-•v ••■*■■ maoM** THE LIFE AND TIMES OLIVER GOLDSMITH. THK LIFE AND TIMES OLIVER GOLDSMITH. BY JOHN FORSTER. FOURTH EDITION. riTH FORTV WOODCUTS, AFTEB DESIGNS BY C. 8TASFIELD, R.A., D. MACLI8E, R.A. JOHX I.EECH, RICHARD DOVI.B, AND ROBERT JAMES HAMERTOX. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY. 1863. J^ 3 ■«••'• • • LONDON*: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET. CHARLES DICKENS. GENIUS AND ITS REWARDS ARE BRIEFLY TOLD I A LIBERAL NATURE AND A NIGGARD DOOM, A DIFFICULT JOURNEY TO A SPLENDID TOMB. NEW-WRIT, NOR LIGHTLY WEIGHED, THAT STORY OLD IN GENTLE GOLDSMITH'S LIFE I HERE UNFOLD ! THRO' OTHER THAN LONE WILD OR DESERT-GLOOM, IN ITS MERE JOY AND PAIN, ITS BLIGHT AND BLOOM, ADVENTUROUS.* COME WITH ME AND BEHOLD, FRIEND WITH HEART AS GENTLE FOR DISTRESS, AS RESOLUTE WITH WISE TRUE THOUGHTS TO BIND THE HAPPIEST TO THE UNHAPPIEST OF OUR KIND, THAT THERE IS FIERCER CROWDED MISERY IN GARRET-TOIL AND LONDON LONELINESS THAN IN CRUEL ISLANDS 'MID THE FAR-OFF SEA. JOHN FORSTER. March, 1848. * The original title of this Biography was the Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldtmith. Why it was altered I have explained at the close of the Preface to the Second Edition. A C A k ft PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. In a few words prefixed to the Third Edition of this Work, issued in the same form as the present, I stated that it was not meant to displace its immediate predecessor, in two octavo volumes, of which it was an abridgment ; but that the favour extended to the book had suggested its publication at a price that might bring it within reach of a larger number of readers, and qualify it to accompany the many popular col- lections of those delightful writings to which its principal attraction is due. The chief omission in the volume is of matter not imme- diately relating to Goldsmith himself, and of that large body of illustrative notes and authorities which may be referred to in the library edition ; but in the preface referring exclusively to the latter, and now reprinted because of certain charges brought against the writer, will be found a sufficient indica- tion of the leading sources from which the facts of the biography were drawn. Mr. Carlyle having always blamed me for suppressing the woodcuts given originally, they are here restored. The library edition of this book having been for some years out of print, I take the opportunity of stating that a D0W impression of it will very shortly be published with additional illustrative matter. J. F. M) M"NTA<.t S / PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION, (in two volumes). Whatever the work may be which a man undertakes to do, it is -desirable that he should do it as completely as he can ; and this is my reason for having endeavoured, amid employ- ments that seemed scarcely compatible with such additional labour, to render this book more worthy of the favour with which the First Edition was received. With this remark these volumes should have been dis- missed, to find what acceptance and appreciation the new facts and illustrations they contain may justly win for them, but for the circumstance of an attack made upon the writer by the author of a former life of Goldsmith, on grounds as unjustifi- able and in terms as insolent as may be found in even the history of literature.* Briefly, Mr. Prior's charge against me was this. That I had taken all the facts relating to Goldsmith contained in the pre- sent biography from the book written by himself; that the whole of the original matter connected with the poet supplied in my work might have been comprised in two pages ; and that the additional seven hundred pages, in so far as they related circumstances in Goldsmith's life, and were not mere criticism, * The letters in which this charge was brought and answered, are printed in m of the 10th June 1848, and in the Literary Guzettr of th« July 1848. x PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. or reflection, or anecdotes of other persons, or illustrations of the time, were a wholesale abstraction from the Life by Mr. Prior. My answer (to describe it as briefly) was, that the charge so brought against me was in all its particulars un- founded and false ; that I had mentioned Mr. Prior's name in connection with everything of which he could in any sense be regarded as the discoverer ; that so far from my book being slavishly copied from his, I had largely supplied his deficiencies, and silently corrected his errors ; and that, in availing myself with scrupulous acknowledgment of the facts first put forth by him, as well as of the far more important facts related in other books without which he never could have written his, I had con- tributed to them many new anecdotes and some original letters, had subjected them to an entirely new examination and arrange- ment, and had done my best to transform an indiscriminate and dead collection of details about a man, into a living picture of the man himself surrounded by the life of his time. The reader will observe that the accusation which thus un- expectedly placed me on my defence, implied neither more nor less on the part of the person who made it, than a claim to absolute property in certain facts. It was not pretended that my book contained a line of Mr. Prior's writing. Not even the monomania which suggested so extraordinary a charge could extend it into an imputation that a single word of original comment or criticism, literary or personal, had been appro- priated by me ; or that I had adopted a thought, an expression, a view of character, a construction of any particular circum- stances, or a decision on any doubtful point, which Mr. Prior had before suggested or made. The specific and sole offence was the use in my narrative of matter which a previous biographer had used, which he assumed to have discovered, and the repetition of which he would prohibit to all who came after him. The question broadly raised was, whether any man who may have published a biography, contributing PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xi to it certain facts as the result of his own research, can from that instant lay claim to the entire beneficial interest in those facts, nay, can appropriate to himself the subject of the biography, and warn off every other person as a trespasser from the ground so seized. Xow, upon the reason or common sense of such a proposition, I should be ashamed to waste a word. Taking for granted the claim of discovery to the full extent asserted, the claim to any exclusive use of such discovery is sheer folly. No man can hold a patent in biography or in history except by a mastery of execution unapproached by competitors. He only may hope to have possessed himself of a subject, who has exhausted it ; or to have established his originality in dealing with facts, who has so happily disposed and applied them as to preclude the chances of more successful treatment by any subsequent writer. But between me and my accuser in this particular case, a really practical question was raised under cover of the extravagant and impossible one. The substance of Mr. Prior's pretensions as a discoverer in connection with Goldsmith came in issue ; and the answer could only be, that these had been enormously exaggerated. It became necessary to point out that to even a small fraction of the matter assumed to have been first set forth by him, his title as its discoverer could as little be proved, as his right to any exclusive property or ownership in it. I found myself obliged to assert, that the most impor- tant particulars of Goldsmith's life, except as to bibliography, where the books themselves furnished easy hints for the supply of every defect, had been published long before by Cooke, Glover, Percy, Davies, Hawkins, Boswell, and their contem- poraries or commentators ; and that were each fact again : ossly assigned to its original authority, what Mr. Prior might claim for his would be found ridiculously small com- vith the bulk of his volumes. In support of that assertion I now place before the public xii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. the present book. Not only are very numerous corrections to every former publication on the subject here made, and a great many new facts brought forward, but each fact, whether new or old, is given from its first authority, and no quotation has been made at second hand. The gravest defect in my first edition is thus remedied. I no longer, from a strained sense of the courtesy due to a living writer, and an immediate predecessor on this ground, confine my acknowledgments chiefly to him. The reader is enabled to see exactly the extent of my obligations to Mr. Prior, and also, for the first time, the extent of his obligations to books which be has largely copied, and never remembered or cared to name. For, nothing is so noteworthy in this stickler for a property in facts originally derived, as the perpetual false assumption of an original air, by quoting as from the communication of indivi- duals, information derived from printed sources. His foot- prints were in each case so carefully obliterated, that he doubtless thought it perfectly safe to do this, and relied on all trace being lost of his having simply been where others had been before him. No one reading his book would expect to find already printed in a magazine of the last century not a few of its most characteristic " original " anecdotes. To the highly curious and valuable series of published recollections of Gold- smith, written by one of his intimate companions, William Cooke of the Temple, before even Percy's edition of the Mis- cellaneous Works, Mr. Prior never once refers. He preserves almost as close a silence in respect to the Percy Memoir itself, which, though remaining still by far the fullest and most au- thentic repository of "original" information about Goldsmith, he sedulously avoids to name in connection with any of the in- teresting matter he abstracts unscrupulously from it. When, in the course of repelling his attack, I had occasion to repeat my obligations to what I regard as the most valuable details in his book, namely, Goldsmith's accounts and agreements PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xiii with his publisher Newbery, and the bills of his landlady Mrs. Fleming, it never occurred to me to doubt that those papers were Mr. Prior's, and remained in his possession. The truth, however, is that they were placed at his disposal by Mr. Murray, of Albemarle-street, whose son and successor has most kindly placed them at mine ; and though I have quoted them throughout my volumes as originally published by Mr. Prior, it will be found that I have corrected several mistakes in his transcription of them, and printed some part of their contents for the first time. Even to the entertaining tailor's bills which in his book first illustrated Goldsmith's boyish love of dress, I have been enabled to add some curious details derived from a discovery of yet earlier date, connecting with his very outset in life as a medical student his indulgence in those innocent loible3. The reader will do me the justice to remember that any apparent depreciation of the labours of a predecessor in the same field with myself has been forced upon me. I had no thought towards this gentleman but of gratitude in connection with the pursuit which had occupied us in common, until he repelled the expression of that feeling. Of course I did not think his book a good one, or I would not have written mine ; but 1 liked his liking for the subject, had profited not a little by his exertions in connection with it, valued the new facts he had contributed to its illustration, and was content, without the mention of any adverse opinion as to the mode in which he had used those materials, to let the reader silently infer the reason which had induced my own attempt. For why should I now conceal that the very extent of my sympathy with the purpose of his biography had unhappily convinced me of its utter failure in his hands : and that for this reason, with no dislike of him, but much love for Goldsmith, the present biography was undertaken ? It seemed no unworthy task to rescue one of the most fascinating writers in the language xiv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. from one of its dullest books, from a posthumous admiration more harassing than any spite that vexed poor Groldsmith while he lived, from a clumsy and incessant exaltation far worse than Hawkins's absurd contempt or the amusing slights of Boswell. In the course of this attempt it became necessary to correct many errors, to supply many omissions, and to restore point to many anecdotes mistold or misunderstood; but while all this was done silently, Mr. Prior's name was introduced into the text of my narrative not less than fifteen times, and a brief advertisement at its close was devoted to the eulogistic statement (for which I can only now implore the pardon of my readers) that the " diligent labour, enthu- " siasm, and ability displayed in his edition and elaborate " memoir twelve years ago, had placed every subsequent writer " under weighty obligations to him." If any one then had warned me of the impending wrath of Mr. Prior, it would have appeared to me. simply ridiculous. With some reason, perhaps, any new biographer may demand a brief interval for public judgment before a successor shall occupy his ground, but even this in courtesy only; and it never occurred to me to question Mr. "Washington Irving' s perfect right to avail himself to the uttermost of the present work, though he did so within as many weeks as I had waited years before encroaching on Mr. Prior's. But if any one had gravely assured me that the author of a book published twelve years, and which, with no encouragement for a second edition, had for more than half that time been transferred to the shelves of the cheap bookstalls, would think himself entitled coarsely to assail me for opening his subject anew, I should have laughed at a suggestion so incredible ; and if, in support of the statement, details of the proposed attack had been given as based chiefly on the; imputation of borrowing without acknow- ledgment, I should have convinced my informant, by the series of examples I am now about to submit to the reader, PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xv how monstrous and impossible it was that of all men on earth Mr. Prior should ever venture on such a charge, or throw down such a challenge. At page 13 of Mr. Prior's first volume, in giving several details of the childhood of the poet, he expresses his thanks to " the Eev. Dr. Strean, of Athlone, to whom I feel obliged for " the inquiries he has made." So at pages 22, 23, 110, and in other places (in the second volume, 255, &c). Yet the obliga- tion was really incurred, not to Dr. Strean, but to an Essay only once very slightly and cursorily alluded to (102), containing (139 — 149) the whole of Dr. Strean' s information, and published in 1808 by Mr. Mangin, who not without reason complained, on the appearance of Mr. Prior's book, that, though Dr. Strean had placed it in Mr. Prior's hands telling him it contained all he had to say about Goldsmith, he had "employed much of " what he found in the Essay without having the courtesy to " use marks of quotation." {Parlour Window Book, 4-5.) At pp. 28-29, 45-47, 109, 118, 128, and in other parts of the description of Goldsmith's boyhood, all the characteristic anec- dotes are given generally as on the authority of his sisters or friends ; but any particular mention of the Percy Memoir, in which (5-6-7-9-13-14) they were first published, is studiously avoided. In like manner the account of his first adventures in Edinburgh, told with an original air at p. 134-135, the notice of Mr. Contarine at p. 50-51, and of Mr. Lawder at p. 130, are taken without acknowledgment from the same source (19-20, 17, and 18) ; and at p. 47 a little fact is described as from the communication of a reverend gentleman, who had already communicated it to all the world at a public meeting fifteen years before (Gent. May. xc. 620). At p. 76, coupled with a previous intimation at p. 63, the reader is left to infer that Dr. Wilson's account of the college xvi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. riot in which Goldsmith took part is laid before him from unpublished letters, whereas all the facts, on the special autho- rity of Dr. Wilson, are stated in the Percy Memoir (16-17), to which no allusion is made ; and in like manner the charac- teristic expression in that memoir, that " one of his contempo- " raries describes him as perpetually lounging about the college "gate" (15), is appropriated as a piece of original information at p. 92, and assigned to Dr. Wolfen. At p. 98 much is made of the loss of the formal registry proving Goldsmith to have taken his bachelor's degree (all which is in the Percy Memoir, 17, though Mr. Prior does not tell his readers so), and a self-glorifying announcement is made of the satisfactory settlement of that interesting question, even in the absence of so important a piece of proof, by the fact that " his name was first found by the present toriter in the list of " such as had right of access to the college library, to which by " the rules graduates only are admissible." Yet Mr. Prior had before him Mr. Shaw Mason's Statistical Account or Survey, published nearly twenty years before, where, for satisfactory evidence that Goldsmith had taken his bachelor's degree, Mr. Mason expressly describes his name as "in the roll of " those qualified for admission to the college library" (iii. 358). At pp. 159-164, one of the best of all Goldsmith's letters is printed without the slightest hint that it had been printed in the Percy Memoir (27-32) ; and the same silence is preserved (138) in regard to a letter printed, though with less satisfactory completeness, at pp. 22-26 of the same most authentic narra- tive. Let me add, that though Dr. Percy omits some valuable points in this letter, Mr. Prior is not entitled to say that all copies of it hitherto printed have been taken from " imperfect "transcripts," saving only that which "has been submitted "to the present writer," &c, &c. In the 25th volume of the European Magazine (332-333) there is a copy, postscript and all, word for word the same as Mr. Prior's, except that the PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xvii close is more characteristic than his, of the writer's spirit in those boyish days. At p. 169-170 there is mnch parade about certain discoveries in connection with Dr. Ellis, and we are told that "from " accounts given by this gentleman in conversation in various "societies in Dublin, it appears that, &c.;" but what appears is literally no more than had been told far more character- istically at p. 33-34 of the Percy Memoir, to which no allusion is made, either here or a few pages on (174), when one of the prettiest of all the stories of Goldsmith's improvidence is given on Dr. Ellis's authority, without a hint of the book {Percy Memoir, 33-34) in which it first appeared. At p. 176, the same sort of parade is made about a lost letter of Goldsmith's descriptive of his travels " communicated to the "writer by &c. &c. &c. to whose father &c. &c." — the fact of the letter, as well as of the accident that destroyed it, having been published nearly half a century before by Dr. Campbell, in his Survey of the South of Ireland (286-289), and referred to not only at p. 37 of the Percy Memoir, but in a previous biographical sketch by Isaac Reed (xi-xii.). At p. 209 an interesting notice of Goldsmith's obscurest days in London is set forth as " in the words put into his "mouth by a gentleman who knew him for several years," and the gentleman is elaborately described in a note as a " barrister and author of &c. &c. ; " but the circumstance is carefully suppressed that " the words " are really quoted from a narrative printed nearly fifty years before in the European Magazine (xxiv. 91). In like manner, at p. 212-213, by far the most valuable and curious anecdote of those dark days, is reprinted verbatim from p. 39-40 of the Percy Memoir, without the most distant allusion to its having already appeared there. At p. 217-218 mention is made of one of Miss Milner's recollections of Goldsmith while an usher with her father, but no one could infer that this had been already quoted by xviii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Mr. Mitford from Watkins's Literary Anecdotes (515), though certainly it was more pardonable in Mr. Prior thus to borrow- without leave from one source, than to utterly omit, as he does, all mention of the most interesting details of those curious recollections to be found in other sources (in the European Magazine, liii. 373-375 ; and in the Gentleman's Magazine, lxxxvii. 