Chapter II: Introduction (1)

Two of the earlier, and, in some respects, more important _Memoirs_
of Oliver Goldsmith open with a quotation from one of his minor works, in
which he refers to the generally uneventful life of the scholar. His own
chequered career was a notable exception to this rule. He was born on the
10th of November, 1728, at Pallas, a village in the county of Longford in
Ireland, his father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, being a clergyman of the
Established Church. Oliver was the fifth of a family of five sons and
three daughters. In 1730, his father, who had been assisting the rector of
the neighbouring parish of Kilkenny West, succeeded to that living, and
moved to Lissoy, a hamlet in Westmeath, lying a little to the right of the
road from Ballymahon to Athlone. Educated first by a humble relative named
Elizabeth Delap, the boy passed subsequently to the care of Thomas Byrne,
the village schoolmaster, an old soldier who had fought Queen Anne’s
battles in Spain, and had retained from those experiences a wandering and
unsettled spirit, which he is thought to have communicated to one at least
of his pupils. After an attack of confluent small-pox, which scarred him
for life, Oliver was transferred from the care of this not-uncongenial
preceptor to a school at Elphin. From Elphin he passed to Athlone; from
Athlone to Edgeworthstown, where he remained until he was thirteen or
fourteen years of age. The accounts of these early days are contradictory.
By his schoolfellows he seems to have been regarded as stupid and heavy,—‘little
better than a fool’; but they

admitted that he was remarkably active and athletic, and that he was an
adept in all boyish sports. At home, notwithstanding a variable
disposition, and occasional fits of depression, he showed to greater
advantage. He scribbled verses early; and sometimes startled those about
him by unexpected ‘swallow-flights’ of repartee. One of these, an
oft-quoted retort to a musical friend who had likened his awkward antics
in a hornpipe to the dancing of Aesop,—

Heralds! proclaim aloud! all saying,

See _Aesop_ dancing, and his _monkey_ playing,—

reads more like a happily-adapted recollection than the actual impromptu
of a boy of nine. But another, in which, after a painful silence, he
replied to the brutal enquiry of a ne’er-do-well relative as to when he
meant to grow handsome, by saying that he would do so when the speaker
grew good,—is characteristic of the easily-wounded spirit and
‘exquisite sensibility of contempt’ with which he was to enter upon the
battle of life.

In June, 1744, after anticipating in his own person, the plot of his later
play of _She Stoops to Conquer_ by mistaking the house of a
gentleman at Ardagh for an inn, he was sent to Trinity College, Dublin.
The special dress and semi-menial footing of a sizar or poor scholar—for
his father, impoverished by the imprudent portioning of his eldest
daughter, could not afford to make him a pensioner—were scarcely
calculated to modify his personal peculiarities. Added to these, his tutor
elect, Dr. Theaker Wilder, was a violent and vindictive man, with whom his
ungainly and unhopeful pupil found little favour. Wilder had a passion for
mathematics which was not shared by Goldsmith, who, indeed, spoke
contemptuously enough of that science in after life. He could, however, he
told Malone, ‘turn an Ode of Horace into English better than any of them.’
But his academic career was not a success.

PANE OF GLASS WITH GOLDSMITH’S AUTOGRAPH (Trinity College, Dublin)

In May, 1747, the year in which his father died,—an event that
further contracted his already slender means,—he became involved in
a college riot, and was publicly admonished. From this disgrace he
recovered to some extent in the following month by obtaining a trifling
money exhibition, a triumph which he unluckily celebrated by a party at
his rooms. Into these festivities, the heinousness of which was aggravated
by the fact that they included guests of both sexes, the exasperated
Wilder made irruption, and summarily terminated the proceedings by
knocking down the host. The disgrace was too much for the poor lad. He
forthwith sold his books and belongings, and ran away, vaguely bound for
America. But after considerable privations, including the achievement of a
destitution so complete that a handful of grey peas, given him by a girl
at a wake, seemed a banquet, he turned his steps homeward, and, a
reconciliation having been patched up with his tutor, he was received once
more at college. In February, 1749, he took his degree, a low one, as
B.A., and quitted the university, leaving behind him, for relics of that
time, a scratched signature upon a window-pane, a _folio_ Scapula
scored liberally with ‘promises to pay,’ and a reputation for much
loitering at the college gates in the study of passing humanity. Another
habit which his associates recalled was his writing of ballads when in
want of funds. These he would sell at five shillings apiece; and would
afterwards steal out in the twilight to hear them sung to the
indiscriminate but applauding audience of the Dublin streets.

What was to be done with a genius so unstable, so erratic? Nothing,
apparently, but to let him qualify for orders, and for this he is too
young. Thereupon ensues a sort of ‘Martin’s summer’ in his changing life,—a
disengaged, delightful time when ‘Master Noll’ wanders
irresponsibly from house to house, fishing and flute-playing, or, of
winter evenings, taking the chair at the village inn. When at last the
moment came for his presentation to the Bishop of Elphin, that prelate,
sad to say, rejected him, perhaps because of his college reputation,
perhaps because of actual incompetence, perhaps even, as tradition
affirms, because he had the bad taste to appear before his examiner in
flaming scarlet breeches. After this rebuff, tutoring was next tried. But
he had no sooner saved some thirty pounds by teaching, than he threw up
his engagement, bought a horse, and started once more for America, by way
of Cork. In six weeks he had returned penniless, having substituted for
his roadster a sorry jade, to which he gave the contemptuous name of
Fiddleback. He had also the simplicity to wonder, on this occasion, that
his mother was not rejoiced to see him again. His next ambition was to be
a lawyer; and, to this end, a kindly Uncle Contarine equipped him with
fifty pounds for preliminary studies. But on his way to London he was
decoyed into gambling, lost every farthing, and came home once more in
bitter self-abasement. Having now essayed both divinity and law, his next
attempt was physic; and, in 1752, fitted out afresh by his long-suffering
uncle, he started for, and succeeded in reaching, Edinburgh. Here more
memories survive of his social qualities than of his studies; and two
years later he left the Scottish capital for Leyden, rather, it may be
conjectured, from a restless desire to see the world than really to
exchange the lectures of Monro for the lectures of Albinus. At Newcastle
(according to his own account) he had the good fortune to be locked up as
a Jacobite, and thus escaped drowning, as the ship by which he was to have
sailed to Bordeaux sank at the mouth of the Garonne. Shortly afterwards he
arrived in Leyden. Gaubius and other Dutch professors figure

sonorously in his future works; but whether he had much experimental
knowledge of their instructions may be doubted. What seems undeniable is,
that the old seduction of play stripped him of every shilling; so that,
like Holberg before him, he set out deliberately to make the tour of
Europe on foot. _Haud inexpertus loquor,_ he wrote in after days,
when praising this mode of locomotion. He first visited Flanders. Thence
he passed to France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, supporting himself
mainly by his flute, and by occasional disputations at convents or
universities. ‘Sir,’ said Boswell to Johnson, ‘he _disputed_ his
passage through Europe.’ When on the 1st February, 1756, he landed at
Dover, it was with empty pockets. But he had sent home to his brother in
Ireland his first rough sketch for the poem of _The Traveller_.

