"that I have lived many years in intimacy with you. It may 66 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." CHAPTER XV. 1773. Et. 45. THE SHADOW AND THE SUNSHINE. 1773. ONE dark shadow fell upon Goldsmith in the midst of the success of She Stoops to Conquer, and it came as usual from Kenrick. Nine days after the appearance of the comedy, a personal attack by that professional libeller appeared in an evening paper called the London Packet. It was not more gross than former favours from the same hand had been. All his writings were denounced in it. The Traveller was "flimsy," the Deserted Village "without fancy or fire," the Good Natured Man "water-gruel," and She Stoops to Conquer "a speaking pan"tomime." Harmless abuse enough, and such as plays the shadow to all success; for even the libeller is compelled to admit that "it is now the ton to go and see" the comedy he so elaborately abuses. Swift's sign of a genius is, that the dunces are in confederacy against him; and there is always a large and active class of them in literature. To the end of the chapter, the Dryden will have his Shadwell, and the Pope his Dennis; and still the signum fatale Minerva will be a signal for the huic date, the old cry of attack. “Give it him,” is the sentence, if he shows signs of life in genius or learning; and the execution seldom fails. But a man who enters literature, enters it on this condition. He has to reflect that, sooner or later, he will be stamped for as much as he is worth; and meanwhile has to think that probably his height, dimensions, and prowess might not be so well discerned, if less men than himself did not thus surround and waylay him at his starting. Without extenuation of the unjust assailant, so much is fairly to be said; without in the least agitating the question whether a petty larceny or a petty libel be the more immoral, or whether it be the more criminal to filch a purse or a good name. Shakespeare has decided that. But the present libel in the London Packet went far beyond the bounds indicated; and to which allusion has only been made, that the incident now to be related may be judged correctly. Goldsmith had patiently suffered worse public abuse; and would doubtless here have suf fered as patiently, if baser matter had not been introduced. But the libeller had invaded private life, and dragged in the Jessamy Bride. "Was but the lovely H- -k as much enamoured, you “would not sigh, my gentle swain, in vain." Having read this, he felt it was his duty to resent it. Captain Charles Horneck, the lady's brother, is thought to have accompanied him to the office of the London Packet, in ignorance of his precise intention; but his companion is more likely to have been Captain Higgins. It is a strong presumption against the other Captain's presence, that Goldsmith's anger had been chiefly excited by the allusion to his sister. Thomas Evans was the publisher (from a note found among his papers, Goldsmith at first seems to have thought him the editor); and must not be confounded with the worthy bookseller of the same name, who first collected Goldsmith's writings. This other Thomas Evans was more eccentric than amiable. He had so violent a quarrel with one of his sons, that he allowed him, a year and a half before his own death, literally to perish in the streets; he separated from his wife, because she sided with her son in that quarrel; and he would have disinherited his heirs if they had not buried him without coffin or shroud, and limited his funeral expenses to forty shillings. His assistant at this time was a young man named Harris, whose name afterwards rivalled Newbery's in the affection of children, having succeeded to Francis Newbery's business, carried on as the firm of Carnan and Newbery, in St. Paul's-churchyard. It was of him that Goldsmith and the Captain inquired whether Evans was at home; and he has described what followed. He called Evans from an adjoining room, and heard him thus addressed: "I have called in consequence of a scurrilous attack in your paper upon me (my name "is Goldsmith), and an unwarrantable liberty taken with the name of a young lady. As for myself I care little, but her name must not be sported with." Evans, upon this, declaring ignorance of the matter, saying he would speak to the editor, and stooping as though to look for the libel,-Goldsmith struck him smartly with his cane across the back. But Evans, being a strong sturdy man, returned the blow "with interest; " and in the sudden scuffle a lamp suspended over-head was broken, the combatants covered with the oil, and the undignified affray brought to a somewhat ludicrous pause. Then there stepped from the adjoining editorial room, which Evans had lately quitted, no less a person than Kenrick himself, who had certainly written the libel, and who is described to have "separated the parties, and "sent Goldsmith home in a coach;" greatly disfigured, according to Cradock; the Captain who accompanied him, standing trans 66 66 fixed with amazement. Evans subsequently indicted Goldsmith for the assault, but consented to a compromise on his paying fifty pounds to a Welch charity. But this money payment was the least of the fines exacted. All the papers abused the poor sensitive poet, even such as were ordinarily favourable to him; and all of them steadily turned aside from the real point in issue. At last he stated it himself; in an address to the public which was published in the Daily Advertiser of the 31st of March, and a portion of which is worth subjoining. The abuse at which it was aimed had at this time grown to an intolerable height. The Mr. Snakes, whom Sheridan satirised a few years later, were spawning in abundance. "I am "not employed in the political line, but in private disputes," said one of them this year to Tommy Townshend, explaining why he had preferred entering into the service of the newspapers rather than into that of the ministers. Attacks upon private character were the most liberal existing source of newspaper income. Of late, the press has turned from defending public interest, to making inroads upon private life; from combating the strong, to overwhelming the feeble. No condition is now too obscure for its abuse, and the protector is become the tyrant of the people. In this manner the freedom of the press is beginning to sow the seeds of its own dissolution; the great must oppose it from principle, and the weak from fear; till at last every rank of mankind shall be found to give up its benefits, content with security from its insults. By treating them with silent contempt, we do not pay a sufficient deference to the opinion of the world. By recurring to legal redress, we too often expose the weakness of the law, which only serves to increase our mortification by