMAN" i6i 
 
 milk-score ! However, dear Bob, whether in a penury or 
 affluence, serious or gay, I am ever wholly thine, 
 
 " Oliver Goldsmith. 
 " Give my — no, not compliments neither, but some- 
 thing . . . most warm and sincere wish that you can conceive, 
 to your mother, Mrs. Bryanton, to Miss Bryanton, to your- 
 self ; and if there be a favourite dog in the family, let me be 
 remembered to it." 
 
 The third letter, which was that to his cousin Jane Lawder, 
 he might reasonably have expected to be successful. Her 
 husband was in comfortable circumstances, and he could cer- 
 tainly have afforded the price of half a dozen copies, if he felt 
 disinclined to bother his friends with this application of his 
 wife's cousin. The letter was not written in any begging 
 vein, it will be noticed. Mr. Lawder could not have been 
 apprehensive from its tone that the writer was taking the 
 first step to become a dependent upon the bounty of his 
 house. If he had possessed any capacity whatsoever for forming 
 an opinion, he would have perceived from this letter that 
 the writer had at least a chance of doing something to place 
 himself in a better position than any he had yet occupied ; 
 but it is more than possible that this Mr. Lawder, after con- 
 sulting with the other country gentleman who had been 
 made aware of Goldsmith's intention to become an author, 
 arrived at the conclusion that such an ambition was a disgrace 
 to the family. In Ireland in the eighteenth century author- 
 ship was held in as little account as scholarship. The attorney, 
 whose business was looked on as too contemptible to admit of 
 his sitting down at the same table as one of these coarse 
 country louts, was still held in far higher esteem than a writer 
 of books, however eminent the latter might be. Among the 
 English country gentlemen the same impression remained ; 
 and even in London, the patron left his author to cool his heels 
 among the footmen in the hall, while he attended to tradesmen 
 who waited on him. Of course, in the case of the London 
 patron, eminence counted for something. As soon as the 
 author became eminent enough to have ten thousand patrons 
 instead of one only, that one was quite ready to admit him 
 through the exclusive doors beyond the ante-room. But if 
 
1 62 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 an author wished to retain any self-respect — ^we assume 
 that he started with some — ^he did well to make haste to 
 become famous. As so few, however, became famous even 
 at their leisure, we are afraid that not many retained their 
 self-respect. 
 
 But if Mr. Lawder perceived a menace in the letter which 
 his wife showed him with Oliver Goldsmith's signature^ 
 surely the sight of his handwriting and the sound of his happy 
 humour ringing through the pages must have caused her 
 memory to go back to the days when they had been together 
 at Kilmore, when he had played his flute and she had jingled- 
 her harpsichord, before the judicial Dean had arrived at 
 the rectory and sentenced Oliver to become a physician. 
 One might at least fancy that the letter would have had 
 such an effect upon her. Perhaps it had too ; only the result 
 of sending her memory back was to make her reflect upon the 
 amount of money her father had spent upon the man, and to 
 think that it was all spent to no better purpose than to make 
 him an author — not quite an author — she would be just to 
 him : he had sunk no lower than to hope to become an author. 
 
 This is the letter which she received : 
 
 " If you should ask, why in an interval of so many 
 years, you never heard from me, permit me, madam, to ask 
 the same question. I have the best excuse in recrimination. 
 I wrote to Kilmore from Leyden in Holland, from Louvain 
 in Flanders, and Rouen in France, but received no answer. 
 To what could I attribute this, please, but to displeasure 
 or forgetfulness ? Whether I was right in my conjecture, 
 I do not pretend to determine, but this I must ingenuously 
 own, that I have a thousand times in my turn endeavoured 
 to forget them whom I could not but look upon as forgetting 
 me. I have attempted to blot their names from my memory, 
 and, I confess it, spent whole days in efforts to tear their 
 images from my heart. Could I have succeeded, you had 
 not now been troubled with this renewal of a discontinued 
 correspondence ; but, as every effort the restless make to pro- 
 cure sleep serves but to keep them waking, all my attempts 
 contributed to impress what I would forget deeper on my 
 imagination. But this is a subject I would willingly turn 
 
''BEING BORN JN IRISHMAN" 163 
 
 rom, and yet, for the soul of me, I can't till I have said all. 
 '. was, madam, when I discontinued writing to Kilmore, in 
 uch circumstances that all my endeavours to continue your 
 ■egards might be attributed to wrong motives. My letters 
 night be regarded as the petitions of a beggar, and not the 
 )fferings of a friend ; while all my professions, instead of being 
 :onsidered as the result of disinterested esteem, might be 
 iscribed to venal insincerity. I believe indeed you had too 
 nuch generosity to place them in such a light, but I could 
 lot bear even the shadow of such a suspicion. The most 
 delicate friendships are always most sensible of the slightest 
 invasion, and the strongest jealousy is ever attendant on 
 the warmest regard. I could not, I own I could not, con- 
 tinue a correspondence where every acknowledgment for 
 past favours might be considered as an indirect request for 
 future ones, and where it might be thought I gave my heart 
 from a motive of gratitude alone, when I was conscious of 
 having bestowed it on much more disinterested principles. 
 
 " It is true, this conduct might have been simple enough, 
 but yourself must confess it was in character. Those who 
 know me at all, know that I have always been actuated by 
 diflferent principles from the rest of mankind, and while none 
 regarded the interests of his friends more, no man on earth 
 regarded his own less. I have often aflfected bluntless to avoid 
 the imputation of flattery, have frequently seemed to overlook 
 those merits too obvious to escape notice, and pretended a 
 disregard to those instances of good nature and good sense 
 which I could not fail tacitly to applaud ; and all this lest 
 I should be ranked among the grinning tribe who say very 
 true to all that is said, who fill a vacant chair at a tea-table, 
 whose narrow souls never moved in a wider circle than the 
 circumference of a guinea, and who had rather be reckoning 
 the money in your pocket than the virtues of your breast. 
 All this, I say I have done, and a thousand other very silly 
 tho' very disinterested things in my time, and for all which 
 no soul cares a farthing about me. God's curse, madam ! 
 is it to be wondered that he should once in his life forget 
 you who has been all his life forgetting himself ? 
 
 " However, it is probable you may one of those days 
 see me turn'd into a perfect Hunks, and as dark and intricate 
 
i64 JHE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 as a mouse-ho^e. I have already given my landlady orders 
 for an entire reform in the state of my finances. I declaim 
 against hot suppers, drink less sugar in my tea, and check my 
 grate with brick-bats. Instead of hanging my room with 
 pictures I intend to adorn it with maxims of frugality. These 
 will make pretty furniture enough, and won't be a bit too 
 expensive ; for I shall draw them all out with my own hands, 
 and my landlady's daughter shall frame them with the parings 
 of my black waistcoat. Each maxim is to be inscribed on a 
 sheet of clear paper, and wrote with my best pen ; of which 
 the following will serve as a specimen. Look sharp. Mind 
 the main chance. Money is money now. If you have a 
 thousand found, you can -put your hands by your sides and 
 say you are worth a thousand -pounds every day of the year. 
 Take a farthing from an hundred pound aud it will be an hundred 
 pound no longer. Thus, which way soever I turn my eyes, 
 they are sure to meet one of those friendly Monitors ; and 
 as we are told of an Actor who hung his room round with 
 looking-glasses to correct the defects of his person, my 
 apartment shall be furnished in a peculiar manner to correct 
 the errors of my mind. 
 
 " Faith, madam, I heartily wish to be rich, if it were only 
 for this reason, to say without a blush how much I esteem 
 you ; but, alas ! I have many a fatigue to encounter before 
 that happy time comes, when your poor old simple friend 
 may again give a loose to the luxuriance of his nature, sitting 
 by Kilmore fireside recount the various adventures of an 
 hard-fought life, laugh over the follies of the day, join his 
 flute to your harpsichord, and forget that ever he starved 
 in those streets where Butler and Otway starved before him. 
 
 " And now I mention those great names — My uncle- 
 He is no more than that soul of fire as when once I knew him. 
 Newton and Swift grew dim with age as well as he. But 
 what shall I say ? — ^his mind was too active an inhabitant 
 not to disorder the feeble mansion of its abode ; for the richest 
 jewels soonest wear their settings. Yet who but the fool 
 would lament his condition ! He now forgets the calamities 
 of life. Perhaps indulgent heaven has given him a fore- 
 taste of that tranquillity here which he so well deserves 
 hereafter. 
 
"BEING BORN AN IRISHMAN" 165 
 
 " But I must come to business ; for business, as one of 
 my maxims tells me, must be minded or lost. I am going to 
 publish in London a book entitled The Present State of Taste 
 and Literature in Europe. The Booksellers in Ireland republish 
 every performance there without making the author any 
 consideration. I would in this respect disappoint their avarice, 
 and have all the profits of my labours to myself. I must 
 therefore request Mr. Lawder to circulate among his friends 
 and acquaintances an hundred of my Proposals, which I have 
 given the bookseller, Mr. Bradley in Dame Street, directions 
 to send him. If, in pursuance to such circulation, he should 
 receive any subscriptions, I entreat when collected they may 
 be sent to Mr. Bradley's as aforesaid, who will give a receipt 
 and be accountable for the work, or a return of the subscription. 
 If this request (which, so far complied with, will in some mea- 
 sure be an encouragement to a man of learning) should be 
 disagreeable or troublesome, I would not press it ; for I 
 would be the last man on earth to have my labours go a-begging; 
 but if I know Mr. Lawder, and sure I ought to know him, 
 he wiU accept the employment with pleasure. All I can say — 
 if he writes a book I wiU get him two hundred subscribers, 
 and those of the best wits in Europe. 
 
 " Whether this request is complied with or not, I shall 
 not be uneasy ; but there is one Petition I must make to 
 him, which I solicit with the warmest ardour, and in which I 
 cannot bear a refusal, I mean, dear Madam, that I may live 
 
 " Your ever affectionate 
 
 and obliged kinsman, 
 " Oliver Goldsmith 
 
 "You see how I blot and blunder, when I am asking a 
 favour. 
 
 " Temple Exchange Coffee House, 
 
 "near Temple Bar, Lmd. Aug. 15, 1758." 
 
 She paid no attention to this letter, with its blots and 
 erasures, nor do we hear of her husband's making any move 
 in the direction suggested by her cousin Oliver ; and when 
 some months had passed without bringing to him any 
 response to his appeal for a simple act of courtesy, it would 
 not have been surprising if her cousin Oliver had resolved 
 
i66 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 never again to be guilty of a business act. If he made such 
 a resolution it was certainly one of the few to which he 
 rigorously adhered for the rest of his life. 
 
 It will have been noticed that he made no mention of 
 the Coromandel scheme in any of these letters ; but we know 
 of no adequate reason for his refraining from doing so. Later, 
 however, he wrote to his brother Henry, telling him all 
 there was to be told ; and subsequently to Hodson, as follows : 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 "You cannot expect regularity in one who is 
 regular in nothing. Nay, were I forced to love you by 
 rule, I dare venture to say that I could never do it sincerely. 
 Take me, then, with all my faults. Let me write when 1 
 please, for you see I say what I please, and am only thinking 
 aloud when writing to you. I suppose you have heard of 
 my intention of going to the East Indies. The place of my 
 destination is one of the factories on the coast of Coromandel, 
 and I go in quality of physician and surgeon ; for which the 
 company has signed my warrant, which has already cost me 
 ten pounds. I must also pay ^50 for my passage, and ten pounds 
 for my sea stores : and the other incidental expenses of my 
 equipment will amount to ^60 or ^70 more. The salary 
 is but trifling, namely /[loo 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 one thousand pounds 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 
 
 " You cannot conceive how I am sometimes divided. 
 To leave all that is dear to me gives me pain : but when I 
 consider I may possibly acquire a genteel independence for 
 life, when I think of that dignity which philosophy claims 
 to raise itself above contempt and ridicule, when I think 
 
"BEING BORN AN IRISHMAN'' 167 
 
 thus, I eagerly long to embrace every opportunity of separating 
 myself from the vulgar as much in my circumstances, as I 
 am already in my sentiments. I am going to publish a book, 
 for an account of which I refer you to a letter which I 
 wrote to my brother Goldsmith. Circulate for me among 
 your acquaintances a hundred proposals, which I have given 
 orders may be sent to you : and if, in pursuance of such 
 circulation, you should receive any subscriptions, let them, 
 when collected, be transmitted to Mr. Bradley, who will 
 give a receipt for the same. ... I know not how my 
 desire of seeing Ireland, which had so long slept, has again 
 revived with so much ardour. So weak is my temper, and 
 so unsteady, that I am frequently tempted, particularly 
 when low-spirited, to return home and leave my fortune, 
 though just beginning to look kinder. But it shall not be. 
 In five or six years I hope to indulge these transports. 
 I find I want constitution, and a strong steady disposition, 
 which alone makes men great. I will, howei er, correct my 
 faults, since I am conscious of them." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 DE PROFUNDIS 
 1758-1759 
 
 But even the chance of getting rid of him by helping him to 
 carry out his Coromandel plans, did not move any of his friends 
 to action in respect of getting subscribers to the projected 
 book, or of writing to him on the subject ; for some time after- 
 wards, in a letter to his brother, he says, " The behaviour 
 of Mr. Mills and Mr. Lawder is a little extraordinary. How- 
 ever, their answering neither you nor me is a sufficient in- 
 dication of their disliking the employment which I assigned 
 to them." So much for Messrs. Mills and Lawder. Of 
 the exertions of Mr. Bryanton on behalf of literature he 
 could never have had much hope. Bob Bryanton was 
 developing too rapidly into the typical Irish gentleman of the 
 period. " Pray, give my love to Bob Bryanton, and entreat 
 him from me not to drink," is a significant paragraph in 
 this letter to his brother Henry. The whole letter should, 
 however, be given in full ; it is one of the most interesting 
 of the far too meagre Goldsmith correspondence. We 
 omit from the text the paragraphs we have quoted else- 
 where : 
 
 " I shall the beginning of next month send over two 
 
 hundred and fifty books, which are all that I fancy can be well 
 
 sold among you, and I would have you make some distinction 
 
 in the persons who have subscribed. The money, which wiU 
 
 amount to sixty pounds, may be left with Mr. Bradley, as 
 
 soon as possible. I am not certain but I shall quickly have 
 
 occasion for it. I have met with no disappointment with 
 
 respect to my East India voyage; nor are my resolutions 
 
 altered ; though, at the same time, I must confess it gives me 
 
 some pain to think I am almost beginning the world at the 
 
 168 
 
DE PROFUNDIS 169 
 
 age of thirty-one. Though I never had a day's sickness since 
 I saw you, yet I am not that strong and active man you once 
 knew me. You scarcely can conceive how much eight years 
 of disappointment, anguish, and study, have worn me down. 
 If I remember right, you are seven or eight years older than 
 me, yet I dare venture to say, that if a stranger saw us both, 
 he would pay me the honours of seniority. Imagine to your- 
 self a pale melancholy visage, with two great wrinkles between 
 the eyebrows, with an eye disgustingly severe, and a big wig ; 
 and you may have a perfect picture of my present appearance. 
 On the other hand, I conceive you as perfectly sleek and healthy, 
 passing many a happy day among your own children, or those 
 who knew you a child. Since I knew what it was to be a man, 
 this is a pleasure I have not known. I have passed my days 
 among a parcel of cool designing beings, and have contracted 
 all their suspicious manner in my own behaviour. I should 
 actually be as unfit for the society of my friends at home, 
 as I detest that which I am obliged to partake of here. I 
 can now neither partake of the pleasure of a revel, nor con- 
 tribute to raise its jollity. I can neither laugh nor drink, 
 have contracted a hesitating disagreeable manner of speaking, 
 and a visage that looks ill-nature itself ; in short, I have 
 thought myself into a settled melancholy, and an utter 
 disgust of all that life brings with it. — Whence this romantic 
 turn, that all our family are possessed with ? Whence this 
 love for every place and every country but that in which we 
 reside ? for every occupation but our own ? this desire of 
 fortune, and yet this eagerness to dissipate ? I perceive, my 
 dear sir, that I am at intervals for indulging this splenetic 
 manner, and following my own taste, regardless of yours. 
 
 " The reasons you have given me for breeding up your 
 son as a scholar, are judicious and convincing. I should, 
 however, be glad to know for what particular profession 
 he is designed. If he be assiduous, and divested of strong 
 passions, (for passions in youth always lead to pleasure), he 
 may do very well in your college ; for it must be owned, that 
 the industrious poor have good encouragement there, perhaps 
 better than in any other in Europe. But if he has ambition, 
 strong passions, and an exquisite sensibility of contempt, 
 do not send him there, unless you have no other trade for him 
 
170 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 except your own. It is impossible to conceive how much 
 may be done by a proper education at home. A boy, for 
 instance, who understands perfectly well Latin, French, 
 Arithmetic, and the principles of the civil law, and can write 
 a fine hand, has an education that may qualify him for any 
 undertaking. And these parts of learning should be carefully 
 inculcated, let him be designed for whatever calling he will. 
 Above aU things let him never touch a romance or novel; 
 those paint beauties in colours more charming than nature, 
 and described happiness that man never tastes. How delu- 
 sive, how destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss. 
 They teach the youthful mind to sigh after beauty and 
 happiness which never existed ; to despise the little good 
 which fortune has mixed in our cup, by expecting more 
 than she ever gave ; and in general, take the word of a man 
 who has seen the world, and has studied human nature more 
 by experience than precept, take my word for it, I say, 
 that books teach us very little of the world. The greatest 
 merit in the state of poverty would only serve to make the 
 possessor ridiculous ; may distress, but cannot relieve him. 
 Frugality, and even avarice, in the lower orders of mankind, 
 are true ambition. These aflEord the only ladder for the poor 
 to rise to preferment. Teach then, my dear sir, to your 
 son, thrift and economy. Let his poor wandering uncle's 
 example be placed before his eyes. I had learned from books 
 to be disinterested and generous, before I was taught from 
 experience the necessity of being prudent. I had contracted 
 the habits and notions of a philosopher, while I was exposing 
 myself to the insidious approaches of cunning; and often 
 by being, even with my narrow finances, charitable to excess, 
 I forgot the rules of justice, and placed myself in the very 
 situation of the wretch who thanked me for my bounty. 
 When I am in the remotest part of the world, teU him this, 
 and perhaps he may improve from my example. But I 
 find myself again falling into my gloomy habits of thinking. 
 
 " My mother, I am informed, is almost blind : even 
 though I had the utmost inclination to return home, under 
 such circumstances I could not ; for to behold her in dis- 
 tress without a capacity of relieving her from it, would add 
 too much to my splenetic habit. Your last letter was much 
 
DE PROFUNDIS 171 
 
 too short, it should have answered some queries I had made in 
 my former. Just sit down as I do, and write forward until 
 you have filled all your paper ; it requires no thought, at least 
 from the ease with which my own sentiments rise when they 
 are addressed to you. For, believe me, my head has no share 
 in all I write ; my heart dictates the whole. Pray, give my 
 love to Bob Bryanton, and intreat him, from me, not to 
 drink. My dear sir, give me some account about poor Jenny. 
 Yet her husband loves her ; if so, she cannot be unhappy. 
 
 " I know not whether I should tell you — yet why should 
 I conceal those trifles, or indeed, anything from you ? — there 
 is a book of mine will be published in a few days, the life of 
 a very extraordinary man, no less than the great Voltaire. 
 You know already by the title, that it is no more than a 
 catch-penny. However, I spent but four weeks on the whole 
 performance, for which I received twenty pounds. When 
 published, I shall take some method of conveying it to you, 
 unless you may think it dear of the postage, which may amount 
 to four of five shillings. However, I fear you will not find 
 an equivalence of amusement. Your last letter, I repeat it, 
 was too short : you should have given me your opinion of 
 the design of the heroicomical poem which I sent you. You 
 remember I intended to introduce the hero of the poem, as 
 lying in a paltry ale-house : you may take the following 
 specimen of the manner, which I flatter myself is quite 
 original. The room in which he lies maybe described some- 
 what this way : 
 
 The window, patch'd with paper, lent a ray, 
 That feebly shew'd the state in which he lay. 
 The sandy floor, that grits beneath the tread : 
 The humid wall with paltry pictures spread ; 
 The game of goose, was there expos'd to view, 
 And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew ; 
 The seasons fram'd with listing, found a place. 
 And Prussia's monarch shew'd his lampblack face. 
 The morn was cold ; he views with keen desire, 
 A rusty grate unconscious of a fire. 
 An unpaid reck'ning on the freeze was scor'd 
 And five crack'd teacups dress'd the chimney-board. 
 
 " And now imagine after his soUiloquy, the landlord to 
 make his appearance, in order to dun him for the reckoning. 
 
172 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 Not with that face, so servile and so gay, 
 That welcomes every stranger that can pay. 
 With sulky eye he smoak'd the patient man, 
 Then pull'd his breeches tight, and thus began, &c. 
 
 " All this is taken, you see, from nature. It is a good 
 remark of Montaigne's, that the wisest men often have friends, 
 with whom they do not care how much they play the fool. 
 Take my present follies as instances of regard. Poetry is a 
 much easier, and more agreeable species of composition than 
 prose, and could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant 
 employment to be a poet. I am resolved to leave no space, 
 though I should fill it up only by telling you, what you very 
 well know already, I mean that I am 
 
 " Your most affectionate 
 
 " Friend and brother, 
 
 " Oliver Goldsmith." 
 
 All these letters which we have given, with very few and 
 unimportant omissions from the original text, were written 
 not from the school at Peckham but from London. Gold- 
 smith had already left the school, possibly because it was 
 seen that Dr. Milner's iUness left no hope of his ever being 
 able to return to his classes (he died a few months later) and 
 arrangements had to be made by his son for the appointment 
 of a permanent substitute ; or perhaps, because Goldsmith 
 found that he could not save enough out of his salary to 
 enable him to meet the expenses of his outfit for Coromandel. 
 He returned to his old work of writing for the Reviews, only 
 this time he went to Hamilton instead of Griffiths ; or 
 rather Hamilton came to him, having been led to do so 
 by his appreciation of Goldsmith's work on the Monthly. 
 On the Critical Review he had a free hand, and ran no chance 
 of having his writings garbled by the " goody " or " the 
 gammer " of his former experience, as SmoUett called Mr. 
 and Mrs. Griffiths. When he returned to London he went 
 into new lodgings, the house being No. 12 Green Arbour 
 Court, Fleet Street. This was, in comparison with his former 
 lodging, what house-agents call " a good address " ; but it 
 was one of a group that the humblest artisan of to-day would 
 ignore. In Goldsmith's time it was the abode of the most 
 
DE PROFUNDI S 173 
 
 wretched of the town. In a room at the end of the rickety- 
 stairs, noisome and noisy, resounding with the squalls of the 
 offspring of drunken parents, sat the poet who loved the 
 open air and the scents of the woodland — the poet whose 
 verses cannot be read without the reader being made conscious 
 of the scent of the green fields and of the fresh breath of 
 the forest. Here it was that he drudged at his desk while 
 the viragoes in the passage quarrelled over their brats, or some 
 other incident of that warfare which seems to be incessantly 
 waging in and around the overcrowded dens that exist to make 
 a mock of civilisation. 
 
 The horror of the picture of Goldsmith in his garret 
 has been dwelt upon too frequently to require more than a 
 passing word in this place. But no writer has, we think, 
 laid sufficient emphasis upon the fact of the unhappy occu- 
 pant's being not merely a man of genius, but a man capable 
 of writing in a style that few writers have ever surpassed — 
 a man not only of University degrees, but of education as 
 well — a man who had a knowledge of several modern lan- 
 guages as well as of two of the ancient — a man who had made 
 himself familiar with the people of almost every state in Europe, 
 and with the arts and the sciences of Italy and Holland. 
 It is when we remember not merely the accident of his genius, 
 but the attainments of the man as well, that we can 
 appreciate to the full the horror of his position in the midst of 
 the rabble of Green Arbour Court. 
 
 Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves. 
 
 Milton's picture of Samson is a pitiful one ; but not 
 more pitiful than that of Oliver Goldsmith, B.A., M.B., in 
 his garret at the head of those breakneck stairs, with only one 
 chair and a dirty table on which he spreads his writing-paper. 
 
 For the accuracy of the picture we have to thank Percy, 
 the kinsman of the great Northumberlands, who became 
 Bishop of Dromore. Percy was the friend, who at the begin- 
 ning of March 1759, " found him in lodgings so poor and 
 uncomfortable that he should not think it proper to mention 
 the circumstance, if he did not consider it the highest proof 
 of the splendour of Dr. Goldsmith's genius and talents, that 
 by the bare exertion of their powers, under every disadvan- 
 
174 'J^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 tage of person and fortune, he could gradually emerge from 
 such obscurity, to the enjoyment of all the comforts and even 
 luxuries of life, and admission into the best societies of Lon- 
 don. The doctor was writing his Enquiry &'c., in a wretched 
 dirty room in which there was but one chair, and when he 
 from civility offered it to his visitant, himself was obliged to 
 sit in the window." 
 
 The interest of the picture is heightened by the entrance 
 of a little girl who dropped a curtsey and said that her mamma 
 had sent to ask if the gentleman could oblige her with the 
 loan of " a potful of coals." She had brought the peculiar 
 coalscuttle with her ; so that it was plain that his neighbours 
 and fellow lodgers had come to know what was the nature 
 of " the gentleman " who occupied that dirty room. 
 
 There he sat writing his Enquiry into the State of Polite 
 Learning before the males of the den returned to their 
 lairage at night to distract his attention by their loud exercise 
 of a lore that could scarcely be defined by the adjective on 
 his title page. When Washington Irving paid a visit to Green 
 Arbour Court ninety years later, he found himself on the 
 ragged fringe of the usual squalid raucous quarrel between the 
 females — the males had not returned for the night — and he 
 mentions that the fons et origo of the torrent of abuse which 
 was hurled from staircase to staircase, was a wash tub, 
 the right of possession of which was disputed with strident 
 vehemence by these bare-armed termagants. This fact suggests 
 that the locality had improved with the times. For obvious 
 reasons there could hardly have been a dispute about a wash- 
 tub in the old days. 
 
 But for the first few months of his residence at this " good 
 address," Goldsmith's imagination was vivid enough to see 
 beyond the paper-patched window-frames a prospect of 
 waving palms along a coral coast with a blue sea shimmering 
 in the sunlight out to where the blue sky bent to the horizon. 
 The very name of the Coromandel coast would have been 
 enough to bring such a picture before his eyes. He felt that he 
 should only have to work for a few months longer to win his 
 freedom from the Purgatorio where he was suffering, to 
 the Paradiso on which his heart was set. In a few months 
 all would be over. 
 
DE PROFUNDIS 175 
 
 In a few months all was over — his dream had vanished, 
 and he was looking out of his window upon the dreariness 
 of November hanging over the Fleet Ditch. The appoint- 
 ment was given to some one else. Without a word of 
 explanation he was told that the situation was no longer 
 vacant. 
 
 He never communicated to any one in Ireland or elsewhere 
 what formality he had neglected, entailing thereby the loss 
 of the post which he had believed to be within his grasp ; 
 but every one knows that the East India Company was simply 
 a huge machine for the perpetration of jobbery. It was 
 founded on jobbery and it was maintained by jobbery. Its 
 own servants were taught that their pay depended upon 
 their success in the art of jobbery ; but for that matter, they 
 should never have got so far as become the servants of the 
 Company without its aid. The red tape of the East India 
 Company remained undiminished until, through its bungling, 
 the whole East was dyed a deeper crimson still. The invention 
 of an excuse — if any excuse was thought necessary — to put off 
 such a man as Oliver Goldsmith, would be an easy matter even 
 for an apprentice standing at the roots of the pagoda tree, ex- 
 pectant of the shaking of the boughs. He may have been 
 told that he had neglected to deposit his passage money — 
 that a physician with a foreign degree was not eligible for 
 an appointment under so patriotic a corporation as the East 
 India Company — any excuse would have been reckoned an 
 adequate one by the directors, even supposing that the 
 matter ever was sufficiently far advanced to come within 
 the cognizance of the Board, and if it was not thought to 
 be adequate by the applicant, so much the worse for him. 
 That was all. 
 
 He must have felt in a condition bordering upon despair 
 when he was made aware of his failure to get the appointment, 
 for we know what was the next move that he made to obtain 
 a livelihood out of what he believed to be his proper pro- 
 fession. He made an application for the humble position 
 of hospital mate, and in his eagerness to secure it he went so 
 far as to beg of Griffiths to become security to a tailor for a 
 suit of clothes in which to appear before the examiners. That 
 resulted in a situation after Griffiths' own heart. The poor 
 
176 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 hack was putting himself in his power. He could make his 
 own terms for the carrying out of the favour, and his terms 
 were four articles in the writer's best style for the Review. 
 Goldsmith agreed, tucked the books for criticism under his 
 arm, put on the new suit and marched before the examining 
 board in due course. 
 
 The result is still to be seen engrossed in the records 
 of the College of Surgeons : 
 
 "At a Court of Examiners held at the Theatre, 21st 
 December, 1758 . . . James Bernard, mate to an hospital, 
 Oliver Goldsmith, found not qualified for ditto." 
 
 Four days later, on the morning of Christmas Day, the 
 wife of the man from whom he had his room came to him 
 with a piteous story of her husband's having been arrested 
 by bailiffs and of there being no food in the house for her 
 children. She knew the quarter to come to with such a 
 tale. Goldsmith relieved her necessities, but only at the 
 sacrifice of the suit of clothes. A few days later he handed 
 to an acquaintance the books which he had received for 
 review, as security for the loan of a few shillings. The news 
 of both transactions came to the ear of Griffiths, and he sent 
 to Goldsmith demanding the return of the suit of clothes and 
 with it the four articles which he had agreed to write in return 
 for the obligation conferred upon him by his taskmaster. 
 One knows the kind of letter that Goldsmith would write in 
 reply to such a demand. The letter does not exist, but we know 
 what it must have been as well as if it lay before us. Not a 
 grovelling letter, not an exculpatory letter ; but a simple 
 straightforward confession of the circumstances which he 
 believed in an emotional moment to justify his act, ending 
 with a reiterated promise to work off his liability as speedily 
 as was possible. 
 
 The character of Griffiths' response to this letter is also 
 known to us, not by reason of our acquaintance with his 
 style, but from reading the letter which it evoked from Gold- 
 smith. This is given by Mr. Forster, into whose possession 
 it came. It was found among the papers of Griffiths, methodi- 
 cally endorsed — for Griffiths was an excellent business man, 
 
DE PROFUNDIS 177 
 
 and was proving it daily at the expense of other men who 
 were not — " Received in January 1759." " Its appearance 
 harmonises with its contents," wrote Mr. Forster, " for 
 there is nothing of the freedom or boldness of hand in it 
 which one may perceive in his ordinary manuscript. . . . 
 The pointing is imperfect and confused, nor is there any 
 break or paragraph from the first line to the signature, but 
 all concealment is ended in it, and stern plain truth is told." 
 
 The letter itself can only be described as heartrending. 
 It represents the despairing cry of a strong man over whose 
 head the waters have closed. It cannot be read without 
 tears by any one who remembers the gentleness of the heart 
 from which The Deserted Village came, the cheerfulness of the 
 nature that produced The Vicar of Wakefield, the noble mind 
 that dedicated The Traveller to his poor brother rather than to 
 a wealthy patron. In the whole range of literature there 
 is no more piteous protest than this uttered by a man of 
 genius against the fate which has decreed that only by suffering 
 all that man can suffer does one learn to speak the words 
 of sympathy and hope for the healing of the broken-hearted. 
 
 This is the letter which Mr. Forster printed verbatim 
 from the faded document he was fortunate enough to 
 obtain : 
 
 " Sir, 
 
 " I know of no misery but a gaol to which my own 
 imprudencies and your letter seem to point. I have seen it 
 inevitable these three or four weeks, and, by heavens ! request it 
 as a favour, as a favour that may prevent somewhat more fatal. 
 I have been some years struggling with a wretched being, with 
 all that contempt which indigence brings with it, with all 
 those strong passions which make contempt insupportable. 
 What then has a gaol that is formidable ? I shall at least 
 have the society of wretches, and such is to me true society. 
 I tell you again and again I am now neither able nor willing 
 to pay you a farthing, but I will be punctual to any appoint- 
 ment you or the taylor shall make ; thus far at least I do not 
 act the sharper, since unable to pay my debts one way I would 
 willingly give some security another. No sir, had I been 
 a sharper, had I been possessed of less good nature and 
 
 M 
 
178 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 native generosity I might surely now have been in better 
 circumstances. I am guilty I own of meannesses which 
 poverty unavoidably brings with it, my reflections are 
 filled with repentance for my imprudence, but not with any 
 remorse for being a villain. That may be a character you 
 unjustly charge me with. Your books I can assure you 
 are neither pawn'd nor sold, but in the custody of a friend 
 from whom my necessities oblig'd me to borrow some money ; 
 whatever becomes of my person, you shall have them in a 
 month. It is very possible both the reports you have heard 
 and your own suggestions may have brought you false 
 information with respect to my character, it is very possible 
 that the man whom you now regard with detestation may 
 inwardly burn with grateful resentment, it is very possible 
 that upon a second perusal of the letter I sent you, you may 
 see the workings of a mind strongly agitated with gratitude 
 and jealousy. If such circumstances should appear at least 
 spare invective, tUl my book with Mr. Dodsley shall be publish' d, 
 and then perhaps you may see the bright side of a mind when 
 my professions shall not appear the dictates of necessity 
 but of choice. You seem to think Dr. Milner knew me not. 
 Perhaps so : but he was a man I shall ever honour. But I 
 have friendship only with the dead ! I ask pardon for taking 
 up so much time. Nor shall I add to it by any other 
 professions than that I am, sir, your humble servt. 
 
 " Oliver Goldsmith. 
 " P.S. I shall expect impatiently the result of your resolu- 
 tions." 
 
 The bitterness of the contempt which a reader of this 
 letter cannot but have for the man who compelled it to be 
 written is increased by a knowledge of his character. One 
 could understand a high-minded gentleman feeling shocked 
 at the doubtful probity that prompted Goldsmith's acts ; 
 though we know that it is just such a man that would be most 
 generous in his treatment of his weaker brethren who have 
 been guilty of weakness. But when we become aware of 
 Griffiths' " record," our contempt for him takes another 
 and a stronger form. If he could be accused only of waxing 
 fat by keeping his authors lean, after the manner of Margery 
 
DE PROFUNDIS 179 
 
 Quether in Mr. Baring-Gould's fable, he might be dismissed 
 with a shrug, and the trite remark that fatness on the one 
 hand and leanness on the other means only business. If the 
 bookseller — ^he did not call himself a publisher until many 
 years had passed — ^was a good man of business and the author 
 was a bad man of business, the former was bound to wax 
 fat and the latter to get lean. But Griffiths not only ground 
 down his authors — poor fools that they were ! — taking every 
 advantage of them that an unscrupulous taskmaster saw 
 possible, until they were reduced from being drudges to being 
 slaves — he was not content to use the ordinary business grind- 
 stone to effect his purpose, but became a swindler as well 
 as a bully. It was well known that he was a shuffler and a 
 sharper when he had the chance, and with the wretches 
 who were foolish enough to place themselves in his power, 
 he must have had many chances. Grainger, who knew him 
 better than most people did, warned Percy against trusting 
 him. " You must have little dependence upon Griffiths," 
 he wrote. " Do not go on with him without a positive 
 bargain." That was rather a significant hint as to the charac- 
 ter of the man who played to get Goldsmith into his power, 
 over that paltry transaction of the suit of clothes, and then 
 rounded upon him, calling him a sharper and a villain — 
 terms which he knew should have been applied to himself. 
 
 He made a mistake. He was a God-fearing Presbyterian 
 and most regular in his attendance at his conventicle, so he 
 had doubtless heard read many times that it was Jeshurun 
 who waxed fat and kicked. He felt himself very well quali- 
 fied to play the part of Jeshurun. He had never heard 
 of any one getting lean and kicking. But now he had an 
 example of a reversal of the usual code ; and his astonish- 
 ment must have been tinged with the pious horror that 
 seizes the sanctimonious when they see a lewd feUow act 
 in complete disregard of Scriptural precedent. It was the 
 one who had got lean that treated the text with contempt : 
 it was now the one who waxed fat that was kicked. 
 
 Piteous though Goldsmith's letter reads now, it must have 
 sounded quite another note than the piteous in Mr. Griffiths' 
 ear. He must have had the sensation of being kicked in 
 every line. He must have felt the contempt of the writer 
 
i8o THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 stinging him like a lash in every word — ^particularly in those 
 
 words in which the writer acknowledged that he had been 
 
 in the wrong. He had no mind to accept the challenge in 
 
 the postscript. He had a thought for his own interests. 
 
 He did not know where people would stop if once he gave 
 
 them a chance of talking about him and the authors whom 
 
 he starved in his garrets. It might interfere with his business 
 
 to be talked about ; so he thought it prudent to put aside his 
 
 bluster and come to terms with an author who challenged 
 
 him to do his worst, and awaited his decision with impatience. 
 
 " Gammer " Griffiths crawled down. What a pity it is 
 
 that Goldsmith did not reproduce the scene of his coming 
 
 to terms ! It is, however, easy to imagine his unctuous 
 
 assurance that nothing could have been further from his mind 
 
 than to suggest that Goldsmith was a sharper and a villain, 
 
 and that Dr. Milner, who had just died, knew how incapable 
 
 he was of doing so. No, he might have written hastily, 
 
 but all he meant to say was . . . but authors are always 
 
 imprudent — yes, and impetuous. . . . What nonsense was 
 
 that about a gaol f He would no more dream of letting a 
 
 gentleman of Mr. Goldsmith's attainments, &c. &c. 
 
 And then came a suggestion of the terms for the clearing 
 up of the whole business. The terms were simple. Griffiths 
 wanted a life of Voltaire written to make a translation of the 
 Henriade which he had in hand, large enough for a volume. 
 The contract price for this was to be twenty pounds, and out 
 of this the guarantee for the suit of clothes was to be 
 deducted. So this detestable affair ended. Twenty pounds 
 was a very fair price to pay for such a sketch as Goldsmith 
 could write ; and this fact enables us to estimate the effect 
 which Goldsmith's letter had upon his taskmaster. Griffiths 
 had a dread of publicity being given to the matter, just as a 
 thief shrinks from the responsibility of playing the part of 
 prosecutor, even in a case where he has right on his side, not 
 quite knowing where the thing might end. Griffiths had his 
 fears. He possibly saw how much could be made out of the 
 affair by an unscrupulous rival with a powerful pen dipped 
 in ink which SmoUett seemed to have made specially with 
 extra galls for his use in writing such criticisms as admitted 
 of his dragging in the name of Griffiths and Mrs. Griffiths. 
 
DE PROFUNDIS i8i 
 
 We have already said that GrifHths was a God-fearing 
 Presbyterian ; but however much he feared God, he feared 
 Smollett more. Smollett had alluded to the pair as " Goody " 
 and " Gammer," and to the editor as " the old gentleman 
 who conducts the Monthly " ; so that it might not be going 
 too far to assume that there were strained relations between 
 Smollett and himself, and he had no mind to give the Critical 
 a conspicuous chance of referring to Griffiths' garret system 
 of encouraging authors. That was how he came to see that 
 a speedy rapprochement with Goldsmith was advisable, and so a 
 fresh bargain on a generous basis was concluded. He was an 
 excellent man of business. 
 
 But however detestable a sharper Griffiths may have been, 
 Goldsmith's acts in regard to the suit of clothes and the books 
 cannot be justified, though they have long ago been condoned. 
 It is likely that he could have been successfully prosecuted 
 for fraud by Griffiths ; to be sure, his intent was not fraudu- 
 lent in either case ; but his acts were distinctly culpable 
 from a judicial standpoint, and if he had escaped, when once 
 they came under judicial cognizance, he might have been 
 accounted an extremely lucky man. But the person who 
 would make a strenuous attempt to impress this view upon 
 the world of to-day would be wasting his time. There is an 
 unwritten military law which decrees that if a soldier goes 
 into action between his committing any offence and his 
 trial, he is not liable to any subsequent penalty, no matter 
 what the nature of his offence may be. The justice inherent 
 in the principle upon which that decree is founded is recog- 
 nised by every one ; and instinctively the world will apply 
 it to Oliver Goldsmith. His life was a constant campaign, 
 and every day brought him into the forefront of the battle. 
 Every day added to his scars, and yet he never gave in. He 
 fought sturdily and manfully until, all imperfectly equipped 
 for the contest, he succumbed just as victory was in view. 
 That is how the world, which owes him so much, regards 
 Goldsmith and his errors, and that is why no one who has 
 read Goldsmith will tolerate the assumption of any coldly 
 judicial attitude in considering an act of his, however blame- 
 worthy it would be if associated with the career of an ordinary 
 man. It would be a waste of time to try to urge upon people 
 
1 82 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 who have made Goldsmith part of their daily life, who 
 cannot make a speech without introducing some words of his, 
 who cannot converse with their neighbours without getting 
 him to speak for them the phrase that makes for cheerfulness 
 and friendliness and sympathy — it would be a waste of time, 
 we repeat, to try to urge upon such people that the law is no 
 respecter of persons. They will answer " So much the worse 
 for the law. The law is no respecter of persons. No, but 
 we are." 
 
 An answer would be ready to every logical and reasonable 
 plea for the condemnation of Oliver Goldsmith for pawning a 
 coat that he had obtained on another man's credit, in order 
 to provide a dinner on Christmas Day for a poor woman and 
 her children ; and it is greatly to be feared that in this spirit 
 the world would refuse to condemn him, even if the garment 
 had been the ermine robe of the Lord Chief Justice or the 
 billowy surplice of the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 And the world would be right. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 HIS FIRST BOOK 
 
 I7S9 
 
 It will be gathered that the pursuit of that Enquiry into the 
 State of Polite Learning which was being maintained — ^with 
 certain unavoidable breaks at which we have hinted in the 
 foregoing chapter — was becoming a somewhat uncertain 
 business. It would seem that it had to be laid aside to 
 allow of the author's discharging his obligation to his task- 
 master. It was in February 1759 that he wrote the letter, 
 already quoted, to his brother Henry, in which he mentions 
 that he spent four weeks upon the Life of Voltaire, and that 
 it was, after aU, " a mere catch-penny thing." The date 
 shows that he must have begun this work almost immediately 
 after his compromise with Griffiths ; and it contained some 
 passages which were clearly prompted by his recent experiences. 
 Goldsmith was in advance of his time in his appreciation of 
 the genius of Voltaire. Not merely did he show his admiration 
 for his writings in this little sketch of his life, but several years 
 later, when Sir Joshua Reynolds painted a grandiose portrait of 
 Beattie, the shallow rhetorician, introducing into the sym- 
 bolic group the demons of Infidelity, Sophistry, and Falsehood, 
 giving the likenesses of Gibbon, Voltaire, and Hume respec- 
 tively, to the trio — they were being driven into outer dark- 
 ness by Beattie and a good angel using as a weapon the Essay 
 on Truth — Goldsmith very nearly came to a quarrel with his 
 friend the painter. " It very ill becomes a man of your 
 eminence and character," said he to Sir Joshua, " to debase 
 so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as Beattie. 
 Beattie and his book will be forgotten in ten years, while 
 Voltaire's fame will last for ever. Take care it does not 
 perpetuate this picture to the shame of such a man as you." 
 
 183 
 
1 84 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 But Seattle was having his day — a very short day it was — 
 when Goldsmith uttered this protest, and the picture was 
 finished, and Goldsmith was accused of being envious to a 
 point of distraction of the man who, posterity has decreed, 
 was unworthy to occupy a square inch of a canvas that con- 
 tained three such figures as those depicted — to his lasting 
 discredit — by Reynolds as flying from the imposing figure 
 of the shallowest of their opponents. Goldsmith's judgment 
 was truer than that of Johnson, with Oxford at his back, 
 and the King, who gave Beattie his pension, at the back of 
 the University. 
 
 But the Enquiry was at last finished and published by 
 Robert Dodsley at the TuUy's Head on AprU 2, 1759. The 
 six months previous to this date had been the most momentous 
 in the writer's life. The period included his several attempts 
 to find a way of living that would make him independent of 
 the booksellers. He was like the prophet Jonah fleeing from 
 the inevitable, trying to evade the responsibilities that were 
 thrust upon him by Destiny. He fled from the Nineveh of 
 Paternoster Row and soon found himself, after an interval 
 on stormy seas, thrown overboard from the East India Com- 
 pany's ship and absorbed by the whale in the form of the 
 CoUege of Surgeons ; but he was soon got rid of by this 
 powerful organism, so that there was nothing left for him 
 but to face his destiny and adopt Letters as a business. It 
 will be observed that he did it reluctantly. We have been 
 told repeatedly that he was a man who was consumed by 
 vanity. We do not find any hint of this weakness in the 
 history of his life at this period. It is vanity that prompts 
 hundreds of men to get their names printed on the title 
 pages of books ; but what is the impulse that drives a man 
 to avoid such a sop to his vanity and take refuge in the friendly 
 obscurity of such a post as that of hospital mate ? 
 
 He had, unfortunately, little vanity and no real ambition. 
 He was driven to Letters to keep himself from starvation, but 
 his object was not achieved with any degree of permanency ; 
 he wrote incessantly and he starved frequently. So little 
 vanity had he of his authorship that he made no stipulation 
 that his name should be on the title-page of his first complete 
 work that had a claim to be respectfully considered as 
 
HIS FIRST BOOK 185 
 
 a book. The Enquiry bore upon its title-page the motto 
 in Latin : 
 
 Tolerahile si jEdificia nostra diruerent JEdificandi cafaces, 
 
 and also a motto in Greek ; it bore also the names of the 
 booksellers who had subscribed to its production, but the 
 author's name was absent. 
 
 The whole of the book may be read at a single sitting by 
 a modern reader ; and it is worth such an expenditure of 
 time, but not much more. Every page is delightfully written, 
 and the work occupies a unique position in critical literature, 
 owing to the fact of its being the first of the kind that was 
 written naturally and simply, and not in the ponderous 
 language of the commentators of the eighteenth century. 
 That is how it has survived so many hundreds of volumes of 
 " poHte learning." Any inquiry into the present state of 
 the volumes of polite learning published during that period 
 would take the form of a coroner's inquest fost mortem. 
 They would require to be disinterred in order to be examined ; 
 but then the cause of their decease would be speedily revealed, 
 and, incidentally, the reason of the survival of this effort of 
 Goldsmith's. His style was full of liveliness, and liveliness 
 means life in literature, though it might be fancied that a 
 good many writers believed exactly the opposite. The 
 majority of his contemporaries who wrote far more learnedly, 
 have undergone aU the processes of decay, sinking down by 
 their own weight into the depths of obscurity — ^that region 
 which is peopled with the shades of the Ponderous. 
 
186 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 lettres, like the phrase " polite learning," resembled the small 
 shop standing between the two wings of the Universal Stores : 
 it was merely a matter of time when it would be absorbed. 
 The word " culture " represents the " trust " that swallowed 
 up belles-lettres, and now when one speaks of culture one is 
 intelligible — so at least it is to be hoped. 
 
 But we can stiU read Goldsmith's Enquiry with interest. 
 It is cheerful throughout, and never so much so as when it 
 refers to the woes of authors. This is, of course, looking at 
 it from the standpoint of the general reader. The critical 
 reader wiU perceive how the attempt to deal with ancient 
 literature, as well as the modern literature of every European 
 State, within the space that would not be sufficient for the 
 adequate consideration of one very humble classic, could not 
 be otherwise than superficial. It is superficial — delightfully 
 superficial, the modern casual reader will say who wants to 
 get through life and literature as easily as possible. It is 
 very easy reading. 
 
 It is not, however, with the condition of literature in 
 Europe but with the condition of the literary man in England 
 that the Enquiry is chiefly concerned. The period was one 
 of transition. Literature had always been regarded as a 
 tender plant that could only come to maturity if protected 
 from the coldness of the world ; and its protector was called, 
 very properly, the patron. It was an author's duty to find 
 a patron for his book, and he usually went to the nobility in 
 search of him, and, finding him, shared him with the ladies of the 
 theatre, the keepers of the gambling heUs, and private chaplains. 
 Dr. Johnson was for some time a patron-hunter, and one of 
 the most successful of his day — in spite of his failure to hunt 
 down Lord Chesterfield for his Dictionary — for he achieved 
 the supreme patronage of a pension for life. But the time 
 was approaching when it was thought that literature might 
 possibly be all the sturdier if its growth were independent 
 of such protection, and the experiment was being made — at 
 the authors' risk — in England. Goldsmith, being one of the 
 authors, dealt with the question with great dehcacy from their 
 standpoint ; and just as the question of the endowment of 
 research has been discussed for some years in this country, 
 he discussed the question of the endowment of authorship. 
 
HIS FIRST BOOK 187 
 
 What he feared most was what he had the best of reasons for 
 fearing — namely, that the alternative scheme to that of the 
 patronage of the peer would be the patronage of the pub- 
 lisher. He did not reckon on the third alternative — namely, 
 the patronage of the public. " The author, when unpatro- 
 nised by the great, has naturally recourse to the bookseller. 
 There cannot, perhaps, be imagined a combination more 
 prejudicial to taste than this," he asserted. " It is to the 
 interest of the one to allow as little for writing, and of the 
 other to write as much as possible ; accordingly tedious 
 compilation 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, seldom 
 imagination is called in ; he sits down to address the venal 
 muse with the most phlegmatic apathy, and, as we are told 
 of the Russians, courts his mistress by falling asleep in her 
 lap. His reputation never spreads to 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. . . . Thus the man who, under the protection of 
 the great, might have done honour to humanity, when only 
 patronised by the booksellers becomes a thing little superior 
 to the fellow who works at the press." 
 
 Now although he lived to proclaim the booksellers to be 
 his best friends, yet he had good reason to view with trepida- 
 tion the passing of the power which goes with patronage, into 
 the hands of the booksellers. Of course, the questions which 
 he raised have been the subject of discussion in many coun- 
 tries and at various times. Philosophers talked largely half 
 a century ago, and still more largely a quarter of a century 
 ago, upon the splendid results that had been achieved by the 
 appeal of authors from the patron to the public. But now 
 that the public have shown exactly what sort of reading they 
 want and the price they are willing to pay for it — ^when the 
 " sound " reading department in the free libraries is resorted 
 to by the few, and the most illiterate of the contents of the 
 fiction department are read by the many — ^when the best 
 magazines have had the lives crushed out of them by the 
 competition of the most contemptible, sagacious people are 
 shaking their heads and wondering if, after all, the business 
 
i88 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 of authorship has gained so greatly by the transfer of its 
 protection from the solitary patron to the million patrons. 
 
 So far as the arts are concerned the question discussed by 
 Goldsmith has been definitely answered by many countries, 
 Eastern as weU as Western. The patronage of the million 
 has debased the art of China, Japan, and Persia ; and in Italy, 
 France, and England, the photographically illustrated news- 
 paper satisfies the whole artistic cravings of the mUlion, and 
 the squat, padded arm-chair represents the ideal in furniture. 
 The few who appreciate true art, which means good work- 
 manship, wiU admit into their houses no furniture except 
 what was made in the splendid days when the patron flourished, 
 and, under his shelter, the arts. 
 
 Fifty years ago Goldsmith's plea for the patron would have 
 been received with ridicule by the philosophers ; but latterly 
 they are inclined to shake their heads and wait. 
 
 One thing, however, is pretty sure, and this is that if 
 Oliver Goldsmith had been even moderately well endowed 
 out of any fund available for authors of merit, the Goldsmith 
 whom we know to-day would not have existed. We know 
 how Johnson, that excellent type of the literary man, who, 
 having failed to find the patron for whom he went in search, 
 held him up to contempt in a definition, and placed him 
 nearest to the gaol in his list of cumulative ills of authorship — 
 we know how Johnson, the lover of letters, spent his days 
 and nights when he was endowed ; and wiU any one say that 
 Goldsmith would have become industrious when Johnson 
 became indolent ? It would have been a melancholy day 
 for England when Goldsmith received a sufficient endowment 
 to allow of his living without writing. He would have lived 
 pretty much in the same condition that was his to the end 
 of his life, but he would have lived in idleness. The develop- 
 ment of any scheme of State endowment in his favour would 
 assuredly not have meant the development of his own genius 
 — that which was his by nature, without money and without 
 price. 
 
 Everywhere in the course of his Enquiry he displays bold- 
 ness of thought and fearlessness of language. He abused the 
 magazines for which he had been writing, he abused the 
 critics who failed to discriminate between the good and the 
 
HIS FIRST BOOK 189 
 
 bad, and, worst of all, when he referred to the stage he said 
 something that David Garrick took to be a sneer at himself. 
 He suffered for the rest of his life through his independence 
 of thought in this place. Garrick never quite forgot the line 
 that he had taken in making him, as he thought, the subject 
 of his inquisition. A short time after its publication Gold- 
 smith applied to him for the favour of his influence when 
 he was seeking for the appointment of secretary to the Society 
 of Arts, and Garrick curtly refused his application. More 
 than once at a later period, also, the actor showed that he 
 had not forgotten the same offence, though he and Goldsmith 
 were apparently on friendly terms ; but his final revenge he 
 certainly had when he wrote the mock epitaph, which has 
 ever since been attached to Goldsmith : 
 
 Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll, 
 Who wrote liie an angel but talked like poor PoU. 
 
 There never was perpetrated a greater misstatement. What- 
 ever Goldsmith talked like, it was not poor PoU. Poor Poll 
 only repeats the words of others ; but Goldsmith's weakness 
 was his originality, not only of thought, but of expression as 
 well. There never was a mind so free from the trick of the 
 parrot than his ; and yet Garrick's jest has in the memory of 
 millions done duty as an exhaustive biography of the man 
 whose misfortune it was to hurt the amour-propre of David 
 Garrick, and to have a name that was susceptible of being 
 curtailed into a rhyme for " PoU." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE "BEE" AND OTHERS 
 1759-1760 
 
 The publication of the Enquiry did not create any particular 
 stir in the world of letters. Griffiths, who was contemplating 
 a retirement from business, having made as ample a fortune 
 as most people did who, like him, were engaged in the slave 
 trade, could scarcely fail to recognise the personal note in 
 the reference to the tender mercies of the booksellers, and 
 engaged one of the most notorious libellers of the day to 
 abuse the book in the Monthly Review. Kenrick was the 
 name of this wretch ; and Griffiths found in him a wiUing 
 tool to do his bludgeoning. He pursued Goldsmith to the 
 end of his life, and when he was lying dead wrote a scurrilous 
 quatrain about him, and so roused public indignation that 
 the contemptible scoundrel who perpetrated it was com- 
 pelled to fly from the town. But in spite of what Goldsmith 
 had said about the power of the critics, it was not in the 
 power of Kenrick or any of his gang of rufflers to make or mar 
 such a work as the Enquiry. It was impossible for the book 
 to achieve a huge success — no book that appeals wholly to a 
 public interested in literature ever will — and it was equally 
 impossible that a composition so abounding in charm of style 
 could be published without attracting the attention of dis- 
 criminating readers. Thus it was that it was read and com- 
 mented on by thoughtful people, and inquiries were made 
 respecting the writer. When one looks at the Enquiry nowa- 
 days, remembering how its production awakened a spirit of 
 business enterprise in the author, causing him to try to capture 
 the Irish market before it could be stocked with a pirated 
 edition, one cannot but smile. " Polite learning " wa^ not 
 
 exactly the subject that was being eagerly discussed in Ireland 
 
 190 
 
THE " BEE " AND OTHERS 191 
 
 in the middle years of the eighteenth century. If Goldsmith 
 ever did send the copies with which he threatened his bewil- 
 dered brother, it is greatly to be feared that they were stared' 
 at by the Ballymahon critics, and that their comment on the 
 matter would take the form of a confession that they could 
 make neither head nor tail of it. 
 
 But before it had been published for long. Goldsmith was 
 approached by a bookseller who did business at the Sign of 
 the Bible in St. Paul's Churchyard, and who had been asso- 
 ciated for several years with the issue of some of that periodical 
 literature upon which the Enquiry had commented. The 
 Idler and the Rambler were only two out of the enormous 
 number of these productions which came into existence while 
 the craze for magazines lasted. They appeared by the score 
 and buzzed away in the light-hearted style of such ephemera. 
 The Trifler, the Templar, the Cottager, the Gentleman, and 
 even the Sceptic had representative magazines of a kind, and 
 within a few weeks another dozen had been added to the long 
 list. But Mr. WiUde thought that there was room for still 
 another. At least if there was not, no great harm would be 
 done ; and he believed that with Mr. Goldsmith as the sole 
 editor and sole contributor, enough would be made out of 
 the issue to pay him two guineas a week. 
 
 A single printing-press, a single compositor, and a single 
 contributor — ^these were aU that were needed for a new venture 
 of this kind ; so that, even if the circulation never passed 
 beyond the unit which entered so conspicuously into the 
 calculation of the needs of every department, the loss would 
 not be extravagant to a man with many irons in the fire and 
 the Bible on his sign-board. The result of his enterprise 
 was a publication of thirty-two pages, crown octavo, stitched 
 in blue covers, bearing the title the Bee, and the first number 
 appeared on Saturday, October 6, 1759. It promised ex- 
 tremely well, as do most things of the sort ; and some of them 
 add performance to promise ; but this fact does not prevent 
 the public from tiring of them. In such a case nowadays 
 what an astute publisher does is to drop the thing and issue 
 another on exactly the same lines, only with a different name, 
 and " run " it until the public once more become weary 
 of Its familiarity, and he finds it necessary to make another 
 
192 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 change of title without a change of style. In Goldsmith's 
 day there was no talk of " running " a magazine, but the same 
 sound and sagacious policy was pursued. The Bee did not 
 differ substantially from any of the literary insects that had 
 buzzed or hummed or droned — most of them had droned — 
 into notice during the previous year or two. This example 
 of editorial industry went into eight numbers only ; but a 
 better eight numbers could scarcely be looked for. Every 
 line of every one may be read to-day with interest and enjoy- 
 ment. 
 
 The Introduction is deHghtful, being in the most charac- 
 teristic Goldsmith vein. " There is not perhaps," it begins, " 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 his 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 indeUcacy 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. ... In short, 
 whichever way I turned, nothing presented, but prospects 
 of terror, despair, chandlers' shops, and waste paper." 
 
 And then he draws a picture of the entrance of the pub- 
 lisher, who, perceiving his embarrassment, offered his assist- 
 ance and his advice. " ' You must know, sir,' he says, ' that 
 the republic of letters is at present divided into three classes. 
 One writer, for instance, excels at a plan, or a title-page, 
 another works away at the body of the book, and a third is 
 a dab at an index. Thus a magazine is not the result of any 
 single man's industry, but goes through as many hands as a 
 
THE " BEE " AND OTHERS 193 
 
 new pin, before it is fit for the public. I fancy, sir,' continues 
 he, ' I can provide an eminent hand, and upon moderate 
 terms to draw up a promising plan to smooth up our readers 
 a little and pay them, as Colonel Charteris paid his seraglio, 
 at the rate of three-halfpence in hand and three shUlings 
 more in promises.' " 
 
 The " three-halfpence in hand," which the editor of the 
 Bee oflEered to his readers, must be valued at the rate of exchange 
 which an English sovereign claims during a revolution in a 
 South American repubhc, when paper is plentiful and gold 
 scarce. The first number makes an appeal to scholars, and 
 flatters those who are not, by giving a Latin quatrain, imitated 
 from the Spanish, On a Beautiful Youth Struck Blind, with 
 Lightning. It is well known in its Enghsh form. Then follow 
 Remarks on Our Theatres, a chatty and discriminating paper 
 which shows how closely and with what independence of 
 judgment the writer studied the art of acting as it was 
 • exhibited in England ; and it must be noted that he seemed 
 anxious to remove from the mind of Garrick the idea which 
 he had got from the offensive paragraph in the Enquiry, that he 
 was not so highly appreciated as he deserved to be by the author. 
 The Story of Alcander and Septimius, in the same number, is 
 one of the tales of exaggerated virtue which were thought 
 highly edifying during the eighteenth century ; indeed this 
 particular one adorned every school " Reader " well into the 
 second half of the nineteenth. It was described as " Trans- 
 lated from a Byzantine historian." We are not guilty of any 
 breach of confidence in stating that this " historian " 
 was Boccaccio. An imaginary letter from Cracow and 
 a short account of Maupertius made up the remainder of 
 this number. 
 
 The paper On Dress which opened No. II. is one of the 
 most amusing ever written by Goldsmith. The comedy of 
 Cousin Hannah suggests a study of Mrs. Hardcastle. For 
 the concluding paper, which deals with MUe. Clairon, the 
 French actress, Goldsmith drew upon his recollections of 
 his stay in Paris. The desire to be all things to aU readers 
 is just a little too apparent in every number of the Bee ; 
 and one cannot avoid feeling that no reader would think 
 that enough space had been given to his own particular 
 
 ti 
 
194 'J^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 subject ; so that it could not have surprised any one to learn 
 at the outset of No. IV. that the venture was not becoming 
 popular. The editor is frank but indiscreet in making such 
 a confession. He should have remembered his advice given 
 in his article On the Use of Language and refrained from 
 acknowledging his want of success. " If you would ward off 
 the gripe of Poverty, pretend to be a stranger to her, and she 
 wiU at least use you with ceremony," he wrote a few weeks 
 earlier. Yet at the beginning of No. IV., instead of affirming 
 that the success of the Bee had surpassed his most sanguine 
 expectation, he wrote : 
 
 " 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 get farther stiU ; 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." After this very 
 frank confession, and in spite of a delightfully humourous 
 series of explanations and resolutions bearing upon the mystery 
 of his want of success, every reader must have known that the 
 end was in sight. Whatever chance The Bee might have had 
 of making its way up to a paying point, it could not possibly 
 survive so frank a reference to its unpopularity up to that 
 moment. The end came, as we have already stated, with 
 the appearance of- the eighth number ; but not before 
 Goldsmith had added to his reputation, not indeed with the 
 public, but with a few people of discernment, and among 
 them there were some important acquaintances for a writer 
 to make. 
 
 In the fifth number he had written A Reverie, in which 
 he imagined a small stage coach, the name of which was the 
 " Fame Machine," and the Coachman, an affable and seemingly 
 good-natured feUow, informed him that he had but a few 
 days returned from the Temple of Fame, to which he had 
 been carrying Addison, Swift, Pope, Steele, Congreve, and 
 CoUey Gibber, and that he was now awaiting another coachful. 
 
From the cnorazntig by Heath a/tei- the portrait by Opie 
 
THE ''BEE" AND OTHERS .195 
 
 After refusing to admit the author, because he had no better 
 luggage than a copy of the Bee, others approached but were 
 not allowed to take their place in the vehicle ; at last, however, 
 there came up " a very grave personage whom at some dis- 
 tance I took for one of the most reserved and even disagreeable 
 figures I had seen, but , as he approached his appearance 
 improved, and when I could distinguish him thoroughly I 
 perceived that, in spite of the severity of his brow, he had 
 one of the most good-natured countenances that could be 
 imagined. Upon coming to open the stage door, he lifted 
 a parcel of folios into the seat before him ; but our inquisi- 
 torial coachman at once shoved them out again. ' What, 
 not take in my dictionary ? ' exclaimed the other in a rage. 
 ' Be patient, sir,' replied the coachman, ' I have drove a 
 coach, man and boy, these two thousand years, but I do not 
 remember to have carried beyond one dictionary during the 
 whole time. That little book which I perceive peeping from 
 one of your pockets, may I presume to ask what it contains ? ' 
 ' A mere trifle,' replied the author, ' it is called The Rambler.' 
 ' The Rambler ! ' says the coachman, ' I beg, sir, you'll take 
 your place. I have heard our ladies in the Court of Apollo 
 frequently mention it with raptures ; and Clio, who happens 
 to be a little grave, has been heard to prefer it to The Spec- 
 tator, though others have observed that the reflections, by 
 being refined, sometimes become minute.' " 
 
 Among the discriminating few who read this paper there 
 was one who had the insight to perceive that the writer was 
 a person of taste and judgment, and this reader was the 
 " grave personage " with one of the most " good-natured 
 countenances that could be imagined." He did not fail to 
 recognise the capacity of the author, and his admirable 
 descriptive powers. Although it would appear that he made 
 no sign at the moment, yet there can be no doubt that when, 
 a short time afterwards, his friend Percy asked him to accom- 
 pany him in paying a visit to the author, he was influenced 
 in his acquiescence by his recollection of the fifth number of 
 the Bee. 
 
 In the same Reverie a complimentary reference was made 
 to SmoUett also, who was at once admitted to a place in the 
 coach on account of his novel. " A well-written romance 
 
196 1:HE life of OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 is no such easy task as is generally imagined," said the coach- 
 man. " I remember formerly to have carried Cervantes and 
 Segrais, and if you think fit you may enter." 
 p% SmoUett approached the author of these sagacious criti- 
 cisms a short time after their appearance, and even before 
 the Bee was published in volume form at the price of half a 
 crown, had asked him to contribute to a new magazine which 
 he was starting with the title of the British Magazine or 
 Monthly Repository for Gentlemen and Ladies. No proposition 
 could have been more timely. Although Goldsmith had 
 been writing a good deal for other periodicals while conducting 
 the Bee, he must have been looking out for some new field 
 of industry in place of that limited meadow of wild flowers 
 from which he had been gathering honey. He had been 
 contributing to the Busybody and the Layd^s Journal and 
 perhaps other magazines of the same type — it would be im- 
 possible to say exactly how many they were or what were 
 their names, and possibly he himself would have been more 
 puzzled than any one else to name the articles that came 
 from his pen or to say definitely where they had appeared ; 
 for he seemed to scribble them off, draw his money for them — 
 if he had not already drawn it in advance — and then dismiss 
 them from his mind. He had an extraordinary facility for 
 producing " copy," and the ease with which he wrote was 
 only surpassed by the ease with which he procrastinated 
 writing. Any excuse seemed to satisfy his unexacting con- 
 science. If the story of his landlady's hearing an altercation 
 in his room in Green Arbour Court after a visitor had called 
 upon him one night, is not true, it has at least every semblance 
 of truth. The visitor made his call, there were sounds of 
 a heated argument, then of the door being slammed and 
 locked and the key removed. Then came silence. What 
 tragedy was being enacted at the other side of that closed 
 door ? We could fancy the good woman standing with the 
 door of her own room open an inch or two, breathlessly 
 awaiting the development of the situation, only we know 
 that she dwelt in the midst of alarms in that unsavoury locality, 
 and she must have schooled herself to control her excitement 
 over the affairs of her neighbours. But after an hour of silence 
 she heard the voices once more, only now in amicable tones. 
 
THE " BEE " AND OTHERS 197 
 
 The door was unlocked, the visitor reappeared, Dr. Goldsmith 
 called for her, and she was asked to step round to the tavern 
 and fetch supper for two. The story may be one of the 
 usual sort that attach themselves to a whimsical man after 
 his death : they are handed on from generation to generation, 
 now being told of one man and then of another, but by no 
 means indiscriminately, always with a sense of appropriate- 
 ness ; and this one has certainly got its right local colour. 
 The most ordinary imagination will be equal to a perception 
 of aU that the narrative suggests — the proprietor of the 
 magazine to whom an article has been promised, coming to 
 the author for it, finding that it has not been written, refusing 
 to go away without it, taking the law in his own hands, locking 
 the door and swearing that it wiU not be unlocked until the 
 paper has been written. Then the author sitting down on 
 the chair — ^the editor on the window-seat — the hurrying, 
 spluttering, scrawling quill for an hour — ^the tragedy is averted, 
 and a merry supper takes its place. 
 
 So it was that Goldsmith wrote and procrastinated and 
 tried to work off arrears, taking little account of anything he 
 produced and only recognising his own writings when he 
 found them in a magazine with which he had no dealings. In 
 a preface to his volume of essays he says that, though they 
 came pretty silently into the world, he cannot complain of 
 their circulation. " The magazines and papers of the day 
 have indeed been liberal enough in this respect. Most of 
 these essays have been regularly reprinted twice or thrice a 
 year, and conveyed to the public through the kennel of some 
 engaging compilation. If there be a pride in multiplied 
 editions, I have seen some of my labours sixteen times reprinted 
 and claimed by different parents as their own. I have seen 
 them flourishing at the beginning with praise, and signed at 
 the end with the names of Philantos, Philalethes, Philelutheros, 
 and Philanthropos. These gentlemen have kindly stood 
 sponsors to my productions ; and to flatter me more, have 
 always passed them as their own." 
 
 But he cannot afford to keep Dr. Smollett waiting, and 
 he agrees to write for his new venture, which is to appear on 
 January i, 1760. A few days later, Mr. Newbery, the book- 
 seller, paid him a visit to acquaint him with another scheme 
 
198 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 involving the publication of a daily paper to be entitled the 
 Public Ledger, and to obtain his co-operation. Of course, 
 he assented to the kindly proposition of a man whose sub- 
 sequent services to him cannot be over-estimated. He 
 promised to write two articles a week at the rate of a guinea 
 for each, and in agreement with this arrangement, the series 
 which was subsequently published in book form with the 
 title of the Citizen of the World came into existence. 
 
 The essays which he also wrote for Smollett's British 
 Magazine attracted a good deal of attention. They have 
 continued to do so during the hundred and fifty years that 
 have passed since their first appearance. Every generation 
 has taken delight in the adventures of that " man in very 
 shabby clothes " who was found seated on one of the benches 
 in St. James's Park — ^the genial, chatty, brazen vagabond whose 
 confessions bear the most marvellous resemblance to the whole 
 truth that ever was possessed by an imaginary narrative, not 
 even excepting the adventures of Robinson Crusoe ; every 
 generation has shaken the one available hand of the old priva- 
 teersman whose cheerfulness is as plausible as his reasons for 
 it are credible. All these characters which Goldsmith created 
 only to do duty for a single article, and that a short one, are 
 as highly finished as genius can make them. He took no 
 trouble over any of them, hence they live and breathe as 
 creations, and have none of the jerkiness of the puppet in 
 their movements. 
 
 We fancy that it was his extraordinary ease of writing and 
 of conveying to a reader this sense of ease — ability to do the 
 latter is not invariably the result of easy writing — that so 
 irritated Kenrick and his like. It must have been doubly 
 annoying to them to observe how he never took his work 
 of essay-writing seriously. What a dehghtful bit of raillery 
 is the following, from one of these papers : 
 
 " We essayists, who are allowed but one subject at a time, 
 are by no means so fortunate as the writers of magazines, 
 who write upon several. If a magaziner be dull upon the 
 Spanish war, he soon has us up again, with the Ghost in Cock 
 Lane ; if the reader begins to doze upon that, he is quickly 
 roused by an eastern tale ; tales prepare us for poetry ; and 
 
THE " BEE " AND OTHERS 199 
 
 poetry for the meteorological history of the weather. It 
 is the life and soul of a magazine never to be long dull upon 
 one subject ; and the reader, like the sailor's horse, has at 
 least the comfortable refreshment of having the spur often 
 changed." 
 
 This is the prelude to one of the best parodies imaginable 
 upon the magazines of the period, from the Modest Address 
 to the Public and the Dedication to that Most Ingenious of all 
 Patrons, the Trifoline Ambassador, on to the instructions on 
 the rites to accompany an incantation. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE "CITIZEN OF THE WORLD" 
 1760 — 1761 
 
 It was in a spirit of levity that he started the Chinese Letters 
 for Newbery's Public Ledger. We rather fancy that he had 
 an idea of going no further than to write a parody that should 
 not be so much a parody as a humourous skit upon the sham 
 OrientaUsm which was in the air just at the time ; but as 
 the first letter, like many other things that are not written 
 seriously but are read with great seriousness, attracted some 
 attention, he published a second and a third, and then the 
 possibilities in the idea of this sham Chinaman walking about 
 London, jotting down his experiences, became plain to him, 
 and he continued the Letters until they became the leading 
 feature of the paper whose fortune they made. The grave 
 criticism that has been uttered by authorities in regard to the 
 Citizen of the World is, of course, that the imaginary China- 
 man does not talk or think like a Chinaman ; and this being 
 so, the letters are without value. This is the usual type of 
 the criticism which finds fault with a book for not being 
 something which the author never meant it to be. 
 
 The preface to the volume indicates the exact spirit in 
 which Goldsmith wrote the Letters. " The distinctions of 
 polite nations are few," he says, " but such as are peculiar 
 to the Chinese appear in every page of the following corre- 
 spondence. The metaphors and allusions are all drawn from 
 the East. Their formaHty our author carefully preserves. 
 Many of their favourite tenets in morals are illustrated. The 
 Chinese are always concise, so is he. Simple, so is he. The 
 Chinese are grave and sententious, so is he. But in one par- 
 ticular the resemblance is peculiarly striking : the Chinese 
 are often dull, and so is he. Nor has my assistance been 
 
THE '' CITIZEN OF THE WORLD'' 201 
 
 wanting. We are told in an old romance of a certain knight 
 errant and his horse who contracted an intimate friendship. 
 The horse most usually bore the knight ; but in cases of extra- 
 ordinary dispatch the knight returned the favour, and carried 
 his horse. Thus in the intimacy between my author and me, 
 he has usually given me a lift of his Eastern sublimity, and 
 I have sometimes given him a return of my colloquial 
 ease." 
 
 Then he goes on to describe a reverie, a favourite and 
 fruitful device of his. He imagined a Fashion Fair being 
 held on the frozen Thames, when every author who could 
 carry his books there might probably find a very good recep- 
 tion. " I resolved, however, to observe the humours of the 
 place in safety from the shore, sensible that ice was at best 
 precarious, and having been always a little cowardly in my 
 sleep." But noticing the success of several of his friends, he 
 began to think, " If these meet with favour and safety, some 
 luck may for once attend the unfortunate. I am resolved to 
 make a new adventure. The furniture, frippery, and fireworks 
 of China have long been fashionably bought up. I'll try the 
 fair with a small cargo of Chinese morality. If the Chinese 
 have contributed to vitiate our taste, I'll try how far they 
 can help to improve our understanding. But as others have 
 driven to the market in waggons, I'U cautiously begin by 
 venturing with a wheel-barrow. Thus resolved, I baled up 
 my goods and fairly ventured, when, upon just entering the 
 fair, I fancied the ice that had supported an hundred waggons 
 before cracked under me, and wheelbarrow and all went to 
 the bottom." 
 
 This suggests the spirit in which the imaginary letters had 
 been begun, though it was not continued through them. The 
 point of the design was the European " making up " to a 
 certain extent as a Chinaman and parodying in his observations, 
 and particularly in his maxim morality, the many English 
 writers who had attempted in all seriousness to give the 
 moralisings of an Oriental when placed in the midst of English 
 civilisation. No English writer ever succeeded as Montes- 
 quieu did, in carrying out such a scheme with complete success. 
 The humour of the situation as conceived by Goldsmith 
 consists in the man's forgetting the part that he is playing, 
 
202 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 and revealing the Englishman or, funnier still, the Irishman, 
 within the robes of the student of Confucius. The humour 
 is the same as that of Sir W. S. Gilbert's Mikado. A Japanese 
 official sings in the costume of Japan : 
 
 Taken from the county jail 
 
 By a set of curious chances ; 
 Liberated then on bail 
 
 On my own recognisances. 
 
 We are not disillusioned when we hear the Oriental making 
 use of a familiar phrase of the Western police-court, because 
 no illusion was ever meant. We are only amused. And so, 
 when the " make-up " of Goldsmith's Chinese philosopher 
 washes off in the first shower, we do not cry out that the actor 
 is, after aU, only an Englishman. 
 
 Sham Chinese had been fashionable in England for several 
 years in 1760, just as the Japanese of the draper's shop was 
 regarded as " precious " by the poseurs of what was termed a 
 " high art cult " in England in 188 1 ; and Goldsmith's sense of 
 humour took him in the same direction as Sir W. Gilbert's took 
 the author of The Mikado — only in the same direction, however ; 
 Goldsmith took but a step or two to Sir. W. Gilbert's strides. 
 But it is scarcely a matter for surprise that the delicate humour 
 of the former should be misunderstood when the GUbertian 
 treatment of The Mikado was regarded in all seriousness by 
 English officialdom, and the representation of a piece that 
 had nothing Japanese about it except the dresses, was prohibited 
 lest it should give offence to the nation who had become our 
 allies, not only politically but artistically, having years before 
 taken over the music of The Mikado and played it daily on 
 their bands. But then British officialdom is capable of 
 anything. 
 
 Steele had made use of the idea, which Swift said he gave 
 him, of an Indian describing his travels in England. It 
 appeared in a number of the Spectator, and Swift complained 
 in one of his letters that it had been wasted in a single article ; 
 he had intended making a volume out of it himself. It is 
 rather a pity that he was so confiding. Swift would have 
 made a great satire if he had been able to realise his idea ; 
 but assuredly his Indian would have had nothing of the Indian 
 
1:HE ''CITIZEN OF THE WORLD" 203 
 
 about him except Indian ink. But his reflections would have 
 made up a masterly satire upon England and the English. 
 Walpole had actually preceded Goldsmith in making a Chinese 
 philosopher, Xo Ho by name, write a letter to Lien Chi at 
 Pekin, on the political situation in England. Then Percy 
 had just risen from revising Wilkinson's translation of a 
 Chinese novel ; the Pagoda, which is so conspicuous a feature 
 of Kew Gardens, had just been designed ; and Thomas Chippen- 
 dale was endeavouring to realise the most marvellous deco- 
 rative feat that had ever been attempted even by the English 
 cabinet-makers, whose feats were many and wonderful — the 
 grafting of a Chinese design upon a French framework. It 
 is pretty clear that China was in the air when Goldsmith began 
 his Letters, and that, like other sensible people, he was laughing 
 at the fad of the moment. But we are of the opinion that 
 when he started his account in Newbery's Ledger, he had no 
 intention of acting differently from Steele, in the Spectator : 
 he did not mean to pursue the idea beyond a few issues. The 
 fact that the Letters were not numbered as they appeared 
 favours this contention, and gives us some ground for believing 
 that the idea so appealed to Newbery — ^he knew its value by 
 referring to the figures of the circulation of the paper — that 
 he asked the writer to continue the Letters until he got notice 
 to stop. These suggestions are, however, speculative and 
 cannot be insisted upon. The interest and the value of 
 the whole series remain the same whether the scheme of 
 the Chinaman in London writing his letters twice a week 
 for a year, was intended to be a feature of the paper from the 
 first, or whether the original intention was only to print an 
 occasional letter. What is certain is that the Chinaman was 
 talked about, and that Goldsmith found himself in a position to 
 enlarge the scope of the reflections of his protege, until, before 
 long, he had become the convenient vehicle for putting the 
 author's, not the Chinaman's, views on many matters before 
 the public. The " make-up " gradually wears off, and although 
 the representative of the disciple of Confucius makes heroic 
 attempts now and again to carry on the role with which 
 he started, by indulging in a flowery sentiment (which might 
 as well have been culled from the store of the medicine man 
 of a North American Indian wigwam), he takes in no one. 
 
204 'J^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 He is a whimsical, good-humoured, tolerant philosopher, 
 and, like one of his friends, there is no harm whatsoever 
 in him. 
 
 Of the whimsical humour and wit and studies of character 
 which make up the charm of the Citizen of the World, it is 
 scarcely necessary to write a word. Like almost everything 
 else that came from the same pen, they have become incor- 
 porated in our literature. Beau Tibbs may not be as finished 
 a portrait as Sir Roger de Coverley, but he occupies a place of 
 distinction in one of the panels in that gallery of English 
 portraits in fiction which includes also the Man in Black, 
 Corporal Trim, Parson Adams, Will Wimble, and that ex- 
 quisite family group of the Primrose family. Addison, 
 Sterne, Fielding, and Goldsmith have made the eighteenth- 
 century wing of that gallery a room of old friends, the best 
 of aU company. No matter at what page we open the 
 Citizen of the World we find something diverting. Dr. 
 Whitwell Elwen, who performed the feat of writing immense 
 essays on Goldsmith, Fielding, Boswell, and Johnson, without 
 introducing a solitary original remark upon any one of them, 
 affirms that the " happy artifice " of the stranger's com- 
 menting upon English customs, which came to so much in 
 other hands, comes to nothing in the hands of Goldsmith. 
 " It is simply as a collection of light papers upon the vices 
 and follies of the day that the work must be regarded, as in 
 all his speculations there is much that is commonplace ; but 
 he skims pleasantly over the surface of things, gives picturesque 
 sketches of the men he met and the haunts he frequented, and 
 intermingles observations which, whether grave or gay, bear 
 the stamp of his kindly nature." 
 
 A more perfect example of kindly incompetence than this 
 criticism of the Letters could with difficulty be imagined. The 
 writer was one of the most earnest conservators of the conven- 
 tional of fifty years ago ; and it was part of his literary creed 
 that no writer could be entertaining unless he was super- 
 ficial, and that wisdom invariably was wrapped up in a 
 cloak of dulness. The fact is that some of the Letters 
 go as deep into the heart of things as any essays have ever 
 done, and several anticipate in a startling way some of the 
 most modern conclusions on social subjects. The abuses 
 
THE " CITIZEN OF THE WORLD" 205 
 
 of the Church, the abuses of the Courts of Justice, the abuses 
 of the Legislature, are dealt with in turn, and never without 
 the weak point being detected. Never was there a clearer 
 range of vision and never was there a sounder judgment than 
 that which is shown in these papers. In Letter LXXIX., 
 for instance, it is pointed out that " Penal laws, instead of 
 preventing crimes, are generally enacted after the commission ; 
 instead of repressing the growth of ingenious villainy, only 
 multiply deceit, by putting it upon new shifts and expedients 
 of practising with impunity. Such laws," continues this 
 eighteenth-century writer, " resemble the guards which are 
 sometimes imposed upon tributary princes, apparently indeed 
 to secure them from danger, but in reality to confirm their 
 captivity." 
 
 And at the time he wrote, only here and there had a voice 
 been uplifted against the atrocities of the Statute book. 
 " Penal laws," he resumed, " secure property and a state, 
 but they also diminish personal security in the same propor- 
 tion ; there is no positive law, how equitable soever, that 
 may not be sometimes capable of injustice. When a law 
 enacted to make theft punishable with death, happens to be 
 equitably executed, it can at best only guard our possessions ; 
 but when by favour or ignorance Justice pronounces a wrong 
 verdict, it then attacks our lives, since in such a case the whole 
 community suflEers with the innocent victim. If, therefore, 
 in order to secure the effects of one man, I should make a law 
 which may take away the life of another, in such a case, to 
 attain smaller good, I am guilty of a greater evil ; to secure 
 society in possession of a bauble, I render a real and valuable 
 possession precarious." 
 
