1755. losopher of Ferney; our English cocks on Mount Jura; * wondered Johnsons, Burkes, Gibbons, War- to see the sheep in the valleys, tons, Sheridans, and Reynoldses as he had read of them in the were discussing the in- old pastoral poets, following the scription for the marble sound of the shepherd's pipe of At. 27. tomb of the author of the reed;** and, poet himself at last, Vicar of Wakefield. sent off to his brother Henry *** The lecture-rooms of Germany the first sketch of what was afterare so often referred to in his wards expanded into the Traprose writings, that, as he passed veller. Who can doubt that it to Switzerland, he must have would contain the germ of these taken them in his way. In the exquisite lines? Polite Learning, * one is painted Eternal blessings crown admirably: its Nego, Probo, and friend, attend: my earliest Distinguo, growing gradually And round his dwelling guardian saints loud till denial, approval, and Bless'd be that spot, where cheerful guests distinction are altogether lost; till retire disputants grow warm, mode- To pause from toil, and trim their evenrator is unheard, audience take Bless'd that abode, where want and pain part in the debate, and the whole repair ing fire; hall buzzes with false philosophy, And every stranger finds a ready chair; Bless'd be those feasts, with simple plenty sophistry, and error. Passing crown'd, fail, food, Remembering thus his brother's humble kindly life, he had set in pleasant contrast before into Switzerland, he saw Schaff- Where all the ruddy family around hausen frozen quite across, and Laugh at the jests or pranks that never the water standing in columns Or sigh with pity at some mournful where the cataract had formerly tale, fallen. His Animated Nature, in Or press the bashful stranger to his which this is noticed, contains And learn the luxury of doing good. also masterly description, from his own experience, of the wonders that present themselves to the traveller over lofty mountains; and he adds that "nothing "can be finer or more exact "than Mr. Pope's description of *** Glover, who related many anec"a traveller straining up the dotes on Goldsmith's own authority, dis"Alps."** Geneva was his tinctly tells us (Malone's Dublin edition of the Poems, p. IV: and see Annual Reresting-place in Switzerland; but gister, xvII. 30) that it was here he first he visited Basle and Berne; ate tried a sustained flight in verse, and that a "savoury" dinner on the top of the Traveller to his brother Henry. Exhe sent from Switzerland the first sketch of the Alps; *** flushed wood-pressly indeed he states himself in the Chap. v. **Animated Nature, 1. 120. *** Ib. 1. 278. *Animated Nature, IV. 338. ** Ib. 252-3. The description is very pretty. dedication that a part of it had been sent to his brother from Switzerland, and Mrs. Hodson tells us: "she hath seen letters "to his friends, which he wrote from And sions tread, force a churlish soil for scanty him the weak luxuriance of Italy, Where the bleak Swiss their stormy manand the sturdy enjoyment of the rude Swiss home. Observe in this following passage with what No bread. afford, 1755. product here the barren hills an exquisite art of artlessness, if But man and steel, the soldier I may so speak, an unstudied character is given to the verses No vernal blooms their torpid rocks ar and his sword; ray, Æt. 27. by the recurring sounds in the But winter lingering chills the lap of rhymes; by the use that is made May; breast, meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest. of particular words and their re- No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's petition; and by the personal But feeling, the natural human pathos, which invests the lines with a Yet still, even here, content can spread a charm so rarely imparted to mere Redress the 'clime, and all its rage discharm, descriptive poetry. These ex arm. though small, He sees his little lot the lot of all; no contiguous palace rear its head shame the meanness of his humble costly lord the sumptuous banquet shed deal Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil. tracts are given thus early be- Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts cause there is every reason to believe that much of the poem was Sees written before his return to Eng-To land, and that certainly he had, No while himself a traveller, conceived the simple and extremely To make him loathe his vegetable mealstriking design of bringing into But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil, contrast the varieties of scenery and character observed by him, only the more decisively to show that it is not by such varieties, or by any particular institutions, the happiness of individuals is determined, so much as by their own self-government in mind and temper. *The sixth edition of the Traveller, published in 1770, is undoubtedly the best. "Mansion" in the third line of the above extract, is the reading of the earlier editions, but "mansions' is obviously better. In the twenty-second line, the word "breasts," which is in every edition published while Goldsmith lived, was corrupted into "breathes" in the editions afterwards printed, and is so given in Prior's (or rather Wright's) edition of 1837. The superiority of the original word is very marked. Æt. 27. While his loved partner, boastful Displays her cleanly platter on And haply too some pilgrim, thither led, With many a tale repays the nightly bed. of the very abyss of poverty and For me your tributary stores combine; mine! Descending into Piedmont he observed the floating bee-houses of which he speaks so pleasantly in the Animated Nature.* "As Enhance the bliss his scanty fund sup-ing their flowery pasture along "the bees are continually choos plies: Dear is that shed to which his soul con forms, And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms; breast roar, But bind him to his native mountains more. "the banks of the stream, they fore unrifled; and thus a single "are furnished with sweets be 66 And as a child, when scaring sounds "floating bee-house yields the molest, Clings closer and closer to the mother's “proprietor a considerable in'come. Why a method similar So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind's "to this has never been adopted "in England, where we have "more gentle rivers, and more "flowery banks, than any other Such was the education of "part of the world, I know not." thought and heart now taking the After_this, proofs of his having place of a more learned dis-seen Florence, Verona, Mantua, cipline in the truant wanderer; and Milan, are apparent; and in such the wider range of sym-Carinthia the incident occurred pathies and enjoyment opening with which his famous couplet out upon his view; such the has too hastily reproached a larger knowledge that awakened people, when, sinking with fain him, as the subtle perceptions tigue, after a long day's toilsome of genius arose. More than ever walk, he was turned from a peawas he here, in the practical sant's hut at which he implored paths of life, a loiterer and lag- a lodging. At Padua he is supgard; yet as he passed from posed to have stayed some little place to place, finding for his time; ** and here, it has been asfoot no solid resting-ground, no spot of all the world that he might hope to call his own, there was yet sinking deep into the heart of the homeless vagrant that power and possession to which all else on earth subserves and is obedient, and which out * VI. 109. In the same narrative (11. 