277-278). At p. 220 the origin of Goldsmith's first connection with literature, and the peculiar engagement he entered into, are related without a hint of having been derived from p. 60 of the Percy Memoir. At p. 244, the sudden and disconcerting visit of Charles Goldsmith to London is referred to his having heard of Oliver's great friends through a letter to Mrs. Lawder, although there is proof, but a few pages on (268), that Oliver could have written no such letter ; and Mr. Prior had, in truth, simply copied the fact from North cote's Life of Reynolds (i. 332-333). An original letter is given at pp. 246-251, full of interest and character, without anything to inform the reader that he might have found it at pp. 40-45 of the Percy Memoir ; nor would it be very clear to him, even though Bishop Percy is mentioned in a note, that the letter at pp. 259-262 had been copied from the same source (50-52) ; still less that the long and characteristic fragment of a letter at pp. 275-278 is also but a verbatim copy from pp. 46-49 of the same ill-treated authority, and that the master-piece of all Goldsmith's epis- tolary writing, for the varied interest of its contents, has been bodily transferred without acknowledgment from pp. 53-59 of the one book to pp. 297-303 of the other. At pp. 370-372, an anecdote is related as having been told by Goldsmith himself "with considerable humour;" but the story is ill-told, and with no mention of the printed authority from which it was derived (in the European Magazine, xxiv. 259-260). Precisely the same remark I have to repeat of the stories at pp. 422-424, and of the statement at p. 495 for PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xix which an erroneous authority is given. These will be found in the European Magazine, xxiv. 92, 93, and 94. " The remem- " brance of Bishop Percy " is invoked for another whimsical anecdote at p. 377, when the exact page of the memoir (62-63) which contains it, might with equal ease and more propriety have been named. Thus far Mr. Prior's first volume; in which I have indicated scarcely any facts, for the use of which even as he had borrowed them himself, except that I never sought to put them forth as my own discoveries, I was not assailed and insulted by him. I now proceed in the same way, with all possible brevity, through the second volume of his book : merely premising, as a help to those who would have some clue to this perpetual and strange desire to represent as from oral or written com- munication facts derived from printed sources, that Mr. Prior took occasion in the course of his attack upon me expressly to lay down the doctrine, that what has been printed for any given number of years can no longer be held new, or regarded in the light of a discovery ; and as, in his own esteem, he is nothing if not a discoverer, and by consequence a proprietor, of facts, there ought perhaps to be little to surprise the reader in the foregoing and following examples. At pp. 1-11 of the second volume there is a vast deal about Goldsmith's Oratorio of the Captivity, about the fact of copies being still extant in his handwriting, and about M r. Prior being enabled to print for the first time " from that " which appears the most correct transcript;" the reader being kept quite ignorant that already this poem had been printed, from a copy in Goldsmith's handwriting at the least as curious as Mr. Prior's, and certainly as correct (the one having been made for Newbery, and the other for Dodsley, and the latest xx PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. in transcription presenting only a few changes of text from the other), in the octavo edition of the Miscellaneous Works published by the London "trade " in 1820. At p. 55 a story is repeated from the recollections of Miss Reynolds, communicated to Mr. Croker, which had already been far better told in the Gentleman' 's Magazine for July 1797. In pp. 80-94 a great clutter is made about the ballad of Edwin and Angelina, as to which all that was really essential is told in pp. 74-76 of the Memoir by Percy, whose personal connection with the dispute arising out of it gives peculiar authority to his statement. At p. 130 the assertion about Goldsmith's having got a large sum for what might seem a small labour, put forth as an exaggeration reported by others which " he took no pains to " contradict," but to which he would " in substance reply " &c. is all taken without acknowledgment from Cooke's narrative in the European Magazine (xxiv. 94) ; in which the exaggera- tion, such as it is, is most emphatically assigned to Goldsmith himself. At p. 135 the whimsical anecdote described to have been told to Dr. Percy, " with some humour by the Duchess " of Northumberland," might more correctly have been quoted from p. 68-69 of the Percy Memoir. At p. 139 there occurs, at last, formal mention of a person "admitted to considerable intimacy with him, Mr. William " Cooke, a barrister, known as the writer of a work on dramatic " genius, and of a poem, &c "; of whom it is added that " he " related many amusing anecdotes of the poet from personal " knowledge ;" but where the anecdotes are to be found is care- fully suppressed, nor indeed could any one imagine that they had ever found their way into print. At p. 139-140 a highly characteristic story of Goldsmith is given as from the relation of this Mr. Cooke, " corroborated to the writer by the late " Richard Sharpe, Esq., to whom Mr. Cooke told it more than " once ; " the story being nothing more than a transcript from PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xxi Taylor's Records of his Life (i. 107-110), published four years before Mr. Prior wrote. At p. 1-40-141, one of Cooke's most amusing stories is ill-told without a mention of its printed source {Europ. Mag. xxiv. 260). At p. 167 an incident is given from Mrs. Piozzi's relation, though with no mention of her book {Anecdotes, 244-246) ; and connected with it is a formal confirmation of her mistake as to the club's night of meeting, which the very slight diligence of turning to p. 72 of the Percy Memoir would have enabled Mr. Prior to correct. And at pp. 175, 178 (where certain lines are quoted without allusion to an anecdote current at the time which had given them their only point), 18 1,182, and 197, circumstances and traits of character are set forth without the least acknow- ledgment from Cooke's printed papers {European Magazine, xxiv. 170, 422, xxv. 184, xxiv. 172, 261, and 429), with only such occasional mystification of the reader as that " a jest of the poet "was repeated by Mr. Cooke" (197), or that "Bishop Percy in "conversation frequently alluded to these habits " (182). At pp. 194-196, a long passage is given from Colman's Random Records (i. 110-113); at p. 207 a business-agreement of Goldsmith's as " drawn up by himself " is given from the Percy Memoir (78) ; and at pp. 220-223 a letter from Oliver to Maurice Goldsmith is copied from the same source (86-89), — without a clue in any of these cases to the book which contains the original. At p. 237-238 we are informed that Mr. Percival Stockdale's Memoirs "furnishes scarcely an allusion to Goldsmith. His " papers, however, supply an anecdote communicated by a " lady eminent for her writings in fiction, his friend, and whom " the writer has likewise the honour, &c. &c. &c." And then the anecdote, professing to be transcribed by Miss Jane Porter from the manuscripts of Mr. Stockdale, turns out to be a literal transcription from that very Memoirs of the worthy gentleman (ii. 136-137), which had been published nearly thirty years ixii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. before Mr. Prior's book, and in which Mr. Prior had been able to find " scarcely an allusion " to Groldsmith. At pp. 254-269 there is a long rigmarole about the identity of Lissoy and Auburn, and about the alehouse &c rebuilt by Mr. Hogan, — all professing to be the result of written com- munication or personal inquiry, — not a syllable of which may not be found in Mangin's Essay (140-143) ; in Mr. Newell' s elaborate and highly illustrated quarto edition of the Poetical Works (1811 : "with remarks attempting to ascertain chiefly " from local observation the actual scene of the Deserted Vil- " lage : " 61-80), and in Mr. Hogan's own account in the Gentle- mans Magazine (xc. 618-622), — not one of these authorities being once named by Mr. Prior. At p. 288-289 we have a charming fragment of a letter to Eeynolds transferred without acknowledgment from the Percy Memoir (90-91) ; at p. 300, an agreement with Davies is silently taken from an earlier page (79) ; at p. 375, a curious letter of Tom Paine' s to Groldsmith is so taken from a later page (96-98) ; and at pp. 328-330, an admirable letter is in like manner copied, and not even correctly copied, from the same mal-treated book (92-94). At p. 309 an anecdote is given from an earlier volume of the magazine which contained the printed papers by Cooke {European Magazine, xxi. 88), but with careful avoidance of any clue to the authority. At pp. 313-321 not a few of the traits of Hiffernan are borrowed from one of Cooke's papers respecting him {European Magazine, xxv. 110-184), still with no hint of any such source. At p. 349-350, a very characteristic story of G-oldsmith is copied without allusion from the Percy Memoir (100). At p. 353 an incident is men- tioned as " according to the late Mr. John Taylor," which is simply copied from Taylor's Records (i. 118). And so, at pp. 370 and 401, where the incidents given are silently transcribed from Northcote {Life of Reynolds,!. 288 and 286). PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xxiii At p. 381 a pleasant anecdote appears as though originally told, but which Cooke had long before related in print {European Magazine, xxiv. 261) ; at p. 386-387, two letters are appropriated without allusion to Colman's Posthumous Letters (ed : 1820 ; 180), or to Garrick's Correspondence (ed : 1830; i. 527), where they first appeared; at pp. 389, 465, aud 481, anecdotes, full of character, which Cooke certainly deserved the credit of having told in print {European Magazine, xxiv. 173, 261, and 262), are given without an allusion to him; at pp. 421 and 473, two anecdotes, the former being one of the most charming recorded of Goldsmith, which had been told in the same magazine, but in a later and an earlier number than those in which Cooke wrote (lv. 443. and xix. 94), are silently taken in the same way ; at p. 465-466, a curious trait given as "mentioned by Malone" might as well have been given as copied from his Life of Dry den (i. 518) ; and, for a final act of justice to the Percy Memoir, let me add that the libel at p. 408-409, the unfinished fragment at p. 410, the address to the public at p. 413-414, the amusing verses at p. 419, and the Oglethorpe letter at p. 422-423, are all drawn, with the same extraordinary absence of all mention of their source, from that first authentic record of Goldsmith's career (103-105, 105-106, 107-108, 102-103, and 95-96). To close the ungracious task which has thus been forced upon me. Letters quoted by Mr. Prior are never referred to the place from which he draws them, except in the few instances where a really original letter happens to have fallen in his way. Whether it be at p. 390, where a letter of Goldsmith's to Cradock (in Memoirs, i. 225) is misplaced, and referred to what it has no connection with ; or at p. 429, where a letter of Goldsmith's to Garrick (in Memoirs of Doctor Burney, i. 272- 273) is given as though personal communication had drawn it from Madame d'Arblay ; or at p. 470, where a letter of Beattie's (in Forbes's Life, ii. 69) is made use of- or at pp. 369, xxiv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 472, 482, 488, and 510, where quotations are printed, and in two instances misprinted, from letters of Beauclerc's ( in Hardy's Life of Lord Chwlernont, 178, 163, 177, 178, and 179) ; or at p. 526, where we find a letter from Maurice Goldsmith to Mr. Hawes (in Hawes's Account, 22), — still the reader is left without a clue to the source of these letters, in any single instance, and may suppose, for anything to the contrary revealed to him by Mr. Prior, that all have proceeded from that amazing fund of private and exclusive discovery, on which this gentleman founds his claim to an exclusive property in their use. And now, having gone through Mr. Prior's volumes, as I hope for the last time, I shall content myself with this further remark, that I ground my claim to whatever merit my own volumes may possess, on the completeness of their contrast to his, and on the conviction that no two books so utterly unlike each other were ever before written on the same subject. For a help to the reader's judgment in one direction only, I subjoin a mention of those pages in my volumes which contain facts, anecdotes, or personal traits exclusively relating to Goldsmith himself, here included for the first time in any Life of him ; and I have placed an asterisk before the new facts or characteristics so affecting him personally, added to the present edition. Were I to attempt so to distinguish the new matter introduced having relation to the time, and filling up the picture I seek to present of G-oldsmith' s associates and friends, it would involve a specification of almost every page. In the first volume, 14, *39, *53-54, *61, 68, 82, *82-83, *83-85, *85-87, 129, 157-158, 169, *190, 265, 286, 287, *289, *296, 307, •8X1, 313, *325, 328, 366, 367, *379-380, *395, 397, *405, and *441-443. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xxv In the second volume, 9, 18, 19-20, 22, 30, *39, 42-43, 50, 59-60, 61, 05-08, 70, 71, 75, 70-81, 100-101, 102, *104-105, *106-107, 10S, 114-115, 115, 119-120, 121-122, 125, *126, 128, *130-131, 181, 132, 133, 134, 139, 141, 142-143, 144- 145, 148, 157-158, 158-159, *159, 100, 103-104, 108, 179, 180, 194, 203-204, 205, 213, 220, *221, 227, *233, 237, *255- 250, *265-274, 275, 278-280, 282, 287, *293, *294-295, *295- 297, 305, *312, 317, *325, 320, 328, *33G-337, *339, 344, •850, 357, 358, *359, 301-302, *303-3G5, 371, *374, *378, 379, *381-382, 390, 398, *402-404, *406, *409, *414-41G, 418, 420-421, 428-429, 430-431, 434-436, 438-440, *441-444, *451, *453, *450, *458-459, *400, 404, 400, 467, and *470. In conclusion, with particular reference to a change in the title of this biography, intended more correctly to express the extended aim and character it now assumes, perhaps the reader may be requested to remember that while " the times," as well as " the life," are meant to be comprised, the persons introduced appear always as far as possible in the character and proportions which they bore to the society of their day, during the life, and not beyond it ; that Burke is not yet the impeacher of Hastings, nor Boswell the biographer of John- son ; and that in thus bringing within the circle of view not a little of the social as well as literary characteristics, of the arts, the theatres, and the politics, of this fragment of the eighteenth century, still the object has strictly been to show in more vivid lights from each, the central figure of Goldsmith himself, not exaggerated, not unduly exalted, but with all tli.it there was in him to admire and iove, and all there was around hi tn to suggest excuse or pity. .1. I\ 58, Lincoln's Iwn Fields, 3MA January, 1864. LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS. FIRST BOOK. Title-page, Portrait by Reynolds Frontispiece (Occupations preced inq Authorship) Goldsmith learning his Letters The Sizar and Ballad-singer . Goldsmith and his College Tutor The Alehouse at Ballymahon The Reception at Ballymahon Goldsmith and Voltaire . The Reception in London . Poor Physician to the Poor . At Doctor Milner's PASK 25 29 43 48 50 55 SECOND BOOK. Frontispiece (Writing for Bread). 63 At the Dunciad 67 Goldsmith and Horace Walpole . 75 Goldsmith's Garret . . . , 80 An Author and his Readers . Green Arbour-court . Goldsmith and his Landlady . Mr. Percy visits Goldsmith 102 110 THIRD BOOK. Frontispiece (Goldsmith and the Booksellers) . . . .125 Profiting by the Spiders . . . 135 Goldsmith's Night Wanderings . 137 Hogarth at Islington . . . . 176 After Supper at the Mitre . . 192 Reynolds at Islington . . . Johnson at Islington Doctor Goldsmith Facsimile of a Letter by Goldsmith Goldsmith Conjuring . . . 26S At thr Window in Garden-court . 2S7 263 FOURTH BOOK. Frontispiece (Dignities of Author- ship) 289 After the Comedy . . . . 297 The Shoemaker's Holiday . . . 307 In Westminster Abbey and on Temple Bar 318 Garrick and the Bloom-coloured Coat 831 The Landing at Calais . . . 356 The Royal Academy Dinner . . 373 Boswell's Election to the Club . 432 Goldsmith and Reynolds at Vaux- hall 449 The Author's Present and Future 472 TABLE OE CONTENTS: ANALYTICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL. The Author to the Reader 1 Book I. 1728 to 1757. THE SIZAR, STUDENT, TRAVELLER, APOTHECARY'S JOURNEYMAN, USHER, and poor physician. Pages 5 to 61. ira 1730. ML 2. yKt. 3. At. 6. Mt. 8. 1787. 1738. 1739. ecimen-review . . Leases himself to Griffiths An author's prospects . . 58 Interval between patrons and public . . . .58 Literature used and despised . 59 Origin of Grub-street . . . 59 Sam Johnson and the lower class of writers . .60 Mr. John Jackson and the higher class . . . . 60 The Reign of periodicals . . CO Goldsmith at the Dunciad . . 61 Book II. 1757 to 1759. authorship by oompulsion. Pages 63 to 124. CHAPTER I. 1757. REVIEWING FOR MR. AND MRS. GRIFFITHS. 1 7/7. Author by Profession . . . 65 in the Griffith's-livery . . 65 Writing for the Monthly Review 66 Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths superin- tending 66 Nortfiern Antiquities ... 67 The tragedy of Douglas . . 68 Why Garrick rejected it . .68 Advantages of persecution . . 68 A polite pooh ! pooh I . .69 Wilkie's Epigoniad . . . 70 Distinguished Mr. Puns . . 70 Want of critical depth no proof of literary envy . . . 71 Bonnell Thornton and George Colman . . . .71 Criticising and praising Burke. 71 Smollett, Hume, and Warbur- tou 72 Jonas Hanway and his pro- jects 73 Vails to servants put down . . 73 Umbrellas forced into use . 73 - The Journey from Portsmouth . 73 Polignac's Anti- Lucretius and Gray's Mastor Tommy . 74 Goldsmith and Horace Walpole 75 Odes b>i Mr. Orttf . . . . 75 Wal pole's quarrel with Gray . 75 Habit of depreciation . . 76 Lessons in poetry. . . 76 Gray praised by Goldsmith. . 76 Johnson's influence yet unfelt. 78 CHAPTER II. 1768. MAKING SHIFT TO EXIST. itli Griffiths . 78 . '-"J. Clow iout on the Monthly Hevietr . ... 78 Interpolation of articles . . . Mr. Griffiths's opinion of Gold- smith .... In a Garret near Salisbury -sq . Doctor James Grainger. . . Brother Charles visits the gar- ret A sore disappointment . . Letter to brother-in-law Hod- son A picture for Irish friends . . Irish memories and Irish pro- mises Poor physician and poorer poet 1758. (February) Translating under iEt. 30. a feigned name . Loses hope and courage . . Gives up literature . Goes back to Peckham school . A medical appointment prom- ised ... One more literary effort . Irish independence . . . Released from Peckham school CHAPTER III. 1758. ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE FROM LITERATURE. 1758. A new Magazine j&t. 30. (August) Working for his outfit Letter to Edward Mills . . What an Irish relativo might do What the Irish relative did . . Letter to Robert Bryanton The Future invoked against the Present . . . . Ordinary fato of Authors . Bread wanting, and milk-score unpaid Despair in the garret Starving where ltutlcr and Otwag . . Letter to Cousin Jane . . TABLE OF CONTENTS. FAGK A. fancy portrait . . . . 92 Living death of Uncle Conta- rine 93 Proposals for a subscription to a book 93 Appointed medical officer at Coromandel. . .93 CHAPTER IV. 1758. ESCAPE PREVENTED. 1758. Describes the appointment to iEt. 30. Hodson 93 Fine words for Irish hearing . 94 Grand style of the Marquis of Griffiths .... 94 A hopeful group of friends . . 95 Smollett and the "Old Gentle- woman " of the Monthly Review 95 Hamilton's Critical Review . . 96 Reviews for Hamilton . . 96 A thought of Dryden . . . 97 Speaking out for the Author's profession . . . .97 Green-Arbour-court . . . 97 The flute still in tune . . 98 ^November) Coromandel ap- pointment lost . . . 99 Resolves to be a hospital mate. 99 Griffiths and the tailor . . 100 Four articles for the Monthly Review 100 (December) Examined and re- jected at Surgeons' Hall . 100 The virtue of necessity . . 101 Driven back to Literature . . 101 CHAPTER V. 1758—1759. DISCIPLINE OF SOREOW, 1758. Pawns his new clothes for his Mt. 30. landlady . . . .102 Griffiths demands payment for them . . * . . . 102 Letter in possession of the bio- grapher . . . .102 Griffiths calls names . . . 103 Which is the sharper and villain? .... 103 The gain in sorrow . . . 104 Beams of morning . . . 104 Writing a Life of Voltaire . . 104 (February) Letter to Henry Goldsmith. . . . lofi Self-painted portraiture. . . 105 A poor wandering uncle's ex- ample . ... 106 Heroi-comical verses . . . 107 Poetry and prose . ... 