 A thoughtful and mature plea for one of the most impor- 
 tant reforms that ever engrossed the attention of a statesman. 
 When the question was eventually forced upon the Legislature 
 a good many years later, the very arguments made use of by 
 Goldsmith were employed by the reformers. The venality 
 of the paid magistracy — ^he had only to go round the corner 
 into Bow Street to have an example of it — ^was fearlessly dealt 
 with in the same Letter, and illustrated by aptness and force. 
 '• A mercenary magistrate who is rewarded in proportion, 
 not to his integrity, but to the number he convicts, must be 
 
2o6 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 a person of the most unblemished character, or he will lean 
 on the side of cruelty ; and when once the work of injustice 
 is begun, it is impossible to teU how far it will proceed. It 
 is said of the Hyaena, that naturally it is no way ravenous ; 
 but when once it has tasted human flesh it becomes the most 
 voracious animal of the forest and continues to persecute 
 mankind ever after. A corrupt magistrate may be considered 
 as a human Hyaena ; he begins, perhaps, by a private snap ; 
 he goes on to a morsel among friends, he proceeds to a meal 
 in public, from a meal he advances to a surfeit, and at last 
 sucks blood like a vampyre." 
 
 Then comes another apt illustration of the value of mercy 
 as a policy. The emperor who hurried to quell an insurrec- 
 tion in one of his provinces, crying, " FoUow me, and I promise 
 you that we shall quickly destroy them," instead of revenging 
 himself upon the insurgents, treated the captives with mildness 
 and humanity. " How," cries his first minister, " is this the 
 manner in which you fulfil your promise ? Your royal word 
 was given that your enemies should be destroyed, and 
 behold you have pardoned aU and even caressed some ! " 
 " I promised," replied the emperor, with a generous air, 
 " to destroy my enemies. I have fulfilled my word, for 
 see, they are enemies no longer ; I have made friends of 
 them ! " 
 
 But while reform of the system is advocated, the author 
 is keen to recognise the equality of the administration of the 
 law in the case of the nobleman who had just been tried and 
 sentenced to death for the murder of a servant. The allusion 
 was, of course, to Lord*Ferrers. He had just been executed at 
 Tyburn. In another of the Letters reform of the laws of 
 marriage and divorce is advocated, and, after a hundred years 
 or so, attention was given to the author's words. In another 
 he discusses in a thoroughly modern spirit some of the difficult 
 problems bearing upon the distribution of wealth, and his 
 conclusions are those which are fast gaining ground in many 
 communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed there is 
 scarcely one of the whole series which, if published to-day, 
 would fail to attract the attention of the thoughtful, unless 
 they might, like Elwin, be deterred from giving consideration 
 to the Chinaman's comments, owing to the grace of style 
 
THE '^ CITIZEN OF THE WORLD" 207 
 
 in which they are presented and the humour with which they 
 are illustrated. 
 
 Certainly the humour of some of these illustrations has 
 never been surpassed by an essayist writing in English. What, 
 for instance, could be better than the complaint uttered 
 against the poets of the eighteenth century ? " Pegasus, 
 they say, has slipped the bridle from his mouth, and our 
 modern bards attempt to direct his flight by catching him by 
 the tail." The Letter in which this appears might have been 
 written by a brilliant twentieth-century critic taking a bird's- 
 eye view, as it were, of the poetry of the eighteenth — all 
 except Goldsmith's poetry. But perhaps what is most sur- 
 prising about the Letters is their diversity. There are some 
 writers who only succeed in being interesting when they 
 are dealing with a subject which they have made their 
 own ; but Goldsmith flies with lightness and ease from 
 one subject to another, and never fails to interest or 
 amuse, even when he is discussing a matter which one 
 might reasonably be disposed to class among the heaviest 
 that could be chosen for treatment. It should be noted 
 also that when he moralises, his moralising is that of the 
 broad-minded man of experience and observation — the man 
 who has visited many peoples, and has acquired a spirit of 
 toleration in regard to the faddist, the extremist, and even 
 the fraudulent. He is no stern censor of the wickedness of the 
 world, and it is greatly to be feared that he shows himself 
 ready to condone rascality if it assumes a quaint or whimsical 
 form. 
 
 But to attempt to sum up all the qualities which mark 
 the Citizen of the World and give the Letters a distinc- 
 tion little inferior, if at all, to that which is associated with 
 the Spectator, would demand a versatility of judgment equal 
 to that of treatment, which the author possessed in so ample 
 a measure. It is only when we have read the whole series 
 that we can properly understand the grounds upon which 
 Dr. Johnson based his high estimate of Goldsmith as a 
 writer. Johnson was attracted to him while they were 
 still appearing in the Public Ledger, and before he had done 
 any of the work that gave him a position among the great 
 writers of the day. They were sufficient to make the author 
 
208 JHE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 of The Rambler aware of the powers of Goldsmith, and to 
 have a certain amount of interest in paying him a visit when 
 Percy invited him to do so. 
 
 Elwin, to whom we have already referred, suggests that 
 the Letters were not altogether a success when published 
 in the newspapers, his ground for this opinion being the 
 paragraph in the preface, where the author hints at his 
 time having been unprofitably employed in this work. But 
 against this view we have the evidence of an enemy — the 
 man who, upon the occasion of the publication of the Bee, 
 was delighted to have a chance of referring to the failure of 
 the serial issue of those essays. Kenrick would only have 
 been too pleased if he could have repeated the sneer in regard 
 to the volumes of the Citizen of the World,. But even Kenrick 
 was bound to make the admission that their value had been 
 recognised. " The public have been already sufficiently 
 acquainted with the merit of these entertaining Letters, which 
 were first printed in the Ledger, and are supposed to have 
 contributed not a little towards the success of that paper," 
 he wrote in the Monthly Review. But he goes a good 
 deal further than this to remove any doubt that might possibly 
 exist as to the advance which the publication of the Letters 
 had given to Goldsmith as a writer ; for he thought it prudent 
 to try to make up for his previous insult, and he certainly 
 would not have done this if Goldsmith's position had not been 
 greatly strengthened. But still it seems strange to us, in 
 these days, and after hearing so much about the overwhelming 
 vanity of the author, to learn that, when the work was issued 
 in 1761, in two volumes. Goldsmith's name was not upon the 
 title-page. A paper of Newbery's suggested to Mr. Forster 
 that Goldsmith had sold the copyright to that gentleman for 
 five guineas. The document is a formal receipt signed by 
 Goldsmith. " Received of Mr. Newbery five guineas, which, 
 with what I have received at different times before, is in full 
 for the copy [right] of the Chinese Letters, as witness my hand, 
 Oliver Goldsmith, March 5th, 1762." It seems to us, how- 
 ever, that the mention of five guineas in this document was 
 simply a matter of form. We know how Newbery was 
 accustomed to act as his banker, and that Goldsmith had 
 always a pretty large overdraft. When the amount of this 
 
THE ''CHIZEN OF 7HE WORLD" 209 
 
 overdraft had increased to an alarming extent — alarming to 
 Newbery — Goldsmith may have suggested the cancelling of 
 the whole in exchange for the copyright of the book and an 
 immediate honorarium of five guineas. The reference to 
 " what I have received at various times " suggests such a 
 squaring of accounts. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 SIGNS OF APPRECIATION 
 1761 — 1762 
 
 It is certain that the appearance of the Letters in the Ledger 
 meant a great advance to Goldsmith. He had begun to be 
 talked about, not merely among the circle of booksellers' hacks 
 with whom he had been mingling for two years, but by some 
 writers of distinction, in addition to Grainger and Percy, 
 who had appreciated him from the first. He was earning 
 from three to four guineas a week, and this would have been 
 ample for his needs if his needs had not included those of 
 the needy as well. In spite of the worldly wisdom in his 
 letter to his brother, which we have quoted, it appears 
 as if he could never get rid of the custom of his country 
 in money matters. We have pointed out that in Ireland 
 no one except a curmudgeon ever thought for a moment 
 of withholding a loan from any one who asked for it. 
 The only adequate reason for not lending money was not 
 having money — nay, in some instances, as we have shown, 
 the possession of the means of raising money was regarded as 
 sufficient to make the transaction effective ; and Goldsmith 
 more than once went without blankets in order to provide a 
 beggar with drink. But if he lent his money freely when he 
 chanced to have any, he borrowed quite as freely, so that 
 he contrived to muddle through the year. That was in 
 Ireland, the natural soil for the growth of muddling, and a 
 plentiful crop of the political as well as the social and economic 
 varieties has been forthcoming from time to time during the 
 past three or four hundred years. In England, however, and 
 particularly in that part of London which was irrigated — 
 sometimes too lavishly — ^by the Fleet, the Irish system has 
 never worked with complete satisfaction to all parties concerned 
 
SIGNS OF APPRECIATION zii 
 
 in its application. The borrowers remained borrowers and the 
 lenders paupers. The news that NoU Goldsmith was in funds 
 must have sent a thrill of excitement round the straggling 
 circle of his associates ; but it could never have lasted 
 long. The Grub Street loafers around the bedraggled skirts 
 of literature must have been four-deep in the square of Green 
 Arbour Court awaiting his arrival from Newbery's counting- 
 house, and his pockets were emptied before he got upon the 
 breakneck stairs. 
 
 He formed some very doubtful friendships at this time. 
 There was a certain club that oflFered him a choice between 
 the thriftless and the disreputable, and, lest he might be 
 embarrassed in his choosing, some of his own countrymen 
 sought him out and — ^when they found that he was earning 
 money — by forcing their companionship upon him, gave him 
 an example of a combination of both. There was one 
 PiUdngton whom he had known in Dublin — an excellent type 
 of the plausible rascal. He came to Goldsmith with a story 
 that would not have imposed upon even the little girl who 
 borrowed the coals from him when Percy was his visitor — 
 a story of a duchess who collected the albino mouse, necessi- 
 tating the approach of a naturalist to her grace in a decent 
 coat, and a decent coat could not be had for less than two 
 guineas. Of course Pilkington had the mice safe at the docks ; 
 but where were the two guineas to come from ? Goldsmith 
 was willing to oblige, but alas ! he had only half a guinea in 
 cash. Pilkington had doubtless many a time faced a more 
 difficult problem. Goldsmith had a watch. It was taken 
 to a pawnbroker's, and — ^that was the last he saw of it or of 
 the naturalist for many a day. 
 
 Goldsmith's friend Cooke, who printed this story and several 
 others in the European Magazine, makes it more plausible in 
 one way and less so in another. He makes the rascal in need 
 of the money to buy a cage for the mice. Two guineas for a 
 cage for white mice ! Still, it required to be a cage fit for the 
 fastidious eyes of a duchess. Cooke, in the same number of 
 the European Magazine, told of his being taken in by another 
 rascal named Lloyd — he had been Churchill's friend — who 
 accosted him in a coffee-house, expressing the hope that he 
 was quite well. Goldsmith having never seeji the man before, 
 
212 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 " shrank back a little, and returned his inquiries with an air 
 of distant civility." Lloyd explained in an offhand way that, 
 though they had not met before, he thought that brethren 
 of the pen should not stand on ceremony with one another, 
 and asked him to supper that same night, the company to be 
 " half a dozen honest feUows." This bait — it certainly 
 promised a novelty to him in that locality — ^took with Gold- 
 smith, and he went to the tavern where the entertainment 
 was to be held. It was done on a most generous scale, 
 but the honoured guest was left to pay the whole bUl. 
 
 It was probably Newbery's observing how things were 
 going with this ridiculous Irish genius that brought about 
 ithe removal of the latter to a more reputable locality than 
 Green Arbour Court, though one with a less picturesque 
 name. Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, would certainly be 
 accounted a better address by the house-agents, though it 
 sounds cpmmonplace by the side of the Court of the Green 
 Arbour. The fact that the house belonged to a relative of 
 Newbery leads us to believe that the change was suggested 
 by the bookseller, who certainly did his best to keep Goldsmith 
 free from the constant financial tangles in which he found 
 himself through his culpable improvidence and stUl more 
 'culpable beneficence. Newbery, in fact, did his best to play 
 the part wjiich Mrs. Milner had suggested that she should 
 assume irvprespect of his money. And if it should be whispered 
 that Newbery made more than the customary banker's profit 
 by the arrangement, we have only to examine the statements 
 ■ of the accounts between them to be made aware of the straight- 
 , forwardness of every transaction. Newbery did his best for 
 •him compatible with doing his best for himself. If he did 
 very well through his connection with Goldsmith, assuredly 
 this connection was the most fortunate for Goldsmith of any 
 that he had ever formed. If Newbery had not been an upright 
 man of business he could easily have got anything that Gold- 
 smith wrote for him for half the price he paid for it. The 
 temptation for a man in the position which he occupied in 
 respect of so thriftless a person as Goldsmith, to shrug his 
 shoulders and ask himself what was the good of putting large 
 sums into the hands of such a man when he only flung them away 
 upoft rogues and vagabonds, must have been great — it would 
 
SIGNS OF APPRECIATION 213 
 
 certainly have been too great to be resisted by Griffiths. But 
 it may safely be said that if Goldsmith trusted Newbery 
 implicitly, Newbery proved himself to be deserving of this 
 trust. The author of The Vicar of Wakefield, both by his 
 reference to the good bookseller in one of the most delightful 
 chapters, and by his reiteration of his belief that the book- 
 sellers were his best friends, showed that he knew he had 
 every reason to feel grateful to John Newbery, and afterwards 
 to his nephew Francis. Cooke, among his items of gossip, 
 mentions that Goldsmith was constantly referring in the 
 friendliest terms to the elder of the booksellers, asserting that 
 he was the best of all patrons to authors in distress. 
 
 It is pretty certain that during these years he did a great 
 deal of work for Newbery in that department of literature which 
 the publisher had made his own. Newbery turned out 
 juvenile books by the score, and the destructive instjnct of 
 childhood was a far greater source of revenue to him than the 
 varying reading whims of their parents. He was able to pay 
 for the instruction of the parents out of the profits made by 
 providing the children with diversion ; and it is pretty certain 
 that the easy adaptability of Goldsmith to every form of 
 writing commended itself to the bookseller when his stock of 
 nursery literature stood in need of replenishing, as it must 
 have done every month. It might not be impossible to dis- 
 cern the Goldsmith touch in many of these tales and poems 
 if one had any means of obtaining them all, and leisure to 
 pursue a search which would be like looking for a piece of gold 
 buried in a field of five acres. The Elegy on the Death of a 
 Mad Dog, as well as that on The Glory of her Sex, Mrs. 
 Mary Blaize, shows how well he wrote in a vein that children 
 relish in verse ; and we cannot doubt that these are but the 
 survivors of scores of equally delightful trifles which dropped 
 from his pen as easily as did his Dublin ballads for street use. 
 The well-known Goody Two Shoes has been claimed for Gold- 
 smith, mainly on the ground that James's Powders are praised 
 in the course of the narrative, and it was well known that he 
 had unbounded belief in this medicine ; but Newbery believed 
 in it much more ardently than did Goldsmith, and on much 
 better grounds, for he was the proprietor of the Powders and 
 he made a handsome revenue out of their sale. Excellent 
 
214 'J^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 business man that he was he would take good care not to allow 
 one of his authors to miss an opportunity of saying a good 
 word for them. 
 
 He went to his new rooms — rooms, not a room this time — 
 toward the close of the year 1760, while the Chinese Letters 
 were still appearing in the Public Ledger ; and he probably made 
 an effort to regulate his habits in conformity with the social 
 advance wh ch his removal suggested. But he seems to have felt 
 that a complete severance from Green Arbour Court would 
 be too much for him, so he retained at least one link with his 
 old lodgings : he never failed to send his old landlady the 
 material for many a dinner and many a supper from his more 
 sumptuous table at Wine Oflfice Court ; and the likelihood 
 is that his table was a good deal more sumptuous upon occa- 
 sions than it ever had been in that bare room where, for the 
 best of reasons, two people could not sit down together to 
 supper. But, in his improved conditions of life, upon the 
 occasion of the happy delivery of belated " copy " demanding 
 celebration through the medium of a supper, each of the 
 celebrants had a chair to himself. The accommodation at 
 Wine Office Court was on a generous scale, and so of course 
 were the incidental expenses of the new occupier. Where 
 would be the good of having a room in which a number of 
 his friends could sup — ^with a whole chair for every one of 
 them — if he refrained from inviting them to supper ? 
 
 There can be no doubt that he took care that the fine 
 opportunities suggested by a dining-table and a complete set 
 of chairs were taken advantage of ; or, in case he omitted to 
 do so, we may be sure that his friends would see to it for 
 him. But however doubtful his visitors may occasionally 
 have been, two came to him on the evening of the last 
 day of May 1 76 1, about whose position there could not be 
 a second opinion. The Reverend Thomas Percy brought 
 with him Mr. Samuel Johnson — ^he had not yet received his 
 Oxford degree — ^to sup at the new lodgings, and their host 
 was a proud man. But the incident was of greater impor- 
 tance to him than he ever had imagined it would be. It 
 marked his admission not only into the inner circle of litera- 
 ture, but to a friendship which never failed him, and which 
 came to his rescue upon at least two occasions of emergency. 
 
SIGNS OF APPRECIATION 215 
 
 brought him out of his difficulties, and set his feet upon solid 
 ground. 
 
 Percy relates how, on his calling for Johnson at his rooms 
 in Inner Temple Lane, he found him engaged in making an 
 elaborate toilet, such as one might hardly imagine the occasion 
 demanded. Seeing him in a new suit of clothes, a powdered 
 wig, and with everything about him so perfectly dissimilar 
 from his usual habits and appearance, he could not help 
 asking what was the cause of this singular transformation. 
 " Why, sir," said Johnson, " 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 
 of showing him a better example." 
 
 A more amusing incident has never been described in 
 connection with this group of notabilities. Johnson's solemn 
 explanation, uttered out of the midst of his finery, is admirably 
 in keeping with the self-consciousness of a man accustomed 
 to old friendships in the way of garments, while appearing 
 in all the unproved rigidity of new. Every one must 
 sympathise with the elderly, shapeless man whose garments 
 invariably hung loosely upon his big limbs, whose wig was 
 usually a few sizes too smaU for him, and whose linen — " clean 
 linen, sir, I have no passion for it," he admitted some years 
 later — every one will sympathise with him upon this occasion. 
 // faut souifrir pour etre beau, no doubt, or even four 
 encourager les autres, but within limits. The only redeeming 
 element in the situation was the shortsightedness of the 
 beau. No matter how many mirrors there were in his 
 room, he could not see how he looked. But he must have 
 felt it. 
 
 And then the notion of this simple-minded scholar, that 
 all he had to do in order to convince a man who must have 
 been in the habit of seeing him daily, that he was not slovenly 
 in his dress or untidy in his habits, was to borrow a newly 
 powdered wig, a good coat, and silk stockings, with practicable 
 garters, shoes with buckles, and a laced hat, and appear in 
 them — once I He only appeared once in this imposing disguise ; 
 neither Percy nor any one else records having seen him a 
 second time suffering under the conditions of a self-imposed 
 but unaccustomed tidiness, and we know that he returned to 
 
2i6 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 the comfort of " bagginess," and remained in it for the re- 
 mainder of his life ; he never meant to do otherwise ; but his 
 knowledge of men assured him that never more would Gold- 
 smith think of him in excusing his own slovenliness of attire. 
 His train of reasoning was in a line with that of the person who 
 felt that he could never be accused of lying because upon one 
 occasion he had told the truth. The picture of Johnson, 
 divested of all his rugged personality, entering the room at 
 Wine Office Court and coming face to face with Goldsmith— 
 the look upon Goldsmith's face — the dignity of Percy — the 
 tavern servant, holding a napkin over his mouth while at the 
 door, but guffawing and spluttering from stair to stair as he 
 goes to carry up the supper — we can see it all before us 
 to-day, and for a moment we cannot help being at one with the 
 tavern waiter. 
 
 The curious part of the story is that it assumes that Gold- 
 smith's slovenliness in dress was notorious. But the Gold- 
 smith tradition leads one in exactly the opposite direction. 
 The most prominent of his traits was always believed to be his 
 passion for fine clothes. It was only to be expected that as 
 his vanity — according to the " authorities " — was insatiable, 
 he should endeavour to gratify it in this way ; so that it comes 
 upon us as a great shock to hear that he took so little pride in 
 his personal appearance as to merit a startling rebuke from the 
 most notoriously slovenly man associated with a profession 
 that included but few beaux in any of its grades. 
 
 Now if the story was told of Goldsmith that, expecting a 
 visit from Johnson, he got a new coat of brilliant colour, a 
 powdered wig and silk hose, would not every one accept it as 
 absolutely true to the Goldsmith tradition ? There he was, 
 puffed up with vanity and expecting to impress his distin- 
 guished visitor ! And if Boswell was at hand, would he not 
 give us a picture of Johnson's grave disapproval of the other's 
 extravagance ? And would not casual readers smile indul- 
 gently and say, " How like poor Goldsmith ! " But the story 
 being as it is, people say " How noble of Johnson to put himself 
 to so much trouble in order to show a good example to the 
 slovenly Goldsmith ! " Though, looked at in an impartial 
 spirit, it must be confessed that a more notorious example of 
 bad taste than a prosperous man's going to pay a visit to a man 
 
SIGNS OF APPRECIATION 217 
 
 who was not so prosperous, and dressing up for the purpose in 
 the most expensive way, could hardly be imagined. 
 
 Happily, however, Goldsmith had the largest sense of 
 humour of any man of his time ; and he would not feel as 
 a good many others might, that his visitor was desirous of 
 humiliating him by drawing his attention to the contrast in 
 their dress. He had also a sense of politeness : he would have 
 refrained from laughing so long as Johnson remained in his 
 rooms ; but when he had departed 
 
 We do not hear that Johnson ever again tried his experi- 
 ment of posing as an example of what could be accomplished by 
 a man's giving a reasonable amount of attention to his toilet. 
 But if in after years, when he noticed, as so many other people 
 did, that Goldsmith was extravagantly fond of purple and 
 fine hnen, his conscience must have given him a twinge, and 
 he must have bitterly repented leading Goldsmith into such 
 ways. But he need not have been uneasy. If Goldsmith 
 became addicted to the wearing of fine clothes, he did so in 
 spite of, not on account of, Johnson's action. It was as a 
 warning that he appeared before Goldsmith that night ; and 
 if Goldsmith did not refrain from running up a tailor's biU 
 after that, it was because his taste for dress was too strong 
 to be influenced by his recollection of Johnson as he appeared 
 for the first time in his room in Wine Office Court. 
 
 With this visit of Johnson, accompanied by Percy, it may 
 be said that a new period in Goldsmith's life began. That 
 visit was equivalent to a presentation at Court. It gave 
 him a position and a prestige which he had never previously 
 enjoyed. It meant the recognition of his claims as a writer, 
 not merely as a compiler. To be sure, he had not yet 
 had his name upon the title-page of a book, and the public 
 knew him not at all. That did not matter. He had 
 received a proof of the appreciation of a man whose 
 position in literature was acknowledged, and that meant 
 promotion from the ranks of Grub Street, though possibly 
 at this time he was not earning more than a few pounds a 
 week. He allowed himself to be called Doctor — the dis- 
 tinction did not mean much. Kenrick enjoyed it and so did 
 Griffiths, though the fact that the name of the University 
 from which the latter had received his degree had never been 
 
21 8 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 divulged, gave Smollett an occasional chance of saying a pithy- 
 word or two on the subject, of which he availed himself to the 
 full. But no one questioned Goldsmith's right to the title, 
 and this may be accepted as a proof that his contemporaries 
 were better informed on this point than we are to-day. One 
 may be sure that if Kenrick had become aware of any 
 joint in his harness, he would have had his knife into it in 
 a moment. 
 
 Goldsmith got on the most intimate terms with Johnson, 
 and was admitted to the freedom of Tom Davies' back-parlour, 
 where he came in contact with many persons of real literary 
 distinction, and perhaps with an actor or two. Tom Davies had 
 once been an actor himself, and he had been extremely success- 
 ful in his connection with the stage, for it had enabled him to 
 marry a very beautiful and attractive wife, and he had been 
 fortunate enough to be satirised by Churchill in the lines in 
 the Rosciad : 
 
 Statesman all over, in place famous grown 
 He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a bone; 
 
 and he retired from the boards, where he could never have 
 gained further distinction, and opened a bookseller's shop, from 
 behind the counter of which he was able to make friends with 
 such customers as were aware of his stage associations and of the 
 attractions of his wife. With such claims to attention, it is 
 not surprising that his shop became a rendezvous of all sorts 
 of interesting men, and that he himself advanced from being 
 patronised as a bookseller to patronise the men whose books 
 he sold (with varying degrees of success). 
 
 Johnson was one of the earliest of the habitues of Davies' 
 shop, and pretty Mrs. Davies is believed to have provided him 
 with as many cups of tea as would, if pooled, have been 
 enough for him to swim in, or to provide him with his 
 infrequent luxury of a bath. Tea was expensive in those days 
 when it was bought by the quarter-ounce ; but Tom Davies 
 was a good man of business ; he knew that Johnson loved to 
 hear himself talk, and that a good many other people did so 
 too, and the chance of seeing and heating Johnson was a 
 distinct " draw." Reynolds the painter, and Burney the 
 musician, were constantly in the shop, though both were 
 
SIGNS OF APPRECIATION 219 
 
 busy men ; and then came Murphy and George Colman, and 
 Percy and George Steevens. Garrick, though extremely 
 fond of good books and bad books in good bindings, at first 
 gravitated naturally to the ex-actor's shop, but his attendance 
 became more meagre when he found that his acting and his 
 management were being made the subject of discussion in 
 the shop as well as the back-parlour. This fact, however, did 
 not prevent Tom Davies from becoming his biographer. 
 Foote, the most notable farceur of the day, and the most 
 popular because the coarsest, was also a frequenter of Davies' 
 shop, and found there some material for his extravagant 
 mimicry, but not so much as he hoped to find. He had seen 
 Johnson and Goldsmith together, and, looking at them with 
 an eye to business, perceived that he could make something 
 out of them if he brought them on his stage. Undoubtedly 
 he would have made people laugh by his mimicry of two 
 persons whose peculiarities were so strongly marked as to 
 make his task easy. But he changed his mind as to the suita- 
 bility of at least one of them as a subject ; for Tom Davies 
 thought it well to make Johnson aware of Foote's intention, 
 and Johnson forthwith asked the bookseller what was the 
 market price of a stout oak cudgel. " Sixpence," he was told. 
 " Why, then, sir, give me leave to send your servant to pur- 
 chase me a shilling one," said Johnson. " I'll have a double 
 quantity. I am determined the fellow shall not do it with 
 impunity." 
 
 Now the fact that Foote had thought him (for a time) 
 worthy of being bracketed with Johnson in a caricature, shows 
 that Goldsmith was " in the picture," so to speak — ^that he 
 was a prominent member of the Davies' circle and that he 
 had become a familiar figure in the purlieus of Fleet Street — 
 a person to be pointed out to a stranger as one of the nota- 
 bilities of the region. 
 
 And this is the point at which a biographer, making 
 inquiries for Oliver Goldsmith — Dr. Oliver Goldsmith, who 
 had studied classics and got his degree at Dublin University ; 
 who had then studied medicine at Edinburgh University, 
 chemistry at Leyden, and mankind in every part of Europe ; 
 Goldsmith who had more than held his own in oratorical 
 contests in Italy ; Goldsmith who had written essays in which 
 
220 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 wit and humour were found in combination with a literary- 
 style unsurpassed for purity and elegance — finds himself face 
 to face with quite a different person, the Oliver Goldsmith 
 of James Boswell. 
 
 Goldsmith met Boswell at dinner at Tom Davies' in 1762. 
 BosweUwas a very young Scotsman, the son of a judge; and the 
 Duke of Argyll having said that he should go to the bar 
 instead of carrying out his own intention of becoming a 
 soldier, he had been studying oratorical voice production on 
 Sheridan's own system, under Sheridan himself, in Edinburgh, 
 and his instructor had given him an introduction to Davies. 
 Young BosweU had a craze for coming in contact with cele- 
 brated people, and for attending hangings, and having received 
 in Edinburgh all the gratification in both directions — occa- 
 sionally with a combination of the two — that the northern 
 capital could afford, he came to London to continue his 
 pursuit of these giddy pleasures. Tom Sheridan had fired 
 his imagination by his account of Johnson, but Johnson having 
 said something that was very hurtful to Sheridan's dignity, 
 the latter could not consistently with his self-respect, which 
 was considerable, give young Boswell a letter of introduction 
 to the great man ; but he knew young BosweU, and he knew 
 that if he introduced him to Davies, young Boswell would 
 be able to manage the rest without much assistance. He 
 was right : the young Scotsman haunted the bookseller's shop 
 when his numerous engagements at Tyburn allowed him, 
 but for a long time he failed to run Johnson down, and having 
 his heart set on Johnson, it was a poor equivalent for the treat 
 he had promised himself, to meet Goldsmith. If there was 
 one person for whom a Scotsman with an " accent " had an 
 antipathy that no circumstances could mitigate, it was an Irish- 
 man with a brogue. And his overtaking Goldsmith when in 
 search of Johnson was to him something like a man's following 
 the spoor of a lion but being forced to content himself with 
 a shot at a cat. 
 
 But, later, BosweU got very near indeed to the lion ; and 
 then he found that the lion and the cat had contracted an 
 earlier friendship, and it occurred to him that as they were 
 so close to each other he might as weU bring the two down 
 together. 
 
SIGNS OF APPRECIATION 221 
 
 Having referred with some conciseness in our Introduc- 
 tory chapter to Boswell's attempt to define the position of 
 Goldsmith within the circle of which he made Johnson the 
 centre, it is only necessary in this place to record that it 
 was in the year 1762 that BosweU was presented to Goldsmith 
 in Tom Davies' back-parlour. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 AN INTERLUDE 
 1762' 
 
 There is a matter which we think should be considered in all 
 its bearings now that we have reached that point in the story 
 of Goldsmith's life, when he had become of sufficient impor- 
 tance to attract the attention of distinguished men, and to be 
 noticed and written about in connection with them and some- 
 times hy them. The accounts of the earlier years of men 
 who have attained distinction from comparatively humble 
 beginnings are usually meagre, the fact being that such 
 accounts are of no importance : there is seldom anything 
 about the men to give their associates a premonition of 
 their destiny ; it is only when they have done something 
 distinctive that people begin to notice them, and then 
 they become just too closely attended to for their own 
 comfort. It was only when Goldsmith got into line with 
 noticeable people that he became noticed ; and it was, as 
 we have ventured to point out, rather unfortunate for him 
 that he obtained the casual attention of the most earnest 
 collector of minutiae concerning interesting persons that 
 existed in the century. Boswell was a parasite himself and he 
 took a great interest in the ticks with which the great men 
 whom he had a chance of observing were infected. He had 
 not a soul above ticks, though he fancied he had, and that was 
 where, we think, he made a mistake. It was, we repeat. 
 Goldsmith's misfortune to come under the notice of a man 
 who was the most active recorder of all that he observed, and 
 at the same time the least capable of drawing a correct con- 
 clusion from his observations — that is, so far as Goldsmith was 
 concerned. But quite apart from those questions of malice and 
 
 wilful inaccuracy on Boswell's part, to which we have referred 
 
 222 
 
AN INTERLUDE 223 
 
 in our Introductory chapter, there was about Goldsmith 
 something which Boswell was constitutionally incapable of 
 understanding, and which puzzled a good many of the people 
 in the same circle of observers and recorders. 
 
 This peculiar quality which Goldsmith possessed, and 
 which baffled many of the eminent men about him when they, 
 made an attempt to reconcile it with his possession of other 
 qualities, causing him to remain to the day of death an enigma 
 to all, was never reckoned a peculiarity on his part when in 
 Ireland, because in his day, it was part and parcel of the 
 nationality of the Irish. It was the exhibition of this national 
 trait — it was scarcely a trait — that caused the Irish to be 
 looked upon as simpletons, only when they were not looked 
 on as utter fools. 
 
 There is nothing so difficult for one race to understand as 
 the humour of another race, and the most perplexing of all 
 forms of national humour were those which belonged to Ireland 
 in the eighteenth century, and which are not yet extinct in 
 many parts of the island. One of these was termed the 
 Irish bull. It is a definite form of humour, and it is roared 
 at in England, though not as a form of humour, but only as a 
 ludicrous mistake on the part of a very simple person — some- 
 thing more than a mere paradox. Kindly Englishmen have 
 often tried to explain, but never with notable success, to a 
 stolid Irishman, how ridiculous is the blunder which he 
 made when he had perpetrated one of these bulls. While the 
 explanation is going on the Irishman stands with a perfectly 
 expressionless face, but after a time, a puzzled look comes 
 over him ; he laughs boisterously, and forthwith puts a 
 ridiculous construction upon the lucid explanation of his 
 original blunder that is forced upon him. The man is hope- 
 less — quite hopeless ; and the Englishman, who goes away in 
 a good humour, cannot for the life of him understand, when he 
 comes to think over the whole business in the evening, how 
 he was ever induced to pay that Irish simpleton the full price 
 that he asked for the horse with all the blood of the Galtees 
 in his veins, or for that terrier which is a lineal descendant of 
 the favourite of Brian Boru — if the name is spelt Bryan 
 Boroihme the Englishman is doubly impressed by the story of 
 the pedigree. Looking at the spavined mare, and the wiry 
 
224 'J^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 mongrel, the rash purchaser wonders how on earth that fool of 
 an Irishman was able to impose upon him. 
 
 That is how the Irishman found that his bull was a valuable 
 national asset : it gave him the reputation of belonging to a 
 nation of blunderers, which as a matter of fact was quite true : 
 the Irish are a nation of blunderers, but not on account of their 
 use of that figure of speech known as the bull. If a really 
 observant Englishman had seen the twinkle that there was in 
 the eye of the old Mayo peasant who, when cheering the 
 ladies who had helped the neighbourhood in time of great 
 distress, walked away muttering, " If it wasn't for the famine 
 we'd all be starvin' this day," he would have known more 
 about the true Irish bull than a whole treatise could teach him. 
 
 This is one form of Irish humour with which Goldsmith 
 was fully acquainted, and he passed it ofiE upon a good many 
 Englishmen, and for his pains got the reputation of being a 
 fool. " He was a fool," said Cooke. " If you gave him 
 change for a bad shilling and you gave him the shilling back, 
 he would say, ' What's the matter with the shilling ? It's as 
 good a shilling as ever was born.^ " 
 
 Of course the people who came to understand this form 
 of his native humour, found him extremely amusing and looked 
 upon him as a delightful companion ; but the majority of these 
 people were not of the recording sort : they did not keep 
 diaries, nor did they write biographies. But let not Boswell 
 tell us that Goldsmith, if he was the ignorant, foolish, pushing, 
 easily irritated conversational blunderer that he tries to make 
 him out to be, would have become the beloved friend of people 
 known to fashion as well as of people known to fame. 
 
 But there is still another form of Irish humour of which 
 Goldsmith was a master. It consists in the delivery of an 
 ironical comment so subtle as to mystify an audience, and, in 
 the case of an average English audience, to leave them rather 
 inclined to believe that it was meant in aU seriousness to be an 
 expression of the speaker's actual opinion on the subject of his 
 comment. In Ireland this form of humour has survived 
 the conditions under which it at one time flourished in almost 
 every part of the island. It was once the commonest collo- 
 quial form of some districts, and even now it is possible for one 
 to hear a dialogue begun and maintained in the same spirit of 
 
AN INTERLUDE 225 
 
 quiet mockery, with no facial expression, of either of the 
 persons taking part in it to give away the secret. 
 
 So long as he remained in Ireland Goldsmith might have 
 exercised himself in this fashion without running any chance of 
 being misunderstood ; and we may be pretty sure that when 
 his uncle received that letter from Edinburgh which aUuded 
 to his constant visits to the Duke and Duchess of Hamilton, 
 the whole of the Contarine circle had their laugh over it. But 
 his constant practice of the same figure of speech in England 
 had the effect not merely of mystifying many of his associates, 
 but of actually leading them astray ; and this fact, we think, 
 must be accepted as an explanation of how, while some people 
 thought him delightfully humourous, others believed, and 
 recorded their belief, that he was a simpleton at the best and 
 a fool at the worst. 
 
 There is no figure of rhetoric so dangerous to employ in 
 England as that which the Greeks called irony. The occasions 
 upon which an attempt to use it with effect has resulted in 
 disaster, misunderstanding, and the breaking up of old friend- 
 ships, are numerous. It is absolutely foreign — absolutely 
 antagonistic to the spirit of the English as a race. Sometimes, 
 when the one who uses it on a platform laughs in a knowing 
 way, or gives a wink, or adopts some equally broad and square 
 way of letting his audience into the secret, a few sentences in 
 this vein have been known to be fairly successful ; but on the 
 whole, it is safer for any one making a move in this direction, 
 when addressing an average English audience or an average 
 English reader, to adopt the explanatory scheme of the 
 American humourist who kept people straight by the note, 
 " N.B. This is sarcusm." 
 
 Had De Foe adopted such a course and added to " The 
 Shortest way with the Dissenters," " N .B. This is irony,'''' he 
 would have been saved a great deal of trouble ; and had Swift 
 been equally confidential when he wrote his dreadful tract on 
 the advisability of cooking Irish babies, and serving them up 
 like sucking pigs, he would have saved some trouble to those 
 sober Englishmen who wrote discountenancing any increase in 
 the diet of the nation that would involve a return to the 
 domestic policy of Herod the Great. Goldsmith's country- 
 man Edmund Burke was also a master of the same Irish adap- 
 
 ? 
 
226 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 tation of the Greek figure of speech. He was misjudged on 
 several occasions on account of his employment of it. It will 
 be remembered that when he wrote his ironical Vindication of 
 Natural Society, Johnson as weU as Warburton and Chester- 
 field were deceived by it, taking it au grand serieux, so that he 
 was forced to explain in a preface to a new edition, that he 
 meant the treatise as a jest. The English people do not like 
 ambiguous forms of humour. Pope's Dunciad was only under- 
 stood by reason of the breadth and the violence of its wit. 
 But it is doubtful if much of the irony of the Rape of the Lock 
 has been mastered by the average reader up to the present day. 
 At any rate the general opinion that prevails among Englishmen 
 is that there is no need for exotic forms of humour, when so 
 excellent a result may be so easily achieved by any one with 
 a moderately large mouth and with a horse-collar at hand. 
 
 That is how it was that Goldsmith was a puzzle to so many 
 people in England, though in Ireland his humour must have 
 been transparent. Had he written those Retaliation lines 
 which referred to Cumberland, on one of his Irish friends, 
 there would have been no chance of the irony they contained 
 being accepted as it was by Cumberland himself as a finished 
 compliment. Mrs. Thrale was, of course, a sufficiently pene- 
 trative reader to be able to see through the mask of the poet's 
 irony ; but assuredly if the captious Cumberland had done 
 so, he would not have been so generous in his subsequent 
 references to Goldsmith. During the thirty-five years that 
 elapsed between the publication of the lines and his death 
 the news had not reached Cumberland that they were not 
 meant to be taken seriously. 
 
 But as the dangers of irony are so fully recognised and 
 have been commented on so frequently between the time of 
 Mrs. Piozzi and the time of Professor Minto, it is unnecessary 
 to give any further instances of Goldsmith's suffering through 
 his use of this rhetorical boomerang. We wiU only beg of a 
 reader of Boswell to consider if it might not be possible that a 
 Scotsman, who of all people in the world had the least 
 faculty for appreciating this form of expression, became 
 mystified by the adroitness of Goldsmith's employment of 
 it ; and if it was not rather more than possible that this Irish- 
 man, whose humour appears in almost every line that ever 
 
AN INTERLUDE 227 
 
 came from his pen, thoroughly enjoying the mystification of 
 Boswell, almost touched the border-line of extravagance in 
 his utterances when the silly Scotsman was within hearing. 
 
 There are, however, several other forms in which the 
 humours of the Irish character find expression, and some of 
 them were also resorted to by Goldsmith when he was in the 
 mood. He had lived for more than twenty years in Ireland 
 and he was " to the manner born." They came as naturally 
 to him as did the Irish customs of borrowing and lending 
 when necessity arose — and a very slender excuse was con- 
 sidered adequate for either in Ireland — as naturally to him 
 as did thriftlessness, in a country where, to make use of one 
 of their idioms, only the thriftless had any chance of saving 
 anything for themselves. The apparent paradox would have 
 been only too well understood : the moment that a peasant 
 was known to have a clean cabin and a " tidy bit of money 
 put by," his rent was increased by one of the rapacious 
 agents acting for a rapacious landlord, year by year, until 
 the only chance the poor wretch had of living was to get 
 a name for ihriftlesness and to make his cabin unapproach- 
 able to " the quality " by surrounding it with a rampart of 
 filth. 
 
 We get a hint now and again in the references to him made 
 by some of his associates — ^not one of whom was quite so 
 impervious to humour as Boswell — of his practising that 
 peculiarly Hibernian form of humour which consists in making 
 oneself the subject of a jest — in pretending that one is dull 
 and incapable of seeing points that are apparent to all the 
 rest of the world. No one can have liyed in Ireland without 
 observing how frequently and how successfully such a scheme 
 of affected stupidity can be carried on by a humourist in a 
 mixed company. It may be witnessed any day in the year. 
 It usually starts with the deliverance of a platitude by a 
 stranger. The, humourist listens with simulated interest, 
 looks puzzled, asks to have it repeated. When this is done 
 there is a pause suggesting profound thought ; then suddenly 
 the clouds clear away and the humourist, abusing himself for 
 being a dense fool, forthwith puts a ridiculous construction 
 upon the simplest words. His chuckling is brought to a 
 sudden stop by the amazed protest of the victim against his 
 
228 7HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 attempted solution of the obvious ; until, with a consummate 
 simulation of stupidity and disappointment on the part of the 
 humourist, the other is led to explain at length, and with 
 ludicrous emphasis, the exact meaning of the platitude. But 
 it is no use ; his tormentor scratches his head, shakes it, wags 
 it ; he gives up puzzling over the problem ; he says he sup- 
 poses it would be plain enough to any one who had the 
 learning ; but may be these things had best not be meddled 
 with by ignorant folk like himself ; and after congratulating 
 his victim upon the good use he has made of his opportunities 
 of acquiring knowledge, he goes off, murmuring his admiration 
 for the fine display of wisdom that comes so easy-like from 
 them that have had the schooling. 
 
 Of course this kind of thing can only be successfully passed 
 off on a stranger — an Englishman by preference, who never 
 suspects the trick. An Englishman spends so much of his 
 time endeavouring to appear cleverer than he really is, that 
 he never thinks it possible that any one else should try to 
 make out that he is more foolish than he reaUy is. 
 
 Now it is notorious that Oliver Goldsmith was greatly 
 given to every form of jesting — some of his jests Boswell 
 grasped, after a pause for thought, and a word or two of 
 elucidation, no doubt — and for such a man to refrain from 
 ringing off all the changes of Irish humour with which he was 
 acquainted, when he found himself in the presence of so many 
 likely victims, would be too much to expect. Nearly all 
 his associates took him seriously ; Boswell most seriously of aU. 
 But, we repeat, now and again a hint is given that at least 
 some of his most intimate friends saw through his schemes. 
 They had an uneasy impression that there was more in his 
 stupidity than met the eye. Sir Joshua Reynolds was his 
 closest friend and Reynolds's capacity for seeing what was 
 beneath the surface in the character of his many sitters, is 
 generally believed to have been rather above than below the 
 average. He affirmed more than once that Goldsmith was 
 in the habit of diverting himself by affecting a stupidity that 
 he really did not possess. Other acute observers agreed with 
 him ; but, of course, so fantastic a suggestion has been smiled 
 aside by such writers as pronounce everything incredible 
 which they themselves do not believe. If any of them had 
 
AN INTERLUDE 229 
 
 put the question fairly, not necessarily to an Irishman, but to 
 some one who had had experience of the various forms of 
 humour of the country whence Goldsmith derived his brogue, 
 his thriftlessness, his reckless beneficence, his appreciation of 
 the weaknesses of his fellow men, his avoidance in conversation 
 or in writing of every topic that might offend the sensitive- 
 ness of those with whom he came in contact — if the question 
 were put to any one with experience of the Irish and their 
 methods of thought and their ways of expressing themselves : 
 " Have you ever heard of an Irishman affecting stupidity in 
 the presence of stolid strangers for the sake of drawing them 
 out, laughing in his sleeve all the time ? " the reply might 
 possibly have stimulated the imagination of the. inquirers — 
 not to the point of believing that Goldsmith had ever acted in 
 this way, but only to the point of believing that there might 
 be some excuse for Reynolds's suspicion. 
 
 But even if we were capable of performing the feat of 
 making such critics admit that there was something in this 
 startling theory of a typical Irishman's behaving in the manner 
 of a typical Irishman when encircled by Englishmen, the 
 " snap " of the girdle being a typical Scotsman, they could 
 still save intact their view of Goldsmith by asserting that no 
 man except one who was a fool would run the chance of 
 behaving so that he should be taken for a fool. Such a con- 
 tention would be quite right : Goldsmith was a fool to allow 
 himself to be so carried away by his whimsical sense of humour 
 as to cause him to play the part that he did upon occasions. We 
 have no reason to concern ourselves with the question as to 
 whether such forms of humour as those which have been 
 practised by the Irish are reprehensible or not ; we know the 
 effect that their yielding to them had upon the Irish people, 
 and we know that it is only since they have succeeded in 
 abandoning them and choosing as their representatives men 
 who are as serious-minded and as grave in their speech as the 
 Englishmen or the Scotsmen with whom they mingle, that 
 they have been taken seriously ; what we have to concern our- 
 selves with is the question as to whether he played the fool wil- 
 fully or because he could not help it. Censors will, of course, 
 assure us that the culpability is on the part of the man who 
 assumes a stupidity with which he has not been endowed by 
 
230 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 nature ; and taking that view of the matter, Goldsmith would 
 certainly be deserving of censure, were it not that his error 
 carried with it rather more than an adequate punishment. 
 But this view assists materially in the solution of the most 
 perplexing problem that has existed since people began 
 to accept Boswell blindly and without taking the trouble 
 to make the necessary allowance for his prejudices, his vanity, 
 and his other disqualifications for coming to a just conclusion 
 on many of the matters with which he dealt, the problem of 
 how a man whose writings (which he invariably produced in a 
 hurry) give evidence of quite an unusual range of reading, 
 a far wider range than it may be said any of the writers in 
 the Spectator enjoyed, should talk like a dunce ; how a man 
 whose writings overflow with wit should be accounted 
 a dullard, and how a man who wrote the most sparkling 
 comedies of his generation should be pronounced deficient in 
 observation. 
 
 It is almost a platitude to say that a man's writings should 
 never be looked on as reflecting himself — that the dullest of 
 men have written the most brilliant of comedies, and that 
 the most sparkling of conversers have been the most ponderous 
 of writers. But when people try to impress upon us the 
 extraordinary difference that may exist between a man and 
 his writings, they invariably bring forward Goldsmith as 
 evidence in favour of their contention. It is not so easy 
 adding to the list of writers of comedy who were devoid of a 
 sense of comedy in their daily life, though there may have 
 been many instances of brilliant talkers who were the authors 
 of very flat comedies. 
 
 And what are the instances given by Boswell and by 
 Beattie, and occasionally by Cooke, of Goldsmith's vanity and 
 of his envy springing from his vanity ? There is the story, 
 already referred to, of his being in a rage because the officers 
 at Lille looked up in admiration at the window of the inn 
 where the Miss Hornecks were seated, and there is the anec- 
 dote of his resenting the praise given to the performance of 
 the puppets in Panton Street, when he could not contain 
 his chagrin, but burst out with the protest, " Psha ! I could 
 do it as well myself ! " There was the incident of his sneering 
 at Burke's oratory and affirming that he could also do that as 
 
AN INTERLUDE 231 
 
 well himself ; but mounting a chair, he found that the words 
 would not come. 
 
 We really feel ourselves to be in the place of the victim 
 of that form of Irish humour which we have described : we 
 feel, in setting about a defence of Goldsmith in regard to 
 these charges, as if we were about to play into the hands of the 
 humourist who, with a stolid face, requires an explanation of 
 the obvious. But when we find Croker waving aside the 
 Jessamy Bride's assurance that there was no doubt in the mind 
 of any one present upon the occasion of Goldsmith's walking 
 to and fro in agitation at Lille because the officers had paid 
 attention to the ladies rather than to himself, that he was in 
 jest ; and when we find that Crabbe actually introduced the 
 scene into a poem, treating Goldsmith's resentment seriously, 
 we become aware of the fact which Goldsmith should have 
 mastered as early as possible after arriving in England — namely, 
 that there are people so utterly devoid of every sense of 
 humour that it is never safe to deviate even by a hair's breadth 
 from the straight and' narrow path of seriousness, and that if 
 one should try to protect oneself from a misunderstanding 
 by the use of the warning " N.B. This is Sarcusm," one 
 should print it in large capitals and in red ink. 
 
 It might have been thought that the least imaginative 
 person — nay, Boswell himself — would be able to see the whole 
 of that delightful little scene at the French inn — the impressed 
 officers loitering about the square to obtain another look at 
 the charming girls, the charming girls themselves overcome 
 with laughter at that droll little friend of theirs, who was for 
 ever making fun of his own plainness, stalking to and fro in a 
 rage, declaring that the fellows had no taste, to look at the 
 girls while he was at the other window, offering them the 
 chance of their lives ! And as for the story of the puppets, 
 all that we can say is that if there is no humour in a man's 
 affirming that he is quite as adroit as a stuffed figure con- 
 trolled by wires, there is nothing humourous in the world. 
 To allege that Goldsmith was envious of the praise given 
 by one of the company to the puppet would be exactly the 
 same as to suggest that he had declared that it was intolerable 
 that so much respect should be paid to the Equator, or 
 that people should take such an extraordinary amount of 
 
232 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 pains to visit the North Pole when they could so easily come 
 to see Oliver Goldsmith at his rooms in the Temple. 
 
 As for his sneer at Burke's oratory, the person who tells 
 that story is the very person who told the story of Goldsmith's 
 going so far in his praise of Burke's powers as to assert, in the 
 face of BosweU's contention to the contrary, that they were 
 superior to those of Johnson himself. And not only did he 
 show his admiration for Burke's oratory in this way, but he 
 published an eulogy of it. Was this the man who would ven- 
 ture to assert, when surrounded by Burke's friends and his own, 
 that Burke was little better than a charlatan and that his art 
 was a trick ? Goldsmith was certainly not the man to do so, 
 unless he had added to his sneer his offer to demonstrate the 
 accuracy of his statement. But the moment he does so, we 
 know that Goldsmith was just the man to say all that was 
 attributed to him, and then to mount the chair, clear his 
 throat, strike a pose of exaggerated dignity, and barely recover 
 his balance on the rickety rostrum ; clear his throat again, 
 make more comic gestures, frown with dreadful severity at 
 his friends who were laughing ; give a cough, make another 
 comic start and once again almost lose his balance ; straighten 
 himself, look offended, and when every one was roaring, 
 jump down and pretend to be greatly hurt, and refuse 
 to proceed further before so unmannerly a crew. 
 
 That would be the scene, and probably Burke himself would 
 be present, and thoroughly enjoying the whimsical fun of his 
 fellow countryman. It would carry his memory back to many 
 a scene of precisely the same type enacted by one of the 
 College boys in the Common Hall at Trinity while waiting for 
 the coming of some of the dignitaries upon an occasion that 
 called for oratory. 
 
 As for the story, solemnly told by Beattie, of Goldsmith's 
 writhing in agony because some one read a scene from Shake- 
 speare and then praised the author, we venture to suggest that 
 it would be more to the point if we were told who was the 
 reader. Goldsmith had a sensitive ear — by far the most sensi- 
 tive of any poet of his century, and in certain circumstances, his 
 writhing in agony is easily cedible. But further we refuse to 
 go. We will not even suggest that Beattie was actuated in 
 telling the story by his knowledge of the contempt in which 
 
AN INTERLUDE 233 
 
 he was held by Goldsmith, when Johnson, Reynolds, and 
 indeed the whole of England, from the King up, were praising 
 his triumph over Hume, Gibbon, and Voltaire. Posterity 
 has acted very inconsiderately in regard to Beattie. It has 
 amply vindicated the judgment of Goldsmith respecting 
 Reynolds's picture. Posterity looks at the portrait of Beattie 
 and at the flying figures, and says, " Gibbon I know, and Hume 
 ^ know, and Voltaire I know, but who is this ? " 
 
 But we do not venture to say that Beattie told his stories 
 out of malice ; we only say that he told them because, to 
 borrow one of Johnson's most effective criticisms, " the man 
 was a fool." 
 
 We only claim for Goldsmith, before passing on to that 
 part of the story of his life when his position in the world 
 of letters attracted to him a good deal of attention, to be 
 regarded as a man of genius whose memory has suffered, but 
 whose position as the most lovable of men, remains unchanged, 
 owing to his coming in contact with some persons who wrote 
 about him without being in any way qualified to form a correct 
 estimate of his nature or of his character. In order to under- 
 stand Goldsmith the first essential is an acquaintance with the 
 conditions under which he lived in the country of his birth, 
 with the course of thought prevailing among the inhabitants, 
 with the methods by which they endeavoured to express 
 themselves, and, above all, with the varieties of their humour. 
 
 Is it possible to say that any of his associates who wrote 
 about him possessed the least of these qualifications for coming 
 to a correct conclusion on the subject of his character ? We 
 certainly think that it is not possible to do so. Oliver Gold- 
 smith played the fool often enough in the course of his life, 
 but not in the way attributed to him by these writers. There 
 are fools and fools. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 SCHEMES AND DREAMS 
 1761 — 1763 
 
 To return to the annals of Goldsmith's career after a 
 digression, which we believe to be as essential to the correct 
 appreciation of the position to which he had attained as the 
 Overture to Tannhaiiser is to the understanding of the 
 strenuous work which is to follow, it may be said that the 
 record of his writings in the years 1761 and 1762 is meagre. 
 When the last of the Letters appeared in the Ledger the pay- 
 ment which he received week by week — it amounted to a 
 living wage, but no more — came to an end, and he must have 
 found some journalistic work to supply its place ; but only 
 guesses have been made as to what were his contributions to 
 the other papers. Newbery's books contain entries of a few 
 guineas paid to him for a tract on the Cock Lane ghost — that 
 childish fraud which succeeded amazingly until Johnson 
 came upon the scene and helped to break up the squalid con- 
 federacy — but the search for this work has not been rewarded. 
 Our opinion is that Newbery never did publish as a pamphlet 
 what Goldsmith wrote on this topic, but that, with the 
 author's consent (or without it) he handed it over to a news- 
 paper. Goldsmith took no trouble over this. It is said that 
 he revised a History of Mecklenburgh, and received for it 
 twenty pounds, and that he compiled for Newbery a volume 
 of poetical extracts. Then came some months of drudgery 
 over an abridged Plutarch of which seven volumes only were 
 issued. 
 
 While writing the fifth volume of this series, he was 
 attacked by a complaint which from this date was a source of 
 constant trouble to him, and he had asked for another writer. 
 to complete what he had begun. Going to Bath to recuperate 
 
 3J4 
 
SCHEMES AND DREAMS 235 
 
 he found the pump-room in tears for the recent decease of 
 the notorious M.C. known as Beau Nash ; and he thought, 
 or some one else thought for him, that he should take advan- 
 tage of the opportunity to write a life of this exponent of the 
 science of audacity in combination with impudence and backed 
 up by unscrupulousness. The Life of Nash was done with 
 taste and judgment. An indulgent smile pervades the work, 
 as though the writer felt unwilling to hurt the susceptibilities 
 of the feeble folk who had looked on Nash as a hero. He 
 received but fourteen guineas for the two hundred and thirty- 
 four pages which this book made, and his name did not appear 
 on the title-page. 
 
 Later in the year he received two guineas from Newbery 
 for seventy-nine leaves bringing up to date a school history 
 which had been published before George II. had completed 
 his reign. With the accession of the new monarch, it was found 
 convenient to add to it the complete record of his illustrious 
 predecessor. The chances are that Goldsmith's contribution 
 to this work was worth the two guineas. To be sure it might 
 have been possible for Newbery to get the " seventy-nine 
 leaves " for less ; but his desire to be generous got the better 
 of his prudence as a business man. 
 
 But in spite of Newbery's munificence, and the increased 
 interests of his life, when he was daily meeting desirable people, 
 he had not yet reconciled himself to the thought of living as a 
 literary drudge to the end. If Richardson was the nursery 
 governess of the period, assuredly Newbery thought that 
 Goldsmith would make an excellent charwoman. But he 
 gave him employment, however humbly he paid him, and 
 employment is healthy for the employed, and a source of 
 wealth to the employer. Still, considering his circumstances, 
 it is not surprising that Goldsmith should look about him 
 with a view of discovering a path to a more ample life. He 
 had just heard that Lord Bute was on the search for deserving 
 literary men whom he could befriend, and it is said that he 
 memorialised this powerful dispenser of patronage for an 
 appointment to a department of Oriental research which had 
 not yet been created and which up to the present has not been 
 formed. 
 
 He had great hopes of Lord Bute. In the year 1755 
 
236 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 Johnson had defined a patron as " a wretch who supports 
 with insolence and is repaid with flattery," and a pension 
 as " pay given to a state hireling for treason to this country." 
 In 1762 he was asked if he would accept Lord Bute as his 
 patron and become one of his pensioners to the extent of ^^300 
 a year, and he accepted the situation and the pension — 
 from a " Whig dog " too. Of course the minister cared 
 nothing for Johnson ; but he cared a good deal for some of his 
 Scotch friends, and had flung his bounty — at the expense of 
 the nation — with a liberal hand among the hungry crew. His 
 liberality to his own countrymen having called for some rather 
 pointed comments in England, he hastened to endow some- 
 body in England, so that the mouths of the people who were 
 hooting him might be stopped. He heard that there was a 
 worthy man named Johnson who had compiled a Dictionary, 
 and he gave him a pension, so that he might be able to point 
 to this Johnson as evidence of the eclectic character of the 
 distribution of his rewards. 
 
 Johnson, who kept himself well abreast of public opinion 
 at this time, and, indeed at all times, knew this perfectly well ; 
 but he accepted the patron and the position of pensioner. 
 A little later when Tom Sheridan, who had taught the Bute 
 family elocution in Edinburgh, also received a pension, though 
 it was ;£ioo short of the other, Johnson declared that if 
 Sheridan got a pension it was time for him to give up his own. 
 Well, he was the best person to pronounce an opinion on so 
 delicate a matter, and perhaps he was right ; but he refrained 
 from carrying oat his threat. All that came of his out- 
 burst of indignation was the severance of his and Sheridan's 
 friendship. The ungenerous remark was accentuated by the 
 fact that it was probably Sheridan himself who had suggested 
 the name of Johnson for the pension. Of course the good- 
 humoured Johnson roared with laughter when he heard of 
 Sheridan's sensitiveness ; and he was (apparently) equally 
 amused when he heard — through the delicate tact of Boswell — 
 that people were saying that he himself should have been the 
 last man to accept a pension from the King. 
 
 " Why, sir," said he, with a hearty laugh, Boswell tells us, 
 " it is a mighty foolish noise they make. I have accepted of a 
 pension as a reward which has been thought due to my literary 
 
SCHEMES AND DREAMS 237 
 
 merit ; and now that I have this pension, I am the same man 
 in every respect that I have ever been ; I retain the same 
 principles. It is true that I cannot now curse (smiling) the 
 House of Hanover ; nor would it be decent for me to drink 
 King James's health in the wine that King George gives me 
 money to pay for. But, sir, I think that the pleasure of 
 cursing the House of Hanover, and drinking King James's 
 health are amply overbalanced by ^^300 a year." 
 
 That was the straightforward unaffected way of looking at 
 the transaction ; nothing had been changed by the incident 
 of his accepting a pension : he that was righteous was righteous 
 still ; he that was filthy was filthy still. A patron remained 
 the wretch and the pensioner remained the hireling. 
 
 Goldsmith having had an example of Lord Bute's " cute- 
 ness " which he took for benovolence, fancied that here, at 
 last, after long waiting, was a statesman capable of taking a 
 high-minded view of his responsibilities, and of exercising his 
 privileges for the benefit of the State. His optimism actually led 
 him so far as to think that a statesman could have at heart the 
 prosperity of the State apart from the prosperity of his party ! 
 He learned the truth later, but in time to write the immortal 
 words which have qualified the career of most politicians since 
 the days of Burke, who " to party gave up was what meant 
 for mankind." 
 
 Of course nothing came of his memorial. Bute no doubt 
 burnt many candles, and he took care that they were kept 
 upright in their sockets. He had plenty of rough material for 
 the purpose ; memorials poured in upon him. Mr. John Forster, 
 in pursuing his indefatigable search for even the smallest 
 item of interest in connection with Goldsmith, had all the old 
 papers that had passed through Bute's hands searched for 
 Goldsmith's memorial, but nothing of the sort was forth- 
 coming. But Goldsmith had no thought of getting some- 
 thing for nothing from the dispensers of patronage. He had 
 never a thought of a pension in his mind, and in this particular 
 he seems to have been the solitary exception among literary 
 men of the day. Pensions were rocketing in the air, and one 
 might be brought down at any moment by a lucky shot. He 
 never aimed at one. He had two splendid chances within a 
 year or two. He was at Northumberland House where, 
 
238 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 through the influence of his frend Dr. Percy, he had access to 
 the library, and was actually addressed by the Earl who was 
 going to Ireland as Viceroy. " Hearing that I was a native 
 of that country," said Goldsmith telling the story to Haw- 
 kins, " he said he would be glad to do me any kindness." 
 " And what did you answer to this gracious offer ? " inquired 
 Hawkins. " Why," said Goldsmith, " I could say nothing but 
 that I had a brother there, a clergyman, that stood in need of 
 help." " Thus," lamented Hawkins, " did this idiot in the 
 affairs of the world trifle with his fortunes, and put back the 
 hand that was held out to assist him." 
 
 His second chance approached him in the questionable 
 shape of an emissary from the Government in the year 1767. 
 The Government were on the look-out for men who could aid 
 them by their pens, and the name of Oliver Goldsmith had 
 been mentioned by a high authority in this connection. 
 Once more " this idiot in the affairs of the world trifled with his 
 fortunes and put back the hand that was held out to assist 
 him." He flung open his door and ordered the tempter out, 
 though he was chaplain to Lord Sandwich himself. 
 
 Happily, however, there was a more reasonable man, 
 who was already a pensioner on the Government, and when 
 the most tyrannical scheme of taxation that had never been 
 framed was being pressed upon the American colonies, he did 
 his best for his patrons in the pamphlet Taxation no Tyranny. 
 Of course, Johnson being the most independent person that 
 ever accepted a pension from the minister of a party which he 
 alleged to be made up of traitors, believed in the principles 
 which he advocated and justified in his pamphlet, or he 
 would never have written it ; so that no slight can be cast upon 
 his honesty, but only upon his intelligence, on this account. 
 He was independent ; for is not an independence another 
 name for a pension ? But it seems rather a pity that he 
 should ever have spoken as he did to Boswell regarding 
 the abuse of power by a supreme authority. " Sir, there is 
 this consideration, that if the abuse be enormous. Nature 
 will rise up and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt 
 political system." At any rate, if some people will still say 
 that Johnson pocketed his independence, the American 
 colonies gained theirs. 
 
SCHEMES AND DREAMS 239 
 
 Goldsmith's Asiasic scheme — or Asiatic dream — was long 
 cherished by him. Curiously enough, it was in this very year 
 that an author whose masterpiece rivalled even Goldsmith's 
 novel in popularity, Bernadin de Saint Pierre, was trying to 
 get some State to send him out to the East to found a 
 new colony — a dream which was taken advantage of by 
 some schemer, who, promising to land him at Madagascar, 
 carried him on to Mauritius, where he planned his Paul and 
 Virginia. 
 
 Goldsmith was more fortunate ; but though he never 
 left England, he retained his thirst for travel, and when he 
 was shut out from the prospect of visiting strange peoples, all 
 he could do was to interest himself in the strange peoples who 
 visited him. The strangest of these were the three Cherokees 
 who were lionised in England in 1762. He was greatly 
 interested in them and brought them presents, receiving from 
 them in exchange an ardent embrace which left a splash of 
 their war-paint on his cheek, a token of goodwill which 
 possibly was more convenient than the native ceremony of 
 mingling their blood. It was convenient, but not con- 
 ventional, and Goldsmith's appearance in the street after the 
 ceremony was the subject of comment by the crowd. But 
 he passed good-humouredly through the ordeal of yells and 
 laughter. 
 
 His desire to travel had, however, taken too firm a hold 
 on him to allow him to remain in Wine Office Court. He 
 gathered his goods together and set off on a journey. He 
 had set his heart on Central Asia ; but he was obliged to be 
 content with Central Islington. He was recommended to 
 to this sylvan place of farms and paddocks stretching far to the 
 north and west by Newbery, who lived there and had a 
 worthy friend named Mrs. Fleming, a lodging-house keeper in 
 need of a lodger. He settled down in her house, she having 
 made a rather loose arrangement with Newbery to pay her 
 bills for his board and lodging at the rate of ;^5o a year. 
 These bills, as well as the extracts from Newbery's ledger, form 
 very interesting reading. The latter suggest that the philan- 
 thropic bookseller had promised to pay the first of Goldsmith's 
 many bills of Mr. Filby, the philanthropic tailor, at the appro- 
 priate sign of the "Harrow." On September 8, 1763, there is the 
 
240 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 item " To Cash paid your draft to Wm. Filby ^15 2s." F 
 November 9, 1762 to October 10, 1763 Newbery had pai 
 Goldsmith in cash either direct or to Mrs, Fleming or 
 Filby something like ^^iio 14s. against which he was cred 
 only with ^63 " By copy of different kinds." 
 
 It is obvious that a system of expenditure under such ^ 
 ditions was bound to result in a financial crisis ; but this 
 averted by the philanthropy of Newbery for another 
 years, and these years were among the most importan 
 Goldsmith's life. His expenses were increasing, and 
 drudgery was not bringing him remuneration at the s 
 ratio. He wrote prefaces and did revises and compiled revi 
 but could not earn more than twenty-five shillings a w 
 although every one concerned in the production of litera 
 was acquainted with him, and ready to acknowledge in e 
 way except that which was remunerative, the value oi 
 writings. He was constantly in the company of Johnson, 
 Hogarth as well as Reynolds became his most intimate fri 
 With the two last he had never more than a moment's disag 
 ment, and beyond a doubt they were two of the greatest me 
 their time. The three — Goldsmith, Reynolds, and Hogar 
 gravitated to the one point. They had something in comr 
 though none of them might have been able to define 
 something that has caused them to outlive in reputatio 
 many of their fellow craftsmen — something that has ca 
 their works to live after them and to be far more highly va 
 to-day than they were during their lifetime. 
 
 The History of England in a Series of Letters from a Nobli 
 to his Son — how the three friends must have laughed over 
 title page — was the only book of which Goldsmith was 
 sole author produced by him in these years, and it wa! 
 course, published by Newbery without his name b 
 attached to it. It went into edition after edition on 
 strength of its being what it pretended to be, even the 
 the purchasing public, with boys and girls to educate, a 
 buted it first to one profligate peer and then to anol 
 Profligacy and polite literature seemed to have bee 
 associated beyond the power of ever being separated in 
 minds of earnest educationists. For more than thirty 3 
 the question of the authorship remained undecided ; anc 
 
Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. 
 
 medallion in wa-V in the possession of the A-nthor. 
 
SCHEMES AND DREAMS 241 
 
 name of Lord Lyttleton actually appeared on the title-page 
 of one of the pirated editions. 
 
 But in spite of the fact that he was nothing more than a 
 hackwriter so far as the public were concerned, yet when 
 Reynolds suggested to Johnson the starting of a Club which 
 should be one of intellect and achievement only, Goldsmith 
 took his place among the first members, who numbered only 
 nine. Some fourteen years earlier Johnson had founded a 
 club in Ivy Lane, which had gone to pieces owing to the death 
 of some members and the dispersal of others, and he sug- 
 gested — we know what one of Johnson's " suggestions " 
 amounted to — that the new club should be on the same basis. 
 The original members were Reynolds, Johnson, Burke, Dr. 
 Nugent (Burke's father-in-law), Topham Beauclerk, and that 
 other gentleman about town, Bennet Langton, Chamier, the 
 War Office Secretary, and Goldsmith. A retired solicitor 
 named Hawkins (afterwards knighted) had been a member of 
 the Ivy Lane Club, and so was looked on as qualified for the 
 new one ; and, later, for the same reason, Samuel Dyer was 
 asked to join ; he was a remarkable man and had many literary 
 connections. There is a trifling conflict of evidence as to 
 the reason for the exclusion of Garrick ; but though Boswell 
 endeavours to prove that the account of this transaction 
 given by Mrs. Piozzi was a fabrication and that that given by 
 Hawkins was an exaggeration, there really was no difference 
 worth speaking of between his own story and the stories of the 
 other narrators. He says that, " not very long after the 
 institution of our club " — Boswell repeatedly calls it our club ; 
 though he was kept out of it for ten years and at last only 
 admitted because Johnson made his admission a personal 
 favour — " Sir Joshua Reynolds was speaking of it to Garrick. 
 ' I like it much, (said he) I think I shall be of you ? ' When 
 Sir Joshua mentioned this to Dr. Johnson, he was much dis- 
 pleased with the actor's conceit. ' He'll be of us, (said John- 
 son) how does he know we will permit him ? The first Duke 
 in England has no right to hold such language.' However," 
 continues Boswell, " When Garrick was regularly proposed 
 some time afterwards, Johnson, though he had taken a momen- 
 tary offence to his arrogance, warrnly and kindly supported 
 him and he was accordingly elected, was a most agreeable 
 
 Q 
 
242 7HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 member and continued to attend our meetings to the time 
 of his death. ... I am happy to be enabled to vindicate at 
 once the heart of Johnson and the social merit of Garrick." 
 
 This account of his he declares he gave in order to correct 
 the prevarications of Mrs. Piozzi and Hawkins. A curious 
 person this to correct prevarications ! How about his 
 own ? He says that Johnson's offence was " momentary " 
 and suggests that Garrick was elected almost immediately 
 afterwards. Now will it be believed that Johnson's momen- 
 tary resentment lasted nearly ten years ? The greatest 
 actor, a man who did more for the English stage than any one 
 associated with it before or since, was excluded from the Club 
 that had among its members two persons of no special achieve- 
 ments whatsoever — unless running away with the wife of a friend 
 or marrying a countess is one — Beauclerk and Langton. It will 
 strike a good many people that the less there is said about the 
 heart of Johnson in connection with this transaction the better 
 it wiU be for his memory. As for Boswell's affecting to patronise 
 Garrick and to assure posterity that he could behave like a 
 gentleman upon the occasion of his being present at " our 
 club," this is a piece of impertinence that even Boswell himself 
 has hardly paralleled in the record of his many feats in this 
 direction. His repetition of " our club " is a delicious bit of 
 presumption. Garrick had actually been a member before 
 BosweU was grumblingly admitted, and even then the man 
 who was responsible for his admission felt it to be his duty 
 to lecture him before the other members, as to how they 
 expected him to behave. Johnson knew that this caution was 
 not unnecessary. And yet BosweU had the effrontery to assume 
 that it was necessary for him to "vindicate . . . the social 
 merit " of Garrick ! 
 
 It was at the funeral of Garrick that the Club obtained its 
 diploma ; it was then alluded to as the Literary Club. That 
 Goldsmith should have been one of the original members 
 proves pretty plainly the esteem in which he was held by 
 both Reynolds and Johnson. Edmund Burke was at this 
 time no more widely known by name than Goldsmith ; but 
 Reynolds was seldom astray in regard to men. That was how 
 he became famous. He foresaw that this second Irishman 
 of their Club was on the threshold of a great career. 
 
SCHEMES AND DREAMS 243 
 
 Within nine years — before Boswell succeeded in squeezing 
 himself through the door that was only half opened for 
 him — these two Irishmen had become famous ; and every 
 year that has passed since then has only added to the 
 lustre of their names. Their nationality may have been 
 an obstacle to their ascent, but it was not a material one. 
 They both spoke with what is called in England a " brogue," 
 but a very slight divergence from the incorrectness of collo- 
 quial London is sufficient to cause an Irishman's " brogue " to 
 be alluded to. Only once or twice does a rhyme of Goldsmith 
 suggest a " brogue," — though in one of his early critical 
 efforts he assumed that "key" rhymed with "say" — ^whereas 
 in the works of Dryden, Pope, Addison and, indeed, almost 
 every English poet, Irish rhymes are to be found by the score. 
 But however this may be, both Burke and Goldsmith possessed 
 sufficient national traits to cause them to be looked on as 
 Irish types. Each of them was eminently a type of an Irish- 
 man whose abilities would be great enough to carry him on to 
 the highest pinnacle of the Temple of Fame, were these 
 abilities capable of being exercised independently of the con- 
 trol of certain impulses which do not tend to supreme success 
 in life. But to be an Irishman is to be impulsive, and the 
 impulsive man is the one who is nearly always right in his 
 intentions, but nearly always at a disadvantage in dealing with 
 a people who lose half the intermediate joys of life, but achieve 
 supremacy, through their possession of the power to conceal 
 their intentions and control their emotions. 
 
 But Burke and Goldsmith will ever remain in the estima- 
 tion of the world which owes so much to both of them, as two 
 of the greatest figures of the eighteenth century. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 "THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD" COMES ON THE SCENE 
 
 1763— 1764 
 
 These years spent by Goldsmith in ill-paid drudgery while 
 mingling on equal terms with men who were in easy circum- 
 stances^some of them were wealthy — form the most melan- 
 choly subject of review. The farm labourers on the Langton 
 estate were better housed and better fed than was this man of 
 education and genius, and so was the charwoman's son who 
 cleaned out the studio of Reynolds ; so, for that matter, was 
 Dr. Johnson's negro who tried (unsuccessfully) to keep his 
 rooms tidy. Here was this educated man of genius, with a 
 learned profession at his back, a man who was capable of 
 writing books that the world would cherish among the most 
 prized of those possessions which it has received from genius — 
 here he was compelled to scribble prefaces to worthless 
 volumes, and to compile stuff which no one wanted to read, 
 and all for the few]^shillings necessary to keep^"himself from 
 starvation. 
 
 We have glimpses of him going from one lodging to another. 
 He left Islington ^f or a time and shared a room with the butler 
 on the library staircase of the Temple, and thence for a short 
 space of ;time to a room in Gray's Inn ; and we find from 
 Newbery's methodical papers that he was now permitted only 
 to draw shillings in place of the guineas for which a few years 
 before he had promised to account. Relations between him- 
 self and Newbery hadlnot become actually strained, but they 
 were certainly straining. He tried to get work from Tonson, 
 who was becoming one of the great booksellers of the Strand, 
 and he went so far as to sign an agreement for a Chronological 
 History of the Lives of Eminent Persons of Great Britain and 
 
 Ireland, which was to be in two volumes, each to contain thjrty- 
 
 244 
 
''THE FICAR OF WAKEFIELD" 245 
 
 five sheets to be paid for at the rate of three guineas a sheet, 
 the complete copy''to beTldelivered^'' within two years. But 
 Dodsley, with whom the agreement was made, had stipulated 
 that^the author should receive one moiety of his remuneration 
 only when^he had jsupplied the copy for the last sheet. This 
 clause was, of course, fatal to the enterprise, so far as the author 
 was concerned. ,A glimpse which we catch of him at this 
 time, previous to his return to Mrs. Fleming's at Islington, 
 shows him exerting himself on behalf of Kit Smart, a sort of 
 poet, who is best known to fame by reason of Johnson's con- 
 fession that they had one trait in common. We have already 
 referred to it. They had both an aversion to clean linen. 
 The poet had married Newbery's step-daughter, and had 
 undoubtedly gone " stark staring mad," as Gray, years before, 
 had prophesied he should. But Goldsmith and Kit Smart 
 also had something in common. Within a few months of 
 each other, each had written the book for an oratorio. Smart's 
 was actually produced with music by Worgan, a well-known 
 musician, at the King's Theatre. Goldsmith got ten pounds 
 for the rights in his from Dodsley, but only two songs that it 
 contained were published until after the author's death. 
 
 So he was occupied all the time that he was running 
 into debt to Filby for the clothes he wore when mingling 
 with men to whom an extra coat meant nothing ; and, accord- 
 ing to BosweU, carrying on wordy arguments with Johnson, 
 and getting much the better of him too, although BosweU 
 did his best to prove the contrary. Of course we know 
 perfectly well that Johnson was really a brilliant monologist : 
 we have the evidence of the greatest men of his circle to 
 this effect, as we have also to the effect that Goldsmith 
 was slow, hesitating, and uncertain ; but, as we have already 
 said, if BosweU had contented himself with merely making 
 a statement of these facts he would have effected his pur- 
 pose, which he certainly failed to do when he trusted to 
 his own judgment to provide excerpts from their conver- 
 sation to prove the enormous superiority of Johnson. He 
 never quoted Johnson saying anything so wittily apt as 
 was Goldsmith's prediction of what a fable written by 
 Johnson would be : " you would make all the little fishes talk 
 like whales." 
 
246 t:he life of Oliver goldsmith 
 
 But beyond doubt Goldsmith must have been an agreeable 
 companion at all times, and no one liked better to be in his 
 company than Johnson. Still we venture to think that 
 Johnson's influence was a very unhappy one upon Goldsmith. 
 Since receiving his pension Johnson lived a life of complete 
 indolence, not rising until late in the day and showing him- 
 self too lazy to make even a decent toilet before he sallied 
 forth to play the part of dictator at a coffee house until 
 it was time for him to play the part of monarch of a tavern 
 circle. The effect of such an example of unbridled indolence 
 upon a man of the strongest proclivities toward idleness, must 
 have been very great and very demoralising. Johnson pro- 
 fessed to be desirous of leading Goldsmith into better courses 
 as regards personal habits ; and he did so too — for a while — 
 but surely it would have been more consistent with his lofty 
 aims if, instead of putting on a clean shirt and a new wig to 
 inflence Goldsmith upon the occasion of his first visit to Wine 
 Office Court, he had shown him an example of industry a 
 year or two later — an example of a man so devoted to his 
 profession of letters as to continue to practise it with inde- 
 fatigable zeal even though he was no longer dependent on it 
 for a living. Surely Johnson must have seen that, for a man of 
 Goldsmith's temperament, nothing could have been more 
 demoralising than to be associated with that habitual tavern- 
 spouting which practically constituted his daily life from the 
 moment he got his pension. 
 
 But the time was coming when Johnson's sincere friend- 
 ship for Goldsmith was put to the test and justified what the 
 latter had said of his nature : " He has now become miserable 
 and that insures the protection of Johnson." Goldsmith and 
 he had been exerting themselves on behalf of Kit Smart early 
 in 1764 and in April Mrs. Fleming received her old lodger 
 back at Islington. It would seem that he paid her a retaining 
 fee during his absence, for the first item in her midsummer 
 bill is for rent from Christmas to March 29, amounting to 
 ^i. lys. 6d. Now the bill up to November 8 had been 
 paid to Mrs. Fleming by Newbery, but it would seem that 
 the philanthropic bookseller suggested some new arrange- 
 ment that would not necessitate his own guarantee to Mrs. 
 Fleming ; for, one morning — according to Boswell, afternoon 
 
" THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD " 247 
 
 according to Mrs. Piozzi — ^Johnson received a letter from 
 the lodger saying that he was in great distress, and begging 
 him to come witlxout delay. " I sent him a guinea," Johnson 
 told Boswell, " 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 sixty pounds. 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." 
 
 That is the bald account of the incident. It seems rather 
 strange that at the time Johnson did not refer to the book as 
 " his novel," but only " a novel." There can be no doubt 
 that it was the Vicar of Wakefield, but according to Boswell, 
 Johnson referred to it as if the book had never been heard of. 
 This may have been, however, on account of his telling the 
 story between the time of the incident and the publication of 
 the novel. 
 
 At any rate here was the crisis, and it brought the man to 
 meet it. But the odd thing is that, although Johnson and 
 Goldsmith must have been together many times during the 
 previous three months, not a word had the former breathed 
 of his being engaged in writing a novel. Not a word about it 
 had been uttered in the hearing of any of the members of the 
 Club. A most extraordinary instance of reticence on the part 
 of an author and of want of curiositv on the part of his friends, 
 most of whom were supposed to be mterested in literary work. 
 The novel was sprung upon Johnson ; but he does not seem 
 to have shown any surprise. One might fancy that he would 
 have held up his hands in astonishment, when this proof of 
 the versatility of his friend was revealed to him, and that he 
 would have held them still higher when the merit of this 
 novel was revealed to him ; and that he would afterwards have 
 
248 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 talked to his friends about it, and that they would have con- 
 gratulated the author, and continued to inquire about it — when 
 it was to be published — what were the characters in it — 
 what was it about — was the scene laid in England or Ireland, 
 or had he placed it in Holland — the countless questions that 
 are put to an author who is making a new and startling depar- 
 ture in his work. But we do not hear anything more about the 
 novel until it was published fifteen months later. Nobody 
 knew anything about it and nobody cared anything about it. 
 But there is another remarkable point in this connection, 
 and this is the unemotional way in which Goldsmith received 
 Johnson's announcement that he had sold the book and, 
 moreover, brought him the purchase money in his hand. This 
 is the most incredible part of the whole story — that Johnson 
 should have made no allusion to Goldsmith's reception of the 
 welcome news and the still more welcome money. Can any 
 one believe that Johnson gave only such a bald outline of the 
 transaction as Boswell printed ? We, at any rate, decline to 
 credit it. We decline to believe that Goldsmith, on suddenly, 
 and at what must have seemed to him the lowest point touched 
 by the ebb tide of his fortunes, becoming possessed of a larger 
 sum of money than he had ever before had in his possession, 
 and simultaneously being made aware of his power to write a 
 book which — when properly negotiated — should be worth so 
 much money, simply counted the cash, paid the bailiffs and 
 began to rate his landlady for having so ill-used him. No, we 
 may rest quite certain that Goldsmith was overwhelmed 
 with emotion — that he confessed to Johnson that he had 
 never before had so much money in his hand at one time, and 
 that he believed the turning point in his fortunes had now 
 come. We may be sure of this, and also that Johnson would 
 be sufficiently moved by the expression of his gratitude and of 
 his joy at being relieved as if by a miracle from the arrest, to 
 touch upon this element in his narration of the transaction. 
 If Johnson told the story at all he told it well and he told it 
 fully. It was Boswell who reduced it to that absurdly bald 
 outline which he printed as if it came directly from Johnson's 
 lips ; and his reason for doing so was to prevent his readers 
 from thinking that Johnson concerned himself with Goldsmith's 
 affairs in any but the most casual way, or that he was to any 
 
" THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD " 249 
 
 extent interested in the man. He did not want his readers to 
 be interested in Goldsmith, as he believed they would have 
 been if he had made anything but the barest story out of 
 the material at his disposal. 
 
