GREEN ARBOUR COURT,
LITTLE OLD BAILEY
(as it appeared in 1803)
He was born . . . at Pallas. This is the usual account. But it was maintained by the family of the poet's mother, and has been contended (by Dr. Michael F. Cox in a Lecture on 'The Country and Kindred of Oliver Goldsmith,' published in vol. 1, pt. 2, of the Journal of the 'National Literary Society of Ireland.' 1900) that his real birth-place was the residence of Mrs. Goldsmith's parents, Smith-Hill House, Elphin, Roscommon, to which she was in the habit of paying frequent visits. Meanwhile, in 1897, a window was placed to Goldsmith's memory in Forgney Church, Longford,—the church of which, at the time of his birth, his father was curate.
his academic career was not a success. 'Oliver Goldsmith is recorded on two occasions as being remarkably diligent at Morning Lecture; again, as cautioned for bad answering at Morning and Greek Lectures; and finally, as put down into the next class for neglect of his studies' (Dr. Stubbs's History of the University of Dublin, 1889, p. 201 n.)
a scratched signature upon a window-pane. This, which is now at Trinity College, Dublin, is here reproduced in facsimile. When the garrets of No. 35, Parliament Square, were pulled down in 1837, it was cut out of the window by the last occupant of the rooms, who broke it in the process. (Dr. J. F. Waller in Cassell's Works of Goldsmith, [1864-5], pp. xiii-xiv n.)
a poor physician. Where he obtained his diploma is not known. It was certainly not at Padua (Athenaeum, July 21, 1894). At Leyden and Louvain Prior made inquiries but, in each case, without success. The annals of the University of Louvain were, however, destroyed in the revolutionary wars. (Prior, Life, 1837, i, pp. 171, 178).
declared it to be by Goldsmith. Goldsmith's authorship of this version has now been placed beyond a doubt by the publication in facsimile of his signed receipt to Edward Dilly for
third share of 'my translation,' such third share amounting to 6 pounds 13s. 4d. The receipt, which belongs to Mr. J. W. Ford of Enfield Old Park, is dated 'January 11th, 1758.' (Memoirs of a Protestant, etc., Dent's edition, 1895, i, pp. xii-xviii.)
12, Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey. This was a tiny square occupying a site now absorbed by the Holborn Viaduct and Railway Station. No. 12, where Goldsmith lived, was later occupied by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. as a printing office. An engraving of the Court forms the frontispiece to the European Magazine for January, 1803.
or some of his imitators. The proximate cause of the Citizen of the World, as the present writer has suggested elsewhere, may have been Horace Walpole's Letter from XoHo [Soho?], a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his friend Lien Chi, at Peking. This was noticed as 'in Montesquieu's manner' in the May issue of the Monthly Review for 1757, to which Goldsmith was a contributor (Eighteenth Century Vignettes, first series, second edition, 1897, pp. 108-9).
demonstrable from internal evidence. e.g.—The references to the musical glasses (ch. ix), which were the rage in 1761-2; and to the Auditor (ch. xix) established by Arthur Murphy in June of the latter year. The sale of the 'Vicar' is discussed at length in chapter vii of the editor's Life of Oliver Goldsmith ('Great Writers' series), 1888, pp. 110-21.
started with a loss. This, which to some critics has seemed unintelliglble, rests upon the following: 'The first three editions, . . . resulted in a loss, and the fourth, which was not issued until eight [four?] years after the first, started with a balance against it of £2 16s. 6d., and it was not until that fourth edition had been sold that the balance came out on the right side' (A Bookseller of the Last Century [John Newbery] by Charles Welsh, 1885, p. 61). The writer based his statement upon Collins's 'Publishing book, account of books printed and shares therein, No. 3, 1770 to 1785.'
James's Powder. This was a famous patent panacea, invented by Johnson's Lichfield townsman, Dr. Robert James of the Medicinal Dictionary. It was sold by John Newbery, and had an extraordinary vogue. The King dosed Princess Elizabeth with it; Fielding, Gray, and Cowper all swore by it, and Horace Walpole, who wished to try it upon Mme. du Deffand in extremis,
said he should use it if the house were on fire. William Hawes, the Strand apothecary who attended Goldsmith, wrote an interesting Account of the late Dr. Goldsmith's Illness, so far as relates to the Exhibition of Dr. James's Powders, etc., 1774, which he dedicated to Reynolds and Burke. To Hawes once belonged the poet's worn old wooden writing-desk, now in the South Kensington Museum, where are also his favourite chair and cane. Another desk- chair, which had descended from his friend, Edmund Bott, was recently for sale at Sotheby's (July, 1906).
No collected edition of Goldsmith's poetical works appeared until after his death. But, in 1775, W. Griffin, who had published the Essays of ten years earlier, issued a volume entitled The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B., containing all his Essays and Poems. The 'poems' however were confined to 'The Traveller,' 'The Deserted Village,' 'Edwin and Angelina,' 'The Double Transformation,' 'A New Simile,' and 'Retaliation,'—an obviously imperfect harvesting. In the following year G. Kearsly printed an eighth edition of Retaliation, with which he included 'The Hermit' ('Edwin and Angelina'), 'The Gift,' 'Madam Blaize,' and the epilogues to The Sister and She stoops to Conquer;* while to an edition of The Haunch of Venison, also put forth in 1776, he added the 'Epitaph on Parnell' and two songs from the oratorio of The Captivity. The next collection appeared in a volume of Poems and Plays published at Dublin in 1777, where it was preceded by a 'Life,' written by W. Glover, one of Goldsmith's 'Irish clients.' Then, in 1780, came vol. i of T. Evans's Poetical and Dramatic Works, etc., now first collected, also having a 'Memoir,' and certainly fuller than anything which had gone before. Next followed the long-deferred Miscellaneous Works, etc., of 1801, in four volumes, vol. ii of which comprised the plays and poems. Prefixed to this edition is the important biographical sketch, compiled under the direction of Bishop Percy, and usually described as the Percy Memoir, by which title it is referred to in the ensuing
*Some copies of this are dated 1777, and contain The Haunch of Venison and a few minor pieces.
notes. The next memorable edition was that edited for the Aldine Series in 1831, by the Rev. John Mitford. Prior and Wright's edition in vol. iv of the Miscellaneous Works, etc., of 1837, comes after this; then Bolton Corney's excellent Poetical Works of 1845; and vol. i of Peter Cunningham's Works, etc. of 1854. There are other issues of the poems, the latest of which is to be found in vol. ii (1885) of the complete Works, in five volumes, edited for Messrs. George Bell and Sons by J. W. M. Gibbs.
Most of the foregoing editions have been consulted for the following notes; but chiefly those of Mitford, Prior, Bolton Corney, and Cunningham. Many of the illustrations and explanations now supplied will not, however, be found in any of the sources indicated. When an elucidatory or parallel passage is cited, an attempt has been made, as far as possible, to give the credit of it to the first discoverer. Thus, some of the illustrations in Cunningham's notes are here transferred to Prior, some of Prior's to Mitford, and so forth. As regards the notes themselves, care has been taken to make them full enough to obviate the necessity, except in rare instances, of further investigation. It is the editor's experience that references to external authorities are, as a general rule, sign-posts to routes which are seldom travelled.*
It was on those continental wanderings which occupied Goldsmith between February, 1755 and February, 1756 that he conceived his first idea of this, the earliest of his poems to which he prefixed his name; and he probably had in mind Addison's Letter from Italy to Lord Halifax, a work in which he found 'a strain of political thinking that was, at that time [1701]. new in our poetry.' (Beauties of English Poesy, 1767, i. III). From the dedicatory letter to his brother—which says expressly, 'as a part of this Poem was formerly written to you from Switzerland, the whole can now, with propriety, be only inscribed
*In this connexion may be recalled the dictum of Hume quoted by Dr. Birkbeck Hill:—'Every book should be as complete as possible within itself, and should never refer for anything material to other books' (History of England, 1802, ii. 101).
to you'—it is plain that some portion of it must have been actually composed abroad. It was not, however, actually published until the 19th of December, 1764, and the title- page bore the date of 1765.* The publisher was John Newbery, of St. Paul's Churchyard, and the price of the book, a quarto of 30 pages, was 1s. 6d. A second, third and fourth edition quickly followed, and a ninth, from which it is here reprinted, was issued in 1774, the year of the author's death. Between the first and the sixth edition of 1770 there were numerous alterations, the more important of which are indicated in the ensuing notes.
The didactic purpose of The Traveller is defined in the concluding paragraph of the Dedication; and, like many of the thoughts which it contains, had been anticipated in a passage
*This is the generally recognized first edition. But the late Mr. Frederick Locker Lampson, the poet and collector, possessed a quarto copy, dated 1764, which had no author's name, and in which the dedication ran as follows:—'This poem is inscribed to the Rev. Henry Goldsmith, M.A. By his most affectionate Brother Oliver Goldsmith.' It was, in all probability, unique, though it is alleged that there are octavo copies which present similar characteristics. It has now gone to America with the Rowfant Library.
In 1902 an interesting discovery was made by Mr. Bertram Dobell, to whom the public are indebted for so many important literary 'finds.' In a parcel of pamphlets he came upon a number of loose printed leaves entitled A Prospect of Society. They obviously belonged to The Traveller; but seemed to be its 'formless unarranged material,' and contained many variations from the text of the first edition. Mr. Dobell's impression was that 'the author's manuscript, written on loose leaves, had fallen into confusion, and was then printed without any attempt at re-arrangement.' This was near the mark; but the complete solution of the riddle was furnished by Mr. Quiller Couch in an article in the Daily News for March 31, 1902, since recast in his charming volume From a Cornish Window, 1906, pp. 86-92. He showed conclusively that The Prospect was 'merely an early draft of The Traveller printed backwards in fairly regular sections.' What had manifestly happened was this. Goldsmith, turning over each page as written, had laid it on the top of the preceding page of MS. and forgotten to rearrange them when done. Thus the series of pages were reversed; and, so reversed, were set up in type by a matter-of-fact compositor. Mr. Dobell at once accepted this happy explanation; which—as Mr. Quiller Couch points out—has the advantage of being a 'blunder just so natural to Goldsmith as to be almost postulable.' One or two of the variations of Mr. Dobell's 'find'—variations, it should be added, antecedent to the first edition—are noted in their places.
of The Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 185:—'Every mind seems capable of entertaining a certain quantity of happiness, which no institutions can encrease, no circumstances alter, and entirely independent on fortune.' But the best short description of the poem is Macaulay's:—'In the Traveller the execution, though deserving of much praise, is far inferior to the design. No philosophical poem, ancient or modern, has a plan so noble, and at the same time so simple. An English wanderer, seated on a crag among the Alps, near the point where three great countries meet, looks down on the boundless prospect, reviews his long pilgrimage, recalls the varieties of scenery, of climate, of government, of religion, of national character, which he has observed, and comes to the conclusion, just or unjust, that our happiness depends little on political institutions, and much on the temper and regulation of our own minds.' (Encyclop. Britannica, Goldsmith, February, 1856.)
The only definite record of payment for The Traveller is 'Copy of the Traveller, a Poem, 21l,' in Newbery's MSS.; but as the same sum occurs in Memoranda of much later date than 1764, it is possible that the success of the book may have prompted some supplementary fee.
A Prospect, i.e. 'a view.' 'I went to Putney, and other places on the Thames, to take 'prospects' in crayon, to carry into France, where I thought to have them engraved' (Evelyn, Diary, 20th June, 1649). And Reynolds uses the word of Claude in his Fourth Discourse:—'His pictures are a composition of the various draughts which he had previously made from various beautiful scenes and prospects' (Works, by Malone, 1798, i. 105). The word is common on old prints, e.g. An Exact Prospect of the Magnificent Stone Bridge at Westminster, etc., 1751.
Dedication. The Rev. Henry Goldsmith, says the Percy Memoir, 1801, p. 3, 'had distinguished himself both at school and at college, but he unfortunately married at the early age of nineteen; which confined him to a Curacy, and prevented his rising to preferment in the church.'
with an income of forty pounds a year. Cf. The Deserted Village, ll. 141-2:—
A man he was, to all the country dear,
And passing rich with forty pounds a year.
Cf. also Parson Adams in ch. iii of Joseph Andrews, who has twenty- three; and Mr. Rivers, in the Spiritual Quixote, 1772:—'I do not choose to go into orders to be a curate all my life-time, and work for about fifteen- pence a day, or twenty-five pounds a year' (bk. vi, ch. xvii). Dr. Primrose's stipend is thirty-five in the first instance, fifteen in the second (Vicar of Wakefield, chapters ii and iii). But Professor Hales (Longer English Poems, 1885, p. 351) supplies an exact parallel in the case of Churchill, who, he says, when a curate at Rainham, 'prayed and starved on forty pounds a year.' The latter words are Churchill's own, and sound like a quotation; but he was dead long before The Deserted Village appeared in 1770. There is an interesting paper in the Gentleman's Magazine for November, 1763, on the miseries and hardships of the 'inferior clergy.'
But of all kinds of ambition, etc. In the first edition of 1765, p. ii, this passage was as follows:—'But of all kinds of ambition, as things are now circumstanced, perhaps that which pursues poetical fame, is the wildest. What from the encreased refinement of the times, from the diversity of judgments produced by opposing systems of criticism, and from the more prevalent divisions of opinion influenced by party, the strongest and happiest efforts can expect to please but in a very narrow circle. Though the poet were as sure of his aim as the imperial archer of antiquity, who boasted that he never missed the heart; yet would many of his shafts now fly at random, for the heart is too often in the wrong place.' In the second edition it was curtailed; in the sixth it took its final form.
they engross all that favour once shown to her. First version—'They engross all favour to themselves.'
the elder's birthright. Cunningham here aptly compares Dryden's epistle To Sir Godfrey Kneller, II. 89-92:—
Our arts are sisters, though not twins in birth;
For hymns were sung in Eden's happy earth:
But oh, the painter muse, though last in place,
Has seized the blessing first, like Jacob's race.
Party=faction. Cf. lines 31-2 on Edmund Burke in Retaliation:—
Who, born for the Universe, narrow'd his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.
Such readers generally admire, etc. 'I suppose this paragraph to be directed against Paul Whitehead, or Churchill,' writes Mitford. It was clearly aimed at Churchill, since Prior (Life, 1837, ii. 54) quotes a portion of a contemporary article in the St. James's Chronicle for February 7-9, 1765, attributed to Bonnell Thornton, which leaves little room for doubt upon the question. 'The latter part of this paragraph,' says the writer, referring to the passage now annotated, 'we cannot help considering as a reflection on the memory of the late Mr. Churchill, whose talents as a poet were so greatly and so deservedly admired, that during his short reign, his merit in great measure eclipsed that of others; and we think it no mean acknowledgment of the excellencies of this poem [The Traveller] to say that, like the stars, they appear the more brilliant now that the sun of our poetry is gone down.' Churchill died on the 4th of November, 1764, some weeks before the publication of The Traveller. His powers, it may be, were misdirected and misapplied; but his rough vigour and his manly verse deserved a better fate at Goldsmith's hands.
tawdry was added in the sixth edition of 1770.
blank verse. Cf. The Present State of Polite Learning, 1759, p. 150—'From a desire in the critic of grafting the spirit of ancient languages upon the English, has proceeded of late several disagreeable instances of pedantry. Among the number, I think we may reckon blank verse. Nothing but the greatest sublimity of subject can render such a measure pleasing; however, we now see it used on the most trivial occasions'—by which last remark Goldsmith probably, as Cunningham thinks, intended to refer to the efforts of Akenside, Dyer, and Armstrong. His views upon blank verse were shared by Johnson and Gray. At the date of the present dedication, the latest offender in this way had been Goldsmith's old colleague on The Monthly Review, Dr. James Grainger, author of The Sugar Cane, which was published in June, 1764. (Cf. also The Bee for 24th November, 1759, 'An account of the Augustan Age of England.')
and that this principle, etc. In the first edition this read—'and that this principle in each state, and in our own in particular, may be carried to a mischievous excess.'
Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow. Mitford (Aldine edition, 1831, p. 7) compares the following lines from Ovid:—
Solus, inops, exspes, leto poenaeque relictus.
Metamorphoses, xiv.
217.
Exsul, inops erres, alienaque limina lustres, etc.
Ibis.
113.
slow. A well-known passage from Boswell must here be reproduced:—'Chamier once asked him [Goldsmith], what he meant by slow, the last word in the first line of The Traveller,
Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.
Did he mean tardiness of locomotion? Goldsmith, who would say something without consideration, answered "yes." I [Johnson] was sitting by, and said, "No, Sir, you do not mean tardiness of locomotion; you mean, that sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in solitude." Chamier believed then that I had written the line as much as if he had seen me write it.' [Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, 1887, iii. 252- 3.) It is quite possible, however, that Goldsmith meant no more than he said.
the rude Carinthian boor. 'Carinthia,' says Cunningham, 'was visited by Goldsmith in 1755, and still (1853) retains its character for inhospitality.'
Campania. 'Intended,' says Bolton Corney, 'to denote La campagna di Roma. The portion of it which extends from Rome to Terracina is scarcely habitable.'
a lengthening chain. Prior compares Letter iii of The Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 5:—'The farther I travel I feel the pain of separation with stronger force, those ties that bind me to my native country, and you, are still unbroken. By every remove, I only drag a greater length of chain.' But, as Mitford points out, Cibber has a similar thought in his Comical Lovers, 1707, Act v:—'When I am with Florimel, it [my heart] is still your prisoner, it only draws a longer chain after it.' And earlier still in Dryden's 'All for Love', 1678, Act ii, Sc. 1:—
My life on't, he still drags a chain along,
That needs must clog his flight.
with simple plenty crown'd. In the first edition this read 'where mirth and peace abound.'
the luxury of doing good. Prior compares Garth's Claremont, 1715, where he speaks of the Druids:—
Hard was their Lodging, homely was their Food,
For all their Luxury was doing Good.
my prime of life. He was seven- and-twenty when he landed at Dover in February, 1756.
That, like the circle bounding, etc. Cf. Vicar of Wakefield, 1766, ii. 160-1 (ch. x):—'Death, the only friend of the wretched, for a little while mocks the weary traveller with the view, and like his horizon, still flies before him.' [Prior.]
And find no spot of all the world my own. Prior compares his namesake's lines In the Beginning of [Jacques] Robbe's Geography, 1700:—
My destin'd Miles I shall have gone,
By THAMES or MAESE, by PO or RHONE,
And found no Foot of Earth my own.
above the storm's career. Cf. 1. 190 of The Deserted Village.
should thankless pride repine? First edition, ''twere thankless to repine.'
Say, should the philosophic mind, etc. First edition:—
'Twere affectation all, and school-taught pride,
To spurn the splendid things by heaven supply'd
hoard. 'Sum' in the first edition.
Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own. In the first version this was—
Boldly asserts that country for his own.
And yet, perhaps, etc. In the first edition, for this and the following five lines appeared these eight:—
And yet, perhaps, if states with states we scan,
Or estimate their bliss on Reason's plan,
Though patriots flatter, and though fools contend,
We still shall find uncertainty suspend;
Find that each good, by Art or Nature given,
To these or those, but makes the balance even:
Find that the bliss of all is much the same,
And patriotic boasting reason's shame!
On Idra's cliffs. Bolton Corney conjectures that Goldsmith meant 'Idria, a town in Carniola, noted for its mines.' 'Goldsmith in his "History of Animated Nature" makes mention of the mines, and spells the name in the same way as here.' (Mr. J. H. Lobban's Select Poems of Goldsmith, 1900, p. 87). Lines 84-5, it may be added, are not in the first edition.
And though the rocky-crested summits frown. In the first edition:—
And though rough rocks or gloomy summits frown.
lines 91-2. are not in the first editions.
peculiar, i.e. 'proper,' 'appropriate.'
winnow, i.e. 'waft,' 'disperse.' John Evelyn refers to these 'sea-born gales' in the 'Dedication' of his Fumifugium, 1661:— 'Those who take notice of the scent of the orange- flowers from the rivage of Genoa, and St. Pietro dell' Arena; the blossomes of the rosemary from the Coasts of Spain, many leagues off at sea; or the manifest, and odoriferous wafts which flow from Fontenay and Vaugirard, even to Paris in the season of roses, with the contrary effect of those less pleasing smells from other accidents, will easily consent to what I suggest [i.e. the planting of sweet-smelling trees].' (Miscellaneous Writings, 1825, p. 208.)
Till, more unsteady, etc. In the first edition:—
But, more unsteady than the southern gale,
Soon Commerce turn'd on other shores her sail.
There is a certain resemblance between this passage and one of the later paradoxes of Smollett's Lismahago;—'He affirmed, the nature of commerce was such, that it could not be fixed or perpetuated, but, having flowed to a certain height, would immediately begin to ebb, and so continue till the channels should be left almost dry; but there was no instance of the tide's rising a second time to any considerable influx in the same nation' (Humphry Clinker, 1771, ii. 192. Letter of Mr. Bramble to Dr. Lewis).
lines 141- 2. are not in the first edition.
Its former strength was but plethoric ill. Cf. The Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 98:—'In short, the state resembled one of those bodies bloated with disease, whose bulk is only a symptom of its wretchedness.' [Mitford.]
Yet still the loss, etc. In the first edition:—
Yet, though to fortune lost, here still abide
Some splendid arts, the wrecks of former pride.
The paste- board triumph and the cavalcade. 'Happy Country [he is speaking of Italy], where the pastoral age begins to revive! Where the wits even of Rome are united into a rural groupe of nymphs and swains, under the appellation of modern Arcadians [i.e. the Bolognese Academy of the Arcadi]. Where in the midst of porticos, processions, and cavalcades, abbes turn'd into shepherds, and shepherdesses without sheep, indulge their innocent divertimenti.' (Present State of Polite Learning, 1759, pp. 50- 1.) Some of the 'paste-board triumphs' may be studied in the plates of Jacques Callot.