107 The ale-house hero . . . 108 CHAPTER VI. 1759. WORK AND HOPE. 1759. Voltaire and Ned Purdon . 108 Mt. 31. Introduced to Mr. Percy . . 109 Mr. Percy's visit to the garret. 109 A Newgate biography . . .110 Reviewing for Smollett . .111 Laughing at Elegies . . .111 Forecasting the future . .111 Another scheme for travel . 112 A reverend and irritable dra- matist 112 The fashionable family novel . 113 Adieu to both Reviews . . 113 Close of his account with the owl and the ass . . . 113 CHAPTER VII. 1759. AN APPEAL FOR AUTHORS BY PROFESSION. 1759. (April) Publication of the En- Mt. 31. quiry into Polite Learning . 114 Bad critics and sordid book- sellers 114 Truths of a hard experience . 115 Reviews and Magazines assail- ed 115 A frightful monosyllable . . 116 Smollett's answer, and Grif- fiths's insult . . . 116 Dirt flung at Goldsmith . . .117 What Walpole and Hume thought of Grub-street quarrels . . . .118 Evil influences on literature . 118 Right encouragements to au- thors 119 Grants of money not required . 120 The days of patronage . . 120 Wit and its disadvantages . .121 Genius and its rewards . .121 Collins and Goldsmith . .122 Compensations .... 122 Warnings . . ... 123 What has been done for Litera- ture 123 What Literature may do . . 124 TABLE OF CONTENTS. Book III. 1759 to 1767. authorship by cnoiCB. Pages 125 to 287. 1759. jEt. 31. CHAPTER I. 1759. WRITING THE "BEE." Activity in Grab-street . Dullness and her progeny . . A doubtful recruit . Samuel Johnson . . . The knell of patronage . Encouragement and example Thirty pounds a year. . . A Great Cham in great dis- tress Society gathering round John- son Poverty and independence . (October) First number of the Playhouse criticism . . . Second number of the Bee Third number of the Bee . . Fourth number of the Bee . Booksellers' literature . Writing for the Busy Body and the Lady's Magazine . Fifth number of the Bee . . Goldsmith's first mention of Johnson .... An evening with a bookseller Night wanderings . . Sympathy with the wretched CUAPTER II. 1759. DAVID QARRICK. (November 29th) Close of the Bee Love of the theatre . . . Garrick and Ralph . Authors and managers . . or a tragic Lilliput? Garrick's management . Injustice to players and wrongs to dramatists . . Goldsmith attacks Garrick . Garrick resents the attack . Inconsiderate expressions The actor's claims . PAOK 127 127 128 128 129 129 129 130 130 131 131 189 132 133 133 134 135 135 135 136 i. -lo- rn 137 138 138 138 140 140 141 142 142 CHAPTER III. 1759-1700. OVXRTUBW FROM 8MOLLETT AND MR. in ; Important visitors . 143 Candom- towards an unauo- OOSftfiil author . ,148 1760. (January 1) Smollett's British jEt. 32. Magazine . . . . 143 Essays contributed by Gold- smith .... 144 Cheerful philosophy . . . 145 A puff by Goldsmith . . 145 A country Wow-wow . . . 14C (Jan. 12) Newbery's news- paper . . . .146 A Daily Paper then and now 147 Goldsmith engaged for tho Public Ledger . . . 148 A Guinea an Article . . 148 CHAPTER IV. "THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD." 1760. (January 24 and 29) Tho first Mt. 32. and second Chinese Letters 148 Newspaper shadows and reali- ties 148 Griffiths swallows the loek . 149 The Citizen of the World . . 149 Social reforms suggested in it 149 Quacks and pretenders . . 150 Law and Church . . . 150 Property and poverty . .151 Mad-dog cries . . . . 1">1 Pictures of tho day. . , 151 Laurence Sterne . . . 152 Goldsmith's attack on Tris- tram Shandy . . . 152 Beau Tibbs and the Man in Black 152 Jack Pilkington . . . 154 The great Duchess and tho white mice . ... 154 Tea party at tho White Con- duit Gardens . . . 154 Supper party at the Chapter Coffee-house . . . Dinner at Dlackwall . . 155 Ekmbiliao and Goldsmith . . 165 Hawkins's exposure expo- I luinhlo recreations . . 156 Polly and the Pickpocket . . 156 Tho State reminded of its duty Editing the Lady's Magazine . 157 Writing prefaces . . . 157 Betterlodgings . . .167 CHAPTER V. 1761-1762. FEM.OUMIII- Willi JnllNSOK. art . . . 168 l>or in In in- ol .I0I111- HOIl .... TABLE OF CONTENTS. Johnson in a new suit PAGE 159 Lost anecdotes 159 Booksellers better than pa trons .... 160 1762. Pamphlet on the Cock-lan( Mt. 34. Ghost > 160 Drudging for Newbery 161 Small debts 162 Visits Tunbridge and Bath 162 Life of Beau Nash 162 Unconscious self-revelations 163 A good-natured man 163 Johnson pensioned . 164 Shebbeare (of the pillory) pen sioned 164 A literary Prime Minister 165 CHAPTER VI. 1762. INTRODUCTIONS AT TOM DAVIES'S . 1762. An actor turned bookseller 165 Mt. 34. The shop in Russell-street 165 Garrick and Davies 166 A Patron .... 166 Men of feeling 166 Johnson and Foote . 167 Burke at the Robin Hood 167 A Master of the Rolls . 167 Goldsmith and Johnson as de baters .... 167 The Cherokee Kings 167 Peter Annet 168 Completing a history 168 Memorialising Lord Bute . 168 At work on the Vicar of Wake field .... 169 At dinner with Tom Davies 170 James Boswell . 170 Sayings and doings in Lon- don 170 Boswell and the Cow . . 171 A strange dispenser of fame Robert Levett . . . 171 171 CHAPTER VII. 1762-1763. HOGARTH AND REYNOLDS. 1762. Mrs. Fleming at Islington . 172 Mt. 34. The publisher-paymaster . 172 1763. Compiling . . . .173 Mt. 35. Histories and Prefaces . . 173 Letters from a Nobleman to his son 173 Visitors at Islington . . . 174 William Hogarth . . .175 Sympathies with Goldsmith . 175 Admiration of Johnson . . 175 Portrait of the Landlady . 175 Joshua Reynolds . . . 176 Not a petty quarrel . .177 East aud West in Lcicoster-sq. 177 CHAPTER VIII. 1763. THE CLUB AND ITS FIRST MEMBERS. PAGE 1763. A club proposed . . .178 Mt. 35. Members and rules . . . 178 What it became . . .179 What it was at first . . . 179 Mr. John Hawkins . . .180 Loose characters . . . . 180 An unclubable man . . . 181 Irish adventurers . . . 181 Burke's outset in life . . 181 What kept him down . . . 182 A wonderful talker . . .183 Johnson and Burke talking . 183 Conversational contests . . 1 84 Bennet Langton . . . 184 Topham Beauclerc . . . 185 A prudent mother and a frisk- ing philosopher . . . 185 A man of fashion among scho- lars 186 Beau's secret charm . . . 186 Being superior to one's subject 186 Beauclerc's sallies . . . 187 Goldsmith at the club . . 187 Dick Eastcourt's example . . 187 Doubtful self-assertion . . 188 Self-distrust 188 "It come3 I" . . . . 188 Boswell sees Johnson . . . 188 Shock the first . . . .189 The Mitre 189 The Turk's Head . . .190 The sage taken by storm . .190 Boswell criticizing Goldsmith 190 A roar of applause . . . 191 Easy familiarity . . . . 192 Johnson's pensioners and cha- rities 192 Miss Williams . . . . 192 Levees at Inner Temple-lane . 192 The countess and the scholar . 193 A singular appearance . .193 Goldsmith becomes a Templar 194 CHAPTER IX. 1763—1764. THE ARREST AND WHAT PRECEDED IT. 1763. Compiling for Dodsley . . . 194 Mt. 35. Growing importance . . 194 Secret labours . . . . 195 Singing birds captive and free 195 Distress 195 A letter to Dodsley . . . 196 1764. Johnson and Smart . . .196 Mt. 36. Goldsmith's Oratorio . . . 197 At Islington . . . .197 Unpublished bills of his land- lady 198 Goody Two Shoes . . .200 Reynolds at Islington . . . 200 Borrowing from Newbery . 201 Pope aud Garrick . . . 201 Garrick in Paris . . . 202 TABLE OF CONTENTS. FAGS A rival at home . . . . 202 Powell's success . . . 202 O'Brien and Lady Susan . . 203 Horace Walpole's horror . . 203 Percy and Grainger . . . 203 Goldsmith and Percy . . 204 A round of visitings . . . 204 The Thrales . . . .204 Goldsmith arrested . . . 205 Johnson sent for . . . 205 Who arrested him ? . . 205 Newbery's friendship with the landlady . . . .206 Sale of the Vicar of Wakefield . 207 What Johnson thought the Vicar worth . . . 207 CHAPTER X. 1764—1765. " THE TRAVELLER" AND WHAT FOLLOWED IT. 1764. (Dec. 19) The Traveller pub- J5t. 36. lished . . . .207 Dedication 208 Charles Churchill . . . 208 Legitimate satire . . . 209 Goldsmith and Pope . . 210 Merits of TJu Traveller . . 210 Johnson's help . . .211 Not knowing what one means 211 Luke's crown explained . . 212 Being partial the wrong way . 212 Patronising airs . . . 212 Benny dear 213 Sacrifice of a beast . . .213 Charles Fox and The Traveller 213 The Reviews . . . . 213 1705. Essays by Mr. Goldsmith . . 214 2Et. 37. Edwin and Angelina . . . 215 Charge of plagiarism . . 215 Percy and Goldsmith . . . 216 A hint to young writers . . 216 At Northumberland House . 216 An Idiot 217 Borrowing fifteen and sixpence 217 The best patrons . . .218 An agreement for ninety-nine years 218 CHAPTER XI. 1765. JOLD8WTH IN PRACTICE AND BURKE IN OFFICE. Robert Nugent . 219 His three wives . . . 219 The Grenville ministry . 220 of America . . . 220 Fall of Oronville . 221 Burke's hopes . . 221 The Rockingham party . 221 1 Mr. O'Bourke . . 222 Garrick, Powell, and Stei •no . 223 PAGB Finessing and trick . . . 225 The Actor and the Club . . 224 Hawkins and Garrick . . . 224 Doctor Goldsmith . . . 224 Fine clothes and fine company 225 Beauclerc's advice . . . 226 CHAPTER XII. 1765—1766. HEWS FOR THE CLUB, OF VARIOUS KINDS AND FROM VARIOUS PLACES. 1765. Society of Arts . . . .226 Mt. 37. Miss Williams's Miscellanies . 227 Johnson's Shakespeare, and his Doctorate . . . .227 1766. Chambers in Garden-court . . 227 Jit. 38. English in Paris . . .228 Hume, Rousseau, Barry, and Boswell 228 Walpole, enphilosophe . . 228 A solemn coxcomb in London 228 Johnson's treatment of books . 229 Players and poets . . . 229 Old friends quarrelling . . 229 Kenrick's Fal staff . . . 230 Goldsmith and Johnsou . . 230 Johnson • ' making a line " . . 230 Reappearance of Boswell . . 230 The big man . . . . 231 Boswell and Mr. Pitt . . 231 (14th January) Burke enters Parliament . . . . 232 Astonishment at the Club . 232 Another marvel . . . . 233 John and Francis Newbery . 233 The Vicar of Wakefield . . 233 CHAPTER XIII. 1766. THE "VICAR OF WAKEFIELD." 1766. The most popular of stories . 234 Jit 38. First purely domestic novel . 234 Purpose of the writer . . . 235 Ragged-school experiences an- ticipated .... 235 Social truths . . . . 235 The gibbet and its fashions . 236 Charles Primrose and Abra- ham Adams . ... 236 Fielding's friend and Gold- smith's father . . .236 Musical-glasses . . . . 237 The historical family picture . 237 The wisdom of simpleness . . 238 A fire-side scene . .289 Passages expunged . . 289 Goldsmith's influence onGootho 240 The Reviews . . .241 Johnson's opinion . ■ . 241 What the club thought of it . 241 What Burko and Garrick thought 241 Editions and translations . 241 63 TABLE OF CONTENTS. CFTAPTER XIV. 1706. OLD DRUDGERY, AND A NEW VENTURE DAWNING. PAG« 242 242 1766. Poems for Young Lculies . . Mt. 38. A mistake of authorship . Beauties of English Poetry se- lected 242 Prior in polite company . . 243 Doctor Doddridge and Nancy- Moore 243 Rousseau in Garrick's box . 243 Goldsmith at the theatre .' .243 Tlte Clandestine Marriage . . 244 Garrick's original draught . . 244 Colman discontented . . 244 Goldsmith and N ewbery . . 245 Thoughts of a comedy . . 245 At the Devil tavern . . . 246 Conversation Cooke . . . 246 Dupe to an impostor . . . 246 Adventures of a guinea . . 246 Goldsmith and Charles Lamb's schoolmistress . . . 247 Patagonians . . . .247 CHAPTER XV. 1766. THE GREAT WORLD AND ITS RULERS. . 247 247 248 248 248 249 249 1766. Lord Rockingham retires i£t. 38. Mr. Pitt and a new arrange- ment A king's caresses . . . Camden and Shelburne . Charles Townshend . . . Endeavours to secure Burke . Obstructions in his way . What he had and what he wanted . . . . . 250 The three gangs . . . 250 Influence of faction on litera- ture 250 Pamphleteering and libelling . 251 Uses of literature to politics . 251 Gratitude of politics to litera- ture 251 Christopher Anstey . . . 252 Men of letters in London and in Paris .... 252 Caleb Whitefoord's cross read- ings 253 (28th Dec.) Goldsmith writes a Grammar for five guineas . 253 CHAPTER XVI. 17o.. THEATRES ROYAL COVENT-GARDEN AND DRUBY-LANE. 1767. (6th Jan.) Borrows one-pound Mt. 39. one 253 At work on his comedy. . . 253 Johnson promises a prologue. 254 1767. Mt. 81 Johnson's interview with the King 254 How his Majesty talked . . 254 Goldsmith listening . . . 256 Anxieties of the theatre . . 850 Comedy sent to Garrick . . 256 Mrs. Pritchard and Mrs. Clive 256 Garrick and Goldsmith . . 257 Goldsmith borrowing . . 258 Garrick suggesting changes in comedy 258 Honeywood and his original . 25S Croaker and Suspirius . . 258 Garrick's objections. . . 259 Arbitration rejected . . . 260 Goldsmith's anger . . . 260 News of a rival management . 260 Colman and Powell . . . 260 Garrick's suspicions . . 261 New management announced . 262 Mrs. Yates deserts Garrick . . 262 Goldsmith joins Colman . . 262 Preparations for war . . . 262 Letter and comedy to Colman 263 Writes to Garrick . . .265 Garrick's answer . . . 266 Foote at the Haymarket . . 266 Goldsmith at a new play . . 266 Jack and Gill . . . .267 Ways with childi-en . . . 267 Goldsmith's, Garrick's, and Foote's . . . .267 George Colman the younger . 267 Goldsmith conjuring . . . 268 CHAPTER XVII. 1767. THE WEDNESDAY CLUB. Goldsmith compiling Newbery's last illness , . Success of Goldsmith's Letters . Tom Davies proposes a Roman History . 269 Lectureship on Civil Law . . 270 Humble clubs . 270 At the Devil, the Bedford, anc the Globe . . . . 270 Wednesday Club . 270 Doctor Glover . . . . 271 Adventure at Hampstead 271 Hugh Kelly 271 Imitation of Churchill 27-2 Nottingham ale . . . . 272 Original of Ned Purdon's epi taph .... 272 Melancholy in" mirth . . . 273 Canonbury Tower . 273 CHAPTER XVIII. 1767. PATRONS OF LITERATURE. 1767. Robert Nugent, Viscount Mt. 39. Clare .... 274 TABLE OF CONTENTS. Defeats of Chatham's Ministry 274 George Greuville and Charles Townshend . . .275 Now project to tax America . 2T5 Passionate- ndionle of Burke . 275 Chatham's suppressed gout . 276 Chatham and the King . . 276 Charles Townsheud's death . 276 The Grafton Ministry . . 876 Lord North and Mr. Jcnkin- son 276 Short sighted statesmen . . '-'77 King's friends . . . . 277 What the new system cost . 278 Its literature .... 278 A formidable letter-writer . . 278 Forebodings of a storm . . 279 Authorship of Letters in the Public Advertiser . . . 279 Writers wanted by the Minis- try 279 Goldsmith refuses his sup- port 279 Consequences of refusal . . 279 Smollett and Lord Shelbume . 280 Gray and Lord Bute . . 2*0 Hopes for a writer of genius . 280 Death of the author of Hum- phrey Clinker . . . . 280 CHAPTER XIX. 1767. CLOSE OF A TWELVE YEAKS* STRUGGLE. 1767. Reflections for a garret . Mt. 39. What is done and what might have been done . . . Scar of a twelve years' conflict. What poverty brings with it Its benefits and its evils . Contrasts in all men . . . Social disadvantages The habit of disrespect . . An innocent vanity . Doctor Minor and Doctor Major Hashed-up stories . Beattie's guinea and Gold- smith's sixpences . . . Burke's noble advice Labour and leisure ill-appor- tioned Irish temperament . A battle well fought out . . Want of a home An unfailing friend . . . The rus in urbe of Goldsmith and Gray .... The Temple Gardens . . . 280 Book IV. 1767 to 1774. THE FRIEND OF JOHNSON, BURKE, AND REYNOLDS J DRAMATIST, NOVELIST, and poet. Pages 289 to 472. CHAPTER I. 1767-1768. "THE oood-natuked man." (Dec. 22nd) Death of John New- bery 291 1768. (Jan. 28th) Promised pcr- £t 40. formance of the Qood- Natured Man . . . 291 Quarrels in the theatre . . 291 BickerstaflTs complaint . . 292 medy in rehearsal . . 292 Hugh Kelly's rival comedy . 292 False Delicacy . . . .293 ng of wit and trouble . 294 Garrick^s zeal for Kelly . . 294 A blaze of triumph . . . 294 Last rehearsal of the Good- Naturtd Man . . .294 - . . . 295 Jan.) Goldsmith on the stage . . 295 Powell s acting in Honeywood 295 Recei • ulifls . . 295 > Suiter's acting in Croaker . 206 At supper after the comedy . 296 Goldsmith singing and crying 296 Johnson's sympathy . . 297 Publication of the Good-Ka- tured Man . ... 297 High critics of low humour . 298 "Our little Bard" . . . 298 Goldy 298 Stage-career of the comedy . 298 CHAPTER II 80C1AL ENTEKTAINMENTS, HUMBLE CLIENTS. AND SHOEMAKEH'S HOLIDAYS. 1768. Results of theatrical success . 299 Mt. 40. Chambers in Brick-court Poet Goldsmith and L> Blackstoue . . .299 Dancing a minuet . . . 800 " A cheerful little hop " . 800 The Wednesday Club . . . 301 Putting a pig in the right wny 301 Practical jokes . . 301 Hugh Kelly and his wifo's sister 802 Goldsmith proposes • 802 TABLE OF CONTENTS. Throwing stones from glass houses 302 Tyriau bloom and garter blue 303 (May) Henry Goldsmith's death 303 The Village Preacher . Idea of the Deserted Village Unsettled opinions Sentimental politics Depopulation in England and Ireland . Conversation Cooke . A Shoemaker's Holiday Peter Barlow . Poor pensioners Singing Sally Salisbury . Mr. Cooke and Mr. Rogers CHAPTER III. THE EDGEWARE COTTAGE, ST. STEPHENS, AND GRUB STREET. 1768. The Shoemaker's Paradise Mt. 40. Lawyer Bott . . . . Walpole, Hume, and Robertson Death of Laurence Sterne Royal Academy founded . . Goldsmith Professor of History Riots in St. George's and St. James's .... An Austrian ambassador head- over-heels . . . * Lord Chatham re-awakening . Burke's purchase of Beacons- field: (Oct.) Goldsmith at the theatre Epigram against Goldsmith . Paul Hiffernan Goldsmith at the reading of a Play Isaac Bickerstaff Infamy and misery . . . An Ishmael of criticism . Setting reviewers at defiance . The Gentleman's Journal . A visit from Grub-street . . The screw of tea and sugar General Oglethorpe . . . Jacobite leanings InPoets'-corner and at Temple- 312 312 313 313 314 314 315 315 315 315 316 316 316 316 317 317 317 CHAPTER IV. 1769. LABOURS AND ENJOYMENTS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE. 1769. Degree at Oxford . . .318 Mt. 41. The Great Betu- . . . . 318 Boys of the Newcastle Gram- mar school . . t 319 New members elected to the club 319 Goldsmith and Johnson dis- agree . . . .319 The club's gradual decline . 320 Mrs. Lennox's comedy . . 320 Goldsmith's epilogue . . 320 Vers de Societd . . . . 320 Mrs. Horneck and her daugh- ters 321 Little Comedy and the Captain in Lace . . . . 321 Mr. Washington Irving and the Jessamy Bride . .322 Burke's guardianship . . . 322 " This is a poem " . . . 322 Reynolds and Angelica Kauff- man 323 (May) The Roman History . 324 Dinner talk at Beauclerc's . .324 First agreement for the A nimated Nature . . . .324 A History of Enyland proposed 325 Money advanced to the his- torian 325 What the historian did with it 325 Goldsmith and the Vandyke . 325 Payments anticipated . . 326 Goldsmith on party . . 327 Gray absorbed in a newspaper 327 First Letter with the signature of ' ' Junius " ... 327 Burke trying to be heard . 328 The right to report debates . 328 Sir Henry Cavendish's Notes . 328 CHAPTER V. 1769-1770. LONDON LIFE. 1769. Mrs. Macauley's statue . . 328 2Et. 41. Madame Dubarry's portrait . 328 Vanity Fair . . . . 329 The Stratford Jubilee . . 329 Boswell and Paoli . . . 329 The Auld Dominie . . 329 Baretti and Goldsmith . . 330 Baretti's bail and witnesses . 330 Mr. William Filby's bills . . 330 Boswell's dinner-party . . 331 Waiting for Reynolds . . . 331 The bloom-coloured coat . . 331 How to treat a host . . . 333 At work on a Life of Parnell . 333 The Deserted Village announced 333 1770. Uncle Contarine's legacy . . 334 Mt. 42. Irish friends and family . . 334 Letter to brother Maurice .334 Surrenders his legacy . . . 335 Sends his picture . . . 335 Maurice becomes a cabinet- maker 335 Nephew Hodson comes to Lon- don ..... 336 CHAPTER VI. 1770. DINNERS AND TALK. 1 770. Goldsmith painted by Reynolds 336 -ZEt. 42. Print in the shop-windows . 336 Goldsmith and Sir Joshua . . 337 The nonsense of a man of wit 337 TABLE OF CONTENTS. FAG« The di nners in Leicester-square 338 33S B88 B80 340 340 3i<) MO Ml Ml Formidable guests . Invulnerability of the host A joke without its point . A story not laughed at . Petty annoyances Johnson's practical wisdom Exaggeration of foibles . The Muses and the Players Talking and writing Burke's trick upon Goldsmith 341 The Irish widow .... 342 Celebrated talkers . . . 342 An old lady's advice . . . 342 Goldsmith's conversation . 343 Little fishes talking like whales 344 Goldsmith reads the Heroic Epistle to Johnson . . 344 The he-bear and the she-bear . 345 Johnson's pamphlet against the Opposition . . . 345 Tommy Townshend's attack . 345 Burke in the House of Com- mons 345 Unpunished libels . . . 346 Supremacy of Junius . . . 346 CHAPTER VII. 1770. THE "DESERTED VILLAGE." 1770. (26th May) Publication of the X.I. 42. Deserted Village . . 346 What Gray thought of it . 346 Burke's opinion . . . . 347 Secret of the life of books . .347 Johnson's and Goethe's opinion 348 Sentiment of the Deserted Village . .348 The giant of Giant-castle . . 348 Writing from the heart . . 348 Longing for home . . 848 The village ale-house . . 349 Sympathy with the very poor . 350 Republican principles . . . 350 Johnson's masterpiece . . 350 Without and within . . . 