John Forster is best remembered as writer of the biographies
of the statesmen of the commonwealth, of Goldsmith, Landor,
Dickens. To his own generation he was for twenty years one of
the ablest of London journalists. In his later days, as a
Commissioner in Lunacy, he had time to devote himself more
closely to historical research. He was born at Newcastle on
April 2, 1812, was turned aside from the Bar by success in
newspaper work, and became editor first of the "Foreign
Quarterly Review," then of the "Daily News," on which he
succeeded Dickens, and lastly of "The Examiner." His "Life of
Goldsmith" was published in 1848, and enlarged in 1854.
Forster was different from all that he looked. He seemed
harsh, exacting, and stubborn. He was one of the most loyal of
friends, and tender-hearted towards all good fellows, alive or
dead. His picture of Goldsmith is an understanding defence of
that strangely-speckled genius, written from the heart.
Forster died on February 1, 1876, two years after his
retirement from official life.
_I.--Misery and Ill-luck_
The marble in Westminster Abbey is correct in the place, but not in the
time, of the birth of Oliver Goldsmith. He was born at a small old
parsonage house in an almost inaccessible Irish village called Pallas,
in Longford, November 10, 1728. His father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith,
was a Protestant clergyman with an uncertain stipend, which, with the
help of some fields he farmed, averaged forty pounds a year. They who
have lived, laughed, and wept with the father of the man in black in the
"Citizen of the World," the preacher of "The Deserted Village," or the
hero of "The Vicar of Wakefield," have given laughter, love, and tears
to the Rev. Charles Goldsmith.
Oliver had not completed his second year when the family moved to a
respectable house and farm on the verge of the pretty little village of
Lissoy, in West Meath. Here the schoolmistress who first put a book into
Oliver Goldsmith's hands confessed, "Never was so dull a boy; he seemed
impenetrably stupid."
Yet all the charms of Goldsmith's later style are to be traced in the
letters of his youth, and he began to scribble verses when he could
scarcely write. At the age of eight he went to the Rev. Mr. Gilpin's
superior school of Elphin, in Roscommon, where he was considered "a
stupid, heavy blockhead, little better than a fool, whom everyone made
fun of." Indeed, from his earliest youth he was made to feel an intense,
uneasy consciousness of supposed defects. Later he went to school at
Athlone and at Edgeworthstown, and was in every school trick, either as
an actor or a victim. On leaving the school at Edgeworthstown, Oliver
entered Dublin University as a sizar, "at once studying freedom and
practising servitude." Little went well with him in his student course.
He had a menial position, a savage brute for a tutor, and few
inclinations to the study exacted. But he was not without his
consolations; he could sing a song well, and, at a new insult, could
blow off excitement through his flute. The popular picture of him in
these days is of a slow, hesitating, somewhat hollow voice, a low-sized,
thick, robust, ungainly figure, lounging about the college courts on the
wait for misery and ill-luck.
In Oliver's second year at college his father died suddenly, and the
scanty sum required for his support stopped. Squalid poverty relieved by
occasional gifts was Goldsmith's lot thenceforward. He would write
street-ballads to save himself from actual starving, sell them for five
shillings a-piece, and steal out of the college at night to hear them
sung. It is said to have been a rare occurrence when the five shillings
reached home with him. It was more likely, when he was at his utmost
need, to stop with some beggar on the road who had seemed to him even
more destitute than himself.
He took his degree as bachelor of arts on February 27, 1749 and
returning to his mother's house, at Ballymahon, waited till he could
qualify himself for orders. This is the sunny time between two dismal
periods of his life--the day occupied in the village school, the winter
nights in presiding at Conway's inn, the summer evenings strolling up
the banks of the Inny to play the flute, learning French from the Irish
priests, or winning a prize for throwing a sledge-hammer at the fair.
When the time came for Goldsmith to take orders, one report says he did
not deem himself good enough for it, and another says that he presented
himself before the Bishop of Elphin in scarlet breeches; but in truth
his rejection is the only certainty.
