the country "a shambles."* .Hardly a Monday passed that was not Black Monday at Newgate. An execution came round as regularly as any other weekly show; and when it was that "shocking sight of fifteen men executed," whereof Boswell makes more than one mention, the interest was of course the greater. Men, not otherwise hardened, found here a debasing delight. George Selwyn passed as much time at Tyburn as at White's; and Mr. Boswell had a special suit of execution-black, to make a decent appearance near the scaffold. Not uncalled for, therefore, though solitary and as yet unheeded, was the warning of the good Doctor Primrose. Nay, not uncalled for is it now, though ninety years have passed. Do not, he said, draw the cords of society so hard, that a convulsion must come to burst them; do not cut away wretches as useless, before you have tried their utility; make law the protector, not the tyrant of the people. You will then find that creatures, 66 not to be forgotten," added Sir William, "that she was very young (under "nineteen), and most remarkably handsome. . . Her defence was (I have the trial "in my pocket) that she had lived in credit, and wanted for nothing, till a pressgang came and stole her husband from her... It was at the time when press66 warrants were issued on the alarm about Falkland Islands." Parl. Hist. xix. 237-8. It was not until 1790 that the act for burning women found guilty of coining, and subjecting the sheriff to a severe penalty for not enforcing it, was repealed. Ibid, xxix. 782-3. 66 64 "It is shocking to think," he wrote, but a very few years before this date, what a shambles this country is grown. Seventeen were executed this morning, "after having murdered the turnkey on Friday night, and almost forced open Newgate. One is forced to travel, even at noon, as if one was going to battle." Collected Letters, ii. 418-19. Here, at one view, is the system of frequent executions and its result. Henry Fielding had strongly protested against it, more than ten years before the present date, in his admirable Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers, &c; where, after urging the necessity of a mitigation of the criminal code, he gives many reasons of singular weight in support of his opinion that executions should be private. "The design of those who first "appointed executions to be public, was to add the punishment of shame to that of "death; in order to make the example an object of greater terror. But experience "has shown us that the event is directly contrary to this intention." See the whole of the argument in Works (Ed. 1821), x. 461-7. + Life, iii. 94; viii. 331, &c. 1766. Et. 38. 1766. whose souls are held as dross, want only the hand of a Et. 38. refiner; and that "very little blood will serve to cement our Resemblances have been found, and may be admitted to exist, between the reverend Charles Primrose and the reverend Abraham Adams. They arose from kindred genius; and from the manly habit which Fielding and Goldsmith shared, of discerning what was good and beautiful in the homeliest aspects of humanity. In the parson's saddle-bag of sermons would hardly have been found this prison sermon of the vicar; and there was in Mr. Adams not only a * Greatly as our penal jurisprudence has been improved since Goldsmith's day, there yet remains too much still to do to enable us to dispense with the warning contained in the noble passage of the Vicar of Wakefield to which I refer in the text, and which never can be read or quoted too often: "It is among the citizens "of a refined community that penal laws, which are in the hands of the rich, are laid upon the poor. Government, while it grows older, seems to acquire "the moroseness of age; and as if our property were become dearer in propor"tion as it increased, as if the more enormous our wealth, the more extensive our fears, all our possessions are paled up with new edicts every day, and hung "round with gibbets to scare every invader. I cannot tell whether it is from "the number of our penal laws or the licentiousness of our people, that this "country should show more convicts in a year, than half the dominions of Europe united. Perhaps it is owing to both; for they mutually produce "each other. When by indiscriminate penal laws a nation beholds the same punishment affixed to dissimilar degrees of guilt, from perceiving no distinc"tion in the penalty, the people are led to lose all sense of distinction in "the crime, and this distinction is the bulwark of all morality; thus the mul"titude of laws produce new vices, and new vices call for fresh restraints. "It were to be wished then that power, instead of contriving new laws to "punish vice, instead of drawing hard the cords of society till a convulsion come "to burst them, instead of cutting away wretches as useless, before we have tried "their utility, instead of converting correction into vengeance, it were to be "wished that we tried the restrictive arts of government, and made law the pro"tector, but not the tyrant of the people. We should then find that creatures, "whose souls are held as dross, only wanted the hand of a refiner; we should then "find that wretches, now stuck up for long tortures, lest luxury should feel a "momentary pang, might, if properly treated, serve to sinew the state in times of "danger; that, as their faces are like ours, their hearts are so too; that few "minds are so base as that perseverance cannot amend; that a man may see his "last crime without dying for it; and that very little blood will serve to cement our security." Chapter xxvii. 66 capacity for beef and pudding, but for beating and being 1766. beaten, which would ill have consisted with the simple Et. 38. dignity of Doctor Primrose. But unquestionable learning, unsuspecting simplicity, amusing traits of credulity and pedantry, and a most Christian purity and benevolence of heart, are common to both these master-pieces of English fiction; and are in each with such exquisite touch discriminated, as to leave no possible doubt of the originality of either. Anything like the charge of imitation is preposterous. Fielding's friend, Young, sat for the parson, as in Goldsmith's father, Charles, we have seen the original of the vicar;* and as long as nature pleases to imitate herself, will such simple-hearted spirits reveal kindred with each other. At the same time, and with peculiar mastery, art vindicates also in such cases her power and skill; and the general truth of resemblance is, after all, perceived to be much less striking 66 66 * A confused and quite incredible statement of Mr. Cradock's will hereafter be referred to (Book iv. Chap. xix.) to the effect that the Vicar was written "entirely "in a fortnight" in