He was now seven-and-twenty. He had seen and suffered much, but he was to
have further trials before drifting definitely into literature. Between
Dover and London, it has been surmised, he made a tentative appearance as
a strolling player. His next ascertained part was that of an apothecary’s
assistant on Fish Street Hill. From this, with the opportune aid of an
Edinburgh friend, he proceeded—to use an eighteenth-century phrase—a
poor physician in the Bankside, Southwark, where least of all, perhaps,
was London’s fabled pavement to be found. So little of it, in fact, fell
to Goldsmith’s share, that we speedily find him reduced to the rank of
reader and corrector of the press to Samuel Richardson, printer, of
Salisbury Court, author of _Clarissa_. Later still he is acting
as help or substitute in Dr. Milner’s ‘classical academy’ at Peckham.
Here, at last, chance seemed to open to him the prospect of a literary
life. He had already, says report, submitted a manuscript tragedy to
Richardson’s judgement; and something he said at Dr. Milner’s table
attracted the attention of an occasional
visitor there, the bookseller Griffiths, who was also proprietor of the
_Monthly Review._ He invited Dr. Milner’s usher to try his hand
at criticism; and finally, in April, 1757, Goldsmith was bound over for a
year to that venerable lady whom George Primrose dubs ‘the _antiqua
mater_ of Grub Street’—in other words, he was engaged for bed,
board, and a fixed salary to supply copy-of-all-work to his master’s
magazine.

The arrangement thus concluded was not calculated to endure. After some
five months of labour from nine till two, and often later, it came
suddenly to an end. No clear explanation of the breach is forthcoming, but
mere incompatability of temper would probably supply a sufficient ground
for disagreement. Goldsmith, it is said, complained that the bookseller
and his wife treated him ill, and denied him ordinary comforts; added to
which the lady, a harder taskmistress even than the _ antiqua mater_
above referred to, joined with her husband in ‘editing’ his articles, a
course which, hard though it may seem, is not unprecedented. However this
may be, either in September or October, 1757, he was again upon the world,
existing precariously from hand to mouth. ‘By a very little practice as a
physician, and very little reputation as a poet [a title which, as Prior
suggests, possibly means no more than author], I make a shift to live.’ So
he wrote to his brother-in-law in December. What his literary occupations
were cannot be definitely stated; but, if not prepared before, they
probably included the translation of a remarkable work issued by Griffiths
and others in the ensuing February. This was the _Memoirs of a
Protestant, condemned to the Galleys of France for his Religion,_
being the authentic record of the sufferings of one Jean Marteilhe of
Bergerac, a book of which Michelet has said that it is ‘written as if
between earth and heaven.’ Marteilhe, who died at Cuylenberg

in 1777, was living in Holland in 1758; and it may be that Goldsmith had
seen or heard of him during his own stay in that country. The translation,
however, did not bear Goldsmith’s name, but that of James Willington, one
of his old class-fellows at Trinity College. Nevertheless, Prior says
distinctly that Griffiths (who should have known) declared it to be by
Goldsmith. Moreover, the French original had been catalogued in Griffiths’
magazine in the second month of Goldsmith’s servitude, a circumstance
which colourably supplies the reason for its subsequent rendering into
English.

The publication of Marteilhe’s _Memoirs_ had no influence upon
Goldsmith’s fortunes, for, in a short time, he was again installed at
Peckham, in place of Dr. Milner invalided, waiting hopefully for the
fulfilment of a promise by his old master to procure him a medical
appointment on a foreign station. It is probably that, with a view to
provide the needful funds for this expatriation, he now began to sketch
the little volume afterwards published under the title of _An Enquiry
into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe_, for towards
the middle of the year we find him addressing long letters to his
relatives in Ireland to enlist their aid in soliciting subscriptions for
this book. At length the desired advancement was obtained,—a
nomination as a physician and surgeon to one of the factories on the coast
of Coromandel. But banishment to the East Indies was not to be his
destiny. For some unexplained reason the project came to nothing; and then—like
Roderick Random—he presented himself at Surgeons’ Hall for the more
modest office of a hospital mate. This was on the 21st of December, 1758.
The curt official record states that he was ‘found not qualified.’ What
made matters worse, the necessity for a decent appearance before the
examiners had involved him in new obligations to Griffiths,

out of which arose fresh difficulties. To pay his landlady, whose husband
was arrested for debt, he pawned the suit he had procured by Griffiths’
aid; and he also raised money on some volumes which had been sent him for
review. Thereupon ensued an angry and humiliating correspondence with the
bookseller, as a result of which Griffiths, nevertheless, appears to have
held his hand.

