OLIVARII GOLDSMITH nullum quod tetigit non ornavit : affectuum potens, at lenis dominator; Amicorum fides, Natus Hibernia, Forneiæ Lonfordiensis OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH- and touched nothing that he did not adorn : commanding our emotions, yet a gentle master : He was born in Ireland, at a place called Pallas, (in the parish) of Forney, (and county) of Longford, on the 29th Nov. 1731. Trained in letters at Dublin. Died in London, 4th April, 1774. Sixty-one years after this monument was placed in the Abbey, it occurred to the Benchers of the Inn to which I have the honour to belong in the Temple, to contribute to the place such additional interest as it might receive from commemorating Goldsmith's connection with it. A simple and handsome inscribed slab of plain solid white marble was accordingly, in 1837, fixed in the church, which, when the subsequent repairs and restorations compelled its removal, was transferred to the recesses of the vestry-chamber, where it now remains interred. I availed myself of the friendship of the distinguished person whose name is affixed to this tablet, at that time Treasurer of the Inner Temple, and since Lord Chief Baron, who offered to accompany me in a visit made in 1853 to the burial-ground of the Temple, in the hope of identifying the grave; but we did not succeed in the object of our search. We examined unavailingly every spot beneath which interment had taken place, and every stone and sculpture on the ground; nor was it possible to discover any clue in the register of burials which we afterwards looked through with the Master of the Temple. It simply records as "Buried 9th April, Oliver Goldsmith, M.B. late of Brick-court, "Middle Temple." CHAPTER XXI. THE REWARDS OF GENIUS. 1774. WHILE Goldsmith lay upon his death-bed, there was much discussion in London about the rights of authors. After two 1774. decisions in the courts of common law, which declared an Et. 46. author's property to be perpetual in any work he might have written, the question had been brought upon appeal before the House of Lords, where the opinions of the judges were taken. This was that dignified audience in whose ears might still be ringing some echo of the memorable words addressed to them by Lord Chesterfield. "Wit, my Lords, is a sort of property-the pro"perty of those who have it, and too often the only property they "have to depend on. It is, indeed, but a precarious dependance. "We, my Lords, thank God, have a dependance of another kind.” Safe in that dependance of another kind, what was their judgment, then, as to the only property which not the least distinguished of their fellow citizens had entirely and exclusively to count upon for subsistence and support. First for the opinions of the judges. Five declared their belief that, by the common law of England, the sole right of multiplying copies of any work was vested for ever in him, by the exercise of whose genius, faculties, or industry, such work had been produced; and that no enactment had yet been passed, of force to limit that estate in fee. The special verdict in the case of Millar v. Taylor had found it as a fact, "that before the reign of Queen Anne it was usual to purchase from authors the perpetual copyright of 66 their books, and to assign the same from hand to hand for "valuable considerations, and to make them the subject of family "settlements ;" and, in the subsequent elaborate judgment, Lord Mansfield, Mr. Justice Willes, and Mr. Justice Aston concurred in holding that copyright was still perpetual by the common law, and not limited, except as to penalties, by the statute. Six other judges, on the contrary, held that this perpetual property which undoubtedly existed at common law, had been reduced to a short term by an act passed in the reign of Queen Anne, somewhat strangely entitled (if this were indeed its right construction) as for the encouragement of literature. Chief Justice Mansfield's opinion would have equalised these opposing judgments in the House of Peers; but, though retaining it still as strongly as when it had decided the right in his own court, the highest tribunal of common law, he thought it becoming not then to repeat it. Lord Camden upon this moved and carried a reversal of Lord Mansfield's decision, by reversing the decree which had been founded upon it. The House of Lords thus declared the statute of Anne to have been a confiscation to the public use, after a certain brief term, of such rights of property in the fruits of his own labour and genius, as, up to the period of its enactment, an author had undoubtedly possessed. Lord Camden glorified this result for the sake of literature itself. For he held that Genius was not intended for the benefit of the individual who possessed it, but for the universal benefit of the race; and, believing Fame to be its sufficient reward, thought that all who deserved so divine a recompense, spurning delights and living laborious days, should scorn and reject every other. The real price which Genius sets upon its labours, he fervently exclaimed, is Immortality; and posterity pays that. On the other hand, Mr. Justice Willes announced an opinion hardly less earnest in its tone, to the effect that he held it to be wise in every state to encourage men of letters, without precise regard to what the measure of their powers might be; and that the easiest and most equal way of doing it, was by securing to them the property of their own works. By that means, nobody contributed who was not willing; and though a good book might be run down, and a bad one cried up, for a time, yet