1771. In what follows, the leading notion is founded on one of Et. 43. Boileau's satires, but the comedy is both more rich and more delicate. The visitor ascertains that the venison is really Goldsmith's. If that be the case then, cried he, very gay, We'll have Johnson, and Burke, all the Wits will be there, My acquaintance is slight, or I'd ask my Lord Clare. † And, now that I think on't, as I am a sinner! We wanted this Venison to make out the Dinner. Left alone to reflect, having emptied my shelf, Though I could not help thinking my gentleman hasty, Though clogg'd with a coxcomb, and Kitty his Wife. * The third satire of Boileau, which, on the other hand, owed not a little, as did also Regnier (tenth satire), to Horace, and his raillery of the banquet of Nasidienus. But Mr. Croker has well pointed out how infinitely more droll, natural, and original are the company here brought together; and how nicely the details of the dinner, overdone and tedious in Boileau, are touched by Goldsmith with a pleasantry not carried too far. + The original of this couplet is in Boileau "Molière avec Tartuffe y doit jouer son rôle, Et Lambert qui plus est, m'a donné sa parole." Yet the right to copy might be safely given to everybody, if accompanied by the The first edition had "I'll take no denial-you shall and you must." § This line stood in the first edition : Who would believe it "No words, my dear Goldsmith! my very good friend!" So next Day in due splendor to make my approach, Sad is the disappointment. He had better have remained (as the Duke of Cumberland had said in those love-letters to Lady Grosvenor with which the newspapers were now making mirth for the town) with "nobody with him at sea but himself." Johnson and Burke can't come. The one is at Thrale's, and the other at that horrible House of Commons. But never mind, says the host; you shall see somebody quite as good. And here Goldsmith remembered his former visitor, Parson Scott, who had just now got his fat Northumberland livings in return for his Anti-Sejanus letters, and was redoubling anti-whig efforts through the same channel of the Public Advertiser, in hope of a bishopric very probably, with the signatures of Panurge and Cinna. "There is a villain who writes under the signature of Panurge," exclaimed the impetuous Barré, from his seat on the 12th of March, "a noted ministerial scribbler "undoubtedly supported by government. He has this day "published the grossest abuse upon the Duke of Portland, 66 66 charging him with robbing Sir James Lowther; yet this dirty scoundrel is suffered to go unpunished." Not wholly; for Goldsmith, to whom Burke had probably talked of the matter at the club, now ran his polished rapier * "I congratulate the ministry and the university," writes Nicholls to Gray, a month or two before the poet's death (29th April, 1771), "on the honour they "have both acquired by the promotion of Mr. Scott; may there never be wanting "such lights of the Church! and such ornaments of that famous seminary of "virtue and good learning." During the contest of Lords Sandwich and Hardwicke for the Cambridge High Stewardship, when Scott was busy, as usual, in libelling for his profligate patron, Gray had described this infamous party-hack as hired to do all in his power to provoke people by personal abuse, yet cannot so much as "get himself answered." Works, iv. 34, v. 135. + Cavendish Debates, ii. 390. 1771. Et. 43. 1771. through the political parson. Never mind for Burke and Et. 43. Johnson, repeats his host; I've provided capital substitutes. For I knew it, he cried, both eternally fail, The one with his speeches, and t'other with Thrale ; They're both of them merry, and authors like you.* The only hope left is the pasty; though it looks somewhat alarming when dinner is served, and no pasty appears. There is fried liver and bacon at the top, tripe at the bottom; there is spinach at the sides, with "pudding made hot; " and in the middle a place where the pasty "was-not." Now Goldsmith can't eat bacon or tripe; and even more odious to him than either is the ravenous literary Scot, and the talk of the chocolate-cheeked scribe of a Jew (who likes "these "here dinners so pretty and small"): but still there's the pasty promised, with Kitty's famous crust; and of this a rumour goes gradually round the table, till the Scot, though already replete with tripe and bacon, announces "a corner "for thot ;" and "we'll all keep a corner," is the general resolve, and on the pasty everything is concentrated: when the terrified maid brings in, not the pasty, but the catastrophe, in the shape of terrible news from the baker. To him had the pasty been carried, crust and all: And so it fell out, for that