strange blunders; for he knew nothing with He 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. aspired to share in their colloquial renown; but never was amibition more unfortunate. It may seem strange that a man who wrote 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 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 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. 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 angel, and talked like poor Pol.' Chamier 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. There are transparent and sparkling rivers Yet, ignorant as Goldsmith was, few 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 Goldsmith might now be considered as a hearers. He was painfully sensible of his prosperous man. He had the means of inferiority in conversation; he felt every living in comfort, and even in what to one failure keenly; yet he had not sufficient who had so often slept in barns and on bulks judgment and self-command to hold his must have been luxury. His fame was great 50 tongue. His animal spirits and vanity were and was constantly rising. He lived in what always impelling him to try to do the one was intellectually far the best society of the thing which he could not do. After every kingdom, in a society in which no talent or attempt he felt that he had exposed himself, a 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 l. 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 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 that he might be said to invite them; and praise, instead of doing injuries slyly and Goldsmith has sometimes been represented 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 his forty-sixth year. 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 He was laid in the 10 much to be lamented that Johnson did not leave to posterity a more durable and a more valuable memorial of his friend. A life of Goldsmith would have been an inestimable addition to the Lives of the Poets. No man churchyard of the Temple; but the spot was not marked by any inscription, and is now forgotten. The coffin was followed by Burke and Reynolds. Both these great men were sincere mourners. Burke, 15 appreciated Goldsmith's writings more justly 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. 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 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 Her tears fell with the dews at even; After the flitting of the bats, When thickest dark did trance the sky, And glanced athwart the glooming flats. 20 She said, 'I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!' Upon the middle of the night, Waking she heard the night-fowl crow: The cock sung out an hour ere light: From the dark fen the oxen's low Came to her: without hope of change, In sleep she seemed to walk forlorn, She only said, 'The day is dreary, 25 30 20 1830 She said, 'I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!' About a stone-cast from the wall A sluice with blackened waters slept, And o'er it many, round and small, The clustered marish-mosses crept. Hard by a poplar shook alway, 35 40 All silver-green with gnarlèd bark: For leagues no other tree did mark The level waste, the rounding gray. She only said, 'My life is dreary, And ever when the moon was low, 45 And the shrill winds were up and away, 50 In the white curtain, to and fro, She saw the gusty shadow sway. But when the moon was very low, And wild winds bound within their cell, The shadow of the poplar fell 55 Upon her bed, across her brow. She only said, 'The night is dreary, All day within the dreamy house, 60 The doors upon their hinges creaked; Old faces glimmered through the doors, The sparrow's chirrup on the roof, The slow clock ticking, and the sound Which to the wooing wind aloof The poplar made, did all confound She wept, 'I am aweary, aweary, 65 70 70 Skimming down to Camelot: But who hath seen her wave her hand? Only reapers, reaping early PART II There she weaves by night and day She has heard a whisper say, 75 A magic web with colours gay. 80 40 |