 And then comes the most remarkable point of all in this 
 connection : he does not record Johnson's having said a single 
 word to him respecting the part that he, Johnson, had played 
 in a transaction of precisely the same character — down to the 
 very bottle of wine — some years earlier ; only he had then 
 appeared in the role of the arrested debtor and Samuel 
 Richardson had played the part of the later Johnson. 
 
 This story was told by George Steevens in the European 
 Magazine, and Croker printed it in a note in his edition of 
 Boswell's Life of Johnson. Talking of Richardson, Johnson 
 said, " I remember writing to him from a sponging house, 
 and was so sure of my deliverance through his kindness and 
 liberality, that before his reply was brought, I knew that I 
 could afford to joke with the rsacal who had me in custody, 
 and did so over a pint of adulterated wine, for which at that 
 instant I had no money to pay." 
 
 The morality of the transaction of his making merry over 
 a bottle of wine on the strength of another man's paying for it, 
 was, Mr. Augustine Birrell remarks, " like his linen, a trifle 
 dingy." 
 
 We wonder if Johnson did really omit to tell Boswell this 
 story in connection with the other. We cannot believe that 
 he would teU it to Steevens apropos of Richardson, and not 
 even hint at it to Boswell, when telling him of the Goldsmith 
 incident. Really, were it not for the fact that his account of 
 the latter is corroborated in some measure by Hawkins and 
 Mrs. Piozzi, we should be very much inclined to say, from his 
 way of telling it — his omitting every detail of interest, and 
 making Johnson talk in it of " a novel " instead of " the novel 
 entitled The Vicar of Wakefield" that there never had been 
 more than one story of a literary man being under arrest, and 
 sending to his friend to help him out of his difficulty, mean- 
 while indulging in a bottle of wine. 
 
 But the scene undoubtedly took place, and it is one of the 
 best remembered of aU in the whole panorama illustrative of 
 the romance of authorship. It has been treated pictorially 
 
2SO 7HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 more than once, and at least once it has been put upon the 
 stage. But so far as an actual record of the transaction is 
 concerned, there is no trace of any in existence. Johnson 
 enters, asks Goldsmith if he has anything to sell. Nothing, is 
 the reply. What, nothing ? Well, nothing except a novel 
 at which he must have been working without a word to any 
 one — without even approaching a publisher with a view to 
 obtain an advance of ten pounds on it. The MS. is taken out 
 of a drawer. Johnson reads some pages, is struck with their 
 merit, hurries off with it to a bookseller, and hurries back with 
 sixty pounds as the price of it. Goldsmith pays the bailiffs, 
 pockets the balance, and rates his landlady. He seems to 
 think no more of the novel, and the purchaser appears to 
 share his forgetfulness, for he puts it into a drawer and there 
 it lies for over a year, having apparently passed out of John- 
 son's memory as well. He may have been struck with its 
 merit at first, but apparently the impression passed away, 
 and we do not hear that he ever referred to it again previous 
 to its publication, except to tell Boswell the story of its dis- 
 posal. In spite of this, however, we do not think so poorly 
 of Johnson as to believe that his interest in the novel ceased 
 when he had put the money into the author's hand. We 
 are convinced that he spoke of it constantly in the hearing 
 of Boswell ; but Boswell aimed only at writing the Life of 
 Johnson; the Life of Goldsmith was outside his range of 
 vision. 
 
 It seems very likely that Goldsmith at once got together 
 his chattels and left Islington for London. As for his land- 
 lady, Mrs. Fleming, all that we hear of her afterwards is that 
 Newbery left her ^50 in his will, and that Hogarth painted 
 her portrait ; but whether as a commission from the lady 
 herself or merely as memento for Goldsmith, it is difficult to 
 say. As a matter of fact the picture may owe its name simply 
 to the imagination of an auctioneer. It cannot be doubted 
 that the portrait of an eighteenth century hard-faced woman 
 in Sunday finery and with a determined hand resting on a 
 table, appeals to people more when it is catalogued GoU- 
 smith's Landlady than it would if simply marked Portrait of a 
 Lady. She deserves a kindly word. Her lodger must have 
 been a great trial to her at times, especially if he persisted in his 
 
'"THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD'' 251 
 
 flute practice at unseasonable hours, and extinguished his 
 candle at night by throwing a slipper at it. 
 
 He left Islington ; and he took with him another manu- 
 script. It was in verse, and it was entitled 7he traveller. He 
 had been writing at it intermittently for about nine years, but 
 he had now finished it and he did not leave it behind him when 
 he shook off the dust of Islington from his feet and went to 
 his side of the attic in the Temple, which he shared with 
 Mr. Jeffs, the butler. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 "THE TRAVELLER" 
 1764—1765 
 
 There is no record of his having said anything to his friends 
 about being engaged on a poem — a fact which is not particularly 
 helpful to any one who is anxious to believe to the full Mr. 
 BosweU's statements as to his vanity. He was regarded by most 
 of the members of the Club as having ideas of his own about 
 poetry, and he had now and again written about poems ; but 
 every one knows that it is one thing to have ideas about poetry 
 and quite another to write poetry ; it is one thing to write 
 about poems and quite another to write a poem. Percy 
 knew that he was greatly interested in ballads — the English 
 woodland form of the stately formal French growth : an exotic 
 even in France — and they had chatted together quite recently 
 upon this subject. But no one guessed that he had actually 
 ventured upon a serious effort in verse. 
 
 One of his friends suspected it, however, for on calling 
 upon Goldsmith, Mr. Reynolds, the painter, found him with 
 a pen in his hand and a sheet of manuscript with the ink stiU 
 wet upon it. He had turned away from his desk for a moment 
 to give some hints to his dog on the correct way of balancing 
 a lump of sugar on his nose, when in the heraldic attitude 
 rampant, which in a dog is called " begging." He had taught 
 the dog to beg, and was now alternating his instruction with 
 the writing of an immortal poem. Reynolds glanced over 
 his shoulder and read the lines : 
 
 B7 sports like these are all their cares beguiled : 
 The sports of children satisfy the child. 
 
 He thought the couplet very appropriate to the situation, 
 and said as much ; but if he fancied he had a clue to the work 
 
"THE TRAVELLER" 253 
 
 that had been engrossing the attention of his friend for some 
 time, he failed to follow it up. Indeed, upon more than one 
 occasion Goldsmith had confessed that he understood in 
 the amplest way the relationship that the writing of poetry- 
 bore to the earning of daily bread. 
 
 But having finished the poem, he brought it to Newbery, 
 who had the courage to purchase it. Then Johnson was let 
 into the secret, and having read the proof-sheets, not only 
 spoke very highly of the poem, but actually offered to improve 
 it. The author, out of the exuberance of his humility, 
 accepted his kind offer, and if Johnson did not quite keep 
 his promise, he at any rat^ added some lines to it, and, the 
 proofs being passed for the press, sat down and wrote a short 
 notice of the poem for the Critical Review, which appeared 
 simultaneously with the publication of The Traveller ; 
 or, A Prospect of Society, a Poem by Oliver Goldsmith, 
 M.B., on December 19, 1764. The price was one shilling 
 and sixpence. 
 
 The second page of the booklet contained another example 
 of what Hawkins called " this idiot in the affairs of the world," 
 putting aside his chances of making his venture a success by 
 a dedication to a person of position and influence ; it bore 
 a dedication " To the Reverend Henry Goldsmith," his 
 brother, and this was actually of an apologetic character. 
 
 " I am sensible that the friendship between us can acquire 
 no new force from the ceremonies of a Dedication ; and 
 perhaps it demands an excuse thus to prefix your name to 
 my attempts, which you decline giving with your own. But 
 as a part of this Poem was formerly written to you from 
 Switzerland, the whole can now, with propriety, be only 
 inscribed to you." 
 
 It is pleasant to have no reason to believe otherwise than 
 that this dedication was received by the curate of Kilkenny 
 West, Co. Longford, Ireland, in the spirit in which it was 
 offered ; and that he had no arriere fensee in accepting immor- 
 tality in association with an " attempt " to which his name 
 was prefixed. 
 
 The Traveller is not a poem which demands any detailed 
 criticism at this time or in this place. It is a poem which is 
 more full of poetry than of any other element. It is a poem 
 
254 'J^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 which one reads in a quarter of an hour and remembers for the 
 rest of one's life. It is a poem that may be read without giving 
 the most sensitive ear a single jar in any line from the beginning 
 to the end. What might have been, and what we think it 
 very likely it would be in the hands of a modern poet — a 
 rhymed version of a lecture at a panorama — becomes under 
 the touch of Goldsmith the panorama itself. It never, by- 
 phrase or by thought, falls for an instant below the level of 
 high achievement. The only poem to be compared with 
 it in English in this respect is Gray's Elegy. But while the 
 Elegy is a monotone. The Traveller is a symphony ; while the 
 Elegy is a poem written by a man on a plain, The Traveller 
 is a poem written by a man on a mountain. In the one 
 the horizon is felt to be restricted ; in the other it is felt 
 to be wide. A comparison between the two poems is only 
 possible by one's confining oneself to a consideration of the 
 exquisite finish of both, and of the impression produced 
 upon the mind by an admirable work of art. In neither is 
 there observable the slip of the graver ; but in the Elegy we 
 are conscious in almost every line of the graver's work ; in 
 The Traveller we are conscious only of the effect which it 
 achieves. 
 
 The Traveller is one of the few poems in which elaboration 
 does not become laborious, and in which melody does not 
 convey to a reader accustomed to feats in technique an im- 
 pression of weakness. There are no feats of technique in 
 any of its expressive lines ; and the fact that such a conclusion 
 must be come to is in itself evidence of the greatest technical 
 feat of all, which indeed it is. A poem in which we are accus- 
 tomed to have " fine lines " pointed out to us is usually one 
 whose fineness of phrase is too apparent to be perfect. The 
 best lines are those whose force is felt by a reader without 
 the need to strike him a blow between the eyes. A great 
 many of the most highly finished of modern poems have been 
 called striking, but one might easily fancy that those analysts 
 who call them so mean by the word little beyond a startling 
 succession of percussions. Modern culture in rhythm does 
 not mean a smooth road but one that is " bumpy " to a 
 degree. This would not matter if the poet were mounted 
 upon Pegasus in the air, but modern verse culture has clipped 
 
'"THE TRAVELLER'' 255 
 
 the wings of Pegasus, and as he bumps along the highway 
 the rider seems evermore to be calling out : 
 
 Dosn't thou 'ear my 'earse's legs, as they canters away ? 
 Proputty, proputty, proputty— that's what I 'ears 'em saay. 
 
 The bearing of all this upon the question of the technical 
 qualities of The Traveller is, we trust, obvious. The artistic 
 ideals of one century are not those of another ; and the ten- 
 dency of the last twenty-five years in poetry, as well as in 
 music, has been to startle a listener into thought, not to 
 lead a listener into a way of thinking, and certainly not to 
 grant one the " pleasing of a lute." Therefore a poem such 
 as this of Goldsmith's, which does not startle, may not appeal 
 very powerfully to a student of modern English verse. But 
 it does appeal to a much larger constituency — it could not 
 well appeal to a smaller — and the grace of its diction and the 
 limpid quality of its sentiment, quite apart from the real 
 poetical powers of the whole, have caused it to find its way 
 to the inmost life of more readers than almost any other 
 poem of the same type has reached. It is like The Deserted 
 Village, a poem for daily use — " for human nature's daily 
 food." English-speaking people could not get on without 
 the lines of The Traveller. Every day we hear of " a weary 
 waste expanding to the skies " ; the line has even been em- 
 ployed to describe the prolix speech of a statesman in aphelion. 
 ..^ My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee," has sent a thrill 
 of joy to the receiver of many a lover's letter from abroad. 
 To " learn the luxury of doing good " has won thousands for 
 deserving charities when tacked on to the statistics of a 
 " report " after a begging sermon. 
 
 These little things are great to little man, 
 
 has been applied indiscriminately to a variety of incidents of 
 life, from children to domestic accounts. The thought that 
 " Rocks, by custom, turn to beds of down " has, we are con- 
 vinced, prevented many suicides. " The paste-board triumph " 
 has done duty at many a general election, and " Winter 
 lingering chills the lap of May " has no chance of being 
 forgotten so long as the English language is spoken in the 
 climate of England. 
 
256 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 The effect produced by the publication of the poem— 
 the first work of Goldsmith to which his name was attached— 
 was not immediate, but its destiny was sure. It never re- 
 mained dormant, though for some months Mr. Newbery must 
 have had fears lest he had been too rash in producing a poem 
 dedicated to an Irish curate, with a reference to his emolu- 
 ments of " forty pounds a year " in the dedicatory letter. 
 But then it began to be talked about, and the booklet began 
 to move — it began to run off, and the first edition passed away 
 in a rush. A second, third, and fourth edition were called 
 for before August, and then it became known that a new 
 poet was in existence. That is how the English people know 
 that a new poet is born into the world : when they cannot, 
 after trying hard, resist buying his poem, they form a great 
 respect for him, and they measure his greatness by a scale of 
 editions. 
 
 The Traveller succeeded on its merits only. Johnson 
 frankly admitted that before its publication Goldsmith could 
 barely get a listening even among his own friends ; and when he 
 learned how the poem was selling, he pronounced it the best 
 that had appeared since the death of Pope. It seems a pity 
 that he did not say this in the notice he wrote of it in the 
 Critical Review. But to say so much was not reaUy to go 
 to any point of extravagant eulogy. The question that has 
 not yet been decided to the satisfaction of everybody is 
 whether Pope ever wrote a line of poetry in all his life ; and 
 aU the rest of the " poets " were only imitators of Pope, just 
 as he himself was an imitator of Dryden in all his ranges, 
 from the Pastorals to the Ode, Pope's Homer doing duty for 
 Dryden's Virgil. A great poet is like a great comet — ^he 
 drags behind him innumerable meteorites, which, luckily, 
 get fused before they can do any great harm. The heroic 
 metre of the early part of the eighteenth century is the easiest 
 of aU metres to be duU in ; and lacking the perfect balance — 
 the rise and relapse from the first to the second line of the 
 couplet preceding the semi-colon, which made Pope readable 
 and admirable as well — ^his followers were unreadable and 
 execrable. ChurchiU was the last of them. Byron called 
 him " the comet of a season," but he was never a comet, he 
 was only a meteorite — one of the " tail " of the great comet 
 
HE TRAVELLER" 2S7 
 
 Pope ; he gave but a whiz, and all was over ; he became 
 fused, and he mixed with the mirk in dust and ashes. The 
 other writers mounted the stilts on which Dryden and Pope had 
 stalked along, but their progress was what Chamier suggested 
 was meant hj Goldsmith's " slow " — " tardiness of locomotion." 
 Goldsmith had not the courage to forsake the heartless 
 heroic metre, but he had the ability to make a new thing 
 of it. The monotony of the measure seems always to have 
 been accepted as " classical," and the introduction at rare 
 intervals of the " needless Alexandrine " produced an effect 
 like that of the momentary kick-up of a tardy horse when 
 it gets a blow with a stick — a sudden spasmodic jog forward 
 before it falls back into its normal pace. The sulky stanza 
 of the conventional monody, employed by Dryden and Gray, 
 and indeed a host of other writers of distinction, was far less 
 monotonous than the continuous couplet form ; but when 
 Goldsmith set himself to the business of walking upon his 
 feet instead of on stilts, he showed of what varied cadences 
 even the heroic couplet was capable. Of course, he never played 
 fast and loose with it, as Keats did nearly half a century later, 
 ri-ansforming it utterly, and making it absolutely natural, 
 and, incidentally, so outraging the upholders of the conven- 
 tional that they stoned him with stones until he died. Gold- 
 smith was not one of the great masters of the magic of melody, 
 as Keats was, but he succeeded in both his poems in doing more 
 to humanise the anemic heroic metre than any writer of 
 his century had accomplished. The glitter in the lines of 
 The Traveller and The Deserted Village is the glitter of a 
 linipid flowing brook, not of the huge mirror in which one 
 seems to be looking when reading Windsor Forest. And that, 
 we venture to think, represents something — certainly not all 
 — of the difference between Goldsmith and, we will not say 
 simply Pope, but the others : he drew directly from Nature ; 
 they held their mirrors up to Nature — not in the sense of 
 Hamlet's advice — and noted the reflections on the surface. 
 It was through the adoption of the mirror system that Windsor 
 Forest became a shrubbery, with a rustic arch here and there, 
 built up of poles sawn into lengths and nailed together 
 according to scale ; and that the " refulgent lamp of light " 
 passage in Pope's English masterpiece of hybrid culture — 
 
258 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 Homer in an English greenhouse — makes schoolboys who 
 have ground through a book or two of Homer, grin. 
 
 It is interesting to learn that the manuscript of The 
 Traveller was one mass of excisions, interlineations, and sub- 
 stitutions. The poet showed himself to be one of the most 
 fastidious of writers. It took Gray three years to give an 
 air of laborious perfection to his Elegy. It took Goldsmith 
 eight to impart an air of spontaneity to The Traveller. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 "EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY" AND SOMETHING ELSE 
 
 1765— 1766 
 
 That Goldsmith should be capable of writing such a poem as 
 The traveller surprised a good many people, including several 
 of his associates at the Club, some of whom were (as it seems 
 to us) so short-sighted as to assume that Johnson had prac- 
 tically written the whole. We have already referred to the 
 discussion as to the meaning of the last word of the first line 
 — slow. Goldsmith's hesitation in replying to Chamier's 
 foolish inquiry, and Johnson's promptitude in giving the 
 correct meaning, may have induced the belief that the latter had 
 the best of reasons for knowing better than Goldsmith what 
 he meant. But Johnson would not hear of such a thing, and 
 Reynolds, who did a little painting from Nature himself, never 
 entertained the idea. He knew Goldsmith and he knew Johnson. 
 
 But Johnson really was, in spite of his denials, a collabo- 
 rator with the author ; he contributed nine lines to the 
 poem. They are by no means the best that it contains ; but 
 they do not stand out conspicuously as being the worst. They 
 are well grafted on to the parent stem. 
 
 Boswell was absent from London while the poem was 
 being discussed ; he was playing the fool on the Continent 
 and he came home to play the fool, dressing himself up in 
 the national costume of Corsica, that island of brigands — 
 though the greatest of all had not yet been born there — ^to give 
 himself a chance of getting into the room with Pitt, to whom 
 he imparted the story of his life and from whom he begged 
 the favour of a letter now and again. Of course, Boswell 
 assumed -that Johnson had written the poem from beginning 
 to end ; and it is plain that years had passed before he accepted 
 Johnson's denial. He kept harping on this string at every 
 
 259 
 
26o 1:HE life of OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 opportunity, and like the wolf in conversation with the lamb 
 in the fable, he said in substance, " Though you may not 
 have written it with your own hand, yet it never would have 
 been written but for you." 
 
 " He imitates you, sir," he cried petulantly when Johnson 
 was praising The Traveller. " Why no, sir," replied Johnson. 
 " Jack Hawksworth is one of my imitators, but not Goldsmith. 
 Goldy, sir, has great merit." This is not enough for his 
 persecutor. " But, sir, he is much indebted to you for 
 getting so high in the public estimation," said Boswell. 
 " Why, sir," responded Johnson, " he has perhaps got sooner 
 to it by his intimacy with me." 
 
 But as an advertising agent no one could surpass Johnson. 
 He actually brought the poem to Reynolds's house and read 
 it through to the painter's sister. She was a flighty person, 
 a maiden of thirty-seven, who seems to have lived perpetually 
 wondering what some of her brother's friends would do 
 next. " Well," she exclaimed, when Johnson's own sonorous 
 lines had, we may be sure, fuU justice done to them at the 
 close, " Well, I never more shall think Dr. Goldsmith ugly." 
 She had thought him ugly previously, though her brother, 
 who has been the means of making us acquainted with more 
 of the beauty of his century than have all the men of his time, 
 and may have known something of its ugliness as well, did 
 not agree with her. 
 
 Miss ReyBolds's comment was a delightful one : it repre- 
 sents the fairy-tale transformation of the yellow dwarf into 
 the handsome young prince. Such is one of the feats of the 
 wizardry of poetry. More commonplace, but perhaps all 
 the more scholarly, was Bennet Langton's criticism. " There 
 is not a bad line in The Traveller — not one of Dryden's care- 
 less verses," he remarked four years after Goldsmith's death. 
 Charles Fox was one of the earliest of its admirers, and Burke, 
 although being whirled about in one of those miniature mael- 
 stroms which were always stirring up mud from the profound 
 depths of the seas of jobbery and corruption which went by 
 the name of politics, had still time to read the first work to 
 which his fellow countryman had put his name. Burke was 
 on the eve of a triumph of his own, and when all England was 
 applauding his first speeches in the House of Commons, all 
 
''EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY" 261 
 
 the members of the Club joined with Goldsmith in congratu- 
 lating him. " He has gained more reputation than perhaps 
 any man at his first appearance ever gained before. His 
 speeches have filled the town with wonder," wrote Johnson 
 to Langton. 
 
 The year 1765 was indeed a memorable one for the Club. 
 Goldsmith and Burke had become famous, Boswell obtained 
 his interview with the Prime Minister in the appropriate 
 costume of a brigand, and Johnson had made his footing 
 sure with the Thrales at Streatham and had had the 
 degree of LL.D. conferred upon him, honoris causa, by 
 the University which had given Goldsmith his B.A. But 
 he never called himself anything but " Mr. " to the day of 
 his death. There were some movings also : Johnson had taken 
 a house in Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, and Goldsmith had 
 shifted to better rooms in the same part of the Temple where 
 he had been for about a year, and Mr. Jeffs, the butler, had 
 to look out for another companion. 
 
 The author of The Traveller considered himself justified 
 also in hiring a man-servant, whose honesty he put to an 
 unjustifiable test by leaving his money lying about his room. 
 For obvious reasons, however, we are not led to think that 
 the man deserved to be highly commended for resisting 
 temptation in such a form. 
 
 The servant was probably hired at the suggestion of 
 Reynolds, who advised Goldsmith to make one more attempt 
 to obtain a practice as a physician ; and a man-servant was 
 as necessary an auxiliary to the carrying out of this scheme 
 as were the purple silk small clothes, the scarlet roquelaire, 
 buttoned close under the chin, the professional wig, and the 
 gold-headed cane. He was now invariably referred to as 
 Doctor Goldsmith, even in the booksellers' documents, and 
 it had been impressed upon him that, with the assumption 
 of professional dignity, he must give up any further attend- 
 ance at those Bohemian haunts where he had been accustomed 
 to enjoy himself. In the volume of Essays which he pub- 
 lished this year — ^we have already quoted a part of the preface 
 — ^he had been induced to make some changes which the 
 booksellers thought needful in appealing to the five-shilling 
 public from the threepenny. It was understood that the 
 
262 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 book-buying public would be scandalised to come across any 
 suggestion that the author had attended such plebeian resorts 
 as White Conduit Gardens ; so in the essay referring to this 
 place, " the Park " was substituted. Other alterations of this 
 sort were also made. But it was one thing for him to make 
 such changes to suit the susceptibilities of readers, but quite 
 another for him to relinquish aU the joys of the vulgar places 
 themselves. " In troth," he said to Cooke, complaining 
 bitterly of having to give them up, " here am I shut out of 
 several places where I used to play the fool very agreeably." 
 But he soon found out that locality has got very little to 
 do with the delights of playing the fool. One may enjoy 
 them in quite good society as well as in the humblest ; and 
 the way he set about playing the fool was in the way most 
 dangerous for his reputation. He played the fool just too 
 convincingly. His nationality had not changed with his 
 prosperity ; and so he continued giving grave imitations of 
 Johnson's gait and manner, and people about him fancied 
 that he was in earnest and not in jest ; he continued leading 
 people on to explain to him that some remark which he had 
 made was absolutely silly, while he pretended that he could 
 not for the life of him see the force of the explanation. He 
 fancied that he was making fools of these people ; and no 
 doubt he had many a hearty laugh at the ease with which 
 he had taken them in ; and he would have laughed quite 
 as heartily could he have seen them laying their heads together 
 and declaring that of all the slow-minded idiots they had 
 ever met he was the most eminent. Only a few of his asso- 
 ciates saw what he was doing, and they have recorded their 
 impression that he was diverting himself by trying how far 
 he could go in enforcing his stupidity upon others. But 
 their testimony to this effect goes for nothing when placed 
 by the side of that of the people whom he had imposed upon. 
 People prefer not to believe that they have been made fools 
 of by the man whom they take for a fool ; they would a great 
 deal rather assume that any one else is the fool ; and they are 
 quite right. Goldsmith had only himself to blame for his 
 employment of Irish idioms when living in London. Only 
 there were some occasions when his friends had no excuse for 
 allowing themselves to be taken in. 
 
''EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY 263 
 
 But there was one man who now sought his acquaintance 
 and must have had many a long laugh at his tricks ; for he had 
 had some experience of his fellow-countrymen, the Irish, and 
 their ways. This was Robert Nugent, who afterwards became 
 Lord Clare. He belonged to a different type of Irishman 
 from that among which Goldsmith must be classed. There 
 was no subtlety about his humour, it was broad and jovial, 
 and made up in heartiness for its want of point. He invited 
 Goldsmith to visit him at one of his country seats. He had 
 been married three times, and had done very well for himself 
 by those transactions. His first wife had brought him a great 
 deal of money, his second several estates, and his third had 
 borne him a daughter. This daughter was not quite fourteen 
 when she made the acquaintance of Goldsmith, and they 
 soon got upon a jocular footing. The girl played practical 
 jokes upon him, and he had a large store of fun to draw upon 
 for her entertainment ; and one may be sure that when he 
 assumed his gravest manner and pretended, as it is said he did 
 elsewhere, that he could not for the life of him make out why 
 people at the table did not laugh when he had said that the 
 peas should be sent to Hammersmith because that was the 
 way to make them green, when they had roared at another 
 man's saying the same thing, only making the merest difference 
 in his answer, saying " That's the way to Turn'em green," 
 the girl went into fits. 
 
 But never did Goldsmith so play the fool as when he set 
 out to work up a practice as a physician. It is said that he 
 actually worked it up to the extent of one patient, a lady 
 belonging to the good old family of the Sidebothams. But 
 though he might have worked up this illustrious connection 
 to a highly remunerative point, he failed to do so, owing to the 
 patient's having a favourite apothecary whom she insisted on 
 calling in to consultation. In spite of the reputation as a poet 
 which The Traveller had given him, he found that he was stiU 
 at the bottom of the ladder as a medical practitioner ; he declined 
 to consult with the apothecary and the lady dismissed him. 
 
 It might have been worse — especially for the lady. 
 
 Topham Beauclerk was present when Goldsmith told the 
 story of his treatment, and declared that he would never 
 again give medical advice even to his best friends. 
 
264 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 " Quite right, doctor," said Beauclerk. " Whenever you 
 undertake to kill,|let it only be your enemies." 
 
 The work which he was compiling for Newbery was 
 entitled J Survey of Experimental Philosophy. Contrary to 
 what one might suppose, it was not illustrative of his experience 
 as a practitioner. He got sixty guineas out of it. It is 
 impossible to say what other sums he earned to pay his extra 
 expenses, though Newbery's explicit accounts teU us how 
 much he borrowed. The chances are that Newbery kept 
 him pretty busy after the success of the poem. That was 
 where the system of advances benefited the bookseller. " For 
 which I promise to account " appears pretty frequently over 
 the signature of Goldsmith, and it may be taken for granted 
 that so excellent a business man as Mr. Newbery the elder 
 made him account for every penny, and got good value for 
 his money. The system, which reaUy was a negation of all 
 system, naturally prevented the borrower from being able 
 to make a bargain for anything. But then it may be said that 
 if Goldsmith had not begun every year with a balance against 
 him in Newbery's books, he would never have done any work. 
 But would this have mattered so much, considering what 
 sort of work he was compelled to do — ^his Survey of Experi- 
 mental Philosophy, his Selected Poems for Toung Ladies, and 
 the like ? We could quite easily resign ourselves to be without 
 these if only we had in their stead a few more original poems 
 and three or four novels. It is heart-breaking to think of 
 what the man proved himself to be capable and then to read 
 the list of the work which was put into his hands to do. New- 
 bery's treatment of him may have been just and even generous, 
 but to set him to do the work that he did was like putting 
 Botticelli on to paint the outside of a gasonfeter. 
 
 It was when he was in the middle of his Experimental 
 Philosophy that the younger Newbery, nephew to John, 
 seemed suddenly to remember that he had paid sixty pounds 
 for the manuscript of a novel which had lain in his desk for 
 over a year. It would appear that the transaction had faded 
 from Goldsmith's mind as well as from Johnson's, for we do 
 not hear that the fact of Newbery's having the book " in 
 hand " was ever mentioned between them. It might be 
 thought that the author would be full of eagerness for the 
 
''EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY" 265 
 
 publication of his first attempt at a novel, and that the eminent 
 critic who had made himself aware of its merit and who had 
 recommended it to the publisher, would retain sufficient 
 interest in the book to make some inquiry respecting it. 
 Both Johnson and Goldsmith were daily coming in contact 
 with men — ^Percy, Cooke, Hawkins and others, leaving Bos- 
 weU out of the question altogether — ^who would certainly 
 have recorded any conversation that had reached them 
 respecting Goldsmith's novel during the year that Newbery 
 had it in his possession ; but we do not hear that its name had 
 ever been mentioned in their circle, or that Newbery's plans 
 in regard to it had ever been alluded to. And this being so, 
 the advertisement in the St. Jameses Chronicle that " In a 
 few days wiU be published, in two volumes, twelves, price 
 six shillings bound or five shillings sewed, The Vicar of Wake- 
 field, a tale. Supposed to be Written by Himself," cannot 
 have attracted any particular attention. 
 
 We begin to have our doubts as to the business capacity 
 of either of the Newberys, when we know of the book lying 
 in the purchaser's desk for a full year, and then of the adver- 
 tisement being printed without the name of the author being 
 mentioned, although the publication of The Traveller the 
 previous year had given him some reputation. Indeed there 
 is much that is left to the imagination in regard to the pro- 
 duction of The Vicar of Wakefield, especially as some account- 
 books of Collins, of Salisbury, the printer of the novel, contain 
 some entries which suggest that he was the part owner of 
 the copyright. 
 
 At any rate the book was published on March 27, 1766, 
 and a second edition was called for in May ; a third followed 
 within a short enough time to make its success apparent ; but it 
 would be impossible to say that it created the extraordinary 
 impression upon the public that was produced by the pub- 
 lication of Fanny Burney's Evelina nine years afterwards. 
 We know what Johnson thought of the latter book, thanks, 
 not to Boswell, who really did not trouble himself much 
 about literary matters — contenting himself, happily, with 
 social amenities — but to Miss Burney herself, who not only 
 kept an excellent diary, but also wrote long and interesting 
 letters to her friends. The town went mad over Evelina, 
 
266 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 as it has done now and again over a book which makes but 
 a languid appeal to readers at a later date ; and Johnson went 
 mad with the town. But he certainly was quite sane over 
 The Vicar of Wakefield. It is clear that he thought it an 
 ordinary performance, in spite of the fact of his recommending 
 it to Francis Newbery. But, for that matter, Goldsmith 
 himself had no exalted opinion of its merits ; for although 
 he had plenty of time to revise it, he took no pains with it 
 in this respect. When asked some time after its publication 
 how he could have been so careless about it when he was not 
 hurried in its production, he replied that no matter what 
 extra trouble he might have taken with it, he would never 
 have received more than had been originally paid for it. 
 This shocking explanation proves pretty conclusively that 
 the author regarded it with rather more indifference than he 
 did his ordinary hack work. It was only when he set about 
 printing a poem that he laboured day by day and year by 
 year to bring it as near to perfection as was possible by a nice 
 choice of words and the most exquisite finish in the matter 
 of style. No one indeed seemed to think much of The Vicar 
 of Wakefield and its prospects, for on the day the second 
 edition was published, the elder Newbery, who undoubtedly 
 had a share in the profits, refused to honour a bill for fifteen 
 guineas drawn upon him by the author. Nobody except 
 the general public appeared to think much of the performance 
 at first, but after some editions had been sold out, it came 
 to the ears of the critics that the book was a good one, and 
 then the critics began to talk about it. A long time had 
 elapsed, however, before Johnson said what he reaUy thought 
 of it, and then the most that Boswell could remember 
 was in regard to its cash value. It was not cheap at ^60, he 
 thought, considering that Goldsmith had not at the time of 
 its sale published his poem. To be sure, if he had retained 
 it until The Traveller had made him famous, he might, 
 Johnson thought, have got double the money for it. He may 
 have shown good judgment in his appraisement ; but at the 
 same time it can scarcely be doubted that the Newberys — 
 after the lapse of a year or two — came to the conclusion that 
 they had got the book cheap, and we rather incline to the 
 belief that most persons will be in cordial agreement with 
 
''EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHT'' 267 
 
 them on this point. We seem to hear the elder Newbery — 
 excellent business man that he was — talking over the rash 
 purchase of his nephew at the moment, and enunciating the 
 admirable business principle of the man in Le Genre de Mon- 
 sieur Poirrier : " If you had only waited till his dinner-time 
 you could have got it for half the price." Beyond a doubt, 
 if Francis Newbery had only waited until the author had 
 been carried off to a sponging-house, he could have got the 
 book for half the price it actually cost him. Mr. Austin 
 Dobson, in his delightful study of Goldsmith published in 
 the " Notable Authors " series, gives a list of all the editions 
 of The Vicar of Wakefield up to the date at which he wrote, 
 and almost every year since then has brought another edition ; 
 so, taking everything into account, to say that £100,000 has 
 been made by publishers and artists out of the book is not 
 to go too far. Boswell's story about Goldsmith's having told 
 him that he had once sold a novel — again not the novel — for 
 ^^400, is too ridiculous to be credited even by the most ardent 
 believers in the excellence of his memory. But what would 
 he have said if Goldsmith had boasted to him that he had written 
 a novel out of which ^^ 100,000 would eventually be made ? 
 
 The Vicar of Wakefield, like The Traveller and The Deserted 
 Village, is a book which English-speaking people cannot do 
 without. It enters into their daily life — in the Senate, at 
 the Bar, in the pulpit, in the daily newspaper. Its characters 
 have been used to illustrate innumerable incidents, and its 
 incidents have been used to illustrate innumerable characters. 
 Its phraseology is that of to-day, because every generation since 
 the book appeared has quoted its phrases, so that now we can 
 no more do without them than we could do without Hamlet. 
 They have become part of the language of every-day life. 
 
 " Pray, sir, what is a Branghton ? " cried Boswell when he 
 wished to know whether Johnson meant to compliment him 
 or otherwise — he rather fancied it was otherwise, but he was 
 not quite sure. " Pray, sir, what is a Branghton ? " and all 
 the table at that coUation at Streatham House roared with 
 laughter — all except the little authoress of Evelina, who sat 
 there blushing. 
 
 " Pray, sir, what is a Branghton ? " one might inquire 
 to-day at any middle-class coUation, without causing so much 
 
268 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 as a laugh. Who remembers anything to-day of the unpleasant 
 Mr. Branghton of Evelina ? 
 
 But if any one were to ask, " Pray, sir, who was Farmer 
 Flamborough ? " a reply would be quickly forthcoming from 
 the youngest of the girls. 
 
 Evelina is still read, but only as Clarissa Harlowe is 
 read, only as Joseph Andrews is read — not for entertainment 
 but as a study in the literature of the eighteenth century. 
 Average readers, when they have spent an hour over these, 
 feel that it should be accounted to them for righteousness; 
 and when they are told that people once went mad over 
 Evelina, they feel — unless they are hypocrites who " austerely 
 talk " of the beauty of eighteenth-century romances — ^that 
 madness must have been in the family. But what about 
 The Vicar of Wakefield F Is there any one who has not read 
 it ? Is there any one who does not continue to read it, not 
 as a study, but for pure pleasure ? It was accounted so interest- 
 ing that the reading of it on Sunday was prohibited in the 
 'sixties in households where any book with the long s in 
 the type was permitted, being presumably instructive and 
 SabbaticaUy dull. 
 
 But if we want to know what the book really is, let us try 
 to recoUect what we thought of it when we first got it into our 
 hands and read it through. How the spirit of the story took 
 hold of us before we had finished the first page — ^how we 
 puzzled over the Whistonian controversy, not understanding 
 what was its drift, but stiU feeling that there was something 
 quaint and " smileable " about it — ^how the catalogue of the 
 cumulative misfortunes made us feel a good deal more sym- 
 pathy for the family of Primrose than we ever did for the 
 family of Job under similar conditions — ^how the new and 
 more humble vicarage seemed a much more comfortable and 
 cosy place than the old one could have been — ^how we 
 feU in love with Olivia at first, and then with Sophia, when 
 we perceived that Miss Livy had the bad taste to be attracted 
 to a gentleman whose ideas of sport had led him to shoot a 
 blackbird and a "sitter" at that — ^how our hearts turned 
 again to her when it was revealed that her lover was really 
 the heartless scoundrel that we fancied he was — ^how oui 
 hearts burned in indignation at the fiendish machinations ol 
 
''EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY'' 269 
 
 the wicked squire in causing the arrest of the good old man — 
 and how the story had been so interesting that we felt com- 
 pelled by a sense of honour to take the bad with the good 
 and shirked nothing of the sermon to the prisoners ! Then the 
 reaction from the depths of misery to the heights of happiness, 
 and all with such delightful suddenness too, far more plausible 
 than the tale of the return of Job's luck — and what a satisfac- 
 tory finish — ^all except the French horn ; we felt a grudge 
 against that French horn, which threatened to redeem the 
 vileness of the wretch who had not only brought misery 
 upon the lovely heroine, but had shot a blackbird as well ! 
 How long did any of us hold out against the redeeming 
 influence of that French horn ? How many years had 
 passed before we began to smile at it ? 
 
 But what of the other humours of the story ? Well, 
 were they not all lost sight of under the influence of the story ? 
 Were we not too much delighted by the woodland to be able 
 to pay any attention to the trees ? Had we not a sense of the 
 humours of the story as one has a sense of the odours of the 
 woodland — odours of bluebells and meadowsweet and prim- 
 roses — ^primroses everywhere, so that we had no wish to 
 " peep and botanise," searching the undergrowth for everything 
 that grew there ? Was it not enough for us to feel that we 
 were breathing the atmosphere of the story and so had no 
 desire to separate the keen freshness of the humour from the 
 gracious perfume of the pathos ? 
 
 That is how to arrive at a just knowledge of the fascina- 
 tion in The Vicar of Wakefield which has made it beloved 
 for a century and a half by readers of many races — German 
 and French and Italian and Danish and Spanish, as well as 
 English. Only by recalling our flrst impressions on reading 
 it through can we understand its charm, and how the feeling 
 that it is altogether good must remain with aU who read it. 
 
 Of course, it is one of the most faulty of all the books that 
 have become immortal. Very interesting indeed it is to 
 look for faults in it. They do not need much searching for, 
 or any particular skill at that form of delving, to discover. 
 The " fable " is as old as the book of Job, and the " machi- 
 nery " is as ancient as the Book of Genesis. The story hangs 
 together upon a gross improbability, and the coincidences 
 
270 7HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 are as numerous as they are cheap. The interruption of the 
 action of the story by an account of the adventures of the 
 eldest son is as inartistic as anything in the Mneid or Paradise 
 Lost, and the characterisation is too typical to impart to a 
 reader a sense of individuality — at least, by all the rules for 
 measuring such a thing, it should be so, and if it is not so, 
 this fact does not negative the accuracy of the criticism. 
 
 Very interesting indeed it is to make a catalogue of its 
 surface blemishes and then to pursue the inquiry as to whether 
 the story takes hold of a reader by reason of its possessing such 
 faults or in spite of them. We rather incline to the belief 
 that the novel has become beloved from pole to pole owing 
 to the simplicity of its construction and the equal simplicity 
 of its characters. We have the same feeling for them as we 
 have for children. Looked at from the standpoint of worldly 
 wisdom, the Vicar himself is the greatest child in the family. 
 His smile is that of the child who has a great fancy for itself 
 at times, and feels proud of its position as the head of the 
 nursery. He looks on smilingly at the little games of the 
 other children, the chief of whom is Mrs. Primrose, and he 
 is very sly over the airs they give themselves — ^their foolish 
 little tricks — their bedecking themselves out in cheap finery, 
 decocting face-washes, and thinking to make an impression 
 on their neighbours by riding to church on the horses that 
 have been in the plough aU the week. We hear him murmur : 
 
 The sports of children satisfy the child 
 
 in an artless aside, and he will not take them seriously. He 
 chuckles over his own cleverness in spilling the face-wash — 
 the cleverness of the nursery — and he is quite good-humoured 
 in letting the others have their own way in the matter of 
 the painting of the family group. He enters with spirit 
 into the game — the usual children's game — of " dressing up " 
 — and he dresses up with the best of them. So he goes on 
 to the end ; and it is the childlike spirit that prevails, bringing 
 out the better nature of the criminals in the gaol, just as 
 the presence of a little child has been known to change the 
 character of a man — to purify a whole community of the 
 lawless. 
 
 If The Vicar of Wakefield had been worked out with more 
 
''EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY 271 
 
 consideration for probability, it would never, we think, have 
 reached the position that it now holds in the hearts of readers : 
 it would have been criticised, not beloved. 
 
 The personal note sounds through this book. Goldsmith 
 introduced his own experiences into many parts of it. Every 
 writer worthy of the name must embody his own experience, 
 or the result of his own observation, into his or her books ; 
 but few writers of fiction have gone so far in this way as 
 Goldsmith. In his essays, his plays, and his one romance, 
 we are conscious of coming in contact with Oliver Goldsmith 
 in many places. The difficulty is always to know where imagi- 
 nation takes the pen from the hand of actuality to continue 
 the story. A writer of fiction who is something of an artist 
 will be conscientious in respect of his art rather than in 
 respect of facts. He may have some one in his mind when he 
 starts to draw a character necessary for the working out of 
 the incidents of his story ; but if he is an artist he will have 
 no hesitation in adding imaginary traits to those with which 
 the live model is endowed, in order to make him more in- 
 teresting, and more lifelike as well, for he knows that, however 
 transparent the character of a man may be, it has its opaque 
 patches. A man invariably reserves something of himself — 
 something of his character, something of his nature — from 
 the eyes of the world ; and thus it is left to the imagination 
 of a painter, or that of a student of character who expresses 
 himself through the medium of a novel, to present a picture 
 that is really more true to nature than it would be if 
 he had confined himself to the reproduction on the canvas 
 or on the paper of the man as he usually appears bfefore the 
 world. The diffierence between a great painter and an 
 ordinary draughtsman is that the latter reproduces the features 
 as he sees them and as most people see them, the former 
 reveals the character beneath those features. 
 
 To say that Dr. Primrose was the Reverend Charles Gold- 
 smith would be to go too far ; but how far it is impossible 
 to tell. It seems pretty likely that Goldsmith had his father 
 before him all the time that he was composing the story ; but 
 then what about the father of the " Man in Black," and what 
 about the parson in The Deserted Village P These characters 
 are also said to have been taken from Charles Goldsmith, 
 
272 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 though they are far from being identical with Dr. Primrose. 
 Dr. Primrose may have been childlike in his unworldliness, 
 but he never suggested the unpractical beneficence of the 
 father of the " Man in Black." The truth seems to us to be 
 that Goldsmith put something of his father into every one 
 of the three characters, but took good care to put no more 
 into any one of them than suited his own purpose. And so 
 also he dealt with himself in his works. There was something 
 of himself in the " Man in Black," in the " philosophic vaga- 
 bond" George Primrose, and in Mr. Honeywood. To no 
 one of these characters are we justified in pointing, saying, 
 as some people have not hesitated to say, "That is Oliver 
 Goldsmith." Only one thing is certain : he never drew any 
 character with photographic inaccuracy. The depicting of 
 character is outside the province of the photographer. Gold- 
 smith's portraits are the work of a man of imagination as well 
 as observation. 
 
 Quite profitless it would be to pursue the question of how 
 far his mother went to the character of Mrs. Primrose, and 
 whether Olivia or Sophia was drawn from his cousin Jane 
 Contarine ; but it would be impossible to turn away from the 
 book without referring to the passionate appeal for the reform 
 of the penal laws, in that chapter where the good parson is 
 shown incarcerated and endeavouring to do something for his 
 fellow prisoners. The subject was one upon which Goldsmith 
 had written earnestly before ; and the arguments that he em- 
 ployed are precisely those which were used with effect when, 
 many years after his death, the question of these reforms were 
 agitating the country. But at the time Goldsmith wrote there 
 was no statesman bold enough or wise enough to set about the 
 task which he suggested. Indeed, public opinion was strongly 
 opposed to any reduction in the severity of the Statutes relating 
 to the protection of property. Gibbets were almost as plenti- 
 fully distributed through England as telegraph-poles are in 
 these days ; and the Black Mondays at Newgate sent scores 
 of wretches to Tyburn. As Walpole said in one of his letters, 
 England had become one vast shambles ; and yet Goldsmith's 
 voice was the solitary one that was raised in protest against 
 this shocking condition of things. 
 
 It seems strange that this serious chapter in The Vicar of 
 
''EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY" 273 
 
 Wakefield did not call for comment from Johnson and his 
 circle. Their neglect of it could not be attributed to any 
 want of interest in the subject on the part of the active recorder 
 to the group. Mr. BosweU knew more about the etiquette of 
 Tyburn than any amateur in England, with the exception, 
 perhaps, of George Selwyn. He attended executions pretty 
 much as we attend races ; but he never made a toil of a 
 pleasure as Selwyn did, allowing nothing to interfere with 
 his study of the dying agonies of the victims of a mon- 
 strous code, and retaining all the year round a special room 
 in a house overlooking the Edinburgh Grass Market where 
 the hangings took place. Mr. Selwyn was one of the most 
 natural of the wits of the period, and was devoted to children. 
 
 But not a word do we hear of any comment being made 
 by Goldsmith's friends upon that able chapter in his book, 
 though we are not spared the most trivial discussion that 
 took place upon some ridiculous question, such as whether 
 Hume had ever confessed to " a clergyman in the bishopric 
 of Durham " that he had never read the New Testament with 
 attention, or " whether a peasant can possibly be so happy as 
 a philosopher," so that the impression is forced upon us that 
 the members of this briUiant circle were more given to things 
 trivial than things serious. It may be, however, that Johnson 
 was so overcome by the labour entailed by producing his 
 edition of Shakespeare — ^he started his subscription list in 
 1756 and promised that subscribers should have the work 
 complete by the end of the following year, and no doubt he 
 meant to get the whole done by that time, so that Churchill 
 was not justified in calling him a cheat — that he thought it 
 prudent to relax for a while and approach nothing that 
 demanded serious attention. He was, after all, barely nine 
 years in arrears with his Shakespeare. 
 
 But Edmund Burke read the indictment of the penal code 
 in The Vicar of Wakefield, and it produced its impression 
 upon him. If he was not able to appraise the market value 
 of the novel so accurately as Johnson, he showed himself more 
 capable of appreciating its ethical as well as its economic value. 
 
 It seems rather remarkable that a book which is -■so 
 thoroughly English in its feeling and its homeliness, should be- 
 come so popular all over the Continent. Translation followed 
 
 s 
 
274 'J^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 translation into French and German ; Italian and Danish is 
 came later. One of the later Spanish editions was publi; 
 in Mexico in 1852. It was received with acclamation i: 
 countries and by some of the best-known men in Eui 
 Goethe has borne eloquent testimony to the effect it prod 
 upon him, when as a student in Strasburg, it was read to 
 by Herder. To the end of his long career he affirmed th 
 had been the means of changing his ideals of life and of drai 
 him closer to the truest literary forms. Among the Ga: 
 correspondence there is a lively letter from Madame Ri 
 boni relative to her many disappointments over the Vic 
 which had been promised to her by Burke but not sent ; 
 then telling of the supreme disappointment she experiencedv 
 at last she got a copy. Garrick had told her that it was no1 
 sort of book that she would care about, and she told him 
 his judgment was not at fault. She thought no more hi 
 of it than did Garrick. That was only to be expected ; 
 when it was translated into French it went into as n 
 editions as the original did in the land of its birth. Al 
 Coronation Charles X. found time to teU the Duke 
 Northumberland " that he had never known since the rest 
 tion of his family the pleasure he used to enjoy at Hart 
 House in reading The Vicar of Wake-field.'" 
 
 This interesting story was vouched for by the write 
 a review of Forster's Life in the Morning Chronicle 
 June 13, 1848. 
 
 The dramatic possibilities of the romance were i 
 clearly shown by the production in 1878 of a rather free I 
 lish adaptation by W. G. Wills at the Court Theatre, ui 
 the title of Olivia ; but twenty three years earlier a Fre 
 adaptation by MM. Eugene Nus and Tisserant was broi 
 on the stage of the Paris Odeon, and played with great 
 cess, the part of " Primerose, Vicaire de Wakefield " b 
 taken by Tisserant himself. Only to a few persons is it kn 
 that to the appearance of Miss Ellen Terry in Mr. Wills's | 
 and her exquisite impersonation of Olivia, is due the i 
 interesting of stage associations of our time. At the term 
 tion of the run of the piece at the Court Theatre, Miss I 
 Terry joined Henry Irving at the Lyceum, of which he 
 just become the lessee. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 IN THE MIDST OF FRIENDS 
 1766 
 
 of Wakefield, had scarcely given promise of the 
 :h it was to achieve, before the ill-feeHng of Kenrick 
 sd in regard to its author. In a letter which he 
 he ^t. Jameses Chronicle under the pseudonym 
 " he wrote : 
 
 e Reliques of Ancient Poetry, published about two 
 is a very beautiful little ballad called A Friar of 
 ■y. The ingenious author, Mr. Percy, supposes 
 mzas sung by Ophelia in the play of Hamlet were 
 me ballad well known in Shakespeare's time, and 
 
 stanzas, with the addition of one or two of his 
 meet them, he has formed the above-mentioned 
 subject of which is : A lady comes to a convent to 
 
 her lover, who has been driven there by her 
 be is answered by a friar that he is dead. 
 
 No, no, he is dead, gone to his death's bed, 
 He never will come again. 
 
 seps and laments her cruelty. The friar endeavours 
 her with morality and religion, but aU in vain ; 
 ;s the deepest grief and the most tender sentiment 
 at last the friar discovers himself. 
 
 And lo, beneath his gown of gray 
 My own true love appears. 
 
 rophe is very fine, and the whole joined with the 
 nderness, has the greatest simplicity ; yet though 
 
 m 
 
■l(> THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 lis ballad was so recently published in the Ancient Reliques, 
 )r. Goldsmith has been hardy enough to publish a poem 
 lUed The Hermit where the circumstances and catastrophe 
 re exactly the same, only with this difference, that the natural 
 mplicity and tenderness of the original are almost entirely 
 )St in the languid smoothness and tedious paraphrase of the 
 Dpy, which is as short of the merits of Mr. Percy's ballad as 
 ae insipidity of negus is to the genuine flavour of champagne." 
 
 This attempt to show Goldsmith in the character of a 
 lagiarist was no more happy than the other efforts made to 
 is detriment by the same contemptible person. The ballad 
 eginning " Turn, gentle Hermit of the Dale " was pubUshed 
 1 The Vicar of Wakefield ; it was the poem supposed to be 
 ipeated by Mr. BurcheU as an example of simplicity of 
 iction as contrasted with the overladen style of Acis and 
 'rdlatea ; but though this was its first appearance in public, 
 had been written some years before and printed by the 
 buntess of Northumberland with the title-page, '■'Edwin 
 nd Angelina, a baUad; by Mr. Goldsmitli. Printed for 
 le amusement of the Countess of Northumberland." 
 
 Goldsmith's reply to the charge of stealing from Percy 
 as not the indignant or sarcastic one which it might have 
 een, considering how good an answer he had to the charge. 
 : is, on the contrary, a model of good taste and moderation ; 
 
 Sir, 
 
 "... Another correspondent of yours [he had begun 
 le letter by an explanation referring to a book that 
 e had commended] accuses me of having taken a ballad I 
 ublished some time ago from the ingenious Mr. Percy. I do 
 Dt think there is any great resemblance between the two 
 ieces in question. If there be any, his ballad was taken from 
 line. I read it to Mr. Percy some years ago, and he, as we 
 3th considered these things as trifles at best, told me, with 
 is usual good humour, the next time I saw him, that he had 
 ken my plan to form the fragments of Shakespeare into a 
 illad of his own. He then read me his little cento, if I 
 ay so call it, and I highly approved it. Such petty anecdotes 
 these are scarcely worth printing ; and were it not for the 
 isy disposition of some of your correspondents, the public 
 
IN THE MIDST OF FRIENDS 277 
 
 should never have known that he owes me the hint of his 
 ballad or that I am obliged to his friendship and learning for 
 communications of a much more important nature. 
 
 " I am, Sir, Yours, &c., 
 
 " Oliver Goldsmith." 
 
 In the memoir of Goldsmith prefixed to the edition of 
 his works for which Percy was responsible, it is explained that 
 the source of the two ballads was in another ballad of ancient 
 origin, beginning " Gentle Heardsman." The point is of little 
 consequence. Goldsmith's poem has about it nothing what- 
 ever of an imitation of an old ballad, either in form or sub- 
 stance. It is too studied in its diction — ^too carefuUy put 
 together — in short, it is too weU written to be capable of 
 carrying to a reader the " wood-notes wild " of one of the 
 old ballads, even when the latter has undergone the process 
 of " restoration " at the hands of Percy. It is a graceful 
 eighteenth-century poem, and nothing but that. The gentle 
 hermit is no more like the real " eremite " of an ancient 
 baUad than is one of Boucher's shepherds like the real thing, 
 and we feel that the " Dale " is one of Fragonard's, carefully 
 built up, with a copy in stone of a Grecian altar in the fore- 
 ground and the head of a leaden Artemis on a pedestal, half 
 hidden by shrubs at one side. It is not even written in the 
 form of the old ballad, but rhymes in alternate lines. This 
 was, of course, in accordance with the fastidiousness of the 
 author when writing verse. He could not bear to leave a 
 tag-end, so to speak ; but if he had meant to suggest the form 
 of a relique he would certainly have done so. The simplicity 
 of " Turn, gentle Hermit " is the simplicity of culture , not 
 of the woodland ; and this is possibly why it became one of 
 the most popular poems in the language, and has remained 
 so for a century and a half. We believe that more of its 
 stanzas than of any other poem can be repeated by people in 
 England to-day. The Hermit was set to music by James Hook, 
 in the days preceding the introduction of the doggerel ballad 
 on the concert platform. 
 
 And now that the novel had established the author's fame 
 as a writer of fiction, just as the poem of the previous year 
 had established his reputation as a poet, it might have been 
 
278 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 expected that the booksellers would show that they under- 
 stood their business by giving him a commission, with a 
 handsome advance, for as many poems and as many novels 
 as he could write for the next ten years. But what do we 
 find ? On the day that the second edition of The Traveller 
 appeared, his draft for fifteen guineas on John Newbery was 
 returned dishonoured, and a little later the author was glad 
 to get an order to compile a selection of Poems for Toung Ladies, 
 in three parts : Devotional, Moral, and Entertaining. For this 
 he received the sum of ten pounds. It was this book which 
 he found a young girl reading at a house where he visited, 
 and the incident so delighted him that he sent her a copy of 
 The Traveller to encourage her. She lived to tell the story to 
 Charles Lamb. 
 
 The booksellers were disappointing. They did not under- 
 stand their business. They had suddenly become possessed 
 of the services of a poet, and they sent him to search among the 
 lumber of other men's works to paste up a book for them. 
 They had at their disposal the services of a novelist of the 
 highest order, and they commissioned him to write a grammar 
 for children. It was like having a Derby winner in a paddock 
 and harnessing him to a plough. 
 
 It is not surprising that he turned away from the book- 
 sellers to the theatre. If he had written a successful poem 
 and a successful novel, why should he not write a successful 
 comedy ? He had always been interested in the theatre, 
 and his earliest essays show that he had studied the stage 
 in the most intelligent spirit ; but he was not content to 
 accept its traditions as though they were the decisions of a 
 High Court from which there was no appeal. To the con- 
 ventionalities of stagecraft he was never indulgent. He 
 showed that he appreciated to the fuU the ludicrous operations 
 of some of the drama's laws, and the ridiculous mannerisms 
 of the actors. Several of his papers display an intimate know- 
 ledge of the trend of the art both in England and France, 
 and all his criticisms are those of an ardent theatre-goer, but 
 at the same time one who was fastidious beyond the average, 
 and not inclined to be indulgent even to an actor-manager. 
 
 This last was where he was unfortunate. It wiU be 
 remembered that in his Enquiry he had made some remarks 
 
IN THE MIDST OF FRIENDS 279 
 
 which David Garrick, who' had taken upon himself the duties 
 of residuary legatee of the English Drama, had interpreted as 
 a personal slight, and had resented in a very practical way. 
 But it was only through David Garrick that any one having 
 ambitions to write for the stage could hope to get a hearing. 
 Goldsmith was not a man to take back anything that he had 
 written unless it contained some word that jarred upon his 
 sensitive ear, or some phrase that failed to carry the exact 
 shade of his meaning ; but having had no intention of hurting 
 Garrick's feelings or even his amour-propre, he took care to 
 expunge the paragraph to which the actor took exception, since 
 it had conveyed an impression other than he had meant to 
 convey ; and he did this, it must be remembered, after Garrick 
 had declined to vote for his being appointed to the Society 
 of Arts, and when he had certainly no intention whatever of 
 writing for the stage. He did not call the actor's attention 
 to his amende, and it is likely that he felt a little sore on account 
 of Garrick's refusal to give him his vote. 
 
 But still, for several reasons, he had a longing to write a 
 comedy; the first being, no doubt, that a successful play 
 was much more remunerative to an author than a successful 
 novel, and the second being that he had a genuine contempt 
 for the spurious form of comedy introduced by Steele, which 
 had done more to demoralise the English stage than all the 
 immoralities of Congreve. " Sentimental comedy " had 
 always been his aversion, as well as the aversion of the most 
 intelligent class of playgoers ; but what have the tastes of the 
 intelligent to do with the manager of a playhouse ? He does 
 not cater for the intelligent, who are always in a minority, 
 but for " the distracted multitude," whose shillings make him 
 wealthy. One or two of these sentimental comedies had been 
 successful, and had given Garrick a chance of displaying his 
 amazing versatility ; and so it came to be an understood thing 
 that nothing but sentimental comedy had a chance of succeed- 
 ing — ^with Garrick. 
 
 Goldsmith, it wiU thus be seen, had the worst chance 
 that any man could have of reaching the ear of the public 
 through the medium of a play. He was not on good terms 
 with the one manager, and he was not disposed to write the 
 class of piece which was in favour with the public at the 
 
2 8o 1:hE life of OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 moment. But still he had a strong desire to make his 
 attempt. 
 
 While he was compiling his poems for young ladies and 
 such like stuff, he must have been working, consciously or 
 unconsciously, upon his play, thinking out its characters and 
 arranging their entrances and exits ; and in the meanwhile 
 he was mixing a good deal in society. He was very eclectic 
 in his society tastes. He was constantly at the Reynoldses', 
 and met there a number of interesting people and a large 
 number who were not interesting. Then there was his friend 
 Nugent, a fine, free and hearty, companionable man, who 
 doubtless introduced him to many of his friends, not caring in 
 the least whether they were likely to be congenial to him or 
 not ; he knew that to so human a man as Goldsmith all 
 mankind is congenial. He had also Percy and the exalted 
 circle at Northumberland House, and although Johnson had 
 practically deserted the Club in favour of the Thrales', where 
 he spent three or four days out of every week — only returning 
 to try to effect a reconciliation between those of his household 
 who had been quarrelling in his absence, and to see that 
 they had a hot dinner — still the Club always meant literary 
 society. 
 
 But it has been fully established that Goldsmith occa- 
 sionally grew tired of literary society. This weakness he 
 shared with a good many literary persons of distinction, and 
 if the conversations of the literary society have been correctly 
 reported by the person who took most interest in them, we 
 do not blame the people who, like Goldsmith, looked elsewhere 
 for entertainment. Johnson and Burke were amazingly fine 
 talkers, no doubt, but they never seemed to be quite at their 
 best when Mr. Boswell had his notebook out. Frankly, we 
 confess that the records of the conversational feats of the 
 literary circle tend to convey the impression that they were 
 commonplace, trivial, and generally " rudderless." That 
 word we have ventured to press into our service because we 
 think that it conveys the impression that remains on the mind 
 of an unprejudiced person after reading an account of the 
 conversations reported by Boswell. And it is just because 
 Boswell reports everything with scrupulous care — ^the appear- 
 ance of the people, their movements, their peculiarities, and 
 
IN THE MIDST OF FRIENDS 281 
 
 their other human traits — that his book must be esteemed 
 as one of the most vivid ever written. His reports of the 
 trivialities and the inanities are infinitely more valuable than 
 a verbatim record of aU that Johnson said about the infidelity 
 of Hume, or whether or not fighting was actually unscriptural. 
 But the conversation was " rudderless." It went flying about 
 the table like a ship without a rudder. Every current affected 
 it. Sometimes it would go scudding along before the wind, 
 and then it would suddenly sail very close to the wind indeed ; 
 round would swing the yards and off it would go on a new 
 tack. It went at " everything by fits but nothing long " ; 
 it zigzagged over topics by the score, but it made no progress ; 
 it got no nearer to the heart of the matter. It was bewil- 
 dering. It led nowhere. It was profitless. 
 
 So Hume thought it. What do we find him writing 
 in regard to the social entertainment of literary London at 
 the time ? In one of his letters, quoted by Burton in his 
 life of the historian, he says : 
 
 " If a man has the misfortune in London to attach him- 
 self to letters, even if he succeeds, I know not with whom he 
 is to live, nor how he is to pass his time in a suitable society. 
 The little company there that is worth conversing with are 
 cold or unsociable or warmed only by faction and cabal ; so 
 that a man who plays no part in public affairs becomes 
 altogether insignificant, and if he is not rich, becomes even 
 contemptible." 
 
 This testimony from one of the most eminent of the 
 literary men of the day is worthy of attention at any rate. 
 Really, we do not think that the conversations, as reported by 
 BosweU, differ so greatly in character from the gossip of the 
 wheezy village gaffers round the ale-house fire. But to say 
 so much is not to say that a report of the ale-house gossip at 
 any period would not be intensely interesting to readers a 
 century and a half later. 
 
 Even Tom Davies' shop must eventually have made Gold- 
 smith ready for a change of intellectual diet ; and when he 
 grew tired of making fools of the chosen people in this connec- 
 tion, it is not surprising that he turned once more to the 
 
282 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 Gentiles — ^the folk among whom he had, he confessed, so 
 frequently played the fool agreeably. There were Clubs to 
 which he had entree, and of which the greater number were 
 unquestionably as superior in entertainment to that available 
 at the premises in Gerrard Street, where the Club met, as 
 Bet Bouncer's well-defined charms were to the less pronounced 
 attractions of Miss Neville ; and among his friends here he 
 was certain of enjoying himself. They did not talk like 
 Johnson, nor was BosweU to be seen in a corner, but in spite 
 of shortcomings under this heading, there was a good deal of 
 fun to be got one way or another out of the company, and 
 Goldsmith undoubtedly got most that was going. There was 
 the " Devil " tavern, celebrated by Ben Jonson, the " Bed- 
 ford " in Covent Garden, and the " Globe " in Fleet Street. 
 At every one of them his coming was welcomed and his departure 
 delayed until the early hours of the morning. His associate, 
 Cooke, to whom the world is indebted for a great deal of 
 curious information about him in these days and in these 
 localities, describes his popularity among his own countrymen 
 who "supported" him at his evenings in one of the Clubs. 
 So far as we can gather, the support of these Irishmen was not 
 on their part with regard to him, but on his part with regard 
 to them. During the eighteenth century and well into the 
 nineteenth Fleet Street and its purlieus were overrun by young 
 Irishmen picking up a precarious living out of the odd jobs 
 which journalism provided for the imaginative and the un- 
 scrupulous. To have no aptitude for any business seemed to 
 be regarded as sufficient qualification for a journalist, and there 
 was no chance of the supply falling short of the demand so 
 long as money could be borrowed by a ne'er-do-well in Ireland 
 to carry him to London. Some of them did moderately well 
 for themselves, and some became notorious ; but the majority 
 lived on the precarious Irish system of begging and borrowing. 
 They " stood by " each other, but not to the same extent as 
 the Scotch " stood by " each other. The Scotch system was 
 founded on the strictest commercial principles, and the Irish 
 on the loosest principles of good nature. They " stood by " 
 Oliver Goldsmith so long as he had a penny in his pocket, and 
 it was their constant study to curtail this period. He under- 
 stood the Irish system thoroughly, having practised it aU his 
 
IN THE MIDST OF FRIENDS 283 
 
 life, and he never seems to have thought of questioning the 
 ultimate consequences of its operation. 
 
 It is said that he had quite a number of these countrymen 
 of his about him upon the occasion of his visiting one of their 
 places of resort, and he was for years alluded to as " our 
 Doctor." With some of the " Wednesday " Club, which met 
 at the Globe Tavern, he became very intimate. One of these 
 named Glover became rather well known through having 
 been taken up by Garrick, as was also Hugh Kelly, originally 
 apprenticed to a stay-maker in Dublin, and coming over to 
 London to seek his fortune through the most devious of its 
 avenues — Grub Street. On the death of Goldsmith it was 
 only natural that every Irishman who had met him in the 
 course of his jovial evenings should hasten to make " copy " 
 of his reminiscences of those days, the result being the 
 accumulation of Goldsmith anecdotes and the creation of a 
 Goldsmith legend. The value of stories brought together 
 from such dubious sources should have been properly esti- 
 mated long ago and excluded from any serious memoir of the 
 man around whom they were composed. 
 
 Quite apart from this range of anecdote is one told of 
 Goldsmith by George Colman the younger. He was a child 
 of five or six when Goldsmith was in the habit of visiting his 
 father at Richmond. Taking the boy on his knee to amuse 
 him, he received a smack on the face, and young George was 
 consigned to the family dungeon to expiate the offence. He 
 had not been there for long, however, before Goldsmith came 
 to him with a lighted candle in his hand to comfort him in 
 his well-merited incarceration, and remained with him for a 
 long time, amusing him by doing those conjuring tricks which 
 he had acquired for the benefit of his friends, the children. 
 The most elementary of all nursery conjuring is probably the 
 " Jack and Jill " feat, performed by sticking a piece of paper 
 on the forefinger of each hand and showing the marvel of 
 their sudden flight and unaccountable reappearance at the 
 word of command. This miracle was shown by him to little 
 Miss Hawkins, with many others recorded by her years after 
 his death. 
 
 But the recreation which he enjoyed most at this time was 
 one that never failed him — ^a country ramble. He was never 
 
284 'J^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 so happy as when he was strolling through the lanes of Hamp- 
 stead or on the confines of Islington. AH the rural villages 
 which are now part of labouring London itself, and in some 
 cases the busiest part as well, were well acquainted with him, 
 and he endeavoured to inculcate his love for the country and 
 fresh air upon some of his friends who had previously been 
 thought confirmed townsfolk. He had done his best work in 
 the country, and to the end he felt that when it was necessary 
 for him to do his best he should be away from all that was 
 convivial and in the midst of all that was congenial to him as 
 a roamer and an observer of animated nature. He took a 
 room in the turret of Canonbury House, Islington, and 
 remained there for some weeks in 1767 — quite long enough 
 for him to assist in the establishment of a country Club at the 
 Crown Tavern, in the Islington Lower Road. The preHmi- 
 naries to such an undertaking were as simple as the formalities 
 qualifying for membership. But aU this time, whether in the 
 town or the country, he was, as was said of another rambHng 
 genius, " throwing away his life in handfuls " — ^working at such 
 trivial things as prefaces to new editions of worthless compila- 
 tions, or at compiling things himself, getting a guinea at one 
 time and five guineas at another, but making no attempt to 
 regulate his expenditure in any proportion to his income, and 
 borrowing with one hand in order to lend with the other, 
 the willing victim of imposture and improvidence. " Throw- 
 ing away his life in handfuls " — ^that is a just criticism of Gold- 
 smith at the age of forty, as it would have been of Goldsmith 
 at the age of twenty. He was no more fit than a child to 
 look after himself, and there was no. one at hand to look after 
 him. He had inherited all those qualities which unfit a man 
 for conflict with the world — qualities which lead a man into 
 the delusion that life is a playing-meadow, not a battle-field — 
 that if a man succeeds in making himself beloved he has 
 attained success in life — that if he has pointed out to others 
 the snares and the traps that lie in their walk through life, 
 it is of no consequence if he himself walks into each in turn. 
 
 A man who has inherited such ideas, and has had them 
 confirmed in him by the example and the teaching of an 
 impractical father, requires more looking after than most 
 men ; but when such a man is a genius as well, all the looking 
 
IN THE MIDST OF FRIENDS 285 
 
 after in the world will not make him capable of holding his 
 own in the face of a clamouring world. He wiU not hold his 
 own for a day : he hands it all over to those who ask, and retains 
 nothing for himself. 
 
 That is how it comes that people refer to Goldsmith with 
 a shake of the head and a murmur of " Poor Goldsmith ! " 
 They cannot but think of him as a man who failed in life, 
 because they feel that the man who does not hold his own, 
 but gives it away with both hands, is a weak and not a strong 
 man. A successful man is, in. their estimation, one who 
 holds his own in the face of aU clamour, and everybody else's 
 that he can lay his hands on. 
 
 That is how it comes that so many geniuses have not been 
 " successes " : they have given away all that they had to give, 
 and they have not been thanked for the gift. 
 
 And that is how it comes that the world has not yet made 
 up its mind whether some men were very great geniuses or 
 very great fools. AU that the world has made up its mind 
 about is what is meant by success : success means accumula- 
 tion, not distribution. 
 
 As for Goldsmith, he was a distributor — " he threw away 
 his life in handfuls." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 A GLANCE AT THE STAGE 
 1767 — 1768 
 
 He was still thinking of his comedy, and working it out 
 scene hy scene, when he was playing in the countless 
 comedies — some of them with more than a suggestion of 
 grimness in their plot — of his daily life. If Garrick had 
 understood the literary part of his business as well as he 
 did the heroic or half as well as he did the commercial, 
 he would have gone to the author of the Ficar of Wake- 
 field and said to him : " Sit down and write a play for 
 me on the foundation of your novel, and I will pay your 
 debts and give you a pension of a pound a week for the rest 
 of your life." The stage had, however, drifted so far away 
 from real life that Garrick would have laughed at the notion 
 of introducing into a play any but one scene in the novel, 
 this scene being, of course, the old man's reception of the 
 news of the flight of his daughter : we believe that Garrick 
 was capable of seeing himself in the part of the Vicar for 
 a splendid five minutes. At any rate, only a little imagi- 
 nation is sufficient to enable us to see him in that scene, 
 and the imaginary picture of his treatment of it is stimu- 
 lating. 
 
 But Garrick thought poorly of the story and still more 
 poorly of the author, though it is likely that his opinion 
 would have been somewhat less pronounced if the author 
 had been more enthusiastic about him in his Enquiry. Gold- 
 smith had made no advances toward him since its publication, 
 and, as we have said, had not even pointed out his modi- 
 fication of the hurtful passage ; and he did not now feel 
 at all disposed to approach him to beg another favour even 
 
 greater than that with which he had gone to the theatre 
 
 386 
 
A GLANCE at: THE STAGE 287 
 
 some years earlier. This was the position of matters when 
 the comedy was finished. 
 
 It is nearly certain that he meant to offer the piece to 
 Covent Garden, though Rich's successors in the management 
 of that house had nothing of the spirit of Garrick; but 
 Burke, when told of his intention, strongly advised him to do 
 nothing of the sort, and Johnson pooh-poohed his fears that 
 Garrick had not yet forgotten the indiscretion of the Enquiry. 
 Reynolds, at least, was on the side of Drury Lane, and he 
 arranged that the actor and the author should be brought 
 together at his house in Leicester Fields with a view to 
 business. 
 
 It could not be said that the meeting was altogether 
 propitious. Garrick was a perfect glutton for flattery, and 
 Goldsmith, always weak in worldly wisdom, could not put a 
 reasonable price upon the abrogation of his principles, and 
 humour the actor's weakness. Probably in his anxiety to 
 maintain his independence, he ventured to assert it. However 
 this may be, it is said that the rapfrochement between the two 
 was not aU that his host looked for ; but the manager agreed 
 to read the play, and did so when he got the opportunity. 
 But what was to be expected of him after the inauspicious 
 opening of negotiations but hypercriticism ? But he did 
 no more than possibly every manager before and since has 
 done on getting into his hands the initial dramatic effort of 
 an author — ^he found fault with the characters, especially 
 those that were sufficiently interesting to interfere with the 
 interest of the character which he meant for himself. Several 
 alterations he suggested ; but on the whole he gave the author 
 to understand that he could see no reason why he should not 
 produce the play. He would not, however, give a decided 
 answer about it, but seemed to take pleasure in keeping him 
 in a condition of uncertainty, thinking himself entitled 
 to do so, when he had advanced a small sum by way of a 
 retaining fee. In this unsatisfactory state of things the season 
 approached its close, and no arrangements had been made 
 for the production of the piece. Later, Garrick's objections 
 became more pronounced, and he suggested some drastic 
 changes which the author declared he would never consent 
 to make. Garrick then proposed submitting the whole 
 
288 THE LIFE OF OLIFER GOLDSMITH 
 
 question of the play to the arbitration of Whitehead, the 
 Poet-Laureate ; but this suggestion called for such an out- 
 burst of indignation from the author, that Burke and Rey- 
 nolds hastily interposed and endeavoured to smooth over what 
 Goldsmith termed an insult. 
 
 In this unsatisfactory condition matters remained, when 
 an incident took place which changed the whole aspect of 
 theatrical affairs in London ; for the management of Covent 
 Garden was taken over by a syndicate (as it would be called 
 to-day) of which the leader was George Colman. Strained 
 relations had existed between him and Garrick ever since the 
 production of The Clandestine Marriage of which they were 
 joint authors, and Colman, having been left £6000 by his 
 mother, thought that he would have a trial of management, 
 for a while at any rate, and so had invested in the interest of 
 Rich's successors. 
 
 Goldsmith immediately withdrew his play from Garrick, 
 offered it to Colman, by whom it was accepted promptly, 
 and apparently unconditionally ; and so, with an extremely 
 polite letter to Garrick, to which Garrick replied in a like 
 strain, and a grateful one to Colman, the question that had 
 troubled Goldsmith for months seemed settled. 
 
 He had not had sufficient experience of the vicissitudes 
 of plays and the scheming of managers to be aware of the 
 fact that the acceptance of a play means the beginning of 
 an author's anxieties. The author's idea is that his work 
 should be produced at the earliest possible moment ; the 
 manager's usually is that its production should be deferred 
 as long as possible. Goldsmith's comedy had been read to 
 Johnson and Burke ; Reynolds was already acquainted with 
 it. Johnson had pronounced it the best that had been written 
 since The Provoked Husband, and promised to provide a 
 prologue to it ; and Burke had spoken enthusiastically about 
 it. All this mattered nothing so long as Colman would not 
 agree to allow the mistress of his partner in the theatre to 
 be cast for Imogen. There was a dispute on this nice ques- 
 tion of art between the two men, and they waxed so warm 
 over it that snach a subsidiary matter as Goldsmith and his 
 com,edy seemed to have been lost sight of altogether. 
 
 When a peace was patched up between the two and they 
 
A GLANCE A1 THE STAGE 289 
 
 had a moment to spare, it was arranged that The Good Natur^d 
 Man should be brought out before Christmas. But hitches 
 always do occur — especially if they are arranged for before- 
 hand — in the best-laid schemes of managers ; and the author 
 was informed that it would be impossible to do anything 
 with it sooner than the end of the next month — ^January 
 1768. What the hitch was we have no means of knowing ; 
 but what we do know is that some weeks before the day 
 announced for the production, Garrick hurried on and brought 
 out a play of Kelly's entitled False Delicacy and insisted on 
 its being regarded as a challenge to Goldsmith. Garrick was 
 an excellent stage manager, but all his skill in stage matters 
 was small in comparison with his engineering of something 
 on the other side of the footlights. He contrived to set 
 every one talking about Kelly in rivalry to Goldsmith, ridicul- 
 ing the latter and affirming that he pinned his faith to Kelly. 
 Garrick set all his machinery in motion — the pens of the 
 scribblers who were in his pay, and the gossips of the coffee 
 houses, to write up and talk up the uneducated stay-maker 
 turned play-maker, so as to administer a snub to Johnson 
 and Burke and the other members of the Club who had 
 foretold great things for the work of their fellow member. 
 Goldsmith. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the postponement of The 
 Good Natwf'd Man and the hastening on of False Delicacy 
 were engineered by Garrick ; and that for some considera- 
 tion, the exact nature of which it is unnecessary to investi- 
 gate, Colman showed himself ready to play into his hands. 
 In spite of what Reynolds and the others had said to him. 
 Goldsmith's original distrust of Garrick proved to have been 
 well-founded. False Delicacy was produced, the house was 
 packed with Garrick's friends, and the result was a great success. 
 The piece was kept on for eight nights and repeated during 
 the season more than twenty times. Ten thousand copies 
 of the printed version were sold, and the publishers gave the 
 author a public breakfast, and presented him with a piece of 
 plate. It was translated into French, German, and Portu- 
 guese, and became one of the greatest successes of the day. 
 
 Let any one try to read False Delicacy now and its exact 
 value as a work of art will soon become apparent. It has no 
 
290 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 quality whatsoever to recommend it, and it embodies suffi- 
 cient dulness to serve for a score of those inanities in dialogue 
 which form the bulk of the eighteenth century stage. Garrick 
 had lately professed to hold sentimental comedy in contempt 
 — indeed, he proved by the part he took in The Clandestine 
 Marriage that he desired to see the last of it ; but his desire 
 to see the last of sentimental comedy was not nearly so great , 
 as his desire to snub Johnson for having published his edition 
 of Shakespeare without saying a word in praise of the services 
 of David Garrick on behalf of Shakespeare, and to rebuke the 
 other members of the Club who had declined to recognise his 
 claim to be one of them. 
 
 As to the immediate success of his snub there can be 
 no doubt. There was no one to charge him with incon- 
 sistency in writing up Kelly and giving him both a prologue 
 and an epilogue, when he knew that False Delicacy was the 
 most flagrant example of the sentimental school ever written, 
 and every one believed that if Kelly was a success Goldsmith 
 was bound to be a failure. If the play was not a failure it 
 was not Garrick's fault, nor was it the fault of Colman, who 
 had sold Goldsmith in order to make peace with Garrick. 
 Upon the evening of its production, the theatre was 
 crowded with the Kelly faction, who came prepared to 
 damn The Good Natur'd Man, and they hissed it according 
 to their instructions ; but they could not make it a failure. 
 The acting of Shuter in the part of Croaker so carried the 
 house away that the element of detraction was overcome 
 and the play was saved. It was, however, saved " so as 
 by fire." It had a narrow escape, and everybody seemed 
 to be well aware of this fact — the author best of all. He 
 was grievously disappointed. 
 
 And he had a right to be disappointed. He had put 
 some of his best work into the play, and he had looked for- 
 ward to the profits of its production helping him out of his 
 financial difficulties, which, as usual, were pressing upon him. 
 The play had been ever present with him, as any one who had 
 eyes could see. When Johnson was telling the awe-stricken 
 circle how the King had exchanged half a dozen sentences 
 with him a few weeks before the production, he stole away 
 and sat mo 'Uy apart. That was his extraordinary envy 
 
A GLANCE at: IEE STAGE 291 
 
 which would not permit of his listening any longer to the story 
 of the honour that was done to Johnson by a King whose 
 sovereignty, by the way, Johnson denied. " He assigned as a 
 reason for his gloom and inattention that he apprehended 
 Johnson had relinquished his purpose of furnishing him 
 with a prologue to his play, with the hopes of which he had 
 been flattered," wrote Boswell ; " but it was strongly sus- 
 pected that he was fretting with chagrin and envy at the 
 singular honour Dr. Johnson had lately enjoyed." 
 
 The distorted vision of Boswell, to which we have already 
 referred in this connection, is doubly illustrated in his 
 remark. His own mania for being in the presence of dis- 
 tinguished people caused him to look upon Johnson, fresh 
 from an audience with the King, pretty much as the Israelites 
 looked upon Moses on his descent from Mount Sinai ; and he 
 really must have believed that Goldsmith was envying John- 
 son " the singular honour," almost as much as did another 
 member of the same company for whom Mr. Boswell was 
 certainly better entitled to speak. 
 
 Of course, Boswell could not properly appreciate the 
 feelings of a literary man engaged upon a work that demanded 
 such constancy of thought and attention as a comedy of 
 character with an intricate plot, the displacement of a single 
 entrance or exit in which would mean the ruin of the whole 
 structure. But Goldsmith knew aU that he had gone through 
 during the year, and when he felt that he had laboured and 
 suffered to no purpose — nay, to the detriment of his hard- 
 won reputation, he had reason to feel disappointed. 
 
 And he showed it in a way that seems to us to be as piteous 
 as any incident in the whole range of the history of the making 
 of our literature. He went off quite unconcernedly with his 
 friends to the Club in Gerrard Street, and when there, 
 became absolutely hilarious, singing his favourite song, not 
 " Johnny Armstrong's Last Good-night," but that lyrical 
 gem " There was an old woman tossed up in a blanket seven- 
 teen times as high as the moon " ; and we have no doubt that 
 his friends pulled themselves together and applauded him 
 more generously than the Kelly gang had applauded anything 
 in the comedy. 
 
 And then the friends stole away quietly to their beds. 
 
292 'THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 All except one. 
 