By this time Goldsmith had moved into those historic but now non-existent
lodgings in 12 Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey, which have been
photographed for ever in Irving’s _Tales of a Traveller._ It
was here that the foregoing incidents took place; and it was here also
that, early in 1759, ‘in a wretched dirty room, in which there was but one
chair,’ the Rev. Thomas Percy, afterwards Bishop of Dromore, found him
composing (or more probably correcting the proofs of) _The Enquiry._
‘At least spare invective ’till my book with Mr. Dodsley shall be
publish’d,’—he had written not long before to the irate Griffiths—‘and
then perhaps you may see the bright side of a mind when my professions
shall not appear the dictates of necessity but of choice.’ _The
Enquiry_ came out on the 2nd of April. It had no author’s name, but
it was an open secret that Goldsmith had written it; and to this day it
remains to the critic one of the most interesting of his works. Obviously,
in a duodecimo of some two hundred widely-printed pages, it was impossible
to keep the high-sounding promise of its title; and at best its author’s
knowledge of the subject, notwithstanding his continental wanderings, can
have been but that of an external spectator. Still in an age when critical
utterance was more than ordinarily full-wigged and ponderous, it dared to
be sprightly and epigrammatic. Some of its passages, besides, bear upon
the writer’s personal experiences, and serve to piece the imperfections of
his biography. If it brought him no sudden wealth,

it certainly raised his reputation with the book-selling world. A
connexion already begun with Smollett’s _Critical Review_ was
drawn closer; and the shrewd Sosii of the Row began to see the importance
of securing so vivacious and unconventional a pen. Towards the end of the
year he was writing for Wilkie the collection of periodical essays
entitled _The Bee_; and contributing to the same publisher’s
_Lady’s Magazine_, as well as to _The Busy Body_ of
one Pottinger. In these, more than ever, he was finding his distinctive
touch; and ratifying anew, with every fresh stroke of his pen, his bondage
to authorship as a calling.

He had still, however, to conquer the public. _The Bee_,
although it contains one of his most characteristic essays (‘A City
Night-Piece’), and some of the most popular of his lighter verses (‘The
Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize’), never attained the circulation essential to
healthy existence. It closed with its eighth number in November, 1759. In
the following month two gentlemen called at Green Arbour Court to enlist
the services of its author. One was Smollett, with a new serial, _
The British Magazine_; the other was Johnson’s ‘Jack Whirler,’
bustling Mr. John Newbery from the ‘Bible and Sun’ in St. Paul’s
Churchyard, with a new daily newspaper, _The Public Ledger_.
For Smollett, Goldsmith wrote the ‘Reverie at the Boar’s Head Tavern’ and
the ‘Adventures of a Strolling Player,’ besides a number of minor papers.
For Newbery, by a happy recollection of the _Lettres Persanes_
of Montesquieu, or some of his imitators, he struck almost at once into
that charming epistolary series, brimful of fine observation, kindly
satire, and various fancy, which was ultimately to become the English
classic known as _The Citizen of the World_. He continued to
produce these letters periodically until the August of the following year,
when they were

announced for republication in ‘two volumes of the usual _Spectator_
size.’ In this form they appeared in May, 1762.

But long before this date a change for the better had taken place in
Goldsmith’s life. Henceforth he was sure of work,—mere journey-work
though much of it must have been;—and, had his nature been less
improvident, of freedom from absolute want. The humble lodgings in the Old
Bailey were discarded for new premises at No. 6 Wine Office Court, Fleet
Street; and here, on the 31st of May, 1761, with Percy, came one whose
name was often in the future to be associated with Goldsmith’s, the great
Dictator of London literary society, Samuel Johnson. Boswell, who made
Johnson’s acquaintance later, has not recorded the humours of that supper;
but it marks the beginning of Goldsmith’s friendship with the man who of
all others (Reynolds excepted) loved him most and understood him best.

During the remainder of 1761 he continued busily to ply his pen. Besides
his contributions to _The Ledger_ and _The British
Magazine_, he edited _The Lady’s Magazine_, inserting in
it the _Memoirs of Voltaire_, drawn up some time earlier to
accompany a translation of the _Henriade_ by his crony and
compatriot Edward Purdon. Towards the beginning of 1762 he was hard at
work on several compilations for Newbery, for whom he wrote or edited a
_History of Mecklenburgh_, and a series of monthly volumes of
an abridgement of _Plutarch’s Lives_. In October of the same
year was published the _Life of Richard Nash_, apparently the
outcome of special holiday-visits to the then fashionable watering-place
of Bath, whence its fantastic old Master of the Ceremonies had only very
lately made his final exit. It is a pleasantly gossiping, and not
unedifying little book, which still holds a respectable place among its
author’s minor works. But a recently discovered entry in an old ledger
shows that during the latter half

of 1762 he must have planned, if he had not, indeed, already in part
composed, a far more important effort, _The Vicar of Wakefield_.
For on the 28th of October in this year he sold to one Benjamin Collins,
printer, of Salisbury, for 21 pounds, a third in a work with that title,
further described as ‘2 vols. 12mo.’ How this little circumstance,
discovered by Mr. Charles Welsh when preparing his Life of John Newbery,
is to be brought into agreement with the time-honoured story, related
(with variations) by Boswell and others, to the effect that Johnson
negotiated the sale of the manuscript for Goldsmith when the latter was
arrested for rent by his incensed landlady—has not yet been
satisfactorily suggested. Possibly the solution is a simple one, referable
to some of those intricate arrangements favoured by ‘the Trade’ at a time
when not one but half a score publishers’ names figured in an imprint. At
present, the fact that Collins bought a third share of the book from the
author for twenty guineas, and the statement that Johnson transferred the
entire manuscript to a bookseller for sixty pounds, seem irreconcilable.
That _The Vicar of Wakefield_ was nevertheless written, or was
being written, in 1762, is demonstrable from internal evidence.

About Christmas in the same year Goldsmith moved into lodgings at
Islington, his landlady being one Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming, a friend of
Newbery, to whose generalship this step seems attributable. From the
curious accounts printed by Prior and Forster, it is clear that the
publisher was Mrs. Fleming’s paymaster, punctually deducting his
disbursements from the account current between himself and Goldsmith, an
arrangement which as plainly indicates the foresight of the one as it
implies the improvidence of the other. Of the work which Goldsmith did for
the businesslike and not unkindly little man, there is no very definite
evidence; but various prefaces,
introductions, and the like, belong to this time; and he undoubtedly was
the author of the excellent _ History of England in a Series of
Letters addressed by a Nobleman to his Son_, published anonymously
in June, 1764, and long attributed, for the grace of its style, to
Lyttelton, Chesterfield, Orrery, and other patrician pens. Meanwhile his
range of acquaintance was growing larger. The establishment, at the
beginning of 1764, of the famous association known afterwards as the
‘Literary Club’ brought him into intimate relations with Beauclerk,
Reynolds, Langton, Burke, and others. Hogarth, too, is said to have
visited him at Islington, and to have painted the portrait of Mrs.
Fleming. Later in the same year, incited thereto by the success of
Christopher Smart’s _Hannah_, he wrote the Oratorio of _The
Captivity_, now to be found in most editions of his poems, but never
set to music. Then after the slow growth of months, was issued on the 19th
December the elaboration of that fragmentary sketch which he had sent
years before to his brother Henry from the Continent, the poem entitled
_The Traveller; or, A Prospect of Society_.

