Chapter LXI: Book III: , chap, i, p. 326, line 19: for “Frank”, Thackeray by an (16)

“It having been observed that there was little hospitality in
London—Johnson: ‘Nay, sir, any man who has a name, or who has the
power of pleasing, will be very generally invited in London. The
man, Sterne, I have been told, has had engagements for three
months.’ Goldsmith: ‘And a very dull fellow.’ Johnson: ‘Why, no,
sir.’ ”—BOSWELL’S _Life of Johnson_.

“Her [Miss Monckton’s] vivacity enchanted the sage, and they used to
talk together with all imaginable ease. A singular instance happened
one evening, when she insisted that some of Sterne’s writings were
very pathetic. Johnson bluntly denied it. ‘I am sure,’ said she,
‘they have affected me.’ ‘Why,’ said Johnson, smiling, and rolling
himself about—‘that is, because, dearest, you’re a dunce.’ When she
some time afterwards mentioned this to him, he said with equal truth
and politeness, ‘Madam, if I had thought so, I certainly should not
have said it.’ ”—BOSWELL’s _Life of Johnson_.

165 A passage or two from Sterne’s _Sermons_ may not be without interest
here. Is not the following, levelled against the cruelties of the
Church of Rome, stamped with the autograph of the author of the
_Sentimental Journey_?—

“To be convinced of this, go with me for a moment into the prisons
of the Inquisition—behold _religion_ with mercy and justice chained
down under her feet,—there, sitting ghastly upon a black tribunal,
propped up with racks, and instruments of torment.—Hark!—what a
piteous groan!—See the melancholy wretch who uttered it, just
brought forth to undergo the anguish of a mock-trial, and endure the
utmost pain that a studied system of _religious cruelty_ has been
able to invent. Behold this helpless victim delivered up to his
tormentors. _His body so wasted with sorrow and long confinement,
you’ll see every nerve and muscle as it suffers._ Observe the last
movement of that horrid engine.—What convulsions it has thrown him
into! Consider the nature of the posture in which he now lies
stretched.—What exquisite torture he endures by it.—’Tis all nature
can bear.—Good GOD! see how it keeps his weary soul hanging upon his
trembling lips, willing to take its leave, but not suffered to
depart. Behold the unhappy wretch led back to his cell,—dragg’d out
of it again to meet the flames—and the insults in his last agonies,
which this principle—this principle, that there can be religion
without morality—has prepared for him.”—_Sermon 27th_.

The next extract is preached on a text to be found in Judges xix,
ver. 1, 2, 3, concerning a “certain Levite”:—

“Such a one the Levite wanted to share his solitude and fill up that
uncomfortable blank in the heart in such a situation; for,
notwithstanding all we meet with in books, in many of which, no
doubt, there are a good many handsome things said upon the secrets
of retirement, &c.... yet still, ‘_it is not good for man to be
alone_’: nor can all which the cold-hearted pedant stuns our ears
with upon the subject, ever give one answer of satisfaction to the
mind; in the midst of the loudest vauntings of philosophy, nature
will have her yearnings for society and friendship;—a good heart
wants some object to be kind to—and the best parts of our blood, and
the purest of our spirits, suffer most under the destitution.

“Let the torpid monk seek Heaven comfortless and alone. God speed
him! For my own part, I fear I should never so find the way; _let me
be wise and religious, but let me be_ MAN; wherever Thy Providence
places me, or whatever be the road I take to Thee, give me some
companion in my journey, be it only to remark to, ‘How our shadows
lengthen as our sun goes down’;—to whom I may say, ‘How fresh is the
face of Nature! how sweet the flowers of the field! how delicious
are these fruits!’ ”—_Sermon 18th._

The first of these passages gives us another drawing of the famous
“Captive”. The second shows that the same reflection was suggested
to the Rev. Laurence, by a text in Judges, as by the
_fille-de-chambre_.

Sterne’s _Sermons_ were published as those of “Mr. Yorick”.

