sizar. The sizars paid nothing for food and tuition, and very little for
lodging; but they had to perform some menial services from which they
have long been relieved. They swept the court: they carried up the
dinner to the fellows' table, and changed the plates and poured out the
ale of the rulers of the society. Goldsmith was quartered, not alone, in
a garret, on the window of which his name, scrawled by himself, is still
read with interest. (The glass on which the name is written has, as we
are informed by a writer in "Notes and Queries" (2d. S. ix. p. 91), been
inclosed in a frame and deposited in the Manuscript Room of the College
Library, where it is still to be seen.) From such garrets many men
of less parts than his have made their way to the woolsack or to the
episcopal bench. But Goldsmith, while he suffered all the humiliations,
threw away all the advantages, of his situation. He neglected the
studies of the place, stood low at the examinations, was turned down to
the bottom of his class for playing the buffoon in the lecture-room,
was severely reprimanded for pumping on a constable, and was caned by a
brutal tutor for giving a ball in the attic story of the college to some
gay youths and damsels from the city.
While Oliver was leading at Dublin a life divided between squalid
distress and squalid dissipation, his father died, leaving a mere
pittance. The youth obtained his bachelor's degree, and left the
university. During some time the humble dwelling to which his widowed
mother had retired was his home. He was now in his twenty-first year; it
was necessary that he should do something; and his education seemed to
have fitted him to do nothing but to dress himself in gaudy colours, of
which he was as fond as a magpie, to take a hand at cards, to sing Irish
airs, to play the flute, to angle in summer, and to tell ghost stories
by the fire in winter. He tried five or six professions in turn without
success. He applied for ordination; but, as he applied in scarlet
clothes, he was speedily turned out of the episcopal palace. He then
became tutor in an opulent family, but soon quitted his situation in
consequence of a dispute about play. Then he determined to emigrate to
America. His relations, with much satisfaction, saw him set out for Cork
on a good horse with thirty pounds in his pocket. But in six weeks he
came back on a miserable hack, without a penny, and informed his mother
that the ship in which he had taken his passage, having got a fair wind
while he was at a party of pleasure, had sailed without him. Then he
resolved to study the law. A generous kinsman advanced fifty pounds.
With this sum Goldsmith went to Dublin, was enticed into a gaming house,
and lost every shilling. He then thought of medicine. A small purse
was made up; and in his twenty-fourth year he was sent to Edinburgh. At
Edinburgh he passed eighteen months in nominal attendance on lectures,
and picked up some superficial information about chemistry and natural
history. Thence he went to Leyden, still pretending to study physic. He
left that celebrated university, the third university at which he had
resided, in his twenty-seventh year, without a degree, with the merest
smattering of medical knowledge, and with no property but his clothes
and his flute. His flute, however, proved a useful friend. He rambled
on foot through Flanders, France, and Switzerland, playing tunes which
everywhere set the peasantry dancing, and which often procured for him a
supper and a bed. He wandered as far as Italy. His musical performances,
indeed, were not to the taste of the Italians; but he contrived to live
on the alms which he obtained at the gates of the convents. It should,
however, be observed that the stories which he told about this part of
his life ought to be received with great caution; for strict veracity
was never one of his virtues; and a man who is ordinarily inaccurate in
narration is likely to be more than ordinarily inaccurate when he talks
about his own travels. Goldsmith, indeed, was so regardless of truth
as to assert in print that he was present at a most interesting
conversation between Voltaire and Fontenelle, and that this conversation
took place at Paris. Now it is certain that Voltaire never was within a
hundred leagues of Paris during the whole time which Goldsmith passed on
the Continent.
In 1756 the wanderer landed at Dover, without a shilling, without a
friend, and without a calling. He had, indeed, if his own unsupported
evidence may be trusted, obtained from the University of Padua a
doctor's degree; but this dignity proved utterly useless to him. In
England his flute was not in request: there were no convents; and he was
forced to have recourse to a series of desperate expedients. He turned
strolling player; but his face and figure were ill suited to the boards
even of the humblest theatre. He pounded drugs and ran about London with
phials for charitable chemists. He joined a swarm of beggars, which made
its nest in Axe Yard. He was for a time usher of a school, and felt the
miseries and humiliations of this situation so keenly that he thought
it a promotion to be permitted to earn his bread as a bookseller's hack;
but he soon found the new yoke more galling than the old one, and was
glad to become an usher again. He obtained a medical appointment in
the service of the East India Company; but the appointment was speedily
revoked. Why it was revoked we are not told. The subject was one on
which he never liked to talk. It is probable that he was incompetent to
perform the duties of the place. Then he presented himself at Surgeon's
Hall for examination, as mate to a naval hospital. Even to so humble
a post he was found unequal. By this time the schoolmaster whom he had
served for a morsel of food and the third part of a bed was no more.