By sports like these, etc. A pretty and well- known story is told with regard to this couplet. Calling once on Goldsmith, Reynolds, having vainly tried to attract attention, entered unannounced. 'His friend was at his desk, but with hand uplifted, and a look directed to another part of the room; where a little dog sat with difficulty on his haunches, looking imploringly at his teacher, whose rebuke for toppling over he had evidently just received. Reynolds advanced, and looked past Goldsmith's shoulder at the writing on his desk. It seemed to be some portions of a poem; and looking more closely, he was able to read a couplet which had been that instant written. The ink of the second line was wet:—
By sports like these are all their cares beguil'd;
The sports of children satisfy the child.
(Forster's Life, 1871, i. pp. 347-8).
The sports of children. This line, in the first edition, was followed by:—
At sports like these, while foreign arms advance,
In passive ease they leave the world to chance.
Each nobler aim, etc. The first edition reads:—
When struggling Virtue sinks by long controul,
She leaves at last, or feebly mans the soul.
This was changed in the second, third, fourth, and fifth editions to:—
When noble aims have suffer'd long controul,
They sink at last, or feebly man the soul.
No product here, etc. The Swiss mercenaries, here referred to, were long famous in European warfare.
They parted with a thousand kisses,
And fight e'er since for pay, like Swisses.
Gay's Aye and No, a Fable.
breasts This fine use of 'breasts'—as Cunningham points out—is given by Johnson as an example in his Dictionary.
With patient angle, trolls the finny deep. 'Troll,' i.e. as for pike. Goldsmith uses 'finny prey' in The Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 99:—'The best manner to draw up the finny prey.' Cf. also 'warbling grove,' Deserted Village, l. 361, as a parallel to 'finny deep.'
the struggling savage, i.e. wolf or bear. Mitford compares the following:—'He is a beast of prey, and the laws should make use of as many stratagems and as much force to drive the reluctant savage into the toils, as the Indians when they hunt the hyena or the rhinoceros.' (Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 112.) See also Pope's Iliad, Bk. xvii:—
But if the savage turns his glaring eye,
They howl aloof, and round the forest fly.
lines 201- 2 are not in the first edition.
For every want, etc. Mitford quotes a parallel passage in Animated Nature, 1774, ii. 123:—'Every want thus becomes a means of pleasure, in the redressing.'
Their morals, like their pleasures, are but low. Probably Goldsmith only uses 'low' here in its primitive sense, and not in that which, in his own day, gave so much umbrage to so many eighteenth-century students of humanity in the rough. Cf. Fielding, Tom Jones, 1749, iii. 6:— 'Some of the Author's Friends cry'd—"Look'e, Gentlemen, the Man is a Villain; but it is Nature for all that." And all the young Critics of the Age, the Clerks, Apprentices, etc., called it Low and fell a Groaning.' See also Tom Jones, iv. 94, and 226-30. 'There's nothing comes out but the 'most lowest' stuff in nature'—says Lady Blarney in ch. xi of the Vicar, whose author is eloquent on this topic in The Present State of Polite Learning, 1759, pp. 154-6, and in
She Stoops to Conquer, 1773 (Act i); while Graves (Spiritual Quixote, 1772, bk. i, ch. vi) gives the fashion the scientific appellation of tapino-phoby, which he defines as 'a dread of everything that is low, either in writing or in conversation.' To Goldsmith, if we may trust George Colman's Prologue to Miss Lee's Chapter of Accidents, 1780, belongs the credit of exorcising this particular form of depreciation:—
When Fielding, Humour's fav'rite child, appear'd,
Low was the word—a word each author fear'd!
Till chas'd at length, by pleasantry's bright ray,
Nature and mirth resum'd their legal sway;
And Goldsmith's genius bask'd in open day.
According to Borrow's Lavengro, ch. xli, Lord Chesterfield considered that the speeches of Homer's heroes were frequently 'exceedingly low.'
How often, etc. This and the lines which immediately follow are autobiographical. Cf. George Primrose's story in The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766, ii. 24-5 (ch. i):—'I passed among the harmless peasants of Flanders, and among such of the French as were poor enough to be very merry; for I ever found them sprightly in proportion to their wants. Whenever I approached a peasant's house towards night-fall, I played one of my most merry tunes, and that procured me not only a lodging, but subsistence for the next day.'
gestic lore, i.e. traditional gestures or motions. Scott uses the word 'gestic' in Peveril of the Peak, ch. xxx, where King Charles the Second witnesses the dancing of Fenella:—'He bore time to her motions with the movement of his foot—applauded with head and with hand—and seemed, like herself, carried away by the enthusiasm of the gestic art.' [Hales.]
Thus idly busy rolls their world away. Pope has 'Life's idle business' (Unfortunate Lady, l. 81), and—
The busy, idle blockheads of the ball.
Donne's Satires, iv. l. 203.
And all are taught an avarice of praise. Professor Hales (Longer English Poems) compares Horace of the Greeks:—
Praeter laudem, nullius avaris.
Ars Poetica, l. 324.
copper lace. 'St Martin's lace,' for which, in Strype's day, Blowbladder St. was famous. Cf. the actress's 'copper tail' in Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 60.
To men of other minds, etc. Prior compares with the description that follows a passage in vol. i. p. 276 of Animated Nature, 1774:—'But we need scarce mention these, when we find that the whole kingdom of Holland seems to be a conquest upon the sea, and in a manner rescued from its bosom. The surface of the earth, in this country, is below the level of the bed of the sea; and I remember, upon approaching the coast, to have looked down upon it from the sea, as into a valley.'
Where the broad ocean leans against the land. Cf. Dryden in Annus Mirabilis, 1666, st. clxiv. l. 654:—
And view the ocean leaning on the sky.
the tall rampire's, i.e. rampart's (Old French, rempart, rempar). Cf. Timon of Athens, Act v. Sc. 4:—'Our rampir'd gates.'
bosom reign in the first edition was 'breast obtain.'
Even liberty itself is barter'd here. 'Slavery,' says Mitford, 'was permitted in Holland; children were sold by their parents for a certain number of years.'
A land of tyrants, and a den of slaves. Goldsmith uses this very line as prose in Letter xxxiv of The Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 147.
dishonourable graves. Julius Caesar, Act i. Sc. 2.
Heavens! how unlike, etc. Prior compares a passage from a manuscript Introduction to the History of the Seven Years' War:—'How unlike the brave peasants their ancestors, who spread terror into either India, and always declared themselves the allies of those who drew the sword in defence of freedom.'*
famed Hydaspes, i.e. the fabulosus Hydaspes of Horace, Bk. i. Ode xxii, and the Medus Hydaspes of Virgil, Georg, iv. 211, of which so many stores were told. It is now known as the Jhilum, one of the five rivers which give the Punjaub its name.
Pride in their port, etc. In the first edition these two lines were inverted.
*J. W. M. Gibbs (Works, v. 9) discovered that parts of this History, hitherto supposed to have been written in 1761, were published in the Literary Magazine, 1757-8.
Here by the bonds of nature feebly held. In the first edition—
See, though by circling deeps together held.
Nature's ties was 'social bonds' in the first edition.
Where kings have toil'd, and poets wrote for fame. In the first edition this line read:—
And monarchs toil, and poets pant for fame.
Yet think not, etc. 'In the things I have hitherto written I have neither allured the vanity of the great by flattery, nor satisfied the malignity of the vulgar by scandal, but I have endeavoured to get an honest reputation by liberal pursuits.' (Preface to English History.) [Mitford.]
Ye powers of truth, etc. The first version has:—
Perish the wish; for, inly satisfy'd,
Above their pomps I hold my ragged pride.
Mr. Forster thinks (Life, 1871, i. 375) that Goldsmith altered this (i.e. 'ragged pride') because, like the omitted Haud inexpertus loquor of the Enquiry, it involved an undignified admission.
lines 365- 80 are not in the first edition.
Contracting regal power to stretch their own. 'It is the interest of the great, therefore, to diminish kingly power as much as possible; because whatever they take from it is naturally restored to themselves; and all they have to do in a state, is to undermine the single tyrant, by which they resume their primaeval authority.' (Vicar of Wakefield, 1766, i. 202, ch. xix.)
When I behold, etc. Prior compares a passage in Letter xlix of The Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 218, where the Roman senators are spoken of as still flattering the people 'with a shew of freedom, while themselves only were free.'
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law. Prior notes a corresponding utterance in The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766, i. 206, ch. xix:—'What they may then expect, may be seen by turning our eyes to Holland, Genoa, or Venice, where the laws govern the poor, and the rich govern the law.'
I fly from petty tyrants to the throne. Cf. Dr. Primrose, ut supra, p. 201:—'The generality of mankind also are of my
way of thinking, and have unanimously created one king, whose election at once diminishes the number of tyrants, and puts tyranny at the greatest distance from the greatest number of people.' Cf. also Churchill, The Farewell, ll. 363-4 and 369-70:—
Let not a Mob of Tyrants seize the helm,
Nor titled upstarts league to rob the realm...
Let us, some comfort in our griefs to bring,
Be slaves to one, and be that one a King.
lines 393- 4. Goldsmith's first thought was—
Yes, my lov'd brother, cursed be that hour
When first ambition toil'd for foreign power,—
an entirely different couplet to that in the text, and certainly more logical. (Dobell's Prospect of Society, 1902, pp. xi, 2, and Notes, v, vi). Mr. Dobell plausibly suggests that this Tory substitution is due to Johnson.
Have we not seen, etc. These lines contain the first idea of the subsequent poem of The Deserted Village (q.v.).
Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around. The Oswego is a river which runs between Lakes Oneida and Ontario. In the Threnodia Augustalis, 1772, Goldsmith writes:—
Oswego's dreary shores shall be my grave.
The 'desarts of Oswego' were familiar to the eighteenth-century reader in connexion with General Braddock's ill- fated expedition of 1755, an account of which Goldsmith had just given in An History of England, in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son, 1764, ii. 202-4.
marks with murderous aim. In the first edition 'takes a deadly aim.'
pensive exile. This, in the version mentioned in the next note, was 'famish'd exile.'
To stop too fearful, and too faint to go. This line, upon Boswell's authority, is claimed for Johnson (Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, 1887, ii. 6). Goldsmith's original ran:—
And faintly fainter, fainter seems to go.
(Dobell's Prospect of Society, 1902, p. 3).
How small, of all, etc. Johnson wrote these concluding
ten lines with the exception of the penultimate couplet. They and line 420 were all—he told Boswell—of which he could be sure (Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, ut supra). Like Goldsmith, he sometimes worked his prose ideas into his verse. The first couplet is apparently a reminiscence of a passage in his own Rasselas, 1759, ii. 112, where the astronomer speaks of 'the task of a king . . . who has the care only of a few millions, to whom he cannot do much good or harm.' (Grant's Johnson, 1887, p. 89.) 'I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another,' he told that 'vile Whig,' Sir Adam Fergusson, in 1772. 'It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual' (Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, 1887, ii. 170).
The lifted axe. Mitford here recalls Blackmore's
Some the sharp axe, and some the painful wheel.
The 'lifted axe' he also traces to Young and Blackmore, with both of whom Goldsmith seems to have been familiar; but it is surely not necessary to assume that he borrowed from either in this instance.
Luke's iron crown. George and Luke Dosa, or Doscha, headed a rebellion in Hungary in 1513. The former was proclaimed king by the peasants; and, in consequence suffered, among other things, the torture of the red- hot iron crown. Such a punishment took place at Bordeaux when Montaigne was seventeen (Morley's Florio's Montaigne, 1886, p. xvi). Much ink has been shed over Goldsmith's lapse of 'Luke' for George. In the book which he cited as his authority, the family name of the brothers was given as Zeck,—hence Bolton Corney, in his edition of the Poetical Works, 1845, p. 36, corrected the line to—
Zeck's iron crown, etc.,
an alteration which has been adopted by other editors. (See also Forster's Life, 1871, i. 370.)
Damien's bed of steel. Robert- Francois Damiens, 1714-57. Goldsmith writes 'Damien's.' In the Gentlemen's Magazine for 1757, vol. xxvii. pp. 87 and 151, where there is an account of this poor half- witted wretch's torture and execution for attempting to assassinate Louis XV, the name is thus spelled, as also in other contemporary records and caricatures. The following passage explains the 'bed of steel':—'Being conducted
to the Conciergerie, an 'iron bed', which likewise served for a chair, was prepared for him, and to this he was fastened with chains. The torture was again applied, and a physician ordered to attend to see what degree of pain he could support,' etc. (Smollett's History of England, 1823, bk. iii, ch. 7, § xxv.) Goldsmith's own explanation—according to Tom Davies, the bookseller—was that he meant the rack. But Davies may have misunderstood him, or Goldsmith himself may have forgotten the facts. (See Forster's Life, 1871, i. 370.) At pp. 57- 78 of the Monthly Review for July, 1757 (upon which Goldsmith was at this date employed), is a summary, 'from our correspondent at Paris,' of the official record of the Damiens' Trial, 4 vols. 12 mo.; and his deed and tragedy make a graphic chapter in the remarkable Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, by George Augustus Sala, 1863, iii. pp. 154-180.
line 438. In the first edition of 'The Traveller' there are only 416 lines.
After having been for some time announced as in preparation, The Deserted Village made its first appearance on May 26, 1770.* It was received with great enthusiasm. In June a second, third, and fourth edition followed, and in August a fifth was published. The text here given is that of the fourth edition, which was considerably revised. Johnson, we are told, thought The Deserted Village inferior to The Traveller: but 'time,' to use Mr. Forster's words, 'has not confirmed that judgment.' Its germ is perhaps to be found in ll. 397-402 of the earlier poem.
*In the American Bookman for February, 1901, pp. 563-7, Mr. Luther S. Livingston gives an account (with facsimile title-pages) of three octavo (or rather duodecimo) editions all dated 1770; and ostensibly printed for 'W. Griffin, at Garrick's Head, in Catherine-street, Strand.' He rightly describes their existence as 'a bibliographical puzzle.' They afford no important variations; are not mentioned by the early editors; and are certainly not in the form in which the poem was first advertised and reviewed, as this was a quarto. But they are naturally of interest to the collector; and the late Colonel Francis Grant, a good Goldsmith scholar, described one of them in the Athenaeum for June 20, 1896 (No. 3582).
Much research has been expended in the endeavour to identify the scene with Lissoy, the home of the poet's youth (see Introduction, p. ix); but the result has only been partially successful. The truth seems that Goldsmith, living in England, recalled in a poem that was English in its conception many of the memories and accessories of his early life in Ireland, without intending or even caring to draw an exact picture. Hence, as Lord Macaulay has observed, in a much criticized and characteristic passage, 'it is made up of incongruous parts. The village in its happy days is a true English village. The village in its decay is an Irish village. The felicity and the misery which Goldsmith has brought close together belong to two different countries, and to two different stages in the progress of society. He had assuredly never seen in his native island such a rural paradise, such a seat of plenty, content, and tranquillity, as his "Auburn." He had assuredly never seen in England all the inhabitants of such a paradise turned out of their homes in one day and forced to emigrate in a body to America. The hamlet he had probably seen in Kent; the ejectment he had probably seen in Munster; but, by joining the two, he has produced something which never was and never will be seen in any part of the world.' (Encyclop. Britannica, 1856.) It is obvious also that in some of his theories—the depopulation of the kingdom, for example—Goldsmith was mistaken. But it was not for its didactic qualities then, nor is it for them now, that The Deserted Village' delighted and delights. It maintains its popularity by its charming genre-pictures, its sweet and tender passages, its simplicity, its sympathetic hold upon the enduring in human nature. To test it solely with a view to establish its topographical accuracy, or to insist too much upon the value of its ethical teaching, is to mistake its real mission as a work of art.
Dedication. I am ignorant of that art in which you are said to excel. This modest confession did not prevent Goldsmith from making fun of the contemporary connoisseur. See the letter from the young virtuoso in The Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 145, announcing that a famous 'torse' has been discovered to be not 'a Cleopatra bathing' but 'a Hercules spinning'; and Charles Primrose's experiences at Paris (Vicar of Wakefield, 1766, ii. 27-8).
He is since dead. Henry Goldsmith died in May, 1768, at the age of forty- five, being then curate of Kilkenny West. (See note, p. 164.)
a long poem. 'I might dwell upon such thoughts . . . were I not afraid of making this preface too tedious; especially since I shall want all the patience of the reader, for having enlarged it with the following verses.' (Tickell's Preface to Addison's Works, at end.)
the increase of our luxuries. The evil of luxury was a 'common topick' with Goldsmith. (Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, 1887, ii. 217-8.) Smollett also, speaking with the voice of Lismahago, and continuing the quotation on p. 169, was of the opinion that 'the sudden affluence occasioned by trade, forced open all the sluices of luxury, and overflowed the land with every species of profligacy and corruption.' (Humphry Clinker, 1771, ii. 192.—Letter of Mr. Bramble to Dr. Lewis.)
Sweet AUBURN. Forster, Life, 1871, ii. 206, says that Goldsmith obtained this name from Bennet Langton. There is an Aldbourn or Auburn in Wiltshire, not far from Marlborough, which Prior thinks may have furnished the suggestion.
Seats of my youth. This alone would imply that Goldsmith had in mind the environment of his Irish home.
The decent church that topp'd the neighbouring hill. This corresponds with the church of Kilkenny West as seen from the house at Lissoy.
The hawthorn bush. The Rev. Annesley Strean, Henry Goldsmith's successor at Kilkenny West, well remembered the hawthorn bush in front of the village ale-house. It had originally three trunks; but when he wrote in 1807 only one remained, 'the other two having been cut, from time to time, by persons carrying pieces of it away to be made into toys, etc., in honour of the bard, and of the celebrity of his poem.' (Essay on Light Reading, by the Rev. Edward Mangin, M.A., 1808, 142-3.) Its remains were enclosed by a Captain Hogan previously to 1819; but nevertheless when Prior visited the place in 1830, nothing was apparent but 'a very tender shoot [which] had again forced its way to the surface.' (Prior, Life, 1837, ii. 264.) An engraving of the tree by S. Alken, from a sketch made in 1806-9, is to be
found at p. 41 of Goldsmith's Poetical Works, R. H. Newell's edition, 1811, and is reproduced in the present volume.
How often have I bless'd the coming day. Prior, Life, 1837, ii. 261, finds in this an allusion 'to the Sundays or numerous holidays, usually kept in Roman Catholic countries.'
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen. Strean's explanation (Mangin, ut supra, pp. 140-1) of this is as follows:—'The poem of The Deserted Village, took its origin from the circumstance of general Robert Napper [Napier or Naper], (the grandfather of the gentleman who now [1807] lives in the house, within half a mile of Lissoy, and built by the general) having purchased an extensive tract of the country surrounding Lissoy, or Auburn; in consequence of which many families, here called cottiers, were removed, to make room for the intended improvements of what was now to become the wide domain of a rich man, warm with the idea of changing the face of his new acquisition; and were forced, "with fainting steps," to go in search of "torrid tracts" and "distant climes."'
Prior (Life, 1837, i. 40-3) points out that Goldsmith was not the first to give poetical expression to the wrongs of the dispossessed Irish peasantry; and he quotes a long extract from the Works (1741) of a Westmeath poet, Lawrence Whyte, which contains such passages as these:—
Their native soil were forced to quit,
So Irish landlords thought it fit;
Who without ceremony or rout,
For their improvements turn'd them out ...
How many villages they razed,
How many parishes laid waste ...
Whole colonies, to shun the fate
Of being oppress'd at such a rate,
By tyrants who still raise their rent,
Sail'd to the Western Continent.
The hollow- sounding bittern guards its nest. 'Of all those sounds,' says Goldsmith, speaking of the cries of waterfowl, 'there is none so dismally hollow as the booming of the bittern.' . . . 'I remember in the place where I was a boy with what terror this bird's note affected the whole village; they
considered it as the presage of some sad event; and generally found or made one to succeed it.' (Animated Nature, 1774, vi. 1-2, 4.)
Bewick, who may be trusted to speak of a bird which he has drawn with such exquisite fidelity, refers (Water Birds, 1847, p. 49) to 'the hollow booming noise which the bittern makes during the night, in the breeding season, from its swampy retreats.' Cf. also that close observer Crabbe (The Borough, Letter xxii, ll. 197-8):—
And the loud bittern, from the bull-rush home,
Gave from the salt-ditch side the bellowing boom.
Princes and
lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made.
Mitford compares Confessio Amantis, fol. 152:—
A kynge may make a lorde a knave,
And of a knave a lord also;
and Professor Hales recalls Burns's later line in the Cotter's Saturday Night, 1785:—
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings.
But Prior finds the exact equivalent of the second line in the verses of an old French poet, De. Caux, upon an hour-glass:—
C'est un verre qui luit,
Qu'un souffle peut détruire, et qu'un souffle a
produit.
A time there was, ere England's griefs began. Here wherever the locality of Auburn, the author had clearly England in mind. A caustic commentator has observed that the 'time' indicated must have been a long while ago.
opulence. In the first edition the word is 'luxury.'
And, many a year elapsed, return to view. 'It is strongly contended at Lishoy, that "the Poet," as he is usually called there, after his pedestrian tour upon the Continent of Europe, returned to and resided in the village some time. . . . It is moreover believed, that the havock which had been made in his absence among those favourite scenes of his youth, affected his mind so deeply, that he actually composed great part of the Deserted Village 'at' Lishoy.' (Poetical Works, with Remarks, etc., by the Rev. R. H. Newell, 1811, p. 74.)
Notwithstanding the above, there is no evidence that Goldsmith ever returned to his native island. In a letter to his brother-in-law, Daniel Hodson, written in 1758, he spoke of hoping to do so 'in five or six years.' (Percy Memoir, 1801, i. 49). But in another letter, written towards the close of his life, it is still a thing to come. 'I am again,' he says, 'just setting out for Bath, and I honestly say I had much rather it had been for Ireland with my nephew, but that pleasure I hope to have before I die.' (Letter to Daniel Hodson, no date, in possession of the late Frederick Locker Lampson.)