166 “I am glad that you are in love—’twill cure you at least of the
spleen, which has a bad effect on both man and woman—I myself must
even have some Dulcinea in my head; it harmonizes the soul; and in
these cases I first endeavour to make the lady believe so, or
rather, I begin first to make myself believe that I am in love—but I
carry on my affairs quite in the French way, sentimentally—_l’amour_
(say they) _n’est rien sans sentiment_. Now, notwithstanding they
make such a pother about the _word_, they have no precise idea
annexed to it. And so much for that same subject called
love.”—STERNE’S _Letters_, May 23rd, 1765.

“PS.—My _Sentimental Journey_ will please Mrs. J—— and my Lydia [his
daughter, afterwards Mrs. Medalle]—I can answer for those two. It is
a subject which works well, and suits the frame of mind I have been
in for some time past. I told you my design in it was to teach us to
love the world and our fellow creatures better than we do—so it runs
most upon those gentler passions and affections which aid so much to
it.”—_Letters_ [1767].

167 TO MRS. H——.

“Coxwould, Nov. 15th, 1767.

“Now be a good, dear woman, my H——, and execute those commissions
well, and when I see you I will give you a kiss—there’s for you! But
I have something else for you which I am fabricating at a great
rate, and that is my _Sentimental Journey_, which shall make you cry
as much as it has affected me, or I will give up the business of
sentimental writing ...

“I am yours, &c. &c.,

“T. SHANDY.”

TO THE EARL OF ——.

“Coxwould, Nov. 28th, 1767.

“MY LORD—’Tis with the greatest pleasure I take my pen to thank your
lordship for your letter of inquiry about Yorick—he was worn out,
both his spirits and body, with the _Sentimental Journey_; ’tis
true, then, an author must feel himself, or his reader will not—but
I have torn my whole frame into pieces by my feelings—I believe the
brain stands as much in need of recruiting as the body; therefore I
shall set out for town the twentieth of next month, after having
recruited myself a week at York. I might indeed solace myself with
my wife (who is come from France), but, in fact, I have long been a
sentimental being, whatever your lordship may think to the
contrary.”

168 “It is known that Sterne died in hired lodgings, and I have been
told that his attendants robbed him even of his gold sleeve-buttons
while he was expiring.”—DR. FERRIAR.

“He died at No. 41 (now a cheesemonger’s) on the west side of Old
Bond Street.—_Handbook of London._”

169 “In February, 1768, Laurence Sterne, his frame exhausted by long
debilitating illness, expired at his lodgings in Bond Street,
London. There was something in the manner of his death singularly
resembling the particulars detailed by Mrs. Quickly, as attending
that of Falstaff, the compeer of Yorick for infinite jest, however
unlike in other particulars. As he lay on his bed totally exhausted,
he complained that his feet were cold, and requested the female
attendant to chafe them. She did so, and it seemed to relieve him.
He complained that the cold came up higher; and whilst the assistant
was in the act of chafing his ankles and legs, he expired without a
groan. It was also remarkable that his death took place much in the
manner which he himself had wished; and that the last offices were
rendered him, not in his own house, or by the hand of kindred
affection, but in an inn, and by strangers.

“We are well acquainted with Sterne’s features and personal
appearance, to which he himself frequently alludes. He was tall and
thin, with a hectic and consumptive appearance.”—SIR WALTER SCOTT.

170 “With regard to Sterne, and the charge of licentiousness which
presses so seriously upon his character as a writer, I would remark
that there is a sort of knowingness, the wit of which depends,
firstly, on the modesty it gives pain to; or, secondly, on the
innocence and innocent ignorance over which it triumphs; or thirdly,
on a certain oscillation in the individual’s own mind between the
remaining good and the encroaching evil of his nature—a sort of
dallying with the devil—a fluxionary art of combining courage and
cowardice, as when a man snuffs a candle with his fingers for the
first time, or better still, perhaps, like that trembling daring
with which a child touches a hot tea-urn, because it has been
forbidden; so that the mind has its own white and black angel; the
same or similar amusement as may be supposed to take place between
an old debauchee and a prude—the feeling resentment, on the one
hand, from a prudential anxiety to preserve appearances and have a
character; and, on the other, an inward sympathy with the enemy. We
have only to suppose society innocent, and then nine-tenths of this
sort of wit would be like a stone that falls in snow, making no
sound, because exciting no resistance; the remainder rests on its
being an offence against the good manners of human nature itself.

