"The lenten entertainment I had received made me resolve to depart as soon as possible; accordingly next morning, when I spoke of going, he did not oppose my resolution; he rather commended my design, adding some very sage counsel upon the occasion. To be sure,' said he, the longer you stay away from your mother, the more you will grieve her and your other friends; and possibly they are already afflicted at hearing of this foolish expedition you have made.' Notwithstanding all this, and without any hope of softening such a sordid heart, I again renewed the tale of my distress, and asking how he thought I could travel above a hundred miles upon one half-crown!' I begged to borrow a single guinea, which I assured him should be repaid with thanks. And you know, Sir,' said I, 'it is no more than I have often done for you.' To which he firmly answered, Why, look you, Mr. Goldsmith, that is neither here nor there. I have paid you all you ever lent me, and this sickness of mine has left me bare of cash. But I have bethought myself of a conveyance for you; sell your horse, and I will furnish you a much better one to ride on. I readily grasped at his proposal, and begged to see the nag, on which he led me to his bedchamber, and from under the bed he pulled out a stout oak stick. 'Here he is,' said he; 'take this in your hand, and it will carry you to your mother's with more safety than such a horse as you ride.' I was in doubt, when I got it into my hand, whether I should not, in the first place, apply it to his pate; but a rap at the street door made the wretch fly to it, and when I returned to the parlor, he introduced me, as if nothing of the kind had happened, to the gentleman who entered, as Mr. Goldsmith, his most ingenious and worthy friend, of whom he had so often heard him speak with rapture. I could scarcely compose myself; and must have betrayed indignation in my mien to the stranger, who was a counsellor at law in the neighborhood, a man of engaging aspect and polite address. "After spending an hour, he asked my friend and me to dine with him at his house. This I declined at first, as I wished to have no further communication with my old hospitable friend; but at the solicitation of both I at last consented, determined as I was by two motives; one, that I was prejudiced in favour of the looks and manner of the counsellor; and the other, that I stood in need of a comfortable dinner. And there, indeed, I found every thing that I could wish, abundance without profusion and elegance without affectation. In the evening, when my old friend, who had eaten very plentifully at his neighbour's table, but talked again of lying down with the lamb, made a motion to me for retiring, our generous host requested I should take a bed with him; upon which I plainly told my old friend that he might go home and take care of the horse he had given me, but that I should never re-enter his doors. He went away with a laugh, leaving me to add this to the other little things the counsellor already knew of his plausible neighbour. "And now, my dear Mother, I found sufficient to reconcile me to all my follies; for here I spent three whole days. The counsellor had two sweet girls to his daughters, who played enchantingly on the harpsichord; and yet it was but a melancholy pleasure I felt the first time I heard them; for that being the first time also that either of them had touched the instrument since their mother's death, I saw the tears in silence trickle down their father's cheeks. I every day endeavoured to go away, but every day was pressed and obliged to stay. On my going, the counsellor offered me his purse, with a horse and servant to convey me home; but the latter I declined, and only took a guinea to bear my necessary expenses on the road. "OLIVER GOLDSMITH." "To Mrs. Anne Goldsmith, Ballymahon." No reader of the Traveller would imagine to what little incident he is indebted for that line in the description of the Italians: By sports like these are all their cares beguiled, The anecdote is recovered by Mr. Prior. Reynolds, or one of his friends, one day visiting Oliver in his chamber, caught him teaching a favourite dog to sit upright on its haunches, or, as is commonly said, to beg ;" and while "he occasionally shook his finger at the unwilling pupil in order to make him retain his position, the page before him was wet with the second line of the couplet." The Poet admitted that he derived the idea from his sport. This is to become intimate with the author. Another is characteristic of "poor Goldy." One Pilkington, an odd though not very honest adventurer in London, came to the poet with a pitiful tale of a capital piece of luck being likely to slip through his fingers for the want of a couple of guineas. Want of money is a rare sharpener of invention, at least it appeared so with Pilkington, who related that a friend in India had sent him two white mice, which, if he had money for a cage and a proper suit of clothes, he could sell to the Duchess of Manchester, a lady of virtù in such matters, to great advantage. Goldsmith had but one guinea, when "He begged to suggest, with much diffidence and deference-the emergency was pressing, and might form some apology for the liberty, that the money might be raised from a neighbouring pawnbroker by the deposit of his friend's watch; the inconvenience would not be great, and at most of only a few hours' continuance; it would rescue a sincere friend from enthralment, and confer an eternal obligation." Was the Poet ever known to resist the tithe of such good eloquence? Goldsmith lost his watch, but the world gained the ingenious and well-told tale of Prince Bonbennin Bonbobbinet and the White Mouse in the Citizen of the World. Mr. Prior, too, has an honest zeal for his subject. He has a prompt sympathy to enter into and meet the feelings of the Poet: he is not startled by a seeming act of affectation or a slight display of vanity, nor does he mistake a harmless ebullition of temperament for deliberate envy. The biographer of a man of genius, to appreciate his employment should have the feelings of a man of genius himself. Surely no other than a little or illiberal mind would accuse Goldsmith of envy or ill nature. The Perhaps had Mr. Prior thrown his materials into a more condensed form, his work would have become more popular with the general reader. Few have the leisure to devote to the perusal of an octavo volume of upwards of five hundred pages on a single author, though he be a favourite one. age is practical; after the business of the day, and the attention demanded by the immediate topics of the times-the columns of the newspaper and the last political pamphlet—there is little opportunity left for the cultivation of literature. Except with the favoured few, letters must yield to merchandize, to politics, to science. The modern author, if he would be read, must not write in folios. Mr. Prior's Life of Goldsmith is rather an accumulation of facts and criticism than, properly speaking, a classic biography. It belongs more to the rank of Memoirs. The sketch prefixed to the Paris edition of Goldsmith's works edited by Washington Irving, approaches (for it is in many respects imperfect) what the life of the Poet should be,-- a just and elegant narrative of facts, with occasional reflection, where we gather the cream of the whole story without the trouble of the tedious process of investigation.