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew. Here followed, in the first edition:—
Here, as with doubtful, pensive steps I range,
Trace every scene, and wonder at the change,
Remembrance, etc.
In all my griefs—and God has given my share. Prior notes a slight similarity here to a line of Collins:—
Ye mute companions of my toils, that bear,
In all my griefs, a more than equal share!
Hassan; or, The Camel Driver.
In The Present State of Polite Learning, 1759, p. 143, Goldsmith refers feelingly to 'the neglected author of the Persian eclogues, which, however inaccurate, excel any in our language.' He included four of them in The Beauties of English Poesy, 1767, i. pp. 239-53.
To husband out, etc. In the first edition this ran:—
My anxious day to husband near the close,
And keep life's flame from wasting by repose.
Here to return—and die at home at last. Forster compares a passage in The Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 153:—'There is something so seducing in that spot in which we first had existence, that nothing but it can please; whatever vicissitudes we experience in life, however we toil, or wheresoever we wander, our fatigued wishes still recur to home for tranquillity, we long to die in that spot which gave us birth, and in that pleasing expectation opiate every calamity.' The poet Waller too—he adds—wished to die 'like the stag where he was roused.' (Life, 1871, ii. 202.)
How happy he. 'How blest is he' in the first edition.
And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly. Mitford compares The Bee for October 13, 1759, p. 56:—'By struggling with misfortunes, we are sure to receive some wounds in the conflict. The only method to come off victorious, is by running away.'
surly porter. Mr. J. M. Lobban compares the Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 123:—'I never see a nobleman's door half opened that some surly porter or footman does not stand full in the breach.' (Select Poems of Goldsmith, 1900, p. 98.)
Bends. 'Sinks' in the first edition. unperceived decay. Cf. Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes, 1749, l. 292:—
An age that melts with unperceiv'd decay,
And glides in modest innocence away;
and Irene, Act ii, Sc. 7:—
And varied life steal unperceiv'd away.
While Resignation, etc. In 1771 Sir Joshua exhibited a picture of 'An Old Man,' studied from the beggar who was his model for Ugolino. When it was engraved by Thomas Watson in 1772, he called it 'Resignation,' and inscribed the print to Goldsmith in the following words:—'This attempt to express a Character in The Deserted Village, is dedicated to Dr. Goldsmith, by his sincere Friend and admirer, JOSHUA REYNOLDS.'
Up yonder hill. It has been suggested that Goldsmith was here thinking of the little hill of Knockaruadh (Red Hill) in front of Lissoy parsonage, of which there is a sketch in Newell's Poetical Works, 1811. When Newell wrote, it was already known as 'Goldsmith's mount'; and the poet himself refers to it in a letter to his brother-in-law Hodson, dated Dec. 27, 1757:—'I had rather be placed on the little mount before Lishoy gate, and there take in, to me, the most pleasing horizon in nature.' (Percy Memoir, 1801, p. 43.)
And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made. In Animated Nature, 1774, v. 328, Goldsmith says:—'The nightingale's pausing song would be the proper epithet for this bird's music.' [Mitford.]
No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale. (Cf. Goldsmith's Essay on Metaphors (British Magazine):—'Armstrong has used the word 'fluctuate' with admirable efficacy, in his philosophical poem entitled The Art of Preserving Health.
Oh! when the growling winds contend, and all
The sounding forest 'fluctuates' in the storm,
To sink in warm repose, and hear the din
Howl o'er the steady battlements.
The sad historian of the pensive plain. Strean (see note to l. 13) identified the old watercress gatherer as a certain Catherine Giraghty (or Geraghty). Her children (he said) were still living in the neighbourhood of Lissoy in 1807. (Mangin's Essay on Light Reading, 1808, p. 142.)
The village preacher's modest mansion rose. 'The Rev. Charles Goldsmith is allowed by all that knew him, to have been faithfully represented by his son in the character of the Village Preacher.' So writes his daughter, Catharine Hodson (Percy Memoir, 1801, p. 3). Others, relying perhaps upon the 'forty pounds a year' of the Dedication to The Traveller, make the poet's brother Henry the original; others, again, incline to kindly Uncle Contarine (vide Introduction). But as Prior justly says (Life, 1837, ii. 249), 'the fact perhaps is that he fixed upon no one individual, but borrowing like all good poets and painters a little from each, drew the character by their combination.'
with forty pounds a year. Cf. Dedication to The Traveller, p. 3, l. 14.
Unpractis'd. 'Unskilful' in the first edition.
More skilled. 'More bent' in the first edition.
The long remember'd beggar. 'The same persons,' says Prior, commenting upon this passage, 'are seen for a series of years to traverse the same tract of country at certain intervals, intrude into every house which is not defended by the usual outworks of wealth, a gate and a porter's lodge, exact their portion of the food of the family, and even find an occasional resting- place for the night, or from severe weather, in the chimney-corner of respectable farmers.' (Life, 1837, ii. 269.) Cf. Scott on the Scottish mendicants in the 'Advertisement' to The Antiquary, 1816, and Leland's Hist. of Ireland, 1773, i. 35.
The broken soldier. The disbanded soldier let loose
upon the country at the conclusion of the 'Seven Years' War' was a familiar figure at this period. Bewick, in his Memoir ('Memorial Edition'), 1887, pp. 44- 5, describes some of these ancient campaigners with their battered old uniforms and their endless stories of Minden and Quebec; and a picture of two of them by T. S. Good of Berwick belonged to the late Mr. Locker Lampson. Edie Ochiltree (Antiquary)—it may be remembered—had fought at Fontenoy.
Allur'd to brighter worlds. Cf. Tickell on Addison—'Saints who taught and led the way to Heaven.'
And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray. Prior compares the opening lines of Dryden's Britannia Rediviva:—
Our vows are heard betimes, and heaven takes care
To grant, before we can conclude the prayer;
Preventing angels met it half the way,
And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.
As some tall cliff, etc. Lucan, Statius, and Claudian have been supposed to have helped Goldsmith to this fine and deservedly popular simile. But, considering his obvious familiarity with French literature, and the rarity of his 'obligations to the ancients,' it is not unlikely that, as suggested by a writer in the Academy for Oct. 30, 1886, his source of suggestion is to be found in the following passage of an Ode addressed by Chapelain (1595-1674) to Richelieu:—
Dans un paisible mouvement
Tu t'élèves au firmament,
Et laisses contre toi murmurer cette terre;
Ainsi le haut Olympe, à son pied sablonneux,
Laisse fumer la foudre et gronder le tonnerre,
Et garde son sommet tranquille et lumineux.
Or another French model—indicated by Mr. Forster (Life, 1871, ii. 115-16) by the late Lord Lytton—may have been these lines from a poem by the Abbé de Chaulieu (1639-1720):—
Au milieu cependant de ces peines cruelles
De notre triste hiver, compagnes trop fidèles,
Je suis tranquille et gai. Quel bien plus précieux
Puis-je espérer jamais de la bonté des dieux!
Tel qu'un rocher dont la tête,
Égalant le Mont Athos,
Voit à ses pieds la tempête
Troubler le calme des flots,
La mer autour bruit et gronde;
Malgré ses emotions,
Sur son front élevé règne une paix
profonde,
Que tant d'agitations
Et que ses fureurs de l'onde
Respectent à l'égal du nid des alcyons.
On the other hand, Goldsmith may have gone no further than Young's Complaint: Night the Second, 1742, p. 42, where, as Mitford points out, occur these lines:—
As some tall Tow'r, or lofty Mountain's Brow,
Detains the Sun, Illustrious from its Height,
While rising Vapours, and descending Shades,
With Damps, and Darkness drown the Spatious Vale:
Undampt by Doubt, Undarken'd by Despair,
Philander, thus, augustly rears his Head.
Prior also (Life, 1837, ii. 252) prints a passage from Animated Nature, 1774, i. 145, derived from Ulloa, which perhaps served as the raw material of the simile.
Full well they laugh'd, etc. Steele, in Spectator, No. 49 (for April 26, 1711) has a somewhat similar thought:—'Eubulus has so great an Authority in his little Diurnal Audience, that when he shakes his Head at any Piece of publick News, they all of them appear dejected; and, on the contrary, go home to their Dinners with a good Stomach and chearful Aspect, when Eubulus seems to intimate that Things go well.'
Yet he was kind, etc. For the rhyme of 'fault' and 'aught' in this couplet Prior cites the precedent of Pope:—
Before his sacred name flies ev'ry fault,
And each exalted stanza teems with thought!
(Essay on Criticism, l. 422). He might also have cited Waller, who elides the 'l':—
Were we but less indulgent to our fau'ts,
And patience had to cultivate our thoughts.
Goldsmith uses a like rhyme in Edwin and Angelina, Stanza xxxv:—
But mine the sorrow, mine the fault,
And well my life shall pay;
I'll seek the solitude he sought,
And stretch me where he lay.
Cf. also Retaliation, ll. 73-4. Perhaps—as indeed Prior suggests—he pronounced 'fault' in this fashion.
That one small head could carry all he knew. Some of the traits of this portrait are said to be borrowed from Goldsmith's own master at Lissoy:—'He was instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic'—says his sister Catherine, Mrs. Hodson—'by a schoolmaster in his father's village, who had been a quartermaster in the army in Queen Anne's wars, in that detachment which was sent to Spain: having travelled over a considerable part of Europe and being of a very romantic turn, he used to entertain Oliver with his adventures; and the impressions these made on his scholar were believed by the family to have given him that wandering and unsettled turn which so much appeared in his future life.' (Percy Memoir, 1801, pp. 3-4.) The name of this worthy, according to Strean, was Burn (Byrne). (Mangin's Essay on Light Reading, 1808, p. 142.)
Near yonder thorn. See note to l. 13.
The chest contriv'd a double debt to pay. Cf. the Description of an Author's Bedchamber, p. 48, l. ult.:—
A cap by night—a stocking all the day!
The twelve good rules. 'A constant one' (i.e. picture) 'in every house was "King Charles' Twelve Good Rules."' (Bewick's Memoir, 'Memorial Edition,' 1887, p. 262.) This old broadside, surmounted by a rude woodcut of the King's execution, is still prized by collectors. The rules, as 'found in the study of King Charles the First, of Blessed Memory,' are as follow:— '1. Urge no healths; 2. Profane no divine ordinances; 3. Touch no state matters; 4. Reveal no secrets; 5. Pick no quarrels; 6. Make no comparisons; 7. Maintain no ill opinions; 8. Keep no bad company; 9. Encourage no vice; 10. Make no long meals; 11. Repeat no grievances; 12. Lay no Wagers.' Prior, Misc. Works, 1837, iv. 63, points out that Crabbe also
makes the 'Twelve Good Rules' conspicuous in the Parish Register (ll. 51-2):—
There is King Charles, and all his Golden Rules,
Who proved Misfortune's was the best of schools.
Her late Majesty, Queen Victoria, kept a copy of these rules in the servants' hall at Windsor Castle.
the royal game of goose. The 'Royal and Entertaining Game of the Goose' is described at length in Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, bk. iv, ch. 2 (xxv). It may be briefly defined as a game of compartments with different titles through which the player progresses according to the numbers he throws with the dice. At every fourth or fifth compartment is depicted a goose, and if the player's cast falls upon one of these, he moves forward double the number of his throw.
While broken tea-cups. Cf. the Description of an Author's Bedchamber, p. 48, l. 18:—
And five crack'd teacups dress'd the chimney board.
Mr. Hogan, who repaired or rebuilt the ale-house at Lissoy, did not forget, besides restoring the 'Royal Game of Goose' and the 'Twelve Good Rules,' to add the broken teacups, 'which for better security in the frail tenure of an Irish publican, or the doubtful decorum of his guests, were embedded in the mortar.' (Prior, Life, 1837, ii. 265.)
Shall kiss the cup. Cf. Scott's Lochinvar:—
The bride kissed the goblet: the knight took it up,
He quaff'd off the wine and he threw down the cup.
Cf. also The History of Miss Stanton (British Magazine, July, 1760).—'The earthen mug went round. Miss touched the cup, the stranger pledged the parson,' etc.
Between a splendid and a happy land. Prior compares The Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 98:—'Too much commerce may injure a nation as well as too little; and . . . there is a wide difference between a conquering and a flourishing empire.'
To see profusion that he must not share. Cf. Animated Nature, iv. p. 43:—'He only guards those luxuries he is not fated to share.' [Mitford.]
To see those joys. Up to the third edition the words were each joy.
There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. The gallows, under the savage penal laws of the eighteenth century, by which horse- stealing, forgery, shop-lifting, and even the cutting of a hop-bind in a plantation were punishable with death, was a common object in the landscape. Cf. Vicar of Wakefield, 1706, ii. 122:—'Our possessions are paled up with new edicts every day, and hung round with gibbets to scare every invader'; and Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 63-7. Johnson, who wrote eloquently on capital punishment in The Rambler for April 20, 1751, No. 114, also refers to the ceaseless executions in his London, 1738, ll. 238-43:—
Scarce can our fields, such crowds at Tyburn die,
With hemp the gallows and the fleet supply.
Propose your schemes, ye senatorian band,
Whose ways and means support the sinking land:
Lest ropes be wanting in the tempting spring,
To rig another convoy for the king.
Where the poor houseless shivering female lies. Mitford compares Letter cxiv of The Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 211:—'These poor shivering females have once seen happier days, and been flattered into beauty. They have been prostituted to the gay luxurious villain, and are now turned out to meet the severity of winter. Perhaps now lying at the doors of their betrayers, they sue to wretches whose hearts are insensible, or debauchees who may curse, but will not relieve them.' The same passage occurs in The Bee, 1759, p. 126 (A City Night- Piece).
Near her betrayer's door, etc. Cf. the foregoing quotation.
wild Altama, i.e. the Alatamaha, a river in Georgia, North America. Goldsmith may have been familiar with this name in connexion with his friend Oglethorpe's expedition of 1733.
crouching tigers, a poetical licence, as there are no tigers in the locality named. But Mr. J. H. Lobban calls attention to a passage from Animated Nature [1774, iii. 244], in which Goldsmith seems to defend himself:—'There is an animal of
America, which is usually called the Red Tiger, but Mr. Buffon calls it the Cougar, which, no doubt, is very different from the tiger of the east. Some, however, have thought proper to rank both together, and I will take leave to follow their example.'
The good old sire. Cf. Threnodia Augustalis, ll. 16-17:—
The good old sire, unconscious of decay,
The modest matron, clad in homespun gray
a father's. 'Her father's' in the first edition.
silent. 'Decent' in the first edition.
On Torno's cliffs, or Pambamarca's side. 'Torno'=Tornea, a river which falls into the Gulf of Bothnia; Pambamarca is a mountain near Quito, South America. 'The author'—says Bolton Corney—'bears in memory the operations of the French philosophers in the arctic and equatorial regions, as described in the celebrated narratives of M. Maupertuis and Don Antonio de Ulloa.'
That trade's proud empire, etc. These last four lines are attributed to Johnson on Boswell's authority:—'Dr. Johnson . . . favoured me by marking the lines which he furnished to Goldsmith's Deserted Village, which are only the 'last four'.' (Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, 1887, ii. 7.)
This translation, or rather imitation, was first published at pp. 176-7 of An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe, 1759 (Chap. xii, 'Of the Stage'), where it is prefaced as follows:— 'MACROBIUS has preserved a prologue, spoken and written by the poet [Decimus] Laberius, a Roman knight, whom Caesar forced upon the stage, written with great elegance and spirit, which shews what opinion the Romans in general entertained of the profession of an actor.' In the second edition of 1774 the prologue was omitted. The original lines, one of which Goldsmith quotes, are to found in the Saturnalia of Macrobius, lib. ii, cap. vii (Opera, London, 1694). He seems to have confined himself to imitating the first fifteen:—
Necessitas, cujus cursus transversi impetum
Voluerunt multi effugere, pauci potuerunt,
Quo me detrusit paene extremis sensibus?
Quem nulla ambitio, nulla umquam largitio,
Nullus timor, vis nulla, nulla auctoritas
Movere potuit in juventa de statu;
Ecce in senecta ut facile labefecit loco
Viri Excellentis mente clemente edita
Submissa placide blandiloquens oratio!
Etenim ipsi di negare cui nihil potuerunt,
Hominem me denegare quis posset pati?
Ergo bis tricenis annis actis sine tota
Eques Romanus Lare egressus meo
Domum revertar mimus. nimirum hoc die
Uno plus vixi mihi quam vivendum fuit.
Rollin gives a French translation of this prologue in his Traité des Études. It is quoted by Bolton Corney in his Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith, 1845, pp. 203-4. In his Aldine edition of 1831, p. 114, Mitford completed Goldsmith's version as follows:—
Too lavish still in good, or evil hour,
To show to man the empire of thy power,
If fortune, at thy wild impetuous sway,
The blossoms of my fame must drop away,
Then was the time the obedient plant to strain
When life was warm in every vigorous vein,
To mould young nature to thy plastic skill,
And bend my pliant boyhood to thy will.
So might I hope applauding crowds to hear,
Catch the quick smile, and HIS attentive ear.
But ah! for what has thou reserv'd my age?
Say, how can I expect the approving stage;
Fled is the bloom of youth—the manly air—
The vigorous mind that spurn'd at toil and care;
Gone is the voice, whose clear and silver tone
The enraptur'd theatre would love to own.
As clasping ivy chokes the encumber'd tree,
So age with foul embrace has ruined me.
Thou, and the tomb, Laberius, art the same,
Empty within, what hast thou but a name?
Macrobius, it may be remembered, was the author, with a quotation from whom Johnson, after a long silence, electrified the company upon his first arrival at Pembroke College, thus giving (says Boswell) 'the first impression of that more extensive reading in which he had indulged himself' (Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, 1887, i. 59). If the study of Macrobius is to be regarded as a test of 'more extensive reading' that praise must therefore be accorded to Goldsmith, who cites him in his first book.
This quatrain, the original of which does not appear to have been traced, was first published in The Bee for Saturday, the 6th of October, 1759, p. 8. It is there succeeded by the following Latin epigram, 'in the same spirit':—
LUMINE Acon dextro capta est Leonida sinistro
Et poterat forma vincere uterque Deos.
Parve puer lumen quod habes concede puellae
Sic tu caecus amor sic erit illa Venus.
There are several variations of this in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1745, pp. 104, 159, 213, 327, one of which is said to be 'By a monk of Winchester,' with a reference to 'Cambden's Remains, p. 413.' None of these corresponds exactly with Goldsmith's text; and the lady's name is uniformly given as 'Leonilla.' A writer in the Quarterly Review, vol. 171, p. 296, prints the 'original' thus—
Lumine Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro,
Et potis est forma vincere uterque Deos.
Blande puer, lumen quod habes concede sorori;
Sic tu caecus Amor, sic erit illa Venus;
and says 'it was written by Girolamo Amalteo, and will be found in any of the editions of the Trium Fratrum Amaltheorum Carmina, under the title of 'De gemellis, fratre et sorore, luscis.' According to Byron on Bowles (Works, 1836, vi. p. 390), the persons referred to are the Princess of Eboli, mistress of Philip II of Spain, and Maugiron, minion of Henry III of France, who had each of them lost an eye. But for this the reviewer above quoted had found no authority.
This little trifle, in which a French levity is wedded to the language of Prior, was first printed in The Bee, for Saturday, the 13th of October, 1759. Its original, which is as follows, is to be found where Goldsmith found it, namely in Part iii of the Ménagiana, (ed. 1729, iii, 397), and not far from the ditty of le fameux la Galisse. (See An Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize, infra, p. 198):—
Pour témoigner de ma flame,
Iris, du meilleur de mon ame
Je vous donne à ce nouvel an
Non pas dentelle ni ruban,
Non pas essence, ni pommade,
Quelques boites de marmelade,
Un manchon, des gans, un bouquet,
Non pas heures, ni chapelet.
Quoi donc? Attendez, je vous donne
O fille plus belle que bonne ...
Je vous donne: Ah! le puis-je dire?
Oui, c'est trop souffrir le martyre,
Il est tems de s'émanciper,
Patience va m'échaper,
Fussiez-vous cent fois plus aimable,
Belle Iris, je vous donne ... au Diable.
In Bolton Corney's edition of Goldsmith's Poetical Works, 1845, p. 77, note, these lines are attributed to Bernard de la Monnoye (1641- 1728), who is said to have included them in a collection of Étrennes en vers, published in 1715.
I'll give thee. See an anecdote à propos of this anticlimax in Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, ed. 1889, p. 600:—'There was much laughing about Mrs. Beecher Stowe [then (16th March, 1853) expected in England], and what we were to give her. I referred the ladies to Goldsmith's poems for what I should give. Nobody but Hannah understood me; but some of them have since been thumbing Goldsmith to make out the riddle.'
These lines, which have often, and even of late years, been included among Swift's works, were first printed as Goldsmith's by T. Evans at vol. i. pp. 115-17 of The Poetical and Dramatic Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B., 1780. They originally appeared in The Busy Body for Thursday, October the 18th, 1759 (No. v), having this notification above the title: 'The following Poem written by DR. SWIFT, is communicated to the Public by the BUSY BODY, to whom it was presented by a Nobleman of distinguished Learning and Taste.' In No. ii they had already been advertised as forthcoming. The sub-title, 'In imitation of Dean Swift,' seems to have been added by Evans. The text here followed is that of the first issue.
Wise Aristotle and Smiglecius. Cf. The Life of Parnell, 1770, p. 3:—'His imagination might have been too warm to relish the cold logic of Burgersdicius, or the dreary subtleties of Smiglesius; but it is certain that as a classical scholar, few could equal him.' Martin Smiglesius or Smigletius, a Polish Jesuit, theologian and logician, who died in 1618, appears to have been a special bête noire to Goldsmith; and the reference to him here would support the ascription of the poem to Goldsmith's pen, were it not that Swift seems also to have cherished a like antipathy:—'He told me that he had made many efforts, upon his entering the College [i.e. Trinity College, Dublin], to read some of the old treatises on logic writ by Smeglesius, Keckermannus, Burgersdicius, etc., and that he never had patience to go through three pages of any of them, he was so disgusted at the stupidity of the work.' (Sheridan's Life of Swift, 2nd ed., 1787, p. 4.)