“This source, unworthy as it is, may doubtless be combined with wit,
drollery, fancy, and even humour; and we have only to regret the
misalliance; but that the latter are quite distinct from the former,
may be made evident by abstracting in our imagination the morality
of the characters of Mr. Shandy, my Uncle Toby, and Trim, which are
all antagonists to this spurious sort of wit, from the rest of
_Tristram Shandy_, and by supposing, instead of them, the presence
of two or three callous debauchees. The result will be pure disgust.
Sterne cannot be too severely censured for thus using the best
dispositions of our nature as the panders and condiments for the
basest.”—COLERIDGE, _Literary Remains_, vol. i, pp. 141, 142.

171 “He was a friend to virtue, and in his most playful pages never
forgets what is due to it. A gentleness, delicacy, and purity of
feeling distinguishes whatever he wrote, and bears a correspondence
to the generosity of a disposition which knew no bounds but his last
guinea....

“The admirable ease and grace of the narrative, as well as the
pleasing truth with which the principal characters are designed,
make the _Vicar of Wakefield_ one of the most delicious morsels of
fictitious composition on which the human mind was ever employed.

“... We read the _Vicar of Wakefield_ in youth and in age—we return
to it again and again, and bless the memory of an author who
contrives so well to reconcile us to human nature.”—SIR WALTER
SCOTT.

172 “Now Herder came,” says Goethe in his Autobiography, relating his
first acquaintance with Goldsmith’s masterpiece, “and together with
his great knowledge brought many other aids, and the later
publications besides. Among these he announced to us the _Vicar of
Wakefield_ as an excellent work, with the German translation of
which he would make us acquainted by reading it aloud to us
himself....

“A Protestant country clergyman is perhaps the most beautiful
subject for a modern idyl; he appears like Melchizedeck, as priest
and king in one person. To the most innocent situation which can be
imagined on earth, to that of a husbandman, he is, for the most
part, united by similarity of occupation as well as by equality in
family relationships; he is a father, a master of a family, an
agriculturist, and thus perfectly a member of the community. On this
pure, beautiful, earthly foundation rests his higher calling; to him
is it given to guide men through life, to take care of their
spiritual education, to bless them at all the leading epochs of
their existence, to instruct, to strengthen, to console them, and if
consolation is not sufficient for the present, to call up and
guarantee the hope of a happier future. Imagine such a man with pure
human sentiments, strong enough not to deviate from them under any
circumstances, and by this already elevated above the multitude of
whom one cannot expect purity and firmness; give him the learning
necessary for his office, as well as a cheerful, equable activity,
which is even passionate, as it neglects no moment to do good—and
you will have him well endowed. But at the same time add the
necessary limitation, so that he must not only pause in a small
circle, but may also, perchance, pass over to a smaller; grant him
good nature, placability, resolution, and everything else
praiseworthy that springs from a decided character, and over all
this a cheerful spirit of compliance, and a smiling toleration of
his own failings and those of others,—then you will have put
together pretty well the image of our excellent Wakefield.

“The delineation of this character on his course of life through
joys and sorrows, the ever-increasing interest of the story, by the
combination of the entirely natural with the strange and the
singular, make this novel one of the best which has ever been
written; besides this, it has the great advantage that it is quite
moral, nay, in a pure sense, Christian—represents the reward of a
goodwill and perseverance in the right, strengthens an unconditional
confidence in God, and attests the final triumph of good over evil;
and all this without a trace of cant or pedantry. The author was
preserved from both of these by an elocution of mind that shows
itself throughout in the form of irony, by which this little work
must appear to us as wise as it is amiable. The author, Dr.
Goldsmith, has, without question, a great insight into the moral
world, into its strength and its infirmities; but at the same time
he can thankfully acknowledge that he is an Englishman, and reckon
highly the advantages which his country and his nation afford him.
The family, with the delineation of which he occupies himself,
stands upon one of the last steps of citizen comfort, and yet comes
in contact with the highest; its narrow circle, which becomes still
more contracted, touches upon the great world through the natural
and civil course of things; this little skiff floats on the agitated
waves of English life, and in weal or woe it has to expect injury or
help from the vast fleet which sails around it.

