The second series of letters begins after Oliver had returned to
England about a couple of years, and was “by a very little practice
as a physician and a very little reputation as a poet making a shift
to live,” as he describes it in a letter to his brother-in-law Daniel
Hodson, dated from the Temple Exchange Coffee House, on 27 December,
1757. His brother Charles Goldsmith had paid Oliver a visit in London,
and had informed him “of the fatigue you were at in soliciting a
subscription to relieve me, not only among my friends and relations,
but acquaintance in general. Tho my pride might feel some repugnance
at being thus relieved, yet my gratitude can suffer no diminution....
Whether I eat or starve, live in a first floor or four pairs of stairs
high, I still remember them [my friends] with ardour, nay my very
country comes in for a share of my affection. Unaccountable fondness
for country, this maladie du Pays, as the french call it.” He hopes
that if he can be absent six weeks from London next summer “to spend
three of them among my friends in Ireland. My design is purely to
visit, and neither to cut a figure nor levy contributions--neither to
excite envy nor solicit favour: in fact my circumstances are adapted to
neither. I am too poor to be gazed at, and too rich to need assistance.”
Percy here omits what he calls “some mention of private family
matters.” The letter is at this point frayed and imperfect, but these
words can be made out:
“Charles is furnished with everything necessary, but why ... stranger
to assist him. I hope he will be improved in his ... against his return
[from Jamaica]. Poor Jenny! But it is what I expected. My mother too
has lost Pallas! My dear Sir, these things give me real uneasiness, and
I could wish to redress them. But at present there is hardly a Kingdom
in Europe in which I am not a debtor” etc.
After an interval, Goldsmith had what was for him a real bout of
letter-writing to a number of his kinsfolk and friends, to solicit
their assistance in getting subscriptions for his “Enquiry into the
Present State of Polite Learning in Europe” on which he was engaged,
and which was about to be published. On 7 August, 1758, he wrote to his
cousin and school-fellow Edward Mills that his “Essay on the Present
State of Taste and Literature in Europe,” as it was then called, was
“now printing in London, and I have requested Mr. Radcliff, Mr. Lawder,
Mr. Bryanton, my brother Mr. Henry Goldsmith, and my brother-in-law Mr.
Hodson, to circulate my proposals among their acquaintances.”
The letter to Dr. Radcliff is unknown: the date of that to Mrs. Lawder,
asking her husband’s help, is 15 August, 1758; that to Bryanton is
14 August, 1758; the letter to Henry Goldsmith is lost, but a second
letter to him on the same subject says “I shall the beginning of next
month send over two hundred and fifty books.” As the work was published
on 2 April, 1759, the date of this second letter to the Revd. Henry
Goldsmith was probably February, 1759. (It has been preserved, but is
not actually dated.)
Taking these several communications in the order of their date, the
letter of 7 August, 1758, to Edward Mills, which I exhibit to-day,
is a frank appeal for help in circulating the prospectus of Oliver’s
new book, but otherwise contains nothing of importance. “Every book
published here [London] the printers in Ireland republish there,
without giving the Author the least consideration for his coppy. I
would in this respect disappoint their avarice, and have all the
additional advantages that may result from the sale of my performance
there to myself.”
Neither Mills nor Lawder (to whom a similar request was made through
the medium of his wife on the 15th of the same month of August, 1758)
appears to have taken any notice of it, and in writing to his brother
Henry at a later date--about February, 1759--Oliver says “The behaviour
of Mr. Mills and Mr. Lawder is a little extraordinary: however, their
answering neither you nor me is a sufficient indication of their
disliking the employment which I assignd them. As their conduct is
different from what I had expected so I have made an alteration in
mine. I shall the beginning of next month send over two hundred and
fifty books, which are all that I fancy, can be well sold among you.”
The next letter, that dated 14 August, 1758, addressed to Robert
Bryanton is only known to us through its appearance for the first time
in Prior’s _Life_ (I, 263). It complains of not having heard from
Bryanton or of his doings, gives an amusing prophecy of his own future
fame 200 years onwards as the author of the Essay on Polite Learning
“a work well worth its weight in diamonds,” and then descends suddenly
to earth with “Oh! Gods! Gods! here in a garret writing for bread and
expecting to be dunned for a milk-score! However, dear Bob, whether in
penury or affluence, serious or gay, I am ever thine. Give the most
warm and sincere wish you can conceive to your mother, Mrs. Bryanton,
to Miss Bryanton, to yourself: and if there be a favourite dog in the
family, let me be remembered to it.”
