The
arrangement
thus concluded was not calculated to endure.
Oliver Goldsmith
To face p.
119
GREEN ARBOUR COURT, OLD BAILEY. From an engraving in
the 'European Magazine' for January, 1803. . . . . . To face p. 160
KILKENNY WEST CHURCH. From an aquatint by S. Alken of
a sketch by R. H. Newell ('Goldsmith's Poetical
Works', 1811). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To face p. 179
HAWTHORN TREE. From the same . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To face p. 180
SOUTH VIEW FROM GOLDSMITH'S MOUNT. From the same . . . . To face p. 183
THE SCHOOL HOUSE. From the same . . . . . . . . . . . . To face p. 187
PORTRAIT OF GOLDSMITH. Drawn by Henry William Bunbury
and etched by James Bretherton. From the
'Haunch of Venison', 1776. . . . . . . . . . . . . . To face p. 259
PORTRAIT OF GOLDSMITH. From a silhouette by Ozias
Humphry, R. A. , in the National Portrait Gallery. . . To face p. 261
LISSOY (OR LISHOY) MILL. From an aquatint by S. Alken
of a sketch by R. H. Newell ('Goldsmith's
Poetical Works', 1811) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To face p. 262
THE PARSONAGE. From the same . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To face p. 264
INTRODUCTION
Two of the earlier, and, in some respects, more important 'Memoirs' of
Oliver Goldsmith open with a quotation from one of his minor works, in
which he refers to the generally uneventful life of the scholar. His own
chequered career was a notable exception to this rule. He was born on
the 10th of November, 1728, at Pallas, a village in the county of
Longford in Ireland, his father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, being a
clergyman of the Established Church. Oliver was the fifth of a family of
five sons and three daughters. In 1730, his father, who had been
assisting the rector of the neighbouring parish of Kilkenny West,
succeeded to that living, and moved to Lissoy, a hamlet in Westmeath,
lying a little to the right of the road from Ballymahon to Athlone.
Educated first by a humble relative named Elizabeth Delap, the boy
passed subsequently to the care of Thomas Byrne, the village
schoolmaster, an old soldier who had fought Queen Anne's battles in
Spain, and had retained from those experiences a wandering and unsettled
spirit, which he is thought to have communicated to one at least of his
pupils. After an attack of confluent small-pox, which scarred him for
life, Oliver was transferred from the care of this not-uncongenial
preceptor to a school at Elphin. From Elphin he passed to Athlone; from
Athlone to Edgeworthstown, where he remained until he was thirteen or
fourteen years of age. The accounts of these early days are
contradictory. By his schoolfellows he seems to have been regarded as
stupid and heavy,--'little better than a fool'; but they admitted that
he was remarkably active and athletic, and that he was an adept in all
boyish sports. At home, notwithstanding a variable disposition, and
occasional fits of depression, he showed to greater advantage. He
scribbled verses early; and sometimes startled those about him by
unexpected 'swallow-flights' of repartee. One of these, an oft-quoted
retort to a musical friend who had likened his awkward antics in a
hornpipe to the dancing of Aesop,--
Heralds! proclaim aloud! all saying,
See 'Aesop' dancing, and his 'monkey' playing,--
reads more like a happily-adapted recollection than the actual impromptu
of a boy of nine. But another, in which, after a painful silence, he
replied to the brutal enquiry of a ne'er-do-well relative as to when he
meant to grow handsome, by saying that he would do so when the speaker
grew good,--is characteristic of the easily-wounded spirit and
'exquisite sensibility of contempt' with which he was to enter upon the
battle of life.
In June, 1744, after anticipating in his own person, the plot of his
later play of 'She Stoops to Conquer' by mistaking the house of a
gentleman at Ardagh for an inn, he was sent to Trinity College, Dublin.
The special dress and semi-menial footing of a sizar or poor
scholar--for his father, impoverished by the imprudent portioning of his
eldest daughter, could not afford to make him a pensioner--were scarcely
calculated to modify his personal peculiarities. Added to these, his
tutor elect, Dr. Theaker Wilder, was a violent and vindictive man, with
whom his ungainly and unhopeful pupil found little favour. Wilder had a
passion for mathematics which was not shared by Goldsmith, who, indeed,
spoke contemptuously enough of that science in after life. He could,
however, he told Malone, 'turn an Ode of Horace into English better than
any of them. ' But his academic career was not a success. In May, 1747,
the year in which his father died,--an event that further contracted his
already slender means,--he became involved in a college riot, and was
publicly admonished. From this disgrace he recovered to some extent in
the following month by obtaining a trifling money exhibition, a triumph
which he unluckily celebrated by a party at his rooms. Into these
festivities, the heinousness of which was aggravated by the fact that
they included guests of both sexes, the exasperated Wilder made
irruption, and summarily terminated the proceedings by knocking down the
host. The disgrace was too much for the poor lad. He forthwith sold his
books and belongings, and ran away, vaguely bound for America. But after
considerable privations, including the achievement of a destitution so
complete that a handful of grey peas, given him by a girl at a wake,
seemed a banquet, he turned his steps homeward, and, a reconciliation
having been patched up with his tutor, he was received once more at
college. In February, 1749, he took his degree, a low one, as B. A. , and
quitted the university, leaving behind him, for relics of that time, a
scratched signature upon a window-pane, a 'folio' Scapula scored
liberally with 'promises to pay,' and a reputation for much loitering at
the college gates in the study of passing humanity. Another habit which
his associates recalled was his writing of ballads when in want of
funds. These he would sell at five shillings apiece; and would
afterwards steal out in the twilight to hear them sung to the
indiscriminate but applauding audience of the Dublin streets.
What was to be done with a genius so unstable, so erratic? Nothing,
apparently, but to let him qualify for orders, and for this he is too
young. Thereupon ensues a sort of 'Martin's summer' in his changing
life,--a disengaged, delightful time when 'Master Noll' wanders
irresponsibly from house to house, fishing and flute-playing, or, of
winter evenings, taking the chair at the village inn. When at last the
moment came for his presentation to the Bishop of Elphin, that prelate,
sad to say, rejected him, perhaps because of his college reputation,
perhaps because of actual incompetence, perhaps even, as tradition
affirms, because he had the bad taste to appear before his examiner in
flaming scarlet breeches. After this rebuff, tutoring was next tried.
But he had no sooner saved some thirty pounds by teaching, than he threw
up his engagement, bought a horse, and started once more for America, by
way of Cork. In six weeks he had returned penniless, having substituted
for his roadster a sorry jade, to which he gave the contemptuous name of
Fiddleback. He had also the simplicity to wonder, on this occasion, that
his mother was not rejoiced to see him again. His next ambition was to
be a lawyer; and, to this end, a kindly Uncle Contarine equipped him
with fifty pounds for preliminary studies. But on his way to London he
was decoyed into gambling, lost every farthing, and came home once more
in bitter self-abasement. Having now essayed both divinity and law, his
next attempt was physic; and, in 1752, fitted out afresh by his
long-suffering uncle, he started for, and succeeded in reaching,
Edinburgh. Here more memories survive of his social qualities than of
his studies; and two years later he left the Scottish capital for
Leyden, rather, it may be conjectured, from a restless desire to see the
world than really to exchange the lectures of Monro for the lectures of
Albinus. At Newcastle (according to his own account) he had the good
fortune to be locked up as a Jacobite, and thus escaped drowning, as the
ship by which he was to have sailed to Bordeaux sank at the mouth of the
Garonne. Shortly afterwards he arrived in Leyden. Gaubius and other
Dutch professors figure sonorously in his future works; but whether he
had much experimental knowledge of their instructions may be doubted.
What seems undeniable is, that the old seduction of play stripped him of
every shilling; so that, like Holberg before him, he set out
deliberately to make the tour of Europe on foot. 'Haud inexpertus
loquor,' he wrote in after days, when praising this mode of locomotion.
He first visited Flanders. Thence he passed to France, Germany,
Switzerland, and Italy, supporting himself mainly by his flute, and by
occasional disputations at convents or universities. 'Sir,' said Boswell
to Johnson, 'he 'disputed' his passage through Europe. ' When on the 1st
February, 1756, he landed at Dover, it was with empty pockets. But he
had sent home to his brother in Ireland his first rough sketch for the
poem of 'The Traveller'.
He was now seven-and-twenty. He had seen and suffered much, but he was
to have further trials before drifting definitely into literature.
Between Dover and London, it has been surmised, he made a tentative
appearance as a strolling player. His next ascertained part was that of
an apothecary's assistant on Fish Street Hill. From this, with the
opportune aid of an Edinburgh friend, he proceeded--to use an
eighteenth-century phrase--a poor physician in the Bankside, Southwark,
where least of all, perhaps, was London's fabled pavement to be found.
So little of it, in fact, fell to Goldsmith's share, that we speedily
find him reduced to the rank of reader and corrector of the press to
Samuel Richardson, printer, of Salisbury Court, author of 'Clarissa'.
