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.
[Illustration: ]
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:—
‘MACROBIUS 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.
THE GIFT.
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):—
ETRENE A IRIS.
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 DR. SWIFT,
is communicated to the Public by the BUSY BODY,
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.
A SONNET.
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:
_A cap by night—a stocking all the day!_
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 APPENDIX 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_).
TO G. C. AND R. L.
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. OLIVER GOLDSMITH.’ (_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:—
‘OMNES.
Bravo, bravo!
_First_ FELLOW.
The ’Squire has got spunk in him.
_Second_ FELLOW.
I loves to hear him sing, bekeays he never gives us nothing that’s _low_
. . .
_Fourth_ FELLOW.
The genteel thing is the genteel thing at any time. If so be that a
gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.
_Third_ FELLOW.
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.)