CHAPTER III. THE EDGEWARE COTTAGE, ST. STEPHEN'S, AND GRUB STREET. 1768. 1768. HENRY GOLDSMITH's death would seem to have been made known to his brother Oliver shortly before we discover the Et. 40. latter to have gone into temporary retreat in a cottage eight miles down the Edgeware-road, "at the back of Canons." He had taken it in connection with his neighbour in the Temple, Mr. Bott; and they kept it for some little time. It was very small, and very absurdly decorated; and, as a set-off to his Shoemaker's Holiday, he used to call this his Shoemaker's Paradise, one of that craft having built it, and laid it out with flying Mercuries, jets d'eau, and other preposterous ornaments,* though the ground it stood upon, with its two rooms on a floor, its garden and all, covered considerably less than half-an-acre. The friends would occasionally drive down to this retreat, even after dining in London, Mr. Bott being one of those undoubtedly respectable men who kept a horse and gig: and a curious letter is said to be in existence written by Goldsmith shortly before his death, thanking Bott again and again for timely pecuniary help, rendered in his worst straits; saying it is to Bott he entirely owes that he can sit down in safety in his chambers without the terrors Europ. Mag. xxiv. 94, 1768. of arrest hanging momentarily over him; and recalling such Et. 40. whimsical scenes of past days as when they used to drive down the Edgeware-road at night, and, both their necks being brought to imminent peril by the gig's descent into a ditch, the driver (Bott) would exhaust all his professional eloquence to prove that at that instant they were exactly in the centre of the road.* Here the History of Rome, undertaken for Davies, was at leisure proceeded with; here the new poem, worked at in the adjoining lanes, and in pleasant strolls along the shady hedges, began to grow in importance; here, thus tuning his exquisite song outside the bars of his London prison, he might with himself enjoy that sense of liberty for which it so delighted him to listen to the songs of other uncaged birds; † * Prior, ii. 191. And see Percy Memoir, 112, note. + See ante, i. 366. I will here add, as a supplement to the exquisite passage there quoted from the Animated Nature, another, hardly less pleasing (iv. 260), on the Robin Redbreast. Goldsmith is talking of the sagacity of the nightingale, which however he seems to doubt; and continues: "It is but to have high reputation "for any one quality, and the world is ready enough to give us fame for others to "which we have very small pretensions. But there is a little bird rather cele"brated for its affection to mankind than its singing, which, however, in our "climate, has the sweetest note of all others. The reader already perceives that "I mean the Red-breast, the well-known friend of man, that is found in every hedge, and makes it vocal. The note of other birds is louder, and their inflec"tions more capricious; but this bird's voice is soft, tender, and well-supported; "and the more to be valued as we enjoy it the greatest part of the winter. If "the nightingale's song has been compared to the fiddle, the red-breast's voice "has all the delicacy of the flute." I take the opportunity of adding, as well for the mere pleasure of transcribing the lines as that the reader should see them here, that stanza on the red-breast which Gray expunged from the Elegy, and which made Lord Byron wonder that he could have had the heart to do it. Here scattered oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen, are showers of violets found, Two most charming lines I am tempted to add to these, because neither are they There pipes the wood-lark, and the song-thrush there 1768. and here, so engaged, Goldsmith seems to have passed the greater part of the summer, apparently not much moved by Et. 40. what was going on elsewhere. Walpole, mourning for the loss of his Lady Hervey and his Lady Suffolk, was reading his tragedy of the Mysterious Mother to his lady-friends who remained, and rejoicing that he did not need to expose himself to "the impertinencies of that jackanapes Garrick, who lets nothing appear but his own wretched stuff, or that "of creatures still duller, who suffer him to alter their "pieces as he pleases ;"*- but Goldsmith's withers are unwrung. Hume was receiving a considerable increase to his pension, with significant intimation of the royal wish that he should apply himself to the continuation of his English History; great lords were fondly dandling Robertson into the good graces of the booksellers, the Chief Justice admiringly telling the Duke of Bedford that 4500l. was to be paid him for his History of Charles the Fifth, and Walpole reasonably sneering at this worship of Scotch puffing and partiality;† --but the humbler historian at Edgeware pursues his labours unbribed and undisturbed. The Sentimental Journey was giving pleasure to not a few; even Walpole was declaring it "infinitely preferable to the tiresome Tristram