 Goldsmith was left alone with the man who had done so 
 much for him and who was still to do much more — the man 
 who had taken very good care that the " singular honour " done 
 to him by the King should not prevent his writing the pro- 
 mised prologue — he was left alone with the man who had 
 suffered many disappointments in life, but had at all times 
 risen above them ; he was left alone with Johnson. The 
 ghastly mask of merriment dropped from him, his head fell 
 forward into his hands, and he burst into tears. 
 
 He told the story — but not the whole story — of this 
 touching episode to Percy in Johnson's presence some time 
 afterwards. The part that he omitted had to do with what 
 Johnson said to him upon that occasion. But we can imagine 
 all that came from Johnson, and be thankful that Boswell was 
 not lurking behind the door to record all that seemed to him 
 worth jotting down, which, we may take it for granted, would 
 be just what no one wanted to hear. 
 
 " I was suffering horrid tortures," Goldsmith said, referring 
 to his going to the Club with his friends, " and verily believe 
 that if I had put a bit into my mouth, it would have strangled 
 me on the spot, I was so excessively ill ; but I made more 
 noise than usual to cancel that, and so they never perceived 
 my not eating nor, I believe, at all imagined to themselves 
 the anguish of my heart. But when all were gone except 
 Johnson here I burst out a-crying, and even swore by — that 
 I would never write again." 
 
 " All which," said Johnson, hearing this confession, " I 
 thought had been a secret between you and me ; and I 
 am sure I would not have said anything about it for the 
 world." 
 
 Mrs. Piozzi seemed to think that Goldsmith had con- 
 fessed something greatly to his discredit ; but we do not 
 think that many modern readers of the story will take the same 
 view of the matter. They will, we fancy, feel more akin 
 with Goldsmith on account of those tears of his alone with 
 his friend, following the mockery of his hour of hilarity. 
 
 If Johnson had tried to comfort him by the assurance that 
 things might not be so bad as they seemed, he would have 
 been right. The comedy was not a failure ; on the con- 
 
A GLANCE at: THE STAGE 293 
 
 trary, it is doubtful if any other play, with the exception 
 of Kelly's, produced during the year, was such a financial 
 success. Goldsmith made close upon ;£400 out of his fees 
 at the theatre, and Griffin, the printer, was able to add £100 
 to this for the publishing rights. The author must have felt 
 fully compensated for the anxieties of the year, culminating 
 in that outburst on the night of the production. 
 
 The comedy would undoubtedly have been an unequi- 
 vocal success but for the introduction of the scene with the 
 bailiffs. It is difficult for us to understand in these days how 
 so admirable a scene would have failed to be well received, 
 unless the parts had been atrociously acted or the actors had 
 introduced some atrocious " gags." A paraphrase of this 
 scene, only with infinitely more vulgarity in its fooling, 
 made the fortune of a nondescript piece some twenty-five 
 years ago in London. Goldsmith was ordered to abandon 
 the bailiffs, but he refused to do so, knowing that whether 
 they were " low " or not, they were natural characters to 
 appear in a comedy of manners, and he wanted to go to an 
 excess of lowness to spite the spurious and affected sentimen- 
 talists ; but he did not stick to his point in this play ; he cut 
 out the " low " element in The Good Natur^d Man, but took 
 very good care to go to a deeper depth still in She Stoops to 
 Conquer, and he triumphed. Meantime, however, his first 
 effort for the stage had the " singular honour " done to it 
 of a Royal Command, and Shuter, the comedian, who had 
 certainly pulled the play out of the fire, chose it for his 
 benefit when its run had ended. Goldsmith sent him ten 
 guineas for a box. 
 
 The Good-Natur^d Man has never been a popular comedy. 
 It has invariably dragged before a modern audience, ready to 
 submit (now and again) to the elegant diction of the three — or 
 is it four ? — splays which have survived the leisurely drama of 
 the eighteenth century. We do not recollect its having been 
 attempted in any series of these revivals during the past 
 twenty-five years in London ; though a ridiculous medley of 
 two or three French plays, with no breath of the eighteenth 
 century in Jit, entitled David Garrick[ has been} played 
 thousands of times and accepted by unenquiring audiences 
 during the past forty years as a picture of the period. The 
 
294 1HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 fact is that, while there is a great deal to divert an audience 
 in Goldsmith's first comedy, there is little to hold one's atten- 
 tion. HoneyTvood is said to have been due to his 
 acquaintance with his own weaknesses ; but it is rather curious 
 that none of his friends seemed to notice this at the time. 
 However this may be, Honeywood is a character too remote 
 from the experience of most people to interest them ; and 
 the other young gentleman has not enough spirit for the two. 
 Miss Richland has no " dash " about her ; she is an elementary 
 study done in water-cloour, and Olivia only differs in being 
 done in pastel. They lack the Watteau grace and Fragonard 
 glow of the two girls in She Stoops to Conquer. But when 
 we come to consider the other personages we find ourselves 
 on a different plane altogether. They are among the few 
 characters in eighteenth-century comedy that are true 
 to nature and effective stage figures as well. The stage 
 demands a scene painter, not a miniaturist, and the limelight 
 produces quite a different effect from that which is due to 
 sunlight. That is how it comes that some of the most ad- 
 mirable characters in fiction fail to retain, when transferred 
 to a play, the part which they took in the story. But with 
 Croaker, Mrs. Croaker, Lofty, and Timothy Twitch, ihe 
 garrulous bailiff, actors should be able to do anything on 
 the stage, and yet they strike one as being quite natural. The 
 doleful Croaker is said to have been suggested by a character 
 in the Rambler whom Johnson called Suspirius ; and Fanny 
 Burney felt quite horrified to think that Goldsmith should 
 have been guilty of such an act of plagiarism. We have 
 become more lenient in these days toward writers for the 
 stage, who annex some of the most strongly marked peculiari- 
 ties of personages in fiction. But how about real life ? Is 
 Croaker so remote from the ordinary experiences of life in 
 England as to make us feel that Goldsmith could never have 
 met such a person, and so was compelled to take him bodily 
 out of the Rambler ? By calling his character Suspirius 
 Johnson did his best to decorporise him — we have never met 
 a Mr. Suspirius — and simply to present him as a type. He 
 certainly did not invent the character. He is as old as the 
 Prophet Jeremiah, or Micaiah, the son of Imlah, whose 
 depressing influence was too much for King Ahab. 
 
A GLANCE AT THE STAGE 295 
 
 According to Boswell, Johnson said he believed that 
 Croaker had been taken from his Suspirius ; but he did not seem 
 to lay great emphasis upon the theft ; and we may be sure 
 that no one regarded it as flagrant, or Kenrick or some of the 
 Kelly gang would have made use of it against Goldsmith. 
 As a matter of fact, there is only a general resemblance 
 between the two characters, and it exists only in the matter 
 of the grumbling ; Croaker in the play is much more than 
 an alarmist : he is an intriguer, he is a husband, he is a father. 
 His disposition is shown in juxtaposition with every one of 
 these relationships, whereas Suspirius is a mere sketch of an 
 alarmist. 
 
 Garrick objected to Lofty, and the character does not 
 seem to have been effective in the performance of the comedy. 
 But this must have been wholly the fault of the repre- 
 sentative of the character. Lofty, if played slowly and 
 deliberately, would account for the dragging of the play — it 
 accounted for its dragging when it was revived in the English 
 provinces some thirty years ago ; but if played briskly and with 
 the bustle of a character in a farce, it should be one of the 
 best parts in the play. The view of Lofty as a pompous 
 fellow, full of a sense of his own importance, is quite plausible 
 to a reader of the piece, but quite fatal to the balance of the 
 play as represented on the stage. Woodward played the 
 part ; but we fancy that if it had been given to Quick, who 
 was afterwards the original Tony Lumpkin, it would have gone 
 much better, though it is not a low comedy part. Garrick 
 had always distrusted the character, and some years later, 
 reminded Goldsmith of the fact that, even when represented 
 by a better actor than Woodward, it had not gone well. 
 
 Mrs. Croaker is a delightful character, not only as a set- 
 off to her gloomily garrulous spouse, but on account of her 
 cheerful naturalness ; and the bailiff should have been as 
 effective in his own way as Dogberry was in his. Goldsmith's 
 instincts were rarely at fault ; and we feel that the play with- 
 out Timothy Twitch would be like She Stoops to Conquer 
 without Diggory. 
 
 With regard then to the production of The Good-Natur'd 
 Man what can be said is that it fell little short of being a 
 great success, and that it only did so through the machina- 
 
296 1HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 tions of Garrick, out of his pique against the Club and the 
 undeserved slight cast upon him by Johnson, in regard to the 
 omission of his name, both from the membership of the Club 
 and his edition of Shakespeare. If Goldsmith's comedy 
 had been produced before Kelly's and in the ordinary way 
 of business, without the attempt being made to force down 
 the throats of playgoers that it was meant as a menace to a 
 form of entertainment which was then very popular, it would 
 have been a complete success. Johnson's prologue was, 
 however, a heavy weight to lay upon the piece at its outstart ; 
 it is ponderous, especially in its attempt at humour. It 
 is a mistake to sneer at the pit in a prologue, or to talk of 
 " the pert apprentice " when in the presence and at the mercy 
 of some hundreds of this very class. In spite of everything, 
 however, the value of the comedy was recognised on every 
 hand. It would never have sold to the extent it did had it 
 been the failure which it seemed to be to the author and his 
 friends. It is satisfactory to know, too, that Goldsmith's 
 earnestness in maintaining the artistic value of the bailiffs' 
 scene was shared by some other excellent judges of stage effect. 
 Five years later Mrs. Green chose The Good Natur'd, Man 
 for her benefit, and announced that this scene would be 
 restored. Upon the same occasion Lee Lewes played the 
 part of Lofty. This performance represented the triumph 
 of Goldsmith's views respecting the introduction of " low " 
 character into a comedy. He had abated nothing of his 
 belief in this respect, and, we repeat, had even descended to 
 deeper depths of vulgarity than were represented by Timothy 
 Twitch ; for " little Aminadab " in The Three Pigeons 
 certainly moved in a lower circle than did Mr. Twitch. The 
 triumph of She Stoofs to Conquer gave Mrs. Green courage 
 to announce as an attraction of The Good-Natur'd Man, the 
 resuscitation of the bailiffs. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 ROOMS IN BRICK COURT 
 1768 
 
 Goldsmith with ^5°° i^ ^i^ hand all at once appears before 
 us as a scarcely recognisable figure. He does not remain 
 long so. He soon reveals his identity. What is a man to 
 do who has had a constant struggle to obtain the necessaries 
 of life and who has learnt by hard experience how precarious 
 are the pecuniary rewards of genius, when he suddenly becomes 
 possessed of more than eight times the largest sum that he 
 has ever had at one time ? That was the question which 
 he must have asked himself with his ^^500 in his pocket. 
 
 His ingenuity was quite equal to the working out of an 
 answer. Manifestly the only thing that could possibly be 
 done with the money was to buy the lease of a set of 
 chambers in the best part of the Temple and furnish them 
 in proper style. 
 
 He spent the whole of the money in this way within a 
 few weeks of receiving it. Brick Court was the situation 
 which he chose. He was fortunate enough (he thought) 
 to be able to purchase the lease for ^400, and he was certain 
 that, with due extravagance, he could lay out his remaining 
 j^ioo on furniture. He did not over-estimate his powers 
 in this way. In a day or two he was his old self, the Oliver 
 Goldsmith whom everybody knew — a penniless genius, only 
 instead of being lodged near the roof in Green Arbour Court 
 — i;^stead of being lodged on the staircase, jointly with Jeffs 
 the butler, in Garden Court, where he could live as modestly 
 as was consistent with his income, he has an expensive suite, 
 admirably furnished and extremely well adapted for the 
 exercise of hospitality. 
 
 He saw the advantages of his new place of abode, and he 
 
 397 
 
298 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 seems to have made up his mind to avail himself of them 
 without delay. This was the year 1768, and it was perhaps 
 the pleasantest of his life, for the greatest happiness that he 
 knew consisted in entertaining his friends. He gave dinner 
 parties and supper parties by the score. Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 — he was knighted by the King this year — dined with him 
 twice in one week ; Colman came, and so did Johnson, wlien 
 he wished for a change from the cuisine of Streatham ; so 
 did Cooke and Bickerstaff and Percy, and quite a number 
 of nonentities with appetites. While they lasted these 
 entertainments were not wanting in merriment. A young 
 barrister named Blackmore was engaged in writing certain 
 Commentaries which afterwards became as well known in 
 certain circles as The Vicar of Wakefield — perhaps even better 
 known. He commented on ithe noise made by the guests 
 of the occupant of the room immediately above the one in 
 which he worked until late at night ; and found ample reason 
 for the tumult when he learned that Dr. Goldsmith was 
 among his friends overhead. Entertainments went on with- 
 out ceasing ; and when Dr. Goldsmith was not playing the 
 fool very agreeably, according to the advice given by Hamlet 
 to Polonius, in his own house, he was doing so at the houses 
 of his friends. He was as boisterous as a boy upon these 
 occasions, ringing all the changes upon his native humour — 
 singing his songs and dancing his dances. He had now got 
 into the full glare of the footlights ; his name was on every- 
 one's lips, and the Goldsmith tradition became fully estab- 
 lished. A little later everybody that had passed within 
 a mile of the Temple during this year had a story to tell of 
 the frolics of the ridiculous Irish poet. Every one was on 
 terms of the utmost familiarity with him, but the way he 
 taught some of them to keep their place is related by the 
 glib Mr. Glover and the constant Mr. Cooke. Both of 
 these gentlemen made the most of their friendship with him, 
 and it can scarcely be doubted that whenever he had money 
 it was placed at their disposal. One of them acknowledged 
 having asked him for the loan of a guinea ; but this was upon 
 a normal day, when Goldsmith was out of funds. All that 
 he could do was to borrow the required amount and slip 
 it under the door at night so that he — or some one else 
 
ROOMS IN BRICK COURT 299 
 
 — might get it on opening the door. To the memory — or 
 imagination — of Glover another story is due. It related 
 to the Wednesday Club and a certain pork butcher who sang 
 a good song. This accomplishment he thought entitled him 
 to call Goldsmith by the most abbreviated form of his 
 Christian name. " Come, Noll, here's my service to you, old 
 boy," he would say between his songs. But one night Glover 
 whispered to Goldsmith that he should not permit the man 
 to take such a liberty. " Let him alone, and you'll see how 
 civilly I'll let him down," replied Goldsmith ; and at the 
 conclusion of the next song, looked toward the offensive 
 man, saying, " Mr. B — , I have the honour of drinking your 
 good health." " Thank'e, thank'e, Noll," replied Mr. 
 B — with great alertness. "Well, where's the advantage of 
 your reproof ? " inquired Glover. " In troth," answered 
 Goldsmith, with a comical expression of chagrin, " In troth, 
 I give it up ; I ought to have known before now, that there 
 is no putting a pig in the right way." 
 
 Glover was fond of playing practical jokes. It was he 
 who, returning from a country walk with Goldsmith, brought 
 him into a house where a family were having tea, and by 
 brazenly pretending to be acquainted with some member, 
 was invited with his friend to join the circle. Upon another 
 occasion he, with some of the jocular young bloods who 
 assembled at the Globe tavern, pretended that the chops to 
 which Goldsmith was sitting down after a long and hungry 
 day were not fit to eat. One of them declared that the 
 waiter who had the effrontery to set them before an honoured 
 guest should be made to eat them himself. The trick took. 
 The company insisted on the waiter's finishing off the chops, 
 and Goldsmith ordered a fresh supper for himself " and 
 treated the waiter to a dram, who might otherwise get sick 
 from so nauseating a meal." 
 
 The Goldsmith tradition was now fully established ; 
 and, just as twenty-five or thirty years later, every story of the 
 adroitness of a man in avoiding the bailiffs, was attached 
 to the younger Sheridan, so every story of the taking in of a 
 man who was as easy to take in as a child, had Goldsmith for 
 the victim. 
 
 It was when Goldsmith was entertaining two of his 
 
300 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 most honoured friends at his rooms that there entered upon 
 him without ceremony one evening a disreputable fellow 
 to whom he had once lent a couple of guineas. " Sitting 
 himself down, with most intolerable assurance, he inquired 
 after my health and literary pursuits," said Goldsmith, 
 telling the story, " as if we were upon the most friendly 
 footing. I was at first so much ashamed of ever having 
 known such a fellow that I stifled my resentment and 
 drew him into a conversation on such topics as I knew he 
 could talk upon, in which, to do him justice, he acquitted 
 himself very reputably, when all of a sudden, as if recollecting 
 something, he pulled two papers out of his pocket, >vhich he 
 presented to me with great ceremony, saying ' Here, my 
 dear friend, is a quarter of a pound of tea and a half-pound of 
 sugar I have brought for you ; for though it is not in my 
 power at present to pay you the two guineas you so gener- 
 ously lent me, you, nor any one else, shall ever have it to say 
 that I want gratitude.' This was too much," continued 
 the narrator, " I could no longer keep my feelings, but desired 
 him to turn out of my chambers directly ; which he very 
 coolly did, taking up his tea and sugar ; and I never saw him 
 afterwards." 
 
 He must have been constantly meeting with a contretemps 
 of this nature ; the fact being that he was so simple-minded 
 as to be imposed upon by any impudent fellow ; and the 
 class of man with whom he must frequently have associated 
 was that Irishman who believes himself to be a perfect gentle- 
 man. In the smaller towns in his native land he stiU struts 
 into bars and billiard rooms, treats the company with easy 
 patronage and is called " Captain " by the billiard-markers. 
 If he chances to meet a stranger of a better class, he forces 
 his acquaintance on him, and, refusing to be snubbed, trades 
 in every direction upon being on terms of the closest in- 
 timacy with him, calling him by his Christian name in 
 public, and if he finds him in the company of ladies, pushing 
 himself forward to obtain an introduction. This type of 
 impostor swarmed in Fleet Street during the greater part 
 of the last century, calling himself an author, and being 
 nightly " flown with insolence and wine." In the eighteenth 
 century he had many representatives in the same neighbour- 
 
ROOMS IN BRICK COURT 301 
 
 hood, and the least cunning among them would far outwit 
 Goldsmith. When they learned of his being in funds, their 
 devotion to him and their allusions to the old country must 
 have been touching. 
 
 This year, which opened with the news of his having 
 received ;£500 from his play, must have been a very trying 
 one to him, through the demands of these worthless ad- 
 venturers on the one hand, and his popularity with some 
 of the most distinguished men in England on the other. 
 If he had had even the most rudimentary knowledge of the art of 
 getting on in the world, he would, of course, have dropped 
 the acquaintance of the detrimentals and cultivated the others ; 
 but there he was, endeavouring to find a substitute for John 
 Newbery, who had died during the previous December, to 
 make advances to him on account of a work not yet begun, 
 in order that he might be able to lend money to the worth- 
 less crew that haunted the taverns and dogged him to his 
 rooms. There he was, making a jest of pretending to resent 
 the undue familiarity of a vulgar pork-butcher in calling him 
 Noll, and yet quite serious (according to some authorities 
 solemnly accepted by grave biographers) in resenting John- 
 son's calling him " Goldy ! " Everybody knew Johnson's 
 delightful habit of giving amusing nicknames to his most 
 cherished friends, and there could not possibly be one among 
 them who did not feel complimented by this show of famili- 
 arity. And yet we are asked to believe that Goldsmith, 
 who was " hail-fellow-well-met " with butcher and baker 
 and candlestick maker — the first two, at any rate, can be 
 vouched for — became peevish because his best friend paid 
 him a compliment which Kelly or Kenrick would have given 
 anything to receive ! 
 
 Surely the explanation of his objection to be called " Goldy " 
 was on account of its being so painfully lucus a non lucendo. 
 " Goldy — Goldy," we hear him grumble, the twinkle in his 
 eye all the time, " the idea of calling me Goldy, when I 
 haven't set eyes on a bit of it this twelve-month ! " Even 
 without the story of the pork-butcher and his ignorant famili- 
 arity, we should have laughed at the suggestion of Goldsmith's 
 objecting to be called " Goldy." If we had heard that, when 
 the fellow called out " Noll," he rose and walked out of the 
 
302 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 room, we might possibly have thought that he was sensitive 
 on the point of nicknames ; but with that story, as told by 
 Glover, before us, we have no trouble in arriving at what we 
 believe to be a correct solution of his show of petulant vanity 
 when Johnson curtailed his name, as he did Sheridan's, and 
 BosweU's, and Beauclerk's. 
 
 It was in these days that he instituted his " Shoemaker's 
 Holiday " entertainment — one that has been imitated by 
 several generations of literary and artistic brethren in London. 
 The happy name was, of course, suggested by the title of 
 Dekker's play. Half a dozen friends would start on foot for an 
 excursion into the country after breakfast on Sunday, dining at 
 a cheap ordinary in the northern heights and returning to sup 
 together at a tavern. We do not hear that he succeeded in 
 getting any of his better class of acquaintance to accompany 
 him upon these rambles ; most of his companions were men 
 who were accustomed to think of " a cut from the joint and 
 pastry " for tenpence — the Highbury carte du jour — in the 
 light of festive fare. One of them was a quaint person, such 
 as was always to be found about an attorney's office down to 
 the days of Dickens — an elderly copying clerk of methodical 
 habits and simple tastes, who refused on principle to pay 
 more than a fixed sum for a meal. If Beauclerk or Langton 
 or Boswell had met Goldsmith leading his nondescript crew 
 along the Surrey highway on a Sunday morning the result 
 would have been profitable. We should have heard what 
 they looked like. But it is not difficult to picture them on 
 their trudge, careless as to their dress and without a care at 
 heart — for the time being. 
 
 And when the leader of the little band found himself 
 back at his rooms in the Temple, he brought out of his desk 
 the manuscript which was now in his thoughts day and night, 
 as it had been for some months, and added a couple of 
 lines, suggested, it may be, by some object or incident which 
 had struck him during the day's ramble. We know what 
 this manuscript became in the course of time. One day 
 during this summer Cooke dropped in upon him and found 
 him just putting away what he had written, and he 
 read it to his visitor. It contained ten lines of The Deserted, 
 Village : 
 
ROOMS IN BRICK COURT 303 
 
 Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, 
 
 Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, 
 
 How often have I loiter'd o'er thy green, 
 
 Where humble happiness endear'd each scene ! 
 
 How often have I paus'd on every charm, 
 
 The shelter'd cot, the cultivated farm, 
 
 The never-failing brook, the busy miU, 
 
 The decent church that topt the neighb'ring hill. 
 
 The hawthorn bush with seats beneath the shade, 
 
 For talking age and whisp'ring lovers made. 
 
 Those were the lines that he had just written, and " Let 
 me tell you this is no bad morning's work," he cried, 
 exultantly. 
 
 We do not know what his visitor thought on the subject ; 
 but we know what the opinion of the world of readers has 
 been for nearly a hundred and fifty years on that morning's 
 work. 
 
 He had the poem close to him all this year, working at it, 
 as he did at all his poems, with patient care, applying his 
 exquisite sense of balance — his exquisite fastidiousness in the 
 choice of the word of the exact shade of thought or feeling, 
 to every line. And the sweet melody of melancholy which is 
 woven through the poem from word to word, represented, we 
 know, what was in his own heart all the time ; for the news had 
 reached him of the death of his brother Henry, the one whom 
 he " loved better than most men," as he wrote in his dedication 
 of this poem to Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
 
 He was not accustomed to treat his writing of poetry 
 so lightly as he did the execution of his commissions for the 
 booksellers. He never hurried over a line of his verses. He 
 thought over every word, and as we have already mentioned 
 in connection with The Traveller, his manuscript pages were 
 crowded with corrections and interlineations. He was 
 nursing this new poem of his for two years close to his heart 
 before he let it go from him to become the crown of the 
 labours of his life. 
 
 He soon found that it was impossible for him to remain 
 in town if he wished to complete the commission which he 
 had received from Tom Davies and his associated booksellers 
 for a History of Rome. He was to receive ;^25o for this work, 
 and it was to be completed in two years. He had made his 
 
304 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 rooms in Brick Court just too comfortable, and they were 
 just too handy for the Fleet Street loafers, to allow of his hav- 
 ing a chance of doing any work that demanded serious applica- 
 tion. It was not until he was dead that people became 
 aware of the extent of his benefactions. His rooms must 
 have been constantly besieged, so that he had little time 
 for work. He had always a train of pensioners — ^widows 
 (possibly some of them were really widows) with their 
 children (possibly some of them were really their own 
 children) — ^unfortunate wretches whom he had once be- 
 friended and who knew that they were safe in clinging 
 to him; all sorts of suflFerers — importunate and impostors 
 — he did his best for them all. And the sacrifices that he 
 made for them ! It is recorded on good authority that 
 upon one occasion he was just sitting down to a meal 
 when an appeal was made to him ; some one was starving. 
 Without a second word he swept the contents of the table 
 into the basket saying, " Now, let me only suppose that I 
 have eaten a heartier breakfast than usual, and I am nothing 
 out of pocket." 
 
 It soon became obvious to his true friends — most likely 
 the booksellers who were becoming uneasy — that he would 
 never get through any work so long as he remained in London 
 and made his chambers a rendezvous for the idle and the 
 indigent. A neighbour of his in the Temple, Mr. Thomas 
 Bott, who had acquired a personal interest in his industry, 
 having lent him some money, was in the habit of taking 
 country lodgings at a cottage on the Edgware Road, and, as 
 there was a room to spare, may have urged him to be his 
 companion at his retreat for a few months. Goldsmith was 
 wise enough to see the advantage of entering into such an 
 arrangement, and though, of course, unwilling to resume 
 work, he took his departure from Brick Court for the time 
 being, doubtless greatly to the chagrin of his friends of the 
 Wednesday Club. 
 
 Though he loved the country he could rarely get farther 
 away from London than Highbury or Islington. Only the 
 year before, Percy, who was leaving his Vicarage at Easton 
 Maudit for some months, invited him to occupy it till the 
 return of the family ; and Goldsmith seems to have been 
 
ROOMS IN BRICK COURT 305 
 
 anxious to accept that hospitable offer. He wrote, however, 
 to make some inquiries before definitely deciding. 
 
 " I. In the first place, are there any troublesome prying 
 neighbours ? 
 
 " 2. Can I have a chamber to myself and can I buy 
 coals, &c. ? 
 
 " 3. Will I not cumber the house and take up the room 
 of others f 
 
 " 4. How long can you spare the apartment ? 
 
 "5. Is there a stage? The price f and can any books 
 be carried down ? 
 
 " 6. Can I have milk, meat and tea in the place ? 
 
 "And lastly, will it be in any way inconvenient to you and 
 Mrs. Percy ? And when will you want to be down your- 
 selves f " 
 
 It is not recorded either by Percy or any one else that the 
 visit took place. The inquiries made by Goldsmith suggest 
 certain unusual elements incidental to the invitation. It 
 is difficult to know what Goldsmith could have meant by in- 
 quiring if he could have an apartment to himself. Did he 
 fancy there was a likelihood of his having to share it with 
 the butler, as he did his Garden Court, staircase room f 
 
 The cottage on the Edgware Road seems to have been a 
 delightful one. It had been built by a Piccadilly shoemaker 
 for himself, and so it was promptly named by Goldsmith 
 " Shoemaker's Paradise " — a fitting objective for a " Shoe- 
 maker's Holiday." The garden was laid out in formal style, 
 with plaster deities of the second and third-class, naiads 
 and dryads, and nymphs, and fauns, with grottoes and foun- 
 tains ; and these he cannot but have felt to constitute 
 a certain stimulating entourage for the writing of a History of 
 Rome. 
 
 There would have been but little chance of his doing any 
 work in London during these months, for the Wilkes fever 
 was raging there with the virulence of a plague, and the 
 town was topsy-turvy. The Wilkes mob had things aU 
 their own way. The carnival frenzy that admitted of the 
 overturning of the State coach of the Austrian Ambassador 
 
3o6 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 while the rioters chalked " No. 45 " on the soles of his shoes — 
 a symbol which must have been mysterious to the unfortunate 
 victim — was not to be checked by the contemptible Govern- 
 ment that held the reins, but without any knowledge of whether 
 they were to be used for leading or driving. 
 
 " Undisturbed by the obscene tumult which raged all 
 around him," Goldsmith laboured at his History of Rome, 
 and meditated upon his Deserted Village. His friend Bott 
 owned a gig, and at rare intervals drove with him to London 
 for an hour or two, returning — ^not without risk — in the 
 early hours of the morning to " Shoemaker's Paradise." And 
 equally undisturbed by the Comus clamour of the rabble rout 
 both in the streets and the Houses of Parliament, Art was 
 meditating upon a scheme, the results of which were greater 
 than any one associated with the original movement could 
 have anticipated. An accidental word or two spoken in a 
 coterie of artists acted as a tongue of flame upon tinder, 
 and in a brief space of time the phrase " An English Academy 
 of Arts " was flying around. The movement — the second 
 of the kind— gathered strength every hour ; it was a beauti- 
 ful and lusty child ; and it only wanted a competent sponsor 
 to set it upon its feet. The godfather was forthcoming. 
 Reynolds had discussed the movement with West in private 
 and had consented to join hands with his brother artists, 
 Chambers, Cotes, and Moser. He entered the room where a 
 Committee of the whole fraternity was sitting, and at the 
 moment of his appearing at the door, inspired by one thought, 
 the members sprang to their feet and hailed him as Presi- 
 dent. 
 
 Before many months had passed the Academy had re- 
 ceived Royal Patronage, and Reynolds had been knighted. 
 Johnson received the appointment of Professor of Ancient 
 Literature, and Oliver Goldsmith became the first Professor 
 of History in December 1769, when the organisation of the 
 Royal Academy was completed. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 MAKING MONEY AND SPENDING IT 
 1768— 1769 
 
 It was in this same year, 1768, that Goldsmith formed a 
 close friendship with one of the greatest men of the age. 
 General Oglethorpe had distinguished himself in many 
 ways and in many directions. His intimate connection 
 with Wesley's mission to Georgia is well known. He 
 had studied many social questions and had advocated many 
 reforms, bringing to bear upon all an eminently sane 
 mind and a ripe judgment. That such a man should 
 appreciate Goldsmith and become intimate with him, not 
 on account of anything that he had written, but by reason 
 of something that he had said, rather tends to the belief that 
 there was more in Goldsmith's conversation, when he chose 
 to talk freely and sincerely, than some of his friends seemed to 
 imagine there could be. 
 
 In writing to him Oglethorpe commented thus on one 
 of his remarks : " How just, sir, were your observations that 
 the poorest objects were by extreme poverty deprived of the 
 benefit of hospitals erected for the relief of the poorest. 
 Extreme poverty which should be the strongest recommenda- 
 tion to charity, is here the insurmountable objection, which 
 leaves the distressed to perish." General Oglethorpe sent 
 with his letter ^5, which he begged Goldsmith to distribute for 
 him, for the immediate relief of any cases that he knew to be 
 deserving, and he concluded his letter with an invitation to 
 his country house, Cranham Hall, Essex. 
 
 This letter shows very clearly the impression made upon 
 him by Goldsmith, and especially by the soundness of Gold- 
 smith's remarks upon matters of great social and economic 
 
 importance. It is difficult to reconcile such evidence of the 
 
 J07 
 
3o8 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 effect of his conversation with the accounts given by Boswell 
 of his feebleness in this direction. But, as we have already 
 remarked, B ©swell's attempts to produce evidence in favour 
 of his statements, go far to prove just the opposite to what 
 he meant to prove. 
 
 ; . The truth seems to us to be that Goldsmith suited his 
 conversation to the company in which he found himself. 
 He made very good fun (he thought) out of Boswell, by 
 adopting the Irish form of humour of pretending to be a 
 fool, not giving a thought to the possible consequences of 
 such an attitude in the presence of one whose foolishness 
 was not a pretence. But when he came to talk with men 
 like Oglethorpe, he was himself — the man of large views, 
 founded on observation and experience — in short the man of 
 his Essays — the observer in The Citizen of the World. The 
 fact of his maintaining the opinions which he had formed on 
 certain matters, social and artistic, and eventually proving 
 them to be right, points to his being anything but a simple- 
 ton in ideas. 
 
 At the same time we do not think that Oglethorpe acted 
 upon a sound impulse in entrusting him with money for the 
 relief of deserving cases of extreme poverty. It was Gold- 
 smith's weakness of discrimination in such matters that was his 
 ruin, keeping him constantly poor, and compelling him to 
 undertake uncongenial work in order to find money, not for 
 his own necessities, but for those of other people — the majority 
 of them impostors. There was, for instance, the case of the 
 swindler, who called himself the Chevalier de Champigny, 
 who was obtaining subscriptions for a projected History of 
 England in fifteen volumes, to be written in French. Gold- 
 smith, in order to help him, handed him a full subscription 
 of seven and a half guineas, though, as Percy said, " he pro- 
 bably had not another left in his pocket." Again there was 
 an Irishman named Griffin who approached him begging him 
 to try to induce Garrick to add his recommendation to Gold- 
 smith's to get him appointed teacher of French to an im- 
 portant school. How far Goldsmith assisted him with money 
 does not appear ; but Garrick gave him a testimonial, and the 
 fellow got the place, only to decamp after a month or two 
 witli everything he could lay his hands on. 
 
MAKING MONET AND SPENDING IT 309 
 
 Another adventurer of the original Irish stock whom he 
 should have shaken off early in their acquaintance was named 
 Hiffernan. He had followed the Dublin profession of 
 " going to be a doctor," and came to London to practise it there. 
 He picked up odd jobs on the papers, and, hanging on to Gold- 
 smith, must have got many guineas out of him. He fell 
 asleep one evening when Bickerstaff had invited him and 
 Goldsmith to hear him read a new play, and unfortunately, 
 the literary entertainment had been preceded by one of a more 
 material form, in which Hiffernan, as usual, had indulged too 
 freely. He began to snore before the second act was reached. 
 The author fondly thought that he could successfully com- 
 pete with such rivalry ; but before it was half over 
 he found out his mistake. Rather than submit to the 
 ignominy of taking a part in the duet, Bickerstaff stopped 
 reading. " Never mind the brute, but go on. He would 
 serve Homer just so, if he were reading his own works," said 
 Goldsmith. 
 
 Kenrick may have been in the bar of the tavern or behind 
 the door when this unrehearsed scene was being enacted, 
 and as usual, the scoundrel misrepresented it, but in so 
 wretched an attempt at an epigram, it only deserves to be 
 quoted as evidence of how contemptible Kenrick was as a 
 writer. The dregs of Grub |Street could scarcely have 
 produced a more wretched thing. 
 
 What are your Britons, Romans, Grecians, 
 Compared with thorough bred Milesians ! 
 Step into Griffin's shop he'll tell ye 
 Of Goldsmith, Bickerstaff and KeUy. 
 And take one Irish evidence for t'other, 
 Ev'n Homer's self is but their foster-brother. 
 
 The doggerel speaks for itself, and makes one wonder how 
 it ever came to be printed. 
 
 It was in October that Goldsmith returned to London 
 from the Edgware Road cottage, and Johnson welcomed him 
 back. Upon the three off-days from the Thrales at Streatham 
 Johnson seems to have lost no opportunity of being in his 
 company. At the Club, at those well-furnished rooms in the 
 Temple, and at coffee houses without number they made 
 a point of meeting, and of leaving themselves open to the 
 
3IO 7 HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 merriment of every one with any sense of the incongruous 
 who saw them side by side. The one a big-boned, roughly- 
 clad giant, the other small, thick-set, over-dressed, needing to 
 tilt his head far to one side in order to look up to his com- 
 panion. The one lumbering along in mighty strides, the 
 other stumping along taking two strides to every one of his. 
 They must have suggested to many onlookers one of Admiral 
 Hawke's three-deckers with a cock-boat at its lee making 
 extremely bad weather and steering awry through being 
 blanketed by the bulk of the other. 
 
 So they marched down the Strand one day and through 
 the King's Mews by Northumberland House, on to West- 
 minster Abbey. They found themselves among the busts 
 at Poet's Corner. Johnson pointed to them and murmured : 
 
 Forsitan, et nostrum nomen, miscebitur istis. 
 
 Then they walked back to Fleet Street ; but just as they 
 were about to pass through Temple Bar, Goldsmith stopped, 
 pointed to the ghastly decoration of rebels' heads which still 
 remained spiked on the top since the executions after the 
 Jacobite rising. We are pretty sure that he borrowed John- 
 son's ponderous tones, though his eyes did not lose their 
 twinkle, while he pointed upward saying : 
 
 Forsitan, et nostrum nomen, miscebitur istis. 
 
 The Stability of Temple Bar must have been threatened 
 by the thunder of Johnson's laughter ; for there never was 
 any one so generous of his laughter or so timely with it as 
 Johnson ; and of this fact no one was better aware than Gold- 
 smith. It was Johnson's tremendous laughter that appalled 
 the box of wreckers on the first night of She Stoops to Conquer, 
 and made the success of the piece certain. Goldsmith appre- 
 ciated Johnson to the full ; it was he who would not accept 
 Gray's description of him, "Look, look, there goes Ursa 
 Major." " There's nothing of the bear about him but the 
 skin," said Goldsmith. 
 
 ^^ It was with Johnson he went to Oxford on the completion 
 of his Roman History in 1769, and was given the degree of 
 M.B., ad eundem gradum^ but Mr. Forster, who was very 
 
Lady Diana Beauclhrk. 
 
 From a mezzotint engraving. 
 
MAKING MONET AND SPENDING IT 311 
 
 unlucky in his attempts to give chapter and verse for 
 Goldsmith's degrees, mentions that there is a break in the 
 continuity of the University records during this year, so that he 
 was unable to obtain corroboration of Bishop Percy's statement 
 to the effect that Goldsmith had been so honoured. Forster 
 found out, however, that the visit to Oxford did take place, 
 and that it was in response to the invitation of Chambers, 
 the distinguished lawyer, who had become a member of the 
 Club, when Hawkins' welcome retirement made room for 
 some new blood. The Club was accumulating distinction in 
 these days. Goldsmith was becoming more famous every 
 year, and the name of Burke was honoured above that of any 
 politician in England ; Reynolds had been proclaimed by 
 every one except the King, who preferred West, the greatest 
 painter in England, and Topham Beauclerk had carried qff 
 Lady Bolingbroke, and when her husband got his divorce, 
 married her. She had been Lady Diana Spencer, and she was 
 thus able to have associated with her title once more the 
 name of the chaste goddess, when she was united by the 
 Church to Beauclerk. As Lady Diana Beauclerk she became 
 almost famous as an artist in her own day. She is still highly 
 respected by print collectors. Her style had a good deal of 
 the graceful lines of Angelica Kauffman and Cipriani, though 
 she was never so ambitious as either. 
 
 It was Goldsmith who had suggested the enlarging of the 
 borders of the Club, giving as his reason that the original 
 members had by this time " travelled over each other's minds." 
 " Sir, you have not travelled over my mind, I promise you," 
 cried Johnson ; but the feeling was distinctly in favour of 
 an increase in the membership, and in the course of a short 
 time, the limit of twenty was reached, and a few years later 
 ten additions were made, and this number was never ex- 
 ceeded. 
 
 As this year went on the position of Goldsmith became 
 more difficult than it had ever been. He had undoubtedly 
 come to see the wisdom of the advice given to him by his 
 best friends to cut himself adrift from his old associates, whose 
 most prominent traits have already been indicated, and he 
 began to perceive that if he did not speedily do so, he would 
 soon sink to the level of the least desirable among them. The 
 
312 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 doors of a better class of friends were open to him, and he 
 felt that he had but to enter to live a different sort of life 
 from that which had kept him poor and in debt. He made 
 a move in the right direction ; but he had not learned the 
 secret of being able to mingle on equal terms with persons 
 in easy circumstances, only so far as one whose circumstances 
 were mostly extremely uneasy should do. He had an idea 
 that it was necessary for him to conduct his life as they did 
 theirs — ^with a careless disregard for the smaller economies 
 which are common to the lower grade. He made a mistake — 
 one into which a good many other men of his type have fallen : 
 he did not form his own estimate of what his expenditure 
 should be, he allowed others who knew nothing about it to do 
 it for him, and he accepted their judgment. The art of cutting 
 a figure in the society of the great has at all times required 
 a great deal of study by such aspirants as have empty pockets, 
 and few of them quite master it — those who do are called 
 adventurers. But Oliver Goldsmith had not even acquired 
 a rudimentary knowledge of the art of being artful, and the 
 consequences to himself were disastrous. He found that 
 his new friends were as expensive to entertain as his old ; 
 and when he was handsomely entertained by them he could 
 not but return their civilities. He seems to have borrowed 
 money in many directions, and to have outrun the advances 
 made to him in a generous spirit, but on a business scale, by 
 the booksellers. He flung about the money so acquired, 
 and did not seem inclined to make any serious effort to 
 redeem his liabilities by work. When he had delivered his 
 History of Rome he gave himself completely up to his new 
 life of extravagance and social pleasure. He had never been 
 so idle since he came to London, and, as usual, with the 
 duration of idleness came an increased reluctance to work. 
 Beyond a doubt, Mrs. Milner had made a true estimate 
 of his character when she had said that he would do weU to 
 allow her to look after his money for him as she looked after 
 the pocket money of the young gentlemen at the school. 
 He never realised the importance, not of saving — it would be 
 going too far to expect him to think of saving — but of spend- 
 ing his money in a right way. He had received within a year 
 a sum which should have enabled him to live easily for three 
 
MAKING MONET AND SPENDING IT 313 
 
 years, and this space would have been ample to allow of his 
 writing another masterpiece of fiction, for which he could 
 certainly have commanded as much as he was paid for his 
 History of Rome. But he never gave himself a chance. His 
 temperament was such as prevented his being able to regulate 
 his life — to make it conform with his circumstances. 
 
 The History when it left his hands was a masterpiece, 
 but not one in the sense in which The Vicar of Wakefield 
 was a masterpiece. It was only a masterpiece of compila- 
 tion, and of suitability to the purpose for which it was 
 designed. It was meant to make the study of the history of 
 Rome pleasing to beginners, and it fulfilled its object so well 
 that it remained for nearly a century practically without a 
 competitor in the market. And it may truly be said that, while 
 almost every Roman History that has been published since 
 Goldsmith's, is very much more accurate, yet not one has 
 been so interesting. When one hears a great deal about the 
 necessity for erudition, one is tempted to inquire what is 
 the value of erudition in a book if no one will read it ? The 
 difficulty of getting a volume of history of any sort that will 
 attract rather than repel a young student was solved by 
 Goldsmith, and since his Histories have been discarded no 
 others that have been written have taken their place. This 
 appears to us to be all that can be said on the subject ; but to 
 say so much is to say a good deal. 
 
 Dr. Johnson in referring to Goldsmith's Roman History 
 amazed Boswell by the measure of his praise. 
 
 " Whether we take Goldsmith as a poet, as a comic writer, 
 or as an historian, he stands in the first class," said Johnson. 
 
 Boswell : " An historian ? My dear sir, you surely will 
 not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the 
 works of other historians of this age ? " Johnson : " Why, 
 who are before him ? " Boswell : " Will you not admit 
 the superiority of Robertson, in whose history we find such 
 penetration ; such painting ? " Johnson : " Sir, you must 
 consider how that penetration and how that painting are 
 employed. It is not history ; it is imagination. He who 
 describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson 
 paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece ; he 
 imagines an heroic countenance. You must look on Robert- 
 
314 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 son's work as a romance and try it by that standard. 
 History it is not. Besides sir, it is the great excellence of a 
 writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. 
 Goldsmith has done this in his history. Now Robertson 
 might have put twice as much in his book; Robertson is 
 like a man who has packed gold in wool ; the wool takes up 
 more room than the gold. No sir. I always thought that 
 Robertson would be crushed with his own weight — would 
 be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you 
 shortly all you want to know. Robertson detains you a great 
 deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous 
 detail a second time ; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will 
 please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an 
 old tutor of a coUege said to one of his pupils : ' Read over 
 your compositions and whenever you meet with a passage 
 which you think is particularly fine, strike it out ! ' Gold- 
 smith's Abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus 
 or Eutropius, and I will venture to say that if you compare 
 him with Vertot in the same places of the Roman History, 
 you will find that he excels Vertot. Sir, he has the art of 
 compiling, and of saying everything that he has to say in a 
 pleasing manner." 
 
 While any one accustomed to Boswell's methods would 
 feel, from reading his record of his conversation, that he had a 
 grudge against Robertson, and was anxious to pay it off, as 
 usual, through Johnson, it must be acknowledged that he 
 shows Johnson laying his finger at once upon the vital points 
 of both writers. Goldsmith sought to elucidate his sub- 
 ject, Robertson to envelope it in a cloud of words. More- 
 over, Goldsmith's judgment on most matters with which he 
 had to deal was nearly always sound. He freed his mind 
 from all prejudice and he dealt with what appeared to him to 
 be the facts material to any issue, in the most fair-minded 
 spirit. He never degenerated into a special pleader or a 
 partisan. Even though rigid criticism of his Roman History 
 will assert that all he did was to put into his own words what 
 other writers up to his time had said in theirs, still the re- 
 sult of his doing so was to transform what was unattractive 
 into what was supremely absorbing. He made the learning 
 of history as delightful as the reading of a Persian tale 
 
MAKING MONET AND SPENDING IT 315 
 
 — ^what Johnson rightly predicted his Natural History 
 would be. 
 
 Tom Davies and his partner in the History of Rome had 
 every reason to be gratified by the reception of the work, 
 which was issued in two volumes of 500 pages each, in the 
 May of 1769. But some months previous to its appearance 
 the author had entered into an agreement with Griffin, the 
 bookseller, to write for him a large Natural History. It was 
 to be in eight volumes, every one containing between 400 and 
 500 pages, and payment was to be made to him at the rate of 
 one hundred guineas a volume. 
 
 Now, here was a chance that would have delighted most 
 writers for the booksellers. Talk of Royal pensions — here he 
 had offered to him an annuity of a hundred guineas a year 
 for eight years, and, taking into account the value of money in 
 the mid-years of the eighteenth century, this sum should have 
 been sufficient to keep him, and to keep him very well too. 
 But when the Roman History appeared and was likely to turn 
 out a gold-mine to the booksellers, Tom Davies approached 
 him with an offer of five hundred guineas for an English 
 History in four volumes, stipulating that the whole was to 
 be delivered within two years from the date of the agree- 
 ment, and not to be paid for until the work was completed. 
 
 Here then, he had a chance of supplementing his hundred 
 a year by another hundred guineas, to be continued for five 
 years, or by two hundred and fifty guineas a year for two years ; 
 so that, looking ahead, say, for five years only — quite a strain 
 of foresight for Goldsmith — he had an annual income assured 
 to him of ^^273 equal to about £6^0 or ^700 of our money. 
 
 And all that he would have to do for this money would 
 be to apply himself rather diligently to his work for two 
 years — two volumes a year of the English History and a little 
 more than one of the Natural History would mean assiduity, 
 but not beyond his powers of work — and after the first two 
 years he could afford to relax and only write one volume a 
 year for the remaining three years of the five. 
 
 But this did not exhaust the list of his commissions over- 
 lapping one another, for he had an offer from Davies to write 
 an Abridgement of his Roman History, for the use of schools, 
 to be issued in one volume duodecimo, and for this he was 
 
3i6 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 to receive fifty guineas, and an agreement embodying this 
 proposal was signed in the September of the following year 
 (1770). 
 
 There were very few authors in England in Goldsmith's 
 time who were in the habit of receiving such offers for the 
 work of compiling. But as he already occupied before the 
 world an unassailable position as poet, novelist, and play- 
 wright, and having, moreover, elevated the work of com- 
 pilation into an art, commanding as much attention and 
 respect as he could achieve by the exercise of his inventive 
 gifts, he might surely have sat down to his desk with a light 
 heart to begin his five years of congenial and honourable 
 work — work that had no tinge of the old drudgery about it. 
 
 But Oliver Goldsmith was Oliver Goldsmith — that is 
 all that need be said in extenuation of his failure to run on 
 the lines laid down for him by the tradesmen who were — 
 as he always acknowledged them to be — ^his best friends. 
 Within five years he had completed all the commissions 
 with which he had been entrusted, and had given the world 
 two works over and above his contract — the one a poem called 
 The Deserted Village and the other a play called She Stoop 
 to Conquer, and by both he had made hundreds of pounds; 
 and yet he died overwhelmed by debt, and Johnson wrote his 
 epitaph for Westminster Abbey and another for the reading 
 of his friends — the latter- is a masterly summing up of his 
 life:: 
 
 " Was ever poet so trusted before ? " 
 
 That was Goldsmith's life. He could do well for every 
 one but himself. He never succeeded in ordering his life 
 as other men have ordered their lives. He had sounded aU 
 the depths of human life and had scaled its highest heights ; 
 he knew all about life except how to live. It was not the 
 need of money that overwhelmed him and thrust him into 
 the grave, it was his ignorance of how to live for himself and 
 not for other people. During the five years of his life, 
 beginning at the period which we have now reached in his 
 history, he must have received more than the equivalent of 
 j^50oo of our money, and yet he died deeply in debt, and 
 having nothing to show for his money beyond a score or so 
 of beggars weeping outside his door. 
 
MAKING MONET AND SPENDING IT 317 
 
 He knew everything about life except how to live. He 
 made many experiments and he had many experiences, but 
 he never acquired the knowledge of how to live. No man 
 was more industrious than he, especially during his last five 
 years upon earth, and certainly no man that ever wrote 
 employed his time so well. These five years represented a 
 culmination of literary excellence — History of Rome, History 
 of England, The Deserted Village, She Stoops to Conquer , 
 Animated Nature — a pretty fair list to be achieved within five 
 years — and yet he was pushed into the grave beneath the 
 weight of the anxieties of a life that should have been free 
 from any anxiety. No stranger catastrophe is to be found 
 recorded in the life story of any one of those abnormal men 
 on whom the burden of genius has been laid, unfitting them 
 for living in a world the fundamental principle of whose 
 existence is the maintenance of the normal. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 "THE JESSAMY BRIDE" AND HER FAMILY 
 1769 
 
 The most interesting of the chapters of the last eventful 
 five years of Goldsmith's life is undoubtedly that which was 
 devoted to his friendship with the Horneck family. The 
 episode comes upon us suddenly. Nothing that we have 
 heard about Goldsmith and his appearance in the world leads 
 up to it. Everything that we have heard of him has tended 
 strongly to turn us away from expecting such an episode. We 
 have seen him as the clumsy awkward lout wearing clothes 
 that added to the absurdity of a sufficiently absurd person 
 — as a man with something less than the most ordinary graces 
 of manner and of speech — a man on whom the struggle with 
 adversity had left its marks, and yet all at once he appears 
 before us on terms of the most delightful intimacy with a 
 family who had been brought up in an atmosphere of 
 refinement and of fashion — the two are not always found 
 united. 
 
 We must confess that in these circumstances there is great 
 need to be astonished. We feel, after undergoing a course 
 of Boswell's Goldsmith, that we have been brought face to 
 face with a new person, just as, reading Fanny Burney after 
 Boswell, we felt that we had made the acquaintance of a new 
 Johnson. There was nothing about the Horneck family 
 to lead one to suppose that they would be attracted to a 
 friendship for a man solely on account of his having attained 
 distinction in the world of art or letters. They were not 
 particularly devoted to either art or literature ; and they 
 certainly had nothing of Mrs. Thrale's pretensions to form 
 a salon on a French model ; ladies who have had such an 
 
 ambition have not recoiled from the Objectionable when it 
 
 318 
 
" THE JESSJMT BRIDE " 319 
 
 has come in the questionable shape of a man of genius — Mrs. 
 Thrale at any rate did not shrink from such a trial ; for she 
 knew enough natural history to be aware of the fact that the 
 hunting of lions cannot be maintained with any measure of 
 success in kid gloves. The Hornecks seem to have cared 
 nothing for specimens of the larger carnivora, however mightily 
 voiced. They were an ordinary family of refinement and 
 healthy gaiety. They were accustomed to mingle with the 
 best people of the day, and the beauty of the two girls could 
 not but cause them to be welcomed by the most fastidious 
 of the best. They were about the last family in the world 
 with whom such a man as the Goldsmith of Boswell would 
 be likely to become intimate, and the fact that they received 
 Goldsmith and cultivated his society and gave him many 
 tokens of their appreciation of himself without any regard to 
 his achievements, goes far to justify what we have already said 
 on the subject of the Goldsmith of Boswell. 
 
 Mrs. Horneck was the widow of Captain Kane Horneck, 
 the representative of a family whose ancestors had come to 
 England in 1680 from the Rhine provinces, eventually settling 
 in Devonshire. When Goldsmith was introduced to them by 
 Reynolds, the family consisted of a son, Charles, and two 
 daughters, Mary and Catharine; Charles had just come of 
 age, and after travelling on the Continent, where he met 
 Henry Bunbury, had obtained a commission in the Guards. 
 The girls were extremely beautiful ; they had that girlish 
 loveliness which, going with exquisite grace and elegance of 
 form, caused the eyes of the great painters to be turned toward 
 them, and when the painters had pointed to them, the eyes of 
 all the world of fashion were directed to them. Sir Joshua 
 painted Catharine, and lived to make one of his most perfect 
 child pictures in the portrait of her son — she married her 
 brother's friend, Henry Bunbury, when he was twenty-one and 
 she was not quite twenty, and Johnson's wedding gift to her 
 was a Family Bible. The elder girl, Mary, also sat to Sir 
 Joshua, in a modified Oriental costume, and when the por- 
 trait was finished, he was so pleased with it that he kept it 
 hanging in his studio until the day of his death, affirming 
 that it was the best picture he had ever painted. The gossip 
 of the day alleged that the pigments had not only been mixed 
 
320 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 with brains, according to his own advice to the amateur who 
 asked him for some hints, but with love as well. But as the 
 girl was just eighteen — she looks nearer sixteen — when the 
 portrait was painted, and he was forty-four, and had known 
 her from her childhood, the story may be set aside as an idle 
 invention. The portrait is, however, a delightful one, and 
 as full of the spirit of life and the soul of girlhood as the 
 artist's Lady Betty Hamilton. Of its beauty every one who 
 has seen it can speak, and as to its fidelity, one of the most 
 astonishing pieces of evidence possible to imagine in such a 
 connection was forthcoming on the publication some twelve 
 years ago of the Jerningham Letters. Lady Bedingfeld's 
 journal contains the following entry, opposite the date 
 September 19, 1833 : 
 
 " When the Queen returned to the Drawing-room we 
 found several ladies there. I observed a very old lady with 
 striking remains of beauty, and whose features seemed very 
 familiar to me. I felt to know her features by heart, and at 
 last I heard her name, Mrs. Gwyn, the widow of a general 
 and near ninety. I had never seen her before, but when I 
 was a girl, my uncle, the poet, gave me a portrait of her, 
 copied from Sir Jos. Reynolds, small size in a Turkish costume 
 and attitude. This picture is still at Cassy, and, of course, 
 must be very like her since it led me to find her out." 
 
 There can scarcely be a doubt that the picture was " very 
 like " when Dunkarton's engraving of it was sufficient to 
 allow of the original being identified with it, sixty-three 
 years after it was painted — very like indeed ! 
 
 This painting was bequeathed by Reynolds to Mary 
 Horneck who, some years after Goldsmith's death, married 
 Colonel Gwyn, one of the King's equerries ; and at her death 
 it passed into the possession of her grand-nephew, Catharine 
 Bunbury's grandson ; and it remained for many years at the 
 seat of the Bunburys, Barton Hall, Norfolk. The exquisite 
 representation by Sir Joshua Reynolds of the two sisters — 
 one of the most beautiful pictures produced during the 
 eighteenth century, and in point of composition equal to 
 anything that Rembrandt painted — is now, we believe, in 
 
Miss Horneck. 
 
 ("The Jessamy Bride.") 
 
 From the picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds^ P.R.A. 
 
" THE JESS A Mr BRIDE " 321 
 
 the collection of Mr. W. W. Astor. Hoppner also made a 
 portrait of each of the sisters. A miniature of Mary, nine 
 inches by five, beautifully painted, was sold with a large 
 number of meinentoes of her — fans, diamonds and lace, every 
 article a work of perfect art — at Christie's about ten years 
 ago. This portrait must have been painted when she was 
 nearly seventy, the sweetest old lady possible to imagine, 
 but only giving the merest suggestion of the early work of 
 Sir Joshua. 
 
 These lovely sisters were naturally great favourites in the 
 varied societies where they moved. In the history of the last 
 quarter of the eighteenth century we are constantly catching 
 glimpses of some of them. Mrs. Bunbury's husband was, 
 as a caricaturist, far more refined than either Gilray or Row- 
 landson, and in the number of suggestive touches in his 
 drawing, surpassed only by Hogarth. He was, however, 
 inferior in point of draughtsmanship to any of the three. 
 In Fanny Burney's diary and letters we find occasional refer- 
 ences to Mary. She was Lady of the Bedchamber to the 
 Queen, and was on the most affectionate terms with all the 
 princesses. It was in agreement with a compact made 
 with one of them that her remains were laid to rest in 
 the royal vault. For many years she lived at Kew, 
 whence she wrote to the last some delightful letters to the 
 children of her old associates at the palace. She had no 
 children herself, but adopted the daughter of a distant 
 relation of her husband, to whom she left her jewels. North- 
 cote mentions her as liking in her old age to come to his studio 
 and talk over the past days with him, when he was a pupil 
 of Reynolds ; here she met Hazlitt and delighted him 
 by the enthusiastic way she talked of Goldsmith, for whom 
 she had the greatest affection. 
 
 Altogether she must have been one of those delightful 
 wom6n who never grow old — a rare woman who, after being 
 for many years an important figure in palaces and on the 
 most intimate terms with the Queen and the princesses, liked 
 most to recall her friendship for the poet who had given her 
 the name that connects her with English literature — the 
 Jessamy Bride. 
 
 Edmund Burke was one of the trustees of the estate of 
 
322 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 Captain Kane Horncck, and in that capacity naust have had 
 many opportunities of observing her development from a 
 girl of beauty to a woman of character. One of his letters 
 to her is preserved in the Hanbury Correspndence . It is 
 dated February i, 1792, and is quoted by Forster as follows : 
 
 " Your appreciation of anything I do is a satisfaction I 
 feel very sensibly. From your childhood I have admired 
 your heart and had a very good opinion of your judgment, 
 and wished you all manner of happiness with an afiFection 
 which, without violence, might be called paternal." 
 
 Such was the delightful family whom we find treating 
 Oliver Goldsmith as one of themselves, welcoming him 
 heartily when he visited them and choosing him to be their 
 companion on a holiday excursion to France. Very diflFerent 
 indeed was the welcome he received at Barton Hall from that 
 accorded to him at Streatham Hall — the one the seat of an 
 ancient family, the other the recent acquisition of a brewer, 
 whose father had probably been a potman in a public-house, 
 and who himself died of gluttony. " Goldsmith has sounded 
 the depths of vulgarity," wrote Mrs. Thrale. So he had — upon 
 one occasion, when a guest in her house. The talk turned 
 upon a contemptible book which had just been written by 
 Dr. Beattie — a book which has long ago passed into oblivion 
 and which any man of letters whose judgment was worth 
 anything would have condemned, though it really was not 
 deserving even of the distinction of condemnation — Johnson 
 and Mrs. Thrale were talking enthusiastically of this, when 
 Goldsmith, who had long before seen what shallow stuff it 
 was, protested in his own humourous way against the atten- 
 tion that was being given to the writer of one book when he 
 himself had written so many, and no one was making a fuss 
 about him. 
 
 " Ay, doctor," said Johnson, " but you must remember 
 that forty-two sixpences go to every guinea," whereupon 
 Mrs. Thrale clapped her hands with delight. 
 
 " Goldsmith," she wrote, " has sounded the depths of 
 vulgarity," — and of stupidity, she might have added, and of 
 critical incompetence in addition. The spectacle of Johnson 
 
" THE JESSAMT BRIDE " 323 
 
 and Mrs. Thrale in ecstacies over Beattie's book, and snubbing 
 Oliver Goldsmith is not an edifying one to us to-day. Forty- 
 two sixpences to a guinea ! One book written by Dr. Beattie 
 worth, forty-two by Dr. Goldsmith ! There is a fine piece 
 of eighteenth-century literary criticism for twentieth-century 
 readers to wonder at, unless they accept our advice and regard 
 Johnson's remark as merely a good humoured " dig " at Gold- 
 smith's dislike to Beattie. If Johnson's remark was really 
 contemptuous it was contemptible ; but he loved having a 
 " dig " at some one's little weaknesses. As for Mrs. Thrale, 
 she could only see that it was advisable for her to follow the 
 voice of the crowd. The crowd were acclaiming Beattie 
 and she clapped her hands in delight. 
 
 Very different people were the Hornecks. People of true 
 refinement and true feeling, it did not take them long to find 
 out what Goldsmith was at heart. Reynolds had done so 
 years before, and so had Burke. The young Guardsman 
 seems to have been on as friendly terms with him as were his 
 sisters ; and a little later, Henry Bunbury joined the others 
 in his liking for the awkward genius. He accorded to him 
 the compliment of a caricature, one of his best, giving us 
 what we feel, with Reynolds's marvellous picture beside it, 
 must have been an admirable likeness of Goldsmith, only 
 with the most prominent features humourously emphasised. 
 
 His association with these people and on such terms must 
 have been the greatest delight of his life, though they were 
 only one family out of the many in the same position in life 
 with whom he was well acquainted. His friend Cooke, 
 possibly with a touch of envy, referred to the demoralising 
 effect which his mingling with " the great " had upon him ; 
 but we cannot believe that he had the Hornecks in his mind 
 at the time. There is not much demoralisation to a man of 
 genius in being made the willing butt of a thousand little jests 
 — banterings and persiflage — ^wordy battledore and shuttlecock 
 of a delightful sort. We get a glimpse of it in the rhymed 
 letter which he sent in reply to a belated invitation to dinner : 
 
 Your mandate I got, 
 You may all go to pot ; 
 Had your senses been right 
 You'd have sent before miijkt 
 
324 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 As I hope to be saved, 
 
 I put off being shaved ; 
 
 For I could not make bold 
 
 While the matter was cold, 
 
 To meddle in suds. 
 
 Or to put on my duds ; 
 
 So tell Horneck and Nesbitt, 
 
 And Baker and his bit. 
 
 And Kauffman beside. 
 
 And the Jessamy Bride, 
 
 With the rest of the crew, 
 
 The Reynoldses two, 
 
 Little Comedy's face, 
 
 And the Captain in Lace — 
 
 (By the bye you may tell him, 
 
 I have something to sell him ; 
 
 Of use I insist. 
 
 When he comes to enlist. 
 
 Your worships must know 
 
 That a few days ago, 
 
 An order went out, 
 
 For the foot guards so stout 
 
 To wear tails in high taste, 
 
 Twelve inches at least : 
 
 Now I've got him a scale 
 
 To measure each tail, 
 
 To lengthen a short tail 
 
 And a long one to curtail) — 
 
 Yet how can I when veit; 
 
 Thus stray from my text ? 
 
 Tell each other to rue 
 
 Your Devonshire crew, 
 
 For sending so late 
 
 To one of my state. 
 
 But 'tis Reynolds's way 
 
 From vyisdom to stray. 
 
 And Angelica's whim 
 
 To be frolick like him ; 
 
 But, alas ! your good worships, how could they be wiser, 
 
 When both have been spoil'd in to-day's Advertiser ? 
 
 " Little Comedy " was his nickname for Catherine, and 
 " The Captain in Lace " for Charles. The couplets bring 
 before us, as no other document has ever done, the intimate 
 relations existing between the various members of the circle. 
 One has not heard before of his acquaintance with Angelica 
 Kauffman, or with the Bakers — Dr. George Baker, Reynolds's 
 medical adviser, was subsequently knighted. But especially 
 
" THE JESSAMT BRIDE " 325 
 
 interesting it is to us to notice his " chaff " of the Guardsman. 
 It is inconceivable that Goldsmith should be the stammering 
 lout which some of his associates made him out to be, and yet 
 on such terms with a man of fashion like young Horneck. 
 The whole family were his friends and remained so to the 
 last. They must have gone together to masquerades, Ranelagh 
 suppers, and Pantheon entertainments, to say nothing of river 
 parties and theatre parties. No doubt he entertained them 
 in his usual extravagant style at his rooms ; and it is equally 
 certain that they responded from their house in Westminster. 
 There was also Reynolds's house in Leicester Fields to be 
 depended on, but there the rendezvous would be for 
 supper not dinner ; for dinner in Sir Joshua's dining-room 
 was too much of a scramble upon ordinary occasions to be 
 pleasant to the fastidious. He kept an open table, and his 
 guests seem to have looked upon it as a tavern " ordinary." 
 The service was as deficient as were the china and glass ; and 
 although there was usually abundance to eat and drink, yet 
 before every one was satisfied, there was, as a rule, a good deal 
 of noise. One guest, after having a sample of the Leicester 
 Fields menage, expressed his fervent belief that all the rest of 
 the world must have been silent that evening. 
 
 It would certainly be to supper that Sir Joshua would 
 invite his dearest friends ; and it may be taken for granted 
 that when little Dr. Goldsmith and little David Garrick were 
 present, the entertainment would be as laughable as any that 
 Foote could provide in the Haymarket. We have accounts of 
 a Dumb Crambo collaboration between Garrick and Gold- 
 smith, the greatest actor of his time repeating Hamlet's 
 soliloquy, and the greatest poet of his time illustrating it with 
 incongruous gestures. The effect must have been a master- 
 piece of comedy. And then possibly Garrick would give an 
 imitation, such as delighted the Burney girls, of Cumberland 
 the dramatist, whom some people seem to have mixed up 
 with Goldsmith, in respect of that unhappy quality of envy 
 causing him to decry the works of every one but himself; 
 or of Johnson making love to the mature widow of opulent 
 charms whom he married ; and if the company survived the 
 fits of laughter that such a performance produced. Dr. Gold- 
 smith might possibly be tempted to sing one of his songs for 
 
326 IHE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 them or play his flute or to dance a minuet solus. But before 
 this jesting had become fatiguing, Sir Joshua would lead Miss 
 Kauffman to the harpsichord — ^it would be too much to imagine 
 that he had become the possessor of that new-fangled instru- 
 ment the Forte-piano — and the graceful Swiss lady, who had 
 not ceased to be an accomplished musician when she became an 
 accomplished artist, would sing a serious canzonet, before the 
 sounds of carriages approaching and of the link boys shouting 
 were heard, bringing about the separation of the party. 
 
 These were certainly the happiest days of Oliver Gold- 
 smith's life. Even though he had to toil for hours during 
 the day to execute the work with which he had been commis- 
 sioned, he could still have the enjoyment that he so thoroughly 
 relished, sitting in the midst of a circle of delightful people, 
 and having his humour appreciated to the full by them — ^he 
 could stUl have the satisfaction of bringing out of his desk on 
 his return a manuscript over which he was taking some trouble, 
 writing only a few lines on every page, and leaving a broad 
 space between them which he never failed to fill up with 
 alterations and corrections, changes of words and phrases, to 
 pass his fastidious ear. This was the work of which he had 
 read a few lines to a friend several months before, and now 
 he was giving a touch of finality to the whole, which was a 
 poem that he had entitled The Deserted Village. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 ON THE EVE OF A TRIUMPH 
 1769 — 1770 
 
 If it is true that a poet is born, not made, it is equally true 
 that a poem is made not born. Percy had an opportunity of 
 observing the processes of the creation of a work under the 
 hand of a poet who, careless and apparently indifferent in 
 regard to his other work, took the highest possible view of his 
 responsibilities as a poet. He refers to the extraordinary 
 ease with which Goldsmith's prose ran from his pen, scarcely 
 a word being changed and every word so well chosen ; and 
 contrasts it with the labour he expended upon his poetry. 
 He was for years working at The Traveller, and he was for 
 years working at The Deserted Village. He seems to have felt 
 that if he was but an author by profession, it had been laid on 
 him to put the best of himself into his poetry. In endeavour- 
 ing to form an estimate of the character of Oliver Goldsmith it 
 may be as well to keep one's attention upon this fact. He was 
 called an inspired idiot by one of the most superficial observers 
 that ever elevated gossip to the rank of a profession. An 
 inspired idiot ! Never was there a more unfortunate inspira- 
 tion than this of Walpole's. The inspired idiot as poet is the 
 one who acts as if he believes that his work is finished when he 
 has found his last rhyme. To endeavour to improve upon 
 anything that he has flung from his pen would be, he believes, 
 to cast a slur upon the validity of his inspiration. He feels 
 that the malediction which the gentle copyist of the monastery 
 appended to his transcript of the Apocalypse, would be 
 wisely applied to him if he were to alter a single word that he 
 has written in his poem. This is the inspired idiot, and he 
 never was a poet. 
 
 Goldsmith was exactly the opposite to such a person. He 
 
 J27 
 
328 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 was in his relation to his poems exactly the opposite to what 
 an observer of his casual ways of life would believe him to be. 
 Casualties are to the casual, and assuredly he was familiar 
 enough with the sequence ; but when he was building up the 
 two poems by which he meant to be remembered, he was 
 another man. Had he modelled his way of living on the same 
 principle that he adopted for the writing of his poems, his 
 life would have been very different from the life of Oliver 
 Goldsmith. 
 
 It is worthy of note that he never made the publication of a 
 poem the subject of negotiation with the booksellers, and 
 that he rarely spoke to any of his literary friends of his designs 
 in respect of either The Traveller or The Deserted Village. 
 No one had a suspicion before it was published that he was 
 capable of writing the former, and among the hundreds of 
 questions and answers which are so faithfully recorded in con- 
 nection with the literary circle, not one has any reference to a 
 forthcoming poem by Dr. Goldsmith. Among the many empty 
 boastings of Dr. Goldsmith himself not one has a bearing upon 
 this not altogether unimportant matter. Even when he 
 read the few lines to his friend Cooke, he breathed nothing of 
 his intentions in respect of them ; he did not suggest that 
 they were part of a long poem of which he had had the scheme 
 in his mind for some years. He may have confided in John- 
 son and Reynolds, but if he did, they kept his secret intact. 
 
 What seems to us most astonishing is that none of his 
 associates, after the publication of The Vicar of Wakefield,. 
 asked him why he did not sit down and write another novel — 
 that none of them, after the publication of The Traveller, asked 
 him when he meant to publish another such poem. It was 
 not until The Deserted Village had been in the hands of the 
 public for more than a year, placing him immediately at the 
 head of the list of poets who followed Pope — some people, 
 excellent critics, said Dryden — that a question was put to 
 him on the subject of his poetry. It was at the Dinner of 
 the Royal Academy, on St. George's Day, 1771, that Lord 
 Lisburne asked him the very pertinent question, why he did 
 not write more poetry, to which he replied, " My Lord, by 
 courting the Muses I shall starve ; but by my other labours I 
 eat, drink, have good clothes, and enjoy the luxuries of life." 
 
ON THE EVE OF A TRIUMPH 329 
 
 Of course there were numbers of other people besides Lord 
 Lisburne interested in Goldsmith as a poet ; but Boswell 
 was not among them, so he carefully avoided recording the 
 asking of Lord Lisburne's question by any member of the 
 literary circle. 
 
 But the poem was undoubtedfy finished — only for some 
 alteration that he made every day to some word or phrase — 
 and placed in the hands of the printers in the year 1769. It 
 was twice announced in the Advertiser in this year and yet 
 it was not until May 26 in the year following that it was in 
 the hands of the public. 
 
 It is rather remarkable that there should be no contem- 
 porary mention of the fact that some months — perhaps as 
 many as six — before the actual publication of the poem in 
 quarto, it was privately printed in octavo form. For more 
 than a century and a quarter after the poet's death it was 
 assumed that the first issue of the work was in May 1770. It 
 is only within the last ten years that collectors have become 
 aware of the fact that there were actually three editions of 
 the private printing. When the discovery was made there 
 was naturally a great search instituted for copies of the first 
 octavo edition, the distinctive mark of which is a misprint in 
 the thirty-seventh line which reads : 
 
 Amidst the bowers the tyrant's head is seen. 
 
 In the two subsequent issues of the privately printed 
 edition the word head is altered to hand, as it appears in every 
 subsequent edition. Only three copies of the poem in octavo 
 with the misprint complete have up to the present been 
 discovered, and of these one is now in America. 
 
 It is almost incredible that, of a poem which attracted so 
 much attention when it was given to the public, an edition 
 should have been privately circulated without a record being 
 made of it, either by the author or one of his friends. But 
 the fact that such an edition exists forces one to consider 
 the possibility of its having been printed, as The Hermit was 
 printed, for the entertainment of Lady Northumberland. 
 But this can scarcely be thought of while the fact is before 
 us that Percy, who would certainly have been aware of 
 such an incident, makes no reference to it in the Life of 
 
33° THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 the poet for which he was responsible. To be sure, it must 
 be noted that Percy in this Memoir states that The Deserted 
 Village was published in 1769, and the private edition may 
 have been issued as far back as this year ; but Percy is not 
 always to be depended on as regards his dates. 
 
 The fact is that the whole incident is mysterious and 
 incapable of explanation on any assumption that can be called 
 plausible. Boswell devotes some pages to Goldsmith's move- 
 ments during the year 1769, but no word does he say to 
 lead us to suppose that Goldsmith had just privately 
 printed a poem or that he meant to publish one the 
 following year. He gives us a delightful picture of the poet's 
 strutting to and fro while waiting for a tardy guest at Mr. 
 BosweU's hospitable rooms, bragging of his new suit, just as 
 every one who has ever lived in Ireland for any length of time 
 must have seen some grave-faced humourist doing, calling the 
 attention of every one present to the imaginary beauties of his 
 new coat, and winding up by declaring that it was a great day 
 for Ireland when he made his first appearance in so elegant a 
 garment — " as if," a Boswell would say, after witnessing so 
 absurd a display — " as if the fortunes of his unhappy country 
 could be materially aflFected by an incident which, if closely 
 examined, must be pronounced trivial ! " We wonder if 
 Goldsmith made any sly reference to its being as great a day 
 for Filby when he sent home that particular " suit of ratteen 
 lined with satin " {vide the Filby bills) as it was for Corsica 
 when Mr. Boswell appeared in the streets of London in the 
 national costume of an island brigand-patriot. 
 
 The conversation afterwards took a turn for the worse, 
 and poetry was discussed ; but not a word is recorded as having 
 been uttered respecting the poem by Oliver Goldsmith, M.B., 
 which had been announced in the Advertiser. 
 
 Goldsmith was in a particularly good humour this evening, 
 for he had recently persuaded the booksellers to make him an 
 advance of £500 for the first five volumes of the Natural His- 
 tory, and he thereby saw his way clearly to write the two 
 volumes of the English History for which he had been com- 
 missioned ; and Johnson, being in equally exuberant spirits, 
 was shouting down all rivals at the table, when Goldsmith 
 paraphrased Cibber : " There is no arguing with Johnson, 
 
ON IHE EVE OF A TRIUMPH 331 
 
 for when his pistol misses fire he knocks you down with the 
 butt end of it." 
 
 That was the best thing which Boswell recorded in con- 
 nection with his dinner party. 
 
 Many opportunities had he during this year of referring to 
 Goldsmith. There was the case of Baretti, for instance, upon ^■ 
 which we have already touched. Goldsmith detested this 
 naturalised Italian, for naturalisation does not change a man's 
 nature, and Baretti was eminently detestable, insulting Gold- 
 smith every time they met, and also subjecting Mr. Boswell 
 to the same course of treatment. We have already pointed out 
 the subtlety with which the Scotsman paid him back ; and 
 also how he meanly ignored Goldsmith's share in the case. 
 The Irishman paid back the Italian by heaping coals of fire 
 on his head, sitting by his side in the coach when an applica- 
 tion for bail was to be made, and giving evidence on his behalf 
 in the " Awful Sessions House " as Boswell calls the Old 
 Bailey. Goldsmith might have had nothing to say to the 
 matter so far as Boswell's record is concerned ; for all that the 
 Scotsman was anxious to place on record was the smallness of 
 the regard that Johnson had for Baretti, whom Boswell hated, 
 and whom he confessed that he hoped to see hanged. 
 
 Not a word has this clever chronicler of small beer to say 
 respecting The Deserted Village. Not a word has Mr. 
 Thomas Davies, the conscientious bookseller, to say about the 
 matter in which it might reasonably be expected he took a 
 professional interest ; and thus we are left to work out the 
 puzzle of the privately printed edition of the poem without 
 any contemporary help, and, if we please, to assume, as some 
 collectors have done, that this octavo edition was really the 
 original form in which the poem was given to the public. 
 When we find before us a letter written by Goldsmith to 
 his brother Maurice early in the year following (1770), we 
 begin to be hopeful of a clue. But although the letter 
 refers to his appointment to the professorship at the Royal 
 Academy and to the mezzotint of himself which had 
 just been published, no allusion is made to The Deserted 
 Village. Surely it might have been expected that any 
 communication made at this time by the author of The 
 Deserted Village to some one within easy reach of Lissoy, 
 
332 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 would contain a reference to his having introduced the village 
 into a poena ; but not the most distant allusion is made to 
 Lissoy's connection with Auburn — and this fact has cer- 
 tainly strengthened the hands of those critics who hold that 
 Lissoy and Auburn have little in common. 
 
 But the letter must be quoted, indicating, as it does, the 
 strong aflEection which the writer had for his old associations 
 with Ireland, and also the carelessness of his friends in respect 
 of the letters which he had written to them from time to time. 
 They had given him up. It was only when a casual reference 
 to his fame came under the notice of any of them that they 
 were led to wonder if they could get anything out of him. 
 
 " Dear Brother, 
 
 " I should have answered your letter sooner, but in truth I 
 am not fond of thinking.of the necessities of those I love, when 
 it is so very little in my power to help them. I am sorry to 
 find you are still every way unprovided for ; and what adds 
 to my uneasiness is that I have received a letter from my 
 sister Johnson, by which I learn that she is pretty much in 
 the same circumstances. As to myself, I believe I could get 
 both you and my poor brother-in-law something like that 
 which you desire, but I am determined never to ask for little 
 things, nor exhaust any little interest I may have until I can 
 serve you, him, and myself more effectually. As yet no 
 opportunity has offered, but I believe you are pretty well 
 convinced that I will not be remiss when it arrives. The 
 king has lately been pleased to make me Professor of Ancient 
 History in a royal Academy of Painting, which he has just 
 established, but there is no salary annexed; and I took it 
 rather as a compliment to the institution than any benefit 
 to myself. Honours to one in my situation are some- 
 thing like ruffles to a man that wants a shirt. You tell 
 me that there are fourteen or fifteen pounds left me in 
 the hands of my cousin Lawder, and you ask me what 
 I would have done with them. My dear brother, I 
 would by no means give any directions to my dear worthy 
 relations at Kilmore, how to dispose of money, which is, 
 properly speaking, more theirs than mine. All that I can 
 say is, that I entirely and this letter will serve to witness, 
 
ON THE EVE OF A TRIUMPH 333 
 
 give up any right and title to it ; and I am sure they will 
 dispose of it to the best advantage. To them I entirely 
 leave it : whether they or you may think the whole necessary 
 to fit you out, or whether our poor sister Johnson may not 
 want the half, I leave entirely to their and your discretion. 
 The kindness of that good couple to our poor shattered family 
 demands our sincerest gratitude, and though they have 
 almost forgot me, yet, if good things at last arrive, I hope 
 one day to return, and encrease their good humour by adding 
 to my own. I have sent my cousin Jenny a miniature picture 
 of myself, as I believe it is the most acceptable present 
 I can offer. I have ordered it to be left for her at George 
 Faulkenor's, folded in a letter. The face, you well know, 
 is ugly enough but it is finely painted. I will shortly 
 also send my friends over the Shannon some mezzo-tinto 
 prints of myself and some more of my friends here, such as 
 Burke, Johnson, Reynolds, and Colman. I believe I have 
 written an hundred letters to different friends in your country, 
 and never received an answer from any of them. I do not 
 know how to account for this, or why they are unwilling to 
 keep up for me those regards which I must ever retain for 
 them. If then you have a mind to oblige me, you will write 
 often whether I answer you or not. Let me particularly 
 have the news of our family and old acquaintances. For 
 instance, you may begin by telling me about the family where 
 you reside, how they spend their time, and whether they ever 
 make mention of me. Tell me about my mother, my brother 
 Hodson, and his son ; my brother Harry's son and daughter, 
 my sister Johnson, the family of Ballyoughter, what is become 
 of them, where they live, and how they do. You talked of 
 being my only brother, I don't understand you — Where is 
 Charles ? A sheet of paper occasionally filled with news of 
 this kind, would make me very happy, and would keep you 
 nearer my mind. As it is, my dear brother, believe me to be 
 yours, most affectionately, 
 
 " Oliver Goldsmith." 
 
 Of course the reference to his acceptance of the Royal 
 Academy appointment contains a slip of the pen. It can 
 scarcely be doubted that he meant to say that he took it as a 
 
334 *I^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 compliment from the institution, not to the institution. The 
 tone of the paragraph and of the one following it shows that he 
 is not at all anxious to boast. He suffered for his solicitude 
 in regard to his relations, for a nephew — a son of his sister 
 who had married Daniel Hodson, thereby depriving Oliver 
 Goldsmith of the money with which he might have gone to 
 the University in the same rank as his brother Henry — turned 
 up in London shortly afterwards and sponged upon him to the 
 day of his death. It will be seen from Filby's bills that half 
 the sum which he owed to the tailor at his death — it amounted 
 to ^79 — was for this nephew of his. It will also be noticed 
 that, at the death of his mother. Goldsmith not only went 
 into mourning himself but put young Hodson into mourning 
 as well. And yet Northcote was foolish enough to repeat 
 the piece of malicious gossip that Goldsmith only went into 
 half-mourning at his mother's death, and on being asked 
 which of his connections had died, replied " a distant relative " 
 — the most uncharacteristic Goldsmith story ever invented by 
 the Kenrick gang. 
 