Nothing remained but to return to the lowest drudgery of literature.
Goldsmith took a garret in a miserable court, to which he had to climb
from the brink of Fleet Ditch by a dizzy ladder of flagstones called
Breakneck Steps. The court and the ascent have long disappeared; but old
Londoners will remember both. (A gentleman, who states that he has known
the neighbourhood for thirty years, corrects this account, and informs
the present publisher that the Breakneck Steps, thirty-two in number,
divided into two flights, are still in existence, and that, according
to tradition, Goldsmith's house was not on the steps, but was the first
house at the head of the court, on the left hand, going from the Old
Bailey. See "Notes and Queries" (2d. S. ix. 280).) Here, at thirty, the
unlucky adventurer sat down to toil like a galley slave.
In the succeeding six years he sent to the press some things which have
survived and many which have perished. He produced articles for reviews,
magazines, and newspapers; children's books which, bound in gilt paper
and adorned with hideous woodcuts, appeared in the window of the once
far-famed shop at the corner of Saint Paul's Churchyard; "An Inquiry
into the State of Polite Learning in Europe," which, though of little
or no value, is still reprinted among his works; a "Life of Beau Nash,"
which is not reprinted, though it well deserves to be so (Mr Black has
pointed out that this is inaccurate: the life of Nash has been twice
reprinted; once in Mr Prior's edition (vol. iii. p. 249), and once in
Mr Cunningham's edition (vol. iv. p. 35).); a superficial and incorrect,
but very readable, "History of England," in a series of letters
purporting to be addressed by a nobleman to his son; and some very
lively and amusing "Sketches of London Society," in a series of letters
purporting to be addressed by a Chinese traveller to his friends. All
these works were anonymous; but some of them were well-known to be
Goldsmith's; and he gradually rose in the estimation of the booksellers
for whom he drudged. He was, indeed, emphatically a popular writer. For
accurate research or grave disquisition he was not well qualified by
nature or by education. He knew nothing accurately: his reading had been
desultory; nor had he meditated deeply on what he had read. He had seen
much of the world; but he had noticed and retained little more of what
he had seen than some grotesque incidents and characters which had
happened to strike his fancy. But, though his mind was very scantily
stored with materials, he used what materials he had in such a way as
to produce a wonderful effect. There have been many greater writers;
but perhaps no writer was ever more uniformly agreeable. His style was
always pure and easy, and, on proper occasions, pointed and energetic.
His narratives were always amusing, his descriptions always picturesque,
his humour rich and joyous, yet not without an occasional tinge of
amiable sadness. About everything that he wrote, serious or sportive,
there was a certain natural grace and decorum, hardly to be expected
from a man a great part of whose life had been passed among thieves and
beggars, street-walkers and merry andrews, in those squalid dens which
are the reproach of great capitals.
As his name gradually became known, the circle of his acquaintance
widened. He was introduced to Johnson, who was then considered as the
first of living English writers; to Reynolds, the first of English
painters; and to Burke, who had not yet entered parliament, but had
distinguished himself greatly by his writings and by the eloquence of
his conversation. With these eminent men Goldsmith became intimate.
In 1763 he was one of the nine original members of that celebrated
fraternity which has sometimes been called the Literary Club, but which
has always disclaimed that epithet, and still glories in the simple name
of The Club.
By this time Goldsmith had quitted his miserable dwelling at the top of
Breakneck Steps, and had taken chambers in the more civilised region of
the Inns of Court. But he was still often reduced to pitiable shifts.
Towards the close of 1764 his rent was so long in arrear that his
landlady one morning called in the help of a sheriff's officer. The
debtor, in great perplexity, despatched a messenger to Johnson; and
Johnson, always friendly, though often surly, sent back the messenger
with a guinea, and promised to follow speedily. He came, and found that
Goldsmith had changed the guinea, and was railing at the landlady over
a bottle of Madeira. Johnson put the cork into the bottle, and entreated
his friend to consider calmly how money was to be procured. Goldsmith
said that he had a novel ready for the press. Johnson glanced at
the manuscript, saw that there were good things in it, took it to a
bookseller, sold it for 60 pounds, and soon returned with the money.
The rent was paid; and the sheriff's officer withdrew. According to one
story, Goldsmith gave his landlady a sharp reprimand for her treatment
of him; according to another, he insisted on her joining him in a bowl
of punch. Both stories are probably true. The novel which was thus
ushered into the world was the "Vicar of Wakefield."
