public till many years after Goldsmith's death, when it appeared in Seward's Anecdotes. The poem had been, eminently and in a peculiar degree, written from personal feeling and observation; and the course of its composition has been traced with the course of its author's life. When Boswell came back to London some year or so after its appearance, he tells us with what amazement he had heard Johnson say that "there had not been so fine a poem since Pope's time;' and then amusingly explains the phenomenon by remarking, that "much, no doubt, both of the sentiments and expression "were derived from conversation" with the great lexicographer. What the great lexicographer really suggested was a title, The Philosophic Wanderer, rejected for something simpler; as, if offered, the Johnsonian sentiment and expression would, I suspect, have been. But "Garth did "not write his own Dispensary," and Goldsmith had still less chance of obtaining credit for his. The rumour that Johnson had given great assistance, is nevertheless contradicted by even Hawkins; where he professes to relate the extreme astonishment of the club, that a newspaper essayist and bookseller's drudge should have written such a poem. Undoubtedly that was his own feeling; and others of the members shared it, though it is to be hoped in a less degree. Well," exclaimed Chamier, "I do believe he wrote this poem himself; and let me tell you, that is believing a great deal." Goldsmith had left the club early that night, after "rattling away as usual." In truth he took little pains himself, in the thoughtless simplicity of those social hours, to fence round his own property and claim. "Mr. Gold"smith," asked Chamier, at the next meeting of the club, 1764. Et. 36. 1764. Æt. 36. "what do you mean by the last word in the first line of your "Traveller? 66 6 66 6 'Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.' "Do you mean tardiness of locomotion?" Johnson, who was near them, took part in what followed, and has related it. "Goldsmith, who would say something without consideration, answered 'Yes.' I was sitting by, and said, 'No, 'sir, you did not mean tardiness of locomotion: you mean that sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in "solitude.' Ah!' exclaimed Goldsmith,' that was what "I meant.' Chamier," Johnson adds, "believed then that "I had written the line, as much as if he had seen me write "it." Yet it might be, if Burke had happened to be present, that Johnson would not have been permitted, so obviously to the satisfaction of every one in the room, dictatorially to lay down thus expressly what the poet meant. For who can doubt that he also meant slowness of motion ? The first point of the picture is that. The poet is moving slowly, his tardiness of gait measuring the heaviness of heart, the pensive spirit, the melancholy, of which it is the outward expression and sign. Goldsmith ought to have added to Johnson's remark that he meant all it said, and the other too; but no doubt he fell into one of his old flurries when he heard the general aye aye that saluted the great cham's authoritative version. While he saw that superficially he had been wrong, he must have felt that properly explained his answer was substantially right; but he had no address to say so, the pen not being in his hand. The lines which Johnson really contributed he pointed out himself to Boswell, when laughing at the notion that he had taken any more important part in it.. They were the line which now stands 420th in the poem; and, omitting the last couplet but one, the eight concluding lines. The couplet so grafted on his friend's insertion by Goldsmith himself, is worth all that Johnson added; though its historical allusion was somewhat obscure.. "The lifted axe, the agonising wheel, Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel.” Who was Luke, and what was his iron crown? is a question Tom Davies tells us he had often to answer; being a great resource in difficulties of that kind. "The Doctor referred "me," he says, in a letter to the reverend Mr. Granger, who was compiling his Biographical History and wished to be exact, "to a book called Géographie Curieuse, for an expla"nation of Luke's iron crown." The explanation, besides being in itself incorrect, did not mend matters much. "Luke" had been taken simply for the euphony of the line. He was one of two brothers who had headed a revolt against the Hungarian nobles, at the opening of the sixteenth century; but, though both were tortured, the special horror of the red-hot crown was inflicted upon George.