Shandy;' while, within a few months, at a grand dinner-table round which were seated two dukes, two earls, Mr. Garrick, and Mr. Hume, a footman in attendance was announcing Sterne's lonely death in a common lodging-house in Bond-street; ‡ *Coll. Lett. v. 199. His audience consisted of Lady Aylesbury, Lady Lyttelton, and Miss Rich; his friend Conway assisting on the occasion. Coll. Lett. v. 223. I quote from a curious volume based on facts undoubtedly authentic : In the month of January, 1768, we set off for London. We stopped for "some time at Almack's house, in Pall-mall. My master afterwards took Sir "James Gray's house in Clifford-street, who was going ambassador to Spain. He "now began housekeeping, hired a French cook, house-maid, and kitchen-maid, "and kept a great deal of the best company. About this time, Mr. Sterne, the 1768. Et. 40. -but Goldsmith does not yet see the shadow of his own early decay. Gray, who had in vain solicited the Cambridge professorship of modern history* while he yet had the health it would have given him spirit to enjoy, and was now about to receive it from the Duke of Grafton when no longer able to hold it,t was wondering at a new book about Corsica, "celebrated author, was taken ill at the silk-bag shop in Old Bond-street. He Works, iii. + Poor Gray! even his quiet scholarly life could not protect him from the scurrility of the time, from which Goldsmith so sorely suffered. "I have the unhap"piness," says Walpole's friend Cole, "to live in an age when all decency, both "of behaviour and language, are set at nought, and under a notion of freedom "and liberty every man's private character is made the object of public censure, "by means of a most licentious measure of the liberty of the press. Thus my "friend Mr. Gray, a man devoid of all ambitious views, because his friend Mr. "Stonehewer had pointed him out as a most proper person to the Duke of "Grafton for the professorship of modern history, without the least application or "thought of it himself, met with the most illiberal abuse in the public papers," &c. &c. Cole's MSS. xxxii. 12. Cavendish Debates, i. 621. And see Wooll's Warton, 335-6. 1768. in which he found a hero pourtrayed by a green goose, and where he had the comfort of feeling that what was wise in it Et. 40. must be true, for the writer was too great a fool to invent it ;* --but Goldsmith has never been much interested in Boswell, and Paoli is not very likely to increase his interest. Having made this unavailing effort to empty his head of Corsica, Boswell himself had visited London in the spring, had followed Johnson to Oxford, and was now making him the hero of dinner parties at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, where Percy was quite unwarrantably attacked, Robertson slighted, and Davies turned into ridicule ;-but Goldsmith is doubtless well content, for a time, to escape his chance of being also "tossed and gored." Kindness he could "When Boswell published his account of Corsica, I found Mr. Gray reading it. 'With this,' he said, 'I am much pleased, because I see that the author ""is too foolish to have invented it.'" Nicholls's Reminiscences of Gray (Works, v. 47), one of the most charming papers, at once for fulness and brevity, ever contributed to our knowledge of a celebrated man. Of Boswell's Corsica, Gray expressed a similar opinion to Walpole (Works, iv. 113), and I quote the passage, because it so exactly hits at once the littleness and the greatness of Boswell, and, nearly twenty years before the masterpiece of English biography was written, shows us the possibility of a green goose doing justice to a hero. "Mr. Boswell's "book I was going to recommend to you, when I received your letter "pleased and moved me strangely, all (I mean) that relates to Paoli. it has He is a man born two thousand years after his time! The pamphlet proves what I have "always maintained, that any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if "he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity. Of Mr. Boswell's "truth I have not the least suspicion, because I am sure he could invent nothing "of this kind. The true title of this part of his work is, a Dialogue between a "Green-Goose and a Hero." Feb. 25, 1768. It was now that Hume described him as "a young gentleman, very good"humoured, very agreeable, and very mad." Hume's Priv. Cor. 131. For two wonderfully ridiculous letters of Boswell's, written during his recent foreign tour, to Andrew Mitchell, the English minister at Berlin, who was a great friend of old Auchinleck, and had been appealed to to check James's extravagances, see Mitchell's Memoirs and Papers, ii. 351-8. I may also add, with special reference to the "dinners" so abundantly mentioned in the text, what Wilkes some years later wrote of him (Letters, iv. 5). "The earth," says the patriot, describing a drought, "is as thirsty as Boswell, and as cracked in many places as he certainly is in one." "When I called upon Dr. Johnson next morning, I found him highly satisfied |