CHAPTER IV.

THE CITIZEN of the WORLD.

1760.

WITH the second week of his engagement on the Public 1760. Ledger, Goldsmith had taken greater courage. The letter t. 32. which appeared on the 24th of January, though without title or numbering to imply intention of continuance, threw out the hint of a series of letters, and of a kind of narrative as in the Lettres Persanes. The character assumed was that of a Chinese visitor to London: the writer's old interest in the flowery people having received new strength, of late, from the Chinese novel on which his dignified acquaintance Mr. Percy had been recently engaged.* The second letter, still without title, appeared five days after the first; some inquiry seems to have been made for their continuance; and thence uninterruptedly the series went on. Not until

* "I will endeavour," writes Shenstone in the following year (Nichols's Illustrations, vii. 222), "to procure and send you a copy of Percy's translation of a

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genuine Chinese novel in four small volumes, printed months ago, but not to be "published before winter." Percy was the editor, and wrote the preface and notes; but the actual translation of Hau Kiou Choaan from the Chinese was executed by Mr. Wilkinson, and all that Percy did in that respect was to translate the translator "into good reading English." It may be worth remarking, that, three years before, some noise had been made by a smart political squib of Horace Walpole's, which he protested he had writ in an hour-and-a-half, and which passed through five editions in a fortnight, the Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his friend Lien Chi at Pekin. See Coll. Lett. iv. 289, 290.

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1760.

somewhat advanced, were they even numbered; they never Æt. 32. received a title, until republished; but they were talked of as the Chinese Letters, assumed the principal place in the paper, and contributed more than any other cause to its successful establishment. Sir Simeon Swift and his "Ranger," Mr. Philanthropy Candid and his "Visitor," struggled and departed as newspaper shadows are wont to do; Lien Chi Altangi became real, and lived. From the ephemeral sprang the immortal. On that column of ungainly-looking, perishable type, depended not alone the paper of the day, but a book to last throughout the year, a continuous pleasure for the age, and one which was for all time. It amused the hour, was wise for the interval beyond it, is still diverting and instructing us, and will delight generations yet unborn. At the close of 1760, ninety-eight of the letters had been published; within the next few months, at less regular intervals, the series was brought to completion; and in the following year, the whole were republished by Mr. Newbery "for the author,"* in two duodecimo volumes, but without any author's name, as The Citizen of the World; or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher in London, to his "Friend in the East."

"Light, agreeable, summer reading," observed the British Magazine, with but dry and laconic return for the Wow-wow. The Monthly Review had to make return of a different kind, Mr. Griffiths now decently resolving to swallow his leek;

* This specification, which appears upon no other book written by Goldsmith, appears to imply either some reluctance on Newbery's part to undergo the risk of the republication, or some quarrel as to terms; but whichever it may have been, it is clear that a very small payment a few months later put the bookseller in possession of the whole "copy" [copyright] of the book. "Received of "Mr. Newbery, five guineas, which, with what I have received at different times before, is in full for the copy of the Chinese Letters, as witness my hand, Oliver "Goldsmith. March 5, 1762." Newbery MSS, Prior, i. 397.

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1760.

and his pliant cur Mr. Kenrick, having taken his orders to abstain from bark or bite, and whine approbation and Et. 32. apology, thus, after remarking that the Chinese philosopher had nothing Asiatic about him, did his master's bidding in his master's name: "The public have been already made sufficiently acquainted with the merit of these entertaining 'Letters, which were first printed in The Ledger, and are supposed to have contributed not a little towards the success of that paper. They are said to be the work of "the lively and ingenious Writer of An Enquiry into the "Present State of Polite Learning in Europe; a Writer whom, "it seems, we undesignedly offended by some Strictures on the conduct of many of our modern Scribblers. As the "observation was entirely general, in its intention, we were "surprised to hear that this Gentleman had imagined him"self in any degree pointed at, as we conceive nothing can be more illiberal in a Writer, or more foreign to the character "of a Literary Journal, than to descend to the meanness "of personal reflection."* Pity might be reasonably given to men humiliated thus; but Goldsmith withheld forgiveness. Private insults could not so be retracted; nor could imputations which sink deepest in the simplest and most honourable natures, be thus easily purged away. Mr. Griffiths was left to the consolation of reflecting, that he had himself eaten the dirt which it would have made him far happier to have flung at the Citizen of the World.

