strange blunders; for he knew nothing with accuracy. Thus, in his 'History of England' he tells us that Naseby is in Yorkshire; nor did he correct this mistake when the book was reprinted. He was very nearly hoaxed into putting into the 'History of Greece' an account of a battle between Alexander the Great and Montezuma. In his 'Animated Nature' he relates, with faith and with

accomplishment was wanting, and in which the art of conversation was cultivated with splendid success. There probably were never four talkers more admirable in four 5 different ways than Johnson, Burke, Beauclerk, and Garrick; and Goldsmith was on terms of intimacy with all the four. He aspired to share in their colloquial renown; but never was amibition more unfortunate.

perfect gravity, all the most absurd lies which 10 It may seem strange that a man who wrote

he could find in books of travels about gigantic Patagonians, monkeys that preach sermons, nightingales that repeat long conversations. 'If he can tell a horse from a

with so much perspicuity, vivacity, and grace, should have been, whenever he took a part in conversation, an empty, noisy, blundering rattle. But on this point the evidence is

contrast between Goldsmith's published works and the silly things which he said, that Horace Walpole described him as an inspired idiot. 'Noll,' said Garrick, 'wrote like an

cow,' says Johnson, 'that is the extent of his 15 overwhelming. So extraordinary was the knowledge of zoology.' How little Goldsmith was qualified to write about the physical sciences is sufficiently proved by two anecdotes. He on one occasion denied that the sun is longer in the northern than in 20 angel, and talked like poor Pol.' Chamier the southern signs. It was vain to cite the authority of Maupertuis. 'Maupertuis!' he cried, ‘I understand those matters better than Maupertuis.' On another occasion he, in defiance of the evidence of his own senses, 25 maintained obstinately, and even angrily, that he chewed his dinner by moving his upper jaw.

declared that it was a hard exercise of faith to believe that so foolish a chatterer could have really written 'The Traveller.' Even Boswell could say, with contemptuous compassion, that he liked very well to hear honest Goldsmith run on. 'Yes, sir,' said Johnson, but he should not like to hear himself.' Minds differ as rivers differ. Yet, ignorant as Goldsmith was, few There are transparent and sparkling rivers writers have done more to make the first 30 from which it is delightful to drink as they steps in the laborious road to knowledge easy and pleasant. His compilations are widely distinguished from the compilations of ordinary book-makers. He was a great, perhaps an unequalled, master of the arts of 35 selection and condensation. In these respects his histories of Rome and of England, and still more his own abridgments of these histories, well deserve to be studied. In general nothing is less attractive than an 40 epitome: but the epitomes of Goldsmith, even when most concise, are always amusing; and to read them is considered by intelligent children, not as a task, but as pleasure.

flow; to such rivers the minds of such men as Burke and Johnson may be compared. But there are rivers of which the water when first drawn is turbid and noisome, but becomes pellucid as crystal, and delicious to the taste, if it be suffered to stand till it has deposited a sediment; and such a river is a type of the mind of Goldsmith. His first thoughts on every subject were confused even to absurdity; but they required only a little time to work themselves clear. When he wrote they had that time; and therefore his readers pronounced him a man of genius: but when he talked he talked nonsense, and 45 made himself the laughingstock of his a hearers. He was painfully sensible of his inferiority in conversation; he felt every failure keenly; yet he had not sufficient judgment and self-command to hold his tongue. His animal spirits and vanity were always impelling him to try to do the one thing which he could not do. After every attempt he felt that he had exposed himself,

a

Goldsmith might now be considered as prosperous man. He had the means of living in comfort, and even in what to one who had so often slept in barns and on bulks must have been luxury. His fame was great 50 and was constantly rising. He lived in what was intellectually far the best society of the kingdom, in a society in which no talent or

and writhed with shame and vexation; yet the next moment he began again.

His associates seem to have regarded him with kindness, which, in spite of their admiration of his writings, was not unmixed with contempt. In truth, there was in his character much to love, but very little to respect. His heart was soft even to weakness: he was so generous that he quite forgot

much sharp misery before he had done anything considerable in literature. But, after his name had appeared on the titlepage of 'The Traveller,' he had none but 5 himself to blame for his distresses. His average income, during the last seven years of his life, certainly exceeded 400 l. a year: and 400 l. a year ranked, among the incomes of that day, at least as high as 800 7. a year

to be just; he forgave injuries so readily 10 would rank at present. A single man living

in the Temple with 400 l. a year might then be called opulent. Not one in ten of the young gentlemen of good families who were studying the law there had so much. But all

that he might be said to invite them; and
was so liberal to beggars that he had nothing
left for his tailor and his butcher. He was
vain, sensual, frivolous, profuse, improvident.
One vice of a darker shade was imputed to 15 the wealth which Lord Clive had brought
him, envy. But there is not the least reason
to believe that this bad passion, though it
sometimes made him wince and utter fretful
exclamations, ever impelled him to injure by
wicked arts the reputation of any of his 20
rivals. The truth probably is, that he was
not more envious, but merely less prudent,
than his neighbours. His heart was on his
lips. All those small jealousies, which are but
too common among men of letters, but which 25
a man of letters who is also a man of the
world does his best to conceal, Goldsmith
avowed with the simplicity of a child.
When he was envious, instead of affecting
indifference, instead of damning with faint 30 unskilful of gamblers. For a time he put off