 The mezzotint referred to in the letter was done after 
 the well-known portrait painted by Reynolds. It was engraved 
 by Marchi under the supervision of Sir Joshua himself, and is 
 to-day reckoned one of the finest of all the mezzotints of the 
 eighteenth century. As to the portrait from which it was 
 taken there can scarcely be a second opinion. It has always 
 been looked upon as representing the noblest achievement, 
 not merely of Reynolds, but of the art of which he was so true 
 an exponent. No one can refer to it without enthusiasm, 
 for every one that has eyes to see must be struck by the 
 marvellous power with which all the great emotional elements 
 mingled in Goldsmith's life are blended in the picture. 
 Tragedy is in the expression, but it is tragedy with the 
 twinkle of comedy ; pathos is there, and its effect is not 
 diminished by the note of humour of which one becomes 
 conscious after looking at the picture for some time. And 
 these elements are displayed against a background, so to 
 speak, of exquisite simplicity of nature. Reynolds's portrait 
 of Oliver Goldsmith is a biography in colour. And we all 
 know that it could never have been what it is unless the 
 painter had put the best of himself into it. Sympathy 
 
ON THE EVE OF A TRIUMPH 335 
 
 is in every part of it; and as he worked at it day by- 
 day and came to see more and more into those secrets of 
 character and emotion which none of his sitters could conceal 
 from Reynolds, his sympathy broadened into the truest 
 affection. That is the supreme achievement of the painter : 
 he has not only put the man's life upon his canvas, he has 
 put on record as well his own feelings in regard to his friend. 
 
 Reynolds painted the portrait for himself ; but when the 
 Duke of Dorset saw it he would not be denied it. He purchased 
 it for Knowle. A copy was made by the painter for Thrale's 
 collection at Streatham, where for forty-five years it hung 
 by the side of Garrick, Burney, Burke, Johnson, Chambers, 
 Reynolds himself, and a few others. Fanny Burney in her 
 Life of her father gives some particulars of these pictures in 
 the Streatham Portrait Gallery ; but she was, of course, 
 unable to mention one very interesting point respecting them, 
 which was that that enthusiastic patron of the arts, Mr. 
 Thrale the brewer did not pay for them. He left it to his 
 widow to pay for them, or to maintain the example which he 
 had set her of patronising without paying. But Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds was a good business man as well as a good friend; 
 and between the date of his painting these portraits for 
 Mr. Thrale and the date of Mrs. Thrale's paying for them, 
 his prices had risen, and the lady who was fortunate enough 
 to be Mr. Thrale's widow had to pay at the enhanced rate, 
 amounting in some cases to as much as thirty guineas for 
 one portrait — it was said that Reynolds was becoming quite 
 preposterous in his charges ; happily, however, for succeeding 
 generations, his prices if preposterous were not absolutely 
 prohibitive. 
 
 At the dispersal of the collection in 18 16, the portrait of 
 Goldsmith — it was catalogued " duplicate " — ^was sold to the 
 Duke of Bedford for ;^I33 7s. — about half the price that one 
 of the mezzotints would fetch in an auction-room to-day. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 "THE DESERTED VILLAGE" 
 1770 
 
 Whatever explanation an ingenious person may put upon the 
 curious incident of the privately printed editions of the poem 
 which was destined to make the name of the writer known 
 and loved in every part of the civilised world, there can be no 
 doubt that the first appearance of The Deserted Village in 
 public was on May 26, 1 770. The Public Advertiser not merely 
 mentions the day but the hour. " This day at 12 wiU be 
 published, price two shillings. The Deserted Village, a poem. 
 By Doctor Goldsmith, Printed for W. Griffin, at Garrick's 
 Head in Catherine St., Strand." So ran the advertisement. 
 On June 7, a second edition was called for, and a third within 
 another fortnight. A fourth appeared after a lapse of the 
 same duration, and on August 16, a fifth. The success of the 
 book was greater even than that of The Traveller, though it 
 did not make such a change in the author's prospects as did 
 the earlier poem. But to say that it merely consolidated hi! 
 reputation is to say too little. He was acknowledged to be a 
 poet when he published The Traveller, and he remained an 
 acknowledged poet when The Deserted Village appeared — 
 even that is something satisfactory for a poet to reflect upon, 
 when he has put his second volume into the hands of the 
 people who admired his first so greatly as to make them 
 expect more from the second. Much was expected from the 
 poet of The Traveller, and these expectations were more than 
 realised by The Deserted Village. Johnson thought that the 
 earlier poem was the better : he had contributed nine lines to 
 the earlier and only four to the latter. But he was undoubtedly 
 honest in his opinion, and it can quite easily be understood that 
 the one should make a stronger appeal to him than the other, 
 
 336 
 
" 7HE DESERTED VILLAGE " 337 
 
 he took into account in forming his judgment so many other 
 things besides the poetry. People usually pronounce an 
 opinion on poetry from the standpoint of poetry only ; but 
 Johnson approached it from every side in turn. He would 
 not read a history that was written by an " infidel." He did 
 not believe that a man could write soundly on the Heptarchy 
 unless he was sound on the Pentateuch. He was not quite 
 sure that The Deserted Village was not at heart an attack upon 
 the Tory aristocracy. 
 
 But there can be no question as to his sincere admira- 
 tion of the poem as a poem. Any question of preference 
 between the two poems was only a question of preference 
 between the smell of a sweet brier and the scent of a haw- 
 thorn. 
 
 The breath of the hawthorn pervades The Deserted Village 
 — the rain-drenched hawthorn in the early spring, the full 
 summer blossoming of the tree when the air is heavy with 
 perfume and the whole landscape seems to have become one 
 hawthorn bush ; and then the harsh biting smell of the winter 
 thorn — we are conscious of it all while reading the poem : the 
 scent of the hawthorn never leaves it. We feel that we have 
 sat with the poet in the shade of the tree in all seasons. 
 
 What can be said of the man who could write the 
 words of that dedication ? It was inscribed to Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds : 
 
 " The only dedication I ever made was to my brother, 
 because I loved him better than most other men. He is 
 since dead. Permit me to inscribe this Poem to you." 
 
 It is the most perfect dedication in the English language. 
 It is the only dedication that could be attached to such a poem, 
 and the poem is the only one that could follow such an inscrip- 
 tion. Read the words that we have quoted and note the 
 natural hush that follows. We are conscious of having heard 
 an exquisite chord struck, and we pause to allow its vibrations 
 to wane away. They take long 
 
 Gray had the poem read to him, and before he heard 
 the last line he cried : 
 
 " This man is a poet ! " 
 
 He might have said, " This man is a poet," before his 
 reader had finished the dedication. 
 
338 fHE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 The Deserted Village is, perhaps, the most compact poem 
 ever written. It conveys to a reader a sense of the need 
 for every word that it contains. There is no superfluous 
 line in it. We feel that there is nothing of what we may- 
 call the "couplet sense" in any part of it — that couplet 
 sense which even under the manipulation of Pope becomes 
 intolerable. It is a study in delicate tones of colour, and 
 we know that they are the tints of Nature in the North : 
 soft sunshine, and a sky dappled with faint grey. There 
 is no sense of weakness in the sweetness of the lines. 
 Their honey does not cloy. They are mellifluous only as 
 flowers are mellifluous. There is no attempt made in this 
 poem any more than there was in its forerunner, to surprise a 
 reader with the aptness of a word — ^with the expressiveness of 
 a phrase. We feel as we do in looking at a beautiful land- 
 scape, that it cannot help being what it is, for it is Nature. 
 We feel that everything about it is true. The poet is not 
 anxious to exhibit his own powers. All he aims at is to draw 
 your attention to the pictures that he sees. 
 
 And it is, as we have just said, a series of pictures in low 
 tones that he brings before our eyes. " The sheltered cot," 
 " the cultivated farm," " the never failing brook " " the busy 
 mill," " the decent church that topt the neighb'ring hiU," 
 the " smiling village loveliest of the lawn " — all the simplicity 
 of the true pastoral is in the incidents of the landscape, and no 
 artificial note is struck in the people. They are naturally 
 rustic, they are never outside the picture, they are never 
 otherwise than in character — English-speaking people in 
 all departments of life ; we cannot get on without them in 
 our literature, our oratory, our daily conversation. They are 
 ever with us. There is scarcely a line in the poem that has not 
 been annexed for daily use, though in using it no thought 
 may be given to its origin. 
 
 One has only to glance at a few of these exquisitely simple 
 pictures to become aware of their perfection. The poet 
 imagines a man who has cherished the memory of the places 
 and of their people familiar to his boyhood, returning, after 
 a long separation, to the well-remembered scenes, only to 
 find that all is changed. He meditates on the house ^hathas 
 been left to him desolate : 
 
" 7HE DESERTED VILLAGE " 339 
 
 In all my wand'rings round this world of care, 
 In all my griefs — and God has giv'n my share — 
 I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, 
 Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ; 
 To husband out life's taper at the close, 
 And keep the flame from wasting, by repose : 
 I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, 
 Amidst the swains to show my book-learn'd skill ; 
 Around my fire an evening group to draw. 
 And tell of all I felt and all I saw ; 
 And as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue. 
 Pants to the place from whence at first he flew, 
 I still had hopes, my long vexations past. 
 Here to return — and die at home at last. 
 
 The beauty and the deep feeling of the lines have not been 
 surpassed in any English poem ; and as to the elements of 
 strong interest in the situation there can be no doubt, any 
 more than there can be as to the good use the author has made 
 of his materials. Every word heightens the impression, and 
 that little suggestion of humour : 
 
 I stiU had hopes, for pride attends us still. 
 Amidst the swains to show my book-learn'd skill ; 
 
 increases the eflPect : it is like a sudden gleam of sunshine 
 coming through the dimness of the glade and casting the 
 shadow of a trembling spray on the sward for a moment. 
 
 And then how noble is the next passage, and how natural 
 in the sequence of thought : 
 
 How blest is he who crowns in shades like these, 
 A youth of labour with an age of ease j 
 Who quits a world where strong temptations try. 
 And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly ! 
 For him no vsretches, born to work and weep, 
 Explore the mine, or tempt the dang'rous deep ; 
 Nor surly porter stands in guilty state. 
 To spurn imploring Famine from the gate ; 
 But on he moves to meet his latter end. 
 Angels around befriending Virtue's friend ; 
 Sinks to the grave with unperceiv'd decay, 
 While Resignation gently slopes the way ; 
 And, all his prospects bright'ning to the last, 
 His heaven commences ere the world be past. 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds at once recognised the pictorial 
 element of the passage. He painted a picture inspired by one 
 line, and called it " Resignation." It was engraved and bore 
 
340 7HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 an inscription : " This attempt to express a character in 
 The Deserted Village is dedicated to Doctor Goldsmith by his 
 sincere friend and admirer, Joshua Reynolds." 
 
 But there is scarcely a couplet in the poem that does not 
 suggest a picture, or, we may add, that has not been made the 
 subject of one. No poem lends itself so well to illustration. 
 When we read it we are conscious of walking through a 
 gallery of pictures, and the painter of whom we think all the 
 time is Crome, that English artist who was born in the year 
 that the poem was first printed, and who more than any other, 
 had the power of representing the sympathetic significance of 
 a landscape — the living spirit underlying a certain aspect of 
 Nature. It is, indeed, questionable if it would be possible 
 more adequately to illustrate the feeling that pervades this 
 poem than by placing together a number of the existing pic- 
 tures by John Crome. But, then, should exception be taken 
 to the suggestion that the poem stands in any need of pictorial 
 illustration, we gladly vary our remark and say that it would 
 be impossible to transcribe Crome's landscapes more effectively, 
 more accurately, and more appreciatively than by passages 
 from Goldsmith. 
 
 The temptation to pursue this line of thought is great. 
 In this place, however, and in touching briefly upon this 
 poem, we have sufficient temptations to face in the way of 
 quotation from so eminently quotable a work, to prevent our 
 having any desire to encounter new ones that present them- 
 selves less directly in our path. It is only necessary to call 
 attention to the similarity of the low-toned charm existing in 
 the works of both these artists, who laboured so conscientiously 
 to the one end through different mediums. 
 
 The returned exile moves from spot to spot, revolving 
 many memories of the village as he knew it. He hears again 
 the once familiar sounds — the milkmaid singing, the lowing 
 of the herd, the gabbling geese, the playful children, the 
 watchdog's bark, and the loud laugh that spoke the vacant 
 mind — he rehears all, and once again there is an artistic 
 contrast — one solitary figure remains of aU — the old woman 
 who gathers watercress at the brook. Then come recollections 
 of the village parson : 
 
 Pasting rich with forty pounds a year. — 
 
''THE DESEMED VILLAGE" 341 
 
 a portrait too familiar to require to be reproduced at this 
 time. He thinks of the schoolmaster, the ale-house and its 
 frequenters, and we have a series of groups, every figure in 
 which stands out clearly and with its own characteristics 
 perfectly depicted; perfect simplicity, perfect naturalness 
 is the note of all. Then there is another eflFective contrast 
 and an appeal to statesmen to judge 
 
 How wide the limits stand 
 Between a splendid and an happy land. 
 
 The moralist contends that the increase of the luxury of 
 the few, which, he declares, is at the expense of the many, 
 brings destruction to a state. He paints the horrors of town 
 life and the sadness of emigration, picture following picture 
 until the series culminates in one that is affecting in every 
 touch. He shows the villagers making ready for their 
 departure to another land: 
 
 Good Heaven ! What sorrows gloom'd that parting day 
 
 That caUed them from their native walks away : 
 
 When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, 
 
 Hung round the bowers and fondly look'd their last, 
 
 And took a long farewell, and vnshed in vain 
 
 For seats like these beyond the Western main : 
 
 And shudd'ring still to face the distant deep, 
 
 Return'd and wept, and still return'd to weep. 
 
 The good old sire, the first prepared to go 
 
 To new-found worlds and wept for others' woe ; 
 
 But for himself, in conscious virtue brave, 
 
 He only wish'd for worlds beyond the grave, 
 
 His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears. 
 
 The fond companion of his helpless years. 
 
 Silent went next, neglectful of her charms. 
 
 And left a lover's for her father's arms. 
 
 With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes. 
 
 And blest the cot where every pleasure rose ; 
 
 And kist her thoughtless babes with many a tear. 
 
 And claspt them close, in sorrow doubly dear ; 
 
 Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief. 
 
 In aU the silent manliness of grief. 
 
 • • • 
 
 Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail. 
 That idly waiting, flaps with every gale, 
 Dovimward they move, a melancholy band. 
 Pass from the shore and darken all the strand. 
 
342 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 All the elements of the sincerest poetry are to be found in 
 this affecting unaffected passage. Every one who has ever 
 witnessed an emigration scene will testify to its accuracy. 
 
 A great deal has been written from time to time upon the 
 philosophy, the economics, and the social aspects of The 
 Deserted, Village. We have been assured that such a wiping 
 out of a whole community as is described in the poem would 
 not be possible even in Ireland and in the eighteenth century. 
 It is said that the one person to whom the author confided 
 the plan of the work, affirmed that Goldsmith had stated that 
 such an incident had actually come within his own experience, 
 though he mentioned no names in this connection — a 
 significant omission. We do not believe that Goldsmith said 
 anything of the sort. But he had imagination enough to be 
 able to picture such an incident, and not only its consequences, 
 but its origin as well. 
 
 What seems to us to be most likely is that, in the course of 
 his vagrancy, whether engaged in making a " shoemaker's holi- 
 day " through the green country around London, or during 
 his years of rambling in Ireland, he came upon half a dozen 
 cottages in ruins, and learned that they were being demolished 
 because they interfered with the " prospect " from one of 
 the drawing-room windows of a mansion hard at hand ; 
 something that happens every day in England and must have 
 happened quite as frequently in the eighteenth century in 
 Ireland, where there was great traffic in mansions, and where 
 the site for a group of cabins was determined by the local 
 supply of mud, without any question as to whether the pro- 
 spect from the windows of the mansion was marred or not. 
 The exigencies of art required a picturesque record of those 
 who suffered by the demolition of the cabins, and of their 
 sufferings, and the poet proved himself equal to the occasion. 
 
 But it is really immaterial whether any such scene of 
 eviction ever took place or not. Surely a poet is not to be 
 debarred from imagining such an occurrence, or from giving 
 a detailed account of the return of a native of the village after 
 many years, hoping and longing to be able to gratify his desire 
 to spend the remainder of his life among the scenes that were 
 familiar to him and that have never left his memory, and 
 of his finding himself face to face with desolation where once 
 
"THE DESERTED VILLAGE" 343 
 
 he had known only happiness to dwell. This is all that Gold- 
 smith did. It is not necessary to inquire if the Napper faniily 
 in Westmeath ever did endeavour to improve their estate by 
 some wholesale evictions, or if Oliver Goldsmith heard about 
 it in his youth ; nor does it seem to us to matter in the least if 
 he and his companions came one Sunday morning upon an 
 Islington dairy farm where they had been accustomed to get 
 bowls of milk, and found that the walls of the homestead were 
 being demolished, the paddocks having been bought by the 
 owner of a neighbouring mansion who had been studying too 
 closely the landscape gardening plans of " Capability Brown." 
 Such a disappointment to the party would be talked over with 
 considerable vehemence, we may be sure, and the oppressions 
 of the poor and lowly by the wealthy and arrogant would 
 form the subject of many a bitter word. It does not seem to 
 us to be any more necessary to discuss what foundation the 
 author had for his story of the desertion of the village of 
 Auburn than it is to discuss the source of his story of the deser- 
 tion of the Wakefield Vicarage by Olivia Primrose. Gold- 
 smith was as fully entitled to write of the one as of the other. 
 We may only remark that it is difficult to see how the arro- 
 gance of the wealthy could be gratified by the destruction 
 of the most picturesque village that ever existed. The village 
 has not been sacrificed to any scheme of landscape gardening 
 in connection with the haughty mansion. It has simply been 
 turned into a solitary wilderness, with the hollow sounding 
 bittern (of Lough Ree's sedges) to recall the desolate places 
 through which an earlier poet walked. As to what scheme 
 of wealthy arrogance could be gratified by such a work of 
 wanton destruction, we should like some further information if 
 we were prepared to discuss the economic features of the poem. 
 But the social history of England, and that of the United 
 States of America as well, afford us a good deal of food for 
 consideration in connection with the sentiment of the striking 
 passage : 
 
 111 fares the land, to hast'ning ills a prey, 
 
 Where wealth accumulates and men decay ; 
 
 Princes and lords may flourish or may fade ; 
 
 A breath can make them, as a breath has made ; 
 
 But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, 
 
 When once destroy'd can never be supplied. 
 
344 'I^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 These fine lines do more than merely suggest that Gold- 
 ,smith foresaw some of the most difficult problems of the 
 twentieth century, just as he foresaw the approach of the 
 French Revolution when the sagest of philosophers prophesied 
 only peace and safety. The tyranny of trade which Goldsmith 
 foresaw in England, with its attendant evils of plethoric 
 towns and anaemic rural villages, has been felt all over England 
 — in America it has become intolerable — within the past 
 quarter of a century ; but so far as we recollect, no one — even 
 in America — anxious for a healthier condition of things, has 
 looked for its approach as Goldsmith did, through the medium 
 of poetry. Poetry he foresaw emigrating to America, of 
 all places in the world, and in his invocation to that 
 
 Dear charming nymph, neglected and decry'd, 
 
 he entreats her to 
 
 Aid slighted truth with thy persuasive strain ; 
 Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain ; 
 Teach him, that states of native strength possest 
 Though very poor, may still be very blest. 
 
 That is the message which he entreated Poetry to carry 
 across the Atlantic ! It may have been delivered ; but 
 speaking frankly, we do not think that its delivery has been so 
 efficacious as the poet could have wished. The rage of gain 
 is not universally spurned in the land to which he sent his 
 message, and among the blessings which the people there 
 acknowledge, without reluctance, that they enjoy, poverty 
 does not take a particularly prominent place. 
 
 Respecting the identity of the village which he called 
 Auburn much has been written. In many directions the village 
 of Lissoy has been accepted as the model which the poet 
 had before him, and a hawthorn tree which, in common with 
 almost every village in central Ireland, was straggling across 
 the end of its little street, was carried away twig by twig mainly 
 by the loving hands of those who had heard the message in 
 America. The decent church that topt the neighb'ring hill, 
 would no doubt also have been carried off^ by the same agencies 
 of destructive homage, but for the fact of its being very firmly 
 fixed. Had they found the veteran schoolmaster in his place 
 they would doubtless have torn him limb by limb and sent a 
 
" THE DESERTED VILLAGE " 345 
 
 bone as a memento of the poet to every museum throughout 
 the country. But the homage of those enthusiasts who seem 
 to believe that the best way of honouring a poet is to materialise 
 everything that he imagined, proves nothing. The alteration 
 of the name of the village on the maps to Auburn is also un- 
 convincing to any one who doubts if Goldsmith had only 
 Lissoy in his mind when he wrote, the poem. Sixty years ago 
 a person anxious to settle the question for ever, restored the 
 ale-house, and furnished it exactly in accordance with the 
 inventory contained in the poem, down to the tea cups which 
 were duly cracked (z/ide schedule) but securely fastened to 
 the board to defy memento thieves. There was, however, 
 considerable difficulty about the rules for the Royal game of 
 Goose, which were not easily forthcoming ; and as for the 
 nightingale — ^well, the place of the absent nightingale could 
 only be taken, upon important occasions, by a boy with a 
 couple of quills and a glass of water, but the water was doubt- 
 less taken from the actual brook, so that really nothing worth 
 speaking of was lacking ; for we are sure that if the gabbling 
 geese were not forthcoming, the omission would never be 
 noticed, if tourists only came in sufficient numbers. 
 
 And then a clergyman in England wrote to prove that 
 Auburn was several other places, and he was probably right ; 
 and Lord Macaulay wrote to prove that it never existed, 
 and he was probably right too — in one sense. 
 
 Now any one who has visited Central Ireland and become 
 acquainted with the type of the villages to be found in that 
 region, will agree with us in thinking that the trim Auburn 
 could not possibly have ever been among these. A straggling 
 street of thirty or forty houses, ill kept and plentifully puddled, 
 with no evidence of a desire for cleanliness or tidiness — that is 
 the typical Irish village of to-day, as every one knows. (We 
 have already referred to the origin of this attempt to put as 
 poor a face on things as possible.) That was the Irish village 
 with which Goldsmith was acquainted ; but it is equally 
 certain that it was Lissoy he had in his mind when he drew the 
 picture of Auburn. Time and a poet's mind are the greatest 
 refiners in existence, and that which comes under the in- 
 fluence of both let none call common or unclean. Goldsmith 
 was a poet, not what is exactly the opposite to a poet — a 
 
346 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 realistic painter. The picture of the village which suited 
 the scheme of his poem was actually a picture of Lissoy in 
 no respect except its topography. Time had obliterated 
 from his memory every trace of the squalid, and the poet's 
 imagination did the rest. The picture that was in the poet's 
 mind necessitated the notes of nightingale, and he was so 
 conscientious a poet that he was bound to introduce a grove 
 of nightingales. It was never his intention to re-build 
 Lissoy ; but, like the tourists whom he brought into existence, 
 he carried oflE as many mementoes of Lissoy as suited his 
 own purposes. 
 
 The question of the identification of the various topo- 
 graphical features of Auburn is really not worth longer 
 consideration than the question of the origin of the name, 
 which, it may be mentioned, was exactly the same as the origin 
 of the name Holborn. Goldsmith had heard of Aldbourne 
 (pronounced Auburn) as the name of a village near Sahsbury, 
 and he was attracted by its sound; and Aldbourne was, 
 like Holborn, a corruption of Old Bourne. But the question 
 of the identity of certain of the persons in Auburn is un- 
 doubtedly an interesting one. It does not seem to have 
 occurred to any of his friends to put a few direct questions to 
 him on this subject. The identity of the various characters 
 in Dryden's Absalom and Achitofhel was established at once ; 
 and no one was left long in doubt as to the originals of the 
 finely drawn characters in the couplets of Pope's satires ; but 
 no letter of Goldsmith's written to his brothers or his sisters 
 in Ireland, or, indeed, to any of his friends, refers to his inten- 
 tion to make an attempt to draw the character in his poem of 
 his father or his dead brother or the schoolmaster. The only 
 solid link that binds Henry Goldsmith to the clergyman in 
 The Deserted Village is that forty pounds a year. Here we 
 feel that we have an identification clue that may be worth 
 something ; and when we find that not only had Henry Gold- 
 smith this particular income, but that his father had it for 
 thirteen years of his life, we have no reason to feel in diffi- 
 culties ; all we have to do is to assume that the character of the 
 parson was, like the piece of furniture in the inn, meant to dis- 
 charge a double duty : it was at once the character of the 
 father, the Reverend Charles Goldsmith, and of his son, the 
 
r. I 
 
" THE DESERTED VILLAGE " 347 
 
 Reverend Henry Goldsmith. It is a happy thing when two 
 good men can be brought under the benign influence of the 
 one consecration. The tablet which was erected by the son 
 of the one and the brother of the other, remains to-day 
 sacred to the memory of Charles and Henry Goldsmith. It 
 is a monument more enduring than brass, and it will cease to 
 enshrine their virtues only when the English language shall 
 cease to be read. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 A HOLIDAY IN FRANCE 
 1770 
 
 Scarcely had the second edition of The Deserted Village 
 appeared when the Life of Parnell was published by Davies. 
 The memoir is the merest sketch ; but it is full of sound 
 criticism, and its importance was increased through being 
 made the medium for the publication of some very character- 
 istic letters of Pope — ^whose trickery Goldsmith detected and 
 exposed — of Gay and of Arbuthnot. The references to the 
 celebrated Scribblerus Club are excellent. " It is past a 
 doubt that they wrgte many things in conjunction, and Gay 
 usually held the pen. And yet I do not remember any 
 productions," wrote Goldsmith, " which were the joint 
 effort of this Society, as doing it honour. There is something 
 feeble and quaint in all their attempts, as if company re- 
 pressed thought, and genius wanted solitude for its boldest 
 and happiest exertions." The same impression must have 
 been produced upon many other readers of the " scribblerus " 
 papers. But Goldsmith perceived that the great value of 
 this memoir was the excuse that it gave for the publication 
 of the letters from Pope. " As they have never before 
 appeared," he says, " it is probable the reader will be much 
 better pleased with their idle effusions than with anything 
 I can hammer out for his amusement." 
 
 But though he looked on this work in its proper light, as 
 a mere sketch, it was accounted by Johnson so good that he 
 did not wish to introduce Parnell among his own Lives of the 
 Poets, produced some years later. According to BosweU, 
 on the appearance of Goldsmith's sketch, Johnson thought 
 very poorly of it. But Johnson seems to have changed his 
 mind about it, for in referring to it in his Lives of the Poets, 
 
 348 
 
A HOLIDAY IN FRANCE 349 
 
 he wrote : " The life of Dr. Parnell is a task which I should 
 very willingly decline, since it has been lately written by 
 Goldsmith, a nian of such variety of powers, and such felicity 
 of performance, that he always seemed to do best that which 
 he was doing, and a man who had the art of being minute 
 without tediousness, whose language was copious without 
 exuberance, exact without constraint, and easy without 
 weakness. What such an author has told who would tell 
 again ? I have made an abstract from his larger narrative, 
 and have this gratification from my attempt that it gives me 
 an opportunity of paying due tribute to the memory of 
 Goldsmith." 
 
 Moreover, the sales were so good that Davies commissioned 
 him to do a little more of this " hammering out " in the form 
 of a Life of Bolingbroke to be prefixed to a new edition of 
 his Dissertation. The merits of this work are not very con- 
 spicuous. He found that St. John was a good deal more 
 malleable than Parnell, and he carried out the process too 
 thoroughly. The result is a thinness of metal, and withal 
 not gold leaf, and too many markings of the hammer. The 
 truth is that there was very little incident in ParneU's career, 
 and thus it lent itself very well to treatment in a sketch ; 
 but Bolingbroke's life was far too overflowing to allow of 
 its being dealt with in the same style. Here and there 
 throughout the pages of the memoir, however, we find a 
 trenchant criticism and a shrewd remark. 
 
 But he certainly detested the work ; and one can well 
 believe that he neglected the proofs when they came to him 
 for correction, causing Davies to wring his hands in despair. 
 
 What he received for these things is as open to conjecture 
 as the amount paid to him for The Deserted Village. Regarding 
 the latter Cooke states that Griffin bought it for ;^ioo ; 
 but that Goldsmith, finding after a brief calculation that this 
 would work out at something about five shillings a couplet, 
 returned a portion of the money, saying that no poem was 
 worth that money. This story was doubted at the time, 
 but reiterated by Cooke. It may still be true, for with 
 Goldsmith and a sum of money in juxtaposition one never 
 knows what is going to happen. But is it likely that Griffin 
 would, contrary to agreement, advance him ;^S00 on a work 
 
3SO THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 which he had scarcely more than begun, and then pay him, 
 also in advance, at the rate of five shillings a couplet, for a 
 poem ? Surely it is much more reasonable to think that the 
 poem was offered as a consideration for the generous advance 
 made in respect of Animated Nature ? This is what we believe 
 actually happened. Such an advance as ^^500 — the price of 
 five out of the eight volumes stipulated for — would never 
 have been made by the bookseller at great inconvenience to 
 himself unless for some consideration. Goldsmith wanted 
 the ^500 ; and he bribed Griffin with the poem to let him 
 have the sum. But after all this is only the merest conjec- 
 ture. It is, however, necessary to account for two things : 
 (i) the magnitude of the advance contrary to the terms of 
 the agreement, on a long work that was scarcely begun, and 
 (2) the absence of any agreement respecting the publication 
 of the poem. 
 
 As for Cooke's story, all that an unprejudiced critic would 
 say after hearing it is that an author who had no scruples over 
 drawing j^Soo on a book which he knew would take him years 
 to write — especially if he intended to write it conjointly with 
 an equally important work for another publisher — would have 
 no scruple over putting into his pocket so small a sum as that 
 ^100 which Cooke said he received and of which he returned 
 a portion. Goldsmith over money matters had no more 
 conscience than a boy over bird-nesting. 
 
 He had need of some ready money now. He had just 
 seen his Parnell memoir through the press when he joined 
 his friends the Hornecks, mother and daughters, on a trip to 
 France ; and we know from the nature of the letter he wrote 
 to Percy on the subject of occupying his Vicarage, that he 
 was not the man to sponge on his friends. A portion of the 
 letter which he wrote to Reynolds on landing at Calais was 
 published by Percy, and this shows in what an excellent 
 humour he was. No doubt there had been a good deal of 
 children's fun on the way to Dover and aboard the packet. 
 No doubt the girls had read the poem of which all their friends 
 were talking, and believing that all the world was talking of 
 it, they felt proud of being on such excellent terms with the 
 author as allowed of their taunting him with having written 
 those lines about the melancholy of the " long pomp " and 
 
A HOLIDAY IN FRANCE 351 
 
 " the midnight masquerade," when all the time he had been 
 appearing in the most gorgeous of garments at these vain 
 and unsatisfying entertainments ; and no doubt he replied 
 gravely that he had only gone to these wicked places in order 
 that he might learn how sad they were and so deter others 
 from going. His reference to his invention for a machine to 
 prevent sea-sickness, suggests some former jest made by him, 
 probably at Sir Joshua's own table. 
 
 He wrote from the Hotel d'Angleterre, at Calais : 
 
 " My dear friend, we had a very quick passage from Dover 
 to Calais, which we performed in three hours and twenty 
 minutes, all of us extremely sea-sick, which must necessarily 
 have happened, as my machine to prevent sea-sickness was 
 not completed. We were glad to leave Dover, because we 
 hated to be imposed upon ; so were in high spirits at coming 
 to Calais, where we were told that a little money would go 
 a great way. Upon landing two little trunks, which was all 
 we carried with us, we were surprised to see fourteen or fifteen 
 fellows all running down to the ship to lay their hands upon 
 them ; four got under each trunk, the rest surrounded, and 
 held the hasps ; and in this manner our little baggage was 
 conducted, with a kind of funeral solemnity, till it was safely 
 lodged at the custom-house. We were well enough pleased 
 with the people's civility till they came to be paid : when every 
 creature that had the happiness of but touching our trunks 
 with their finger, expected sixpence; and had so pretty civil a 
 manner of demanding it, that there was no refusing them. 
 When we had done with the porters, we had next to speak 
 with the custom-house officers, who had their pretty civil way 
 too. We were directed to the Hotel d'Angleterre, where a 
 valet de place came to offer his service : and spoke to me ten 
 minutes before I once found out that he was speaking English. 
 We had no occasion for his service, so we gave him a little 
 money because he spoke English, and because he wanted it. 
 I cannot help mentioning another circumstance. I bought 
 a new ribbon for my wig at Canterbury, and the barber at 
 Calais broke it in order to gain sixpence by buying me a new 
 one." 
 
 It was when they reached Lille on their way to Paris, 
 
352 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 passing no doubt over the route which he had once traversed 
 in a very different style, that the incident of the officers 
 looking up to the girls in the window occurred, calling for 
 Goldsmith's indignation at the want of taste on the part of 
 the military which caused them to ignore him. 
 
 Another delightful letter to Reynolds, written from Paris, 
 shows that he was taking but too good care of his friends, 
 quarrelling with those who attempted to cheat them, and 
 getting between them and the rapacity of the lodging-house 
 keepers. Very mournful, however, are his reflections at the 
 changes effected by a few years. On his former journeying 
 in France and Flanders he had never been in the least troubled 
 by these things. 
 
 " My dear Friend, I began a long letter to you from Lille 
 giving a description of all that we had done and seen, but 
 finding it very dull, and knowing that you would show it again, 
 I threw it aside and it was lost. You see by the top of this 
 letter that we are at Paris, and (as I have often heard you say) 
 we have brought our own amusement with us, for the ladies do 
 not seem to be very fond of what we have yet seen. 
 
 " With regard to myself I find that travelling at twenty 
 and at forty are very different things. I set out with all my 
 confirmed habits about me, and can find nothing on the 
 Continent so good as when I formerly left it. One of our 
 chief amusements here is scolding at everything we meet with, 
 and praising every thing and every person we left at home. 
 You may judge therefore whether your name is not frequently 
 bandied at table among us. To tell you the truth I never 
 thought I could regret your absence so much as our various 
 mortifications on the road have often taught me to do. I 
 could tell you of disasters and adventures without number, 
 of our lying in barns, and of my being half-poisoned with a 
 dish of green peas, of our quarrelling with postilions and 
 being cheated by our landladies, but I reserve all this for an 
 happy hour which I expect to share with you upon my return. 
 
 " I have little to tell you more, but that we are at present 
 all well, and expect returning when we have staid out one 
 month, which I should not care if it were over this very day. I 
 long to hear from you all : how you yourself do, how Johnson, 
 
A HOLIDAY IN FRANCE 353 
 
 Burke, Dyer, Chamier, Colman, and every one of the Club do. 
 I wish I could send you some amusement in this letter, but I 
 protest I am so stupified by the air of this country (for I am 
 sure it can never be natural) that I have not a word to say. 
 I have been thinking of the plot of a comedy which shall be 
 entitled A Journey to Paris, in which a family shall be intro- 
 duced with a full intention of going to France to save money. 
 You know there is not a place in the world more promising 
 for that purpose. As for the meat of this country I can scarce 
 eat it, and though we pay two good shillings an head for our 
 dinner, I find it all so tough, that I have spent less time with 
 my knife than my pick-tooth. I said this as a good thing at 
 table, but it was not understood. I believe it to be a good 
 thing. 
 
 " As for our intended journey to Devonshire, I find it 
 out of my power to perform it, for, as soon as I arrive at Dover 
 I intend to let the ladies go on, and I will take a country 
 lodging somewhere near that place in order to do some business. 
 I have so outrun the constable, that I must mortify a little 
 to bring it up again. For God's sake the night you receive this 
 take your pen in your hand and tell me something about 
 yourself, and myseli, if you know of anything that has happened. 
 About Miss Reynolds, about Mr. Bickerstafi, my nephew, or 
 anybody that you regard. I beg you will send to Griffin the 
 bookseller to know if there be any letters left for me, and to 
 be so good as to send them to me at Paris. They may perhaps 
 be left for me at the porter's lodge opposite the pump in 
 Temple-lane. The same messenger will do. I expect one 
 from Lord Clare from Ireland. As for others I am not much 
 uneasy about them. 
 
 " Is there anything I can do for you at Paris ? I wish you 
 would tell me. The whole of my own purchases here, is one 
 silk coat which I have put on, and which makes me look like 
 a fool. But no more of that. I find that Colman has gained 
 his lawsuit. I am glad of it. I suppose you often meet. 
 I will soon be among you, better pleased with my situation 
 at home than I ever was before. And yet I must say, that 
 if anything could make France pleasant, the very good women 
 with whom I am at present would certainly do it. I could 
 say more about that, but I intend showing them this letter 
 
 z 
 
354 7HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 before I send it away. What signifies teazing you loi 
 with moral observations when the business of my wri 
 is over. I have one thing only more to say, and of th 
 think every hour in the day, namely, that I am your 
 " Most sincere and most affectionate friend, 
 
 " Oliver Goldsmit 
 
 " Direct to me at the Hotel de Danemarc, 
 " Rue Jacob, Fauxbourg St. Germaiils." 
 
 Only a few other anecdotes resulted from this tour. One 
 probably told by a man named Hickey about Goldsmith's ha 
 jumped into the basin of one of the fountains at Verss 
 while endeavouring to prove that it was not within lea 
 distance — a foolish trivial thing. The narrator might as 
 have told of his getting a splash of mud on his stocki 
 But from a different source we hear of his shaking his 1 
 on Mrs. Horneck's proposing when they found thems( 
 on a Sunday morning in some place where there was 
 English chaplain, that he should read the Service to tl 
 " I should be happy to oblige you, dear madam," was his re 
 " but in truth I do not think myself good enough." 
 
 Readers are at liberty to come to any conclusion ■ 
 please as to his meaning. 
 
 But one outcome of this French visit was an observa 
 in Animated Nature respecting the accuracy of the pronur 
 tion of French parrots which are taught in France, 
 the slovenliness in pronouncing English by birds taugh 
 England. It would be interesting to learn if Garrick, 
 was an authority on the talk of " poor Poll," had noticed 
 difference between the two schools of elocution. 
 
 His return to England was rather melancholy. He 
 when in Paris heard of the death of his mother in Irelan 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 WORK AND PLAY 
 
 1770 — 1771 
 
 His holiday had lasted a little over six weeks. The book- 
 sellers grudged him every day of it, and on the best possible 
 grounds. Taking the most indulgent view of his work they 
 must have reckoned it as being about two years in arrear. 
 But only now and again did Goldsmith seem to have any qualms. 
 He had schooled himself — without any great severity of 
 discipline — into the feeling that when he had received a 
 substantial advance for any work, he had got over the most 
 troublesome part of the transaction, and could afford to be 
 negligent. As an exponent of the complete art of negligence 
 he was unsurpassed in the annals of authorship ; though, as 
 we have already said, taking his last five years' work in the 
 aggregate, it represents rather more than a very industrious 
 writer would produce. But his way was to have alternate 
 orgies of industry and idleness ; and when he was indulging 
 in one of the latter, Messrs. Davies, Griffin, Newbery and the 
 rest who attended to their shops daily from seven in the morn- 
 ing until eight at night, shook their heads and held up their 
 hands. They despaired of him. 
 
 He had now on hand the History of the Earth and Animated 
 Nature, which, according to his agreement of the previous 
 year (Feb. 1769) was to be in eight volumes and " written 
 immediately " ; and the History of England, which was to 
 be in four, and completed within two years from June 13 in 
 the same year. He must have made considerable progress 
 with the latter when he returned from France, for the four 
 volumes were actually published within a year from that date. 
 But in spite of his arrears and of his having his hands quite 
 full, he did not hesitate to sign an agreement for the Abridge- 
 
 3SS 
 
356 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 ment of his Roman History, and even so unbusinesslike a man 
 as Goldsmith must have seen the importance of pushing 
 forward this particular work while the original was still being 
 talked about and before some one else should carry out so 
 promising a scheme. 
 
 But, as usual, he signed his agreement with a heart as 
 light as his pen, and then, stuffing the proofs of his Memoir 
 of Bolinghroke into his trunk, he set off to visit his friend 
 Lord Clare at Gosfield. The nature of this visit and its 
 duration testify to the cordiality of the relations existing 
 between Lord Clare and himself. The former had just 
 suffered the greatest bereavement that could have fallen upon 
 him. His only son, Robert Nugent, had died a short time 
 before, and he begged Goldsmith to come to him at Gosfield 
 as soon as he could get away. And just as Gibbon hurried 
 away from Lausanne to be hy the side of Lord Sheffield on 
 hearing of the death of Lady Sheffield, Goldsmith made 
 haste to reach his friend. He was a sympathetic companion. 
 Only a few weeks had passed since the news of his own bereave- 
 ment had reached him, and though he had not seen his mother 
 for nearly twenty years, there can be no doubt that he had a 
 sense of sorrow at the breaking of another link between him 
 and his old home. 
 
 He remained with Lord Clare, and as Lady Buckingham, 
 Lord Clare's only daughter, was able to testify years afterwards, 
 he was the means of restoring cheerfulness to the household. 
 In October (1770) Davies complained to Dr. Grainger that 
 he could not get the proofs of the Bolingbroke sketch, the 
 author not having sent them back from Gosfield ; and in the 
 early months of the new year he was still there, but at the 
 point of setting out for Bath, where he was the Clares' guest 
 for a further period. 
 
 And as the joining together of these periods brings us well 
 into the spring of this year, consequently eight or nine months 
 after the death of his mother, during which space he was 
 never once in London, the utter groundlessness of the story 
 of his appearing at Reynolds's house in second mourning, 
 when his mother had just died, is apparent, even without 
 the need of Filby's books to prove that he went into complete 
 mourning. 
 
WORK AND PLAT 357 
 
 We have the evidence of Percy for a characteristic story 
 of one of the poet's little accidents during his stay at Bath. 
 Going out for a stroll before breakfast one morning he returned 
 as he thought to Lord Clare's house, walked upstairs and 
 seated himself on a sofa in one of the rooms, where he found 
 the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, apparently waiting 
 for breakfast to be served. He found that they were quite 
 polite, and they conversed together until the servants entered 
 with breakfast. It was only when they had most civilly 
 invited him to join them that he became aware of the fact 
 that he had not returned to Lord Clare's house but had 
 entered another beside it, the occupants of which were the 
 Duke and Duchess of Northumberland. He was naturally 
 overwhelmed with confusion ; but he was assured that no 
 apology on his part was necessary. 
 
 Of course no apology was necessary. The houses on each 
 parade in Bath so closely resemble one another that such a 
 mistake as Goldsmith's must have been made scores of times. 
 This story may certainly be accepted ; and so perhaps — 
 with some reserve — may be another, which is also illustrative 
 of his absent-mindedness, if of little else. It was printed by 
 Croker in his edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, and was 
 told to him by an Irishman named O' Moore, a good many 
 years after the incident to which it refers was said to have 
 occurred. O'Moore said that he was going with Burke to 
 dine with Reynolds when they passed through a crowd who 
 were about a hotel where some foreign ladies were displaying 
 themselves rather conspicuously. Goldsmith was a short 
 way behind Burke, also on his way to Sir Joshua's ; and on 
 arriving at the house, Burke, who was always ready for a 
 practical joke, gravely taxed Goldsmith with having said 
 out loud in the middle of the crush, " What stupid beasts 
 these people are for staring with such admiration at those 
 painted Jezebels, while a man of my talents passed by un- 
 noticed ! " " Surely, surely, my dear friend," cried Gold- 
 smith, " I did not say so." " But if you had not said so, 
 how could I have known it ? " said Burke. " True," said 
 Goldsmith. " Well, I am very sorry. It was very foolish. 
 I do recollect that something of the kind passed through my 
 mind, but I did not think I had uttered it." 
 
358 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 It must not be forgotten that this story came from the 
 accommodating memory of the Irish Colonel O'Moore, and 
 was narrated by the accommodating pen of Croker. 
 
 It was while he was at Gosfield that he received what some 
 of his biographers have tried to make out was a serious wound 
 to his vanity — on the authority (as usual) of Boswell ; for 
 Lord Camden had called one day, and treated him with cold- 
 ness. " He took no more notice of me," said Goldsmith, with 
 well-simulated bitterness, " than if I had been an ordinary 
 man ! " He was in a mixed company, Johnson and Boswell and 
 others being present ; and at this they all burst out laughing. 
 Goldsmith had scored and every one knew it except Boswell. 
 One can see the picture of this scene as plainly as one can see 
 the picture in the hotel at Lille, where no doubt there was 
 an outburst of laughter when the little man who was so well 
 aware of his plainness and awkwardness, affirmed that he had 
 his admirers. " He took no more notice of me than if I had 
 been an ordinary man ! " he cried indignantly, and the more 
 the people about him laughed the graver his face would 
 become, while he looked round from one to the other in the 
 group, pretending to wonder what they were laughing at. The 
 Irish humour of his attitude is so apparent that one cannot 
 help joining in the laugh. And it was in appreciation of his 
 humour that Johnson declared that Doctor Goldsmith did 
 well to be indignant. " A nobleman," he affirmed, " ought 
 to have made up to such a man as Goldsmith ; and I think 
 it is much against Lord Camden that he neglected him." 
 From what we learn of Johnson, not through such a medium 
 as Boswell, but from Fanny Burney, we have every reason to 
 feel certain that he appreciated Goldsmith's humour, and 
 backed it up. It is only when a man is uncertain of his 
 position that he complains of not having proper deference 
 shown to him, and even then only by his inferiors. Even if 
 Goldsmith had walked out of the Wednesday Club room at 
 the Globe tavern when the pork butcher varied his familiarity 
 of " Nolly " by " Noll," he would scarcely have shown himself 
 to be the man to be taken seriously when he complained 
 that he had been shamefully neglected by Lord Camden. 
 
 He was in London in time for the first of the Annual 
 Dinners of the Royal Academy, on St. George's Day this year 
 
WORK AND PLAT 359 
 
 (1771). Here he had a chance of making an enemy of a man 
 who was one of the most contemptible of the notabilities of 
 his time — the type of the dilettante and the literary exquisite 
 that has ever been the most odious of the race. Gossip and 
 slanderer of men and women, and sneerer at everything of 
 good in man and woman, Horace Walpole forms a contrast 
 to Oliver Goldsmith — the artistic contrast that exists between 
 a highly finished mannikin and a man. There was nothing 
 natural about Horace Walpole — even his gait was formed 
 upon a French dancing-master's idea of the mincing of 
 Agag, King of the Amalakites. We look at his portrait 
 and see him standing on his toes, raising his eyebrows 
 with the supercilious leer while he insists on his cicerone 
 repeating his information that the little man with the protrud- 
 ing upper lip is Doctor Goldsmith. He was the sort of man 
 who would go to the Royal Academy banquet and assume 
 from the moment he entered the room that it was given in 
 his honour. 
 
 He was near enough to Johnson and Goldsmith to hear 
 their conversation. It was on the subject of some poems 
 in manuscript which had some time before been found in 
 a chest in St. Mary, Redcliffe, Bristol, and were said to be 
 the work of one Rowley, a priest who lived in the fifteenth 
 century. Dr. Goldsmith was affirming his belief in the 
 authenticity of the poems, and announcing his admiration 
 for them, and Johnson was laughing at his eagerness. But it 
 was a literary question, and Goldsmith was able to hold his 
 own on any literary question, though he possibly was as 
 ignorant as Johnson on the subject of fifteenth century 
 caligraphy. This was the moment for the supreme arbiter 
 to interpose. Forgeries, he cried, all forgeries ! The per- 
 petrator of the fraud had done him the honour to offer him 
 the first chance of giving them to the world ; but he had 
 detected the fraud at once and had declined to allow his 
 name to be associated with such a thing. We know perfectly 
 well how Walpole could play the role of the supercilious 
 delicately critical virtuoso — the arbiter elegantiarum, whose 
 literary work was so precious, so exquisite — that the very 
 thought of the manuscript going into the hands of a common 
 printer was unsupportable and compelled him to set up a 
 
36o THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 press of his own. But we also know how Goldsniith could 
 play the part of literary man with self-respect enough to turn 
 a powerful minister's emissary out of his room when he came 
 to propose the subsidising of his pen for the support of a 
 party ; and knowing this, we may be sure that he did not 
 spare the man who, he now knew, had sent Chatterton to his 
 death. It was Goldsmith who made him aware of the sequel 
 to his trifling with the Rowley manuscripts which had been 
 offered to him by the boy Chatterton from Bristol — of the 
 scene of the starvation which Goldsmith had arrived too late to 
 avert — the body of the youth lying white among the myriad 
 white fragments of manuscript which he had snowed around 
 the room before taking the poison. 
 
 Walpole was shocked by the tidings ; but knowing that 
 no one would believe that he was capable of any feeling, in 
 the paper describing this incident at the dinner, he felt it 
 necessary to add that his own word to this effect would be 
 attested by " the persons of honour and veracity who were 
 present " upon that occasion. 
 
 But incredulous of his sincerity though a good many of 
 his friends might be — their incredulity being in proportion to 
 the intimacy of their acquaintance with him — we cannot 
 doubt for a moment that he was affected by Goldsmith's 
 recital of the story. The way Cleopatra ordered the man 
 who brought to her ears the tidings of the marriage of Mark 
 Antony carries with it conviction of the sincerity of her 
 feeling on the subject. Not a good word had Walpole to 
 say of Goldsmith or Goldsmith's works after this episode. 
 The reflection of having been shocked out of his mask of 
 exquisite artificiality by such a lout as Goldsmith must have 
 been very gaUing to him. 
 
 The part that Walpole played in respect of Chatterton 
 is in keeping with the role he habitually assumed. It was 
 like him to be greatly amused at the warmth of Doctor 
 Goldsmith in maintaining his belief in the forgeries which he, 
 Walpole, might have had the honour of making public ; 
 but supposing that Doctor Goldsmith had said he would 
 abandon the question of forgery or not forgery and simply 
 stand by the question of poetry or not poetry, how would 
 Walpole reply ? Was the author of The Castle of Otranto 
 
WORK AND PLAT 361 
 
 the man to hold up his hands in pious horror at the thought 
 of an attempt to impose upon the public by pretending that 
 a modern work was an ancient one ? 
 
 Every one knows nowadays that if Walpole had had any- 
 thing of the feeling of the true patron of literature — the true 
 protector of the literary worker, he would have held out a 
 helping hand to the boy who had entrusted his Rowley poems 
 to his care ; and, perceiving that the boy was only following 
 the example set to him by the author of the forged Castle of 
 Otranto, and was trying to obtain the ear of the public by the 
 same device as that author had adopted, would have said to 
 him : " You have written poems in which genius of an extra- 
 ordinary character may be recognised in every line, and I will 
 stand sponsor for them to mark my appreciation of their 
 value." Had he written to Chatterton to this effect — and he 
 had a chance of doing it — posterity would not hold him morally 
 accountable for the death of a boy who wrote such poetry as 
 never was written in the world by any one of the same age. 
 
 But the truth is that the supercilious arbiter elegantiarum 
 of Strawberry Hill was as incapable of judging whether the 
 Rowley manuscripts possessed any literary value as he was of 
 judging whether they possessed any archaeological value. If 
 he had seen through the fraud at once, as he suggested, with 
 smiles and shrugs, that he did, why did he not return the 
 manuscripts at once ? No, he waited for Gray and Mason 
 to smile at the attempt to pass them off as genuine ; and even 
 then he did not return them until the poet had written an 
 urgent letter. Then, having heard that his correspondent 
 was a young man in very humble circumstances, he had no 
 difficulty in perceiving how valueless they were ; nor had he 
 any trouble in coming to the conclusion that Oliver Goldsmith 
 was an extremely vulgar and uncouth person when Oliver 
 Goldsmith had expressed himself pretty freely in his hearing 
 on the subject of the treatment of Chatterton. 
 
 But Walpole was avenged before the distinguished guests 
 had separated upon this very interesting occasion, and Gold- 
 smith was put into his proper place. At one end of the table 
 late in the evening the conversation seems to have been 
 rapid and mixed. Johnson of course was there, and so was 
 Goldsmith ; a short distance off was Moser, the Swiss, who had 
 
362 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 been appointed Keeper of the Academy. The last named 
 seemed to possess that unfortunate trait of his countrymen in 
 being extremely impolite without meaning it. " Hush, hush ! " 
 he shouted, " the Toctor is going to say something." Dr. 
 Goldsmith was amazed to find that the road was being cleared 
 for him. " No, no," shrieked Moser, " it is not you, but the 
 great Toctor, I mean." 
 
 This was not the first time that the lesser doctor was made 
 to know his place. 
 
 He had, however, quite recovered from the effects of this 
 nasty blow within a few weeks, for we find him writing to Lord 
 Clare to acknowledge the safe arrival and to describe the 
 subsequent adventures of a certain haunch of venison which 
 his lordship had sent to him. The high spirits which gallop 
 through the verses of that delightful piece of such fooling as 
 Goldsmith loved, are hardly conformable with a sense of 
 mortification due to Moser 's snub. 
 
 The Haunch of Venison is one of the most famous jeux 
 d"* esprit ever written ; but the author threw it off without 
 apparently a second thought, mentioning it to nobody and 
 keeping no copy of it. But Lord Clare found the verses so 
 full of the sparkle of wit and the dash of humour that he passed 
 them round among his friends, and when the author found 
 that he was doing so he asked for the original so that he might 
 make it better worth circulating. He made only a few changes, 
 however, and these quite trifling. Of course, reading them 
 now we lose all the value of the " topical " allusions. But 
 the Clare circle must have been more diverted by these than by 
 the description of the dinner where the Venison was not. 
 Nothing could surely be neater than the reference to the 
 famous Dolly Monroe, the Irish beauty, who had so captivated 
 Townshend ; to the Scotch party parson Scott ; to the phrase 
 made use of by the Duke of Cumberland in one of those love 
 letters to Lady Grosvenor which had just been published — 
 " nobody with me at sea but myself ! " But the whole piece 
 shows a delicate finish which is rarely to be found associated 
 with so laughable a performance. And what seems to us to 
 be one of its most interesting features is the impression of 
 probability that it conveys. It is exactly like what we would 
 expect to happen to Goldsmith ; and the impudent visitor 
 
WORK AND PLAT 363 
 
 who carries off the haunch is just the sort of person that 
 might have been found in his rooms — an artistic blend of 
 Lofty, Beau Tibbs and the gentleman from Ireland who had 
 the consignment of white mice for a lady of quality. 
 
 But Goldsmith was not always so unfortunate in picking 
 up an acquaintance. It was in this year (1771) that two law 
 students of the Temple were introduced to him and enter- 
 tained by him. One of them was a youth of nineteen, named 
 Henry Grattan, and the other was Robert Day, who is less 
 remembered as a judge on the Irish bench than Grattan was 
 as a far-seeing patriotic statesman — a man of genius and of 
 eloquence only second to that of Burke. Goldsmith became 
 a constant visitor at Grattan's rooms in Essex Court, and 
 Day treasured to the end of his life the memory of his early 
 friendship for the author of The Deserted Village. 
 
 It can easily be believed, however, that at this time he 
 laid himself open to even a greater extent than in his earlier 
 years in London, to the wiles of impostors, ready to prey 
 upon him, in the absence of a haunch of venison to divert 
 their attention. The way he made the acquaintance of a young 
 man named McDonnell, who afterwards became a well-known 
 physician, was narrated by the young man himself. It enables 
 one to see without much trouble how easy it was to impose 
 upon him. He laid himself out to be imposed upon. He 
 seemed to feel that it was better that he should befriend a 
 score of impostors rather than run the chance of neglecting 
 some deserving man. McDonnell was accidentally left in 
 London in a most forlorn condition. He had just arrived from 
 France and had no money to pay for his journey to Ireland, and 
 no friends from whom he could borrow it. He strolled by 
 good luck into the Temple Gardens and tried to forget his 
 condition by reading a book which he had brought with him. 
 
 " I had not been there long," he wrote in after years, 
 " when a gentleman, strolling about passed near me, and 
 observing, perhaps, something Irish or foreign in my garb 
 or countenance, addressed me : ' Sir, you seem studious ; 
 I hope you find this a favourable place to pursue it.' ' Not 
 very studious, sir ; I fear it is the want of society that brings 
 me hither ; I am solitary and unknown in this metropolis ' ; 
 
364 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 and a passage from Cicero — ratio -pro Archia — occurring to 
 nae, I quoted it : ' Haec studia pronoctant nobiscum, ferigri- 
 nantuT, rusticanturJ ' You are a scholar, too, sir, I per- 
 ceive.' ' A piece of one, sir ; but I ought still to have been 
 in the college where I had the good fortune to pick up the 
 little I know.' A good deal of conversation ensued ; I told 
 him part of my history, and he, in return, gave his address 
 in the Temple, desiring me to call soon, from which, to my 
 infinite surprise and gratification, I found that the person 
 who thus seemed to take an interest in my fate was my country- 
 man, and a distinguished ornament of letters. 
 
 " I did not fail to keep the appointment, and was received 
 in the kindest manner. He told me smilingly, that he was 
 not rich ; that he could do little for me in direct pecuniary 
 aid, but would endeavour to put me in the way of doing some- 
 thing for myself ; observing, that he could at least furnish 
 me with advice not whoUy useless to a young man placed in 
 the heart of a great metropolis. ' In London,' he continued, 
 ' nothing is to be got for nothing : you must work ; and no 
 man who chooses to be industrious need be under obligations 
 to another, for here labour of every kind commands its reward. 
 If you think proper to assist me occasionally as amanuensis, 
 I shall be obliged, and you will be placed under no obligation, 
 until something more permanent can be secured for you.' 
 This employment, which I pursued for some time, was to 
 translate passages from BuflEon, which was abridged or altered, 
 according to circumstances, for his Natural History." 
 
 He had made considerable progress with the Animated 
 Nature when this interesting incident took place ; but he 
 cannot have gone far with it at the time he was visiting 
 Lord Clare, and he certainly did not make any advance with 
 the work commensurate with the advances made to him by 
 Griffin during the spring in London. He was fully occupied 
 over the proof sheets of his History of England, taking care, 
 however, not to neglect Vauxhall or Ranelagh for the sake of 
 the printers. Judge Day testified to his fidelity to the attrac- 
 tions of both these places of polite resort, and also to his final 
 abandonment of all traces of the scholar in his costume — 
 they were never very great since his early years in London — and 
 
WORK AND PLAT 365 
 
 his adoption of the bagwig and sword of the gentlemen of 
 fashion. He seems to have worn the latter with some 
 uneasiness, if we are to credit the story of his awkwardness 
 being mimicked by two strangers in the street one day. They 
 suggested that he was like a fly transfixed by a pin. He 
 retorted with equal breadth of metaphor by warning the 
 people in the street that they were pickpockets in disguise, 
 and seeing that they did not resent his idiom, he seemed to 
 think that he would be quite safe in offering them a challenge. 
 He laid his hand upon his sword and invited them to draw. 
 But he was right in assunaing that the men who do not draw 
 on being called pickpockets will still refrain even though 
 challenged in the middle of a street of suspicious passengers. 
 They slunk away followed by the jeers of the crowd. 
 
 He had to adopt the same attitude in regard to the in- 
 famous Kenrick a short time afterwards, for Goldsmith having 
 become a sufficiently important person in the world of fashion 
 to have his name included in the newspaper list of notabilities 
 present at a masquerade, Kenrick had written a lampoon on 
 the incident — a foolish, pointless thing, as one may judge 
 from the initial couplet : 
 
 How widely different, Goldsmith, are the ways 
 Of Doctors now and those of ancient days ! 
 
 The stuff had not even grammar to make it readable ; but the 
 malicious and insolent intention was in every line ; and when 
 Goldsmith n&jj^ came upon him in a coffee-house he walked 
 straight up to him and demanded an immediate apology. 
 He had not mistaken his man this time either. Kenrick 
 publicly dissociated himself from the libellous lines, and from 
 the sentiments they embodied. With this equivalent to 
 an apology Goldsmith left the coffee house ; but when he 
 was well out of the way, the cowardly rascal Kenrick began 
 to ridicule him in one of those harangues in which he so 
 frequently indulged in tavern parlours. 
 
 The cowardliness of the same man is shown in one of 
 Garrick's letters to him. " Sir," wrote the actor, " I would 
 have honoured you by giving you the satisfaction of a gentle- 
 man if you could (as Shakespeare says) have screwed your 
 courage to the sticking place to have taken it," 
 
366 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 No, there was no danger that such a person as Kenrick 
 would draw his sword openly. The poisoned poniard had 
 too long been his weapon to allow of his changing it, even for 
 the sake of giving his vindicators a chance of making a solitary- 
 entry to his credit as a gentleman. He remained a stabber 
 to the end of his life. 
 
 But quite apart from anything that Kenrick had to say 
 on the subject, Goldsmith was fully aware of the unsatisfying 
 and unsatisfactory nature of the entertainments in which he 
 was indulging. Had he not referred to the demoralising 
 effects of the " midnight masquerade " in The Deserted, Village ? 
 Now and again he had more than a poet's conviction of their 
 worthlessness. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who had now become 
 almost a daily companion of his, entered his room one afternoon 
 without waiting to be announced, and found him actively 
 engaged in kicking a bundle from wall to wall. On being 
 questioned by his visitor, he at once explained that he had 
 been so much ashamed of the money he had spent over these 
 masquerades that he had determined to have nothing more 
 to do with them, but in order that the money should not be 
 wholly wasted, he had converted his last gala suit into a ball 
 which, as a medium of healthy exercise, could scarcely be 
 surpassed. 
 
 He probably went to a masquerade that very night. 
 
 It was not such entertainments as these that were working 
 to his detriment. He had got into a habit of card-playing, 
 which, to a man of his temperament, was the most fatal to 
 his comfort and his prospects that he could possibly have 
 acquired. In Ireland he had once, it will be remembered, 
 thrown away a large sum entrusted to him for his legal educa- 
 tion, by a single night at the card table, and he had been 
 equally imprudent at Leyden. He was an extremely poor 
 player of all games of cards ; and like a good many indifferent 
 performers, he rather fancied himself as an exponent of the 
 game, and was inclined to abuse his luck, holding it accountable 
 for his repeated losses. It was this weakness of his that kept 
 him down in these prosperous years. What with reckless 
 beneficence on the one hand and reckless behaviour at the card 
 table on the other hand, he was the despair of himself as well 
 as of his best friends. 
 
WORK AND PLAT ^67 
 
 His necessities becoming greater every day and his respon- 
 sibilities continuing to increase, he tore himself away from 
 the fatal allurements of the town and hurried off to a lodging 
 which he had taken in a farm on the Edgware Road, where 
 he intended to resume his labour at Animated Nature — a 
 task the sheer weight of which was pressing upon him. But 
 the hope of getting a quantity of money quickly, and the 
 dulness of toiling at a work out of which he knew he could 
 not possibly squeeze another guinea until he had completed 
 at least the five volumes that had been paid for, induced 
 him to turn his attention to a play. Instead of working 
 steadily through his task, he wandered about the fields trying 
 to pick up the materials for a comedy. And he seems to 
 have been successful in bringing together sufficient to serve 
 for a rough draft to be submitted to a manager. 
 
 It was to this rough draft he alluded in the solitary letter 
 which is forthcoming of the many he must have written to 
 Bennet Langton, who had lately married one of the three 
 Countesses Dowager of Rothes. It is dated from the Temple, 
 September 7, 1771, a month after the publication of his 
 History of England. 
 
 " My dear Sir, 
 
 " Since I had the pleasure of seeing you last, I have been 
 almost wholly in the country at a farmer's house, quite alone, 
 trying to write a comedy. It is now finished, but when or 
 how it will be acted, or whether it will be acted at all, are 
 questions I cannot resolve. I am therefore so much employed 
 upon that, that I am under the necessity of putting off my 
 intended visit to Lincolnshire for this season. Reynolds is 
 just returned from Paris, and finds himself now in the case of 
 a truant that must make up for his idle time by diligence. 
 We have therefore agreed to postpone our journey till next 
 summer, when we hope to have the honour of waiting upon 
 Lady Rothes, and you, and staying double the time of our late 
 intended visit. We often meet, and never without remem- 
 bering you. I see Mr. Beauclerk very often both in town and 
 country. He is now going directly forward to become a 
 second Boyle : deep in chymistry and physics. Johnson has 
 been down upon a visit to a country parson, Doctor Taylor ; 
 
368 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 and is returned to his old haunts at Mrs Thrale's. Burke 
 is a farmer, en attendant a better place ; but visiting about too. 
 Every soul is a visiting about and merry but myself. And 
 that is hard too, as I have been trying these three months to 
 do something to make people laugh. There have I been 
 strolling about the hedges, studying jests with a most tragical 
 countenance. The Natural History is about half finished, 
 and I will shortly finish the rest. God knows I am tired 
 of this kind of finishing, which is but bungling work ; and that 
 not so much my fault, as the fault of my scurvy circumstances. 
 They begin to talk in town of the Opposition's gaining ground ; 
 the cry of liberty is still as loud as ever. I have published, 
 or Davies has published for me, an Abridgement of the History 
 of England, for which I have been a good deal abused in the 
 newspapers for betraying the liberties of the people. God 
 knows I had no thought for or against liberty in my head ; 
 my whole aim being to make up a book of a decent size, that, 
 as 'Squire Richard says, would do no harm to nobody. How- 
 ever, they set me down as an arrant Tory, and consequently 
 an honest man. When you come to look at any part of it, 
 you'll say that I am a sour Whig. God bless you, and with 
 my most respectful compliments to her ladyship, 
 " I remain, dear Sir, 
 " Your most affectionate humble servant, 
 
 " Oliver Goldsmith." 
 
 The attacks made upon his History of England were due to 
 the extraordinary lengths that faction was permitted to carry 
 people during those made Wilkes-Junius years in England. 
 It was difficult for any one to write even the simplest essay- 
 without suspicion being aroused that the writer's pen had 
 been subsidised either by the Government or the Opposition. 
 The most commonplace sentences were tortured into a signi- 
 ficance which in ordinary times no one could possibly think 
 of attributing to them. In the case of a writer who had 
 within a year or two reached the highest position and whosfe 
 importance was recognised by the attempt to buy him which 
 was made by Lord Sandwich, it can easily be understood that 
 everything he wrote should be subjected to this scrutiny ; 
 and once suspicion is aroused in regard to any book, one has 
 
WORK AND PLAT 369 
 
 only to read it suspiciously and one will quickly obtain ample 
 proof on every page of all that one suspected and probably a 
 good deal more. 
 
 Trifles light as air 
 Are to the jealous confirmation strong 
 As proof of Holy Writ. 
 
 And so assuredly are the writings of a man who is read with 
 suspicion. The only difficulty that there could be in the case 
 of this History by Goldsmith is suggested by himself in 
 the letter just quoted : The Whig faction were likely to 
 accuse him of being a Tory and the Tory faction of being a 
 Whig. 
 
 But Goldsmith was really like Canning's Needy Knife- 
 Grinder — in one respect, but in one respect only : " Story ? 
 Lor' bless you I have none to tell," he was ready to cry. He 
 had no thought of taking either side — the side that was 
 muddling the governing of the country or the side that was 
 muddling the opposing of these depredators. He took by no 
 means a lofty view of his responsibilities as a historian. He 
 had none of those high hopes of revolutionising existing 
 opinion respecting certain persons or certain episodes, which 
 seem to animate the more scientific historians of modern days, 
 and which many of them realise — until the next batch comes 
 along to reverse all that they have said. Goldsmith was 
 extremely modest in his preface ; but it was just this modesty 
 that caused the critical spies to believe that he was a Jesuit 
 and that his adherence to the masquerade as an entertainment 
 was due to his having habituated himself to the mask as a 
 writer of history. 
 
 His work was attacked in many directions, but on none of 
 its many vulnerable points. His critics did not understand 
 the rudiments of their business ; and though Tom Davies 
 was so alarmed for his own safety financially, that he went to 
 the extreme length of writing a favourable review of the 
 History in the Public Advertiser — a proceeding of which he 
 was extremely proud — there was no reason for his trepidation. 
 The public believed in Goldsmith, and they did not believe 
 in party. His version of the History of England was the one 
 they wanted and they bought the thing that they knew they 
 wanted. He had read the works of Rapin, Carte, Smollett 
 
 2A 
 
370 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 and Hume, and compiled his narrative from these excellent 
 authorities. He made a delightful story out of the records 
 of crime which were always looked upon as constituting the 
 backbone of English history, until a new type of anatomist 
 appeared, to show that the growth of a great nation is in the 
 long run not greatly affected by the crimes of their governors 
 for the moment. 
 
 That is the most that can be said of Goldsmith's History 
 of England, and the fact that, like his History of Rome, it 
 remained the favourite of the public and that it was prac- 
 tically the only handbook of history that found its way into 
 English schools during the same period, proves a good deal. 
 Whatever were its shortcomings it had sufficient attractions 
 to cause the study of history to be interesting where it had 
 previously been dull, to draw to its pages readers whom 
 previously every history had repelled. 
 
 The mistakes that it contained were numerous. When a 
 compiler has been drawing upon four authors he naturally 
 incorporates into his work four sets of blunders. It seems 
 strange that one of the most flagrant of all should be made by 
 himself. In his reference to the Siege of Londonderry, he 
 stated that the defence was undertaken by " One Walker, a 
 dissenting minister." Now, it might be expected that a 
 descendant of the Protestant settlers of Ireland would be 
 acquainted from his childhood with the heroic achievement, 
 almost unparalleled in history, of the holding of the little city 
 on the Foyle for one hundred and four days, against a large 
 and well disciplined army, composed chiefly of Frenchmen, 
 until relief came by sea. Not half a century had elapsed 
 between the Siege of Londonderry and the birth of Oliver 
 Goldsmith, and only a hundred miles or so separated the 
 parsonage of his father and the palace of Dromore, where the 
 gallant Walker had lived since his appointment by the King, 
 whom he had so well served, to the diocese as Bishop, and yet 
 Goldsmith had never heard of him, and had actually believed 
 that he was one of the ministers whom the Presbyterian Scots 
 had brought with them when they set about the work of the 
 Ulster plantation. 
 
 Percy was very indignant with him for making such a 
 mistake, for he himself knew all there was to know about 
 
WORK AND PLAT 371 
 
 Dr. George Walker, having received the Bishopric that Walker 
 had held for something under a year. 
 
 But his blunders in the History did not cause Goldsmith 
 any uneasiness. He estimated much more correctly than did 
 the public or Dr. Johnson the value of his labours in such a 
 field. " God knows I had no thought for or against 
 liberty in my head ; my whole aim being to make up a book of 
 a decent size, that, as Squire Richard says, ' would do no harm 
 to nobody.' " The closing lines of his letter to Bennet 
 Langton embody his ambitions as a historian. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 VISITS AND LETTERS 
 1771— 1772 
 
 When he wrote to Langton he was at the point of setting out 
 for Barton Hall, where he was to be one of the party which 
 the Bunburys were bringing together before their honey- 
 moon was quite over. Henry William Bunbury had married 
 Catherine Horneck, and they were living at the family seat 
 until the small house which they subsequently occupied, close 
 to Barton Hall, should be ready for them. We have a sus- 
 picion that the tact of the good friends whom Goldsmith had 
 in the Hornecks, as well as in Henry Bunbury and Reynolds, 
 was accountable for this visit, in order to bring Garrick and 
 himself into closer touch with each other. Garrick was to 
 be of the party, and every one knew that Garrick and he had 
 never been on the best of terms, though frequently meeting. 
 Reynolds was so excellent a business man himself that he 
 could not help feeling that a raffrochement between the two 
 would be mutually advantageous to them, and he also knew 
 that Goldsmith would be seen to greatest advantage in the 
 country, and surrounded by charming people. 
 
 The visit took place, and was a very delightful on^ ; but 
 it did not bear any fruit in the way of establishing on a practical 
 basis a business understanding between the two men. No 
 doubt there was some talk about the new comedy, and there 
 is no reason to believe that if Garrick had shown any interest 
 in it he might not have had a chance of reading it, and he would 
 probably have availed himself of the opportunity of rejecting 
 it ; for he was not a very good judge of a play, and, like so 
 many others of the class who feel so deeply that those who 
 live to please must please to live, he had a mortal dread of 
 innovations. Although Kelly, whom he had run against 
 
 373 
 
FISITS AND LETTERS 373 
 
 Goldsmith some years before, had turned out a very bad 
 bargain, his last play having been an absolute fiasco, yet 
 there was another exponent of sentimental comedy come to 
 the front, and the public were greatly pleased with him. 
 This was Richard Cumberland, who was the author of The 
 West Indian, and, better still, the son of a bishop and the 
 grandson of another bishop. Garrick thought that something 
 could be done with Cumberland, but he doubted if anything 
 could be done with Goldsmith. Perhaps he may have felt 
 that, as everything Goldsmith had done had added to his 
 reputation, it would be against every law of probability that 
 he should continue on this ascending scale of success. The 
 modern manager of a theatre seems to choose his plays on 
 something of the same principle. The writer who has made 
 the largest number of consecutive failures is the one for him ; 
 for his delicate discrimination leads him to perceive that the 
 more failures a playwriter achieves, the greater is the likelihood 
 of his new work- being a success. Discriminating people buy 
 a dog that has got over its distemper and other canine dis- 
 orders, knowing that its chances of turning out well are thereby 
 increased. 
 
 But whether or not Garrick looked at the question of 
 Goldsmith from the standpoint of the lottery, he does not 
 seem to have been greatly interested to hear that he had the 
 draft of a new comedy in his trunk, and Goldsmith spent his 
 time amusing his friends at Barton and being made the 
 victim of their practical jokes. From the account given by 
 his Jessamy Bride years afterwards, when she was " old and 
 a mine of memories," the sole survivor of an interesting 
 group, we gather that the members of the Barton Hall party 
 were a number of high-spirited boys and girls, and that the 
 ideal of their fun was that which is still the schoolboys' — the 
 tumbling of a man with a particularly good coat on his back 
 into a pond. When the man with the good coat is, in spite 
 of this strong piece of evidence in favour of quite another 
 assumption, a poet, and not only so, but an historian of Rome 
 and England as well, life can offer but little farther to his 
 friends with a sense of what is humourous. 
 
 The great poet who was a visitor at Barton was the greatest 
 schoolboy of the whole joUy band. The traditional poet 
 
374 'J^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 would have been like a fish out of water in such a company ; 
 but whatever Goldsmith was, he certainly was not that. If 
 there was any fun going he was in the middle of that, and if 
 there was any water going he was in" the middle of that as 
 well. After describing his feats at the water-jump which 
 just fell short by a few inches of landing him dry-shod on the 
 bank, the Jessamy Bride mentioned that, more than anything, 
 he enjoyed a romp with the children. A romp with the 
 children ! Well, no doubt after aU his adventures with their 
 elders, he must have enjoyed the comparative tranquillity 
 of a romp with the children. 
 
 It is needless to say that his wig was not lost sight of as 
 a potent agent of fun. Judiciously treated, a wig should keep 
 a mixed company in a good humour for an indefinite time ; 
 and Goldsmith's wig seems to have missed doing so — if at all 
 — only by a hair's-breadth. He himself had long ago mastered 
 some of its possibilities. He had been known to fling it up 
 to the ceiling when playing the fool in a London house ; but 
 he soon came to learn how meagre were his resources com- 
 pared with those of his friends at Barton. He found that he 
 had scarcely more than crossed the boundary where wig-dignity 
 ends and wig-humour begins. What was all that nonsense 
 of his throwing the thing up to the ceiling and so forth, 
 compared with the masterpiece represented by transferring 
 it when bedraggled to the care of a valet who had never 
 curled a wig in his life, with instructions to have it ready to 
 be worn by dinner-time ? The Jessamy Bride remembered 
 something of the result after half a century had passed ; but 
 she was too wise to make any attempt to describe it. 
 
 And when it came to sitting down to a round game of 
 cards he could amuse the whole company by his drollery, 
 assuming an eagerness to win the few pence in the pool, and 
 affecting a chagrin at losing, which' was highly diverting. 
 Mrs. Gwyn also remembered his singing many songs, some of 
 them of his own composition in regard to the words. 
 The melodies may have been some of those ancient Irish 
 ones, of which he must have had a store. And, more inter- 
 esting still, she recollected his reading to her and her sister 
 one day some chapters of a new novel which he was 
 writing. 
 
VISITS AND LETTERS 375 
 
 What was this novel and where is it to-day ? These are 
 the questions which every one will ask. It is not known to 
 be in existence in any form. We can only surmise that this 
 was the romance which he had agreed some years before to 
 write for Newbery. It was to be similar in style to The Vicar 
 of Wake-field ; but when some chapters of it went to Newbery 
 he declined to accept them, alleging that they referred only 
 to the story contained in The Good Natur'd Man, and his 
 contract was for something original. 
 
 Another surmise on a slenderer foundation still may possibly 
 be permitted to us in this place. Mr. Forster, in his Life, 
 mentioned the discovery only a short time before the publi- 
 cation of this masterpiece, of a poem in Oliver Goldsmith's 
 handwriting, and supposed to be by him. It was a translation 
 or an adaptation of Vida's Game of Chess, and it has since been 
 included in some editions of the poet's works. Now one of 
 Bunbury's best etchings shows two girls in Oriental costume 
 playing chess. The features of the girls suggest very strongly 
 the artist's wife and her sister Mary, and we know that one 
 of them at least had appeared in a picture in Oriental dress. 
 Might it not be possible, we would venture to inquire, 
 that the girls were sitting to the artist for this etching 
 during one of Goldsmith's visits to Barton, and that he 
 was induced to adapt Vida's poem, The Game of Chess, for 
 their amusement ? 
 
 He was accustomed to introduce scraps of rhyme into his 
 letters to Mrs. Bunbury and her sister after the matter of 
 his first communication to the charming pair, which puts us 
 in possession of his nicknames for them and their brother. 
 One of these letters, which fortunately was preserved by the 
 recipient though not published until long after her death, 
 is delightful in its unaffected fun and gentle raillery. It was 
 written in reply to Mrs. Bunbury's invitation to him to come 
 to them at Christmas, which must have contained some 
 allusions — easily intelligible to him — to the hue of one of his 
 coats worn during a previous visit, and also to some episode 
 of dancing with the haymakers ; nor was that fruitful source 
 of all that was found ludicrous, the wig, forgotten by the 
 lady. 
 
 This was the letter : 
 
376 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 " Madam, 
 
 " I read your letter with, all that allowance which critical 
 candour could require, but after all find so much to object to, 
 and so much, to raise my indignation, that I cannot help 
 giving it a serious answer. 
 
 " I am not so ignorant, Madam, as not to see there are 
 many sarcasms contained in it, and solecisms also. (Solecism is a 
 word that comes from the town of Soleis in Attica, among the 
 Greeks, built by Solon, and applies as we use the word Kidder- 
 minster, for curtains from a town also of that name, — but this 
 is learning you have no taste for !) — I say. Madam, there are 
 many sarcasms in it, and solecisms also. But not to seem an 
 ill-natured critic, I'll take leave to quote your own words, and 
 give you my remarks upon them as they occur. You begin 
 as follows : 
 
 ' I hope my good Doctor, you soon will be here, 
 And your spring-velvet coat very smart will appear. 
 To open our ball the first day of the year.' 
 
 " Pray, Madam, where did you ever find the epithet 
 ' good,' applied to the title of Doctor ? Had you called me 
 ' learned Doctor,' or ' grave Doctor,' or ' noble Doctor,' it 
 might be allowable, because they belong to the profession. 
 But, not to cavil at trifles, you talk of my ' spring-velvet coat,' 
 and advise me to wear it the first day in the year, that is, in 
 the middle of winter ! — a spring-velvet coat in the middle of 
 winter ! ! ! That would be a solecism indeed ! and yet to 
 increase the inconsistence, in another part of your letter you 
 call me a beau. Now, on one side or other, you must be 
 wrong. If I am a beau, I can never think of wearing a spring- 
 velvet in winter : and if I am not a beau, why then, that 
 explains itself. But let me go on to your two next strange 
 lines : 
 
 ' And bring with you a wig, that is modish and gay 
 To dance with the girls that are makers of hay.' 
 
 " The absurdity of making hay at Christmas you yourself 
 seem sensible of : you say your sister wiU laugh ; and so 
 indeed she well may ! The Latins have an expression for a 
 contemptuous kind of laughter, ' naso contemnere adunco ' ; 
 that is, to laugh with a crooked nose. She may laugh at you 
 
VISHS AND LETTERS 377 
 
 in the manner of the antients if she thinks fit. But now I 
 come to the most extraordinary of all extraordinary proposi- 
 tions, which is, to take your and your sister's advice in playing 
 at loo. The presumption of the offer raises my indignation 
 beyond the bounds of prose ; it inspires me at once with verse 
 and resentment. I take advice ! and from whom ? You 
 shall hear. 
 
 First let me suppose, what may shortly be true, 
 
 The company set, and the word to be. Loo : 
 
 All smirking, and pleasant, and big with adventure, 
 
 And ogling the stake which is fix'd in the centre. 
 
 Round and round go the cards, while I inwardly damn 
 
 At never once finding a visit from Pam. 
 
 I lay down my stake, apparently cool, 
 
 While the harpies about me all pocket the pool. 
 
 I fret in my gizzard, yet cautious and sly, 
 
 I wish all my friends may be bolder than I : 
 
 Yet still they sit snug, not a creature will aim 
 
 By losing their money to venture at fame. 
 
 'Tis in vain that at niggardly caution I scold, 
 
 'Tis in vain that I flatter the brave and the bold : 
 
 All play their own way, and they think me an ass, — 
 
 ' What does Mrs. Bunbury ? ' — I, Sir, I pass.' 
 
 ' Pray what does Miss Horneck ? take courage, come do — ' 
 
 ' Who, I .? let me see, Sir, why I must pass too.' 
 
 Mr. Bunbury frets, and I fret like the devil. 
 
 To see them so cowardly, lucky, and civil. 
 
 Yet stiU I sit snug, and continue to sigh on. 
 
 Till, made by my losses as bold as lion, 
 
 I venture at all — ^while my avarice regards 
 
 The whole pool as my own — ' Come give me five cards.' 
 
 ' Well done ! ' cry the ladies ; ' Ah, Doctor, that's good ! 
 
 ' The pool's very rich — ah, the Doctor is loo'd ! ' 
 
 Thus foil'd in my courage, on all sides perplext, 
 
 I ask for advice from the lady that's next : 
 
 ' Pray, Ma'am, be so good as to give your advice ; 
 
 ' Don't you think the best way is to " venture for't twice .? " 
 
 ' I advise,' cries the lady, ' to try it, I own — 
 
 ' Ah ! the Doctor is loo'd ! Come, Doctor, put down.' 
 
 Thus, playing, and playing, I still grow more eager. 
 
 And so bold, and so bold, I'm at last a bold beggar. 
 
 Now, ladies, I ask, if law-matters you're skilled in. 
 
 Whether crimes such as yours should not come before Fielding : 
 
 For giving advice that is not worth a straw. 
 
 May well be call'd picking of pockets in law ; 
 
 And picking of pockets, with which I now charge ye. 
 
 Is, by quinto Elizabeth, Death without Clergy. 
 