Later still he is acting as help or substitute in Dr. Milner's
'classical academy' at Peckham. Here, at last, chance seemed to open to
him the prospect of a literary life. He had already, says report,
submitted a manuscript tragedy to Richardson's judgement; and something
he said at Dr. Milner's table attracted the attention of an occasional
visitor there, the bookseller Griffiths, who was also proprietor of the
'Monthly Review'. He invited Dr. Milner's usher to try his hand at
criticism; and finally, in April, 1757, Goldsmith was bound over for a
year to that venerable lady whom George Primrose dubs 'the 'antiqua
mater' of Grub Street'--in other words, he was engaged for bed, board,
and a fixed salary to supply copy-of-all-work to his master's magazine.
The arrangement thus concluded was not calculated to endure. After some
five months of labour from nine till two, and often later, it came
suddenly to an end. No clear explanation of the breach is forthcoming,
but mere incompatability of temper would probably supply a sufficient
ground for disagreement. Goldsmith, it is said, complained that the
bookseller and his wife treated him ill, and denied him ordinary
comforts; added to which the lady, a harder taskmistress even than the
'antiqua mater' above referred to, joined with her husband in 'editing'
his articles, a course which, hard though it may seem, is not
unprecedented. However this may be, either in September or October,
1757, he was again upon the world, existing precariously from hand to
mouth. 'By a very little practice as a physician, and very little
reputation as a poet [a title which, as Prior suggests, possibly means
no more than author], I make a shift to live. ' So he wrote to his
brother-in-law in December. What his literary occupations were cannot be
definitely stated; but, if not prepared before, they probably included
the translation of a remarkable work issued by Griffiths and others in
the ensuing February. This was the 'Memoirs of a Protestant, condemned
to the Galleys of France for his Religion', being the authentic record
of the sufferings of one Jean Marteilhe of Bergerac, a book of which
Michelet has said that it is 'written as if between earth and heaven. '
Marteilhe, who died at Cuylenberg in 1777, was living in Holland in
1758; and it may be that Goldsmith had seen or heard of him during his
own stay in that country. The translation, however, did not bear
Goldsmith's name, but that of James Willington, one of his old
class-fellows at Trinity College. Nevertheless, Prior says distinctly
that Griffiths (who should have known) declared it to be by Goldsmith.
Moreover, the French original had been catalogued in Griffiths' magazine
in the second month of Goldsmith's servitude, a circumstance which
colourably supplies the reason for its subsequent rendering into
English.
The publication of Marteilhe's 'Memoirs' had no influence upon
Goldsmith's fortunes, for, in a short time, he was again installed at
Peckham, in place of Dr. Milner invalided, waiting hopefully for the
fulfilment of a promise by his old master to procure him a medical
appointment on a foreign station. It is probably that, with a view to
provide the needful funds for this expatriation, he now began to sketch
the little volume afterwards published under the title of 'An Enquiry
into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe', for towards the
middle of the year we find him addressing long letters to his relatives
in Ireland to enlist their aid in soliciting subscriptions for this
book. At length the desired advancement was obtained,--a nomination as a
physician and surgeon to one of the factories on the coast of
Coromandel. But banishment to the East Indies was not to be his destiny.
For some unexplained reason the project came to nothing; and then--like
Roderick Random--he presented himself at Surgeons' Hall for the more
modest office of a hospital mate. This was on the 21st of December,
1758. The curt official record states that he was 'found not qualified. '
What made matters worse, the necessity for a decent appearance before
the examiners had involved him in new obligations to Griffiths, out of
which arose fresh difficulties. To pay his landlady, whose husband was
arrested for debt, he pawned the suit he had procured by Griffiths' aid;
and he also raised money on some volumes which had been sent him for
review. Thereupon ensued an angry and humiliating correspondence with
the bookseller, as a result of which Griffiths, nevertheless, appears to
have held his hand.
By this time Goldsmith had moved into those historic but now
non-existent lodgings in 12 Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey, which have
been photographed for ever in Irving's 'Tales of a Traveller'. It was
here that the foregoing incidents took place; and it was here also that,
early in 1759, 'in a wretched dirty room, in which there was but one
chair,' the Rev. Thomas Percy, afterwards Bishop of Dromore, found him
composing (or more probably correcting the proofs of) 'The Enquiry'. 'At
least spare invective 'till my book with Mr. Dodsley shall be
publish'd,'--he had written not long before to the irate Griffiths--'and
then perhaps you may see the bright side of a mind when my professions
shall not appear the dictates of necessity but of choice. ' 'The Enquiry'
came out on the 2nd of April. It had no author's name, but it was an
open secret that Goldsmith had written it; and to this day it remains to
the critic one of the most interesting of his works. Obviously, in a
duodecimo of some two hundred widely-printed pages, it was impossible to
keep the high-sounding promise of its title; and at best its author's
knowledge of the subject, notwithstanding his continental wanderings,
can have been but that of an external spectator. Still in an age when
critical utterance was more than ordinarily full-wigged and ponderous,
it dared to be sprightly and epigrammatic. Some of its passages,
besides, bear upon the writer's personal experiences, and serve to piece
the imperfections of his biography. If it brought him no sudden wealth,
it certainly raised his reputation with the book-selling world. A
connexion already begun with Smollett's 'Critical Review' was drawn
closer; and the shrewd Sosii of the Row began to see the importance of
securing so vivacious and unconventional a pen. Towards the end of the
year he was writing for Wilkie the collection of periodical essays
entitled 'The Bee'; and contributing to the same publisher's 'Lady's
Magazine', as well as to 'The Busy Body' of one Pottinger. In these,
more than ever, he was finding his distinctive touch; and ratifying
anew, with every fresh stroke of his pen, his bondage to authorship as a
calling.
He had still, however, to conquer the public. 'The Bee', although it
contains one of his most characteristic essays ('A City Night-Piece'),
and some of the most popular of his lighter verses ('The Elegy on Mrs.
Mary Blaize'), never attained the circulation essential to healthy
existence. It closed with its eighth number in November, 1759. In the
following month two gentlemen called at Green Arbour Court to enlist the
services of its author. One was Smollett, with a new serial, 'The
British Magazine'; the other was Johnson's 'Jack Whirler,' bustling Mr.
John Newbery from the 'Bible and Sun' in St. Paul's Churchyard, with a
new daily newspaper, 'The Public Ledger'. For Smollett, Goldsmith wrote
the 'Reverie at the Boar's Head Tavern' and the 'Adventures of a
Strolling Player,' besides a number of minor papers. For Newbery, by a
happy recollection of the 'Lettres Persanes' of Montesquieu, or some of
his imitators, he struck almost at once into that charming epistolary
series, brimful of fine observation, kindly satire, and various fancy,
which was ultimately to become the English classic known as 'The Citizen
of the World'. He continued to produce these letters periodically until
the August of the following year, when they were announced for
republication in 'two volumes of the usual 'Spectator' size. ' In this
form they appeared in May, 1762.
But long before this date a change for the better had taken place in
Goldsmith's life. Henceforth he was sure of work,--mere journey-work
though much of it must have been;--and, had his nature been less
improvident, of freedom from absolute want. The humble lodgings in the
Old Bailey were discarded for new premises at No. 6 Wine Office Court,
Fleet Street; and here, on the 31st of May, 1761, with Percy, came one
whose name was often in the future to be associated with Goldsmith's,
the great Dictator of London literary society, Samuel Johnson. Boswell,
who made Johnson's acquaintance later, has not recorded the humours of
that supper; but it marks the beginning of Goldsmith's friendship with
the man who of all others (Reynolds excepted) loved him most and
understood him best.
During the remainder of 1761 he continued busily to ply his pen. Besides
his contributions to 'The Ledger' and 'The British Magazine', he edited
'The Lady's Magazine', inserting in it the 'Memoirs of Voltaire', drawn
up some time earlier to accompany a translation of the 'Henriade' by his
crony and compatriot Edward Purdon. Towards the beginning of 1762 he was
hard at work on several compilations for Newbery, for whom he wrote or
edited a 'History of Mecklenburgh', and a series of monthly volumes of
an abridgement of 'Plutarch's Lives'. In October of the same year was
published the 'Life of Richard Nash', apparently the outcome of special
holiday-visits to the then fashionable watering-place of Bath, whence
its fantastic old Master of the Ceremonies had only very lately made his
final exit. It is a pleasantly gossiping, and not unedifying little
book, which still holds a respectable place among its author's minor
works. But a recently discovered entry in an old ledger shows that
during the latter half of 1762 he must have planned, if he had not,
indeed, already in part composed, a far more important effort, 'The
Vicar of Wakefield'. For on the 28th of October in this year he sold to
one Benjamin Collins, printer, of Salisbury, for 21 pounds, a third in a
work with that title, further described as '2 vols. 12mo. ' How this
little circumstance, discovered by Mr. Charles Welsh when preparing his
Life of John Newbery, is to be brought into agreement with the
time-honoured story, related (with variations) by Boswell and others, to
the effect that Johnson negotiated the sale of the manuscript for
Goldsmith when the latter was arrested for rent by his incensed
landlady--has not yet been satisfactorily suggested. Possibly the
solution is a simple one, referable to some of those intricate
arrangements favoured by 'the Trade' at a time when not one but half a
score publishers' names figured in an imprint. At present, the fact that
Collins bought a third share of the book from the author for twenty
guineas, and the statement that Johnson transferred the entire
manuscript to a bookseller for sixty pounds, seem irreconcilable. That
'The Vicar of Wakefield' was nevertheless written, or was being written,
in 1762, is demonstrable from internal evidence.
