name some of the essays of oliver goldsmith

OLIVER GOLDSMITH (Sir Joshua Reynolds)

OXFORD EDITION

The complete poetical works of oliver goldsmith.

Edited with Introduction and Notes by AUSTIN DOBSON HON. LL.D. EDIN.

PREFATORY NOTE

This volume is a reprint, extended and revised, of the Selected Poems of Goldsmith issued by the Clarendon Press in 1887. It is ‘extended,’ because it now contains the whole of Goldsmith’s poetry: it is ‘revised’ because, besides the supplementary text, a good deal has been added in the way of annotation and illustration. In other words, the book has been substantially enlarged. Of the new editorial material, the bulk has been collected at odd times during the last twenty years; but fresh Goldsmith facts are growing rare. I hope I have acknowledged obligation wherever it has been incurred; I trust also, for the sake of those who come after me, that something of my own will be found to have been contributed to the literature of the subject.

AUSTIN DOBSON.

Ealing, September , 1906.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Introduction.

Two of the earlier, and, in some respects, more important Memoirs of Oliver Goldsmith open with a quotation from one of his minor works, in which he refers to the generally uneventful life of the scholar. His own chequered career was a notable exception to this rule. He was born on the 10th of November, 1728, at Pallas, a village in the county of Longford in Ireland, his father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, being a clergyman of the Established Church. Oliver was the fifth of a family of five sons and three daughters. In 1730, his father, who had been assisting the rector of the neighbouring parish of Kilkenny West, succeeded to that living, and moved to Lissoy, a hamlet in Westmeath, lying a little to the right of the road from Ballymahon to Athlone. Educated first by a humble relative named Elizabeth Delap, the boy passed subsequently to the care of Thomas Byrne, the village schoolmaster, an old soldier who had fought Queen Anne’s battles in Spain, and had retained from those experiences a wandering and unsettled spirit, which he is thought to have communicated to one at least of his pupils. After an attack of confluent small-pox, which scarred him for life, Oliver was transferred from the care of this not-uncongenial preceptor to a school at Elphin. From Elphin he passed to Athlone; from Athlone to Edgeworthstown, where he remained until he was thirteen or fourteen years of age. The accounts of these early days are contradictory. By his schoolfellows he seems to have been regarded as stupid and heavy,—‘little better than a fool’; but they admitted that he was remarkably active and athletic, and that he was an adept in all boyish sports. At home, notwithstanding a variable disposition, and occasional fits of depression, he showed to greater advantage. He scribbled verses early; and sometimes startled those about him by unexpected ‘swallow-flights’ of repartee. One of these, an oft-quoted retort to a musical friend who had likened his awkward antics in a hornpipe to the dancing of Aesop,—

Heralds! proclaim aloud! all saying, See Aesop dancing, and his monkey playing,—

reads more like a happily-adapted recollection than the actual impromptu of a boy of nine. But another, in which, after a painful silence, he replied to the brutal enquiry of a ne’er-do-well relative as to when he meant to grow handsome, by saying that he would do so when the speaker grew good,—is characteristic of the easily-wounded spirit and ‘exquisite sensibility of contempt’ with which he was to enter upon the battle of life.

In June, 1744, after anticipating in his own person, the plot of his later play of She Stoops to Conquer by mistaking the house of a gentleman at Ardagh for an inn, he was sent to Trinity College, Dublin. The special dress and semi-menial footing of a sizar or poor scholar—for his father, impoverished by the imprudent portioning of his eldest daughter, could not afford to make him a pensioner—were scarcely calculated to modify his personal peculiarities. Added to these, his tutor elect, Dr. Theaker Wilder, was a violent and vindictive man, with whom his ungainly and unhopeful pupil found little favour. Wilder had a passion for mathematics which was not shared by Goldsmith, who, indeed, spoke contemptuously enough of that science in after life. He could, however, he told Malone, ‘turn an Ode of Horace into English better than any of them.’ But his academic career was not a success.

PANE OF GLASS WITH GOLDSMITH’S AUTOGRAPH (Trinity College, Dublin)

In May, 1747, the year in which his father died,—an event that further contracted his already slender means,—he became involved in a college riot, and was publicly admonished. From this disgrace he recovered to some extent in the following month by obtaining a trifling money exhibition, a triumph which he unluckily celebrated by a party at his rooms. Into these festivities, the heinousness of which was aggravated by the fact that they included guests of both sexes, the exasperated Wilder made irruption, and summarily terminated the proceedings by knocking down the host. The disgrace was too much for the poor lad. He forthwith sold his books and belongings, and ran away, vaguely bound for America. But after considerable privations, including the achievement of a destitution so complete that a handful of grey peas, given him by a girl at a wake, seemed a banquet, he turned his steps homeward, and, a reconciliation having been patched up with his tutor, he was received once more at college. In February, 1749, he took his degree, a low one, as B.A., and quitted the university, leaving behind him, for relics of that time, a scratched signature upon a window-pane, a folio Scapula scored liberally with ‘promises to pay,’ and a reputation for much loitering at the college gates in the study of passing humanity. Another habit which his associates recalled was his writing of ballads when in want of funds. These he would sell at five shillings apiece; and would afterwards steal out in the twilight to hear them sung to the indiscriminate but applauding audience of the Dublin streets.

What was to be done with a genius so unstable, so erratic? Nothing, apparently, but to let him qualify for orders, and for this he is too young. Thereupon ensues a sort of ‘Martin’s summer’ in his changing life,—a disengaged, delightful time when ‘Master Noll’ wanders irresponsibly from house to house, fishing and flute-playing, or, of winter evenings, taking the chair at the village inn. When at last the moment came for his presentation to the Bishop of Elphin, that prelate, sad to say, rejected him, perhaps because of his college reputation, perhaps because of actual incompetence, perhaps even, as tradition affirms, because he had the bad taste to appear before his examiner in flaming scarlet breeches. After this rebuff, tutoring was next tried. But he had no sooner saved some thirty pounds by teaching, than he threw up his engagement, bought a horse, and started once more for America, by way of Cork. In six weeks he had returned penniless, having substituted for his roadster a sorry jade, to which he gave the contemptuous name of Fiddleback. He had also the simplicity to wonder, on this occasion, that his mother was not rejoiced to see him again. His next ambition was to be a lawyer; and, to this end, a kindly Uncle Contarine equipped him with fifty pounds for preliminary studies. But on his way to London he was decoyed into gambling, lost every farthing, and came home once more in bitter self-abasement. Having now essayed both divinity and law, his next attempt was physic; and, in 1752, fitted out afresh by his long-suffering uncle, he started for, and succeeded in reaching, Edinburgh. Here more memories survive of his social qualities than of his studies; and two years later he left the Scottish capital for Leyden, rather, it may be conjectured, from a restless desire to see the world than really to exchange the lectures of Monro for the lectures of Albinus. At Newcastle (according to his own account) he had the good fortune to be locked up as a Jacobite, and thus escaped drowning, as the ship by which he was to have sailed to Bordeaux sank at the mouth of the Garonne. Shortly afterwards he arrived in Leyden. Gaubius and other Dutch professors figure sonorously in his future works; but whether he had much experimental knowledge of their instructions may be doubted. What seems undeniable is, that the old seduction of play stripped him of every shilling; so that, like Holberg before him, he set out deliberately to make the tour of Europe on foot. Haud inexpertus loquor, he wrote in after days, when praising this mode of locomotion. He first visited Flanders. Thence he passed to France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, supporting himself mainly by his flute, and by occasional disputations at convents or universities. ‘Sir,’ said Boswell to Johnson, ‘he disputed his passage through Europe.’ When on the 1st February, 1756, he landed at Dover, it was with empty pockets. But he had sent home to his brother in Ireland his first rough sketch for the poem of The Traveller .

He was now seven-and-twenty. He had seen and suffered much, but he was to have further trials before drifting definitely into literature. Between Dover and London, it has been surmised, he made a tentative appearance as a strolling player. His next ascertained part was that of an apothecary’s assistant on Fish Street Hill. From this, with the opportune aid of an Edinburgh friend, he proceeded—to use an eighteenth-century phrase—a poor physician in the Bankside, Southwark, where least of all, perhaps, was London’s fabled pavement to be found. So little of it, in fact, fell to Goldsmith’s share, that we speedily find him reduced to the rank of reader and corrector of the press to Samuel Richardson, printer, of Salisbury Court, author of Clarissa . Later still he is acting as help or substitute in Dr. Milner’s ‘classical academy’ at Peckham. Here, at last, chance seemed to open to him the prospect of a literary life. He had already, says report, submitted a manuscript tragedy to Richardson’s judgement; and something he said at Dr. Milner’s table attracted the attention of an occasional visitor there, the bookseller Griffiths, who was also proprietor of the Monthly Review. He invited Dr. Milner’s usher to try his hand at criticism; and finally, in April, 1757, Goldsmith was bound over for a year to that venerable lady whom George Primrose dubs ‘the antiqua mater of Grub Street’—in other words, he was engaged for bed, board, and a fixed salary to supply copy-of-all-work to his master’s magazine.

The arrangement thus concluded was not calculated to endure. After some five months of labour from nine till two, and often later, it came suddenly to an end. No clear explanation of the breach is forthcoming, but mere incompatability of temper would probably supply a sufficient ground for disagreement. Goldsmith, it is said, complained that the bookseller and his wife treated him ill, and denied him ordinary comforts; added to which the lady, a harder taskmistress even than the antiqua mater above referred to, joined with her husband in ‘editing’ his articles, a course which, hard though it may seem, is not unprecedented. However this may be, either in September or October, 1757, he was again upon the world, existing precariously from hand to mouth. ‘By a very little practice as a physician, and very little reputation as a poet [a title which, as Prior suggests, possibly means no more than author], I make a shift to live.’ So he wrote to his brother-in-law in December. What his literary occupations were cannot be definitely stated; but, if not prepared before, they probably included the translation of a remarkable work issued by Griffiths and others in the ensuing February. This was the Memoirs of a Protestant, condemned to the Galleys of France for his Religion, being the authentic record of the sufferings of one Jean Marteilhe of Bergerac, a book of which Michelet has said that it is ‘written as if between earth and heaven.’ Marteilhe, who died at Cuylenberg in 1777, was living in Holland in 1758; and it may be that Goldsmith had seen or heard of him during his own stay in that country. The translation, however, did not bear Goldsmith’s name, but that of James Willington, one of his old class-fellows at Trinity College. Nevertheless, Prior says distinctly that Griffiths (who should have known) declared it to be by Goldsmith. Moreover, the French original had been catalogued in Griffiths’ magazine in the second month of Goldsmith’s servitude, a circumstance which colourably supplies the reason for its subsequent rendering into English.

The publication of Marteilhe’s Memoirs had no influence upon Goldsmith’s fortunes, for, in a short time, he was again installed at Peckham, in place of Dr. Milner invalided, waiting hopefully for the fulfilment of a promise by his old master to procure him a medical appointment on a foreign station. It is probably that, with a view to provide the needful funds for this expatriation, he now began to sketch the little volume afterwards published under the title of An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe , for towards the middle of the year we find him addressing long letters to his relatives in Ireland to enlist their aid in soliciting subscriptions for this book. At length the desired advancement was obtained,—a nomination as a physician and surgeon to one of the factories on the coast of Coromandel. But banishment to the East Indies was not to be his destiny. For some unexplained reason the project came to nothing; and then—like Roderick Random—he presented himself at Surgeons’ Hall for the more modest office of a hospital mate. This was on the 21st of December, 1758. The curt official record states that he was ‘found not qualified.’ What made matters worse, the necessity for a decent appearance before the examiners had involved him in new obligations to Griffiths, out of which arose fresh difficulties. To pay his landlady, whose husband was arrested for debt, he pawned the suit he had procured by Griffiths’ aid; and he also raised money on some volumes which had been sent him for review. Thereupon ensued an angry and humiliating correspondence with the bookseller, as a result of which Griffiths, nevertheless, appears to have held his hand.

By this time Goldsmith had moved into those historic but now non-existent lodgings in 12 Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey, which have been photographed for ever in Irving’s Tales of a Traveller. It was here that the foregoing incidents took place; and it was here also that, early in 1759, ‘in a wretched dirty room, in which there was but one chair,’ the Rev. Thomas Percy, afterwards Bishop of Dromore, found him composing (or more probably correcting the proofs of) The Enquiry. ‘At least spare invective ’till my book with Mr. Dodsley shall be publish’d,’—he had written not long before to the irate Griffiths—‘and then perhaps you may see the bright side of a mind when my professions shall not appear the dictates of necessity but of choice.’ The Enquiry came out on the 2nd of April. It had no author’s name, but it was an open secret that Goldsmith had written it; and to this day it remains to the critic one of the most interesting of his works. Obviously, in a duodecimo of some two hundred widely-printed pages, it was impossible to keep the high-sounding promise of its title; and at best its author’s knowledge of the subject, notwithstanding his continental wanderings, can have been but that of an external spectator. Still in an age when critical utterance was more than ordinarily full-wigged and ponderous, it dared to be sprightly and epigrammatic. Some of its passages, besides, bear upon the writer’s personal experiences, and serve to piece the imperfections of his biography. If it brought him no sudden wealth, it certainly raised his reputation with the book-selling world. A connexion already begun with Smollett’s Critical Review was drawn closer; and the shrewd Sosii of the Row began to see the importance of securing so vivacious and unconventional a pen. Towards the end of the year he was writing for Wilkie the collection of periodical essays entitled The Bee ; and contributing to the same publisher’s Lady’s Magazine , as well as to The Busy Body of one Pottinger. In these, more than ever, he was finding his distinctive touch; and ratifying anew, with every fresh stroke of his pen, his bondage to authorship as a calling.

He had still, however, to conquer the public. The Bee , although it contains one of his most characteristic essays (‘A City Night-Piece’), and some of the most popular of his lighter verses (‘The Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize’), never attained the circulation essential to healthy existence. It closed with its eighth number in November, 1759. In the following month two gentlemen called at Green Arbour Court to enlist the services of its author. One was Smollett, with a new serial, The British Magazine ; the other was Johnson’s ‘Jack Whirler,’ bustling Mr. John Newbery from the ‘Bible and Sun’ in St. Paul’s Churchyard, with a new daily newspaper, The Public Ledger . For Smollett, Goldsmith wrote the ‘Reverie at the Boar’s Head Tavern’ and the ‘Adventures of a Strolling Player,’ besides a number of minor papers. For Newbery, by a happy recollection of the Lettres Persanes of Montesquieu, or some of his imitators, he struck almost at once into that charming epistolary series, brimful of fine observation, kindly satire, and various fancy, which was ultimately to become the English classic known as The Citizen of the World . He continued to produce these letters periodically until the August of the following year, when they were announced for republication in ‘two volumes of the usual Spectator size.’ In this form they appeared in May, 1762.

But long before this date a change for the better had taken place in Goldsmith’s life. Henceforth he was sure of work,—mere journey-work though much of it must have been;—and, had his nature been less improvident, of freedom from absolute want. The humble lodgings in the Old Bailey were discarded for new premises at No. 6 Wine Office Court, Fleet Street; and here, on the 31st of May, 1761, with Percy, came one whose name was often in the future to be associated with Goldsmith’s, the great Dictator of London literary society, Samuel Johnson. Boswell, who made Johnson’s acquaintance later, has not recorded the humours of that supper; but it marks the beginning of Goldsmith’s friendship with the man who of all others (Reynolds excepted) loved him most and understood him best.

During the remainder of 1761 he continued busily to ply his pen. Besides his contributions to The Ledger and The British Magazine , he edited The Lady’s Magazine , inserting in it the Memoirs of Voltaire , drawn up some time earlier to accompany a translation of the Henriade by his crony and compatriot Edward Purdon. Towards the beginning of 1762 he was hard at work on several compilations for Newbery, for whom he wrote or edited a History of Mecklenburgh , and a series of monthly volumes of an abridgement of Plutarch’s Lives . In October of the same year was published the Life of Richard Nash , apparently the outcome of special holiday-visits to the then fashionable watering-place of Bath, whence its fantastic old Master of the Ceremonies had only very lately made his final exit. It is a pleasantly gossiping, and not unedifying little book, which still holds a respectable place among its author’s minor works. But a recently discovered entry in an old ledger shows that during the latter half of 1762 he must have planned, if he had not, indeed, already in part composed, a far more important effort, The Vicar of Wakefield . For on the 28th of October in this year he sold to one Benjamin Collins, printer, of Salisbury, for 21 pounds, a third in a work with that title, further described as ‘2 vols. 12mo.’ How this little circumstance, discovered by Mr. Charles Welsh when preparing his Life of John Newbery, is to be brought into agreement with the time-honoured story, related (with variations) by Boswell and others, to the effect that Johnson negotiated the sale of the manuscript for Goldsmith when the latter was arrested for rent by his incensed landlady—has not yet been satisfactorily suggested. Possibly the solution is a simple one, referable to some of those intricate arrangements favoured by ‘the Trade’ at a time when not one but half a score publishers’ names figured in an imprint. At present, the fact that Collins bought a third share of the book from the author for twenty guineas, and the statement that Johnson transferred the entire manuscript to a bookseller for sixty pounds, seem irreconcilable. That The Vicar of Wakefield was nevertheless written, or was being written, in 1762, is demonstrable from internal evidence.

About Christmas in the same year Goldsmith moved into lodgings at Islington, his landlady being one Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming, a friend of Newbery, to whose generalship this step seems attributable. From the curious accounts printed by Prior and Forster, it is clear that the publisher was Mrs. Fleming’s paymaster, punctually deducting his disbursements from the account current between himself and Goldsmith, an arrangement which as plainly indicates the foresight of the one as it implies the improvidence of the other. Of the work which Goldsmith did for the businesslike and not unkindly little man, there is no very definite evidence; but various prefaces, introductions, and the like, belong to this time; and he undoubtedly was the author of the excellent History of England in a Series of Letters addressed by a Nobleman to his Son , published anonymously in June, 1764, and long attributed, for the grace of its style, to Lyttelton, Chesterfield, Orrery, and other patrician pens. Meanwhile his range of acquaintance was growing larger. The establishment, at the beginning of 1764, of the famous association known afterwards as the ‘Literary Club’ brought him into intimate relations with Beauclerk, Reynolds, Langton, Burke, and others. Hogarth, too, is said to have visited him at Islington, and to have painted the portrait of Mrs. Fleming. Later in the same year, incited thereto by the success of Christopher Smart’s Hannah , he wrote the Oratorio of The Captivity , now to be found in most editions of his poems, but never set to music. Then after the slow growth of months, was issued on the 19th December the elaboration of that fragmentary sketch which he had sent years before to his brother Henry from the Continent, the poem entitled The Traveller; or, A Prospect of Society .

In the notes appended to The Traveller in the present volume, its origin and progress are sufficiently explained. Its success was immediate and enduring. The beauty of the descriptive passages, the subtle simplicity of the language, the sweetness and finish of the versification, found ready admirers,—perhaps all the more because of the contrast they afforded to the rough and strenuous sounds with which Charles Churchill had lately filled the public ear. Johnson, who contributed a few lines at the close, proclaimed The Traveller to be the best poem since the death of Pope; and it is certainly not easy to find its equal among the works of contemporary bards. It at once raised Goldsmith from the condition of a clever newspaper essayist, or—as men like Sir John Hawkins would have said—a mere ‘bookseller’s drudge,’ to the foremost rank among the poets of the day. Another result of its success was the revival of some of his earlier work, which, however neglected by the author, had been freely appropriated by the discerning pirate. In June, 1765, Griffin and Newbery published a little volume of Essays by Mr. Goldsmith , including some of the best of his contributions to The Bee, The Busy Body, The Public Ledger , and The British Magazine , besides ‘The Double Transformation’ and ‘The Logicians Refuted,’ two pieces of verse in imitation of Prior and Swift, which have not been traced to an earlier source. To the same year belongs the first version of a poem which he himself regarded as his best work, and which still retains something of its former popularity. This was the ballad of Edwin and Angelina , otherwise known as The Hermit . It originated in certain metrical discussions with Percy, then engaged upon his famous Reliques of English Poetry ; and in 1765, Goldsmith, who through his friend Nugent (afterwards Lord Clare) had made the acquaintance of the Earl of Northumberland, printed it privately for the amusement of the Countess. In a revised and amended form it was subsequently given to the world in The Vicar of Wakefield .

With the exception of an abortive attempt to resume his practice as a medical man,—an attempt which seems to have been frustrated by the preternatural strength of his prescriptions,—the next memorable thing in Goldsmith’s life is the publication of The Vicar of Wakefield itself. It made its appearance on the 27th of March, 1766. A second edition followed in May, a third in August. Why, having been sold (in part) to a Salisbury printer as far back as October, 1762, it had remained unprinted so long; and why, when published, it was published by Francis Newbery and not by John Newbery, Goldsmith’s employer,—are questions at present unsolved. But the charm of this famous novel is as fresh as when it was first issued. Its inimitable types, its happy mingling of Christianity and character, its wholesome benevolence and its practical wisdom, are still unimpaired. We smile at the inconsistencies of the plot; but we are carried onward in spite of them, captivated by the grace, the kindliness, the gentle humour of the story. Yet it is a mistake to suppose that its success was instantaneous. Pirated it was, of course; but, according to expert investigations, the authorized edition brought so little gain to its first proprietors that the fourth issue of 1770 started with a loss. The fifth, published in April, 1774, was dated 1773; and had apparently been withheld because the previous edition, which consisted of no more than one thousand copies, was not exhausted. Five years elapsed before the sixth edition made its tardy appearance in 1779. These facts show that the writer’s contemporaries were not his most eager readers. But he has long since appealed to the wider audience of posterity; and his fame is not confined to his native country, for he has been translated into most European languages. Dr. Primrose and his family are now veritable ‘citizens of the world.’

A selection of Poems for Young Ladies , in the ‘Moral’ division of which he included his own Edwin and Angelina ; two volumes of Beauties of English Poesy , disfigured with strange heedlessness, by a couple of the most objectionable pieces of Prior; a translation of a French history of philosophy, and other occasional work, followed the publication of the Vicar . But towards the middle of 1766, he was meditating a new experiment in that line in which Farquhar, Steele, Southerne, and others of his countrymen had succeeded before him. A fervent lover of the stage, he detested the vapid and colourless ‘genteel’ comedy which had gradually gained ground in England; and he determined to follow up The Clandestine Marriage , then recently adapted by Colman and Garrick from Hogarth’s Marriage A-la-Mode , with another effort of the same class, depending exclusively for its interest upon humour and character. Early in 1767 it was completed, and submitted to Garrick for Drury Lane. But Garrick perhaps too politic to traverse the popular taste, temporized; and eventually after many delays and disappointments, The Good Natur’d Man , as it was called, was produced at Covent Garden by Colman on the 29th of January, 1768. Its success was only partial; and in deference to the prevailing craze for the ‘genteel,’ an admirable scene of low humour had to be omitted in the representation. But the piece, notwithstanding, brought the author 400 pounds, to which the sale of the book, with the condemned passages restored, added another 100 pounds. Furthermore, Johnson, whose ‘Suspirius’ in The Rambler was, under the name of ‘Croaker,’ one of its most prominent personages, pronounced it to be the best comedy since Cibber’s Provok’d Husband .

During the autumn of 1767, Goldsmith had again been living at Islington. On this occasion he had a room in Canonbury Tower, Queen Elizabeth’s old hunting-lodge, and perhaps occupied the very chamber generally used by John Newbery, whose active life was, in this year, to close. When in London he had modest housing in the Temple. But the acquisition of 500 pounds for The Good Natur’d Man seemed to warrant a change of residence, and he accordingly expended four-fifths of that sum for the lease of three rooms on the second floor of No. 2 Brick Court, which he straightway proceeded to decorate sumptuously with mirrors, Wilton carpets, moreen curtains, and Pembroke tables. It was an unfortunate step; and he would have done well to remember the Nil te quaesiveris extra with which his inflexible monitor, Johnson, had greeted his apologies for the shortcomings of some earlier lodgings. One of its natural results was to involve him in a new sequence of task-work, from which he never afterwards shook himself free. Hence, following hard upon a Roman History which he had already engaged to write for Davies of Russell Street, came a more ambitious project for Griffin, A History of Animated Nature ; and after this again, another History of England for Davies. The pay was not inadequate; for the first he was to have 250 guineas, for the second 800 guineas, and for the last 500 pounds. But as employment for the author of a unique novel, an excellent comedy, and a deservedly successful poem, it was surely—in his own words—‘to cut blocks with a razor.’

And yet, apart from the anxieties of growing money troubles, his life could not have been wholly unhappy. There are records of pleasant occasional junketings—‘shoe-maker’s holidays’ he called them—in the still countrified suburbs of Hampstead and Edgware; there was the gathering at the Turk’s Head, with its literary magnates, for his severer hours; and for his more pliant moments, the genial ‘free-and-easy’ or shilling whist-club of a less pretentious kind, where the student of mixed character might shine with something of the old supremacy of George Conway’s inn at Ballymahon. And there must have been quieter and more chastened resting-places of memory, when, softening towards the home of his youth, with a sadness made more poignant by the death of his brother Henry in May, 1768, he planned and perfected his new poem of The Deserted Village .

In December, 1769, the recent appointment of his friend Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy brought him the honorary office of Professor of History to that institution; and to Reynolds The Deserted Village was dedicated. It appeared on the 26th of May, 1770, with a success equal, if not superior, to that of The Traveller . It ran through five editions in the year of its publication; and has ever since retained its reputation. If, as alleged, contemporary critics ranked it below its predecessor, the reason advanced by Washington Irving, that the poet had become his own rival, is doubtless correct; and there is always a prejudice in favour of the first success. This, however, is not an obstacle which need disturb the reader now; and he will probably decide that in grace and tenderness of description The Deserted Village in no wise falls short of The Traveller ; and that its central idea, and its sympathy with humanity, give it a higher value as a work of art.

After The Deserted Village had appeared, Goldsmith made a short trip to Paris, in company with Mrs. and the two Miss Hornecks, the elder of whom, christened by the poet with the pretty pet-name of ‘The Jessamy Bride,’ is supposed to have inspired him with more than friendly feelings. Upon his return he had to fall again to the old ‘book-building’ in order to recruit his exhausted finances. Since his last poem he had published a short Life of Parnell ; and Davies now engaged him on a Life of Bolingbroke , and an abridgement of the Roman History . Thus, with visits to friends, among others to Lord Clare, for whom he wrote the delightful occasional verses called The Haunch of Venison , the months wore on until, in December, 1770, the print-shops began to be full of the well-known mezzotint which Marchi had engraved from his portrait by Sir Joshua.

His chief publications in the next two years were the above-mentioned History of England , 1771; Threnodia Augustalis , a poetical lament-to-order on the death of the Princess Dowager of Wales, 1772; and the abridgement of the Roman History , 1772. But in the former year he had completed a new comedy, She Stoops to Conquer; or, The Mistakes of a Night , which, after the usual vexatious negotiations, was brought out by Colman at Covent Garden on Monday, the 15th of March, 1773. The manager seems to have acted Goldsmith’s own creation of ‘Croaker’ with regard to this piece, and even to the last moment predicted its failure. But it was a brilliant success. More skilful in construction than The Good Natur’d Man , more various in its contrasts of character, richer and stronger in humour and vis comica , She Stoops to Conquer has continued to provide an inexhaustible fund of laughter to more than three generations of playgoers, and still bids fair to retain the character generally given to it, of being one of the three most popular comedies upon the English stage. When published, it was gratefully inscribed, in one of those admirable dedications of which its author above all men possessed the secret, to Johnson, who had befriended it from the first. ‘I do not mean,’ wrote Goldsmith, ‘so much to compliment you as myself. It may do me some honour to inform the public, that I have lived many years in intimacy with you. It may serve the interests of mankind also to inform them, that the greatest wit may be found in a character, without impairing the most unaffected piety.’

His gains from She Stoops to Conquer were considerable; but by this time his affairs had reached a stage of complication which nothing short of a miracle could disentangle; and there is reason for supposing that his involved circumstances preyed upon his mind. During the few months of life that remained to him he published nothing, being doubtless sufficiently occupied by the undertakings to which he was already committed. The last of his poetical efforts was the poem entitled Retaliation , a group of epitaph-epigrams prompted by some similar jeux d’esprit directed against himself by Garrick and other friends, and left incomplete at his death. In March, 1774, the combined effects of work and worry, added to a local disorder, brought on a nervous fever, which he unhappily aggravated by the use of a patent medicine called ‘James’s Powder.’ He had often relied upon this before, but in the present instance it was unsuited to his complaint. On Monday, the 4th of April, 1774, he died, in his forty-sixth year, and was buried on the 9th in the burying-ground of the Temple Church. Two years later a monument, with a medallion portrait by Nollekens, and a Latin inscription by Johnson, was erected to him in Westminster Abbey, at the expense of the Literary Club. But although the inscription contains more than one phrase of felicitous discrimination, notably the oft-quoted affectuum potens, at lenis dominator , it may be doubted whether the simpler words used by his rugged old friend in a letter to Langton are not a fitter farewell to Oliver Goldsmith,—‘Let not his frailties be remembered; he was a very great man.’

In person Goldsmith was short and strongly built. His complexion was rather fair, but he was deeply scarred with small-pox; and—if we may believe his own account—the vicissitudes and privations of his early life had not tended to diminish his initial disadvantages. ‘You scarcely can conceive,’ he writes to his brother in 1759, ‘how much eight years of disappointment, anguish, and study, have worn me down. . . . Imagine to yourself a pale melancholy visage, with two great wrinkles between the eye-brows, with an eye disgustingly severe, and a big wig; and you may have a perfect picture of my present appearance,’ i.e. at thirty years of age. ‘I can neither laugh nor drink,’ he goes on; ‘have contracted an hesitating, disagreeable manner of speaking, and a visage that looks ill-nature itself; in short, I have thought myself into a settled melancholy, and an utter disgust of all that life brings with it.’ It is obvious that this description is largely coloured by passing depression. ‘His features,’ says one contemporary, ‘were plain, but not repulsive,—certainly not so when lighted up by conversation.’ Another witness—the ‘Jessamy Bride’—declares that ‘his benevolence was unquestionable, and his countenance bore every trace of it.’ His true likeness would seem to lie midway between the grotesquely truthful sketch by Bunbury prefixed in 1776 to the Haunch of Venison , and the portrait idealized by personal regard, which Reynolds painted in 1770. In this latter he is shown wearing, in place of his customary wig, his own scant brown hair, and, on this occasion, masquerades in a furred robe, and falling collar. But even through the disguise of a studio ‘costume,’ the finely-perceptive genius of Reynolds has managed to suggest much that is most appealing in his sitter’s nature. Past suffering, present endurance, the craving to be understood, the mute deprecation of contempt, are all written legibly in this pathetic picture. It has been frequently copied, often very ineffectively, for so subtle is the art that the slightest deviation hopelessly distorts and vulgarizes what Reynolds has done supremely, once and for ever.

Goldsmith’s character presents but few real complexities. What seems most to have impressed his contemporaries is the difference, emphasized by the happily-antithetic epigram of Garrick, between his written style and his conversation; and collaterally, between his eminence as a literary man and his personal insignificance. Much of this is easily intelligible. He had started in life with few temporal or physical advantages, and with a native susceptibility that intensified his defects. Until he became a middle-aged man, he led a life of which we do not even now know all the degradations; and these had left their mark upon his manners. With the publication of The Traveller , he became at once the associate of some of the best talent and intellect in England,—of fine gentlemen such as Beauclerk and Langton, of artists such as Reynolds and Garrick, of talkers such as Johnson and Burke. Morbidly self-conscious, nervously anxious to succeed, he was at once forced into a competition for which neither his antecedents nor his qualifications had prepared him. To this, coupled with the old habit of poverty, must be attributed his oft-cited passion for fine clothes, which surely arose less from vanity than from a mistaken attempt to extenuate what he felt to be his most obvious shortcomings. As a talker especially he was ill-fitted to shine. He was easily disconcerted by retort, and often discomfited in argument. To the end of his days he never lost his native brogue; and (as he himself tells us) he had that most fatal of defects to a narrator, a slow and hesitating manner. The perspicuity which makes the charm of his writings deserted him in conversation; and his best things were momentary flashes. But some of these were undoubtedly very happy. His telling Johnson that he would make the little fishes talk like whales; his affirmation of Burke that he wound into a subject like a serpent; and half-a-dozen other well-remembered examples—afford ample proof of this. Something of the uneasy jealousy he is said to have exhibited with regard to certain of his contemporaries may also be connected with the long probation of obscurity during which he had been a spectator of the good fortune of others, to whom he must have known himself superior. His improvidence seems to have been congenital, since it is to be traced ‘even from his boyish days.’ But though it cannot justly be ascribed to any reaction from want to sufficiency, it can still less be supposed to have been diminished by that change. If he was careless of money, it must also be remembered that he gave much of it away; and fortune lingers little with those whose ears are always open to a plausible tale of distress. Of his sensibility and genuine kindheartedness there is no doubt. And it is well to remember that most of the tales to his disadvantage come, not from his more distinguished companions, but from such admitted detractors as Hawkins and Boswell. It could be no mean individuality that acquired the esteem, and deserved the regret, of Johnson and Reynolds.

