When placed those heavenly charms among;
The sight my voice of power bereaves,
And chains my torpid tongue.
Through every thrilling fibre flies
The subtle flame; in dimness drear
My eyes are veil'd; a murmuring noise
Glides tinkling through my ear;
Death's chilly dew my limbs o'erspreads,
Shiv'ring, convuls'd, I panting lye;
And pale, as is the flower that fades,
I droop, I faint, I die.
The rudest language, in which there was anything of natural feeling,
would be preferable to this cold splendour. In the other ode, he comes
into contrast with Akenside.
But lo! to Sappho's melting airs
Descends the radiant queen of love;
She smiles, and asks what fonder cares
Her suppliant's plaintive measures move.
Why is my faithful maid distrest?
Who, Sappho, wounds thy tender breast?
Say, flies he? soon he shall pursue:
Shuns he thy gifts? he soon shall give:
Slights he thy sorrows? he shall grieve,
And soon to all thy wishes bow.
_Akenside_, b. 1, Ode 13.
This, though not unexceptionable, and particularly in the last verse,
has yet a tenderness and spirit utterly wanting in Mason.
What from my power would Sappho claim?
Who scorns thy flame?
What wayward boy
Disdains to yield thee joy for joy?
Soon shall he court the bliss he flies;
Soon beg the boon he now denies,
And, hastening back to love and thee,
Repay the wrong with extacy.
In the Pygmalion, a lyrical scene, he has made an effort equally vain,
to represent the impassioned eloquence of Jean Jaques Rousseau.
In his shorter poems, there is too frequent a recurrence of the same
machinery, and that, such as it needed but little invention to create.
Either the poet himself, or some other person, is introduced, musing by
a stream or lake, or in a forest, when the appearance of some celestial
visitant, muse, spirit, or angel, suddenly awakens his attention.
Soft gleams of lustre tremble through the grove,
And sacred airs of minstrelsy divine
Are harp'd around, and flutt'ring pinions move.
Ah, hark! a voice, to which the vocal rill,
The lark's extatic harmony is rude;
Distant it swells with many a holy trill,
Now breaks wide warbling from yon orient cloud.
_Elegy_ 2.
And,
But hark! methinks I hear her hallow'd tongue!
In distant trills it echoes o'er the tide;
Now meets mine ear with warbles wildly free,
As swells the lark's meridian extacy.
_Ode_ vi.
After the extatic notes have been heard, all vanishes away like some
figure in the clouds, which
Even with a thought,
The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct
As water is in water.
His abstractions are often exalted into cherubs and seraphs. It is the
"cherub Beauty sits on Nature's rustic shrine;" "heaven-descended
Charity;" "Constancy, heaven-born queen;" Liberty, "heaven-descending
queen." Take away from him these aerial beings and their harps, and you
will rob him of his best treasures.
He holds nearly the same place among our poets, that Peters does among
our painters. He too is best known by--
The angel's floating pomp, the seraph's glowing grace;
and he too, instead of that gravity and depth of tone which might seem
most accordant to his subjects, treats them with a lightness of pencil
that is not far removed from flimsiness.
In the thirteenth Ode, on the late Duchess of Devonshire, the only lady
of distinguished rank to whom the poets of modern times have loved to
pay their homage, and in the sixteenth, which he entitles Palinodia, he
provokes a comparison with Mr. Coleridge. One or two extracts from each
will shew the difference between the artificial heat of the schools and
the warmth of a real enthusiasm.
Art thou not she whom fav'ring fate
In all her splendour drest,
To show in how supreme a state
A mortal might be blest?
Bade beauty, elegance, and health,
Patrician birth, patrician wealth,
Their blessings on her darling shed;
Bade Hymen, of that generous race
Who freedom's fairest annals grace,
Give to thy love th'illustrious head.
_Mason._
Light as a dream, your days their circlets ran,
From all that teaches brotherhood to man
Far, far removed; from want, from hope, from fear,
Enchanting music lull'd your infant ear,
Obeisant praises sooth'd your infant heart:
Emblasonments and old ancestral crests,
With many a bright obtrusive form of art,
Detain'd your eye from nature; stately vests,
That veiling strove to deck your charms divine,
Were your's unearn'd by toil.