order to pay a journey of needful business to Wakefield, and hence the name. On the other hand, an American loyalist who took refuge in England, and had occasion to visit Wakefield, three years after Goldsmith's death, seems to have had curious proof of the anxiety of the good people of that prosperous town to claim a property in the vicar himself, as well as in the name of the vicarage. "Departed in a stage-coach from Sheffield, and arrived at Black 'Barnsley through a delightful though uneven road; distance fourteen miles. "Here we took post-chaises, and in two hours alighted at Wakefield, a clothing "town, wherein appear evident tokens of taste in building, and of wealth: the avenues to it delightful, the roads like a carpet walk; on one side a raised terrace walk for foot-passengers, flagged for more than two miles, the lands "hereabouts excellent, and under the most improved cultivation. The Westgatestreet has the noblest appearance of any I ever saw, out of London; its pavements in the best order; its length near half-a-mile, and width ten rods. Were "it not for some old, low buildings, London could not boast a more magnificent 66 street. It has a very large episcopal church, with a remarkably lofty tower "and spire. The principal character in the novel called The Vicar of Wakefield was taken from the late vicar of this church, named Johnson, whose peculiarly “odd and singular humour has exposed his memory to the ridicule of that 66 'satire." It is hardly necessary to remark that the worthy Boston trader whose diary I quote (Curwen's Journal and Letters, 131), could not himself have read the book which he thus characterises. 66 66 66 1766. than the local accidents of difference. Does it not well Et. 38. nigh seem incredible, indeed, comparing the tone of language and incident in the two stories, that a space of twenty years should have comprised Joseph Andrews and the Vicar of Wakefield? Little, it must be confessed, had past experience in fiction, from the days of De Foe to these of Smollett, prepared the age for a simple novel of English domestic life.* Least of all for that picture, so purely and delicately shaded, of the vicar, in his character of pastor, parent, and husband; of his helpmate, with her motherly cunning and housewifely prudence, loving and respecting him, "but at the dictates "of maternal vanity counterplotting his wisest schemes;" of both, with their children around them, their quiet labour and domestic happiness,-which Walter Scott declares to be without a parallel, in all his novel-reading, as a fireside picture of perfect beauty. It may be freely admitted that there are many grave faults, some improbabilities, some even palpable absurdities, in the construction of the story. Goldsmith knew this. "There are an hundred faults in this 66 Thing," he said, in his brief advertisement to it; "and an "hundred things might be said to prove them beauties. "But it is needless." (His meaning is, that to make beauties out of faults, be the proof ever so successful, does not mend the matter.) "A book may be amusing with may be very dull without a single numerous errors, or it * I must always regard it as extraordinary, in such men, how much both Fielding and Smollett resorted in their novels to that sort of stimulus which the covert satire of individuals could alone supply to the generally false and depraved taste of the day, and which Goldsmith so steadily turned aside from. The truth is, as already I have hinted, that not many years before this date half the papers that issued from Grub-street were mere scandalous chronicles; and literature still suffered even less from the contempt into which the inferior talents of their writers had brought it, than from the dregs of the example they had left, and of the diseased taste to which they had so largely administered. absurdity." He rested, with well grounded faith, on the 1766. vital reality of his characters. It is wonderful with what Et. 38. nice variety the family likeness of each Primrose is preserved, and how little the defects of the story interfere with any of them. Cannot one see that there is a propriety, an eternal fitness, in even the historical family picture? Those rosy Flamborough girls, who do nothing but flaunt in red top-knots, hunt the slipper, burn nuts, play tricks, dance country dances, and scream with laughter; who have not the least idea of high life or high-lived company, or such fashionable topics as pictures, taste, Shakspeare, and the musical-glasses,*-how should it be possible for them to have any other notion or desire than just to be painted in 66 Let me remark of this now famous allusion, that it may help in some degree to show us how long the little story had been in hand, and that there is no ground for supposing it, as Hawkins and others have called it, a mere occasional piece of writing to meet "a moment of pressure." An allusion to "the last Auditor," marking 1762 as about the time when the publication of Murphy's unsuccessful paper so-called was in progress and would have suggested that reference, is borne out by "the musical-glasses." It was at the close of 1761 and in 1762, that musical-glasses were the temporary rage. Everybody's letters allude to them. Here is a charming one from Gray to Mason, which, being in one quaint sentence, I need not scruple to quote entire. "Pemb. Hall, Dec. 8, 1761. Dear Mason, Of all "loves come to Cambridge out of hand, for here is Mr. Delaval and a charming set of glasses that sing like nightingales; and we have concerts every other night, "and shall stay here this month or two; and a vast deal of good company, and a "whale in pickle just come from Ipswich; and the man will not die, and Mr. "Wood is gone to Chatsworth; and there is nobody but you and Tom and the "curled dog; and do not talk of the charge, for we will make a subscription; besides, we know you always come when you have a mind. T. G." Correspondence of Gray and Mason, 283-4. They had been introduced some years before, with less effect, by a German performer, thus referred to in a letter of Walpole's to Mann (Coll. Lett. ii. 111). "The operas flourish more than in any "latter years; the composer is Gluck, a German he is to have a benefit, at "which he is to play on a set of drinking-glasses, which he modulates with "water. I think I have heard you speak of having seen some such thing." I close this note with an advertisement from the St. James's Chronicle of Dec. 3rd, 1761: "At Mr. Sheridan's lecture on elocution, Miss Lloyd succeeds Miss Ford "in performing on the musical-glasses for the amusement of genteel company." It was eminently, we perceive, an amusement for "the genteel," the Skeggses and Blarneys of high life. 66 |