378 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 What justice, when both to the Old Bailey brought ! 
 
 By the gods, I'll enjoy it, the' 'tis but in thought ! 
 
 Both are plac'd at the bar, with all proper decorum, 
 
 With bunches of fennell, and nosegays before 'em ; 
 
 Both cover their faces with mobs and all that. 
 
 But the judge bids them, angrily, take off their hat. 
 
 When uncover'd a buz of inquiry runs round, — 
 
 ' Pray what are their crimes ? ' — ' They've been pilfering found.' 
 
 ' But, pray, who have they pilfer'd f ' — ' A Doctor, I hear.' 
 
 ' What, yon solemn-faced, odd looking man that stands near ! ' 
 
 ' The same ' — ' What a pity ! How does it surprise one, 
 
 ' Two handsomer culprits I never set eyes on ! ' 
 
 Then their friends all come round me with cringing and leering, 
 
 To melt me to pity, and soften my swearing. 
 
 First Sir Charles advances with phrases well-strung, 
 
 ' Consider, dear Doctor, the girls are but young.' 
 
 ' The younger the worse,' I return him again, 
 
 ' It shews that their habits are all dyed in grain. 
 
 ' But then they're so handsome, one's bosom it grieves.' 
 
 ' What signifies handsome, when people are thieves i 
 
 ' But where is your justice ? their cases are hard.' 
 
 ' What signifies justice ? I want the reward.' 
 
 "There's the parish of Edmonton offers forty pounds; 
 there's the parish of St. Leonard Shoreditch offers forty 
 pounds ; there's the parish of Tyburn, from the Hog-in-the- 
 Pound to St. Giles's watch-house, offers forty pounds, — I 
 shall have all that if I convict them ! — 
 
 ' But consider their case — it may yet be your owti ! 
 
 And see how they kneel ! Is your heart made of stone ? ' 
 
 This moves ; — so at last I agree to relent. 
 
 For ten pounds in hand, and ten pounds to be spent. 
 
 " I challenge you all to answer this : I tell you, you cannot. 
 It cuts deep : — but now for the rest of the letter ; and next — 
 but I want room — so I believe I shall battle the rest out at 
 Barton some day next week. 
 
 " I don't value you all ! 
 
 " O. G." 
 
 It is not known whether he went to Barton so soon after 
 his first visit as Christmas would be. But it is certain that 
 during the next year, 1772, he was there more than once, 
 though, as usual, he could ill spare the time, and still less 
 readily, the money, which such a holiday entailed. Before 
 many months of the year had gone by he had drawn the 
 
VISITS AND LETTERS 379 
 
 balance that remained to him from Animated Nature— to 
 be exact, as one should be in the matter of accounts, we should 
 say the balance that would have been due to him when he 
 had written and delivered the copy for the final volume. 
 Among all the writers who had reason to testify to the 
 generosity of their publishers — and they are many — Goldsmith 
 stands easily first. Whatever his drudgery may have been 
 during the last six or seven years of his life, it was of his own 
 creating ; it was not imposed upon him either by Davies or 
 Griffin. They were the most generous of taskmasters. They 
 paid him for work which he had not done, and which they 
 had no guarantee he would ever do. Griffin would have 
 had great reason to complain that he was being badly treated 
 when, after he had advanced that ;£5oo for Animated Nature, 
 the author accepted the commission for the four volumes of 
 the English History from Davies, agreeing to complete them 
 within two years ; but, instead of making any protest against 
 the shelving of the larger and more arduous work, five or 
 six months after the issue of the English History he handed 
 over the ^300 which would only have been due when the 
 last of the eight volumes of Animated Nature had been sent 
 to the press. It reaUy should be said of Goldsmith that he 
 suffered nearly as much from the generosity of his publishers 
 as he did from his own. If they had insisted on his dealings 
 with them being on a reasonable business basis he would soon 
 have ceased to look on his work as so much drudgery. AU 
 work seems drudgery to one who has been paid for doing it 
 before it is begun, and the hardship seems doubled when the 
 money has been spent with nothing to show for it. All that 
 can be alleged against the booksellers is that, instead of 
 encouraging him in the production of imaginative work, they 
 set him to do the work of compilation. There was surely 
 room for another Vicar of Wakefield, and if Newbery did 
 not think that the chapters of the story which Goldsmith 
 submitted to him were likely to make a good beginning to a 
 novel, that was no reason why he should not have encouraged 
 the author to make another attempt. But just at that time, 
 when Newbery was well aware that he had twelve, if not 
 fourteen volumes, actually in hand, he may have felt that it 
 would be ridiculous to talk of a new work of fiction. 
 
38o THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 What he did talk of was a settlement of the accounts 
 between the author and himself, and he carried on his conver- 
 sation to such purpose that we find one of his entries in which 
 Goldsmith stands in the novel position of creditor for ^£200 ! 
 Newbery should have made the entry in red ink. 
 
 Early in 1772, he became acquainted with Cradock, a 
 gentleman of family and fortune, with a country seat in 
 Leicestershire and literary tastes. He was a friend of Lord 
 Clare, and he came to town to produce a translation which he 
 had made of Voltaire's Zobeide. Goldsmith met him at the 
 house of Yates, the actor, who was to take the principal part 
 in the tragedy, and, pleased to be associated with anything 
 by the French author for whom he had so great a respect, 
 he promised to write a prologue. As a specimen of his ability 
 in this extinct form of composition it must be quoted. It 
 is one of the best examples of prologue writing that has 
 survived the wreck of eighteenth-century dramatic literature. 
 In the eighteenth century there was a dramatic literature. 
 In the nineteenth there was an illiterate drama, and in the 
 twentieth there is the music-hall. 
 
 The chief quality which it was necessary that a prologue 
 should possess was, clearly, aptness. It should introduce the 
 topic of the hour, and the topic of the spring of 1772 was the 
 South Sea explorations of Lieutenant Cook. The adroitness 
 of the poet in touching upon these is worthy of recognition, 
 and must have been recognised by aU parts of the house. 
 But the very doubtful rhymes which he allowed himself in 
 some of the couplets suggest his impression that they would 
 not be repeated with great frequency. In his own poems 
 he never has anything so slovenly as " enters " jingling with 
 " adventures," or " laden " with " trading " ; nor would 
 he have allowed a line to end with the word " aid " rhyming 
 with " trade," when the rhymes in the couplet immediately 
 preceding were " laid her " and " trader." But he knew that 
 no one minded such artistic shortcomings in a prologue. 
 The great point was that he struck the right note at once and 
 stopped short at exactly the right moment. 
 
 In these bold times, when Learning's sons explore 
 The distant climates and the savage shore ; 
 
FISITS AND LETTERS 381 
 
 When wise astronomers to India steer, 
 
 And quit for Venus many a brighter here ; 
 
 While botanists all cold to smile and dimpling, 
 
 Forsake the fair and patiently — ^go simpling : 
 
 Our bard into the general spirit enters. 
 
 And fits his little frigate for adventures. 
 
 With Scythian stores, and trinkets deeply laden. 
 
 He this way steers his course, in hopes of trading — 
 
 Yet ere he lands he's order'd me before. 
 
 To make an observation on the shore. 
 
 Where are we driven ? our reckoning sure is lost ! 
 
 This seems a rocky and a dangerous coast. 
 
 Lord, what a sultry climate am I under ! 
 
 Yon ill foreboding cloud seems big with thunder : 
 
 (Upfer Gallery) 
 There mangroves spread, and larger than I've seen 'em 
 Here trees of stately size — and billing turtles in 'em. 
 
 (Balconies) 
 Here ill-condition'd oranges abound — 
 
 And apples, bitter apples strew the ground : 
 
 {Stage) 
 (Tasting them) 
 
 The inhabitants are cannibals I fear : 
 
 I heard a hissing — there are serpents here ! 
 
 O, there the people are — best keep my distance : 
 
 Our Captain, gentle natives ! craves assistance ; 
 
 Our ship's well stor'd — in yonder creek we've laid her. 
 
 His honour is no mercenary trader. 
 
 This is his first adventure, lend him aid, 
 
 And we may chance to drive a thriving trade. 
 
 His goods, he hopes, are prime, and brought from far. 
 
 Equally fit for gallantry and war. 
 
 What, no reply to promises so ample ? 
 
 I'd best step back — and order up a sample. 
 
 The play which followed was not even a noteworthy- 
 failure. Respecting it Walpole write to Lady Ossory : 
 " There is a new tragedy at Covent Garden called Zobeide 
 which I am told is very indifferent, though written by a 
 country gentleman." 
 
 " Though written by a country gentleman." It does indeed 
 seem little short of miraculous how, with so obvious a qualifi- 
 cation for success, the play did not succeed. 
 
 Goldsmith's intimacy with Cradock increased during the 
 next few months ; and it was increased by the former's 
 writing of a lament on the death of the Princess Dowager of 
 Wales to which he gave Dryden's title Threnodia Augustalis. 
 
382 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 The poem, which was announced to be " hj a gentleman of 
 acknowledged literary merit," was written to bp recited with 
 incidental music at one of the CorneUy Concerts in Soho 
 Square. Mrs. CorneUy's musical evenings had become the 
 fashion, and remained so for several years. They were 
 supposed to be very select, and so they undoubtedly were. 
 Goldsmith was accustomed to allude to the miscellaneous 
 entertainments which he gave at his rooms as " little Cor- 
 nellys." He did not take much trouble over his Threnodia, 
 the only interest he took in the work was on account of the 
 friendship that had existed between his friend Lord Clare 
 and the royal lady in whose memory it was written. Nugent 
 had been a strong partisan of the Prince and Princess of Wales, 
 and after the death of the former, had remained for many years 
 an adherent of the princess. The poem is on the same level 
 as the " book " for the oratorio The Captivity. It did not 
 attract much attention, and no one seems to have associated 
 Goldsmith's name with it. In the early posthumous 
 edition of his works it is not to be found. 
 
 It was certainly not on account of the performance of 
 this work during the month of February, that BosweU, coming 
 to London from his native Scotland, was amazed to find the 
 name of Goldsmith in everybody's mouth. He could not under- 
 stand the reason, and so he applied to Johnson for a solution. 
 
 " Sir," he complained to his mentor, " Goldsmith has 
 acquired more fame than all the officers last war who were not 
 generals." " Why, sir," replied Johnson, " you will find ten 
 thousand fit to do what they did before you find one fit to do 
 what Goldsmith has done." 
 
 The explanation reminds one of the reply of the avaricious 
 prima donna to the potentate who refused to accede to her 
 terms on the plea that, were he to pay her price, she would be 
 receiving more than any of his marshals " : " Eh, Men, man 
 sire. Let your marshals sing to you." 
 
 BosweU found that Goldsmith was even more sought after 
 than Johnson, but he could not for the life of him understand 
 how such a state of things could exist, though it is not long 
 before he lets his readers into the secret which he himself, to 
 the day of his death, failed to fathom. He makes us see clearly 
 that Goldsmith was becoming every day more companionable. 
 
VISHS AND LETTERS 383 
 
 Although Boswell had been in Scotland for some time, it 
 does not appear that the gaiety of London was eclipsed by 
 his absence, or that the Johnsonian circle suffered greatly 
 by the gap his departure had left in it. He had been in some 
 law cases before the Court at Edinburgh, and the practice in 
 cross-examination which they afforded him he thought he 
 might with propriety continue in London. He soon found 
 out his mistake. Johnson turned upon him. " Sir," he 
 shouted, " I will not be put to the question. Don't you 
 consider, sir, that these are not the manners of a gentleman ? 
 I will not be baited with what and why. What is this ? 
 What is that ? Why is a cow's tail long ? Why is a fox's tail 
 bushy ? " 
 
 Happily, he was so constituted as to be incapable of feeling 
 such rebuffs. He alluded to them under the general designa- 
 tion of " wit," and certainly in these days he must have found 
 Johnson the prince of humourists. The author of Animated 
 Nature might have been worse employed than in studying 
 Boswell as an example of the indifference with which one 
 of the order Pachydermata regards attacks from one of the 
 order Ursida. 
 
 We are indebted to Boswell for an entertaining account 
 of a dinner at General Oglethorpe's, at which they all met, 
 and in the course of which the old general gave reminiscences 
 of Marlborough's wars, pretty much as old generals in the 
 middle years of the nineteenth century did of the Peninsular, 
 and as some — ^becoming, alas ! fewer every year — stiU talk 
 of " the Mutiny." Some of the wine was spilled on the table 
 to enable their host to illustrate the order of the Siege of 
 Belgrade ; and perhaps it was this spilling of the wine that 
 drew from Oglethorpe the oft-repeated story of the insolent 
 Prince of Wurtemberg's flicking some wine in the face of the 
 young officer who lived to be old and to tell the story of how 
 he promptly said, " A capital jest, my prince ; but we do it 
 much better in England," and quicUy threw a fuU glass of 
 wine in his face. 
 
 From the spilling of wine to the shedding of blood is a 
 simple sequence. A duel had been avoided between Ogle- 
 thorpe and the prince, but should duels always be avoided ? — 
 was duelling morally justifiable ? That was what Boswell 
 
3»4 'IHE LIFE UF ULIl^ER GULDISMl'I H 
 
 was anxious to know. Goldsmith said that if Boswell won 
 fight, the question would be settled for ever, but Johnsi 
 denied such a presumption, and explained in what circui 
 stances a duel could not be avoided. On they went to i. 
 question of people living together on friendly terms and y 
 differing on a point of some magnitude. As usual, Goldsmi 
 — even according to BosweU — is able to lay his finger upon t 
 weak point in Johnson's assertion that all the differing parti 
 had to do in order to remain good friends was to avoid eve 
 reference to the subject of their variance. " But, sir," sa 
 Goldsmith, " when people live together who have somethii 
 as to which they disagree and which they want to shun, th 
 wiU be in the situation mentioned in the story of Bluebear( 
 ' Tou may look into all the chambers hut one.'' But we shou 
 have the greatest inclination to look into that chamber — 
 talk of that subject." That was Goldsmith's argument, ai 
 if it was not a sound one, there never was a sound argume 
 advanced on any question. That was Goldsmith's argumer 
 This was Johnson's. He shouted across the table, " Sir, 
 am not saying that you could live in friendship with a m; 
 from whom you differ as to some point, I am only saying th 
 I could do it." 
 
 This was Johnson's wit. 
 
 From these examples of a very animated nature, Gol 
 smith retired to his lodging on the Edgware Road, and resum 
 his toils under that heading. He had by this time got abo 
 half-way through the book, and in addition to the labo 
 that it entailed, he had to complete the Abridgement of i. 
 History of Rome, and there can be no doubt that he was st 
 sanguine as to the successful carrying out of a scheme he h 
 for a long time in his mind, for the pubHcation of a Histo 
 of Experimental Philosophy. With aU this work on hand ai 
 before him, some one seems to have suggested to him t 
 advisability of employing an amanuensis. He had had soi 
 experience of a help of this sort, but found that when he h 
 need of some facts about China methodically arranged, a.: 
 set his " help " to do this for him, the result was too startli: 
 to be of any practical value to him, for, according to the i 
 searches of this assistant, China was vaguely situated somewhe 
 between India and Persia, and the inhabitants had a dash 
 
VISITS AND LETTERS 385 
 
 the Otaheitan about them. His amanuensis was equally a 
 failure. He sat looking at the young man and the young man 
 sat looking at him, and then Goldsmith put a guinea into 
 his hand and allowed him to go away. So at least is the story 
 told by one Pugh, in the course of his Remarkable Occurrences 
 in the Life of James Hanioay, Esq. 
 
 He worked continuously on his Animated Nature and the 
 Abridgement of the History of Rome, and managed to throw 
 off a few magazine articles as well, before he returned to 
 town, to display his envy of the encomiums passed upon the 
 puppets in Panton Street — that funny incident so seriously 
 described, to which we have already alluded — and to take 
 part in the Ranelagh masquerades with the Hornecks, now 
 become almost inseparable from him, and with Reynolds. 
 He went with George Steevens and Johnson to see the aged 
 Macklin play at Covent Garden, and he supped tete-a-tete 
 with Johnson ofE rump steaks and kidneys. Pretty things, 
 Johnson thought them, but not filling. " How many of 
 them would reach to the moon ? " asked Goldsmith. " To 
 the moon," said Johnson. " Ah, Goldy, I fear that exceeds 
 your calculation." " Not at all, sir," said Goldsmith, " I 
 think I could tell." " Pray then, sir, let us hear." " Why 
 one — if it were long enough," cried Goldsmith, and Johnson 
 confessed that he had deserved the pitfall. " I should not 
 have provoked so foolish an answer by so foolish a question," 
 he said. 
 
 He accompanied Johnson to the Thrales' hospitable house 
 several times this year, and occasionally he was one of Mrs. 
 Vesey's lions, as well as Mrs. Montague's. The blue stockings 
 were very pronounced in colour at that time. Then we find 
 him interested in the new dining-club at St. James' Coffee 
 House, and longing to act the part of Scrub in The Beaux 
 Stratagem which there was some talk of the members, not of 
 this mushroom club, but of the old one at Gerard Street, 
 going to Lichfield to represent in honour of Johnson and 
 Garrick — a very doubtful way of honouring a great actor and 
 his master, some people may think. And not the least in- 
 teresting of his associates at this time is to be found in a letter 
 which he received from Tom Paine. It is given by Percy in 
 juxtaposition with a letter of Oglethorpe's, from which we 
 
 2 B 
 
386 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 have already quoted. The right reverend prelate treated Tom 
 Paine with the scantiest of courtesy. Introducing the letters, 
 Percy says they are " from two remarkable characters ; but as 
 opposite as can be found between a friend and an enemy of 
 the human race ; the one distinguished for the most exalted 
 application, the other for the vilest abuse : of singular talents : 
 both intimately connected with the history of America, where 
 the one had founded a flourishing colony, the other hath 
 endeavoured to poison and corrupt all the colonies. Not to 
 keep the reader longer in suspense, these are two letters, from 
 the venerable General Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia; 
 and the notorious Thomas Paine, then an officer of the excise, 
 whose claim therein to singular modesty will divert the 
 reader." 
 
 Tom Paine was more concerned at that moment with the 
 wrongs of the Excisemen than with the Rights of Man. He 
 was stationed at Lewes, and seems to have been connected 
 with getting up a petition to Parliament for the increase of the 
 salaries of the minor officials associated with the Excise 
 Department. This petition or memorial was his first literary 
 work, and he seems to have been as proud of it as a tradesman 
 is of seeing his name in print. Why he should have sent a 
 copy of it to Goldsmith it is difficult to teU. He may have 
 read The Deserted Village and thought that the sentiments 
 it contained indicated on the part of the author a sympathy 
 with that revolutionary spirit which was in the air, but the 
 strength of which Exciseman Paine had not so accurately 
 gauged. But however this may be, he had certainly heard 
 that Goldsmith was an approachable man, and he was anxious 
 to meet a brother litterateur and to learn how much they had 
 in common. 
 
 This is the letter : 
 
 " Honoured sir, 
 
 " Herewith I present you with the case of the officers of 
 excise. A compliment of this kind from an entire stranger 
 may appear somewhat singular; but the following reasons 
 and information will I presume sufficiently apologize. 
 
 " I act myself in the humble station of an officer of excise, 
 though somewhat differently circumstanced to what many 
 
VISHS AND LETTERS 387 
 
 of them are, and have been the principal promoter of a plan 
 for applying to Parhament this session for an increase of 
 salary. A petition for this purpose has been circulated through 
 every part of the kingdom, and signed by all the officers 
 therein. A subscription of three shillings per oflEcer is raised, 
 amounting to upwards of five hundred pounds, for supporting 
 the expenses. 
 
 " The excise officers in all cities and corporate towns 
 have obtained letters of recommendation from the electors 
 to the members on their behalf, many or most of whom have 
 promised their support. The enclosed case we have presented 
 to most of the members, and shall to aU, before the petition 
 appear in the house. 
 
 " The memorial before you met with so much approbation 
 while in manuscript, that I was advised to print four thousand 
 copies : three thousand of which were subscribed for by the 
 officers in general, and the remaining one thousand reserved 
 for presents. 
 
 " Since the delivering them, I have received so many 
 letters of thanks and approbation for the performance, that 
 were I not rather singularly modest, I should insensibly become 
 a little vain. 
 
 " The literary fame of Dr. Goldsmith has induced me to 
 present one to him, such as it is. 'Tis my first and only attempt, 
 and even now I should not have undertaken it, had I not been 
 particularly apphed to by some of my superiors in office. 
 
 " I have some few questions to trouble Dr. Goldsmith with, 
 and should esteem his company for an hour or two, to partake 
 of a bottle of wine or anything else, and apologize for this 
 trouble, as a singular favour conferred on 
 
 " His unknown 
 " Humble Servant 
 " and Admirer 
 " Thomas Paine. 
 
 " Excise Coffee House, 
 
 " Broad Street. December 21, 1772.. 
 
 " P.S. Shall take the liberty of waiting on you in a day 
 or two." 
 
 This letter has undoubtedly an interest of its own, for 
 
388 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 within two years of its date the writer's fortunes had under- 
 gone a great change, and he was on the way to become cele- 
 brated, or, according to Percy, notorious. The " case " 
 which he presented to Goldsmith was so well done as to cause 
 the Government to dispense with his services at the Excise — 
 they made the fact of his keeping a tobacconist's shop a reason 
 for his dismissal, and it would appear to have been quite 
 a valid one ; but Benjamin Franklin, having probably been 
 also one of the recipients of the " case," and having complied 
 with the author's request for an interview, commended him 
 very highly and gave him the assurance that America was 
 waiting for such men as he. Paine took the hint and found 
 that this information was correct. America received him with 
 enthusiasm, as also did France when her Revolution was in 
 progress. He was more fortunate than the Scotch Exciseman 
 who had shown himself in too great sympathy with the same 
 tremendous national convulsion, and who, born two years 
 later then Tom Paine, died thirteen years earlier, miserable 
 to the last because he had no friend near him of the practical 
 insight of Franklin to advise him for his good. 
 
 Uneventful, save for a severe attack of the malady from 
 which he had suffered six or seven years earlier, had Gold- 
 smith's life been since the publication of his History of England. 
 Since the attractions of the fashionable circle in which he 
 found himself were so great, he returned to them from his 
 cottage as seldom as possible. The terrible weight of those 
 obligations of his in respect of the History of Animated Nature 
 was pressing heavily upon him; and at last the time arrived 
 when it became insupportable. He had only one hope of 
 rescue remaining — the comedy which he had written nearly 
 two years before, but which seemed no nearer production 
 than it had ever been. The truth is that at that time 
 the same struggle was going on in stage matters as has 
 become prominent at certain periods in England both as 
 regards the drama and literature. . The sentimentalists and 
 the realists have ever been engaged in a struggle for pre- 
 eminence ; and at no time would it be possible to say with 
 certainty which side was winning and which was losing ground. 
 We have seen something of the contest within our own 
 generation. We have laughed at the books that our fathers 
 
VISITS AND LETTERS 389 
 
 and mothers and uncles and aunts wept over so copiously ; 
 and have even failed to be in the least impressed by the 
 heroic gentlemen who stalked gloomily through the fiction 
 of fifty years ago, flinging purses to right and left. These 
 splendid heroes were more heroic still when they were put 
 upon the stage ; and the simperers in sandals and book-muslin 
 who fainted at the whisper of an idiomatic phrase, and swooned 
 at the sight of an underdone beefsteak, drew all manly sym- 
 pathy to them when put into a play. 
 
 They would be looked on as ridiculous caricatures to-day ; 
 but for all her delicacy and timidity, the sentimental little 
 woman showed herself to be as long-lived as a chronic invalid, 
 and the gloomy hero retained his raven curls without a streak 
 of grey, well into the last quarter of the nineteenth century. 
 No works of fiction have been more popular than Bulwer 
 Lytton's, and no plays have been more popular than The Lady 
 of Lyons, Richelieu, and Money — ^the positive, comparative 
 and superlative degrees of all that is artificial in style, unhealthy 
 in tone, and mawkish in sentiment. And yet when the dis- 
 tinguished actor and actress who had done so much to intro- 
 duce natural characterisation and simple incidents into comedy 
 migrated to another theatre in London, they could not find 
 a play which promised more success to their new enterprise 
 than the fustian Money ; and when the greatest actor of our 
 time was anxious to consolidate a reputation due to his acting 
 of Hamlet, he produced Richelieu, and afterwards joined with 
 the most exquisite Beatrice in presenting The Lady of Lyons. 
 But only the judicious few shook their heads. The judicial 
 paying crowd clapped their hands. 
 
 These few incidents of the last quarter of the nineteenth 
 century may be accepted as illustrative of the attitude of the 
 leading exponents of the drama in respect of all that is tawdry 
 and meretricious. A score of such instances of the variations 
 in public taste and of the varieties of managers' obtuseness 
 could be given by any one whose acquaintance with the 
 stage goes back twenty-five or thirty years ; but the few that 
 occur to us may help to an understanding of the difficulties 
 of Goldsmith with the two managers on whose whims the 
 drama of the period was dependent. They both professed 
 to see the foolishness of the comedy of unreality, but neither 
 
390 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 of the pair had the courage of his opinion. They had both 
 made money out of it in the past, and were not sure that 
 they might not make money out of it in the future. They 
 no longer had ambitions to direct the taste of the pubUc, 
 they were content to be directed by it. No doubt they 
 quoted the couplet which has always been the manager's 
 charter for producing a contemptible thing that pays : 
 
 The drama's laws the drama's patrons give. 
 For those who live to please must please to live. 
 
 They did not know what was coming. Each had an eye 
 on the other, and his other eye was on the look-out for the 
 jumping cat. 
 
 That was the condition of things at the theatres when 
 Goldsmith wrote his second comedy in 177 1, and placed it 
 in the hands of Colman, altering it and revising it, and perhaps 
 improving it, during the next year. But still Colman pro- 
 fessed not to be able to assign a date to its production. The 
 whole story of the manager's ineptitude and of the author's 
 suffering must, however, be narrated without a break to allow 
 of one's appreciating the risk that was run of the finest comedy 
 of its century being left to moulder on the manager's shelf. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 THE STORY OF THE COMEDY 
 1772—1773 
 
 He occupied one room in the farmhouse — the guest-chamber 
 it had probably been called when the farm was young. It was 
 a pretty spacious apartment, up one pair of stairs and to the 
 right of the landing, and from its window there was a pleasing 
 prospect of a paddock with wheatfields beyond ; there was a 
 drop in the landscape in the direction of Hendon, and here 
 was a little wood. The farmer's name was Selby, a married 
 man, with a son of sixteen and younger children, and the 
 farmhouse was the nearest building to the sixth milestone on 
 the Edgware Road. 
 
 He was invariably alluded to as " the gentleman," and 
 the name did very well for him, situated as he was in the 
 country ; in the town and among his acquaintance it would 
 serve badly as a means of identification. He was never 
 referred to as " the gentleman " of the Johnsonian group. 
 In his room in the farmhouse there was his bed and table — 
 a large table littered with books : it took two chaises to carry 
 his books hither from his rooms in the Temple. Here he 
 sat and wrote the greater part of the day, and when he was 
 very busy he would scarcely be able to touch the meals which 
 were sent up to him from the kitchen. But he was by no 
 means that dignified type of the man of letters who would 
 shrink from fellowship with the farmer or his family. He 
 frequently came down his stairs into the kitchen and stood 
 with his back to the fire, conversing with the housewife. 
 
 And then upon occasions " the gentleman " would take a 
 
 walk abroad ; the farmer's son had more than once come upon 
 
 him strolling about the fields with his hands in his pockets 
 
 and his head bent toward the ground, stiU muttering fitfully 
 
 291 
 
392 7HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 and occasionally giving a laugh. Now and again he paid a 
 visit to his friend Mr. Hugh Boyd at the village of Kenton, 
 and once he returned late at night from such a visit without 
 his shoes. He had left them in a quagmire, he said, and it 
 was only with a struggle that he saved himself from being 
 engulfed as well. That was the story of his shoes which 
 young Selby remembered when he was no longer young. 
 
 There wjs another story which he remembered, but it 
 related to his slippers. The fact was that " the gentle- 
 man " had acquired the bad habit of reading in bed, and 
 the table on which his candlestick stood being several feet 
 away from his pillow, he saved himself the trouble of rising to 
 extinguish the candle by flinging a slipper at it. In the 
 morning the overturned candle was usually found side by 
 side on the floor with an unaccountably greasy slipper. This 
 method of discharging an important domestic duty differed 
 considerably from Johnson's way of compassing the same end. 
 Johnson, being extremely short-sighted, was compelled to 
 hold the candle close to the book when reading in bed, so 
 that he had no need to use his slipper as an extinguisher. No, 
 but he found his pillow very handy for this purpose. When 
 he had finished his reading he threw away the book and went 
 to sleep with his candle under his pillow. 
 
 Goldsmith at the farm went about a good deal in his 
 slippers and with his shirt loose at the collar — the latter must 
 have been but one of his very customary negligences, or Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds would not have painted him thus. Doubtless 
 the painter had long recognised the interpretative value of 
 this loosened collar above that of the velvet and silk raiment 
 in which Goldsmith sometimes appeared before the wondering 
 eyes of his friends. 
 
 But if the painter had never had an opporturiity of study- 
 ing the picturesqueness of his negligence in town, he had 
 more than one chance of doing so within the farmhouse. 
 Young Selby recollected that upon at least one occasion Sir 
 Joshua, his friend Sir William Chambers, and Dr. Johnson 
 had paid a visit to the gentleman who lodged at the farm. 
 He remembered that for the reception of so distinguished a 
 company the farmhouse parlour had been opened and tea 
 provided. There must have been a good deal of pleasant 
 
THE STORY OF THE COMEDY 393 
 
 talk between the gentleman and his friends at this time, and 
 probably young Selby heard an astonishingly loud laugh 
 coming from the enormous visitor with the brown coat and 
 the worsted stockings, as " the gentleman " endeavoured to 
 tell his guests something of the strange scenes which he was 
 introducing into the comedy which was then without a name, 
 but which young Selby doubtless heard was produced the 
 following year in London, when it was called She Stoops to 
 Conquer. 
 
 This was the second year that Goldsmith had spent at the 
 farm, working alternately at the comedy and Animated Nature. 
 
 It was in 1771 that Mr. Boswell paid him a visit, bringing 
 with him as a witness Mr. Mickle, the translator of the Lusiai. 
 " The gentleman " had gone away for the day, Mrs. Selby 
 explained ; but she did not know Mr. Boswell. She could 
 not prevent him from satisfying his curiosity in respect of 
 Dr. Goldsmith. He went upstairs to his room, and he was 
 fuUy satisfied. He found the walls all scrawled over with 
 outline drawings of quite a number of animals. Having thus 
 satisfied himself that the author of Animated Nature was 
 working in a thoroughly conscientious manner, he came away. 
 He records the incident himself, but he does not say whether 
 or not he was able to recognise any of the animals from the 
 pictures. 
 
 It was in the following year that Goldsmith was revising and 
 rewriting his comedy in the same place. Whatever disappoint- 
 ment he may have felt at the indifferent success of the first 
 performance of The Good-Natur'd Man — and he undoubtedly 
 felt some — had been amply redeemed by the money which 
 accrued to him from the " author's nights " and by the sale 
 of the play ; and he had only awaited a little encouragement 
 from the managers to enable him to begin another comedy. 
 But the managers were not encouraging, and he was found by 
 his friends one day to be full of a scheme for the building of 
 a new theatre for the production of new plays, in order that 
 the existing managers might not be able to carry on their 
 tyranny any longer. Such a scheme has been revived every 
 decade since Goldsmith's time, but never with the least 
 success. Johnson, whose sound sense was rarely at fault, 
 laughed at the poet's project for bringing down the mighty 
 
394 'J^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 from their seats, upon which Goldsmith cried : " Ay, sir, 
 this matter may be nothing to you who can now shelter 
 yourself behind the corner of your pension," and he doubtless 
 went on to describe the conditions of the victims of the 
 tyranny of which he complained ; but it is questionable if 
 his doing so had any greater effect than to turn Johnson's 
 laughter into another and a wider channel. 
 
 Of course, the scheme for bringing the managers to their 
 senses never reached a point of serious consideration ; and 
 forthwith Goldsmith began to illustrate, for the benefit of 
 posterity, the depths to which the stupidity of the manager 
 of a playhouse can occasionally fall. The public have always 
 had abundant proofs of the managers' stupidity afforded them 
 in the form of the plays which they produce ; but the history 
 of the production of the most brilliant comedy of the 
 eighteenth century is practically unique, for it is the history 
 of the stupidity of a manager in doing his best to bring about 
 the failure of a play which he was producing at his own theatre. 
 He had predicted the failure of the piece, and it must strike 
 most people that the manager of a theatre who produces for 
 a failure will be as successful in compassing his end as a jockey 
 who rides for a fall. Colman believed that he was in the 
 fortunate position of one of those prophets who had the 
 realisation of their predictions in their own hands. He was 
 mistaken in this particular case. Although he was justified 
 on general principles in assuming his possession of this power, 
 yet he had made no allowance for the freaks of genius. He was 
 frustrated in his amiable designs by this incalculable force — 
 this power which he had treated as a quantite negligeahle. 
 A man who has been accustomed aU his life to count only on 
 simple ability in the people about him is, on suddenly being 
 brought face to face with genius, like an astronomer who makes 
 out his tables of a new object on the assumption that it is 
 a fixed star, when all the time it is a comet, upsetting by 
 its erratic course all his calculations, and demanding to be 
 reckoned with from a standpoint that applies to itself 
 alone. 
 
 The stars of Colman's theatrical firmament were such as 
 might safely be counted on ; but Goldsmith's genius was not 
 of this order. The manager's stupidity lay in his blunt 
 
7HE STORT OF THE COMEDY 395 
 
 refusal to recognise a work of genius when it was brought to 
 him by a man of genius. 
 
 We have already mentioned that the central idea of the 
 plot of She Stoops to Conquer may have been suggested by that 
 incident of his boyhood when he was directed to the house of 
 Mr. P. Featherstone as an inn, and it cannot be denied that 
 the playing of the practical joke of Tony Lumpkin upon the 
 two travellers is " very Irish." It is certain that the play 
 was constructed and written by Goldsmith without an adviser- 
 He was possibly shrewd enough to know that if he were to take 
 counsel with any of his friends — Garrick, Johnson, Reynolds, 
 or Colman — ^he would not be able to write the play which 
 he had a mind to write. But the play in its original form 
 was practically finished some time in the summer of 1771 ; 
 and on September 7 the author was back at his rooms in the 
 Temple and writing in that letter which we have quoted in 
 full to his friend Bennet Langton : " I have been almost 
 wholly in the country at a farmer's house, quite alone, trying 
 to write a comedy. It is now finished, but when or how it 
 wiU be acted, or whether it will be acted at all, are questions 
 I cannot resolve." 
 
 The misgivings which he had at this time were well 
 founded. He considered that the fact of his having obtained 
 from Colman a promise to read any play that he might write 
 constituted an obligation on his part to submit this piece to 
 Colman rather than to Garrick. He accordingly placed it 
 in Colman's hands ; but it is impossible to say if the work of 
 elaborate revision which Goldsmith began in the spring of 
 1772 was due to the comments made by this manager on 
 the first draft, or to the author's own reconsideration of his 
 work as a whole. But the amended version was certainly in 
 Colman's hands in the summer of this year (1772). The 
 likelihood is that Colman would have refused point-blank to 
 have anything to do with the comedy after he had read the 
 first draft, had it not been that just at this time Goldsmith's 
 reputation was increased to a remarkable extent by the publi- 
 cation of his Histories. 
 
 At any rate, Colman got the play — and kept it. He would 
 give the author no straightforward opinion as to its prospects 
 in his hands. He refused to say when he would produce it 
 
396 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 — nay, he declined to promise that he would produce it at 
 all. Goldsmith was thus left in torment for month after 
 month, and the effect of the treatment that he received was 
 to bring on a fresh attack of his illness, and the effect of his 
 illness was to sink him into such depths of despondency as 
 he had never before sounded. The story told by Cooke 
 of his coming upon the unhappy man in a cofEee-house, 
 and of the latter's attempt to give him some of the details 
 of the plot of the comedy, speaks for itself. " I shook my 
 head," wrote Cooke, " and said that I was afraid the audience, 
 under their then sentimental impressions, would think it too 
 broad and farcical for comedy." This was poor comfort for 
 the author ; but after a pause he shook the man by the hand, 
 saying piteously : " I am much obliged to you, my dear 
 friend, for the candour of your opinion, but it is all I can do ; 
 for alas ! I find that my genius, if ever I had any, has of late 
 totally deserted me." 
 
 He had once had great hopes of good resulting from 
 Colman's taking up the management of Covent Garden. 
 A very different letter he had now to write to him from that in 
 which he had congratulated him, and, incidentally, the English 
 Drama, upon his entering into possession of the theatre. 
 Colman had endeavoured to evade the responsibility of giving 
 him a direct answer about the play. He clearly meant that 
 the onus of refusing it should lie at the door of some one else. 
 
 " Dear sir," wrote the author in January 1773, " I entreat 
 you'll release me from that state of suspense in which I have 
 been kept for a long time. Whatever objections you have 
 made or shall make to my play I wiU endeavour to remove 
 and not argue about them. To bring in any new judges 
 either of its merits or faults I can never submit to. Upon a 
 former occasion when my other play was before Mr. Garrick 
 he offered to bring me before Mr. Whitehead's tribunal, but 
 I refused the proposal with indignation. I hope I shall not 
 experience as hard treatment from you as from him. . . . 
 For God's sake take the play and let us make the best of it, 
 and let me have the same measure at least which you have 
 given as bad plays as mine." Goldsmith had clearly sunk to 
 the deepest depths before he wrote this letter to Colman. 
 But this did not matter to Colman. 
 
THE STORr OF THE COMEDY 397 
 
 Upon receiving it he at once returned the manuscript of 
 the play ; and on the author's unfolding it he found that 
 on the back of almost every page, on the blank space reserved 
 for the prompter's hieroglyphs, some sneering criticism was 
 scrawled. To emphasise this insult Colman had enclosed a 
 letter to the effect that if the author was stiU unconvinced that 
 the piece would be a failure, he, Colman, would produce it. 
 
 Immediately on receipt of this contemptible effort at 
 contempt, Goldsmith packed up the play and sent it to 
 Garrick at Drury Lane. That same evening, however, he 
 met Johnson and told him what he had done ; and Johnson, 
 whose judgment on the practical side of authorship was rarely 
 at fault, told him that he had done wrong and that he must 
 get the manuscript back without delay, and submit to Colman's 
 sneers for the sake of having the comedy produced. Upon 
 Johnson's promising to visit Colman and to urge upon him 
 the claims of Goldsmith to his consideration, the distracted 
 author wrote to Drury Lane : 
 
 " Upon more mature deliberation and the advice of a 
 sensible friend, I begin to think it indelicate in me to throw 
 upon you the odium of confirming Mr. Colman's sentence. 
 I therefore request that you wiU send my play by my servant 
 back ; for having been assured of having it acted at the other 
 house, though I confess yours in every respect more to my 
 wish, yet it would be foUy in me to forego an advantage which 
 lies in my power of appealing from Mr. Colman's opinion to 
 the judgment of the town." 
 
 Goldsmith got back the play, and Johnson explained 
 to him, as he did some years later to Reynolds, that the 
 solicitations which he had made to Colman to put it in 
 rehearsal without delay amounted almost to force. At any 
 rate, the play was announced and the parts distributed to the 
 excellent company which Colman controlled. The spirit in 
 which he set about the discharge of his duplex role of prophet 
 and manager — a sort of theatrical Melchizedek — was apparent 
 to every one during the earliest rehearsals. Johnson, writing 
 to an American correspondent, mentioned that Colman made 
 no secret of his belief that the play would be a failure — far 
 
398 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 from it : he seems to have taken the most extraordii 
 trouble to spread his belief far and wide ; and when a man; 
 adopts such a course, what chance, one may ask, has 
 play ? What chance, the players could not but ask, have 
 players ? 
 
 This was possibly the only occasion in the history of 
 English drama on which such questions could be asked, 
 managers have a fault at all — a point which is not 
 ripe for discussion — it has never been in the directior 
 depreciating a play which they are about to produce — tha 
 of course, outside the author's immediate circle. It is ( 
 when the play has failed that they sometimes allow tha 
 was a bad one, and incapable of being saved even by the 
 acting of the company and the sumptuous mounting. 
 
 It might have been thought that Colman would have 
 sufficient acumen to perceive, from the extraordinary sue 
 that followed the production just at this time of Foe 
 entertainment founded on the Panton Street Exhibition 
 entitled The Primitive Puppet Show, the direction that 
 being taken by the taste of the public. It was underst 
 that the proprietor of " the little house in the ¥. 
 market " intended satirising the Sentimentalists, and no 
 was sure that Garrick himself was not to be brought on 
 stage as a representative of this school. A lady of qua 
 inquired of Foote if the figures would be as large as '. 
 " Oh no, my lady," he replied, " not much larger t 
 Garrick." 
 
 Garrick himself was distinctly uneasy for some time ; 
 of course Foote was brought to a momentary sense of decori 
 Walpole, writing to Lady Ossory, said, " Garrick, by 
 negotiation of a Secretary of State, has made peace v 
 Foote, and by the secret article of the treaty is to be left 
 of the puppet show." And when his mind was set at i 
 he showed how clever he was by giving every one to underst 
 that he was heart and soul on the side of the satirist — ti 
 detesting sentimental comedy, " let the galled jade win( 
 his " withers were unwrung." While all London was lau 
 ing over Foote's puppet-play of The Handsome Housem. 
 or, Piety in Pattens, " Showing how a Maiden of Low Deg 
 by the mere effects of Morality and Virtue, raised her 
 
THE STORT OF THE COMEDT 399 
 
 to Riches and Honour," Garrick was busy writing the prologue 
 for Goldsmith's play, the conceit of which was that Woodward, 
 who was to speak it, should appear dressed in black and holding 
 a handkerchief to his eyes, and exclaim, between his sobs, 
 that " the Comic Muse long sick is now a-dying," and that 
 
 To her a mawkish drab of spurious breed. 
 Who deals in Sentimentals, will succeed ! 
 Poor Ned and I are dead to all intents ; 
 We can as soon speak Greek as Sentiments. 
 
 But he explains that 
 
 One hope remains — hearing the maid was ill, 
 
 A Doctor comes this night to shew his skill. 
 
 To cheer her heart, and give your muscles motion, 
 
 He, in Five Draughts prepar'd, presents a potion : 
 
 A kind of magic charm — for be assur'd. 
 
 If you will swallow it the maid is cur'd ; 
 
 But desperate the Doctor and her case is. 
 
 If you reject the dose and make wry faces ! 
 
 This truth he boasts ; will boast it while he lives, 
 
 No pois'nous drugs are mix'd in what he gives ; 
 
 Should he succeed you'll give him his degree ; 
 
 If not, within he will receive no fee ! 
 
 The college you, must his pretensions back. 
 
 Pronounce him Regular, or dub him Quack. 
 
 This was really a very clever move on the part of Mr. 
 Garrick, and it is extraordinary that Colman had not the 
 sense to perceive that it was the right move to make. The 
 cat had jumped, and Garrick had seen on which side she had 
 alighted. 
 
 Colman had not. He must have felt certain that the 
 piece would be a failure or he would never have acted as he 
 did. He controlled his company but too well. The effect 
 of his sneering at the piece in their presence was quickly 
 apparent, for after a day or two of rehearsals it was an- 
 nounced that the leading lady, the accomplished Frances 
 Abington, had retired from the part of Miss Hardcastle ; 
 that Smith, known as " Gentleman Smith," had refused to 
 play Young Marlow ; and that Woodward, the most popular 
 comedian in the theatre, had thrown up the part of Tony 
 Lumpkin. 
 
 Here, in one day, it seemed that Colman had achieved his 
 
400 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 aims, and the piece would have to be withdrawn by the 
 author. This was undoubtedly the managerial view of the 
 situation which had been precipitated by the manager ; and 
 it was shared only by those of the author's friends who under- 
 stood his character as indifferently as did Colman. They 
 must all have been somewhat amazed when the author quietly 
 accepted the situation and affirmed that he would rather that 
 his play were damned by bad players than merely saved by 
 good acting. One of the company who had the sense to 
 perceive the merits of the piece — his friend Shuter, who 
 was cast for the part of old Hardcastle — advised him to give 
 Lewes, the harlequin, the part of young Marlow ; Quick, 
 a great favourite with the public, was to act Tony Lumpkin, 
 and, after a considerable amount of wrangling, Mrs. Bulkley, 
 lately Miss Wilford, who had been the Miss Richland of The 
 Good-Natur'd Man, accepted the part which the capricious 
 Mrs. Abington had resigned. 
 
 Another start was made with the rehearsals of the piece, 
 and further efforts were made by Colman to bring about the 
 catastrophe which he had predicted. He refused to let a 
 single scene be painted for the production, or to supply a 
 single new dress ; his excuse being that the money spent 
 in this way would be thrown away, for the audience would 
 never aUow the piece to proceed beyond the second act. 
 
 But happily Dr. Johnson had his reputation as a prophet 
 at stake as well as Colman, and he was singularly well equipped 
 by Nature for enforcing his views on any subject. He could 
 not see anything of what was going on upon the stage, but 
 his laugh at the succession of humourous things spoken by the 
 company must have had an inspiring effect upon every one — 
 except Colman. Johnson's laugh was the strongest expression 
 of appreciation of humour of which the century has a record. 
 It was epic. To say that Johnson's laugh at the rehearsals 
 of She Stoops to Conquer saved the piece, would, perhaps, be 
 going too far. But can any one question its value as a counter- 
 acting agent to Colman's depressing influence on the stage 
 during these rehearsals ? Johnson was the only man in 
 England who could make Colman (and every one else) tremble, 
 and his laugh had the same effect upon the building in which 
 it was delivered. It was the Sirocco against a wet blanket. 
 
1HE STORT OF THE COMEDY 401 
 
 He it was who encouraged the company to do their best for 
 the play, in spite of the fact that they were all aware that their 
 doing their best for it would be resented by their manager. 
 
 Reynolds, also, another valuable friend to the author, 
 sacrificed several of his busiest hours in order to attend the 
 rehearsals. His sister's sacrifices to the same end were, 
 perhaps, not quite so impressive, nor were those made by the 
 ingenious Mr. Cradock. Miss Horneck and her sister bore 
 testimony to the strength of their friendship for the poet, by 
 accompanying him daily to the theatre. 
 
 But, after all, these good friends had not many oppor- 
 tunities of showing their regard for him in this way, for the 
 play must have had singularly few rehearsals. Scarcely a 
 month elapsed between the date of Colman's receiving the 
 manuscript on its being returned by Garrick, and the produc- 
 tion of the piece. It is doubtful if more than ten rehearsals 
 took place after the parts were re-cast. If the manager kept 
 the author in suspense for eighteen months respecting the 
 fate of his play, he endeavoured to make up for his dilatoriness 
 now. It was announced for Monday, March 15, and, accord- 
 ing to Northcote, it was only on the morning of that day that 
 the vexed question of what the title should be was settled. 
 For some time the author and his friends had been talking 
 the matter over. " We are all in labour for a name to Goldy's 
 play," wrote Johnson. The Mistakes of a Night, The Old House 
 a New Inn, and The Belle's Stratagem were suggested in turn. 
 It was Goldsmith himself who gave it the title under which 
 it was produced. 
 
 On the evening of this day, March 15, the author was the 
 guest at a dinner-party organised in his honour. It is easy 
 to picture this particular function. The truth was that 
 Colman's behaviour had broken the spirit, not only of the 
 author, but of the majority of his friends as well. They would 
 all make an eflFort to cheer up poor Goldsmith ; but every 
 one knows how cheerless a function is that which is organised 
 with such a cheerful intention. It is not necessary that 
 one should have been in a court of law watching the face of 
 the prisoner in the dock when the jury have retired to consider 
 their verdict, in order to appreciate the feelings of Goldsmith 
 when his friends made their attempt to cheer him up. The 
 
402 THE LIFE OF OLIVER Lr^^JSMITH 
 
 last straw added on to the cheerlessness of the banquet was 
 surely to be found in the accident that every one wore black ! 
 The King of Sardinia had died a short time before, an 
 Court had ordered mourning to be worn for some we^ 
 memory of this potentate. Johnson was very nearly outi 
 propriety by appearing in coloured raiment, but G 
 Steevens, who called for him to go to the dinner, was, fortun 
 in time to prevent such a breach of etiquette. " I wou] 
 for ten pounds have seemed so retrogade to any g 
 observance," cried Johnson, in offering his thanks t 
 remembrancer. Happily the proprieties were saved ; 
 what must have been the effect of the appearance of 
 gentlemen in black upon the person whom they mea 
 cheer up ? 
 
 Reynolds told his pupil, Northcote, what effect 
 resources of gaiety had upon Goldsmith. His mouth b( 
 so parched that he could neither eat nor drink ; nor could tie 
 so much as speak in acknowledgment of the well-meant act 
 of his friends. When the party after this entertainment set 
 out for the theatre, they must have suggested, all being in 
 black, a more sombre procession than one is accustomed to 
 imagine when conjuring up a picture of an eighteenth-century 
 theatre-party. 
 
 And Goldsmith was missing ! 
 
 Unfortunately Boswell was in Scotland, or we should not 
 be left in doubt as to how it happened that no one thought of 
 taking charge of Goldsmith. But no one seemed to think 
 of him, and so his disappearance was never noticed. His 
 friends arrived at the theatre and found their places, Johnson 
 in the front row of the boxes ; and the curtain was rung up, 
 and Goldsmith was forgotten under the influence of that 
 comedy which constitutes his claim to be remembered by 
 theatre-goers of to-day. 
 
 He was found by an acquaintance a couple of hours later 
 wandering in the Mall of St. James's Park, and was only 
 persuaded to go to the theatre by its being represented to 
 him that his services might be required should it be found 
 necessary to alter something at the last moment. 
 
 Now, Cumberland was among the members of that dis- 
 tinguished audience. The author of The West Indian was, 
 
THE STORT OF THE COMEDY 403 
 
 of course, regarded as one of the leaders of the Sentimental 
 school, the demise of which was satirised in the prologue, 
 Cumberland was, as we have said, a man who could never see 
 a particle of good in anything that was written by another. 
 It was a standing entertainment with Garrick to " draw him 
 on " by suggesting that some one had written a good scene in 
 a play, or was about to produce an interesting book. In a 
 moment Cumberland was up, protesting against the assump- 
 tion that the play or the book could be worth anything. So 
 wide a reputation had he for decrying every other author 
 that, when Sheridan produced The Critic ; or. The Tragedy 
 Rehearsed, his portrait was immediately recognised in Sir 
 Fretful Plagiary. 
 
 What must have been the feelings of this man when from 
 the first the play, which, in spite of his assertions to the 
 contrary, to which we shall presently refer, he had come 
 to wreck, was received by the whole house with uproarious 
 applause ? Well, we do not know what he felt like, but we 
 know what he looked like. One of the newspapers described 
 him as " looking glum," and another contained a rhymed 
 epigram describing him as weeping. Goldsmith entered the 
 theatre by the stage-door, at the beginning of the fifth act, 
 where Tony Lumpkin and his mother appear close to their 
 own house, and the former pretends that the chaise has 
 broken down on CrackskuU Common. He had no sooner 
 got into the " wings " than he heard a hiss. " What's that, 
 sir ? " he whispered to Colman, who was beside him. " Psha, 
 sir ! don't be afraid of a squib when we have been sitting 
 these two hours on a barrel of gunpowder," was the reply. 
 The story is well known, and its accuracy has never been 
 impeached. And the next day it was understood that that 
 solitary hiss came from Cumberland, the opinion that it was 
 due to the malevolence of Macpherson, whose pretensions 
 to the discovery of Ossian were exposed by Johnson, being 
 discredited. 
 
 But the effect of Colman's brutality and falsehood into 
 the bargain had not a chance of lasting long. The hiss was 
 received with cries of " Turn him out ! " and, with an addition 
 to the tumultuous applause of all the house. Goldsmith must 
 have been made aware in another instant of the fact that he 
 
404 THE LIFE OF OLIVER L^^JSMHH 
 
 had written the best comedy of the day and that Colman had 
 lied to hina. From the first there had been no question of 
 sitting on a barrel of gunpowder. Such applause could 
 greet the last act of a play the first four acts of which had 
 doubtful. He must have felt that at last he had conque 
 that he had by one more achievement proved to his 
 satisfaction — and he was hard to satisfy — that those f: 
 of his who had attributed genius to him had not beer 
 taken; that those who, like Johnson and Percy andRey 
 had believed in him before he had written the works 
 made him famous, had not been misled. 
 
 The next day all London was talking of She Stoi 
 Conquer and of Colman. Horace Walpole, who dei 
 Goldsmith, and who found when he went to see the pla] 
 it was deplorably vulgar, mentioned in a letter whi( 
 wrote to Lady Ossory on the morning after the produ 
 that it had " succeeded prodigiously," and the newspapers 
 were full of lampoons at the expense of the manager. If 
 Colman had had the sense to keep to himself his forebodings 
 of the failure of the piece, he would not have left himself open 
 to these attacks ; but, as has been said, he took as much pains 
 to decry the coming production as he usually did to " puff " 
 other pieces. It would seem that every one in town had for 
 several days been talking about nothing else save the coming 
 failure of Dr. Goldsmith's comedy. Only on this assumption 
 can we now understand the poignancy of the " squibs " — 
 some of them partook largely of the character of his own 
 barrel of gunpowder — levelled against Colman. He must 
 have been quite amazed at the clamour that arose against 
 him ; it became too much for his delicate skin, and he fled 
 to Bath to get out of the way of the scurrilous humourists 
 who were making him a target for their pop-guns. But even 
 at Bath he failed to find a refuge. Writing to Mrs. Thrale, 
 Johnson said, " Colman is so distressed with abuse that he has 
 solicited Goldsmith to take him ofl[ the rack of the newspapers." 
 
 It was characteristic of Goldsmith that he should do all 
 that was asked of him, and that he should make no attempt, 
 either in public or in private, to exult in his triumph over the 
 manager. The only reference which he made to his sufferings 
 while Colman was keeping him on the rack, was in a letter 
 
THE STORT OF THE COMEDY 405 
 
 he wrote to his friend Cradock, who, in return for the pro- 
 logue to Zobeide, had written an epilogue for the play, to 
 erplain how it was that this epilogue was not used at the first 
 representation. After saying simply, " The play has met 
 with a success beyond your expectation or mine," he makes 
 his explanation, and concludes thus : " Such is the history 
 of my stage adventure, and which I have at last done with. 
 I cannot help saying that I am very sick of the stage, and 
 though I believe I shall get three tolerable benefits, yet I 
 shall on the whole be a loser, even in a pecuniary light ; my 
 ease and comfort I certainly lost while it was in agitation." 
 
 Goldsmith showed that he bore no grudge against Colman ; 
 but the English stage should bear Colman a grudge for his 
 treatment of one of the few authors of real genius who have 
 contributed to it for the benefit of posterity. If She Stoops 
 to Conquer had been produced when it first came into the 
 manager's hands, Goldsmith would certainly not have written 
 the words just quoted. What would have been the result 
 of his accepting the encouragement of its immediate produc- 
 tion it is impossible to tell ; but it is not going too far to 
 assume that the genius which gave the world The Good- 
 Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer would have been equal 
 to the task of writing a third comedy equal in merit to either 
 of these. Yes, posterity owes Colman a grudge ; though in 
 his prologue to A Chapter of Accidents, produced in 1780, he 
 affirmed that, with She Stoops to Conquer, 
 
 Nature and Mirth resum'd their legal sway, 
 And Goldsmith's genius bask'd in open day. 
 
 Quite true ; but no thanks to Colman. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 "SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER" 
 
 1773 
 
 Many years after the production of She Stoops to Conquer 
 Cumberland published in his Memoirs what purported to be 
 a circumstantial account of the performance and of the inci- 
 dents connected with it. He endeavoured to make- out that 
 the success of the piece was solely due to himself and to his 
 organisation of a claque to pull it out of the fire to which it 
 was doomed by reason of its badness. A more impudent 
 piece of mendacity than Cumberland's narrative could scarcely 
 be imagined. He pretended that he was the leading spirit 
 at the dinner preceding the performance — that he was one 
 of the author's staunch friends, Johnson and Reynolds and 
 Steevens played parts quite subsidiary to his own in this 
 transaction, and when it came to the actual saving of the 
 piece, the triumph was due to what he called " our 
 manoeuvres " ; these being the working of the full machinery 
 of the professional claquer — the posting of a number of loud- 
 voiced men in various parts of the house, who were to take from 
 him the signal when to cheer. Owing to his forethought and 
 the perfection of his organisation, the attempts of those who 
 meant to wreck the piece were frustrated, and thus, through 
 the extreme good nature of Cumberland, She Stoops to Conquer 
 was allowed to proceed to its close. 
 
 This whole narrative is an impudent fabrication, the 
 more impudent by reason of the air of a large-hearted and 
 tolerant patronage of Goldsmith which pervades it. Every- 
 body knew what was the character of Richard Cumberland. 
 It was an agony to him to hear a good word said about any 
 one but himself, and yet he would try to make the readers of 
 
 his Memoirs believe that he put himself to all this trouble 
 
 406 
 
"SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER" 407 
 
 on behalf of the author who was his most imminent and 
 pronounced rival, and of the play which ridiculed him and 
 the sentimentalists with whom he had banded himself ! This 
 would be rather too much to expect from Mr. Cumberland. 
 Everybody knew that he wished to ingratiate himself with 
 Colman, in view of future productions, and it was with this 
 object he went to the theatre prepared to hiss — " willing to 
 wound and yet afraid to strike," in the face of the success made 
 by the play from the first. Only that one hiss did he venture 
 upon ; the disapprobation with which it was noticed made him 
 shrink into his box, and content himself by " looking glum." 
 Several newspapers referred to the disappointment on his face, 
 and, as we have already mentioned, many squibs appeared upon 
 the aspect of himself and Kelly. One of them was as follows : 
 
 At Dr. Goldsmith's merry play- 
 All the spectators laugh they say ; 
 The assertion, sir, I must deny, 
 For Cumberland and Kelly cry. 
 
 But at the very outset of his narrative Cumberland showed 
 himself unworthy of confidence, for among the little company 
 of the author's staunch friends who supported him at the 
 dinner he includes FitzHerbert, who had committed suicide 
 the previous year. 
 
 It does not need any one to go to a large amount of trouble 
 to account for the success of She Stoops to Conquer. It suc- 
 ceeded because it contained aU the elements of success. It 
 required no saving by the exertions of Cumberland, or of 
 Johnson or of young Northcote, Sir Joshua Reynolds's pupil, 
 who was in the gallery and " laughing exceedingly " ; or of 
 the Honourable Miss Nugent, who must have exploded when 
 she heard in the dialogue the reference made to the trick 
 which she had once played with the author's wig. It is 
 ludicrous to notice Cumberland's attitude, suggesting that 
 the stage actually owed the existence of the play to his extra- 
 ordinary benevolence. As if a piece that has been played 
 thousands of times and that is still played with success, 
 contained such distinct elements of failure as necessitated 
 his heroic act of self-sacrifice to save it ! 
 
 She Stoops to Conquer succeeded, not because of the part 
 it played in the faction of the stage of the day, or in the fashior 
 
408 THE LIFE OF OLIVE i LDSMITH 
 
 of theh our^. hnt hpramc jt. wae a truc comcdjjof character a 
 of action, and^ above all^ of natiir-e. There is in it the sv 
 stance of three distinct comedies ; and the fact ths 
 the best scenes that it contains — that of the disa 
 Mrs. Hardcast le of the loss of the jewels — has no bear 
 the fortuned jofjthe hero or heroine, sKows^how pro 
 author was of iiis_ni3teriair' This is a comedy within a 
 And then, quite apart from the actual" foundatio: 
 piece, which is, of course, the practical joke played 
 two gentlemen by Tony Lumpkin, there is the cc 
 the character of Young Marlow — overwhelmed whe 
 to face a lady of fashion but on the easiest tern 
 barmaid. In the operation of this humourous trail 
 certainly the groundwork for a whole " plot." Incid 
 soul of comedy, and She Stoops to Conquer is crow 
 incident. And if incident is its soul, assuredly sit 
 its backbone, and on this assumption Goldsmith'^ ^.^^^ 
 fully vertebrate. There is an unusual but very effect 
 situation developed, or in course of development, in ev 
 scene ; and, best of all, the imagination of an audience 
 stimulated in every scene to anticipate what is coming ; £ 
 yet what does come, comes with such a series of little surpr 
 that one's attention, which is grasped at the outset, is ne 
 allowed to be diverted from the main course of the p] 
 The comedy marches ahead from the first : it never mj 
 time. The dialogue is ever to the point. Every ph: 
 but adds to the impression one gains of the naturalness of 
 characters. 
 
 It seems to have been the fashion in Goldsmith's day 
 call every comedy that moved with rapidity — ^there w 
 very few that could be so described — a farce. The ei 
 scientific frontier of farce, eighteenth century or fwenti 
 century, has never been accurately dehmitated. She St 
 to Conquer was originally thought by Johnson and a good m 
 other people to be too farcical to be termed a comedy, 
 the chances are that the most fastidious of playwriters wc 
 prefer having his piece succeed on account of its fare 
 elements than fail by reason of its leaning too much the oi 
 way, whether the signpost to the other way is labelled " 1 
 comedy" or not. The truth is that the people who' pa] 
 
"SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER" 409 
 
 go to a theatre care nothing for such labels. They would 
 just as soon be amused hy a farce as by a comedy. They do 
 not feel ashamed of their laughter at the close of a scene 
 when they are assured that it was a farcical scene and not a 
 scene of true comedy. A good number of critics in Gold- 
 smith's day, as well as in our own, resemble the good woman 
 in Sheridan's St. Patrick's Day ; or. The Scheming Lieutenant, 
 who implored her husband not to submit to the disgrace of 
 being cured by some one who is not a regular practitioner. 
 With such people the designation of a play is everything. If 
 this play of Goldsmith's is, after all, a farce, all that can be 
 said is that it was a great pity that Garrick and Colman did 
 not get some of their dreary comedy-writers to turn their 
 attention to farce of the type of She Stoops to Conquer. 
 
 It is unnecessary in this place to do more than call atten- 
 tion to a faculty of Goldsmith's which we think has been 
 overlooked by all his biographers ; this is his extraordinary 
 technical skill as a playwriter. From time to time we have 
 heard a great deal — chiefly from authorities connected with 
 the theatre — of the absolute necessity that exists for any one 
 who hopes to write a play to serve an apprenticeship to the 
 stage in order to master the amazing difficulties of its tech- 
 nicalities. We are assured that unless one has lived in that 
 mystic region vaguely referred to as " behind the scenes," 
 one cannot expect to be anything but a bungler. But here 
 we find a comedy in which every scene is built up both as 
 regards the dialogue and the situations in such a way as to 
 produce effects of the most valuable sort, looked at from 
 the standpoint of the theatre only. Almost every scene 
 in the play is a good stage scene, and the technical knowledge 
 displayed on such matters as " climax " and.,"Ietliiig_.the 
 audi£nc£^into__the secret " cannot be denied. What actor 
 could wish for a more effective entrance than is given to Tony 
 Lumpkin in the first act ? He is being fully discussed by his 
 mother and stepfather. They are getting more emphatic 
 every moment in their references to him, and the interest of 
 the audience is increasing in proportion. The dialogue is 
 becoming crisper and more curt. " We must not snub the 
 poor boy now, for I believe we shan't have him long among 
 us. Anybody that looks in his face may see he's consumptive," 
 
410 THE LIFE OF OLIVER LrKjjuDSMMH 
 
 says the mother. " Aye, if growing too fat be one of the 
 symptoms," growls her husband. " He coughs sometimes " 
 " Yes, when his liquor goes the wrong way." " I'm ac 
 afraid of his lungs." " And truly so am I ; for he some 
 whoops like a speaking-trumpet (Tony Lumpkin holloas I 
 the scenes), aye, there he goes — a very consumptive f 
 truly." And then Tony bounces in, and we know 
 whatever may be the fate of the other characters, 
 Lumpkin is a success. 
 
 And when the game of cross-purposes begins — sure] 
 most finished and the most natural ever put on the st 
 one cannot but admire the adroitness with which it is mai 
 It was Goldsmith's way to bring in something of his own 
 rience, whether he was writing an essay, a romance, or a 
 so we are not surprised that, fresh from General Ogleth 
 description, done in wine on his dinner-table, he should 
 Mr. Hardcastle talk of Prince Eugene and Marlborough's wars 
 and the Siege of Belgrade. But for genuine stagecraft 
 nothing could surpass the management of the scene where, 
 after Tony has taken the jewels, he suj;gejts to his mother that 
 she should pretend to Constance that she has mislaid them and 
 callhim as a witness, and then she discovers that what she meant 
 to, bea fiction is^ 3i_Jact. The moment she leaves the room to 
 fetch her garnets we begin _ to laugh. To show a trickster 
 tricked is the height of diversion. But the -author goes 
 further, and shows the^ tricksters of the trickster defeated by 
 the_s implest misunderstanding, anH that not once but tw ice. 
 The game of cross-purposes is maintained by a succession of 
 the liveliest incidents, every one linkedon to t he ot her and 
 not one in the least degree strained or unnatural. The play 
 might have been written by some one who had served an 
 apprenticeship to the craft of the stage, only that such a 
 training does not always account for dialogue with the flavour 
 of good literature about it. 
 
 One might sum up the piece by saying that, unless in 
 the hands of so consummate a master of the art of the stage, 
 such a plot as is made the groundwork of She Stoops to Conquer, 
 would never run a chance of being accepted by even the least 
 critical audience. Let any one write a synopsis of it, and one 
 wiU soon see how artificially it reads. But we watch with 
 
"SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER" 411 
 
 unflagging interest the dexterity with, which the author drives 
 his team through the innumerable obstacles which threaten 
 disaster at every yard, and we feel that he succeeds in reaching 
 his journey's end in safety by sheer skill. If the play is a farce 
 there never was one that achieved success by fewer appeals 
 to the credulity of an audience — there never was one that 
 carries with it such an atmosphere of real life. Even reading 
 it we do not feel that there is anything preposterous in the 
 notion of a satisfactory courtship being begun and completed 
 between dusk and supper-time ; but, watching the play on 
 the stage, the question as to the reasonableness of the notion 
 never suggests itself. A delighted audience asks no questions 
 on any point — certainly none as to the reasonableness of a 
 rapid courtship. 
 
 She Stoops to Conquer is not a farce. It is a true comedy 
 of manners, -ef-character,jiid[ of human nature. It has never 
 been performed without success ; and it would be revived 
 much more frequently than it has been recently if the actor- 
 manager could only make up his mind whether to take the 
 part of Mr. Hardcastle, Tony Lumpkin, Young Marlow, or 
 Diggory. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 AFTER THE COMEDY 
 
 1773 
 
 It was stated that the profits accruing to Goldsmith from the 
 production of his second play amounted to between four 
 hundred and five hundred pounds. Such an estimate is 
 obviously too small and very much too small. He made 
 five hundred pounds out of The Good-Natur'd Man, and yet 
 that play was perilously close to a failure. Cooke must be 
 nearer the truth in asserting that the profits reached eight 
 hundred pounds. It was performed for the twelve available 
 nights before the close of the season. The tenth was by 
 Royal Command. During the summer Foote performed 
 it at the " little house," and the following winter saw it 
 at Covent Garden, where it was paid the unusual compliment 
 of a second Command Night. It was almost immediately 
 translated into German and French. 
 
 We have that perfect picture of the author and his friends 
 together upon the night of the production of The Good- 
 Natur'd Man, when it was taken for granted the piece had been 
 a failure. We should like to have as a companion a picture 
 of the same good company after the performance of She 
 Stoops to Conquer. We may be pretty sure that the supper 
 party upon this occasion was a good deal merrier than that 
 which celebrated (as they thought) the failure of the author's 
 first attempt at comedy — on the stage: he frequently 
 attempted it in other directions. It could hardly have taken 
 place at Sir Joshua's house in Leicester Fields, or young 
 Mr. Northcote would have said something about it. It 
 might not be going too far to suggest that the party was made 
 up by the Hornecks and the rest of the " Devonshire crew," 
 
 supplemented by an active contingent from Norfolk. The 
 
 412 
 
AFTER THE COMEDT 413 
 
 Hornecks and the Bunburys we know stood by Goldsmith 
 nobly at this time of his contest with the stupidity of Colman, 
 and attended the rehearsals in a body, adding the elements 
 of beauty and fashion to those of intellect and scholarship, 
 represented by Reynolds and Johnson upon these occasions. 
 It is said that the presence of so much unaccustomed brilhance 
 in the theatre during the rehearsals so dazzled good Mr. 
 Shuter that he failed now and again to remember his cues. 
 He made no lapses on the night of the performance, however, 
 and if it was not laid on him to do for the piece all that he did 
 for the previous one by the same author, it is certain that his 
 impersonation of Mr. Hardcastle was a fine one, and that the 
 author testified to the gratitude he felt for his contribution 
 to the success of the piece. 
 
 To Johnson, however, he owed more than to any one 
 else in respect of She Stoops to Conquer, and he acknow- 
 ledged his debt in the only way in his power. He had 
 assigned the copyright of the play to Newbery, and when 
 it was printed the Dedication was found to be " To Samuel 
 Johnson, LL.D." 
 
 " I have, particularly, reason to thank you for your par- 
 tiality to this performance," he wrote in the second of the 
 two paragraphs of the Dedication. " The undertaking a 
 Comedy, not merely sentimental, was very dangerous ; and 
 Mr. Colman, who saw this piece in its various stages, always 
 thought it so. However, I ventured to trust it to the public ; 
 and though it was necessarily delayed till late in the season, 
 I have every reason to be grateful." 
 
 This tribute was the least which he could have offered to 
 the man who had not only given him the best possible advice 
 in respect of it, but had actually been able to exercise upon 
 Colman such a form of compulsion for its production as no 
 one else in England could have brought to bear upon him 
 with the same result. 
 
 Boswell, coming to town from Scotland a few days after 
 the production, must have been still further surprised at the 
 increase of Goldsmith's fame during his absence. If he had 
 been more talked of than all the officers, except generals, who 
 had taken part in the wars, after the publication of his Histories, 
 assuredly after the representation of his comedy, his importance 
 
414 2"H£ LIFE OF OLIVF^ '^OLDSMITH 
 
 as a topic had increased, so as to surpass even that of 
 generals. He had previously been acknowledged as 
 author of the two best poems, the two best historic" "^-^ 
 best work of fiction, the only direction in whicl; 
 eminence had not been fully established was that of 
 and now that the success of his comedy had marke( 
 quest of this realm also, Boswell was amazed, but no 
 as he would have been had he been able to rid his mi 
 singular notion which he had early acquired, tha 
 had written much of what was attributed to Goldsmi 
 can be no doubt that Boswell really had this belie 
 tained it to the day of his death. Every now and aga 
 suggestions of it in his Life of Johnson. Sometime 
 a sly hint of it, with a little smirk, and more tha 
 tells of his approaching Johnson with this same litt 
 of extraordinary shrewdness, to hint at his dis 
 Johnson's hand in something that Goldsmith has 
 of his being rebuffed by the great man. So obsessed was 
 by the tremendous personality of Johnson that it is plaii 
 see he attributed Johnson's denials of his innuendoes, to 
 good-nature, and he continued to believe that Johnson insp: 
 those works of Goldsmith which he did not actually wi 
 It will be seen a little later, that, even in regard to the le 
 which Goldsmith wrote to the Daily Advertiser in relatioi 
 his attack upon Evans, Boswell assumed that this also had b 
 the composition of Johnson, though the latter condem 
 the writing of such a letter. 
 
 But it was doubtless owing to the position which the ni 
 of Goldsmith now held in the estimation of the world, th 
 dreadful fear laid hold of Boswell. He had seen that — by 
 help of Johnson — Goldsmith had written the most succes 
 histories, poems, and play, and what if his ambition she 
 lead him on to make the attempt — by the help of Johnso 
 to write the most interesting biography ? 
 
 The effect of this terrible suggestion which came to '. 
 must have been visible to most of his associates at this ti 
 though they may not have been able to account for it, ur 
 they had seen him jotting down all the precious phrases 1 
 fell from Johnson's lips. It is, at any rate, plain in all 
 references to Goldsmith about this period, that he had t 
 
AFTER THE COMEDY 415 
 
 living in great trepidation lest some day Johnson should 
 announce to him that he had entrusted his friend Goldsmith 
 with the materials necessary for writing his life, and that, 
 in view of the uncertainties of all terrestrial things, the work 
 was to be begun at once. Holy Week had scarcely ended (a 
 fortnight after the production of She Stoops to Conquer) before 
 we find him warning Johnson of the looseness of Goldsmith's 
 religious principles. Johnson, it would appear, had had Gold- 
 smith as one of his most intimate friends for several years, and 
 yet stood in need of being enlightened in regard to his religious 
 principles. We have already mentioned in dealing with the 
 attitude of Boswell in regard to Goldsmith, his going to 
 Johnson with the story of Goldsmith's having told him that, 
 just as he took his shoes from the shoemaker and his coat from 
 his tailor, so he took his religion from his priest. He left it 
 for Johnson himself to decide if this was the sort of man to 
 do credit to such a theme for a biography as he had in his mind. 
 Boswell himself was fully competent to speak decisively on 
 the subject of religion, for he had sampled several. He 
 had been in turn a Presbyterian, a Papist, an Atheist, and a 
 Churchman. Finally he became a Johnsonian, and died in 
 that faith, and, according to Percy, of its effects. 
 
 A few days later, he tells us, some one in the company 
 asked if the King intended going to see She Stoops to Conquer. 
 " I wish he would," exclaimed the author, but after a moment's 
 reflection, he added, " Not that it would do me the least good." 
 " Well, then, sir," said Johnson, " let us say it would do him 
 good. No, sir, this affectation will not pass ; it is mighty idle. 
 In such a state as ours, who would not wish to please the chief 
 magistrate ? " "I do wish to please him," replied Goldsmith. 
 " I remember a line in Dryden : 
 
 And every poet is the Monarch's friend. 
 
 It ought to be reversed." 
 
 Then Boswell hastens to record Goldsmith's saying 
 something distinctly Jacobite in its tendency. " Happy 
 rebellions," some one had exclaimed, and Goldsmith had said 
 that the phrase did not exist in English. " But have you 
 not the thing ? " asked Paoli. " Yes," responded Gold- 
 smith. " All our happy revolutions. They have hurt our 
 
41 6 THE LIFE OF OLIVl OLDSMITH 
 
 constitution and will hurt it, till we remedy it by another ha 
 revolution." 
 
 Now here we have Boswell blowing hot and 
 tries to make out that it was a silly piece of affec 
 Goldsmith's part to pretend that he was indiflFeren 
 the King came to his play or not, and yet a moi 
 he is trying to make out that Goldsmith was a Jac 
 as such, not recognising the sovereignty of the King 
 he had referred. Then without putting in the 
 link in the conversation, he goes on to state that 
 marked that Goldsmith in his play had paid a ver 
 compliment to a certain great lady ; his allusion 
 Hastings' remark that in France " even among slav< 
 of marriage are respected." This was, of course, a 
 Royal Marriage Act, passed by the King the pre 
 on account of the Duke of Gloucester's havinj 
 
 ledged Lady Waldegrave as his wife. At the pe.^„. 
 
 of the play the allusion called for an outburst of chee 
 directed toward the box in which the Duke of Glouce 
 sat. 
 
 Goldsmith did not reply to Paoli's suggestion ; but Bos 
 was determined to force him to go further than he had 
 done in his opposition to the reigning sovereign, anc 
 expressed a doubt if the author had actually meant the wi 
 to be taken as an allusion to the Marriage Act. But 
 author refused the impertinent challenge, and only sn) 
 in response. Paoli, seeing through the whole affair, t 
 said, " Monsieur Goldsmith est comme la mer, qui j 
 des perles et beaucoup d'autres belles choses sans s'en a] 
 ^evoir." " Tres bien dit, et tres elegamment ! " cried 
 author. 
 
 But it must be plain to every one that what Boswell o: 
 is the most important part of the conversation, and thi 
 the link between the talk about the possibility of the Ki 
 going to see the play and Paoli's remark about the grac 
 compliment paid to the distinguished lady who had wed 
 en secondes noces, the Duke of Gloucester. It seems q 
 apparent that Paoli's remark had been led up to by some 
 saying that, whether or not the King's going to see Goldsmi 
 play would do the author any good, the author had d 
 
AFTER THE COMEDT 417 
 
 his best to prevent the likelihood of the King's patronage 
 being given to him, b^ the introduction of a sneer at the piece 
 of legislation which his Majesty had insisted on being passed. 
 Any one certainly might have made such a remark, or Gold- 
 smith might have made it himself, if he had been anxious 
 to show that, whatever any one else in the company might 
 have been, he at any rate had been consistent. 
 
 It cannot be said that the honour which came to Gold- 
 smith by the success of his comedy was diminished by an 
 incident which took place in connection with it a few days 
 before Boswell's return to London. 
 
 One of the most brutal and scurrilous libels that Kenrick, 
 the master of venom and vulgarity, had ever written, 
 appeared in the London Packet. It took the form of a letter, 
 and its style was formed upon that of Junius. It must have 
 been apparent to every one that the writer's aim was to 
 emulate the virulence and violence of that mysterious Fury, 
 who was terrorising ministers and making the Court tremble. 
 The writer in the Packet who signed himself " Tom Tickle," 
 after referring to Goldsmith's " monkey face " and " cloven 
 hoof," and adding, " Your poetic vanity is as unpardonable 
 as your personal. Would men believe it and will women 
 bear it, to be told that for hours the great Goldsmith will 
 stand surveying his grotesque Oran-hotan's figure in a pier- 
 glass ? Was but the lovely H k as much enamoured, 
 
 you would not sigh, my gentle swain, in vain. But your 
 vanity is preposterous. How will this same bard of Bedlam 
 ring the changes in praise of Goldy ! " 
 
 So the stuff was continued, the vilest abuse being heaped 
 upon the author's poems and plays, concluding with a diatribe 
 about She Stoop to Conquer which, is hysterical in its malevolence. 
 
 Goldsmith had arrived at the Hornecks' to dine, and found 
 the whole family in a state of the greatest indignation at the 
 scurrilous letter. It was not much worse than some others 
 that had been penned by the same hand against him, but to 
 which he had made no reply. This onej however, contained 
 a paragraph such as no man would disregard. It introduced 
 the name of the charming girl whose family had shown 
 Goldsmith such kindness as he had valued nior§ deeply than 
 
 2D 
 
41 8 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 all the praise he had received from the rest of the world. 
 He could not but feel that he was the means of having her 
 name held up to ridicule by associating it with his, and he 
 took a step that every man of honour was bound to take in 
 the circumstances. 
 
 Cradock in telling the story says, " he agonised all dinner- 
 time, but as soon as possible afterwards he stole away." 
 
 Taking with him a friend — a certain Captain H , which 
 
 may mean either Captain Horneck or an Irish acquaintance 
 mentioned in the Haunch of Venison, Captain Higgins — ^he 
 hurried to the office of the Pijc^i?^ and inquiredfor the publisher. 
 The publisher was a Welsh adventurer named Thomas Evans 
 — ^he was no relation to the bookseller of that name — and the 
 moment that Goldsmith told him that he had called about 
 the libellous letter, he pretended that he had never heard 
 of it, but would make inquiries respecting it. He had turned 
 away, when Goldsmith, perceiving that he meant to evade his 
 responsibility, cried out, " You know well enough, you rascal, 
 what I mean ! " and struck him across the shoulders with his 
 cane. In an instant the man had turned upon him, and 
 struck him on the face, and in the struggle between the two, 
 a lamp was knocked down and deluged them both with oil. 
 But the troubled waters were not to be smoothed thus, and 
 further blows were exchanged, until a man who had been 
 looking out of the window of an inner office, at last rushed out 
 and separated the combatants. Goldsmith's friend, " Captain 
 H " taking him away in a hackney coach. 
 
 The man who had been a spectator of the scuffle through 
 the window was Kenrick himself. 
 
 Within the next few days the action taken by Goldsmith 
 was resented by nearly all the newspapers. The wretched 
 blackmailers who would not have been able to exist for a 
 month without their levies upon innocent people whom they 
 threatened to hold up to ridicule or contempt, were up in 
 arms at the prospect that awaited them if the example shown 
 by Goldsmith were to be followed by other men of equal 
 manliness. The hucksters of venom saw that their occupation 
 was threatened, and forthwith raised the howl that the 
 liberty of the Press was in danger, and Goldsmith was made 
 the object of the vituperation of the blackguard gang. 
 
AFTER THE COMEDY 419 
 
 ms was encouraged — if he stood in any need of 
 agement — by their support, and indicted his assailant 
 ult. Some "of Goldsmith's^nd, possibly, the Hornecks' 
 , came forward, however, Sd he withdrew the charge 
 offer to hand fifty pounds to some Welsh charity. 
 :ew days afterwards the Daily Advertiser published a 
 from him, stating in a straightforward manner what 
 > attitude in regard to the calumniating crew who did 
 oul work of knifing innocent men and women under 
 eld of the liberty of the Press. 
 
 .est it should be supposed that I have been willing to 
 : in others an abuse of which I have been guilty myself, 
 leave to declare, that in all my life I never wrote, or 
 ;d, a single paragraph, letter, or essay in a newspaper, 
 a few moral essays, under the character of a Chinese, 
 ten years ago, in the Ledger, and a letter to which I 
 my name in the St. Jameses Chronicle. If the liberty of 
 ;ss, therefore, has been abused, I have had no hand in it. 
 
 have always considered the press as the protector of 
 jedom, as a watchful guardian, capable of uniting the 
 Lgainst the encroachments of power. What concerns 
 blic most properly admlits of a public discussion. But 
 , the press has turned from defending public interest, to 
 J inroads upon private life, from combating the strong, 
 "whelming the feeble. No condition is now too obscure 
 
 abuse, and the protector is become the tyrant of the 
 . In this manner the freedom of the press is beginning 
 the seeds of its own dissolution ; the great must oppose 
 1 principle, and the weak from fear ; till at last every 
 [ mankind shall be found to give up its benefits, content 
 scurity from its insults. 
 
 low to put a stop to this licentiousness, by which all 
 liscriminately abused, and by which vice consequently 
 3 in the general censure, I am unable to tell ; all I 
 wish is, that as the law gives us no protection against 
 jury, so it should give calumniators no shelter after 
 
 provoked correction. The insults, which we receive 
 the public, by being more open, are the more distress- 
 Y treating them with, silent contempt, we do not pay 
 
420 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 a sufficient deference to the opinion of the world. By recur- 
 ing to legal redress, we too often expose the weakness of the 
 law, which only serves to ii^crease our mortification by failing 
 to relieve us. In short, SVery man should singly consider 
 himself as a guardian of the Uberty of the press, and, as far 
 as his influence can extend should endeavour to prevent its 
 licentiousness becoming at last the grave of its freedom. 
 