_Coleridge, Ode to Georgiana, Duchess of Gloucester._
Say did I err, chaste Liberty,
When, warm with youthful fire,
I gave the vernal fruits to thee,
That ripen'd on my lyre?
When, round thy twin-born sister's shrine
I taught the flowers of verse to twine
And blend in one their fresh perfume;
Forbade them, vagrant and disjoin'd,
To give to every wanton wind
Their fragrance and their bloom?
_Mason._
Ye clouds, that far above me float and pause,
Whose pathless march no mortal may controul!
Ye ocean waves, that, whereso'er ye roll,
Yield homage only to eternal laws!
Ye woods, that listen to the night-birds singing,
Midway the smooth and perilous steep reclin'd;
Save when your own imperious branches swinging,
Have made a solemn music of the wind!
Where, like a man belov'd of God,
Through glooms, which never woodman trod,
How oft, pursuing fancies holy,
My moonlight way o'er flow'ring weeds I wound,
Inspir'd beyond the guess of folly,
By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound!
O, ye loud waves, and O, ye forests high,
And O, ye clouds, that far above me soar'd!
Thou rising sun! thou blue rejoicing sky!
Yea, every thing that is and will be free,
Bear witness for me wheresoe'er ye be,
With what deep worship I have still adored
The spirit of divinest liberty.
_Coleridge. France, An Ode._
The Elegy written in a churchyard in South Wales, is not more below
Gray's.
Of eagerness to obtain poetical distinction he had much more than Gray;
but in tact, judgment, and learning, was exceedingly his inferior. He
was altogether a man of talent, if I may be allowed to use the word
talent according to the sense it bore in our old English; for he had a
vehement _desire_ of excellence, but wanted either the depth of mind or
the industry that was necessary for producing anything that was very
excellent.
FOOTNOTES
[1] It is said, that the best likeness of Gray is to be found in the
figure of Scipio, in an engraving for the edition of Gil Blas,
printed at Amsterdam, 1735, vol. iv. p. 94.--See Mr. Mitford's Gray,
vol. i. lxxxi. A copy of this figure would be acceptable to many of
Gray's admirers.
[2] Essays on English Church Music, Mason's Works, vol. iii. p. 370.
* * * * *
OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
Oliver, the second son of Charles and Anne Goldsmith, was born in
Ireland, on the 10th of November, 1728, at Pallas, in the Parish of
Forgany or Forney in the County of Longford. By a mistake made in the
note of his entrance in the college register, he is represented to have
been a native of the county of Westmeath.
His father, who had before resided at Smith-hill in the county of
Roscommon, (which has by some been erroneously said to be the birth-place
of his son, Oliver,) removed thence to Pallas, and afterwards to
his Rectory of Kilkenny West, in the county of Westmeath; and in the
latter of these parishes, at Lissoy, or Auburn, he built the house
described as the Village-Preacher's modest mansion in the Deserted
Village. His mother was daughter of the Rev. Oliver Jones, master of the
diocesan school at Elphin. Their family consisted of five sons and three
daughters.
In a letter from his elder sister, Catherine, the wife of Daniel Hodson,
Esq. inserted in the Life of Goldsmith, which an anonymous writer, whom
I suppose to have been Cowper's friend, Mr. Rose, from a passage in Mr.
Nichol's Literary Anecdotes, prefixed to his Miscellaneous Works,
wonders are told of his early predilection for the poetical art; but
those who have observed the amplification with which the sprightly
sallies of childhood are related by domestic fondness, will listen to
such narrations with some abatement of confidence. It seems probable,
that a desire of literary distinction might have been infused into his
youthful mind by hearing of the reputation of his countryman, Parnell,
with whom, as we learn from his life of that poet, his father and uncle
were acquainted.
He received the first rudiments of learning from a school-master who
taught in the village where his parents resided, and who had served as a
quarter-master during the war of the Succession in Spain; and from the
romantic accounts which this man delighted to give of his travels,
Goldsmith is supposed, by his sister, to have contracted his propensity
for a wandering life. From hence he was removed successively to the
school at Elphin, of which the Rev. Mr. Griffin was master, and to that
of Athlone; kept by the Rev. Mr. Campbell; and lastly, was placed under
the care of the Rev. Patrick Hughes, of Edgeworthstown, in the county of
Longford, to whose instruction he acknowledged himself to have been more
indebted than to that of his other teachers.
