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and in his age, to be acknowledged for the wisest of modern men, he never ceased throughout to confess what he owed t. 38. to those old evenings at Strasburg. The strength which can conquer circumstance; the happy wisdom of irony which elevates itself above every object, above fortune and misfortune, good and evil, death and life, and attains to the possession of a poetical world; first visited Goethe in the tone with which Goldsmith's tale is told. The fiction became to him life's first reality; in country clergymen of Drusenheim, there started up vicars of Wakefield; for Olivias and Sophias of Alsace, first love fluttered at his heart;—and at every stage of his illustrious after-career, its impression still vividly recurred to him. He remembered it, when, at the height of his worldly honour and success, he made his written Life (Wahrheit und Dichtung) record what a blessing it had been to him; he had not forgotten it, when, some twenty years ago, standing at the age of eighty-one on the very brink of the grave, he told a friend that in the decisive moment of mental development the Vicar of Wakefield had formed his education, and that he had recently, with unabated delight, "read the charming book again from beginning to end, not a little affected by the lively recollection" of how much he had been indebted to the author seventy years before.

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Goldsmith was unconscious of this exalted tribute. He died as ignorant of Herder's friendly criticism, as of the gratitude of Goethe. The little book silently forced its way. I find upon examination of the periodicals of the day that no noise was made about it, no trumpets were blown for it. The St. James's Chronicle did not condescend to notice its appearance, and the Monthly Review confessed frankly that

VOL. II.

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nothing was to be made of it.* The better sort of newsFt. 38. papers as well as the more dignified reviews contemptuously left it to the patronage of Lloyd's Evening Post, the London Chronicle, and journals of that class; which simply informed their readers that a new novel, called the Vicar of Wakefield, had been published, that "the Editor is Doctor Goldsmith, "who has affixed his name to an introductory advertisement," and that such and such were the incidents of the story. Several columns of the Evening Post and the Chronicle, between the dates of March and April, were filled in this way with bald recital of the plot; and with such extracts as the prison-scene, the account of the Primroses, and the brief episode of Matilda: but, in the way of praise or of criticism, not a word was said. Johnson, as I have remarked, took little interest in the story at any time but as the means of getting so much money for its author; and believing that "Harry "Fielden" (as he called him) knew nothing but the shell of life,t may be excused for thinking the Vicar a mere fanciful

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* I subjoin the notice which appeared in that respectable periodical. "Through "the whole course of our travels in the wild regions of romance, we never met "with anything more difficult to characterise than the Vicar of Wakefield; "a performance which contains beauties sufficient to entitle it to almost the highest 'applause, and defects enough to put the discerning reader out of all patience "with an author capable of so strangely under-writing himself. With marks of "genius, equal in some respects to those which distinguish our most celebrated "novel-writers, there are in this work such palpable indications of the want of a thorough acquaintance with mankind, as might go near to prove the Author "totally unqualified for success in this species of composition, were it not that he "finds such resources in his own extraordinary natural talents, as may, in the judg"ment of many readers, in a great measure compensate for his limited knowledge "of men, manners, and characters, as they really appear in the living world.-In "brief, with all its faults, there is much rational entertainment to be met with in "this very singular tale." Monthly Review, xxxiv. 407, May 1766. Well might Southey say that the Vicar of Wakefield had proved "a puzzler" to the critics of its time!

Fielding being mentioned, Johnson exclaimed, "He was a blockhead ;" and upon Boswell expressing his astonishment at so strange an assertion, he said, “What "I mean by his being a blockhead is, that he was a barren rascal." BOSWELL. "Will you not allow, sir, that he draws very natural pictures of human life?"

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performance." It would seem that none of the club 1766. indeed, excepting Burke, cared much about it: and one may Et. 38. read, in the French letters of the time, how perfectly Madame Riccoboni agrees with her friend Garrick as to the little to be learned from it; and how surprised the lively lady is that the Burkes should have found it pathetic, or be able to approve of its arguments in favour of thieves and outcasts. Admiration, nevertheless, gathered slowly and

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JOHNSON. "Why, sir, it is of very low life. Richardson used to say, that had he "not known who Fielding was, he should have believed he was an ostler." (So much the worse, I would ask leave to say, for Richardson.) Sir, there is more "knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's, than in all Tom Jones! I, "indeed, never read Joseph Andrews." ERSKINE. "Surely, sir, Richardson is very "tedious." JOHNSON. "Why, sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, "your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment." Boswell, iii. 207, 208. (For an exception he would occasionally make in favour of Amelia, see Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes, 221-2.) This talk was at Sir Alexander Macdonald's in 1772, and the "Erskine" who finds Richardson tedious was a "young officer in the regimentals of the Scots Royal, "who talked with a vivacity, fluency, and precision so uncommon, that he attracted "particular attention;" who afterwards attracted more particular attention still, as the first advocate of Westminster Hall, and ultimately lord high chancellor; and whose genuine sense of humour, and natural wit, must surely have resented very strongly this most astounding of all Johnson's heresies..