 " Oliver Goldsmith." 
 
 This is the letter to which we have alluded as having been 
 attributed by Boswell to Johnson. The former tells us all 
 about it himself. He went to Johnson's house late in the 
 evening, and sat with Mrs. Williams until Johnson came in 
 and said to the lady, " Well, Dr Goldsmith's manifesto has 
 got into your paper." " I asked him," continued Boswell, 
 " if Dr. Goldsmith had written it, with an air that made him 
 suspect that it was his, though subscribed by Goldsmith." 
 At which Johnson said, " Sir, Dr. Goldsmith would no more 
 have asked me to write such a thing as that for him, than he 
 would have asked me to feed him with a spoon or to do 
 anything else that denoted his imbecility. I as much believe 
 that he wrote it as if I had seen him do it. Sir, had he shown 
 it to any one friend he would not have been allowed to publish 
 it. He has, indeed, done it very well, but i^ is a fooUsh 
 thing well done. I suppose he has been so much elated with 
 the success of his new comedy that he has thought everything 
 that concerned him must be of importance to the public." 
 Boswell remarked, " I fancy, sir, that this is the first time he 
 has been engaged in such an adventure," to which Johnson 
 replied, " Why, sir, I believe it is the first time he has beat ; 
 he may have been beaten before. This, sir, is a new plume to 
 him." 
 
 How any one capable of pronouncing an opinion on any 
 subject could suggest that Goldsmith's writing that letter 
 was a foolish thing is past the comprehension of man. And 
 as for the suggestion that Goldsmith had come to think that 
 anything that concerned himself must be of importance to the 
 public, all that one can say is that it was not Goldsmith but 
 the newspapers that acted in accordance with that belief. 
 The newspapers had attacked him in a phalanx, and will 
 
AFTER THE COMEDY 421 
 
 any one say that he was not justified in writing such a letter 
 — surely the mildest that any man ever wrote in similar 
 circumstances — as that which Johnson thought so foolish a 
 thing ? As a matter of fact was not such an incident as the 
 insult ofEered to Goldsmith in that Junius letter in the Packet 
 and the retaliation by Goldsmith, of " importance to the 
 public " ? The newspapers were quite right in looking on 
 it as such, and Goldsmith was only following their lead. 
 Johnson's sneer — according to Boswell — suggesting the likeli- 
 hood of Goldsmith's having at some time been beaten, has 
 caused commentators some perturbation, for they assumed 
 that he had in his mind some previous encounter in which 
 Goldsmith had been engaged and in which he had been 
 worsted. It seems to us unnecessary to draw any such 
 conclusion from Johnson's words. He might have said the 
 same about any one who had given another a caning. The 
 fact that he regarded the paxt played by Goldsmith in doing 
 the beating as a new plume to him, indicates pretty plainly 
 that the general idea that prevailed was that Goldsmith got 
 the upper Jiand in the fight, though it would appear from the 
 account given by Cradock and Percy of the affair, that 
 Goldsmith's plumage suffered somewhat in the actual en- 
 counter. Of course, Johnson could hardly regard the attack 
 upon Evans as highly reprehensible, considering the action 
 which he himself had taken in view of Foote's mimicking him, 
 and also in regard to Mr. Macpherson, who had invented 
 Ossian. The giant who goes about with an oak club to use 
 against his detractors, can scarcely be hard on a pygmy with 
 a cane. Johnson it was who confessed that he had knocked 
 down a bookseller with one of his own folios, because he con- 
 sidered that the man had been impertinent ; so we may be 
 sure that his sympathies were with Goldsmith, and that he 
 regarded Evans as an eminently " caneable," if not a " club- 
 able " man. It is probable that if he had gone in Goldsmith's 
 spirit to resent such an attack as that in the Packet, the sequel 
 would ihave been less lively than it was in the case of Goldsmith. 
 It -did not take long for the news of the encounter with 
 Evans to reach his friends. We learn from Percy's Diary 
 that before he had time to wash the blood from his face, 
 Garrick and Beauclerk called upon him, and what did this 
 
422 ^IHK LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 pair of farceurs do but induce him to accompany them to the 
 Club, just as he was — " to show the world how little affected 
 he was by the encounter." He remained only a short time 
 at the Club, and he apologised for going away, saying that 
 he was afraid he was making the company melancholy. His 
 suggestion was received with a roar of the laughter which the 
 members present must have been making almost superhuman 
 efforts to repress from the moment of his entrance, with his 
 seamed face and soiled coat. 
 
 But there can be no doubt that the general idea was that 
 Goldsmith had behaved very well in this business of Evans ; 
 for we find the Hornecks as closely attached to him as ever, 
 and Garrick so friendly toward him as to call for the rebuke of 
 some of the actor's old friends, who had once joined with him 
 in sneering at the poet. One of them, who had expectations 
 from Drury Lane, wrote, " You seem now to give in to Gold- 
 smith's ridiculosity in opposition to all sentimentality." Of 
 course that is just what Garrick was doing. He was a capable 
 manager, and had his finger on the pulse of the public. More- 
 over, he had his eye on The Club, and he had been given a 
 hint that if he behaved well, he might be elected when the 
 next vacancy occurred, and in spite of the machinations of 
 Boswell, who played with great skill the part of the mischief- 
 maker in a girls' school, telling Garrick what Johnson and 
 the others had said about him, and no doubt " rubbing in " 
 to Johnson the effect which Garrick's mimicry of him had 
 upon the admiring circle, Garrick was duly elected — Goldsmith 
 seconding his nomination, a feW days before the production 
 of his comedy ; but we doubt very much if even then the 
 actor refrained from those inimitable imitations of his old 
 schoolmaster. If he did, the gaiety of a good many of their 
 friends was certainly eclipsed. What would we not give to 
 have seen him doing the part of Johnson as the ardent lover, 
 or as the genial host squeezing, with countless contortions, a 
 lemon into a punch-bowl and calling out in the patois of 
 Lichfield, " Who's for poonch ? " But most excruciating 
 of all must have been his copy of Johnson's most characteristic 
 contortions — swinging his arms about and then bending his 
 body so that, with his pendulous arm, his fingers almost 
 touched the ground. This extraordinary movement Garrick 
 
AFTER THE COMEDT 423 
 
 would imitate, with Johnson's customary twitchings and jerks 
 and pursings out of his lips, blowing in a sort of whistle 
 through them while he delivered the lines from Ovid's 
 Metamorphoses : 
 
 Os homini sublime dedit — cselumque tueri 
 Jussit — et erectos ad sidera — tollere vultua, 
 
 keeping his eyes fixed on the floor all the time. It is not 
 surprising to hear that the onlookers were overwhelmed 
 with laughter, and implored him to stop. 
 
 No doubt Johnson heard through Boswell of Garrick's 
 fun at this time, for we may be pretty sure that Boswell was 
 not particularly well pleased at the idea of the great actor 
 being elected to the Club in advance of himself. We have 
 already referred to the patronising tone he assumed in this 
 connection, afiirming that Garrick really behaved quite like 
 a gentleman while a member of " our Club." If Johnson 
 heard about Garrick's mimicry he might not be disposed to 
 regard it any more leniently than he did the prospect of 
 Poote's ; hence his frequent outbursts against Garrick, 
 carefully chronicled by Boswell. It is in respect of these 
 records that we are convinced a great injustice is done to 
 Johnson. If Boswell had just come to him with one of his 
 stories of how Garrick had convulsed a company by such 
 mimicry as we have described, it would only be natural for 
 Johnson to decry Garrick. But Boswell records Johnson's 
 sneer, he says nothing about the story of Garrick's impudence 
 with which he had just come to Johnson. " How odd to 
 tell the man ! " was the marginal note made by Mrs. Piozzi 
 opposite BosweU's account of his tale-bearing in one case — ^it 
 was in regard to what Johnson had said of him at the Thrales'. 
 She should have known Boswell better than to see anything 
 odd in his " clashing." He was a born " dasher," and was 
 doubtless called so many times by his own countrymen. 
 
 It is in his record of some of the conversations about 
 Garrick at this time — ^when the actor had been admitted, or 
 was at the point of being admitted to the envied Club — that 
 Boswell shows Johnson to be most intolerant of him. His 
 vanity was discussed at the Thrales' at dinner, and Johnson 
 pretended to justify it, saying that he received enough praise 
 
424 IHE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 to turn any man's head ; but a few days later at the Ogle- 
 thorpes', on Goldsmith saying that it was " mean and gross " 
 on the part of Garrick to introduce some lines into a play of 
 Beaumont and Fletcher's in order to flatter the Queen, 
 Johnson is reported to have cried : " As to meanness, sir, 
 how is it mean in a player, a showman, a fellow who exhibits 
 himself for a shilling, to flatter his Queen ? " 
 
 Goldsmith's friendship with the Oglethorpes, where this 
 conversation and others already mentioned took place, is 
 shown by the fact of his having dined with them twice within 
 a fortnight. At the first dinner we hear of his distinguishing 
 himself by singing Tony Lumpkin's song The Three Ji)lly 
 Pigeons and the Irish melody to which he had put words, 
 intending it to be sung by the representative of Miss Hard- 
 castle in the comedy. It was doubtless through having heard 
 it upon the occasion of this dinner that BosweU asked him 
 for a copy, which, years afterwards, he sent to Percy so 
 that it might be included in the complete edition of the 
 works. 
 
 It is certain that Goldsmith possessed more skill as a 
 vocalist than was merely necessary to obtain applaoise among 
 his associates at the Wednesday Club. Upon one occasion 
 when he was -drinking tea with some ladies, a ballad singer in 
 the street outside was heard floundering through a song oi 
 which he was very fond. He remarked how wretched the 
 performance was, and on his hostess's challenging him to 
 improve 'upon it, he astonished the company by the admirable 
 way in which he sung it. He had, of course, a personal interest 
 in the performance of ballad singers since his college days ir 
 Dublin, when he had listened to his own productions sung in 
 the streets. It may have been his recollection of previous 
 and more acute agonies that caused him when engaged a1 
 cards at Sir William Chambers' one night, suddenly to throw 
 down his hand, hurry from the room to pay off one of thest 
 same metre ballad mongers. It was not until some time had 
 elapsed that his host inquired if he had found the room sc 
 hot as to compel him to rush into the street. " Not at all,'' 
 he replied, " but in truth, I could not bear to hear thai 
 unfortunate woman half singing, half sobbing ; for such tones 
 could only arise from the extremity of distress. Her voic« 
 
AFTER THE COMEDY 425 
 
 grated painfully on my ear and jarred my frame, so that I 
 could not rest until I had sent her away." 
 
 It can easily be believed that when it got noised abroad 
 that Dr. Goldsmith was so extremely sensitive, his movements 
 were watched with great interest by vocalists who flattered 
 themselves on possessing the necessary qualification for 
 -jarring his frame, and being sent off with half a crown in their 
 hand. It is very doubtful if the genial Mr. Oakman who sent 
 him a complimentary poem a few days after the production of 
 She Stoops to Conquer was much better than one of these people. 
 His verses were found amongst Goldsmith's papers after his 
 death. 
 
 Quite sick in her bed Thalia was laid, 
 
 A sentiment puke had quite kill'd the sweet maid, 
 
 Her bright eyes lost all of their fire ; 
 When a regular Doctor, one Goldsmith by name, 
 Found out her disorder as soon as he came, 
 And has made her (for ever 'twill crown all his fame) 
 
 As lively as one can desire. 
 
 Oh ! Doctor, assist a poor bard who lies ill. 
 Without e'er a nurse, e'er a potion, or pill ; 
 
 From your kindness he hopes for some ease. 
 You're a " good-natur'd man " all the world does allow ; 
 O would your good nature but shine forth just now, 
 In a manner — I'm sure your good sense will tell how, 
 
 Your servant most humbly 'twould please. 
 
 There was a postcript to this missive, and it was quite as 
 important — to the writer — as anything in his rhymes : 
 
 " The bearer is the author's wife, and an answer from 
 Dr. Goldsmith by her, will be ever gratefully acknowledged by 
 his humble servant John Oakman. 
 
 "Orange Court, Swallow Street, 
 
 " Carnaby Market. 
 "Saturday, March 27, 1773." 
 
 The artful writer may have made a good living by addressing 
 complimentary verses to the author of every successful play 
 produced both at Covent Garden and Drury Lane ; or indeed, 
 so adroitly does he make his appeal, it may not be going too 
 far to suggest that he extended his congratulations to the 
 ladies and gentlemen who had contributed to the success of 
 
4ZO ItlJ!. Lltt, Ut ULll^EK ISULUSMVltl 
 
 the play : so clever a mendicant would have had no ti 
 in embodying in his verses a hint that, without the se 
 
 of Mr. , or Mrs. , the author would have cut i 
 
 sorry figure. 
 
 Y^i However this may be, it can, we think, be take 
 granted that Mr. Oakman received from the author ( 
 Stoops to Conquer such a reply to his application as encou 
 him to persevere in that branch of the begging business ^ 
 he had adopted. It was his readiness in responding tc 
 messages that was leaving Goldsmith penniless, and si 
 deeper and deeper in debt, in spite of the fact that h 
 earning more money by his pen than any literary m 
 England. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 "ANIMATED NATURE" 
 1773 
 
 It was during the few weeks that elapsed before Johnson's 
 departure for the Hebrides we find him — according to Boswell 
 — saying the hardest things about Goldsmith. There was 
 the dinner-party at the Dilly's which we have already described 
 — ^Johnson had told him that he was impertinent, but had 
 apologised for it later in the evening — and there were other 
 occasions on which he talked of the abnormally narrow range 
 of Goldsmith's knowledge. Any attentive reader of the Life 
 of Johnson must feel inchned to wonder how it was that 
 Johnson, after so long an acquaintance with Goldsmith, and 
 after showing himself to be Goldsmith's best friend and most 
 ardent admirer, should only now become sensible of his 
 numerous deficiencies, both of character and knowledge. All 
 the stranger would it seem when one reflects upon the fact 
 that it was only now that Goldsmith had won his position of 
 supremacy in the four departments of literature in which he 
 had laboured. 
 
 Mrs. Piozzi is, however, good enough to give us a short 
 account of a conversation which she had with Johnson just 
 at this time, on the subject of the possible writing of a 
 biography of himself. " Who will be my biographer, do you 
 think ? " Johnson asked. " Goldsmith, no doubt," cried Mrs. 
 Thrale, " and he will do it the best among us." " The dog 
 would write it best, to be sure," said Johnson, " but his par- 
 ticular malice towards me and general disregard of truth would 
 make the book useless to all and injurious to my character." 
 
 This little conversation indicates that the question of a 
 biography was being discussed ; and it is safe to assume that 
 rumours of it now and again reached the very attentive ears 
 
 4*7 
 
428 1:HE life of OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 of Mr. Boswell ; and the way in which he constantly : 
 in his Life to Mrs. Thrale — she had already published Me 
 of Johnson — gives us a very good hint as to how it came i 
 that only when Goldsmith had achieved his greatest sv 
 as a writer did Johnson find it necessary to say so many 
 things about him. It becomes perfectly plain that Be 
 was doing his best to make mischief between Johnson 
 Goldsmith, just as he did his best to make mischief bet 
 Johnson and Garrick. He went to Goldsmith and, wit! 
 cunning of one of the collies of his native land in dire 
 the course of the flock of which he is in charge, shepherde 
 conversation to a point when Goldsmith, most probab 
 his ironical way, must say something that was susceptib 
 being interpreted into a statement reflecting upon Johi 
 then off he would go to Johnson and tell him, in his own 
 what Goldsmith had said in his way, the result being 
 Johnson would say something scornful of Goldsmith, 
 what the mischief-monger thought was better stUl, be 
 more and more impressed with the fact that Goldsmith v 
 make a very indifferent biographer, pre-eminent thoug 
 might be as a writer. Mrs. Piozzi's story may be accept 
 a proof of how successful Boswell had been in his schei 
 He had just been to Johnson with the tale of how Golds 
 had endeavoured to ridicule the idea of that trip tc 
 Hebrides to which Johnson stood committed. 
 
 It is unnecessary to enter into a consideration of the que 
 whether Johnson's estimate of Goldsmith as his po 
 biographer was correct or incorrect. Much more impo 
 to us are the facts bearing upon the question, not o 
 possible biography of Johnson by Goldsmith, but o: 
 possible biography of Goldsmith by Johnson. The mat 
 for the latter had, we know, been transferred to Johnsc 
 Percy, to whom they had been entrusted ; and Johnson 
 so little for them that he carried them away from his ] 
 and into some tavern, where he left them lying witb 
 clue to their ownership, and forgot all about them, 
 only necessary to say, before dismissing this questio 
 biographies and biographers, that, however malicious a I 
 Johnson would have been if done by Goldsmith, who : 
 wrote a malicious line in all his life, it would never have 
 
« ANIMATED NATURE " 429 
 
 said of Goldsmith that he took so light a view of his duties 
 either as a historian or biographer as might cause him to be 
 the means of depriving the world of a work which could not 
 but have been of the greatest interest to all classes of readers. 
 
 He must have continued working at his Animated Nature 
 and the History of Greece for which he had been commissioned 
 by the booksellers, while his play was being produced and 
 while he was recovering from the effects of his fracas with 
 Evans. He had received every penny which he was to be 
 paid for the former, and a further advance of ^£250 on account 
 of the Greece is recorded in the June of this year (1773). But 
 long before this date his accounts with Davies and Griffin had 
 got into a hopeless condition of tangle, and if these gentlemen 
 fancied that his gain of ;£8oo from the comedy would give 
 them a chance of straightening things out, they quickly were 
 made aware of the fact that, with all their experience of him, 
 they knew very little of Oliver Goldsmith. It is likely, how- 
 ever, that the pressure they put upon him at this time to 
 allow of their balancing their books, was due to their laying 
 their heads together and saying that if they did not square up 
 with him now they would never be able to do so. 
 
 They were quite right ; they did not square up with him, 
 and they had never another chance. 
 
 He had spent all the money they had advanced to him, 
 and the splendid profits of the production of She Stoops to 
 Conquer melted away, no one knew how. He had nothing 
 to show for aU his expenditure. He was hopeless in money 
 matters, and he was actually better ofi when he was drudging 
 away for Griffiths on a pound a week than he was now, when 
 his earnings for the year must have been little short of twelve 
 hundred pounds — ^representing upwards of £2.600 of our 
 money. 
 
 But it is easy to see how the booksellers regarded his case. 
 The early weakness of Griffin in making a substantial advance 
 before he had done any work whatsoever, had been followed 
 by the most deplorable results, and now the tradesmen's 
 dilemma is apparent. Goldsmith had no money, and without 
 money he could not, of course, live to do the work for which 
 he had been paid. If they had denied him further advances, 
 the books which he was writing would not have advanced. 
 
430 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 They knew that their only hope of getting the books out of 
 his hands was to provide him with the means of finishing them. 
 
 Davies hints at there having been an appeal to arbitration, 
 Dr.- Johnson being appointed umpire and deciding against 
 Goldsmith. Davies says that Goldsmith was very angry, and 
 thought it outrageous that one author should side with the 
 booksellers against a brother author. This is not surprising. 
 An arbitrator is usually a man who reconciles two of his 
 friends who have fallen out, and immediately becomes an 
 enemy of both. But the decision of an arbitrator in Gold- 
 smith's case was a mere matter of form. The booksellers 
 could not make a penniless man repay them anything. 
 
 No, but they could refuse to have any further specu- 
 lative dealings with such a man ; and this, it would appear, 
 was the course which they determined to adopt in respect of 
 him. He was anxiously looking out for the means of obtaining 
 a further advance, and he came upon two excellent and very 
 promising schemes, but when he submitted them to the 
 booksellers he found that they would have nothing to do with 
 him. They would, no doubt, have liked to make some money 
 by the realisation of his schemes, but the risk of employing 
 so unbusiness-like a workman as Goldsmith was too great for 
 them to face any longer. The compiling of the works which 
 he suggested, would occupy years, and they were not prepared 
 to finance an author who could not manage to live on £1206 
 a year. They knew that the starting of such a colossal work 
 as he had in his mind meant placing in his hands the handle 
 of a pump — the pump of a golden stream : he would use it 
 to pump the money out of them, as he had used the Animated 
 Nature, which was still lying unfinished in his desk. They 
 looked on him as hopeless ; and they refused to have anything 
 further to do with him, directing all their energy upon the 
 business of getting out of his hands the work for which in a 
 moment of weakness they had paid him. They were business* 
 men now. Previously they had been generous. 
 
 A Popular Dictionary of the Arts and. Sciences was the title 
 of the scheme which he had now devised. He wrote a pros- 
 pectus for it, and his design was to obtain the co-operation of 
 his many friends as contributors on whatever subjects they 
 thought fit, so that he himself would be more in the position 
 
" ANIMATED NATURE " 43 1 
 
 of the editor than of the author, of the work. Garrick promised 
 to contribute to it — ^he was a man of the world, and he knew 
 that encouraging a sanguine man entailed no unpleasant 
 consequences upon himself ; he had a pretty shrewd idea that 
 nothing would come of the matter. He also got Dr. Burney 
 to promise a contribution, and wrote to him : " My dear 
 Doctor, I have sent you a letter from Dr. Goldsmith. He 
 is proud to have your name among the elect." Reynolds 
 and Johnson were also to assist in filling the Dictionary. 
 
 His making out the list of " the elect," to borrow Garrick's 
 words, was aU of no avail. Davies explained the position of 
 " the trade " quite soundly. They thought well of the enter- 
 prise, but they would not risk their money with Dr. Gold- 
 smith. This was in regard to the Dictionary of the Arts and 
 Sciences. The Experimental Philosophy scheme upon which 
 he had been dwelling for some time, does not seem to have 
 ever reached the prospectus stage. He was quite fuU of the 
 plans for the Dictionary when Cradock paid him a visit. His 
 imagination enabled him to see the conclusion of the work ; 
 but the imagination of the booksellers was not quite so 
 obliging. He assured Cradock that he had put some of his 
 best writing into the prospectus, and no doubt he had. Upon 
 one occasion he had complained bitterly to the same friend 
 of being compelled to turn out a volume a month ; but if 
 the booksellers could have been sure that he would turn out 
 a volume a year of his Dictionary, they would have accepted 
 his proposals with enthusiasm. Doubtless he spoke to Griffin 
 about his production and Griffin asked him where his Animated 
 Nature was. He had been engaged upon this book for several 
 years, and had written half a dozen volumes of history in the 
 meantime, and yet Animated Nature was in a condition of 
 suspended animation. What right had he to waste his time 
 over new and elaborate schemes before he had fulfilled the 
 obligation into which he had entered with his eyes open years 
 before ? That is what Griffin would have asked him, and 
 Griffin would have been right. 
 
 But he was undoubtedly giving some time to his Animated 
 Nature — ^when he could spare it from his History of Greece and 
 the correspondence that his preparation for the Dictionary 
 entailed. So much in earnest was he that no time should be 
 
432 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 lost over it that, upon one occasion, when he had been 
 avoidably detained with a pleasure party at Windsor, 
 entreated Percy and Cradock to come to his rooms in 
 Temple to complete some of the proofs which he had 
 upon his desk. Cradock gives a description of his rooir 
 this time ; they were a perfect litter of books on nal 
 history — ^the expensive volumes to which he refers in 
 Introduction to his work — and partly corrected proof-shi 
 Cumberland, too, had his " recollections " of visiting 
 at this time, and affirms that he was able to show him " 
 beginning of his Animated Nature." He adds that he di 
 with a sigh " such as genius draws when hard necessity dii 
 it from its bent, to drudge for bread and talk of birds 
 beasts and creeping things, which Pidcock's showman w( 
 have done as well." " Poor fellow ! " cries the sympatl 
 Cumberland, " he hardly knew an ass from a mule, nc 
 turkey from a goose, but when he saw it on the table." 
 
 Clumsy as ever in his inventions was the sympath 
 Cumberland. He should have known that at this time ne 
 three years had elapsed since Goldsmith had been engj 
 at the beginning of his work. It had gone to the prin 
 long before. And as for the poor fellow who hardly knev 
 ass from a mule, and who wrote a book which Pidcock's sh 
 man could have done as well, aU that we can say is that 
 a great pity that he did not give this visitor of his a chj 
 of glancing at some other parts of the work besides the be, 
 ning ; and that it is also a great pity that Cumberland, i 
 wrote his " recollections " years after the work had l 
 published in its complete form, did not avail himself of 
 opportunity thereby afforded him of refreshing his men 
 in respect of the contents, if only for the sake of giving 
 " recollections " the semblance of accuracy. Cumberlai 
 attempts to belittle Goldsmith can hardly be called ingeni 
 That belittling by an expression of friendliness is one of 
 cheapest and most transparent forms of depreciation. 1 
 was his close friendship for the author that caused him 
 arrive at the conclusion tha.tr Jnimated Nature might q 
 as well have been written by " Pidcock's showman," one can 
 but feel that this friendship must have had a prejudi 
 effect upon his judgment. What can be thought of the vi 
 
''ANIMATED NATURE" 433 
 
 of a man's opinion when it forces him to believe that Gold- 
 smith's work could have been quite as well done by a common 
 showman ? 
 
 Full of errors as this History of the Earth and, Animated 
 Nature undoubtedly is, there is scarcely a page in any of the 
 volumes that does not impress upon an ordinary reader the 
 fact that the writer was one who had studied his subject and 
 noted it carefully and intelligently in many of its aspects. 
 We have no reason to complain if we find that it is not a 
 scientific treatise. It is imaginative and it is speculative ; but 
 it never ceases to interest a reader in birds, beasts, and fishes, 
 and it was never designed to do more. It embodied all the 
 leading errors made by great naturalists up to the time it was 
 written, and the facts which it contains are facts of sentiment 
 rather than facts of science. It abounds in beautiful thoughts 
 and picturesque ideas suggested by the subject of almost every 
 chapter, but having no illustrative value in regard to the many 
 problems of Nature which a true Natural History might 
 reasonably be expected to elucidate. It stands without a 
 competitor as the most fascinating series of desultory essays 
 ever written on the surface of a great subject. It resembled 
 the author's histories in its possession of the most marvellous 
 power of attracting a reader and holding a reader's attention 
 from the first page to the last ; and that is what no work of 
 the same sort had done up to the time of its publication, and 
 what, we may add, few have done since. 
 
 It must be remembered that the writers on natural history 
 of to-day are spending most of their time correcting the 
 errors of those of yesterday, and that those of yesterday 
 laughed at those of the day before. The fundamental prin- 
 ciples of Nature which all naturalists up to the time of Darwin 
 assumed to exist, we know now to be erroneous ; but although 
 Darwin has been their guide for scarcely more than half a 
 century, already his suggestions have been for the most part 
 superceded by later investigators. Buffon and Laplace have 
 been obsolete for years ; but the thoughts and the imagina- 
 tion and the sentiments to be found on every page of Gold- 
 smith's work are as fresh and as fragrant to-day as they were 
 when he wrote that work, and they will remain so when the 
 scientific researches of the twentieth century shall have pointed 
 
 2£ 
 
434 'J^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 out the gross errors of the naturaUsts of the nineteenth. 
 Scientific knowledge is progressive, consequently our estimate 
 of the scientific knowledge of any period must be comparative. 
 Goldsmith had not a profound knowledge of natural history, 
 but it was much more profound than that possessed by the 
 Archangel Raphael in Paradise Lost ; and the Archangel 
 gave Adam and Eve to understand that he was a sort of private 
 secretary to the Creator. But people do not read Paradise 
 Lost for the sake of learning natural history from the Archangel 
 Raphael. They know that he was as well informed as the 
 best authorities in the middle of the seventeenth century, 
 but no better. Bacon was a pre-RaphaeUte in some 
 points, and Goldsmith knew more than Raphael by the 
 extent of a century of research. If we laugh at Gilbert 
 White's belief that swallows do not migrate but dive into the 
 mud at the bottom of a lake where they remain snug and secure 
 until the next spring, we do so at our peril, for assuredly the 
 next generation, to say nothing of the next century, will 
 laugh at what we believe to be the results of our latest researches 
 into the problems of the migration of birds. A hundred 
 years ago the belief among naturalists was general that the 
 peculiar marking of certain small fishes was the design of a 
 bountiful Providence to enable them to be more distinctly 
 seen by the larger " finny tribes " which preyed upon them, 
 and that the lamp of the glow-worm was given to it for the 
 benefit of the early bird who went in search of worms before 
 the dawn. It was understood also that the fox was endowed 
 by heaven with its pungent scent in order that the sport of 
 fox-hunting might be maintained. This seems very ridiculous 
 to us nowadays. But is it a whit more absurd than the scheme 
 of education — it has remained unchanged for hundreds of 
 years — which punishes a boy for telling falsehoods in his humble 
 way, and then puts him into the army to begin his education 
 in the art of lying — under the scientific name of strategy — ^to 
 an enemy, which he had always been taught to regard as the 
 meanest of all forms of mendacity ? Every one knows nowa- 
 days that without lying more than half of our animated nature 
 would become extinct in a few years. Deception in Nature 
 means survival. 
 
 We may laugh at the naturalists of the past, but we must 
 
''JNIMA7ED NATURE" 435 
 
 do so in the certainty that our last words in natural history 
 wiU be laughed at in the course of some years. We have 
 only to look at the rows of birds'-skins which the modern 
 gamekeeper nails to his door, to become aware of the extra- 
 ordinary ignorance that has been perpetrated from generation 
 to generation of men who have lived in the midst of Nature 
 and by their knowledge of Nature. Goldsmith affected to be 
 nothing more than a compiler of other men's knowledge of 
 natural history, and he possessed all the qualifications necessary 
 for the discharge of that duty. It reaUy did not matter 
 whether or not he knew a turkey from a goose ; but it so 
 happened that he did. He had a good working knowledge 
 of the subjects treated by the men whose information it was 
 his business to put forth in an attractive form for all readers. 
 But no one with any power of discrimination could read his 
 own remarks without perceiving in a moment that he had 
 not only been an intelligent observer of many phases of his 
 subject, but that he had many opportunties of observing 
 Nature in the course of his life. He had spent years as closely 
 associated with the wild life of the lake, the river, the moun- 
 tain, the moor, and the bog, as is any trapper of wild creatures ; 
 and he had gained a trapper's knowledge of Nature in many 
 forms. Can any one suggest that the essay on spiders and 
 their habits, which he once wrote, could be written by a man 
 who was not a careful observer ? To say that he did not 
 know an ass from a mule was as ridiculous as it would be to 
 assert that he did not know Cumberland from Kelly. 
 
 But we repeat, it is not as a naturalist that Goldsmith 
 must be judged, but as a writer who sets about the task of 
 awakening a reader's interest in the study of animated Nature. 
 And looked at from this standpoint, it cannot but be said 
 that for more than half a century his work fulfilled its purpose 
 as no book of the kind had ever done before, and as none has 
 ever done since. It has been the delight of hundreds of 
 thousands of readers, and it has led hundreds of thousands 
 to understand and to appreciate the things of Nature. We 
 know that while he was writing it he was full of the subject. 
 He could not stroll through the green lanes of the northern 
 slopes of London without obtaining material for his work, 
 and he could not take a pleasure trip through France without 
 
436 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 seeing something worth noting about the people and their 
 ways. He was an experienced, a sympathetic, and an intelli- 
 gent observer, and he was gifted with a capacity to write 
 about everything in such a way as to interest his readers. His 
 History of the World and Animated Nature remains a delight 
 to all to this day ; and, regarded from the standpoint from 
 which we regard a series of pictures, the volumes must be 
 pronounced worthy of the place which they have occupied 
 for more than a hundred years in English descriptive, not 
 scientific, literature. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 HE LAYS DOWN HIS PEN 
 1773— 1774 
 
 It became obvious to the more intimate of Goldsmith's friends 
 at this time that his position was very perilous. He had 
 reached the end of his resources. He had forfeited all claims 
 upon the booksellers who had hitherto supported him. They 
 could not aflFord to trust him any longer, and he had nothing 
 in hand on which he could claim or beg an advance. He had 
 reached the end of his resources. 
 
 What was to be done with him ? What was to be done 
 for him ? What he needed was, we repeat, the sensible 
 Mrs. Milner — some one who would treat him as an irrespon- 
 sible schoolboy with pocket money. A course of Gaffer and 
 Gammer Griffiths might have done much for him — a task- 
 master and taskmistress who would set him down at his desk 
 in a garret and keep him working for so many hours a day, 
 giving him a pound for himself at the week's end. Under 
 such conditions he could have recovered his position by his 
 Dictionary of the Arts within a year ; but such a scheme of 
 retrenchment was not to be proposed to him. He had lost 
 control of himself and he would not be controlled by others. 
 A movement was made to obtain for him one of the pensions 
 which were being flung about to all sorts and conditions of 
 writers, but especially to those rascals on whose scurrility 
 the Court party was dependent for their existence. Kelly 
 had received his pension for doing some of the dirty work 
 which Goldsmith had refused Scott, the chaplain emissary, 
 to soil his hands over ; and Scott himself had obtained a fat 
 canonry for hunting up libellers. Goldsmith's friends could 
 not have been sanguine enough to fancy that an application 
 for a pension for him would have a chance of being listened 
 
 437 
 
438 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 to. It was made, but it fell perfectly flat. It is doubtf 
 if it was ever replied to. How could they expect that a m: 
 whose pen would have been a power if exercised on beh; 
 of the Government, and who had refused to lend them i 
 aid, should have a chance of a pension of a single penny 
 The idea was preposterous. The new pension granted w 
 to Dr. Beattie, a man who was not even among the gre 
 mediocrity, and who had taken the trouble to prove it by t 
 publication of an Essay on Truth. But there was a Beat1 
 epidemic raging, and every one seemed to be suffering fro 
 it except Goldsmith, and his immunity was attributed to 1 
 envy of Beattie's superior powers. Goldsmith was as soui 
 on the subject of Beattie as he was on many other poir 
 upon which he proved himself to be right while the peoj 
 about him were wrong. He showed that he knew bett 
 than Garrick, the great actor, what constituted a good pb 
 and he showed that he knew better than Johnson, t 
 great polemic, what constituted a sound defence of fait 
 Johnson went mad with the rest of the town over Beattii 
 paltry platitudes ; but Goldsmith never hesitated 
 express his opinion regarding the worthlessness of the Ess 
 on Truth. 
 
 It was in these days of Beattie's beatification that Gol 
 smith administered that stern rebuke to Reynolds for painti 
 his foolish picture of Beattie chasing from the face of t 
 earth those enemies of the orthodox — Hume, Gibbon, ai 
 Voltaire. 
 
 But Beattie got his pension in hand and Goldsmith g 
 nothing beyond a draft upon posterity, which posterity \ 
 not dishonoured. 
 
 The fact was that he was incapable of acting in such a w 
 as might encourage the party in power to believe that 
 might yet be brought to help them. This was the year wh 
 Townshend was Lord Mayor of London, and making hims 
 very conspicuous by his assertion of his independence of t 
 Court, his action being highly commended by Lord Sh 
 bourne, who had been sneered at as Malagrida by the vitrio 
 " Junius." Goldsmith was worldly fooUsh enough to wr: 
 in the newspapers in praise of the action of Lord May 
 Townshend, Beauclerk tells us, and adds : " The same nig 
 
HE LAYS DOWN HIS PEN 439 
 
 we happened to sit next to Lord Shelbourne at Drury Lane. 
 I mentioned the circumstance of the paragraph to him, and 
 he said to Goldsmith that he hoped he had mentioned nothing 
 about Malagrida in it. ' Do you know,' said Goldsmith, 
 ' that I never could conceive the reason why they should 
 call you Malagrida, for Malagrida was a very good sort of 
 man.' You see plainly what he meant to say ; but that 
 happy turn of expression is peculiar to himself. Mr. Wal- 
 pole says that this story is a picture of Goldsmith's whole 
 life." 
 
 Mr. Walpole had deviated into accuracy without knowing 
 it, or without caring whether he did or not. Goldsmith's 
 life's history was that of a man who paid compliments in the 
 wrong way to the right people, and in the right way to the 
 wrong people. He was never quite able to do the best for 
 himself either by compliments or the opposite. He was 
 always showing himself to be worthy of the attorney's opinion 
 of him when he found that he had been invited by the 
 Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland to ask for anything and it 
 should be his, unto half of his kingdom, and Goldsmith had 
 begged his Excellency to do something for the curate of 
 Kilkenny West. 
 
 And just now he stood in great need of a strong hand to 
 be stretched out to him. He had, as we have said, come to 
 the end of his resources. He was at his wits' end for money. 
 He tried to induce Garrick to adopt The Good-Natur^d Man — 
 he had taken it from Colman when the latter offered his 
 stage to Kenrick, and paid for doing so, for Kenrick's failure 
 was emphatic — but Garrick had no confidence in the play, 
 so long as Lofty remained in it. At first the author could not 
 see his way to accept the suggestion of cutting out the part ; 
 and negotiations hung fire. Before long, however, it became 
 with the author a case of " needs must." A letter in a sadly 
 shaky handwriting — Mr. Forster prints the signature in fac- 
 simile, and very pathetic it looks — signified his acquiescence 
 in the removal of Lofty, but it was, we know, the acquiescence of 
 Romeo's apothecary — " My poverty but not my wiU consents." 
 This was not the important part of the letter, however, and 
 it was merely an afterthought to a proposal of much greater 
 moment to the writer. 
 
440 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 " My Dear Sir, 
 
 "Your saying you would play my Good-Natured Man mak 
 me wish it. The money you advanced me upon Nei 
 bery's note I have the mortification to find is not y 
 paid, but he says he will in two or three days. What I me; 
 by this letter is to lend me sixty pounds for which I w 
 give you Newbery's note, so that the whole of my de 
 will be an hundred for which you shall have Newbery's no 
 as a security. This may be paid either from my alterati( 
 if my benefit should come to so much, but at any rate I w 
 take care you shall not be a loser. I will give you a ne 
 character in my comedy and knock out Lofty which do 
 not do, and will make such other alterations as you direct. 
 
 " I am, yours, Oliver Goldsmith. 
 
 " I beg an answer." 
 
 Mr. Forster thinks it quite likely, from the way the lett 
 is written and sealed with a wafer, that it was sent to Garri 
 by a messenger from a sponging-house where the writer w 
 detained. It produced its effect upon Garrick, though wh 
 he laid it away with his other papers, he endorsed it — ^by i 
 means inappropriately — " Goldsmith's parlaver." He replie 
 agreeing to let Goldsmith have the loan on the security 
 the author's own acceptance, but he did not show himsi 
 to be greatly elated at the prospect of receiving the alter 
 comedy. This letter Goldsmith acknowledged as foUows : 
 
 " My dear Friend, 
 
 " I thank you ! I wish I could do something to ser 
 you. I shall have a comedy for you in a season or two 
 furthest that I believe will be worth your acceptance, foi 
 fancy I will make it a fine thing. You shall have the refus 
 I wish you would not take up Newbery's note but let Wal 
 tease him, without, however, coming to extremities ; '. 
 him haggle after him and he will get it. He owes it a: 
 wiU pay it. I'm sorry you are ill. I wiU draw upon you o 
 month after date for sixty pound and your acceptance w 
 be ready money, part of which I want to go down to Bart 
 with. May God preserve my honest little man, for he 1 
 my heart. " Ever, 
 
 " Oliver Goldsmith." 
 
HE LAYS DOWN HIS PEN 441 
 
 This is also labelled by Garrick, " Goldsmith's parlaver." 
 He was indeed ready to adopt any means^-" parlaver " 
 or otherwise — to get money to throw away. The remainder 
 of this history suggests a man at the end of his resources — 
 alternate outbursts of gaiety and days of depression, flashes 
 of genius followed by profound despondency. If Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds had kept a diary or had written many letters in 
 these months, they would be read with a melancholy interest ; 
 for Goldsmith and he were constantly in each other's company 
 — at Vauxhall, Ranelagh, the theatre, and, doubtless, the 
 recently opened Pantheon in the Oxford Road. Sir Joshua 
 and his niece — she gives an account of the scene — ^were 
 present at a house when Garrick and Goldsmith played their 
 game of Dumb Crambo, to which we have already alluded, 
 for the diversion of the company. " The most delightful 
 man was Goldsmith," Haydon has recorded Sir Joshua's 
 niece's saying to him. She saw him and Garrick keeping 
 an immense party laughing at this till they shrieked. 
 Garrick sat on Goldsmith's knee ; a tablecloth was pinned 
 under Garrick's chin and brought behind Goldsmith, hiding 
 both their figures. Garrick then spoke in his finest style 
 Hamlet's speech to his father's ghost. Goldsmith put out 
 his hands on each side of the cloth, and made burlesque 
 action, tapping his heart, and putting his hand to Garrick's 
 head and nose at the wrong time." At Topham Beauclerk's 
 also this entertainment took place, only the parts were 
 reversed ; it was Goldsmith who sat on Garrick's knee 
 and declaimed some of the soliloquys from Addison's Cato. 
 Walpole was present on this occasion, and, as usual, failed 
 to see any fun in what was convulsing every one else. 
 
 But very different indeed from this exhibition of high 
 spirits is the picture which Cradock gives us of the poet at 
 his desk. He was in a condition that Cradock describes as 
 " very low," and he found it impossible to cheer him up. 
 He called upon him every morning, and they tried to work 
 out together some scheme for raising money ; but all they 
 could think of was the issue of an edition of The Traveller and 
 The Deserted Village in one volume, with notes by the author. 
 This certainly sounded promising ; but it can easily be seen 
 that it was not well adapted to meet the author's emergency, 
 
442 'IHE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 the fact being that it would have to be taken up by the bo 
 sellers before it could be a success, and the booksellers wo 
 only place to his credit, without giving him anything in ha 
 whatever advance they might feel disposed to make on acco 
 of the new project. Besides, there was the question 
 the separate copyrights to be considered, and all this would m 
 delay. It is not surprising that the scheme fell through. 
 
 Very pathetic is Cradock's account of how he insisted 
 Goldsmith's coming to dine with him in the midst of 
 troubles. Goldsmith was unwiUing, but allowed him 
 to be prevailed upon, only making it a condition that 
 should not be asked to eat anything. " After dinner, he ti 
 some wine with biscuits," Cradock writes, " but I was S( 
 obliged to leave him for a while, as I had matters to sel 
 for our next day's journey. On my return coffee was rea 
 and in the course of the evening he endeavoured to talk i 
 remark as usual, but all was forced. He stayed tiU midnig 
 and I insisted on seeing him safe home ; and we most cordiz 
 shook hands at the Temple Gate." 
 
 That was their last parting. 
 
 It was during this winter, 1773-4, *^^^ Goldsmith had 
 opportunity of showing, out of the depths of his despair a 
 with the waters closing above his head, that in yet anotl 
 branch of literature — one in which he had never made 
 essay — ^his powers were pre-eminent. By no part of his w( 
 is he better known than by some lines in his Retaliation. . 
 does not appear to have suspected, any more than did 
 friends, that among his gifts was that of polished satiri 
 verse, and the result of his solitary attempt in this direct 
 must have been as great a surprise to himself as to his as 
 ciates. The story of the origin of this incomparable series 
 mock epitaphs has been told in so many different ways a 
 by so many different people that it is not easy to say wh: 
 is the correct version. It is really of no great importai 
 whether Garrick's account is strictly accurate, or whetl 
 two sets of imaginary epitaphs upon Goldsmith were writi 
 by his friends as a diversion after one of their dinners at t 
 St. James's Coffee-house, and his set composed by way 
 retaliation : there is no very wide divergence between a 
 of the records of the transaction, and even Cumberlan 
 
HE LAYS DOWN HIS PEN 443 
 
 account of it seems credible ; though it is rather funny to 
 find, from a hint that he lets drop, that he assumed that Gold- 
 smith's reference to him was as complimentary as it sounded, 
 his explanation being that he alone of all the writers of the 
 epitaphs upon the poet had treated him seriously. Unfor- 
 tunately, he had forgotten what exactly he did write that had 
 so disarmed Goldsmith. But it so happened that Goldsmith's 
 reference to Cumberland was written throughout in the 
 finest strain of irony. It was the extraordinary vanity 
 of the man that prevented his having the least suspicion 
 of the irony, though every one else must have perceived it, 
 including Mrs. Thrale, to whose insight in this matter we have 
 referred. 
 
 The simple facts seem to be that the little company one 
 evening began their customary jesting at Goldsmith's expense, 
 and that Garrick, who most likely came fully equipped, 
 adroitly manipulated the subject in the direction of epitaphs. 
 The fact that Northcote was able to record Edmund Burke's 
 pun, in defining an epitaph as a grave epigram, shows the 
 turn that the chat was taking ; and then, quite easily, it 
 took the form of a suggestion that no time should be lost in pre- 
 paring a suitable epitaph for Goldsmith's tomb in Westminster 
 Abbey — no one better than Garrick could manoeuvre a con- 
 versation in the direction he wished. And then probably two 
 or three of the wits gave forth their couplets, touching upon 
 the poet's weaknesses, and Garrick, after allowing them to 
 expose their feebleness, said he was ready, and forthwith 
 repeated the best-known lines of all that he wrote : 
 
 Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness called NoU 
 Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor PoU. 
 
 Of course there was nothing better than this forthcoming, 
 and Garrick got credit for a brilliant impromptu. He has 
 since got credit for having written a complete biography of 
 Goldsmith in two lines ; for should the conversation by 
 some curious and unaccountable chance take a literary turn 
 in a general company of to-day, and the name of Goldsmith 
 be mentioned, half the people present wiU repeat the couplet, 
 more or less inaccurately, and feel conscious of having 
 exhausted the subject of Goldsmith. 
 
444 '^HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 But when Garrick had delivered himself of his master- 
 piece, it is pretty certain that Goldsmith threatened to do 
 for every one present what had been done for him, and he 
 kept his threat. 
 
 It is said that he allowed one or two of his friends — most 
 likely Reynolds and Richard Burke — to see some of the epitaphs 
 which he wrote within the next few days, and they brought 
 such a report of them to the others who had taken part in the 
 game as caused them to reconsider their position ; the result 
 being that some of them at least began trying to hammer out 
 a series of couplets rather more complimentary than the first 
 had been to the bard who was reported to be preparing a 
 chastisement of scorpions in retaliation to their chastisement 
 of whips. 
 
 Such an explanation may or may not be thought adequate 
 to account for Garrick's long epitaph, which was forthcoming 
 shortly afterwards, and for the reports of others to follow. 
 But there was really no need for any trepidation on the part 
 of the men who had been so merry at Goldsmith's expense. 
 The most sensitive among them could scarcely find a gnat- 
 sting in any line that he had written in his Retaliation. There 
 was no sting ; but there was evidence of a power to sting — of 
 an aptitude for satire great enough to compose a new Dunciai. 
 
 The accounts of the revelation of the mock epitaphs also differ. 
 Percy, who had as good a chance as any one of hearing the 
 correct story, stated that it was at the next meeting of a 
 dining club — not of the Club — after the one at which he had 
 been the subject of the jest, that he produced his set of 
 epitaphs ; but it has been said that it was not until some of 
 them had been circulated and talked about that the fuU set 
 was produced. But however this may be, the effect of their 
 production was to convince his friends that he should be 
 treated with greater respect in the future, not for his own 
 sake but for the sake of their own skins : he had shown them 
 that he had the weapon of flagellation in his pen if he had 
 a mind to use it. 
 
 The power of satire does not consist in the mere capacity 
 to write words that sting or phrases that flay. The power of 
 satire lies in the capacity to read character, to understand 
 motives, to snatch away a mask. Unless the satirist can do 
 
HE LAVS DOWN HIS PEN 445 
 
 these things he is no menace to any one. Adroitness in 
 satirical expression is no intellectual gift by itself ; it is only 
 when it is made the medium for showing the insight of the 
 writer into human nature — for showing his ability to grasp 
 the elements of a character, that it becomes a force and a 
 terrific force. This fact was fully appreciated by the men of 
 genius and the men of the world who were associated with 
 Goldsmith in their perilous game of wit against wit. They 
 did not fail to perceive that he was their master — that while 
 they had been able to do no more than make a jest of his 
 most obvious weaknesses, he had laid his finger upon every 
 trait that belonged to them. But he only used his finger-tip, 
 and that very gently, in the act ; he had repressed himself, 
 and they were aware of it. Such delicacy of touch as is dis- 
 played in almost every line of Retaliation is that which is the 
 result of the writer's feeling that he is the master of his medium. 
 It is the delicacy of touch of the consummate swordsman — 
 of the accomplished surgeon. Goldsmith is the skilful 
 mattre d'armes, with the button on his foil. He makes point 
 after point, but never wounds. But there was chalk on the 
 button of his foil, and it left its mark wherever it touched his 
 antagonist. Before he had done with some of them they 
 were pretty well pitted — only chalk-marks, but they indi- 
 cated the sldll which he had at his command, so that every 
 touch was on a vital part. His friends conceived a great 
 respect for him. 
 
 The two most trenchant of these analyses of character 
 dealt with Edmund Burke and David Garrick — the two most 
 distinguished members of the company. Many of the lines 
 have, like so much that Goldsmith wrote, become the most 
 quotable and the most useful in the English language. The 
 fourteen that apply to Burke have been quoted and re-quoted 
 in full and in fragments : 
 
 Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such; 
 We scarcely can praise it, or blame it too much ; 
 Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, 
 And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. 
 Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat, 
 To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote ; 
 Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining. 
 And thought of convincing while they thought of dining ; 
 
446 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 Though equal to all things, for all things unfit, 
 Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit : 
 For a patriot too cool ; for a drudge disobedient, 
 And too fond of the right to pursue the expedient. 
 In short, 'twas his fate, unemploy'd or in place, sir. 
 To eat mutton cold, and cut blocks with a razor. 
 
 So perfect a summary of a great man's character does not 
 exist within the compass of fourteen lines. Pope never did 
 anything equal to it, and the best satires in Absolom and 
 Achitofhel, though saturated with venom, are — possibly on 
 account of this saturation — infinitely inferior in finish to the 
 lines we have quoted. Dryden at his best never makes us 
 feel that he is taking a judicial view of the man he is scarifying. 
 He never gives us a sense of his grasp of character. We feel 
 that he sets himself up to ridicule some one^vdiom he hated, 
 and that he does his work very thoroughly ; but no one thinb 
 of asking if he describes the man accurately. We never think 
 of asking in Goldsmith's case either ; but only because we 
 feel from the first that he never deviates from the truth. 
 Burke had more than twenty years of active life before 
 him when Goldsmith wrote these lines, and yet a more 
 accurate summing up of his whole career than they afford- 
 could scarcely be imagined. We are only inclined to take 
 exception to the best known line. But it was after Gold- 
 smith had died that Burke's patriotism got the better of his 
 partisanship. 
 
 The Garrick lines are as well known as those on Burke ; 
 so that there is no need to quote them in this place. They 
 occupy a page in most school " Readers," and boys learn to 
 repeat them in the foolish fluent manner of the bird with 
 which, according to the subject of the lines, thd author had 
 one trait in common. And can any one doubt that they 
 describe the real Garrick ? Brilliant as they are, we are never 
 led to feel that they are so at the expense of the great actor. 
 Percy alludes to the " severity " of these lines. Possibly the 
 only person who agreed with him in thinking them severe was 
 Garrick, and then only because he knew them to be so true. 
 But where now are all the complimentary verses that were 
 written upon Garrick ? Which one of them survives to be 
 read to-day ? And what one of them could compare in force 
 
HE LATS DOWN HIS PEN 447 
 
 or in grace of compliment with the concluding lines of Gold- 
 smith's satire ? 
 
 Those poets, who owe their best fame to his skill, 
 Shall still be his flatterers, go where he will, 
 Old Shakespeare receive him with praise and with love, 
 And Beaumonts and Bens be his Kellys above. 
 
 If Garrick could have foreseen that of all the praise that was 
 lavished upon him, only these lines of Goldsmith should 
 survive to be read daily by thousands of his fellow-countrymen, 
 he might easily have pardoned the " severity " which good 
 Dr. Percy fancied had a need to be apologised for, and ac- 
 counted for by quoting the severity of Garrick in referring 
 to their author. But Garrick needed no apology. The force 
 of all that Goldsmith wrote upon him was fully appreciated 
 by him, and he felt that he had reason to be grateful to the 
 poet for all that he refrained from writing as well as for all 
 that he wrote in his Retaliation. 
 
 The reference to Reynolds remains unfinished : it is the 
 broken column of the tomb, more expressive than if it were 
 complete : 
 
 Here Reynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind. 
 
 He has not left a wiser or better behind ; 
 
 His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand ; 
 
 His manners were gentle, complying, and bland ; 
 
 Still born to improve us in every part. 
 
 His pencil our faces, his manners our heart ; 
 
 To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering, 
 
 When they judg'd without skill he was still hard of hearing : 
 
 When they talk'd of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff 
 
 He shifted his trumpet and only took snuff. 
 
 By flattery unspoiled 
 
 And here he laid down his pen. He may have paused to 
 think of the many incidents of that friendship which existed 
 between the great painter and himself, and which he surely 
 in his darkest hours could never review without finding in it 
 a source of consolation. And now that the waters were closing 
 over his head, could he continue writing of the friend whom he 
 loved as he had written of the men who were nothing to him, 
 the men who had walked on their own paths, crossing the 
 pathway of his life, not side by side with him as Reynolds had 
 walked ? How could he look back upon his strenuous days 
 
448 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 of dispiriting toil, when, unknown and despised in the midst 
 of the drudgery that brought him bread sometimes, and star- 
 vation more frequently, that solitary hand of friendship and 
 appreciation was stretched out to him, and that voice of 
 kindly encouragement spoke to him — ^how could he take that 
 glimpse into the past without emotion ? How could he 
 continue to write of Reynolds as he had written of the others ? 
 
 By flattery unspoil'd. . . 
 
 He laid down his pen. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 LAST HOURS 
 1774 
 
 The last recorded meeting of Goldsmith and Johnson was 
 upon the occasion of a dinner given by the former at his 
 rooms. It is stated that Johnson was so determined to show 
 his host how highly he disapproved of his lavish hospitality 
 that he sent away from the table a whole course untouched. 
 That is not in the least like what Johnson would have done. 
 It would have been contrary to his most cherished principles 
 and his confirmed habits. Had he not avowed that his wish 
 was never to sit down to meagre fare ? " What folly is that ? " 
 he cried at the Thrales' dinner-table. " Who would feed 
 with the poor that can help it ? No, no ; let me smile with 
 the wise and feed with the rich ! " It is not at aU likely that 
 one who paid so much attention to the quantity of his eating 
 would be guilty of such an act of bad taste and useless self- 
 sacrifice as has been attributed to him. 
 
 At any rate, that was the last time they met. Goldsmith 
 had just finished correcting the proofs of the History of 
 the World and Animated Nature, and the work was announced 
 for publication. He had retired to his lodgings on the 
 Edgware Road, and had announced his intention of selling 
 the remainder of the lease of his chambers in Brick Court 
 and of living permanently at the cottage, only going up to 
 London for a month or two out of the year. He was con- 
 templating a severe scheme of retrenchment, having appa- 
 rently awakened at last to a sense of his position, with a load 
 of accumulated debt upon his shoulders and nothing to show 
 for it — with his credit with the booksellers gone, so that he 
 had no important commissions before him, and with the 
 necessity to work for his bread from day to day, just as he had 
 
 449 2F 
 
4SO THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 done when he had been in his garret in Green Arbour 
 Court. 
 
 His situation was pitiable in every way. He was toiling 
 away at his History of Greece — payment for which he had, of 
 course, forestalled — at another of the booksellers' Abridgements, 
 revising his Enquiry at about the same rate of remuneration 
 as he had received for such work when in his garret ; and 
 translating Scarron's Comic Romance : it was from the French 
 writer that he had derived the idea of the opening of his 
 Retaliation. That was the situation in which the author of 
 The Deserted Village, The Vicar of Wakefield, and She Stoop 
 to Conquer found himself at the end of his sixth year of un- 
 paralleled success, from a social and material, as well as a 
 literary, standpoint. Every year had but added to his 
 triumphs, and yet now he was practically just where he 
 had started, only with an obligation of debt upon him from 
 which he could only be released in one way. 
 
 And that was the way in which release came to him. 
 
 The complaint from which he had suffered for several 
 years, and of which a return is inevitable with the approach 
 of mental worries, prostrated him at his cottage, and as soon 
 as he was able to move he hurried to London to see his 
 physician. But he had not more than arrived when symp- 
 toms of a further disorder of a different character showed them- 
 selves. He was anxious to attend a meeting of the Club to 
 welcome the admission of Charles Fox, Sir Charles Bunbury, 
 the brother of his great friend Henry, George Steevens, and 
 Fordyce, the celebrated doctor of medicine ; but he soon 
 found that it would be impossible for him to carry out his 
 intention in this respect. He went to bed, and Hawes, a 
 surgeon-apothecary with whom he had been on the friendliest 
 terms, and into whose plans for organising what afterwards 
 suggested the Royal Humane Society, he sympathetically 
 entered, was soon by his side, and from a pamphlet which 
 this gentleman published after obtaining his degree of M.D., 
 we are placed in possession of all the melancholy incidents of 
 these last days. 
 
 Goldsmith complained of pains in the fore part of the 
 head. His tongue was moist and his pulse at ninety. He 
 believed that a fever was imminent, and having previously 
 
LAST HOURS 451 
 
 found relief from the use of the febrifuge of the day, known 
 as James's Powders, he begged that this medicine should be 
 given to him, asserting that it could not fail to cure him. The 
 efficacy of this drug was testified to by numbers of his friends, 
 and most ardently of all by Dr. Percy, who affirmed that it 
 had saved his son's life. But Hawes assured him that his 
 disorder was not febrile, but nervous, and that the powders 
 would be positively dangerous to him at that moment. It is 
 plain from Hawes's straightforward account of the incidents, 
 that his patient was as difficult a one as a man with some 
 knowledge of medicine usually is. He vehemently entreated 
 Goldsmith not to persist in his demand, but to allow him to 
 call in Dr. Fordyce, and, after a great deal of opposition. 
 Goldsmith consented. Fordyce arrived at Brick Court 
 shortly after Hawes had left, and confirmed his diagnosis and 
 repeated his warning against James's Powders. Shortly after 
 midnight a messenger came with leeches and medicine from 
 Hawes ; but Goldsmith would have nothing to do with the 
 medicine, and insisted on the messenger's bringing him the 
 forbidden drug. The powders were obtained, but on the 
 patient's partaking of one, he declared that it was a counter- 
 feit and that he would have nothing more to do with Hawes. 
 He sent the next day to Francis Newbery, who, as we have 
 said, was the proprietor of the medicine, for a fresh packet, 
 and this he administered to himself, following it up by two 
 others in the course of the next twenty-four hours. A second 
 apothecary was called in, but, very wisely, declined to give 
 any advice, and Goldsmith shortly afterwards became so much 
 worse that he was unable to protest against the return of 
 Hawes. At the first time of Hawes's reappearance, the patient 
 was dozing, and Hawes thought it better not to disturb him, 
 but the same night, on his calling again, he found him greatly 
 exhausted, and " in a low voice he said he wished he had 
 taken my friendly advice last night," Hawes wrote in his 
 pamphlet. 
 
 Goldsmith continued to sink, and Dr. Fordyce thought 
 it advisable to get the advice of another physician of experience. 
 They met on the Monday and were in consultation daily 
 during the week. Goldsmith had alternations of improvement 
 and relapse. At times he was cheerful, but he was exhausted 
 
452 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 through the lack of sleep, and his incapability of takiog 
 nourishment. For several days his condition remained un- 
 altered, and then Dr. Turton said to him, " Your pulse is in 
 greater disorder than it should be from the degree of fever 
 which you have. Is your mind at ease ? " " No, it is not," 
 was the reply, and that was the last sentence spoken by Oliver 
 Goldsmith. 
 
 «. For some days it seemed likely that his strong constitution 
 would assert itself. He had a long and peaceful sleep, and at 
 midnight on Sunday, April 3, other favourable symptoms 
 were observable. But at four o'clock in the morning 
 he was seized with convulsions. The apothecary Maxwell, 
 who was the nearest practitioner, was sent for, and hurried 
 to his bedside, but was unable to give him any relief. For 
 three-quarters of an hour the convulsions continued, and 
 only ceased when Oliver Goldsmith had ceased to breathe, 
 at a quarter to five o'clock on the morning of AprU 4, 1774. 
 
 The news that Goldsmith was dead came as a great shock 
 upon the town, especially in those regions where he had been 
 for years a familiar figure. The good tradesmen of Fleet 
 Street and the Strand, who had been accustomed to point 
 him out to their friends from the country, connecting him 
 with many stories of his humour and his oddities — of the easy 
 way he had been imposed upon, and of how some of the most 
 worthless rascals in the neighbourhood had subsisted on his 
 bounty, must have felt as if they had lost a friend ; and the 
 booksellers of Paternoster Row and St. Paul's Churchyard 
 must have felt that they had lost a source of profit as well as 
 a source of much worry. When the news spread to the courts 
 and alleys around the Fleet Ditch and through the narrow 
 and tortuous passages northward as far as the Turnstile, 
 consternation must have followed. The poor wretches who 
 lived in the purlieus of the chief arteries of the City knew that 
 when Goldsmith had died they had lost a friend and a bene- 
 factor. The staircase leading to his rooms in Brick Court 
 bore a weeping crowd of men, women, and children who had 
 been his pensioners, and the flags of the Temple were trodden 
 by ragged groups of mourners. The lawyers looking out 
 of their windows must have been amazed, and the more 
 
LAST HOURS 453 
 
 cynical amused, at the unusual sight of grief that had no 
 connection with a trial in Bow Street or at the Old Bailey. 
 Who could understand sorrow among such a crowd at the 
 death of the poet ? 
 
 There is no record of more than one of his old associates 
 having been to inquire about him during the week of his 
 illness. Walpole wrote that he had been shamefully treated 
 by his friends at this time, and assigns as a cause the fact of 
 his having written some imaginary epitaphs upon some of 
 them, which, he said, hurt them. If there was any piece of 
 gossip, spicey or spiteful, being circulated about a man or a 
 woman, Walpole was the one to give it countenance. Whether 
 or not his most intimate friends called to inquire for him, 
 it is certain that Percy did so. His diary records this fact. 
 Against the date March 10, there is the entry: " Dined with 
 Goldsmith at the Turk's Head. 
 
 " 28. Called on Dr. Goldsmith whom I found ill of a 
 fever. 
 
 " Sunday, April 3. I saw poor Dr. Gqldsmith, who was 
 dangerously iU. He just knew me. 
 
 " Monday, April 4. I went into Sussex. Poor Dr. 
 Goldsmith died this day, having been in convulsions all 
 night. On my return. Sat., 9th April, I saw poor Gold- 
 smith's coffin." 
 
 The simple explanation of the absence of his other friends 
 from his bedside may be found in the assumption that none 
 of them knew anything about his illness — none of them had 
 ever heard of his return to Brick Court from his cottage. His 
 servant, John Eyles, was much too busy during that melancholy 
 week to be able to spare the time to go to Reynolds or Johnson 
 — perhaps he was even forbidden to do so by one of the doctors. 
 Of course it is understood that Dr. Fordyce had been sent for 
 to the Club in Gerrard Street by Hawes, and it might be said 
 that he would communicate to the other members the reason 
 for his hurrying away from them on the night of his first 
 appearance among them. But this assumption necessitates 
 the production of some evidence to show that he was actually 
 at the Club when he received Hawes's message, and it is more 
 than likely that he may only have remained in Gerrard Street 
 for a short time, owing to the exigencies of his profession. 
 
454 "THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 To suggest that Goldsmith's friends had deserted him 
 because of the severity of his imaginary epitaphs upon some 
 of them is too absurd to be deserving of serious consideration. 
 Johnson was his friend, and Goldsmith had written no epitaph 
 upon him. Reynolds was his friend, and assuredly there was 
 nothing to which Reynolds could take exception in what 
 Goldsmith had written about him — indeed there is good 
 reason to believe that he never saw the imaginary epitaph 
 until the writer was dead, It cannot be doubted for a moment 
 that Johnson and Reynolds and Garrick and Burke would have 
 been by his side to the end had they heard that he was sick 
 unto death — ^had they even heard that he was indisposed. 
 Had there been any question of strained relations between 
 him and his friends he would not have shown the eagerness 
 that he did to go to the Club to join in their welcome to the 
 new members. 
 
 But our knowledge of how they received the news of his 
 death gives Walpole the lie in a moment. When the sad 
 tidings came to Edmund Burke he burst into tears. Reynolds 
 was equally moved. He was engaged at a picture when the 
 message was brought to him, and he at once laid down his 
 brushes, left his painting-room, and shut himself off from 
 every one for the remainder of the day, although it is well 
 known that he had never done so upon any previous occasion, 
 even when the news of a death in his own family reached him. 
 Johnson was also deeply affected, and remained mourning 
 for his friend and cherishing his memory to the day of his 
 own death, giving to the mezzotint portrait after Reynolds 
 the chief place in his little gallery. Three months after 
 Goldsmith's death he wrote to BosweU : " Of poor dear 
 Doctor Goldsmith there is little more to be told. He died 
 of a fever, I am afraid more violent by uneasiness of mind. 
 His debts began to be heavy and all his resources were exhausted 
 — Sir Joshua is of opinion that he owed not less than two 
 thousand pounds. Was ever poet so trusted before ? " 
 
 Only one more incident remains to be recorded in con- 
 nection with the solitary man, into whose life, though he 
 was the most beloved of aU writers that have ever lived, no 
 love-story was known to have entered — not an incident giving 
 a hint of any feeling beyond that of a true woman grief- 
 
LAST HOURS 455 
 
 stricken at the loss of a dear friend whose simple nature and 
 unaffected sympathy with every human emotion and every 
 human weakness had won for him a place in the heart of her 
 heart ; but it is such an incident as takes away from the picture 
 of the solitary man dying with none but strangers by his side, 
 and lying remote and unfriended, the impression of the pitiable 
 sadness and sorrow of such an end to such a life. When the 
 last duty had been discharged and the face of the dead was 
 already hidden, his Jessamy Bride came into the darkened 
 room with her sister, and what ■ had been done had to be 
 undone for the moment. The black lid was removed; she 
 was allowed to see once more the plain face of the man whom 
 she had valued above all men, and she took from his head a 
 lock of hair to remain with her while she lived. The story 
 of a man's death, however, full of gloom it may seem, cannot 
 be thought utterly forlorn when it is associated with such 
 an incident as this. The last hand that touched his cold 
 forehead was the hand of the girl who understood what manner 
 of man he was, the girl who had done more than all the rest 
 of his friends to brighten the last years of his life. 
 
 Mary Horneck kept the memento of him until the day of 
 her death. 
 
 Sixty years after she was laid in the vault by the side of the 
 Princess who had been her friend, the writer of these 
 pages was invited by a descendant of the lady to whom she 
 had bequeathed her jewels, to see these interesting souvenirs ; 
 and among them, enclosed in a small gold locket, was the 
 memento that she had so treasured. The thin coil of faded 
 brown hair lay under the glass, and on the rim of gold was 
 engraved the name of Oliver Goldsmith. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 THE MEMORIALS OF A MAN OF GENIUS 
 
 The idea of having a public funeral naturally occurred to 
 some members of the distinguished circle to which OUver 
 Goldsmith had belonged ; and the arrangements for carrying 
 it out were sufficiently far advanced to allow of the pall- 
 bearers being nominated. These were Lord Shelbourne, 
 Lord Lowth, Reynolds, Garrick, Beauclerk, and Edmund 
 Burke. No question arose as to the validity of Goldsmith's 
 claim to a place in Westminster Abbey. The august autho- 
 rities who exercise in the great WaUiaUa of the nation the 
 privileges ascribed by tradition to St. Peter in another and 
 even more important sphere of responsibility, have never 
 shown any particular discrimination in regard to literature. 
 They have admitted unrepentant Magdalens within their 
 waUs, and representatives of all the vices which were once 
 associated with the stage ; they have admitted politicians 
 whose names have come to be significant of all that is con- 
 temptible in public life, and soldiers whose incapacity brought 
 ruin upon thousands of their countrymen. Indeed, a stroll 
 round our Walhalla would lead one to believe that the lesser 
 St. Peters had made it a point of granting admission only to 
 those whom the greater St. Peter was charged to exclude ; 
 but the claim of Oliver Goldsmith would assuredly not have 
 been rejected had the question of this public recognition of 
 his position as a writer been allowed to go to the head of the 
 Chapter of Westminster. The intentions of his friends in this 
 matter were, however, after a short deliberation, abandoned. 
 Mr. Forster, writing with a nice sense of nineteenth-century 
 propriety, says " it was felt that a private ceremony would 
 better become the circumstances in which he died," But 
 the truth seems to be that his friends feared that his creditors 
 
 4S6 
 
THE MEMORIALS OF J MAN OF GENIUS 457 
 
 would interfere with the carrying out of the arrangements 
 for a public funeral. It appears that the creditors' privilege 
 at that time permitted of their seizing the body of a man who 
 had died without satisfying their claims. The fact of his 
 having paid the debt to Nature was not regarded as indemni- 
 fying him against the action of his more inexorable creditors. 
 However this may be, the idea was abandoned, and in the 
 simplest way the burial took place in the ground of the Temple 
 Church, at five o'clock on the evening of April 9. Although 
 Burke and Reynolds had given all instructions in regard to 
 the interment, yet, for some reason never explained, neither of 
 them was present, nor were any. of the other old associates of 
 Oliver Goldsmith. The clergyman who had married Sir 
 Joshua's niece Theophila — his name was Palmer — ^was chief 
 mourner, and the two Days, Hawes, the apothecary, and 
 Mr. Ethrington, were the only representatives of the many 
 friends of the dead man. Hugh Kelly, however, stood by the 
 grave, and remained weeping there when the others had gone 
 away. 
 
 That is the account which remains with us of the last 
 scene of all. No one seems to have had sufficient interest in 
 the dead man to think him worthy of having the spot where 
 he was laid, marked by a slab. The neglect is irreparable. 
 Mr. Forster states that in 1852, accompanied by Sir Frederick 
 Pollock, at that time Treasurer of the Temple and afterwards 
 Chief Baron, he visited the burial-ground of the Temple, 
 hoping to be able to identify the grave of Goldsmith. " We 
 examined unavailingly every spot beneath which interment 
 had taken place," he writes, " and every stone and sculpture 
 on the ground ; nor was it possible to discover any clue in the 
 register of burials which we afterwards looked through with 
 the Master of the Temple. It simply records as ' Buried 
 9th April, Oliver Goldsmith, M.B., late of Brick-court, 
 Middle Temple.' " 
 
 Eighteen years later Canon Ainger, who was then Reader 
 of the Temple, wrote to Forster telling him that some time 
 during this interval a flat gravestone had been placed in the 
 yard at the north side of the church, a few feet west 
 of the Master's house. It is inscribed, " Here lies Oliver 
 Goldsmith." 
 
458 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 After all, the question of the accuracy of such a record as 
 this is simply one of mensuration. The word " here " need 
 not be circumscribed in its signification : it may be taken to 
 refer to the graveyard and not merely to the ground beneath' 
 the slab, though in the graveyard sense of a hie jacet the latter 
 only can be accepted. 
 
 It is difficult to account for the neglect in this matter of 
 those friends of Goldsmith who undoubtedly cherished his 
 memory. It is impossible to account for the absence of all 
 of them from the ceremony at the grave. It is impossible 
 to account for the total lack of interest they showed in his 
 place of sepulture. Not one of them all seems to have had 
 a desire to see his grave. 
 
 After the lapse of two years, however, a medallion portrait — 
 of which NoUekens was the sculptor — with a tablet, the 
 inscription on which was composed by Johnson, was placed 
 in Westminster Abbey, the place selected for it being within 
 a pointed arch between the monuments of Gay and a Duke 
 of Argyll. The suggestion of this memorial came from 
 Reynolds, and it is understood that the cost was subscribed 
 for by the members of the Club. 
 
 When the proposed inscription was, however, read to 
 them at Reynolds's house, it was received with anything but 
 satisfaction. Objection after objection was raised to it, the 
 chief apparently being that it was in Latin — as a matter of 
 course Johnson had written it in Latin — and they thought 
 it should be in English. But it was one thing to agree upon 
 the necessity for emendation and quite another to make the 
 great scholar aware of this decision. The members of the 
 council must have looked at one another as did the mice in 
 the story when they had debated upon the question of the 
 cat and, on resolving that a bell should be hung round its 
 neck, found themselves confronted with the question as to 
 how their resolution should be enforced. No one in the 
 conclave seemed to have courage enough to go to Johnson, 
 and make him acquainted with the decision that had been come 
 to. At last some one suggested the adoption of the ingenious 
 device of mutineers at sea, writing the matter of the com- 
 plaint within a circle and Ixaving the signatures standing out 
 from the circumference. This round-robin was at once 
 
THE MEMORIALS OF A MAN OF GENIUS 459 
 
 prepared by Dr. Barnard, Dean of Derry, and afterwards 
 Bishop of Killaloe, and, later, of Limerick, Sir William Forbes, 
 who gave an account of the business and enclosed a copy of 
 the document to Boswell, officiating as clerk. Sir William 
 mentioned that the Dean's address was " replete with wit 
 and humour," but the company feared that Johnson might 
 think that so important a matter should not be treated by 
 them with such levity. So Burke drew up something of a 
 dignified type and it was duly signed in radiating form, and 
 Sir Joshua conveyed it to Johnson, who " received it with 
 much good humour and desired Sir Joshua to tell the gentle- 
 men that he would alter the epitaph in any manner they 
 pleased as to the sense of it, but he would never consent to 
 disgrace the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English 
 inscription." 
 
 Boswell's comment on Sir William Forbes's communication 
 is as funny as might be expected from him. " The anecdote 
 . . . proves in the strongest manner the reverence and awe 
 with which Johnson was regarded by some of the most eminent 
 men of his time, in various departments, and even by such 
 of them as lived most with him ; while it also confirms what 
 I have again and again inculcated, that he was by no means 
 of that ferocious and irascible character which has been 
 ignorantly imagined." 
 
 He must have been passing through one of his most 
 sanguine intervals if he took it for granted that Johnson's 
 slap on the face which he administered to the gentlemen who 
 ventured to suggest that the inscription should be in English, 
 would settle for ever the question of his affability. And then 
 Johnson went into particulars. " I wonder that Joe Warton, 
 a scholar by profession, should be such a fool ! " he remarked 
 to Reynolds (further evidence of his suavity !) ; "I should 
 have thought Mund Burke, too, would have had more sense." 
 Then he went on to ask if any human being would like 
 to see the inscription on the Statue of Erasmus in 
 Rotterdam in Dutch instead of Latin; which would have 
 been an apt inquiry and quite to the point, if the 
 suggestion had been made that Goldsmith's epitaph should be 
 in Irish. 
 
 The agitation which was started by the subscribers to the 
 
46o THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 medallion soon subsided under the soothing influence of 
 Johnson's velvet touch. The original composition was 
 accepted, and it had every right to be accepted, for it is one 
 of the finest inscriptions in the Abbey, and one sentence of 
 it at least has become classical, though Dean Stanley, in the 
 first edition of his Memorials of Westminster Abbey, misquoted 
 it, and then said that it was not classical. He had not taken 
 the trouble to read what was engraved upon the tablet of 
 which he was the legal custodian ! Of course, he corrected 
 his text in the next edition of his delightful work. 
 
 OLIVARII GOLDSMITH, 
 PoET^, Physici, Historici, 
 Qui nullum fere seribendi genus non tetigit, 
 Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit : 
 
 SiVE RiSUS ESSENT MOVENDI, 
 
 SivE Lacrym^, 
 
 Affectuum potens, At lenis Dominator ; 
 
 Incenio sublimis, vividus, versatilis, 
 
 Oratione grandis, nitidus, venustus : 
 
 Hoc MONUMENTO MeMORIAM COLUIT 
 
 SoDALiuM Amor, 
 Amicorum Fides, 
 Lectorum Veneratio. 
 Natus In Hibernia Fornei/e Longfordiensis 
 
 In LOCO QUI NOMEN PaLLAS, 
 
 Nov. XXIX. MDCCXXXI 
 Eblan« Literis institutus 
 
 Objit Londini, 
 April IV. MDCCLXXIV. 
 
 Johnson also wrote a Greek tetrastic which he sent to 
 Boswell. 
 
 In 1837 the Benchers of the Temple Inn placed a marble 
 slab in the church in commemoration of the fact that Gold- 
 smith was buried in the Temple. The inscription upon this 
 is in English, the Benchers apparently not holding Johnson's 
 views as to the disgrace that attaches to the English language 
 when appearing on the walls of a church whose traditions are 
 wholly English. 
 
-PX- 
 
 _J 
 
 ThK statue by FOTKY at TkIMTY COLLK(;ii, DUIII.IX. 
 
THE MEMORIALS OF A MAN OF GENIUS ^6i 
 
 This Tablet 
 
 recording that 
 
 Oliver Goldsmith 
 
 Died ik the Temple 
 
 ON the 4TH OF April 1774 
 
 And was buried 
 
 In the adjoining churchyard 
 
 Was erected by the Benchers of 
 
 The Honourable Society of the 
 
 Inner Temple 
 
 A.D. 1837. 
 
 Sir Frederick Pollock, 
 
 Treasurer. 
 
 At a much later date Foley's statue of a handsome youth, 
 inscribed on the pedestal "Oliver Goldsmith," was placed 
 on the right of the entrance to Trinity College, Dublin, to 
 correspond with that of Burke which stands on the left. 
 Even the lapse of a hundred years does not make it too late 
 for a University to do honour to itself in this fashion. 
 
 This chapter cannot end more appropriately than with an 
 extract from WiUiam Allingham's Diary, referring to the acci- 
 dental visit of Thomas Carlyle to the Temple Church on May 
 4, 1879 • " Close by," said AUingham, " is Goldsmith's grave." 
 " Where is it ? " said Carlyle ; and then, " we stood beside the 
 simple but sufficient monument. ... C. took off his 
 broad-flapped black hat, saying, ' A Salute.' I followed his 
 example, and thus we stood for a few seconds." As they 
 were turning away Carlyle gave a laugh, saying, " Poor 
 Oliver ! " |3j 
 
 That is the tribute which philosophy pays to the memory 
 of Oliver Goldsmith — a laugh and a sigh. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 THE CONCLUSION OF ALL 
 
 Respecting the last illness of Oliver Goldsmith we have been 
 favoured with the opinion of Sir James Crichton Browne, 
 F.R.S. This distinguished authority believes that the 
 symptoms, so far as can be ascertained, suggest a disorder of 
 the kidneys. 
 
 The prominence given to the report that his death was 
 due to his use of James's Powders so threatened the sale of 
 this once popular medicine, that Newbery began to fear that 
 he would be compelled to trust in the future to the profits 
 of Goldsmith's books rather than to the profits of the Powders, 
 the efficacy of which his death had made doubtful. In his 
 panic he instituted an inquiry into the circumstances connected 
 with Goldsmith's last use of them, and collected and published 
 several affidavits showing — to the satisfaction of every one, 
 he hoped — that the value of the medicine was in no way 
 impaired by reason of its apparent failure in the case to which 
 he referred. The affidavits appeared as an appendix to the 
 pamphlet written by Hawes, which he entitled, " An Account 
 of the late Dr. Goldsmith's illness, so far as relates to the 
 Exhibition of Dr. James's Powders, together with Remarks 
 on the Use and Abuse of Powerful Medicines in the beginning 
 of Fevers and other Acute Disorders." The pamphlet was 
 dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds and Edmund Burke, who 
 had entrusted the writer with the carrying out of all the 
 arrangements incidental to the funeral. 
 
 Goldsmith's brother Maurice, who had come to London 
 
 from Ireland as the representative of the family, wrote a 
 
 letter of thanks to Mr. Hawes for his kindness and for his 
 
 attention to the various matters of business which he had 
 
 seen to. " I am thoroughly convinced of your care, assiduity 
 
 462 
 
i:he conclusion of all 463 
 
 and diligence with respect to my brother, Doctor Goldsmith," 
 wrote Maurice. " I am also convinced that as his affairs 
 were put into your hands by Sir Joshua Reynolds he could 
 have chose no one who would have acted with more caution 
 and disinterestedness than you have done, for which you 
 have my sincere wishes for the welfare of you and yours." 
 
 Poor Maurice Goldsmith went back to Ireland doubtless 
 greatly disappointed to have found out that, as his brother had 
 written to him regarding his appointment to the Academy, 
 distinction is one thing and the amassing of a fortune is 
 quite another. 
 
 He returned to his home in Ireland to resume his work 
 as a cabinet-maker. He died several years later in great 
 poverty. Benevolent attempts were made by Bishop Percy 
 on behalf of the other members of the Goldsmith family, 
 all of whom had fallen on evil days ; but he was unable to 
 do much. There was not one in the direct line that did not 
 die in the very depths of poverty. The Goldsmiths were not 
 a family that possessed any of those qualities which tend 
 toward success in life. Their temperament, as well as their 
 training, was such as unfitted them to achieve anything in 
 life except acting as a warning to future generations, against 
 the inculcating of unworldliness as the leading principle 
 of life. They had all been nurtured on these doctrines which, 
 if acted upon, cannot but end in disaster, since they are 
 contrary to the established and immutable laws of Nature. 
 It was a strict adherence to the family tradition of regarding 
 forty pounds a year as the limit of human ambition and 
 pecuniary acquisition that wiped out the family. The sum 
 of their disqualifications for success is represented by the word 
 unpracticability. They were educated to be unpractical — to 
 face the world in the assumption that the principles which 
 had been inculcated upon them were those that were 
 recognised by the world. They had no more chance of 
 " getting on " under these conditions than has a man who 
 goes into battle as a combatant with a bundle of lint in his 
 hand instead of a sword. They faced their contest with the 
 world in the belief that the one who bound up most wounds 
 was accounted the victor. They had learned one set of rules 
 of life, but these were not the rules under which the game of 
 
464 7HE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 life is played, and they only found out their mistake when it 
 was too late to make an attempt to retrieve it. The rules 
 they had learned belonged to the " royal game of goose," and 
 we know what becomes of the geese in the game of life. 
 