351 Auburn and Lissoy . . 351 Irish evictions . ... 351 Supposed sites of the poem . 351 The got-up Auburn . . 351 Dedication to Reynolds . . 352 Payment for the poem . . 352 Farewell to poetry . . 853 Alarm of the critics . 853 (May) Chatterton in London . 353 London experiences . . . 853 The disorders caused by hunger 354 A three months' struggle . 354 Last act of a tragedy . . . 354 CHAPTER VIII. 1770. A VI8IT TO PARIS. (July) Goldsmith and the Hor- nccka at Calais . .355 FAOB Letter to Reynolds . . 355 Fourteen porters for two trunks 355 The poet's wig . . . .356 At Lisle 357 At Paris . . . .357 Travelling at twenty and at forty 357 Another letter to Reynolds . 357 Thinking of another comedy . 358 His good things not understood 358 Outrunning the constable . 358 Looking like a fool in a silk coat 858 A leap at Versailles . . . 358 English and French parrots . 359 Death of Goldsmith's mother . 359 Half-mourning . . . 359 CHAPTER IX 1770-1771. THE "HAUNCH OF VENISON " AND "GAME OF CHESS." 1770. Abridgment of Roman History 359 ,JEt. 42. Life of Parnell . . .359 Adjective and substantive . 360 Life of Bolingbroke . . . 360 Johnsonian writing . . . 360 Attack of the Monthly Review . 360 1771. At Lord Clare's . . . . 361 2Et. 43. At breakfast with a duchess by mistake . . . .362 r Squire Gawkey . . . . 362 Lord Clare's daughter and her playfellow . . . .362 Lord Camden and Goldsmith . 302 A present to Goldsmith from Lord Clare . . . .363 A present to Lord Clare from Goldsmith . . . . 363 The Haunch of Venison . . 363 Poor poet-pensioners . . . 364 Boileau's third satire . . 364 Parson Scott and Barre* . . 365 Catastrophe of the oven . . 366 A newly discovered poem • . 366 Vida's Game of Chess . . .366 The favourite of Leo . . . 367 Goldsmith's knowledge of chess 367 Translation by Goldsmith . 368 The elephants and the archers 368 Divine machinery . . . 869 Vicissitudes of the fight . . 369 Encounter of the queens . . 370 Struggle of the kings . . . 371 New fact in Goldsmith's life . 371 CHAPTER X. 1771. A ROUND OF PLEASURES. 1771. Horace Wal polo . JEt. 43. First Royal Academy dinner What Academies cannot do What Academics can do . Conversation at the Academy dinner 373 371 87:! TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGR Guldsinith and Rowley . .374 Walpole and Chatterton . . 374 Percy and Goldsmith . . 374 Goldsmith and Henry Grattan 375 Judge Day describes Gold smith 375 Bunbury's caricatures . . 375 A laugh 375 At the Grecian coffee-house . 376 At Ranelagh and Vauxhall . 376 A challenge .... 376 Kenrick the libeller . . . 376 At the Chapter coffee-house . 376 At the masquerade . . . 377 The poet and the president . 377 Charles Fox and the macca- ronis 377 Disadvantages of a mask . . 378 The poet doing penance . . 378 Goldsmith at cards . . 378 Charles Fox at hazard . . 379 Thoughtless indulgence . . 379 At work on another comedy . 379 The rise of Richard Cumber- land 380 First comedy at Covent Garden 380 The original Sir Fretful . . 3S0 Pleasant persiflage . . . 380 Grateful for being laughed at . 380 At Hyde Farm . . . . 381 Writing the Animated Nature . 381 Eoswell's visit with William Julius Mickle . . . 381 Natural history experiences . 382 Among the country fairs . . 382 Wonderful matters . . . 382 CHAPTER XI. 1771. COUNTUY LABOURS AND RELAXATIONS. 1771. (August). The English History Mt. 43. published .... Party warnings and imputa- tions Tom Davies reviews his own publication Goldsmith's farm-house at Hyde Recollections of his habits there Strolling players at Hendon . " The Gentleman " . Letter to Bennet Langton . . Little Comedy married . Civilities and help from Garrick " Dr. Goldsmith's ridiculosity " Sports at Mrs. Bunbury's A Christmas party . . " Letter to Mrs. Bunbury . \ A spring velvet coat in winter At a round game with Little Comedy and the Jessamy Bride ..... " The Doctor is loo'd " . . Handsome culprits A solemn-faced, odd-looking prosecutor 384 39;; CHAPTER XII 1772. FAME acquired and task-work resumed. PAGK 1772. A desperate game . . . 390 Mt. 44. Goldsmith in the Temple-gar- dens . . . . .390 An Irish client . . . . 390 Nothing for nothing in London 390 A description of China . . 391 Little Cradock . . . . 391 Prologue for Zobeide . . 392 The Threnodia Avgustalis . . 392 Rehearsal of the parts . . 392 A surprise for Bos well . . 393 Johnson put to the question . Horrible shocks for Boswell . Tigers as cats, and cats as tigers 393 Colly Cibber and Dryden . . 394 Disagreements and friendship 394 An illustration from Blue Beard 395 Goldsmith and Sappho . . 395 " Oh, dear good man ! " . . 395 Dean Barnard's verses . . 395 At work on the Animated Nature . . . .396 Bits of natural painting . . 397 Obligations to the Goose . 398 Failure in a new novel . . 399 Abridgment of the Roman His- tory 399 Trial of an amanuensis . . 399 Gibbon and Goldsmith . . 400 Johnson's blame and praise . 400 Household words . . . . 400 New Essays .... 400 CHAPTER XIII. 1772. puppets at drury-lane and elsewhere. 1772. Mt. 44. Attack on sentimental comedy 401 The new venture . . .401 Libellers of Garrick . . . 401 French airs .... 402 Garrick's greatest mistake . 402 Hamlet with Alterations . . 402 George Steevens'sjoke . . 402 Cock-a-doodle-doo ! . . . 403 Burke in Paris . . . 403 Goldsmith at the puppet-show 403 Thomas Paine . ... 404 At the theatre with Johnson . 404 Northcote at Reynolds's . . 404 Goldsmith and Bairy . . . 405 Disputing with Burke . . 405 Criticism of Otway and Shake- speare 405 A dead set at Cumberland . 406 Proposing to play Scrub . . 406 Cultivating his brogue . . 406 Dining club at the St. James's Coffee-house . . . 406 Goldsmith's "Little Cornelys" 407 At Shelbume House . . . 407 At Mrs. Vesey's and Mrs. Mon- tagu's . . . .407 TABLE OF CONTENTS. Jack's in Dean-stveet . A question for a philosopher At a chop-house with Cooke Fears about his comedy . Goldsmith trying a speech . . 407 . 408 . 408 . 408 . 408 CHAPTER XIV. 1772-177::. "she stoops to conquer." 1772. Varieties of enjoyment in £t. 44. comedies .... Fine gentlemen critics . . Young Marlow .... Tony Lumpkin . . . . Goldsmith and Sheridan . Goldsmith and Lord Clare's daughter . . . . George Colman's misgivings . 1773 (January) Letter to Colman . I iie comedy sent to Garrick . Again withdrawn . . . Johnson's anticipations . Foote's Piety in Pattens . . Garrick's conversion Objections of the actors to their parts 414 Theatrical criticism . . . 414 A Harlequin for Young Marlow 414 Company at the rehearsals . . 414 Five epilogues . . . .414 Letter to Cradock . . . 415 A history of stage adventures . 415 A name for the comedy . . 415 Value of Horace Walpole's judg- ments 415 The first night, arrived . . 416 Johnson and George Steevens . 416 (15th March) Dinner before the performance . . 416 Cumberland's account of it . . 416 In the theatre . . . .417 Signals for applause . . . 417 How the comedy was received 417 Goldsmith during the perform- ance 417 Gratitude to the actors . . 418 i'.s amende . . . 419 Northcote in the gallery . . 419 Stage career of Ste Stoops to Contruer .... 419 Dedication to Johnson . . 419 CHAPTER XV. 1773. THE SHADOW AND THE SUNSHINE. 1773. Lilwl in the London Packet . 420 Swift's sign of a genius . .420 The uses of a libeller . . . 420 IriMult to the Jessamy Bride . 421 Goldsmith's visit to the pub- lisher .. Goldsmith sent home in a coach 421 Address to the public . . . 422 A foolish thiug well done . . 422 Visit from Boswell . . 422 A dinner with Johnson . . 423 Sings Tony Lumpkin's song . 423 Talk at Paoli's .... 423 The man Sterne . . .423 Prefaces and dedications . . 423 An argument with Johnson . 423 Reasoning wrong at first thinking . . . . 423 The king and the comedy . 425 Rebellions and revolutions . . 425 Paoli's compliment to Gold- smith,. . . . .425 Goldsmith's attack on the Mar- riage Act . . . . 425 Talk at Thrale's . . .426 Vanity of Garrick . . . 427 The profession of an actor . 427 Lawyers and players . . 427 Davy and Sam . . . . 427 Caricature of Johnson . . 428 Knowledge of acting . . . 428 Credulity of Goldsmith . . 428 Marvels in the Animated Nature 428 CHAPTER XVI. 1773. At work on a Grecian History . 429 Mt. 45. Disputes with the booksellers . 429 Changes in the club and now members . . . .429 Boswell proposed . . . 430 What Reynolds and Malone thought, of him . . .430 Boswell elected . . . . 431 First appearance at the club . 431 Johnson's charge . . . 432 A specimen of club talk . . 432 Dinner at Dilly's . . .433 Goldsmith's love of nature . .433 A dispute with Johnson . . 433 Goldsmith hat in hand . . 434 Johnson's rude attack . . 435 The epilogue for Lee Lewes . 435 Goldy's forgiveness . . .435 Meddling of Boswell . . . 435 Envy not concealed . . .436 Bozzy's retort . . . . 436 Goldsmith suggested as John- son's biographer . 437 Random sallies . . . . 437 Talking laxlyand feelingkindly 437 To be remembered when Bos- well is read .... 438 CHAPTER XVII. 1773. DRUDGERY AND DEPRESSION. 1773. The Grecian History . . . 439 Mt. 45. Plan for a Dictionary of Arts Had Sciences . . . 439 Introduction written . . . 43J» A [>cep into his chambers . 43U The occasional man-servant . 440 Percy proposed as bis biogra- pher 440 h and health broken . . 440 xl TABLE OF CONTENTS. Cumberland's visit to the Tem- ple . . . . . 440 Signs of depression . . . 441 A trouble during whist . . 441 A pension applied for . . . 441 Popularity of Beattie with the great 442 Why Goldsmith should not be popular with the great . 442 Goldsmith's only dispute with Reynolds . . . . 443 The ale-house in Gerrard-street 443 Reynolds rebuked . . .443 Beattie pensioned . . . 443 Depending on moonshine . 444 Malagrida 444 False emphasis in life . . . 445 Discontents with Covent- garden .... 445 Desertion by the booksellers . 446 CHAPTER XVIII. 1773. THE CLOUDS STILL GATHERING. 1773. Failure of the Dictionary pro- Mt. 45. ject 446 Goldsmith's letter to Garrick . 447 Proposed alteration of the Good-Natured Man rejected 447 More " parlaver " to Garrick . 447 A gleam of sunshine . . ' 448 Goldsmith and Sir Joshua at Vauxhall . . . .448 Kelly's fourth comedy . . 449 Goldsmith and Walpole at Beauclerc's . . . 450 Horace playing off a butt . . 450 A game of Mufti . . .450 Goldsmith and Garrick . . 450 Almost killed with envy . . 451 Approach of a more serious malady . . . . . 451 CHAPTER XIX. 1773-1774. "retaliation." 1773. The last dinner-parties . . 452 j£t. 45. Satirical epitaphs proposed . 453 Cumberland's and Garrick's . 453 Goldsmith produces his . . 453 Two sets ofjeux d' esprit . . 453 1774. Garrick's account of the matter 453 2Et. 46. Cumberland's account . . 454 Confusion of facts and incidents 454 Account in an original letter . 455 Goldsmith recites Cumber- land's verses . . . . 455 Goldsmith's lines on Garrick . 455 Burke and Mrs. Cholmondeley 456 Burke's Epitaph . . . 457 Reynolds's Epitaph . . . 457 Goldsmith's last unfinished verse 457 Final drudgery . . . . 457 His friends neglecting him . 458 Proposing to leave London . 458 Approach of his last visitor . 458 CHAPTER XX. 1774. ILLNESS AND DEATH. 1774 (Feb. 25) Illness .... 459 Mt. 46. Hawes called in 459 Doctor Fordyce sent for . . . 459 Goldsmith persists in taking the fever-powders . . 460 Results 460 Evidence of the servants . .460 Doctor Turton summoned . . 461 Goldsmith's last words . . 461 (4th April) Death . . . 461 Grief of Burke, Sir Joshua, and Johnson .... 462 Mourners of various kinds . . 462 Little Comedy and the Jes- samy Bride . . . 462 Arrival and departure of Mau- rice Goldsmith . ... 463 The funeral ... .463 No record of the grave . . 463 Round-robin to Johnson . .463 Johnson's epitaph . . . 465 Attempted in English . . . 465 Tablet in the Temple . . 465 CHAPTER XXI. 1774. THE REWARDS OF GENIUS. 1774. Cases of disputed copyright . 466 Property in wit . . . . 466 Opinions of the Judges . . 467 Lord Mansfield and Lord Cam- den 467 Opinion of Justice Willes . 467 Lord Chatham's opinion . . 468 Results of Goldsmith's genius 468 Account between a writer and his readers . . . 469 Intention of this book . . . 469 Claims of men of letters . . 469 What English parliaments re- ward 470 An author's right to the fruits of his labour . . . 470 Birds fouling their own nest . 471 The last Copyright Act . . 471 Less protection in England than anywhere . . . 471 The true remedy for literary wrongs . . . . . 472 THE AUTHOE TO THE EEADEE. "It seems rational to hope," says Johnson in the Life of Savage, "that minds qualified for great attainments should first " endeavour their own benefit ; and that they who are most " able to teach others the way to happiness, should with most " certainty follow it themselves : but this expectation, however " plausible, has been very frequently disappointed." Perhaps not so frequently as the earnest biographer imagined. Much depends on what we look to for our benefit, much on what we follow as the way to happiness. It may not be for the one, and may have led us far out of the way of the other, that we had acted on the world's estimate of wordly success, and to that directed our endeavour. So might we ourselves have blocked up the path, which it was our hope to have pointed out to others ; and in the straits of a selfish profit, made k of great attainments. Oliver Goldsmith, whose life and adventures should be known to all who know his writings, must be held to have succeeded in nothing that his friends would have had him succeed in. He was intended for a clergyman, and was re- jected when he applied for orders ; he practised as a physician, mil never made what would have paid for a degree; what he was not asked or expected to do, was to write, but he wrote 2 THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. and paid the penalty. His existence was a continued privation. The days were few, in which he had resources for the night, or dared to look forward to the morrow. There was not any miserable want, in the long and sordid catalogue, which in its turn and, in all its -bitterness he did not feel. He had shared the experience of t'hbse to whom he makes affecting reference in, \\i$ Jt^Wqfedliy'iiture, " people who die really of hunger, in " cbmniM language" of *a broken heart ; " and when he succeeded at the last, success was but a feeble sunshine on a rapidly approaching decay, which was to lead him, by its nickering and uncertain light, to an early grave. Self-benefit seems out of the question here, and the way to happiness is indeed distant from this. But if we look a little closer, we shall see that he has passed through it all with a child-like purity of heart unsullied. Much of the misery vanishes when that is known ; and when it is remembered, too, that in spite of it the Vicar of Wakefield was written, nay that without it, in all human probability, a book so delightful and wise could not have been written. Fifty-six years after its author's death, the greatest of Germans recounted to a friend how much he had been indebted to the celebrated Irishman. ' It is not to be described," wrote Groethe to Zelter, in 1830, ' the effect that Goldsmith's Vicar had upon me, just at the "critical moment of mental development. That lofty and " benevolent irony, that fair and indulgent view of all infirmities " and faults, that meekness under all calamities, that equanimity " under all changes and chances, and the whole train of kindred " virtues, whatever names they bear, proved my best education ; "and in the end," he added with sound philosophy, "these are " the thoughts and feelings which have reclaimed us from all "the errors of life." And why were they so enforced in that charming book, but because the writer had undergone them all ; because they had reclaimed himself, not from the world's errors only, but also THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. 3 from its suffering and care ; and because his own life and adventures had been the same chequered and beautiful romance of the triumph of good over evil. Though what is called worldly success, then, was not attained by Goldsmith, it may be that the way to happiness was yet not missed altogether. The sincere and sad biographer of Savage might have profited by the example. His own benefit he had not successfully " endeavoured," when the gloom of his early life embittered life to the last, and the trouble he had endured was made excuse for a sorrowful philosophy, and for manners that were an outrage to the kindness of his heart. What had fallen to Johnson's lot, fell not less heavily to Goldsmith's. Of the calamities to which the literary life was then exposed, " Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol," none were spared to the subject of these pages. But they found, and left him, gentle and unspoiled : and though the discipline that thus taught him charity entailed some social disadvantage, by unfeigned sincerity and simplicity of heart he diffused every social enjoyment. When his conduct least agreed with his writings, these characteristics did not fail him. What he gained, was gain to others ; what he lost, concerned only himself; he suffered pain, but never inflicted it ; and it is amazing to think how small an amount of mere insensibility to other people's opinions would have exalted Doctor Goldsmith's position in the literary circles of his day. He lost caste because he could not acquire it, and could as little assume the habit of indifference, as trade upon the gravity of the repute he had won. " Admirers in a room," said Northcote, repeating what had been told him by Eeynolds, " whom his entrance had struck with awe, " might be seen riding out upon his back." It was hard, he said himself to Sir Joshua, that fame and its dignities should intercept people's liking and fondness ; and for his love of the b 2 4 THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. latter, no doubt he forfeited not a little of the former. " He is " an inspired idiot," cried Walpole. " He does not know the " difference of a turkey from a goose," said Cumberland. " Sir," shouted Johnson, " he knows nothing, he has made up his mind " about nothing." Few cared to think or speak of him but as little Goldy, honest Goldy ; and every one laughed at him for the oddity of his blunders, and the awkwardness of his manners. But I invite the reader to his life and adventures, and the times in which they were cast. ]N"o uninstructive explanation of all this may possibly await us there, if together we review the scene, and move among its actors as they play their parts. THE SIZAR, STUDENT, TRAVELLER, APOTHECARY'S JOURNEYMAN, USHER, AND POOR PHYSICIAN. BOOK THE FIRST. CHAPTER I. SCHOOL DAYS AND HOLIDAYS. 1728—1745. The marble in Westminster Abbey is correct in the place, but not io the time, of the birth of Oliver Goldsmith. He was 1 72S born at a small old parsonage house (supposed afterwards to be haunted by the fairies, or good people of the district, who could not however save it from being levelled to the ground) in a lonely, remote, and almost inaccessible Irish village on the southern banks of the river Inny, called Pallas, or Pallasmore, the property of the Edgeworths of Edgeworthstown, in the county of Longford, on the 10th of November, 1728 : a little more than three years earlier than the date upon his epitaph. His father, the reverend Charles Goldsmith, descended from a family which had long been settled in Inland, and held various offices or dignities in connexion with the established church, was a protestant clergyman with an un- certain stipend, which, with the help of some fields he farmed, and occasional duties performed for the rector of the adjoining p of Kilkenny West (the reverend Mr. Green) who was uncle to his . averaged forty pounds a year. In May, 1718, he bad married Anne, the daughter of the reverend Oliver Jones, who was master of the school at Elphin, to which he had gone in boy- hood ; and before 1728 four children had been the issue of the marriage. A new birth was but a new bnrtlirn : and little -In ami the humble village preacher, then or ever, that from the dad that tenth of November on which his Oliver was born, his own virtues and very foibles were to lie a legacy of pleasure to many generations of men. For they who have loved, Ian with the father of the man in black in the Citizen of th> R 8 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. the preacher of the Deserted Village, or the hero of the Vicar of Wakefield, have given laughter, love, and tears, to the reverend Charles Goldsmith. The death of the rector of Kilkenny West improved his fortunes. He succeeded in 1730 to this living of his wife's uncle ; jL' t o n ^ s income of forty pounds was raised to nearly two hundred ; and Oliver had not completed his second year when the family moved from Pallasmore to a respectable house and farm on the verge of the pretty little village of Lissoy, "in the county of " Westmeath, barony of Kilkenny West," some six miles from Pallasmore, and about midway between the towns of Ballymahon and Athlone. The first-born, Margaret (22nd August, 1719), appears to have died in childhood ; and the family, at this time consisting of Catherine (13th January, 1721), Henry (9th Febru- ary, 17 — ), Jane (9th February, 17 — ), and Oliver, born at Pallasmore, was in the next ten years increased by Maurice (7th July, 1736), Charles (16th August, 1737), and John 23rd , 1740), born at Lissoy. The leaf of the family bible recording these dates is unfortunately so torn that the precise year of the births of Henry and Jane, like that of Oliver's birth, is not discernible from it ; but it seems quite decisive, from the fact of the same day specified in both cases, coupled with the distinct assurance of Mrs. Hodson that there was a childless interval of seven years before the birth of Oliver, that Henry and Jane were twins, and both born in 1722. The youngest, as the eldest, died in youth ; Charles went in his twentieth year, a friendless adventurer, to Jamaica, and after long self-exile died, little less than half a century since (1803 — 4), in a poor lodging in Somers' Town ; Maurice was put to the trade of a cabinet-maker, kept a meagre shop in Charlestown in the county of Roscommon, and "departed "from a miserable life" in 1792 ; Henry followed his father's calling, and died as he had lived, a humble village preacher and schoolmaster, in 1768 ; Catherine married a wealthy husband, Mr. Hodson, Jane a poor one, Mr. Johnston, and both died in Athlone, some years after the death of that celebrated brother to whose life and times these pages are devoted. A trusted dependant in Charles Goldsmith's house, a young woman related to the family, afterwards known as Elizabeth 7n, o Delap and schoolmistress of Lissoy, first put a book into Oliver Goldsmith's hands. She taught him his letters ; lived till it was matter of pride to remember ; often talked of it to Doctor Strean, Henry Goldsmith's successor in the curacy of Kilkenny West ; and at the ripe age of ninety, when the great writer had been thirteen years in his grave, boasted of it with her last breath. That her success in the task had not been much to boast of, she at chap, i.] SCHOOL DAYS AND HOLIDAYS. 