praise, instead of doing injuries slyly and
in the dark, he told everybody that he was
envious. 'Do not, pray, do not talk of
Johnson in such terms,' he said to Boswell;
'you harrow up my very soul.' George 35
Steevens and Cumberland were men far too
cunning to say such a thing. They would
have echoed the praises of the man whom
they envied, and then have sent to the news-
papers anonymous libels upon him. Both 40
what was good and what was bad in Gold-
smith's character was to his associates a per-
fect security that he would never commit
such villany. He was neither ill-natured
enough, nor long-headed enough, to be 45
guilty of any malicious act which required
contrivance and disguise.

Goldsmith has sometimes been represented
as a man of genius, cruelly treated by the
world, and doomed to struggle with dif- 50
ficulties which at last broke his heart.
But no representation can be more remote
from the truth. He did, indeed, go through

from Bengal, and Sir Lawrence Dundas from Germany, joined together, would not have sufficed for Goldsmith. He spent twice as much as he had. He wore fine clothes, gave dinners of several courses, paid court to venal beauties. He had also, it should be remembered, to the honour of his heart, though not of his head, a guinea, or five, or ten, according to the state of his purse, ready for any tale of distress, true or false. But it was not in dress or feasting, in promiscuous amours or promiscuous charities, that his chief expense lay. He had been from boyhood a gambler, and at once the most sanguine and the most

the day of inevitable ruin by temporary expedients. He obtained advances from booksellers, by promising to execute works which he never began. But at length this source of supply failed. He owed more than 20007., and he saw no hope of extrication from his embarrassments. His spirits and health gave way. He was attacked by a nervous fever, which he thought himself competent to treat. It would have been happy for him if his medical skill had been appreciated as justly by himself as by others. Notwithstanding the degree which he pretended to have received at Padua, he could procure no patients. 'I do not practice,' he once said; 'I make it a rule to prescribe only for my friends.' 'Pray, dear Doctor,' said Beauclerk, 'alter your rule; and prescribe only for your enemies.' Goldsmith now, in spite of this excellent advice, prescribed for himself. The remedy aggravated the malady. The sick man was induced to call in real physicians; and they at one time

imagined that they had cured the disease. Still his weakness and restlessness continued. He could get no sleep. He could take no food. 'You are worse,' said one of his medical attendants, 'than you should be from the degree of fever which you have. Is your mind at ease?' 'No, it is not,' were the last recorded words of Oliver Goldsmith. He died on the third of April 1774, in

5

no interest for posterity were wanting to that noble gallery, and that their places were supplied by sketches of Johnson and Gibbon, as happy and vivid as the sketches of Burke and Garrick.

Some of Goldsmith's friends and admirers honoured him with a cenotaph in Westminster Abbey. Nollekens was the sculptor; and Johnson wrote the inscription. It is

his forty-sixth year. He was laid in the 10 much to be lamented that Johnson did not churchyard of the Temple; but the spot leave to posterity a more durable and a more was not marked by any inscription, and valuable memorial of his friend. is now forgotten. The coffin was followed by Burke and Reynolds. Both these great men were sincere mourners. Burke, 15 when he heard of Goldsmith's death, had burst into a flood of tears. Reynolds had been so much moved by the news that he had flung aside his brush and palette for the day.

A life of Goldsmith would have been an inestimable addition to the Lives of the Poets. No man appreciated Goldsmith's writings more justly than Johnson: no man was better acquainted with Goldsmith's character and habits; and no man was more competent to delineate with truth and spirit the peculiarities of a 20 mind in which great powers were found in company with great weaknesses. But the list of poets to whose works Johnson was requested by the booksellers to furnish prefaces ended with Lyttelton, who died in 1773. The line seems to have been drawn expressly for the purpose of excluding the person whose portrait would have most fitly closed the series. Goldsmith, however, has been fortunate in his biographers.

A short time after Goldsmith's death, a little poem appeared, which will, as long as our language lasts, associate the names of his two illustrious friends with his own. It has already been mentioned that he sometimes felt 25 keenly the sarcasm which his wild blundering talk brought upon him. He was, not long before his last illness, provoked into retaliating. He wisely betook himself to his pen; and at that weapon he proved himself a 30 Within a few years his life has been written

match for all his assailants together. Within
a small compass he drew with a singularly
easy and vigorous pencil the characters
of nine or ten of his intimate associates.
Though this little work did not receive his 35
last touches, it must always be regarded as a
masterpiece. It is impossible, however, not
to wish that four or five likenesses which have

by Mr. Prior, by Mr. Washington Irving, and by Mr. Forster. The diligence of Mr. Prior deserves great praise; the style of Mr. Washington Irving is always pleasing; but the highest place must, in justice, be assigned to the eminently interesting work of Mr. Forster.

1843

VICTORIAN AGE

POETRY