The lively French woman's letter will be found in the Garrick Correspondence, ii. 492-4. She had heard so much of the Vicar that she was dying to read it. But though everybody wrote to tell her that they had sent it, the little book never came. A Mr. Jenkinson was to have conveyed it to her, but the Mr. Jenkinson of the novel did not turn out a baser deceiver. Then "peu de jours après, voilà une "lettre de Mr. Burke. Un style charmant, des excuses de sa longue négligence, "mille politesses, un badinage léger, de l'esprit, de l'agrément, de la finesse; "rien de plus joli. Il prend la liberté de m'envoyer, il a l'honneur de me "présenter,qui, quoi? devinez, Le Vicaire de Wakefield. Un Irlandois doit 66 me le remettre, avec," &c. But the Irishman, alas, proved only another Jenkinson; and he ushered in still further disappointments, till at last the little lady, exasperated almost to despair, receives "un billet de Mr. Garrick, une "lettre de Mr. Becket, et ce Vicaire si désiré, si long-temps attendu-je pousse un cri de joie," &c. Then of course, as usual when expectation has been so highly wrought, disappointment succeeds. "Vous avez raison," she writes to Garrick, "de dire, qu'il ne m'apprendra rien. C'est un homme qui va de malheurs en malheurs assez rapidement, et de bonheurs en bonheurs tout aussi vite. "Cela ne resemble guère à la vie du monde. On devroit s'appliquer à peindre les "situations les plus ordinaires, celles où beaucoup de personnes peuvent se trouver. "Alors les leçons de conduite seroient utiles. Je ne suis pas un juge compétent

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steadily around it; a second edition* appeared on the 5th of Æt. 38. June, and a third on the 25th of August; it reached its sixth edition in the year of its writer's death; and he had lived to see it translated into several continental languages, though not to know that the little story had been the chief consolation of a foreign prince in his English exile, † nor even to receive from the booksellers the least addition to that original sorry payment, which even Johnson thought "accidentally" less than it ought to have been. In the very month when the second edition of the Vicar of Wakefield was issued, a bill which Oliver Goldsmith had drawn upon Newbery, for fifteen guineas, was returned dishonoured.

"du style, mais le plan de l'ouvrage ne m'a pas intéressée; le pathétique annoncé par Mr. Burke ne m'a point frappée : le plaidoyer en faveur des vouleurs, des "petits larrons, des gens de mauvaises mœurs, est fort éloigné de me plaire. Il "faut dire aux hommes: soyez toujours honnêtes, l'honneur perdu ne se recouvre "jamais. C'est les désespérer, dira-t'-on, c'est leur ôter le désir de rentrer dans "leur devoir. Mon ami, l'expérience prouve, que celui dont la misère, dont le "besoin a tourné les idées vers la bassesse, vers le crime, qui a pu envisager la "honte et s'exposer à la mériter, est un homme dont le cœur est corrompu. Le "Vicaire prèche des coquins, les convertit; je ne voudrois pas rencontrer sa con"grégation dans un bois, si j'avois mille louis dans ma poche."

* I ought not to mention this second impression without adding that it contained some additions, such as Burchel's repetition of his famous monosyllable at each pause in the revelations of Miss Skeggs; and some omissions, as of a passage that Goldsmith may possibly have found in use against himself, in which he had said of Moses, "for he always ascribed to his wit that laughter which was lavished on his "simplicity." We owe to Johnson, as I have shown in a previous note, the mention of two omissions made before publication, which he could hardly have remembered if he had not very carefully read the MS.

"The writer of these remarks," says the reviewer of the first edition of this biography in the Morning Chronicle of the 13th June, 1848, "is enabled to state, "having himself received it from a person of the highest rank, that, at the coro"nation of the late King of France, Charles X, he told the Duke of North"umberland (the ambassador extraordinary deputed on the part of George IV to "offer his congratulations on that occasion) that he had never known, since the "restoration of his family, the pleasure he used to enjoy at Hartwell-house, "where his only literary gratification consisted in reading The Vicar of Wakefield.”

CHAPTER XIV.

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OLD DRUDGERY, WITH A NEW VENTURE DAWNING.

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BUT if solid rewards seldom waited on even the happiest of Goldsmith's achievements, he never now lost courage and hope, or showed signs of yielding in the struggle. He had always his accustomed resource, and went uncomplainingly to the old drudgery. Payne the bookseller gave him ten guineas for compiling a duodecimo volume of " Poems for "Young Ladies. In three parts: Devotional, Moral, and Entertaining." It was a respectable selection of pieces, chiefly from Parnell, Pope, Thomson, Addison, and Collins; with additions of less importance from less eminent hands, and some occasional verses which he supposed to be his friend Robert Nugent's,* but which were really written by Lord Lyttelton. It has been assumed to have been in this book "for young ladies" that two objectionable pieces by Prior were inserted; but the statement, though sanctioned

* The origin of the mistake is obvious. Nugent had written an "Epistle to —," beginning

"Clarinda, dearly lov'd, attend

The counsels of a faithful friend;"

and this had become confounded in Goldsmith's recollection with Lyttelton's "Advice to a Lady," beginning

"The counsels of a friend, Belinda, hear."

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Æt. 38.

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