But, before the "Vicar of Wakefield" appeared in print, came the
great crisis of Goldsmith's literary life. In Christmas week, 1764, he
published a poem, entitled the "Traveller." It was the first work to
which he had put his name; and it at once raised him to the rank of a
legitimate English classic. The opinion of the most skilful critics was,
that nothing finer had appeared in verse since the fourth book of the
"Dunciad." In one respect the "Traveller" differs from all Goldsmith's
other writings. In general his designs were bad, and his execution good.
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.
While the fourth edition of the "Traveller" was on the counters of the
booksellers, the "Vicar of Wakefield" appeared, and rapidly obtained a
popularity which has lasted down to our own time, and which is likely to
last as long as our language. The fable is indeed one of the worst that
ever was constructed. It wants, not merely that probability which ought
to be found in a tale of common English life, but that consistency which
ought to be found even in the wildest fiction about witches, giants,
and fairies. But the earlier chapters have all the sweetness of
pastoral poetry, together with all the vivacity of comedy. Moses and his
spectacles, the vicar and his monogamy, the sharper and his cosmogony,
the squire proving from Aristotle that relatives are related, Olivia
preparing herself for the arduous task of converting a rakish lover by
studying the controversy between Robinson Crusoe and Friday, the great
ladies with their scandal about Sir Tomkyn's amours and Dr Burdock's
verses, and Mr Burchell with his "Fudge," have caused as much harmless
mirth as has ever been caused by matter packed into so small a number of
pages. The latter part of the tale is unworthy of the beginning. As we
approach the catastrophe, the absurdities lie thicker and thicker; and
the gleams of pleasantry become rarer and rarer.
The success which had attended Goldsmith as a novelist emboldened him to
try his fortune as a dramatist. He wrote the "Goodnatured Man," a piece
which had a worse fate than it deserved. Garrick refused to produce it
at Drury Lane. It was acted at Covent Garden in 1768, but was coldly
received. The author, however, cleared by his benefit nights, and by the
sale of the copyright, no less than 500 pounds, five times as much as he
had made by the "Traveller" and the "Vicar of Wakefield" together. The
plot of the "Goodnatured Man" is, like almost all Goldsmith's plots,
very ill constructed. But some passages are exquisitely ludicrous; much
more ludicrous, indeed, than suited the taste of the town at that time.
A canting, mawkish play, entitled "False Delicacy," had just had an
immense run. Sentimentality was all the mode. During some years, more
tears were shed at comedies than at tragedies; and a pleasantry which
moved the audience to anything more than a grave smile was reprobated
as low. It is not strange, therefore, that the very best scene in the
"Goodnatured Man," that in which Miss Richland finds her lover attended
by the bailiff and the bailiff's follower in full court dresses, should
have been mercilessly hissed, and should have been omitted after the
first night.
In 1770 appeared the "Deserted Village." In mere diction and
versification this celebrated poem is fully equal, perhaps superior,
to the "Traveller;" and it is generally preferred to the "Traveller" by
that large class of readers who think, with Bayes in the "Rehearsal,"
that the only use of a plan is to bring in fine things. More discerning
judges, however, while they admire the beauty of the details, are
shocked by one unpardonable fault which pervades the whole. The fault we
mean is not that theory about wealth and luxury which has so often been
censured by political economists. The theory is indeed false: but the
poem, considered merely as a poem, is not necessarily the worse on
that account. The finest poem in the Latin language, indeed the finest
didactic poem in any language, was written in defence of the silliest
and meanest of all systems of natural and moral philosophy. A poet may
easily be pardoned for reasoning ill; but he cannot be pardoned for
describing ill, for observing the world in which he lives so carelessly
that his portraits bear no resemblance to the originals, for exhibiting
as copies from real life monstrous combinations of things which never
were and never could be found together. What would be thought of a
painter who should mix August and January in one landscape, who should
introduce a frozen river into a harvest scene? Would it be a sufficient
defence of such a picture to say that every part was exquisitely
coloured, that the green hedges, the apple-trees loaded with fruit, the
waggons reeling under the yellow sheaves, and the sun-burned reapers
wiping their foreheads, were very fine, and that the ice and the boys
sliding were also very fine? To such a picture the "Deserted Village"
bears a great resemblance. 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.
In 1773 Goldsmith tried his chance at Covent Garden with a second play,
"She Stoops to Conquer." The manager was not without great difficulty
induced to bring this piece out. The sentimental comedy still reigned;
and Goldsmith's comedies were not sentimental. The "Goodnatured Man" had
been too funny to succeed; yet the mirth of the "Goodnatured Man" was
sober when compared with the rich drollery of "She Stoops to Conquer,"
which is, in truth, an incomparable farce in five acts. On this
occasion, however, genius triumphed. Pit, boxes, and galleries, were
in a constant roar of laughter. If any bigoted admirer of Kelly and
Cumberland ventured to hiss or groan, he was speedily silenced by a
general cry of "turn him out," or "throw him over." Two generations have
since confirmed the verdict which was pronounced on that night.