In an edition of Goldsmith’s poems, any extended examination of his remaining productions would be out of place. Moreover, the bulk of these is considerably reduced when all that may properly be classed as hack-work has been withdrawn. The histories of Greece, of Rome, and of England; the Animated Nature ; the lives of Nash, Voltaire, Parnell, and Bolingbroke, are merely compilations, only raised to the highest level in that line because they proceeded from a man whose gift of clear and easy exposition lent a charm to everything he touched. With the work which he did for himself, the case is different. Into The Citizen of the World , The Vicar of Wakefield , and his two comedies, he put all the best of his knowledge of human nature, his keen sympathy with his kind, his fine common-sense and his genial humour. The same qualities, tempered by a certain grace and tenderness, also enter into the best of his poems. Avoiding the epigram of Pope and the austere couplet of Johnson, he yet borrowed something from each, which he combined with a delicacy and an amenity that he had learned from neither. He himself, in all probability, would have rested his fame on his three chief metrical efforts, The Traveller , The Hermit , and The Deserted Village . But, as is often the case, he is remembered even more favourably by some of those delightful familiar verses, unprinted during his lifetime, which he threw off with no other ambition than the desire to amuse his friends. Retaliation , The Haunch of Venison , the Letter in Prose and Verse to Mrs. Bunbury , all afford noteworthy exemplification of that playful touch and wayward fancy which constitute the chief attraction of this species of poetry. In his imitations of Swift and Prior, and his variations upon French suggestions, his personal note is scarcely so apparent; but the two Elegies and some of the minor pieces retain a deserved reputation. His ingenious prologues and epilogues also serve to illustrate the range and versatility of his talent. As a rule, the arrangement in the present edition is chronological; but it has not been thought necessary to depart from the practice which gives a time-honoured precedence to The Traveller and The Deserted Village . The true sequence of the poems, in their order of publication, is, however, exactly indicated in the table which follows this Introduction.

CHRONOLOGY OF GOLDSMITH’S LIFE AND POEMS.

VIGNETTE TO ‘THE TRAVELLER’ (Samuel Wale)

DESCRIPTIVE POEMS

THE TRAVELLER OR A PROSPECT OF SOCIETY DEDICATION TO THE REV. HENRY GOLDSMITH

D EAR S IR , I am sensible that the friendship between us can acquire no new force from the ceremonies of a Dedication; and perhaps it demands an excuse thus to prefix your name to my attempts, which you decline giving with your own. But as a part of this Poem was formerly written to you from Switzerland, the whole can now, with propriety, be only inscribed to you. It will also throw a light upon many parts of it, when the reader understands, that it is addressed to a man, who, despising Fame and Fortune, has retired early to Happiness and Obscurity, with an income of forty pounds a year.

I now perceive, my dear brother, the wisdom of your humble choice. You have entered upon a sacred office, where the harvest is great, and the labourers are but few; while you have left the field of Ambition, where the labourers are many, and the harvest not worth carrying away. But of all kinds of ambition, what from the refinement of the times, from different systems of criticism, and from the divisions of party, that which pursues poetical fame is the wildest.

Poetry makes a principal amusement among unpolished nations; but in a country verging to the extremes of refinement, Painting and Music come in for a share. As these offer the feeble mind a less laborious entertainment, they at first rival Poetry, and at length supplant her; they engross all that favour once shown to her, and though but younger sisters, seize upon the elder’s birthright.

Yet, however this art may be neglected by the powerful, it is still in greater danger from the mistaken efforts of the learned to improve it. What criticisms have we not heard of late in favour of blank verse, and Pindaric odes, choruses, anapaests and iambics, alliterative care and happy negligence! Every absurdity has now a champion to defend it; and as he is generally much in the wrong, so he has always much to say; for error is ever talkative.

But there is an enemy to this art still more dangerous, I mean Party. Party entirely distorts the judgment, and destroys the taste. When the mind is once infected with this disease, it can only find pleasure in what contributes to increase the distemper. Like the tiger, that seldom desists from pursuing man after having once preyed upon human flesh, the reader, who has once gratified his appetite with calumny, makes, ever after, the most agreeable feast upon murdered reputation. Such readers generally admire some half-witted thing, who wants to be thought a bold man, having lost the character of a wise one. Him they dignify with the name of poet; his tawdry lampoons are called satires, his turbulence is said to be force, and his frenzy fire.

What reception a Poem may find, which has neither abuse, party, nor blank verse to support it, I cannot tell, nor am I solicitous to know. My aims are right. Without espousing the cause of any party, I have attempted to moderate the rage of all. I have endeavoured to show, that there may be equal happiness in states, that are differently governed from our own; that every state has a particular principle of happiness, and that this principle in each may be carried to a mischievous excess. There are few can judge, better than yourself, how far these positions are illustrated in this Poem.

I am, dear Sir, Your most affectionate Brother,                                 O LIVER G OLDSMITH .

THE TRAVELLER OR A PROSPECT OF SOCIETY

THE TRAVELLER (R. Westall)

VIGNETTE TO ‘THE DESERTED VILLAGE’ (Isaac Taylor)

THE DESERTED VILLAGE

DEDICATION TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS

D EAR S IR , I can have no expectations in an address of this kind, either to add to your reputation, or to establish my own. You can gain nothing from my admiration, as I am ignorant of that art in which you are said to excel; and I may lose much by the severity of your judgment, as few have a juster taste in poetry than you. Setting interest therefore aside, to which I never paid much attention, I must be indulged at present in following my affections. The only dedication I ever made was to my brother, because I loved him better than most other men. He is since dead. Permit me to inscribe this Poem to you.

How far you may be pleased with the versification and mere mechanical parts of this attempt, I don’t pretend to enquire; but I know you will object (and indeed several of our best and wisest friends concur in the opinion) that the depopulation it deplores is no where to be seen, and the disorders it laments are only to be found in the poet’s own imagination. To this I can scarce make any other answer than that I sincerely believe what I have written; that I have taken all possible pains, in my country excursions, for these four or five years past, to be certain of what I allege; and that all my views and enquiries have led me to believe those miseries real, which I here attempt to display. But this is not the place to enter into an enquiry, whether the country be depopulating or not; the discussion would take up much room, and I should prove myself, at best, an indifferent politician, to tire the reader with a long preface, when I want his unfatigued attention to a long poem.

In regretting the depopulation of the country, I inveigh against the increase of our luxuries; and here also I expect the shout of modern politicians against me. For twenty or thirty years past, it has been the fashion to consider luxury as one of the greatest national advantages; and all the wisdom of antiquity in that particular, as erroneous. Still however, I must remain a professed ancient on that head, and continue to think those luxuries prejudicial to states, by which so many vices are introduced, and so many kingdoms have been undone. Indeed so much has been poured out of late on the other side of the question, that, merely for the sake of novelty and variety, one would sometimes wish to be in the right.

I am, Dear Sir, Your sincere friend, and ardent admirer,                                         O LIVER G OLDSMITH .

The Water-cress gatherer (John Bewick)

THE DEPARTURE (Thomas Bewick)

LYRICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS PIECES

Part of a prologue written and spoken by the poet laberius a roman knight, whom caesar forced upon the stage p reserved by m acrobius., on a beautiful youth struck blind with lightning.

( Imitated from the Spanish. )

TO IRIS, IN BOW STREET, CONVENT GARDEN

THE LOGICIANS REFUTED

IN IMITATION OF DEAN SWIFT

ON THE TAKING OF QUEBEC, AND DEATH OF GENERAL WOLFE

AN ELEGY ON THAT GLORY OF HER SEX, MRS. MARY BLAIZE

Description of an author’s bedchamber, on seeing mrs. ** perform in the character of ****, of the death of the left hon. ***, an epigram addressed to the gentlemen reflected on in the rosciad, a poem, by the author.

Worried with debts and past all hopes of bail, His pen he prostitutes t’ avoid a gaol.                                                                 R OSCOM.

TO G. C. AND R. L.

Translation of a south american ode, the double transformation a tale, a new simile in the manner of swift.

EDWIN AND ANGELINA (T. Stothard)

EDWIN AND ANGELINA A BALLAD

Elegy on the death of a mad dog, song from ‘the vicar of wakefield’, epilogue to ‘the good natur’d man’, epilogue to ‘the sister’, prologue to ‘zobeide’, threnodia  augustalis:.

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF HER LATE ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCESS DOWAGER OF WALES. OVERTURE—A SOLEMN DIRGE. AIR—TRIO.

MAN SPEAKER.

SONG. BY A MAN—AFFETTUOSO.

WOMAN SPEAKER.

SONG.  BY A MAN.—BASSO.—STACCATO.—SPIRITOSO.

SONG. BY A WOMAN.—AMOROSO.

AIR. CHORUS.—POMPOSO.

PART II OVERTURE—PASTORALE MAN SPEAKER.

CHORUS.—AFFETTUOSO.—LARGO.

SONG. BY A WOMAN.

SONG. BY A MAN.—BASSO. SPIRITOSO.

SONG. BY A WOMAN.—PASTORALE.

CHORUS.—ALTRO MODO.

SONG FROM ‘SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER’

Epilogue to ‘she stoops to conquer’.

PORTRAIT OF GOLDSMITH AFTER REYNOLDS (Vignette to ‘Retaliation’)

RETALIATION A POEM

After the Fourth Edition of this Poem was printed, the Publisher received an Epitaph on Mr. Whitefoord, from a friend of the late Doctor Goldsmith, inclosed in a letter, of which the following is an abstract:—

‘I have in my possession a sheet of paper, containing near forty lines in the Doctor’s own hand-writing: there are many scattered, broken verses, on Sir Jos. Reynolds, Counsellor Ridge, Mr. Beauclerk, and Mr. Whitefoord. The Epitaph on the last-mentioned gentleman is the only one that is finished, and therefore I have copied it, that you may add it to the next edition. It is a striking proof of Doctor Goldsmith’s good-nature. I saw this sheet of paper in the Doctor’s room, five or six days before he died; and, as I had got all the other Epitaphs, I asked him if I might take it. “ In truth you may, my Boy ,” (replied he,) “ for it will be of no use to me where I am going. ”’

SONG INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SUNG IN ‘SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER’

Translation, the haunch of venison a poetical epistle to lord clare, epitaph on thomas parnell, the clown’s reply, epitaph on edward purdon, epilogue for mr. lee lewes, epilogue intended to have been spoken for ‘she stoops to conquer’.

Enter M RS. B ULKLEY , who curtsies very low as beginning to speak. Then enter M ISS C ATLEY , who stands full before her, and curtsies to the audience.

MRS. BULKLEY.

MISS CATLEY.

Recitative.

Air—Cotillon.

Air—A bonny young lad is my Jockey.

MISS CATLEY. Air—Ballinamony.

THE CAPTIVITY

AN ORATORIO

THE PERSONS.

S CENE —The Banks of the River Euphrates, near Babylon.

THE CAPTIVITY ACT I—S CENE I. Israelites sitting on the Banks of the Euphrates. FIRST PROPHET. RECITATIVE.

FIRST PROPHET. AIR.

SECOND PROPHET.

SECOND PROPHET. RECITATIVE.

FIRST PROPHET. RECITATIVE.

Enter C HALDEAN P RIESTS attended. FIRST PRIEST. AIR.

SECOND PRIEST.

A CHALDEAN WOMAN. AIR.

A CHALDEAN ATTENDANT.

FIRST PRIEST.

RECITATIVE.

FIRST PROPHET.

ACT II. Scene as before. CHORUS OF ISRAELITES.

FIRST PRIEST. RECITATIVE.

SECOND PRIEST. AIR.

GOLDSMITH’S AUTOGRAPH (Stanzas from ‘The Captivity’)

ISRAELITISH WOMAN. RECITATIVE.

SECOND PRIEST. RECITATIVE.

CHALDEAN WOMAN. AIR.

CHORUS OF ALL.

ACT III. Scene as before. FIRST PRIEST. RECITATIVE.

ISRAELITISH WOMAN. AIR.

CHORUS OF ISRAELITES.

FIRST AND SECOND PRIEST. AIR.

CHORUS OF YOUTHS.

CHORUS OF VIRGINS.

SEMI-CHORUS.

THE LAST CHORUS.

VERSES IN REPLY TO AN INVITATION TO DINNER AT DR. BAKER’S. ‘This is a poem! This is a copy of verses!’

O LIVER G OLDSMITH .      

LETTER IN PROSE AND VERSE TO MRS. BUNBURY

M ADAM , I read your letter with all that allowance which critical candour could require, but after all find so much to object to, and so much to raise my indignation, that I cannot help giving it a serious answer.

I am not so ignorant, Madam, as not to see there are many sarcasms contained in it, and solecisms also. (Solecism is a word that comes from the town of Soleis in Attica, among the Greeks, built by Solon, and applied as we use the word Kidderminster for curtains, from a town also of that name;—but this is learning you have no taste for!)—I say, Madam, there are sarcasms in it, and solecisms also. But not to seem an ill-natured critic, I’ll take leave to quote your own words, and give you my remarks upon them as they occur. You begin as follows:—

‘I hope, my good Doctor, you soon will be here, And your spring-velvet coat very smart will appear, To open our ball the first day of the year.’

Pray, Madam, where did you ever find the epithet ‘good,’ applied to the title of Doctor? Had you called me ‘learned Doctor,’ or ‘grave Doctor,’ or ‘noble Doctor,’ it might be allowable, because they belong to the profession. But, not to cavil at trifles, you talk of my ‘spring-velvet coat,’ and advise me to wear it the first day in the year,—that is, in the middle of winter!—a spring-velvet in the middle of winter!!! That would be a solecism indeed! and yet, to increase the inconsistence, in another part of your letter you call me a beau. Now, on one side or other, you must be wrong. If I am a beau, I can never think of wearing a spring-velvet in winter: and if I am not a beau, why then, that explains itself. But let me go on to your two next strange lines:—

‘And bring with you a wig, that is modish and gay, dance with the girls that are makers of hay.’

The absurdity of making hay at Christmas, you yourself seem sensible of: you say your sister will laugh; and so indeed she well may! The Latins have an expression for a contemptuous sort of laughter, ‘Naso contemnere adunco’; that is, to laugh with a crooked nose. She may laugh at you in the manner of the ancients if she thinks fit. But now I come to the most extraordinary of all extraordinary propositions, which is, to take your and your sister’s advice in playing at loo. The presumption of the offer raises my indignation beyond the bounds of prose; it inspires me at once with verse and resentment. I take advice! and from whom? You shall hear.

There’s the parish of Edmonton offers forty pounds; there’s the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, offers forty pounds; there’s the parish of Tyburn, from the Hog-in-the-Pound to St. Giles’s watchhouse, offers forty pounds,—I shall have all that if I convict them!’—

I challenge you all to answer this: I tell you, you cannot. It cuts deep;—but now for the rest of the letter: and next— but I want room—so I believe I shall battle the rest out at Barton some day next week.

I don’t value you all!     O. G.

VIDA’S GAME OF CHESS TRANSLATED

He was born . . . at Pallas. This is the usual account. But it was maintained by the family of the poet’s mother, and has been contended (by Dr. Michael F. Cox in a Lecture on ‘The Country and Kindred of Oliver Goldsmith,’ published in vol. 1, pt. 2, of the Journal of the ‘National Literary Society of Ireland.’ 1900) that his real birth-place was the residence of Mrs. Goldsmith’s parents, Smith-Hill House, Elphin, Roscommon, to which she was in the habit of paying frequent visits. Meanwhile, in 1897, a window was placed to Goldsmith’s memory in Forgney Church, Longford,—the church of which, at the time of his birth, his father was curate.

his academic career was not a success. ‘Oliver Goldsmith is recorded on two occasions as being remarkably diligent at Morning Lecture; again, as cautioned for bad answering at Morning and Greek Lectures; and finally, as put down into the next class for neglect of his studies’ (Dr. Stubbs’s History of the University of Dublin , 1889, p. 201 n.)

a scratched signature upon a window-pane. This, which is now at Trinity College, Dublin, is here reproduced in facsimile. When the garrets of No. 35, Parliament Square, were pulled down in 1837, it was cut out of the window by the last occupant of the rooms, who broke it in the process. (Dr. J. F. Waller in Cassell’s Works of Goldsmith, [1864–5], pp. xiii-xiv n.)

a poor physician. Where he obtained his diploma is not known. It was certainly not at Padua ( Athenaeum , July 21, 1894). At Leyden and Louvain Prior made inquiries but, in each case, without success. The annals of the University of Louvain were, however, destroyed in the revolutionary wars. (Prior, Life , 1837, i, pp. 171, 178).

declared it to be by Goldsmith. Goldsmith’s authorship of this version has now been placed beyond a doubt by the publication in facsimile of his signed receipt to Edward Dilly for third share of ‘my translation,’ such third share amounting to 6 pounds 13s. 4d. The receipt, which belongs to Mr. J. W. Ford of Enfield Old Park, is dated ‘January 11th, 1758.’ ( Memoirs of a Protestant , etc., Dent’s edition, 1895, i, pp. xii-xviii.)

12, Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey. This was a tiny square occupying a site now absorbed by the Holborn Viaduct and Railway Station. No. 12, where Goldsmith lived, was later occupied by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. as a printing office. An engraving of the Court forms the frontispiece to the European Magazine for January, 1803.

or some of his imitators. The proximate cause of the Citizen of the World , as the present writer has suggested elsewhere, may have been Horace Walpole’s Letter from XoHo [Soho?], a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his friend Lien Chi, at Peking . This was noticed as ‘in Montesquieu’s manner’ in the May issue of the Monthly Review for 1757, to which Goldsmith was a contributor ( Eighteenth Century Vignettes , first series, second edition, 1897, pp. 108–9).

demonstrable from internal evidence. e.g.—The references to the musical glasses (ch. ix), which were the rage in 1761–2; and to the Auditor (ch. xix) established by Arthur Murphy in June of the latter year. The sale of the ‘Vicar’ is discussed at length in chapter vii of the editor’s Life of Oliver Goldsmith (‘Great Writers’ series), 1888, pp. 110–21.

started with a loss. This, which to some critics has seemed unintelliglble, rests upon the following: ‘The first three editions, . . . resulted in a loss, and the fourth, which was not issued until eight [four?] years after the first, started with a balance against it of £2 16s. 6d., and it was not until that fourth edition had been sold that the balance came out on the right side’ ( A Bookseller of the Last Century [John Newbery] by Charles Welsh, 1885, p. 61). The writer based his statement upon Collins’s ‘Publishing book, account of books printed and shares therein, No. 3, 1770 to 1785.’

James’s Powder. This was a famous patent panacea, invented by Johnson’s Lichfield townsman, Dr. Robert James of the Medicinal Dictionary . It was sold by John Newbery, and had an extraordinary vogue. The King dosed Princess Elizabeth with it; Fielding, Gray, and Cowper all swore by it, and Horace Walpole, who wished to try it upon Mme. du Deffand in extremis , said he should use it if the house were on fire. William Hawes, the Strand apothecary who attended Goldsmith, wrote an interesting Account of the late Dr. Goldsmith’s Illness, so far as relates to the Exhibition of Dr. James’s Powders, etc., 1774, which he dedicated to Reynolds and Burke. To Hawes once belonged the poet’s worn old wooden writing-desk, now in the South Kensington Museum, where are also his favourite chair and cane. Another desk-chair, which had descended from his friend, Edmund Bott, was recently for sale at Sotheby’s (July, 1906).

GREEN ARBOUR COURT, LITTLE OLD BAILEY (as it appeared in 1803)

EDITIONS OF THE POEMS.

No collected edition of Goldsmith’s poetical works appeared until after his death. But, in 1775, W. Griffin, who had published the Essays of ten years earlier, issued a volume entitled The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B., containing all his Essays and Poems . The ‘poems’ however were confined to ‘The Traveller,’ ‘The Deserted Village,’ ‘Edwin and Angelina,’ ‘The Double Transformation,’ ‘A New Simile,’ and ‘Retaliation,’—an obviously imperfect harvesting. In the following year G. Kearsly printed an eighth edition of Retaliation , with which he included ‘The Hermit’ (‘Edwin and Angelina’), ‘The Gift,’ ‘Madam Blaize,’ and the epilogues to The Sister and She stoops to Conquer ;* while to an edition of The Haunch of Venison , also put forth in 1776, he added the ‘Epitaph on Parnell’ and two songs from the oratorio of The Captivity . The next collection appeared in a volume of Poems and Plays published at Dublin in 1777, where it was preceded by a ‘Life,’ written by W. Glover, one of Goldsmith’s ‘Irish clients.’ Then, in 1780, came vol. i of T. Evans’s Poetical and Dramatic Works, etc., now first collected , also having a ‘Memoir,’ and certainly fuller than anything which had gone before. Next followed the long-deferred Miscellaneous Works, etc., of 1801, in four volumes, vol. ii of which comprised the plays and poems. Prefixed to this edition is the important biographical sketch, compiled under the direction of Bishop Percy, and usually described as the Percy Memoir , by which title it is referred to in the ensuing notes. The next memorable edition was that edited for the Aldine Series in 1831, by the Rev. John Mitford. Prior and Wright’s edition in vol. iv of the Miscellaneous Works , etc., of 1837, comes after this; then Bolton Corney’s excellent Poetical Works of 1845; and vol. i of Peter Cunningham’s Works , etc. of 1854. There are other issues of the poems, the latest of which is to be found in vol. ii (1885) of the complete Works , in five volumes, edited for Messrs. George Bell and Sons by J. W. M. Gibbs.

* Some copies of this are dated 1777, and contain The Haunch of Venison and a few minor pieces.

Most of the foregoing editions have been consulted for the following notes; but chiefly those of Mitford, Prior, Bolton Corney, and Cunningham. Many of the illustrations and explanations now supplied will not, however, be found in any of the sources indicated. When an elucidatory or parallel passage is cited, an attempt has been made, as far as possible, to give the credit of it to the first discoverer. Thus, some of the illustrations in Cunningham’s notes are here transferred to Prior, some of Prior’s to Mitford, and so forth. As regards the notes themselves, care has been taken to make them full enough to obviate the necessity, except in rare instances, of further investigation. It is the editor’s experience that references to external authorities are, as a general rule, sign-posts to routes which are seldom travelled.*

* In this connexion may be recalled the dictum of Hume quoted by Dr. Birkbeck Hill:—‘Every book should be as complete as possible within itself, and should never refer for anything material to other books’ ( History of England , 1802, ii. 101).

THE TRAVELLER.

It was on those continental wanderings which occupied Goldsmith between February, 1755 and February, 1756 that he conceived his first idea of this, the earliest of his poems to which he prefixed his name; and he probably had in mind Addison’s Letter from Italy to Lord Halifax , a work in which he found ‘a strain of political thinking that was, at that time [1701]. new in our poetry.’ ( Beauties of English Poesy , 1767, i. III). From the dedicatory letter to his brother—which says expressly, ‘as a part of this Poem was formerly written to you from Switzerland, the whole can now, with propriety, be only inscribed to you’—it is plain that some portion of it must have been actually composed abroad. It was not, however, actually published until the 19th of December, 1764, and the title-page bore the date of 1765.* The publisher was John Newbery, of St. Paul’s Churchyard, and the price of the book, a quarto of 30 pages, was 1s. 6d. A second, third and fourth edition quickly followed, and a ninth, from which it is here reprinted, was issued in 1774, the year of the author’s death. Between the first and the sixth edition of 1770 there were numerous alterations, the more important of which are indicated in the ensuing notes.

* This is the generally recognized first edition. But the late Mr. Frederick Locker Lampson, the poet and collector, possessed a quarto copy, dated 1764, which had no author’s name, and in which the dedication ran as follows:—‘This poem is inscribed to the Rev. Henry Goldsmith, M.A. By his most affectionate Brother Oliver Goldsmith.’ It was, in all probability, unique, though it is alleged that there are octavo copies which present similar characteristics. It has now gone to America with the Rowfant Library.     In 1902 an interesting discovery was made by Mr. Bertram Dobell, to whom the public are indebted for so many important literary ‘finds.’ In a parcel of pamphlets he came upon a number of loose printed leaves entitled A Prospect of Society . They obviously belonged to The Traveller ; but seemed to be its ‘formless unarranged material,’ and contained many variations from the text of the first edition. Mr. Dobell’s impression was that ‘the author’s manuscript, written on loose leaves, had fallen into confusion, and was then printed without any attempt at re-arrangement.’ This was near the mark; but the complete solution of the riddle was furnished by Mr. Quiller Couch in an article in the Daily News for March 31, 1902, since recast in his charming volume From a Cornish Window , 1906, pp. 86–92. He showed conclusively that The Prospect was ‘merely an early draft of The Traveller printed backwards in fairly regular sections.’ What had manifestly happened was this. Goldsmith, turning over each page as written, had laid it on the top of the preceding page of MS. and forgotten to rearrange them when done. Thus the series of pages were reversed; and, so reversed, were set up in type by a matter-of-fact compositor. Mr. Dobell at once accepted this happy explanation; which—as Mr. Quiller Couch points out—has the advantage of being a ‘blunder just so natural to Goldsmith as to be almost postulable.’ One or two of the variations of Mr. Dobell’s ‘find’—variations, it should be added, antecedent to the first edition—are noted in their places.

The didactic purpose of The Traveller is defined in the concluding paragraph of the Dedication ; and, like many of the thoughts which it contains, had been anticipated in a passage of The Citizen of the World , 1762, i. 185:—‘Every mind seems capable of entertaining a certain quantity of happiness, which no institutions can encrease, no circumstances alter, and entirely independent on fortune.’ But the best short description of the poem is Macaulay’s:—‘In the Traveller the execution, though deserving of much praise, is far inferior to the design. No philosophical poem, ancient or modern, has a plan so noble, and at the same time so simple. An English wanderer, seated on a crag among the Alps, near the point where three great countries meet, looks down on the boundless prospect, reviews his long pilgrimage, recalls the varieties of scenery, of climate, of government, of religion, of national character, which he has observed, and comes to the conclusion, just or unjust, that our happiness depends little on political institutions, and much on the temper and regulation of our own minds.’ ( Encyclop. Britannica , Goldsmith, February, 1856.)

The only definite record of payment for The Traveller is ‘Copy of the Traveller, a Poem, 21 l ,’ in Newbery’s MSS.; but as the same sum occurs in Memoranda of much later date than 1764, it is possible that the success of the book may have prompted some supplementary fee.

A Prospect , i.e. ‘a view.’ ‘I went to Putney, and other places on the Thames, to take ‘prospects’ in crayon, to carry into France, where I thought to have them engraved’ (Evelyn, Diary , 20th June, 1649). And Reynolds uses the word of Claude in his Fourth Discourse:—‘His pictures are a composition of the various draughts which he had previously made from various beautiful scenes and prospects’ ( Works , by Malone, 1798, i. 105). The word is common on old prints, e.g. An Exact Prospect of the Magnificent Stone Bridge at Westminster , etc., 1751.

Dedication. The Rev. Henry Goldsmith, says the Percy Memoir , 1801, p. 3, ‘had distinguished himself both at school and at college, but he unfortunately married at the early age of nineteen; which confined him to a Curacy, and prevented his rising to preferment in the church.’

with an income of forty pounds a year. Cf. The Deserted Village , ll. 141–2:—

A man he was, to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a year .

Cf. also Parson Adams in ch. iii of Joseph Andrews , who has twenty-three; and Mr. Rivers, in the Spiritual Quixote , 1772:—‘I do not choose to go into orders to be a curate all my life-time, and work for about fifteen-pence a day, or twenty-five pounds a year’ (bk. vi, ch. xvii). Dr. Primrose’s stipend is thirty-five in the first instance, fifteen in the second ( Vicar of Wakefield , chapters ii and iii). But Professor Hales ( Longer English Poems , 1885, p. 351) supplies an exact parallel in the case of Churchill, who, he says, when a curate at Rainham, ‘prayed and starved on forty pounds a year .’ The latter words are Churchill’s own, and sound like a quotation; but he was dead long before The Deserted Village appeared in 1770. There is an interesting paper in the Gentleman’s Magazine for November, 1763, on the miseries and hardships of the ‘inferior clergy.’

But of all kinds of ambition, etc. In the first edition of 1765, p. ii, this passage was as follows:—‘But of all kinds of ambition, as things are now circumstanced, perhaps that which pursues poetical fame, is the wildest. What from the encreased refinement of the times, from the diversity of judgments produced by opposing systems of criticism, and from the more prevalent divisions of opinion influenced by party, the strongest and happiest efforts can expect to please but in a very narrow circle. Though the poet were as sure of his aim as the imperial archer of antiquity, who boasted that he never missed the heart; yet would many of his shafts now fly at random, for the heart is too often in the wrong place.’ In the second edition it was curtailed; in the sixth it took its final form.

they engross all that favour once shown to her. First version—‘They engross all favour to themselves.’

the elder’s birthright. Cunningham here aptly compares Dryden’s epistle To Sir Godfrey Kneller , II. 89–92:—

Our arts are sisters, though not twins in birth; For hymns were sung in Eden’s happy earth: But oh, the painter muse, though last in place, Has seized the blessing first, like Jacob’s race.

Party =faction. Cf. lines 31–2 on Edmund Burke in Retaliation :—

Who, born for the Universe, narrow’d his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.

Such readers generally admire, etc. ‘I suppose this paragraph to be directed against Paul Whitehead, or Churchill,’ writes Mitford. It was clearly aimed at Churchill, since Prior ( Life , 1837, ii. 54) quotes a portion of a contemporary article in the St. James’s Chronicle for February 7–9, 1765, attributed to Bonnell Thornton, which leaves little room for doubt upon the question. ‘The latter part of this paragraph,’ says the writer, referring to the passage now annotated, ‘we cannot help considering as a reflection on the memory of the late Mr. Churchill, whose talents as a poet were so greatly and so deservedly admired, that during his short reign, his merit in great measure eclipsed that of others; and we think it no mean acknowledgment of the excellencies of this poem [ The Traveller ] to say that, like the stars, they appear the more brilliant now that the sun of our poetry is gone down.’ Churchill died on the 4th of November, 1764, some weeks before the publication of The Traveller . His powers, it may be, were misdirected and misapplied; but his rough vigour and his manly verse deserved a better fate at Goldsmith’s hands.

tawdry was added in the sixth edition of 1770.

blank verse. Cf. The Present State of Polite Learning , 1759, p. 150—‘From a desire in the critic of grafting the spirit of ancient languages upon the English, has proceeded of late several disagreeable instances of pedantry. Among the number, I think we may reckon blank verse . Nothing but the greatest sublimity of subject can render such a measure pleasing; however, we now see it used on the most trivial occasions’—by which last remark Goldsmith probably, as Cunningham thinks, intended to refer to the efforts of Akenside, Dyer, and Armstrong. His views upon blank verse were shared by Johnson and Gray. At the date of the present dedication, the latest offender in this way had been Goldsmith’s old colleague on The Monthly Review , Dr. James Grainger, author of The Sugar Cane , which was published in June, 1764. (Cf. also The Bee for 24th November, 1759, ‘An account of the Augustan Age of England.’)

and that this principle, etc. In the first edition this read—‘and that this principle in each state, and in our own in particular, may be carried to a mischievous excess.’

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow. Mitford (Aldine edition, 1831, p. 7) compares the following lines from Ovid:—

Solus, inops, exspes, leto poenaeque relictus.                      Metamorphoses , xiv. 217. Exsul, inops erres, alienaque limina lustres, etc.                      Ibis . 113.

slow. A well-known passage from Boswell must here be reproduced:—‘Chamier once asked him [Goldsmith], what he meant by slow , the last word in the first line of The Traveller ,

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.

Did he mean tardiness of locomotion? Goldsmith, who would say something without consideration, answered “yes.” I [Johnson] was sitting by, and said, “No, Sir, you do not mean tardiness of locomotion; you mean, that sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in solitude.” Chamier believed then that I had written the line as much as if he had seen me write it.’ [Birkbeck Hill’s Boswell , 1887, iii. 252–3.) It is quite possible, however, that Goldsmith meant no more than he said.

the rude Carinthian boor. ‘Carinthia,’ says Cunningham, ‘was visited by Goldsmith in 1755, and still (1853) retains its character for inhospitality.’