About Christmas in the same year Goldsmith moved into lodgings at
Islington, his landlady being one Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming, a friend of
Newbery, to whose generalship this step seems attributable. From the
curious accounts printed by Prior and Forster, it is clear that the
publisher was Mrs. Fleming's paymaster, punctually deducting his
disbursements from the account current between himself and Goldsmith, an
arrangement which as plainly indicates the foresight of the one as it
implies the improvidence of the other. Of the work which Goldsmith did
for the businesslike and not unkindly little man, there is no very
definite evidence; but various prefaces, introductions, and the like,
belong to this time; and he undoubtedly was the author of the excellent
'History of England in a Series of Letters addressed by a Nobleman to
his Son', published anonymously in June, 1764, and long attributed, for
the grace of its style, to Lyttelton, Chesterfield, Orrery, and other
patrician pens. Meanwhile his range of acquaintance was growing larger.
The establishment, at the beginning of 1764, of the famous association
known afterwards as the 'Literary Club' brought him into intimate
relations with Beauclerk, Reynolds, Langton, Burke, and others. Hogarth,
too, is said to have visited him at Islington, and to have painted the
portrait of Mrs. Fleming. Later in the same year, incited thereto by the
success of Christopher Smart's 'Hannah', he wrote the Oratorio of 'The
Captivity', now to be found in most editions of his poems, but never set
to music. Then after the slow growth of months, was issued on the 19th
December the elaboration of that fragmentary sketch which he had sent
years before to his brother Henry from the Continent, the poem entitled
'The Traveller; or, A Prospect of Society'.
In the notes appended to 'The Traveller' in the present volume, its
origin and progress are sufficiently explained. Its success was
immediate and enduring. The beauty of the descriptive passages, the
subtle simplicity of the language, the sweetness and finish of the
versification, found ready admirers,--perhaps all the more because of
the contrast they afforded to the rough and strenuous sounds with which
Charles Churchill had lately filled the public ear. Johnson, who
contributed a few lines at the close, proclaimed 'The Traveller' to be
the best poem since the death of Pope; and it is certainly not easy to
find its equal among the works of contemporary bards. It at once raised
Goldsmith from the condition of a clever newspaper essayist, or--as men
like Sir John Hawkins would have said--a mere 'bookseller's drudge,' to
the foremost rank among the poets of the day. Another result of its
success was the revival of some of his earlier work, which, however
neglected by the author, had been freely appropriated by the discerning
pirate. In June, 1765, Griffin and Newbery published a little volume of
'Essays by Mr. Goldsmith', including some of the best of his
contributions to 'The Bee', 'The Busy Body', 'The Public Ledger', and
'The British Magazine', besides 'The Double Transformation' and 'The
Logicians Refuted,' two pieces of verse in imitation of Prior and Swift,
which have not been traced to an earlier source. To the same year
belongs the first version of a poem which he himself regarded as his
best work, and which still retains something of its former popularity.
This was the ballad of 'Edwin and Angelina', otherwise known as 'The
Hermit'. It originated in certain metrical discussions with Percy, then
engaged upon his famous 'Reliques of English Poetry'; and in 1765,
Goldsmith, who through his friend Nugent (afterwards Lord Clare) had
made the acquaintance of the Earl of Northumberland, printed it
privately for the amusement of the Countess. In a revised and amended
form it was subsequently given to the world in 'The Vicar of Wakefield'.
With the exception of an abortive attempt to resume his practice as a
medical man,--an attempt which seems to have been frustrated by the
preternatural strength of his prescriptions,--the next memorable thing
in Goldsmith's life is the publication of 'The Vicar of Wakefield'
itself. It made its appearance on the 27th of March, 1766. A second
edition followed in May, a third in August. Why, having been sold (in
part) to a Salisbury printer as far back as October, 1762, it had
remained unprinted so long; and why, when published, it was published by
Francis Newbery and not by John Newbery, Goldsmith's employer,--are
questions at present unsolved. But the charm of this famous novel is as
fresh as when it was first issued. Its inimitable types, its happy
mingling of Christianity and character, its wholesome benevolence and
its practical wisdom, are still unimpaired. We smile at the
inconsistencies of the plot; but we are carried onward in spite of them,
captivated by the grace, the kindliness, the gentle humour of the story.
Yet it is a mistake to suppose that its success was instantaneous.
Pirated it was, of course; but, according to expert investigations, the
authorized edition brought so little gain to its first proprietors that
the fourth issue of 1770 started with a loss. The fifth, published in
April, 1774, was dated 1773; and had apparently been withheld because
the previous edition, which consisted of no more than one thousand
copies, was not exhausted. Five years elapsed before the sixth edition
made its tardy appearance in 1779. These facts show that the writer's
contemporaries were not his most eager readers. But he has long since
appealed to the wider audience of posterity; and his fame is not
confined to his native country, for he has been translated into most
European languages. Dr. Primrose and his family are now veritable
'citizens of the world. '
A selection of 'Poems for Young Ladies', in the 'Moral' division of
which he included his own 'Edwin and Angelina'; two volumes of 'Beauties
of English Poesy', disfigured with strange heedlessness, by a couple of
the most objectionable pieces of Prior; a translation of a French
history of philosophy, and other occasional work, followed the
publication of the 'Vicar'. But towards the middle of 1766, he was
meditating a new experiment in that line in which Farquhar, Steele,
Southerne, and others of his countrymen had succeeded before him. A
fervent lover of the stage, he detested the vapid and colourless
'genteel' comedy which had gradually gained ground in England; and he
determined to follow up 'The Clandestine Marriage', then recently
adapted by Colman and Garrick from Hogarth's 'Marriage A-la-Mode', with
another effort of the same class, depending exclusively for its interest
upon humour and character. Early in 1767 it was completed, and submitted
to Garrick for Drury Lane. But Garrick perhaps too politic to traverse
the popular taste, temporized; and eventually after many delays and
disappointments, 'The Good Natur'd Man', as it was called, was produced
at Covent Garden by Colman on the 29th of January, 1768. Its success was
only partial; and in deference to the prevailing craze for the
'genteel,' an admirable scene of low humour had to be omitted in the
representation. But the piece, notwithstanding, brought the author 400
pounds, to which the sale of the book, with the condemned passages
restored, added another 100 pounds. Furthermore, Johnson, whose
'Suspirius' in 'The Rambler' was, under the name of 'Croaker,' one of
its most prominent personages, pronounced it to be the best comedy since
Cibber's 'Provok'd Husband'.
During the autumn of 1767, Goldsmith had again been living at Islington.
On this occasion he had a room in Canonbury Tower, Queen Elizabeth's old
hunting-lodge, and perhaps occupied the very chamber generally used by
John Newbery, whose active life was, in this year, to close. When in
London he had modest housing in the Temple. But the acquisition of 500
pounds for 'The Good Natur'd Man' seemed to warrant a change of
residence, and he accordingly expended four-fifths of that sum for the
lease of three rooms on the second floor of No. 2 Brick Court, which he
straightway proceeded to decorate sumptuously with mirrors, Wilton
carpets, moreen curtains, and Pembroke tables. It was an unfortunate
step; and he would have done well to remember the 'Nil te quaesiveris
extra' with which his inflexible monitor, Johnson, had greeted his
apologies for the shortcomings of some earlier lodgings. One of its
natural results was to involve him in a new sequence of task-work, from
which he never afterwards shook himself free. Hence, following hard upon
a 'Roman History' which he had already engaged to write for Davies of
Russell Street, came a more ambitious project for Griffin, 'A History of
Animated Nature'; and after this again, another 'History of England' for
Davies. The pay was not inadequate; for the first he was to have 250
guineas, for the second 800 guineas, and for the last 500 pounds. But as
employment for the author of a unique novel, an excellent comedy, and a
deservedly successful poem, it was surely--in his own words--'to cut
blocks with a razor. '
And yet, apart from the anxieties of growing money troubles, his life
could not have been wholly unhappy. There are records of pleasant
occasional junketings--'shoe-maker's holidays' he called them--in the
still countrified suburbs of Hampstead and Edgware; there was the
gathering at the Turk's Head, with its literary magnates, for his
severer hours; and for his more pliant moments, the genial
'free-and-easy' or shilling whist-club of a less pretentious kind, where
the student of mixed character might shine with something of the old
supremacy of George Conway's inn at Ballymahon. And there must have been
quieter and more chastened resting-places of memory, when, softening
towards the home of his youth, with a sadness made more poignant by the
death of his brother Henry in May, 1768, he planned and perfected his
new poem of 'The Deserted Village'.
In December, 1769, the recent appointment of his friend Reynolds as
President of the Royal Academy brought him the honorary office of
Professor of History to that institution; and to Reynolds 'The Deserted
Village' was dedicated. It appeared on the 26th of May, 1770, with a
success equal, if not superior, to that of 'The Traveller'. It ran
through five editions in the year of its publication; and has ever since
retained its reputation. If, as alleged, contemporary critics ranked it
below its predecessor, the reason advanced by Washington Irving, that
the poet had become his own rival, is doubtless correct; and there is
always a prejudice in favour of the first success. This, however, is not
an obstacle which need disturb the reader now; and he will probably
decide that in grace and tenderness of description 'The Deserted
Village' in no wise falls short of 'The Traveller'; and that its central
idea, and its sympathy with humanity, give it a higher value as a work
of art.