9 other times confessed. " Never was so dull a boy : he seemed " impenetrably stupid," said the good Elizabeth Delap, when she bored her friends, or answered curious enquirers, about the cele- brated Doctor Goldsmith. " He was a plant that flowered late," said Johnson to Boswell ; "there ap- peared nothing remarkable about him " when he was young." This, if true, would have been only another confir- mation of the saying that the richer a nature is, the harder and more slow its development is like to be ; but it may perhaps be doubted, in the mean- ing it would ordinarily bear, for all the charms of Goldsmith's later style are to be traced in even the letters of his youth, and his sister expressly tells us that he not only began to scribble verses when he could scarcely write, but otherwise showed a fondness for books and learning, and what she calls "signs of genius." At the age of six, Oliver was handed over to the village school, kept by Mr. Thomas Byrne. Looking back from this dis- tance of time, and penetrating through greater obscurity J. A than its own cabin-smoke into that Lissoy academy, it is to be discovered that this excellent Mr. Byrne, retired quarter-master of an Irish regiment that had served in Marlborough's Spanish wars, was more given to "shoulder a crutch and show how fields were "won," and certainly more apt to teach wild legends of an Irish hovel, and hold forth about fairies and rapparees, than to inculcate what are called the humanities. Little Oliver came away from him much as he went, in point of learning ; but there were certain wandering unsettled tastes, which his friends thought to have been here implanted in him, and which, as well as a taste for song, one of his later essays might seem to connect with the vagrant life of the blind harper Carolan, whose wayside melodies he had been taken to hear. Unhappily something more and other than this also remained, in the effects of a terrible disease which assailed him at the school, and were not likely soon to pass away. An attack of confluent small-pox which nearly proved mortal left deep and indelible traces on his face, for ev< r wttled hi* small pretenflon to good-looks, and exposed him to jest and sarcasm. Kind-natured Mr. Byrne might best hare reoondled him to it, used to his temper as no doubt he had become ; an u nw i tti n g a oontrasl t«. gentb ness, to simplicity, to an utter at) nature, could but make an absurdity the more. ' u .' what 12 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i " wouldst thou have, dear Doctor ! " said Johnson, laughing at a squib in the St. James's Chronicle which had coupled himself and his friend as the pedant and his flatterer in Love's Labour's Lost, and at which poor Goldsmith was fretting and foaming ; " who the ' ' plague is hurt with all this nonsense ? and how is a man the "worse, I wonder, in his health, purse, or character, for being "called Holofernes?" "How you may relish being called " Holofernes," replied Goldsmith, "I do not know ; but I do not "like at least to play Goodman Dull." Much against his will it was the part he was set down for from the first. But were there not still the means, at the fire-side of his good- hearted father, of turning these childish rebuffs to something of a wholesome discipline 1 Alas ! little ; there was little of worldly wisdom in the home circle of the kind but simple preacher, to make a profit of this worldly experience. My father's education, says the man in black, and no one ever doubted who sat for the portrait, "was above his fortune, and his generosity greater than "his education. . . . He told the story of the ivy-tree, and that was " laughed at ; he repeated the jest of the two scholars and one " pair of breeches, and the company laughed at that ; but the story " of Taffy in the sedan-chair was sure to set the table in a roar : "thus his pleasure increased in proportion to the pleasure he "gave; he loved all the world, and he fancied all the world " loved him. . . . We were told that universal benevolence was " what first cemented society ; we were taught to consider all the " wants of mankind as our own ; to regard the human face divine " with affection and esteem ; he wound us up to be mere machines 1 ' of pity, and rendered us incapable of withstanding the slightest "impulse made either by real or fictitious distress : in a word, we "were perfectly instructed in the art of giving away thousands, " before we were taught the more necessary qualifications of getting "a farthing." Acquisitions highly primitive, and supporting what seems to have been the common fame of the Goldsmith race. " The Goldsmiths "were always a strange family," confessed three different branches of them, in as many different quarters of Ireland, when inquiries were made by a recent biographer of the poet. " They rarely ' ' acted like other people : their hearts were always in the right " place, but their heads seemed to be doing anything but what "they ought." In opinions or confessions of this kind, however, the heart's right place is perhaps not so well discriminated as it might be, or collision with the head would be oftener avoided. Worthy Doctor Strean expressed himself more correctly wlien Mr. Mangin was making his inquiries more than forty years ago. "Several of the family and name," he said, "live near Elphin, chap, i.] SCHOOL DAYS AND HOLIDAYS. 13 "who, as well as the poet, were, and are, remarkable for their 11 worth, but of no cleverness in the common affairs of the world." If cleverness in the common affairs of the world is what the head should be always versed in, to be meditating what it ought, poor Oliver was a grave defaulter. We are all of us, it is said, more or less related to chaos ; and with him, to the last, there was much that lay unredeemed from its void. Sturdy boys who work a gallant way through school, become the picked men of their colleges, grow up to thriving eminence in their several callings, and found respectable families, are seldom troubled with this re- lationship till chaos reclaims them altogether, and they die and are forgotten. All men have their advantages, and that is theirs. But it shows too great a pride in what they have, to think the whole world should be under pains and penalties to possess it too ; and to set up so many doleful lamentations over this poor, weak, confused, erratic, Goldsmith nature. Their tone will not be taken here, the writer having no pretension to its moral dignity. Con- sideration will be had for the harsh lessons this boy so early and bitterly encountered ; it will not be forgotten that feeling, not always rightly guided or controlled, but sometimes in a large excess, must almost of necessity be his who has it in charge to dis- pense largely, variously, and freely to others ; and in the endeavour to show that the heart of Oliver Goldsmith was indeed rightly placed, it may perhaps appear that his head also profited by so good an example. At the age of eleven he was removed from Mr. Griffin's, and put to a school of repute at Athlone, about five miles from his father's house, and kept by a reverend Mr. Campbell. At x,, -,i about the same time his brother Henry went as a pensioner to Dubbin University, and it was resolved that in due course Oliver should follow him : a determination, his sister told Dr. Percy, which had replaced that of putting him to a common trade, on those evi- dences of a certain liveliness of talent which had broken out at uncle John's being discussed among his relatives and friends. He remained at Athlone two years ; and, when Mr. Campbell's ill- health obliged him to resign his charge, was removed to the school of Edgeworthstown, kept by the reverend Patrick j^ ^ Hughes. Here he stayed more than three years, and was long remembered by the school acquaintance he formed ; among whom were Mr. Beatty, Mr. Nugent, Mr. Roach, and Mr. Daly, to whom we are indebted for some traits of that »^ early time. They recollected Mr. Hughes's special kindness to him, and " thinking well" of him, as matters not then to be accounted for. The good master, it appeared, had been Charles Qoldsniith'i friend. They dwelt upon his ugliness and awkward 14 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. manners ; they professed to recount even the studies he liked or disliked (Ovid and Horace were welcome to him, he hated Cicero, Livy was his delight, and Tacitus opened him new sources of plea- sure) ; they described his temper as ultra-sensitive, but added that though quick to take offence, he was more feverishly ready to forgive. They also said, that though at first diffident and backward in the extreme, he mustered sufficient boldness in time to take even a leader's place in the boyish sports, and particularly at fives or ball- playing. Whenever an exploit was proposed or a trick was going forward, "Noll Goldsmith" was certain to be in it ; an actor or a victim. Of his holidays, Ballymahon was the central attraction ; and here too recollection was vivid and busy, as soon as his name grew famous. An old man who directed the sports of the place, and kept the ball-court in those days, long subsisted on his stories of " Master Noll." The narrative master-piece of this ancient Jack Fitzsimmons related to the depredation of the orchard of Tirlicken, by the youth and his companions. Fitzsimmons also vouched to the reverend John Graham for the entire truth of the adventure so currently and confidently told by his Irish acquaint- ance, which offers an agreeable relief to the excess of diffidence heretofore noted in him, and on which, if true, the leading incident of She Stoops to Conquer was founded. At the close of his last holidays, then a lad of nearly seventeen, he left home for Edgeworthstown, mounted on a borrowed jj t 1 g hack which a friend was to restore to Lissoy, and with store of unaccustomed wealth, a guinea, in his pocket. The delicious taste of independence beguiled him to a loitering, lingering, pleasant enjoyment of the journey ; and, instead of finding himself under Mr. Hughes's roof at nightfall, night fell upon him some two or three miles out of the direct road, in the middle of the streets of Ardagh. But nothing could disconcert the owner of the guinea, who, with a lofty, confident air, inquired of a person passing the way to the town's best house of entertainment. The man addressed was the wag of Ardagh, a humorous fencing- master, Mr. Cornelius Kelly, and the schoolboy swagger was irresistible provocation to a jest. Submissively he turned back with horse and rider till they came within a pace or two of the great Squire Featherston's, to which he respectfully pointed as the " best house " of Ardagh. Oliver rang at the gate, gave his beast in charge with authoritative rigour, and was shown, as a supposed expected guest, into the comfortable parlour of the squire. Those were days when Irish inn-keepers and Irish squires more nearly approximated than now ; and Mr. Feather- ston, unlike the excellent but explosive Mr. Hardcastle, is said to chap, ii.] COLLEGE. t 15 have seen the mistake and humoured it. Oliver had a supper which gave him so much satisfaction, that he ordered a bottle of wine to follow ; and the attentive landlord was not only forced to drink with him, but, with a like familiar condescension, the wife and pretty daughter were invited to the supper-room. Going to bed, he stopped to give special instructions for a hot cake to breakfast ; and it was not till he had dispatched this latter meal, and was looking at his guinea with pathetic aspect of farewell, that the truth was told him by the good-natured squire. The late Sir Thomas Featherston, grandson to the supposed inn-keeper, had faith in the adventure ; and told Mr. Graham that as his grandfather and Charles Goldsmith had been college acquaintance, it might the better be accounted for. It is certainly, if true, the earliest known instance of the dis- position to swagger with a grand air which afterwards displayed itself in other forms, and strutted about in clothes rather noted for fineness than fitness. CHAPTER II. COLLEGE. 1745—1749. But the school-days of Oliver Goldsmith are now to close. Within the last year there had been some changes at Lissoy, which ■ little affected the family fortunes. Catherine, the elder 7£ t ij sister, had privately married a Mr. Daniel Hodson, "the i of a gentleman of good property, residing at St. John's, near " Athlone." The young man was at the time availing himself of Henry Goldsmith's services as private tutor ; Henry having obtained a scholarship two years before, and now assisting the family resources with such employment of his college distinction. The good Charles Goldsmith was greatly indignant at the marriage, and on reproaches from the elder Hodson ' ' made a sacrifice detrimental "to the interests of his family." He entered into a legal en- gagement, still registered in the Dublin Four Courts, and bearing date the 7th of September, 1744, " to pay to Daniel Hodson, Esq., "of St. John's, Roscommon, £400 as the marriage portion of his " daughter Catherine, then the wife of the said Danirl Hodeon.' 1 it could not be effected without sacrifice of hia tith-s and nd it was a sacrifice, as it seems to me, made in i •ry ample and very falsi: pride. Tin- writer who dis- liis marriage settlement attributes it to " the highest sense 16 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. " of honour ;" but it must surely be doubted if an act which, to elevate the pretensions of one child, and adapt them to those of the man she had married, inflicted beggary on the rest, should be so referred to. Oliver was the first to taste its bitterness. It was announced to him that he could not go to college as Henry had gone, a pensioner ; but must consent to enter it, a sizar. The first thing exacted of a sizar, in those days, was to give proof of classical attainments. He was to show himself, to a certain reasonable extent, a good scholar ; in return for which, being clad in a black gown of coarse stuff without sleeves, he was marked with the servant's badge of a red cap, and put to the servant's offices of sweeping courts in the morning, carrying up dishes from the kitchen to the fellows' dining-table in the after- noon, and waiting in the hall till the fellows had dined. This, for which commons, teaching, and chambers, were on the other hand greatly reduced, is called by one of Goldsmith's biographers " one of " those judicious and considerate arrangements of the founders of " such institutions, that gives to the less opulent the opportunity of "cultivating learning at a trifling expense ;" but it is called by Goldsmith himself, in his Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning (and Johnson himself condemns the practice not less severely, though as pompously Sir John Hawkins supports it), a "contradiction" suggested by motives of pride, and a pas- sion which he thinks absurd, "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." To this contradiction- he is now himself doomed ; and that which to a stronger judgment and more resolute purpose might have prompted only the struggle that triumphs over the meanest circumstance, to him proved the hardest lesson yet in his life's hard school. He resisted with all his strength ; little less than a whole year, it is said, obstinately resisted, the new contempts and loss of worldly consideration thus bitterly set before him. He would rather have gone to the trade chalked out for him as his rough alternative, — when uncle Contarine interfered. This was an excellent man ; and with some means, though very far from considerable, to do justice to his kindly impulses. In youth he had been the college companion of Bishop Berkeley, and w r as worthy to have had so divine a friend. He too was a clergyman, and held the living of Kilmore near Carrick-on-Shannon, which he afterwards changed to that of Oran near Roscommon ; where he built the house of Emblemore, changed to that of Tempe by its subsequent possessor, Mr. Edward Mills, Goldsmith's relative and contemporary. Mr. Contarine had married Charles Goldsmith's sister (who died at about this date, leaving one child), chap, n.] COLLEGE. 