“I may suppose that my readers know this work, and have it in
memory; whoever hears it named for the first time here, as well as
he who is induced to read it again, will thank me.”—GOETHE, _Truth
and Poetry; from my own Life_ (English translation, vol. i, pp.
378-9).

“He seems from infancy to have been compounded of two natures, one
bright, the other blundering; or to have had fairy gifts laid in his
cradle by the ‘good people’ who haunted his birthplace, the old
goblin mansion, on the banks of the Inny.

“He carries with him the wayward elfin spirit, if we may so term it,
throughout his career. His fairy gifts are of no avail at school,
academy, or college: they unfit him for close study and practical
science, and render him heedless of everything that does not address
itself to his poetical imagination, and genial and festive feelings;
they dispose him to break away from restraint, to stroll about
hedges, green lanes, and haunted streams, to revel with jovial
companions, or to rove the country like a gipsy in quest of odd
adventures....

“Though his circumstances often compelled him to associate with the
poor, they never could betray him into companionship with the
depraved. His relish for humour, and for the study of character, as
we have before observed, brought him often into convivial company of
a vulgar kind; but he discriminated between their vulgarity and
their amusing qualities, or rather wrought from the whole store
familiar features of life which form the staple of his most popular
writings.”—WASHINGTON IRVING.

173 “The family of Goldsmith, Goldsmyth, or, as it was occasionally
written, Gouldsmith, is of considerable standing in Ireland, and
seems always to have held a respectable station in society. Its
origin is English, supposed to be derived from that which was long
settled at Crayford in Kent.”—PRIOR’S _Life of Goldsmith_.

Oliver’s father, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather were
clergymen; and two of them married clergymen’s daughters.

174 At church with meek and unaffected grace,
His looks adorn’d the venerable place;
Truth from his lips prevail’d with double sway,
And fools who came to scoff remain’d to pray.
The service past, around the pious man,
With steady zeal each honest rustic ran;
E’en children follow’d with endearing wile,
And pluck’d his gown to share the good man’s smile.
His ready smile a parent’s warmth exprest,
Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distrest;
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven.
As some tall cliff that lifts his awful form,
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.

_The Deserted Village._

175 “In May this year (1768), he lost his brother, the Rev. Henry
Goldsmith, for whom he had been unable to obtain preferment in the
Church....

“....To the curacy of Kilkenny West, the moderate stipend of which,
forty pounds a year, is sufficiently celebrated by his brother’s
lines. It has been stated that Mr. Goldsmith added a school, which,
after having been held at more than one place in the vicinity, was
finally fixed at Lissoy. Here his talents and industry gave it
celebrity, and under his care the sons of many of the neighbouring
gentry received their education. A fever breaking out among the boys
about 1765, they dispersed for a time, but reassembling at Athlone,
he continued his scholastic labours there until the time of his
death, which happened, like that of his brother, about the
forty-fifth year of his age. He was a man of an excellent heart and
an amiable disposition.”—PRIOR’S _Goldsmith_.

Where’er I roam, whatever realms to see,
My heart, untravell’d, fondly turns to thee:
Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.

_The Traveller_.

176 “When Goldsmith died, half the unpaid bill he owed to Mr. William
Filby (amounting in all to 79_l_.) was for clothes supplied to this
nephew Hodson.”—FORSTER’S _Goldsmith_, p. 520.

As this nephew Hodson ended his days (see the same page) “a
prosperous Irish gentleman”, it is not unreasonable to wish that he
had cleared off Mr. Filby’s bill.

177 “Poor fellow! He hardly knew an ass from a mule, nor a turkey from a
goose, but when he saw it on the table.”—CUMBERLAND’S _Memoirs_.