171) he mentions what he had observed of the tarantula in Italy. "A friend of "mine had a servant who suffered him"self to be bit, &c." **The Percy Memoir (35) says six months, and adds that, "descending to Italy he 66 "so much more vigorous and picturesque made his description of that country "than that of Addison, though they both pear Man seems the only growth that dwindles here! serted, though in this case also in florid beauty groves and fields apthe official records are lost, he received his degree. Here, or at Louvain, or at some other of these foreign universities where he always boasted of himself as hero Contrasted faults through all his 1755 Though poor, luxurious; though Æt. 27. submissive, vain; untrue anew. in penance planning sins It is a hard struggle to return in the disputations to which his Though grave, yet trifling; zealous, yet vagabond refers, And even philosophic vagabond refers, there can hardly be a question that the degree, a very simple and accessible matter at any of them, was actually conferred. to England; but his steps are "Sir," said Boswell to Johnson, now bent that way. “My skill “he disputed his passage through "in music," says the philo"Europe."* Of his having also sophic vagabond, whose account taken a somewhat close survey there will be little danger in acof those countless academic in- cepting as at least some certain stitutions of Italy in the midst of reflection of the truth, "could which Italian learning at this time "avail me nothing in Italy, withered, evidence is not want-"where every peasant was ing; and he always thoroughly "better musician than I: but by discriminated the character of "this time I had acquired anthat country and its people. "other talent which answered But small the bliss that sense bestows, And sensual bliss is all the knows; 66 there is a passage in the first number of ... a alone" was a skill in disputation. In my purpose as well, and this nation "all the foreign universities and "convents there are, upon cer"viewed it through pretty much the same maintained against every ad"tain days, philosophical theses "political optics." The same authority informs us (36) that Goldsmith, after his "ventitious disputant; for which, travels, landed at Dover in 1756; and "if the champion opposes with the Bee, written in the assumed character "any dexterity, he can claim a of a traveller, which no doubt fairly "gratuity in money, a dinner, describes his own restless and desultory "and a bed for one night. In wanderings. "When will my restless this manner, then, I fought my "disposition give me leave to enjoy the 66 present hour? When at Lyons I thought way towards England; walked "all happiness lay beyond the Alps; "along from city to city; ex"when in Italy, I found myself still in "amined mankind more nearly; 'want of something, and expected to "leave solicitude behind me by going "and, if I may so express it, "into Roumelia; and now you find me ". 'saw both sides of the pic"turning back, still expecting ease every-"ture." "where but where I am. It is now seven "years since I saw the face of a single "creature who cared a farthing whether "I was dead or alive." * Life, 11. 189. CHAPTER VI. Peckham School and Grub Street. 1756. Æt. 28. 1756--1757. he was wandering without friend or acquaintance, without the knowledge or comfort of even one kind face, in the lonely, terrible, LONDON streets. He thought he might find employment as an usher; and there of his getting a bare subsistence is a dark uncertain kind of story, in this way for some few months, IT was on the 1st of February, 1756, just at the breaking out of the war, that Oliver Goldsmith stepped upon the shore at Dover, and stood again among his country-under a feigned name: which men. would have involved him in a Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her worse distress but for the judi state, With daring aims irregularly great. cious silence of the Dublin Doctor (Radcliff), fellow of the college and joint-tutor with Wilder, to whom he had been suddenly The comfort of seeing it must obliged to refer for a character, have been nearly all the comfort and whose good-humoured acto him. At this moment, there quiescence in his private appeal is little doubt, he had not a saved him from suspicion of imfarthing in his pocket; and from posture. Goldsmith showed his the lords of human kind, intent gratitude by a long, and, it is on looking in any direction but said, a most delightful letter to his, it was much more difficult Radcliff, descriptive of his travels; to get one than from the care- now unhappily destroyed.* He less good-humoured peasants of to But the writer of this and the former "paragraph assures the public that he "had the anecdote from the Doctor's 46 own mouth." Mr. Prior has quoted this, I. 201. France or Flanders. In the "country town alluded to is an English struggle of ten days or a fort-"town, the name of which is forgotten. night which it took him to get to London, there is reason suspect that he attempted a "low "comedy" performance in a *Percy's friend, Campbell (in his Phicountry barn; and, at one of the towns he passed, had implored to be hired in an apothecary's shop.* * In the middle ofFebruary *In one of the newspaper notices which appeared after his death, the writer stated that he had once set up as an apothecary in a country town. This was immediately denied, on the assumption that Ireland was referred to; whereupon the writer rejoined (St. James' Chronicle, April 12, 14, 1774), "We never "said that he set up in Ireland. The losophical Survey of the South of Ireland, in M.D. London, 1777, 286-9), gives an aca series of letters to John Watkinson, count of this incident from the recollections of Radcliff's widow, but in ante I dating it before his foreign travel makes 66 66 |