"THE DESERTED VILLAGE"
The wandering boy, stricken with grief at the pain and the poverty he
sees, alike in town and village in Ireland, foreshadows and unveils
the coming man, who, knowing his own anxieties, was ever more
distressed by the cares and afflictions he beheld than by those
through which he was at any time himself the sufferer.
In all the careers of the essentially great, there are times when
laughter will mingle with the honour we bestow, and compassion oust
our adoration from its throne. Laughter may grow derisive and
compassion scornful. Contempt has one virtue--it recoils. Derision can
find no room within the fathoming comprehension that does not forget
the ceaseless pressure of those ruthless surroundings in which often
noblest lives are framed.
Pope's line on Gay pictures Goldsmith:
"In wit, a man--simplicity, a child."
In these early days no path seemed chosen save that of the road
following the loitering line of least resistance.
After his University career was over, Goldsmith for a while made his
home with his sister and her husband near Lissoy, enjoying fishing and
otter-hunting. Principally he passed his days idling, as people say,
or seeing visions, as the poets and the prophets plead. He was often
with his brother Henry, sharing in the pastor's work. Precious these
fraternal communions must have been. Abiding was Oliver's love
for Henry, to the last, deep, devoted, and revering. During this
wayward era, splendidly attired, and gaily wearing a pair of red
riding-breeches, he called upon the Bishop, having at the moment a
hazy view of being ordained. Noll's radiant apparel, laughing eyes,
and merry face, made the bewildered prelate diffident. Contarine
procured his nephew a tutorship, which was held for twelve months,
until one night, playing cards, Noll called his employer a scoundrel
and a cheat. With thirty pounds in his leaking pockets, later he set
out from home for Cork, and thence, according to his magnificent
plans, for America. He was not destined to become an Empire-builder in
the Colonies. Six weeks saw him home again as happy as ever, and quite
penniless. Neither he himself nor anyone else ever knew, or ever will
know now, what in the meantime had happened to the good fellow. He had
exchanged a capital horse for a lank and bony creature of which he
appeared very fond, called Fiddle-back. According to his story, he
had put his kit on board, and the captain of the ship had sailed
without him. No one was too glad to see him back again so soon. His
mother and his brother Henry knew that neither of them had means to
support him as a man of fantastic leisure. His indolence dishonoured
the family. Perplexing eccentricities had grown intolerable. Only old
Uncle Contarine stood by the boy. He still believed in and loved dear
Noll, incorrigible as the good fellow was, and inexplicable from every
vantage. When he returned poor Oliver had said, with his happy though
here unconscious humour: "And now, my dear mother, after having
struggled so hard to come home to you, I wonder that you are not more
rejoiced to see me."
Even his poor mother could not welcome his return with warmth. A
certain coldness crept into the heart of Henry, the beloved brother.
They had been greatly tried. Perhaps Uncle Contarine continued clement
merely because in the nature of things his responsibilities for the
vagrancies of his kinsman were inevitably less intimate. As he was not
willing to enter the Church, his uncle now thought that Goldsmith
should go to London and study law at the Temple. He gave the prodigal
fifty pounds, and bade him God-speed. Goldsmith made his way as far as
Dublin. There, passing a merry and philanthropic time with new and old
familiars, he gambled away, and gave away, and lost his money, and all
too soon had none for further travels. He returned with shame upon
his brow, completely contrite. The kindly Contarine possessed that
fine courage, the fortitude of forgiveness. It was springtime in the
poet's heart. This was his era of heroic hope, immortal dreaming, and
Divine revelation.
Following the traditions of his family, he would have become a
clergyman. It was not want of religious sentiment that precluded his
feeling sincerely called to this Divine office, but the unutterable
profoundness of his reverence. With all his laughter he ever had the
pure spirit of the pastor. For the faithful fulfilment of the
ministry, in that marvellous picture of a parson's life given in _The
Deserted Village_ he has revealed a living and an enlightening ideal.
Here the hearts of priest and poet beat as one. There is a universal
ministry, higher than divided priesthoods. Oliver Goldsmith, poet,
playwright, and humorist, was a veritable minister of God. Poetry has
one eternal test. The poem must ever be a very part of the very life
of the poet, his very soul, the breathing hope and the vital blood of
his whole being. This is true of Goldsmith's two great poems. They are
in themselves a sufficing and beautiful biography. We know the heart
of the man from these sublime outpourings of the soul. For every word
and every line we love and honour Goldsmith. _The Deserted Village_
reveals the singer's sense of sorrow, reverence for the reverend in
life, his compassion and outpouring sympathy, not for single hearts
merely, but that wider love involved and proclaimed in the
understanding pity for a race--and not for one place alone, but for a
whole land, lain desolate.
