BOOK THE SECOND. AUTHORSHIP BY COMPULSION. CHAPTER I. 1757 TO 1759. Reviewing for Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths. 1757. |Richardson's workmen, on Towerhill doled out physic over Mr. Jacob's counter, and at Peckham dispensed the more nauseating THE means of existence, long dose to young gentlemen of Docsought, seemed thus to be found, tor Milner's academy: he had when, in his twenty-ninth year, here entered into Mr. Griffiths's Oliver Goldsmith sat down service, and put on the livery of 1757. to the precarious task- the Monthly Review. Æt. 29. work of Author by Pro- He was man-of-letters, then, fession. He had exerted no con- at last; but had gratified no pastrol over the circumstances in sion, and attained no object of which he took up the pen: nor ambition. The hope of greathad any friendly external aid, in ness and distinction, day-star of an impulse of kindness, offered his wanderings and his privait to his hand. To be swaddled, tions, was at this hour, more than rocked, and dandled into author- it had ever been, dim, distant, ship is the lot of more fortunate cold. A practical scheme of men: with Goldsmith it was the literary life had as yet struck no stern and last resource of his root in his mind; and the asserstruggle with adversity. As in tion of later years, that he was the country-barn he would have past thirty before he was really played Scrub or Richard; as he attached to literature and senprescribed for the poorer than sible that he had found his vocahimself at Bankside, until worse tion in it, is no doubt true. What than their necessities drove him the conditions of his present to herd with the beggars in Axe-employment were, he knew well: lane; as in Salisbury-court he that if he had dared to indulge corrected the press among Mr. any hopes of finer texture, if he 1757. had shown the fragments of his strong man, as I have said; but poem, or if he had produced the neither was his weakness such acts of the tragedy read to that he shrank from the reRichardson, Mr. and Mrs. Grif-sponsibilities it brought. fiths must have taken immediate When suffering came, in counsel on the expenses of his whatever form, he met it t. 29. board. He was there, as he had with a quiet, manful endurance: been in other places of servitude, without gnashing of the teeth, because the dogs of hunger were or wringing of the hands. Among at his heels.* He was not a "(if any were born during the currency "of the lease) would they be serfs, and * In an essay by Mr. De Quincey on the "ascripti prelo? Goldsmith's own terms first edition of this biography, so dif- "of self-conveyance to Griffiths-the ferent an opinion is formed from that "terms we mean on which he 'conwhich I offer of this Griffiths-agreement, "veyed' his person and free-agency to as well as of my contrast between the "the uses of the said Griffiths (or his asposition of the man-of-letters in Gold-"signs?)-do not appear to have been smith's day and that of the men of Queen "much more dignified than Smart's in Anne, while the grounds of difference are "the quality of the conditions, though so amusingly expressed, that the reader "considerably so in the duration of the will probably thank me for quoting the "term; Goldsmith's lease being only for passage. I should premise that Smart's "one year, and not for ninety-nine, so agreement, alluded to in the outset, will "that he had (as the reader perceives) a be found described, post, Book III. "clear ninety-eight years at his own disChap. x. "The pauperised (or Grub "posal. We suspect that poor Oliver, in "Street) section of the literary body, at "his guileless heart, never congratulated "the date of Goldsmith's taking service" himself on having made a more feliciamongst it, was (in Mr. Forster's "tous bargain. Indeed, it was not so 'estimate) at its very lowest point of de- "bad, if everything be considered: Goldpression. And one comic presumption "smith's situation at that time was bad; "in favour of that notion was that Smart," and for that very reason the lease "the prose translator of Horace, and a "(otherwise monstrous) was not bad. He "well-built scholar, actually let himself "was to have lodging, board, and 'a "out to a monthly journal on a regular "small salary,' very small, we suspect; "lease of ninety-nine years. What could "and in return for all these blessings, he move the rapacious publisher to draw"had nothing to do, but to sit still at a "the lease for this monstrous term of "table, to work hard from an early hour years, we cannot conjecture. Surely "in the morning until 2 P.M. (at which "the villain might have been content "elegant hour we presume that the "with three score years and ten. But "parenthesis of dinner occurred), but also "think, reader, of poor Smart two years"-which, not being an article in the "after, upon another publisher's apply-"lease, might have been set aside, on a ing to him vainly for contributions, and "motion before the King's Bench-to angrily demanding what possible ob-"endure without mutiny the correction "jection could be made to offers so "and the revisal of all his MSS. by Mrs. "liberal, being reduced to answer-No "Griffiths, wife to Dr. G. the lessee. This 'objection, sir, whatever, except an "affliction of Mrs. Dr. G. surmounting his "unexpired term of ninety-seven years "'yet to run.' The bookseller saw that "he must not apply again in that cen"tury; and, in fact, Smart could no "longer let himself, but must be sub-let "(if let at all) by the original lessee. "Query now-was Smart entitled to vote "as a freeholder, and Smart's children 66 66 shoulders, and controlling his pen, "seems to us not at all less dreadful than "that of Sindbad, when indorsed with "the old man of the sea; and we, in "Goldsmith's place, should have tried "how far Sindbad's method of abating "the nuisance had lost its efficacy by "time, viz. the tempting our oppressor to 1757. the lowest of human beings he out-practised the whole college of could take his place, as he after-physicians. wards proved his right to sit The time is at hand in his hisamong the highest, by the tory, when all this becomes clear. strength of his affectionate Outside the garret window of Mr. Et. 29. sympathies with the na- Griffiths, by the light which the ture common to all. And so miserable labour of the Monthly sustained through the scenes of Review will let in upon the heartwretchedness he passed, he had sick labourer, it may soon be done more, though with little seen. Stores of observation, feelconsciousness of his own, truly ing, and experience, hidden from to achieve his destiny, than if, himself at present, are by that transcending the worldly plans of light to be revealed. It is a wise Irish friends, he had clam- thought to carry us through this bered to the bishops' bench or new scene of suffering, with new and unaccustomed hope. "mounting this old woman of the sea? Goldsmith never publicly avowed what he had written in the Monthly Review, any more than "get drunk once or twice a-day, and "then suddenly throwing Mrs. Dr. G. off "her perch. From that bad eminence,' "which she had audaciously usurped, "what harm could there be in thus dis- the Roman poet talked of the millstone he turned in his days "Certainly these conditions-the hard of hunger. Men who have been "the writing-table, and, above all, the at the galleys, though for no "having one's pen chained to that of Mrs. crime of their own committing, "Dr. Griffiths, do seem to countenance are wiser than to brag of the "Mr. Forster's idea, that Goldsmith's "work, the being chained by the leg to 66 lege of Grub Street, in the days of "period was the purgatory of authors. work they performed there. All "And we freely confess that excepting he stated was, that all he wrote "Smart's ninety-nine years' lease, or the was tampered with by Griffiths "contract between the Devil and Dr. "Faustus, we never heard of a harder or his wife. Smollett has de"bargain driven with any literary man. picted this lady as an antiquated "Smart, Faustus, and Goldsmith, were female critic; and when "ilclearly over-reached. Yet, after all, "was this treatment in any important "literate, bookselling" Griffiths "point (excepting as regards Dr. Faustus) declared unequal war against worse than that given to the whole col- that potent antagonist, protest"Pope? The first edition of the Dunciad ing that the Monthly Review was "dates from 1727; Goldsmith's matricula- not written by "physicians with→tion in Grub Street dates from 1757--just "out practice, authors without "tion. And it is important to remember "learning, men without decency, "that Goldsmith, at this time in his "gentlemen without manners, "twenty-ninth year, was simply an usher "and critics without judgment,' "never practised writing for the press, Smollett retorted in a few broad "and had not even himself any faith unscrupulous lines on the whole "at all in his own capacity for writ"ing." De Quincey's Works, vi. 212-15 party of the rival publication. "The Critical Review is not "thirty years later; which is one genera "at an obscure boarding-school; had (Ed. 1857). 1757. Æt. 29. "written," he said, "by a parcel possible, to remain in his ob"of obscure hirelings, under the scurity; but a copy of the Monthly "restraint of a bookseller and his which belonged to Griffiths, and "wife, who presume to revise, in which he had privately "alter, and amend the articles marked the authorship of "occasionally. The principal most of the articles, with"writers in the Critical Review are draws the veil. It is for no pur"unconnected with booksellers, pose that Goldsmith could have "unawed by old women, and in- disapproved, or I should scorn "dependent of each other."