A year's engagement as a tutor followed, and from it he returned home
with thirty pounds in his pocket, and was the undisputed owner of a good
horse. Thus furnished and mounted he set off for Cork with a vision of
going to America, but returned presently with only five shillings and a
horse he had bought for one pound seventeen.
Law was the next thing thought of, and his uncle Contarine, who had
married his father's sister, came forward with fifty pounds. With this
sum Oliver started for London, but gambled it all away in Dublin. In
bitter shame he wrote to his uncle, confessed, and was forgiven, and the
good uncle then made up a small purse to carry him to Edinburgh for the
study of medicine.
No traditions remain in Edinburgh as to the character or extent of
Goldsmith's studies there, but it may be supposed that his eighteen
months' residence was, on the whole, not unprofitable. A curious
document that has been discovered is a torn leaf of a tailor's ledger
radiant with "rich sky-blue satin, fine sky-blue shalloon, a superfine
silver-laced small hat, rich black Genoa velvet, and superfine high
claret-coloured cloth," ordered by Mr. Oliver Goldsmith, student.
_II.--Through Europe with a Flute_
From Edinburgh he sailed for Leyden, but called on the way at Newcastle
and saw enough of England to be able to say that "of all objects on this
earth an English farmer's daughter is the most charming." Little is
known of his pursuits at Leyden, where his principal means of support
were as a teacher. After staying there nearly a year, he quitted it
(1755) at the age of twenty-seven, for a travel tour through Europe,
with a guinea in his pocket, one shirt on his back, and a flute in his
hand.
Goldsmith started on his travels in February, 1755, and stepped ashore
at Dover February 1, 1756. For his route it is necessary to consult his
writings. His letters of the time have perished. In later life, Foote
tells us, "he frequently used to talk, with great pleasantry, of his
distresses on the Continent, such as living on the hospitalities of the
friars, sleeping in barns, and picking up a kind of mendicant livelihood
by the German flute." His early memoir-writers assert with confidence
that in some small portion of his travels he acted as companion to a
young man of large fortune. It is certain that the rude, strange
wandering life to which his nature for a time impelled him was an
education picked up from personal experience and by actual collision
with many varieties of men, and that it gave him on several social
questions much the advantage over the more learned of his
contemporaries. As he passed through Flanders, Louvain attracted him,
and here, according to his first biographer, he took the degree of
medical bachelor. This is likely enough. Certain it is he made some stay
at Louvain, became acquainted with its professors, and informed himself
of its modes of study. Some little time he also passed at Brussels.
Undoubtedly he visited Antwerp, and he rested a brief space in Paris. He
must have taken the lecture-rooms of Germany on his way to Switzerland.
Passing into that country he saw Schaffhausen frozen. Geneva was his
resting-place in Switzerland, but he visited Basle and Berne. Descending
into Piedmont, he saw Milan, Verona, Mantua, and Florence, and at Padua
is supposed to have stayed some six months, and, it has been asserted,
received his degree. "Sir," said Johnson to Boswell, "he _disputed_ his
passage through Europe."
_III.--Physic, Teaching, and Authorship_
Landing at Dover without a farthing in his pocket, the traveller took
ten days to reach London, where an uncertain story says he gained
subsistence for a few months as an usher, under a feigned name. At last
a chemist of the name of Jacob, at the corner of Monument Yard, engaged
him. While employed among the drugs he met an old Edinburgh
fellow-student, Owen Sleigh, who, "with a heart as warm as ever, shared
his home and friendship." Goldsmith now began to practise as a physician
in a humble way, and through one of his patients was introduced to
Richardson and appointed for a short time reader and corrector to his
press in Salisbury Court. Next we find him at Peckham Academy, acting as
assistant to Dr. Milner, whose son had been at Edinburgh.
Milner was a contributor to the "Monthly Review," published by
Griffiths, the bookseller, and at Milner's table Griffiths and Goldsmith
met, with the result that Goldsmith entered into an agreement to devote
himself to the "Monthly Review" for a year. In fulfilment of that
agreement Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths provided him with bed and board in
Paternoster Row, and, at the age of nine-and-twenty, he began his work
as an author by profession.