 And Oliver Goldsmith was a member of the Goldsmith 
 family. He had inherited the traits that appertained to the 
 people of the country of his birth, and instead of being 
 subjected to such a training as would have corrected these 
 traits, directing them into such channels as would make them 
 of use to him, as the ingenuity of man has turned the dominant 
 elements of Nature so as to be of advantage to himself, he had 
 been taught every doctrine that is directly antagonistic to 
 the economy of Nature. When a man who knew him well, 
 declared that he was a fool, he gave a very good summary 
 of the judgment which the practical people of the world 
 have ever delivered upon such a man as Oliver Goldsmith. 
 The condition of his rooms was typical of his career. There 
 was nothing but disorder in his life. He made no attempt 
 to regulate it. He made no attempt to govern the incidents 
 of life as men who are called practical do — making one success 
 lead to another, and linking them all together so closely as to 
 prevent there being any room for a failure. In his achievement 
 he was, as Johnson said, a great man, but in the ordering of 
 his life he was, as Cooke said, a fool. Of every step in life 
 that he took it might be said that no one but a fool would have 
 acted thus. He used to talk of playing the fool sometimes. 
 That was the only part that he played with success. The 
 products of his genius were of no use to himself, so far as the 
 living of his life was concerned. Instead of his way becoming 
 easier when he had written The Traveller and every one was 
 talking about him, he made it more difficult for himself, and 
 the greater his successes were, the more arduous was his 
 struggle. They were Pyrrhic victories. When the last and 
 most conspicuous of all was achieved, he was completely 
 undone. The success of She Stoops to Conquer placed him in 
 the position of the greatest writer of comedy in England, 
 and the next day he was working shoulder to shoulder with 
 Grub Street hacks, and ruin was staring him in the face. 
 No one but a genius could have produced the works that came 
 from his pen, and no one but a fool would have failed to make 
 
THE CONCLUSION OF ALL 465 
 
 something for himself out of them. It may be truthfully- 
 said that his successes became a burthen to him : he was able 
 to bear up against the first and the second, but when they 
 accumulated they overwhelmed him and he sank under their 
 oppression. We repeat " he flung away his life and genius 
 in handfuls," and all that he had to show for it was a crowd 
 of outcasts weeping on his staircase. 
 
 There can be no simpler or more agreeable exercise than 
 the rearrangement, on a rational scale, of the life of a man 
 of genius. Taking a bird's-eye view, so to speak, of his 
 career, one sees without any difficulty the numerous mistakes 
 that he made, the various pitfalls into which he went headlong, 
 and the wrong turnings which he took. The course pursued 
 by a man of genius in his walk through the world is usually 
 zigzag ; but one has only to draw a pen from angle to angle 
 to straighten it out, and when one has done this, one sees in 
 a moment the track that he would have followed if he had 
 been a man of wisdom instead of a man of genius. There is 
 no better way of combining material comfort with ease of 
 locomotion in a walk through life than by keeping to the King's 
 highway. The beaten track — that is safe and certain. It is, 
 however, only the people who leave this track and go wandering 
 along unbeaten ways, that learn anything about the world 
 through which they are travelling. We can look at the track 
 left by Oliver Goldsmith, and, finding it diverging so greatly 
 on every hand from the well-trodden highway of security, 
 shake our heads and call him a fool. We can easily see that 
 if he had acted with prudence and a reasonable regard for his 
 own comfort, he would have been as prosperous as a book- 
 seller instead of being as needy as a bookseller's hack. We 
 can see without difficulty that if, after sowing the wild oats 
 of indiscriminate beneficence, he had settled down to 
 practise as a physician and to collect his fees, he might have 
 enjoyed a long life of placid obscurity. If he had had the 
 sense to jump at the offer made to him by the Earl of 
 Northumberland when going to Ireland, he would have got 
 something " on the Irish Establishnient," and we should have 
 had no Deserted Village ; if he had put his pride to one side 
 when Parson Scott approached him with an offer for the use 
 of his pen, he would have pocketed a pension, and we should 
 
 2 G 
 
466 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 not have She Stoops to Conquer ; and all this simply means 
 that, if he had been a man diflFerent from the man that he was, 
 we should not have had Oliver Goldsmith. 
 
 It is, however, very difficult for any one who knows the 
 value of highways to refrain from assuming a great deal in 
 regard to the career of such a man. It seems so very plain 
 that the greater part of his life was wasted. Two poems, 
 two comedies, one short novel and a volume of Essays — that 
 is the sum of his work as a writer. His work as a compiler is 
 much greater in bulk, and it bears the impress of his incompar- 
 able style, but it is not to be considered alongside the product 
 of his imagination. Are these six works all that might reason- 
 ably be looked for as the result of the life's work of Oliver 
 Goldsmith ? 
 
 That is the question which forces itself upon us ; and with 
 a sense of having been deprived of a poem that would have 
 been more exquisite still than The Deserted Village, half a 
 score of novels every one of them equal in charm to The 
 Vicar of Wakefield, and a dozen comedies more delightful 
 than She Stoops to Conquer, we are led into that profitless 
 exercise of affirming what might have been. 
 
 Being able to get a hundred guineas for a poem of five 
 or six hundred lines, why did he not sit down and write 
 one when The Traveller had given him fame ? When the 
 publishers of The Vicar of Wakefield had made so much by 
 its sale, why did he not sit down and write another novel 
 instead of a History of England F When he could write such 
 a comedy as She Stoops to Conquer, why should he not have 
 written eight others instead of the eight volumes of Animated 
 Nature ? 
 
 That is what we are led to ask, and having asked it, we feel 
 that we do well to be angry with the booksellers for not 
 understanding the requirements of the world better than to 
 set the poet down to compile school books, the novelist to 
 compile ancient history, and the playwriter to translate from a 
 naturalist ? We forget the whole debt which we owe to our 
 author, and allow ourselves to be irritated at his folly in 
 becoming the slave of the booksellers when he had it in his 
 power to become their master. Finally, we are led to denounce 
 the Government of the day in refusing to grant a pension to 
 
THE CONCLUSION OF ALL 467 
 
 Goldsmith when they flung their pensions to a score of writers 
 whose names convey nothing to us when we hear them 
 spoken to-day. 
 
 All this is to no purpose, because we know that genius is 
 usually like the gold in quartz : it only appears under a process 
 of crushing. If Goldsmith's life had been a life of order and 
 method it would have been dominated by other forces than 
 those which led to the production of the works of genius 
 that came from his pen, and consequently those works would 
 never have been produced. There never was a. writer who 
 put his own life into his works to the same extent as did 
 Oliver Goldsmith, and we feel about him as we must about 
 every other man of genius, that if the way of his life had been 
 different, assuredly his work would not have been the same ; 
 and, so far as Oliver Goldsmith is concerned, who would have 
 been willing to run the risk of anything that he did being im- 
 proved by an alteration of the scheme under which it was 
 produced ? Speculate as we may upon the splendid possi- 
 bilities of his genius under other conditions of life, it is safe 
 for us to assume that, as the imaginative works of Oliver 
 Goldsmith were produced under certain conditions, under 
 no other conditions would the same works have been given 
 to us. We know what these works are, and would we like 
 them to be different to the extent of a hair's breadth ? 
 Assuredly we would not. They remain to-day the best 
 beloved of all that was written in the century to which they 
 belong, and the name of their author remains to-day the best 
 beloved in the long roll of English literature. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM THE LEDGER OF WILLIAM FILBY, 
 TAILOR, AT THE SIGN OF THE HARROW 
 IN WATER-LANE 
 Mr. Oliver Goldsmith, Dr. 
 
 Brick Court, Temple, No. 2, up two pair of stairs. 
 
 1767. Brought from fol. 26 
 
 March 4. To superfine suit complete 
 June 19. To suit complete . 
 Sept. 8. To superfine cloth breeches 
 Oct. 2. To suit of state mourning 
 Dec. 26. To black thick-set breeches 
 28. To superfine frock suit 
 
 (Paid by a draft on Mr. Griffin, Feb. 6, 1768.) 
 
 
 £ .. d. 
 
 25 19 21 
 609 
 
 6 lV:6 
 
 
 I 2 Zo 
 
 
 6 89 
 
 
 I 10 
 
 
 5 12 
 
 1768. 
 Jan. 
 
 21. 
 
 March 
 
 17- 
 
 June 
 July 
 Aug. 
 Sept. 
 
 16. 
 
 22. 
 29. 
 24. 
 
 Nov. 
 
 30- 
 29. 
 
 £52 5 o 
 
 L ^- d. 
 
 To Tyrian bloom satin grain and 
 
 garter blue silk breeches 
 To suit of clothes colour, lined 
 
 vnth silk, and gold buttons . 
 To suit of mourning 
 To two yards of green livery cloth . 
 To suit cleaned .... 
 To coat and waistcoat cleaned and 
 
 made up . 
 To fine worsted breeches 
 To suit of grain mixture 
 
 To man . . . . • 
 
 £32 I 7 
 
 (Paid Oct. 9, 1769, by a note on Mr. Griffin, three months after 
 
 date, for £33.) 
 
 469 
 
 9 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 S 
 
 12 
 
 6 
 
 I 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 14 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 
470 
 
 1769. 
 
 
 
 £ ^■ 
 
 d. 
 
 Jan. 
 
 6. 
 
 To calico waistcoats 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 Feb. 
 
 9- 
 II. 
 
 To suit of clothes 
 
 To altering two pairs of breeches for 
 
 8 14 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 ____inan ..... 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 17- 
 
 To mending ditto 
 
 I 
 
 6 
 
 Sept. 
 
 19- 
 
 To pair of silk breeches 
 
 2 3 
 
 
 
 
 24. 
 
 To making a frock suit of cloth 
 
 6 3 
 
 9 
 
 Oct. 
 
 16. 
 
 To making a half-dress suit of ratteen 
 
 
 
 
 
 lined with satin 
 
 12 12 
 
 
 
 
 
 To a pair of silk stocking breeches . 
 
 2 s 
 
 
 
 
 
 To a pair of bloom-coloured ditto . 
 
 I 4 
 
 6 
 
 1770. 
 
 
 
 
 
 April 
 
 21. 
 
 To Bath coating surtout 
 
 I 10 
 
 
 
 
 
 To dress suit .... 
 
 9 19 
 
 3 
 
 Mav 
 
 3- 
 
 To suit ..... 
 
 5 17 
 
 7J 
 
 hh 
 
 4- 
 
 To suit ..... 
 
 7 13 
 
 9 
 
 Sept. 
 
 8. 
 
 To suit of mourning 
 
 S 12 
 
 
 
 £64 6 of 
 
 (Paid /40 February 8, 177 1, by a note of hand on Mr. Thos. Davies ; 
 and £2^ October 2, by part of a note of hand on Griffin.) 
 
 1771. 
 Jan. 
 
 Feb. 
 April 
 
 Oct. 
 Dec. 
 
 3. To clothes scouring and mending and 
 
 pressing ..... 
 
 3. To pair of best silk stocking breeches 
 
 24. To suit of clothes, lined with silk, 
 
 gold buttons, &c. 
 
 8. To best silk breeches 
 
 II. To frock suit, lined with [illegible], 
 
 half trimmed with gold sprig 
 
 buttons . 
 
 17. To Queen's blue dress suit 
 
 3. To suit, plain 
 
 5. To silk breeches . 
 
 To jobs, mending, &c. 
 
 Jan. 4. To half-trimmed frock suit 
 
 31. To suit of mourning 
 March 18. To fine ratteen surtout, in grain 
 
 4 
 
 2 5 
 
 6 
 6 
 
 9 17 
 2 5 
 
 6 
 6 
 
 8 13 
 
 5 
 
 II 17 
 
 
 
 s 13 
 
 
 
 2 2 
 
 9 
 
 s 
 
 
 
 s 15 
 
 
 
 5 12 
 
 
 
 3 5 
 
 6 
 
April 
 
 May 
 May 
 
 June 
 
 July 
 
 Nov. 
 
 Dec. 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 28. To Princess stuff breeches 
 
 1 . To superfine cloth ditto 
 
 2. "" 
 
 471 
 
 5- 
 21. 
 
 8. 
 
 19- 
 
 i8. 
 
 13- 
 17- 
 
 To suit of livery 
 
 To ditto, frock and waistcoat 
 
 To jacket 
 To your blue velvet suit 
 To crimson collar for man 
 To altering two coats . 
 To velvet suit new-coloured 
 To mending, &c. . 
 To making velvet waistcoat 
 To jobs, &c. 
 
 1773- 
 March 
 
 7- 
 10. 
 
 13- 
 
 I s. d. 
 
 I 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 10 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 12 
 
 6 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 21 
 
 10 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 ' I 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 S 
 
 8 
 
 I 
 
 7 
 
 6 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 IS 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 6 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 6 
 
 4. To Princess stuff breeches 
 II. To suit ..... 
 
 April 12. To mending, &c 
 
 May 7. To velvet waistcoat, cleaning, &c. . 
 To altering suit, and for serge de soy 
 
 for waistcoat and skirts, &c. 
 To rich straw silk tamboured waist- 
 coat ..... 
 June 2. Tamboured waistcoat cleaned 
 
 To green half-trimmed frock and 
 breeches, lined with silk, &c. &c. . 
 To silver-grey silk tamboured waist- 
 coat ..... 
 17. To fine brown cambric waistcoat, 
 tamboured .... 
 Mr. Hodson's bill to order 
 
 Bill delivered .... ;^I58 4 4 
 
 2 
 35 
 
 6 
 
 o 
 
 Mr. Filby's account against Goldsmith, as it appeared at his death, 
 showed him indebted in the sum of ^^79 \\s. A portion of this 
 (^48 4/. 6d) was the unpaid balance of the preceding account. The 
 latest half-year's supply from July to December 1773 (including two 
 suits, charged respectively £^ ic,s. 6d. and ^5 I3J-., and £z 19J. T,d. for 
 a great-coat), amounted to ^^23 14/. ()d. ; and there was an additional 
 item of £7 14-f. 9^. for a third suit, sent home a fortnight before his 
 death. After quoting Johnson's mention of his extravagance, Mr. John 
 Forster appropriately adds : " Let me at least accompaiTy this . . . 
 with his friend's excellent remark at Mrs. Thrale's one day, when 
 
472 APPENDIX 
 
 somebody was denouncing ' showy decorations of the human figure.' 
 ' Oh,' exclaimed Johnson, ' let us not be found, when our Master calls 
 us, ripping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit of contention 
 from our souls and tongues. . . . Alas, sir ! a man who cannot get to 
 heaven in a green coat will not find his way thither the sooner in a 
 grey one.' " 
 
 Johnson's admirable remark appears in Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abikgton, Frances, retirement from 
 part of Miss Hardcastle, 399, 400 
 
 Absolom and, Achitophel, by Dryden, 346 
 
 Addison, Joseph, 152, 194, 204, 243, 
 441 
 
 Ainger, Alfred, Master of tlie Temple, 
 
 457 
 Albinus, Professor at Leyden, 112, 114, 
 
 117 
 "Almack's,''63 
 
 Alston, Charles, professor of Materia 
 Medica, Edinburgh, Goldsmith's 
 criticism of, 113 
 America : 
 
 Goldsmith's proposed voyage to, 
 
 94, 11S-116 
 social condition of, foretold in The 
 Deserted Village, 343 
 Andrews, Dr., Provost of Trinity Col- 
 lege, Dublin, 58 
 Arbuthnot, John, 348 
 Ardagh, Goldsmith's adventure at, 52- 
 
 54 
 Argyll, Duke of, 220 
 
 Astor, W. W., 321 
 Athlone, 46 
 
 Rev. Mr. Campbell's school, 52- 
 
 .54 
 Auchinleck, Lord, Bosvyell's father, 14 
 
 Baker, Dr. George, 324 
 
 BaUymahon, Mrs. Goldsmith's home 
 
 and Goldsmith's life at, 81, 82-87, 
 
 90,92,98, 100, 112, 113, 119 
 Ballyoughter, 50, 333 
 Baretti, Joseph, Bosvyell's account of 
 
 case, 26-28, 331 
 Barnard, William, D.D., Dean of Derry, 
 
 Bishop of KiUaloe and Limerick, 
 
 458-459 
 
 Barton Hall, Norfolk, 320, 322, 372- 
 
 374. 378 
 Basle, visited by Goldsmith, 132 
 Bath: 
 
 Colman at, 404 
 Goldsmith at, 234-235, 357 
 " Bear," St. James's Street, 20 
 Beattie, Dr. James, 230, 232-233, 322- 
 
 323 
 Goldsmith's opinion of, 183, 438 
 Johnson's portrait of, 183-184,438 
 Pension, 438 
 Beauclerc : 
 
 Lady Diana, 311 
 
 Topham, 241, 242, 264, 302, 311, 
 367,421,438,441,456 
 Beaumont, Francis, 424 
 The Beaux Stratagem, 385 
 Bedford, John Russell, 9th Duke of. 
 Goldsmith's portrait bought by, 
 1816, 335 
 " Bedford," Covent Garden, 282 
 Bedingfeld, Charlotte Georgiana, Lady, 
 
 journal quoted, 320 
 the Bee, establishment of, and Gold- 
 smith's vyork on, 144, 191-196 
 Bernard, James, 176 
 Berne, visited by Goldsmith, 132 
 Bickerstaff, Isaac, 298, 309, 353 
 BirreU, Augustine, edition of Boswell 
 
 referred to, 9, 249 
 Blackmore, Sir William, 298 
 Bolingbroke : 
 
 Henry St. John, Lord Viscount, 
 
 life by Goldsmith, 349, 356 
 Lady, see Beauclerc, Lady Diana 
 Bordeaux, 116, 1 17 
 
 Boswell, James, 45, 87, 138, 204, 236, 
 238, 265, 267, 280, 282, 295, 
 302, 402, 454, 459, 460 
 
 473 
 
474 
 
 INDEX TO THE LIFE OF 
 
 Boswell, James — continued- 
 
 account of Goldsmith and attitude 
 towards, 3^33, 47, 54, 134-135, 
 222-223, 224, 226-227, 228, 
 230, 232, 24s, 246-247, 247-250, 
 252,291,308,313,313-314,318, 
 
 329> 330-331, 348. 358, 382-383, 
 413,415-417,420 
 account of, 13-26 
 meeting with Goldsmith, 220-221 
 admission to the Literary Club, 
 
 241, 242 
 on exclusion of Garrick from the 
 
 Literary Club, 241-242 
 interview with Pitt, 259, 261 
 and The Traveller, 259-260 
 and the Vicar of Wakefield, 266 
 interest in executions, 273 
 visit to Goldsmith's farm, 393 
 fear that Goldsmith should write 
 
 Johnson's Life, 414-415 
 and Garrick, 422, 423-424 
 mischief made between Johnson 
 and Goldsmith, 427-428 
 Bott, Thomas, 304, 306 
 Boyd, Hugh, 392 
 Boyle, Hon. Robert, 367 
 Bradley, Mr., bookseller, Dame Street, 
 
 Dublin, 158, 165, 167, 168 
 Brick Court, 297, 304, 449, 452, 453 
 British Magazine or Monthly Repository 
 for Gentlemen and Ladies, establish- 
 ment of, and Goldsmith's work on, 
 196-198 
 Brussels, visited "by Goldsmith, 131 
 Bryanton : 
 Betty, 108 
 Peggy, 108 
 Robert, 168, 171 
 
 friend and companion of 
 
 Goldsmith at Ballymahon, 
 
 82-83, 84, 89 
 
 Goldsmith's letters to, 107- 
 
 109, 156, 158-161 
 
 Buckingham, Mary Elizabeth, Lady, 356 
 
 Buflon, George Louis Leclerc, Comte 
 
 de, naturalist, 47, 48, 364, 433 
 Bulkley, Mrs. (Miss Wilfrid), part of 
 Miss Hardcastle taken by, 45, 400 
 
 Bunbury : 
 
 Catherine (Horneck), " Little 
 
 Comedy," 319, 324, 376-378 
 Sir Charles, 450 
 
 Henry, 319, 321, 323, 413, 450 
 party at Barton Hall, 372-374 
 Bunting, Edward, bard, 85 
 Burke : 
 
 Rt. Hon. Edmund, 16, 28, 154, 
 237, 242, 243, 261, 274,280, 
 287,288,289,311,323,333, 
 
 335,363,368,443,459,461, 
 462 
 at Trinity College, Dublin, 
 
 with Goldsmith, 75 
 irony of, 225-226 
 Goldsmith and oratory of, 232 
 member of the Literary Club, 
 
 241 
 and The Traveller, 260 
 and the Vicar of Wakefield, 274 
 and the Good Natur'd Man, 
 
 288 
 letter to Mary Horneck, 322 
 Goldsmith's epitaph of, 445- 
 
 446 
 grief at Goldsmith's death,454 
 nominated as Goldsmith's 
 
 pall-bearer, 456 
 not at Goldsmith's burial, 457 
 address to Johnson, 459 
 Richard, 444 
 Burney : 
 
 Dr. Charles : 
 
 contribution promised to A 
 Popular Dictionary of Arts 
 and Sciences, ^'^l 
 and Tom Davies' shop, 218 
 Fanny, 17-20, 265, 267, 268, 294, 
 318,321,325,333,358 
 Burns, Robert, 2 
 Burton, John HiU, 281 
 the Busybody, 196 
 Bute, John, 3rd Marquis : 
 
 Goldsmith's memorial to, for 
 appointment to department of 
 Oriental research, 235, 237 
 pension list, 236 
 Butler, 164 
 
Byrne, Thomas, quartermaster 
 
 schoolmaster, 49-50, 53 
 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 93, 256 
 
 Calais, letter to Reynoldsfrom, 350, 35 1 
 
 Camden, Charles Pratt, ist Earl, and 
 Goldsmith, 358 
 
 The Campaign, by Addison, reference, 
 152 
 
 Campbell, Rev. Thomas, on Gold- 
 smith's birthplace, 34 
 
 Canonbury House, Islington, Gold- 
 smith at, 284 
 
 The Captivity, oratorio, 382 
 
 Carolan, Irish bard, 85 -86 
 
 Carte, Thomas, 369 
 
 Castle Coote, 109 
 
 Chaloner, Miss, of Chester, 61 
 
 Chambers, Sir William, 306, 424 
 
 visit to Goldsmith at farm, 392- 
 
 393 
 Sir Robert, 311, 335 
 Chamier, Anthony : 
 
 and The Traveller, 126, 257, 259 
 member of the Literary Club, 241 
 Champigny, Chevalier de, 308 
 Charlemont, James Caulfield, 1st Earl 
 
 of, 57 
 
 Charles X., and The Vicar of Wakefield, 
 274 
 
 Charteris, Francis, Col., 193 
 
 Chatham, William Pitt, Earl of. Bos- 
 well's interview with, 259, 261 
 
 Chatterton, Thomas, Walpole's atti- 
 tude, 359-361 
 
 Cherokees, Goldsmith's visit to, 239 
 
 Chesterfield, Philip Dormer, 4th Earl 
 of, Viceregent : 226 
 influence on Dublin, 56-57, 226 
 and Dr. Johnson, 186 
 
 Chippendale, Thomas, 203 
 
 Chronological History of the Lives of 
 Eminent Persons of Great Britain and 
 Ireland, 244-245 
 
 ChurchiU, Charles, 211, 218, 256-257, 
 
 273 
 Cibber : 
 
 CoUey, 27, 32, 194, 330-331 
 Mrs., 32 
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 and 
 
 475 
 
 Cipriani, Giovanni Battista, 56, 3 1 1 
 Citizen of the World, 137-138, 139, 198, 
 
 200-209,214,234,308,419 
 Clairon, Mile., 193 
 The Clandestine Marriage, by Garrick 
 
 and Colman, 288, 290 
 Clare, Robert Nugent, Lord, 353, 380 
 and Goldsmith, 263, 280,. 356-358, 
 362, 364 
 Claxton, Mr., 9 
 Clonfert Abbey, 47 
 Clon-mac-nois, 46 
 Cock Lane ghost, 198, 234 
 Collins, printer, of Salisbury, 265 
 Colman : 
 
 George, 333, 353,407,409,413,439 
 
 and Tom Davies' shop, 219 
 
 Covent Garden management 
 
 taken over by syndicate 
 
 under, 288 
 
 and The Good-Natur'd Man, 
 
 288-289 
 entertained by Goldsmith, 
 
 298 
 and She Stoops to Conquer, 
 129, 390, 394-405 
 George, the younger, anecdote of 
 Goldsmith, 283 
 Comic Romance, by Scarron, 450 
 Congreve, William, 16, 27, 194, 279 
 Contarine : 
 
 Jane, see Lawder. 
 Rev. Thomas, 50, 51, 82, 130, 225 
 Goldsmith assisted by, at 
 school and college, 61-62,70 
 Goldsmith sent as tutor to 
 
 Mr. Flinn, 90-91 
 Sum given to Goldsmith for 
 
 law training, 98-99 
 Goldsmith at house of, 99 
 expenses of Goldsmith's med- 
 ical education offered by, 
 loi, 102 
 Goldsmith's letters to, 103, 
 
 105, 109-I14, 116-I19 
 illness, 130, 132 
 Contarini family, of Venice, 61 
 Conway, George, alehouse, BaUymahon, 
 82, 112, 122 
 
476 
 
 INDEX TO THE LIFE OF 
 
 Cook, Capt. James, 380 
 
 Cooke, William, 213, 231, 262, 265, 282, 
 
 299. 302. 323>. 328, 349 
 anecdotes of Pilkingtcn and Lloyd, 
 
 211-212 
 entertained by Goldsmith, 298 
 on payment received by Goldsmith 
 for The Deserted FiUage,'}/\.g-'^^o 
 and She Stoops to Conquer, 396, 412 
 on Goldsmith, 464 
 Cork, Goldsmith at, 91, 94, 105, 115-16 
 Cornelly, Mrs., musical evenings, 382 
 Coromandel Coast, Goldsmith's hopes 
 of medical appointment on, 155, 166, 
 168, 172, 174-175 
 Corsican Revolution, Boswell and, 14 
 the Cottager, 191 
 Cotes, Francis, R.A., 306 
 Covent Garden, 287, 288, 385, 396, 
 
 412, 425 
 Cowrper, William, i 
 Crabbe, George, 231 
 Cradock, Joseph, 401, 418, 421, 431, 
 432, 441, 442 
 friendship with Goldsmith,38o-38l 
 epilogue vyritten for She Stoops to 
 Conquer, 405 
 Cranham Hall, Essex, Goldsmith in- 
 vited to, 307 
 Crichton-Brown, Sir James, F.R.S., 
 
 opinion on Goldsmith's illness, 462 
 The Critic ; or. The Tragedy Rehearsed, 
 
 by Sheridan, 403 
 Critical Review : 
 
 Goldsmith engaged to write in, 
 
 151, 172 
 Johnson's notice of The Traveller, 
 253, 256 
 Croker, John Wilson, edition of Bos- 
 well's Life of Johnson, 231, 249, 357 
 Crome, John, 340 
 " Crown " Tavern, Islington Lower 
 
 Road, 284 
 Cumberland, Richard, 226, 325, 373 
 and She Stoops to Conquer, 402-403, 
 
 406-407 
 and The Animated Nature, 432-433 
 and the Retaliation, 442-443 
 Cumberland, Duke of, 362 
 
 Daily Advertiser, Goldsmith's letter in, 
 
 414, 419-420 
 Darwin, Sir Charles, 433 
 David Garrick, 293 
 Davies : 
 
 Thomas : 27, 281, 331 
 
 Boswell introduced to John- 
 son by, 15, 16 
 frequenters of shop, 218-219, 
 
 220, 221 
 and Goldsmith, 303, 315-316, 
 348. 349> 355-356, 368, 369, 
 
 379. 429-430, 431, 47° 
 Mrs., 218 
 Day, Robert : 
 
 friendship with Goldsmith, 336, 
 
 364 
 at Goldsmith's funeral, 457 
 De Foe, Daniel, 225 
 Delap, Elizabeth, 48-49, 53 
 Dekker, Thomas, 302 
 The Deserted Village, 3, 129, 177, 255, 
 257, 267, 316, 317, 327, 328,366, 
 386, 465, 466 
 question of identity of persons and 
 
 places, 36, 37, 38, 49, 272 
 work on, 302-303, 306, 326 
 publication and criticism, 329-332, 
 
 336-347 
 payment for, 349-350 
 proposed edition with The 
 
 Traveller, 441-442 
 Desmond, Gerald Fitzgerald, 5th Earl 
 
 of, 35 
 " Devil " tavern, 282 
 Dilly, bros., dinner given by, in the 
 
 Poultry, 9-10, 427 
 Dobson, Austin, 267 
 Dodsley, Robert, 178, 245 ** 
 
 An Enquiry into the present State 
 of Polite Learning in Europe pub- 
 lished by, 184 
 agreement with Goldsmith for A 
 Chronological History of the Lives 
 of Eminent Persons of Great 
 Britain and Ireland, 244-245 
 Dorset, Duke of. Goldsmith's portrait 
 
 purchased by, 335 
 Douglas Cause, 14 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 477 
 
 Dover, Goldsmith's journey to London, 
 
 140-141 
 Drury Lane, 287, 397, 422, 425 
 Dryden, John, i, 243, 256, 257, 260, 
 
 328, 346> 381, 446, 415 
 Du Hammel de Monceau, Professor of 
 
 Medicine, Paris, iii 
 Dublin : 
 
 condition and description, and 
 life of, middle of i8th century, 
 
 55-59 
 Goldsmith in, 55-71, 72-76, 
 
 105, 219 
 statue to Goldsmith, 461 
 Trinity College, 62-65, 68 
 Dunciad, by Pope, 226 
 Dunkarton, Robert, engraver, 320 
 Dyer, Samuel, member of the Literary 
 Club, 241 
 
 East India Company, Goldsmith's hopes 
 of appointment under, 155, 166, 168, 
 172, 174-175 
 Easton Maudit, Goldsmith invited to, 
 
 304-305 
 Edgware Road, Goldsmith inlodgingsin, 
 46, 304-306, 367, 384, 391-392, 449 
 Edgeworthstovyn, Co. Longford, Gold- 
 smith with Rev. P. Hughes of, 52 
 Edinburgh, Goldsmith in, 103-114, 219 
 Edwin and Angelina, 276 
 7he Elegy, by Gray, 254, 258 
 Elegy, on the Death of a Mad Dog, 213 
 EUis, Dr., account of Goldsmith in 
 
 Leyden, 122-123 
 Elphin, Co. Roscommon, 37, 43, 61 
 quotedasGoldsmith's birthplace, 34 
 Goldsmith at Rev. Mr. Griffin's 
 
 school, 50-52 
 Bishop of, rejection of Goldsmith 
 as candidate for Holy orders, 87, 
 88, 89-90 
 Elwin, Dr. Whitwell, on The Citizen 
 
 of the World, 204, 206, 208 
 Emlagh, 109 
 
 the English Academy of Arts, after- 
 wards the Royal Academy, 306, 331, 
 
 332> 333-334 
 see also Royal Academy 
 
 Enquiry into the Present State of Polite 
 
 Learning in Europe, 66, 124, 129, 155, 
 
 174, 183-189, 190, 190-191, 278-279, 
 
 286, 450 
 Essay on Truth, by Beattie, 439 
 Essex Court, 363 
 Ethrington, Mr., at Goldsmith's 
 
 funeral, 457 
 Europe, Goldsmith's tour, 84, 124-139 
 European Magazine, 211, 249 
 " Eutropius, 314 
 Evans, Thomas, publisher of the 
 
 Packet, Goldsmith's assault on, 414, 
 
 418-419, 421-422, 429 
 Evelina, by Fanny Burney, 265-266, 
 
 268 
 Eyles, John, Goldsmith's servant, 453 
 
 False Delicacy, by KeUy, production by 
 
 Garrick, 289-290 
 Fantocinni, exhibition of, in London, 
 
 Goldsmith at, 4-5, 230, 231-232, 385, 
 
 398. 
 
 Farhein, Professor of Medicine, Paris, 
 III 
 
 Farr, Dr. William, 143 
 
 Faulkenor, George, 333 
 
 Featherstone : 
 
 P., Goldsmith's adventure at house 
 
 of, 52-54, 395 
 Sir Thomas, 54 
 
 Ferrers, Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl, 
 206 
 
 Fielding, Henry, 204 
 
 Filby, John and William, Harrow, 
 Water Lane, Goldsmith's tailors, 7, 
 121, 239-240, 245, 330, 356, 469-472 
 
 FitzHerbert, William, 28, 407 
 
 Flanders, Goldsmith in, 128, 130 
 
 Fleming, Mrs., Goldsmith's Islington 
 landlady, 84, 239-240, 245, 246, 250 
 
 Fleet Ditch, 452 
 
 Fleet Street, 310, 452 
 
 Fletcher, John, 424 
 
 Flinn, Mr., Goldsmith as tutor to sons 
 of, 91 
 
 Flood, Henry, fellow-commoner at 
 Trinity College, Dublin, with Gold- 
 smith, 75 
 
478 
 
 INDEX TO THE LIFE OF 
 
 Florence, visited by Goldsmith, 132, 
 
 136 
 Florus, Lucius, 314 
 Foley, J. H., R.A., statue of Goldsmith, 
 
 Dublin, 461 
 Foote, Samuel, 27, 28, 29, 30, 82, 219, 
 325, 421, 423 
 and Johnson and Goldsmith, 219 
 and The Primitive Puppet Show, 
 
 398-399 
 She Stoop to Conquer performed by, 
 412 
 Forbes, Sir William, 459 
 Fordyce, Dr. : 
 
 admission to the Literary Club, 
 
 450 
 Goldsmith attended by, 451, 453 
 Forster, John, biographer of Goldsmith, 
 93, 122, 176-177, 208, 237, 274, 310- 
 311, 322, 375, 439, 440, 456, 457, 471 
 Fox, Charles : 
 
 admirer of The Traveller, 260 
 admission to the Literary Club, 450 
 Fragonard, Jean Honore, painter, 38 
 France, Goldsmith in, 4, 21, 128, 131, 
 
 350-354 
 Franklin, Benjamin, and Thomas Paine, 
 
 388 
 
 French Revolution, foretold by Gold- 
 smith, 137-138, 344 
 
 A Friar of Orders Gray, by Percy, Gold- 
 smith accused of plagiarising, 274- 
 277 
 
 Gal WAY, 35 
 
 Game of Chess, by Vida, adaptation by 
 
 Goldsmith, 375 
 Garden Court, 297, 305 
 Garrick, David, 27, 142, 283, 335, 354, 
 385, 395. 396, 401, 438 
 Boswell and, 28, 30, 31-32, 428 
 relations with Goldsmith, 189, 193, 
 
 278-279, 421-422 
 and Tom Davies' shop, 219 
 exclusion from the Literary Club 
 and subsequent election, 241- 
 242, 422 
 and The Vicar of Wakefield, 274, 
 286 
 
 Garrick — continued 
 
 and The Good-Natur'd Man, 287- 
 288, 29s, 296, 439-441 
 
 production of Kelly's False Deli- 
 cacy, 289-290 
 
 and Griffin, 308 
 
 dumb crambo entertainment with 
 Goldsmith, 325, 441 
 
 at Barton Hall, 372-373 
 
 She Stoofs to Conquer sent to, 397 
 
 and The Handsome Housemaid, 
 
 398-399 • 
 prologue to She Stoops to Conquer, 
 
 399 
 and Cumberland, 403 
 imitation of Johnson, 422-423 
 contribution promised to A Pop- 
 ular Dictionary of Arts and 
 Sciences, 431 
 epitaph of Goldsmith, 442, 443, 
 
 444 
 Goldsmith's epitaph of, (445), 446- 
 
 447 
 nominated as Goldsmith's pall- 
 bearer, 456 
 Gaussen, Miss Alice, 24 
 Gaubius, professor at Leyden, 119 
 Gay, John, 348 
 Geneva, Goldsmith at, 131 
 the Gentleman, 191 
 Germany : 
 
 Goldsmith on, 139 
 visited by Goldsmith, 128, 131 
 Gerrard Street, meeting place of the 
 
 Literary Club, 202, 291, 385, 453 
 Gibbon, Edward, 183, 233, 356, 438 
 Gilbert, Sir W. S., 202 
 Gibray, James, 321 
 "Globe" tavern, Fleet Street, 282, 
 
 283, 299, 358 
 The Glory of her Sex, Mrs. Mary 
 
 Blaize, 213 
 Gloucester, Duke of, 416 
 Glover : 
 
 member of the Wednesday Club, 
 
 283 
 anecdotes of Goldsmith, 298-299, 
 
 302 
 practical jokes, 299 
 
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 
 
 Vicar of Wakefield, 274 
 Goldsmith : 
 
 Mrs. Anne : 
 
 at Ballymahon, 82 
 bill from Sarah Shore, 84 
 letter from Oliver, 94-98 
 refusal to admit Goldsmith 
 
 again, 99 
 death, 354, 356 
 Catherine, see Hodson 
 Rev. Charles, 52, 122, 271-272, 
 
 346, 347 
 
 Curate-in-charge of Pallas- 
 more, 34-36, 37 
 
 Rector of Kilkenny West, 36- 
 
 37 
 training of children, 43 
 bond given to Mr. Daniel 
 
 Hodson as marriage portion 
 
 of Catherine Goldsmith, 
 
 60-61 
 death, 69, 72 
 Charles, 49, 333 
 
 visit to Oliver, 152 
 in Jamaica, 152 
 Henry, 48, 49, 59, 60, 103, 145, 
 
 166, 183, 303, 333, 346, 
 
 347 
 Curate of Pallas, 61, 62 
 Oliver persuaded to return to 
 
 Dublin, 72 
 school started by, 84 
 disagreement with Oliver, 99 
 letter to, 168-172 
 The Traveller dedicated to, 
 
 253 
 Jack, 112 
 
 John, " searcher " atGalway, 1541, 
 
 35 
 John, of BaUyoughter, 50 
 Maurice, 49, 462, 463 
 
 letter from Goldsmith, 331- 
 
 333 
 Oliver : 
 
 appreciation and criticism, I- 
 S, 74, 87, 223-233, 243, 
 316-317 
 contemporary accounts of, 3 
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 and the 
 
 479 
 
 Goldsmith — continued 
 Oliver — continued 
 
 Boswell's account of, and atti- 
 tude towards, 3-33, 47, 54, 
 134-135,222-223,224,226- 
 227, 228, 230, 232, 24s, 
 246-247, 247-250, 252, 291, 
 
 308, 313, 3i3-3i4> 3i8> 329. 
 330-331, 348, 358, 382-383, 
 
 4i3> 4iS-4i7> 426 
 place and date of birth, 34 
 condition of Ireland during 
 
 youth and effect on, 38-43, 
 
 . 44-4S. 
 
 life at Lissoy, 44-49 
 schooling, 49, 52 
 adventure at Ardagh, 52-54 
 at Dublin University, 55, 58- 
 
 71, 72, 76 
 departure from Dublin to 
 
 Lissoy, 71 
 return to Dublin, 72 
 idle years in Ireland, 77 
 life at Ballymahon, 82-87 
 preparation for Holy orders, 
 
 82-87 
 rejected as candidate for Holy 
 
 orders, 87-88, 89-90 
 tutorship, 91 
 adventures after leaving Mr. 
 
 Flinn, 91-98 
 return to Ballymahon, 92, 
 
 98 
 in Dublin, 99 
 return to Pallas, 99 
 at Kilmore, 99-100 
 advised to become a doctor, 
 
 99-102 
 in Edinburgh, 103-114 
 projected journey to America, 
 
 115-116 
 adventures on way to Leyden, 
 
 115-117 
 life in Leyden, 119-123 
 tour in Europe, 124-139 
 medical degree, 1 30-1 3 1 
 journey from Dover to Lon- 
 don, 140-141 
 as usher, 141 
 
48o 
 
 INDEX TO THE LIFE OF 
 
 Goldsmith — continued 
 Oliver — continued 
 
 as apothecary's assistant, 141 
 
 as physician, 141-142 
 
 as reader and corrector to the 
 
 press, 142 
 style, 136-137 
 
 assistant at Dr. Milner's Peck- 
 ham Academy, 143-145, 148 
 tragedy written by, 143, 145 
 meeting with Griffiths andem- 
 ployment on Monthly 
 Review, 145-148 
 scheme of travelling to Syria, 
 
 146 
 engaged by Hamilton to write 
 in the Critical Review, 151 
 visit from brother Charles, 152 
 Memoirs of a Protestant Con- 
 demned to the Galleys of 
 France for his Religion, 154 
 return to Dr. Milner, 154-155 
 hopes of medical appointment 
 on Coromandel Coast and 
 loss of, 155, 166, 168, 172, 
 
 174-175 
 
 An Enquiry into the Present 
 State of Polite Learning in 
 Eurofe, 155-168, 183-184, 
 184-189 
 
 work on the Critical Review, 
 ijz 
 
 at Green Arbour Court, 172, 
 196-197 
 
 application to Griffiths to 
 become surety to tailor, de- 
 mand for payment letter 
 and bargain, 176-182 
 
 failure to obtain position as 
 hospital mate, 175-176 
 
 relations with Garrick, 189, 
 193, 278-279, 4ZI-422 
 
 the Enquiry attacked by 
 Griffiths, 190 
 
 work on the Bee, 191-196 
 
 work on the British Magazine, 
 196-198 
 
 contributor to the Public 
 Ledger, 198 
 
 Goldsmith — continued 
 Oliver — continued 
 
 Chinese Letters, zoo-209 
 signs of appreciation, 210-21 1 
 removal to Wine Office Court, 
 
 212, 214 
 juvenile writings, 213 
 kindness to landlady at Green 
 
 Arbour Court, 214 
 visit from Johnson and Percy, 
 
 214-217 
 relations with Johnson, etc., 
 
 218-219 
 meeting with Boswell, 220- 
 
 221 
 tract on the Cock Lane ghost, 
 
 234 
 
 History of Mecklenburgb, 234 
 
 Plutarch, 234 
 
 visit to Bath, 234-235 
 
 Life of Nash, 235 
 
 completion of a school his- 
 tory, 235 
 
 memorial to Lord Bute for 
 appointment to department 
 of Oriental research, 235, 
 
 ^37. 
 interview with Lord North- 
 umberland, 237-238 
 refusal to write for Govern- 
 ment, 238 
 visit to Cherokees, 239 
 move to Islington, 239-240 
 financial arrangements with 
 
 Newbery, 239, 240 
 friendship vyith Reynolds and 
 
 Hogarth, 240 
 The History of England in a 
 Series of Letters from a 
 Nobleman to his Son, 240- 
 241 
 member of the Literary Club, 
 
 241, 242 
 change of rooms, 244 
 relations with Newbery, 244 
 attempt to get work from 
 
 Tonson, 244 
 agreement with Dodsley, 244- 
 24s 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 481 
 
 Goldsmith — continued 
 Oliver — CO itinued 
 
 and YiS. Smart, 245, 246 
 oratorio, 245 
 Johnson's influence, 246 
 return to Islington, 246 
 Vicar of Wakefield, 247-250, 
 
 264-274 
 departure from Islington, 250- 
 
 251 
 in the Temple, 251 
 The Traveller, 252-260 
 change of rooms, 261 
 man-servant engaged, 261 
 essays, 261-262 
 and the Nugents, 263 
 as physician, 263-264 
 A Survey of Experimental 
 
 Philosophy, 264, 431 
 The Hermit and accusation of 
 
 plagiarism, 275-277 
 Poems for Young Ladies, 278 
 interest in the theatre, 278 
 and Garrick, 286-287 
 The Good-Natur'd Man, 287- 
 
 296 
 rooms in Brick Court and life 
 
 there, 297-304 
 The Deserted Village, 302-303 
 removal to Edgvyare Road, 
 
 304-306 
 invitation to Easton Maudit, 
 
 304-305 
 Professor of History, Royal 
 
 Academy, 306 
 and General Oglethorpe, 307, 
 
 308 
 return to London, 309 
 with Johnson, 309-311 
 visit to Oxford, 131, 3 10-3 1 1 
 The History of Rome, 313-315 
 commissions, 315-316 
 and Horneck famiy, 318-325, 
 
 325-326 
 as poet, 327-328 
 The Deserted Village, 328- 
 
 332> 336-347^ 349-350 
 and nephew, 334 
 Reynolds' portrait, 334-335 
 
 Goldsmith — continued 
 Oliver — continued 
 
 Life of Parnell, 348 
 
 Life of Bolinghroke, 349 
 
 holiday in France, 350-354, 
 
 at Gosfield, 356, 358 
 
 at Bath, 357 .4 
 
 at Royal Academy dinner, 
 
 358-362 i 
 
 and Chatterton, 359-360 
 The Haunch of Venison, 362- 
 
 .363 
 friends, masquerades, etc., 
 
 365-366 
 retreat to Edgware Road, 367 
 History of England, 368-371 
 at Barton Hall, 372-374, 378 
 relations with publishers, 379- 
 
 380 
 friendship with Cradock and 
 
 prologue to Jobeide, 380- 
 
 381 
 lament on death of Dowager 
 Princess of Wales, 381-382 
 popularity of, 382 
 new novel, 374-375, 379 
 adaptation of Vida's Game of 
 
 _ Chess, 375 
 dinners at General Ogle- 
 thorpe's, 383-384, 424 
 life in Edgware Road, 384, 
 
 391-392 
 employment of amanuensis, 
 
 384-385 
 She Stoops to Conquer, 390, 
 
 393-402,405, 406-411, 412 
 scheme re theatre, 393-394 
 as play writer, 409 
 Boswell's attitude towards, 
 
 415-417 
 and the Royal Marriage Act, 
 
 416-417 
 attack on Evans and letter 
 
 in Daily Advertiser, 417, 
 
 422 
 as vocalist, 424-425 
 and John Oakinan, 425-426 
 and Johnson, 427-429 
 and booksellers, 429-430 
 
 2H 
 
482 
 
 INDEX TO THE LIFE OF 
 
 Goldsmith — continued 
 Oliver — continued 
 
 scheme of A Popular Dic- 
 tionary of the Arts and 
 Sciences, 430-431 
 History of the Earth and 
 Animated Nature, 431-436 
 attempt to obtain pension for, 
 
 437> 438 
 opinion of Seattle, 438 
 and Lord Shelbourne, 438- 
 
 439 . 
 negotiations with Garrick, 
 
 439-441 
 proposed edition of The 
 
 Traveller and The Deserted 
 
 Village, 441-442 
 The Retaliation, 442-448 
 last meeting with Johnson, 449 
 at Edgware Road lodgings, 449 
 condition of afiairs, 449-450 
 illness, 450-452, 462 
 death, 452-453 
 absence of friends during ill- 
 ness, 453-454 
 grief of friends, 454-455 
 idea of public funeral and 
 
 abandonment, 456-457 
 burial, 457-458 
 tablet in Westminster Abbey 
 
 and epitaph, 458-460 
 slab in Temple Church, 460- 
 
 461 
 statue in Dublin, 461 
 Filby's accounts with, 469- 
 
 472 , . , 
 
 letters, see that title. 
 Dean of Cloyne, Oliver advised 
 to become a doctor, loo-ioi 
 Goldsmith family, 463-464 
 The Good-Natur'd Man, 2, 104, 287, 
 
 296, 375, 393, 400, 439-;44o 
 Goody Two Shoes, authorship, 213-214 
 Gosfield, Goldsmith's visit to Lord 
 
 Clare at, 356, 358 
 Gould, Sabine Baring, 179 
 Grainger, Dr. James, 179, 210, 356 
 Grattan, Henry, friendship with Gold- 
 smith, 363 
 
 Gray, Thomas, I, 119, 245, 254, 257,' 
 258, 361 
 description of Johnson, 310 
 on Goldsmith, 337 
 Gray's Inn, Goldsmith in, 244 
 Green : 
 
 Mr., Goldsmith assisted by, at 
 
 school, 62 
 Mrs., The Good-Natur'd Man 
 chosen for benefit, 296 
 Green Arbour Court, 196, 297, 450 
 Griffin : 
 
 W., printer, 336, 355, 364, 4^, 470 
 
 payment to Goldsmith for 
 
 publishing rights of The 
 
 Good-Natur'd Man, 293 
 
 agreement with Goldsmith 
 
 for Natural History, 315 
 and Goldsmith, 349-350. 379. 
 429-430, 
 Rev. Mr., school at Elphin, 50-52 
 — , Irishman, swindler, 308 
 Griffiths : 
 
 Ralph, printer and proprietor of 
 Monthly Review, 156, 217, 
 
 429. 437 , ^ 
 
 meeting with Goldsmith and 
 
 employment of, 145-148 
 Smollett's opinion of, 172 
 became security to a tailor for 
 
 Goldsmith, 175-176 
 payment demanded, Gold- 
 smith's letter to, and bar- 
 gain, 176-182 
 attack on the Enquiry, 190 
 Mrs., and Goldsmith, 147, 148, 
 148-149, 437 
 Grosvenor, Lady, 362 
 Gunnings, 109, no 
 Gwyn : 
 
 Mrs. Mary (Horneck), " the Jes- 
 samy Bride," 319, 320, 321, 
 
 373, 374, 375, 455 
 portraits of, 319-321 
 Col., 320 
 
 Hamilton : 
 
 Archibald, Goldsmith employed 
 by, on Critical Review, 151, 172 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 483 
 
 Hamilton — continued 
 Lady Betty, 320 
 
 Duke and Duchess of, in Edin- 
 burgh, 108-109, no, 225 
 Hampstead, 284 
 Hanbury Correspcmdence, 322 
 The Handsome Housemaid, Foote's 
 
 puppet play, 398-399 
 Hartwell House, 274 
 The Haunch of Venison, 362-363 
 Hawes, surgeon-apothecary, 45 3, 45 
 Goldsmith attended by, 450-451, 
 
 462 
 arrangements respecting funeral, 
 462-463 
 Hawldns : 
 
 Sir John, 238, 242, 249, 253, 265, 
 
 3" 
 
 member of the Ivy Lane and 
 Literary Clubs, 241 
 Laetitia Matilda, 283 
 Hawksworth, Jack, 260 
 Haydon, 441 
 Hazlitt, William, interview with Mary 
 
 Horneck, 321 
 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 274 
 The Hermit, 274-277, 329 
 Hickey, Mr., anecdote of Goldsmith at 
 
 Versailles, 354 
 Hiffernan, Paul, protege of Goldsmith, 
 
 .309 
 Higgins, Captain, 418 
 Hebrides, Johnson's proposed trip to 
 
 427, 428 
 Hints to Introduce Decorum at City 
 
 Feasts and Sunday Ordinaries in 
 . Dublin, 57 
 Historical Survey of the South of Ireland 
 
 by Rev. T. Campbell, reference, 34 
 History of the Earth and Animated 
 
 Nature, 2-3, 46, 47, 129, 131, 315, 
 
 317, 330. 354. 355, 364, 367, 368, 379, 
 
 385, 388, 393, 429, 431-436, 449, 466 
 History of England, 315, 317, 330, 355, 
 
 364, 367, 368-371, 379, 388, 466 
 History of England in a Series of letters 
 
 from a Nobleman to his Son, 240-241 
 History of Experimental Philosophy, 
 
 scheme, 43, 384 
 
 History of Greece, 429, 431, 450 
 
 History of Mecklenburgh, 234 
 
 History of Rome, 303, 306, 310, 312, 
 
 313-315, 317, 356, 370, 384, 385 
 Hodson : 
 
 Catherine (Goldsmith), 50, 51, 52, 
 
 60-61, 72, 92, 103, 107, 112, 
 
 "3 
 
 Daniel, 83, 93, 333, 334 
 
 bond given to, by Rev. Charles 
 Goldsmith as marriage por- 
 tion of daughter Catherine 
 with son of, 60-61 
 marriage with Catherine 
 
 Goldsmith, 60-61 
 Lissoy parsonage taken by, 72 
 letters from Goldsmith, 86, 
 153, 153-154, 156, 166-167 
 contributions collected on 
 behalf of Goldsmith, 152 
 Mr., 471 
 Hogarth, William, 38, 321 
 
 friendship with Goldsmith, 240 
 portrait of Mrs. Fleming, 250 
 Holberg, Baron de, tour through 
 
 Europe, 124 
 Holland, Goldsmith's tour, 124-126 
 Homer, Pope's translation, 257-258 
 Hoppner,John, Horneck sisters painted 
 
 by, 321 
 Horneck family : 
 
 and Goldsmith, 318-325, 385, 412, 
 
 414, 418-419, 420, 422 
 Goldsmith's holiday in France 
 with, 4, 21-22, 230-231, 350- 
 
 354 
 and She Stoops to Conquer, 401 
 Catherine, see Bunbury 
 Charles, 319, 324, 325 
 Capt. Kane, 319, 322 
 Mary, see Gwyn. 
 Mrs., 319 
 Hughes, Rev. Patrick, Edgeworthstown, 
 
 Goldsmith taught by, 52 
 Hume, David, 183, 233, 275, 281, 376, 
 428 
 
 Idler, the, 191 
 Inny, River, 34 
 
484 
 
 INDEX TO THE LIFE OF 
 
 Ireland : 
 
 condition before conquest by Eng- 
 land, 38-39 
 condition of, in Goldsmith's youth, 
 and effect on him, 41-43, 44-4S 
 oppression by English, 40-41 
 Irish humour, 223-229 
 Irving, Washington : 
 
 sketch of Goldsmith's life referred 
 
 to, II 
 visit to Green Arbour Court, 174 
 Islington, Goldsmith at, 46, 239, 245, 
 
 246, 284 
 Italy, Goldsmith in, 128, 132, 133, 219 
 Ivy Lane Club, 241 
 
 Jacob, apothecary. Fish Street Hill, 
 Goldsmith employed as assistant, 141 
 Jamaica, Charles Goldsmith in, 152 
 James's Powders, 213, 45 1, 462 
 Jeffs, Mr., butler, Temple, 244, 251, 
 
 261, 297 
 Jemingham Letters, extract, 320 
 Johnson, Samuel, I, 48, 138, 139, 188, 
 204, 233, 245, 261, 262, 265, 274, 
 280, 281, 282, 286, 287, 288, 289, 
 290, 291, 294, 295, 296, 301, 302, 
 311,318,322,323,325,328,330, 
 33i>333>335.3S8,367>37i.38o, 
 392> 39S> 403> 41 3> 414. 4iS> 43o> 
 438>4S3> 454. 471-472 
 Boswell's account of Goldsmith 
 
 and, 4-33 
 on price obtained by Goldsmith 
 
 for Vicar of Wakefield, 5 
 and Boswell, 15-20 
 memorial inscription to Gold- 
 smith, 34 
 and Goldsmith's Animated Nature, 
 
 47 
 and Earl of Chesterfield, 56, 186 
 loss of Goldsmith's memoir, 73, 
 
 121, 428-429 
 and Foote, 82, 319 
 on Goldsmith, 134-135, 464 
 visit to Goldsmith, 214-217 
 and Vindication of Natural Society, 
 
 226 
 and Cock Lane ghost, 234 
 
 Johnson, Samuel- — continued 
 
 severance of friendship vyith Sheri- 
 dan, 236 
 pension from Lord Bute, 236-237 
 Taxation no Tyranny, 238 
 Ivy Lane Club, 241 
 Literary Club, 241-242 
 negro of, 244 
 and Kit Smart, 245 
 influence on Goldsmith, 246 
 and Vicar of Wakefield, 247-250 
 and Samuel Richardson, 249 
 and The Traveller, 126-127, 253, 
 
 256, 259 
 and Evelina, 265 
 and The Vicar of Wakefield, 266 
 and The Good-Naiur'd Man, 288, 
 
 296 
 and Goldsmith after performance 
 
 of The Good-Natur'd Man, 292 
 entertained by Goldsmith, 298 
 edition of Shakespeare, 273 
 Professor of Ancient Literature, 
 
 Royal Academy, 306 
 and Goldsmith, 309-310, 427-428 
 visit to Oxford, 131, 310-311 
 criticism of Goldsmith and Robert- 
 son as historians, 313-314 
 opinion of The Deserted Village, 
 
 336-337 
 opinion of Life of Pamell, 348-349 
 at Royal Academy dinner, 359-360, 
 
 361 
 on Goldsmith, 382 
 dinner at General Oglethorpe's, 
 
 383-384 
 
 visit to Goldsmith at farm, 392-393 
 
 and Goldsmith's theatre scheme, 
 
 393-394 
 and She Stoops to Conquer, 397, 400- 
 
 401, 401-402, 404, 405, 408, 413 
 fear of Boswell that Goldsmith 
 
 should write life of, 414-415 
 and Goldsmith's attack on Evans 
 
 and letter in Daily Advertiser, 
 
 420-421 
 attack on bookseller, 421 
 and Garrick, 422-424 
 Hebrides,proposed trip to, 427,428 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 485 
 
 Johnson, Samuel — continued 
 
 contribution promised to A Pop- 
 ular Dictionary of Arts and 
 Sciences, 431 
 last meeting with Goldsmith, 449 
 grief at Goldsmith's death, 454 
 epitaph on Goldsmith, 34, 316, 
 458-460 
 Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, 261 
 Jones : 
 
 Rev. Oliver, 34, 36 
 Mr., 155 
 Jonson, Ben, 282 
 Jura, climbed by Goldsmith, 132 
 
 Kauffmann, Angelica, 56, 311, 324, 326 
 
 Keats, John, 257 
 
 Kelly: 
 
 Cornelius, Goldsmith sent to Mr. 
 
 Featherstone, 54 
 Hugh, 283, 291, 293, 29s, 296, 301, 
 309, 372-373, 407 
 False Delicacy, production by 
 
 Garrick, 289-290 
 pension, 437 
 
 by Goldsmith's grave, 457 
 Kenrick, William, 198, 217, 218, 295, 
 
 301, 334. 439 
 review of Goldsmith's Enquiry, 
 
 190 
 on the Chinese Letters, 208 
 Goldsmith accused of plagiarism, 
 
 275-277 
 epigram, 309 
 
 lampoon on Goldsmith, 365^366 
 libellous letter on Goldsmith in 
 the Packet, 417 
 Kenton village, 392 
 Kew, Mary Horneck at, 321 
 Kilcoubry, Lord, glover in Edinburgh, 
 
 108 
 Kilkenny ^est, 36, 253, 439 
 
 Rev. Charles Goldsmith as rector, 
 
 36-37 
 Kihnore, 61, 99, 114, 119, I23> 162, 163, 
 
 164, 332 
 King's Theatre, Kit Smart's oratorio 
 
 produced at, 245 
 Knowle, 335 
 
 The Lady's Journal, 196 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 278 
 
 Lane, Dr., 439 
 
 Langton, Bennet, 9, 244, 261, 302 
 
 member of theLiterary Club, 241-2 
 comment on The Traveller, 260 
 letter from Goldsmith, 367-368, 
 
 37i> 395 . 
 Laplace, naturalist, 433 
 Lawder : 
 
 Jane, 99-100, 112, 129, 272, 333 
 letter from Goldsmith, 156, 
 161-165 
 Mr., 168, 332 
 
 indifference to Goldsmith, 
 161-162, 165 
 Leicester Fields, 287, 325, 412 
 Letters : 
 
 to Robert Bryanton, 107-109, 156, 
 
 158-161 
 to Mrs. Bunbury, 376-378 
 to George Colman, 396 
 to Rev. Thomas Contarine, 109- 
 
 114, 116-119 
 in Daily Advertiser, 419-420 
 to David Garrick, 396, 440 
 to Mrs. Goldsmith, 94-98 
 to Henry Goldsmith, 66-6^, 168- 
 
 172 
 to Maurice Goldsmith, 331-333 
 to Ralph Griffiths, 177-178 
 to Daniel Hodson, 86, 153-154, 
 
 166-167 
 to Bennet Langton, 367-368, 371 
 to Jane Lawder, 162-165 
 to Edward Mills, 157-158 
 to Sir Joshua Reynolds, 350, 351, 
 
 3S2-3S4 
 to St. James's Chronicle, 276-277 
 
 Lewes, Lee : 
 
 Lofty played by, 296 
 young Marlow played by, 400 
 
 Leyden, 112, 114 
 
 Goldsmith's journey to, and life in, 
 115-117, 119, 123, 162,219,366 
 
 Lichfield, 385 
 
 Life of Bolinghroke, 349, 356 
 
 Life of Johnson, by Boswell, account of 
 Goldsmith, 3, 33 
 
486 
 
 INDEX TO THE LIFE OF 
 
 Life of Nash, 235 
 
 Life of Parnell, 348-349 
 
 Lille, Goldsmith at, 4, 21, 230, 231, 
 
 .351-352 
 Lisburne, Lord, 328-329 
 Lissoy, 36, 42, 52, S3, 59, 71, 72, 
 81, 90, 109, 119, 122, 154, 
 
 331 
 Goldsmiths at, 37-38 
 question of identification with 
 
 Auburn, 37-38, 332, 344-346 
 Goldsmith's life at, 44-49 
 the Literary Club, 241-243, 282, 311, 
 
 422, 450, 458 
 Lloyd, Charles, and Goldsmith, 211- 
 
 212 
 Louis XIV., 118 
 
 Louvain, Goldsmith at, 129, 136 
 Lowth, Lord, nominated as Gold- 
 smith's pall-bearer, 456 
 Lyttleton, Lord, name on title-page of 
 pirated edition of the History of 
 England in a Series of Letters from a 
 Nobleman to his Son, 241 
 Lytton, Bulwer, 389 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., Baron Macaulay, 
 
 345 
 
 McDonnell, and Goldsmith, 363- 
 364 
 
 Macklin, Charles, 385 
 
 Macleane, Lauchlan, 116 
 
 Macpherson, James, 403, 421 
 
 Mansfield, William Murray, 1st Earl of, 
 28 
 
 Mantua, visited by Goldsmith, 132 
 
 Marchi, engraver, 334 
 
 Marlborough, 49 
 
 Mason : 
 
 Shavy, 84 
 William, 361 
 
 Maxwell, apothecary, Goldsmith at- 
 tended by, 452 
 
 Mayo, Rev. Dr., 9 
 
 Memoirs of a Protestant Condemned to 
 the Galleys of France for his Religion, 
 
 154 
 Mickle, Mr., translator of the Lustad, 
 
 393 
 
 Milan, visited by Goldsmith, 13a 
 Mills, Edward, letter from Gold»mith, 
 
 but no reply, 156, 157-158, 168 
 Milner : 
 
 Dr., 178, 180 
 
 Goldsmith as assistant and 
 
 teacher at Academy of, at 
 
 Peckham, 143-14S, 154-1.55 
 
 son of, feUow student with 
 
 Goldsmith at Edinburgh, 
 
 155 
 death, 172 
 Mrs., and Goldsmith, 144-14S, 
 212, 312, 437 
 Minto, Walter, Professor at Edinburgh, 
 
 226 
 Mistakes of a Night, 53 
 " Mitre," Fleet Street, 5-6, 20, 73 
 Monroe, Dolly, 362 
 Montague, Mrs. Elizabeth, 28, 385 
 Montaigne, Michel de, 172 
 Montesquieu, Charles Secondat, Baron 
 
 de, 201 
 Monthly Review, 145, 176 
 
 Goldsmith's work in, 149-151 
 review of Goldsmith's Enquiry in, 
 
 190 
 on the Chinese Letters, 208 
 Moore : 
 
 Dr. John, no 
 Thomas, 85, 154 
 Moser, George Michael, R.A., Keeper 
 
 of Royal Academy, 306, 361-362 
 Munro, Alexander, professor of anat- 
 omy, Edinburgh, 113, 117 
 Murger, Henry, Fie de Boheme, 109 
 Murphy, Arthur, 28, 57, 219 
 
 Napper family, Westmeath, 343 
 Nash, Richard, " Beau Nash," 235 
 Newbery : 
 
 Francis, 267, 355, 374 
 
 and Vicar of Wakefield, 264 
 and Goldsmith's new novel, 
 
 375 
 settlement of accounts, 379- 
 
 380 
 copyright of She Stoops to 
 
 Conquer assigned to, 41 J 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 487 
 
 Newbery — continued 
 Francis — continued 
 
 note taken up by Garrick, 
 
 440 
 proprietor of James's PlAvders, 
 
 451, 462 
 John, bookseller, 213, 240, 245, 247, 
 256, 265, 266, 267, 278 
 
 Goldsmith engaged to contri- 
 bute to the Public Ledger, 
 
 197-198 
 formal receipt for 5 guineas 
 
 from Goldsmith, 208 
 kindness to Goldsmith, 212- 
 
 213 
 publication of juvenile works, 
 
 213 
 proprietor of James's Powders, 
 
 213 
 Goldsmith's work for, 234, 
 
 23s 
 Goldsmith recommended to 
 
 move to Islington, 239 
 payments to Goldsmith or 
 Mr. FilbyorMrs. Fleming, 
 239-240 
 legacy to Mrs. Fleming, 250 
 The Traveller purchased, 253 
 death, 301 
 Newcastle, Duke and Duchess, 357 
 Newcastle-on-Tyne, Goldsmith im- 
 prisoned at, 116-117 
 Newton, 164 
 Night Thoughts, by Edward Young, 
 
 reference, 143 
 Nollekens, Joseph, sculptor of tablet to 
 
 Goldsmith, 458 
 Noithcote, James, 40, 334, 402, 412, 443 
 
 and She Stoops to Conquer, 407 
 Northumberland : 
 
 Earl of, 238, 357, 465 
 Duchess of, 276, 329 
 Northumberland House, 280 
 Nugent : 
 
 Robert, afterwards Lord Clare, see 
 
 Clare. 
 Robert, son of Lord Clare, death, 
 
 356 
 Hon. Miss, 263, 407 
 
 Nugent — continued 
 
 Dr., member of the Literary Club, 
 241 
 
 Oakman, John, complimentary verses 
 
 to Goldsmith, 425-426 
 Oglethorpe, James Edward, General, 
 .307. 38s, 386, 424 
 friendship with Goldsmith, 307- 
 
 308 
 dinner at house of, 383-384, 410 
 O'Moore, Col., anecdote of Gold- 
 smith, 357-358 
 Ossory, Lady, 381, 398,404 
 Otway, Thomas, 152, 164 
 Oxford, Johnson and Goldsmith's visit 
 
 to, 131, 310-311 
 Oxford Road Pantheon, 441 
 
 Packet, libellous letter against Gold- 
 smith and result, 417-422 
 Padua, visited by Goldsmith, 131, 132, 
 
 136 
 Paine, Thomas : 
 petition, 386 
 
 letter to Goldsmith, 386-387 
 went to America, 388 
 Pallas, Pallasmore, Co. Longford : 
 
 Rev. Charles Goldsmith at, 34-36, 
 
 quoted as Goldsmith's birthplace, 
 
 34 
 Goldsmith at, 99 
 
 Pallasbeg, 34-35 
 
 Palmpr, Rev. Mr., chief mourner at 
 Goldsmith's funeral, 457 
 
 Pamela, by Samuel Richardson, refe- 
 rence, 143 
 
 Panton St. exhibition, 4-5, 230, 231, 
 
 232> 385, 398 
 Paoli, Pascal, 416 
 Paris, III, 112, 116 
 
 Goldsmith at, 131, 136 
 
 letter to Reynolds from, 352-354 
 Paternoster Row, 452 
 Paul and Virginia, by Saint Pierre, 
 
 239 
 Peckham, Goldsmith at, 143-145, 152, 
 
 154-1SS 
 
488 
 
 INDEX TO THE LIFE OF 
 
 Penal laws : 
 
 the Citizen of the World on, 205-6 
 indictment of, in the Vicar of 
 Wakefield, 272-274 
 Percy, Dr. Thomas, Bishop of Dromore, 
 30, so, 106, 130, 136, 141, 179, 
 195, 203, 208, 210, 211, 238, 252, 
 26s, 280, 292, 308, 311, 327, 329, 
 330> 350, 357, 370, 385, 388, 404, 
 415, 421, 424, 432, 444, 446, 447 
 quoted re Boswell, 24-25 
 Goldsmith persuaded to write 
 memoir by, and loss of, 72-73, 
 121, 428 
 on Goldsmith at Green Arbour 
 
 Court, 173-174 
 Johnson taken to visit Goldsmith, 
 
 214-217 
 and Tom Davies' shop, 219 
 A Friar of Orders Gray by, Gold- 
 smith accused of plagiarising, 
 274-277 
 entertained by Goldsmith, 298 
 invitation of Goldsmith to Easton 
 
 Maudit, 304-305 
 and James's Powders, 451 
 Goldsmith called on, during ill- 
 ness, 453 
 and Goldsmith family, 463 
 Petit, Jean Louis, Professor of Medicine, 
 
 Paris, III 
 PiUdngton, Jack, Goldsmith persuaded 
 
 to pawn watch, 211 
 Pidcock, 432 
 
 Piozzi, Mrs., see Thrale, Mrs. 
 Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham, see 
 
 Chatham. 
 Plume, professor of Chemistry, Edin- 
 burgh, Goldsmith's criticism of, 113 
 Plutarch's Lives, 234 
 Poems for Toung Ladies, 278 
 Pollock, Sir Frederick, 457 
 Pope, Alexander, I, 32, 37, 194, 256, 
 
 2S7. 328, 338, 346, 348, 446 
 criticism of, 1-2, 119 
 irony of, 226 
 Irish rhymes, 243 
 A Popular Dictionary of the Arts and 
 Sciences, scheme of, 430-431 
 
 Prior, Sir James, biography of Gold- 
 smith, 34, 35, 103 
 Pritchard, Mrs., 32 
 The Public Advertiser, 329, 330, 336 
 favourable review of The Histtry 
 of England in, 369 
 the Public Ledger, 214, 419 
 
 Goldsmith engaged to contribute 
 
 to, 197-198 
 Goldsmith's Chinese Letters, 200- 
 209, 234, 419 
 Pugh, John, 385 
 
 Quick, John, part of Tony Lumpkin 
 played by, 295, 400 
 
 Radcliff, Dr., 144, 158 
 
 the Rambler, 191, 195, 294 
 
 Ranelagh, 364, 385, 441 
 
 Rafe of the Lock, by Pope, 226 
 
 Rapin, Rene, 369 
 
 Ree, Lough, 46, 48, 60, 343 
 
 Remarkable Occurrences in the Life of 
 James Hanway, Esq., by Pugh, 385 
 
 Retaliation, 73, 226, 442-448 
 
 Reynolds : 
 
 Sir Joshua, 8, 21, 28, 71, 233, 242, 
 244, 252, 259, 280, 288, 289, 
 311,313,321,323,328,333, 
 356, 357, 366, 367, 372, 385, 
 
 392, 395, 397, 4°4, 407,412 
 
 441,444,453,454,457,458, 
 
 459,462 
 portrait of Seattle, 183 
 ^in Tom Davies' shop, 218 
 ^.-'"^ and Goldsmith, 228, 229' 
 
 friendship with Goldsmith, 
 
 240 
 member of the Literary Club, 
 
 241 
 Goldsmithadvised to practice 
 
 as physician, 261 
 meeting between Garrick and 
 
 Goldsmith at house of, 287 
 entertained by Goldsmith, 298 
 The Deserted Village dedicated 
 
 to, 303 
 President of the English 
 
 Academy of Arts, 306 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 489 
 
 Reynolds — continued 
 
 Sir Joshua — continued 
 
 Goldsmith introduced to Hor- 
 
 necks by, 319 
 portraits of Catharine and 
 
 Mary Horneck, 319-321 
 suppers at Leicester Fields, 
 
 325-326 
 portrait of Goldsmith, 334- 
 
 33S 
 
 portraits at Streatham, 335 
 
 dedication of The Deserted 
 Village to, 337 
 
 picture " Resignation " in- 
 spired by The Deserted 
 Village, 339, 340 
 
 letters from Goldsmith, 350, 
 
 .351,352-354 . 
 visit to Goldsmith at farm, 
 
 392-393 
 and She Stoops to Conquer, 401 - 
 
 402,413 
 contribution promised to A 
 
 Popular Dictionary of Arts 
 
 and Sciences, 431 
 portrait of Beattie, 438 
 Goldsmith's epitaph, 447-448 
 grief at Goldsmith's death, 
 
 454 
 nominated as Goldsmith's 
 pall-bearer, 456 
 Theophila, 266, 353, 457 
 Riccoboni, Madame, and the Vicar of 
 
 Wakef-eld, 274 
 Rich, Christopher, theatrical manager, 
 
 287, 288 
 Richardson, Samuel, of Salisbury Court, 
 
 235 
 Goldsmith engaged as reader and 
 
 corrector to the press, 143 
 Johnson rescued from sponging 
 house, 249 
 Richmond, Goldsmith at, 283 
 Rights of Man, 386 
 
 Robertson, William, Johnson's criti- 
 cism, 30, 313-314 
 Rothes, Dowager Countesses of, 367 
 Rotterdam, 117 
 Rouen, Goldsmith at, 129, 136 
 
 Rouelle, professor of Chemistry, Paris, 
 
 131 
 
 Rowlandson, Thomas, 321 
 Royal Academy : 
 
 dinner, 358-362 
 
 See also English Academy of Arts 
 Royal Humane Society, 450 
 Royal Marriage Act, hit at, in She 
 
 Stoops to Conquer, 416-417 
 Russia, 113 
 
 St. Andrews, Goldsmith embarked on, 
 for Bordeaux and wreck of, 116, 117 
 St. James's Chronicle, 275, 419 
 
 advertisement of The Vicar of 
 
 Wakefield, 265 
 St. John's Castle and Church, 46 
 St. James's Coffee House, 385, 442 
 St. John's, Co. Roscommon, 60 
 St. Paul's Churchyard, 452 
 Saint Pierre, Bernadin de, 239 
 Sandwich, Lord, 238, 368 
 Sardinia, King of, mourning for, 402 
 Scarron, Paul, Comic Romance, 450 
 the Sceptic, 191 
 Scott : 
 
 Sir Walter, 15 
 
 Rev. Mr., 362, 437, 465 
 Scribblerus Club, 348 
 Selby, family, of farm near Edgware 
 
 Road, 391, 392, 393 
 Selected Poems for Toung Ladies, 264 
 Selwyn, George, 273 
 Seward, William, 18, 19 
 Shakespeare, William, 27, 273 
 She Stoops to Conquer, 2, 46, 84, 129, 293, 
 294> 29S> 296, 310, 316, 317, 393-412, 
 416-417, 464, 466 
 Sheffield, Lord and Lady, 356 
 Shelbourne, William Petty, Lord, 438 
 
 43?> 456 
 Sheridan : 
 
 Richard Brinsley, 154, 299 
 
 The Critic, 403 
 Thomas, 154, 302 
 in Dublin, 57 
 Boswell given introduction to 
 
 Davies, 220 
 pension from Lord Bute, 236 
 
 21 
 
490 
 
 INDEX TO THE LIFE OF 
 
 Sheridan — continued 
 Thomas — continued 
 
 severance of friendship with 
 
 Johnson, 236 
 St. Patrick's Day, 409 
 " Shoemaker's Holiday " entertain- 
 ment, 302, 342 
 " Shoemaker's Paradise," Edgware 
 
 Road, 305, 306 
 Shore, Sarah, bill to Mrs. Goldsmith, 84 
 The Shortest way with the Dissenters, 
 
 by De Foe, 225 
 Shuter, Edward : 
 
 as Croaker in The Good-Natur'd 
 
 Man, 290 
 The Good-Natur'd Man chosen for 
 
 benefit, 293 
 part of old Hardcastle played by, 
 400, 413 
 Sidebothams, family, 263 
 Sleigh, Dr. : 
 
 Goldsmith assisted by, 116, 141- 
 
 142 
 at Edinburgh with Goldsmith, 141, 
 
 143 
 Smart, Kit, oratorio, 245, 246 
 Smith, Mr., refusal to play young 
 
 Marlow, 399 
 SmoUet, Tobias, 218, 369 
 
 opinion of Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths, 
 
 147, 150, 172, 180, 181 
 complimentary reference to, in the 
 
 Bee, 195-196 
 British Magazine, or Monthly 
 Repository for Gentlemen and 
 Ladies established, and Gold- 
 smith engaged to work on, 196- 
 198 
 Soho Square, Cornelly concerts in, 382 
 the Spectator, 195, 202, 203, 207, 230 
 Spencer, Lady Diana, see Beauclerc, 
 
 Lady Diana. 
 Stage, struggle between sentimentalists 
 
 and realists, 388-390 
 Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, Dean of 
 
 Westminster, 460 
 Steele, Sir Richard, 194, 202, 203, 279 
 Steevens, George, 385, 465 
 
 and Tom Davies' shop, 219 
 
 Stevens — continued 
 
 story of Richardson and Johnson, 
 
 249 
 admission to the Literary Club, 
 450 
 Sterne, Lawrence, 204 
 Stonehouse, Sir John, 24 
 Strand, 452 
 
 Strawberry Hill press, 3S9-360 
 Streatham, 261, 309 
 
 party at the Thrales, 267, 268 
 Portrait Gallery, 335 
 Streatham Hall, Goldsmith at, 322- 
 
 323 
 Strean, Dr., 87 
 A Survey of Experimental Philosophy, 
 
 264, 431 
 Swift, Dr. Jonathan, 164, 194, 202, 225 
 Switzerland, Goldsmith in, 127, 128, 
 
 131-132 
 Syria, Goldsmith's scheme of travelling 
 to, 146 
 
 Taylor, Rev. John, 367 
 
 Taxation no Tyranny, by Johnson, 238 
 
 the Templar, 191 
 
 Temple, Goldsmith in, 244, 251, 395, 
 
 432. 452 
 Temple Bar, Johnson and Goldsmith 
 
 at, 310 
 Temple Church : 
 
 Goldsmith's burial in, 457 
 slab to Goldsmith, 460-46 1 
 Teniers, David, painter, 38 
 Thomson, James, I 
 
 Thrales, 17, 261, 280, 309, 385, 423, 449 
 
 Fanny Burney's account of party 
 
 at house of, at Streatham, 17, 20 
 
 portrait collection, 335 
 
 Thrale, Mrs. (Mrs. Piozzi), 30, 226, 241, 
 
 242, 247, 249, 292, 318, 319, 322, 
 
 323, 368, 404, 423, 427, 428, 443, 
 
 47i> 472 
 The Three Pigeons, 296 
 Threnodia Augustalis, 381-382 
 Tonson, Jacob, bookseller, 244 
 Toplady, Rev. Augustus, 9, 10 
 Townshend, 362, 438 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 491 
 
 The Traveller, s,y2, 125, 126-127, 132, 
 14s. 154. ^77y 2SI) 252-260, 263, 26s, 
 266, 267, 278, 303, 327, 328, 336, 441- 
 442, 464 
 
 The Trifler, 191 
 
 Trim, non-commissioned officer, 49 
 
 Turk's Head, 453 
 
 Turton, Dr., Goldsmith attended by, 
 451-452 
 
 Tyburn, 206, 220, 273 
 
 Vaxxxhall, 364, 441 
 
 Venice, Goldsmith said to have visited, 
 
 132 
 Verona, visited by Goldsmith, 132 
 Versailles, Goldsmith at, 354 
 Vertot d'Aubeuf, Rene Aubert de, 314 
 Vesey, Mrs., 385 
 
 The Vicar of Wakefield, 2, 5, 46, 80, 94, 
 120, 129, 177, 213, 247-250, 276, 286, 
 .313= 328,378,466 
 Vida, Marco Girolamo, Italian poet. 
 Game of Chess, Goldsmith's adapta- 
 tion of, 375 
 Vie de Boheme, by Murger, 109 
 Vindication of Natural Society, by 
 
 Edmund Burke, 226 
 Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet de, 2 3 3 
 Goldsmith's meeting with, 131 
 Goldsmith's contract with Grif- 
 fiths to write life of, 180-181, 
 183 
 Zobeide, Cradock's translation and 
 Goldsmith's prologue, 171, 380- 
 381 
 
 Waldegrave, Lady, 416 
 
 Wales, Dowager Princess of, Gold- 
 smith's lament on death of, 381-382 
 
 Walker, Dr. George, 370, 371 
 
 Wall, Capt. John, master of St. 
 Andrews, 116 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 25, 273, 439, 440 
 and Boswell's Life of Johnson, 24, 
 
 32 
 and the Gunnings, no 
 letter from Xo Ho, 203 
 on Goldsmith, 327 
 at Royal Academy dinner, 359-362 
 
 Walpole continued. 
 
 and Chatterton, 359-361 
 
 on Zobeide, 381 
 
 and The Handsome Housemaid, 
 
 398 
 on She Stoops to Conquer, 404 
 on Goldsmith and his friends, 453, 
 
 4S4 
 Warburton, William, 226 
 Warton, Joe, 459 
 Watteau, Antoine, painter, 38 
 "Wednesday" Club, 283, 299, 304, 
 
 358, 424 
 Wesley, Rev. John, 307 
 West, Benjamin, painter, 306, 311 
 Westminster Abbey : 
 
 tablet to Goldsmith, 458-460 
 Johnson and Goldsmith in, 310 
 White, Gilbert, 47, 434 
 White Conduit Gardens, 262 
 Whitehead, William, Poet Laureate, 
 
 288, 396 
 " White's," 63 
 
 Wilder, Theaker, Fellow of Trinity 
 College, Dublin : 
 cruelty to Goldsmith, 65, 6j, 68, 
 
 69> 7°> 71 > 72> 7Z, 75 
 death, 72 
 Wilfrid, Miss, see Bulkley, Mrs. 
 Wilkes, John, 305-306, 368 
 Wilkie, bookseller in St. Paul's Church- 
 yard, establishment of the Bee and 
 engagement of Goldsmith, 191 
 Wilkinson, James, 203 
 William HL, 63 
 Williams : 
 Miss, 6 
 Mrs., 23, 420 
 Willington, James, pseudonym used by 
 
 Goldsmith, 154 
 Windsor Forest, 257 
 Wine Oifice Court, Goldsmith in, 239, 
 
 246 
 Woffington, Margaret, 58 
 Woodward, Mr. : 
 
 Lofty in The Good-Natur'd Man 
 
 played by, 295 
 to speak prologue in The Good- 
 Natur'd Man, 399 
 
492 
 
 Woodward, Mr. — contiimed 
 
 threw up part of Tony Lumpkin, 
 
 399 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 94 
 Worgan, Mr., Kit Smart's oratorio 
 produced by, 245 
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 Wiirtemberg, Prince of, 383 
 Young, Edward, i, 2, 27, 143 
 Zobeide, by Voltaire, Cradock's trans- 
 
 lation and Goldsmith's prologue, 
 380-381 
 
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