I finished Goldsmith yesterday, after dinner, having read it from the
first page to the last with the greatest care and attention.
As a picture of the time, I really think it impossible to give it too
much praise. It seems to me to be the very essence of all about the time
that I have ever seen in biography or fiction, presented in most wise
and humane lights, and in a thousand new and just aspects. I have never
liked Johnson half so well. Nobody's contempt for Boswell ought to be
capable of increase, but I have never seen him in my mind's eye half so
plainly. The introduction of him is quite a masterpiece. I should point
to that, if I didn't know the author, as being done by somebody with a
remarkably vivid conception of what he narrated, and a most admirable
and fanciful power of communicating it to another. All about Reynolds is
charming; and the first account of the Literary Club and of Beauclerc as
excellent a piece of description as ever I read in my life. But to read
the book is to be in the time. It lives again in as fresh and lively a
manner as if it were presented on an impossibly good stage by the very
best actors that ever lived, or by the real actors come out of their
graves on purpose.
And as to Goldsmith himself, and _his_ life, and the tracing of it out
in his own writings, and the manful and dignified assertion of him
without any sobs, whines, or convulsions of any sort, it is throughout a
noble achievement, of which, apart from any private and personal
affection for you, I think (and really believe) I should feel proud, as
one who had no indifferent perception of these books of his--to the best
of my remembrance--when little more than a child. I was a little afraid
in the beginning, when he committed those very discouraging imprudences,
that you were going to champion him somewhat indiscriminately; but I
very soon got over that fear, and found reason in every page to admire
the sense, calmness, and moderation with which you make the love and
admiration of the reader cluster about him from his youth, and
strengthen with his strength--and weakness too, which is better still.
I don't quite agree with you in two small respects. First, I question
very much whether it would have been a good thing for every great man to
have had his Boswell, inasmuch as I think that two Boswells, or three at
most, would have made great men extraordinarily false, and would have
set them on always playing a part, and would have made distinguished
people about them for ever restless and distrustful. I can imagine a
succession of Boswells bringing about a tremendous state of falsehood in
society, and playing the very devil with confidence and friendship.
Secondly, I cannot help objecting to that practice (begun, I think, or
greatly enlarged by Hunt) of italicising lines and words and whole
passages in extracts, without some very special reason indeed. It does
appear to be a kind of assertion of the editor over the reader--almost
over the author himself--which grates upon me. The author might almost
as well do it himself to my thinking, as a disagreeable thing; and it is
such a strong contrast to the modest, quiet, tranquil beauty of "The
Deserted Village," for instance, that I would almost as soon hear "the
town crier" speak the lines. The practice always reminds me of a man
seeing a beautiful view, and not thinking how beautiful it is half so
much as what he shall say about it.
In that picture at the close of the third book (a most beautiful one) of
Goldsmith sitting looking out of window at the Temple trees, you speak
of the "gray-eyed" rooks. Are you sure they are "gray-eyed"? The raven's
eye is a deep lustrous black, and so, I suspect, is the rook's, except
when the light shines full into it.
I have reserved for a closing word--though I _don't_ mean to be
eloquent about it, being far too much in earnest--the admirable manner
in which the case of the literary man is stated throughout this book. It
is splendid. I don't believe that any book was ever written, or anything
ever done or said, half so conducive to the dignity and honour of
literature as "The Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith," by J. F.,
of the Inner Temple. The gratitude of every man who is content to rest
his station and claims quietly on literature, and to make no feint of
living by anything else, is your due for evermore. I have often said,
here and there, when you have been at work upon the book, that I was
sure it would be; and I shall insist on that debt being due to you
(though there will be no need for insisting about it) as long as I have
any tediousness and obstinacy to bestow on anybody. Lastly, I never will
hear the biography compared with Boswell's except under vigorous
protest. For I do say that it is mere folly to put into opposite scales
a book, however amusing and curious, written by an unconscious coxcomb
like that, and one which surveys and grandly understands the characters
of all the illustrious company that move in it.
My dear Forster, I cannot sufficiently say how proud I am of what you
have done, or how sensible I am of being so tenderly connected with it.
When I look over this note, I feel as if I had said no part of what I
think; and yet if I were to write another I should say no more, for I
can't get it out. I desire no better for my fame, when my personal
dustiness shall be past the control of my love of order, than such a
biographer and such a critic. And again I say, most solemnly, that
literature in England has never had, and probably never will have, such
a champion as you are, in right of this book.
Ever affectionately.
[Sidenote: Mr. Mark Lemon.]
_Wednesday, May 3rd, 1848._