The twelve months' agreement was not carried out. At the end of five
months Goldsmith left the "Monthly Review." During that period he had
reviewed Professor Mallet's translations of Scandinavian poetry and
mythology; Home's tragedy of "Douglas," Burke's "Origin of our Ideas of
the Sublime and Beautiful," Smollett's "Complete History of England,"
and Gray's "Odes." Though he was no longer "a not unuseful assistant" to
Griffiths, he kept up an irregular business association with that
literary slave-driver. He also became a contributor to Newbery's
"Literary Magazine." At last, in despair, he turned again from the
miseries of Grub Street to Dr. Milner's school-room at Peckham, and,
after another brief period of teaching, Dr. Milner secured for him the
promise of an appointment as medical officer to one of the East India
Company's factories on the coast of Coromandel. Partly to utilise his
travel experiences in a more formal manner than had yet been possible,
and partly to provide funds for his equipment for foreign service, he
now wrote his "Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in
Europe," and, leaving Dr. Milner's, became a contributor to Hamilton's
"Critical Review," a rival to Griffiths's "Monthly." In these days he
lived in a garret in Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey, with a single chair
in the room, and a window seat for himself if a visitor occupied the
chair. For some unknown reason the Coromandel appointment was withdrawn,
and failure in an examination as a hospital-mate left no hope except in
literature.
The turning-point of Goldsmith's life was reached when Griffiths became
security for a new suit of clothes in which that unfortunate
hospital-mate examination might be attended. On Griffiths finding that
the new suit had been pawned to free the poet's landlady from the
bailiffs, he abused him as a sharper and a villain, and threatened to
proceed against him by law as a criminal. This attack forced from
Goldsmith the rejoinder, "Sir, I know of no misery but a jail to which
my own imprudences and your letter seem to point. I have seen it
inevitable these three or four weeks, and, by heavens! regard it as a
favour, as a favour that may prevent somewhat more fatal. I tell you
again and again I am now neither able nor willing to pay you a farthing,
but I will be punctual to any appointment you or the tailor shall make;
thus far at least I do not act the sharper, since, unable to pay my
debts one way, I would willingly give some security another. No, sir;
had I been a sharper, had I been possessed of less good nature and
native generosity, I might surely now have been in better circumstances.
My reflections are filled with repentance for my imprudence, but not
with any remorse for being a villain."
The result of this correspondence was that Goldsmith contracted to write
for Griffiths a "Life of Voltaire"; the payment being twenty pounds,
with the price of the clothes to be deducted from the sum.
In the autumn of 1759 Goldsmith commenced, for bookseller Wilkie, of St.
Paul's Churchyard, the weekly writing of "The Bee," a threepenny
magazine of essays. It ended with its eighth number, for the public
would not buy it. At the same time he was writing for Mr. Pottinger's
"Busybody," and Mr. Wilkie's "Lady's Magazine." "The Bee," though
unsuccessful, brought Goldsmith useful friends--Smollett and Garrick,
and Mr. Newbery, the publisher--and with the New Year (1760) he was
working with Smollett on "The British Magazine," and, immediately
afterwards, on Newbery's "Public Ledger," a daily newspaper, for which
he wrote two articles a week at a guinea for each article. Among the
articles were the series that still divert and instruct us--"The Citizen
of the World." This was the title given when the "Letters from a Chinese
Philosopher in London to his Friend in the East" were republished by
Newbery, at the end of the year. Goldsmith now began to know his own
value as a writer.
_IV.--Social and Literary Success_
His widening reputation brought him into association and friendship with
Johnson, to whom he was introduced by Dr. Percy, the collector of the
"Reliques of Ancient English Poetry." Goldsmith gave a supper in honour
of his visitor, and when Percy called on Johnson to accompany him to
their host's lodgings, to his great astonishment he found Johnson in a
new suit of clothes, with a new wig, nicely powdered, perfectly
dissimilar from his usual appearance. On being asked the cause of this
transformation Johnson replied, "Why, sir, I hear that Goldsmith, who is
a very great sloven, justifies his disregard of cleanliness and decency
by quoting my practice; and I am desirous this night to show him a
better example."