Campania. ‘Intended,’ says Bolton Corney, ‘to denote La campagna di Roma . The portion of it which extends from Rome to Terracina is scarcely habitable.’

a lengthening chain. Prior compares Letter iii of The Citizen of the World , 1762, i. 5:—‘The farther I travel I feel the pain of separation with stronger force, those ties that bind me to my native country, and you, are still unbroken. By every remove, I only drag a greater length of chain.’ But, as Mitford points out, Cibber has a similar thought in his Comical Lovers , 1707, Act v:—‘When I am with Florimel, it [my heart] is still your prisoner, it only draws a longer chain after it .’ And earlier still in Dryden’s ‘All for Love’, 1678, Act ii, Sc. 1:—

My life on’t, he still drags a chain along, That needs must clog his flight.

with simple plenty crown’d. In the first edition this read ‘where mirth and peace abound.’

the luxury of doing good. Prior compares Garth’s Claremont , 1715, where he speaks of the Druids:—

Hard was their Lodging, homely was their Food, For all their Luxury was doing Good .

my prime of life. He was seven-and-twenty when he landed at Dover in February, 1756.

That, like the circle bounding, etc. Cf. Vicar of Wakefield , 1766, ii. 160–1 (ch. x):—‘Death, the only friend of the wretched, for a little while mocks the weary traveller with the view, and like his horizon, still flies before him.’ [Prior.]

And find no spot of all the world my own. Prior compares his namesake’s lines In the Beginning of [Jacques] Robbe’s Geography , 1700:—

My destin’d Miles I shall have gone, By THAMES or MAESE, by PO or RHONE, And found no Foot of Earth my own.

above the storm’s career. Cf. 1. 190 of The Deserted Village.

should thankless pride repine? First edition, ‘’twere thankless to repine.’

Say, should the philosophic mind, etc. First edition:—

’Twere affectation all, and school-taught pride, To spurn the splendid things by heaven supply’d

hoard. ‘Sum’ in the first edition.

Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own. In the first version this was—

Boldly asserts that country for his own.

And yet, perhaps, etc. In the first edition, for this and the following five lines appeared these eight:—

And yet, perhaps, if states with states we scan, Or estimate their bliss on Reason’s plan, Though patriots flatter, and though fools contend, We still shall find uncertainty suspend; Find that each good, by Art or Nature given, To these or those, but makes the balance even: Find that the bliss of all is much the same, And patriotic boasting reason’s shame!

On Idra’s cliffs. Bolton Corney conjectures that Goldsmith meant ‘Idria, a town in Carniola, noted for its mines.’ ‘Goldsmith in his “History of Animated Nature” makes mention of the mines, and spells the name in the same way as here.’ (Mr. J. H. Lobban’s Select Poems of Goldsmith , 1900, p. 87). Lines 84–5, it may be added, are not in the first edition.

And though the rocky-crested summits frown. In the first edition:—

And though rough rocks or gloomy summits frown.

lines 91–2. are not in the first editions.

peculiar, i.e. ‘proper,’ ‘appropriate.’

winnow, i.e. ‘waft,’ ‘disperse.’ John Evelyn refers to these ‘sea-born gales’ in the ‘Dedication’ of his Fumifugium , 1661:— ‘Those who take notice of the scent of the orange-flowers from the rivage of Genoa, and St. Pietro dell’ Arena; the blossomes of the rosemary from the Coasts of Spain, many leagues off at sea; or the manifest, and odoriferous wafts which flow from Fontenay and Vaugirard, even to Paris in the season of roses, with the contrary effect of those less pleasing smells from other accidents, will easily consent to what I suggest [i.e. the planting of sweet-smelling trees].’ ( Miscellaneous Writings , 1825, p. 208.)

Till, more unsteady, etc. In the first edition:—

But, more unsteady than the southern gale, Soon Commerce turn’d on other shores her sail.

There is a certain resemblance between this passage and one of the later paradoxes of Smollett’s Lismahago;—‘He affirmed, the nature of commerce was such, that it could not be fixed or perpetuated, but, having flowed to a certain height, would immediately begin to ebb, and so continue till the channels should be left almost dry; but there was no instance of the tide’s rising a second time to any considerable influx in the same nation’ ( Humphry Clinker , 1771, ii. 192. Letter of Mr. Bramble to Dr. Lewis).

lines 141–2. are not in the first edition.

Its former strength was but plethoric ill. Cf. The Citizen of the World , 1762, i. 98:—‘In short, the state resembled one of those bodies bloated with disease, whose bulk is only a symptom of its wretchedness.’ [Mitford.]

Yet still the loss, etc. In the first edition:—

Yet, though to fortune lost, here still abide Some splendid arts, the wrecks of former pride.

The paste-board triumph and the cavalcade. ‘Happy Country [he is speaking of Italy], where the pastoral age begins to revive! Where the wits even of Rome are united into a rural groupe of nymphs and swains, under the appellation of modern Arcadians [i.e. the Bolognese Academy of the Arcadi ]. Where in the midst of porticos, processions, and cavalcades, abbes turn’d into shepherds, and shepherdesses without sheep, indulge their innocent divertimenti .’ ( Present State of Polite Learning , 1759, pp. 50–1.) Some of the ‘paste-board triumphs’ may be studied in the plates of Jacques Callot.

By sports like these, etc. A pretty and well-known story is told with regard to this couplet. Calling once on Goldsmith, Reynolds, having vainly tried to attract attention, entered unannounced. ‘His friend was at his desk, but with hand uplifted, and a look directed to another part of the room; where a little dog sat with difficulty on his haunches, looking imploringly at his teacher, whose rebuke for toppling over he had evidently just received. Reynolds advanced, and looked past Goldsmith’s shoulder at the writing on his desk. It seemed to be some portions of a poem; and looking more closely, he was able to read a couplet which had been that instant written. The ink of the second line was wet:—

By sports like these are all their cares beguil’d; The sports of children satisfy the child.

(Forster’s Life , 1871, i. pp. 347–8).

The sports of children. This line, in the first edition, was followed by:—

At sports like these, while foreign arms advance, In passive ease they leave the world to chance.

Each nobler aim, etc. The first edition reads:—

When struggling Virtue sinks by long controul, She leaves at last, or feebly mans the soul.

This was changed in the second, third, fourth, and fifth editions to:—

When noble aims have suffer’d long controul, They sink at last, or feebly man the soul.

No product here, etc. The Swiss mercenaries, here referred to, were long famous in European warfare.

They parted with a thousand kisses, And fight e’er since for pay, like Swisses. Gay’s Aye and No, a Fable .

breasts This fine use of ‘breasts’—as Cunningham points out—is given by Johnson as an example in his Dictionary.

With patient angle, trolls the finny deep. ‘Troll,’ i.e. as for pike. Goldsmith uses ‘finny prey’ in The Citizen of the World , 1762, ii. 99:—‘The best manner to draw up the finny prey .’ Cf. also ‘warbling grove,’ Deserted Village , l. 361, as a parallel to ‘finny deep.’

the struggling savage, i.e. wolf or bear. Mitford compares the following:—‘He is a beast of prey, and the laws should make use of as many stratagems and as much force to drive the reluctant savage into the toils, as the Indians when they hunt the hyena or the rhinoceros.’ ( Citizen of the World , 1762, i. 112.) See also Pope’s Iliad , Bk. xvii:—

But if the savage turns his glaring eye, They howl aloof, and round the forest fly.

lines 201–2 are not in the first edition.

For every want, etc. Mitford quotes a parallel passage in Animated Nature , 1774, ii. 123:—‘Every want thus becomes a means of pleasure, in the redressing.’

Their morals, like their pleasures, are but low. Probably Goldsmith only uses ‘low’ here in its primitive sense, and not in that which, in his own day, gave so much umbrage to so many eighteenth-century students of humanity in the rough. Cf. Fielding, Tom Jones , 1749, iii. 6:— ‘Some of the Author’s Friends cry’d—“Look’e, Gentlemen, the Man is a Villain; but it is Nature for all that.” And all the young Critics of the Age, the Clerks, Apprentices, etc., called it Low and fell a Groaning.’ See also Tom Jones , iv. 94, and 226–30. ‘There’s nothing comes out but the ‘most lowest’ stuff in nature’—says Lady Blarney in ch. xi of the Vicar , whose author is eloquent on this topic in The Present State of Polite Learning , 1759, pp. 154–6, and in She Stoops to Conquer , 1773 (Act i); while Graves ( Spiritual Quixote , 1772, bk. i, ch. vi) gives the fashion the scientific appellation of tapino-phoby, which he defines as ‘a dread of everything that is low , either in writing or in conversation.’ To Goldsmith, if we may trust George Colman’s Prologue to Miss Lee’s Chapter of Accidents , 1780, belongs the credit of exorcising this particular form of depreciation:—

When Fielding, Humour’s fav’rite child, appear’d, Low was the word—a word each author fear’d! Till chas’d at length, by pleasantry’s bright ray, Nature and mirth resum’d their legal sway; And Goldsmith’s genius bask’d in open day.

According to Borrow’s Lavengro , ch. xli, Lord Chesterfield considered that the speeches of Homer’s heroes were frequently ‘exceedingly low.’

How often, etc. This and the lines which immediately follow are autobiographical. Cf. George Primrose’s story in The Vicar of Wakefield , 1766, ii. 24–5 (ch. i):—‘I passed among the harmless peasants of Flanders, and among such of the French as were poor enough to be very merry; for I ever found them sprightly in proportion to their wants. Whenever I approached a peasant’s house towards night-fall, I played one of my most merry tunes, and that procured me not only a lodging, but subsistence for the next day.’

gestic lore, i.e. traditional gestures or motions. Scott uses the word ‘gestic’ in Peveril of the Peak , ch. xxx, where King Charles the Second witnesses the dancing of Fenella:—‘He bore time to her motions with the movement of his foot—applauded with head and with hand—and seemed, like herself, carried away by the enthusiasm of the gestic art.’ [Hales.]

Thus idly busy rolls their world away. Pope has ‘Life’s idle business ’ ( Unfortunate Lady , l. 81), and—

The busy, idle blockheads of the ball. Donne’s Satires , iv. l. 203.

And all are taught an avarice of praise. Professor Hales ( Longer English Poems ) compares Horace of the Greeks:—

Praeter laudem, nullius avaris. Ars Poetica , l. 324.

copper lace. ‘St Martin’s lace,’ for which, in Strype’s day, Blowbladder St. was famous. Cf. the actress’s ‘copper tail’ in Citizen of the World , 1762, ii. 60.

To men of other minds, etc. Prior compares with the description that follows a passage in vol. i. p. 276 of Animated Nature , 1774:—‘But we need scarce mention these, when we find that the whole kingdom of Holland seems to be a conquest upon the sea, and in a manner rescued from its bosom. The surface of the earth, in this country, is below the level of the bed of the sea; and I remember, upon approaching the coast, to have looked down upon it from the sea, as into a valley.’

Where the broad ocean leans against the land. Cf. Dryden in Annus Mirabilis , 1666, st. clxiv. l. 654:—

And view the ocean leaning on the sky.

the tall rampire’s, i.e. rampart’s (Old French, rempart, rempar ). Cf. Timon of Athens , Act v. Sc. 4:—‘Our rampir’d gates.’

bosom reign in the first edition was ‘breast obtain.’

Even liberty itself is barter’d here. ‘Slavery,’ says Mitford, ‘was permitted in Holland; children were sold by their parents for a certain number of years.’

A land of tyrants, and a den of slaves. Goldsmith uses this very line as prose in Letter xxxiv of The Citizen of the World , 1762, i. 147.

dishonourable graves. Julius Caesar , Act i. Sc. 2.

Heavens! how unlike, etc. Prior compares a passage from a manuscript Introduction to the History of the Seven Years’ War :—‘How unlike the brave peasants their ancestors, who spread terror into either India, and always declared themselves the allies of those who drew the sword in defence of freedom.’*

* J. W. M. Gibbs ( Works , v. 9) discovered that parts of this History , hitherto supposed to have been written in 1761, were published in the Literary Magazine , 1757–8.

famed Hydaspes, i.e. the fabulosus Hydaspes of Horace, Bk. i. Ode xxii, and the Medus Hydaspes of Virgil, Georg , iv. 211, of which so many stores were told. It is now known as the Jhilum, one of the five rivers which give the Punjaub its name.

Pride in their port, etc. In the first edition these two lines were inverted.

Here by the bonds of nature feebly held. In the first edition—

See, though by circling deeps together held.

Nature’s ties was ‘social bonds’ in the first edition.

Where kings have toil’d, and poets wrote for fame. In the first edition this line read:—

And monarchs toil, and poets pant for fame.

Yet think not, etc. ‘In the things I have hitherto written I have neither allured the vanity of the great by flattery, nor satisfied the malignity of the vulgar by scandal, but I have endeavoured to get an honest reputation by liberal pursuits.’ (Preface to English History. ) [Mitford.]

Ye powers of truth, etc. The first version has:—

Perish the wish; for, inly satisfy’d, Above their pomps I hold my ragged pride.

Mr. Forster thinks ( Life , 1871, i. 375) that Goldsmith altered this (i.e. ‘ragged pride’) because, like the omitted Haud inexpertus loquor of the Enquiry , it involved an undignified admission.

lines 365–80 are not in the first edition.

Contracting regal power to stretch their own. ‘It is the interest of the great, therefore, to diminish kingly power as much as possible; because whatever they take from it is naturally restored to themselves; and all they have to do in a state, is to undermine the single tyrant, by which they resume their primaeval authority.’ ( Vicar of Wakefield , 1766, i. 202, ch. xix.)

When I behold, etc. Prior compares a passage in Letter xlix of The Citizen of the World , 1762, i. 218, where the Roman senators are spoken of as still flattering the people ‘with a shew of freedom, while themselves only were free.’

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law. Prior notes a corresponding utterance in The Vicar of Wakefield , 1766, i. 206, ch. xix:—‘What they may then expect, may be seen by turning our eyes to Holland, Genoa, or Venice, where the laws govern the poor, and the rich govern the law.’

I fly from petty tyrants to the throne. Cf. Dr. Primrose, ut supra , p. 201:—‘The generality of mankind also are of my way of thinking, and have unanimously created one king, whose election at once diminishes the number of tyrants, and puts tyranny at the greatest distance from the greatest number of people.’ Cf. also Churchill, The Farewell , ll. 363–4 and 369–70:—

Let not a Mob of Tyrants seize the helm, Nor titled upstarts league to rob the realm... Let us, some comfort in our griefs to bring, Be slaves to one, and be that one a King.

lines 393–4. Goldsmith’s first thought was—

Yes, my lov’d brother, cursed be that hour When first ambition toil’d for foreign power,—

an entirely different couplet to that in the text, and certainly more logical. (Dobell’s Prospect of Society , 1902, pp. xi, 2, and Notes, v, vi). Mr. Dobell plausibly suggests that this Tory substitution is due to Johnson.

Have we not seen, etc. These lines contain the first idea of the subsequent poem of The Deserted Village ( q.v. ).

Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around. The Oswego is a river which runs between Lakes Oneida and Ontario. In the Threnodia Augustalis , 1772, Goldsmith writes:—

Oswego’s dreary shores shall be my grave.

The ‘desarts of Oswego’ were familiar to the eighteenth-century reader in connexion with General Braddock’s ill-fated expedition of 1755, an account of which Goldsmith had just given in An History of England, in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son , 1764, ii. 202–4.

marks with murderous aim. In the first edition ‘takes a deadly aim.’

pensive exile. This, in the version mentioned in the next note, was ‘famish’d exile.’

To stop too fearful, and too faint to go. This line, upon Boswell’s authority, is claimed for Johnson (Birkbeck Hill’s Boswell , 1887, ii. 6). Goldsmith’s original ran:—

And faintly fainter, fainter seems to go.

(Dobell’s Prospect of Society , 1902, p. 3).

How small, of all, etc. Johnson wrote these concluding ten lines with the exception of the penultimate couplet. They and line 420 were all—he told Boswell—of which he could be sure (Birkbeck Hill’s Boswell , ut supra ). Like Goldsmith, he sometimes worked his prose ideas into his verse. The first couplet is apparently a reminiscence of a passage in his own Rasselas , 1759, ii. 112, where the astronomer speaks of ‘the task of a king . . . who has the care only of a few millions, to whom he cannot do much good or harm.’ (Grant’s Johnson , 1887, p. 89.) ‘I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another,’ he told that ‘vile Whig,’ Sir Adam Fergusson, in 1772. ‘It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual’ (Birkbeck Hill’s Boswell , 1887, ii. 170).

The lifted axe. Mitford here recalls Blackmore’s

Some the sharp axe, and some the painful wheel.

The ‘lifted axe’ he also traces to Young and Blackmore, with both of whom Goldsmith seems to have been familiar; but it is surely not necessary to assume that he borrowed from either in this instance.

Luke’s iron crown. George and Luke Dosa, or Doscha, headed a rebellion in Hungary in 1513. The former was proclaimed king by the peasants; and, in consequence suffered, among other things, the torture of the red-hot iron crown. Such a punishment took place at Bordeaux when Montaigne was seventeen (Morley’s Florio’s Montaigne , 1886, p. xvi). Much ink has been shed over Goldsmith’s lapse of ‘Luke’ for George. In the book which he cited as his authority, the family name of the brothers was given as Zeck,—hence Bolton Corney, in his edition of the Poetical Works , 1845, p. 36, corrected the line to—

Zeck’s iron crown, etc.,

an alteration which has been adopted by other editors. (See also Forster’s Life , 1871, i. 370.)

Damien’s bed of steel. Robert-Francois Damiens, 1714–57. Goldsmith writes ‘Damien’s.’ In the Gentlemen’s Magazine for 1757, vol. xxvii. pp. 87 and 151, where there is an account of this poor half-witted wretch’s torture and execution for attempting to assassinate Louis XV, the name is thus spelled, as also in other contemporary records and caricatures. The following passage explains the ‘bed of steel’:—‘Being conducted to the Conciergerie, an ‘iron bed’, which likewise served for a chair, was prepared for him, and to this he was fastened with chains. The torture was again applied, and a physician ordered to attend to see what degree of pain he could support,’ etc. (Smollett’s History of England , 1823, bk. iii, ch. 7, § xxv.) Goldsmith’s own explanation—according to Tom Davies, the bookseller—was that he meant the rack. But Davies may have misunderstood him, or Goldsmith himself may have forgotten the facts. (See Forster’s Life , 1871, i. 370.) At pp. 57–78 of the Monthly Review for July, 1757 (upon which Goldsmith was at this date employed), is a summary, ‘from our correspondent at Paris,’ of the official record of the Damiens’ Trial, 4 vols. 12 mo.; and his deed and tragedy make a graphic chapter in the remarkable Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous , by George Augustus Sala, 1863, iii. pp. 154–180.

line 438. In the first edition of ‘The Traveller’ there are only 416 lines.

THE DESERTED VILLAGE.

After having been for some time announced as in preparation, The Deserted Village made its first appearance on May 26, 1770.* It was received with great enthusiasm. In June a second, third, and fourth edition followed, and in August a fifth was published. The text here given is that of the fourth edition, which was considerably revised. Johnson, we are told, thought The Deserted Village inferior to The Traveller : but ‘time,’ to use Mr. Forster’s words, ‘has not confirmed that judgment.’ Its germ is perhaps to be found in ll. 397–402 of the earlier poem.

* In the American Bookman for February, 1901, pp. 563–7, Mr. Luther S. Livingston gives an account (with facsimile title-pages) of three octavo (or rather duodecimo) editions all dated 1770; and ostensibly printed for ‘W. Griffin, at Garrick’s Head, in Catherine-street, Strand.’ He rightly describes their existence as ‘a bibliographical puzzle.’ They afford no important variations; are not mentioned by the early editors; and are certainly not in the form in which the poem was first advertised and reviewed, as this was a quarto. But they are naturally of interest to the collector; and the late Colonel Francis Grant, a good Goldsmith scholar, described one of them in the Athenaeum for June 20, 1896 (No. 3582).

Much research has been expended in the endeavour to identify the scene with Lissoy, the home of the poet’s youth (see Introduction , p. ix); but the result has only been partially successful. The truth seems that Goldsmith, living in England, recalled in a poem that was English in its conception many of the memories and accessories of his early life in Ireland, without intending or even caring to draw an exact picture. Hence, as Lord Macaulay has observed, in a much criticized and characteristic passage, ‘it is made up of incongruous parts. The village in its happy days is a true English village. The village in its decay is an Irish village. The felicity and the misery which Goldsmith has brought close together belong to two different countries, and to two different stages in the progress of society. He had assuredly never seen in his native island such a rural paradise, such a seat of plenty, content, and tranquillity, as his “Auburn.” He had assuredly never seen in England all the inhabitants of such a paradise turned out of their homes in one day and forced to emigrate in a body to America. The hamlet he had probably seen in Kent; the ejectment he had probably seen in Munster; but, by joining the two, he has produced something which never was and never will be seen in any part of the world.’ ( Encyclop. Britannica , 1856.) It is obvious also that in some of his theories—the depopulation of the kingdom, for example—Goldsmith was mistaken. But it was not for its didactic qualities then, nor is it for them now, that The Deserted Village ’ delighted and delights. It maintains its popularity by its charming genre -pictures, its sweet and tender passages, its simplicity, its sympathetic hold upon the enduring in human nature. To test it solely with a view to establish its topographical accuracy, or to insist too much upon the value of its ethical teaching, is to mistake its real mission as a work of art.

Dedication. I am ignorant of that art in which you are said to excel. This modest confession did not prevent Goldsmith from making fun of the contemporary connoisseur. See the letter from the young virtuoso in The Citizen of the World , 1762, i. 145, announcing that a famous ‘torse’ has been discovered to be not ‘a Cleopatra bathing’ but ‘a Hercules spinning’; and Charles Primrose’s experiences at Paris ( Vicar of Wakefield , 1766, ii. 27–8).

He is since dead. Henry Goldsmith died in May, 1768, at the age of forty-five, being then curate of Kilkenny West. (See note, p. 164.)

a long poem. ‘I might dwell upon such thoughts . . . were I not afraid of making this preface too tedious; especially since I shall want all the patience of the reader, for having enlarged it with the following verses.’ (Tickell’s Preface to Addison’s Works , at end.)

the increase of our luxuries. The evil of luxury was a ‘common topick’ with Goldsmith. (Birkbeck Hill’s Boswell , 1887, ii. 217–8.) Smollett also, speaking with the voice of Lismahago, and continuing the quotation on p. 169, was of the opinion that ‘the sudden affluence occasioned by trade, forced open all the sluices of luxury, and overflowed the land with every species of profligacy and corruption.’ ( Humphry Clinker , 1771, ii. 192.—Letter of Mr. Bramble to Dr. Lewis.)

Sweet AUBURN. Forster, Life , 1871, ii. 206, says that Goldsmith obtained this name from Bennet Langton. There is an Aldbourn or Auburn in Wiltshire, not far from Marlborough, which Prior thinks may have furnished the suggestion.

Seats of my youth. This alone would imply that Goldsmith had in mind the environment of his Irish home.

The decent church that topp’d the neighbouring hill. This corresponds with the church of Kilkenny West as seen from the house at Lissoy.

KILKENNY WEST CHURCH (R. H. Newell)

The hawthorn bush. The Rev. Annesley Strean, Henry Goldsmith’s successor at Kilkenny West, well remembered the hawthorn bush in front of the village ale-house. It had originally three trunks; but when he wrote in 1807 only one remained, ‘the other two having been cut, from time to time, by persons carrying pieces of it away to be made into toys, etc., in honour of the bard, and of the celebrity of his poem.’ ( Essay on Light Reading , by the Rev. Edward Mangin, M.A., 1808, 142–3.) Its remains were enclosed by a Captain Hogan previously to 1819; but nevertheless when Prior visited the place in 1830, nothing was apparent but ‘a very tender shoot [which] had again forced its way to the surface.’ (Prior, Life , 1837, ii. 264.) An engraving of the tree by S. Alken, from a sketch made in 1806–9, is to be found at p. 41 of Goldsmith’s Poetical Works , R. H. Newell’s edition, 1811, and is reproduced in the present volume.

HAWTHORN TREE (R. H. Newell)

How often have I bless’d the coming day. Prior, Life , 1837, ii. 261, finds in this an allusion ‘to the Sundays or numerous holidays, usually kept in Roman Catholic countries.’

Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen. Strean’s explanation (Mangin, ut supra , pp. 140–1) of this is as follows:—‘The poem of The Deserted Village , took its origin from the circumstance of general Robert Napper [Napier or Naper], (the grandfather of the gentleman who now [1807] lives in the house, within half a mile of Lissoy, and built by the general) having purchased an extensive tract of the country surrounding Lissoy, or Auburn ; in consequence of which many families, here called cottiers , were removed, to make room for the intended improvements of what was now to become the wide domain of a rich man, warm with the idea of changing the face of his new acquisition; and were forced, “ with fainting steps, ” to go in search of “ torrid tracts ” and “ distant climes. ”’

Prior ( Life , 1837, i. 40–3) points out that Goldsmith was not the first to give poetical expression to the wrongs of the dispossessed Irish peasantry; and he quotes a long extract from the Works (1741) of a Westmeath poet, Lawrence Whyte, which contains such passages as these:—

Their native soil were forced to quit, So Irish landlords thought it fit; Who without ceremony or rout, For their improvements turn’d them out ... How many villages they razed, How many parishes laid waste ... Whole colonies, to shun the fate Of being oppress’d at such a rate, By tyrants who still raise their rent, Sail’d to the Western Continent.

The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest . ‘Of all those sounds,’ says Goldsmith, speaking of the cries of waterfowl, ‘there is none so dismally hollow as the booming of the bittern.’ . . . ‘I remember in the place where I was a boy with what terror this bird’s note affected the whole village; they considered it as the presage of some sad event; and generally found or made one to succeed it.’ ( Animated Nature , 1774, vi. 1–2, 4.)

Bewick, who may be trusted to speak of a bird which he has drawn with such exquisite fidelity, refers ( Water Birds , 1847, p. 49) to ‘the hollow booming noise which the bittern makes during the night, in the breeding season, from its swampy retreats.’ Cf. also that close observer Crabbe ( The Borough , Letter xxii, ll. 197–8):—

And the loud bittern, from the bull-rush home, Gave from the salt-ditch side the bellowing boom.

Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made.

Mitford compares Confessio Amantis , fol. 152:—

A kynge may make a lorde a knave, And of a knave a lord also;

and Professor Hales recalls Burns’s later line in the Cotter’s Saturday Night , 1785:—

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings.

But Prior finds the exact equivalent of the second line in the verses of an old French poet, De. Caux, upon an hour-glass:—

C’est un verre qui luit, Qu’un souffle peut détruire, et qu’un souffle a produit.

A time there was, ere England’s griefs began. Here wherever the locality of Auburn, the author had clearly England in mind. A caustic commentator has observed that the ‘time’ indicated must have been a long while ago.

opulence. In the first edition the word is ‘luxury.’

And, many a year elapsed, return to view. ‘It is strongly contended at Lishoy, that “ the Poet ,” as he is usually called there, after his pedestrian tour upon the Continent of Europe, returned to and resided in the village some time. . . . It is moreover believed, that the havock which had been made in his absence among those favourite scenes of his youth, affected his mind so deeply, that he actually composed great part of the Deserted Village ‘at’ Lishoy.’ ( Poetical Works, with Remarks , etc., by the Rev. R. H. Newell, 1811, p. 74.)

Notwithstanding the above, there is no evidence that Goldsmith ever returned to his native island. In a letter to his brother-in-law, Daniel Hodson, written in 1758, he spoke of hoping to do so ‘in five or six years.’ ( Percy Memoir , 1801, i. 49). But in another letter, written towards the close of his life, it is still a thing to come. ‘I am again,’ he says, ‘just setting out for Bath, and I honestly say I had much rather it had been for Ireland with my nephew, but that pleasure I hope to have before I die.’ (Letter to Daniel Hodson, no date, in possession of the late Frederick Locker Lampson.)

Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew. Here followed, in the first edition:—

Here, as with doubtful, pensive steps I range, Trace every scene, and wonder at the change, Remembrance, etc.

In all my griefs—and God has given my share. Prior notes a slight similarity here to a line of Collins:—

Ye mute companions of my toils, that bear, In all my griefs , a more than equal share! Hassan; or, The Camel Driver.

In The Present State of Polite Learning , 1759, p. 143, Goldsmith refers feelingly to ‘the neglected author of the Persian eclogues, which, however inaccurate, excel any in our language.’ He included four of them in The Beauties of English Poesy , 1767, i. pp. 239–53.

To husband out, etc. In the first edition this ran:—

My anxious day to husband near the close, And keep life’s flame from wasting by repose.

Here to return—and die at home at last. Forster compares a passage in The Citizen of the World , 1762, ii. 153:—‘There is something so seducing in that spot in which we first had existence, that nothing but it can please; whatever vicissitudes we experience in life, however we toil, or wheresoever we wander, our fatigued wishes still recur to home for tranquillity, we long to die in that spot which gave us birth, and in that pleasing expectation opiate every calamity.’ The poet Waller too—he adds—wished to die ‘like the stag where he was roused.’ ( Life , 1871, ii. 202.)

South View from Goldsmith’s Mount (R.H. Newell)

How happy he. ‘How blest is he’ in the first edition.

And, since ’tis hard to combat, learns to fly. Mitford compares The Bee for October 13, 1759, p. 56:—‘By struggling with misfortunes, we are sure to receive some wounds in the conflict. The only method to come off victorious, is by running away.’

surly porter. Mr. J. M. Lobban compares the Citizen of the World , 1762, i. 123:—‘I never see a nobleman’s door half opened that some surly porter or footman does not stand full in the breach.’ ( Select Poems of Goldsmith , 1900, p. 98.)

Bends. ‘Sinks’ in the first edition. unperceived decay . Cf. Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes , 1749, l. 292:—

An age that melts with unperceiv’d decay, And glides in modest innocence away;

and Irene , Act ii, Sc. 7:—

And varied life steal unperceiv’d away.

While Resignation, etc. In 1771 Sir Joshua exhibited a picture of ‘An Old Man,’ studied from the beggar who was his model for Ugolino. When it was engraved by Thomas Watson in 1772, he called it ‘Resignation,’ and inscribed the print to Goldsmith in the following words:—‘This attempt to express a Character in The Deserted Village , is dedicated to Dr. Goldsmith, by his sincere Friend and admirer, J OSHUA R EYNOLDS .’

Up yonder hill. It has been suggested that Goldsmith was here thinking of the little hill of Knockaruadh (Red Hill) in front of Lissoy parsonage, of which there is a sketch in Newell’s Poetical Works , 1811. When Newell wrote, it was already known as ‘Goldsmith’s mount’; and the poet himself refers to it in a letter to his brother-in-law Hodson, dated Dec. 27, 1757:—‘I had rather be placed on the little mount before Lishoy gate, and there take in, to me, the most pleasing horizon in nature.’ ( Percy Memoir , 1801, p. 43.)

And fill’d each pause the nightingale had made. In Animated Nature , 1774, v. 328, Goldsmith says:—‘The nightingale’s pausing song would be the proper epithet for this bird’s music.’ [Mitford.]

No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale. (Cf. Goldsmith’s Essay on Metaphors ( British Magazine ):—‘Armstrong has used the word ‘fluctuate’ with admirable efficacy, in his philosophical poem entitled The Art of Preserving Health .

Oh! when the growling winds contend, and all The sounding forest ‘fluctuates’ in the storm, To sink in warm repose, and hear the din Howl o’er the steady battlements.

The sad historian of the pensive plain. Strean (see note to l. 13) identified the old watercress gatherer as a certain Catherine Giraghty (or Geraghty). Her children (he said) were still living in the neighbourhood of Lissoy in 1807. (Mangin’s Essay on Light Reading , 1808, p. 142.)

The village preacher’s modest mansion rose. ‘The Rev. Charles Goldsmith is allowed by all that knew him, to have been faithfully represented by his son in the character of the Village Preacher.’ So writes his daughter, Catharine Hodson ( Percy Memoir , 1801, p. 3). Others, relying perhaps upon the ‘forty pounds a year’ of the Dedication to The Traveller , make the poet’s brother Henry the original; others, again, incline to kindly Uncle Contarine ( vide Introduction ). But as Prior justly says ( Life , 1837, ii. 249), ‘the fact perhaps is that he fixed upon no one individual, but borrowing like all good poets and painters a little from each, drew the character by their combination.’

with forty pounds a year. Cf. Dedication to The Traveller , p. 3, l. 14.