In the notes appended to _The Traveller_ in the present volume,
its origin and progress are sufficiently explained. Its success was
immediate and enduring. The beauty of the descriptive passages, the subtle
simplicity of the language, the sweetness and finish of the versification,
found ready admirers,—perhaps all the more because of the contrast
they afforded to the rough and strenuous sounds with which Charles
Churchill had lately filled the public ear. Johnson, who contributed a few
lines at the close, proclaimed _The Traveller_ to be the best
poem since the death of Pope; and it is certainly not easy to find its
equal among the works of contemporary bards. It at once raised Goldsmith
from the condition of a clever newspaper essayist, or—as men like
Sir John
Hawkins would have said—a mere ‘bookseller’s drudge,’ to the
foremost rank among the poets of the day. Another result of its success
was the revival of some of his earlier work, which, however neglected by
the author, had been freely appropriated by the discerning pirate. In
June, 1765, Griffin and Newbery published a little volume of _Essays
by Mr. Goldsmith_, including some of the best of his contributions
to _The Bee, The Busy Body, The Public Ledger_, and _The
British Magazine_, besides ‘The Double Transformation’ and ‘The
Logicians Refuted,’ two pieces of verse in imitation of Prior and Swift,
which have not been traced to an earlier source. To the same year belongs
the first version of a poem which he himself regarded as his best work,
and which still retains something of its former popularity. This was the
ballad of _Edwin and Angelina_, otherwise known as _The
Hermit_. It originated in certain metrical discussions with Percy,
then engaged upon his famous _Reliques of English Poetry_; and
in 1765, Goldsmith, who through his friend Nugent (afterwards Lord Clare)
had made the acquaintance of the Earl of Northumberland, printed it
privately for the amusement of the Countess. In a revised and amended form
it was subsequently given to the world in _The Vicar of Wakefield_.

With the exception of an abortive attempt to resume his practice as a
medical man,—an attempt which seems to have been frustrated by the
preternatural strength of his prescriptions,—the next memorable
thing in Goldsmith’s life is the publication of _The Vicar of
Wakefield_ itself. It made its appearance on the 27th of March,
1766. A second edition followed in May, a third in August. Why, having
been sold (in part) to a Salisbury printer as far back as October, 1762,
it had remained unprinted so long; and why, when published, it was
published by Francis Newbery and not by John Newbery, Goldsmith’s

employer,—are questions at present unsolved. But the charm of this
famous novel is as fresh as when it was first issued. Its inimitable
types, its happy mingling of Christianity and character, its wholesome
benevolence and its practical wisdom, are still unimpaired. We smile at
the inconsistencies of the plot; but we are carried onward in spite of
them, captivated by the grace, the kindliness, the gentle humour of the
story. Yet it is a mistake to suppose that its success was instantaneous.
Pirated it was, of course; but, according to expert investigations, the
authorized edition brought so little gain to its first proprietors that
the fourth issue of 1770 started with a loss. The fifth, published in
April, 1774, was dated 1773; and had apparently been withheld because the
previous edition, which consisted of no more than one thousand copies, was
not exhausted. Five years elapsed before the sixth edition made its tardy
appearance in 1779. These facts show that the writer’s contemporaries were
not his most eager readers. But he has long since appealed to the wider
audience of posterity; and his fame is not confined to his native country,
for he has been translated into most European languages. Dr. Primrose and
his family are now veritable ‘citizens of the world.’

A selection of _Poems for Young Ladies_, in the ‘Moral’
division of which he included his own _Edwin and Angelina_; two
volumes of _Beauties of English Poesy_, disfigured with strange
heedlessness, by a couple of the most objectionable pieces of Prior; a
translation of a French history of philosophy, and other occasional work,
followed the publication of the _Vicar_. But towards the middle
of 1766, he was meditating a new experiment in that line in which
Farquhar, Steele, Southerne, and others of his countrymen had succeeded
before him. A fervent lover of the stage, he detested the vapid and
colourless ‘genteel’
comedy which had gradually gained ground in England; and he determined to
follow up _The Clandestine Marriage_, then recently adapted by
Colman and Garrick from Hogarth’s _Marriage A-la-Mode_, with
another effort of the same class, depending exclusively for its interest
upon humour and character. Early in 1767 it was completed, and submitted
to Garrick for Drury Lane. But Garrick perhaps too politic to traverse the
popular taste, temporized; and eventually after many delays and
disappointments, _The Good Natur’d Man_, as it was called, was
produced at Covent Garden by Colman on the 29th of January, 1768. Its
success was only partial; and in deference to the prevailing craze for the
‘genteel,’ an admirable scene of low humour had to be omitted in the
representation. But the piece, notwithstanding, brought the author 400
pounds, to which the sale of the book, with the condemned passages
restored, added another 100 pounds. Furthermore, Johnson, whose
‘Suspirius’ in _The Rambler_ was, under the name of ‘Croaker,’
one of its most prominent personages, pronounced it to be the best comedy
since Cibber’s _Provok’d Husband_.

During the autumn of 1767, Goldsmith had again been living at Islington.
On this occasion he had a room in Canonbury Tower, Queen Elizabeth’s old
hunting-lodge, and perhaps occupied the very chamber generally used by
John Newbery, whose active life was, in this year, to close. When in
London he had modest housing in the Temple. But the acquisition of 500
pounds for _The Good Natur’d Man_ seemed to warrant a change of
residence, and he accordingly expended four-fifths of that sum for the
lease of three rooms on the second floor of No. 2 Brick Court, which he
straightway proceeded to decorate sumptuously with mirrors, Wilton
carpets, moreen curtains, and Pembroke tables. It was an unfortunate step;
and he would have done well to remember the _Nil_
_te quaesiveris extra_ with which his inflexible monitor, Johnson,
had greeted his apologies for the shortcomings of some earlier lodgings.
One of its natural results was to involve him in a new sequence of
task-work, from which he never afterwards shook himself free. Hence,
following hard upon a _Roman History_ which he had already
engaged to write for Davies of Russell Street, came a more ambitious
project for Griffin, _A History of Animated Nature_; and after
this again, another _History of England_ for Davies. The pay
was not inadequate; for the first he was to have 250 guineas, for the
second 800 guineas, and for the last 500 pounds. But as employment for the
author of a unique novel, an excellent comedy, and a deservedly successful
poem, it was surely—in his own words—‘to cut blocks with a
razor.’