Than reason- boasting mortal's pride. So in The Busy Body. Some editors—Mitford, for example—print the line:—
Than reason,—boasting mortals' pride.
Deus est anima brutorum. Cf. Addison in Spectator, No. 121 (July 19, 1711): 'A modern Philosopher, quoted by Monsieur Bale in his Learned Dissertation on the Souls of Brutes delivers the same Opinion [i.e.—That Instinct is the immediate direction of Providence], tho' in a bolder form of words where he says Deus est Anima Brutorum, God himself is the Soul of
Brutes.' There is much in 'Monsieur Bayle' on this theme. Probably Addison had in mind the following passage of the Dict. Hist. et Critique (3rd ed., 1720, 2481b.) which Bayle cites from M. Bernard:—'Il me semble d'avoir lu quelque part cette Thèse, Deus est anima brutorum: l'expression est un peu dure; mais elle peut recevoir un fort bon sens.'
B—b=Bob, i.e. Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister, for whom many venal 'quills were drawn' circa 1715- 42. Cf. Pope's Epilogue to the Satires, 1738, Dialogue i, ll. 27- 32:—
Go see Sir ROBERT—
P. See Sir ROBERT!—hum—
And never laugh—for all my life to come?
Seen him I have, but in his happier hour
Of Social Pleasure, ill-exchang'd for Pow'r;
Seen him, uncumber'd with the Venal tribe,
Smile without Art, and win without a Bribe.
A courtier any ape surpasses. Cf. Gay's Fables, passim. Indeed there is more of Gay than Swift in this and the lines that follow. Gay's life was wasted in fruitless expectations of court patronage, and his disappointment often betrays itself in his writings.
And footmen, lords and dukes can act. Cf. Gil Blas, 1715-35, liv. iii, chap. iv:—'Il falloit voir comme nous nous portions des santés à tous moments, en nous donnant les uns aux autres les surnoms de nos maîtres. Le valet de don Antonio appeloit Gamb celuiet nous nous enivrions peu à peu sous ces noms empruntés, tout aussi bien que les seigneurs qui les portoient véritablement.' But Steele had already touched this subject in Spectator, No. 88, for June 11, 1711, 'On the Misbehaviour of Servants,' a paper supposed to have afforded the hint for Townley's farce of High Life below Stairs, which, about a fortnight after The Logicians Refuted appeared, was played for the first time at Drury Lane, not much to the gratification of the gentlemen's gentlemen in the upper gallery. Goldsmith himself wrote 'A Word or two on the late Farce, called High Life below Stairs,' in The Bee for November 3, 1759, pp. 154- 7.
This little piece first appears in The Bee for October 20, 1759 (No. iii). It is there called 'A Sonnet,' a title which is only accurate in so far as it is 'a little song.' Bolton Corney affirms that it is imitated from the French of Saint-Pavin (i.e. Denis Sanguin de Saint-Pavin, d. 1670), whose works were edited in 1759, the year in which Goldsmith published the collection of essays and verses in which it is to be found. The text here followed is that of the 'new edition' of The Bee, published by W. Lane, Leadenhall Street, no date, p. 94. Neither by its motive nor its literary merits—it should be added—did the original call urgently for translation; and the poem is here included solely because, being Goldsmith's, it cannot be omitted from his complete works.
This and the following line in the first version run:—
Yet, why this killing soft dejection?
Why dim thy beauty with a tear?
Quebec was taken on the 13th September, 1759. Wolfe was wounded pretty early in the action, while leading the advance of the Louisbourg grenadiers. 'A shot shattered his wrist. He wrapped his handkerchief about it and kept on. Another shot struck him, and he still advanced, when a third lodged in his breast. He staggered, and sat on the ground. Lieutenant Brown, of the grenadiers, one Henderson, a volunteer in the same company, and a private soldier, aided by an officer of artillery who ran to join them, carried him in their arms to the rear. He begged them to lay him down. They did so, and asked if he would have a surgeon. "There's no need," he answered; "it's all over with me." A moment after, one of them cried out, "They run; see how they run!" "Who run?" Wolfe demanded, like a man roused from sleep. "The enemy, sir. They give way everywhere!" "Go, one of you, to Colonel Burton," returned the dying man; "tell him to march Webb's regiment down to Charles River, to cut off their retreat from the bridge." Then, turning on his side, he
murmured, "Now, God be praised, I will die in peace!" and in a few moments his gallant soul had fled.' (Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, 1885, ii. 296-7.) In his History of England in a Series of Letters, 1764, ii. 241, Goldsmith says of this event:—'Perhaps the loss of such a man was greater to the nation than the conquering of all Canada was advantageous; but it is the misfortune of humanity, that we can never know true greatness till the moment when we are going to lose it.'* The present stanzas were first published in The Busy Body (No. vii) for Tuesday, the 22nd October, 1759, a week after the news of Wolfe's death had reached this country (Tuesday the 16th). According to Prior (Life, 1837, i. 6), Goldsmith claimed to be related to Wolfe by the father's side, the maiden name of the General's mother being Henrietta Goldsmith. It may be noted that Benjamin West's popular rendering of Wolfe's death (1771)—a rendering which Nelson never passed in a print shop without being stopped by it—was said to be based upon the descriptions of an eye- witness. It was engraved by Woollett and Ryland in 1776. A key to the names of those appearing in the picture was published in the Army and Navy Gazette of January 20, 1893.
The publication in February, 1751, of Gray's Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard had set a fashion in poetry which long continued. Goldsmith, who considered that work 'a very fine poem, but overloaded with epithet' (Beauties of English Poesy, 1767, i. 53), and once proposed to amend it 'by leaving out an idle word in every line' [!] (Cradock's Memoirs, 1826, i. 230), resented these endless imitations, and his antipathy to them frequently reveals itself. Only a few months before the appearance of Mrs. Blaize in The Bee for October 27, 1759, he had written in the Critical Review, vii. 263, when noticing Langhorne's Death of Adonis, as follows:—'It is not thus that many of our moderns have composed what they call elegies; they seem scarcely to have known its real character. If an hero or a poet
*He repeats this sentiment, in different words, in the later History of England of 1771, iv. 400.
happens to die with us, the whole band of elegiac poets raise the dismal chorus, adorn his herse with all the paltry escutcheons of flattery, rise into bombast, paint him at the head of his thundering legions, or reining Pegasus in his most rapid career; they are sure to strew cypress enough upon the bier, dress up all the muses in mourning, and look themselves every whit as dismal and sorrowful as an undertaker's shop.' He returned to the subject in a Chinese Letter of March 4, 1761, in the Public Ledger (afterwards Letter ciii of The Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 162-5), which contains the lines On the Death of the Right Honourable ***; and again, in The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766, i. 174, à propos of the Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog, he makes Dr. Primrose say, 'I have wept so much at all sorts of elegies of late, that without an enlivening glass I am sure this will overcome me.'
The model for An Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize is to be found in the old French popular song of Monsieur de la Palisse or Palice, about fifty verses of which are printed in Larousse's Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIX me Siècle, x. p. 179. It is there stated to have originated in some dozen stanzas suggested to la Monnoye (v. supra, p. 193) by the extreme artlessness of a military quatrain dating from the battle of Pavia, and the death upon that occasion of the famous French captain, Jacques de Chabannes, seigneur de la Palice:—
Monsieur d'La Palice est mort,
Mort devant Pavie;
Un quart d'heure avant sa mort,
Il était encore en vie.
The remaining verses, i.e. in addition to those of la Monnoye, are the contributions of successive generations. Goldsmith probably had in mind the version in Part iii of the Ménagiana, (ed. 1729, iii, 384-391) where apparently by a typographical error, the hero is called 'le fameux la Galisse, homme imaginaire.' The verses he imitated most closely are reproduced below. It may be added that this poem supplied one of its last inspirations to the pencil of Randolph Caldecott, who published it as a picture-book in October, 1885. (See also An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog, p. 212.)
Who left a pledge behind. Caldecott cleverly converted this line into the keynote of the poem, by making the heroine a pawnbroker.
When she has walk'd before. Cf. the French:—
On dit que dans ses amours
Il fut caresse des belles,
Qui le suivirent toujours,
Tant qu'il marcha devant elles.
Her last disorder mortal. Cf. the French:—
Il fut par un triste sort
Blesse d'une main cruelle.
On croit, puis qu'il en est mort,
Que la plaie étoit mortelle.
Kent Street, Southwark, 'chiefly inhabited,' said Strype, 'by Broom Men and Mumpers'; and Evelyn tells us (Diary 5th December, 1683) that he assisted at the marriage, to her fifth husband, of a Mrs. Castle, who was 'the daughter of one Burton, a broom-man . . . in Kent Street' who had become not only rich, but Sheriff of Surrey. It was a poor neighbourhood corresponding to the present 'old Kent-road, from Kent to Southwark and old London Bridge' (Cunningham's London).* Goldsmith himself refers to it in The Bee for October 20, 1759, being the number immediately preceding that in which Madam Blaize first appeared:—'You then, O ye beggars of my acquaintance, whether in rags or lace; whether in Kent- street or the Mall; whether at the Smyrna or St. Giles's, might I advise as a friend, never seem in want of the favour which you solicit' (p. 72). Three years earlier he had practised as 'a physician, in a humble way' in Bankside, Southwark, and was probably well acquainted with the humours of Kent Street.
In a letter written to the Rev. Henry Goldsmith in 1759 (Percy Memoir, 1801, pp. 53-9), Goldsmith thus refers to the first form of these verses:—'Your last letter, I repeat it, was
*In contemporary maps Kent (now Tabard) Street is shown extending between the present New Kent Road and Blackman Street.
too short; you should have given me your opinion of the design of the heroicomical poem which I sent you: you remember I intended to introduce the hero of the poem, as lying in a paltry alehouse. You may take the following specimen of the manner, which I flatter myself is quite original. The room in which he lies, may be described somewhat this way:—
The window, patch'd with paper, lent a ray,
That feebly shew'd the state in which he lay.
The sanded floor, that grits beneath the tread:
The humid wall with paltry pictures spread;
The game of goose was there expos'd to view
And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew:
The seasons, fram'd with listing, found a place,
And Prussia's monarch shew'd his lamp-black face
The morn was cold; he views with keen desire,
A rusty grate unconscious of a fire.
An unpaid reck'ning on the frieze was scor'd,
And five crack'd tea-cups dress'd the chimney board.
And now imagine after his soliloquy, the landlord to make his appearance, in order to dun him for the reckoning:—
Not with that face, so servile and so gay,
That welcomes every stranger that can pay,
With sulky eye he smoak'd the patient man,
Then pull'd his breeches tight, and thus began, etc.
All this is taken, you see, from nature. It is a good remark of Montaign[e]'s, that the wisest men often have friends, with whom they do not care how much they play the fool. Take my present follies as instances of regard. Poetry is a much easier, and more agreeable species of composition than prose, and could a man live by it, it were no unpleasant employment to be a poet.'
In Letter xxix of The Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 119-22, which first appeared in The Public Ledger for May 2, 1760, they have a different setting. They are read at a club of authors by a 'poet, in shabby finery,' who asserts that he has composed them the day before. After some preliminary difficulties, arising from the fact that the laws of the club do not permit any author to inflict his own works upon the assembly without a money payment, he introduces them as follows:—
'Gentlemen, says he, the present piece is not one of your common epic poems, which come from the press like paper kites in summer; there are none of your Turnuses or Dido's in it; it is an heroical description of nature. I only beg you'll endeavour to make your souls unison* with mine, and hear with the same enthusiasm with which I have written. The poem begins with the description of an author's bedchamber: the picture was sketched in my own apartment; for you must know, gentlemen, that I am myself the heroe. Then putting himself into the attitude of an orator, with all the emphasis of voice and action, he proceeded.
Where the Red Lion, etc.'
The verses then follow as they are printed in this volume; but he is unable to induce his audience to submit to a further sample. In a slightly different form, some of them were afterwards worked into The Deserted Village, 1770. (See ll. 227-36.)
Where Calvert's butt, and Parsons' black champagne. The Calverts and Humphrey Parsons were noted brewers of 'entire butt beer' or porter, also known familiarly as 'British Burgundy' and 'black Champagne.' Calvert's 'Best Butt Beer' figures on the sign in Hogarth's Beer Street, 1751.
The humid wall with paltry pictures spread. Bewick gives the names of some of these popular, if paltry, decorations:—'In cottages everywhere were to be seen the "Sailor's Farewell" and his "Happy Return," "Youthful Sports," and the "Feats of Manhood," "The Bold Archers Shooting at a Mark," "The Four Seasons," etc.' (Memoir, 'Memorial Edition,' 1887, p. 263.)
The royal game of goose was there in view. (See note, p. 188.)
And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew. (See note, p. 187.)
The Seasons, fram'd with listing. See note to l. 10 above, as to 'The Seasons.' Listing, ribbon, braid, or tape is still used as a primitive encadrement. In a letter dated August 15, 1758, to his cousin, Mrs. Lawder (Jane Contarine), Goldsmith again refers to this device. Speaking of some 'maxims of frugality' with which he intends to adorn his room, he adds—
*i.e. accord, conform.
'my landlady's daughter shall frame them with the parings of my black waistcoat.' (Prior, Life, 1837, i. 271.)
And brave Prince William. William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, 1721-65. The 'lamp- black face' would seem to imply that the portrait was a silhouette. In the letter quoted on p. 200 it is 'Prussia's monarch' (i.e. Frederick the Great).
With beer and milk arrears. See the lines relative to the landlord in Goldsmith's above-quoted letter to his brother. In another letter of August 14, 1758, to Robert Bryanton, he describes himself as 'in a garret writing for bread, and expecting to be dunned for a milk score.' Hogarth's Distrest Poet, 1736, it will be remembered, has already realized this expectation.
A cap by night—a stocking all the day. 'With this last line,' says The Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 121, 'he [the author] seemed so much elated, that he was unable to proceed: "There gentlemen, cries he, there is a description for you; Rab[e]lais's bed- chamber is but a fool to it:
A cap by night—a stocking all the day!
There is sound and sense, and truth, and nature in the trifling compass of ten little syllables."' (Letter xxix.) Cf. also The Deserted Village, l. 230:—
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.
If Goldsmith's lines did not belong to 1759, one might suppose he had in mind the later Pauvre Diable of his favourite Voltaire. (See also APPENDIX B.)
These verses, intended for a specimen of the newspaper Muse, are from Letter lxxxii of The Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 87, first printed in The Public Ledger, October 21, 1760.
From Letter ciii of The Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 164, first printed in The Public Ledger, March 4, 1761. The verses are
given as a 'specimen of a poem on the decease of a great man.' Goldsmith had already used the trick of the final line of the quatrain in An Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize, ante, p. 198.
From Letter cx of The Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 193, first printed in The Public Ledger, April 14, 1761. It had, however, already been printed in the 'Ledger', ten days before. Goldsmith's animosity to Churchill (cf. note to l. 41 of the dedication to The Traveller) was notorious; but this is one of his doubtful pieces.
virtue. 'Charity' (Author's note).
bounty. 'Settled at One Shilling—the Price of the Poem' (Author's note).
From the same letter as the preceding. George Colman and Robert Lloyd of the St. James's Magazine were supposed to have helped Churchill in The Rosciad, the 'it' of the epigram.
From Letter cxiii of The Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 209, first printed in The Public Ledger, May 13, 1761.
The Double Transformation first appeared in Essays: By Mr. Goldsmith, 1765, where it figures as Essay xxvi, occupying pp. 229-33. It was revised for the second edition of 1766, becoming Essay xxviii, pp. 241-45. This is the text here followed. The poem is an obvious imitation of what its author calls (Letters from a Nobleman to his Son, 1764, ii. 140) that 'French elegant easy manner of telling a story,' which Prior had caught from La Fontaine. But the inherent simplicity of Goldsmith's style is
curiously evidenced by the absence of those illustrations and ingenious allusions which are Prior's chief characteristic. And although Goldsmith included The Ladle and Hans Carvel in his Beauties of English Poesy, 1767, he refrained wisely from copying the licence of his model.
Jack Book-worm led a college life. The version of 1765 reads 'liv'd' for 'led'.
And freshmen wonder'd as he spoke. The earlier version adds here—
Without politeness aim'd at breeding,
And laugh'd at pedantry and reading.
Her presence banish'd all his peace. Here in the first version the paragraph closes, and a fresh one is commenced as follows:—
Our alter'd Parson now began
To be a perfect ladies' man;
Made sonnets, lisp'd his sermons o'er,
And told the tales he told before,
Of bailiffs pump'd, and proctors bit,
At college how he shew'd his wit;
And, as the fair one still approv'd,
He fell in love—or thought he lov'd.
So with decorum, etc.
The fifth line was probably a reminiscence of the college riot in which Goldsmith was involved in May, 1747, and for his part in which he was publicly admonished. (See Introduction, p. xi, l. 3.)
usage. This word, perhaps by a printer's error, is 'visage' in the first version.
Skill'd in no other arts was she. Cf. Prior:—
For in all Visits who but She,
To Argue, or to Repartee.
Five greasy nightcaps wrapp'd her head. Cf. Spectator, No. 494— 'At length the Head of the Colledge came out to him, from an inner Room, with half a Dozen Night-Caps upon his Head.' See also Goldsmith's essay on the Coronation (Essays, 1766, p. 238), where Mr. Grogan speaks of his wife as habitually
'mobbed up in flannel night caps, and trembling at a breath of air.'
By day, 'twas gadding or coquetting. The first version after 'coquetting' begins a fresh paragraph with—
Now tawdry madam kept, etc.
A sigh in suffocating smoke. Here in the first version follows:—
She, in her turn, became perplexing,
And found substantial bliss in vexing.
Thus every hour was pass'd, etc.
Thus as her faults each day were known. First version: 'Each day, the more her faults,' etc.
Now, to perplex. The first version has 'Thus.' But the alteration in line 61 made a change necessary.
paste. First version 'pastes.'
condemn'd to hack, i.e. to hackney, to plod.
The New Simile first appears in Essays: By Mr. Goldsmith, 1765, pp. 234-6, where it forms Essay xxvii. In the second edition of 1766 it occupies pp. 246- 8 and forms Essay xix. The text here followed is that of the second edition, which varies slightly from the first. In both cases the poem is followed by the enigmatical initials '*J. B.,' which, however, as suggested by Gibbs, may simply stand for 'Jack Bookworm' of The Double Transformation. (See p. 204.)
Long had I sought in vain to find. The text of 1765 reads—
'I long had rack'd my brains to find.'
Tooke's Pantheon. Andrew Tooke (1673-1732) was first usher and then Master at the Charterhouse. In the latter capacity he succeeded Thomas Walker, the master of Addison and Steele. His Pantheon, a revised translation from the Latin of the Jesuit, Francis Pomey, was a popular school-book of mythology, with copper-plates.
Wings upon either side—mark that. The petasus of Mercury, like his sandals (l. 24), is winged.
No poppy-water half so good. Poppy-water, made by
boiling the heads of the white, black, or red poppy, was a favourite eighteenth- century soporific:—'Juno shall give her peacock poppy- water, that he may fold his ogling tail.' (Congreve's Love for Love, 1695, iv. 3.)
With this he drives men's souls to hell.
Tu....
....virgaque levem coerces
Aurea turbam.—Hor. Od. i. 10.
Moreover, Merc'ry had a failing.
Te canam....
Callidum, quidquid placuit, iocoso
Condere furto.—Hor. Od. i. 10.
Goldsmith, it will be observed, rhymes 'failing' and 'stealing.' But Pope does much the same:—
That Jelly's rich, this Malmsey healing,
Pray dip your Whiskers and your tail in.
(Imitation of Horace, Bk. ii, Sat. vi.)
Unless this is to be explained by poetical licence, one of these words must have been pronounced in the eighteenth century as it is not pronounced now.
In which all modern bards agree. The text of 1765 reads 'our scribling bards.'
This ballad, usually known as The Hermit, was written in or before 1765, and printed privately in that year 'for the amusement of the Countess of Northumberland,' whose acquaintance Goldsmith had recently made through Mr. Nugent. (See the prefatory note to The Haunch of Venison.) Its title was 'Edwin and Angelina. A Ballad. By Mr. Goldsmith.' It was first published in The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766, where it appears at pp. 70-7, vol. i. In July, 1767, Goldsmith was accused [by Dr. Kenrick] in the St. James's Chronicle of having taken it from Percy's Friar of Orders Gray. Thereupon he addressed a letter to the paper, of which the following is the material portion:—'Another Correspondent of yours accuses me of having
taken a Ballad, I published some Time ago, from one by the ingenious Mr. Percy. I do not think there is any great Resemblance between the two Pieces in Question. If there be any, his Ballad is taken from mine. I read it to Mr. Percy some Years ago, and he (as we both considered these Things as Trifles at best) told me, with his usual Good Humour, the next Time I saw him, that he had taken my Plan to form the fragments of Shakespeare into a Ballad of his own. He then read me his little Cento, if I may so call it, and I highly approved it. Such petty Anecdotes as these are scarce worth printing, and were it not for the busy Disposition of some of your Correspondents, the Publick should never have known that he owes me the Hint of his Ballad, or that I am obliged to his Friendship and Learning for Communications of a much more important Nature.—I am, Sir, your's etc. OLIVER GOLDSMITH.' (St. James's Chronicle, July 23-5, 1767.) No contradiction of this statement appears to have been offered by Percy; but in re-editing his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry in 1775, shortly after Goldsmith's death, he affixed this note to The Friar of Orders Gray:—'As the foregoing song has been thought to have suggested to our late excellent poet, Dr. Goldsmith, the plan of his beautiful ballad of Edwin and Emma [Angelina], first printed [published?] in his Vicar of Wakefield, it is but justice to his memory to declare, that his poem was written first, and that if there is any imitation in the case, they will be found both to be indebted to the beautiful old ballad, Gentle Herdsman, etc., printed in the second volume of this work, which the doctor had much admired in manuscript, and has finely improved' (vol. i. p. 250). The same story is told, in slightly different terms, at pp. 74-5 of the Memoir of Goldsmith drawn up under Percy's superintendence for the Miscellaneous Works of 1801, and a few stanzas of Gentle Herdsman, which Goldsmith is supposed to have had specially in mind, are there reproduced. References to them will be found in the ensuing notes. The text here adopted (with exception of ll. 117-20) is that of the fifth edition of The Vicar of Wakefield, 1773[4], i. pp. 78-85; but the variations of the earlier version of 1765 are duly chronicled, together with certain hitherto neglected differences between the first and later editions of the novel. The poem was also printed in the Poems for Young
Ladies, 1767, pp. 91-8.* The author himself, it may be added, thought highly of it. 'As to my "Hermit," that poem,' he is reported to have said, 'cannot be amended.' (Cradock's Memoirs, 1828, iv. 286.)