It was probably that untowardness in his outward appearance, which never
afterwards left him, that made his schoolfellows consider him a dull
boy, fit only to be the butt of their ridicule.
On his last return after the holidays to the house of his master, an
adventure befel him, which afterwards was made the ground-work of the
plot in one of his comedies. Journeying along leisurely, and being
inclined to enjoy such diversion as a guinea, that had been given him
for pocket-money, would afford him on the road, he was overtaken by
night at a small town called Ardagh. Here, inquiring for the best house
in the place, he was directed to a gentleman's habitation that literally
answered that description. Under a delusion, the opposite to that
entertained by the knight of La Mancha, he rides up to the supposed inn;
and having given his horse in charge to the ostler, enters without
ceremony; The master of the house, aware of the mistake, resolves to
favour it; and is still less inclined to undeceive his guest, when he
finds out from his discourse that he is the son of an acquaintance and a
neighbour. A good supper and a bottle or two of wine are called for, of
which the host, with his wife and daughter, are invited to partake; and
a hot cake is providently ordered for the morrow's breakfast. The young
traveller's surprise may be conceived, when in calling for his bill, he
finds under what roof he has been lodged, and with whom he had been
putting himself on such terms of familiarity.
In June, 1745, he was sent a sizer to Trinity College, Dublin, and
placed under the tuition of Mr. Wilder, one of the fellows, who is
represented to have been of a temper so morose as to excite the
strongest disgust in the mind of his pupil. He did not pass through his
academical course without distinction. Dr. Kearney (who was afterwards
provost), in a note on Boswell's Life of Johnson, informs us, that
Goldsmith gained a premium at the Christmas examination, which,
according to Mr. Malone, is more honourable than those obtained at the
other examinations, inasmuch as it is the only one that determines the
successful candidate to be the first in literary merit. This is enough
to disprove what Johnson is reported to have said of him, that he was a
plant that flowered late; that there appeared nothing remarkable about
him when he was young; though when he had got into fame, one of his
friends began to recollect something of his being distinguished at
college. Whether he took a degree is not known.[1] On one occasion he
narrowly escaped expulsion for having been concerned in the rescue of a
student, who, in violation of the supposed privileges of the University
had been arrested for debt within its precincts: but his superiors
contented themselves with passing a public censure on him.
Having been deprived, in 1747, by death, of his father, who had with
difficulty supported him at college, he became a dependant on the bounty
of his uncle,[2] the Rev. Thomas Contarine; and after fluctuating in his
choice of an employment in life, was at length established as a medical
student at Edinburgh, in his twenty-fifth year.
Dr. Strean mentions, that he was at one time intended for the church,
but that appearing before the Bishop, when he went to be examined for
orders, in a pair of scarlet breeches, he was rejected.
From Edinburgh, when he had completed his attendance on the usual course
of lectures, he removed to Leyden, with the intention of continuing his
studies at that University.
Johnson used to speak with coarse contempt of Goldsmith's want of
veracity. "Noll," said he to a lady of much distinction in literature,
who repeated to me his words, "Noll, madam, would lie through an inch
board." In this instance, Johnson's known partiality to Goldsmith fixes
the stigma so deeply, that we can place no reliance on the account he
gave of what befel him, when he imagined himself to be no longer within
reach of detection. In a letter to his uncle he relates that, before
going to Holland, he had embarked in a vessel for Bordeaux, that the
ship was driven by a storm into Newcastle-upon-Tyne, that he was there
seized on suspicion of being engaged with the rebels, and thrown into
prison; that the vessel, meanwhile proceeding on her voyage, was wrecked
at the mouth of the Garonne, where all the crew perished; and that, at
the end of a fortnight, being liberated, he set sail in a vessel bound
for Holland, and in nine days arrived safely at Rotterdam. After a
residence of about a twelve-month at Leyden, he was involved in
difficulties, occasioned by his love of gambling, a ridiculous
inclination that adhered to him for the remainder of his life. He now
set out with the resolution of visiting the principal parts of the
Continent on foot; and, according to his own report of himself, made his
way by a variety of stratagems, sometimes recruiting his finances by the
acquisition of small sums proposed in the foreign universities to public
disputants; at others, securing himself a hospitable reception by the
exercise of a moderate share of skill in playing the flute--his
"tuneless pipe," as he calls it, in that passage of The Traveller, where
he alludes to this method of supplying his wants.