After 'The Deserted Village' had appeared, Goldsmith made a short trip
to Paris, in company with Mrs. and the two Miss Hornecks, the elder of
whom, christened by the poet with the pretty pet-name of 'The Jessamy
Bride,' is supposed to have inspired him with more than friendly
feelings. Upon his return he had to fall again to the old
'book-building' in order to recruit his exhausted finances. Since his
last poem he had published a short 'Life of Parnell'; and Davies now
engaged him on a 'Life of Bolingbroke', and an abridgement of the 'Roman
History'. Thus, with visits to friends, among others to Lord Clare, for
whom he wrote the delightful occasional verses called 'The Haunch of
Venison', the months wore on until, in December, 1770, the print-shops
began to be full of the well-known mezzotint which Marchi had engraved
from his portrait by Sir Joshua.
His chief publications in the next two years were the above-mentioned
'History of England', 1771; 'Threnodia Augustalis', a poetical
lament-to-order on the death of the Princess Dowager of Wales, 1772; and
the abridgement of the 'Roman History', 1772. But in the former year he
had completed a new comedy, 'She Stoops to Conquer; or, The Mistakes of
a Night', which, after the usual vexatious negotiations, was brought out
by Colman at Covent Garden on Monday, the 15th of March, 1773. The
manager seems to have acted Goldsmith's own creation of 'Croaker' with
regard to this piece, and even to the last moment predicted its failure.
But it was a brilliant success. More skilful in construction than 'The
Good Natur'd Man', more various in its contrasts of character, richer
and stronger in humour and 'vis comica', 'She Stoops to Conquer' has
continued to provide an inexhaustible fund of laughter to more than
three generations of playgoers, and still bids fair to retain the
character generally given to it, of being one of the three most popular
comedies upon the English stage. When published, it was gratefully
inscribed, in one of those admirable dedications of which its author
above all men possessed the secret, to Johnson, who had befriended it
from the first. 'I do not mean,' wrote Goldsmith, 'so much to compliment
you as myself. It may do me some honour to inform the public, that I
have lived many years in intimacy with you. It may serve the interests
of mankind also to inform them, that the greatest wit may be found in a
character, without impairing the most unaffected piety. '
His gains from 'She Stoops to Conquer' were considerable; but by this
time his affairs had reached a stage of complication which nothing short
of a miracle could disentangle; and there is reason for supposing that
his involved circumstances preyed upon his mind. During the few months
of life that remained to him he published nothing, being doubtless
sufficiently occupied by the undertakings to which he was already
committed. The last of his poetical efforts was the poem entitled
'Retaliation', a group of epitaph-epigrams prompted by some similar
'jeux d'esprit' directed against himself by Garrick and other friends,
and left incomplete at his death. In March, 1774, the combined effects
of work and worry, added to a local disorder, brought on a nervous
fever, which he unhappily aggravated by the use of a patent medicine
called 'James's Powder. ' He had often relied upon this before, but in
the present instance it was unsuited to his complaint. On Monday, the
4th of April, 1774, he died, in his forty-sixth year, and was buried on
the 9th in the burying-ground of the Temple Church. Two years later a
monument, with a medallion portrait by Nollekens, and a Latin
inscription by Johnson, was erected to him in Westminster Abbey, at the
expense of the Literary Club. But although the inscription contains more
than one phrase of felicitous discrimination, notably the oft-quoted
'affectuum potens, at lenis dominator', it may be doubted whether the
simpler words used by his rugged old friend in a letter to Langton are
not a fitter farewell to Oliver Goldsmith,--'Let not his frailties be
remembered; he was a very great man. '
In person Goldsmith was short and strongly built. His complexion was
rather fair, but he was deeply scarred with small-pox; and--if we may
believe his own account--the vicissitudes and privations of his early
life had not tended to diminish his initial disadvantages. 'You scarcely
can conceive,' he writes to his brother in 1759, 'how much eight years
of disappointment, anguish, and study, have worn me down. . . . Imagine to
yourself a pale melancholy visage, with two great wrinkles between the
eye-brows, with an eye disgustingly severe, and a big wig; and you may
have a perfect picture of my present appearance,' i. e. at thirty years
of age. 'I can neither laugh nor drink,' he goes on; 'have contracted an
hesitating, disagreeable manner of speaking, and a visage that looks
ill-nature itself; in short, I have thought myself into a settled
melancholy, and an utter disgust of all that life brings with it. ' It is
obvious that this description is largely coloured by passing depression.
'His features,' says one contemporary, 'were plain, but not
repulsive,--certainly not so when lighted up by conversation. ' Another
witness--the 'Jessamy Bride'--declares that 'his benevolence was
unquestionable, and his countenance bore every trace of it. ' His true
likeness would seem to lie midway between the grotesquely truthful
sketch by Bunbury prefixed in 1776 to the 'Haunch of Venison', and the
portrait idealized by personal regard, which Reynolds painted in 1770.
In this latter he is shown wearing, in place of his customary wig, his
own scant brown hair, and, on this occasion, masquerades in a furred
robe, and falling collar. But even through the disguise of a studio
'costume,' the finely-perceptive genius of Reynolds has managed to
suggest much that is most appealing in his sitter's nature. Past
suffering, present endurance, the craving to be understood, the mute
deprecation of contempt, are all written legibly in this pathetic
picture. It has been frequently copied, often very ineffectively, for so
subtle is the art that the slightest deviation hopelessly distorts and
vulgarizes what Reynolds has done supremely, once and for ever.
Goldsmith's character presents but few real complexities. What seems
most to have impressed his contemporaries is the difference, emphasized
by the happily-antithetic epigram of Garrick, between his written style
and his conversation; and collaterally, between his eminence as a
literary man and his personal insignificance. Much of this is easily
intelligible. He had started in life with few temporal or physical
advantages, and with a native susceptibility that intensified his
defects. Until he became a middle-aged man, he led a life of which we do
not even now know all the degradations; and these had left their mark
upon his manners. With the publication of 'The Traveller', he became at
once the associate of some of the best talent and intellect in
England,--of fine gentlemen such as Beauclerk and Langton, of artists
such as Reynolds and Garrick, of talkers such as Johnson and Burke.
Morbidly self-conscious, nervously anxious to succeed, he was at once
forced into a competition for which neither his antecedents nor his
qualifications had prepared him. To this, coupled with the old habit of
poverty, must be attributed his oft-cited passion for fine clothes,
which surely arose less from vanity than from a mistaken attempt to
extenuate what he felt to be his most obvious shortcomings. As a talker
especially he was ill-fitted to shine. He was easily disconcerted by
retort, and often discomfited in argument. To the end of his days he
never lost his native brogue; and (as he himself tells us) he had that
most fatal of defects to a narrator, a slow and hesitating manner. The
perspicuity which makes the charm of his writings deserted him in
conversation; and his best things were momentary flashes. But some of
these were undoubtedly very happy. His telling Johnson that he would
make the little fishes talk like whales; his affirmation of Burke that
he wound into a subject like a serpent; and half-a-dozen other
well-remembered examples--afford ample proof of this. Something of the
uneasy jealousy he is said to have exhibited with regard to certain of
his contemporaries may also be connected with the long probation of
obscurity during which he had been a spectator of the good fortune of
others, to whom he must have known himself superior. His improvidence
seems to have been congenital, since it is to be traced 'even from his
boyish days. ' But though it cannot justly be ascribed to any reaction
from want to sufficiency, it can still less be supposed to have been
diminished by that change. If he was careless of money, it must also be
remembered that he gave much of it away; and fortune lingers little with
those whose ears are always open to a plausible tale of distress. Of his
sensibility and genuine kindheartedness there is no doubt. And it is
well to remember that most of the tales to his disadvantage come, not
from his more distinguished companions, but from such admitted
detractors as Hawkins and Boswell. It could be no mean individuality
that acquired the esteem, and deserved the regret, of Johnson and
Reynolds.
In an edition of Goldsmith's poems, any extended examination of his
remaining productions would be out of place. Moreover, the bulk of these
is considerably reduced when all that may properly be classed as
hack-work has been withdrawn. The histories of Greece, of Rome, and of
England; the 'Animated Nature'; the lives of Nash, Voltaire, Parnell,
and Bolingbroke, are merely compilations, only raised to the highest
level in that line because they proceeded from a man whose gift of clear
and easy exposition lent a charm to everything he touched. With the work
which he did for himself, the case is different. Into 'The Citizen of
the World', 'The Vicar of Wakefield', and his two comedies, he put all
the best of his knowledge of human nature, his keen sympathy with his
kind, his fine common-sense and his genial humour. The same qualities,
tempered by a certain grace and tenderness, also enter into the best of
his poems. Avoiding the epigram of Pope and the austere couplet of
Johnson, he yet borrowed something from each, which he combined with a
delicacy and an amenity that he had learned from neither. He himself, in
all probability, would have rested his fame on his three chief metrical
efforts, 'The Traveller', 'The Hermit', and 'The Deserted Village'.