Turn, etc. The first version has—
Deign saint-like tenant of the dale,
To guide my nightly way,
To yonder fire, that cheers the vale
With hospitable ray.
For yonder faithless phantom flies. The Vicar of Wakefield, first edition, has—
'For yonder phantom only flies.'
All. Vicar of Wakefield, first edition, 'For.'
Man wants but little here below. Cf. Young's Complaint, 1743, Night iv. 9, of which this and the next line are a recollection. According to Prior (Life, 1837, ii. 83), they were printed as a quotation in the version of 1765. Young's line is—
Man wants but Little; nor that Little, long.
modest. Vicar of Wakefield, first edition, 'grateful.'
Far in a wilderness obscure. First version, and Vicar of Wakefield, first edition:—
Far shelter'd in a glade obscure
The modest mansion lay.
The wicket, opening with a latch. First version, and Vicar of Wakefield, first edition:—
The door just opening with a latch.
And now, when busy crowds retire. First version, and Vicar of Wakefield, first edition:—
And now, when worldly crowds retire
To revels or to rest.
But nothing, etc. In the first version this stanza runs as follows:—
But nothing mirthful could assuage
The pensive stranger's woe;
For grief had seized his early age,
And tears would often flow.
*This version differs considerably from the others, often following that of 1765; but it has not been considered necessary to record the variations here. That Goldsmith unceasingly revised the piece is sufficiently established.
modern. Vicar of Wakefield, first edition, reads 'haughty.'
His love-lorn guest betray'd. First version, and Vicar of Wakefield, first edition:—
The bashful guest betray'd.
Surpris'd, he sees, etc. First version, and Vicar of Wakefield, first edition:—
He sees unnumber'd beauties rise,
Expanding to the view;
Like clouds that deck the morning skies,
As bright, as transient too.
The bashful look, the rising breast. First version, and Vicar of Wakefield, first edition:—
Her looks, her lips, her panting breast.
But let a maid, etc. For this, and the next two stanzas, the first version substitutes:—
Forgive, and let thy pious care
A heart's distress allay;
That seeks repose, but finds despair
Companion of the way.
My father liv'd, of high degree,
Remote beside the Tyne;
And as he had but only me,
Whate'er he had was mine.
To win me from his tender arms,
Unnumber'd suitors came;
Their chief pretence my flatter'd charms,
My wealth perhaps their aim.
a mercenary crowd. Vicar of Wakefield, first edition, has:—'the gay phantastic crowd.'
Amongst the rest young Edwin bow'd. First version:—
Among the rest young Edwin bow'd,
Who offer'd only love.
Wisdom and worth, etc. First version, and Vicar of Wakefield, first edition:—
A constant heart was all he had,
But that was all to me.
And when beside me, etc. For this 'additional stanza,' says the Percy Memoir, p. 76, 'the reader is indebted to Richard Archdal, Esq., late a member of the Irish Parliament, to whom it was presented by the author himself.' It was first printed in the Miscellaneous Works, 1801, ii. 25. In Prior's edition of the Miscellaneous Works, 1837, iv. 41, it is said to have been 'written some years after the rest of the poem.'
The blossom opening to the day, etc. For this and the next two stanzas the first version substitutes:—
Whene'er he spoke amidst the train,
How would my heart attend!
And till delighted even to pain,
How sigh for such a friend!
And when a little rest I sought
In Sleep's refreshing arms,
How have I mended what he taught,
And lent him fancied charms!
Yet still (and woe betide the hour!)
I spurn'd him from my side,
And still with ill-dissembled power
Repaid his love with pride.
For still I tried each fickle art, etc. Percy finds the prototype of this in the following stanza of Gentle Herdsman:—
And grew soe coy and nice to please,
As women's lookes are often soe,
He might not kisse, nor hand forsoothe,
Unlesse I willed him soe to doe.
Till quite dejected with my scorn, etc. The first edition reads this stanza and the first two lines of the next thus:—
Till quite dejected by my scorn,
He left me to deplore;
And sought a solitude forlorn,
And ne'er was heard of more.
Then since he perish'd by my fault,
This pilgrimage I pay, etc.
And sought a solitude forlorn. Cf. Gentle Herdsman:—
He gott him to a secrett place,
And there he dyed without releeffe.
And there forlorn, despairing, hid, etc. The first edition for this and the next two stanzas substitutes the following:—
And there in shelt'ring thickets hid,
I'll linger till I die;
'Twas thus for me my lover did,
And so for him will I.
'Thou shalt not thus,' the Hermit cried,
And clasp'd her to his breast;
The astonish'd fair one turned to chide,—
'Twas Edwin's self that prest.
For now no longer could he hide,
What first to hide he strove;
His looks resume their youthful pride,
And flush with honest love.
'Twas so for me, etc. Cf. Gentle Herdsman:—
Thus every day I fast and pray,
And ever will doe till I dye;
And gett me to some secret place,
For soe did hee, and soe will I.
Forbid it, Heaven. Vicar of Wakefield, first edition, like the version of 1765, has 'Thou shalt not thus.'
My life. Vicar of Wakefield, first edition, has 'O thou.'
No, never from this hour, etc. The first edition reads:—
No, never, from this hour to part,
Our love shall still be new;
And the last sigh that rends thy heart,
Shall break thy Edwin's too.
The poem then concluded thus:—
Here amidst sylvan bowers we'll rove,
From lawn to woodland stray;
Blest as the songsters of the grove,
And innocent as they.
To all that want, and all that wail,
Our pity shall be given,
And when this life of love shall fail,
We'll love again in heaven.
These couplets, with certain alterations in the first and last lines, are to be found in the version printed in Poems for Young Ladies, 1767, p. 98.
This poem was first published in The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766, i. 175- 6, where it is sung by one of the little boys. In common with the Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize (p. 47) it owes something of its origin to Goldsmith's antipathy to fashionable elegiacs, something also to the story of M. de la Palisse. As regards mad dogs, its author seems to have been more reasonable than many of his contemporaries, since he ridiculed, with much common sense, their exaggerated fears on this subject (v. Chinese Letter in The Public Ledger for August 29, 1760, afterwards Letter lxvi of The Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 15). But it is ill jesting with hydrophobia. Like Madam Blaize, these verses have been illustrated by Randolph Caldecott.
In Islington there was a man. Goldsmith had lodgings at Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming's in Islington (or 'Isling town' as the earlier editions have it) in 1763- 4; and the choice of the locality may have been determined by this circumstance. But the date of the composition of the poem is involved in the general obscurity which hangs over the Vicar in its unprinted state. (See Introduction, pp. xviii-xix.)
The dog, to gain some private ends. The first edition reads 'his private ends.'
The dog it was that died. This catastrophe suggests the couplet from the Greek Anthology, ed. Jacobs, 1813-7, ii. 387:—
Kappadoken pot exidna kake daken alla kai aute
katthane, geusamene aimatos iobolou.
Goldsmith, however, probably went no farther back than Voltaire on Fréron:—
L'autre jour, au fond d'un vallon,
Un serpent mordit Jean Fréron.
Devinez ce qu'il arriva?
Ce fut le serpent qui creva.
This again, according to M. Edouard Fournier (L'Esprit des Autres, sixth edition, 1881, p. 288), is simply the readjustment of an earlier quatrain, based upon a Latin distich in the Epigrammatum delectus, 1659:—
Un gros serpent mordit Aurelle.
Que croyez-vous qu'il arriva?
Qu'Aurelle en mourut?—Bagatelle!
Ce fut le serpent qui creva.
First published in The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766, ii. 78 (chap. v). It is there sung by Olivia Primrose, after her return home with her father. 'Do, my pretty Olivia,' says Mrs. Primrose, let us have that little melancholy air your pappa was so fond of, your sister Sophy has already obliged us. Do child, it will please your old father.' 'She complied in a manner so exquisitely pathetic,' continues Dr. Primrose, 'as moved me.' The charm of the words, and the graceful way in which they are introduced, seem to have blinded criticism to the impropriety, and even inhumanity, of requiring poor Olivia to sing a song so completely applicable to her own case. No source has been named for this piece; and its perfect conformity with the text would appear to indicate that Goldsmith was not indebted to any earlier writer for his idea.
His well-known obligations to French sources seem, however, to have suggested that, if a French original could not be discovered for the foregoing lyric, it might be desirable to invent one. A clever paragraphist in the St. James's Gazette for January 28th, 1889, accordingly reproduced the following stanzas, which he alleged, were to be found in the poems of Segur, 'printed in Paris in 1719':—
Lorsqu'une femme, après trop de tendresse,
D'un homme sent la trahison,
Comment, pour cette si douce foiblesse
Peut-elle trouver une guérison?
Le seul remède qu'elle peut ressentir,
La seul revanche pour son tort,
Pour faire trop tard l'amant repentir,
Helas! trop tard—est la mort.
As a correspondent was not slow to point out, Goldsmith, if a copyist, at all events considerably improved his model (see in particular lines 7 and 8 of the French). On the 30th of the month the late Sir William Fraser gave it as his opinion, that, until the volume of 1719 should be produced, the 'very inferior verses quoted' must be classed with the fabrications of 'Father Prout,' and he instanced that very version of the Burial of Sir John Moore (Les Funérailles de Beaumanoir) which has recently (August 1906) been going the round of the papers once again. No Ségur volume of 1719 was, of course, forthcoming.
Kenrick, as we have already seen, had in 1767 accused Goldsmith of taking Edwin and Angelina from Percy (p. 206). Thirty years later, the charge of plagiarism was revived in a different way when Raimond and Angéline, a French translation of the same poem, appeared, as Goldsmith's original, in a collection of Essays called The Quiz, 1797. It was eventually discovered to be a translation 'from' Goldsmith by a French poet named Léonard, who had included it in a volume dated 1792, entitled Lettres de deux Amans, Habitans de Lyon (Prior's Life, 1837, ii. 89-94). It may be added that, according to the Biographie Universelle, 1847, vol. 18 (Art. 'Goldsmith'), there were then no fewer than at least three French imitations of The Hermit besides Léonard's.
Goldsmith's comedy of The Good Natur'd Man was produced by Colman, at Covent Garden, on Friday, January 29, 1768. The following note was appended to the Epilogue when printed:—'The Author, in expectation of an Epilogue from a friend at Oxford, deferred writing one himself till the very last hour. What is here offered, owes all its success to the graceful manner of the Actress who spoke it.' It was spoken by Mrs. Bulkley, the 'Miss Richland' of the piece. In its first form it is to be
found in The Public Advertiser for February 3. Two days later the play was published, with the version here followed.
As puffing quacks. Goldsmith had devoted a Chinese letter to this subject. See Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 10 (Letter lxv).
No, no: I've other contests, etc. This couplet is not in the first version. The old building of the College of Physicians was in Warwick Lane; and the reference is to the long-pending dispute, occasionally enlivened by personal collision, between the Fellows and Licentiates respecting the exclusion of certain of the latter from Fellowships. On this theme Bonnell Thornton, himself an M.B. like Goldsmith, wrote a satiric additional canto to Garth's Dispensary, entitled The Battle of the Wigs, long extracts from which are printed in The Gentleman's Magazine for March, 1768, p. 132. The same number also reviews The Siege of the Castle of Æsculapius, an heroic Comedy, as it is acted in Warwick- Lane. Goldsmith's couplet is, however, best illustrated by the title of one of Sayer's caricatures, The March of the Medical Militants to the Siege of Warwick-Lane-Castle in the Year 1767. The quarrel was finally settled in favour of the college in June, 1771.
Go, ask your manager. Colman, the manager of Covent Garden, was not a prolific, although he was a happy writer of prologues and epilogues.
The quotation is from King Lear, Act iii, Sc. 4.
In the first version the last line runs:—
And view with favour, the 'Good-natur'd Man.'
The Sister, produced at Covent Garden February 18, 1769, was a comedy by Mrs. Charlotte Lenox or Lennox, 'an ingenious lady,' says The Gentleman's Magazine for April in the same year, 'well known in the literary world by her excellent writings, particularly the Female Quixote, and Shakespeare illustrated. . . . The audience expressed their disapprobation of it with so much clamour and appearance of prejudice, that she would not suffer an attempt to exhibit it a second time (p. 199).' According to the
same authority it was based upon one of the writer's own novels, Henrietta, published in 1758. Though tainted with the prevailing sentimentalism, The Sister is described by Forster as 'both amusing and interesting'; and it is probable that it was not fairly treated when it was acted. Mrs. Lenox (1720-1804), daughter of Colonel Ramsay, Lieut.-Governor of New York, was a favourite with the literary magnates of her day. Johnson was half suspected of having helped her in her book on Shakespeare; Richardson admitted her to his readings at Parson's Green; Fielding, who knew her, calls her, in the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, 1755, p. 35 (first version), 'the inimitable author of the Female Quixote'; and Goldsmith, though he had no kindness for genteel comedy (see post, p. 228), wrote her this lively epilogue, which was spoken by Mrs. Bulkley, who personated the 'Miss Autumn' of the piece. Mrs. Lenox died in extremely reduced circumstances, and was buried by the Right Hon. George Ross, who had befriended her later years. There are several references to her in Boswell's Life of Johnson. (See also Hawkins' Life, 2nd ed. 1787, pp. 285-7.)
Zobeide, a play by Joseph Cradock (1742-1826), of Gumley, in Leicestershire, was produced by Colman at Covent Garden on Dec. 11, 1771. It was a translation from three acts of Les Scythes, an unfinished tragedy by Voltaire. Goldsmith was applied to, through the Yates's, for a prologue, and sent that here printed to the author of the play with the following note:—'Mr. Goldsmith presents his best respects to Mr. Cradock, has sent him the Prologue, such as it is. He cannot take time to make it better. He begs he will give Mr. Yates the proper instructions; and so, even so, commits him to fortune and the publick.' (Cradock's Memoirs, 1826, i. 224.) Yates, to the acting of whose wife in the character of the heroine the success of the piece, which ran for thirteen nights, was mainly attributable, was to have spoken the prologue, but it ultimately fell to Quick, later the 'Tony Lumpkin' of She Stoops to Conquer, who delivered it in the character of a sailor. Cradock seems
subsequently to have sent a copy of Zobeide to Voltaire, who replied in English as follows:—
9e. 8bre. 1773. à ferney.
Sr.
Thanks to yr muse a foreign copper shines
Turn'd in to gold, and coin'd in sterling lines.
You have done to much honour to an old sick man of eighty.
I am with the most sincere esteem and gratitude
Sr.
Yr. obdt. Servt. Voltaire.
A Monsieur Monsieur J. Cradock.
The text of the prologue is here given as printed in Cradock's Memoirs, 1828, iii. 8-9. It is unnecessary to specify the variations between this and the earlier issue of 1771.
In these bold times, etc. The reference is to Cook, who, on June 12, 1771, had returned to England in the Endeavour, after three years' absence, having gone to Otaheite to observe the transit of Venus (l. 4).
Botanists. Mr. (afterward Sir Joseph) Banks and Dr. Solander, of the British Museum, accompanied Cook.
go simpling, i.e. gathering simples, or herbs. Cf. Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iii, Sc. 3:—
'—These lisping hawthorn buds that ... smell like Bucklersbury in simple-time.'
In the caricatures of the day Solander figured as 'The simpling Macaroni.' (See note, p. 247, l. 31.)
With Scythian stores. The scene of the play was laid in Scythia (v. supra).
to make palaver, to hold a parley, generally with the intention of cajoling. Two of Goldsmith's notes to Garrick in 1773 are endorsed by the actor—'Goldsmith's parlaver.' (Forster's Life, 1871, ii. 397.)
mercenary. Cradock gave the profits of Zobeide to Mrs. Yates. 'I mentioned the disappointment it would be to you'—she says in a letter to him dated April 26, 1771—'as you had generously given the emoluments of the piece to me.' (Memoirs, 1828, iv. 211.)
Augusta, widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and mother of George the Third, died at Carlton House, February 8, 1772. This piece was spoken and sung in Mrs. Teresa Cornelys's Great Room in Soho Square, on the Thursday following (the 20th), being sold at the door as a small quarto pamphlet, printed by William Woodfall. The author's name was not given; but it was prefaced by this 'advertisement,' etc.:—
'The following may more properly be termed a compilation than a poem. It was prepared for the composer in little more than two days: and may be considered therefore rather as an industrious effort of gratitude than of genius. In justice to the composer it may likewise be right to inform the public, that the music was adapted in a period of time equally short.
It is—as Cunningham calls it—a 'hurried and unworthy off- spring of the muse of Goldsmith.'
(Part I).
Celestial-like her bounty fell.
The Princess's benefactions are not exaggerated. 'She had paid off
the whole of her husband's debts, and she had given munificent sums
in charity. More than 10,000 pounds a year were given away by her
in pensions to individuals whom she judged deserving, very few of
whom were aware, until her death, whence the bounty came. The whole
of her income she spent in England, and very little on herself'
(Augusta: Princess of Wales, by W. H. Wilkins,
Nineteenth Century, October, 1903, p. 675).
There faith shall come. This, and the three lines that follow, are borrowed from Collins's Ode written in the beginning of the year 1746.
(Part II).
The towers of Kew. 'The
embellishments of Kew palace and gardens, under the direction of
[Sir William]
Chambers, and others, was the favourite object of her [Royal Highness's] widowhood' (Bolton Corney).
Along the billow'd main. Cf. The Captivity, Act ii, l. 18.
Oswego's dreary shores. Cf. The Traveller, l. 411.
And with the avenging fight. Varied from Collins's Ode on the Death of Colonel Charles Ross at Fontenoy.
Its earliest bloom. Cf. Collins's Dirge in Cymbeline.
This thoroughly characteristic song, for a parallel to which one must go to Congreve, or to the 'Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen' of The School for Scandal, has one grave defect,—it is too good to have been composed by Tony Lumpkin, who, despite his inability to read anything but 'print- hand,' declares, in Act i. Sc. 2 of She Stoops to Conquer, 1773, that he himself made it upon the ale-house ('The Three Pigeons') in which he sings it, and where it is followed by the annexed comments, directed by the author against the sentimentalists, who, in The Good Natur'd Man of five years before, had insisted upon the omission of the Bailiff scene:—
Bravo, bravo!
The 'Squire has got spunk in him.
I loves to hear him sing, bekeays he never gives us nothing that's low . . .
The genteel thing is the genteel thing at any time. If so be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.
I like the maxum of it, Master Muggins. What, tho' I am obligated to dance a bear, a man may be a gentleman for all that. May this be my poison if my bear ever dances but to
the very genteelest of tunes. Water Parted,* or the minuet in Ariadne.'
When Methodist preachers, etc. Tony Lumpkin's utterance accurately represents the view of this sect taken by some of his contemporaries. While moderate and just spectators of the Johnson type could recognize the sincerity of men, who, like Wesley, travelled 'nine hundred miles in a month, and preached twelve times a week' for no ostensibly adequate reward, there were others who saw in Methodism, and especially in the extravagancies of its camp followers, nothing but cant and duplicity. It was this which prompted on the stage Foote's Minor (1760) and Bickerstaffe's Hypocrite (1768); in art the Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism of Hogarth (1762); and in literature the New Bath Guide of Anstey (1766), the Spiritual Quixote of Graves, 1772, and the sarcasms of Sterne, Smollett and Walpole.
It is notable that the most generous contemporary portrait of these much satirised sectaries came from one of the originals of the Retaliation gallery. Scott highly praises the character of Ezekiel Daw in Cumberland's Henry, 1795, adding, in his large impartial fashion, with reference to the general practice of representing Methodists either as idiots or hypocrites, 'A very different feeling is due to many, perhaps to most, of this enthusiastic sect; nor is it rashly to be inferred, that he who makes religion the general object of his life, is for that sole reason to be held either a fool or an impostor.' (Scott's Miscellaneous Prose Works, 1834, iii. 222.)
But of all the birds in the air. Hypercriticism may object that 'the hare' is not a bird. But exigence of rhyme has to answer for many things. Some editors needlessly read 'the gay birds' to lengthen the line. There is no sanction for this in the earlier editions.
This epilogue was spoken by Mrs. Bulkley in the character of Miss Hardcastle. It is probably the epilogue described by
*i.e. Arne's Water Parted from the Sea,—the song of Arbaces in the opera of Artaxerxes 1762. The minuet in Ariadne was by Handel. It came at the end of the overture, and is said to have been the best thing in the opera.
Goldsmith to Cradock, in the letter quoted at p. 246, as 'a very mawkish thing,' a phrase not so incontestable as Bolton Corney's remark that it is 'an obvious imitation of Shakespere.'
That pretty Bar- maids have done execution. Cf. The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766, i. 7:—'Sophia's features were not so striking at first; but often did more certain execution.'
coquets the guests. Johnson explains this word 'to entertain with compliments and amorous tattle,' and quotes the following illustration from Swift, 'You are coquetting a maid of honour, my lord looking on to see how the gamesters play, and I railing at you both.'