17 and was the only member of the Goldsmith family of whom we have solid evidence that he at any time took pains with Oliver, or felt anything like a real pride in him. He bore the greater part of his school expenses ; and was wont to receive him with delight in holidays, as the playfellow of his daughter Jane, a year or two older than Oliver, and some seven years after this married to a Mr. Lawder. How little the most charitable of men will make allowance for differences of temper and disposition in the education of youth, is too well known : Mr. Contarine told Oliver that he had himself been a sizar, and that it had not availed to withhold from him the friendship of the great and the good. His counsel prevailed. The youth went to Dublin, showed by passing the necessary examination that his time at school had not been altogether thrown away, and on the 11th of June 1745 was admitted, last in the list of eight who so presented themselves, a sizar of Trinity College ; — there most speedily to earn that ex- perience, which, on his elder brother afterwards consulting him as to the education of his son, prompted him to answer thus : " If he " has ambition, strong passions, and an exquisite sensibility of con- " tempt, do not send him to your college, unless you have no other ' ; trade for him except your own." Flood was then in the college, but being some years younger than Goldsmith, and a fellow commoner, it is not surprising that they should have held no intercourse ; but a greater than Flood, though himself little notable at college, said he perfectly recollected his old fellow-student, when they afterwards met at the house of Mr. Reynolds. Not that there was much for an Edmund Burke to recollect of him. Little went well with Goldsmith in his student course. He had a menial position, a savage brute for tutor, and few inclinations to the study exacted. He was not, indeed, as perhaps never living creature in this world was, without his consolations ; he could sing a song well, and, at a new insult or outrage, could blow off excitement through his flute with a kind of desperate "mechanical vehemence." At the worst he had, as he describes it himself, a " knack at hoping ;" and at all times, it must with equal certainty be affirmed, a knack at getting into scrapes. Like Samuel Johnson at Oxford, ^ t jg he avoided lectures when he could, and was a lounger at the college gate. The popxilar picture of him in these Dublin I niversity days, is little more than of a slow, hesitating, somewhat hollow voice, heard seldom and always to great disadvantage in the class-rooms ; and of a low-sized, thick, robust, ungainly figure, lounging about the college courts on the wait for misery and ill luck. Kdgcworthstown schoolfellow, Beatty, had entered among 18 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book r. the sizars with him, and for a time shared his rooms. They are described as the top-rooms adjoining the library of the building numbered 35, where the name of Oliver Goldsmith may still be seen, scratched by himself upon a window-pane. Another sizar, Marshall, is said to have been another of his chums. Among his occasional associates, were certainly Edward Mills, his relative ; Robert Bryanton, a Ballymahon youth, also his relative, of whom he was fond ; Charles and Edward Purdon, whom he lived to befriend ; James Willington, whose name he afterwards had permission to use in London, for low literary work he was ashamed to put his own to ; Wilson and Kearney, subsequently doctors and fellows of the college ; Wolfen, also well known ; and Lauchlan Macleane, whose political pamphlets, unaccepted challenge to Wilkes, and general party exertions, made a noise in the world twenty or thirty years later. But not till a man becomes famous is it to be expected that any wonderful feats of memory should be performed respecting him ; and it seems tolerably evident that, with the exception of perhaps Bryanton and Beatty, not one owner of the names recounted put himself in friendly relation with the sizar, to elevate, assist, or cheer him. Richard Malone, after- wards Lord Sunderlin ; Barnard and Marlay, afterwards worthy bishops of Killaloe and Waterford ; found nothing more pleasant than to talk of " their old fellow-collegian Doctor Goldsmith," in the painting-room of Reynolds : but nothing, I suspect, so difficult, thriving lads as they were in even these earlier days, than to vouchsafe recognition to the unthriving, depressed, insulted Oliver. A year and a half after he had entered college, at the com- mencement of 1747, his father suddenly died. The scanty jp . , g sums required for his support had been often intercepted, but this stopped them altogether. It may have been the least and most trifling loss connected with that sorrow ; but " squalid poverty," relieved by occasional gifts, according to his small means, from uncle Contarine, by petty loans from Bryanton or Beatty, or by desperate pawning of his books of study, was Goldsmith's lot thenceforward. Yet even in the depths of that despair, arose the consciousness of faculties reserved for better fortune than continual contempt and failure. He would write street-ballads to save himself from actual starving ; sell them at the Rein-deer repository in Mountrath-court for five shillings a-piece ; and steal out of the college at night to hear them sung. Happy night, to him worth all the dreary days ! Hidden by some dusky wall, or creeping within darkling shadows of the ill- lighted streets, this poor neglected sizar watched, waited, lingered, listened there, for the only effort of his life which had not wholly CHAP, n.l COLLEGE. 19 failed. Few and dull perhaps the beggar's audience at first, but more thronging, eager, and delighted, as he shouted forth his newly-gotten ware. Cracked enough, I doubt not, were those ballad-singing tones ; very harsh, extremely discordant, and passing from loud to low without meaning or melody ; but not the less did the sweetest music which this earth affords fall with them on the ear of Goldsmith. Gentle faces pleased, old men stopping by the way, young lads venturing a purchase with their last remaining farthing; why, here was a world in little with its fame at the sizar's feet! "The greater world will be listening H one day," perhaps he muttered, as he turned with a lighter heart to hit dull home. It is said to have been a rare occurrence when the five shillings of the Rein-deer repository reached home along with him. It was more likely, when he was at his utmost need, to stop with some beggar on the road who had seemed to him even more destitute than himself. Nor this only. The money gone, — often, for the naked shivering wretch, had he slipped off a portion of the scanty dofchet he wore, to patch a misery he could not otherwise relieve. iie starving creature with five crying children, he gave at one the blankets off his bed, and crept himself into the tin 20 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. for shelter from the cold. For this latter anecdote, Mr. Mills, Goldsmith's relative and fellow student, is the authority. He occasionally furnished him, when in college, with small supplies, and gave him a breakfast now and then ; for which latter purpose having gone to call him one morning, Goldsmith's voice from within his own room proclaimed himself a prisoner, and that they must force the door to help him out. Mills did this, and found him so fastened in the ticking of the bed, into which he had taken refuge from the cold, that he could not escape unassisted. Late on the previous winter night, unable otherwise to relieve a woman and her five children who seemed all perishing for want of warmth, he had brought out his blankets to the college-gate and given them to her. It is not meant to insist on these things as examples of conduct. " Sensibility is not Benevolence ; " nor will this kind of agonised sympathy with distress, even when graced by that active self-denial of which there is here little proof, supply the solid duties or satisfactions of life. There are distresses, vast and remote, with which it behoves us still more to sympathise than with those, less really terrible, which only more attract us by intruding on our senses ; and the conscience is too apt to discharge itself of the greater duty by instant and easy attention to the less. Let me observe also, that, in the case of a man dependent on others, the title to such enjoyment as such largeness and looseness of sympathy involves, has very obvious and controlling limits. So much it is right to interpose when anecdotes of this description are told ; but to Goldsmith, all the circumstances considered, they are really very creditable ; and it is well to recollect them when the " neglected opportunities " of his youth are spoken of. Doubtless there were better things to be done, by a man of stronger purpose. But the nature of men is not different from that of other living creatures ; it gives the temper and the disposition, but not the nurture or the culture. These Goldsmith never rightly had, except in such sort as he could himself provide ; and now, assuredly, he had not found them in his college. " That strong, steady disposition which ' ' alone makes men great," he avowed himself deficient in : but were other dispositions not worth the caring for ? " His imagina- tion" (as, with obvious allusion to his own case, he says of Parnell's) " might have been too warm to relish the cold logic of " Burgersdicius, or the dreary subtleties of Smiglesius : " but with nothing less cold or dreary might a warm imagination have been cherished ? When, at the house of Burke, he talked these matters over in after years with Edmond Malone, he said that, though he made no great figure in mathematics, which was a study in much repute there, he could turn an ode of Horace into English better chap, ii.] COLLEGE. 21 than any of them. His tutor, Mr. Theaker Wilder, would sooner have set him to turn a lathe. This tutor, this reverend instructor of youth, was the same who, on one occasion in Dublin streets, sprang at a bound from the pavement on a hackney-coach which was passing at its swiftest pace, and felled to the ground the driver, who had accidentally touched his face with the whip. So, mathematics being Mr. Theaker Wilder's intellectual passion, the same strength, agility, and ferocity which drove him into brawls with hackney-coachmen, he carried to the demonstrations of Euclid ; and for this, all his life afterwards, even more than poet Gray, did poor Goldsmith wage war with mathematics. Never had he stood up in his class that this learned savage did not outrage and insult him. Having the misery to mistake malice for wit, the comic as well as tragic faculty of Mr. Wilder found endless recreation in the awkward, ugly, "ignorant," most sensitive young man. There was no pause or limit to the strife between them. The tutor's brutality rose even to personal violence ; the pupil's shame and suffering hardened into reckless idleness ; and the college career of Oliver Goldsmith was proclaimed a wretched failure. Let us be thankful that it was no worse, and that participitation in a college riot was after all the highest of his college crimes. Twice indeed he was cautioned for neglecting even his Greek lecture ; but he was also thrice commended for diligence in attending it ; and Doctor Kearney said he once got a prize at a Christmas examination in classics. The latter seems doubtful ; but at any rate the college riot was the worst to allege against him, and in this there was no very active sin. A scholar had been arrested, though the precincts of the university had always been held privileged from the intrusion of bailiffs, and the students resolved to take rough revenge. It was in the summer of 1747. They explored every bailiff's den in Dublin, found the offender by whom the arrest was made, brought him naked to the college pump, washed his delinquency thoroughly out of him ; and were so elated with the triumph, and everything that bore affinity to law, restraint, or authority, looked so ludicrous in the person of this drenched bailiff's-runner, their miserable representative, that it was on the spot proposed to crown and consummate success by breaking open Newgate, and making a general jail delivery. The Black Dog, as the prison was called, stood on the feeblest of legs, and with one small piece of artillery must have gone down for ever ; but the cannon was with the constable, the assailants were repidsed, and some townsmen attracted by the fray unhappily lost their lives. Five of the ringleaders were discovered and expelled the college ; and among five lesser offenders who 22 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book I. were publicly admonished for being present, "aiding and abetting" (Quod seditioni favisset et tumultuantibus opem tulisset), the name of Oliver Goldsmith occurs. More galled by formal University admonition than by Wilder's insults, and anxious to wipe out a disgrace that seemed not so undeserved, Goldsmith tried in the next month for a scholarship. He lost the scholarship, but got an exhibition : a very small exhibi- tion truly, worth some thirty shillings, of which there were nine- teen in number, and his was seventeenth in the list. In the way of honour or glory this was trifling enough ; but, little used to anything in the shape of even such a success, he let loose his unaccustomed joy in a small dancing party at his rooms, of humblest sort. Wilder heard of the affront to discipline, suddenly showed him- self in the middle of the festivity, and knocked down the poor triumphant exhibitioner. It seemed an irretrievable disgrace. Goldsmith sold his books next day, got together a small sum, ran away from college, lingered fearfully about Dublin till his money was spent, and then, with a shilling in his pocket, set out for Cork. He did not know where he would have gone, he said, but he thought of America. For three days he lived upon the shilling ; chap, ii.] COLLEGE. 23 parted .by degrees with nearly all his clothes, to save himself from famine ; and long afterwards told Reynolds what his sister relates in her narrative, that of all the exquisite meals he had ever tasted, the most delicious was a handful of grey peas given him by a girl at a wake after twenty-four hours' fasting. The vision of America sank before this reality, and he turned his feeble steps to Lissoy. His brother had private intimation of his state, went to him, clothed him, and carried him back to college. " Something of a "reconciliation," says Mrs. Hodson, was effected with the tutor. Probably the tutor made so much concession as to promise not to strike him to the ground again ; for certainly no other im- provement is on record. An anecdote, "often told in con- J „', M versation to Bishop Percy," exhibits the sizar at his usual disadvantage. Wilder called on Goldsmith, at a lecture, to explain the centre of gravity, which, on getting no answer, he proceeded him- self to explain : calling out harshly to Oliver at the close, "Now, "blockhead, where is your centre of gravity?" The answer, which was delivered in a slow, hollow, stammering voice, and began " Why, Doctor, by your definition, I think it must be" — disturbed every one's centre of gravity in the lecture room ; and, turning the laugh against Wilder, turned down poor Oliver. And so the insults, the merciless jests, the " Oliver Goldsmith turned down," appear to liave continued as before. We still trace him less by his fame in the class-room than by his fines in the buttery-books. The only change is in that greater submission of the victim which marks unsuccessful rebellion. He offers no resistance ; makes no effort of any kind ; sits, for the most part, indulging day-dreams. A Greek Scapula has been identified which he used at this time, scrawled over with his writing. " Free. Oliver Goldsmith ; " "I promise to pay, " f the apparently vagrant and idle career to be now described, some points of even general beneficial example. The two years, then, are passed ; and Oliver must apply for ■ For the clerical profession," says Mrs. Hodson, " he had on-Tyne. We all "ashore 1 r the fatigue of OUT voyage. Seven men y on shore, and on the following n we 36 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. " were all very merry, the room door bursts open : enters a ser- "jeant 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." These facts are stated on his owm authority ; but whether they are all exactly credible, or whether credit may not rather be due to the suggestion that they were mere fanciful modes of carrying off the loss, in other ways, of money given to enable him to carry on studies in which it cannot now be supposed that he took any great interest, I shall leave to the judgment of the reader. Certain it is that at last he got safe to the learned city ; and wrote off to his uncle, among other sketches of character obviously meant to give him pleasure, what he thought of the three specimens of womankind he had now seen, out of Ireland. " A Dutch " woman and Scotch will well bear an opposition. The one is pale " and fat, the other lean and ruddy : the one walks as if she were " straddling after a go-cart, and the other takes too masculine a " stride. I shall not endeavour to deprive either country of its " share of beauty ; but I must say, that of all objects on this " earth, an English farmer's daughter is most charming." In the same delightful letter he observingly corrects the vulgar notion of the better kind of Dutchman, amusingly comparing him with the downright Hollander, while in equally happy vein he con- ml a? * ras ^ s Scotland and Holland. The playful tone of these passages, the amusing touch of satire, and the incomparably easy style, so compact and graceful, were announcements, properly first vouchsafed to the delight of good Mr. Contarine, of powers that were one day to give unfading delight to all the world. Little is known of his pursuits at Leyden, beyond the fact that he mentions himself, in his Enquiry into Folite Learning, as in the habit of familar intercourse with Gaubius, the chemical professor. But by this time he would seem to have applied himself, with little affectation of disguise, to general knowledge more than to professional. The one was available in immediate wants; the other pointed to but a distant hope which those very wants made, daily, more obscure ; and the narrow necessities of self-help now crowded on him. His principal means of support were as a teacher ; but the difficulties and disappointments of his own philosophic vagabond, when he went to Holland to teach the natives English, himself knowing nothing of Dutch, appear to have made it a sorry calling. Then, it is said, he borrowed, and again resorted to play, winning even largely, but losing all he won ; and it is at least chap, v.l PREPARING FOR A MEDICAL DEGREE. 37 certain that he encountered every form of distress. Unhappily, though he wrote many letters to Ireland, some of them described from recollection as compositions cf singular ease and humour, all arc lost. But Doctor Ellis, an Irish physician of eminence and : udent of Leyden, remembered his fellow-student when years had made him famous, and said (much, it may be confessed, in the tone of ex-post-facto prophecy) that in all his peculiarities it was remarked there was about him an elevation of mind, a philo- sophical tone and manner, and the language anjl information of a scholar. Being much in want of the philosophy, it is well that his friends should have given him credit for it ; though his last known scene in Leyden showed greatly less of the philosophic mind than of the gentle, grateful heart. Bent upon leaving that city, where he had now been nearly a year without an effort for a degree, he called upon Ellis, and asked his assistance in some trifling sum. It was given ; but, as his evil, or (some might say) his good genius would have it, he passed a florist's garden on his return, and seeing some rare and high-priced flowers which his uncle Contarine, an enthusiast in such things, had often spoken and long been in search of, he ran in without other thought than of immediate pleasure to his kindest friend, bought a parcel of the roots, and sent them off to Ireland. He left Leyden next day, with a guinea in his pocket, one shirt to his back, and a flute in his hand. CHAPTER V. TRAVELS. 1755—1756. To understand what was probably passing in Goldsmith's mind at this curious point of his fortunes when, without any r I prospect in life, and devoid even of all apparent ^ 2 7 # < >f self-support, he quitted Leyden, the Enquiry into Preteni State of Polite Learning, the first literary piece which a ears afterwards he published on his own account, will in some degree serve as a guide. The Danish writer, Baron de Holberg, was much talked of at this time, as a celebrated penoo recently dead. His career impressed Goldsmith. It was that of a man of . to whom literature, other sources hi\ ' had given great fame and high worldly station. On tli« death oi Uerg had found himself involved "in all that dis- common among the poor, and. of which t!i«- great "have scarcely any idea." But persisting in a determination to 38 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book r. be something, he resolutely begged his learning and his bread, and so succeeded that "a life begun in contempt and penury ended in "opulence and esteem." Goldsmith had his thoughts more espe- cially fixed upon this career, when at Leyden, by the accident of its sudden close in that city. The desire of extensive travel, too, his sister told Mr. Handcock, had been always a kind of passion with him. " Being of a philosophical turn," says his later associate and friend, Doctor Glover, "and at that time possessing a body " capable of sustaining every fatigue, and a heart not easily terrified "at danger, this ingenious, unfortunate man became an enthusiast "to the design he had formed of seeing the manners of different "countries." And an enthusiast to the same design, with pre- cisely the same means of indulging it, Holberg had also been. " His ambition," I turn again to the Polite Learning, "was not to "be restrained, or his thirst of knowledge satisfied, until he had "seen the Avorld. Without money, recommendations, or friends, "he undertook to set out upon his travels, and make the tour of "Europe on foot. A good voice, and a trifling skill in music, " were the only finances he had to support an undertaking so " extensive ; so he travelled by day, and at night sung at the "doors of peasants ' houses to get himself a lodging. In this 1 ' manner, while yet very young, Holberg passed through France, "Germany, and Holland." With exactly the same resources, still also very young, Goldsmith quitted Leyden, bent upon the travel which his Traveller has made immortal. It was in February, 1755. For the exact route he took, the nature of his adventures, and the course of thought they suggested, it is necessary to resort for the most part to his published writings. His letters of the time have perished. It was common talk at the dinner table of Reynolds that the wanderings of the philosophic vagabond in the Vicar of Wakefield had been suggested by his own, and he often admitted at that time, to various friends, the accuracy of special details. "He frequently used to talk," says Foote's biographer Mr. Cooke, who became very familiar with Goldsmith in later life, ' ' of his distresses on the continent, "such as living on the hospitalities of the friars in convents, " sleeping in barns, and picking up a kind of mendicant livelihood "by the German flute, with great pleasantry." If he did not make more open confession than to private friends, it was to please the booksellers only ; who could not bear that any one so popular with their customers as Doctor Goldsmith had become, should lie under the horrible imputation of a poverty so deplorable. " Countries wear very different appearances," he had written in the first edition of the Polite Learning, "to travellers of different "circumstances. A man who is whirled through Europe in a v.] TRAVELS. 