Early Struggles.--Hack-writing.
Here ensued a very dark period in his life. He was alone in London,
without friends, without money, without introductions; his appearance
was the reverse of prepossessing; and, even despite that medical
degree and his acquaintance with the learned Albinus and the learned
Gaubius, he had practically nothing of any value to offer for sale in
the great labour-market of the world. How he managed to live at all is
a mystery: it is certain that he must have endured a great deal of
want; and one may well sympathise with so gentle and sensitive a
creature reduced to such straits, without inquiring too curiously into
the causes of his misfortunes. If, on the one hand, we cannot accuse
society, or Christianity, or the English government of injustice and
cruelty because Goldsmith had gambled away his chances and was now
called on to pay the penalty, on the other hand, we had better, before
blaming Goldsmith himself, inquire into the origin of those defects of
character which produced such results. As this would involve an
_excursus_ into the controversy between Necessity and Free-will,
probably most people would rather leave it alone. It may safely be
said in any case that, while Goldsmith's faults and follies, of which
he himself had to suffer the consequences, are patent enough, his
character on the whole was distinctly a lovable one. Goldsmith was his
own enemy, and everybody else's friend: that is not a serious
indictment, as things go. He was quite well aware of his weaknesses;
and he was also--it may be hinted--aware of the good-nature which he
put forward as condonation. If some foreigner were to ask how it is
that so thoroughly a commercial people as the English are--strict in
the acknowledgment and payment of debt--should have always betrayed a
sneaking fondness for the character of the good-humoured scapegrace
whose hand is in everybody's pocket, and who throws away other
people's money with the most charming air in the world, Goldsmith
might be pointed to as one of many literary teachers whose own
circumstances were not likely to make them severe censors of the
Charles Surfaces, or lenient judges of the Joseph Surfaces of the
world. Be merry while you may; let to-morrow take care of itself;
share your last guinea with any one, even if the poor drones of
society--the butcher, and baker, and milkman with his score--have to
suffer; do anything you like, so long as you keep the heart warm. All
this is a delightful philosophy. It has its moments of misery--its
periods of reaction--but it has its moments of high delight. When we
are invited to contemplate the "evil destinies of men of letters," we
ought to be shown the flood-tides as well as the ebb-tides. The tavern
gaiety; the brand new coat and lace and sword; the midnight frolics,
with jolly companions every one--these, however brief and
intermittent, should not be wholly left out of the picture. Of course
it is very dreadful to hear of poor Boyse lying in bed with nothing
but a blanket over him, and with his arms thrust through two holes in
the blanket, so that he could write--perhaps a continuation of his
poem on the _Deity_. But then we should be shown Boyse when he was
spending the money collected by Dr. Johnson to get the poor
scribbler's clothes out of pawn; and we should also be shown him, with
his hands through the holes in the blanket, enjoying the mushrooms and
truffles on which, as a little garniture for "his last scrap of beef,"
he had just laid out his last half-guinea.
There were but few truffles--probably there was but little beef--for
Goldsmith during this sombre period. "His threadbare coat, his uncouth
figure, and Hibernian dialect caused him to meet with repeated
refusals." But at length he got some employment in a chemist's shop,
and this was a start. Then he tried practising in a small way on his
own account in Southwark. Here he made the acquaintance of a printer's
workman; and through him he was engaged as corrector of the press in
the establishment of Mr. Samuel Richardson. Being so near to
literature, he caught the infection; and naturally began with a
tragedy. This tragedy was shown to the author of _Clarissa Harlowe_;
but it only went the way of many similar first inspiritings of the
Muse. Then Goldsmith drifted to Peckham, where we find him (1757)
installed as usher at Dr. Milner's school. Goldsmith as usher has been
the object of much sympathy; and he would certainly deserve it, if we
are to assume that his description of an usher's position in the
_Bee_, and in George Primrose's advice to his cousin, was a full and
accurate description of his life at Peckham. "Browbeat by the master,
hated for my ugly face by the mistress, worried by the boys"--if that
was his life, he was much to be pitied. But we cannot believe it. The
Milners were exceedingly kind to Goldsmith. It was at the intercession
of young Milner, who had been his fellow-student at Edinburgh, that
Goldsmith got the situation, which at all events kept him out of the
reach of immediate want. It was through the Milners that he was
introduced to Griffiths, who gave him a chance of trying a literary
career--as a hack-writer of reviews and so forth. When, having got
tired of that, Goldsmith was again floating vaguely on the waves of
chance, where did he find a harbour but in that very school at
Peckham? And we have the direct testimony of the youngest of Dr.