GREEN ARBOUR COURT, OLD BAILEY. From an engraving in
the 'European Magazine' for January, 1803. . . . . . To face p. 160
KILKENNY WEST CHURCH. From an aquatint by S. Alken of
a sketch by R. H. Newell ('Goldsmith's Poetical
Works', 1811). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To face p. 179
HAWTHORN TREE. From the same . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To face p. 180
SOUTH VIEW FROM GOLDSMITH'S MOUNT. From the same . . . . To face p. 183
THE SCHOOL HOUSE. From the same . . . . . . . . . . . . To face p. 187
PORTRAIT OF GOLDSMITH. Drawn by Henry William Bunbury
and etched by James Bretherton. From the
'Haunch of Venison', 1776. . . . . . . . . . . . . . To face p. 259
PORTRAIT OF GOLDSMITH. From a silhouette by Ozias
Humphry, R. A. , in the National Portrait Gallery. . . To face p. 261
LISSOY (OR LISHOY) MILL. From an aquatint by S. Alken
of a sketch by R. H. Newell ('Goldsmith's
Poetical Works', 1811) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To face p. 262
THE PARSONAGE. From the same . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To face p. 264
INTRODUCTION
Two of the earlier, and, in some respects, more important 'Memoirs' of
Oliver Goldsmith open with a quotation from one of his minor works, in
which he refers to the generally uneventful life of the scholar. His own
chequered career was a notable exception to this rule. He was born on
the 10th of November, 1728, at Pallas, a village in the county of
Longford in Ireland, his father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, being a
clergyman of the Established Church. Oliver was the fifth of a family of
five sons and three daughters. In 1730, his father, who had been
assisting the rector of the neighbouring parish of Kilkenny West,
succeeded to that living, and moved to Lissoy, a hamlet in Westmeath,
lying a little to the right of the road from Ballymahon to Athlone.
Educated first by a humble relative named Elizabeth Delap, the boy
passed subsequently to the care of Thomas Byrne, the village
schoolmaster, an old soldier who had fought Queen Anne's battles in
Spain, and had retained from those experiences a wandering and unsettled
spirit, which he is thought to have communicated to one at least of his
pupils. After an attack of confluent small-pox, which scarred him for
life, Oliver was transferred from the care of this not-uncongenial
preceptor to a school at Elphin. From Elphin he passed to Athlone; from
Athlone to Edgeworthstown, where he remained until he was thirteen or
fourteen years of age. The accounts of these early days are
contradictory. By his schoolfellows he seems to have been regarded as
stupid and heavy,--'little better than a fool'; but they admitted that
he was remarkably active and athletic, and that he was an adept in all
boyish sports. At home, notwithstanding a variable disposition, and
occasional fits of depression, he showed to greater advantage. He
scribbled verses early; and sometimes startled those about him by
unexpected 'swallow-flights' of repartee. One of these, an oft-quoted
retort to a musical friend who had likened his awkward antics in a
hornpipe to the dancing of Aesop,--
Heralds! proclaim aloud! all saying,
See 'Aesop' dancing, and his 'monkey' playing,--
reads more like a happily-adapted recollection than the actual impromptu
of a boy of nine. But another, in which, after a painful silence, he
replied to the brutal enquiry of a ne'er-do-well relative as to when he
meant to grow handsome, by saying that he would do so when the speaker
grew good,--is characteristic of the easily-wounded spirit and
'exquisite sensibility of contempt' with which he was to enter upon the
battle of life.
In June, 1744, after anticipating in his own person, the plot of his
later play of 'She Stoops to Conquer' by mistaking the house of a
gentleman at Ardagh for an inn, he was sent to Trinity College, Dublin.
The special dress and semi-menial footing of a sizar or poor
scholar--for his father, impoverished by the imprudent portioning of his
eldest daughter, could not afford to make him a pensioner--were scarcely
calculated to modify his personal peculiarities. Added to these, his
tutor elect, Dr. Theaker Wilder, was a violent and vindictive man, with
whom his ungainly and unhopeful pupil found little favour. Wilder had a
passion for mathematics which was not shared by Goldsmith, who, indeed,
spoke contemptuously enough of that science in after life. He could,
however, he told Malone, 'turn an Ode of Horace into English better than
any of them. ' But his academic career was not a success. In May, 1747,
the year in which his father died,--an event that further contracted his
already slender means,--he became involved in a college riot, and was
publicly admonished. From this disgrace he recovered to some extent in
the following month by obtaining a trifling money exhibition, a triumph
which he unluckily celebrated by a party at his rooms. Into these
festivities, the heinousness of which was aggravated by the fact that
they included guests of both sexes, the exasperated Wilder made
irruption, and summarily terminated the proceedings by knocking down the
host. The disgrace was too much for the poor lad. He forthwith sold his
books and belongings, and ran away, vaguely bound for America. But after
considerable privations, including the achievement of a destitution so
complete that a handful of grey peas, given him by a girl at a wake,
seemed a banquet, he turned his steps homeward, and, a reconciliation
having been patched up with his tutor, he was received once more at
college. In February, 1749, he took his degree, a low one, as B. A. , and
quitted the university, leaving behind him, for relics of that time, a
scratched signature upon a window-pane, a 'folio' Scapula scored
liberally with 'promises to pay,' and a reputation for much loitering at
the college gates in the study of passing humanity. Another habit which
his associates recalled was his writing of ballads when in want of
funds. These he would sell at five shillings apiece; and would
afterwards steal out in the twilight to hear them sung to the
indiscriminate but applauding audience of the Dublin streets.
What was to be done with a genius so unstable, so erratic? Nothing,
apparently, but to let him qualify for orders, and for this he is too
young. Thereupon ensues a sort of 'Martin's summer' in his changing
life,--a disengaged, delightful time when 'Master Noll' wanders
irresponsibly from house to house, fishing and flute-playing, or, of
winter evenings, taking the chair at the village inn. When at last the
moment came for his presentation to the Bishop of Elphin, that prelate,
sad to say, rejected him, perhaps because of his college reputation,
perhaps because of actual incompetence, perhaps even, as tradition
affirms, because he had the bad taste to appear before his examiner in
flaming scarlet breeches. After this rebuff, tutoring was next tried.
But he had no sooner saved some thirty pounds by teaching, than he threw
up his engagement, bought a horse, and started once more for America, by
way of Cork. In six weeks he had returned penniless, having substituted
for his roadster a sorry jade, to which he gave the contemptuous name of
Fiddleback. He had also the simplicity to wonder, on this occasion, that
his mother was not rejoiced to see him again. His next ambition was to
be a lawyer; and, to this end, a kindly Uncle Contarine equipped him
with fifty pounds for preliminary studies. But on his way to London he
was decoyed into gambling, lost every farthing, and came home once more
in bitter self-abasement. Having now essayed both divinity and law, his
next attempt was physic; and, in 1752, fitted out afresh by his
long-suffering uncle, he started for, and succeeded in reaching,
Edinburgh. Here more memories survive of his social qualities than of
his studies; and two years later he left the Scottish capital for
Leyden, rather, it may be conjectured, from a restless desire to see the
world than really to exchange the lectures of Monro for the lectures of
Albinus. At Newcastle (according to his own account) he had the good
fortune to be locked up as a Jacobite, and thus escaped drowning, as the
ship by which he was to have sailed to Bordeaux sank at the mouth of the
Garonne. Shortly afterwards he arrived in Leyden. Gaubius and other
Dutch professors figure sonorously in his future works; but whether he
had much experimental knowledge of their instructions may be doubted.
What seems undeniable is, that the old seduction of play stripped him of
every shilling; so that, like Holberg before him, he set out
deliberately to make the tour of Europe on foot. 'Haud inexpertus
loquor,' he wrote in after days, when praising this mode of locomotion.
He first visited Flanders. Thence he passed to France, Germany,
Switzerland, and Italy, supporting himself mainly by his flute, and by
occasional disputations at convents or universities. 'Sir,' said Boswell
to Johnson, 'he 'disputed' his passage through Europe. ' When on the 1st
February, 1756, he landed at Dover, it was with empty pockets. But he
had sent home to his brother in Ireland his first rough sketch for the
poem of 'The Traveller'.
He was now seven-and-twenty. He had seen and suffered much, but he was
to have further trials before drifting definitely into literature.
Between Dover and London, it has been surmised, he made a tentative
appearance as a strolling player. His next ascertained part was that of
an apothecary's assistant on Fish Street Hill. From this, with the
opportune aid of an Edinburgh friend, he proceeded--to use an
eighteenth-century phrase--a poor physician in the Bankside, Southwark,
where least of all, perhaps, was London's fabled pavement to be found.
So little of it, in fact, fell to Goldsmith's share, that we speedily
find him reduced to the rank of reader and corrector of the press to
Samuel Richardson, printer, of Salisbury Court, author of 'Clarissa'.