Unpractis’d. ‘Unskilful’ in the first edition.

More skilled. ‘More bent’ in the first edition.

The long remember’d beggar. ‘The same persons,’ says Prior, commenting upon this passage, ‘are seen for a series of years to traverse the same tract of country at certain intervals, intrude into every house which is not defended by the usual outworks of wealth, a gate and a porter’s lodge, exact their portion of the food of the family, and even find an occasional resting-place for the night, or from severe weather, in the chimney-corner of respectable farmers.’ ( Life , 1837, ii. 269.) Cf. Scott on the Scottish mendicants in the ‘Advertisement’ to The Antiquary , 1816, and Leland’s Hist. of Ireland , 1773, i. 35.

The broken soldier. The disbanded soldier let loose upon the country at the conclusion of the ‘Seven Years’ War’ was a familiar figure at this period. Bewick, in his Memoir (‘Memorial Edition’), 1887, pp. 44–5, describes some of these ancient campaigners with their battered old uniforms and their endless stories of Minden and Quebec; and a picture of two of them by T. S. Good of Berwick belonged to the late Mr. Locker Lampson. Edie Ochiltree ( Antiquary )—it may be remembered—had fought at Fontenoy.

Allur’d to brighter worlds. Cf. Tickell on Addison—‘Saints who taught and led the way to Heaven.’

And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray. Prior compares the opening lines of Dryden’s Britannia Rediviva :—

Our vows are heard betimes, and heaven takes care To grant, before we can conclude the prayer; Preventing angels met it half the way, And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.

As some tall cliff, etc. Lucan, Statius, and Claudian have been supposed to have helped Goldsmith to this fine and deservedly popular simile. But, considering his obvious familiarity with French literature, and the rarity of his ‘obligations to the ancients,’ it is not unlikely that, as suggested by a writer in the Academy for Oct. 30, 1886, his source of suggestion is to be found in the following passage of an Ode addressed by Chapelain (1595–1674) to Richelieu:—

        Dans un paisible mouvement         Tu t’élèves au firmament, Et laisses contre toi murmurer cette terre;     Ainsi le haut Olympe, à son pied sablonneux, Laisse fumer la foudre et gronder le tonnerre,     Et garde son sommet tranquille et lumineux.

Or another French model—indicated by Mr. Forster ( Life , 1871, ii. 115–16) by the late Lord Lytton—may have been these lines from a poem by the Abbé de Chaulieu (1639–1720):—

Au milieu cependant de ces peines cruelles De notre triste hiver, compagnes trop fidèles, Je suis tranquille et gai. Quel bien plus précieux Puis-je espérer jamais de la bonté des dieux! Tel qu’un rocher dont la tête, Égalant le Mont Athos, Voit à ses pieds la tempête Troubler le calme des flots, La mer autour bruit et gronde; Malgré ses emotions, Sur son front élevé règne une paix profonde, Que tant d’agitations Et que ses fureurs de l’onde Respectent à l’égal du nid des alcyons.

On the other hand, Goldsmith may have gone no further than Young’s Complaint: Night the Second , 1742, p. 42, where, as Mitford points out, occur these lines:—

As some tall Tow’r, or lofty Mountain’s Brow, Detains the Sun, Illustrious from its Height, While rising Vapours, and descending Shades, With Damps, and Darkness drown the Spatious Vale: Undampt by Doubt, Undarken’d by Despair, Philander , thus, augustly rears his Head.

Prior also ( Life , 1837, ii. 252) prints a passage from Animated Nature , 1774, i. 145, derived from Ulloa, which perhaps served as the raw material of the simile.

Full well they laugh’d, etc. Steele, in Spectator , No. 49 (for April 26, 1711) has a somewhat similar thought:—‘ Eubulus has so great an Authority in his little Diurnal Audience, that when he shakes his Head at any Piece of publick News, they all of them appear dejected; and, on the contrary, go home to their Dinners with a good Stomach and chearful Aspect, when Eubulus seems to intimate that Things go well.’

Yet he was kind, etc. For the rhyme of ‘fault’ and ‘aught’ in this couplet Prior cites the precedent of Pope:—

Before his sacred name flies ev’ry fault, And each exalted stanza teems with thought!

( Essay on Criticism , l. 422). He might also have cited Waller, who elides the ‘l’:—

Were we but less indulgent to our fau’ts, And patience had to cultivate our thoughts.

Goldsmith uses a like rhyme in Edwin and Angelina , Stanza xxxv:—

But mine the sorrow, mine the fault,     And well my life shall pay; I’ll seek the solitude he sought,     And stretch me where he lay.

Cf. also Retaliation , ll. 73–4. Perhaps—as indeed Prior suggests—he pronounced ‘fault’ in this fashion.

THE SCHOOL HOUSE (R. H. Newell)

That one small head could carry all he knew. Some of the traits of this portrait are said to be borrowed from Goldsmith’s own master at Lissoy:—‘He was instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic’—says his sister Catherine, Mrs. Hodson—‘by a schoolmaster in his father’s village, who had been a quartermaster in the army in Queen Anne’s wars, in that detachment which was sent to Spain: having travelled over a considerable part of Europe and being of a very romantic turn, he used to entertain Oliver with his adventures; and the impressions these made on his scholar were believed by the family to have given him that wandering and unsettled turn which so much appeared in his future life.’ ( Percy Memoir , 1801, pp. 3–4.) The name of this worthy, according to Strean, was Burn (Byrne). (Mangin’s Essay on Light Reading , 1808, p. 142.)

Near yonder thorn. See note to l. 13.

The chest contriv’d a double debt to pay. Cf. the Description of an Author’s Bedchamber , p. 48, l. ult.:—

A cap by night—a stocking all the day!

The twelve good rules. ‘A constant one’ (i.e. picture) ‘in every house was “King Charles’ Twelve Good Rules.”’ (Bewick’s Memoir , ‘Memorial Edition,’ 1887, p. 262.) This old broadside, surmounted by a rude woodcut of the King’s execution, is still prized by collectors. The rules, as ‘found in the study of King Charles the First, of Blessed Memory,’ are as follow:— ‘1. Urge no healths; 2. Profane no divine ordinances; 3. Touch no state matters; 4. Reveal no secrets; 5. Pick no quarrels; 6. Make no comparisons; 7. Maintain no ill opinions; 8. Keep no bad company; 9. Encourage no vice; 10. Make no long meals; 11. Repeat no grievances; 12. Lay no Wagers.’ Prior, Misc. Works , 1837, iv. 63, points out that Crabbe also makes the ‘Twelve Good Rules’ conspicuous in the Parish Register (ll. 51–2):—

There is King Charles, and all his Golden Rules, Who proved Misfortune’s was the best of schools.

Her late Majesty, Queen Victoria, kept a copy of these rules in the servants’ hall at Windsor Castle.

the royal game of goose. The ‘Royal and Entertaining Game of the Goose’ is described at length in Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes , bk. iv, ch. 2 (xxv). It may be briefly defined as a game of compartments with different titles through which the player progresses according to the numbers he throws with the dice. At every fourth or fifth compartment is depicted a goose, and if the player’s cast falls upon one of these, he moves forward double the number of his throw.

While broken tea-cups. Cf. the Description of an Author’s Bedchamber , p. 48, l. 18:—

And five crack’d teacups dress’d the chimney board.

Mr. Hogan, who repaired or rebuilt the ale-house at Lissoy, did not forget, besides restoring the ‘Royal Game of Goose’ and the ‘Twelve Good Rules,’ to add the broken teacups, ‘which for better security in the frail tenure of an Irish publican, or the doubtful decorum of his guests, were embedded in the mortar.’ (Prior, Life , 1837, ii. 265.)

Shall kiss the cup. Cf. Scott’s Lochinvar :—

The bride kissed the goblet: the knight took it up, He quaff’d off the wine and he threw down the cup.

Cf. also The History of Miss Stanton ( British Magazine , July, 1760).—‘The earthen mug went round. Miss touched the cup , the stranger pledged the parson,’ etc.

Between a splendid and a happy land. Prior compares The Citizen of the World , 1762, i. 98:—‘Too much commerce may injure a nation as well as too little; and . . . there is a wide difference between a conquering and a flourishing empire.’

To see profusion that he must not share. Cf. Animated Nature , iv. p. 43:—‘He only guards those luxuries he is not fated to share.’ [Mitford.]

To see those joys. Up to the third edition the words were each joy .

There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. The gallows, under the savage penal laws of the eighteenth century, by which horse-stealing, forgery, shop-lifting, and even the cutting of a hop-bind in a plantation were punishable with death, was a common object in the landscape. Cf. Vicar of Wakefield , 1706, ii. 122:—‘Our possessions are paled up with new edicts every day, and hung round with gibbets to scare every invader’; and Citizen of the World , 1762, ii. 63–7. Johnson, who wrote eloquently on capital punishment in The Rambler for April 20, 1751, No. 114, also refers to the ceaseless executions in his London , 1738, ll. 238–43:—

Scarce can our fields, such crowds at Tyburn die, With hemp the gallows and the fleet supply. Propose your schemes, ye senatorian band, Whose ways and means support the sinking land: Lest ropes be wanting in the tempting spring, To rig another convoy for the king.

Where the poor houseless shivering female lies. Mitford compares Letter cxiv of The Citizen of the World , 1762, ii. 211:—‘These poor shivering females have once seen happier days, and been flattered into beauty. They have been prostituted to the gay luxurious villain, and are now turned out to meet the severity of winter. Perhaps now lying at the doors of their betrayers, they sue to wretches whose hearts are insensible, or debauchees who may curse, but will not relieve them.’ The same passage occurs in The Bee , 1759, p. 126 ( A City Night-Piece ).

Near her betrayer’s door, etc. Cf. the foregoing quotation.

wild Altama, i.e. the Alatamaha, a river in Georgia, North America. Goldsmith may have been familiar with this name in connexion with his friend Oglethorpe’s expedition of 1733.

crouching tigers, a poetical licence, as there are no tigers in the locality named. But Mr. J. H. Lobban calls attention to a passage from Animated Nature [1774, iii. 244], in which Goldsmith seems to defend himself:—‘There is an animal of America, which is usually called the Red Tiger, but Mr. Buffon calls it the Cougar, which, no doubt, is very different from the tiger of the east. Some, however, have thought proper to rank both together, and I will take leave to follow their example.’

The good old sire. Cf. Threnodia Augustalis , ll. 16–17:—

The good old sire, unconscious of decay, The modest matron, clad in homespun gray

a father’s. ‘Her father’s’ in the first edition.

silent. ‘Decent’ in the first edition.

On Torno’s cliffs, or Pambamarca’s side. ‘Torno’=Tornea, a river which falls into the Gulf of Bothnia; Pambamarca is a mountain near Quito, South America. ‘The author’—says Bolton Corney—‘bears in memory the operations of the French philosophers in the arctic and equatorial regions, as described in the celebrated narratives of M. Maupertuis and Don Antonio de Ulloa.’

That trade’s proud empire, etc. These last four lines are attributed to Johnson on Boswell’s authority:—‘Dr. Johnson . . . favoured me by marking the lines which he furnished to Goldsmith’s Deserted Village , which are only the ‘last four’.’ (Birkbeck Hill’s Boswell , 1887, ii. 7.)

PROLOGUE OF LABERIUS.

This translation, or rather imitation, was first published at pp. 176–7 of An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe , 1759 (Chap. xii, ‘Of the Stage’), where it is prefaced as follows:— ‘M ACROBIUS has preserved a prologue, spoken and written by the poet [Decimus] Laberius, a Roman knight, whom Caesar forced upon the stage, written with great elegance and spirit, which shews what opinion the Romans in general entertained of the profession of an actor.’ In the second edition of 1774 the prologue was omitted. The original lines, one of which Goldsmith quotes, are to found in the Saturnalia of Macrobius, lib. ii, cap. vii ( Opera , London, 1694). He seems to have confined himself to imitating the first fifteen:—

Necessitas, cujus cursus transversi impetum Voluerunt multi effugere, pauci potuerunt, Quo me detrusit paene extremis sensibus? Quem nulla ambitio, nulla umquam largitio, Nullus timor, vis nulla, nulla auctoritas Movere potuit in juventa de statu; Ecce in senecta ut facile labefecit loco Viri Excellentis mente clemente edita Submissa placide blandiloquens oratio! Etenim ipsi di negare cui nihil potuerunt, Hominem me denegare quis posset pati? Ergo bis tricenis annis actis sine tota Eques Romanus Lare egressus meo Domum revertar mimus. nimirum hoc die Uno plus vixi mihi quam vivendum fuit.

Rollin gives a French translation of this prologue in his Traité des Études . It is quoted by Bolton Corney in his Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith , 1845, pp. 203–4. In his Aldine edition of 1831, p. 114, Mitford completed Goldsmith’s version as follows:—

Too lavish still in good, or evil hour, To show to man the empire of thy power, If fortune, at thy wild impetuous sway, The blossoms of my fame must drop away, Then was the time the obedient plant to strain When life was warm in every vigorous vein, To mould young nature to thy plastic skill, And bend my pliant boyhood to thy will. So might I hope applauding crowds to hear, Catch the quick smile, and HIS attentive ear. But ah! for what has thou reserv’d my age? Say, how can I expect the approving stage; Fled is the bloom of youth—the manly air— The vigorous mind that spurn’d at toil and care; Gone is the voice, whose clear and silver tone The enraptur’d theatre would love to own. As clasping ivy chokes the encumber’d tree, So age with foul embrace has ruined me. Thou, and the tomb, Laberius, art the same, Empty within, what hast thou but a name?

Macrobius, it may be remembered, was the author, with a quotation from whom Johnson, after a long silence, electrified the company upon his first arrival at Pembroke College, thus giving (says Boswell) ‘the first impression of that more extensive reading in which he had indulged himself’ (Birkbeck Hill’s Boswell , 1887, i. 59). If the study of Macrobius is to be regarded as a test of ‘more extensive reading’ that praise must therefore be accorded to Goldsmith, who cites him in his first book.

ON A BEAUTIFUL YOUTH STRUCK BLIND WITH LIGHTNING.

This quatrain, the original of which does not appear to have been traced, was first published in The Bee for Saturday, the 6th of October, 1759, p. 8. It is there succeeded by the following Latin epigram, ‘in the same spirit’:—

LUMINE Acon dextro capta est Leonida sinistro     Et poterat forma vincere uterque Deos. Parve puer lumen quod habes concede puellae     Sic tu caecus amor sic erit illa Venus.

There are several variations of this in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1745, pp. 104, 159, 213, 327, one of which is said to be ‘By a monk of Winchester,’ with a reference to ‘Cambden’s Remains , p. 413.’ None of these corresponds exactly with Goldsmith’s text; and the lady’s name is uniformly given as ‘Leonilla.’ A writer in the Quarterly Review , vol. 171, p. 296, prints the ‘original’ thus—

Lumine Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro,     Et potis est forma vincere uterque Deos. Blande puer, lumen quod habes concede sorori;     Sic tu caecus Amor, sic erit illa Venus;

and says ‘it was written by Girolamo Amalteo, and will be found in any of the editions of the Trium Fratrum Amaltheorum Carmina , under the title of ‘De gemellis, fratre et sorore, luscis.’ According to Byron on Bowles ( Works , 1836, vi. p. 390), the persons referred to are the Princess of Eboli, mistress of Philip II of Spain, and Maugiron, minion of Henry III of France, who had each of them lost an eye. But for this the reviewer above quoted had found no authority.

This little trifle, in which a French levity is wedded to the language of Prior, was first printed in The Bee , for Saturday, the 13th of October, 1759. Its original, which is as follows, is to be found where Goldsmith found it, namely in Part iii of the Ménagiana , (ed. 1729, iii, 397), and not far from the ditty of le fameux la Galisse . (See An Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize , infra , p. 198):—

E TRENE A I RIS .

Pour témoigner de ma flame, Iris, du meilleur de mon ame Je vous donne à ce nouvel an Non pas dentelle ni ruban, Non pas essence, ni pommade, Quelques boites de marmelade, Un manchon, des gans, un bouquet, Non pas heures, ni chapelet. Quoi donc? Attendez, je vous donne O fille plus belle que bonne ... Je vous donne: Ah! le puis-je dire? Oui, c’est trop souffrir le martyre, Il est tems de s’émanciper, Patience va m’échaper, Fussiez-vous cent fois plus aimable, Belle Iris, je vous donne ... au Diable.

In Bolton Corney’s edition of Goldsmith’s Poetical Works , 1845, p. 77, note, these lines are attributed to Bernard de la Monnoye (1641–1728), who is said to have included them in a collection of Étrennes en vers , published in 1715.

I’ll give thee. See an anecdote à propos of this anticlimax in Trevelyan’s Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay , ed. 1889, p. 600:—‘There was much laughing about Mrs. Beecher Stowe [then (16th March, 1853) expected in England], and what we were to give her. I referred the ladies to Goldsmith’s poems for what I should give. Nobody but Hannah understood me; but some of them have since been thumbing Goldsmith to make out the riddle.’

THE LOGICIANS REFUTED.

These lines, which have often, and even of late years, been included among Swift’s works, were first printed as Goldsmith’s by T. Evans at vol. i. pp. 115–17 of The Poetical and Dramatic Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B. , 1780. They originally appeared in The Busy Body for Thursday, October the 18th, 1759 (No. v), having this notification above the title: ‘The following Poem written by D R . S WIFT , is communicated to the Public by the B USY B ODY , to whom it was presented by a Nobleman of distinguished Learning and Taste.’ In No. ii they had already been advertised as forthcoming. The sub-title, ‘In imitation of Dean Swift,’ seems to have been added by Evans. The text here followed is that of the first issue.

Wise Aristotle and Smiglecius. Cf. The Life of Parnell , 1770, p. 3:—‘His imagination might have been too warm to relish the cold logic of Burgersdicius, or the dreary subtleties of Smiglesius ; but it is certain that as a classical scholar, few could equal him.’ Martin Smiglesius or Smigletius, a Polish Jesuit, theologian and logician, who died in 1618, appears to have been a special bête noire to Goldsmith; and the reference to him here would support the ascription of the poem to Goldsmith’s pen, were it not that Swift seems also to have cherished a like antipathy:—‘He told me that he had made many efforts, upon his entering the College [i.e. Trinity College, Dublin], to read some of the old treatises on logic writ by Smeglesius , Keckermannus, Burgersdicius, etc., and that he never had patience to go through three pages of any of them, he was so disgusted at the stupidity of the work.’ (Sheridan’s Life of Swift , 2nd ed., 1787, p. 4.)

Than reason-boasting mortal’s pride. So in The Busy Body . Some editors—Mitford, for example—print the line:—

Than reason,—boasting mortals’ pride.

Deus est anima brutorum . Cf. Addison in Spectator , No. 121 (July 19, 1711): ‘A modern Philosopher, quoted by Monsieur Bale in his Learned Dissertation on the Souls of Brutes delivers the same Opinion [i.e.—That Instinct is the immediate direction of Providence], tho’ in a bolder form of words where he says Deus est Anima Brutorum , God himself is the Soul of Brutes.’ There is much in ‘Monsieur Bayle’ on this theme. Probably Addison had in mind the following passage of the Dict. Hist. et Critique (3rd ed., 1720, 2481 b .) which Bayle cites from M. Bernard:—‘Il me semble d’avoir lu quelque part cette Thèse, Deus est anima brutorum : l’expression est un peu dure; mais elle peut recevoir un fort bon sens.’

B—b =Bob, i.e. Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister, for whom many venal ‘quills were drawn’ circa 1715–42. Cf. Pope’s Epilogue to the Satires , 1738, Dialogue i, ll. 27–32:—

Go see Sir ROBERT— P. See Sir ROBERT!—hum— And never laugh—for all my life to come? Seen him I have, but in his happier hour Of Social Pleasure, ill-exchang’d for Pow’r; Seen him, uncumber’d with the Venal tribe, Smile without Art, and win without a Bribe.

A courtier any ape surpasses. Cf. Gay’s Fables, passim . Indeed there is more of Gay than Swift in this and the lines that follow. Gay’s life was wasted in fruitless expectations of court patronage, and his disappointment often betrays itself in his writings.

And footmen, lords and dukes can act. Cf. Gil Blas , 1715–35, liv. iii, chap. iv:—‘Il falloit voir comme nous nous portions des santés à tous moments, en nous donnant les uns aux autres les surnoms de nos maîtres. Le valet de don Antonio appeloit Gamb celuiet nous nous enivrions peu à peu sous ces noms empruntés, tout aussi bien que les seigneurs qui les portoient véritablement.’ But Steele had already touched this subject in Spectator , No. 88, for June 11, 1711, ‘On the Misbehaviour of Servants,’ a paper supposed to have afforded the hint for Townley’s farce of High Life below Stairs , which, about a fortnight after The Logicians Refuted appeared, was played for the first time at Drury Lane, not much to the gratification of the gentlemen’s gentlemen in the upper gallery. Goldsmith himself wrote ‘A Word or two on the late Farce, called High Life below Stairs ,’ in The Bee for November 3, 1759, pp. 154–7.

This little piece first appears in The Bee for October 20, 1759 (No. iii). It is there called ‘A Sonnet,’ a title which is only accurate in so far as it is ‘a little song.’ Bolton Corney affirms that it is imitated from the French of Saint-Pavin (i.e. Denis Sanguin de Saint-Pavin, d. 1670), whose works were edited in 1759, the year in which Goldsmith published the collection of essays and verses in which it is to be found. The text here followed is that of the ‘new edition’ of The Bee , published by W. Lane, Leadenhall Street, no date, p. 94. Neither by its motive nor its literary merits—it should be added—did the original call urgently for translation; and the poem is here included solely because, being Goldsmith’s, it cannot be omitted from his complete works.

This and the following line in the first version run:—

Yet, why this killing soft dejection? Why dim thy beauty with a tear?

STANZAS ON THE TAKING OF QUEBEC.

Quebec was taken on the 13th September, 1759. Wolfe was wounded pretty early in the action, while leading the advance of the Louisbourg grenadiers. ‘A shot shattered his wrist. He wrapped his handkerchief about it and kept on. Another shot struck him, and he still advanced, when a third lodged in his breast. He staggered, and sat on the ground. Lieutenant Brown, of the grenadiers, one Henderson, a volunteer in the same company, and a private soldier, aided by an officer of artillery who ran to join them, carried him in their arms to the rear. He begged them to lay him down. They did so, and asked if he would have a surgeon. “There’s no need,” he answered; “it’s all over with me.” A moment after, one of them cried out, “They run; see how they run!” “Who run?” Wolfe demanded, like a man roused from sleep. “The enemy, sir. They give way everywhere!” “Go, one of you, to Colonel Burton,” returned the dying man; “tell him to march Webb’s regiment down to Charles River, to cut off their retreat from the bridge.” Then, turning on his side, he murmured, “Now, God be praised, I will die in peace!” and in a few moments his gallant soul had fled.’ (Parkman’s Montcalm and Wolfe , 1885, ii. 296–7.) In his History of England in a Series of Letters , 1764, ii. 241, Goldsmith says of this event:—‘Perhaps the loss of such a man was greater to the nation than the conquering of all Canada was advantageous; but it is the misfortune of humanity, that we can never know true greatness till the moment when we are going to lose it.’* The present stanzas were first published in The Busy Body (No. vii) for Tuesday, the 22nd October, 1759, a week after the news of Wolfe’s death had reached this country (Tuesday the 16th). According to Prior ( Life , 1837, i. 6), Goldsmith claimed to be related to Wolfe by the father’s side, the maiden name of the General’s mother being Henrietta Goldsmith. It may be noted that Benjamin West’s popular rendering of Wolfe’s death (1771)—a rendering which Nelson never passed in a print shop without being stopped by it—was said to be based upon the descriptions of an eye-witness. It was engraved by Woollett and Ryland in 1776. A key to the names of those appearing in the picture was published in the Army and Navy Gazette of January 20, 1893.

* He repeats this sentiment, in different words, in the later History of England of 1771, iv. 400.

AN ELEGY ON MRS. MARY BLAIZE.

The publication in February, 1751, of Gray’s Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard had set a fashion in poetry which long continued. Goldsmith, who considered that work ‘a very fine poem, but overloaded with epithet’ ( Beauties of English Poesy , 1767, i. 53), and once proposed to amend it ‘by leaving out an idle word in every line’ [!] (Cradock’s Memoirs , 1826, i. 230), resented these endless imitations, and his antipathy to them frequently reveals itself. Only a few months before the appearance of Mrs. Blaize in The Bee for October 27, 1759, he had written in the Critical Review , vii. 263, when noticing Langhorne’s Death of Adonis , as follows:—‘It is not thus that many of our moderns have composed what they call elegies; they seem scarcely to have known its real character. If an hero or a poet happens to die with us, the whole band of elegiac poets raise the dismal chorus, adorn his herse with all the paltry escutcheons of flattery, rise into bombast, paint him at the head of his thundering legions, or reining Pegasus in his most rapid career; they are sure to strew cypress enough upon the bier, dress up all the muses in mourning, and look themselves every whit as dismal and sorrowful as an undertaker’s shop.’ He returned to the subject in a Chinese Letter of March 4, 1761, in the Public Ledger (afterwards Letter ciii of The Citizen of the World , 1762, ii. 162–5), which contains the lines On the Death of the Right Honourable *** ; and again, in The Vicar of Wakefield , 1766, i. 174, à propos of the Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog , he makes Dr. Primrose say, ‘I have wept so much at all sorts of elegies of late, that without an enlivening glass I am sure this will overcome me.’

The model for An Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize is to be found in the old French popular song of Monsieur de la Palisse or Palice, about fifty verses of which are printed in Larousse’s Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIX me Siècle , x. p. 179. It is there stated to have originated in some dozen stanzas suggested to la Monnoye ( v. supra , p. 193) by the extreme artlessness of a military quatrain dating from the battle of Pavia, and the death upon that occasion of the famous French captain, Jacques de Chabannes, seigneur de la Palice:—

Monsieur d’La Palice est mort,     Mort devant Pavie; Un quart d’heure avant sa mort,      Il était encore en vie.

The remaining verses, i.e. in addition to those of la Monnoye, are the contributions of successive generations. Goldsmith probably had in mind the version in Part iii of the Ménagiana , (ed. 1729, iii, 384–391) where apparently by a typographical error, the hero is called ‘le fameux la Galisse, homme imaginaire.’ The verses he imitated most closely are reproduced below. It may be added that this poem supplied one of its last inspirations to the pencil of Randolph Caldecott, who published it as a picture-book in October, 1885. (See also An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog , p. 212.)

Who left a pledge behind. Caldecott cleverly converted this line into the keynote of the poem, by making the heroine a pawnbroker.

When she has walk’d before. Cf. the French:—

On dit que dans ses amours     Il fut caresse des belles, Qui le suivirent toujours,      Tant qu’il marcha devant elles.

Her last disorder mortal. Cf. the French:—

Il fut par un triste sort     Blesse d’une main cruelle. On croit, puis qu’il en est mort,      Que la plaie étoit mortelle.

Kent Street, Southwark, ‘chiefly inhabited,’ said Strype, ‘by Broom Men and Mumpers’; and Evelyn tells us ( Diary 5th December, 1683) that he assisted at the marriage, to her fifth husband, of a Mrs. Castle, who was ‘the daughter of one Burton, a broom-man . . . in Kent Street’ who had become not only rich, but Sheriff of Surrey. It was a poor neighbourhood corresponding to the present ‘old Kent-road, from Kent to Southwark and old London Bridge’ (Cunningham’s London ).* Goldsmith himself refers to it in The Bee for October 20, 1759, being the number immediately preceding that in which Madam Blaize first appeared:—‘You then, O ye beggars of my acquaintance, whether in rags or lace; whether in Kent-street or the Mall; whether at the Smyrna or St. Giles’s, might I advise as a friend, never seem in want of the favour which you solicit’ (p. 72). Three years earlier he had practised as ‘a physician, in a humble way’ in Bankside, Southwark, and was probably well acquainted with the humours of Kent Street.

* In contemporary maps Kent (now Tabard) Street is shown extending between the present New Kent Road and Blackman Street.

DESCRIPTION OF AN AUTHOR’S BEDCHAMBER.

In a letter written to the Rev. Henry Goldsmith in 1759 ( Percy Memoir , 1801, pp. 53–9), Goldsmith thus refers to the first form of these verses:—‘Your last letter, I repeat it, was too short; you should have given me your opinion of the design of the heroicomical poem which I sent you: you remember I intended to introduce the hero of the poem, as lying in a paltry alehouse. You may take the following specimen of the manner, which I flatter myself is quite original. The room in which he lies, may be described somewhat this way:—

The window, patch’d with paper, lent a ray, That feebly shew’d the state in which he lay. The sanded floor, that grits beneath the tread: The humid wall with paltry pictures spread; The game of goose was there expos’d to view And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew: The seasons, fram’d with listing, found a place, And Prussia’s monarch shew’d his lamp-black face The morn was cold; he views with keen desire, A rusty grate unconscious of a fire. An unpaid reck’ning on the frieze was scor’d, And five crack’d tea-cups dress’d the chimney board.

And now imagine after his soliloquy, the landlord to make his appearance, in order to dun him for the reckoning:—

Not with that face, so servile and so gay, That welcomes every stranger that can pay, With sulky eye he smoak’d the patient man, Then pull’d his breeches tight, and thus began, etc.

All this is taken, you see, from nature. It is a good remark of Montaign[e]’s, that the wisest men often have friends, with whom they do not care how much they play the fool. Take my present follies as instances of regard. Poetry is a much easier, and more agreeable species of composition than prose, and could a man live by it, it were no unpleasant employment to be a poet.’

In Letter xxix of The Citizen of the World , 1762, i. 119–22, which first appeared in The Public Ledger for May 2, 1760, they have a different setting. They are read at a club of authors by a ‘poet, in shabby finery,’ who asserts that he has composed them the day before. After some preliminary difficulties, arising from the fact that the laws of the club do not permit any author to inflict his own works upon the assembly without a money payment, he introduces them as follows:—‘Gentlemen, says he, the present piece is not one of your common epic poems, which come from the press like paper kites in summer; there are none of your Turnuses or Dido’s in it; it is an heroical description of nature. I only beg you’ll endeavour to make your souls unison* with mine, and hear with the same enthusiasm with which I have written. The poem begins with the description of an author’s bedchamber: the picture was sketched in my own apartment; for you must know, gentlemen, that I am myself the heroe. Then putting himself into the attitude of an orator, with all the emphasis of voice and action, he proceeded.

Where the Red Lion, etc.’

* i.e. accord, conform.

The verses then follow as they are printed in this volume; but he is unable to induce his audience to submit to a further sample. In a slightly different form, some of them were afterwards worked into The Deserted Village , 1770. (See ll. 227–36.)

Where Calvert’s butt, and Parsons’ black champagne. The Calverts and Humphrey Parsons were noted brewers of ‘entire butt beer’ or porter, also known familiarly as ‘British Burgundy’ and ‘black Champagne.’ Calvert’s ‘Best Butt Beer’ figures on the sign in Hogarth’s Beer Street , 1751.

The humid wall with paltry pictures spread. Bewick gives the names of some of these popular, if paltry, decorations:—‘In cottages everywhere were to be seen the “Sailor’s Farewell” and his “Happy Return,” “Youthful Sports,” and the “Feats of Manhood,” “The Bold Archers Shooting at a Mark,” “The Four Seasons,” etc.’ ( Memoir , ‘Memorial Edition,’ 1887, p. 263.)

The royal game of goose was there in view. (See note, p. 188. )

And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew. (See note, p. 187. )

The Seasons, fram’d with listing. See note to l. 10 above, as to ‘The Seasons.’ Listing, ribbon, braid, or tape is still used as a primitive encadrement . In a letter dated August 15, 1758, to his cousin, Mrs. Lawder (Jane Contarine), Goldsmith again refers to this device. Speaking of some ‘maxims of frugality’ with which he intends to adorn his room, he adds—‘my landlady’s daughter shall frame them with the parings of my black waistcoat.’ (Prior, Life , 1837, i. 271.)

And brave Prince William. William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, 1721–65. The ‘lamp-black face’ would seem to imply that the portrait was a silhouette. In the letter quoted on p. 200 it is ‘Prussia’s monarch’ (i.e. Frederick the Great).