Nancy Dawson. Nancy Dawson was a famous 'toast' and horn-pipe dancer, who died at Haverstock Hill, May 27, 1767, and was buried behind the Foundling, in the burial-ground of St. George the Martyr. She first appeared at Sadler's Wells, and speedily passed to the stage of Covent Garden, where she danced in the Beggar's Opera. There is a portrait of her in the Garrick Club, and there are several contemporary prints. She was the heroine of a popular song, here referred to, beginning:—
Of all the girls in our town,
The black, the fair, the red, the brown,
Who dance and prance it up and down,
There's none like Nancy Dawson:
Her easy mien, her shape so neat,
She foots, she trips, she looks so sweet,
Her ev'ry motion is complete;
I die for Nancy Dawson.
Its tune—says J. T. Smith (Book for a Rainy Day, Whitten's ed., 1905, p. 10) was 'as lively as that of "Sir Roger de Coverley."'
Che farò, i.e. Che farò senza Euridice, the lovely lament from Glück's Orfeo, 1764.
the Heinel of Cheapside. The reference is to Mademoiselle Anna-Frederica Heinel, 1752-1808, a beautiful Prussian, subsequently the wife of Gaetano Apollino Balthazar Vestris, called 'Vestris the First.' After extraordinary success as a danseuse at Stuttgard and Paris, where Walpole saw her in 1771
(Letter to the Earl of Strafford 25th August), she had come to London; and, at this date, was the darling of the Macaronies (cf. the note on p. 247, l. 31), who, from their club, added a regallo (present) of six hundred pounds to the salary allowed her at the Haymarket. On April 1, 1773, Metastasio's Artaserse was performed for her benefit, when she was announced to dance a minuet with Monsieur Fierville, and 'Tickets were to be hand, at her house in Piccadilly, two doors from Air Street.'
spadille, i.e. the ace of spades, the first trump in the game of Ombre. Cf. Swift's Journal of a Modern Lady in a Letter to a Person of Quality, 1728:—
She draws up card by card, to find
Good fortune peeping from behind;
With panting heart, and earnest eyes,
In hope to see spadillo rise;
In vain, alas! her hope is fed;
She draws an ace, and sees it red.
Bayes. The chief character in Buckingham's Rehearsal, 1672, and intended for John Dryden. Here the name is put for the 'poet' or 'dramatist.' Cf. Murphy's Epilogue to Cradock's Zobeide, 1771:—
Not e'en poor 'Bayes' within must hope to be
Free from the lash:—His Play he writ for me
'Tis true—and now my gratitude you'll see;
and Colman's Epilogue to The School for Scandal, 1777:—
So wills our virtuous bard—the motley Bayes
Of crying epilogues and laughing plays!
Retaliation: A Poem. By Doctor Goldsmith. Including Epitaphs on the Most Distinguished Wits of this Metropolis, was first published by G. Kearsly in April, 1774, as a 4to pamphlet of 24 pp. On the title-page is a vignette head of the author, etched by James Basire, after Reynolds's portrait; and the verses are prefaced by an anonymous letter to the publisher, concluding as follows:—'Dr. Goldsmith belonged to a Club of Beaux Esprits, where Wit sparkled sometimes at the Expence of Good-nature.
It was proposed to write Epitaphs on the Doctor; his Country, Dialect and Person, furnished Subjects of Witticism.—The Doctor was called on for' Retaliation, 'and at their next Meeting produced the following Poem, which I think adds one Leaf to his immortal Wreath. This account seems to have sufficed for Evans, Percy, and the earlier editors. But in vol. i. p. 78 of his edition of Goldsmith's Works, 1854, Mr. Peter Cunningham published for the first time a fuller version of the circumstances, derived from a manuscript lent to him by Mr. George Daniel of Islington; and (says Mr. Cunningham) 'evidently designed as a preface to a collected edition of the poems which grew out of Goldsmith's trying his epigrammatic powers with Garrick.' It is signed 'D. Garrick.' 'At a meeting'—says the writer—'of a company of gentlemen, who were well known to each other, and diverting themselves, among many other things, with the peculiar oddities of Dr. Goldsmith, who would never allow a superior in any art, from writing poetry down to dancing a horn-pipe, the Dr. with great eagerness insisted upon trying his epigrammatic powers with Mr. Garrick, and each of them was to write the other's epitaph. Mr. Garrick immediately said that his epitaph was finished, and spoke the following distich extempore:—
Here lies NOLLY Goldsmith, for shortness call'd Noll,
Who wrote like an angel, but talk'd like poor Poll.
Goldsmith, upon the company's laughing very heartily, grew very thoughtful, and either would not, or could not, write anything at that time: however, he went to work, and some weeks after produced the following printed poem called Retaliation, which has been much admired, and gone through several editions.' This account, though obviously from Garrick's point of view, is now accepted as canonical, and has superseded those of Davies, Cradock, Cumberland, and others, to which some reference is made in the ensuing notes. A few days after the publication of the first edition, which appeared on the 18th or 19th of April, a 'new' or second edition was issued, with four pages of 'Explanatory Notes, Observations, etc.' At the end came the following announcement:—'G. Kearsly, the Publisher, thinks it his duty to declare, that
Dr. Goldsmith wrote the Poem as it is here printed, a few errors of the press excepted, which are taken notice of at the bottom of this page.' From this version Retaliation is here reproduced. In the third edition, probably in deference to some wounded susceptibilities, the too comprehensive 'most Distinguished Wits of the Metropolis' was qualified into 'some of the most Distinguished Wits,' etc., but no further material alteration was made in the text until the suspicious lines on Caleb Whitefoord were added to the fifth edition.
With the exception of Garrick's couplet, and the fragment of Whitefoord referred to at p. 234, none of the original epitaphs upon which Goldsmith was invited to 'retaliate' have survived. But the unexpected ability of the retort seems to have prompted a number of ex post facto performances, some of which the writers would probably have been glad to pass off as their first essays. Garrick, for example, produced three short pieces, one of which ('Here, Hermes! says Jove, who with nectar was mellow') hits off many of Goldsmith's contradictions and foibles with considerable skill (v. Davies's Garrick, 2nd ed., 1780, ii. 157). Cumberland (v. Gent. Mag., Aug. 1778, p. 384) parodied the poorest part of Retaliation, the comparison of the guests to dishes, by likening them to liquors, and Dean Barnard in return rhymed upon Cumberland. He wrote also an apology for his first attack, which is said to have been very severe, and conjured the poet to set his wit at Garrick, who, having fired his first shot, was keeping out of the way:—
On him let all thy vengeance fall;
On me you but misplace it:
Remember how he called thee Poll—
But, ah! he dares not face it.
For these, and other forgotten pieces arising out of Retaliation, Garrick had apparently prepared the above-mentioned introduction. It may be added that the statement, prefixed to the first edition, that ^Retaliation^, as we now have it, was produced at the 'next meeting' of the Club, is manifestly incorrect. It was composed and circulated in detached fragments, and Goldsmith was still working at it when he was seized with his last illness.
Of old, when Scarron, etc. Paul Scarron (1610-60), the author inter alia of the Roman Comique, 1651-7, upon a translation
of which Goldsmith was occupied during the last months of his life. It was published by Griffin in 1776.
Each guest brought his dish. 'Chez Scarron,'—says his editor, M. Charles Baumet, when speaking of the poet's entertainments,—'venait d'ailleurs l'élite des dames, des courtisans & des hommes de lettres. On y dinait joyeusement. Chacun apportait son plat.' (Œuvres de Scarron, 1877, i. viii.) Scarron's company must have been as brilliant as Goldsmith's. Villarceaux, Vivonne, the Maréchal d'Albret, figured in his list of courtiers; while for ladies he had Mesdames Deshoulières, de Scudéry, de la Sablière, and de Sévigné, to say nothing of Ninon de Lenclos and Marion Delorme. (Cf. also Guizot, Corneille et son Temps, 1862, 429-30.)
If our landlord. The 'explanatory note' to the second edition says—'The master of the St. James's coffee- house, where the Doctor, and the friends he has characterized in this Poem, held an occasional club.' This, it should be stated, was not the famous 'Literary Club,' which met at the Turk's Head Tavern in Gerrard Street. The St. James's Coffee-house, as familiar to Swift and Addison at the beginning, as it was to Goldsmith and his friends at the end of the eighteenth century, was the last house but one on the south- west corner of St. James's Street. It now no longer exists. Cradock (Memoirs, 1826, i. 228- 30) speaks of dining at the bottom of St. James's Street with Goldsmith, Percy, the two Burkes (v. infra), Johnson, Garrick, Dean Barnard, and others. 'We sat very late;' he adds in conclusion, 'and the conversation that at last ensued, was the direct cause of my friend Goldsmith's poem, called "Retaliation."'
Our Dean. Dr. Thomas Barnard, an Irishman, at this time Dean of Derry. He died at Wimbledon in 1806. It was Dr. Barnard who, in reply to a rude sally of Johnson, wrote the charming verses on improvement after the age of forty-five, which end—
If I have thoughts, and can't express them,
Gibbon shall teach me how to dress them,
In terms select and terse;
Jones teach me modesty and Greek,
Smith how to think, Burke how to speak,
And Beauclerk to converse.
Let Johnson teach me how to place
In fairest light, each borrow'd grace,
From him I'll learn to write;
Copy his clear, familiar style,
And from the roughness of his file
Grow like himself—polite.
(Northcote's Life of Reynolds, 2nd ed., 1819, i. 221.) According to Cumberland (Memoirs, 1807, i. 370), 'The dean also gave him [Goldsmith] an epitaph, and Sir Joshua illuminated the dean's verses with a sketch of his bust in pen and ink inimitably caricatured.' What would collectors give for that sketch and epitaph! Unfortunately in Cumberland's septuagenarian recollections the 'truth severe' is mingled with an unusual amount of 'fairy fiction.' However Sir Joshua did draw caricatures, for a number of them were exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery (by the Duke of Devonshire) in the winter of 1883-4.
Our Burke. The Right Hon. Edmund Burke, 1729- 97.
Our Will. 'Mr. William Burke, late Secretary to General Conway, and member for Bedwin, Wiltshire' (Note to second edition). He was a kinsman of Edmund Burke, and one of the supposed authors of Junius's Letters. He died in 1798. 'It is said that the notices Goldsmith first wrote of the Burkes were so severe that Hugh Boyd persuaded the poet to alter them, and entirely rewrite the character of William, for he was sure that if the Burkes saw what was originally written of them the peace of the Club would be disturbed.' (Rev. W. Hunt in Dict. Nat. Biography, Art. 'William Burke.')
And Dick. Richard Burke, Edmund Burke's younger brother. He was for some years Collector to the Customs at Grenada, being on a visit to London when Retaliation was written (Forster's Life, 1871, ii. 404). He died in 1794, Recorder of Bristol.
Our Cumberland's sweetbread. Richard Cumberland, the poet, novelist, and dramatist, 1731-1811, author of The West Indian, 1771, The Fashionable Lover, 1772, and many other more or less sentimental plays. In his Memoirs, 1807, i. 369-71, he gives an account of the origin of Retaliation, which adds a few dubious particulars to that of Garrick. But it was written from memory long after the events it records.
Douglas. 'Dr. Douglas, since Bishop of Salisbury,' says Cumberland. He died in 1807 (v. infra).
Ridge. 'Counsellor John Ridge, a gentleman belonging to the Irish Bar' (Note to second edition). 'Burke,' says Bolton Corney, 'in 1771, described him as "one of the honestest and best-natured men living, and inferior to none of his profession in ability."' (See also note to line 125.)
Hickey. The commentator of the second edition of Retaliation calls this gentleman 'honest Tom Hickey'. His Christian name, however, was Joseph (Letter of Burke, November 8, 1774). He was a jovial, good-natured, over-blunt Irishman, the legal adviser of both Burke and Reynolds. Indeed it was Hickey who drew the conveyance of the land on which Reynolds's house 'next to the Star and Garter' at Richmond (Wick House) was built by Chambers the architect. Hickey died in 1794. Reynolds painted his portrait for Burke, and it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1772 (No. 208). In 1833 it belonged to Mr. T. H. Burke. Sir Joshua also painted Miss Hickey in 1769-73. Her father, not much to Goldsmith's satisfaction, was one of the Paris party in 1770. See also note to l. 125.
Magnanimous Goldsmith. According to Malone (Reynolds's Works, second edition, 1801, i. xc), Goldsmith intended to have concluded with his own character.
Tommy Townshend, M.P. for Whitchurch, Hampshire, afterwards first Viscount Sydney. He died in 1800. Junius says Bolton Corney, gives a portrait of him as still life. His presence in Retaliation is accounted for by the fact that he had commented in Parliament upon Johnson's pension. 'I am well assured,' says Boswell, 'that Mr. Townshend's attack upon Johnson was the occasion of his "hitching in a rhyme"; for, that in the original copy of Goldsmith's character of Mr. Burke, in his Retaliation another person's name stood in the couplet where Mr. Townshend is now introduced.' (Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, 1887, iv. 318.)
too deep for his hearers. 'The emotion to which he commonly appealed was that too rare one, the love of wisdom, and he combined his thoughts and knowledge in propositions of wisdom so weighty and strong, that the minds of ordinary hearers
were not on the instant prepared for them.' (Morley's Burke, 1882, 209- 10.)
And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining. For the reason given in the previous note, many of Burke's hearers often took the opportunity of his rising to speak, to retire to dinner. Thus he acquired the nickname of the 'Dinner Bell.'
To eat mutton cold. There is a certain resemblance between this character and Gray's lines on himself written in 1761, beginning 'Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune.' (See Gosse's Gray's Works, 1884, i. 127.) But both Gray and Goldsmith may have been thinking of a line in the once popular song of Ally Croaker:—
Too dull for a wit, too grave for a joker.
honest William, i.e. William Burke (v. supra).
Now breaking a jest, and now breaking a limb. A note to the second edition says—'The above Gentleman [Richard Burke, v. supra] having slightly fractured one of his arms and legs, at different times, the Doctor [i.e. Goldsmith] has rallied him on those accidents, as a kind of retributive justice for breaking his jests on other people.'
Here Cumberland lies. According to Boaden's Life of Kemble, 1825, i. 438, Mrs. Piozzi rightly regarded this portrait as wholly ironical; and Bolton Corney, without much expenditure of acumen, discovers it to have been written in a spirit of persiflage. Nevertheless, Cumberland himself (Memoirs, 1807, i. 369) seems to have accepted it in good faith. Speaking of Goldsmith he says—I conclude my account of him with gratitude for the epitaph he bestowed on me in his poem called Retaliation.' From the further details which he gives of the circumstances, it would appear that his own performance, of which he could recall but one line—
All mourn the poet, I lament the man—
was conceived in a less malicious spirit than those of the others, and had predisposed the sensitive bard in his favour. But no very genuine cordiality could be expected to exist between the rival authors of The West Indian and She Stoops to Conquer.
And Comedy wonders at being so fine. It is instructive
here to transcribe Goldsmith's serious opinion of the kind of work which Cumberland essayed:—'A new species of Dramatic Composition has been introduced, under the name of Sentimental Comedy, in which the virtues of Private Life are exhibited, rather than the Vices exposed; and the Distresses rather than the Faults of Mankind, make our interest in the piece. . . . In these Plays almost all the Characters are good, and exceedingly generous; they are lavish enough of their Tin Money on the Stage, and though they want Humour, have abundance of Sentiment and Feeling. If they happen to have Faults or Foibles, the Spectator is taught not only to pardon, but to applaud them, in consideration of the goodness of their hearts; so that Folly, instead of being ridiculed, is commended, and the Comedy aims at touching our Passions without the power of being truly pathetic.' (Westminster Magazine, 1772, i. 5.) Cf. also the Preface to The Good Natur'd Man, where he 'hopes that too much refinement will not banish humour and character from our's, as it has already done from the French theatre. Indeed the French comedy is now become so very elevated and sentimental, that it has not only banished humour and Moliere from the stage, but it has banished all spectators too.'
The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks. Dr. John Douglas (v. supra) distinguished himself by his exposure of two of his countrymen, Archibald Bower, 1686-1766, who, being secretly a member of the Catholic Church, wrote a History of the Popes; and William Lauder 1710- 1771, who attempted to prove Milton a plagiarist. Cf. Churchill's Ghost, Bk. ii:—
By TRUTH inspir'd when Lauder's spight
O'er MILTON cast the Veil of Night,
DOUGLAS arose, and thro' the maze
Of intricate and winding ways,
Came where the subtle Traitor lay,
And dragg'd him trembling to the day.
'Lauder on Milton' is one of the books bound to the trunk-maker's in Hogarth's Beer Street, 1751. He imposed on Johnson, who wrote him a 'Preface' and was consequently trounced by Churchill (ut supra) as 'our Letter'd POLYPHEME.'
Our Dodds shall be pious. The reference is to the Rev.
Dr. William Dodd, who three years after the publication of Retaliation (i.e. June 27, 1777) was hanged at Tyburn for forging the signature of the fifth Earl of Chesterfield, to whom he had been tutor. His life previously had long been scandalous enough to justify Goldsmith's words. Johnson made strenuous and humane exertions to save Dodd's life, but without avail. (See Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, 1887, iii. 139-48.) There is an account of Dodd's execution at the end of vol. i of Angelo's Reminiscences, 1830.
our Kenricks. Dr. William Kenrick—say the earlier annotators—who 'read lectures at the Devil Tavern, under the Title of "The School of Shakespeare."' The lectures began January 19, 1774, and help to fix the date of the poem. Goldsmith had little reason for liking this versatile and unprincipled Ishmaelite of letters, who, only a year before, had penned a scurrilous attack upon him in The London Packet. Kenrick died in 1779.
Macpherson. 'David [James] Macpherson, Esq.; who lately, from the mere force of his style, wrote down the first poet of all antiquity.' (Note to second edition.) This was 'Ossian' Macpherson, 1738-96, who, in 1773, had followed up his Erse epics by a prose translation of Homer, which brought him little but opprobrium. 'Your abilities, since your Homer, are not so formidable,' says Johnson in the knockdown letter which he addressed to him in 1775. (Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, 1887, ii. 298.)
Our Townshend. See note to line 34.
New Lauders and Bowers. See note to l. 80.
And Scotchman meet Scotchman, and cheat in the dark. Mitford compares Farquhar's Love and a Bottle, 1699, Act iii—
But gods meet gods and jostle in the dark.
But Farquhar was quoting from Dryden and Lee's Oedipus, 1679, Act iv (at end).
Here lies David Garrick. 'The sum of all that can be said for and against Mr. Garrick, some people think, may be found in these lines of Goldsmith,' writes Davies in his Life of Garrick, 2nd ed., 1780, ii. 159. Posterity has been less hesitating in its verdict. 'The lines on Garrick,' says Forster, Life of Goldsmith, 1871, ii. 409, 'are quite perfect writing. Without anger, the satire is finished, keen, and uncompromising; the wit is adorned by most discriminating praise; and the truth is
only the more unsparing for its exquisite good manners and good taste.'
Ye Kenricks. See note to line 86.
ye Kellys. Hugh Kelly (1739- 1777), an Irishman, the author of False Delicacy, 1768; A Word to the Wise, 1770; The School for Wives, 1774, and other sentimental dramas, is here referred to. His first play, which is described in Garrick's prologue as a 'Sermon,' 'preach'd in Acts,' was produced at Drury Lane just six days before Goldsmith's comedy of The Good Natur'd Man appeared at Covent Garden, and obtained a success which it ill deserved. False Delicacy—said Johnson truly (Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, 1887, ii. 48)—'was totally void of character,'—a crushing accusation to make against a drama. But Garrick, for his private ends, had taken up Kelly as a rival to Goldsmith; and the comédie sérieuse or larmoyante of La Chaussée, Sedaine, and Diderot had already found votaries in England. False Delicacy, weak, washy, and invertebrate as it was, completed the transformation of 'genteel' into 'sentimental' comedy, and establishing that ^genre^ for the next few years, effectually retarded the wholesome reaction towards humour and character which Goldsmith had tried to promote by The Good Natur'd Man. (See note to l. 66.)
Woodfalls. 'William Woodfall'—says Bolton Corney—'successively editor of The London Packet and The Morning Chronicle, was matchless as a reporter of speeches, and an able theatrical critic. He made lofty pretensions to editorial impartiality—but the actor [i.e. Garrick] was not always satisfied.' He died in 1803. He must not be confounded with Henry Sampson Woodfall, the editor of Junius's Letters. (See note to l. 162.)
To act as an angel. There is a sub-ironic touch in this phrase which should not be overlooked. Cf. l. 102.
Here Hickey reclines. See note to l. 15. In Cumberland's Poetical Epistle to Dr. Goldsmith; or Supplement to his Retaliation (Gentleman's Magazine, Aug. 1778, p. 384) Hickey's genial qualities are thus referred to:—
Give RIDGE and HICKY, generous souls!
Of WHISKEY PUNCH convivial bowls.
a special attorney. A special attorney was merely an
attorney who practised in one court only. The species is now said to be extinct.
burn ye. The annotator of the second edition, apologizing for this 'forced' rhyme to 'attorney,' informs the English reader that the phrase of 'burn ye' is 'a familiar method of salutation in Ireland amongst the lower classes of the people.'
Here Reynolds is laid. This shares the palm with the admirable epitaphs on Garrick and Burke. But Goldsmith loved Reynolds, and there are no satiric strokes in the picture. If we are to believe Malone (Reynolds's Works, second edition, 1801, i. xc), 'these were the last lines the author wrote.'
bland. Malone (ut supra, lxxxix) notes this word as 'eminently happy, and characteristick of his [Reynolds's] easy and placid manners.' Boswell (Dedication of Life of Johnson) refers to his 'equal and placid temper.' Cf. also Dean Barnard's verses (Northcote's Life of Reynolds, 2nd ed., 1819, i. 220), and Mrs. Piozzi's lines in her Autobiography, 2nd ed., 1861, ii. 175-6.