Later still he is acting as help or substitute in Dr. Milner's
'classical academy' at Peckham. Here, at last, chance seemed to open to
him the prospect of a literary life. He had already, says report,
submitted a manuscript tragedy to Richardson's judgement; and something
he said at Dr. Milner's table attracted the attention of an occasional
visitor there, the bookseller Griffiths, who was also proprietor of the
'Monthly Review'. He invited Dr. Milner's usher to try his hand at
criticism; and finally, in April, 1757, Goldsmith was bound over for a
year to that venerable lady whom George Primrose dubs 'the 'antiqua
mater' of Grub Street'--in other words, he was engaged for bed, board,
and a fixed salary to supply copy-of-all-work to his master's magazine.
The arrangement thus concluded was not calculated to endure. After some
five months of labour from nine till two, and often later, it came
suddenly to an end. No clear explanation of the breach is forthcoming,
but mere incompatability of temper would probably supply a sufficient
ground for disagreement. Goldsmith, it is said, complained that the
bookseller and his wife treated him ill, and denied him ordinary
comforts; added to which the lady, a harder taskmistress even than the
'antiqua mater' above referred to, joined with her husband in 'editing'
his articles, a course which, hard though it may seem, is not
unprecedented. However this may be, either in September or October,
1757, he was again upon the world, existing precariously from hand to
mouth. 'By a very little practice as a physician, and very little
reputation as a poet [a title which, as Prior suggests, possibly means
no more than author], I make a shift to live. ' So he wrote to his
brother-in-law in December. What his literary occupations were cannot be
definitely stated; but, if not prepared before, they probably included
the translation of a remarkable work issued by Griffiths and others in
the ensuing February. This was the 'Memoirs of a Protestant, condemned
to the Galleys of France for his Religion', being the authentic record
of the sufferings of one Jean Marteilhe of Bergerac, a book of which
Michelet has said that it is 'written as if between earth and heaven. '
Marteilhe, who died at Cuylenberg in 1777, was living in Holland in
1758; and it may be that Goldsmith had seen or heard of him during his
own stay in that country. The translation, however, did not bear
Goldsmith's name, but that of James Willington, one of his old
class-fellows at Trinity College. Nevertheless, Prior says distinctly
that Griffiths (who should have known) declared it to be by Goldsmith.
Moreover, the French original had been catalogued in Griffiths' magazine
in the second month of Goldsmith's servitude, a circumstance which
colourably supplies the reason for its subsequent rendering into
English.
The publication of Marteilhe's 'Memoirs' had no influence upon
Goldsmith's fortunes, for, in a short time, he was again installed at
Peckham, in place of Dr. Milner invalided, waiting hopefully for the
fulfilment of a promise by his old master to procure him a medical
appointment on a foreign station. It is probably that, with a view to
provide the needful funds for this expatriation, he now began to sketch
the little volume afterwards published under the title of 'An Enquiry
into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe', for towards the
middle of the year we find him addressing long letters to his relatives
in Ireland to enlist their aid in soliciting subscriptions for this
book. At length the desired advancement was obtained,--a nomination as a
physician and surgeon to one of the factories on the coast of
Coromandel. But banishment to the East Indies was not to be his destiny.
For some unexplained reason the project came to nothing; and then--like
Roderick Random--he presented himself at Surgeons' Hall for the more
modest office of a hospital mate. This was on the 21st of December,
1758. The curt official record states that he was 'found not qualified. '
What made matters worse, the necessity for a decent appearance before
the examiners had involved him in new obligations to Griffiths, out of
which arose fresh difficulties. To pay his landlady, whose husband was
arrested for debt, he pawned the suit he had procured by Griffiths' aid;
and he also raised money on some volumes which had been sent him for
review. Thereupon ensued an angry and humiliating correspondence with
the bookseller, as a result of which Griffiths, nevertheless, appears to
have held his hand.
By this time Goldsmith had moved into those historic but now
non-existent lodgings in 12 Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey, which have
been photographed for ever in Irving's 'Tales of a Traveller'. It was
here that the foregoing incidents took place; and it was here also that,
early in 1759, 'in a wretched dirty room, in which there was but one
chair,' the Rev. Thomas Percy, afterwards Bishop of Dromore, found him
composing (or more probably correcting the proofs of) 'The Enquiry'. 'At
least spare invective 'till my book with Mr. Dodsley shall be
publish'd,'--he had written not long before to the irate Griffiths--'and
then perhaps you may see the bright side of a mind when my professions
shall not appear the dictates of necessity but of choice. ' 'The Enquiry'
came out on the 2nd of April. It had no author's name, but it was an
open secret that Goldsmith had written it; and to this day it remains to
the critic one of the most interesting of his works. Obviously, in a
duodecimo of some two hundred widely-printed pages, it was impossible to
keep the high-sounding promise of its title; and at best its author's
knowledge of the subject, notwithstanding his continental wanderings,
can have been but that of an external spectator. Still in an age when
critical utterance was more than ordinarily full-wigged and ponderous,
it dared to be sprightly and epigrammatic. Some of its passages,
besides, bear upon the writer's personal experiences, and serve to piece
the imperfections of his biography. If it brought him no sudden wealth,
it certainly raised his reputation with the book-selling world. A
connexion already begun with Smollett's 'Critical Review' was drawn
closer; and the shrewd Sosii of the Row began to see the importance of
securing so vivacious and unconventional a pen. Towards the end of the
year he was writing for Wilkie the collection of periodical essays
entitled 'The Bee'; and contributing to the same publisher's 'Lady's
Magazine', as well as to 'The Busy Body' of one Pottinger. In these,
more than ever, he was finding his distinctive touch; and ratifying
anew, with every fresh stroke of his pen, his bondage to authorship as a
calling.
He had still, however, to conquer the public. 'The Bee', although it
contains one of his most characteristic essays ('A City Night-Piece'),
and some of the most popular of his lighter verses ('The Elegy on Mrs.
Mary Blaize'), never attained the circulation essential to healthy
existence. It closed with its eighth number in November, 1759. In the
following month two gentlemen called at Green Arbour Court to enlist the
services of its author. One was Smollett, with a new serial, 'The
British Magazine'; the other was Johnson's 'Jack Whirler,' bustling Mr.
John Newbery from the 'Bible and Sun' in St. Paul's Churchyard, with a
new daily newspaper, 'The Public Ledger'. For Smollett, Goldsmith wrote
the 'Reverie at the Boar's Head Tavern' and the 'Adventures of a
Strolling Player,' besides a number of minor papers. For Newbery, by a
happy recollection of the 'Lettres Persanes' of Montesquieu, or some of
his imitators, he struck almost at once into that charming epistolary
series, brimful of fine observation, kindly satire, and various fancy,
which was ultimately to become the English classic known as 'The Citizen
of the World'. He continued to produce these letters periodically until
the August of the following year, when they were announced for
republication in 'two volumes of the usual 'Spectator' size. ' In this
form they appeared in May, 1762.
But long before this date a change for the better had taken place in
Goldsmith's life. Henceforth he was sure of work,--mere journey-work
though much of it must have been;--and, had his nature been less
improvident, of freedom from absolute want. The humble lodgings in the
Old Bailey were discarded for new premises at No. 6 Wine Office Court,
Fleet Street; and here, on the 31st of May, 1761, with Percy, came one
whose name was often in the future to be associated with Goldsmith's,
the great Dictator of London literary society, Samuel Johnson. Boswell,
who made Johnson's acquaintance later, has not recorded the humours of
that supper; but it marks the beginning of Goldsmith's friendship with
the man who of all others (Reynolds excepted) loved him most and
understood him best.
During the remainder of 1761 he continued busily to ply his pen. Besides
his contributions to 'The Ledger' and 'The British Magazine', he edited
'The Lady's Magazine', inserting in it the 'Memoirs of Voltaire', drawn
up some time earlier to accompany a translation of the 'Henriade' by his
crony and compatriot Edward Purdon. Towards the beginning of 1762 he was
hard at work on several compilations for Newbery, for whom he wrote or
edited a 'History of Mecklenburgh', and a series of monthly volumes of
an abridgement of 'Plutarch's Lives'. In October of the same year was
published the 'Life of Richard Nash', apparently the outcome of special
holiday-visits to the then fashionable watering-place of Bath, whence
its fantastic old Master of the Ceremonies had only very lately made his
final exit. It is a pleasantly gossiping, and not unedifying little
book, which still holds a respectable place among its author's minor
works. But a recently discovered entry in an old ledger shows that
during the latter half of 1762 he must have planned, if he had not,
indeed, already in part composed, a far more important effort, 'The
Vicar of Wakefield'. For on the 28th of October in this year he sold to
one Benjamin Collins, printer, of Salisbury, for 21 pounds, a third in a
work with that title, further described as '2 vols. 12mo. ' How this
little circumstance, discovered by Mr. Charles Welsh when preparing his
Life of John Newbery, is to be brought into agreement with the
time-honoured story, related (with variations) by Boswell and others, to
the effect that Johnson negotiated the sale of the manuscript for
Goldsmith when the latter was arrested for rent by his incensed
landlady--has not yet been satisfactorily suggested. Possibly the
solution is a simple one, referable to some of those intricate
arrangements favoured by 'the Trade' at a time when not one but half a
score publishers' names figured in an imprint. At present, the fact that
Collins bought a third share of the book from the author for twenty
guineas, and the statement that Johnson transferred the entire
manuscript to a bookseller for sixty pounds, seem irreconcilable. That
'The Vicar of Wakefield' was nevertheless written, or was being written,
in 1762, is demonstrable from internal evidence.