Thus, if we are to believe him, he passed through the Netherlands,
France, and Germany, into the Swiss Cantons; and in that country, so
well suited to awaken the feelings of a poet, he composed a part of The
Traveller, and sent it to his elder brother, a clergyman in Ireland.
Continuing his journey into Italy, he visited Venice, Verona, Florence,
and Padua; and having spent six months at the University in the last
mentioned city, returned through France to England in 1756. From his
Inquiry into the Present State of Learning, we collect, that when at
Paris he attended the Chemical Lectures of Rouelle.
In the meantime his uncle had died; and he found himself, on his arrival
in London, so destitute even of a friend to whom he could refer for a
recommendation, that he with difficulty obtained first the place of an
usher to a school, and afterwards that of assistant in the laboratory of
a chemist. At last, meeting with Doctor Sleigh, formerly his fellow-student
at Edinburgh, he was enabled, by the kindness of this worthy physician,
who appears in so amiable a light as the patron of Barry, in the Memoirs
of that painter, to avail himself more effectually of his knowledge in
medicine, and to earn a subsistence, however scanty, by the practice of
that art.
The Bankside in Southwark, and the Temple, or its vicinity, were
successively the places where he fixed his residence. To his
professional gains he soon added the emoluments arising from his
exertions as an author. In 1758, he took a share in the conduct of the
literary journal called the Monthly Review: and for the space of seven
or eight months, while the employment lasted, lodged in the house of Mr.
Griffiths, the proprietor of it. The next year he contributed several
papers to the Lady's Magazine, and to the Bee, a collection of essays,
and published his Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning, in
which he speaks of the Monthly Review in terms not very respectful.
There is, I doubt, in this little essay more display than reality of
erudition. It would not be easy to say where he had discovered "that
Dante was persecuted by the critics as long as he lived." The complaints
he made of the hard fate of authors, and his censure of odes and of
blank verse, were well calculated to conciliate the good will, and to
excite the sympathy of Johnson, with whom he soon became intimate.
Poverty and indiscretion were other claims, by which the benevolent
commiseration of Johnson could scarcely fail to be awakened; and his
acquaintance with Goldsmith had not subsisted long, when an occasion
presented itself for rescuing him from the consequences of those evils.
One day, calling on our poet, at his lodgings in Wine-office Court,
Fleet-street, he found him under arrest for debt, and engaged in violent
altercation with his landlady. Taking from him the Vicar of Wakefield,
then just written, Johnson proceeded with it to Newbery the Bookseller,
from whom he obtained sixty pounds for his friend; and Goldsmith's good
humour, and the complaisance of his hostess, returning with this
accession of wealth, they spent the remainder of the day together in
harmony. In this novel, like Fielding and Smollett, he exhibits a very
natural view of familiar life. Inferior to the first in the artful
management of his story, and to the latter in the broader traits of
comic character, and not equal to either in variety and fertility, he
is, nevertheless, to be preferred to both for his power of passing from
the ludicrous to the tender, and for his regard to moral decency. It was
not printed till some years after, in 1766, when his reputation had been
in some degree established by The Traveller. Meanwhile he published, in
a periodical work called the Ledger, his Letters from a Citizen of the
World to his Friend in the East, in which, under the character of a
Chinese philosopher, he describes the customs and manners of Europeans.
But this assumed personage is an awkward concealment for the good-humoured
Irishman, with his never-failing succession of droll stories.
Of these there are too many; and the want of any thing like a continued
interest is sensibly felt. I do not know of any book, on the same plan,
that is to be compared with the Persian Letters of Montesquieu.
In the spring of 1763 he had lodgings in Islington, and continuing there
till the following year, he revised several petty publications for
Newbery, and wrote the Letters on English History, which, from their
being published as the letters of a nobleman to his son, have been
attributed by turns to the Earl of Orrery and Lord Lyttelton.