Johnson was perhaps the first literary man of the times who estimated
Goldsmith according to his true merits as a writer and thinker, and he
was repaid by an affectionate devotion that was never worn out during
the later years when the Dictator was too ready to make a butt of the
unready Irishman. Goldsmith now joined the group of literary friends who
gathered frequently at the shop of Tom Davies, the bookseller, where
Johnson and Boswell first met, and he was one of the famous Literary
Club which grew out of these meetings.
"Sir," said Johnson to Boswell, at one of their first meetings,
"Goldsmith is one of the first men we have as an author."
This was said at a time when all Goldsmith's best works had yet to be
written. He was still working for the booksellers, and in 1763, issued
anonymously a "History of England in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman
to his Son." To various noblemen credit for this popular work was given,
including Lord Chesterfield. Growing success was only an excuse for
growing extravagance, and in 1764 Goldsmith was placed temporarily under
arrest for debt, probably by his landlady, Mrs. Fleming, with whom he
had been living at Islington under an arrangement made by Newbery. His
withdrawal from the town had given him opportunities for congenial
labour on "The Traveller" and "The Vicar of Wakefield," and when Johnson
appeared, in answer to his urgent summons, it was the manuscript of "The
Vicar" that he carried off, and sold for sixty pounds, to relieve
immediate anxieties.
Still, it was "The Traveller" that was first published (December 19,
1764). Johnson pronounced it a poem to which it would not be easy to
find anything equal since the death of Pope. The predominant impression
of "The Traveller" is of its naturalness and facility. The serene graces
of its style, and the mellow flow of its verse, take us captive before
we feel the enchantment of its lovely images of various life reflected
from its calm, still depths of philosophic contemplation. A fourth
edition was issued by August, and a ninth appeared in the year when the
poet died. The price paid for it by Newbery was, apparently, twenty
guineas.
It was in the spring of 1766, fifteen months after it had been acquired
by Newbery, that "The Vicar of Wakefield" was published. No book upon
record has obtained a wider popularity, and none is more likely to
endure. It is our first pure example of the simple, domestic novel. As a
refuge from the compiling of books was this book undertaken. Simple to
baldness are the materials used, but Goldsmith threw into the midst of
them his own nature, his actual experience, the suffering, discipline,
and sweet emotion of his chequered life, and so made them a lesson and a
delight to all men. The book silently forced its way. No noise was made
about it, no trumpets were blown for it, but admiration gathered
steadily around it, and by August a third edition had been reached.
_V.--Poet, Dramatist, and Spendthrift_
Goldsmith had long been a constant frequenter of the theatres, and one
of the most sagacious critics of the actors of his day; and it was
natural that, having succeeded as an essayist, a poet, and a novelist,
he should try his fortune with the drama. In 1767 a comedy was in
Garrick's hands, wherein, following the method of Farquhar, he attempted
by the help of nature, humour, and character, to invoke the spirit of
laughter, happy, unrestrained, and cordial. After long, and not very
friendly, temporising by the great actor, Goldsmith withdrew the play
from Drury Lane and committed it to Colman at Covent Garden; but it was
not till January 29, 1768, that "The Good-Natur'd Man" was acted. It
proved a reasonably fair success. Johnson, who wrote the prologue, went
to see the comedy rehearsed, and showed unwavering kindness to his
friend at this trying time.
While the play was under discussion and preparation, Goldsmith was
engaged in writing for Tom Davies an easy, popular, "History of Rome,"
in the style of his anonymous "Letters from a Nobleman to His Son,"
proceeding with it at leisure in his cottage at Edgeware. The success of
"The Good-Natured Man," though far from equal to its claims of
character, wit, and humour, very sensibly affected its author's ways of
life. It put £500 in his pocket, which he at once proceeded to squander
on fine chambers in the Temple, and new suits of gay clothing followed
in quick succession.
During the next year, 1769, the "Roman History" was published, and the
first month's sale established its success so firmly that Goldsmith
received an offer of £500 for a "History of England," in four volumes,
to be "written and compiled in two years." At the same time he was under
agreement for his "Natural History," or, as it was finally termed, his
"History of Animated Nature."
