1758. Æt. 30. more books and company; it figures some such change as this which I notice here. Whatever the work may be, the resolution to stick to nature is a good and hopeful one, and will admit of wise application, and many original results. The poem seems to have gone no further: but its cheerful hero reappeared, after some months, in a "club of authors; protested that the alehouse had been his own bed-chamber often; reintroduced the description with six new lines; Where the Red Lion flaring o'er the way, Invites each passing stranger that can pay; There, in a lonely room, from bailiffs snug, The muse found Scroggen stretch'd beneath a rug.. ' flattered himself that his work should not be of the order A night-cap deck'd his brows instead of bay, and having quoted them, was so much elated and selfdelighted, that he was quite unable to proceed. Thus could Goldsmith already turn aside the sharpest edge of poverty; thus wisely consent to be Scroggen till he could be Goldsmith; in the paltry, slovenly pothouse of Drury-lane, give promise of the neat village alehouse of Auburn; and betake himself meanwhile to less agreeable daily duties, in a spirit that would make them, also, the not indifferent source of profit and delight. CHAPTER VI. WORK AND HOPE. 1759. 1759. "SPEEDILY will be published," said the Public Advertiser of the 7th of February, 1759, "Memoirs of the Life of Monsieur Et. 31. "de Voltaire, with critical observations on the writings of "that celebrated poet, and a new Translation of the "Henriade. Printed for R. Griffiths, in Paternoster Row." Nevertheless, the publication did not take place. The Translation was by an old fellow-student of Dublin, Edward Purdon; the poor uncertain hack, whose notoriety rests on Goldsmith's epigram, as his hunger was, even at this early date, supposed to be mainly appeased by a morsel of Goldsmith's crust; and his share of the work was probably not completed in time. Some months later, it appeared in a magazine, and the Life was given to the public through the same bookselling channel; but it is clear that Goldsmith, when he wrote to his brother, had really performed his portion of the contract. It was but a catchpenny matter, as he called it; yet including passages of interesting narrative as well as just remark, and gracefully written. It announces that early admiration of the genius of Voltaire and Rousseau, which he consistently maintained 1759. against some celebrated friends of his later life: it contains Et. 31. the best existing notice known to me of Voltaire's residence in England and for proof of the time at which it was written, passages might be given in exact paraphrase of the argument of his Polite Learning; such sayings from the lastquoted letter to his brother, as "frugality in the lower orders "of mankind may be considered as a substitute for ambition;" and such apophthegms from his recent sharp experience, as "the school of misery is the school of wisdom." The Polite Learning was now completed, and passing through the press: the Dodsleys of Pall Mall, who gave Johnson ten guineas for the poem of London, having taken it under their charge. This too was the time when, being accidentally in company with Grainger at the Temple Exchange coffee-house, he was introduced to Thomas Percy, already busily engaged in collecting the famous Reliques; * now chaplain to Lord Sussex, and who became afterwards Bishop of Dromore. Percy, who had a great love of letters and of literary men, was attracted to this new acquaintance; for before he returned to his vicarage of Easton Mauduit in Northamptonshire, he discovered Goldsmith's address in Green Arbour Court, and resolved to call upon him. "A friend of his paying. * See a letter of the poet Shenstone (to whose suggestion we owe the Reliques) in Nichols's Illustrations, vii. 220-3. + Percy will frequently appear in these pages; and though, for some unexplained reason, Johnson said harsher things to him, as well as of him, than was ordinarily his habit towards men of that calling and station, he has also in a few lines so happily expressed his literary claims and character, that they will best introduce him here: "He is a man very willing to learn, and very able to teach; a man out "of whose company I never go without having learned something. It is sure that "he vexes me sometimes, but I am afraid it is by making me feel my own "ignorance. So much extension of mind, and so much minute accuracy of "inquiry, if you survey your whole circle of acquaintance, you will find so scarce, "if you find it at all, that you will value Percy by comparison. . . Percy's "attention to poetry has given grace and splendour to his studies of antiquity. "A mere antiquarian is a rugged being." Boswell, vii. 117. 66 66 66 66 1759. "him a visit" (I quote from the Memoir to which the grave church dignitary, and descendant of the ancient Earls of Et. 31. Northumberland, communicated this and other anecdotes), "at the beginning of March 1759, found him in lodgings "there so poor and uncomfortable, that he should not think it proper to mention the circumstance, if he did not consider "it as the highest proof of the splendour of Doctor Gold"smith's genius and talents, that by the bare exertion of their powers, under every disadvantage of person and fortune, he "could gradually emerge from such obscurity to the enjoyment of all the comforts and even luxuries of life, and "admission into the best societies of London. The Doctor was writing his Enquiry &c. in a wretched dirty room, in "which there was but one chair, and when he, from civility, "offered it to his visitant, himself was obliged to sit in the "window. While they were conversing, some one gently. "rapped at the door, and being desired to come in, a poor "ragged little girl of very decent behaviour, entered, who, dropping a curtsie, said, 'My mama sends her compli'ments, and begs the favour of you to lend her a chamber'pot full of coals.'"* 66 6 666 If the February number of the Critical Review lay by the reverend, startled, and long-descended visitor, perhaps good * Percy Memoir, 60-1. "I have him now in London," writes Campbell to the bishop in 1790 (Nichols's Illustrations, vii. 779), when describing his progress in throwing Percy's biographical anecdotes into the form of a memoir, “and am "endeavouring to recollect your first visit to him, when the loan, or repayment, of "the chamber-pot of coals was asked." To this the bishop answered promptly, by sending the anecdote, which Campbell (Ibid, 780) thus acknowledges: "My "account of your visit to him there was almost verbatim, from my recollection of 'your words, what you have set down in your last. But could there be any "harm in letting the world know who the visitant was? without the circumstance of "the dignity of the guest, the contrast will be in a great measure lost." In truth however the contrast, though amusing enough, was not so very great as Dr. Campbell, prematurely transforming the vicar of a small living into a bishop full-blown, appears to have presented it to his imagination. 1759. natured Goldsmith, as he scraped together his answer to Et. 31. that humble petition, pointed with a smile to a description of the fate of poets which he had just published there. "There "is a strong similitude," he had said, reviewing a new edition of the Fairy Queen, "between the lives of almost "all our English poets. The Ordinary of Newgate, we "are told, has but one story, which serves for the life of every hero that happens to come within the circle of "his pastoral care; however unworthy the resemblance 66 appears, it may be asserted, that the history of one "poet might serve with as little variation for that of any "other.-Born of creditable parents, who gave him a pious "education; however, in spite of all their endeavours, in "spite of all the exhortations of the minister of the parish "on Sundays, he turned his mind from following good things, "and fell to writing verses!-Spenser, in short, lived 'poor, was reviled by the critics of his time, and died at "last in the utmost distress.' - He was again working for Hamilton. Smollett himself had not seen his new reviewer, but, the success of the Ovid papers having proclaimed the value of such assistance, he appears to have sent the publisher with renewed offers to Green Arbour Court. Goldsmith had resumed with this notice of Spenser; a discriminating proof of his appreciation of all true mastery in the divine art. Popular and practical himself, he wonders not the less at the "great magician:" suddenly taken "from the ways of the present world," and far from Drury Lane alehouses or Auburn villages,—in the *Critical Review, vii. 105, February 1759. + Dr. Aikin (who had the means of knowing) adopts and confirms a statement of Glover's to the effect that "it was the merit which Goldsmith discovered in criticising a despicable translation of Ovid's Fasti by a pedantic schoolmaster, "and his Enquiry into Poltte Literature, which first introduced him to the acquaint"ance of Dr. Smollett." |