* to assist in calling to memory Commanded by a bookseller, what he would himself have comawed by an old woman, and mitted to neglect. The best miserably dependent, one of writers can spare much; it is only these obscure hirelings desired the worst who have nothing to and resolved, as far as it was spare. *Critical Review, VII. 151; in a notice of The first subject I may menDr. Grainger's Letter to Dr. Smollett Oc- tion first, though it takes us back casioned by his Criticism upon a late Trans- a little. It was the specimenlation of Tibullus. The first attack by review which had procured GoldGriffiths had been made in reviewing a pamphlet by some irritated author (an smith his engagement; and if the Occasional Critic) abusive of Smollett. book was furnished from the "By their reciprocal defamation, they bookseller's stores, it was proappear to be physicians without prac"tice; authors without learning; men bably the least common-place of "without decency; and (notwithstanding all they contained. This was the "he has made some lucky discoveries of their mistakes, yet, if their critical year (1757) in which, after six "merit be no greater than his, the public centuries of neglect, the great, will, probably, be ready to add) critics dark, wonderful field of northern "without judgment." To which Smollett fiction began to be explored. ultimately retorted as in the text; but he had meanwhile also, in an address to Professor Mallet of Copenhagen "the Old Gentlewoman who directs the had translated the Edda, direct"Monthly Review," indulged in an im- ing attention strongly to the "remediate onslaught. "There is to be "sure great elegance in this long, draw-"mains" of Scandinavian poetry ling, disjointed, paralytic sentence, and mythology: and Goldsmith's "that, propped upon the crutch of paren: first effort in the Monthly Review "thesis, drags its slow length along. But "good, now, Gammer, will you tell us was to describe the fruits of "how you discovered that what we said these researches, to point out "of the Occasional Critic was defama- resemblances to the inspiration "tion? Have we said anything of him, "but what you yourself have expressly of the East, and to note the pic"confirmed? Have you found out turesqueness and sublimity of "by his defamation, that we are phy- the fierce old Norse imagination. "sicians without practice; authors with"out learning; men without decency; "The learned on this side the gentlemen without manners; and critics "Alps," he began, "have long "without judgment? Defamation im-laboured at the antiquities of "Greece and Rome, but almost .... "plies slander, Goody, and slander is "founded upon falsehood," &c. 1757. "totally neglected their own; like self in Agis, in the Siege of Aquileia, "conquerors, who, while they and other ineffable dulness from "have made inroads into the ter- the same hand (wherein his quick "ritories of their neigh- suspicious glance detected no "bours, have left their own Lady Randolphs), would have Æt. 29. "natural dominions to de- nothing to do with the character "solation."* This was a lively of Douglas. What would come interruption to the ordinary with danger from the full strength Monthly dulness, and perhaps the of Mrs. Cibber, he knew might Percys, and intelligent sub- be safely left to the enfeebled scribers of that sort, opened eyes powers of Mrs. Woffington; a little wider at it. It was not whose Lady Randolph would long after, indeed, that Percy leave him no one to fear but first began to dabble in Runic Barry at the rival house. But Verses from the Icelandic; before despairing also of Covent-garden eight years were passed he had when refused by Drury-lane, and published his famous Reliques; crying plague on both their and in five years more, during houses, to the north good parson intimacy with the writer of this Home had returned, and after notice of Mallet, he produced his eight months were gone, had translation of Mallet's Northern sent back his play endorsed by Antiquities. In all this there was the Scottish capital. There it had probably no connection: yet it is been acted; and from the beginwonderful what a word in season ning of the world, from the befrom a man of genius may do, ginning of Edinburgh, the like of even when the genius is hireling that play had not been known. and obscure and only labouring The gentlemen who became afterfor the bread it eats. wards the Poker Club* made More common-place was the *The Poker Club was not so named respectable-looking thin duo-till five years later. But the men spoken decimo with which Mr. Griffiths's of in the text were precisely that select workman began his next month's labour, but a duodecimo which at the time was making noise enough for every octavo, quarto, and folio in the shop. This was Douglas, a Tragedy, as it is acted at the Theatre Royal in Covent-garden. It was not acted at the Theatre ter) Carlyle; edited by Mr. Burton in 1860. Royal in Drury-lane, because Garrick, who shortly afterwards so complacently exhibited him *Monthly Review, XVI. 377, April 1757. See ante, 64. section of Edinburgh society already existing as a club, which, on Scotland being refused a militia, called itself the Poker, "to stir up the fire of the nation." See an account of it in Scott's notice of Home in his Prose Works (ed. 1835), XIX. 283, in Burton's Life of Hume, 11. 456, and in Campbell's Chancellors, VI. 29-30. To these authorities I have now (1870) to add the Autobiography of Alexander (Jupi See the 11th chapter of that book; and men, and of what was done and suffered by Carlyle himself in connection with Home and his tragedies, the 7th and 8th chapters especially, and others, passim. Carlyle was born six years before Goid for various notices of the leading Scotch |