was lightly and pleasantly written; had some really good remarks on the defects as well as merits of Parnell's translations; and contained that pretty illustration (whereof all who have written biography know the truth as well as beauty), of the difficulty of obtaining, when fame has set its seal on any celebrated man, those personal details of his obscurer days which his contemporaries have not cared to give: "the dews of the morning are past, and 66 we vainly try to continue the chase by the meridian splendour." It also contained remarks on the ornamented schools of poetry, in which allusions, not in the best taste, were levelled against Gray, and less specifically against his old favourite Collins; yet remarks, I must add, of which the principle was sound enough, though pushed, as good principles are apt to be, to an absurd extreme. For, of styles all bristling with epithets, Voltaire himself was not more intolerant than Goldsmith; nor ever with greater zest denounced the adjective, as the substantive's greatest enemy. But merits as well as faults in the Parnell-memoir, Tom Davies of course tested by the sale; and with result so satisfactory that another memoir had at once been engaged for, and now occupied Goldsmith on his return. Bolingbroke was the subject selected, for its hot partyinterest of course; indeed the life was to be prefixed to a republication of the Dissertation on Parties: but it was not the writer's mode, whatever the bookseller may have wished, to turn a literary memoir into a political pamphlet; and what was written proved very harmless that way, with as little in it to concern Lord North as Mr. Wilkes, and of as small interest, it would seem, to the writer as to either. "Doctor Goldsmith is gone with Lord Clare "into the country," writes Davies to Granger, "and I am "plagued to get the proofs from him of his Life of Lord Boling"broke." However, he did get them; and the book was published in December. It must be admitted, I fear, that it is but a slovenly piece of writing. The two closing paragraphs, summing up Bolingbroke's character, alone have any pretensions to strength or merit of style; and these were so marked an imitation of that Johnsonian manner in which Goldsmith's writing for the most part is singularly deficient, whatever his conversation may at times have been, that the resemblance did not escape his friends of the Monthly Review. They closed their bitter onslaught on the Bolingbroke biography, of course without any other foundation for the slander, by broadly insinuating the authorship of Johnson in these particular passages; "being as much superior to "the rest of the composition as the style and manner of Johnson are to those of his equally pompous but feeble imitator." It ought perhaps to be added that it was the very rare occasional indulgence in imitative sentences of this kind, and in conver sation rather than in books (for its occurrence in the latter is so infrequent as, except in this single instance, to be hardly discoverable), that doubtless so often caused Goldsmith to be foolishly talked about as belonging to the "Johnsonian school," with which he had absolutely nothing in common. 66 66 That charge of using Johnson's hard words in conversation, I may here also remark, already brought against him by Joseph Warton, is much harped upon by Hawkins. "He affected," says that ill-natured gentleman, "Johnson's style and manner of "conversation, and, when he had uttered, as he often would, a "laboured sentence, so tumid as to be scarce intelligible, would ask, if that was not truly Johnsonian?" Nor has Boswell omitted it: "To me and many others it appeared that he studiously copied the manner of Johnson, though indeed upon a "smaller scale." It is however to be observed that the same thing is found said so often, and of so many other people, as for the most part to lose its distinctive or pertinent character. Of Boswell himself it is undoubtedly far more certain than of Goldsmith, that he was ludicrous for this kind of imitation of Johnson. Walpole laughs at him for it; Madame D'Arblay highly colours all its most comical incidents; and above all we see it in the conversations of his own wonderful book, so that when he proceeds to turn the laugh on Johnson's landlord, little Allen the printer of Bolt-court, for "imitating the stately periods and slow "and solemn utterance of the great man," and on another occasion professes himself "not a little amused by observing Allen perpetually struggling to talk in the manner of Johnson, like the little "frog in the fable blowing himself up to resemble the stately ox," the effect is amazingly absurd. On the whole, though it is by no means unlikely, as has just been said, that Goldsmith, as well as others who looked up to Johnson, may have fallen now and then into unconscious Johnsonianisms, the charge in its deliberate and exaggerated form must rather be regarded as a sort of falling in with a fashionable cant, in vogue more or less against all with whom Johnson was familiar. It is at least indisputable that no trace of the absurd imitation alleged is discoverable, as a habit, in Boswell's reports of Goldsmith's conversations; where, if it existed at all, that reporter must surely have revealed it who was too truthful to suppress his own, and where indeed one might fairly expect to have found it even somewhat exaggerated. 