1757.

market. They backed their best quarrel with a celebrated name. man, and succeeded. The Com- His notice has evident marks of plete History, we are told, "had a the interpolation of Griffiths, "very disagreeable effect though that worthy's more deadly on Mr. Hume's perform- hostility to Smollett had not yet Et. 29. "ance." It had also, it begun; but even as it stands, in would appear, a very disagree- the Review which had so many able effect on Mr. Hume's temper. points of personal and political "A Frenchman came to me," he opposition to the subject of it, it writes to Robertson, "and spoke is manly and kind. The weak "of translating my new volume places were pointed out with gen"of history: but as he also men- tleness, while Goldsmith strongly "tioned his intention of translat- seized on what he felt to be the "ing Smollett, I gave him no en- strength of Smollett. "The style couragement to proceed."* It "of this Historian," he said, "is had besides, it may be added, a "in general clear, nervous, and very disagreeable effect on the "flowing; and we think it impostempers of other people. War-"sible for a reader of taste not burton heard of its swift sale "to be pleased with the perwhile his own Divine Legation lay "spicuity and elegance of his heavy and quiet at his publisher's; "manner."*

and "the Vagabond Scot who For the critic's handling in "writes nonsense," was the lighter matters, I will mention character vouchsafed to Smollett what he said of a book by Jonas by the vehement proud priest.** Hanway. This was the Jonas of But Goldsmith keeps his temper, whom Doctor Johnson affirmed notwithstanding Smollett's great that he acquired some reputaand somewhat easily-earned good tion by travelling abroad, but fortune; and, in this as in former lost it all by travelling at home: instances, there is no disposition not a witticism, but a sober truth. to carp at a great success or His book about Persia was ex

"little hurt your sales; but these things

II. 135.

* "I am afraid," he writes in a letter cellent, and his book about Portsto Millar (6th April, 1758), "the extra-mouth indifferent. But though "ordinary run upon Dr. Smollett has a an eccentric, he was a very bene"are only temporary." Burton's Life, volent and earnest man; and **"It was well observed that nobody mistake of thinking himself wise though he made the common "in the Augustan age could conceive "that so soon after, a Horse should be when he was only good, he had "made Consul; and yet matters were so too much reason to complain, "well prepared by the time of Caligula, which he was always doing, of a "that nobody was surprised at the mat"ter. So, when Clarendon and Temple general want of earnestness and "wrote History, they little thought the seriousness in his age. His "time was so near when a vagabond Scot larger schemes of benevolence

"should write nonsense ten thousand "strong." Letters to Hurd, 278.

* Monthly Review, XVI. 532, June 1757.

1757.

Æt.

29.

But

have connected his name with with even this class it was a the Marine Society and the winter privilege, and woe to the Magdalen, both of which he woman of a better sort, or to the originated, as well as with the man whether rich or poor, Foundling, which he was active who dared at any time so in improving; and to his courage to invade the rights of and perseverance in smaller fields coachmen and chairmen. of usefulness (his determined Jonas steadily underwent the contention with extravagant vails staring, laughing, jeering, hootto servants* not the least), the men of Goldsmith's day were indebted for liberty to use an umbrella. Gay's pleasant Trivia, and Swift's masterly description Swift's City Shower. Since this biography first appeared, of a city shower, commemorate Mr. Bolton Corney has produced some its earlier use by poor women, lines a century earlier in date which by "tuck'd-up sempstresses might seem to prove that the "umbrella and "walking maids;"** but

This

* "When I sat to Hogarth," said Mr. Cole, "the custom of giving vails to ser"vants was not discontinued. On taking "leave of the painter at the door I of"fered his servant a small gratuity, but "the man very politely refused it, telling "me it would be as much as the loss of "his place if his master knew it. "was so uncommon and so liberal in a "man of Hogarth's profession at that "time of day, that it much struck me, as "nothing of the kind had happened to "me before." My old friend Allan Cunningham, after quoting this in his Lives of the Painters, 1. 176, adds: “Nor is it likely "that such a thing would happen again. "Sir Joshua Reynolds gave his servant "£6 annually of wages, and offered him "£100 a-year for the door!" I doubt whether this latter statement rests on good authority; for it is the defect of an otherwise pleasant book to do very scant and grudging justice to Reynolds, and too readily to believe everything said against him. The biographer took such earnest part with Hogarth that he became unconscious how unfairly he was treating Sir Joshua.

"The tuck'd-up sempstress walks "with hasty strides,

"While streams run down her oil'd "umbrella sides."

had been in use in Michael Drayton's time, even by the high-born mistress of the sempstress and the maid. "Of doves," says the old poet,

"I have a dainty paire "Which, when you please to take "the aier..

