1767. hackney coachman, he has fought his way at last to consideration and esteem. But he bears upon him the scars of Et. 39. his twelve years' conflict; of the mean sorrows through which he has passed, and of the cheap indulgences he has sought relief and help from. There is nothing plastic in his nature now. He is forty. His manners and habits are completely formed; and in them any further success can make little favourable change, whatever it may effect for his mind or his genius. The distrusts which were taught him in his darkest humiliations, cling around him still; and, by the fitful changes and sudden necessities which have encouraged the weakness of his natural disposition, his really generous and most affectionate nature will still continue to be obscured. It was made matter of surprise and objection against him, that though his poems are replete with fine moral sentiments and bespeak a great dignity of mind, yet he had no sense of the shame, nor dread of the evils of poverty.* How should he? and to what good end? Would it have been wisely done to engage in a useless conflict, to contest with what too plainly was his destiny, and gnaw the file for ever? It is true that poverty brings along with it many disreputable compliances, disingenuous shifts and resources, most sordid and dire necessities; much, that, even while it helps to vindicate personal independence, may not be consistent with perfect self-respect. It is not a soil propitious to virtue and straightforwardness, often as they hardily grow there; and it is well that it should be escaped from, as soon as may be. But there are worse evils. There is a worse subjection to poverty than the mere ceasing to regard it with dread or with shame. There is that submission to it which is implied in a servile adulation * Hawkins's Life of Johnson, 420. VOL. II. H 1767. of wealth, to the exclusion of every sense of disgrace but Et. 39. that of being poor; and there is, on the other hand, a familiarity with it, a careless but not unmanly relation with its wants and shames, which, rightly used, may leave infinite enduring pleasure for its every transitory pain. Where is to be found, for example, such an intimate knowledge of the poor, such ready and hearty sympathy with their joys and sorrows, such a strong social sentiment with what the kindliest observers too little heed, such zeal for all that can impart An hour's importance to the poor man's heart, as in Goldsmith's writings? It is the real dignity of mind which only poverty can teach so well; and when his friends admired it in his books, they might have questioned the value of their accompanying regret.* Genius often effects its highest gains in a balance of what the world counts for disadvantage and loss; and it has fairly been made matter of doubt, if Pope's body had been less crooked, whether his verses would have been so straight. In every man, wealthy or poor in fortune or in genius, we see the result of the many various circumstances which have made him what he is; wisdom finds its aptest exercise in a charitable consideration of all those circumstances; and, so *Let me quote from Letter cxix. in the Citizen of the World. "The misfor"tunes of the great, my friend, are held up to engage our attention, are enlarged upon in tones of declamation, and the world is called upon to gaze at the "noble sufferers: they have at once the comfort of admiration and pity. . . . "The miseries of the poor are, however, entirely disregarded; though some undergo more real hardships in one day than the great in their whole lives. It is indeed "inconceivable what difficulties the meanest English sailor or soldier endures "without murmuring or regret. Every day is to him a day of misery, and yet he "bears his hard fate without repining!" I could multiply such passages infinitely from Goldsmith's writings. With his ever genial and humourous delight in the little humble gaieties and thrifty enjoyments of the poor, all his readers are familiar. far as any such result is discovered to have profited and pleased mankind, they will not be unwise to accept it in compensation for whatever pain or disadvantage may have happened to attend it. The last section of Goldsmith's life and adventures is now arrived at; and in what remains to be described there will appear more strange inconsistencies than have yet been noted. The contrast which every man might be made more or less to illustrate, of circumstances and pretensions, of ignorance and knowledge, of accomplishments and blunders, will, for the few years to come, take more decisive shape and greater prominence in Goldsmith. He will be more seen in a society for which his habits have least adapted him, and where the power to make mirth of his foibles was held to be but fair consolation for the inability to make denial of his genius. "Magnanimous Goldsmith, a gooseberry fool!"