tell you more but that we are at present all well, and expect returning when we have staid out one month, which I should not care if it were over this very day. I long to hear from you all how you yourself do, how Johnson, Burke, Dyer, Chamier, Colman, and every one of the Club do. I wish I could send you some amusement in this letter, but I protest I am so stupified by the air of this country (for I am sure it can never be natural) that I have not a word to say. I have been thinking of the plot of a comedy which shall be entitled A Journey to Paris, in which a family shall be introduced with a full intention of going to France to save money. You know there is not a place in the world more promising for that purpose. As for the meat of this country I can scarce eat it, and though we pay two good shillings an head for our dinner, I find it all so tough, that I have spent less time with my knife than my picktooth. I said this as a good thing at table, but it was not understood. I believe it to be a good thing.. As for our intended journey to Devonshire I find it out of my power to perform it, for, as soon as I arrive at Dover I intend to let the ladies go on, and I will take a country lodging somewhere near that place in order to do some business. I have so outrun the constable, that I must mortify a little to bring it up again. For God's sake the night you receive this take your pen in your hand and tell me something about yourself, and myself, if you know of any thing that has happened. About Miss Reynolds, about Mr. Bickerstaff, my nephew, or any body that you regard. I beg you will send to Griffin the bookseller to know if there be any letters left for me, and be so good as to send them to me at Paris. They may perhaps be left for me at the Porter's Lodge opposite the pump in Temple Lane. The same messenger will do. I expect one from Lord Clare from Ireland. As for others I am not much uneasy about. Is there any thing I can do for you at Paris? I wish you would tell me. The whole of my own purchases here, is one silk coat which I have put on, and which makes me look like a fool. But no more of that. I find that Colman has gained his lawsuit. I am glad of it. I suppose you often meet. I will soon be among you, better pleased with my situation at home than I ever was before. And yet I must say, that if any thing could make France pleasant, the very good women with whom I am at present would certainly do it. I could say more about that, but I intend showing them this letter before I send it away. What signifies teazing you longer with moral observations when the business of my writing is over. I have one thing only more to say, and of that I think every hour in the day, namely, that I am your most sincere and most affectionate friend, OLIVER GOLDSMITH. Direct to me at the Hôtel de Danemarc, Rue Jacob, Fauxbourg St. Germains." Little more is to be added of this excursion. It was not made more agreeable to Goldsmith by an unexpected addition to the party in the person of Mr. Hickey (the 'special attorney' who is niched into Retaliation), who joined them at Paris, and whose habit of somewhat coarse raillery was apt to be indulged too freely at Goldsmith's expense. One of the stories Hickey told on his return, however, seems to have been true enough. Goldsmith sturdily maintained that a certain distance from one of the fountains at Versailles was within reach of a leap, and tumbled into the water in his attempt to establish that position. It was also told of him, in proof of his oddity, that on Mrs. Horneck desiring him more than once, when they had no place of protestant worship to attend, to read them the morning service, his uniform answer was, 'I should be happy to oblige you, my dear madam, but in truth I do not think myself good enough.' This, however, we may presume to think perhaps less eccentric than his friends supposed it to be. : Goldsmith did not stay in Dover as he had proposed. He brought the ladies to London. Among the letters forwarded to him in Paris had been an announcement of his mother's death. Dead to any consciousness or enjoyment of life she had for some time been; blind, and otherwise infirm hardly could the event have been unexpected by him, or by any one. Yet are there few, however early tumbled out upon the world, to whom the world has given any substitute for that earliest friend. Not less true than affecting is the saying in one of Gray's charming letters: 'I have discovered a thing very little known, which is, that 'in one's whole life one never can have any more than a 'single mother.' The story (which Northcote says Miss Reynolds told him) that would attribute to Goldsmith the silly slight of appearing in half-mourning at this time, and explaining it as for a 'distant' relation, would not be credible of any man of common sensibility; far less of him. Mr. William Filby's bills enable us to speak with greater accuracy. As in the instance of his brother's death, they contain an entry of a 'suit of mourning,' sent home on the 8th of September. But indulgence of sorrow is the luxury of the idle. Eight days later Goldsmith was signing a fresh agreement with Davies for an Abridgment of his Roman History in a duodecimo volume; for making which, and for putting his name thereto,' Davies undertook to pay fifty guineas. The same worthy bibliopole had published in the summer his Life of Parnell, to which I formerly referred. It was lightly and pleasantly written; and contained that pretty illustration (whereof all who have written biography know the truth as well as beauty), of the difficulty of obtaining, when fame has set its seal on any celebrated man, those personal details of his obscurer days which his contemporaries have not cared to give: 'the dews of the morning are 'past, and we vainly try to continue the chase by the meri'dian splendour.' It also contained remarks on the ornamented schools of poetry, in which allusions (not in the best taste) were levelled against Collins and Gray; yet remarks of which the principle was sound enough, though pushed, as good principles are apt to be, to an absurd extreme. For of styles all bristling with epithets, Voltaire himself was not less tolerant than Goldsmith; nor ever with greater zest denounced the adjective, as the substantive's greatest enemy. But merits as well as faults in the Parnell memoir Tom Davies of course tested by the sale; and with result so satisfactory that another memoir had at once been engaged for, and now occupied Goldsmith on his return. Bolingbroke was the subject selected, for its hot partyinterest of course: but it was not the writer's mode, whatever the bookseller may have wished, to turn a literary memoir into a political pamphlet ; and what was written proved very harmless that way, with as little to concern Lord North as Mr. Wilkes, and of as small interest, it would seem, to the writer as to either. Doctor Goldsmith is ' gone with Lord Clare into the country,' writes Davies to Granger, and I am plagued to get the proofs from him of 'his Life of Lord Bolingbroke.' However, he did get them; and the book was published in December. Goldsmith continued with Lord Clare during the opening months of 1771. They were together at Gosfield, and at Bath; and it was in the latter city the amusing incident occurred which Bishop Percy has related, as told him by the Duchess of Northumberland. The Duke and Duchess occupied a house next door to Lord Clare's, and were surprised one day, when about to sit down to breakfast, to see Goldsmith enter the breakfast-room as from the street, and, without notice of them or the conversation they continued, fling himself unconcernedly on a sofa. After a few minutes, breakfast being meanwhile served, the Duke asked him to take a seat at the table; but, the invitation calling him back from the dream-land he had been visiting, he declared with profuse apologies that he had thought he was in his friend Lord Clare's house, and in irrecoverable confusion hastily withdrew. But not,' adds the Bishop, 'till they had good-naturedly exacted a promise that he 'would give them his company to dinner.' Of Lord Clare's friendly familiarity with the poet, the incident gives us proof; he had himself no very polished manners (he is the Squire Gawkey of the libels of the day), and might the better tolerate Goldsmith's; but that their intercourse at present was as frequent as familiar, seems to have been because Lord Clare had most need of a friend. I am |