Whatever may be the ultimate verdict upon Goldsmith's greatest poem,
one thing is as significant as it is certain. These poetic yearnings
were long in his heart ere he gave them utterance. A wayward, careless
lad, heedless of all responsibility, he seems purposeless and
perplexing to the last degree, yet the profoundest meditations of his
life moved his soul. The very spell of poetry was upon him. This
Divine revealing may have accounted for that outward want of
earnestness of the character, and the career that troubled others if
it did not trouble him. The hold upon the inward and the hidden spirit
absorbed and stagnated the outward movements and the conventional
plans of common existence. It is right to be implicitly imbued with
the honour due to honour, and that tribute which must in every issue
be humbly paid to elemental guiding and essential greatness. Amid the
inconsequent and eccentric variations of evolving genius, the Uncle
Contarine possessed inexhaustible patience. If he had very possibly
not a complete confidence in his wayward nephew, he had an affection
for the lad, and a devotion to his welfare that nothing could
diminish.
This good old man often thought of the poor widow and her boy. He saw
that the provision for a grown lad, ripening into manhood, with no
visible means of independent subsistence, and no ostensible desire for
any conceivable occupation, was a burden too great for the fondest of
mothers to bear when she was very poor. Contarine had been deeply
moved when Oliver came home again that last time thoroughly ashamed
and broken-hearted. This contrition touched the very depths of all the
old man's sympathy. He must have been a man of few words--so few that
he had none to spare for reproaches. He saw to the full the
embarrassments of the situation, and came once more swiftly to the
rescue. His manner was at all times persuasive rather than peremptory.
His plans were practical and immediate. Sudden action stayed the
possibility of growing bitterness. Forthwith Goldsmith was despatched
to Edinburgh to qualify for the medical profession. He was twenty-four
years of age. Although he loved his family dearly, and cherished the
land of his birth with all its pathos and its poetry, he never saw
Ireland again, nor the kinsmen and kinswomen to whom, in his heart, he
lived his days mid fault and failure, sorrow and success, joy and
pain, endlessly devoted.
From the earliest days to the last, throughout the whole career of
Oliver Goldsmith, there were deep emotions in the mind and high
motives in the life and character of this great man that few in his
own times even dimly perceived. Impenetrable love was hidden in that
laughter-laden heart, with its outward concealing and dissimulating
vanities.
When the time came, and he might have left his work in London and gone
home to Ireland for a while, it was too late, for his dear and gentle
mother, old Uncle Contarine, and brother Henry had passed away. It may
be hard to think that an indolent boy who squanders without scruple
the money you have with great embarrassment raised for his benefit
loves you devotedly, and has dedicated his whole heart, and life, and
love to yours. It is difficult, too, to think that a vain little man
is, in his soul, an earnest great one. Yet all this must be achieved
if the heart would know Oliver Goldsmith rightly, and give at least
one faithful life its due.
There is no period in which the moving mind of genius is not
receptive. In those days of wayward adolescence, Goldsmith found books
somewhere, and many, and read them to the depths. Some men have left
lists of the works they studied--even Burns and Byron did. Noll was
never at any time systematic enough to have done this. Often the
spirit is more influenced by the things that are read and not greatly
heeded, than by those that become the subject of fixed study.
Goldsmith was always a lover of Latin poetry and classic models. In
this perplexing youthful time of transition, he had imbued his mind
with romance and with those higher aspirations of the poets of all
ages and eras in which their utterances, growing religious, pertain to
life in its love and light and lofty purity. Literature yields
nothing more enthralling than those passages in which sublimity is
seized, and the mind of man is commanded to rise above the pressing
issue and the material care.
Prudence has many advantages. It makes men rich and respectable, but
it is the death of poetry. Prudence has no genius. It cannot perceive
its own deplorable delimitations. It may not fathom the vagaries of
high minds. Goldsmith was not meant to make his own fortune. He was
intended to make what is far dearer and better than prosperity--hope
and happiness for many and many a heart, and many and many a home.
Burns was not prudent, Byron was not; Johnson was not industrious for
the pure sake and love of labour. He preferred ease, and never, he
acknowledged, worked when he had a guinea to preclude the unpleasant
necessity of toil. Of Goldsmith Thackeray said: "The poor fellow was
never so friendless but he could befriend someone." Sincere and
sublime tributes of love, honour, and affection are offerings doubly
blessed, blessing those who give and those who do receive. Nobly
Oliver Goldsmith revered his brother Henry. The sudden separation from
this heart was the greatest pain for Goldsmith when at last the day
came.
The best idea of the life of Goldsmith at this period is gleaned from
his great poem _The Deserted Village_. These were his words as he
looked back:
"How often have I loitered o'er thy green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene!"
With what delight he shares the rustic revelry. There falls the light
of lingering love on each and every line and word:
"These were thy charms, but all these charms are fled,"
he cries,
"And desolation saddens all thy green."
He depicts emigration and its devastating and enforced exile, so
widely diverse from the healthful, free, and willing spirit of true
and liberal colonisation:
"Far, far away thy children leave the land.
