poor to sell and give up what they possess at the call of the rich, as if it were a hardship that they should not be paid for enjoying, themselves, what they rather choose to be paid for surrendering to others), "and feed them up with an imaginary good while they "monopolize the real benefits of nature." The real truth is that Goldsmith had no settled opinions on the subject, which nevertheless was one of unceasing interest to him, and to which he brought a mind at least so far free from prejudice, one way or the other, that at this moment it was open to reason and at the next to sentiment merely. Doubtless, however, the latter was most strongly felt and oftenest indulged. For his merely sentimental views had grown out of early impressions, were passionately responded to by the warmer sensibilities of his nature, and had received supposed corroboration from his own experience. He told Sir Joshua Reynolds that for four or five years before the Deserted Village was published, he had, by sundry country excursions into various parts of England, verified his fears of the tendency of overgrowing wealth to depopulate the land; and his remark to a friend who called upon him the second morning after he commenced the poem, was nearly to the same effect. "Some of my friends differ with me on this plan," he said, after describing the scheme, "and "think this depopulation of villages does not exist; but I am myself satisfied of the fact. I remember it in my own country, 66 66 "and have seen it in this." The friend who so called upon him, in May 1768; who marks the date as exactly two years before the poem appeared; and who tells us that the writing of it, and its elaborate revision, extended over that whole interval of twenty-four months; was supposed by Scott to have been Lee Lewes the actor. It is difficult to understand how this mistake originated; but it would seem that Sir Walter had judged from only a small portion of the papers whose authorship he thus misstated, and which, except in apparently imperfect and garbled extracts, have equally escaped all Goldsmith's biographers and never been properly made use of until now. The poet's acquaintance with the comedian had not yet begun, nor in the acknowledged (and extremely dull) Memoirs of Lee Lewes, does Goldsmith's name at any time occur. The real writer of the anecdotes was Cooke, the young law student already so often referred to as Goldsmith's countryman and near neighbour in the Temple; and their curious details have been hitherto almost wholly overlooked. They appeared from time to time in the European Magazine. Cooke prefaces the mention of his calling on "the Doctor" the second morning after the Deserted Village was begun, by an account of the Doctor's slowness in writing poetry, "not from the tardiness X "of fancy, but the time he took in pointing the sentiment, and "polishing the versification." An invaluable hint to the poetical aspirant, as already I have strongly urged. Indisputable wealth of genius, flung about in careless exuberance, has as often failed to make a poet, as one finished unsuperfluous masterpiece has succeeded, and kept a name in the Collections for ever. Goldsmith's manner of writing the Deserted Village, his friend tells us, was this: he first sketched a part of his design in prose, in which he threw out his ideas as they occurred to him; he then sat down carefully to versify them, correct them, and add such other ideas as he thought better fitted to the subject; and if sometimes he would exceed his prose design by writing several verses impromptu, these he would take singular pains afterwards to revise, lest they should be found unconnected with his main design. Ten lines, from the fifth to the fifteenth, had been his second morning's work; and when Cooke entered his chamber, he read them to him aloud. Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, Where humble happiness endear'd each scene! The shelter'd cot, the cultivated farm, The never-failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church that topp'd the neighbouring hill, "Come," he added, "let me tell you this is no bad morning's "work; and now, my dear boy, if you are not better engaged, I "should be glad to enjoy a Shoemaker's holiday with you." This proposed enjoyment is then described by Cooke, in a simple, characteristic way. "A Shoemaker's holiday was a day of great "festivity to poor Goldsmith, and was spent in the following "innocent manner. Three or four of his intimate friends rendez"voused at his chambers to breakfast about ten o'clock in the "morning; at eleven they proceeded by the City-road and through "the fields to Highbury-barn to dinner; about six o'clock in the "evening they adjourned to White Conduit-house to drink tea; "and concluded by supping at the Grecian or Temple-exchange "coffee-house, or at the Globe in Fleet-street. There was a very "good ordinary of two dishes and pastry, kept at Highbury-barn "about this time at tenpence per head, including a penny to the 66 waiter; and the company generally consisted of literary charac"ters, a few Templars, and some citizens who had left off trade. "The whole expenses of the day's fête never exceeded a crown, "and oftener were from three-and-sixpence to four shillings; for "which the party obtained good air and exercise, good living, the example of simple manners, and good conversation." 