failing to relieve us. In short, every man should singly consider himself as a guardian of the liberty of the press, and, as far as his influence can extend, should endeavour to prevent its licentiousness becoming at last the grave of its freedom. Johnson called the address a foolish thing well done, and accounted for it by supposing its author so much elated by the success of his new comedy as to think everything that concerned him must be of importance to the public. Boswell had come up for his London holiday two days after it appeared, and thought it so well done, that knowing Johnson to have dictated arguments in Scotch appeals and other like matters for himself, he assumed Johnson to have done it. "Sir," said Johnson, "Doctor Goldsmith would no more have asked me to have wrote such a thing as that, than "he would have asked me to feed him with a spoon, or to do any"thing else that denoted his imbecility." tr A few days later, Boswell repaired to his Fleet-street place of worship with news that he had been to see Goldsmith, and with regrets that he had fallen into a loose way of talking. He reported him to have said, "As I take my shoes from the shoemaker, and my coat from the tailor, so I take my religion from the priest.' A silly thing to say, if gravely said: but not so, if merely used to dismiss Bozzy's pestering habit of intruding solemn subjects, and flourishing weapons of argument over them which he knew not how to handle. But Johnson happened to be in no humour to discriminate, and simply answered: "Sir, he knows nothing; he has 66 made up his mind about nothing." On the thirteenth of April the three dined alone with General Oglethorpe and his family, and Goldsmith showed them that at least he could sing. After taking prominent part in the afterdinner talk, expatiating on one of his favourite themes of the effect of luxury in degenerating races, and maintaining afterwards a discussion with Johnson, he sang with great applause, on joining the ladies at tea, not only Tony Lumpkin's song of the Three Jolly Pigeons, but a very pretty one to the Irish tune of the Humours of Ballamagairy, which he had written for Miss Hardcastle, but which Mrs. Bulkley cut out, not being able to sing. Two days later, the three again met at General Paoli's; and what even Boswell noted down of Goldsmith's share in the conversation, is no unreasonable answer to his own and Johnson's multiplied charges of absurdity and ignorance. What Goldsmith says for the most part is excellent sense, very tersely and happily expressed. The exception was a hasty remark upon Sterne, to whose writings he was not yet become reconciled. Johnson had instanced "the 66 man Sterne" as having had engagements for three months, in proof that any body who has a name will have plenty of invitations in London. "And a very dull fellow," interposed Goldsmith. 66 Why, no, sir," said Johnson. He came off better in a subsequent good-humoured hit against Johnson himself, who, describing his poor-author days and the quantities of prefaces and dedications he had written, declared that he had dedicated to the royal family all round; "and perhaps, sir," suggested Goldsmith, "not one sentence "of wit in a whole dedication ?" "Perhaps not, sir,” the other humanely admitted. And here once for all let me say, as to Goldsmith's share in this and other conversations now to be recorded, that it is never a real deficiency of sense or knowledge that is to be noted in him, so much as an occasional blundering precipitancy which does no justice to what is evidently a view of the subject not incorrect in the main. It will in some sort illustrate my meaning to quote a passage from Swift's Journal to Stella. "I have," he writes, " my "mouth full of water, and was going to spit it out, because I "reasoned with myself, how could I write when my mouth was ❝ full. .. Have not you done things like that, reasoned wrong at first thinking?" This is what Goldsmith was constantly doing in society-reasoning wrong at first thinking-with the disadvantage that those first thoughts got blurted out, and the thoughts that corrected them came too late. He and Johnson, still at Paoli's dinner-table, fell into something like an argument as to whether Signor Martinelli, a very fashionable and complacent teacher of Italian who had written a history of England (he was present at the dinner, or they would hardly have spoken so respectfully of a mere compilation from Rapin), should continue his history to the present day. "To be 66 دو sure he should," said Goldsmith. "No, sir," said Johnson, "he would give great offence. He would have to tell of almost "all the living great what they do not wish to be told.' To this Goldsmith replied, that it might perhaps be necessary for a native to be more cautious; but a foreigner, who came among us without prejudice, might be considered as holding the place of a judge, and might speak his mind freely. Johnson retorted that the foreigner was just as much in danger of catching "the error and mistaken "enthusiasm" of the people he happened to be among. 66 Sir," persisted Goldsmith, "he wants only to sell his history, and to tell truth: one an honest, the other a laudable motive." “Sir,” returned Johnson, "they are both laudable motives. It is laudable "in a man to wish to live by his labours; but he should write so "as he may live by them, not so as he may be knocked on the "head. I would advise him to be at Calais before he writes his 66 66 66 “history of the present age. A foreigner who attaches himself to a political party in this country, is in the worst state that can be imagined; he is looked upon as a mere intermeddler. A native 66 may do it from interest." "Or principle," interposed Boswell. Goldsmith's observation on this was not very logical, it must be confessed. "There are people who tell a hundred political lies every day," he said, "and are not hurt by it. Surely, then, one may tell truth with safety." Why, sir," Johnson answered, " a man had rather have a hundred lies told of him, "than one truth which he does not wish to be told." "Well," protested Goldsmith, "for my part, I'd tell the truth, and shame "the devil." 66 Yes, sir," said the other; "but the devil will be 66 angry. I wish to shame the devil as much as you do, but I "should choose to be out of the reach of his claws." "His claws 66 can do you no harm, when you have the shield of truth," was Goldsmith's happy retort, which on the whole perhaps left the victory with him. The same spirit, but not so good an argument, was in his subsequent comment on Johnson's depreciation of the learning of Harris of Salisbury, the first Lord Malmesbury's father. "He may not be an eminent Grecian," he interposed, "but he is "what is much better he is a worthy humane man. 66 Nay, |