About Christmas in the same year Goldsmith moved into lodgings at
Islington, his landlady being one Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming, a friend of
Newbery, to whose generalship this step seems attributable. From the
curious accounts printed by Prior and Forster, it is clear that the
publisher was Mrs. Fleming's paymaster, punctually deducting his
disbursements from the account current between himself and Goldsmith, an
arrangement which as plainly indicates the foresight of the one as it
implies the improvidence of the other. Of the work which Goldsmith did
for the businesslike and not unkindly little man, there is no very
definite evidence; but various prefaces, introductions, and the like,
belong to this time; and he undoubtedly was the author of the excellent
'History of England in a Series of Letters addressed by a Nobleman to
his Son', published anonymously in June, 1764, and long attributed, for
the grace of its style, to Lyttelton, Chesterfield, Orrery, and other
patrician pens. Meanwhile his range of acquaintance was growing larger.
The establishment, at the beginning of 1764, of the famous association
known afterwards as the 'Literary Club' brought him into intimate
relations with Beauclerk, Reynolds, Langton, Burke, and others. Hogarth,
too, is said to have visited him at Islington, and to have painted the
portrait of Mrs. Fleming. Later in the same year, incited thereto by the
success of Christopher Smart's 'Hannah', he wrote the Oratorio of 'The
Captivity', now to be found in most editions of his poems, but never set
to music. Then after the slow growth of months, was issued on the 19th
December the elaboration of that fragmentary sketch which he had sent
years before to his brother Henry from the Continent, the poem entitled
'The Traveller; or, A Prospect of Society'.
In the notes appended to 'The Traveller' in the present volume, its
origin and progress are sufficiently explained. Its success was
immediate and enduring. The beauty of the descriptive passages, the
subtle simplicity of the language, the sweetness and finish of the
versification, found ready admirers,--perhaps all the more because of
the contrast they afforded to the rough and strenuous sounds with which
Charles Churchill had lately filled the public ear. Johnson, who
contributed a few lines at the close, proclaimed 'The Traveller' to be
the best poem since the death of Pope; and it is certainly not easy to
find its equal among the works of contemporary bards. It at once raised
Goldsmith from the condition of a clever newspaper essayist, or--as men
like Sir John Hawkins would have said--a mere 'bookseller's drudge,' to
the foremost rank among the poets of the day. Another result of its
success was the revival of some of his earlier work, which, however
neglected by the author, had been freely appropriated by the discerning
pirate. In June, 1765, Griffin and Newbery published a little volume of
'Essays by Mr. Goldsmith', including some of the best of his
contributions to 'The Bee', 'The Busy Body', 'The Public Ledger', and
'The British Magazine', besides 'The Double Transformation' and 'The
Logicians Refuted,' two pieces of verse in imitation of Prior and Swift,
which have not been traced to an earlier source. To the same year
belongs the first version of a poem which he himself regarded as his
best work, and which still retains something of its former popularity.
This was the ballad of 'Edwin and Angelina', otherwise known as 'The
Hermit'. It originated in certain metrical discussions with Percy, then
engaged upon his famous 'Reliques of English Poetry'; and in 1765,
Goldsmith, who through his friend Nugent (afterwards Lord Clare) had
made the acquaintance of the Earl of Northumberland, printed it
privately for the amusement of the Countess. In a revised and amended
form it was subsequently given to the world in 'The Vicar of Wakefield'.
With the exception of an abortive attempt to resume his practice as a
medical man,--an attempt which seems to have been frustrated by the
preternatural strength of his prescriptions,--the next memorable thing
in Goldsmith's life is the publication of 'The Vicar of Wakefield'
itself. It made its appearance on the 27th of March, 1766. A second
edition followed in May, a third in August. Why, having been sold (in
part) to a Salisbury printer as far back as October, 1762, it had
remained unprinted so long; and why, when published, it was published by
Francis Newbery and not by John Newbery, Goldsmith's employer,--are
questions at present unsolved. But the charm of this famous novel is as
fresh as when it was first issued. Its inimitable types, its happy
mingling of Christianity and character, its wholesome benevolence and
its practical wisdom, are still unimpaired. We smile at the
inconsistencies of the plot; but we are carried onward in spite of them,
captivated by the grace, the kindliness, the gentle humour of the story.
Yet it is a mistake to suppose that its success was instantaneous.
Pirated it was, of course; but, according to expert investigations, the
authorized edition brought so little gain to its first proprietors that
the fourth issue of 1770 started with a loss. The fifth, published in
April, 1774, was dated 1773; and had apparently been withheld because
the previous edition, which consisted of no more than one thousand
copies, was not exhausted. Five years elapsed before the sixth edition
made its tardy appearance in 1779. These facts show that the writer's
contemporaries were not his most eager readers. But he has long since
appealed to the wider audience of posterity; and his fame is not
confined to his native country, for he has been translated into most
European languages. Dr. Primrose and his family are now veritable
'citizens of the world. '
A selection of 'Poems for Young Ladies', in the 'Moral' division of
which he included his own 'Edwin and Angelina'; two volumes of 'Beauties
of English Poesy', disfigured with strange heedlessness, by a couple of
the most objectionable pieces of Prior; a translation of a French
history of philosophy, and other occasional work, followed the
publication of the 'Vicar'. But towards the middle of 1766, he was
meditating a new experiment in that line in which Farquhar, Steele,
Southerne, and others of his countrymen had succeeded before him. A
fervent lover of the stage, he detested the vapid and colourless
'genteel' comedy which had gradually gained ground in England; and he
determined to follow up 'The Clandestine Marriage', then recently
adapted by Colman and Garrick from Hogarth's 'Marriage A-la-Mode', with
another effort of the same class, depending exclusively for its interest
upon humour and character. Early in 1767 it was completed, and submitted
to Garrick for Drury Lane. But Garrick perhaps too politic to traverse
the popular taste, temporized; and eventually after many delays and
disappointments, 'The Good Natur'd Man', as it was called, was produced
at Covent Garden by Colman on the 29th of January, 1768. Its success was
only partial; and in deference to the prevailing craze for the
'genteel,' an admirable scene of low humour had to be omitted in the
representation. But the piece, notwithstanding, brought the author 400
pounds, to which the sale of the book, with the condemned passages
restored, added another 100 pounds. Furthermore, Johnson, whose
'Suspirius' in 'The Rambler' was, under the name of 'Croaker,' one of
its most prominent personages, pronounced it to be the best comedy since
Cibber's 'Provok'd Husband'.
During the autumn of 1767, Goldsmith had again been living at Islington.
On this occasion he had a room in Canonbury Tower, Queen Elizabeth's old
hunting-lodge, and perhaps occupied the very chamber generally used by
John Newbery, whose active life was, in this year, to close. When in
London he had modest housing in the Temple. But the acquisition of 500
pounds for 'The Good Natur'd Man' seemed to warrant a change of
residence, and he accordingly expended four-fifths of that sum for the
lease of three rooms on the second floor of No. 2 Brick Court, which he
straightway proceeded to decorate sumptuously with mirrors, Wilton
carpets, moreen curtains, and Pembroke tables. It was an unfortunate
step; and he would have done well to remember the 'Nil te quaesiveris
extra' with which his inflexible monitor, Johnson, had greeted his
apologies for the shortcomings of some earlier lodgings. One of its
natural results was to involve him in a new sequence of task-work, from
which he never afterwards shook himself free. Hence, following hard upon
a 'Roman History' which he had already engaged to write for Davies of
Russell Street, came a more ambitious project for Griffin, 'A History of
Animated Nature'; and after this again, another 'History of England' for
Davies. The pay was not inadequate; for the first he was to have 250
guineas, for the second 800 guineas, and for the last 500 pounds. But as
employment for the author of a unique novel, an excellent comedy, and a
deservedly successful poem, it was surely--in his own words--'to cut
blocks with a razor. '
And yet, apart from the anxieties of growing money troubles, his life
could not have been wholly unhappy. There are records of pleasant
occasional junketings--'shoe-maker's holidays' he called them--in the
still countrified suburbs of Hampstead and Edgware; there was the
gathering at the Turk's Head, with its literary magnates, for his
severer hours; and for his more pliant moments, the genial
'free-and-easy' or shilling whist-club of a less pretentious kind, where
the student of mixed character might shine with something of the old
supremacy of George Conway's inn at Ballymahon. And there must have been
quieter and more chastened resting-places of memory, when, softening
towards the home of his youth, with a sadness made more poignant by the
death of his brother Henry in May, 1768, he planned and perfected his
new poem of 'The Deserted Village'.
In December, 1769, the recent appointment of his friend Reynolds as
President of the Royal Academy brought him the honorary office of
Professor of History to that institution; and to Reynolds 'The Deserted
Village' was dedicated. It appeared on the 26th of May, 1770, with a
success equal, if not superior, to that of 'The Traveller'. It ran
through five editions in the year of its publication; and has ever since
retained its reputation. If, as alleged, contemporary critics ranked it
below its predecessor, the reason advanced by Washington Irving, that
the poet had become his own rival, is doubtless correct; and there is
always a prejudice in favour of the first success. This, however, is not
an obstacle which need disturb the reader now; and he will probably
decide that in grace and tenderness of description 'The Deserted
Village' in no wise falls short of 'The Traveller'; and that its central
idea, and its sympathy with humanity, give it a higher value as a work
of art.