With beer and milk arrears. See the lines relative to the landlord in Goldsmith’s above-quoted letter to his brother. In another letter of August 14, 1758, to Robert Bryanton, he describes himself as ‘in a garret writing for bread, and expecting to be dunned for a milk score.’ Hogarth’s Distrest Poet , 1736, it will be remembered, has already realized this expectation.

A cap by night—a stocking all the day. ‘With this last line,’ says The Citizen of the World , 1762, i. 121, ‘he [the author] seemed so much elated, that he was unable to proceed: “There gentlemen, cries he, there is a description for you; Rab[e]lais’s bed-chamber is but a fool to it:

There is sound and sense, and truth, and nature in the trifling compass of ten little syllables.”’ (Letter xxix.) Cf. also The Deserted Village , l. 230:—

A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.

If Goldsmith’s lines did not belong to 1759, one might suppose he had in mind the later Pauvre Diable of his favourite Voltaire. (See also A PPENDIX B. )

ON SEEING MRS. ** PERFORM IN THE CHARACTER OF ****.

These verses, intended for a specimen of the newspaper Muse, are from Letter lxxxii of The Citizen of the World , 1762, ii. 87, first printed in The Public Ledger , October 21, 1760.

ON THE DEATH OF THE RIGHT HON. ***

From Letter ciii of The Citizen of the World , 1762, ii. 164, first printed in The Public Ledger , March 4, 1761. The verses are given as a ‘specimen of a poem on the decease of a great man.’ Goldsmith had already used the trick of the final line of the quatrain in An Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize , ante, p. 198.

AN EPIGRAM.

From Letter cx of The Citizen of the World , 1762, ii. 193, first printed in The Public Ledger , April 14, 1761. It had, however, already been printed in the ‘Ledger’, ten days before. Goldsmith’s animosity to Churchill (cf. note to l. 41 of the dedication to The Traveller ) was notorious; but this is one of his doubtful pieces.

virtue. ‘Charity’ ( Author’s note ).

bounty. ‘Settled at One Shilling—the Price of the Poem’ ( Author’s note ).

From the same letter as the preceding. George Colman and Robert Lloyd of the St. James’s Magazine were supposed to have helped Churchill in The Rosciad , the ‘it’ of the epigram.

TRANSLATION OF A SOUTH AMERICAN ODE.

From Letter cxiii of The Citizen of the World , 1762, ii. 209, first printed in The Public Ledger , May 13, 1761.

THE DOUBLE TRANSFORMATION.

The Double Transformation first appeared in Essays: By Mr. Goldsmith , 1765, where it figures as Essay xxvi, occupying pp. 229–33. It was revised for the second edition of 1766, becoming Essay xxviii, pp. 241–45. This is the text here followed. The poem is an obvious imitation of what its author calls ( Letters from a Nobleman to his Son , 1764, ii. 140) that ‘French elegant easy manner of telling a story,’ which Prior had caught from La Fontaine. But the inherent simplicity of Goldsmith’s style is curiously evidenced by the absence of those illustrations and ingenious allusions which are Prior’s chief characteristic. And although Goldsmith included The Ladle and Hans Carvel in his Beauties of English Poesy , 1767, he refrained wisely from copying the licence of his model.

Jack Book-worm led a college life. The version of 1765 reads ‘liv’d’ for ‘led’.

And freshmen wonder’d as he spoke. The earlier version adds here—

Without politeness aim’d at breeding, And laugh’d at pedantry and reading.

Her presence banish’d all his peace. Here in the first version the paragraph closes, and a fresh one is commenced as follows:—

    Our alter’d Parson now began To be a perfect ladies’ man; Made sonnets, lisp’d his sermons o’er, And told the tales he told before, Of bailiffs pump’d, and proctors bit, At college how he shew’d his wit; And, as the fair one still approv’d, He fell in love—or thought he lov’d. So with decorum, etc.

The fifth line was probably a reminiscence of the college riot in which Goldsmith was involved in May, 1747, and for his part in which he was publicly admonished. (See Introduction , p. xi, l. 3.)

usage. This word, perhaps by a printer’s error, is ‘visage’ in the first version.

Skill’d in no other arts was she. Cf. Prior:—

For in all Visits who but She, To Argue, or to Repartee.

Five greasy nightcaps wrapp’d her head. Cf. Spectator , No. 494— ‘At length the Head of the Colledge came out to him, from an inner Room, with half a Dozen Night-Caps upon his Head.’ See also Goldsmith’s essay on the Coronation ( Essays , 1766, p. 238), where Mr. Grogan speaks of his wife as habitually ‘mobbed up in flannel night caps, and trembling at a breath of air.’

By day, ’twas gadding or coquetting. The first version after ‘coquetting’ begins a fresh paragraph with—

Now tawdry madam kept, etc.

A sigh in suffocating smoke. Here in the first version follows:—

She, in her turn, became perplexing, And found substantial bliss in vexing. Thus every hour was pass’d, etc.

Thus as her faults each day were known. First version: ‘Each day, the more her faults,’ etc.

Now, to perplex. The first version has ‘Thus.’ But the alteration in line 61 made a change necessary.

paste. First version ‘pastes.’

condemn’d to hack, i.e. to hackney, to plod.

A NEW SIMILE.

The New Simile first appears in Essays: By Mr. Goldsmith , 1765, pp. 234–6, where it forms Essay xxvii. In the second edition of 1766 it occupies pp. 246–8 and forms Essay xix. The text here followed is that of the second edition, which varies slightly from the first. In both cases the poem is followed by the enigmatical initials ‘*J. B.,’ which, however, as suggested by Gibbs, may simply stand for ‘Jack Bookworm’ of The Double Transformation . (See p. 204.)

Long had I sought in vain to find. The text of 1765 reads—

‘I long had rack’d my brains to find.’

Tooke’s Pantheon. Andrew Tooke (1673–1732) was first usher and then Master at the Charterhouse. In the latter capacity he succeeded Thomas Walker, the master of Addison and Steele. His Pantheon , a revised translation from the Latin of the Jesuit, Francis Pomey, was a popular school-book of mythology, with copper-plates.

Wings upon either side—mark that. The petasus of Mercury, like his sandals (l. 24), is winged.

No poppy-water half so good. Poppy-water, made by boiling the heads of the white, black, or red poppy, was a favourite eighteenth-century soporific:—‘Juno shall give her peacock poppy-water , that he may fold his ogling tail.’ (Congreve’s Love for Love , 1695, iv. 3.)

With this he drives men’s souls to hell.

Tu.... ....virgaque levem coerces Aurea turbam.—Hor. Od . i. 10.

Moreover, Merc’ry had a failing.

Te canam.... Callidum, quidquid placuit, iocoso Condere furto.—Hor. Od . i. 10.

Goldsmith, it will be observed, rhymes ‘failing’ and ‘stealing.’ But Pope does much the same:—

That Jelly’s rich, this Malmsey healing, Pray dip your Whiskers and your tail in. ( Imitation of Horace , Bk. ii, Sat. vi.)

Unless this is to be explained by poetical licence, one of these words must have been pronounced in the eighteenth century as it is not pronounced now.

In which all modern bards agree. The text of 1765 reads ‘our scribling bards.’

EDWIN AND ANGELINA.

This ballad, usually known as The Hermit , was written in or before 1765, and printed privately in that year ‘for the amusement of the Countess of Northumberland,’ whose acquaintance Goldsmith had recently made through Mr. Nugent. (See the prefatory note to The Haunch of Venison .) Its title was ‘ Edwin and Angelina. A Ballad . By Mr. Goldsmith.’ It was first published in The Vicar of Wakefield , 1766, where it appears at pp. 70–7, vol. i. In July, 1767, Goldsmith was accused [by Dr. Kenrick] in the St. James’s Chronicle of having taken it from Percy’s Friar of Orders Gray . Thereupon he addressed a letter to the paper, of which the following is the material portion:—‘Another Correspondent of yours accuses me of having taken a Ballad, I published some Time ago, from one by the ingenious Mr. Percy. I do not think there is any great Resemblance between the two Pieces in Question. If there be any, his Ballad is taken from mine. I read it to Mr. Percy some Years ago, and he (as we both considered these Things as Trifles at best) told me, with his usual Good Humour, the next Time I saw him, that he had taken my Plan to form the fragments of Shakespeare into a Ballad of his own. He then read me his little Cento, if I may so call it, and I highly approved it. Such petty Anecdotes as these are scarce worth printing, and were it not for the busy Disposition of some of your Correspondents, the Publick should never have known that he owes me the Hint of his Ballad, or that I am obliged to his Friendship and Learning for Communications of a much more important Nature.—I am, Sir, your’s etc. O LIVER G OLDSMITH .’ ( St. James’s Chronicle , July 23–5, 1767.) No contradiction of this statement appears to have been offered by Percy; but in re-editing his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry in 1775, shortly after Goldsmith’s death, he affixed this note to The Friar of Orders Gray :—‘As the foregoing song has been thought to have suggested to our late excellent poet, Dr. Goldsmith, the plan of his beautiful ballad of Edwin and Emma [ Angelina ], first printed [published?] in his Vicar of Wakefield , it is but justice to his memory to declare, that his poem was written first, and that if there is any imitation in the case, they will be found both to be indebted to the beautiful old ballad, Gentle Herdsman, etc. , printed in the second volume of this work, which the doctor had much admired in manuscript, and has finely improved’ (vol. i. p. 250). The same story is told, in slightly different terms, at pp. 74–5 of the Memoir of Goldsmith drawn up under Percy’s superintendence for the Miscellaneous Works of 1801, and a few stanzas of Gentle Herdsman , which Goldsmith is supposed to have had specially in mind, are there reproduced. References to them will be found in the ensuing notes. The text here adopted (with exception of ll. 117–20) is that of the fifth edition of The Vicar of Wakefield , 1773[4], i. pp. 78–85; but the variations of the earlier version of 1765 are duly chronicled, together with certain hitherto neglected differences between the first and later editions of the novel. The poem was also printed in the Poems for Young Ladies , 1767, pp. 91–8.* The author himself, it may be added, thought highly of it. ‘As to my “Hermit,” that poem,’ he is reported to have said, ‘cannot be amended.’ (Cradock’s Memoirs , 1828, iv. 286.)

* This version differs considerably from the others, often following that of 1765; but it has not been considered necessary to record the variations here. That Goldsmith unceasingly revised the piece is sufficiently established.

Turn, etc. The first version has—

Deign saint-like tenant of the dale,     To guide my nightly way, To yonder fire, that cheers the vale     With hospitable ray.

For yonder faithless phantom flies. The Vicar of Wakefield , first edition, has—

‘For yonder phantom only flies.’

All. Vicar of Wakefield , first edition, ‘For.’

Man wants but little here below. Cf. Young’s Complaint , 1743, Night iv. 9, of which this and the next line are a recollection. According to Prior ( Life , 1837, ii. 83), they were printed as a quotation in the version of 1765. Young’s line is—

Man wants but Little; nor that Little, long.

modest. Vicar of Wakefield , first edition, ‘grateful.’

Far in a wilderness obscure. First version, and Vicar of Wakefield , first edition:—

Far shelter’d in a glade obscure The modest mansion lay.

The wicket, opening with a latch. First version, and Vicar of Wakefield , first edition:—

The door just opening with a latch.

And now, when busy crowds retire. First version, and Vicar of Wakefield , first edition:—

And now, when worldly crowds retire To revels or to rest.

But nothing, etc. In the first version this stanza runs as follows:—

But nothing mirthful could assuage     The pensive stranger’s woe; For grief had seized his early age,     And tears would often flow.

modern. Vicar of Wakefield , first edition, reads ‘haughty.’

His love-lorn guest betray’d. First version, and Vicar of Wakefield , first edition:—

The bashful guest betray’d.

Surpris’d, he sees, etc. First version, and Vicar of Wakefield , first edition:—

He sees unnumber’d beauties rise,     Expanding to the view; Like clouds that deck the morning skies,     As bright, as transient too.

The bashful look, the rising breast. First version, and Vicar of Wakefield , first edition:—

Her looks, her lips, her panting breast.

But let a maid, etc. For this, and the next two stanzas, the first version substitutes:—

Forgive, and let thy pious care     A heart’s distress allay; That seeks repose, but finds despair     Companion of the way. My father liv’d, of high degree,     Remote beside the Tyne; And as he had but only me,     Whate’er he had was mine. To win me from his tender arms,     Unnumber’d suitors came; Their chief pretence my flatter’d charms,     My wealth perhaps their aim.

a mercenary crowd. Vicar of Wakefield , first edition, has:—‘the gay phantastic crowd.’

Amongst the rest young Edwin bow’d. First version:—

Among the rest young Edwin bow’d,     Who offer’d only love.

Wisdom and worth, etc. First version, and Vicar of Wakefield , first edition:—

A constant heart was all he had,     But that was all to me.

And when beside me, etc. For this ‘additional stanza,’ says the Percy Memoir , p. 76, ‘the reader is indebted to Richard Archdal, Esq., late a member of the Irish Parliament, to whom it was presented by the author himself.’ It was first printed in the Miscellaneous Works , 1801, ii. 25. In Prior’s edition of the Miscellaneous Works , 1837, iv. 41, it is said to have been ‘written some years after the rest of the poem.’

The blossom opening to the day, etc. For this and the next two stanzas the first version substitutes:—

Whene’er he spoke amidst the train,     How would my heart attend! And till delighted even to pain,     How sigh for such a friend! And when a little rest I sought     In Sleep’s refreshing arms, How have I mended what he taught,     And lent him fancied charms! Yet still (and woe betide the hour!)     I spurn’d him from my side, And still with ill-dissembled power     Repaid his love with pride.

For still I tried each fickle art, etc. Percy finds the prototype of this in the following stanza of Gentle Herdsman :—

And grew soe coy and nice to please,     As women’s lookes are often soe, He might not kisse, nor hand forsoothe,     Unlesse I willed him soe to doe.

Till quite dejected with my scorn, etc. The first edition reads this stanza and the first two lines of the next thus:—

Till quite dejected by my scorn,     He left me to deplore; And sought a solitude forlorn,     And ne’er was heard of more. Then since he perish’d by my fault,     This pilgrimage I pay, etc.

And sought a solitude forlorn. Cf. Gentle Herdsman :—

He gott him to a secrett place,     And there he dyed without releeffe.

And there forlorn, despairing, hid, etc. The first edition for this and the next two stanzas substitutes the following:—

And there in shelt’ring thickets hid,     I’ll linger till I die; ’Twas thus for me my lover did,     And so for him will I. ‘Thou shalt not thus,’ the Hermit cried,     And clasp’d her to his breast; The astonish’d fair one turned to chide,—     ’Twas Edwin’s self that prest. For now no longer could he hide,     What first to hide he strove; His looks resume their youthful pride,     And flush with honest love.

’Twas so for me, etc. Cf. Gentle Herdsman :—

Thus every day I fast and pray,     And ever will doe till I dye; And gett me to some secret place,     For soe did hee, and soe will I.

Forbid it, Heaven. Vicar of Wakefield , first edition, like the version of 1765, has ‘Thou shalt not thus.’

My life. Vicar of Wakefield , first edition, has ‘O thou.’

No, never from this hour, etc. The first edition reads:—

No, never, from this hour to part,     Our love shall still be new; And the last sigh that rends thy heart,     Shall break thy Edwin’s too.

The poem then concluded thus:—

Here amidst sylvan bowers we’ll rove,     From lawn to woodland stray; Blest as the songsters of the grove,     And innocent as they. To all that want, and all that wail,     Our pity shall be given, And when this life of love shall fail,     We’ll love again in heaven.

These couplets, with certain alterations in the first and last lines, are to be found in the version printed in Poems for Young Ladies , 1767, p. 98.

AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A MAD DOG.

This poem was first published in The Vicar of Wakefield , 1766, i. 175–6, where it is sung by one of the little boys. In common with the Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize (p. 47) it owes something of its origin to Goldsmith’s antipathy to fashionable elegiacs, something also to the story of M. de la Palisse. As regards mad dogs, its author seems to have been more reasonable than many of his contemporaries, since he ridiculed, with much common sense, their exaggerated fears on this subject ( v. Chinese Letter in The Public Ledger for August 29, 1760, afterwards Letter lxvi of The Citizen of the World , 1762, ii. 15). But it is ill jesting with hydrophobia. Like Madam Blaize , these verses have been illustrated by Randolph Caldecott.

In Islington there was a man. Goldsmith had lodgings at Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming’s in Islington (or ‘Isling town’ as the earlier editions have it) in 1763–4; and the choice of the locality may have been determined by this circumstance. But the date of the composition of the poem is involved in the general obscurity which hangs over the Vicar in its unprinted state. (See Introduction , pp. xviii-xix.)

The dog, to gain some private ends. The first edition reads ‘his private ends.’

The dog it was that died. This catastrophe suggests the couplet from the Greek Anthology , ed. Jacobs, 1813–7, ii. 387:—

Kappadoken pot exidna kake daken alla kai aute katthane, geusamene aimatos iobolou.

Goldsmith, however, probably went no farther back than Voltaire on Fréron:—

L’autre jour, au fond d’un vallon, Un serpent mordit Jean Fréron. Devinez ce qu’il arriva? Ce fut le serpent qui creva.

This again, according to M. Edouard Fournier ( L’Esprit des Autres , sixth edition, 1881, p. 288), is simply the readjustment of an earlier quatrain, based upon a Latin distich in the Epigrammatum delectus , 1659:—

Un gros serpent mordit Aurelle. Que croyez-vous qu’il arriva? Qu’Aurelle en mourut?—Bagatelle! Ce fut le serpent qui creva.

SONG FROM ‘THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.’

First published in The Vicar of Wakefield , 1766, ii. 78 (chap. v). It is there sung by Olivia Primrose, after her return home with her father. ‘Do, my pretty Olivia,’ says Mrs. Primrose, let us have that little melancholy air your pappa was so fond of, your sister Sophy has already obliged us. Do child, it will please your old father.’ ‘She complied in a manner so exquisitely pathetic,’ continues Dr. Primrose, ‘as moved me.’ The charm of the words, and the graceful way in which they are introduced, seem to have blinded criticism to the impropriety, and even inhumanity, of requiring poor Olivia to sing a song so completely applicable to her own case. No source has been named for this piece; and its perfect conformity with the text would appear to indicate that Goldsmith was not indebted to any earlier writer for his idea.

His well-known obligations to French sources seem, however, to have suggested that, if a French original could not be discovered for the foregoing lyric, it might be desirable to invent one. A clever paragraphist in the St. James’s Gazette for January 28th, 1889, accordingly reproduced the following stanzas, which he alleged, were to be found in the poems of Segur, ‘printed in Paris in 1719’:—

Lorsqu’une femme, après trop de tendresse,     D’un homme sent la trahison, Comment, pour cette si douce foiblesse     Peut-elle trouver une guérison? Le seul remède qu’elle peut ressentir,     La seul revanche pour son tort, Pour faire trop tard l’amant repentir,     Helas! trop tard—est la mort.

As a correspondent was not slow to point out, Goldsmith, if a copyist, at all events considerably improved his model (see in particular lines 7 and 8 of the French). On the 30th of the month the late Sir William Fraser gave it as his opinion, that, until the volume of 1719 should be produced, the ‘very inferior verses quoted’ must be classed with the fabrications of ‘Father Prout,’ and he instanced that very version of the Burial of Sir John Moore ( Les Funérailles de Beaumanoir ) which has recently (August 1906) been going the round of the papers once again. No Ségur volume of 1719 was, of course, forthcoming.

Kenrick, as we have already seen, had in 1767 accused Goldsmith of taking Edwin and Angelina from Percy (p. 206). Thirty years later, the charge of plagiarism was revived in a different way when Raimond and Angéline , a French translation of the same poem, appeared, as Goldsmith’s original, in a collection of Essays called The Quiz , 1797. It was eventually discovered to be a translation ‘from’ Goldsmith by a French poet named Léonard, who had included it in a volume dated 1792, entitled Lettres de deux Amans, Habitans de Lyon (Prior’s Life , 1837, ii. 89–94). It may be added that, according to the Biographie Universelle , 1847, vol. 18 (Art. ‘Goldsmith’), there were then no fewer than at least three French imitations of The Hermit besides Léonard’s.

EPILOGUE TO ‘THE GOOD NATUR’D MAN.’

Goldsmith’s comedy of The Good Natur’d Man was produced by Colman, at Covent Garden, on Friday, January 29, 1768. The following note was appended to the Epilogue when printed:—‘The Author, in expectation of an Epilogue from a friend at Oxford, deferred writing one himself till the very last hour. What is here offered, owes all its success to the graceful manner of the Actress who spoke it.’ It was spoken by Mrs. Bulkley, the ‘Miss Richland’ of the piece. In its first form it is to be found in The Public Advertiser for February 3. Two days later the play was published, with the version here followed.

As puffing quacks. Goldsmith had devoted a Chinese letter to this subject. See Citizen of the World , 1762, ii. 10 (Letter lxv).

No, no: I’ve other contests, etc. This couplet is not in the first version. The old building of the College of Physicians was in Warwick Lane; and the reference is to the long-pending dispute, occasionally enlivened by personal collision, between the Fellows and Licentiates respecting the exclusion of certain of the latter from Fellowships. On this theme Bonnell Thornton, himself an M.B. like Goldsmith, wrote a satiric additional canto to Garth’s Dispensary , entitled The Battle of the Wigs , long extracts from which are printed in The Gentleman’s Magazine for March, 1768, p. 132. The same number also reviews The Siege of the Castle of Æsculapius, an heroic Comedy, as it is acted in Warwick-Lane . Goldsmith’s couplet is, however, best illustrated by the title of one of Sayer’s caricatures, The March of the Medical Militants to the Siege of Warwick-Lane-Castle in the Year 1767. The quarrel was finally settled in favour of the college in June, 1771.

Go, ask your manager. Colman, the manager of Covent Garden, was not a prolific, although he was a happy writer of prologues and epilogues.

The quotation is from King Lear , Act iii, Sc. 4.

In the first version the last line runs:—

And view with favour, the ‘Good-natur’d Man.’

EPILOGUE TO ‘THE SISTER.’

The Sister , produced at Covent Garden February 18, 1769, was a comedy by Mrs. Charlotte Lenox or Lennox, ‘an ingenious lady,’ says The Gentleman’s Magazine for April in the same year, ‘well known in the literary world by her excellent writings, particularly the Female Quixote, and Shakespeare illustrated. . . . The audience expressed their disapprobation of it with so much clamour and appearance of prejudice, that she would not suffer an attempt to exhibit it a second time (p. 199).’ According to the same authority it was based upon one of the writer’s own novels, Henrietta , published in 1758. Though tainted with the prevailing sentimentalism, The Sister is described by Forster as ‘both amusing and interesting’; and it is probable that it was not fairly treated when it was acted. Mrs. Lenox (1720–1804), daughter of Colonel Ramsay, Lieut.-Governor of New York, was a favourite with the literary magnates of her day. Johnson was half suspected of having helped her in her book on Shakespeare; Richardson admitted her to his readings at Parson’s Green; Fielding, who knew her, calls her, in the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon , 1755, p. 35 (first version), ‘the inimitable author of the Female Quixote’; and Goldsmith, though he had no kindness for genteel comedy (see post , p. 228), wrote her this lively epilogue, which was spoken by Mrs. Bulkley, who personated the ‘Miss Autumn’ of the piece. Mrs. Lenox died in extremely reduced circumstances, and was buried by the Right Hon. George Ross, who had befriended her later years. There are several references to her in Boswell’s Life of Johnson . (See also Hawkins’ Life , 2nd ed. 1787, pp. 285–7.)

PROLOGUE TO ‘ZOBEIDE.’

Zobeide , a play by Joseph Cradock (1742–1826), of Gumley, in Leicestershire, was produced by Colman at Covent Garden on Dec. 11, 1771. It was a translation from three acts of Les Scythes , an unfinished tragedy by Voltaire. Goldsmith was applied to, through the Yates’s, for a prologue, and sent that here printed to the author of the play with the following note:—‘Mr. Goldsmith presents his best respects to Mr. Cradock, has sent him the Prologue, such as it is. He cannot take time to make it better. He begs he will give Mr. Yates the proper instructions; and so, even so, commits him to fortune and the publick.’ (Cradock’s Memoirs , 1826, i. 224.) Yates, to the acting of whose wife in the character of the heroine the success of the piece, which ran for thirteen nights, was mainly attributable, was to have spoken the prologue, but it ultimately fell to Quick, later the ‘Tony Lumpkin’ of She Stoops to Conquer , who delivered it in the character of a sailor. Cradock seems subsequently to have sent a copy of Zobeide to Voltaire, who replied in English as follows:—

9e. 8bre. 1773. à ferney.

Sr. Thanks to yr muse a foreign copper shines Turn’d in to gold, and coin’d in sterling lines. You have done to much honour to an old sick man of eighty.

I am with the most sincere esteem and gratitude Sr. Yr. obdt. Servt. Voltaire. A Monsieur Monsieur J. Cradock.

The text of the prologue is here given as printed in Cradock’s Memoirs , 1828, iii. 8–9. It is unnecessary to specify the variations between this and the earlier issue of 1771.

In these bold times, etc. The reference is to Cook, who, on June 12, 1771, had returned to England in the Endeavour , after three years’ absence, having gone to Otaheite to observe the transit of Venus (l. 4).

Botanists. Mr. (afterward Sir Joseph) Banks and Dr. Solander, of the British Museum, accompanied Cook.

go simpling, i.e. gathering simples, or herbs. Cf. Merry Wives of Windsor , Act iii, Sc. 3:—

‘—These lisping hawthorn buds that ... smell like Bucklersbury in simple -time.’

In the caricatures of the day Solander figured as ‘The simpling Macaroni.’ (See note, p. 247, l. 31.)

With Scythian stores. The scene of the play was laid in Scythia ( v. supra ).

to make palaver, to hold a parley, generally with the intention of cajoling. Two of Goldsmith’s notes to Garrick in 1773 are endorsed by the actor—‘Goldsmith’s parlaver.’ (Forster’s Life , 1871, ii. 397.)

mercenary. Cradock gave the profits of Zobeide to Mrs. Yates. ‘I mentioned the disappointment it would be to you’—she says in a letter to him dated April 26, 1771—‘as you had generously given the emoluments of the piece to me.’ ( Memoirs , 1828, iv. 211.)

THRENODIA AUGUSTALIS.

Augusta, widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and mother of George the Third, died at Carlton House, February 8, 1772. This piece was spoken and sung in Mrs. Teresa Cornelys’s Great Room in Soho Square, on the Thursday following (the 20th), being sold at the door as a small quarto pamphlet, printed by William Woodfall. The author’s name was not given; but it was prefaced by this ‘advertisement,’ etc.:—

‘The following may more properly be termed a compilation than a poem. It was prepared for the composer in little more than two days: and may be considered therefore rather as an industrious effort of gratitude than of genius. In justice to the composer it may likewise be right to inform the public, that the music was adapted in a period of time equally short.

SPEAKERS. Mr. Lee and Mrs. Bellamy. SINGERS.

Mr. Champnes, Mr. Dine, and Miss Jameson; with twelve chorus singers. The music prepared and adapted by Signor Vento.

It is—as Cunningham calls it—a ‘hurried and unworthy off-spring of the muse of Goldsmith.’

(Part I). Celestial-like her bounty fell. The Princess’s benefactions are not exaggerated. ‘She had paid off the whole of her husband’s debts, and she had given munificent sums in charity. More than 10,000 pounds a year were given away by her in pensions to individuals whom she judged deserving, very few of whom were aware, until her death, whence the bounty came. The whole of her income she spent in England, and very little on herself’ ( Augusta: Princess of Wales , by W. H. Wilkins, Nineteenth Century , October, 1903, p. 675).

There faith shall come. This, and the three lines that follow, are borrowed from Collins’s Ode written in the beginning of the year 1746.

(Part II). The towers of Kew. ‘The embellishments of Kew palace and gardens, under the direction of [Sir William] Chambers, and others, was the favourite object of her [Royal Highness’s] widowhood’ (Bolton Corney).

Along the billow’d main. Cf. The Captivity , Act ii, l. 18.

Oswego’s dreary shores. Cf. The Traveller , l. 411.

And with the avenging fight. Varied from Collins’s Ode on the Death of Colonel Charles Ross at Fontenoy .

Its earliest bloom. Cf. Collins’s Dirge in Cymbeline .

SONG FROM ‘SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.’

This thoroughly characteristic song, for a parallel to which one must go to Congreve, or to the ‘Here’s to the maiden of bashful fifteen’ of The School for Scandal , has one grave defect,—it is too good to have been composed by Tony Lumpkin, who, despite his inability to read anything but ‘print-hand,’ declares, in Act i. Sc. 2 of She Stoops to Conquer , 1773, that he himself made it upon the ale-house (‘The Three Pigeons’) in which he sings it, and where it is followed by the annexed comments, directed by the author against the sentimentalists, who, in The Good Natur’d Man of five years before, had insisted upon the omission of the Bailiff scene:—

‘O MNES .

Bravo, bravo!

First F ELLOW .

The ’Squire has got spunk in him.

Second F ELLOW .

I loves to hear him sing, bekeays he never gives us nothing that’s low . . .

Fourth F ELLOW .

The genteel thing is the genteel thing at any time. If so be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.

Third F ELLOW .

I like the maxum of it, Master Muggins. What, tho’ I am obligated to dance a bear, a man may be a gentleman for all that. May this be my poison if my bear ever dances but to the very genteelest of tunes. Water Parted ,* or the minuet in Ariadne .’

* i.e. Arne’s Water Parted from the Sea ,—the song of Arbaces in the opera of Artaxerxes 1762. The minuet in Ariadne was by Handel. It came at the end of the overture, and is said to have been the best thing in the opera.

When Methodist preachers, etc. Tony Lumpkin’s utterance accurately represents the view of this sect taken by some of his contemporaries. While moderate and just spectators of the Johnson type could recognize the sincerity of men, who, like Wesley, travelled ‘nine hundred miles in a month, and preached twelve times a week’ for no ostensibly adequate reward, there were others who saw in Methodism, and especially in the extravagancies of its camp followers, nothing but cant and duplicity. It was this which prompted on the stage Foote’s Minor (1760) and Bickerstaffe’s Hypocrite (1768); in art the Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism of Hogarth (1762); and in literature the New Bath Guide of Anstey (1766), the Spiritual Quixote of Graves, 1772, and the sarcasms of Sterne, Smollett and Walpole.

It is notable that the most generous contemporary portrait of these much satirised sectaries came from one of the originals of the Retaliation gallery. Scott highly praises the character of Ezekiel Daw in Cumberland’s Henry , 1795, adding, in his large impartial fashion, with reference to the general practice of representing Methodists either as idiots or hypocrites, ‘A very different feeling is due to many, perhaps to most, of this enthusiastic sect; nor is it rashly to be inferred, that he who makes religion the general object of his life, is for that sole reason to be held either a fool or an impostor.’ (Scott’s Miscellaneous Prose Works , 1834, iii. 222.)

But of all the birds in the air. Hypercriticism may object that ‘the hare’ is not a bird. But exigence of rhyme has to answer for many things. Some editors needlessly read ‘the gay birds’ to lengthen the line. There is no sanction for this in the earlier editions.

EPILOGUE TO ‘SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.’

This epilogue was spoken by Mrs. Bulkley in the character of Miss Hardcastle. It is probably the epilogue described by Goldsmith to Cradock, in the letter quoted at p. 246, as ‘a very mawkish thing,’ a phrase not so incontestable as Bolton Corney’s remark that it is ‘an obvious imitation of Shakespere.’

That pretty Bar-maids have done execution. Cf. The Vicar of Wakefield , 1766, i. 7:—‘Sophia’s features were not so striking at first; but often did more certain execution.’

coquets the guests. Johnson explains this word ‘to entertain with compliments and amorous tattle,’ and quotes the following illustration from Swift, ‘You are coquetting a maid of honour, my lord looking on to see how the gamesters play, and I railing at you both.’

Nancy Dawson. Nancy Dawson was a famous ‘toast’ and horn-pipe dancer, who died at Haverstock Hill, May 27, 1767, and was buried behind the Foundling, in the burial-ground of St. George the Martyr. She first appeared at Sadler’s Wells, and speedily passed to the stage of Covent Garden, where she danced in the Beggar’s Opera . There is a portrait of her in the Garrick Club, and there are several contemporary prints. She was the heroine of a popular song, here referred to, beginning:—

Of all the girls in our town, The black, the fair, the red, the brown, Who dance and prance it up and down,     There’s none like Nancy Dawson: Her easy mien, her shape so neat, She foots, she trips, she looks so sweet, Her ev’ry motion is complete;     I die for Nancy Dawson.