negligent sloven Had shut out the Pasty on shutting his oven. And having thus described the first important manifestation * Or, as the first edition had it, "Who dabble and write in the papers like you." 1771. of that power of easy, witty, sarcastic verse which, even as life was closing on Goldsmith, began to be a formidable weapon in Et. 43. his hands, here may be the fitting occasion to connect with the Haunch of Venison a poem of which the date and circumstances attending its composition are unknown; which has never been publicly ascribed to him until now, and would seem, for some unaccountable reason, to have failed to find its way into print; yet which I cannot hesitate to call his, not simply because the manuscript is undoubtedly his handwriting, but for the better reason that what it contains is not unworthy of his genius. In the absence of certain information I shall forbear to speculate on the probable circumstances which led to the selection of such a subject as an exercise in verse, and content myself with presenting a brief outline of Vida's Game of Chess in the English heroic metre, as it has been found transcribed in the writing of Oliver Goldsmith. By my friend Mr. Bolton Corney, whose property it is, and who kindly permits my use of it. It is a small quarto manuscript of thirty-four pages, containing 679 lines, to which a fly-leaf is appended, in which Goldsmith notes the differences of nomenclature between Vida's chessmen and our own. It has occasional interlineations and corrections, but rather such as would occur in transcription, than in a first or original copy. Sometimes, indeed, choice appears to have been made (as at page 29) between two words equally suitable to the sense and verse, as "to" for "toward;" but the insertions and erasures refer almost wholly to words or lines accidentally omitted and replaced. The triplet is always carefully marked; and though it is seldom found in any other of Goldsmith's poems, I am disposed to regard its frequent recurrence, here, as even helping in some degree to explain the motive which had led him to the trial of an experiment in rhyme comparatively new to him. If we suppose him, half consciously it may be, taking up the manner of the great master of translation, Dryden, who was at all times so much a favourite with him, he would at least be less apt to fall short in so marked a peculiarity, than to err perhaps a little on the side of excess. Though I am far from thinking such to be the result in the present instance. The effect of the whole translation is very pleasing to me, and the mock heroic effect I think not a little assisted by the reiterated use of the triplet and alexandrine. As to any evidences of authorship derivable from the appearance of the manuscript, I will only add another word. The lines in the translation have been carefully counted, and the number is marked in Goldsmith's hand at the close of his transcription. 1771. Of Vida there is little occasion to speak. What student Et. 43. of literature does not know the gay, courtly, scholarly priest, the favourite of Leo the magnificent, whom the seventh Clement invested with the mitre of Alba, and who was crowned with a laurel unfading as his wit by that great English poet, in whose fancy even the ancient glories of Italy seemed to linger still, while A Raffaelle painted and a Vida sung. Immortal Vida! on whose honoured brow As next in place to Mantua, next in fame! * Yet when those lines appeared, in the most marvellous youthful poem of our language, Pope's greatest debt to Vida was still to be incurred. The Game of Chess enriched the Rape of the Lockt with the delightful Game at Ombre. Nor would it be possible better to express, to a reader unacquainted with the original, that charm in Vida's poem which appears to have amused and attracted Goldsmith's imagination, than by referring to the close exactness in the movements of the game between the Baron and Belinda, on which Pope has lavished such exquisite fancy, and wit so delicate and masterly. With all this, Vida has combined in a yet greater degree the subtle play of satire implied in the Such a fact is of course only to be taken in aid of other proof; but a man is not Essay on Criticism, 1. 705-8. 41, and 45.) Though the first sketch of this delightful poem (characterised by Goldsmith in his Beauties of English Poetry as "Pope's most finished production, and "perhaps the most perfect in our language") appeared in Lintot's Miscellany within a year after the publication of the Essay on Criticism, it did not receive its highest touches till the appearance of the second edition, which contained the machinery of the Sylphs and the Game at Ombre. See Works, iii. 169. |