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In what different language, by what different men, how highly and justly this book has since been praised, for its fresh original perception, its delicate delineation of life and manners, its wit and humour, its playful and diverting satire, its exhilarating gaiety, and its clear and lively style, Monthly Review, xxvi. 477, June 1762.

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1760. Æt. 32.

need not be repeated. What is to be said of it here, will have more relation to the character than to the genius of its writer. The steadier direction of his thoughts, and the changing aspect of his fortunes, are what I would now turn back to read in it.

One marked peculiarity its best admirers have failed to observe upon; its detection and exposure, not simply of the foibles and follies which lie upon the surface, but of those more pregnant evils which rankle at the heart, of society. The occasions were frequent in which the Chinese citizen so lifted his voice that only in a later generation could he find his audience; and they were not few, in which he has failed to find one even yet. He saw, in the Russian Empire, what by the best English statesman since has not been sufficiently guarded against, the natural enemy of the more western parts of Europe," an enemy already possessed "of great strength, and, from the nature of the government, "every day threatening to become more powerful." He warned the all-credulous and too-confident English of their insecure tenure of the American colonies; telling them, with a truth as prophetic, and which anticipated the vigorous reasoning of Dean Tucker, that England would not lose her vigour when those colonies obtained their independence. He unveiled the social pretences, which, under colour of protecting female honour, are made the excuse for its violation. He denounced that evil system which left the magistrate, the country justice, and the squire, to punish transgressions in which they had themselves been the guiltiest transgressors. He laughed at the sordidness which makes penny shows of our public temples, turns Deans and Chapters into importunate "beggars," and stoops to pick up half-pence at the tombs of our patriots and

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poets. He laughed at, even while he gloried in, the national

1760.

vaunt of superiority to other nations, which gave fancied t. 32. freedom to the prisoner, riches to the beggar, and enlisted on behalf of church and state fellows who had never profited by either. He protested earnestly against the insufficient

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"I marched up without farther ceremony, and was going to enter, when a 'person, who held the gate in his hand, told me I must pay first. I was "surprised at such a demand, and asked the man whether the people of England "kept a show? whether the paltry sum he demanded was not a national "reproach? whether it was not more to the honour of the country to let their "magnificence or their antiquities be openly seen, than thus meanly to tax a "curiosity which tended to their own honour ? As for your questions, "replied the gate-keeper, to be sure they may be very right, because I don't "understand them; but, as for that there threepence, I farm it from one-who rents "it from another-who hires it from a third-who leases it from the guardians of "the temple; and we all must live." Citizen of the World. Letter xiii.

Who does not remember the talk that the astonished traveller had to listen to soon after his arrival, outside a metropolitan jail? "The conversation was carried on between a debtor through the grate of his prison, a porter who had stopped "to rest his burthen, and a soldier at the window. The subject was upon a "threatened invasion from France, and each seemed extremely anxious to rescue "his country from the impending danger. For my part,' cries the prisoner, 'the "'greatest of my apprehensions is for our freedom; if the French should conquer, 66 what would become of English liberty? My dear friends, liberty is the English"man's prerogative; we must preserve that at the expense of our lives; of that "the French shall never deprive us; it is not to be expected that men who are "slaves themselves would preserve our freedom should they happen to conquer.' Ay, slaves,' cries the porter, 'they are all slaves, fit only to carry burthens, 66 6 every one of them. Before I would stoop to slavery, may this be my poison, "(and he held the goblet in his hand), may this be my poison-but I would 66 6 sooner list for a soldier.' The soldier, taking the goblet from his friend, with "much awe fervently cried out, 'It is not so much our liberties as our religion "that would suffer by such a change; ay, our religion, my lads. May the Devil "sink me into flames (such was the solemnity of his adjuration), if the French "should come over, but our religion would be utterly undone."" Citizen 66 of the World. Letter iv. Byrom's Tom the Porter is now forgotten, but Goldsmith evidently knew the lines:

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