He shifted his trumpet. While studying Raphael in the Vatican in 1751, Reynolds caught so severe a cold 'as to occasion a deafness which obliged him to use an ear-trumpet for the remainder of his life.' (Taylor and Leslie's Reynolds, 1865, i. 50.) This instrument figures in a portrait of himself which he painted for Thrale about 1775. See also Zoffany's picture of the 'Academicians gathered about the model in the Life School at Somerset House,' 1772, where he is shown employing it to catch the conversation of Wilton and Chambers.
and only took snuff. Sir Joshua was a great snuff-taker. His snuff-box, described in the Catalogue as the one 'immortalized in Goldsmith's Retaliation,' was exhibited, with his spectacles and other personal relics, at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1883-4. In the early editions this epitaph breaks off abruptly at the word 'snuff.' But Malone says that half a line more had been written. Prior gives this half line as 'By flattery unspoiled—,' and affirms that among several erasures in the manuscript sketch devoted to Reynolds it 'remained unaltered.' (Life, 1837, ii. 499.) See notes to ll. 53, 56, and 91 of The Haunch of Venison.
Here Whitefoord reclines. The circumstances which led to the insertion of these lines in the fifth edition are detailed in
the prefatory words of the publisher given at p. 92. There is more than a suspicion that Whitefoord wrote them himself; but they have too long been accepted as an appendage to the poem to be now displaced. Caleb Whitefoord (born 1734) was a Scotchman, a wine-merchant, and an art connoisseur, to whom J. T. Smith, in his Life of Nollekens, 1828, i. 333-41, devotes several pages. He was one of the party at the St. James's Coffee-house. He died in 1810. There is a caricature of him in 'Connoisseurs inspecting a Collection of George Morland,' November, 16, 1807; and Wilkie's Letter of Introduction, 1814, was a reminiscence of a visit which, when he first came to London, he paid to Whitefoord. He was also painted by Reynolds and Stuart. Hewins's Whitefoord Papers, 1898, throw no light upon the story of the epitaph.
a grave man. Cf. Romeo and Juliet, Act iii, Sc. 1:—'Ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man.' This Shakespearean recollection is a little like Goldsmith's way. (See note to The Haunch of Venison, l. 120.)
and rejoic'd in a pun. 'Mr. W. is so notorious a punster, that Doctor Goldsmith used to say, it was impossible to keep him company, without being infected with the itch of punning.' (Note to fifth edition.)
'if the table he set on a roar.' Cf. Hamlet, Act v, Sc. I.
Woodfall, i.e. Henry Sampson Woodfall, printer of The Public Advertiser. He died in 1805. (See note to l. 115.)
Cross-Readings, Ship-News, and Mistakes of the Press. Over the nom de guerre of 'Papyrius Cursor,' a real Roman name, but as happy in its applicability as Thackeray's 'Manlius Pennialinus,' Whitefoord contributed many specimens of this mechanic wit to The Public Advertiser. The 'Cross Readings' were obtained by taking two or three columns of a newspaper horizontally and 'onwards' instead of 'vertically' and downwards, thus:—
Colds caught at this season are
The Companion to the Playhouse.
or
To be sold to the best Bidder,
My seat in Parliament being vacated.
A more elaborate example is
On Tuesday an address was presented;
it unhappily missed fire and the villain made off,
when the honour of knighthood was conferred on him
to the great joy of that noble family
Goldsmith was hugely delighted with Whitefoord's 'lucky inventions' when they first became popular in 1766. 'He declared, in the heat of his admiration of them, it would have given him more pleasure to have been the author of them than of all the works he had ever published of his own' (Northcote's Life of Reynolds, 2nd ed., 1819, i. 217). What is perhaps more remarkable is, that Johnson spoke of Whitefoord's performances as 'ingenious and diverting' (Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, 1887, iv. 322); and Horace Walpole laughed over them till he cried (Letter to Montagu, December 12, 1766). To use Voltaire's witticism, he is bien heureux who can laugh now. It may be added that Whitefoord did not, as he claimed, originate the 'Cross Readings.' They had been anticipated in No. 49 of Harrison's spurious Tatler, vol. v [1720].
The fashion of the 'Ship-News' was in this wise: 'August 25 [1765]. We hear that his Majestys Ship Newcastle will soon have a new figurehead, the old one being almost worn out.' The 'Mistakes of the Press' explain themselves. (See also Smith's Life of Nollekens, 1828, i. 336-7; Debrett's New Foundling Hospital for Wit, 1784, vol. ii, and Gentleman's Magazine, 1810, p. 300.)
That a Scot may have humour, I had almost said wit. Goldsmith,—if he wrote these verses,—must have forgotten that he had already credited Whitefoord with 'wit' in l. 153.
Thou best humour'd man with the worst humour'd muse. Cf. Rochester of Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset:—
The best good man, with the worst-natur'd muse.
Whitefoord's contribution to the epitaphs on Goldsmith is said to have been unusually severe,—so severe that four only of its eight lines are quoted in the Whitefoord Papers, 1898, the rest being 'unfit for publication' (p. xxvii). He afterwards addressed a metrical apology to Sir Joshua, which is printed at pp. 217-8 of Northcote's Life, 2nd ed., 1819. See also Forster's Goldsmith, 1871, ii. 408- 9.
Boswell, to whom we are indebted for the preservation of this lively song, sent it to The London Magazine for June, 1774 (vol. xliii, p. 295), with the following:—
SIR,—I send you a small production of the late Dr. Goldsmith, which has never been published, and which might perhaps have been totally lost had I not secured it. He intended it as a song in the character of Miss Hardcastle, in his admirable comedy, She stoops to conquer; but it was left out, as Mrs. Bulkley who played the part did not sing. He sung it himself in private companies very agreeably. The tune is a pretty Irish air, called The Humours of Balamagairy, to which, he told me, he found it very difficult to adapt words; but he has succeeded happily in these few lines. As I could sing the tune, and was fond of them, he was so good as to give me them about a year ago, just as I was leaving London, and bidding him adieu for that season, little apprehending that it was a last farewell. I preserve this little relick in his own handwriting with an affectionate care.
I am, Sir,
Your humble Servant,
JAMES BOSWELL.'
When, seventeen years later, Boswell published his Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., he gave an account of his dining at General Oglethorpe's in April, 1773, with Johnson and Goldsmith; and he says that the latter sang the Three Jolly Pigeons, and this song, to the ladies in the tea-room. Croker, in a note, adds that the younger Colman more appropriately employed the 'essentially low comic' air for Looney Mactwolter in the [Review; or the] Wags of Windsor, 1808 [i.e. in that character's song beginning—'Oh, whack! Cupid's a mannikin'], and that Moore tried to bring it into good company in the ninth number of the Irish Melodies. But Croker did not admire the tune, and thought poorly of Goldsmith's words. Yet they are certainly fresher than Colman's or Moore's:—
Sing—sing—Music was given,
To brighten the gay, and kindle the loving;
Souls here, like planets in Heaven,
By harmony's laws alone are kept moving, etc.
These lines, which appear at p. 312 of vol. V of the History of the Earth and Animated Nature, 1774, are freely translated from some Latin verses by Addison in No 412 of the Spectator, where they are introduced as follows:—'Thus we see that every different Species of sensible Creatures has its different Notions of Beauty, and that each of them is most affected with the Beauties of its own kind. This is nowhere more remarkable than in Birds of the same Shape and Proportion, where we often see the Male determined in his Courtship by the single Grain or Tincture of a Feather, and never discovering any Charms but in the Colour of its own Species.' Addison's lines, of which Goldsmith translated the first fourteen only, are printed from his corrected MS. at p. 4 of Some Portions of Essays contributed to the Spectator by Mr. Joseph Addison [by the late J. Dykes Campbell], 1864.
It is supposed that this poem was written early in 1771, although it was not printed until 1776, when it was published by G. Kearsly and J. Ridley under the title of The Haunch of Venison, a Poetical Epistle to the Lord Clare. By the late Dr. Goldsmith. With a Head of the Author, Drawn by Henry Bunbury, Esq; and Etched by [James] Bretherton. A second edition, the text of which is here followed, appeared in the same year 'With considerable Additions and Corrections, Taken from the Author's last Transcript.' The Lord Clare to whom the verses are addressed was Robert Nugent, of Carlanstown, Westmeath, M.P. for St. Mawes in 1741-54. In 1766 he was created Viscount Clare; in 1776 Earl Nugent. In his youth he had himself been an easy if not very original versifier; and there are several of his performances in the second volume of Dodsley's Collection of Poems by Several Hands, 4th ed., 1755. One of the Epistles, beginning 'Clarinda, dearly lov'd, attend The Counsels of a faithful friend,' seems to have betrayed Goldsmith into the blunder of confusing it, in the Poems for Young Ladies. 1767, p. 114, with Lyttelton's better-known Advice to a Lady ('The counsels of
a friend, Belinda, hear'), also in Dodsley's miscellany; while another piece, an Ode to William Pultney, Esq., contains a stanza so good that Gibbon worked it into his character of Brutus:—
What tho' the good, the brave, the wise,
With adverse force undaunted rise,
To break th' eternal doom!
Tho' CATO liv'd, tho' TULLY spoke,
Tho' BRUTUS dealt the godlike stroke,
Yet perish'd fated ROME.
Detraction, however, has insinuated that Mallet, his step-son's tutor, was Nugent's penholder in this instance. 'Mr. Nugent sure did not write his own Ode,' says Gray to Walpole (Gray's Works, by Gosse, 1884, ii. 220). Earl Nugent died in Dublin in October, 1788, and was buried at Gosfield in Essex, a property he had acquired with his second wife. A Memoir of him was written in 1898 by Mr. Claud Nugent. He is described by Cunningham as 'a big, jovial, voluptuous Irishman, with a loud voice, a strong Irish accent, and a ready though coarse wit.' According to Percy (Memoir, 1801, p. 66), he had been attracted to Goldsmith by the publication of The Traveller in 1764, and he mentioned him favourably to the Earl of Northumberland, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. A note in Forster's Life, 1871, ii. 329-30, speaks of Goldsmith as a frequent visitor at Gosfield, and at Nugent's house in Great George Street, Westminster, where he had often for playmate his host's daughter, Mary, afterwards Marchioness of Buckingham.
Scott and others regarded The Haunch of Venison as autobiographical. To what extent this is the case, it is difficult to say. That it represents the actual thanks of the poet to Lord Clare for an actual present of venison, part of which he promptly transferred to Reynolds, is probably the fact. But, as the following notes show, it is also clear that Goldsmith borrowed, if not his entire fable, at least some of its details from Boileau's third satire; and that, in certain of the lines, he had in memory Swift's Grand Question Debated, the measure of which he adopts. This throws more than a doubt upon the truth of the whole. 'His genius' (as Hazlitt says) 'was a mixture of originality and imitation'; and fact and fiction often mingle inseparably
in his work. The author of the bailiff scene in the Good Natur'd Man was quite capable of inventing for the nonce the tragedy of the unbaked pasty, or of selecting from the Pilkingtons and Purdons of his acquaintance such appropriate guests for his Mile End Amphitryon as the writers of the Snarler and the Scourge. It may indeed even be doubted whether, if The Haunch of Venison had been absolute personal history, Goldsmith would ever have retailed it to his noble patron at Gosfield, although it may include enough of real experience to serve as the basis for a jeu d'esprit.
The fat was so white, etc. The first version reads—'The white was so white, and the red was so ruddy.'
Though my stomach was sharp, etc. This couplet is not in the first version.
One gammon of bacon. Prior compared a passage from Goldsmith's Animated Nature, 1774, iii. 9, à propos of a similar practice in Germany, Poland, and Switzerland. 'A piece of beef,' he says, 'hung up there, is considered as an elegant piece of furniture, which, though seldom touched, at least argues the possessor's opulence and ease.'
a bounce, i.e. a braggart falsehood. Steele, in No. 16 of The Lover, 1715, p. 110, says of a manifest piece of brag, 'But this is supposed to be only a Bounce.'
Mr. Byrne, spelled 'Burn' in the earlier editions, was a relative of Lord Clare.
M—r—'s. MONROE's in the first version. 'Dorothy Monroe,' says Bolton Corney, 'whose various charms are celebrated in verse by Lord Townshend.'
There's
H—d, and C—y, and H—rth, and H—ff. In
the first version—
'There's COLEY, and
WILLIAMS, and HOWARD, and
HIFF.'—Hiff was Paul Hiffernan, M.B., 1719-77,
a Grub Street author and practitioner. Bolton Corney hazards some
conjectures as to the others; but Cunningham wisely passes them
over.
H—gg—ns. Perhaps, suggests Bolton Corney, this was the Captain Higgins who assisted at Goldsmith's absurd 'fracas' with Evans the bookseller, upon the occasion of Kenrick's letter in The London Packet for March 24, 1773. Other accounts, however, state that his companion was Captain Horneck (Prior, Life, 1837, ii. 411-12). This couplet is not in the first version.
Such dainties to them, etc. The first version reads:—
Such dainties to them! It would look like a
flirt,
Like sending 'em Ruffles when wanting a Shirt.
Cunningham quotes a similar idea from T. Brown's Laconics, Works, 1709, iv. 14. 'To treat a poor wretch with a bottle of Burgundy, or fill his snuff-box, is like giving a pair of lace ruffles to a man that has never a shirt on his back.' But Goldsmith, as was his wont, had already himself employed the same figure. 'Honours to one in my situation,' he says in a letter to his brother Maurice, in January, 1770, when speaking of his appointment as Professor of Ancient History to the Royal Academy, 'are something like ruffles to a man that wants a shirt' (Percy Memoir, 1801, 87-8). His source was probably, not Brown's Laconics, but those French 'ana' he knew so well. According to M. J. J. Jusserand (English Essays from a French Pen, 1895, pp. 160-1), the originator of this conceit was M. Samuel de Sorbieres, the traveller in England who was assailed by Bishop Sprat. Considering himself inadequately rewarded by his patrons, Mazarin, Louis XIV, and Pope Clement IX, he said bitterly—'They give lace cuffs to a man without a shirt'; a 'consolatory witticism' which he afterwards remodelled into, 'I wish they would send me bread for the butter they kindly provided me with.' In this form it appears in the Preface to the Sorberiana, Toulouse, 1691.
a flirt is a jibe or jeer. 'He would sometimes . . . cast out a jesting flirt at me.' (Morley's History of Thomas Ellwood, 1895, p. 104.) Swift also uses the word.
An under-bred, fine-spoken fellow, etc. The first version reads—
A fine-spoken Custom-house Officer he,
Who smil'd as he gaz'd on the Ven'son and me.
but I hate ostentation. Cf. Beau Tibbs:—'She was bred, but that's between ourselves, under the inspection of the Countess of All- night.' (Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 238.)
We'll have Johnson, and Burke. Cf. Boileau, Sat. iii. ll. 25-6, which Goldsmith had in mind:—
Molière avec Tartufe y doit jouer son rôle,
Et Lambert, qui plus est, m'a donné sa parole.
What say you—a pasty? It shall, and it must. The first version reads—
I'll take no denial—you shall, and you must.
Mr. J. H. Lobban, Goldsmith, Select Poems, 1900, notes a hitherto undetected similarity between this and the 'It must, and it shall be a barrack, my life' of Swift's Grand Question Debated. See also ll. 56 and 91.
No stirring, I beg—my dear friend—my dear friend. In the first edition—
No words, my dear GOLDSMITH! my very good Friend!
Mr. Lobban compares:—
'Good morrow, good captain.' 'I'll wait on you down,'—
'You shan't stir a foot.' 'You'll think me a clown.'
'And nobody with me at sea but myself.' This is almost a textual quotation from one of the letters of Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, to Lady Grosvenor, a correspondence which in 1770 gave great delight to contemporary caricaturists and scandal-mongers. Other poets besides Goldsmith seem to have been attracted by this particular lapse of his illiterate Royal Highness, since it is woven into a ballad printed in The Public Advertiser for August 2 in the above year:—
The Miser who wakes in a Fright for his Pelf,
And finds no one by him except his own Self, etc.
When come to the place, etc. Cf. Boileau, ut supra, ll. 31-4:—
A peine étais-je entré, que ravi de me voir,
Mon homme, en m'embrassant, m'est venu recevoir;
Et montrant à mes yeux une allégresse
entière,
Nous n'avons, m'a-t-il dit, ni Lambert ni Molière.
Lambert the musician, it may be added, had the special reputation of accepting engagements which he never kept.
and t'other with Thrale. Henry Thrale, the Southwark brewer, and the husband of Mrs. Thrale, afterwards Mrs. Piozzi. Johnson first made his acquaintance in 1765. Strahan complained to Boswell that, by this connexion, Johnson 'was in a great measure absorbed from the society of his old friends.'
(Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, 1887, iii. 225.) Line 72 in the first edition reads—
The one at the House, and the other with THRALE.
They both of them merry and authors like you. 'They' should apparently be 'they're.' The first version reads—
Who dabble and write in the Papers—like you.
Some think he writes Cinna—he owns to Panurge. 'Panurge' and 'Cinna' are signatures which were frequently to be found at the foot of letters addressed to the Public Advertiser in 1770-1 in support of Lord Sandwich and the Government. They are said to have been written by Dr. W. Scott, Vicar of Simonburn, Northumberland, and chaplain of Greenwich Hospital, both of which preferments had been given him by Sandwich. In 1765 he had attacked Lord Bute and his policy over the signature of 'Anti-Sejanus.' 'Sandwich and his parson Anti-Sejanus [are] hooted off the stage'—writes Walpole to Mann, March 21, 1766. According to Prior, it was Scott who visited Goldsmith in his Temple chambers, and invited him to 'draw a venal quill' for Lord North's administration. Goldsmith's noble answer, as reported by his reverend friend, was—'I can earn as much as will supply my wants without writing for any party; the assistance therefore you offer is unnecessary to me.' (Life, 1837, ii. 278.) There is a caricature portrait of Scott at p. 141 of The London Museum for February, 1771, entitled 'Twitcher's Advocate,' 'Jemmy Twitcher' being the nickname of Lord Sandwich.
Swinging, great, huge. 'Bishop Lowth has just finished the Dramas, and sent me word, that although I have paid him the most swinging compliment he ever received, he likes the whole book more than he can say.' (Memoirs of Hannah More, 1834, i. 236.)
pasty. The first version has Ven'son.'
So there I sat, etc. This couplet is not in the first version.
And, 'Madam,' quoth he. Mr. Lobban again quotes Swift's Grand Question Debated:—
And 'Madam,' says he, 'if such dinners you give
You'll ne'er want for parsons as long as you live.'
These slight resemblances, coupled with the more obvious likeness of the 'Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff' of Retaliation (ll. 145-6) to the Noueds and Bluturks and Omurs and stuff' (also pointed out by Mr. Lobban) are interesting, because they show plainly that Goldsmith remembered the works of Swift far better than The New Bath Guide, which has sometimes been supposed to have set the tune to the Haunch and Retaliation.
'may this bit be my poison.' The gentleman in She Stoops to Conquer, Act i, who is 'obligated to dance a bear.' Uses the same asseveration. Cf. also Squire Thornhill's somewhat similar formula in chap. vii of The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766, i. 59.
'The tripe,' quoth the Jew, etc. The first version reads—
'Your Tripe!' quoth the Jew, 'if the truth I may speak,
I could eat of this Tripe seven days in the week.'
Re-echoed, i.e. 'returned' in the first edition.
thot. This, probably by a printer's error, is altered to 'that' in the second version. But the first reading is the more in keeping, besides being a better rhyme.
Wak'd Priam. Cf. 2 Henry IV, Act I, Sc. 1:—
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night.
And would have told him half his Troy was burnt.
sicken'd over by learning. Cf. Hamlet, Act iii, Sc. 1:
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.
Notwithstanding the condemnation of Shakespeare in the Present State of Polite Learning, and elsewhere, Goldsmith frequently weaves Shakespearean recollections into his work. Cf. She Stoops to Conquer, 1773, Act i, p. 13, 'We wanted no ghost to tell us that' (Hamlet, Act i, Sc. 5); and Act i, p. 9, where he uses Falstaff's words (1 Henry IV, Act v, Sc. 1):—
Would it were bed-time and all were well.
as very well known. The first version has, ''tis very well known.'
This epitaph, apparently never used, was published with The Haunch of Venison, 1776; and is supposed to have been written about 1770. In that year Goldsmith wrote a Life of Thomas Parnell, D.D., to accompany an edition of his poems, printed for Davies of Russell Street. Parnell was born in 1679, and died at Chester in 1718, on his way to Ireland. He was buried at Trinity Church in that town, on the 24th of October. Goldsmith says that his father and uncle both knew Parnell (Life of Parnell, 1770, p. v), and that he received assistance from the poet's nephew, Sir John Parnell, the singing gentleman who figures in Hogarth's Election Entertainment. Why Goldsmith should write an epitaph upon a man who died ten years before his own birth, is not easy to explain. But Johnson also wrote a Latin one, which he gave to Boswell. (Birkbeck Hill's Life, 1887, iv. 54.)
gentle Parnell's name. Mitford compares Pope on Parnell [Epistle to Harley, l. iv]:—
With softest manners, gentlest Arts adorn'd.
Pope published Parnell's Poems in 1722, and his sending them to Harley, Earl of Oxford, after the latter's disgrace and retirement, was the occasion of the foregoing epistle, from which the following lines respecting Parnell may also be cited:—
For him, thou oft hast bid the World attend,
Fond to forget the statesman in the friend;
For SWIFT and him despis'd the farce of state,
The sober follies of the wise and great;
Dext'rous the craving, fawning crowd to quit,
And pleas'd to 'scape from Flattery to Wit.
his sweetly-moral lay. Cf. The Hermit, the Hymn to Contentment, the Night Piece on Death—which Goldsmith certainly recalled in his own City Night- Piece. Of the last-named Goldsmith says (Life of Parnell, 1770, p. xxxii), not without an obvious side-stroke at Gray's too-popular Elegy, that it 'deserves every praise, and I should suppose with very little amendment, might be made to surpass all those night pieces and church yard scenes that have since appeared.' This is certainly (as Longfellow sings) to
rustling hear in every breeze
The laurels of Miltiades.