Its tune—says J. T. Smith ( Book for a Rainy Day , Whitten’s ed., 1905, p. 10) was ‘as lively as that of “Sir Roger de Coverley.”’

Che farò, i.e. Che farò senza Euridice , the lovely lament from Glück’s Orfeo , 1764.

the Heinel of Cheapside. The reference is to Mademoiselle Anna-Frederica Heinel, 1752–1808, a beautiful Prussian, subsequently the wife of Gaetano Apollino Balthazar Vestris, called ‘Vestris the First.’ After extraordinary success as a danseuse at Stuttgard and Paris, where Walpole saw her in 1771 (Letter to the Earl of Strafford 25th August), she had come to London; and, at this date, was the darling of the Macaronies (cf. the note on p. 247, l. 31), who, from their club, added a regallo (present) of six hundred pounds to the salary allowed her at the Haymarket. On April 1, 1773, Metastasio’s Artaserse was performed for her benefit, when she was announced to dance a minuet with Monsieur Fierville, and ‘Tickets were to be hand, at her house in Piccadilly, two doors from Air Street.’

spadille, i.e. the ace of spades, the first trump in the game of Ombre. Cf. Swift’s Journal of a Modern Lady in a Letter to a Person of Quality , 1728:—

She draws up card by card, to find Good fortune peeping from behind; With panting heart, and earnest eyes, In hope to see spadillo rise; In vain, alas! her hope is fed; She draws an ace, and sees it red.

Bayes. The chief character in Buckingham’s Rehearsal , 1672, and intended for John Dryden. Here the name is put for the ‘poet’ or ‘dramatist.’ Cf. Murphy’s Epilogue to Cradock’s Zobeide , 1771:—

Not e’en poor ‘Bayes’ within must hope to be Free from the lash:—His Play he writ for me ’Tis true—and now my gratitude you’ll see;

and Colman’s Epilogue to The School for Scandal , 1777:—

So wills our virtuous bard—the motley Bayes Of crying epilogues and laughing plays!

RETALIATION.

Retaliation: A Poem. By Doctor Goldsmith. Including Epitaphs on the Most Distinguished Wits of this Metropolis , was first published by G. Kearsly in April, 1774, as a 4to pamphlet of 24 pp. On the title-page is a vignette head of the author, etched by James Basire, after Reynolds’s portrait; and the verses are prefaced by an anonymous letter to the publisher, concluding as follows:—‘Dr. Goldsmith belonged to a Club of Beaux Esprits, where Wit sparkled sometimes at the Expence of Good-nature.It was proposed to write Epitaphs on the Doctor; his Country, Dialect and Person, furnished Subjects of Witticism.—The Doctor was called on for’ Retaliation, ‘and at their next Meeting produced the following Poem, which I think adds one Leaf to his immortal Wreath. This account seems to have sufficed for Evans, Percy, and the earlier editors. But in vol. i. p. 78 of his edition of Goldsmith’s Works , 1854, Mr. Peter Cunningham published for the first time a fuller version of the circumstances, derived from a manuscript lent to him by Mr. George Daniel of Islington; and (says Mr. Cunningham) ‘evidently designed as a preface to a collected edition of the poems which grew out of Goldsmith’s trying his epigrammatic powers with Garrick.’ It is signed ‘D. Garrick.’ ‘At a meeting’—says the writer—‘of a company of gentlemen, who were well known to each other, and diverting themselves, among many other things, with the peculiar oddities of Dr. Goldsmith, who would never allow a superior in any art, from writing poetry down to dancing a horn-pipe, the Dr. with great eagerness insisted upon trying his epigrammatic powers with Mr. Garrick, and each of them was to write the other’s epitaph. Mr. Garrick immediately said that his epitaph was finished, and spoke the following distich extempore:—

Here lies NOLLY Goldsmith, for shortness call’d Noll, Who wrote like an angel, but talk’d like poor Poll.

Goldsmith, upon the company’s laughing very heartily, grew very thoughtful, and either would not, or could not, write anything at that time: however, he went to work, and some weeks after produced the following printed poem called Retaliation , which has been much admired, and gone through several editions.’ This account, though obviously from Garrick’s point of view, is now accepted as canonical, and has superseded those of Davies, Cradock, Cumberland, and others, to which some reference is made in the ensuing notes. A few days after the publication of the first edition, which appeared on the 18th or 19th of April, a ‘new’ or second edition was issued, with four pages of ‘Explanatory Notes, Observations, etc.’ At the end came the following announcement:—‘G. Kearsly, the Publisher, thinks it his duty to declare, that Dr. Goldsmith wrote the Poem as it is here printed, a few errors of the press excepted, which are taken notice of at the bottom of this page.’ From this version Retaliation is here reproduced. In the third edition, probably in deference to some wounded susceptibilities, the too comprehensive ‘most Distinguished Wits of the Metropolis’ was qualified into ‘ some of the most Distinguished Wits,’ etc., but no further material alteration was made in the text until the suspicious lines on Caleb Whitefoord were added to the fifth edition.

With the exception of Garrick’s couplet, and the fragment of Whitefoord referred to at p. 234, none of the original epitaphs upon which Goldsmith was invited to ‘retaliate’ have survived. But the unexpected ability of the retort seems to have prompted a number of ex post facto performances, some of which the writers would probably have been glad to pass off as their first essays. Garrick, for example, produced three short pieces, one of which (‘Here, Hermes! says Jove, who with nectar was mellow’) hits off many of Goldsmith’s contradictions and foibles with considerable skill ( v. Davies’s Garrick , 2nd ed., 1780, ii. 157). Cumberland ( v. Gent. Mag. , Aug. 1778, p. 384) parodied the poorest part of Retaliation , the comparison of the guests to dishes, by likening them to liquors, and Dean Barnard in return rhymed upon Cumberland. He wrote also an apology for his first attack, which is said to have been very severe, and conjured the poet to set his wit at Garrick, who, having fired his first shot, was keeping out of the way:—

On him let all thy vengeance fall;     On me you but misplace it: Remember how he called thee Poll —     But, ah! he dares not face it.

For these, and other forgotten pieces arising out of Retaliation , Garrick had apparently prepared the above-mentioned introduction. It may be added that the statement, prefixed to the first edition, that Retaliation , as we now have it, was produced at the ‘next meeting’ of the Club, is manifestly incorrect. It was composed and circulated in detached fragments, and Goldsmith was still working at it when he was seized with his last illness.

Of old, when Scarron, etc. Paul Scarron (1610–60), the author inter alia of the Roman Comique , 1651–7, upon a translation of which Goldsmith was occupied during the last months of his life. It was published by Griffin in 1776.

Each guest brought his dish. ‘Chez Scarron,’—says his editor, M. Charles Baumet, when speaking of the poet’s entertainments,—‘venait d’ailleurs l’élite des dames, des courtisans & des hommes de lettres. On y dinait joyeusement. Chacun apportait son plat .’ ( Œuvres de Scarron , 1877, i. viii.) Scarron’s company must have been as brilliant as Goldsmith’s. Villarceaux, Vivonne, the Maréchal d’Albret, figured in his list of courtiers; while for ladies he had Mesdames Deshoulières, de Scudéry, de la Sablière, and de Sévigné, to say nothing of Ninon de Lenclos and Marion Delorme. (Cf. also Guizot, Corneille et son Temps , 1862, 429–30.)

If our landlord. The ‘explanatory note’ to the second edition says—‘The master of the St. James’s coffee-house, where the Doctor, and the friends he has characterized in this Poem, held an occasional club.’ This, it should be stated, was not the famous ‘Literary Club,’ which met at the Turk’s Head Tavern in Gerrard Street. The St. James’s Coffee-house, as familiar to Swift and Addison at the beginning, as it was to Goldsmith and his friends at the end of the eighteenth century, was the last house but one on the south-west corner of St. James’s Street. It now no longer exists. Cradock ( Memoirs , 1826, i. 228–30) speaks of dining at the bottom of St. James’s Street with Goldsmith, Percy, the two Burkes ( v. infra ), Johnson, Garrick, Dean Barnard, and others. ‘We sat very late;’ he adds in conclusion, ‘and the conversation that at last ensued, was the direct cause of my friend Goldsmith’s poem, called “ Retaliation. ”’

Our Dean. Dr. Thomas Barnard, an Irishman, at this time Dean of Derry. He died at Wimbledon in 1806. It was Dr. Barnard who, in reply to a rude sally of Johnson, wrote the charming verses on improvement after the age of forty-five, which end—

If I have thoughts, and can’t express them, Gibbon shall teach me how to dress them,     In terms select and terse; Jones teach me modesty and Greek, Smith how to think, Burke how to speak,     And Beauclerk to converse. Let Johnson teach me how to place In fairest light, each borrow’d grace,     From him I’ll learn to write; Copy his clear, familiar style, And from the roughness of his file     Grow like himself—polite.

(Northcote’s Life of Reynolds , 2nd ed., 1819, i. 221.) According to Cumberland ( Memoirs , 1807, i. 370), ‘The dean also gave him [Goldsmith] an epitaph, and Sir Joshua illuminated the dean’s verses with a sketch of his bust in pen and ink inimitably caricatured.’ What would collectors give for that sketch and epitaph! Unfortunately in Cumberland’s septuagenarian recollections the ‘truth severe’ is mingled with an unusual amount of ‘fairy fiction.’ However Sir Joshua did draw caricatures, for a number of them were exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery (by the Duke of Devonshire) in the winter of 1883–4.

Our Burke. The Right Hon. Edmund Burke, 1729–97.

Our Will. ‘Mr. William Burke, late Secretary to General Conway, and member for Bedwin, Wiltshire’ (Note to second edition). He was a kinsman of Edmund Burke, and one of the supposed authors of Junius’s Letters . He died in 1798. ‘It is said that the notices Goldsmith first wrote of the Burkes were so severe that Hugh Boyd persuaded the poet to alter them, and entirely rewrite the character of William, for he was sure that if the Burkes saw what was originally written of them the peace of the Club would be disturbed.’ (Rev. W. Hunt in Dict. Nat. Biography , Art. ‘William Burke.’)

And Dick. Richard Burke, Edmund Burke’s younger brother. He was for some years Collector to the Customs at Grenada, being on a visit to London when Retaliation was written (Forster’s Life , 1871, ii. 404). He died in 1794, Recorder of Bristol.

Our Cumberland’s sweetbread. Richard Cumberland, the poet, novelist, and dramatist, 1731–1811, author of The West Indian , 1771, The Fashionable Lover , 1772, and many other more or less sentimental plays. In his Memoirs , 1807, i. 369–71, he gives an account of the origin of Retaliation , which adds a few dubious particulars to that of Garrick. But it was written from memory long after the events it records.

Douglas. ‘Dr. Douglas, since Bishop of Salisbury,’ says Cumberland. He died in 1807 ( v. infra ).

Ridge. ‘Counsellor John Ridge, a gentleman belonging to the Irish Bar’ (Note to second edition). ‘Burke,’ says Bolton Corney, ‘in 1771, described him as “one of the honestest and best-natured men living, and inferior to none of his profession in ability.”’ (See also note to line 125.)

Hickey. The commentator of the second edition of Retaliation calls this gentleman ‘honest Tom Hickey’. His Christian name, however, was Joseph (Letter of Burke, November 8, 1774). He was a jovial, good-natured, over-blunt Irishman, the legal adviser of both Burke and Reynolds. Indeed it was Hickey who drew the conveyance of the land on which Reynolds’s house ‘next to the Star and Garter’ at Richmond (Wick House) was built by Chambers the architect. Hickey died in 1794. Reynolds painted his portrait for Burke, and it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1772 (No. 208). In 1833 it belonged to Mr. T. H. Burke. Sir Joshua also painted Miss Hickey in 1769–73. Her father, not much to Goldsmith’s satisfaction, was one of the Paris party in 1770. See also note to l. 125.

Magnanimous Goldsmith. According to Malone (Reynolds’s Works , second edition, 1801, i. xc), Goldsmith intended to have concluded with his own character.

Tommy Townshend, M.P. for Whitchurch, Hampshire, afterwards first Viscount Sydney. He died in 1800. Junius says Bolton Corney, gives a portrait of him as still life . His presence in Retaliation is accounted for by the fact that he had commented in Parliament upon Johnson’s pension. ‘I am well assured,’ says Boswell, ‘that Mr. Townshend’s attack upon Johnson was the occasion of his “hitching in a rhyme”; for, that in the original copy of Goldsmith’s character of Mr. Burke, in his Retaliation another person’s name stood in the couplet where Mr. Townshend is now introduced.’ (Birkbeck Hill’s Boswell , 1887, iv. 318.)

too deep for his hearers. ‘The emotion to which he commonly appealed was that too rare one, the love of wisdom, and he combined his thoughts and knowledge in propositions of wisdom so weighty and strong, that the minds of ordinary hearers were not on the instant prepared for them.’ (Morley’s Burke , 1882, 209–10.)

And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining. For the reason given in the previous note, many of Burke’s hearers often took the opportunity of his rising to speak, to retire to dinner. Thus he acquired the nickname of the ‘Dinner Bell.’

To eat mutton cold. There is a certain resemblance between this character and Gray’s lines on himself written in 1761, beginning ‘Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune.’ (See Gosse’s Gray’s Works , 1884, i. 127.) But both Gray and Goldsmith may have been thinking of a line in the once popular song of Ally Croaker :—

Too dull for a wit, too grave for a joker.

honest William, i.e. William Burke ( v. supra ).

Now breaking a jest, and now breaking a limb. A note to the second edition says—‘The above Gentleman [Richard Burke, v. supra ] having slightly fractured one of his arms and legs, at different times, the Doctor [i.e. Goldsmith] has rallied him on those accidents, as a kind of retributive justice for breaking his jests on other people.’

Here Cumberland lies. According to Boaden’s Life of Kemble , 1825, i. 438, Mrs. Piozzi rightly regarded this portrait as wholly ironical; and Bolton Corney, without much expenditure of acumen, discovers it to have been written in a spirit of persiflage . Nevertheless, Cumberland himself ( Memoirs , 1807, i. 369) seems to have accepted it in good faith. Speaking of Goldsmith he says—I conclude my account of him with gratitude for the epitaph he bestowed on me in his poem called Retaliation .’ From the further details which he gives of the circumstances, it would appear that his own performance, of which he could recall but one line—

All mourn the poet, I lament the man—

was conceived in a less malicious spirit than those of the others, and had predisposed the sensitive bard in his favour. But no very genuine cordiality could be expected to exist between the rival authors of The West Indian and She Stoops to Conquer .

And Comedy wonders at being so fine. It is instructive here to transcribe Goldsmith’s serious opinion of the kind of work which Cumberland essayed:—‘A new species of Dramatic Composition has been introduced, under the name of Sentimental Comedy, in which the virtues of Private Life are exhibited, rather than the Vices exposed; and the Distresses rather than the Faults of Mankind, make our interest in the piece. . . . In these Plays almost all the Characters are good, and exceedingly generous; they are lavish enough of their Tin Money on the Stage, and though they want Humour, have abundance of Sentiment and Feeling. If they happen to have Faults or Foibles, the Spectator is taught not only to pardon, but to applaud them, in consideration of the goodness of their hearts; so that Folly, instead of being ridiculed, is commended, and the Comedy aims at touching our Passions without the power of being truly pathetic.’ ( Westminster Magazine , 1772, i. 5.) Cf. also the Preface to The Good Natur’d Man , where he ‘hopes that too much refinement will not banish humour and character from our’s, as it has already done from the French theatre. Indeed the French comedy is now become so very elevated and sentimental, that it has not only banished humour and Moliere from the stage, but it has banished all spectators too.’

The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks. Dr. John Douglas ( v. supra ) distinguished himself by his exposure of two of his countrymen, Archibald Bower, 1686–1766, who, being secretly a member of the Catholic Church, wrote a History of the Popes ; and William Lauder 1710–1771, who attempted to prove Milton a plagiarist. Cf. Churchill’s Ghost , Bk. ii:—

By TRUTH inspir’d when Lauder’s spight O’er MILTON cast the Veil of Night, DOUGLAS arose, and thro’ the maze Of intricate and winding ways, Came where the subtle Traitor lay, And dragg’d him trembling to the day.

‘Lauder on Milton’ is one of the books bound to the trunk-maker’s in Hogarth’s Beer Street , 1751. He imposed on Johnson, who wrote him a ‘Preface’ and was consequently trounced by Churchill ( ut supra ) as ‘ our Letter’d P OLYPHEME .’

Our Dodds shall be pious. The reference is to the Rev. Dr. William Dodd, who three years after the publication of Retaliation (i.e. June 27, 1777) was hanged at Tyburn for forging the signature of the fifth Earl of Chesterfield, to whom he had been tutor. His life previously had long been scandalous enough to justify Goldsmith’s words. Johnson made strenuous and humane exertions to save Dodd’s life, but without avail. (See Birkbeck Hill’s Boswell , 1887, iii. 139–48.) There is an account of Dodd’s execution at the end of vol. i of Angelo’s Reminiscences , 1830.

our Kenricks. Dr. William Kenrick—say the earlier annotators—who ‘read lectures at the Devil Tavern, under the Title of “The School of Shakespeare.”’ The lectures began January 19, 1774, and help to fix the date of the poem. Goldsmith had little reason for liking this versatile and unprincipled Ishmaelite of letters, who, only a year before, had penned a scurrilous attack upon him in The London Packet . Kenrick died in 1779.

Macpherson. ‘David [James] Macpherson, Esq.; who lately, from the mere force of his style , wrote down the first poet of all antiquity.’ (Note to second edition.) This was ‘Ossian’ Macpherson, 1738–96, who, in 1773, had followed up his Erse epics by a prose translation of Homer, which brought him little but opprobrium. ‘Your abilities, since your Homer, are not so formidable,’ says Johnson in the knockdown letter which he addressed to him in 1775. (Birkbeck Hill’s Boswell , 1887, ii. 298.)

Our Townshend. See note to line 34.

New Lauders and Bowers. See note to l. 80.

And Scotchman meet Scotchman, and cheat in the dark. Mitford compares Farquhar’s Love and a Bottle , 1699, Act iii—

But gods meet gods and jostle in the dark.

But Farquhar was quoting from Dryden and Lee’s Oedipus , 1679, Act iv (at end).

Here lies David Garrick. ‘The sum of all that can be said for and against Mr. Garrick, some people think, may be found in these lines of Goldsmith,’ writes Davies in his Life of Garrick , 2nd ed., 1780, ii. 159. Posterity has been less hesitating in its verdict. ‘The lines on Garrick,’ says Forster, Life of Goldsmith , 1871, ii. 409, ‘are quite perfect writing. Without anger, the satire is finished, keen, and uncompromising; the wit is adorned by most discriminating praise; and the truth is only the more unsparing for its exquisite good manners and good taste.’

Ye Kenricks. See note to line 86.

ye Kellys. Hugh Kelly (1739–1777), an Irishman, the author of False Delicacy , 1768; A Word to the Wise , 1770; The School for Wives , 1774, and other sentimental dramas, is here referred to. His first play, which is described in Garrick’s prologue as a ‘Sermon,’ ‘preach’d in Acts,’ was produced at Drury Lane just six days before Goldsmith’s comedy of The Good Natur’d Man appeared at Covent Garden, and obtained a success which it ill deserved. False Delicacy —said Johnson truly (Birkbeck Hill’s Boswell , 1887, ii. 48)—‘was totally void of character,’—a crushing accusation to make against a drama. But Garrick, for his private ends, had taken up Kelly as a rival to Goldsmith; and the comédie sérieuse or larmoyante of La Chaussée, Sedaine, and Diderot had already found votaries in England. False Delicacy , weak, washy, and invertebrate as it was, completed the transformation of ‘genteel’ into ‘sentimental’ comedy, and establishing that genre for the next few years, effectually retarded the wholesome reaction towards humour and character which Goldsmith had tried to promote by The Good Natur’d Man . (See note to l. 66.)

Woodfalls. ‘William Woodfall’—says Bolton Corney—‘successively editor of The London Packet and The Morning Chronicle , was matchless as a reporter of speeches, and an able theatrical critic. He made lofty pretensions to editorial impartiality—but the actor [i.e. Garrick] was not always satisfied.’ He died in 1803. He must not be confounded with Henry Sampson Woodfall, the editor of Junius’s Letters . (See note to l. 162.)

To act as an angel. There is a sub-ironic touch in this phrase which should not be overlooked. Cf. l. 102.

Here Hickey reclines. See note to l. 15. In Cumberland’s Poetical Epistle to Dr. Goldsmith; or Supplement to his Retaliation ( Gentleman’s Magazine , Aug. 1778, p. 384) Hickey’s genial qualities are thus referred to:—

Give RIDGE and HICKY, generous souls! Of WHISKEY PUNCH convivial bowls.

a special attorney. A special attorney was merely an attorney who practised in one court only. The species is now said to be extinct.

burn ye. The annotator of the second edition, apologizing for this ‘forced’ rhyme to ‘attorney,’ informs the English reader that the phrase of ‘burn ye’ is ‘a familiar method of salutation in Ireland amongst the lower classes of the people.’

Here Reynolds is laid. This shares the palm with the admirable epitaphs on Garrick and Burke. But Goldsmith loved Reynolds, and there are no satiric strokes in the picture. If we are to believe Malone (Reynolds’s Works , second edition, 1801, i. xc), ‘these were the last lines the author wrote.’

bland. Malone ( ut supra , lxxxix) notes this word as ‘eminently happy, and characteristick of his [Reynolds’s] easy and placid manners.’ Boswell (Dedication of Life of Johnson ) refers to his ‘equal and placid temper.’ Cf. also Dean Barnard’s verses (Northcote’s Life of Reynolds , 2nd ed., 1819, i. 220), and Mrs. Piozzi’s lines in her Autobiography , 2nd ed., 1861, ii. 175–6.

He shifted his trumpet. While studying Raphael in the Vatican in 1751, Reynolds caught so severe a cold ‘as to occasion a deafness which obliged him to use an ear-trumpet for the remainder of his life.’ (Taylor and Leslie’s Reynolds , 1865, i. 50.) This instrument figures in a portrait of himself which he painted for Thrale about 1775. See also Zoffany’s picture of the ‘Academicians gathered about the model in the Life School at Somerset House,’ 1772, where he is shown employing it to catch the conversation of Wilton and Chambers.

and only took snuff. Sir Joshua was a great snuff-taker. His snuff-box, described in the Catalogue as the one ‘immortalized in Goldsmith’s Retaliation ,’ was exhibited, with his spectacles and other personal relics, at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1883–4. In the early editions this epitaph breaks off abruptly at the word ‘snuff.’ But Malone says that half a line more had been written. Prior gives this half line as ‘By flattery unspoiled—,’ and affirms that among several erasures in the manuscript sketch devoted to Reynolds it ‘remained unaltered.’ ( Life , 1837, ii. 499.) See notes to ll. 53, 56, and 91 of The Haunch of Venison .

Here Whitefoord reclines. The circumstances which led to the insertion of these lines in the fifth edition are detailed in the prefatory words of the publisher given at p. 92. There is more than a suspicion that Whitefoord wrote them himself; but they have too long been accepted as an appendage to the poem to be now displaced. Caleb Whitefoord (born 1734) was a Scotchman, a wine-merchant, and an art connoisseur, to whom J. T. Smith, in his Life of Nollekens , 1828, i. 333–41, devotes several pages. He was one of the party at the St. James’s Coffee-house. He died in 1810. There is a caricature of him in ‘Connoisseurs inspecting a Collection of George Morland,’ November, 16, 1807; and Wilkie’s Letter of Introduction , 1814, was a reminiscence of a visit which, when he first came to London, he paid to Whitefoord. He was also painted by Reynolds and Stuart. Hewins’s Whitefoord Papers , 1898, throw no light upon the story of the epitaph.

a grave man. Cf. Romeo and Juliet , Act iii, Sc. 1:—‘Ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man .’ This Shakespearean recollection is a little like Goldsmith’s way. (See note to The Haunch of Venison , l. 120.)

and rejoic’d in a pun. ‘Mr. W. is so notorious a punster, that Doctor Goldsmith used to say, it was impossible to keep him company, without being infected with the itch of punning .’ (Note to fifth edition.)

‘if the table he set on a roar.’ Cf. Hamlet , Act v, Sc. I.

Woodfall, i.e. Henry Sampson Woodfall, printer of The Public Advertiser . He died in 1805. (See note to l. 115.)

Cross-Readings, Ship-News, and Mistakes of the Press. Over the nom de guerre of ‘Papyrius Cursor,’ a real Roman name, but as happy in its applicability as Thackeray’s ‘Manlius Pennialinus,’ Whitefoord contributed many specimens of this mechanic wit to The Public Advertiser . The ‘Cross Readings’ were obtained by taking two or three columns of a newspaper horizontally and ‘onwards’ instead of ‘vertically’ and downwards, thus:—

Colds caught at this season are The Companion to the Playhouse.

To be sold to the best Bidder, My seat in Parliament being vacated.

A more elaborate example is

On Tuesday an address was presented; it unhappily missed fire and the villain made off, when the honour of knighthood was conferred on him to the great joy of that noble family

Goldsmith was hugely delighted with Whitefoord’s ‘lucky inventions’ when they first became popular in 1766. ‘He declared, in the heat of his admiration of them, it would have given him more pleasure to have been the author of them than of all the works he had ever published of his own’ (Northcote’s Life of Reynolds , 2nd ed., 1819, i. 217). What is perhaps more remarkable is, that Johnson spoke of Whitefoord’s performances as ‘ingenious and diverting’ (Birkbeck Hill’s Boswell , 1887, iv. 322); and Horace Walpole laughed over them till he cried (Letter to Montagu, December 12, 1766). To use Voltaire’s witticism, he is bien heureux who can laugh now. It may be added that Whitefoord did not, as he claimed, originate the ‘Cross Readings.’ They had been anticipated in No. 49 of Harrison’s spurious Tatler , vol. v [1720].

The fashion of the ‘Ship-News’ was in this wise: ‘August 25 [1765]. We hear that his Majestys Ship Newcastle will soon have a new figurehead, the old one being almost worn out.’ The ‘Mistakes of the Press’ explain themselves. (See also Smith’s Life of Nollekens , 1828, i. 336–7; Debrett’s New Foundling Hospital for Wit , 1784, vol. ii, and Gentleman’s Magazine , 1810, p. 300.)

That a Scot may have humour, I had almost said wit. Goldsmith,—if he wrote these verses,—must have forgotten that he had already credited Whitefoord with ‘wit’ in l. 153.

Thou best humour’d man with the worst humour’d muse. Cf. Rochester of Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset:—

The best good man, with the worst-natur’d muse.

Whitefoord’s contribution to the epitaphs on Goldsmith is said to have been unusually severe,—so severe that four only of its eight lines are quoted in the Whitefoord Papers , 1898, the rest being ‘unfit for publication’ (p. xxvii). He afterwards addressed a metrical apology to Sir Joshua, which is printed at pp. 217–8 of Northcote’s Life , 2nd ed., 1819. See also Forster’s Goldsmith , 1871, ii. 408–9.

SONG FOR ‘SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.’

Boswell, to whom we are indebted for the preservation of this lively song, sent it to The London Magazine for June, 1774 (vol. xliii, p. 295), with the following:—

‘To the Editor of The London Magazine .

S IR ,—I send you a small production of the late Dr. Goldsmith , which has never been published, and which might perhaps have been totally lost had I not secured it. He intended it as a song in the character of Miss Hardcastle , in his admirable comedy, She stoops to conquer ; but it was left out, as Mrs. Bulkley who played the part did not sing. He sung it himself in private companies very agreeably. The tune is a pretty Irish air, called The Humours of Balamagairy , to which, he told me, he found it very difficult to adapt words; but he has succeeded happily in these few lines. As I could sing the tune, and was fond of them, he was so good as to give me them about a year ago, just as I was leaving London, and bidding him adieu for that season, little apprehending that it was a last farewell. I preserve this little relick in his own handwriting with an affectionate care.

I am, Sir,                                              Your humble Servant,            J AMES B OSWELL .’ 

When, seventeen years later, Boswell published his Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. , he gave an account of his dining at General Oglethorpe’s in April, 1773, with Johnson and Goldsmith; and he says that the latter sang the Three Jolly Pigeons , and this song, to the ladies in the tea-room. Croker, in a note, adds that the younger Colman more appropriately employed the ‘essentially low comic’ air for Looney Mactwolter in the [ Review; or the ] Wags of Windsor , 1808 [i.e. in that character’s song beginning—‘Oh, whack! Cupid’s a mannikin’], and that Moore tried to bring it into good company in the ninth number of the Irish Melodies . But Croker did not admire the tune, and thought poorly of Goldsmith’s words. Yet they are certainly fresher than Colman’s or Moore’s:—

Sing—sing—Music was given,     To brighten the gay, and kindle the loving; Souls here, like planets in Heaven,     By harmony’s laws alone are kept moving, etc.

TRANSLATION.

These lines, which appear at p. 312 of vol. V of the History of the Earth and Animated Nature , 1774, are freely translated from some Latin verses by Addison in No 412 of the Spectator , where they are introduced as follows:—‘Thus we see that every different Species of sensible Creatures has its different Notions of Beauty, and that each of them is most affected with the Beauties of its own kind. This is nowhere more remarkable than in Birds of the same Shape and Proportion, where we often see the Male determined in his Courtship by the single Grain or Tincture of a Feather, and never discovering any Charms but in the Colour of its own Species.’ Addison’s lines, of which Goldsmith translated the first fourteen only, are printed from his corrected MS. at p. 4 of Some Portions of Essays contributed to the Spectator by Mr. Joseph Addison [by the late J. Dykes Campbell], 1864.

THE HAUNCH OF VENISON.

It is supposed that this poem was written early in 1771, although it was not printed until 1776, when it was published by G. Kearsly and J. Ridley under the title of The Haunch of Venison, a Poetical Epistle to the Lord Clare. By the late Dr. Goldsmith. With a Head of the Author, Drawn by Henry Bunbury, Esq; and Etched by [ James ] Bretherton. A second edition, the text of which is here followed, appeared in the same year ‘With considerable Additions and Corrections, Taken from the Author’s last Transcript.’ The Lord Clare to whom the verses are addressed was Robert Nugent, of Carlanstown, Westmeath, M.P. for St. Mawes in 1741–54. In 1766 he was created Viscount Clare; in 1776 Earl Nugent. In his youth he had himself been an easy if not very original versifier; and there are several of his performances in the second volume of Dodsley’s Collection of Poems by Several Hands , 4th ed., 1755. One of the Epistles, beginning ‘Clarinda, dearly lov’d, attend The Counsels of a faithful friend,’ seems to have betrayed Goldsmith into the blunder of confusing it, in the Poems for Young Ladies . 1767, p. 114, with Lyttelton’s better-known Advice to a Lady (‘The counsels of a friend, Belinda, hear’), also in Dodsley’s miscellany; while another piece, an Ode to William Pultney, Esq. , contains a stanza so good that Gibbon worked it into his character of Brutus:—

What tho’ the good, the brave, the wise, With adverse force undaunted rise,     To break th’ eternal doom! Tho’ CATO liv’d, tho’ TULLY spoke, Tho’ BRUTUS dealt the godlike stroke,     Yet perish’d fated ROME.

Detraction, however, has insinuated that Mallet, his step-son’s tutor, was Nugent’s penholder in this instance. ‘Mr. Nugent sure did not write his own Ode,’ says Gray to Walpole (Gray’s Works , by Gosse, 1884, ii. 220). Earl Nugent died in Dublin in October, 1788, and was buried at Gosfield in Essex, a property he had acquired with his second wife. A Memoir of him was written in 1898 by Mr. Claud Nugent. He is described by Cunningham as ‘a big, jovial, voluptuous Irishman, with a loud voice, a strong Irish accent, and a ready though coarse wit.’ According to Percy ( Memoir , 1801, p. 66), he had been attracted to Goldsmith by the publication of The Traveller in 1764, and he mentioned him favourably to the Earl of Northumberland, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. A note in Forster’s Life , 1871, ii. 329–30, speaks of Goldsmith as a frequent visitor at Gosfield, and at Nugent’s house in Great George Street, Westminster, where he had often for playmate his host’s daughter, Mary, afterwards Marchioness of Buckingham.