And yet, apart from the anxieties of growing money troubles, his life
could not have been wholly unhappy. There are records of pleasant
occasional junketings—‘shoe-maker’s holidays’ he called them—in
the still countrified suburbs of Hampstead and Edgware; there was the
gathering at the Turk’s Head, with its literary magnates, for his severer
hours; and for his more pliant moments, the genial ‘free-and-easy’ or
shilling whist-club of a less pretentious kind, where the student of mixed
character might shine with something of the old supremacy of George
Conway’s inn at Ballymahon. And there must have been quieter and more
chastened resting-places of memory, when, softening towards the home of
his youth, with a sadness made more poignant by the death of his brother
Henry in May, 1768, he planned and perfected his new poem of _The
Deserted Village_.

In December, 1769, the recent appointment of his friend Reynolds as
President of the Royal Academy brought him the honorary office of
Professor of History to that
institution; and to Reynolds _The Deserted Village_ was
dedicated. It appeared on the 26th of May, 1770, with a success equal, if
not superior, to that of _The Traveller_. It ran through five
editions in the year of its publication; and has ever since retained its
reputation. If, as alleged, contemporary critics ranked it below its
predecessor, the reason advanced by Washington Irving, that the poet had
become his own rival, is doubtless correct; and there is always a
prejudice in favour of the first success. This, however, is not an
obstacle which need disturb the reader now; and he will probably decide
that in grace and tenderness of description _The Deserted Village_
in no wise falls short of _The Traveller_; and that its central
idea, and its sympathy with humanity, give it a higher value as a work of
art.

After _The Deserted Village_ had appeared, Goldsmith made a
short trip to Paris, in company with Mrs. and the two Miss Hornecks, the
elder of whom, christened by the poet with the pretty pet-name of ‘The
Jessamy Bride,’ is supposed to have inspired him with more than friendly
feelings. Upon his return he had to fall again to the old ‘book-building’
in order to recruit his exhausted finances. Since his last poem he had
published a short _Life of Parnell_; and Davies now engaged him
on a _Life of Bolingbroke_, and an abridgement of the _Roman
History_. Thus, with visits to friends, among others to Lord Clare,
for whom he wrote the delightful occasional verses called _The Haunch
of Venison_, the months wore on until, in December, 1770, the
print-shops began to be full of the well-known mezzotint which Marchi had
engraved from his portrait by Sir Joshua.

His chief publications in the next two years were the above-mentioned
_History of England_, 1771; _Threnodia Augustalis_,
a poetical lament-to-order on the death of the Princess Dowager of Wales,
1772; and the abridgement
of the _Roman History_, 1772. But in the former year he had
completed a new comedy, _She Stoops to Conquer; or, The Mistakes of a
Night_, which, after the usual vexatious negotiations, was brought
out by Colman at Covent Garden on Monday, the 15th of March, 1773. The
manager seems to have acted Goldsmith’s own creation of ‘Croaker’ with
regard to this piece, and even to the last moment predicted its failure.
But it was a brilliant success. More skilful in construction than _The
Good Natur’d Man_, more various in its contrasts of character,
richer and stronger in humour and _vis comica_, _She Stoops to
Conquer_ has continued to provide an inexhaustible fund of laughter
to more than three generations of playgoers, and still bids fair to retain
the character generally given to it, of being one of the three most
popular comedies upon the English stage. When published, it was gratefully
inscribed, in one of those admirable dedications of which its author above
all men possessed the secret, to Johnson, who had befriended it from the
first. ‘I do not mean,’ wrote Goldsmith, ‘so much to compliment you as
myself. It may do me some honour to inform the public, that I have lived
many years in intimacy with you. It may serve the interests of mankind
also to inform them, that the greatest wit may be found in a character,
without impairing the most unaffected piety.’

His gains from _She Stoops to Conquer_ were considerable; but
by this time his affairs had reached a stage of complication which nothing
short of a miracle could disentangle; and there is reason for supposing
that his involved circumstances preyed upon his mind. During the few
months of life that remained to him he published nothing, being doubtless
sufficiently occupied by the undertakings to which he was already
committed. The last of his poetical efforts was the poem entitled

_Retaliation_, a group of epitaph-epigrams prompted by some
similar _jeux d’esprit_ directed against himself by Garrick and other
friends, and left incomplete at his death. In March, 1774, the combined
effects of work and worry, added to a local disorder, brought on a nervous
fever, which he unhappily aggravated by the use of a patent medicine
called ‘James’s Powder.’ He had often relied upon this before, but in the
present instance it was unsuited to his complaint. On Monday, the 4th of
April, 1774, he died, in his forty-sixth year, and was buried on the 9th
in the burying-ground of the Temple Church. Two years later a monument,
with a medallion portrait by Nollekens, and a Latin inscription by
Johnson, was erected to him in Westminster Abbey, at the expense of the
Literary Club. But although the inscription contains more than one phrase
of felicitous discrimination, notably the oft-quoted _affectuum potens,
at lenis dominator_, it may be doubted whether the simpler words used
by his rugged old friend in a letter to Langton are not a fitter farewell
to Oliver Goldsmith,—‘Let not his frailties be remembered; he was a
very great man.’