Milner's daughters, that this Irish usher of theirs was a remarkably
cheerful, and even facetious person, constantly playing tricks and
practical jokes, amusing the boys by telling stories and by
performances on the flute, living a careless life, and always in
advance of his salary. Any beggars, or group of children, even the
very boys who played back practical jokes on him, were welcome to a
share of what small funds he had; and we all know how Mrs. Milner
good-naturedly said one day, "You had better, Mr. Goldsmith, let me
keep your money for you, as I do for some of the young gentlemen;" and
how he answered with much simplicity, "In truth, Madam, there is equal
need." With Goldsmith's love of approbation and extreme sensitiveness
he no doubt suffered deeply from many slights, now as at other times;
but what we know of his life in the Peckham school does not incline us
to believe that it was an especially miserable period of his
existence. His abundant cheerfulness does not seem to have at any time
deserted him; and what with tricks, and jokes, and playing of the
flute, the dull routine of instructing the unruly young gentlemen at
Dr. Milner's was got through somehow.
When Goldsmith left the Peckham school to try hack-writing in
Paternoster Row, he was going further to fare worse. Griffiths the
bookseller, when he met Goldsmith at Dr. Milner's dinner-table and
invited him to become a reviewer, was doing a service to the English
nation--for it was in this period of machine-work that Goldsmith
discovered that happy faculty of literary expression that led to the
composition of his masterpieces--but he was doing little immediate
service to Goldsmith.
The newly-captured hack was boarded and lodged at Griffiths' house in
Paternoster Row (1757); he was to have a small salary in consideration
of remorselessly constant work; and--what was the hardest condition of
all--he was to have his writings revised by Mrs. Griffiths. Mr.
Forster justly remarks that though at last Goldsmith had thus become a
man-of-letters, he "had gratified no passion and attained no object of
ambition." He had taken to literature, as so many others have done,
merely as a last resource. And if it is true that literature at first
treated Goldsmith harshly, made him work hard, and gave him
comparatively little for what he did, at least it must be said that
his experience was not a singular one. Mr. Forster says that
literature was at that time in a transition state: "The patron was
gone, and the public had not come." But when Goldsmith began to do
better than hack-work, he found a public speedily enough. If, as Lord
Macaulay computes, Goldsmith received in the last seven years of his
life what was equivalent to £5,600 of our money, even the villain
booksellers cannot be accused of having starved him. At the outset of
his literary career he received no large sums, for he had achieved no
reputation; but he got the market-rate for his work. We have around us
at this moment plenty of hacks who do not earn much more than their
board and lodging with a small salary.
For the rest, we have no means of knowing whether Goldsmith got
through his work with ease or with difficulty; but it is obvious,
looking over the reviews which he is believed to have written for
Griffiths' magazine, that he readily acquired the professional
critic's airs of superiority, along with a few tricks of the trade, no
doubt taught him by Griffiths. Several of these reviews, for example,
are merely epitomes of the contents of the books reviewed, with some
vague suggestion that the writer might, if he had been less careful,
have done worse, and, if he had been more careful, might have done
better. Who does not remember how the philosophic vagabond was taught
to become a cognoscento? "The whole secret consisted in a strict
adherence to two rules: the one always to observe that the picture
might have been better if the painter had taken more pains; and the
other to praise the works of Pietro Perugino." It is amusing to
observe the different estimates formed of the function of criticism by
Goldsmith the critic, and by Goldsmith the author. Goldsmith, sitting
at Griffiths' desk, naturally magnifies his office, and announces his
opinion that "to direct our taste, and conduct the poet up to
perfection, has ever been the true critic's province." But Goldsmith
the author, when he comes to inquire into the existing state of Polite
Learning in Europe, finds in criticism not a help but a danger. It is
"the natural destroyer of polite learning." And again, in the _Citizen
of the World_, he exclaims against the pretensions of the critic. "If
any choose to be critics, it is but saying they are critics; and from
that time forward they become invested with full power and authority
over every caitiff who aims at their instruction or entertainment."
This at least may be said, that in these early essays contributed to
the _Monthly Review_ there is much more of Goldsmith the critic than
of Goldsmith the author. They are somewhat laboured performances. They
are almost devoid of the sly and delicate humour that afterwards
marked Goldsmith's best prose work. We find throughout his trick of
antithesis; but here it is forced and formal, whereas afterwards he
lent to this habit of writing the subtle surprise of epigram. They
have the true manner of authority, nevertheless. He says of Home's
_Douglas_--"Those parts of nature, and that rural simplicity with
which the author was, perhaps, best acquainted, are not unhappily
described; and hence we are led to conjecture, that a more universal
knowledge of nature will probably increase his powers of description."