66 1771. Goldsmith continued with Lord Clare during the opening months of 1771. They were together at Gosfield, and at Bath; and it was in the latter city the amusing incident Et. 43. occurred which Bishop Percy has related, as told him by the Duchess of Northumberland. The Duke and Duchess occupied a house on one of the parades next door to Lord Clare's, and were surprised one day, when about to sit down to breakfast, to see Goldsmith enter the breakfast-room as from the street, and, without notice of them or the conversation they continued, fling himself unconcernedly, "in a manner the most free and easy," on a sofa. After a few minutes, "as he was then perfectly known to "them both, they inquired of him the Bath news of the day; and "imagining there was some mistake, endeavoured by easy and "cheerful conversation to prevent his being too much embarrassed, "till, breakfast being served up, they invited him to stay and "partake of it;" but upon this, the invitation calling him back from the dream-land he had been visiting, he declared with profuse apologies that he had thought he was in his friend Lord Clare's house, and in irrecoverable confusion hastily withdrew. "But 66 not," adds the Bishop, "till they had kindly made him promise "to dine with them." Of Lord Clare's friendly familiarity with the poet, this incident gives us proof. Having himself no very polished manners, for he was the Squire Gawkey of the libels of his time, he might the better tolerate Goldsmith's; but that their intercourse just at present was as frequent as familiar, seems to have been because, at this time, Lord Clare had most need of a friend. "I am told," says a letter-writer of the day, "that Doctor Goldsmith now generally "lives with his countryman Lord Clare, who has lost his only son, "Colonel Nugent." There was left to him, however, an only daughter, the handsome girl whom Reynolds painted; who was married, in the year after Goldsmith's death, to the first Marquis of Buckingham; and with whom, she being as yet in her childhood, and he (as she loved long afterwards to say, and her son often repeated to me) being never out of his, Goldsmith became companion and playfellow. He taught her games, she played him tricks, and, to the last hour of her long life, "dearly loved his 22 memory. Yet even in this friendly house he was not without occasional mortifications, such as his host could not protect him from; and one of them was related by himself. In his “diverting "simplicity," says Boswell, speaking with his own much more diverting air of patronage, Goldsmith complained one day, in a mixed company, of Lord Camden. "I met him," he said, "at Lord “Clare's house in the country; and he took no more notice of me "than if I had been an ordinary man. At this, according to Boswell, himself and the company laughed heartily; whereupon Johnson stood forth in defence of his friend. "Nay, gentlemen, "Doctor Goldsmith is in the right. A nobleman ought to have "made up to such a man as Goldsmith; and I think it is much "against Lord Camden that he neglected him." 66 وو It was doubtless much for Lord Clare that he did not. By that simple means, he would seem to have lessened many griefs, and added to many an enjoyment. Attentions are cheaply rendered that win such sympathy as a true heart returns; and if, from what Wraxall describes as the then spacious avenues of Gosfield-park, Lord Clare had sent an entire buck every season to his friend's humble chambers in the Temple, the single Haunch of Venison which Goldsmith sent back would richly have repaid him. The very agreeable verses which bear that name were written this year, and appear to have been written for Lord Clare alone; nor was it till two years after their writer's death that they obtained a wider audience than his immediate circle of friends. Yet, written with no higher aim than of private pleasantry, a more delightful piece of humour, or a more finished piece of style, has probably been seldom written. There is not a word to spare, every word is in its place, the most boisterous animal spirits are controlled by a charming good taste, and an indescribable airy elegance pervades it all. Its very incidents seem of right to claim a place here, so naturally do they fall within the drama of Goldsmith's life. Allusions in the lines fix their date to the early months of 1771; and it was probably on his return from the visit to which reference has just been made, that Lord Clare's side of venison had reached him. (On the whole, I may take occasion to remark, I prefer the text of the first edition, though the second had ten additional lines, and is likely, as alleged, to have been printed from Goldsmith's corrected copy.) Thanks, my Lord, for your Venison, for finer or fatter The Haunch was a picture for Painters to study, The white was so white, and the red was so ruddy; Though my stomach was sharp, I could scarce help regretting, To spoil such a delicate picture by eating: I had thoughts, in my Chambers to place it in view, To be shown to my friends as a piece of virtu; One gammon of bacon hangs up for a show ; But, for eating a rasher of what they take pride in, But these witty fancies yield to more practical views as he contemplates the delicate luxury; and he bethinks him of the appetites most likely to do it justice. To go on with my Tale-as I gaz'd on the Haunch, I thought of a friend that was trusty and staunch; So I cut it, and sent it to Reynolds undrest, Of the Neck and the Breast I had next to dispose; 'Twas a Neck and a Breast that might rival M-r-se : With the how, and the who, and the where, and the when: I think they love Venison-I know they love Beef. Ah! he had excellent reason to know it. These were four of his poor-poet pensioners, three of whom, in the first uncorrected copy of the poem, stood undisguisedly as " Coley, and Williams, and Howard, and Hiff;" but though it is said that for Williams he meant to substitute a surgeon named Hogarth, then living in Leicester-square, Hiffernan is alone recognisable now. M-r-se was Lord Townshend's Dorothy Monroe, to whose charms he devoted his verse. While thus I debated, in reverie center'd, An acquaintance, a friend as he call'd himself, enter'd; And he smil'd as he looked at the Venison and me. This is the hero of the poem; and sketched so vividly, with a humour so life-like and droll, that he was probably a veritable person. In the first published copy indeed, which, as I have said, contains many touches preferable to what replaces them in the second version, he is described as A fine spoken Custom-house officer he, Who smil'd as he gaz'd on the Venison and me. In what follows, the leading notion is founded on one of Boileau's satires, but the comedy is both more rich and more The visitor ascertains that the venison is really delicate. Goldsmith's. If that be the case then, cried he, very gay, We'll have Johnson and Burke ; all the Wits will be there; My acquaintance is slight, or I'd ask my Lord Clare. And, now that I think on't, as I am a sinner! We wanted this Venison to make out the dinner. What say you-a pasty ?-it shall, and it must, Left alone to reflect, having emptied my shelf, Though I could not help thinking my gentleman hasty, |