After 'The Deserted Village' had appeared, Goldsmith made a short trip
to Paris, in company with Mrs. and the two Miss Hornecks, the elder of
whom, christened by the poet with the pretty pet-name of 'The Jessamy
Bride,' is supposed to have inspired him with more than friendly
feelings. Upon his return he had to fall again to the old
'book-building' in order to recruit his exhausted finances. Since his
last poem he had published a short 'Life of Parnell'; and Davies now
engaged him on a 'Life of Bolingbroke', and an abridgement of the 'Roman
History'. Thus, with visits to friends, among others to Lord Clare, for
whom he wrote the delightful occasional verses called 'The Haunch of
Venison', the months wore on until, in December, 1770, the print-shops
began to be full of the well-known mezzotint which Marchi had engraved
from his portrait by Sir Joshua.
His chief publications in the next two years were the above-mentioned
'History of England', 1771; 'Threnodia Augustalis', a poetical
lament-to-order on the death of the Princess Dowager of Wales, 1772; and
the abridgement of the 'Roman History', 1772. But in the former year he
had completed a new comedy, 'She Stoops to Conquer; or, The Mistakes of
a Night', which, after the usual vexatious negotiations, was brought out
by Colman at Covent Garden on Monday, the 15th of March, 1773. The
manager seems to have acted Goldsmith's own creation of 'Croaker' with
regard to this piece, and even to the last moment predicted its failure.
But it was a brilliant success. More skilful in construction than 'The
Good Natur'd Man', more various in its contrasts of character, richer
and stronger in humour and 'vis comica', 'She Stoops to Conquer' has
continued to provide an inexhaustible fund of laughter to more than
three generations of playgoers, and still bids fair to retain the
character generally given to it, of being one of the three most popular
comedies upon the English stage. When published, it was gratefully
inscribed, in one of those admirable dedications of which its author
above all men possessed the secret, to Johnson, who had befriended it
from the first. 'I do not mean,' wrote Goldsmith, 'so much to compliment
you as myself. It may do me some honour to inform the public, that I
have lived many years in intimacy with you. It may serve the interests
of mankind also to inform them, that the greatest wit may be found in a
character, without impairing the most unaffected piety. '
His gains from 'She Stoops to Conquer' were considerable; but by this
time his affairs had reached a stage of complication which nothing short
of a miracle could disentangle; and there is reason for supposing that
his involved circumstances preyed upon his mind. During the few months
of life that remained to him he published nothing, being doubtless
sufficiently occupied by the undertakings to which he was already
committed. The last of his poetical efforts was the poem entitled
'Retaliation', a group of epitaph-epigrams prompted by some similar
'jeux d'esprit' directed against himself by Garrick and other friends,
and left incomplete at his death. In March, 1774, the combined effects
of work and worry, added to a local disorder, brought on a nervous
fever, which he unhappily aggravated by the use of a patent medicine
called 'James's Powder. ' He had often relied upon this before, but in
the present instance it was unsuited to his complaint. On Monday, the
4th of April, 1774, he died, in his forty-sixth year, and was buried on
the 9th in the burying-ground of the Temple Church. Two years later a
monument, with a medallion portrait by Nollekens, and a Latin
inscription by Johnson, was erected to him in Westminster Abbey, at the
expense of the Literary Club. But although the inscription contains more
than one phrase of felicitous discrimination, notably the oft-quoted
'affectuum potens, at lenis dominator', it may be doubted whether the
simpler words used by his rugged old friend in a letter to Langton are
not a fitter farewell to Oliver Goldsmith,--'Let not his frailties be
remembered; he was a very great man. '
In person Goldsmith was short and strongly built. His complexion was
rather fair, but he was deeply scarred with small-pox; and--if we may
believe his own account--the vicissitudes and privations of his early
life had not tended to diminish his initial disadvantages. 'You scarcely
can conceive,' he writes to his brother in 1759, 'how much eight years
of disappointment, anguish, and study, have worn me down. . . . Imagine to
yourself a pale melancholy visage, with two great wrinkles between the
eye-brows, with an eye disgustingly severe, and a big wig; and you may
have a perfect picture of my present appearance,' i. e. at thirty years
of age. 'I can neither laugh nor drink,' he goes on; 'have contracted an
hesitating, disagreeable manner of speaking, and a visage that looks
ill-nature itself; in short, I have thought myself into a settled
melancholy, and an utter disgust of all that life brings with it. ' It is
obvious that this description is largely coloured by passing depression.
'His features,' says one contemporary, 'were plain, but not
repulsive,--certainly not so when lighted up by conversation. ' Another
witness--the 'Jessamy Bride'--declares that 'his benevolence was
unquestionable, and his countenance bore every trace of it. ' His true
likeness would seem to lie midway between the grotesquely truthful
sketch by Bunbury prefixed in 1776 to the 'Haunch of Venison', and the
portrait idealized by personal regard, which Reynolds painted in 1770.
In this latter he is shown wearing, in place of his customary wig, his
own scant brown hair, and, on this occasion, masquerades in a furred
robe, and falling collar. But even through the disguise of a studio
'costume,' the finely-perceptive genius of Reynolds has managed to
suggest much that is most appealing in his sitter's nature. Past
suffering, present endurance, the craving to be understood, the mute
deprecation of contempt, are all written legibly in this pathetic
picture. It has been frequently copied, often very ineffectively, for so
subtle is the art that the slightest deviation hopelessly distorts and
vulgarizes what Reynolds has done supremely, once and for ever.
Goldsmith's character presents but few real complexities. What seems
most to have impressed his contemporaries is the difference, emphasized
by the happily-antithetic epigram of Garrick, between his written style
and his conversation; and collaterally, between his eminence as a
literary man and his personal insignificance. Much of this is easily
intelligible. He had started in life with few temporal or physical
advantages, and with a native susceptibility that intensified his
defects. Until he became a middle-aged man, he led a life of which we do
not even now know all the degradations; and these had left their mark
upon his manners. With the publication of 'The Traveller', he became at
once the associate of some of the best talent and intellect in
England,--of fine gentlemen such as Beauclerk and Langton, of artists
such as Reynolds and Garrick, of talkers such as Johnson and Burke.
Morbidly self-conscious, nervously anxious to succeed, he was at once
forced into a competition for which neither his antecedents nor his
qualifications had prepared him. To this, coupled with the old habit of
poverty, must be attributed his oft-cited passion for fine clothes,
which surely arose less from vanity than from a mistaken attempt to
extenuate what he felt to be his most obvious shortcomings. As a talker
especially he was ill-fitted to shine. He was easily disconcerted by
retort, and often discomfited in argument. To the end of his days he
never lost his native brogue; and (as he himself tells us) he had that
most fatal of defects to a narrator, a slow and hesitating manner. The
perspicuity which makes the charm of his writings deserted him in
conversation; and his best things were momentary flashes. But some of
these were undoubtedly very happy. His telling Johnson that he would
make the little fishes talk like whales; his affirmation of Burke that
he wound into a subject like a serpent; and half-a-dozen other
well-remembered examples--afford ample proof of this. Something of the
uneasy jealousy he is said to have exhibited with regard to certain of
his contemporaries may also be connected with the long probation of
obscurity during which he had been a spectator of the good fortune of
others, to whom he must have known himself superior. His improvidence
seems to have been congenital, since it is to be traced 'even from his
boyish days. ' But though it cannot justly be ascribed to any reaction
from want to sufficiency, it can still less be supposed to have been
diminished by that change. If he was careless of money, it must also be
remembered that he gave much of it away; and fortune lingers little with
those whose ears are always open to a plausible tale of distress. Of his
sensibility and genuine kindheartedness there is no doubt. And it is
well to remember that most of the tales to his disadvantage come, not
from his more distinguished companions, but from such admitted
detractors as Hawkins and Boswell. It could be no mean individuality
that acquired the esteem, and deserved the regret, of Johnson and
Reynolds.
In an edition of Goldsmith's poems, any extended examination of his
remaining productions would be out of place. Moreover, the bulk of these
is considerably reduced when all that may properly be classed as
hack-work has been withdrawn. The histories of Greece, of Rome, and of
England; the 'Animated Nature'; the lives of Nash, Voltaire, Parnell,
and Bolingbroke, are merely compilations, only raised to the highest
level in that line because they proceeded from a man whose gift of clear
and easy exposition lent a charm to everything he touched. With the work
which he did for himself, the case is different. Into 'The Citizen of
the World', 'The Vicar of Wakefield', and his two comedies, he put all
the best of his knowledge of human nature, his keen sympathy with his
kind, his fine common-sense and his genial humour. The same qualities,
tempered by a certain grace and tenderness, also enter into the best of
his poems. Avoiding the epigram of Pope and the austere couplet of
Johnson, he yet borrowed something from each, which he combined with a
delicacy and an amenity that he had learned from neither. He himself, in
all probability, would have rested his fame on his three chief metrical
efforts, 'The Traveller', 'The Hermit', and 'The Deserted Village'.