Scott and others regarded The Haunch of Venison as autobiographical. To what extent this is the case, it is difficult to say. That it represents the actual thanks of the poet to Lord Clare for an actual present of venison, part of which he promptly transferred to Reynolds, is probably the fact. But, as the following notes show, it is also clear that Goldsmith borrowed, if not his entire fable, at least some of its details from Boileau’s third satire; and that, in certain of the lines, he had in memory Swift’s Grand Question Debated , the measure of which he adopts. This throws more than a doubt upon the truth of the whole. ‘His genius’ (as Hazlitt says) ‘was a mixture of originality and imitation’; and fact and fiction often mingle inseparably in his work. The author of the bailiff scene in the Good Natur’d Man was quite capable of inventing for the nonce the tragedy of the unbaked pasty, or of selecting from the Pilkingtons and Purdons of his acquaintance such appropriate guests for his Mile End Amphitryon as the writers of the Snarler and the Scourge . It may indeed even be doubted whether, if The Haunch of Venison had been absolute personal history, Goldsmith would ever have retailed it to his noble patron at Gosfield, although it may include enough of real experience to serve as the basis for a jeu d’esprit .

The fat was so white, etc. The first version reads—‘The white was so white, and the red was so ruddy.’

Though my stomach was sharp, etc. This couplet is not in the first version.

One gammon of bacon. Prior compared a passage from Goldsmith’s Animated Nature , 1774, iii. 9, à propos of a similar practice in Germany, Poland, and Switzerland. ‘A piece of beef,’ he says, ‘hung up there, is considered as an elegant piece of furniture, which, though seldom touched, at least argues the possessor’s opulence and ease.’

a bounce, i.e. a braggart falsehood. Steele, in No. 16 of The Lover , 1715, p. 110, says of a manifest piece of brag, ‘But this is supposed to be only a Bounce .’

Mr. Byrne, spelled ‘Burn’ in the earlier editions, was a relative of Lord Clare.

M—r—’s. M ONROE ’s in the first version. ‘Dorothy Monroe,’ says Bolton Corney, ‘whose various charms are celebrated in verse by Lord Townshend.’

There’s H—d, and C—y, and H—rth, and H—ff. In the first version—     ‘There’s C OLEY , and W ILLIAMS , and H OWARD , and H IFF .’—Hiff was Paul Hiffernan, M.B., 1719–77, a Grub Street author and practitioner. Bolton Corney hazards some conjectures as to the others; but Cunningham wisely passes them over.

H—gg—ns. Perhaps, suggests Bolton Corney, this was the Captain Higgins who assisted at Goldsmith’s absurd ‘fracas’ with Evans the bookseller, upon the occasion of Kenrick’s letter in The London Packet for March 24, 1773. Other accounts, however, state that his companion was Captain Horneck (Prior, Life , 1837, ii. 411–12). This couplet is not in the first version.

Such dainties to them, etc. The first version reads:—

Such dainties to them! It would look like a flirt, Like sending ’em Ruffles when wanting a Shirt.

Cunningham quotes a similar idea from T. Brown’s Laconics, Works , 1709, iv. 14. ‘To treat a poor wretch with a bottle of Burgundy, or fill his snuff-box, is like giving a pair of lace ruffles to a man that has never a shirt on his back.’ But Goldsmith, as was his wont, had already himself employed the same figure. ‘Honours to one in my situation,’ he says in a letter to his brother Maurice, in January, 1770, when speaking of his appointment as Professor of Ancient History to the Royal Academy, ‘are something like ruffles to a man that wants a shirt’ ( Percy Memoir , 1801, 87–8). His source was probably, not Brown’s Laconics , but those French ‘ana’ he knew so well. According to M. J. J. Jusserand ( English Essays from a French Pen , 1895, pp. 160–1), the originator of this conceit was M. Samuel de Sorbieres, the traveller in England who was assailed by Bishop Sprat. Considering himself inadequately rewarded by his patrons, Mazarin, Louis XIV, and Pope Clement IX, he said bitterly—‘They give lace cuffs to a man without a shirt’; a ‘consolatory witticism’ which he afterwards remodelled into, ‘I wish they would send me bread for the butter they kindly provided me with.’ In this form it appears in the Preface to the Sorberiana , Toulouse, 1691.

a flirt is a jibe or jeer. ‘He would sometimes . . . cast out a jesting flirt at me.’ (Morley’s History of Thomas Ellwood , 1895, p. 104.) Swift also uses the word.

An under-bred, fine-spoken fellow, etc. The first version reads—

A fine-spoken Custom-house Officer he, Who smil’d as he gaz’d on the Ven’son and me.

but I hate ostentation. Cf. Beau Tibbs:—‘She was bred, but that’s between ourselves , under the inspection of the Countess of All-night.’ ( Citizen of the World , 1762, i. 238.)

We’ll have Johnson, and Burke. Cf. Boileau, Sat. iii. ll. 25–6, which Goldsmith had in mind:—

Molière avec Tartufe y doit jouer son rôle, Et Lambert, qui plus est, m’a donné sa parole.

What say you—a pasty? It shall, and it must. The first version reads—

I’ll take no denial—you shall, and you must.

Mr. J. H. Lobban, Goldsmith, Select Poems , 1900, notes a hitherto undetected similarity between this and the ‘It must , and it shall be a barrack, my life’ of Swift’s Grand Question Debated . See also ll. 56 and 91.

No stirring, I beg—my dear friend—my dear friend. In the first edition—

No words, my dear GOLDSMITH! my very good Friend!

Mr. Lobban compares:—

‘Good morrow, good captain.’ ‘I’ll wait on you down,’— ‘You shan’t stir a foot.’ ‘You’ll think me a clown.’

‘And nobody with me at sea but myself.’ This is almost a textual quotation from one of the letters of Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, to Lady Grosvenor, a correspondence which in 1770 gave great delight to contemporary caricaturists and scandal-mongers. Other poets besides Goldsmith seem to have been attracted by this particular lapse of his illiterate Royal Highness, since it is woven into a ballad printed in The Public Advertiser for August 2 in the above year:—

The Miser who wakes in a Fright for his Pelf, And finds no one by him except his own Self , etc.

When come to the place, etc. Cf. Boileau, ut supra , ll. 31–4:—

A peine étais-je entré, que ravi de me voir, Mon homme, en m’embrassant, m’est venu recevoir; Et montrant à mes yeux une allégresse entière, Nous n’avons, m’a-t-il dit, ni Lambert ni Molière.

Lambert the musician, it may be added, had the special reputation of accepting engagements which he never kept.

and t’other with Thrale. Henry Thrale, the Southwark brewer, and the husband of Mrs. Thrale, afterwards Mrs. Piozzi. Johnson first made his acquaintance in 1765. Strahan complained to Boswell that, by this connexion, Johnson ‘was in a great measure absorbed from the society of his old friends.’ (Birkbeck Hill’s Boswell , 1887, iii. 225.) Line 72 in the first edition reads—

The one at the House, and the other with THRALE.

They both of them merry and authors like you. ‘They’ should apparently be ‘they’re.’ The first version reads—

Who dabble and write in the Papers—like you.

Some think he writes Cinna—he owns to Panurge. ‘Panurge’ and ‘Cinna’ are signatures which were frequently to be found at the foot of letters addressed to the Public Advertiser in 1770–1 in support of Lord Sandwich and the Government. They are said to have been written by Dr. W. Scott, Vicar of Simonburn, Northumberland, and chaplain of Greenwich Hospital, both of which preferments had been given him by Sandwich. In 1765 he had attacked Lord Bute and his policy over the signature of ‘Anti-Sejanus.’ ‘Sandwich and his parson Anti-Sejanus [are] hooted off the stage’—writes Walpole to Mann, March 21, 1766. According to Prior, it was Scott who visited Goldsmith in his Temple chambers, and invited him to ‘draw a venal quill’ for Lord North’s administration. Goldsmith’s noble answer, as reported by his reverend friend, was—‘I can earn as much as will supply my wants without writing for any party; the assistance therefore you offer is unnecessary to me.’ ( Life , 1837, ii. 278.) There is a caricature portrait of Scott at p. 141 of The London Museum for February, 1771, entitled ‘Twitcher’s Advocate,’ ‘Jemmy Twitcher’ being the nickname of Lord Sandwich.

Swinging, great, huge. ‘Bishop Lowth has just finished the Dramas, and sent me word, that although I have paid him the most swinging compliment he ever received, he likes the whole book more than he can say.’ ( Memoirs of Hannah More , 1834, i. 236.)

pasty. The first version has Ven’son.’

So there I sat, etc. This couplet is not in the first version.

And, ‘Madam,’ quoth he. Mr. Lobban again quotes Swift’s Grand Question Debated :—

And ‘Madam,’ says he, ‘if such dinners you give You’ll ne’er want for parsons as long as you live.’

These slight resemblances, coupled with the more obvious likeness of the ‘Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff’ of Retaliation (ll. 145–6) to the Noueds and Bluturks and Omurs and stuff’ (also pointed out by Mr. Lobban) are interesting, because they show plainly that Goldsmith remembered the works of Swift far better than The New Bath Guide , which has sometimes been supposed to have set the tune to the Haunch and Retaliation .

‘may this bit be my poison.’ The gentleman in She Stoops to Conquer , Act i, who is ‘obligated to dance a bear.’ Uses the same asseveration. Cf. also Squire Thornhill’s somewhat similar formula in chap. vii of The Vicar of Wakefield , 1766, i. 59.

‘The tripe,’ quoth the Jew, etc. The first version reads—

‘Your Tripe!’ quoth the Jew , ‘if the truth I may speak, I could eat of this Tripe seven days in the week.’

Re-echoed, i.e. ‘returned’ in the first edition.

thot. This, probably by a printer’s error, is altered to ‘that’ in the second version. But the first reading is the more in keeping, besides being a better rhyme.

Wak’d Priam. Cf. 2 Henry IV , Act I, Sc. 1:—

Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night. And would have told him half his Troy was burnt.

sicken’d over by learning. Cf. Hamlet , Act iii, Sc. 1:

And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.

Notwithstanding the condemnation of Shakespeare in the Present State of Polite Learning , and elsewhere, Goldsmith frequently weaves Shakespearean recollections into his work. Cf. She Stoops to Conquer , 1773, Act i, p. 13, ‘We wanted no ghost to tell us that’ ( Hamlet , Act i, Sc. 5); and Act i, p. 9, where he uses Falstaff’s words (1 Henry IV , Act v, Sc. 1):—

Would it were bed-time and all were well.

as very well known. The first version has, ‘’tis very well known.’

EPITAPH ON THOMAS PARNELL.

This epitaph, apparently never used, was published with The Haunch of Venison , 1776; and is supposed to have been written about 1770. In that year Goldsmith wrote a Life of Thomas Parnell, D.D. , to accompany an edition of his poems, printed for Davies of Russell Street. Parnell was born in 1679, and died at Chester in 1718, on his way to Ireland. He was buried at Trinity Church in that town, on the 24th of October. Goldsmith says that his father and uncle both knew Parnell ( Life of Parnell , 1770, p. v), and that he received assistance from the poet’s nephew, Sir John Parnell, the singing gentleman who figures in Hogarth’s Election Entertainment . Why Goldsmith should write an epitaph upon a man who died ten years before his own birth, is not easy to explain. But Johnson also wrote a Latin one, which he gave to Boswell. (Birkbeck Hill’s Life , 1887, iv. 54.)

gentle Parnell’s name. Mitford compares Pope on Parnell [ Epistle to Harley , l. iv]:—

With softest manners, gentlest Arts adorn’d.

Pope published Parnell’s Poems in 1722, and his sending them to Harley, Earl of Oxford, after the latter’s disgrace and retirement, was the occasion of the foregoing epistle, from which the following lines respecting Parnell may also be cited:—

For him, thou oft hast bid the World attend, Fond to forget the statesman in the friend; For SWIFT and him despis’d the farce of state, The sober follies of the wise and great; Dext’rous the craving, fawning crowd to quit, And pleas’d to ’scape from Flattery to Wit.

his sweetly-moral lay. Cf. The Hermit , the Hymn to Contentment , the Night Piece on Death —which Goldsmith certainly recalled in his own City Night-Piece . Of the last-named Goldsmith says ( Life of Parnell , 1770, p. xxxii), not without an obvious side-stroke at Gray’s too-popular Elegy , that it ‘deserves every praise, and I should suppose with very little amendment, might be made to surpass all those night pieces and church yard scenes that have since appeared.’ This is certainly (as Longfellow sings) to

    rustling hear in every breeze The laurels of Miltiades.

Of Parnell, Hume wrote ( Essays , 1770, i. 244) that ‘after the fiftieth reading; [he] is as fresh as at the first.’ But Gray (speaking—it should be explained—of a dubious volume of his posthumous works) said: ‘Parnell is the dung-hill of Irish Grub Street’ (Gosse’s Gray’s Works , 1884, ii. 372). Meanwhile, it is his fate to-day to be mainly remembered by three words (not always attributed to him) in a couplet from what Johnson styled ‘perhaps the meanest’ of his performances, the Elegy— to an Old Beauty :—

And all that’s madly wild, or oddly gay, We call it only pretty Fanny’s way .

THE CLOWN’S REPLY.

This, though dated ‘Edinburgh 1753,’ was first printed in Poems and Plays , 1777, p. 79.

John Trott is a name for a clown or commonplace character. Miss Burney ( Diary , 1904, i. 222) says of Dr. Delap:—‘As to his person and appearance, they are much in the John-trot style.’ Foote, Chesterfield, and Walpole use the phrase; Fielding Scotticizes it into ‘John Trott-Plaid, Esq.’; and Bolingbroke employs it as a pseudonym.

I shall ne’er see your graces. ‘I shall never see a Goose again without thinking on Mr. Neverout ,’—says the ‘brilliant Miss Notable’ in Swift’s Polite Conversation , 1738, p. 156.

EPITAPH ON EDWARD PURDON.

The occasion of this quatrain, first published as Goldsmith’s* in Poems and Plays , 1777, p. 79, is to be found in Forster’s Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith , 1871, ii. 60. Purdon died on March 27, 1767 ( Gentleman’s Magazine , April, 1767, p. 192). ‘“Dr. Goldsmith made this epitaph,” says William Ballantyne [the author of Mackliniana ], “in his way from his chambers in the Temple to the Wednesday evening’s club at the Globe. I think he will never come back , I believe he said. I was sitting by him, and he repeated it more than twice. (I think he will never come back.)”’ Purdon had been at Trinity College, Dublin, with Goldsmith; he had subsequently been a foot soldier; ultimately he became a ‘bookseller’s hack.’ He wrote an anonymous letter to Garrick in 1759, and translated the Henriade of Voltaire. This translation Goldsmith is supposed to have revised, and his own life of Voltaire was to have accompanied it, though finally the Memoir and Translation seem to have appeared separately. (Cf. prefatory note to Memoirs of M. de Voltaire in Gibbs’s Works of Oliver Goldsmith , 1885, iv. 2.)

* It had previously appeared as an extempore by a correspondent in the Weekly Magazine , Edin., August 12, 1773 ( Notes and Queries , February 14, 1880).

Forster says further, in a note, ‘The original . . . is the epitaph on “La Mort du Sieur Etienne”:—

Il est au bout de ses travaux,     Il a passé, le Sieur Etienne; En ce monde il eut tant des maux     Qu’on ne croit pas qu’il revienne.

With this perhaps Goldsmith was familiar, and had therefore less scruple in laying felonious hands on the epigram in the Miscellanies (Swift, xiii. 372):—

Well, then, poor G—— lies underground!     So there’s an end of honest Jack. So little justice here he found,     ’Tis ten to one he’ll ne’er come back.’

Mr. Forster’s ‘felonious hands’ recalls a passage in Goldsmith’s Life of Parnell , 1770, in which, although himself an habitual sinner in this way, he comments gravely upon the practice of plagiarism:—‘It was the fashion with the wits of the last age, to conceal the places from whence they took their hints or their subjects. A trifling acknowledgment would have made that lawful prize, which may now be considered as plunder’ (p. xxxii).

EPILOGUE FOR LEE LEWES’S BENEFIT.

This benefit took place at Covent Garden on May 7, 1773, the pieces performed being Rowe’s Lady Jane Grey , and a popular pantomimic after-piece by Theobald, called Harlequin Sorcerer , Charles Lee Lewes (1740–1803) was the original ‘Young Marlow’ of She Stoops to Conquer . When that part was thrown up by ‘Gentleman’ Smith, Shuter, the ‘Mr. Hardcastle’ of the comedy, suggested Lewes, who was the harlequin of the theatre, as a substitute, and the choice proved an admirable one. Goldsmith was highly pleased with his performance, and in consequence wrote for him this epilogue. It was first printed by Evans, 1780, i. 112–4.

in thy black aspect, i.e. the half-mask of harlequin, in which character the Epilogue was spoken.

rosined lightning, stage-lightning, in which rosin is an ingredient.

EPILOGUE INTENDED FOR ‘SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.’

This epilogue was first printed at pp. 82–6, vol. ii, of the Miscellaneous Works of 1801. Bolton Corney says it had been given to Percy by Goldsmith. It is evidently the ‘quarrelling Epilogue’ referred to in the following letter from Goldsmith to Cradock ( Miscellaneous Memoirs , 1826, i. 225–6):—

‘M Y DEAR S IR , The Play [ She Stoops to Conquer ] has met with a success much beyond your expectations or mine. I thank you sincerely for your Epilogue, which, however could not be used, but with your permission, shall be printed.* The story in short is this; Murphy sent me rather the outline of an Epilogue than an Epilogue, which was to be sung by Mrs. Catley, and which she approved. Mrs. Bulkley hearing this, insisted on throwing up her part, unless according to the custom of the theatre, she were permitted to speak the Epilogue. In this embarrassment I thought of making a quarrelling Epilogue between Catley and her, debating who should speak the Epilogue, but then Mrs. Catley refused, after I had taken the trouble of drawing it out. I was then at a loss indeed; an Epilogue was to be made, and for none but Mrs. Bulkley. I made one, and Colman thought it too bad to be spoken; I was obliged therefore to try a fourth time, and I made a very mawkish thing, as you’ll shortly see. Such is the history of my Stage adventures, and which I have at last done with. I cannot help saying that I am very sick of the stage; and though I believe I shall get three tolerable benefits, yet I shall upon the whole be a loser, even in a pecuniary light; my ease and comfort I certainly lost while it was in agitation.

I am, my dear Cradock,                                                               your obliged, and obedient servant,                         O LIVER G OLDSMITH .    

P.S.—Present my most humble respects to Mrs. Cradock.’

* It is so printed with the note—‘This came too late to be Spoken.’

According to Prior ( Miscellaneous Works , 1837, iv. 154), Goldsmith’s friend, Dr. Farr, had a copy of this epilogue which still, when Prior wrote, remained in that gentleman’s family.

Who mump their passion, i.e. grimace their passion.

ye macaroni train. The Macaronies were the foplings, fribbles, or beaux of Goldsmith’s day. Walpole refers to them as early as 1764; but their flourishing time was 1770–3, when the print-shops, and especially Matthew Darly’s in the Strand, No. 39, swarmed with satirical designs of which they were the subject. Selwyn, March—many well-known names—are found in their ranks. Richard Cosway figured as ‘The Macaroni Painter’; Angelica Kauffmann as ‘The Paintress of Maccaroni’s’; Thrale as ‘The Southwark Macaroni.’ Another caricature (‘The Fluttering Macaroni’) contains a portrait of Miss Catley, the singing actress of the present epilogue; while Charles Horneck, the brother of ‘The Jessamy Bride’ (see p. 251, l. 14) is twice satirized as ‘The Martial Macaroni’ and ‘The Military Macaroni.’ The name, as may be guessed, comes from the Italian dish first made fashionable by the ‘Macaroni Club,’ being afterwards applied by extension to ‘the younger and gayer part of our nobility and gentry, who, at the same time that they gave in to the luxuries of eating, went equally into the extravagancies of dress.’ ( Macaroni and Theatrical Magazine , Oct. 1772.) Cf. Sir Benjamin Backbite’s later epigram in The School for Scandal , 1777, Act ii, Sc. 2:—

Sure never was seen two such beautiful ponies; Other horses are clowns, but these macaronies : To give them this title I’m sure can’t be wrong, Their legs are so slim and their tails are so long.

Their hands are only lent to the Heinel. See note to l. 28, p. 85.

This epilogue, given by Goldsmith to Dr. Percy in MS., was first published in the Miscellaneous Works of 1801, ii. 87–8, as An Epilogue intended for Mrs. Bulkley . Percy did not remember for what play it was intended; but it is plainly (see note to l. 40) the second epilogue for She Stoops to Conquer referred to in the letter printed in this volume.

There is a place, so Ariosto sings. ‘The poet alludes to the thirty-fourth canto of The Orlando furioso . Ariosto, as translated by Mr. Stewart Rose, observes of the lunar world ;

There thou wilt find, if thou wilt thither post, Whatever thou on earth beneath hast lost.

Astolpho undertakes the journey; discovers a portion of his own sense; and, in an ample flask, the lost wits of Orlando.’ (Bolton Corney.) Cf. also Rape of the Lock , Canto v, ll. 113–14:

Some thought it mounted to the Lunar sphere, Since all things lost on earth are treasur’d there.

Lord Chesterfield also refers to the ‘happy extravagancy’ of Astolpho’s journey in his Letters , 1774, i. 557.

at Foote’s Alone. ‘Foote’s’ was the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, where, in February, 1773, he brought out what he described as a ‘Primitive Puppet Show,’ based upon the Italian Fantoccini, and presenting a burlesque sentimental Comedy called The Handsome Housemaid; or, Piety in Pattens , which did as much as She Stoops to laugh false sentiment away. Foote warned his audience that they would not discover ‘much wit or humour’ in the piece, since ‘his brother writers had all agreed that it was highly improper, and beneath the dignity of a mixed assembly, to show any signs of joyful satisfaction; and that creating a laugh was forcing the higher order of an audience to a vulgar and mean use of their muscles’—for which reason, he explained, he had, like them, given up the sensual for the sentimental style. And thereupon followed the story of a maid of low degree who, ‘by the mere effects of morality and virtue, raised herself [like Richardson’s Pamela ], to riches and honours.’ The public, who for some time had acquiesced in the new order of things under the belief that it tended to the reformation of the stage, and who were beginning to weary of the ‘moral essay thrown into dialogue,’ which had for some time supplanted humorous situation, promptly came round under the influence of Foote’s Aristophanic ridicule, and the comédie larmoyante received an appreciable check. Goldsmith himself had prepared the way in a paper contributed to the Westminster Magazine for December, 1772 (vol. i. p. 4), with the title of ‘An Essay on the Theatre; or, A Comparison between Laughing and Sentimental Comedy.’ The specific reference in the Prologue is to the fact that Foote gave morning performances of The Handsome Housemaid . There was one, for instance, on Saturday, March 6, 1773.

The Mohawk. This particular species of the genus ‘rake’ belongs more to Swift’s than Goldsmith’s time, though the race is eternal. There is an account of the ‘Mohock Club’ in Spectator , No. 324. See also Spectator , No. 347; Gay’s Trivia , 1716, Book iii. p. 74; Swift’s Journal to Stella , March 8 and 26, 1712; and the Wentworth Papers , 1883, pp. 277–8.

Still stoops among the low to copy nature. This line, one would think, should have helped to convince Percy that the epilogue was intended for She Stoops to Conquer , and for no other play.

THE CAPTIVITY.

The Oratorio of the Captivity was written in 1764; but never set to music. It was first printed in 1820 at pp. 451–70 of vol. ii of the octavo edition of the Miscellaneous Works issued by the trade in that year. Prior reprinted it in 1837 ( Works , iv. Pp. 79–95) from the ‘original manuscript’ in Mr. Murray’s possession; and Cunningham again in 1854 ( Works , i. pp. 63–76). It is here reproduced from Prior. James Dodsley, who bought the MS. for Newbery and himself, gave Goldsmith ten guineas. Murray’s copy was the one made for Dodsley, October 31, 1764; the one printed in 1820, that made for Newbery. The latter, which once belonged to the autograph collector, William Upcott, was in the market in 1887.

AIR. Act i. This song had been published in the first edition of The Haunch of Venison , 1776, with the second stanza varied thus:—

Thou, like the world, th’ opprest oppressing,     Thy smiles increase the wretch’s woe’ And he who wants each other blessing,     In thee must ever find a foe.

AIR. Act ii. This song also had appeared in the first edition of The Haunch of Venison , 1776, in a different form:—

The Wretch condemn’d with life to part,     Still, still on Hope relies; And ev’ry pang that rends the heart,     Bids Expectation rise. Hope, like the glim’ring taper’s light,     Adorns and chears the way; And still, as darker grows the night,     Emits a brighter ray.

Mitford, who printed The Captivity from Newbery’s version, records a number of ‘first thoughts’ afterwards altered or improved by the author in his MS. Modern editors have not reproduced them, and their example has been followed here. The Captivity is not, in any sense, one of Goldsmith’s important efforts.

VERSES IN REPLY TO AN INVITATION TO DINNER.

These were first published in the Miscellaneous Works of 1837, iv. 132–3, having been communicated to the editor by Major-General Sir H. E. Bunbury, Bart., the son of Henry William Bunbury, the well-known comic artist, and husband of Catherine Horneck, the ‘Little Comedy’ to whom Goldsmith refers. Dr. Baker, to whose house the poet was invited, was Dr. (afterwards Sir George) Baker, 1722–1809. He was Sir Joshua’s doctor; and in 1776 became physician to George III, whom he attended during his illness of 1788–9. He is often mentioned by Fanny Burney and Hannah More.

Horneck, i.e. Mrs. Hannah Horneck—the ‘Plymouth Beauty’—widow of Captain Kane William Horneck, grandson of Dr. Anthony Horneck of the Savoy, mentioned in Evelyn’s Diary , for whose Happy Ascetick , 1724, Hogarth designed a frontispiece. Mrs. Horneck died in 1803. Like Sir Joshua, the Hornecks came from Devonshire; and through him, had made the acquaintance of Goldsmith.

Nesbitt. Mr. Nesbitt was the husband of one of Mr. Thrale’s handsome sisters. He was a member of the Devonshire Club, and twice (1759–61) sat to Reynolds, with whom he was intimate. He died in 1779, and his widow married a Mr. Scott.

Kauffmann. Angelica Kauffmann, the artist, 1741–1807. She had come to London in 1766. At the close of 1767 she had been cajoled into a marriage with an impostor, Count de Horn, and had separated from him in 1768. In 1769 she painted a ‘weak and uncharacteristic’ portrait of Reynolds for Mr. Parker of Saltram (afterwards Baron Boringdon), which is now in the possession of the Earl of Morley. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in the winter of 1876, and is the portrait referred to at l. 44 below.

the Jessamy Bride. This was Goldsmith’s pet-name for Mary, the elder Miss Horneck. After Goldsmith’s death she married Colonel F. E. Gwyn (1779). She survived until 1840. ‘Her own picture with a turban,’ painted by Reynolds, was left to her in his will ( Works by Malone, 2nd ed., 1798, p. cxviii). She was also painted by Romney and Hoppner. ‘Jessamy,’ or ‘jessimy,’ with its suggestion of jasmine flowers, seems in eighteenth-century parlance to have stood for ‘dandified,’ ‘superfine,’ ‘delicate,’ and the whole name was probably coined after the model of some of the titles to Darly’s prints, then common in all the shops.

The Reynoldses two, i.e. Sir Joshua and his sister, Miss Reynolds.

Little Comedy’s face. ‘Little Comedy’ was Goldsmith’s name for the younger Miss Horneck, Catherine, and already engaged to H. W. Bunbury ( v. supra ), to whom she was married in 1771. She died in 1799, and had also been painted by Reynolds.

the Captain in lace. This was Charles Horneck, Mrs. Horneck’s son, an officer in the Foot-guards. He afterwards became a general, and died in 1804. (See note, p. 247, l. 31.)

to-day’s Advertiser. The lines referred to are said by Prior to have been as follows:—

While fair Angelica, with matchless grace, Paints Conway’s lovely form and Stanhope’s face; Our hearts to beauty willing homage pay, We praise, admire, and gaze our souls away. But when the likeness she hath done for thee, O Reynolds! with astonishment we see, Forced to submit, with all our pride we own, Such strength, such harmony, excell’d by none, And thou art rivall’d by thyself alone.

They probably appeared in the newspaper at some date between 1769, when the picture was painted, and August 1771, when ‘Little Comedy’ was married, after which time Goldsmith would scarcely speak of her except as ‘Mrs. Bunbury’ (see p. 132, l. 15).

LETTER IN PROSE AND VERSE TO MRS. BUNBURY.

This letter, which contains some of the brightest and easiest of Goldsmith’s familiar verses, was addressed to Mrs. Bunbury (the ‘Little Comedy’ of the Verses in Reply to an Invitation to Dinner , pp. 250–2), in answer to a rhymed summons on her part to spend Christmas at Great Barton in Suffolk, the family seat of the Bunburys. It was first printed by Prior in the Miscellaneous Works of 1837, iv. 148–51, and again in 1838 in Sir Henry Bunbury’s Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer, Bart. , pp. 379–83. The text of the latter issue is here followed. When Prior published the verses, they were assigned to the year 1772; in the Hanmer Correspondence it is stated that they were ‘probably written in 1773 or 1774.’

your spring velvet coat. Goldsmith’s pronounced taste in dress, and his good-natured simplicity, made his costume a fertile subject for playful raillery,—sometimes, for rather discreditable practical jokes. (See next note.)

a wig, that is modish and gay. ‘He always wore a wig’—said the ‘Jessamy Bride’ in her reminiscences to Prior—‘a peculiarity which those who judge of his appearance only from the fine poetical head of Reynolds, would not suspect; and on one occasion some person contrived to seriously injure this important adjunct to dress. It was the only one he had in the country, and the misfortune seemed irreparable until the services of Mr. Bunbury’s valet were called in, who however performed his functions so indifferently that poor Goldsmith’s appearance became the signal for a general smile’ (Prior’s Life , 1837, ii. 378–9).

Naso contemnere adunco. Cf. Horace, Sat . i. 6. 5:—

          naso suspendis adunco Ignotos,

and Martial, Ep . i. 4. 6:—

Et pueri nasum Rhinocerotis habent.

Loo, i.e. Lanctre- or Lanterloo, a popular eighteenth-century game, in which Pam , l. 6, the knave of clubs, is the highest card. Cf. Pope, Rape of the Lock , 1714, iii. 61:—

Ev’n might Pam , that Kings and Queens o’erthrew, And mow’d down armies in the fights of Lu;

and Colman’s epilogue to The School for Scandal , 1777:—

And at backgammon mortify my soul, That pants for loo , or flutters at a vole?

Miss Horneck. Miss Mary Horneck, the ‘Jessamy Bride’ vide note, p. 251, l. 14).

Fielding. Sir John Fielding, d. 1780, Henry Fielding’s blind half-brother, who succeeded him as a Justice of the Peace for the City and Liberties of Westminster. He was knighted in 1761. There are two portraits of him by Nathaniel Hone.

by quinto Elizabeth, Death without Clergy. Legal authorities affirm that the Act quoted should be 8 Eliz. cap. iv, under which those who stole more than twelvepence ‘privately from a man’s person’ were debarred from benefit of clergy. But ‘quint. Eliz.’ must have offered some special attraction to poets, since Pope also refers to it in the Satires and Epistles , i. 147–8:—

Consult the Statute: quart . I think, it is, Edwardi sext. or prim. et quint. Eliz.

With bunches of fennel, and nosegays before ’em. This was a custom dating from the fearful jail fever of 1750, which carried off, not only prisoners, but a judge (Mr. Justice Abney) ‘and many jurymen and witnesses.’ ‘From that time up to this day [i.e. 1855] it has been usual to place sweet-smelling herbs in the prisoner’s dock, to prevent infection.’ (Lawrence’s Life of Henry Fielding , 1855, p. 296.) The close observation of Cruikshank has not neglected this detail in the Old Bailey plate of The Drunkard’s Children , 1848, v.

mobs. The mob was a loose undress or dèshabillè , sometimes a hood. ‘When we poor souls had presented ourselves with a contrition suitable to our worthlessness, some pretty young ladies in mobs , popped in here and there about the church.’ ( Guardian , No. 65, May 26, 1713.) Cf. also Addison’s ‘Fine Lady’s Diary’ ( Spectator , No. 323); ‘Went in our Mobbs to the Dumb Man’ (Duncan Campbell).

yon solemn-faced. Cf. Introduction , p. xxvii. According to the ‘Jessamy Bride,’ Goldsmith sometimes aggravated his plainness by an ‘assumed frown of countenance’ (Prior, Life , 1837, ii. 379).