His next removal was to the Temple, where he remained for the rest of
his life, not without indulging a project, equally magnificent and
visionary, of making a journey into the East, in order to bring back
with him such useful inventions as had not found their way into Britain.
He was ridiculed by Johnson, for fancying himself competent to so
arduous a task, when he was utterly unacquainted with our own mechanical
arts. He would have brought back a grinding barrow, said Johnson, and
thought that he had furnished a wonderful improvement. The more feasible
plan of returning with honour and advantage to his native country, was
held out to him through the patronage of the Earl of Northumberland.
That nobleman, who was then the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, sent for
him, and made him an offer of his protection. Goldsmith, with his
characteristic simplicity, replied, that he had a brother there, a
clergyman, who stood in need of help; that, for himself, he looked to
the booksellers for support. This reliance happily did not deceive him.
By the rewards of his literary labours, he was placed in a comparative
state of opulence, in which his propensity for play alone occasioned a
diminution.
In 1765, appeared The Hermit, The Traveller, and the Essays.
About this time a club was formed, at the proposal of Reynolds, which
consisted, besides that eminent painter and our poet, of Johnson, Burke,
Burke's father-in-law, Doctor Nugent, Sir John Hawkins, Langton,
Beauclerk, and Chamier, who met and supped together every Friday night,
at the Turk's Head, in Gerard-street, Soho. The bookseller's shop
belonging to Dr. Griffiths, called the Dunciad, in the neighbourhood of
Catherine-street, was another of his favourite haunts.
His comedy of the Good Natured Man, though it had received the sanction
of Burke's approval, did not please Garrick sufficiently to induce him
to venture it on his theatre. It was, therefore, brought forward by
Colman, at Covent Garden, on the 29th of January, 1769; but having been
represented for nine nights, did not longer maintain its place on the
stage, though it is one of those comedies which afford most amusement in
the closet. For his conception of the character of Croaker, the author
acknowledged that he was indebted to Johnson's Suspirius, in the
Rambler. That of Honeywood, in its undistinguishing benevolence, hears
some resemblance to his own.
In the next year he published his Deserted Village; and entered into an
agreement with Davies, to compile a History of England, in four octavo
volumes, for the sum of five hundred pounds in the space of two years;
before the expiration of which period, he made a compact with the same
bookseller for an abridgment of the Roman History, which he had before
published. The History of Greece, which has appeared since his death,
cannot with certainty be ascribed to his pen.
In 1771, he wrote the Life of Bolingbroke, prefixed to the Dissertation
on Parties.
The reception which his former play had met did not discourage him from
trying his fate with a second. But it was not till after much
solicitation that Colman was prevailed on to allow The Mistakes of a
Night, or She Stoops to Conquer, to be acted at Covent Garden, on the
15th of March, 1773. A large party of zealous friends, with Johnson at
their head, attended to witness the representation and to lead the
plaudits of the house; a scheme which Mr. Cumberland describes to have
been preconcerted with much method, but to have been near failing in
consequence of some mistakes in the execution of the manoeuvres, which
aroused the displeasure of the audience. That the piece is enlivened by
such droll incidents, as to be nearly allied to farce, Johnson with
justice observed, declaring, however, that "he knew of no comedy for
many years that had so much exhilarated an audience; that had so much
answered the great end of comedy, that of making an audience merry."
The History of the Earth and Animated Nature, in eight volumes, closed
the labours of Goldsmith. This compilation, however recommended by the
agreeableness of style usual to its author, is but little prized for its
accuracy. In a summary of past events, which are often differently
related by writers of authority and credit nearly equal, it is in vain
to look for certainty. But when we are presented with a description of
natural objects that required only to be looked at in order to be known,
we are neither amused nor instructed without some degree of precision.
History partakes of the nature of romance. Physiology is more closely
connected with science. In the one we must often rest contented with
probability. In the other we know that truth is generally to be
attained, and therefore expect to find it.
Goldsmith had been for some time subject to attacks of strangury; and
having before experienced relief from James's powders, had again
recourse to that popular medicine. His medical attendants are said to
have remonstrated with him on its unfitness in the stage to which his
disorder had reached; but he persevered; and his fever increasing, and
some secret distress of mind, under which he owned to Dr. Turton that he
laboured, aggravating his bodily complaint, he expired on the 4th of
April in his forty-fifth year.