* His reputation had been silently widening, in the midst and in despite of his humbler drudgery; his poem, his novel, his essays, had imperceptibly but steadily enlarged the circle of his admirers; and he was somewhat suddenly, at last, subjected to the social exactions that are levied on literary fame. But let the reader take along with him into these scenes what will alone enable him to judge them rightly. Conversation is a game where the wise do not always win. When men talk together, the acute man will count higher than the subtle man; and he who, though infinitely far from truth, can handle a solid point of argument, will seem wiser than the man around whom truth" plays like an atmosphere," but who cannot reason as he feels. The one 66 forms opinions unconsciously, the other none for which he His "magnanimous" evidence against himself in the poem of Retaliation. 1767. Et. 39. 1767. cannot show specific grounds; and it was not inaptly, Et.39. though humourously, said by Goldsmith of himself, that he disputed best when nobody was by, and always got the better when he argued alone.* Society exposed him to continual misconstruction; so that few more touching things have been recorded of him than those which have most awakened laughter. "People are greatly mistaken in me," he remarked on one occasion. "A notion goes about that when "I am silent, I mean to be impudent; but I assure you, gen"tlemen, my silence arises from bashfulness." From the same cause arose the unconsidered talk which was less easily forgiven than silence; with which we shall find so frequently mixed up, the imputations of vanity and of envy; and to properly comprehend which, there must always be kept in mind the grudging and long-delayed recognition of his genius. Exceptions no doubt there were. Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds, were large exceptions; and with what excellent effect upon his higher nature a sense of his growing fame with such men as these descended, will hereafter be plainly seen. Never is success obtained, if deserved, that it does not open and improve the mind; and never had Goldsmith reason to believe the world in any respect disposed to do him justice, that he was not also most ready and desirous to do justice to others. But, even with the friends I have. * An expression which exactly recalls what Addison is reported to have said of himself when some one remarked how much happier in conversation Steele was than the majority of those who talked with him. "Yes," said Addison, "he "beats me in the room, but no sooner has he got to the bottom of the staircase "than I have refuted all his arguments." "I have only ninepence in my pocket," he said, on another occasion, distinguishing between his conversation and his writing, "but I can draw for a thousand pounds." Langton repeated this saying to Johnson, whereupon Boswell pleasantly reports: JOHNSON. "He had not that "retort ready, sir; he had prepared it beforehand.' LANGTON (turning to me). "A fine surmise. Set a thief to catch a thief.'" vii. 198. Hawkins's Life of Johnson, 418-19. 1767. named, remained too much of the fondness of pity, the familiarity of condescension, the air of generosity, the Et. 39. habit of patronage; too readily did these appear to justify an ill-disguised contempt, a sort of corporate spirit of disrespect, in the rest of the men-of-letters of that circle; and when was the applause of even the highest, yet counted a sufficient set-off against the depreciation of the lowest of mankind? No one who thus examines the whole case can doubt, I think, that Goldsmith had never cause to be really content with his position among the men of his time, or with the portion of celebrity at any period during his life assigned to him. All men can patronise the useful, since it so well caters for itself, but, many as there are to need the beautiful, there are few to set it forth, and fewer still to encourage it; and even the booksellers who crowded round the author of the Vicar of Wakefield and the Traveller, came to talk but of booksellers' drudgery and catchpenny compilations. Is it strange that as such a man stood amid the Boswells, Murphys, Beatties, Bickerstaffs, Grahams, Kellys, Hawkinses, and men of that secondary class, unconscious comparative criticism should have risen in his mind, and taken the form of a very innocent vanity? It is a harsh word, yet often stands for a harmless thing. May it not even be forgiven him if, in galling moments of slighting disregard, he made occasional silent comparison of Rasselas with the Vicar, of the Rambler with the Citizen of the World, of London with the Traveller? 66 'Doctor, I should be glad to see you at Eton," said Mr. George Graham, one of the Eton 66 * Even Johnson lost patience at this one day, and growled out, "If nobody was suffered to abuse poor Goldy but those who could write as well, he would "have few enemies." Europ. Mag. xxxi. 18. |