In person Goldsmith was short and strongly built. His complexion was
rather fair, but he was deeply scarred with small-pox; and—if we
may believe his own account—the vicissitudes and privations of his
early life had not tended to diminish his initial disadvantages. ‘You
scarcely can conceive,’ he writes to his brother in 1759, ‘how much eight
years of disappointment, anguish, and study, have worn me down. . . .
Imagine to yourself a pale melancholy visage, with two great wrinkles
between the eye-brows, with an eye disgustingly severe, and a big wig; and
you may have a perfect picture of my present appearance,’ i.e. at thirty
years of age. ‘I can neither laugh nor drink,’ he goes on; ‘have
contracted an hesitating, disagreeable manner of speaking, and a visage
that looks ill-nature itself; in short, I have thought myself into a
settled melancholy, and an utter disgust of all that life brings with it.’
It is obvious that this description is largely coloured by passing
depression. ‘His features,’ says one contemporary, ‘were plain, but not
repulsive,—certainly not so when lighted up by conversation.’
Another witness—the ‘Jessamy Bride’—declares that ‘his
benevolence was unquestionable, and his countenance bore every trace of
it.’ His true likeness would seem to lie midway between the grotesquely
truthful sketch by Bunbury prefixed in 1776 to the _Haunch of Venison_,
and the portrait idealized by personal regard, which Reynolds painted in
1770. In this latter he is shown wearing, in place of his customary wig,
his own scant brown hair, and, on this occasion, masquerades in a furred
robe, and falling collar. But even through the disguise of a studio
‘costume,’ the finely-perceptive genius of Reynolds has managed to suggest
much that is most appealing in his sitter’s nature. Past suffering,
present endurance, the craving to be understood, the mute deprecation of
contempt, are all written legibly in this pathetic picture. It has been
frequently copied, often very ineffectively, for so subtle is the art that
the slightest deviation hopelessly distorts and vulgarizes what Reynolds
has done supremely, once and for ever.

Goldsmith’s character presents but few real complexities. What seems most
to have impressed his contemporaries is the difference, emphasized by the
happily-antithetic epigram of Garrick, between his written style and his
conversation; and collaterally, between his eminence as a literary man and
his personal insignificance. Much of this is easily intelligible. He had
started in life with few temporal or physical advantages, and with a
native susceptibility that intensified his defects. Until
he became a middle-aged man, he led a life of which we do not even now
know all the degradations; and these had left their mark upon his manners.
With the publication of _The Traveller_, he became at once the
associate of some of the best talent and intellect in England,—of
fine gentlemen such as Beauclerk and Langton, of artists such as Reynolds
and Garrick, of talkers such as Johnson and Burke. Morbidly
self-conscious, nervously anxious to succeed, he was at once forced into a
competition for which neither his antecedents nor his qualifications had
prepared him. To this, coupled with the old habit of poverty, must be
attributed his oft-cited passion for fine clothes, which surely arose less
from vanity than from a mistaken attempt to extenuate what he felt to be
his most obvious shortcomings. As a talker especially he was ill-fitted to
shine. He was easily disconcerted by retort, and often discomfited in
argument. To the end of his days he never lost his native brogue; and (as
he himself tells us) he had that most fatal of defects to a narrator, a
slow and hesitating manner. The perspicuity which makes the charm of his
writings deserted him in conversation; and his best things were momentary
flashes. But some of these were undoubtedly very happy. His telling
Johnson that he would make the little fishes talk like whales; his
affirmation of Burke that he wound into a subject like a serpent; and
half-a-dozen other well-remembered examples—afford ample proof of
this. Something of the uneasy jealousy he is said to have exhibited with
regard to certain of his contemporaries may also be connected with the
long probation of obscurity during which he had been a spectator of the
good fortune of others, to whom he must have known himself superior. His
improvidence seems to have been congenital, since it is to be traced ‘even
from his boyish days.’ But though it cannot justly be ascribed to any
reaction from want to sufficiency, it can still less be supposed to have
been diminished by that change. If he was careless of money, it must also
be remembered that he gave much of it away; and fortune lingers little
with those whose ears are always open to a plausible tale of distress. Of
his sensibility and genuine kindheartedness there is no doubt. And it is
well to remember that most of the tales to his disadvantage come, not from
his more distinguished companions, but from such admitted detractors as
Hawkins and Boswell. It could be no mean individuality that acquired the
esteem, and deserved the regret, of Johnson and Reynolds.

In an edition of Goldsmith’s poems, any extended examination of his remaining productions would be out of place. Moreover, the bulk of these is considerably reduced when all that may properly be classed as hack-work has been withdrawn. The histories of Greece, of Rome, and of England; the _Animated Nature_; the lives of Nash, Voltaire, Parnell, and Bolingbroke, are merely compilations, only raised to the highest level in that line because they proceeded from a man whose gift of clear and easy exposition lent a charm to everything he touched. With the work which he did for himself, the case is different. Into _The Citizen of the World_, _The Vicar of Wakefield_, and his two comedies, he put all the best of his knowledge of human nature, his keen sympathy with his kind, his fine common-sense and his genial humour. The same qualities, tempered by a certain grace and tenderness, also enter into the best of his poems. Avoiding the epigram of Pope and the austere couplet of Johnson, he yet borrowed something from each, which he combined with a delicacy and an amenity that he had learned from neither. He himself, in all probability, would have rested his fame on his three chief metrical efforts, _The Traveller_, _The Hermit_, and _The Deserted Village_. But, as is often the case, he is remembered even more favourably by some of those delightful familiar verses, unprinted during his lifetime, which he threw off with no other ambition than the desire to amuse his friends. _Retaliation_, _ The Haunch of Venison_, the _Letter in Prose and Verse to Mrs. Bunbury_, all afford noteworthy exemplification of that playful touch and wayward fancy which constitute the chief attraction of this species of poetry. In his imitations of Swift and Prior, and his variations upon French suggestions, his personal note is scarcely so apparent; but the two Elegies and some of the minor pieces retain a deserved reputation. His ingenious prologues and epilogues also serve to illustrate the range and versatility of his talent. As a rule, the arrangement in the present edition is chronological; but it has not been thought necessary to depart from the practice which gives a time-honoured precedence to _The Traveller_ and _The Deserted Village_. The true sequence of the poems, in their order of publication, is, however, exactly indicated in the table which follows this Introduction.

CHRONOLOGY OF GOLDSMITH’S LIFE AND POEMS.

1728

_November 10._ Born at Pallas, near Ballymahon, in the county of
Longford, Ireland.

1730

Family remove to Lissoy, in the county of Westmeath.

1731

Under Elizabeth Delap.

1734

Under Mr. Thomas Byrne of the village school.

1736–44

At school at Elphin (Mr. Griffin’s), Athlone (Mr. Campbell’s),
Edgeworthstown (Mr. Hughes’s).

1744

_June 11._ Admitted a sizar of Trinity College, Dublin, _‘annum
agens_ 15.’

1747

Death of his father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith.
_May._
Takes part in a college riot.
_June 15._ Obtains a Smythe
exhibition.
Runs away from college.

1749

_February 27._ Takes his degree as Bachelor of Arts.