The letter to Mrs. Lawder of 15 August, 1758, is a good deal more
guarded, as his relations with his cousin and her husband appear not
to have been at that time of a very cordial nature. The original
has passed through several hands, and has been reproduced more than
once in facsimile. I believe it is now the property of Mr. Sabin of
Bond Street. Oliver says he had written to Kilmore (Mrs. Lawder’s
address) from Leyden, from Louvain and from Rouen, but had received no
answer. “To what could I attribute this, please, but displeasure or
forgetfulness?”... “I heartily wish to be rich, if it were only for
this reason to say without a blush how much I esteem you, but alas I
have many a fatigue to encounter, before that happy time comes: when
your poor old simple friend may again give a loose to the luxuriance of
his nature, sitting by Kilmore fireside, recount the various adventures
of an hard-fought life, laugh over the follies of the day, join his
flute to your harpsicord and forget that he ever starv’d in those
streets where Butler and Otway starv’d before him.” After a pathetic
allusion to the decaying mental powers of his uncle Contarine, Oliver
then makes his appeal as to the “Polite Learning,” but “whether this
request is complied with or not, I shall not be uneasy.”
The second letter to Daniel Hodson, which I exhibit, is provisionally
dated by the modern authorities about November, 1758. It was published
by Percy in the edition of 1801, with the family matters omitted, and
some few alterations and excisions. The letter really begins “You
can’t expect regularity in _a correspondence with_ one who is regular
in nothing.” Later, Goldsmith says: “You imagine, I suppose, that
every author by profession lives in a garret, wears shabby cloaths and
converses with the meanest company; _but I assure you such a character
is_ entirely chimerical.” The family matters omitted by Percy may as
well be restored:
“I am very much pleasd with the accounts you send me of your little
son; if I do not mistake that was his hand which subscrib’d itself
Gilbeen Hardly. There is nothing could please me more than a letter
filld with all the news of the country, but I fear you will think that
too troublesome, you see I never cease writing till a whole sheet of
paper is wrote out. I beg you will immitate me in this particular
and give your letters good measure. You can tell me, what visits you
receive or pay, who has been married or debauch’d, since my absence,
what fine girls you have starting up and beating of the veterans of my
acquaintance from future conquest. I suppose before I return I shall
find all the blooming virgins I once left in Westmeath shrivelled
into a parcel of hags with seven children apiece tearing down their
petticoats. Most of the Bucks and Bloods whom I left hunting and
drinking and swearing and getting bastards I find are dead. Poor devils
they kick’d the world before them. I wonder what the devil they kick
now.” [End of first sheet of letter.]
On a fresh sheet:
“Dear Sister I wrote to Kilmore [where the Lawders lived]. I wish you
would let me know how that family stands affected with regard to me.
My Brother Charles promised to tell me all about it but his letter
gave me no satisfaction in those particulars. I beg you and Dan would
put your hands to the oar and fill me a sheet with somewhat or other,
if you can’t get quite thro your selves lend Billy or Nancy the pen
and let the dear little things give me their nonsense. Talk all about
your selves and nothing about me. You see I do so. I do not know how
my desire of seeing Ireland which had so long slept, has again revived
with so much ardour....” “I ... brother Charles is settled to business.
I see no probability of ... any other proceeding.” [Here follow sixteen
lines of writing, which have been very effectually blotted out with ink
of another tint, probably by the recipient, who sent the letter to be
read by a neighbour.]
The letter ends thus (it is not signed):
“Pray let me hear from my Mother since she will not gratify me herself
and tell me if in any thing I can be immediately serviceable to her.
Tell me how my Brother Goldsmith and his Bishop agree. Pray do this for
me for heaven knows I would do anything to serve you.” [ends.]
The back page is blank, except the address in Goldsmith’s writing:
“Daniel Hodson Esq^r. at Lishoy near | Ballymahon | Ireland.”
We come now to the one letter to his brother the Revd. Henry Goldsmith
which has been preserved. It bears no date, and was doubtless written
about February, 1759. After speaking about the “Polite Learning” book,
Oliver goes on to describe his own difficulties:
“You scarce can conceive how much eight years of disappointment anguish
and study have worn me down. Imagine to yourself a pale melancholly
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.”
He then discusses and approves as judicious and convincing his
brother’s proposals for “breeding up your son as a scholar.” “Preach
then my dear Sir, to your son not the excellence of human nature
nor the disrespect of riches, but endeavour to teach him thrift and
economy. Let his poor wandering uncle’s example be placed in his eyes.
I had learned from books to love virtue before I was taught from
experience the necessity of being selfish.” (The Percy Memoir of 1801
prunes and waters down this passage.)
After references to his mother and other members of the family,
Oliver mentions the imminent publication of his “catchpenny” life of
Voltaire, which has brought him in £20, and quotes some phrases of the
“heroicomical poem” on the design of which he had asked his brother’s
opinion in a previous letter (now lost).