* The character of Goldsmith, as it may now be established from the fullest materials, is worthy of consideration. Its master feature was benevolence. He is in every fibre the Man of Feeling; * Before dismissing Mr. Prior's Life, we have it in our power to correct a mis-statement that appears in the work. In the notice of Goldsmith's relatives, allusion is made to the family of his brother Charles, who visited the Poet from Ireland, and shortly left London for the West Indies, where he remained during his brother's life. He had four children, two sons and two daughters; one of the latter is made to be now resident in England, "the other," Mr. Prior says, "is supposed to have died unmarried;" and in a note an old letter is quoted from a popular periodical, where his daughter is stated to be "buried in the Churchyard of St. Pancras." This lady was married, and is now a widow living among us; and is said, with a close family resemblance, to possess many of the kind virtues of the Post. charity with him was not the performance of a duty, but an impulse of his nature: he did not reason about it, but he felt it; "His pity gave ere charity began." There were never better hearted men than Johnson and Goldsmith. "He is poor and honest, which is recommendation enough to Johnson. He is now become miserable, and that ensures the protection of Johnson," said Goldsmith of two objects whom the Doctor had befriended. This was the affinity that, in spite of their opposite habits, held them firmly together, a noble basis of intimacy worthy of both. Johnson "carried the unfortunate victim of disease and dissipation on his back up through Fleet street, an act which realizes the parable of the good Samaritan;"* and Goldsmith followed the Italian Baretti, who had been unfriendly to him, to prison. A ludicrous incident is told of his hesitating to rise when called in the morning when he was found nestled in the midst of a feather bed which he had ripped up in the night in consequence of the cold :-he had given the clothes to a poor woman. More than once his last guinea was bestowed to relieve the call of distress. At one time while engaged at a game of whist with a party at a friend's house, he suddenly rushed from the table into the street, whence he immediately returned. On being asked by his host whether he was affected by the heat of the room, he replied, "Not at all; but in truth I could not bear to hear that unfortunate woman in the street half singing, half sobbing; for such tones could only arise from the extremity of distress; her voice grated painfully on my ear and jarred my frame, so that I could not rest till I had sent her away." There is a volume of philanthropy in these few words. A character of pure benevolence is rarely understood by the world, or it would be more lenient to its accompanying errors. It would not rebuke the man whose heart bled at the wants of others with indifference to his own. Prudence is a cardinal virtue, but we cannot inculcate it as a homily over the buried infirmities of Goldsmith. His errors were his own, and he reaped their penalty, but his virtues benefited society. would deal gently with his failings, for they had their rise in a noble nature; they were the growth of a rich and productive soil, the ill weeds of a luxuriant harvest. If we may be allowed slightly to alter the sentiment of Dr. Johnson, we would say, "Let not his frailties be remembered, he was a very good man." We Incidental to his benevolent character was his familiarity in * Hazlitt. company, his love of society and domestic life. Northcote said of his easy friendly manner, "When Goldsmith entered a room, sir, people who did not know him became for a moment silent from awe of his literary reputation; when he came out again they were riding upon his back."* He knew how to value the little joys of home, or he could never have drawn the household scenes of the Vicar of Wakefield. His philosophy did not overlook trifles, and it was therefore the wiser. Life, domestic life, the abode of the good, old, well-worn, every day sentiments, the homely endearments of home, is made up of little things: of the accustomed circle round the fireside, the household anecdote and the honest family jest, never threadbare, the humour of the different members, the forwardness of the young and the sedateness of the old, the easy vanity of the girls and the assuming consequence of the boys, with those deeper shades of character in the strength of a mother's affection or the fond pride of a father. Of such is the genuine interest of Goldsmith's novel, which, independent of schools and opinions, will be relished by the learned and the unlearned while an English home exists to preserve the simple fireside virtues. The friendship of Goldsmith with such men as Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds, stamps his character for sincerity and worth. We have the best evidence that he was loved by all these. Johnson constantly asserted a high sense of admiration, which appears strikingly set forth even in the partial pages of Boswell; Burke wrote a high-toned obituary at his death; and Reynolds, during his life, inscribed to him, as "his sincere friend and admirer," the print from his painting of Resignation, taken from the Poet's own verses in the Deserted Village. It were illiberal to contrast the character or reputation of Goldsmith and Johnson. They were both men of many virtues, great talents, and few failings. Perhaps we love the one while we admire the other, but we care not to make even this distinction-we love them both. Goldsmith had a proper sense of the literary character, or rather he was guided by a noble independence of soul, when, in his interview with the Earl of Northumberland, who proffered him his services, he asked for nothing for himself, but mentioned his brother, the clergyman in Ireland. "As for myself," he said, when interrogated on his apparent indifference, "I have no dependence on the promises of great men ; I look to the booksellers for support: they are my best friends, * Life, p. 224. |