39 " post-chaise, and the pilgrim who walks the grand tour on foot, "will form very different conclusions. Haud inexpertus loquor." In the second edition, the haud inexpertus loquor disappeared ; but the experience had been already set down in the Vicar of Waktfi Louvain attracted him of course, as he passed through Flanders ; and here, according to his first biographer, he took the degree of medical bachelor, which, as early as 1763, is found in one of the Dodsley agreements appended to his name. Though this is by no means certain, it is yet likely enough. The records of Louvain University were destroyed in the revolutionary wars, and the means of proof or disproof lost ; but it is improbable that any false assumption of a medical degree would have passed without question among the distinguished friends of his later life, even if it escaped the exposure of his enemies. Certain it is, at any rate, that he made some stay at Louvain, became acquainted with its professors, and informed himself of its modes of study. " I always forgot "the meanness of my circumstances when I could converse upon h subjects." Some little time he also seems to have passed at Brussels. Of his having examined at Maestricht an extensive cavern, or stone quarry, at that time much visited by travellers, there is likewise trace. It must undoubtedly have been at Antwerp (a ' ' fortification in Flanders ") that he saw the maimed, deformed, chained, yet cheerful slave, to whom he refers in that charming essay, in the second number of the Bee, wherein he argues that happiness and pleasure are in ourselves, and not in the objects offered for our amusement. And he afterwards remem- bered, and made it the subject of a striking allusion in his Animated Nature, how, as he approached the coast of Holland, he looked down upon it from the deck, as into a valley ; so that it seemed to him at once a conquest from the sea, and in a manner rescued from its bosom. He did not travel to see that all was barren ; he did not merely outface the poverty, the hardship, ami fatigue, but made them his servants, and ministers to entertain- ment and wisdom. re he passed through Flanders good use had been made of his flute ; and when he came to the poorer provinces of France, foimd it greatly serviceable. "I had some knowledge of " music," says the vagabond, " with a tolerable voice ; I now "turned what was once my amusement into a present means of " subsistence. I passed among the harmless peasants of Flanders, " and among such of the French as were poor enough to be very "merry ; for I ever found them sprightly in proportion to their " wants. Whenever I approached a peasant's house towards night- ' fill, i played one of my most merry tunes, and that procur- >\ 40 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book r. " me not only a lodging, but subsistence for the next day. I once ' ' or twice attempted to play for people of fashion ; but they "always thought my performance odious, and never rewarded me " even with a trifle." In plain words, he begged, as Holberg had done ; supported by his cheerful spirit, and the thought that Holberg's better fate might also yet be his. Not, we may be sure, the dull round of professional labour, but intellectual distinction, popular fame, the applause and wonder of his old Irish associates, were now within the sphere of Goldsmith's vision ; and what these will enable a man joyfully to endure, he afterwards bore witness to. "The perspective of life brightens upon us when terminated "by objects so charming. Every intermediate image of want, "banishment, or sorrow, receives a lustre from their distant " influence. With these in view, the patriot, philosopher, and " poet, have looked with calmness on disgrace and famine, and " rested on their straw with cheerful serenity." Straw, doubtless, was his own peasant-lodging often ; but from it the wanderer arose, refreshed and hopeful, and bade the melody and sport resume, and played with a new delight to the music of enchanting verse already dancing in his brain. Gay sprightly land of mirth and social ease, Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please, How often have I led thy sportive choir, With tuneless pipe, beside the murmuring Loire, Where shading elms along the margin grew, And, freshen'd from the wave, the zephyr flew ! And haply, though my harsh touch, faltering still, But mock'd all tune, and marr'd the dancer's skill, Yet would the village praise my wondrous power, And dance, forgetful of the noon-tide hour. Alike all ages : dames of ancient days Have led their children through the mirthful maze ; And the gay grandsire, skill'd in gestic lore, Has frisk'd beneath the burden of threescore. So bless'd a life these thoughtless realms display ; Thus idly busy rolls their world away. Theirs are those arts that mind to mind endear, For honour forms the social temper here : Honour, that praise which real merit gains, Or e'en imaginary worth obtains, Here passes current — paid from hand to hand, It shifts, in splendid traffic, round the land ; From courts to camps, to cottages it strays, And all are taught an avarice of praise : They please, are pleas'd, they give to get esteem, Till, seeming bless'd, they grow to what they seem. Arrived in Paris, he rested some brief space, and, for the time, a sensible improvement is to be observed in his resources. This is chap, v.] TRAVELS. 41 not easily explained ; for, as will appear a little later in our history, many applications to Ireland of this date remained altogether without answer, and a sad fate had fallen suddenly on his best friend. But in subsequent communication with his brother-in-law Hodson, he remarked, with that strange indifference to what was implied in such obligations which is not the agreeable side of his character, that there was hardly a kingdom in Europe in which he was not a debtor ; and in Paris, if anywhere, he would find many hearts made liberal by the love of learning. His early memoir-writers assert with confidence, that in at least some small portion of these travels he acted as companion to a young man of large fortune (nephew to a pawnbroker, and articled-clerk to an attorney) ; and there are passages in the philosophic vaga- bond's adventures, which, if they did not themselves suggest the assertion (as they certainly supply the language) of those first biographers, would tend to bear it out. " I was to be the young " gentleman's governor, with a proviso that he should always be " permitted to govern himself. He was heir to a fortune of two "hundred thousand pounds, left him by an uncle in the West " Indies ; and all his questions on the road were, how much "money could be saved. Such curiosities as could be seen for " nothing, he was ready enough to look at ; but if the sight of "them was to be paid for, he usually asserted that he had been " told they were not worth seeing ; and he never paid a bill that "he would not observe how amazingly expensive travelling "was." Poor Goldsmith could not have profited much by so thrifty a young gentleman, but he certainly seems to have been present, whether as a student or a mere visitor, at the fashionable chemical lectures of the day (" I have seen as bright a circle of " beauty at the chemical lectures of Rouelle as gracing the court "at Versailles") ; to have seen and admired the celebrated actress Mademoiselle Clairon (of whom he speaks in an essay at the close of the second number of the Bee) ; and to have had leisure to look ; ly around him, and form certain grave and settled conclu- sions on the political and social state of France. He says, in his Animated Nature, that he never walked about the environs of Paris that he did not look upon the immense quantity of game running almost tame on every side of him, as a badge of the slavery of the people. What they wished him to observe as an object of triumph, he added, he regarded with a secret dread and compassion. Nor was it the badge of slavery that had alone arrested his attention. If on every side ho saw this, he saw ry at but a little distance beyond ; and in the fifty-sixth Id n of the World, more than ten years before the Animated 42 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. Nature was written, he predicted, in words that are really very remarkable, the issue which was so terrible and yet so glorious. This remark alone would reveal to us the kind of advantage derived by Goldsmith from the rude, strange, wandering life to which his nature for a time impelled him. It was the education thus picked up from personal experience, and by actual collision with many varieties of men, which not only placed him greatly in advance on several social questions, but occasionally gave him much the advantage over the more educated and learned of his contemporaries, and made him a Citizen of the World. "As " the Swedes are making concealed approaches to despotism, the "French, on the other hand, are imperceptibly vindicating them- " selves into freedom. When I consider that those parliaments " (the members of which are all created by the court, the presi- dents of which can only act by immediate direction) presume " even to mention privileges and freedom, who, till of late, re- ceived 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 will certainly once " more be free." Some thirty years after this was written, and when the writer had been fifteen years in his grave, the crash of the falling Bastille resounded over Europe. Before Goldsmith quitted Paris, he is said by his biographers to have seen and become known to Voltaire. But at Paris this could not have been. The great wit was then self-exiled from the capital, which he had not seen from the luckless hour in which he accepted the invitation of Frederick of Prussia. The fact is alleged, it is quite true, on Goldsmith's own authority ; but the passage is loosely written, does not appear in a work which bore the writer's name, and may either have been tampered with by others, or even mistakenly set down by himself in confusion of memory. The error does not vitiate the statement in an integral point, since it can hardly be doubted, I think, that the meeting actually took place. The time when Goldsmith passed through the Genevese territory, is the time when Voltaire had settled himself, in greater quiet than he had known for years, in his newly- purchased house of Les Dttices, his first residence in Geneva. He is, in a certain sort, admitted president of the European intellectual republic ; and, from his president's chair, is laughing at his own follies, laughing heartily at the kings of his acquaintance, par- ticularly and loudly laughing at Frederick and his " (Euvres des " Poeshies." It is the time of all others when, according to his own letters, he is resolved to have, on every occasion and in every shape, TRAVELS. IS " the society of agreeable and clever people." Goldsmith, flute in hand, or Goldsmith, learned and poor companion to a rich young fool, — Goldsmith, in whatever character, yearning to literature, its fame, and its awe-inspiring professors, — would not find himself near Les Delkes without finding also easy passage to its illustrious owner. By whatever chance or design, there at any rate he seems to have been. A large party was present, and conversation turned upon the English ; of whom, as he afterwards observed in a letter to the Public Ledger, Goldsmith recollected Voltaire to have remarked, that at the battle of Dettingen they exhibited prodigies « >f valour, but lessened their well-bought conquest by lessening the merit of those they had conquered. In a Life of Voltaire afterwards begun, but not finished, in one of the magazines of the day, he recalled this conversation in greater detail, to illustrate the general manner of the famous Frenchman. " When he was warmed in discourse, and had got over a hesitating " manner which sometimes he was subject to, it was rapture to " hear him. His meagre visage seemed insensibly to gather beauty, " every muscle in it had meaning, and his eye beamed with mmnal ,'htness." Among the persons alleged to be present, though might be open to question if anything of great strictness were The names are used of the vivid and noble talker, I >i ■ :■ iteuelle, then on th< the grave that waited f<»r 44 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i him nigh, a hundred years. The last, Goldsmith says, reviled the English in everything ; the first, with unequal ability, defended them ; and, to the surprise of all, Voltaire long continued silent. At last he was roused from his reverie ; a new life pervaded his frame ; he flung himself into an animated defence of England ; strokes of the finest raillery fell thick and fast on his antagonist ; and he spoke almost without intermission for three hours. " I "never was so much charmed," he added, "nor did I ever " remember so absolute a victory as he gained in this dispute." Here Goldsmith was a worshipper at the footstool, and Voltaire was on the throne ; yet it is possible that when the great Frenchman heard in later years the name of the celebrated Englishman, he may have remembered this night at Les Delices, and the enthusiasm of his young admirer, — he may have recalled, with a smile for its fervent zeal, the pale, somewhat sad face, with its two great wrinkles between the eyebrows, but redeemed from ugliness or contempt by its kind expression of simplicity, as his own was by its wonderful intellect and look of unutterable mockery. For though when they met, Voltaire was upwards of sixty-one, and Goldsmith not twenty-seven, it happened that when (in 1778) the Frenchman's popularity returned, and all the fashion and intellect of Paris were again at the feet of the philosopher of Femey ; the Johnsons, Burkes, Gibbons, Wartons, Sheridans, and Reynoldses of England were discussing the inscription for the marble tomb of the author of the Vicar of Wakefield. The lecture rooms of Germany are so often referred to in his prose writings, that, as he passed to Switzerland, he must have taken them in his way. In the Polite Learning, one is painted admirably : its Nego, Probo, and Distinguo, growing gradually loud till denial, approval, and distinction are altogether lost ; till disputants grow warm, moderator is unheard, audience take part in the debate, and the whole hall buzzes with false philosophy, sophistry, and error. Passing into Switzerland, he saw Schaff- hausen frozen quite across, and the water standing in columns where the cataract had formerly fallen. His Animated Nature, in which this is noticed, contains also masterly descriptions, from his own experience, of the wonders that present themselves to the traveller over lofty mountains ; and he adds that " nothing can be finer or "more exact than Mr. Pope's description of a traveller straining " up the Alps." Geneva was his resting-place in Switzerland : but he visited Basle and Berne ; ate a " savoury" dinner on the top of the Alps ; flushed woodcocks on Mount Jura ; wondered to see the sheep in the valleys, as he had read of them in the old pastoral poets, following the sound of the shepherd's pipe of reed ; and, poet himself at last, sent off to his brother Henry the first sketch of what chap, v.] TRAVELS. 45 was afterwards expanded into the Traveller. Who can doubt that it would contain the germ of these exquisite lines ? — ■ Eternal blessings crown my earliest friend, And round his dwelling guardian saints attend : Bless'd be that spot, where cheerful guests retire To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire ; Bless'd that abode, where want and pain repair And every stranger finds a ready chair ; Bless'd 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. Remembering thus his brother's humble kindly life, he had set in pleasant contrast before him the weak luxuriance of Italy, and the sturdy enjoyment of the rude Swiss home. Observe in this following passage with what an exquisite art of artlessness, if I may so speak, an unstudied character is given to the verses by the recurring sounds in the rhymes ; by the turn that is given to particular words and their repetition ; and by the personal feeling, the natural human pathos, which invests the lines with a charm so rarely imparted to mere descriptive verse. My soul, turn from them, turn we to survey Where rougher climes a nobler race display — Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansions tread, And force a churlish soil for scanty bread. No product here the barren hills afford, But man and steel, the soldier and his sword ; No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array, But winter lingering chills the lap of May ; No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast, But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest. 11, even here, content can spread a charm, Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm. Though poor the peasant's hut, Ids feasts though small, He sees his little lot the lot of all ; Sees no contiguous palace rear its bead To shame the meanness of his humble shed : No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal To make him loathe his vegetable meal ; But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil, Bach wish contracting, fits him to the soil. Cheerful at mora he wakes from short repose, Breasts the keen air, and carols as he goes ; With patient angle trolls the finny deep ; Or drives his venturous plough-share to 1 1 Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way, And drags the struggling savage into day. ±G OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [hook i. At night returning, every labour sped, He sits him down the monarch of a shed ; Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys His children's looks that brighten at the blaze — While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard, Displays her cleanly platter on the board : And haply too some pilgrim, thither led, With many a tale repays the nightly bed. Such was the education of thought and heart now taking the place of a more learned discipline in the truant wanderer ; such the wider range of sympathies and enjoyment opening out upon his view ; such the larger knowledge that awakened in him, as the subtle perceptions of genius arose. More than ever was he here, in the practical paths of life, a loiterer and laggard ; yet as he passed from place to place, finding for his foot no solid resting- ground, no spot of all the world that he might hope to call his own, there was yet sinking deep into the heart of the homeless vagrant that power and possession to which all else on earth subserves and is obedient, and which out of the very abyss of poverty and want gave him a right and title over all. For me your tributary stores combine ; Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine ! Descending into Piedmont he observed the floating bee-houses of which he speaks so pleasantly in the Animated Nature. "As the "bees are continually choosing their flowery pasture along the "banks of the stream, they are furnished with sweets before " unrifled ; and thus a single floating bee-house yields the proprietor " a considerable income. Why a method similar to this has never " been adopted in England, where we have more gentle rivers, and " more flowery banks, than any other part of the world, I know "not." After this, proofs of his having seen Florence, Verona, Mantua, and Milan, are apparent ; and in Carinthia the incident occurred with which his famous couplet has too hastily reproached a people, when, sinking with fatigue, after a long day's toilsome walk, he was turned from a peasant's hut at which he implored a lodging. At Padua he is supposed to have stayed some six months ; and here, it has been asserted, though in this case also the official records are lost, he received his degree. Here, or at Louvain, or at some other of these foreign universities where he always boasted himself hero in the disputations to which his philosophic vagabond refers, there can hardly be a question that the degree, a very simple and accessible matter at any of them, was actually conferred. "Sir," said Boswell to Johnson, "he disputed "his passage through Europe." Of his having also taken a some- chap, vi.] TRAVELS. 