If the author had written otherwise, he would have written
differently; had he known more, he would not have been so ignorant;
the tragedy is a tragedy, but why did not the author make it a
comedy?--this sort of criticism has been heard of even in our own day.
However, Goldsmith pounded away at his newly-found work, under the eye
of the exacting bookseller and his learned wife. We find him dealing
with Scandinavian (here called Celtic) mythology, though he does not
adventure on much comment of his own; then he engages Smollett's
_History of England_, but mostly in the way of extract; anon we find
him reviewing _A Journal of Eight Days' Journey_, by Jonas Hanway, of
whom Johnson said that he made some reputation by travelling abroad,
and lost it all by travelling at home. Then again we find him writing
a disquisition on _Some Enquiries concerning the First Inhabitants,
Language, Religion, Learning, and Letters of Europe_, by a Mr. Wise,
who, along with his critic, appears to have got into hopeless
confusion in believing Basque and Armorican to be the remains of the
same ancient language. The last phrase of a note appended to this
review by Goldsmith probably indicates his own humble estimate of his
work at this time. "It is more our business," he says, "to exhibit the
opinions of the learned than to controvert them." In fact he was
employed to boil down books for people who did not wish to spend more
on literature than the price of a magazine. Though he was new to the
trade, it is probable he did it as well as any other.
At the end of five months, Goldsmith and Griffiths quarrelled and
separated. Griffiths said Goldsmith was idle; Goldsmith said Griffiths
was impertinent; probably the editorial supervision exercised by Mrs.
Griffiths had something to do with the dire contention. From
Paternoster Row Goldsmith removed to a garret in Fleet Street; had his
letters addressed to a coffee-house; and apparently supported himself
by further hack-work, his connection with Griffiths not being quite
severed. Then he drifted back to Peckham again; and was once more
installed as usher, Dr. Milner being in especial want of an assistant
at this time. Goldsmith's lingering about the gates of literature had
not inspired him with any great ambition to enter the enchanted land.
But at the same time he thought he saw in literature a means by which
a little ready money might be made, in order to help him on to
something more definite and substantial; and this goal was now put
before him by Dr. Milner, in the shape of a medical appointment on the
Coromandel coast. It was in the hope of obtaining this appointment,
that he set about composing that _Enquiry into the Present State of
Polite Learning in Europe_, which is now interesting to us as the
first of his more ambitious works. As the book grew under his hands,
he began to cast about for subscribers; and from the Fleet-Street
coffee-house--he had again left the Peckham school--he addressed to
his friends and relatives a series of letters of the most charming
humour, which might have drawn subscriptions from a millstone. To his
brother-in-law, Mr. Hodson, he sent a glowing account of the great
fortune in store for him on the Coromandel coast. "The salary is but
trifling," he writes, "namely £100 per annum, but the other
advantages, if a person be prudent, are considerable. The practice of
the place, if I am rightly informed, generally amounts to not less
than £1,000 per annum, for which the appointed physician has an
exclusive privilege. This, with the advantages resulting from trade,
and the high interest which money bears, viz. 20 per cent., are the
inducements which persuade me to undergo the fatigues of sea, the
dangers of war, and the still greater dangers of the climate; which
induce me to leave a place where I am every day gaining friends and
esteem, and where I might enjoy all the conveniences of life."
The surprising part of this episode in Goldsmith's life is that he did
really receive the appointment; in fact he was called upon to pay £10
for the appointment-warrant. In this emergency he went to the
proprietor of the _Critical Review_, the rival of the _Monthly_, and
obtained some money for certain anonymous work which need not be
mentioned in detail here. He also moved into another garret, this time
in Green-Arbour Court, Fleet Street, in a wilderness of slums. The
Coromandel project, however, on which so many hopes had been built,
fell through. No explanation of the collapse could be got from either
Goldsmith himself, or from Dr. Milner. Mr. Forster suggests that
Goldsmith's inability to raise money for his outfit may have been made
the excuse for transferring the appointment to another; and that is
probable enough; but it is also probable that the need for such an
excuse was based on the discovery that Goldsmith was not properly
qualified for the post. And this seems the more likely, that Goldsmith
immediately afterwards resolved to challenge examination at Surgeons'
Hall. He undertook to write four articles for the _Monthly Review_;
Griffiths became surety to a tailor for a fine suit of clothes; and
thus equipped, Goldsmith presented himself at Surgeons' Hall. He only
wanted to be passed as hospital mate; but even that modest ambition
was unfulfilled. He was found not qualified; and returned, with his
fine clothes, to his Fleet-Street den. He was now thirty years of age
(1758); and had found no definite occupation in the world.