1770. Yet are there few, however early tumbled out upon any one. Et. 42. the world, to whom the world has been able to give any substitute for that earliest friend. Not less true than affecting is the saying in one of Gray's letters: "I have discovered a thing very little known, which is, that in one's whole life 66 one never can have any more than a single mother."* The story (which Northcote tells) 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 one of the luxuries of the idle; and whatever the loss or grief that might afflict him, the work that waited Goldsmith must be done. *It touches a deeper sentiment than the same thought in Herodotus, which prompts the choice of the brother before even husband or children, the parents being dead. "Ω βασιλεῦ, ἀνὴρ μέν μοι ἄν ἄλλος γένοιτω, εἰ δαίμων ἐθέλοι, καὶ τέκνα ἄλλα, ἐι ταῦτα ἀποβάλοιμι· πατρὸς δὲ καὶ μητρὸς οὐκ ἔτι μεν ζωόντων, ἀδελφεὸς ἂν ἄλλος οὐδενὶ τρόπῳ γένοιτο. ταύτῃ τῇ γνώμῃ χρεωμένη, ἔλεξα ταῦτα.” Herodoti Thalia, cxix. (Ed. Schweighouser, i. 261.) So, too, our First Edward, when he grieved less for his son's than for his father's death. (Hume, chap. xiii.) "About the year 1770, Dr. Goldsmith lost his mother, who died in Ireland. "On this occasion he immediately dressed himself in a suit of clothes of gray cloth, "trimmed with black, such as commonly is worn for second mourning. When he 66 appeared the first time after this at Sir Joshua Reynolds's house, Miss F. Reynolds, "the sister of Sir Joshua, asked him whom he had lost, as she saw he wore mourning, "when he answered, a distant relation only; being shy, as I conjecture, to own "that he wore such slight mourning for so near a relative. This appears in him 66 an unaccountable blunder, in wearing such a dress; as all those who did not "know his mother, or of her death, would not expect or require him to wear "mourning at all, and to all those who knew of his mother's death, it would (6 appear to be not the proper dress of mourning for so near a relative; so that he "satisfied nobody and displeased some; for Miss Reynolds, who afterwards heard "of her death, thought it unfeeling in him to call his mother a distant relation." Northcote's Life of Reynolds, i. 212. See ante, 191. CHAPTER IX. THE HAUNCH OF VENISON AND GAME OF CHESS. 1770-1771. EIGHT days after he put on mourning for his mother's death, on the 16th of September 1770, 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; had some really good remarks on the defects as well as merits of Parnell's translations; 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 meridian splendour." It also contained remarks on the ornamented schools of poetry, in which allusions, not in the best taste, were levelled against Gray, and less specifically against his old favourite Collins; 1770. Æt. 42. 1770. yet remarks, I must add, of which the principle was sound Et. 42. enough, though pushed, as good principles are apt to be, to an absurd extreme. For, of styles all bristling with epithets, 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 I fear there is no reasonable ground for doubting that Goldsmith was guilty of the egregious bad taste, which Cradock has recorded, of proposing to improve Gray's Elegy by cutting the imagination bodily out of it. "You are so attached," he represents Goldsmith saying "to Hurd, Gray, and Mason, that you think "nothing good can proceed but out of that formal school; now, I'll mend Gray's Elegy, by leaving out an idle word in every line!" "And for me, Doctor, "completely spoil it." "The curfew tolls the knell of day, The lowing herd winds o'er the lea; "Enough, enough, I have no ear for more." Cradock's Memoirs, i. 230. This was certainly carrying out to its most alarming practical extent Voltaire's objection to epithets! "If certain authors could only understand," exclaimed the great Frenchman, "that adjectives are the greatest enemies of substantives, although "they agree in gender, number, and case!" A subtle critic in the Edinburgh Review (lxxxviii. 205) has on the other hand pointed out that the epithet is often, and in no poet more than Gray, precisely that word in a verse which addresses itself most to the imagination of the reader, and tests most severely that of the author. A good epithet is always an image--which the critic proceeds to illustrate by a line, which, as Shakspeare wrote it, would stand The gaudy, babbling, and remorseless day; until a process such as that which Goldsmith applies to the later poet, should amend it into the faultless simplicity of The day! I am afraid that some meddler had been putting Goldsmith out of humour with the poet of Pembroke-hall, by telling him how meanly Parnell himself was thought of there. He had a sort of family as well as national liking for Parnell, and would be sadly disposed to resent, with even greater injustice in the other extreme, Gray's characterisation of him as "the dunghill of Irish Grub-street." See Correspondence of Gray and Mason, 153. Nor should I omit to add that other satisfactory result to his own fame, which arose from the famous eulogy of