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay."
Years later the man wrote these lines, but the thoughts, the burning
sense of burning wrong, the pain and anguish, were hidden in the heart
of the youth, outwardly so careless:
"A bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied."
There is a majesty in the lines--
"His best companions, innocence and health;
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth."
A little later he speaks of
"Every pang that folly pays to pride."
There is a depth in the man who could write:
"Remembrance wakes with all her busy train,
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain;
In all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my grief--and God has given my share--
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down."
How pretty and how pathetic is the picture in this poem of the end
that he had fancied for his days! A thousand and a thousand times
the ceaseless humanity, seeking only love, endears the man. Mark the
sweet, true, and sublime ideal:
"Angels around befriending Virtue's friend:
Bends to the grave with unperceived decay,
While resignation gently slopes the way;
And, all his prospects brightening to the last,
His Heaven commences ere the world be past!"
In simplicity Goldsmith equals Gray. There is a Miltonic dignity truly
classical in the line--
"The sad historian of the pensive plain."
Failures have been indicated in the literary construction of the
finest poems. Critics have held that Burns, in "The Cotter's Saturday
Night," lost the Scottish and gave the piece an English colour.
Macaulay contended that the deserted hamlet pictured by Goldsmith
was neither one thing nor the other, but first Irish and then
English. Criticism purely aesthetic cannot destroy the poignancy and
profoundness of the theme and throughout the touch of a master power.
From beginning to end the piece proceeds in a picturesque progress
which in its steady advancement and maintained dignity is splendidly
processional.
At last we come to the village pastor, and line after line, love leads
the light:
"A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich with forty pounds a year;
Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
Nor ere had changed, nor wished to change, his place."
"Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise."
"Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow,
And quite forgot their vices in their woe;
Careless their merits or their faults to scan,
His pity gave ere charity began."
"Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,
And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray."
This passage concludes in a fine strain, the finest in the poem:
"To them his heart, his love, his griefs, were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven.
As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head."
Here is a transcendent radiance that has been held the most sublime
simile that language yields. Then, following with a most delicate
transition, we have the genial and gentle humour in the picture of
the pedagogue and his pupils, and then the village inn and the rustics
discussing news "much older than their ale."
Well may the sweetly chiding and chastening poet reflect,
"How wide the limits stand,
Between a splendid and a happy land."
It may be surprising to hear dear Noll, the dandy of the Literary
Club, deride
"The glaring impotence of dress."
There is a grace--nay, more, there is a genius in transition. The
exile and the emigration of the Irish were not, and are not now,
exclusively territorial, nor is the spiritual pang of leaving loved
homes and cherished hearts entirely sentimental. Of the Irish it may
be said that, of all the races, their pure love of home is the
deepest, and the most faithful and devoted. Often the enforced exile
that must be endured had no solace save death and the grave for
peace--and a home. Of all the fair, and the gentle and pure, fairest
and gentlest and purest, now and ever, is the Irish girl. Swift the
passage in this tender poem from the village in its sunshine to the
town and the streets in their darkness, and the clouds about the life
of outcast humanity, suffering a more fearful exile:
"Where the poor houseless shivering female lies:
She once, perhaps, in village plenty blest,
Has wept at tales of innocence distrest.
Her modest looks the cottage might adorn,
Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn;
Now lost to all, her friends, her virtue, fled,
Near her betrayer's door she lays her head."
The wonders of the poem are first its pathos, and then its
picturesqueness and its charm. With all these glidings from light to
grave and gladness into gloom, and then again to gaiety, it is a
moving and a magic intermingling. There is a very thunder in the
phrase,
"Pamper luxury, and thin mankind."
And then later:
"Oh, luxury! thou curst by Heaven's decree,
How ill-exchanged are things like these for thee!
How do thy potions, with insidious joy,
Diffuse their pleasures, only to destroy.
Kingdoms by thee, to sickly greatness grown,
Boast of a florid vigour not their own.
At every draught more large and large they grow,
A bloated mass of rank, unwieldy woe;
Till sapped their strength, and every part unsound,
Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round."
In this poem we find the sympathy and the grace of Gray and Wordsworth
with a greater warmth and a glow that is enkindling. The man who is a
master in transition is also and perforce powerful in contrast. In
this graceful gift the whole piece is a striking study. Whether the
strain be didactic or dramatic, emotional or vivacious, melody is
never lost. With many poets frequently the whole melodiousness of
poetry disappears in the prose of a too palpably proclaimed
philosophy. This poem from a pure heart, and these lines from a
loving life, enlighten, but do not tease the mind. There is a prayer
in the words,
"Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain,
Teach him that states of native strength possest,
Though very poor, may still be very blest."
This poem, and also and not less _The Traveller_, although it is a
tale of wandering, beyond all else, reveal the light and the love of
the home.