1751

Rejected for orders by the Bishop of Elphin.
Tutor to Mr. Flinn.

Sets out for America (via Cork), but returns.
Letter to Mrs.
Goldsmith (his mother).

1752

Starts as a law student, but loses his all at play.
Goes to
Edinburgh to become a medical student.

1753

_January 13._ Admitted a member of the ‘Medical Society’ of
Edinburgh.
_May 8._ Letter to his Uncle Contarine.
_September
26._ Letter to Robert Bryanton.
Letter to his Uncle Contarine.

1754

Goes to Leyden. Letter to his Uncle Contarine.

1755

_February._ Leaves Leyden.
Takes degree of Bachelor of
Medicine at Louvain (?).
Travels on foot in France, Germany,
Switzerland, and Italy.
Sketches _The Traveller_.

1756

_February 1._ Returns to Dover. Low comedian; usher (?);
apothecary’s journeyman; poor physician in Bankside, Southwark.

1757

Press corrector to Samuel Richardson, printer and novelist; assistant
at Peckham Academy (Dr. Milner’s).
_April._ Bound over to
Griffiths the bookseller. Quarrels with Griffiths.
_December
27._ Letter to his brother-in-law, Daniel Hodson.

1758

_February._ Publishes _The Memoirs of a Protestant,
condemned to the Galleys of France for his Religion_.
Gives
up literature and returns to Peckham.
_August._ Leaves
Peckham. Letters to Edward Mills, Bryanton, Mrs. Jane Lawder.

Appointed surgeon and physician to a factory on the Coast of
Coromandel.
_November (?)._ Letter to Hodson.
Moves
into 12 Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey.
Coromandel appointment
comes to nothing.
_December 21._ Rejected at Surgeons’ Hall
as ‘not qualified’ for a hospital mate.

1759

_February (?)._ Letter to Henry Goldsmith.
_March._
Visited by Percy at 12 Green Arbour Court.
_April 2._ _Enquiry
into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe_ published.
‘Prologue of Laberius’ (_Enquiry_).
_October 6._
_The Bee_ commenced. ‘On a Beautiful Youth struck blind
with Lightning’ (_Bee_).
_October 13._ ‘The Gift’
(_Bee_).
_October 18._ ‘The Logicians Refuted’ (_Busy
Body_).
_October 20._ ‘A Sonnet’ (_Bee_).

_October 22._ ‘Stanzas on the Taking of Quebec’ (_Busy Body_).

_October 27._ ‘Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize’ (_Bee_).

_November 24._ _The Bee_ closed.

1760

_January 1._ _The British Magazine_ commenced.
_January
12._ _The Public Ledger_ commenced.
_January 24._
First Chinese Letter published (_Citizen of the World_).

_May 2._ ‘Description of an Author’s Bedchamber’ (‘Chinese
Letter’ in _Public Ledger_).
_October 21._ ‘On
seeing Mrs. . . . perform,’ etc. (‘Chinese Letter’ in _Public
Ledger_).
Editing _Lady’s Magazine_. Compiling
Prefaces.
Moves into 6 Wine Office Court, Fleet Street.

1761

_March 4._ ‘On the Death of the Right Hon. . . . (‘Chinese
Letter’ in _Public Ledger_).
_April 4–14._ ‘An
Epigram’; to G. C. and R. L. (‘Chinese Letter in _Public Ledger_).

_May 13._ ‘Translation of a South American Ode.’ (‘Chinese
Letter’ in _Public Ledger_)
_August 14._ Last
Chinese Letter published (_Citizen of the World_).

_Memoirs of M. de Voltaire_ published in _Lady’s
Magazine_.

1762

_February 23._ Pamphlet on Cock Lane Ghost published.
_February
26._ _History of Mecklenburgh_ published.
_May 1._
_Citizen of the World_ published.
_May 1 to Nov. 1._
_Plutarch’s Lives_, vol. i to vii, published.
At Bath
and Tunbridge.
_October 14._ _Life of Richard Nash_
published.
_October 28._ Sells third share of _Vicar of
Wakefield_ to B. Collins, printer, Salisbury.
At Mrs.
Fleming’s at Islington.

1763

_March 31._ Agrees with James Dodsley to write a _
Chronological History of the Lives of Eminent Persons of Great Britain
and Ireland_. (Never done.)

1764

‘The Club,’ afterwards the Literary Club, founded.
Moves into
lodgings on the library staircase of the Temple.
_June 26._
_History of England, in a series of Letters from a Nobleman to
his Son_ published.
_October 31._ Oratorio of _The
Captivity_ sold to James Dodsley.
_December 19._ _The
Traveller_ published.

1765

_June 4._ _Essays by Mr. Goldsmith_ published. ‘The
Double Transformation,’ ‘A New Simile’ (_Essays_).

_Edwin and Angelina_ (_The Hermit_) printed
privately for the amusement of the Countess of Northumberland.

Resumes practice as a physician.

1766

_March 27._ _Vicar of Wakefield_ published. ‘Elegy on
a Mad Dog’; ‘Olivia’s Song’ (_Vicar of Wakefield_).
_May
31._ _Vicar of Wakefield_, 2nd edition.
_June._
Translation of Formey’s _Concise History of Philosophy and
Philosophers_ published.
_August 29._ _Vicar of
Wakefield_, 3rd edition.
_December 15._ _Poems
for Young Ladies_ published.

1766

_December 28._ _English Grammar_ written.

1767

_April._ _Beauties of English Poesy_ published.

_July 19._ Living in Garden Court, Temple.
_July 25._
Letter to the _St. James’s Chronicle_.
_December 22._
Death of John Newbery.

1768

_February 5._ Publishes _The Good Natur’d Man_, a
Comedy, produced at Covent Garden, January 29. ‘Epilogue to _The
Good Natur’d Man_.’
Moves to 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple.

_May._ Death of Henry Goldsmith.
Living at Edgware.

1769

_February 18._ ‘Epilogue to Mrs. Lenox’s _ Sister_.’

_February 29._ Agreement for ‘a new Natural History of Animals’ (_Animated
Nature_).
_May 18._ _Roman History_
published.
_June 13._ Agreement for _History of England_.

_December._ Appointed Professor of History to the Royal Academy.