47 what close survey of those countless academic institutions of Italy, in the midst of which Italian learning at this time withered, evidence is not wanting ; and he always thoroughly discriminated the character of that country and its people. But small the bliss that sense alone bestows, And sensual bliss is all the nation knows ; In florid beauty groves and fields appear — Man seems the only growth that dwindles here ! Contrasted faults through all his manners reign : Though poor, luxurious ; though submissive, vain ; Though grave, yet trifling ; zealous, yet untrue ; And even in penance planning sins anew. It is a hard struggle to return to England ; but his steps are now bent that way. " My skill in music," says the philosophic vagabond, whose account there will be little danger in i' q'q accepting as at least some certain reflection of the truth, "could avail me nothing in Italy, where every peasant was a " better musician than I : but by this time I had acquired another " talent which answered my purpose as well, and this was a skill " in disputation. In all the foreign universities and convents there "are, upon certain days, philosophical theses maintained against u every adventitious disputant ; for which, if the champion opposes " with any dexterity, he can claim a gratuity in money, a dinner, " and a bed for one night. In this manner, then, I fought my " way towards England ; walked along from city to city ; examined nkind more nearly; and, if I may so express it, saw both " sides of the picture." CHAPTER YI. PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB-STREET. 1756—1757. It was on the 1st of February, 1756, that Oliver Goldsmith stepped upon the shore at Dover, and stood again among his countrymen. Rt. 28 Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state, With daring aims irregularly great. Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of human kind pass by, Intent on high designs. . . . The comfort of seeing it must have been about all the com him. At this moment, there is little doubt, he had not a single IB OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book I. farthing in his pocket ; and from the lords of human kind, intent on looking in any direction but his, it was much more difficult to get one than from the careless good-humoured peasants of France or Flanders. In the struggle of ten days or a fortnight which it took him to get to London, there is reason to suspect that he attempted a " low comedy" performance in a country barn ; and, at one of the towns he passed, had implored to be hired in an apothecary's shop. In the middle of February he was wandering without friend or acquaintance, without the knowledge or comfort of even one kind face, in the lonely, terrible, London streets. He thought he might find employment as an usher : and there is a dark uncertain kind of story, of his getting a bare subsistence in this way for some few months, under a feigned name ; which must have involved him in a worse distress but for the judicious silence of the Dublin Doctor (Radcliff), fellow of the college and joint- tutor with Wilder, to whom he had been suddenly required to apply for a character, and whose good-humoured acquiescence in his private appeal saved him from suspicion of imposture. Goldsmith showed his gratitude by a long, and, it is said, a most delightful letter to Radcliff, descriptive of his travels ; now unhap- pily destroyed. He also wrote again to his more familiar Irish chap, vi.] PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB-STREET. 49 friends, but his letters were again unanswered. He went among the London apothecaries, and asked them to let him spread plasters for them, pound in their mortars, run with their medi- - : but they, too, asked him for a character, and he had none to give. At last a chemist of the name of Jacob took compassion upon him, and the late Conversation Sharp used to point out a shop at the corner of Monument-yard on Fish-street-hill, shown to him in his youth as this benevolent Mr. Jacob's. Some dozen years later, Goldsmith startled a brilliant circle at Bennet Langton's with an anecdote of " When I lived among the " beggars in Axe-lane," just as Napoleon, fifty years later, appalled the party of crowned heads at Dresden with his story of " When " I was lieutenant in the regiment of La Fere." The experience with the beggars will of course date before that social elevation of mixing and selling drugs on Fish-street-hill. For doubtless the latter brought him into the comfort and good society on which he afterwards dwelt with such unction, in describing the elegant little lodging at three shillings a week, with its lukewarm dinner served up between two pewter plates from a cook's shop. Thus employed among the drugs, he heard one day that Sleigh, an old fellow-student of the Edinburgh time, was lodging not far off, and he resolved to visit him. He had to wait, jJ on of course, for his only holiday ; " but notwithstanding it " was Sunday," he said, afterwards relating the anecdote, "and it is " to be supposed I was in my best clothes, Sleigh did not know "ine. Such is the tax the unfortunate pay to poverty." He did not fail to leave to the unfortunate the lessons they should be taught by it. Doctor Sleigh (Foote's Doctor Sligo, honourably named in an earlier page of this narrative) recollected at last his friend of two years gone ; and when he did so, added Goldsmith, " I found bis heart as warm as ever, and he shared his purse and " friendship with me during his continuance in London." With the help of this warm heart and friendly purse, seconded also by the good apothecary Jacob ("who," says Cooke, "saw in Goldsmith u talents above his condition"), he now "rose from the apothecary's "drudge to be a physician in a humble way," in Bankside, South- ward It was not a thriving business : poor physician to the poor : but it seemed a change for the better, and hope was strong in him. An old Irish acquaintance and school-fellow (Beatty) met him at this time in the streets. He was in a suit of green and gold, miserably old and tarnished ; his shirt and neckcloth appeared to have been worn at least a fortnight ; but he said he was practising physic, and doing very well ! It is hard to confese failure to one's school-fellow. D BO OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [300K I. Our next glimpse, though not more satisfactory, is more profes- sional. The green and gold have faded quite out, into a rusty full-trimmed black suit : the pockets of which, like those of the poets in innumerable farces, overflow with papers. The coat is second-hand velvet, cast-off legacy of a more successful brother of the craft ; the cane, the wig, have served more fortunate owners ; and the humble practitioner of Bankside is feeling the pulse of a patient humbler than himself, whose courteous entreaties to be allowed to relieve him of the hat he keeps pressed over his heart, he more courteously but firmly declines. Beneath the hat is a large patch in the rusty velvet, which he thus conceals. But he cannot conceal the starvation which is again impending. Even the poor printer's workman he attends, can see how hardly in that respect it goes with him ; and finds courage one day to suggest that his master has been kind to clever men before now, has visited Mr. Johnson in spunging-houses, and might be service- able to a poor physcian. For his master is no less than Mr. Samuel Richardson of Salisbury-court and Parson's-green, printer, and author of Clarissa. The hint is successful ; and Goldsmith, appointed reader and corrector to the press in Salisbury-court, — admitted now and then even to the parlour of Richardson himself. chap, vi.] PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB-STREET. 51 and there grimly smiled upon by its chief literary ornament, great poet of the day, the author of the Night Thoughts, — sees hope in literature once more. He begins a tragedy. With what modest expectation, with what cheerful, simple-hearted deference to criti- cal objection, another of his Edinburgh fellow-students, Doctor Farr, will relate to us. From the time of Goldsmith's leaving Edinburgh, in the year 1754, I never saw him till 1756, when I was in London, attending the hospitals and lectures; early in January [1756 is an evident mistake for 1757] he called upon me one morning before I was up, and on my entering the room, I recognised my old acquaintance, dressed in a rusty full-trimmed black suit, with his pockets full of papers, which instantly reminded me of the poet in Garrick's farce of Lethe. After we had finished our breakfast, he drew from his pocket a part of a tragedy ; which he said he had brought for my correc- tion ; in vain I pleaded inability, when he began to read, and every part on which I expressed a doubt as to the propriety, was immediately blotted out. I then more earnestly pressed him not to trust to my judgment, but to the opinion of persons better qualified to decide on dramatic compositions, on which he told me he had submitted his production, so far as he had written, to Mr. Richardson, the author of Clarissa, on which I peremptorily declined offering another criticism on the performance. The name and subject of the tragedy have unfortunately escaped my memory, neither do I recollect with exactness how much he had written, though I am inclined to believe that he had not completed the third act ; I never heard whether he afterwards finished it. In this visit I remember his relating a strange Quixotic scheme he had in contemplation of going to decipher the inscriptions on the written momntmmt, though he was altogether ignorant of Arabic, or the language in which they might be supposed to be written. The salary of 3001. per annum, which had been left for the purpose, was the temptation ! Temptation indeed ! The head may well be full of projects of any kind, when the pockets are only full of papers. But not, alas, to decipher inscriptions on the written mountains, only to preside over pot-hooks at Peckham, was doomed to be the lot of Goldsmith. One Doctor Milner, known still as the author of Latin and Greek grammars useful in their day, kept a school there ; his son was among these young Edinburgh fellow-students with Oliver, come up, like Farr, Sleigh, and others, to their London examinations; and thus it happened that the office of assistant at the Peckham Academy befell. "All my ambition " now is to live," he may well be supposed to have said, in the words he afterwards placed in the mouth of young Primrose. He seems to have been installed at nearly the beginning of 1757. Ad attempt has been made to show that it was an earlier year, but on grounds too unsafe to oppose to known dates in his life. The good people of Peckham have also cherished traditions of Qold>> House, as what once was the school became afterwards fondly designated ; which may not safely be admitted here. Broken window-panes have been religiously kept, for the supposed treasure D2 52 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. of his hand-writing ; and old gentlemen, formerly Doctor Milner's scholars, have claimed, against every reasonable evidence, the honour of having been whipped by the author of the Vicar of Wakefield. But nothing is with certainty known, save what a daughter of the school-master has related. At the end of the century Miss Hester Milner, ' ' an intelligent "lady, the youngest, and only remaining of Doctor Milner's ten "daughters," was still alive, and very willing to tell what she recollected of their old usher. An answer he had given herself one day to a question which, as it interested her youth, had happily not ceased to occupy and interest her old age, seemed to have retained all the strong impression which it first made upon her. Her father being a presbyterian divine, she could hardly fail to hear many arguments and differences in doctrine or dogma discussed ; and, in connection with these, it seems to have occur- red to her one day to ask Mr. Goldsmith what particular commen- tator on the Scriptures Jve would recommend ; when, after a pause, the usher replied, with much earnestness, that in his belief common-sense was the best interpreter of the sacred writings. What other reminiscences she indulged took a lighter and indeed humourous tone. He was very good-natured, she said ; played all kinds of tricks on the servants and the boys, of which he had no lack of return in kind ; told entertaining stories ; * ' was ' ' remarkably cheerful, both in the family and with the young " gentlemen of the school ;" and amused everybody with his flute. Two of his practical jokes on Doctor Milner's servant, or footboy, were thought worth putting in a notebook by a neighbour of Miss Milner's at Islington, to whom she related them. This was the popular Baptist preacher and schoolmaster, Mr. John Evans, already known as the author of A Brief Sketch of the Denomina- tions, and afterwards more widely distinguished. Thinking that the old lady's recollections somewhat pleasantly illustrated the " humour and cheerfulness of Goldsmith," he was careful, after "receiving them from Miss Milner on drinking tea with her," to write "mem down immediately on his return home. And as even biography has its critics jealous for its due and proper dignity, the present writer had perhaps better anticipate a possible objection to these and other anecdotes which in this narrative will first be read, by pleading also the apology of Miss Milner's friend, that " however trivial they may be, there are some young persons "to whom they may prove acceptable." William was the name of the schoolmaster's servant, and his duty being to wait on the young gentlemen at table, clean their shoes, and so forth, he was not, in social position, so very far removed from the usher but that much familiarity subsisted be- chap, vi.] PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB-STREET. 53 tween them. He was weak, but good-tempered, and oiie of Goldsmith's jokes had for its object to cure him of a hopeless passion with which a pretty servant girl in the neighbourhood had inspired him. This youthful Phillis seems to have rather suddenly quitted service and gone back to her home in Yorkshire, leaving behind her a sort of half-promise that she would some day send William a letter ; which everybody, but William, of course knew was only her good-natured way of getting rid of importunity : he, however, having a fixed persuasion that the letter would come, every morning would watch the postman as he passed, and became at last so wretched with disappointment that Goldsmith good- naturedly devised an attempt to cure these unfounded expectations. In a servant-girl's hand elaborately imitated, and with such lan- guage and spelling as would exactly hit off the longed-for letter out of Yorkshire (" the lady who told me the anecdote," interposes the narrator, " saw it before it was sent "), Goldsmith prepared an epistle from Phillis which was to convey to William, in effect, that she had for various reasons delayed writing, but was now to inform him that a young man, by trade a glass-grinder, was paying his addresses to her, that she had not given him much encouragement but her relations were strongly for the match, that she, however, often thought of William, and must conclude by saying that some- thing must now be done one way or another, a mater of Grub-street with reverence. I thought it my glory to pursue a track which Dryden and Otway trod before me. The difference of fact and fiction here will be, that glory End nothing to do with the matter. Griffiths and glory were not to be •f together. The sorrowful road seemed the last that was ■ him ; and he entered it. < >n this track, then, — taken by few successfully, taken happily by though not on that account the less, in every age, the choio of 111*11 of genius, — we see Goldsmith, in his twenty-ninth year, without liberl ce, in sheer and bare necessity, calling after eaffing having aJippe 1 from him, launched for the first time. Th< pro of unusual gloom might have the ardour of a more damped oh* D o 58 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. Fielding had died in shattered hope and fortune, at what should have been his prime of life, three years before ; within the next two years, poor and mad, Collins was fated to descend to his early grave ; Smollett was toughly fighting for his every-day's existence ; and Johnson, within some half-dozen months, had been tenant of a spunging-house. No man throve that was connected with letters, unless he were also connected with their trade and merchandise, and, like Richardson, could print as well as write books. " Had " some of those," cried Smollett, in his bitterness, "who were pleased " to call themselves my friends, been at any pains to deserve the " character, and told me ingenuously what I had to expect in the " capacity of an author, when I first professed myself of that ' ' venerable fraternity, I should in all probability have spared myself " the incredible labour and chagrin I have since undergone." " I " don't think," said Burke, in one of his first London letters to" his Irish friends, written seven years before this date, "there is as " much respect paid to a man of letters on this side the water as " you imagine. I don't find that Genius, the J rathe primrose, which forsaken dies,' " is patronised by any of the nobility . . . writers of the first talents " are left to the capricious patronage of the public. After all, a ' ' man will make more by the figures of arithmetic than the figures 1 ' of rhetoric, unless he can get into the trade wind, and then he " may sail secure over Pactolean sands." It was, in truth, one of those times of transition which press hardly on all whose lot is cast in them. The patron was gone, and the public had not come ; the seller of books had as yet exclusive command over the destiny of those who wrote them, and he was difficult of access, — without certain prospect of the trade wind, hard to move. "The shepherd in Virgil," wrote Johnson to Lord Chesterfield, "grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a "native of the rocks." Nor had adverse circumstances been without their effect upon the literary character itself. Covered with the blanket of Boyse, and sheltered by the night-cellar of Savage, it had forfeited less honour and self-respect than as the paid client of the ministries of Walpole and Henry Pelham. As long as its political services were acknowledged by offices in the state ; as long as the coarse wit of Prior could be paid by an embassy, or the delicate humour of Addison win its way to a secretaryship ; while Steele and Congreve, Swift and Gay, sat at ministers' tables, and were not without weight in cabinet councils ; its slavery might not have been less real than in later years, yet all externally went well with it. Though even flat apostacy, as in Parnell's case, might in those days lift literature in rank, while 4 ;hap. vi.] PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB-STREET. unpurchaseable independence, as in that of De Foe, depressed it into contempt and ruin ; though, for the mere hope of gain to be got from it, such nobodies as Mr. Hughes were worth propitiating by dignified public employments ; still, it teas esteemed by the crowd, because not wholly shut out from the rank and consideration which worldly means could give to it. " The middle ranks," said Goldsmith truly, in speaking of that period, ' ' generally imitate " the great, and. applauded from fashion if not from feeling." But when another state of things succeeded ; when politicians had too much shrewdness to despise the helps of the pen, and too little intellect to honour its claims or influence ; when it was thought that to strike .it its dignity, was to command its more complete subservience ; when corruption in its grosser forms had become chief director of political intrigue, and it was less the statesman's office to wheedle a vote than the minister's business to give hard cash in return for it, — literature, or the craft so called, was thrust from the house of commons into its lobbies and waiting-rooms, and ordered to exchange the dignity of the council-table for the comforts of the great man's kitchen. The order did not of necessity make the man of genius a servant or a parasite : its sentence upon him simply was, that he must descend in the social scale, and peradventure starve. But though it could not disgrace or degrade him, it called a class of writers into existence whose degradation reacted upon him ; who fiung a stigma on his pursuits, and made the name of man-of-letters the synonyme for dishonest hireling. Of the fifty thousand pounds which the t Committee found to have been expended by Walpole's ministry on daily scribblers for their daily bread, not a sixpence was received, either then or when the Pelhams afterwards followed the example, by a writer whose name is now enviably known. All went to the Guthries, the Amhersts, the Arnalls, the Ralphs, ami the Oldmixons ; and while a Mr. Cook was pensioned, a Harry ing solicited Walpole in vain. What the man of genial \ed, unless the man of rank had wisdom to adorn it by befriending him, was nothing but the shame of being confounded, as one who lived by using the pen, with those who lived by its ition and abuse. - in vain he strove to escape this imputation : it increased, and it clove to him. To become author was to be treated adventurer: a man had only to write, to be classed with whit ■