* "Doctor "Goldsmith says," adds Davies, "he meant by Damien's * In a note to this passage in my former edition, I explained that this Géographie Curieuse, which appeared to have been Goldsmith's authority, was nevertheless itself incorrect in the family name of the brothers, which it reports to have been Zeck. They were George and Luke, as stated, and George underwent the punishment of the "iron crown;" but the family name was Dosa. For this I referred to the Biographie Universelle, xi. 604. The origin of the mistake is curious, and has since been explained to me by the courtesy of a correspondent who writes from America. The two brothers belonged to one of the native races of Transylvania called Szeklers or Zecklers, which descriptive addition follows their names in the German biographical authorities; and this, through abridgment, and misapprehension, in subsequent books came at last to be substituted for the family name. In the next edition of his admirable text of Goldsmith's poems (the best now existing), Mr. Bolton Corney will, I hope, restore the original verse, which he appears too hastily to have altered on a somewhat needless as well as tasteless suggestion of Mr. Prior (ii. 38), that to substitute "Zeck for Luke would render the "line historically correct"! 1764. Æt. 36. 1764. Et.36. "iron the rack; but I believe the newspapers informed us that he was confined in a high tower, and actually obliged "to lie upon an iron bed."* So little was Davies, any more than Chamier, Johnson, or any one else, disposed to take the poet's meaning on the authority of his own explanation of it. Nay, sir," said Johnson very candidly, when it was suggested, some years afterwards, that the partiality of its author's friends might have weighed too much in their judgment of this poem," the partiality of his friends was always against him. It was with difficulty we could give "him a hearing." Explanation of much that receives too sharp a judgment in ordinary estimates of his character, seems to be found, as I have said, in this. When partiality takes the shape of pity, we must not wonder if it is met by the vanities, the conceits, the half shame and half bravado, of that kind of self-assertion which is but self-distrust disguised. Very difficult did Goldsmith find it to force his way, with even the Traveller in his hand, against these patronising airs and charitable allowances. "But he imitates you, sir," said Mr. Boswell, when, on return from his Dutch studies, he found this poem had really gone far to make its writer for the time more interesting than even Johnson himself. " Why no, sir," Johnson answered. "Jack Hawkes"worth is one of my imitators; but not Goldsmith. Goldy, sir, has great merit." "But, sir," persisted the staunch disciple," he is much indebted to you for his getting so 66 high in the public estimation." " Why, sir," complacently responded the sage," he has perhaps got sooner to it by his "intimacy with me.”† Without the reserves, the merit might sometimes be * Granger's Letters, 52-3. Jan. 26, 1771. + Boswell, iii. 253. allowed; but seldom without something of a sting. "Well, "I never more shall think Doctor Goldsmith ugly," was the frank tribute of the sister of Reynolds, after hearing Johnson read the Traveller aloud "from the beginning to "the end of it," a few days after it was published.* Here was another point of friendliest and most general agreement. "Renny dear," now a mature and very fidgety little dame of seven-and-thirty, had never been noted for her beauty; and few would associate such a thing with the seamed, scarred face of Johnson; but the preponderating ugliness of Goldsmith was a thing admitted and allowed for all to fling a stone at, however brittle their own habitations. Miss Reynolds had founded her admiring tribute on what she had herself said at a party in her brother's house some days before. It had been suddenly proposed, as a social game after supper, to toast ordinary women, and have them matched by ordinary men; whereupon one of the gentlemen having given Miss Williams, Johnson's blind old pensioner, Miss Reynolds instantly matched her with Goldsmith; and this whimsical union so enchanted Mrs. Cholmondeley, that, though she had at the time some pique with Renny dear, she ran round the table, kissed her, and said she forgave her everything for her last toast. "Thus," exclaimed Johnson, who was present, and whose wit at his friend's expense was rewarded with a roar, "thus the ancients, on the making-up of their quarrels, "used to sacrifice a beast betwixt them."+ Poor Goldsmith! * See Miss Reynolds's recollections printed in the appendix to Croker's Boswell. Of these I ought to remark, however, that several of them (as Mr. Croker himself admits of one) are manifestly fabricated out of imperfect or confused recollections of anecdotes elsewhere existing, an example of which I give in my next note. + My authority for this anecdote, the point of which is missed in Miss Reynolds's recollections (Croker's Boswell, 831) hitherto supposed to be the only authority for it, is a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for July 1797. No sacrifice was called for at the commencement of a friendship: it was the cessation or reconciliation 1764. Æt. 36. |