1770

_January._ Letter to Maurice Goldsmith.
_April 24–May 26._
Portrait by Reynolds exhibited.
_May 26._ _The Deserted
Village_ published.
_July 13._ _Life of Thomas
Parnell_ published.
_July._ On the Continent with the
Hornecks. Letters to Reynolds.
_September 15._ Agreement for
abridgement of _Roman History_.
_December 1._
Marchi’s print from Reynold’s portrait published.
_December 19._
_Life of Bolingbroke_ published.
_Vicar of
Wakefield_, 4th edition.

1771

_Haunch of Venison_ written. (?)
_August 6._
_History of England_ published.
_December 11._
‘Prologue to Cradock’s _ Zobeide_.’

1772

_February 20._ _Threnodia Augustalis_ published.

Watson’s Engraving of _Resignation_ published.
_December._
Abridgement of _Roman History_ published.

1773

_March 26._ Publishes _She Stoops to Conquer; or, The
Mistakes of a Night_, a Comedy, produced at Covent Garden, March
15. ‘Song in _She Stoops to Conquer_,’ ‘Epilogue to _She
Stoops to Conquer_.’

1773

_March 24._ Kenrick’s libel in the _London Packet_.

_March 31._ Letter in the _Daily Advertiser_.
_May
8._ _The Grumbler_ produced.
Projects a _Dictionary
of Arts and Sciences_.

1774

_March 25._ Illness.
_April 4._ Death.
_April 9._
‘Buried 9th April, Oliver Goldsmith, MB, late of Brick-court, Middle
Temple’ (Register of Burials, Temple Church).
_April 19._
_Retaliation_ published.
_April._ _Vicar of
Wakefield_, 5th edition (dated 1773).
_June._ Song
(‘Ah me, when shall I marry me?’) published.
_June 28._
Letters of Administration granted.
_June._ _An History
of the Earth and Animated Nature_ published.
‘Translation
from Addison.’ (_History_, etc., 1774.)

1776

_The Haunch of Venison_ published. ‘Epitaph on Thomas
Parnell,’ and ‘Two Songs from _The Captivity_ (_Haunch
of Venison_).
Monument with medallion by Nollekens erected
in the south transept of Westminster Abbey.

1777

_Poems and Plays_ published. ‘The Clown’s Reply,’ ‘Epitaph
on Edward Purdon’ (_Poems_, etc., 1777).

1779

_Vicar of Wakefield_, 6th edition.

1780

_Poetical and Dramatic Works_, Evans’s edition, published.

‘Epilogue for Lee Lewes’ (_Poetical, etc., Works_, 1780).

1801

_Miscellaneous Works_, Percy’s edition, published.
‘Epilogues (unspoken) to _She Stoops to Conquer_’ (_Misc.
Works_, 1801).

1820

_Miscellaneous Works_, ‘trade’ edition, published. An
Oratorio’ (_The Captivity_). (_Misc. Works_,
1820.)

1837

_Miscellaneous Works_, Prior’s edition, published. ‘Verses
in Reply to an Invitation to Dinner’; ‘Letter in Prose and Verse to
Mrs. Bunbury’ (_Misc. Works_, 1837).
Tablet erected in
the Temple Church.

1854

_Goldsmith’s Works_, Cunningham’s edition, published.
‘Translation of Vida’s _Game of Chess_’ (_Works_,
1854, vol. iv).

1864

_January 5._ J. H. Foley’s statue placed in front of Dublin
University.

VIGNETTE TO ‘THE TRAVELLER’ (Samuel Wale)

DESCRIPTIVE POEMS

THE TRAVELLER

OR

A PROSPECT OF SOCIETY

DEDICATION TO THE REV. HENRY GOLDSMITH

DEAR SIR,
I am sensible that the
friendship between us can acquire no new force from the ceremonies of a
Dedication; and perhaps it demands an excuse thus to prefix your name to
my attempts, which you decline giving with your own. But as a part of this
Poem was formerly written to you from Switzerland, the whole can now, with
propriety, be only inscribed to you. It will also throw a light upon many
parts of it, when the reader understands, that it is addressed to a man,
who, despising Fame and Fortune, has retired early to Happiness and
Obscurity, with an income of forty pounds a year.

I now perceive, my dear brother, the wisdom of your humble choice. You
have entered upon a sacred office, where the harvest is great, and the
labourers are but few; while you have left the field of Ambition, where
the labourers are many, and the harvest not worth carrying away. But of
all kinds of ambition, what from the refinement of the times, from
different systems of criticism, and from the divisions of party, that
which pursues poetical fame is the wildest.

Poetry makes a principal amusement among unpolished nations; but in a
country verging to the extremes of refinement, Painting and Music come in
for a share. As these offer the feeble mind a less laborious
entertainment,

they at first rival Poetry, and at length supplant her; they engross all
that favour once shown to her, and though but younger sisters, seize upon
the elder’s birthright.

Yet, however this art may be neglected by the powerful, it is still in
greater danger from the mistaken efforts of the learned to improve it.
What criticisms have we not heard of late in favour of blank verse, and
Pindaric odes, choruses, anapaests and iambics, alliterative care and
happy negligence! Every absurdity has now a champion to defend it; and as
he is generally much in the wrong, so he has always much to say; for error
is ever talkative.

But there is an enemy to this art still more dangerous, I mean Party.
Party entirely distorts the judgment, and destroys the taste. When the
mind is once infected with this disease, it can only find pleasure in what
contributes to increase the distemper. Like the tiger, that seldom desists
from pursuing man after having once preyed upon human flesh, the reader,
who has once gratified his appetite with calumny, makes, ever after, the
most agreeable feast upon murdered reputation. Such readers generally
admire some half-witted thing, who wants to be thought a bold man, having
lost the character of a wise one. Him they dignify with the name of poet;
his tawdry lampoons are called satires, his turbulence is said to be
force, and his frenzy fire.

What reception a Poem may find, which has neither abuse, party, nor blank
verse to support it, I cannot tell, nor am I solicitous to know. My aims
are right. Without espousing the cause of any party, I have attempted to
moderate the rage of all. I have endeavoured to show, that there may be
equal happiness in states, that are differently governed from our own;
that every state has a particular principle of happiness, and that this
principle in each may be carried to a mischievous excess. There are few
can judge, better than yourself, how far these positions are illustrated
in this Poem.

I am, dear Sir,
Your most affectionate Brother,

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

THE TRAVELLER

OR

A PROSPECT OF
SOCIETY