178 “These youthful follies, like the fermentation of liquors, often
disturb the mind only in order to its future refinement: a life
spent in phlegmatic apathy resembles those liquors which never
ferment and are consequently always muddy.”—GOLDSMITH, _Memoir of
Voltaire_.

“He (Johnson) said Goldsmith was a plant that flowered late. There
appeared nothing remarkable about him when he was young.”—BOSWELL.

179 “An ‘inspired idiot’, Goldsmith, hangs strangely about him [Johnson]
... Yet, on the whole, there is no evil in the ‘gooseberry-fool’,
but rather much good; of a finer, if of a weaker sort than
Johnson’s; and all the more genuine that he himself could never
become _conscious_ of it, though unhappily never cease attempting to
become so: the author of the genuine _Vicar of Wakefield_, nill he
will he, must needs fly towards such a mass of genuine
manhood.”—CARLYLE’S _Essays_ (2nd ed.), vol. iv, p. 91.

180 “At present, the few poets of England no longer depend on the great
for subsistence; they have now no other patrons but the public, and
the public, collectively considered, is a good and a generous
master. It is indeed too frequently mistaken as to the merits of
every candidate for favour; but to make amends, it is never mistaken
long. A performance indeed may be forced for a time into reputation,
but, destitute of real merit, it soon sinks; time, the touchstone of
what is truly valuable, will soon discover the fraud, and an author
should never arrogate to himself any share of success till his works
have been read at least ten years with satisfaction.

“A man of letters at present, whose works are valuable, is perfectly
sensible of their value. Every polite member of the community, by
buying what he writes, contributes to reward him. The ridicule,
therefore, of living in a garret might have been wit in the last
age, but continues such no longer, because no longer true. A writer
of real merit now may easily be rich, if his heart be set only on
fortune: and for those who have no merit, it is but fit that such
should remain in merited obscurity.”—GOLDSMITH, _Citizen of the
World_, Let. 84.

181 Goldsmith attacked Sterne, obviously enough, censuring his
indecency, and slighting his wit, and ridiculing his manner, in the
53rd letter in the _Citizen of the World_.

“As in common conversation,” says he, “the best way to make the
audience laugh is by first laughing yourself; so in writing, the
properest manner is to show an attempt at humour, which will pass
upon most for humour in reality. To effect this, readers must be
treated with the most perfect familiarity; in one page the author is
to make them a low bow, and in the next to pull them by the nose; he
must talk in riddles, and then send them to bed in order to dream
for the solution,” &c.

Sterne’s humorous _mot_ on the subject of the gravest part of the
charges, then, as now, made against him, may perhaps be quoted here,
from the excellent, the respectable Sir Walter Scott. “Soon after
_Tristram_ had appeared, Sterne asked a Yorkshire lady of fortune
and condition, whether she had read his book, ‘I have not, Mr.
Sterne,’ was the answer; ‘and to be plain with you, I am informed it
is not proper for female perusal.’ ‘My dear good lady,’ replied the
author, ‘do not be gulled by such stories; the book is like your
young heir there’ (pointing to a child of three years old, who was
rolling on the carpet in his white tunics): ‘he shows at times a
good deal that is usually concealed, but it is all in perfect
innocence.’ ”

182 “Goldsmith told us that he was now busy in writing a Natural
History; and that he might have full leisure for it, he had taken
lodgings at a farmer’s house, near to the six-mile stone in the
Edgeware Road, and had carried down his books in two returned
post-chaises. He said he believed the farmer’s family thought him an
odd character, similar to that in which the _Spectator_ appeared to
his landlady and her children; he was _The Gentleman_. Mr. Mickle,
the translator of the _Lusiad_, and I, went to visit him at this
place a few days afterwards. He was not at home; but having a
curiosity to see his apartment, we went in, and found curious scraps
of descriptions of animals scrawled upon the wall with a blacklead
pencil.”—BOSWELL.

183 “When Goldsmith was dying, Dr. Turton said to him, ‘Your pulse is in
greater disorder than it should be, from the degree of fever which
you have; is your mind at ease?’ Goldsmith answered it was not.”—DR.
JOHNSON (_in Boswell_).