sooner or later the reward would be fairly proportioned to the merit of the work. "A writer's 'fame," added this learned and upright judge, "will not be the "less, that he has bread; without being under the necessity, that "he may get bread, of prostituting his pen to flattery or to party." Such interest as society showed in the discussion, went wholly with the majestic sentiments of Camden. "The very thought,” wrote Lord Chatham to Lord Shelburne, "of coining literature "into ready rhino! Why, it is as illiberal as it is illegal." So runs the circle of injustice. Attempt to get social station by your talents, and you are illiberal; use your talents without social station to commend them, and you are despised. It is neverthe less probable that the reader who may have accompanied me through this narrative thus far, will think it not "illiberal" to put these rival and opposing doctrines to the practical test of the Life and Death it has recorded. To that, in the individual case, they may now be left; with such illustrative comment from the nature and the claims of Goldsmith's writings, and the peculiarities of his character, as already I have amply supplied. Let this be added. The debt which Lord Camden proclaimed due to genius (though, from his conduct on the only occasion when they met, he probably did not think it due to Goldsmith), has to this date been amply paid in the fame of the Vicar of Wakefield, the Citizen of the World, the Deserted Village, She Stoops to Conquer, and the Traveller. Goldsmith died in the prime of his age and his powers, because his strength had been overtasked and his mind was ill at ease; but, by this, the world's enjoyment of what he left has been in no respect weakened or impaired. Nor was his lot upon the whole an unhappy one, for him or for us. Nature is vindicated in the sorrows of her favourite children; for a thousand enduring and elevating pleasures survive, to redeem their temporary sufferings. The acquisition of wealth, the attainment of tranquillity and worldly ease, so eagerly coveted and unscrupulously toiled for, are not themselves achieved without attendant losses; and not without much to soften the harshness of anxiety and poverty, to show what gains may be saved out of the greatest apparent disadvantage, and to render us all some solid assistance out of even his thriftless, imprudent, insolvent circumstances, had Goldsmith lived and died. He worthily did the work that was in him to do; proved himself in his garret a gentleman of nature; left the world no ungenerous bequest; and went his unknown way. Nor have posterity been backward to acknowledge the debt which his contemporaries left them to discharge; and it is with calm, unruffled, joyful aspect on the one hand, and with grateful, loving, eager admiration on the other, that the creditor and his debtors at length stand face to face. All this is to the world's honour as well as gain; which has yet to consider, notwithstanding, with a view to its own larger profit in both, if its debt to the man of genius might not earlier be discharged, and if the thorns which only become invisible beneath the laurel that overgrows his grave, should not rather, while he lives, be plucked away. But it is not an act of parliament that can determine this; even though it were an act to restore to the man of letters the rights of which the legislature has thought fit to deprive him. The world must exercise those higher privileges which legislation follows and obeys, before the proper remedy can be found for literary wrongs. Mere wealth would not have supplied it in Goldsmith's day, and does not supply it in our own. This book has been written to little purpose, if the intention can be attributed to it of claiming for the literary man either more money than is proportioned to the work he does by the appreciation it commands, or immunity from those conditions of prudence, industry, and a knowledge of the multiplication table, which are inseparable from success in all other walks of life. But, with a design far other than that, one object of it has been to show that the very character of the writer's calling, by the thoughts which he creates, by the emotions he is able to inspire, by the happiness he may extend to distant generations, so far places him on a different level from the tradesman, merchant, lawyer, or physician, who has his wares and merchandise or advice to sell, that whereas in the latter case the service is as definite as the reward due to it, in the former a balance must be always left, which only time can adjust fairly. In the vast majority of cases, too, even the attempt at adjustment is not made until the tuneful tongue is silent, and the ear deaf to praise; nor, much as the extension of the public of readers has done to diminish the probabilities of a writer's suffering, are the chances of his lot bettered even yet, in regard to that fair and full reward. Another object of this book has therefore been to point out, that literature ought long ago to have received from the state an amount of recognition, which would at least have placed its highest cultivators on a level with other and not worthier recipients of its gratitude. The lapse of time, in widening and enlarging the dominion of intellect, has not lessened this grave necessity. The mind of the nation now more than ever claims to be recognised for itself. More than ever it is felt as a national opprobrium that such of our countrymen as have heretofore achieved greatness, whether in literature or in science, should have struggled into fame without the aid of English institutions, by waging continuous |