66 Truly, very innocent enjoyment; and shared not alone by Templars and small wits, but by humbler good fellows. One Peter Barlow, who acted now and then as a copyist for Goldsmith, -very poor, very proud in his way; who appeared always in one peculiar dress; who declared himself able to give only a specified small sum for his daily dinner, but who stood firmly on his ability to do this, and never permitted any one to do it for him,—had made himself a great favourite with the poet by his honest independence and harmless eccentricity, and had generally a place in the Shoemaker's holiday. If the dinner cost even five shillings each, fifteen-pence was still the limit of Peter's responsibility; and the balance was privately paid by Goldsmith. Many, too, were his other pensioners, on less liberal terms than Peter. He had two or three poor authors always on his list, beside "several widows and poor housekeepers ;" and when he had no money to give the latter, he seldom failed to send them away with shirts or old clothes, sometimes with the whole contents of his breakfast table: saying with a smile of satisfaction after they were gone, "now let me only suppose I have eat a much heartier "breakfast than usual, and I'm nothing out of pocket." Those who knew him best, exclaims Cooke, after relating some stories of this kind, can best speak in his praise. "He was so humane in "his disposition, that his last guinea was the general boundary of "his munificence." Yet Cooke was no enthusiast. He had rather, at the time these anecdotes were written, fallen into the Boswell way of talking of his old patron; and was careful to colour his picture, as though to adapt it for popular acceptance, with all due tints of vanity and folly. Unable to conceal, indeed, the pains he is at in doing this, his examples are often very amusing failures. One day for instance he tells us, Goldsmith being in company where many ladies were, and a ballad-singer happening to sing his favourite air of Sally Salisbury under the window, his envy and vanity broke out, and he exclaimed with some passion, "How miserably this woman "sings !" Pray, Doctor," rejoined the lady of the house, "could you do it better?" "Yes, madam," was the answer, amid a general titter of distrust; "and the company shall be “judges.” He instantly began; when, adds Cooke, with a sort of naïve renewal of the wonder of the ladies, " singing with some ear and no inconsiderable degree of pathos, he obtained the "universal suffrage of the company." I have spoken of the harmless forms of mis-called vanity and envy, which unconscious comparative criticism will sometimes breed; and surely this is but pleasant evidence of them. Nor did the narrator prove more successful when he professed to give instances of Goldsmith's folly. The poet of the Pleasures of Memory, interested in all that concerned the elder poet whose style he made the model for his own finished writings, knew Cooke well in the latter days of his life, and gives me curious illustration of the habit he then had fallen into when he spoke of his celebrated friend. "Sir," he said, on Mr. Rogers asking him what Goldsmith really was in conversation, "he was a fool. The right word never came to him. If you gave him back a bad shilling, he'd say 'Why it's as good a "shilling as ever was born.' You know he ought to have said "coined. Coined, sir, never entered his head. He was a fool, sir." 66 66 It may be added, since the question of vanity and envy has again arisen here, that even Tom Davies, who talks more of his envious sallies than any one, tells us they were altogether childish, harmless, and absurd; that nothing but mirth was ever suggested by them; and that he never formed any scheme, or joined in any combination, to hurt any man living. A more important witness, too, gives yet more.interesting testimony. Bishop Percy, who of all his distinguished friends had known him earliest, after stating that he was generous in the extreme,—that never was there a mind whose general feelings were more benevolent and friendly; and that, so strongly was he affected by compassion, he had been known at midnight to abandon his rest, in order to procure relief and an asylum for a poor dying object, who was left destitute in the streets,—proceeds thus: "He is however supposed to have "been often soured by jealousy or envy, and many little instances 66 are mentioned of this tendency in his character: but whatever appeared of this kind was a mere momentary sensation, which "he knew not how like other men to conceal. It was never the "result of principle, or the suggestion of reflection; it never "embittered his heart, nor influenced his conduct." Let this emphatic language be the comment on any future record of such "little instances ;" and when Johnson ridicules, hereafter, his friend's ignorance of things, let it be taken with Mr. Cooke's odd illustration of his supposed ignorance of words. CHAPTER III. THE EDGEWARE COTTAGE, ST. STEPHEN'S, AND GRUB STREET. 1768. 1768. HENRY GOLDSMITH's death would seem to have been made known to his brother Oliver shortly before we discover the latter to have gone into temporary retreat in a cottage Et. 40. eight miles down the Edgeware-road, "at the back of "Canons." He had taken it in connection with his neighbour in the Temple, Mr. Bott; and they kept it for some little time. It was very small, and very absurdly decorated; and, as a set-off to his Shoemaker's holiday, he used to call this his Shoemaker's paradise, one of that craft having built it, and laid it out with flying Mercuries, jets d'eau, and other preposterous ornaments, though the ground it stood upon, with its two rooms on a floor, its garden and all, covered considerably less than half-an-acre. The friends would occasionally drive down to this retreat, even after dining in London, Mr. Bott being one of those respectable men who kept a horse and gig: and a curious letter is said to be in existence written by Goldsmith shortly before his death, thanking him again and again for timely pecuniary help, rendered in his worst strait; saying it is to Bott he entirely owes that he can sit down in safety in his chambers without the terrors of arrest hanging momentarily over him; and recalling such whimsical scenes of past days as when they used to drive down the Edgeware-road at night, and, both their necks being brought to imminent peril by the gig's descent into a ditch, the driver (Bott) would exhaust all his professional eloquence to prove that at that instant they were exactly in the centre of the road. Here the History of Rome, undertaken for Davies, was at leisure |