“Chambers, you find, is gone far, and poor Goldsmith is gone much
farther. He died of a fever, exasperated, as I believe, by the fear
of distress. He had raised money and squandered it, by every
artifice of acquisition and folly of expense. But let not his
failings be remembered; he was a very great man.”—DR. JOHNSON to
Boswell, July 5th, 1774.

184 “When Burke was told [of Goldsmith’s death] he burst into tears.
Reynolds was in his painting-room when the messenger went to him;
but at once he laid his pencil aside, which in times of great family
distress he had not been known to do, left his painting-room, and
did not re-enter it that day....

“The staircase of Brick Court 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. And he had domestic
mourners, too. His coffin was reopened at the request of Miss
Horneck and her sister (such was the regard he was known to have for
them!) that a lock might be cut from his hair. It was in Mrs. Gwyn’s
possession when she died, after nearly seventy years.”—FORSTER’S
_Goldsmith_.

185 “Goldsmith’s incessant desire of being conspicuous in company was
the occasion of his sometimes appearing to such disadvantage, as one
should hardly have supposed possible in a man of his genius. When
his literary reputation had risen deservedly high, and his society
was much courted, he became very jealous of the extraordinary
attention which was everywhere paid to Johnson. One evening, in a
circle of wits, he found fault with me for talking of Johnson as
entitled to the honour of unquestionable superiority. ‘Sir,’ said
he, ‘you are for making a monarchy of what should be a republic.’

“He was still more mortified, when, talking in a company with fluent
vivacity, and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all
present, a German who sat next him, and perceived Johnson rolling
himself as if about to speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, ‘Stay,
stay—Toctor Shonson is going to zay zomething.’ This was no doubt
very provoking, especially to one so irritable as Goldsmith, who
frequently mentioned it with strong expressions of indignation.

“It may also be observed that Goldsmith was sometimes content to be
treated with an easy familiarity, but upon occasions would be
consequential and important. An instance of this occurred in a small
particular. Johnson had a way of contracting the names of his
friends, as Beauclerk, Beau; Boswell, Bozzy.... I remember one day,
when Tom Davies was telling that Dr. Johnson said—‘We are all in
labour for a name to _Goldy’s_ play,’ Goldsmith seemed displeased
that such a liberty should be taken with his name, and said, ‘I have
often desired him not to call me _Goldy_.’ ”

This is one of several of Boswell’s depreciatory mentions of
Goldsmith—which may well irritate biographers and admirers—and also
those who take that more kindly and more profound view of Boswell’s
own character, which was opened up by Mr. Carlyle’s famous article
on his book. No wonder that Mr. Irving calls Boswell an “incarnation
of toadyism”. And the worst of it is, that Johnson himself has
suffered from this habit of the Laird of Auchenleck’s. People are
apt to forget under what Boswellian stimulus the great Doctor
uttered many hasty things:—things no more indicative of the nature
of the depths of his character than the phosphoric gleaming of the
sea, when struck at night, is indicative of radical corruption of
nature! In truth, it is clear enough on the whole that both Johnson
and Goldsmith _appreciated_ each other, and that they mutually knew
it. They were, as it were, tripped up and flung against each other,
occasionally, by the blundering and silly gambolling of people in
company.

Something must be allowed for Boswell’s “rivalry for Johnson’s good
graces” with Oliver (as Sir Walter Scott has remarked), for Oliver
was intimate with the Doctor before his biographer was,—and as we
all remember, marched off with him to “take tea with Mrs. Williams”
before Boswell had advanced to that honourable degree of intimacy.
But, in truth, Boswell—though he perhaps showed more talent in his
delineation of the Doctor than is generally ascribed to him—had not
faculty to take a fair view of _two_ great men at a time. Besides,
as Mr. Forster justly remarks, “he was impatient of Goldsmith from
the first hour of their acquaintance.”—_Life and Adventures_, p.
292.

186 The above portraits are from contemporary prints of this princess,
before her marriage, and in her old age.

187 Here [below in the text] are the figures, as drawn by young Gilray,
of Lord North, Mr. Fox, Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Burke.