66

with their nimble wings shall "fan you,

"That neither cold nor heate shall "tan you,

"And, like vmbrellas, with their feathers

66

"Sheeld you in all sorts of weathers."

Notes and Queries, II. 523. But neither these nor any similar lines invalidate in any respect what is said in my text as to the use of the umbrella. Clearly, only heat and dust were guarded against in fans and umbrellas before the time of Gay and Hanway (see Coryat's Crudities, 1. 134); and Drayton's lines must be held simply to refer to a protection from sun and wind. What Wolfe writes from Paris to his mother in 1752 bears out exactly what I say of the custom in Hanway's time. "The people," he says, "here use umbrellas in hot "weather to defend them from the sun, 66 and something of the same kind to ** "Britain in winter only knows its "secure them from snow and rain. I "aid "wonder a practice so useful is not in"To guard from chilly showers the "troduced in England, where there are "walking maid." Gay's Trivia."such frequent showers; and especially How easily recognised is the stronger"in the country, where they can be exhand"panded without any inconveniency." I 6

Oliver Goldsmith's Life and Times. I.

ing, and bullying; and having might be at his best, he very punished some insolent knaves agreeably undertakes to prove. who struck him with their whips "The appearance of an inn on

as well as tongues, he "the road, suggests to our phi1757. finally established a pri- "losopher an eulogium on temt. 29 vilege which, when the "perance; the confusion of a disJournal des Débats gravely assured "appointed landlady gives rise its readers that the king of the "to a letter on resentment; and barricades (that king whose "the view of a company of

throne has since been burnt at "soldiers furnishes out materials the top of fresh barricades on "for an essay on war." As to the site of the Bastille) was to be the anti-souchong mania, Goldseen walking the streets of Paris smith_laughs at it; and this was with an umbrella under his arm, doubtless the wisest way. “He," had reached its culminating point Jonas had exclaimed in horror, and was playing a part in state "who should be able to drive affairs. Excellent Mr. Hanway, "three Frenchmen before him, having settled the use of the " 'or she who might be a breeder umbrella, made a less successful "of such a race of men, are to move when he would have written "be seen sipping their Tea! ... down the use of tea. "What a wild infatuation is this!

This is one of the prominent". The suppression of this subjects in the Journey from Ports-"dangerous custom depends enmouth: the book which Griffiths "tirely on the example of ladies had now placed in his workman's " "of rank in this country. . . . hands. Doctor Johnson's review "Some indeed have resolution of it for the Literary Magazine is "enough in their own houses to widely known, and Goldsmith's "confine the use of Tea to their deserved notoriety as well. It "own table, but their number is is more kindly and as effectively "so extremely small, amidst a written. He saw what allowance "numerous acquaintance I know could be made for a writer, how-"only of Mrs. T. . . . whose name ever mistaken, who "shows great "ought to be written out in letters "goodness of heart, and an "of gold." "Thus we see," is earnest concern for the welfare Goldsmith's comment upon this, "of his country." Where the "how fortunate some folks are. book was at its worst, the man "Mrs. T. . . . is praised for con'fining luxury to her own table: may add that Southey quotes this letter "she earns fame, and saves somein his Common-Place Book (1. 574), and ac-"thing in domestic expenses into companies it with the remark: "My "mother was born in the year when this "the bargain!" In subsequent serious expostulation with Mr.

66 was written. And I have heard her

say she remembered the time when any Hanway on some medical as

66 person would have been hooted for 66 carrying an umbrella in Bristol,"

sumptions in his book, the re

"mother?"*

Æt. 29.

viewer lays aside his humble manuscript so long, and so often patched-velvet of Bankside, and with inordinate self-complacency speaks as though with nothing publicly recited from by the less invested than the president's author in a kind earnest of 1757. gold-headed cane: after which what the world was one he closes with this piece of quiet day to expect, that some good sense. "Yet after all, why listeners with good memories "so violent an outcry against | (Le Clerc among them) stole its "this devoted article of modern best passages, and published "luxury? Every nation that is them for the world's earlier "rich hath had, and will have, its benefit as their own. This drove "favourite luxuries. Abridge the the poor cardinal at last to pre"people in one, they generally mature delivery, and an instal"run into another; and the reader ment of thirteen thousand lines "may judge which will be most appeared;* of which certainly "conducive to either mental or one line (Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, “bodily health, the watery bever-Phœboque sagittas, which the worthy "age of a modern fine lady or cardinal had himself stolen from "the strong beer and stronger Marcus Manilius), having since "waters of her great-grand- suggested Franklin's epitaph (Eripuit cælo fulmen sceptrumque This paper had appeared in tyrannis), ** has a good chance July, and in the same number to live. To the August number there was also from the same of the Review, among other mathand a clever notice of Dobson's ters, Goldsmith contributed a translation of the first book of lively paper *** on those new Cardinal de Polignac's Latin poem of Anti-Lucretius: ** the Grimm's Anecdotes, 1. 455. poem add, that, ten years after the present whose ill success stopped Gray date, "George Canning of the Middle in what he playfully called his "Temple Esq," father of the statesman, Master Tommy Lucretius*** ("De published a poor translation of the Cardinal's first three books. See Monthly "Principiis Cogitandi"). The Review, XXXVI. 190 (March 1767). Cardinal's work I may mention **Turgot's biographer, Condorcet, as a huge monument of misap-quotes this line as the only Latin verse composed by the great French economist; plied learning and enormous but Turgot had only "adapted" it, and vanity; the talk of the world in from Polignac no doubt, to place under a those days, now forgotten. It portrait of Franklin. The line of Manilius, the bar from which both wires are was the work of a life; could drawn, is that in which he speaks of boast of having been corrected Epicurus, "Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, viresby Boileau and altered by Louis que Tonanti." Astron. lib. v. line 104. the Fourteenth; and was kept in