Johnson. "The Life of Dr. Parnell is a task "which I should very willingly decline, since it has been lately written by Gold"smith, a man of such variety of powers, and such felicity of performance, that "he always seemed to do best that which he was doing; a man who had the art once been engaged for, and now occupied Goldsmith on his 1770. return. Bolingbroke was the subject selected, for its hot Et. 42. party-interest of course; indeed the life was to be prefixed to a republication of the Dissertation on Parties: 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 in it 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. It must be admitted, I fear, that it is but a slovenly piece of writing. The two closing paragraphs, summing up Bolingbroke's character, alone have any pretension to strength or merit of style; and these were so marked an imitation of that Johnsonian manner in which Goldsmith's writing for the most. part is singularly deficient, whatever his conversation may at times have been, that the resemblance did not escape his friends of the Monthly Review. They closed their bitter onslaught on the Bolingbroke biography by broadly, and of "of being minute without tediousness, and general without confusion; whose "language was copious without exuberance, exact without constraint, and easy "without weakness. What such an author has told, who would tell again? I "have made an abstract from his larger narrative; and have this gratification "from my attempt, that it gives me an opportunity of paying due tribute to the 64 memory of Goldsmith. Τὸ γὰρ γέρας ἐστί θανόντων.” Lives of the Poets. (Works, iii. 522.) On the other hand, he remarked to Boswell, + Monthly Review, Feb. 1771, xliv. 108. The amiable Griffiths begins his attack by candidly confessing his gratification at the opportunity afforded him by Goldsmith's 1770. course without any other foundation for the slander, insinuEt. 42. ating the authorship of Johnson in these particular passages; being as much superior to the rest of the composition as "the style and manner of Johnson are to those of his equally pompous but feeble imitator." 1771. 66 Goldsmith continued with Lord Clare during the opening Æt. 43. months of 1771. They were together at Gosfield, and at book, "of indulging a desire we have long had at heart, of exposing that false, 66 futile, and slovenly style, which, to the utter neglect of grammatical precision "and purity, disgraces &c. &c. &c. and no author ever gave a fairer opportunity "of discharging it, than the author of this Life of Bolingbroke." To show the delicacy of personal reference with which the so grateful office was discharged, I shall quote, with its comment, one out of the eighteen examples of "false language" laughed at by the critical and tasteful Griffiths. "10. Bolingbroke and his wife "parted by mutual consent, both equally displeased?' Arrah!" The reader will perhaps thank me for closing this note with a specimen of the imitation of Johnson to which I advert in the text. "In this manner lived and died Lord Bolingbroke, ever active, never depressed, ever pursuing fortune, and as constantly disappointed "by her. In whatever light we view his character, we shall find him an object "rather properer for our wonder than our imitation, more to be feared than "esteemed, and gaining our admiration without our love. His ambition ever "aimed at the summit of power, and nothing seemed capable of satisfying his "immoderate desires, but the liberty of governing all things without a rival. With "as much ambition, as great abilities, and more acquired knowledge than Casar, "he wanted only his courage to be as successful: but the schemes his head dictated, "his heart often refused to execute; and he lost the ability to perform, just when "the great occasion called for all his efforts to engage." Miscellaneous Works, iii. 424. It was the occasional indulgence in sentences of this kind, and in conversation rather than in books (for its occurrence in the latter is so rare as, except in this single instance, to be hardly discoverable), that doubtless led Boswell so foolishly to talk of Goldsmith as belonging to the "Johnsonian school" with which he had absolutely nothing in common, and that formed so attractive a theme for satire to the small wits of the day. Exempli gratiâ, thus writes, and annotates, the satirical author of the Patron. "Goldsmith thus robed assumes a mock command, And in those regions reigns Johnson at second-hand. "The puny Doctor tore from the brawny shoulders of Johnson a corner of his mantle, "in which he swath'd himself o'er and o'er." I will close this note by referring to a delightful letter from Burke to Murphy on the dangers attending such a style as Johnson's, to be found in Richard Sharp's Letters and Essays, 17. * "I was last night at the club. Dr. Percy has written a long ballad in many "fits; it is pretty enough. He has printed, and will soon publish it. Goldsmith "is at Bath, with Lord Clare. At Mr. Thrale's, where I am now writing, all are "well." Johnson to Boswell, March 20, 1771. Boswell, iii. 153. |