Sir Charles, i.e. Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, Bart., M. P., Henry Bunbury’s elder brother. He succeeded to the title in 1764, and died without issue in 1821. Goldsmith, it may be observed, makes ‘Charles’ a disyllable. Probably, like many of his countrymen, he so pronounced it. (Cf. Thackeray’s Pendennis , 1850, vol. ii, chap. 5 [or xliii], where this is humorously illustrated in Captain Costigan’s ‘Sir Chorlus , I saw your neem at the Levee.’ Perhaps this accounts for ‘failing’ and ‘stealing,’—‘day on’ and ‘Pantheon,’ in the New Simile . Cooke ( European Magazine , October, 1793, p. 259) says that Goldsmith ‘rather cultivated (than endeavoured to get rid of) his brogue.’

dy’d in grain, i.e. fixed, ineradicable. To ‘dye in grain’ means primarily to colour with the scarlet or purple dye produced by the kermes insect, called granum in Latin, from its similarity to small seeds. Being what is styled a ‘fast’ dye the phrase is used by extension to signify permanence.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Oliver Goldsmith

Introduction.

• Bibliographies
• Biographies before 1900
• Biographies after 1900
• General Collections and Studies
• Nationality
• Irish Studies
• The Periodical Writings
• Attribution
• The Citizen of the World
• The Major Poems
• Classicism, Augustanism, and “Retaliation”
• Natural History
• The Vicar of Wakefield

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Oliver Goldsmith by Michael Griffin LAST REVIEWED: 27 February 2019 LAST MODIFIED: 27 February 2019 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846719-0026

The life and work of the Irish poet, playwright, essayist, historian, and novelist Oliver Goldsmith (b. 1728–d. 1774) had not received a tremendous amount of attention since the 1960s, a decade that saw a substantial burst of editorial and critical work, and, in particular, the publication of Arthur Friedman’s five-volume edition of the Collected Works ( Goldsmith 1966 , cited under Editions ) and Roger Lonsdale’s edition of The Poems of Goldsmith, Gray and Collins ( Goldsmith, et al. 1969 , cited under Editions ). A good deal of the critical scholarship that has emerged since then has been in dialogue with, or in response to, those editions and to two-book length works of criticism by Ricardo Quintana ( Quintana 1967 , cited under General Collections and Studies ) and Robert H. Hopkins ( Hopkins 1969 , cited under General Collections and Studies ), which argued for a greater appreciation of the ironic registers of Goldsmith’s work. Indeed, much Goldsmith criticism has focused on the question of whether he should be understood as a sentimentalist or as a satirist, since the oeuvre as a whole exists along a seam between the satirical tenor of his Augustan predecessors and the emerging sensibility of his literary milieu and an expanding middle-class audience. As such, Goldsmith’s writings are in many ways highly representative of his mid-18th-century contexts. The relative lack of sustained scholarly and critical work on Goldsmith since the 1960s is also partly attributable to his work being in some senses too various to accommodate in single thematic or generic studies: he moved across the modes of 18th-century writing with considerable ease and success. The eclectic nature of his oeuvre, and the variety of tones and registers he used in writing across the genres, has resulted in his being characterized in various, often-inconsistent ways. That said, clusters of essays and articles have appeared since the late 20th century that have illustrated the richness and instructive ambiguities of his writing and thinking. Also, his Irishness has been intermittently, and with varying degrees of insight or success, studied throughout the critical heritage as a contributing factor in his social and political worldview. In this article, items that Friedman acknowledged and incorporated into the editorial apparatus of his 1966 edition—including earlier scholarship on the history and sources of Goldsmith’s Greek, Roman, and English histories, the prefaces to which feature in Friedman’s work—are largely omitted. The emphasis here is primarily on the biographical tradition, on criticism and scholarship published after 1966, and within that period on the substantial bodies of criticism surrounding the major poetry and Goldsmith’s one novel.

The most recent edition of the Collected Works , edited by Arthur Friedman, is of mid-20th-century vintage ( Goldsmith 1966 ), while a new edition of Goldsmith’s correspondence (building upon the scholarship of Katharine Balderston, whose edition of the letters was published in 1928) was published in Goldsmith 2018 . Apart from the correspondence, Goldsmith has not been the subject of much editorial scholarship since the 1960s, when, along with Friedman’s Collected Works , the poems—anthologized with those of Thomas Gray and William Collins—were edited and annotated in Goldsmith, et al. 1969 with extraordinary thoroughness by Roger Lonsdale. Tom Davis drew on editions edited by Friedman ( Goldsmith 1966 ) and Lonsdale ( Goldsmith, et al. 1969 ) for his compact edition of the poems and plays ( Goldsmith 1975 ). Goldsmith 2002 , an edition of The Deserted Village , renews in its introduction the poem’s Irish contexts and continuing relevance. For students and general readers, the Goldsmith 1951 (edited by Frederick Hilles), Goldsmith 1974 , and Goldsmith 2008 editions of The Vicar of Wakefield (both edited by Friedman) give useful critical and biographical contexts within which to read the works. Goldsmith, et al. 2007 , a mini-anthology of plays edited by Nigel Wood, situates She Stoops to Conquer in its contemporaneous theatrical culture. Less well known among Goldsmith’s writings for the stage is his derivative 1773 farce The Grumbler , published with an introduction by Perry Wood in Goldsmith 1931 .

Goldsmith, Oliver. The Grumbler: An Adaptation . Introduced and annotated by Alice I. Perry Wood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931.

Contains the text of Goldsmith’s one-act adaptation of Sir Charles Sedley’s three-act translation from the French five-act original by David-Augustin de Brueys and Jean de Palaprat. Perry Wood’s introduction gives a succinct account of the history of Goldsmith’s adaptation in this, the first publication of the play from the manuscript in the Huntington Library.

Goldsmith, Oliver. The Vicar of Wakefield . Edited by Frederick W. Hilles. New York: Everyman’s Library, 1951.

Hilles’s influential introduction related the novel to the conventions of the stage and emphasized its formal symmetry and structural balance.

Goldsmith, Oliver. The Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith . 5 vols. Edited by Arthur Friedman. Oxford: Clarendon, 1966.

Friedman’s edition is the most comprehensive, to date, and, as a collection that moves across all the genres in which Goldsmith wrote, the most advanced in its editorial apparatus. Drawing on the work of several bibliographical scholars between the 1820s and 1960s, Friedman gives as firm an account of the canon of tendentiously attributed periodical and other writings as possible and excludes pieces that had not been satisfactorily proven to be the work of Goldsmith.

Goldsmith, Oliver. The Vicar of Wakefield . Edited by Arthur Friedman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974.

Friedman gives in the 1974 edition a ten-page introduction to The Vicar that concisely explains the novel’s attractions and traces, broadly for the general reader, the issues in criticism. There is also a two-page “Select bibliography” in which Friedman recounts the biographical and critical traditions surrounding the oeuvre in general, and the Vicar in particular.

Goldsmith, Oliver. Poems and Plays . Edited by Tom Davis. London: J. M. Dent, 1975.

A useful, compact edition of the two major plays and the collected poems, lightly end-noted, with a useful, concise (fourteen-page) introduction. Indebted to Friedman ( Goldsmith 1966 ) and Lonsdale ( Goldsmith, et al. 1969 ).

Goldsmith, Oliver. The Deserted Village . Introduced by Vona Groarke. Oldcastle, Ireland: Gallery, 2002.

Goldsmith’s fellow Longford poet Groarke emphasizes in her succinct introduction the continuing relevance of the poem’s political communalism for modern Ireland.

Goldsmith, Oliver. The Vicar of Wakefield . Edited by Arthur Friedman and Robert L. Mack. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Reprinting Friedman’s authoritative text of the corrected first edition of 1766, the newer 2008 edition features an introduction by Mack that extends and updates the terms of the critical debate. The bibliography, accordingly, is updated and the notes are expanded.

Goldsmith, Oliver. The Letters of Oliver Goldsmith . Edited by Michael Griffin and David O’Shaughnessy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Building upon Katharine Balderston’s collected edition of Goldsmith’s small body of (at that point, fifty-three) letters published in 1928, this edition expands the body of correspondence to sixty-six letters. The editors provide an extended introduction that puts Goldsmith in his London-Irish and Enlightenment contexts.

Goldsmith, Oliver, Henry Fielding, David Garrick, George Colman, and John O’Keeffe. She Stoops to Conquer and Other Comedies . Edited by Nigel Wood. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Useful for students, this edition and Wood’s introduction to it situate Goldsmith’s play (alongside others) in the theatrical culture of its time, with a glossary of colloquial and unfamiliar terms, and notes to clarify early-21st-century and historical allusions.

Goldsmith, Oliver, Thomas Gray, and William Collins. The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins and Oliver Goldsmith . Edited by Roger Lonsdale. Harlow, UK: Longmans, 1969.

Lonsdale’s headnotes and footnotes give accounts, unsurpassed in detail, of the composition and early histories of Goldsmith’s poems; see pp. 566–769.

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'The Character of the Man in Black' by Oliver Goldsmith

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Best known for his comic play "She Stoops to Conquer" and the novel "The Vicar of Wakefield," Oliver Goldsmith was also one of the most prominent essayists of the 18th century. "The Character of the Man in Black" (originally published in the Public Ledger) appears in Goldsmith's most popular essay collection, "The Citizen of the World."

Who Is the Man in Black?

Though Goldsmith said that the Man in Black was modeled on his father, an Anglican curate, more than one critic has observed that the character "bears a striking resemblance" to the author:

In fact, Goldsmith himself seems to have had difficulty reconciling his philosophic opposition to charity with his own tenderness toward the poor--the conservative with the man of feeling. . . . As foolishly "luxurious" as Goldsmith may have considered [the Man in Black's] behavior, he apparently found it natural and almost unavoidable for a "man of sentiment." (Richard C. Taylor, Goldsmith as Journalist . Associated University Presses, 1993)

After reading "The Character of the Man in Black," you may find it worthwhile to compare the essay with Goldsmith's "A City Night-Piece" and with George Orwell's "Why Are Beggars Despised?"

'The Man in Black'

To the Same.

1 Though fond of many acquaintances, I desire an intimacy only with a few. The Man in Black, whom I have often mentioned, is one whose friendship I could wish to acquire, because he possesses my esteem. His manners, it is true, are tinctured with some strange inconsistencies; and he may be justly termed a humorist in a nation of humorists. Though he is generous even to profusion, he affects to be thought a prodigy of parsimony and prudence; though his conversation be replete with the most sordid and selfish maxims , his heart is dilated with the most unbounded love. I have known him profess himself a man-hater, while his cheek was glowing with compassion; and, while his looks were softened into pity, I have heard him use the language of the most unbounded ill-nature. Some affect humanity and tenderness, others boast of having such dispositions from nature; but he is the only man I ever knew who seemed ashamed of his natural benevolence. He takes as much pains to hide his feelings, as any hypocrite would to conceal his indifference; but on every unguarded moment the mask drops off, and reveals him to the most superficial observer.

2 In one of our late excursions into the country, happening to discourse upon the provision that was made for the poor in England, he seemed amazed how any of his countrymen could be so foolishly weak as to relieve occasional objects of charity, when the laws had made such ample provision for their support. "In every parish-house," says he, "the poor are supplied with food, clothes, fire, and a bed to lie on; they want no more, I desire no more myself; yet still they seem discontented. I am surprised at the inactivity of our magistrates in not taking up such vagrants, who are only a weight upon the industrious; I am surprised that the people are found to relieve them, when they must be at the same time sensible that it in some measure encourages idleness, extravagance, and imposture. Were I to advise any man for whom I had the least regard, I would caution him by all means not to be imposed upon by their false pretences; let me assure you, sir, they are imposters, every one of them; and rather merit a prison than relief."

3 He was proceeding in this strain earnestly, to dissuade me from an imprudence of which I am seldom guilty, when an old man, who still had about him the remnants of tattered finery, implored our compassion. He assured us that he was no common beggar, but forced into the shameful profession to support a dying wife and five hungry children. Being prepossessed against such falsehoods, his story had not the least influence upon me; but it was quite otherwise with the Man in Black: I could see it visibly operate upon his countenance, and effectually interrupt his harangue. I could easily perceive, that his heart burned to relieve the five starving children, but he seemed ashamed to discover his weakness to me. While he thus hesitated between compassion and pride, I pretended to look another way, and he seized this opportunity of giving the poor petitioner a piece of silver, bidding him at the same time, in order that I should hear, go work for his bread, and not tease passengers with such impertinent falsehoods for the future.

4 As he had fancied himself quite unperceived, he continued, as we proceeded, to rail against beggars with as much animosity as before: he threw in some episodes on his own amazing prudence and economy, with his profound skill in discovering impostors; he explained the manner in which he would deal with beggars, were he a magistrate; hinted at enlarging some of the prisons for their reception, and told two stories of ladies that were robbed by beggarmen. He was beginning a third to the same purpose, when a sailor with a wooden leg once more crossed our walks, desiring our pity, and blessing our limbs. I was for going on without taking any notice, but my friend looking wistfully upon the poor petitioner, bid me stop, and he would show me with how much ease he could at any time detect an impostor.

5 He now, therefore, assumed a look of importance, and in an angry tone began to examine the sailor, demanding in what engagement he was thus disabled and rendered unfit for service. The sailor replied in a tone as angrily as he, that he had been an officer on board a private ship of war, and that he had lost his leg abroad, in defence of those who did nothing at home. At this reply, all my friend's importance vanished in a moment; he had not a single question more to ask: he now only studied what method he should take to relieve him unobserved. He had, however, no easy part to act, as he was obliged to preserve the appearance of ill-nature before me, and yet relieve himself by relieving the sailor. Casting, therefore, a furious look upon some bundles of chips which the fellow carried in a string at his back, my friend demanded how he sold his matches; but, not waiting for a reply, desired in a surly tone to have a shilling's worth. The sailor seemed at first surprised at his demand, but soon recollected himself, and presenting his whole bundle, "Here master," says he, "take all my cargo, and a blessing into the bargain."

6 It is impossible to describe with what an air of triumph my friend marched off with his new purchase: he assured me that he was firmly of opinion that those fellows must have stolen their goods who could thus afford to sell them for half value. He informed me of several different uses to which those chips might be applied; he expatiated largely upon the savings that would result from lighting candles with a match, instead of thrusting them into the fire. He averred, that he would as soon have parted with a tooth as his money to those vagabonds, unless for some valuable consideration. I cannot tell how long this panegyric upon frugality and matches might have continued, had not his attention been called off by another object more distressful than either of the former. A woman in rags, with one child in her arms, and another on her back, was attempting to sing ballads, but with such a mournful voice that it was difficult to determine whether she was singing or crying. A wretch, who in the deepest distress still aimed at good-humour, was an object my friend was by no means capable of withstanding: his vivacity and his discourse were instantly interrupted; upon this occasion his very dissimulation had forsaken him. Even in my presence he immediately applied his hands to his pockets, in order to relieve her; but guess his confusion, when he found he had already given away all the money he carried about him to former objects. The misery painted in the woman's visage was not half so strongly expressed as the agony in his. He continued to search for some time, but to no purpose, till, at length recollecting himself, with a face of ineffable good-nature, as he had no money, he put into her hands his shilling's worth of matches.

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British Literature Wiki

Oliver Goldsmith

Biography A lot about Goldsmith’s life is fairly uncertain. Historians argue on his true birthyear, but the consensus is that it was November 10 of any of the years between 1727 and 1731. The Library of Congress in Kilkenny West, County Westmeath, Ireland claims that he told a biographer that he was born in eiher 1730 or 1731. The son of a clergyman, Goldsmith started his education at home under the tutelage of relatives before eventually attending the village school beginning at age seven. Due to his shy nature and his physical deformities as a result of smallpox, Goldsmith was bullied by his peers and even his teachers, who often singled him out in school as an example of how not to behave. In 1749, after an unimpressive stint at Trinity College in Dublin, Goldsmith graduated without a distinction worthy of pursuing a career in which he was interested. He also went on to pursue degrees in medicine and law, neither of which he ultimately attained. Undistinguished, poor, and yet to be discovered, he moved to London in 1756 and held a series of odd jobs.

Goldsmith’s rise to prominence began with his work as a writer for Ralph Griffith’s Monthly Review. He also wrote essays in The Bee and The Public Ledger. One of his more famous early works, “Chinese Letters,” was originally published in The Public Ledger before being collected as a separate work entitled The Citizen of the World. Due to his pleasant, readable writing style and the help of several famous friends, including Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, and James Boswell, Goldsmith expanded his reputation as merely an essayist to that of a poet as well. His poem “The Traveller,” published in 1764, contained a potent mix of fond recollections of travel through Europe and his guiding political philosophies. This formula was revisited in 1770’s “The Deserted Village,” in which Goldsmith wrote of the beauty of the countryside while also criticizing society’s treatment of poor villagers who faced displacement by modern aristocrats.

Goldsmith did not limit himself to essays and poetry, however. The year 1766 saw the release of his novel The Vicar of Wakefield, whose action, similar to “The Deserted Village,” took place in a small town in the countryside. In 1768, he tried his hand at theater with The Good Natur’d Man. However, it was his second such effort, 1773’s She Stoops to Conquer, that solidified his play writing credentials. She Stoops to Conquer was a definite success and remains one of the most popular English-language plays from that era.

Despite his continuing professional success, Goldsmith faced problems in his personal life. His lavish lifestyle, which begun in his college years, left him in considerable debt, and in 1774, he fell ill. He died on April 4, 1774, at the age of 43, and is buried at the Church of Saint Mary in London.

Another way to interpret it is that Goldsmith is lamenting the destruction of this beautfully plain village. He begins by talking about the village’s natural splendor. He writes, “How often have I paused on every charm, The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm.”

Goldsmith writes that Auburn is now a desolate village, without its luster and devoid of the life it once knew. Nearly all the villagers have left to seek a more lucrative, fulfilling life, an objective Goldsmith rejects in favor of the blissful simplicity the villagers used to enjoy in Auburn. He writes that the villagers used to be happy when “light labour spread her wholesome store, Just gave what life required, but gave no more: His best companions, innocence and health’ and his best riches, ignorance of wealth.” These days, however, Goldsmith notes that “Even now the devastation is begun, And half the business of destruction done; Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand, I see the rural virtues leave the land.” Through his descriptions of the decline of the imaginary Auburn, Goldsmith laments the real-life trend of people deserting the quiet country life in pursuit of more material successes. To him, all that is left of his childhood village and others like it are memories.

A big motif in this poem is that every bit of the it emanates unbreached innocence. Furthermore, the “progressive” usurpers seek to develop the land or take “space… for his lake[and]… space for his horses”.Toward the beginning, Goldsmith writes, “The bashful virgin’s side-long looks of love, The matron’s glance that would those looks reprove.” This is an example of basic, unadulterated every day life. The virgin starts to develop an eye for the men of the village and her mother figure “reproves”. There is not anything special about this moment per se but that is precisely the point.

Help Reading “The Deserted Village” Sometimes its hard to read a poem because one doesn’t know how it is supposed to sound or flow. Play the video below to listen to the first stanza in order to get an idea for the rhythm in which the poem is read.

Goldsmith’s poem “The Deserted Village” is typical of writings of the Augustan time period. Coinciding with the Age of Enlightenment, the era of Augustan literature paid tribute to the orderly structures and themes found in classical Greek and Roman works. Like their ancient predecessors, Augustan authors believed that the universe was a rational and consistent place, and that human nature was essentially unchanging. They based their beliefs about life and the universe on empirical evidence rather than on emotions or personal feelings. Another common element of Augustan literature was the use of satire: the technique of exaggerating a “problematic” aspect of society for the purpose of fixing the problem. This notion that there was a correct and an incorrect way of doing things is yet more evidence of the Augustans’ belief in the importance of evidence-based, rational thinking and of following in the footsteps of the classical scholars.

In “The Deserted Village,” Goldsmith utilizes several typical qualities of Augustan writing, including an emphasis on empiricism, discussions of human nature, and the use of satire.

Empiricism The idea of empiricism places an emphasis on attaining knowledge through observation and exploration. Augustans like Oliver goldsmith were particularly interested in the empirical worldview of learning from nature. Goldsmith’s poem, “The Deserted Village”, exemplifies this concept of observing nature by using the narrator’s changing opinions of the village of Auburn. At the start of the poem, Goldsmith sets the scene by describing the natural beauty of the land with somewhat vivid details. For example, the narrator describes a spring from this area as a “smiling spring”, making the readers see this as a nice place where people can go to feel good.The narrator goes on to describe several places (supposedly close to the Auburn) in a similar manner, including “The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,The never-failing brook, the busy mill”, and “The decent church that topt the neighbouring hill”. Although there are several places described in the poem that are only described by a single preceding adjective, the one adjective gives the reader a good enough understanding of what it is like to be in these specific places and imagine themselves in the environment. When describing aspects of the land in general, the narrator pairs up parts of the scenery with adjectives that give the reader an idea of how they would feel if they were in the same place. From these sensory details, the reader develops a desire to experience these things firsthand because they give the impression that there is something to be gained by doing so, much like how empiricists believed that there was knowledge to be gained from observing nature.

In addition to giving the reader a sensory feel of the area, Goldsmith’s descriptions of the beauty of this nature setting also give the reader an idea of how the positive feelings brought on by the simplicity and beauty of the village affects the people living it. The narrator describes Auburn as a place “Where health and plenty cheared the labouring swain”, explicating that health, happiness and comfort permeated the very environment.

Going on with descriptions of the area, the narrator talks about places like “The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, For talking age and whispering lovers made” to show how Auburn is not only a place of great beauty, but also a place where good times can be had and memories can be made. By talking about Auburn in such a positive light, the narrator makes the village seem attractive to the reader so that what ends up happening seems even more disappointing.

The moment after the line “These were thy charms—But all these charms are fled”, the narrator performs a reversal by writing about the wretched state of the current Auburn village. The narrator uses the same methods of observation that were used to describe Auburn in the past (combining scenery with brief description, quickly including notes about the people, etc.), but this time the narrator uses negative wording to describe the setting and make Auburn seem repulsive instead of attractive. The narrator goes out of his way to describe “The various terrors of that horrid shore” with more than enough negativity to make it clear to the reader that the once-beautiful nature has deteriorated into something unpleasant. For example, when the narrator refers to “Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray, And fiercely shed intolerable day”, he emphasizes the fact that the sunlight in the area is “blazing” and will “fiercely shed intolerable day” because he wants to show that the natural environment has become so bad that it is actually painful to be around. The writer uses such imagery to make the reader feel like going to Auburn to experience its nature will actually do more harm than good. The new, “intolerable” environment of Auburn contradicts the empiricist belief that one would have something to gain by being around nature. This contradiction with nature is giving the reader empirical evidence that what has happened to the village is bad.

Then, from the observation of the changing nature in the village, the narrator of the poem sees the changing attitudes of the local people. The physical nature of Auburn becomes uglier and harsher as the people trade their morals for greed. For the narrator, Auburn is now a place “Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey”, but, as if that were not bad enough, it is also a place where “savage men” reside who are “more murderous than [the tigers]”, making Auburn bad because of its uncouth citizens as well as its unwelcoming nature. Goldsmith utilizes nature images with negative connotations and then pairs them up with descriptions about the people (just like in the last section)to emphasize the overall failure of the village. Regarding empiricism, it could be sai that the degradation of the natural environment resulted in the deterioration of the people of Auburn. Without any nature to observe or draw knowledge from, the people eventually became degraded in their moral statures and ways of life to the point that they become worse off than animals.

Irony Goldsmith talks about the people of his village as if they are different than himself. He went off and became a renowned well known writer in London, no where near the precincts of his village or the nature he speaks so highly of. He was described by his contemporaries of being an envious individual and even tried to leave England for America. Its worth thinking about why and how Goldsmith chose to write about the beauty of a place that brought him so much pain. The answer lies in lines 251-264 where Goldsmith states,

“Yes! let the rich deride, the proud disdain,

These simple blessings of the lowly train;, to me more dear, congenial to my heart,, one native charm, than all the gloss of art;, spontaneous joys, where nature has its play,, the soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway;, lightly they frolic o’er the vacant mind,, unenvied, unmolested, unconfined., but the long pomp, the midnight masquerade,, with all the freaks of wanton wealth arrayed,, in these, ere triflers half their wish obtain,, the toiling pleasure sickens into pain;, and, even while fashion’s brightest arts decoy,, the heart distrusting asks, if this be joy.”.

It’s ironic because Goldsmith was just like all the people who are looking for new opportunities outside the city now because they believe, and he believed that things are better and that there is more opportunities away from their little village than there are in it. Goldsmith’s point here is that he’s been to the other side and back and knows that there is no place like the beautiful, but dying, village that they are all from. But ironically again he is in no place to ridicule due to his success in the city of London. Goldsmith’s main point here, and a major theme of the poem, is to never forget where you are from and to appreciate where you come from.

Human Nature

Goldsmith brings about the Augustan idea that human nature is universal among all people. The Augustans believed that man had a specific place in the natural world. They also believed that this place never changed over time. There are certain qualities of this universal nature that are present in “The Deserted Village”. One of the universal truths this work seems to highlight is the desire of wealth. In the poem, people become obsessed with the temptations of “vain transitory splendours” and greed.The people of Auburn are introduced to wealth and seem to forget their previous, simple lifestyles. With the shift into a more affluent lifestyle, “ No more the farmer’s news, the barber’s tale, No more the woodman’s ballad shall prevail “; all the simple, mundane duties of the country people fade and disappear as they strive for fortune instead. Men from around the world come with desire for riches, and even the poor are affected by the wave of greed that sweeps through the village. This striving for wealth that leads to the discarding of oneself (be they a farmer, a barber, or a woodman) is seen by the narrator of this poem as an undeniable truth about what all human beings are like.

“Vain transitory splendours! Could not all Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall! Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart An hour’s importance to the poor man’s heart; Thither no more the peasant shall repair To sweet oblivion of his daily care; No more the farmer’s news, the barber’s tale, No more the woodman’s ballad shall prevail; No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear, Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear; The host himself no longer shall be found Careful to see the mantling bliss go round; Nor the coy maid, half willing to be prest, Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest.” (l.237-250)

Satire Satire was used during the Augustan period to reflect the universal idea of human nature’s flaws and uses a comedic tone to suggest that people can correct themselves. Goldsmith uses sarcasm to stress the misdirection of the people in the village. In the following passage, he satirically remarks on the changed village.

“If to the city sped—What waits him there? To see profusion that he must not share; To see ten thousand baneful arts combined To pamper luxury, and thin mankind; To see those joys the sons of pleasure know, Extorted from his fellow-creature’s woe. Here while the courtier glitters in brocade, There the pale artist plies the sickly trade; Here while the proud their long-drawn pomps display, There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight reign, Here, richly deckt, admits the gorgeous train; Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square, The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare. Sure scenes like these no troubles e’er annoy! Sure these denote one universal joy! Are these thy serious thoughts?” (l.309-325)

With its focus on empiricism, human nature, and satire, “The Deserted Village” can be considered a standard piece of Augustan literature, and Oliver Goldsmith a unique but decidedly-Augustan author.

The novel was seemingly and supposedly influenced by Samuel Richardson, author of Pamela , and Henry Fielding, author of Joseph Andrews , both of whom are know to be authors of some of the very first novels of literature. Despite the new and different qualities that a novel presented to a world lacking the genre of literary work, it was not an overly popular or praised piece of writing. However, the true significance behind Goldsmith’s authoring of The Vicar of Wakefield is the distinct quality of being an Augustan author that it assigned him. Along with his irony and satire rich poem, “The Deserted Village,” Goldsmith embodies and represents the Augustan, or Neoclassical, Age through his participation in the rise of the novel and his authoring of The Vicar of Wakefield . One of the most significant characteristics of Goldsmith as a writer is his exemplification of the Augustan age and of being a writer and literary figure of the time frame.

References Damrosch, Daivd, and Kevin J.H. Dettmar. The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 3rd ed. United States: Pearson Education, Inc., 2006.

Merriman, C. D. “Oliver Goldsmith.” The Literature Network. Jalic Inc., 2005. < http://www.online-literature.com/oliver-goldsmith/ >

“Oliver Goldsmith.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2013. < http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/237932/Oliver-Goldsmith >

Irving, Washington, and R. Adelaide Witham. Life of Oliver Goldsmith . Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1904. Print.

“Oliver Goldsmith.” Poetry Foundation . Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 17 May 2015.

Oliver Goldsmith – Oliver Goldsmith Biography – Poem Hunter. “Oliver Goldsmith Biography.” Poemhunter.com . PoemHunter, n.d. Web. 17 May 2015.

“”The Deserted Village” by Oliver Goldsmith (read by Tom O’Bedlam).” YouTube. YouTube. Web. 19 May 2015.

Image taken from: “The Vicar of Wakefield.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 20 May 2015. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vicar_of_Wakefield >.

“The Vicar of Wakefield Study Guide.” The Vicar of Wakefield Study Guide. Gradesaver LLC, n.d. Web. 20 May 2015. <http://www.gradesaver.com/the-vicar-of-wakefield>. >.

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The Life and Legacy of Oliver Goldsmith

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Oliver Goldsmith, a prominent 18th-century literary figure, is renowned for his essays, poems, plays, and the novel 'The Vicar of Wakefield.' Born in Ireland, his modest upbringing and education at Trinity College led to a life of travel and varied professions before he found success in London's literary circles. Despite financial struggles, Goldsmith's works like 'The Traveller' and 'She Stoops to Conquer' reflect his wit, social critique, and Neoclassical style, securing his enduring legacy in English literature.

Early Life and Education

Birth and family background.

Oliver Goldsmith was born on November 10, 1728, in County Longford, Ireland, to a modest family

Education and Academic Journey

Education at Trinity College, Dublin

Despite graduating with a Bachelor of Arts, Goldsmith's academic journey was not particularly distinguished

Influence of Smallpox

Goldsmith's early contraction of smallpox left his face marked for life and may have affected his academic performance

European Travels and Settling in England

Goldsmith's travels and uncertain means of funding influenced his later writings before he settled in England in 1756

Struggles and Success in England

Various professions and financial instability.

Goldsmith struggled to find a stable income in England and dabbled in various professions, often facing the threat of debtor's prison

Literary Breakthrough and Acclaim

Publication of "An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe"

Goldsmith's publication of this work marked the beginning of his successful career as a writer

Friendship with Literary Giants

Goldsmith's newfound status as a writer led to friendships with esteemed figures such as Dr. Samuel Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds

Versatility and Legacy in Literature

Goldsmith's diverse literary contributions, including essays, poems, plays, and a novel, cemented his reputation as a versatile and insightful writer

Literary Contributions and Style

Neoclassical tradition and writing style.

Goldsmith's writing style, characterized by clear, elegant prose and the use of the heroic couplet, was influenced by the Neoclassical tradition

Social Commentary and Critique

The Deserted Village

Goldsmith's poem lamenting the decline of rural life showcases his graceful simplicity and poignant critique of social issues

The Vicar of Wakefield

Goldsmith's novel, often considered his most enduring work, offers a satirical yet compassionate portrayal of 18th-century society

Influence and Legacy in English Literature

Goldsmith's mastery of the written word and his role in the literary circle of his time have secured his place as a significant figure in 18th-century literature

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Goldsmith's birthdate and place

Born on Nov 10, 1728, in County Longford, Ireland.

Goldsmith's college and student status

Attended Trinity College, Dublin in 1745 as a sizar.

Goldsmith's post-graduation ventures

Studied medicine in Edinburgh, 1752; traveled Europe; settled in England, 1756.

In England, ______ tried his hand at jobs like apothecary's assistant and school usher before becoming a writer.

Oliver Goldsmith

Despite the risk of debtor's prison, ______'s writing career took off with a 1759 publication about European learning.

Goldsmith's breakthrough work

The poem 'The Traveller' (1764) brought significant acclaim.

Goldsmith's notable friendships

Befriended Dr. Samuel Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Goldsmith's financial patron

Received support from Robert Nugent, easing his money troubles.

Oliver Goldsmith's play '______ ______ ______ ______' debuted in 1773 and displayed his sharp wit and grasp of human nature.

She Stoops to Conquer

Goldsmith's notable poetic form

Used heroic couplet; two rhymed lines of iambic pentameter.

Significance of 'The Deserted Village'

Critiques enclosure, rural depopulation; blends simplicity with social commentary.

Goldsmith's literary versatility

Excelled in poetry, drama, fiction, non-fiction; respected by contemporaries like Dr. Johnson.

Goldsmith's death on ______ was the result of a kidney infection compounded by incorrect medical treatments.

April 4, 1774

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Early Life and Education of Oliver Goldsmith

Goldsmith's Struggle for Livelihood and Entry into Writing

Goldsmith's rise to literary fame, literary contributions and notable works, goldsmith's writing style and influence, the final years and legacy of oliver goldsmith.

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