While Goldsmith was writing the "Deserted Village," and "She Stoops to
Conquer," he was employed on works of a very different kind, works from
which he derived little reputation but much profit. He compiled for
the use of schools a "History of Rome," by which he made 300 pounds,
a "History of England," by which he made 600 pounds, a "History of
Greece," for which he received 250 pounds, a "Natural History," for
which the booksellers covenanted to pay him 800 guineas. These works he
produced without any elaborate research, by merely selecting, abridging,
and translating into his own clear, pure, and flowing language what he
found in books well-known to the world, but too bulky or too dry for
boys and girls. He committed some strange blunders; for he knew nothing
with accuracy. Thus in his "History of England," he tells us that Naseby
is in Yorkshire; nor did he correct this mistake when the book was
reprinted. He was very nearly hoaxed into putting into the "History
of Greece" an account of the battle between Alexander the Great and
Montezuma. In his "Animated Nature" he relates, with faith and with
perfect gravity, all the most absurd lies which he could find in books
of travels about gigantic Patagonians, monkeys that preach sermons,
nightingales that repeat long conversations. "If he can tell a horse
from a cow," said Johnson, "that is the extent of his knowledge of
zoology." How little Goldsmith was qualified to write about the physical
sciences is sufficiently proved by two anecdotes. He on one occasion
denied that the sun is longer in the northern than in the southern
signs. It was vain to cite the authority of Maupertuis. "Maupertuis!" he
cried, "I understand those matters better than Maupertuis." On another
occasion he, in defiance of the evidence of his own senses, maintained
obstinately, and even angrily, that he chewed his dinner by moving his
upper jaw.
Yet, ignorant as Goldsmith was, few writers have done more to make the
first steps in the laborious road to knowledge easy and pleasant. His
compilations are widely distinguished from the compilations of ordinary
book-makers. He was a great, perhaps an unequalled, master of the arts
of selection and condensation. In these respects his histories of Rome
and of England, and still more his own abridgements of these histories,
well deserve to be studied. In general nothing is less attractive than
an epitome: but the epitomes of Goldsmith, even when most concise, are
always amusing; and to read them is considered by intelligent children,
not as a task, but as a pleasure.
Goldsmith might now be considered as a prosperous man. He had the means
of living in comfort, and even in what to one who had so often slept
in barns and on bulks must have been luxury. His fame was great and
was constantly rising. He lived in what was intellectually far the
best society of the kingdom, in a society in which no talent or
accomplishment was wanting, and in which the art of conversation was
cultivated with splendid success. There probably were never four talkers
more admirable in four different ways than Johnson, Burke, Beauclerk,
and Garrick; and Goldsmith was on terms of intimacy with all the four.
He aspired to share in their colloquial renown; but never was ambition
more unfortunate. It may seem strange that a man who wrote with so much
perspicuity, vivacity, and grace, should have been, whenever he took a
part in conversation, an empty, noisy, blundering rattle. But on this
point the evidence is overwhelming. So extraordinary was the contrast
between Goldsmith's published works and the silly things which he said,
that Horace Walpole described him as an inspired idiot. "Noll," said
Garrick, "wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll." Chamier
declared that it was a hard exercise of faith to believe that so foolish
a chatterer could have really written the "Traveller." Even Boswell
could say, with contemptuous compassion, that he liked very well to hear
honest Goldsmith run on. "Yes, sir," said Johnson, "but he should
not like to hear himself." Minds differ as rivers differ. There are
transparent and sparkling rivers from which it is delightful to drink as
they flow; to such rivers the minds of such men as Burke and Johnson may
be compared. But there are rivers of which the water when first drawn
is turbid and noisome, but becomes pellucid as crystal, and delicious to
the taste, if it be suffered to stand till it has deposited a sediment;
and such a river is a type of the mind of Goldsmith. His first thoughts
on every subject were confused even to absurdity; but they required
only a little time to work themselves clear. When he wrote they had that
time; and therefore his readers pronounced him a man of genius: but when
he talked he talked nonsense, and made himself the laughing-stock of his
hearers. He was painfully sensible of his inferiority in conversation;
he felt every failure keenly; yet he had not sufficient judgment and
self-command to hold his tongue. His animal spirits and vanity were
always impelling him to try to do the one thing which he could not do.
After every attempt he felt that he had exposed himself, and writhed
with shame and vexation; yet the next moment he began again.