Monthly Review, XVII. 50-4, July 1757. ** Ibid, 44. *** Works, II. 191,

66

I may

*** In the form of a letter to the

authors of the Monthly Review (XVII. 154, August 1757). Gray disliked Voltaire's opinions generally, "but this," says Mr. Nichols, "did not prevent his paying the "full tribute of admiration due to his

[BOOK II. volumes of Voltaire's Universal have quite thrown aside the reHistory which so delighted Wal- collection of an early disagreepole and Gray; but in the Sep-ment*), because there was that tember number, where he real indifference to popular in1757. remarks on Odes by Mr. fluences in the poet which the wit Æt. 29. Gray, I find opinions which and fine gentleman was anxious place in lively contrast the ob- to have credit for. This liking he scure Oliver and the brilliant proclaimed on all occasions. Horace. had written the short advertiseWalpole called himself a whig, ment which prefaced the first in compliment to his father; but edition of the Elegy; he had himexcept in very rare humours he self taken the risk of publishing, hated, while he envied, all things four years before, "a fine edition popular. "I am more humbled," ""of six poems of Mr. Gray with was his cry, when thirsting for "prints from designs of Mr. R. every kind of notoriety, "I am "Bentley;"** and when he

He

"more humbled by any applause heard, in the July of this year, "in the present age, than by that Gray had left his Cambridge "hosts of such critics as Dean retreat for a visit to Dodsley the "Milles."* He was very steady in his fondness for Gray (though Gray himself appears never to

66

genius. He was delighted with his "pleasantry; appproved his historical "compositions, particularly his Essai sur "l'Histoire Universelle; and placed his 66 tragedies next in rank to those of "Shakspeare." Works, v. 32, 33. In a letter to Wharton (July 10, 1764) he talks of his having been reading "half-a-dozen new works of that inexhaustible, "eternal, entertaining scribbler Voltaire, "who at last (I fear) will go to Heaven, "for to him entirely it is owing that the "king of France and his council have "reviewed and set aside the decision of "the parliament of Thoulouse in the "affair of Calas you see a scribbler may be of some use in the world." Works, IV. 35, 36. Let me add to this note that Gray's high opinion of Voltaire's tragedies is shared by one of our greatest authorities on such a matter now living, Sir Edward Bulwer (Lord Lytton), whom I have often heard maintain the marked superiority of Voltaire over all his countrymen in the knowledge of dramatic art, and the power of producing theatrical effects.

...

*Coll. Lett. v. 323.

*For Walpole's account of their difference when travelling on the continent together in their youth, see Coll. Lett. v. 340, 341; but Mr. Mitford, in his edition of Gray, has explained the matter differently on the authority of Mr. Isaac Reed. Fom this it would seem that the quarrel arose out of a suspicion on Walpole's part that Gray had spoken ill of him to some friends in England, which impelled him to open clandestinely and re-seal one of Gray's letters. This was discovered and resented. Works, 11. 175, note. It is right to add, however, that this account is not borne out by what Gray said to Nichols on the latter questioning him about the quarrel. "Wal"pole," replied Gray, "was son of the first "minister, and you may easily conceive "that on this account he might assume "an air of superiority, or do or say some"thing which perhaps I did not bear as well "as I ought." Works, v. 48. This, substantially, would bear out Walpole, who takes all that kind of blame frankly to himself.

**See his own Short Notes of his life, Letters to Mann (1843, 1844, concluding series), IV.343. See also his brief Memoir of Gray, and the letters to Brown and Mason, in Mitford's Correspondence of Gray | and Mason (1853), xxxш. 89, and 92.