These years of heavy work were among the happiest of Goldsmith's life,
for he had made the acquaintance of the Misses Horneck, girls of
nineteen and seventeen. The elder, Catherine, or "Little Comedy," was
already engaged; the younger, Mary, who had the loving nickname of the
"Jessamy Bride," exercised over him a strong fascination. Their social
as well as personal charms are uniformly spoken of by all. Mary, who did
not marry till after Goldsmith's death, lived long enough to be admired
by Hazlitt, to whom she talked of the poet with affection unabated by
age, till he "could almost fancy the shade of Goldsmith in the room,
looking round with complacency."
It was during these years of busy bookmaking, too, that the poet was
perfecting his "Deserted Village." On May 26, 1770, it appeared,
published at two shillings. Its success was instant and decisive. By
August 16, a fifth edition had appeared. When Gray heard the poem read,
he exclaimed, "This man is a poet!" The judgment has since been affirmed
by hundreds of thousands of readers, and any adverse appeal is little
likely now to be lodged against it. Within the circle of its claims and
pretensions, a more entirely satisfactory and delightful poem than "The
Deserted Village" was probably never written. It lingers in the memory
where once it has entered; and such is the softening influence on the
heart of the mild, tender, yet clear light which makes its images so
distinct and lovely, that there are few who have not wished to rate it
higher than poetry of yet higher genius. Goldsmith looked into his heart
and wrote.
The poet had now attained social distinction, and we find him passing
from town to country with titled friends, and visiting, in somewhat
failing health, fashionable resorts, such as Bath. His home remained in
the Temple. His worldly affairs continued a source of constant
embarrassment, however, and when, in 1772, he had placed the manuscript
of "She Stoops to Conquer" in the hands of Colman, not only his own
entreaties but the interference of Johnson were used to hasten its
production in order to relieve his anxieties. Colman was convinced the
comedy would be unsuccessful. It was first acted on March 15, 1773, and,
"quite the reverse to everybody's expectation," it was received with the
utmost applause.
At this time Goldsmith was sadly in arrears with work he had promised to
the booksellers; disputes were pending, and his circumstances were
verging on positive distress. The necessity of completing his "Animated
Nature"--for which all the money had been received and spent--hung like
a mill-stone upon him. His advances had been considerable on other works
not yet begun. In what leisure he could get from these tasks he was
working at a "Grecian History" to procure means to meet his daily
liabilities.
It occurred to friends at this time to agitate the question of a pension
for him, on the ground of "distinction in the literary world, and the
prospect of approaching distress," but as he had never been a political
partisan, the application was met by a firm refusal. Out of the worries
of this darkening period, with ill-health adding to his cares, the
genius of the poet flashed forth once more in his personal poem,
"Retaliation." At a club dinner at St. James's coffee-house, the
proposition was made that each member present should write an epitaph on
Goldsmith, and Garrick started with:
Here is Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll,
Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll.
Later, Goldsmith retaliated with epitaphs on his circle of club friends.
His list of discriminating pictures was not complete when he died.
Indeed, the picture of Reynolds breaks off with a half line.
On March 25, 1774, the poet was too ill to attend the club
gathering--how ill, his friends failed to realise. On the morning of
April 4, he died from weakness following fever. "Is your mind at ease?"
asked his doctor. "No, it is not," was the melancholy answer, and his
last recorded words. His debts amounted to not less than two thousand
pounds. "Was ever poet so trusted!" exclaimed Johnson.
His remains were committed to their final resting-place in the burial
ground of the Temple Church, and the staircase of his chambers is said
to have been filled with mourners the reverse of domestic--women without
a home, without domesticity of any kind, with no friend but him they had
come to weep for, outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked city, to whom
he had never forgotten to be kind and charitable.
Johnson spoke his epitaph in an emphatic sentence: "He had raised money,
and squandered it, by every artifice of acquisition and folly of
expense; but let not his frailties be remembered--he was a very great
man."
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