Of Parnell, Hume wrote (Essays, 1770, i. 244) that 'after the fiftieth reading; [he] is as fresh as at the first.' But Gray (speaking—it should be explained—of a dubious volume of his posthumous works) said: 'Parnell is the dung-hill of Irish Grub Street' (Gosse's Gray's Works, 1884, ii. 372). Meanwhile, it is his fate to-day to be mainly remembered by three words (not always attributed to him) in a couplet from what Johnson styled 'perhaps the meanest' of his performances, the Elegy— to an Old Beauty:—
And all that's madly wild, or oddly gay,
We call it only pretty Fanny's way.
This, though dated 'Edinburgh 1753,' was first printed in Poems and Plays, 1777, p. 79.
John Trott is a name for a clown or commonplace character. Miss Burney (Diary, 1904, i. 222) says of Dr. Delap:—'As to his person and appearance, they are much in the John-trot style.' Foote, Chesterfield, and Walpole use the phrase; Fielding Scotticizes it into 'John Trott-Plaid, Esq.'; and Bolingbroke employs it as a pseudonym.
I shall ne'er see your graces. 'I shall never see a Goose again without thinking on Mr. Neverout,'—says the 'brilliant Miss Notable' in Swift's Polite Conversation, 1738, p. 156.
The occasion of this quatrain, first published as Goldsmith's* in Poems and Plays, 1777, p. 79, is to be found in Forster's Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith, 1871, ii. 60. Purdon died on March 27, 1767 (Gentleman's Magazine, April, 1767, p. 192). '"Dr. Goldsmith made this epitaph," says William Ballantyne [the author of Mackliniana], "in his way from his chambers in the Temple to the Wednesday evening's club at the Globe. I think he will never come back, I believe he said. I was
*It had previously appeared as an extempore by a correspondent in the Weekly Magazine, Edin., August 12, 1773 (Notes and Queries, February 14, 1880).
sitting by him, and he repeated it more than twice. (I think he will never come back.)"' Purdon had been at Trinity College, Dublin, with Goldsmith; he had subsequently been a foot soldier; ultimately he became a 'bookseller's hack.' He wrote an anonymous letter to Garrick in 1759, and translated the Henriade of Voltaire. This translation Goldsmith is supposed to have revised, and his own life of Voltaire was to have accompanied it, though finally the Memoir and Translation seem to have appeared separately. (Cf. prefatory note to Memoirs of M. de Voltaire in Gibbs's Works of Oliver Goldsmith, 1885, iv. 2.)
Forster says further, in a note, 'The original . . . is the epitaph on "La Mort du Sieur Etienne":—
Il est au bout de ses travaux,
Il a passé, le Sieur Etienne;
En ce monde il eut tant des maux
Qu'on ne croit pas qu'il revienne.
With this perhaps Goldsmith was familiar, and had therefore less scruple in laying felonious hands on the epigram in the Miscellanies (Swift, xiii. 372):—
Well, then, poor G—— lies underground!
So there's an end of honest Jack.
So little justice here he found,
'Tis ten to one he'll ne'er come back.'
Mr. Forster's 'felonious hands' recalls a passage in Goldsmith's Life of Parnell, 1770, in which, although himself an habitual sinner in this way, he comments gravely upon the practice of plagiarism:—'It was the fashion with the wits of the last age, to conceal the places from whence they took their hints or their subjects. A trifling acknowledgment would have made that lawful prize, which may now be considered as plunder' (p. xxxii).
This benefit took place at Covent Garden on May 7, 1773, the pieces performed being Rowe's Lady Jane Grey, and a popular pantomimic after- piece by Theobald, called Harlequin Sorcerer, Charles Lee Lewes (1740- 1803) was the original 'Young Marlow' of She Stoops to Conquer. When that part was thrown up by
'Gentleman' Smith, Shuter, the 'Mr. Hardcastle' of the comedy, suggested Lewes, who was the harlequin of the theatre, as a substitute, and the choice proved an admirable one. Goldsmith was highly pleased with his performance, and in consequence wrote for him this epilogue. It was first printed by Evans, 1780, i. 112-4.
in thy black aspect, i.e. the half-mask of harlequin, in which character the Epilogue was spoken.
rosined lightning, stage- lightning, in which rosin is an ingredient.
This epilogue was first printed at pp. 82-6, vol. ii, of the Miscellaneous Works of 1801. Bolton Corney says it had been given to Percy by Goldsmith. It is evidently the 'quarrelling Epilogue' referred to in the following letter from Goldsmith to Cradock (Miscellaneous Memoirs, 1826, i. 225-6):—
'MY DEAR SIR,
The Play [She Stoops to Conquer] has met with a
success much beyond your expectations or mine. I thank you
sincerely for your Epilogue, which, however could not be used, but
with your permission, shall be printed.* The story in short is
this; Murphy sent me rather the outline of an Epilogue than an
Epilogue, which was to be sung by Mrs. Catley, and which she
approved. Mrs. Bulkley hearing this, insisted on throwing up her
part, unless according to the custom of the theatre, she were
permitted to speak the Epilogue. In this embarrassment I thought of
making a quarrelling Epilogue between Catley and her, debating who
should speak the Epilogue, but then Mrs. Catley refused, after I
had taken the trouble of drawing it out. I was then at a loss
indeed; an Epilogue was to be made, and for none but Mrs. Bulkley.
I made one, and Colman thought it too bad to be spoken; I was
obliged therefore to try a fourth time, and I made a very mawkish
thing, as you'll shortly see. Such is the history of my Stage
adventures, and which I have at last done with. I cannot help
saying that I am very sick of the
*It is so printed with the note—'This came too late to be Spoken.'
stage; and though I believe I shall get three tolerable benefits, yet I shall upon the whole be a loser, even in a pecuniary light; my ease and comfort I certainly lost while it was in agitation.
I am, my dear Cradock,
your obliged, and obedient servant,
OLIVER
GOLDSMITH.
According to Prior (Miscellaneous Works, 1837, iv. 154), Goldsmith's friend, Dr. Farr, had a copy of this epilogue which still, when Prior wrote, remained in that gentleman's family.
Who mump their passion, i.e. grimace their passion.
ye macaroni train. The Macaronies were the foplings, fribbles, or beaux of Goldsmith's day. Walpole refers to them as early as 1764; but their flourishing time was 1770-3, when the print-shops, and especially Matthew Darly's in the Strand, No. 39, swarmed with satirical designs of which they were the subject. Selwyn, March—many well-known names—are found in their ranks. Richard Cosway figured as 'The Macaroni Painter'; Angelica Kauffmann as 'The Paintress of Maccaroni's'; Thrale as 'The Southwark Macaroni.' Another caricature ('The Fluttering Macaroni') contains a portrait of Miss Catley, the singing actress of the present epilogue; while Charles Horneck, the brother of 'The Jessamy Bride' (see p. 251, l. 14) is twice satirized as 'The Martial Macaroni' and 'The Military Macaroni.' The name, as may be guessed, comes from the Italian dish first made fashionable by the 'Macaroni Club,' being afterwards applied by extension to 'the younger and gayer part of our nobility and gentry, who, at the same time that they gave in to the luxuries of eating, went equally into the extravagancies of dress.' (Macaroni and Theatrical Magazine, Oct. 1772.) Cf. Sir Benjamin Backbite's later epigram in The School for Scandal, 1777, Act ii, Sc. 2:—
Sure never was seen two such beautiful ponies;
Other horses are clowns, but these macaronies:
To give them this title I'm sure can't be wrong,
Their legs are so slim and their tails are so long.
Their hands are only lent to the Heinel. See note to l. 28, p. 85.
This epilogue, given by Goldsmith to Dr. Percy in MS., was first published in the Miscellaneous Works of 1801, ii. 87-8, as An Epilogue intended for Mrs. Bulkley. Percy did not remember for what play it was intended; but it is plainly (see note to l. 40) the second epilogue for She Stoops to Conquer referred to in the letter printed in this volume.
There is a place, so Ariosto sings. 'The poet alludes to the thirty-fourth canto of The Orlando furioso. Ariosto, as translated by Mr. Stewart Rose, observes of the lunar world;
There thou wilt find, if thou wilt thither post,
Whatever thou on earth beneath hast lost.
Astolpho undertakes the journey; discovers a portion of his own sense; and, in an ample flask, the lost wits of Orlando.' (Bolton Corney.) Cf. also Rape of the Lock, Canto v, ll. 113-14:
Some thought it mounted to the Lunar sphere,
Since all things lost on earth are treasur'd there.
Lord Chesterfield also refers to the 'happy extravagancy' of Astolpho's journey in his Letters, 1774, i. 557.
at Foote's Alone. 'Foote's' was the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, where, in February, 1773, he brought out what he described as a 'Primitive Puppet Show,' based upon the Italian Fantoccini, and presenting a burlesque sentimental Comedy called The Handsome Housemaid; or, Piety in Pattens, which did as much as She Stoops to laugh false sentiment away. Foote warned his audience that they would not discover 'much wit or humour' in the piece, since 'his brother writers had all agreed that it was highly improper, and beneath the dignity of a mixed assembly, to show any signs of joyful satisfaction; and that creating a laugh was forcing the higher order of an audience to a vulgar and mean use of their muscles'—for which reason, he explained, he had, like them, given up the sensual for the sentimental style. And thereupon followed the story of a maid of low degree who, 'by the mere effects of morality and virtue, raised herself [like Richardson's Pamela], to riches and honours.' The
public, who for some time had acquiesced in the new order of things under the belief that it tended to the reformation of the stage, and who were beginning to weary of the 'moral essay thrown into dialogue,' which had for some time supplanted humorous situation, promptly came round under the influence of Foote's Aristophanic ridicule, and the comédie larmoyante received an appreciable check. Goldsmith himself had prepared the way in a paper contributed to the Westminster Magazine for December, 1772 (vol. i. p. 4), with the title of 'An Essay on the Theatre; or, A Comparison between Laughing and Sentimental Comedy.' The specific reference in the Prologue is to the fact that Foote gave morning performances of The Handsome Housemaid. There was one, for instance, on Saturday, March 6, 1773.
The Mohawk. This particular species of the genus 'rake' belongs more to Swift's than Goldsmith's time, though the race is eternal. There is an account of the 'Mohock Club' in Spectator, No. 324. See also Spectator, No. 347; Gay's Trivia, 1716, Book iii. p. 74; Swift's Journal to Stella, March 8 and 26, 1712; and the Wentworth Papers, 1883, pp. 277- 8.
Still stoops among the low to copy nature. This line, one would think, should have helped to convince Percy that the epilogue was intended for She Stoops to Conquer, and for no other play.
The Oratorio of the Captivity was written in 1764; but never set to music. It was first printed in 1820 at pp. 451-70 of vol. ii of the octavo edition of the Miscellaneous Works issued by the trade in that year. Prior reprinted it in 1837 (Works, iv. Pp. 79-95) from the 'original manuscript' in Mr. Murray's possession; and Cunningham again in 1854 (Works, i. pp. 63-76). It is here reproduced from Prior. James Dodsley, who bought the MS. for Newbery and himself, gave Goldsmith ten guineas. Murray's copy was the one made for Dodsley, October 31, 1764; the one printed in 1820, that made for Newbery. The latter, which once belonged to the autograph collector, William Upcott, was in the market in 1887.
AIR. Act i. This song had been published in the first edition
of The Haunch of Venison, 1776, with the second stanza varied thus:—
Thou, like the world, th' opprest oppressing,
Thy smiles increase the wretch's woe'
And he who wants each other blessing,
In thee must ever find a foe.
AIR. Act ii. This song also had appeared in the first edition of The Haunch of Venison, 1776, in a different form:—
The Wretch condemn'd with life to part,
Still, still on Hope relies;
And ev'ry pang that rends the heart,
Bids Expectation rise.
Hope, like the glim'ring taper's light,
Adorns and chears the way;
And still, as darker grows the night,
Emits a brighter ray.
Mitford, who printed The Captivity from Newbery's version, records a number of 'first thoughts' afterwards altered or improved by the author in his MS. Modern editors have not reproduced them, and their example has been followed here. The Captivity is not, in any sense, one of Goldsmith's important efforts.
These were first published in the Miscellaneous Works of 1837, iv. 132- 3, having been communicated to the editor by Major-General Sir H. E. Bunbury, Bart., the son of Henry William Bunbury, the well-known comic artist, and husband of Catherine Horneck, the 'Little Comedy' to whom Goldsmith refers. Dr. Baker, to whose house the poet was invited, was Dr. (afterwards Sir George) Baker, 1722-1809. He was Sir Joshua's doctor; and in 1776 became physician to George III, whom he attended during his illness of 1788-9. He is often mentioned by Fanny Burney and Hannah More.
Horneck, i.e. Mrs. Hannah Horneck—the 'Plymouth Beauty'—widow of Captain Kane William Horneck, grandson
of Dr. Anthony Horneck of the Savoy, mentioned in Evelyn's Diary, for whose Happy Ascetick, 1724, Hogarth designed a frontispiece. Mrs. Horneck died in 1803. Like Sir Joshua, the Hornecks came from Devonshire; and through him, had made the acquaintance of Goldsmith.
Nesbitt. Mr. Nesbitt was the husband of one of Mr. Thrale's handsome sisters. He was a member of the Devonshire Club, and twice (1759-61) sat to Reynolds, with whom he was intimate. He died in 1779, and his widow married a Mr. Scott.
Kauffmann. Angelica Kauffmann, the artist, 1741-1807. She had come to London in 1766. At the close of 1767 she had been cajoled into a marriage with an impostor, Count de Horn, and had separated from him in 1768. In 1769 she painted a 'weak and uncharacteristic' portrait of Reynolds for Mr. Parker of Saltram (afterwards Baron Boringdon), which is now in the possession of the Earl of Morley. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in the winter of 1876, and is the portrait referred to at l. 44 below.
the Jessamy Bride. This was Goldsmith's pet- name for Mary, the elder Miss Horneck. After Goldsmith's death she married Colonel F. E. Gwyn (1779). She survived until 1840. 'Her own picture with a turban,' painted by Reynolds, was left to her in his will (Works by Malone, 2nd ed., 1798, p. cxviii). She was also painted by Romney and Hoppner. 'Jessamy,' or 'jessimy,' with its suggestion of jasmine flowers, seems in eighteenth-century parlance to have stood for 'dandified,' 'superfine,' 'delicate,' and the whole name was probably coined after the model of some of the titles to Darly's prints, then common in all the shops.
The Reynoldses two, i.e. Sir Joshua and his sister, Miss Reynolds.
Little Comedy's face. 'Little Comedy' was Goldsmith's name for the younger Miss Horneck, Catherine, and already engaged to H. W. Bunbury (v. supra), to whom she was married in 1771. She died in 1799, and had also been painted by Reynolds.
the Captain in lace. This was Charles Horneck, Mrs. Horneck's son, an officer in the Foot-guards. He afterwards became a general, and died in 1804. (See note, p. 247, l. 31.)
to-day's Advertiser. The lines referred to are said by Prior to have been as follows:—
While fair Angelica, with matchless grace,
Paints Conway's lovely form and Stanhope's face;
Our hearts to beauty willing homage pay,
We praise, admire, and gaze our souls away.
But when the likeness she hath done for thee,
O Reynolds! with astonishment we see,
Forced to submit, with all our pride we own,
Such strength, such harmony, excell'd by none,
And thou art rivall'd by thyself alone.
They probably appeared in the newspaper at some date between 1769, when the picture was painted, and August 1771, when 'Little Comedy' was married, after which time Goldsmith would scarcely speak of her except as 'Mrs. Bunbury' (see p. 132, l. 15).
This letter, which contains some of the brightest and easiest of Goldsmith's familiar verses, was addressed to Mrs. Bunbury (the 'Little Comedy' of the Verses in Reply to an Invitation to Dinner, pp. 250- 2), in answer to a rhymed summons on her part to spend Christmas at Great Barton in Suffolk, the family seat of the Bunburys. It was first printed by Prior in the Miscellaneous Works of 1837, iv. 148-51, and again in 1838 in Sir Henry Bunbury's Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer, Bart., pp. 379-83. The text of the latter issue is here followed. When Prior published the verses, they were assigned to the year 1772; in the Hanmer Correspondence it is stated that they were 'probably written in 1773 or 1774.'
your spring velvet coat. Goldsmith's pronounced taste in dress, and his good- natured simplicity, made his costume a fertile subject for playful raillery,—sometimes, for rather discreditable practical jokes. (See next note.)
a wig, that is modish and gay. 'He always wore a wig'—said the 'Jessamy Bride' in her reminiscences to Prior—'a peculiarity
which those who judge of his appearance only from the fine poetical head of Reynolds, would not suspect; and on one occasion some person contrived to seriously injure this important adjunct to dress. It was the only one he had in the country, and the misfortune seemed irreparable until the services of Mr. Bunbury's valet were called in, who however performed his functions so indifferently that poor Goldsmith's appearance became the signal for a general smile' (Prior's Life, 1837, ii. 378-9).
Naso contemnere adunco. Cf. Horace, Sat. i. 6. 5:—
naso suspendis adunco
Ignotos,
and Martial, Ep. i. 4. 6:—
Et pueri nasum Rhinocerotis habent.
Loo, i.e. Lanctre- or Lanterloo, a popular eighteenth-century game, in which Pam, l. 6, the knave of clubs, is the highest card. Cf. Pope, Rape of the Lock, 1714, iii. 61:—
Ev'n might Pam, that Kings and Queens o'erthrew,
And mow'd down armies in the fights of Lu;
and Colman's epilogue to The School for Scandal, 1777:—
And at backgammon mortify my soul,
That pants for loo, or flutters at a vole?
Miss Horneck. Miss Mary Horneck, the 'Jessamy Bride' vide note, p. 251, l. 14).
Fielding. Sir John Fielding, d. 1780, Henry Fielding's blind half-brother, who succeeded him as a Justice of the Peace for the City and Liberties of Westminster. He was knighted in 1761. There are two portraits of him by Nathaniel Hone.
by quinto Elizabeth, Death without Clergy. Legal authorities affirm that the Act quoted should be 8 Eliz. cap. iv, under which those who stole more than twelvepence 'privately from a man's person' were debarred from benefit of clergy. But 'quint. Eliz.' must have offered some special attraction to poets, since Pope also refers to it in the Satires and Epistles, i. 147-8:—
Consult the Statute: quart. I think, it is,
Edwardi sext. or prim. et quint. Eliz.
With bunches of fennel, and nosegays before 'em. This was a custom dating from the fearful jail fever of 1750, which carried off, not only prisoners, but a judge (Mr. Justice Abney) 'and many jurymen and witnesses.' 'From that time up to this day [i.e. 1855] it has been usual to place sweet-smelling herbs in the prisoner's dock, to prevent infection.' (Lawrence's Life of Henry Fielding, 1855, p. 296.) The close observation of Cruikshank has not neglected this detail in the Old Bailey plate of The Drunkard's Children, 1848, v.
mobs. The mob was a loose undress or dèshabillè, sometimes a hood. 'When we poor souls had presented ourselves with a contrition suitable to our worthlessness, some pretty young ladies in mobs, popped in here and there about the church.' (Guardian, No. 65, May 26, 1713.) Cf. also Addison's 'Fine Lady's Diary' (Spectator, No. 323); 'Went in our Mobbs to the Dumb Man' (Duncan Campbell).
yon solemn- faced. Cf. Introduction, p. xxvii. According to the 'Jessamy Bride,' Goldsmith sometimes aggravated his plainness by an 'assumed frown of countenance' (Prior, Life, 1837, ii. 379).
Sir Charles, i.e. Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, Bart., M. P., Henry Bunbury's elder brother. He succeeded to the title in 1764, and died without issue in 1821. Goldsmith, it may be observed, makes 'Charles' a disyllable. Probably, like many of his countrymen, he so pronounced it. (Cf. Thackeray's Pendennis, 1850, vol. ii, chap. 5 [or xliii], where this is humorously illustrated in Captain Costigan's 'Sir Chorlus, I saw your neem at the Levee.' Perhaps this accounts for 'failing' and 'stealing,'—'day on' and 'Pantheon,' in the ^New Simile^. Cooke (European Magazine, October, 1793, p. 259) says that Goldsmith 'rather cultivated (than endeavoured to get rid of) his brogue.'
dy'd in grain, i.e. fixed, ineradicable. To 'dye in grain' means primarily to colour with the scarlet or purple dye produced by the kermes insect, called granum in Latin, from its similarity to small seeds. Being what is styled a 'fast' dye the phrase is used by extension to signify permanence.
Forster thus describes the MS. of this poem in his Life of Goldsmith:—'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 such as would occur in transcription rather 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 seldom as it is 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, in so marked a peculiarity, be less apt to fall short 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 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 evidence 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. Such a fact is, of course, only to be taken in aid of other proof; but a man is not generally at the pains of counting, still less, I should say in such a case as Goldsmith's, of elaborately transcribing, lines which are not his own.' (Forster's Goldsmith, 1871, ii. 235-6).
When Forster wrote the above, the MS. was in the possession of Mr. Bolton Corney, who had not been aware of its existence when he edited Goldsmith's Poems in 1845. In 1854 it was, with his permission, included in vol. iv of Cunningham's Works of 1854, and subsequently in the Aldine Poems of 1866.
Mark Jerome Vida of Cremona, 1490-1566, was Bishop of Alba, and favourite of Leo the Magnificent. Several translators had tried their hand at his Game of Chess before Goldsmith. Lowndes mentions Rowbotham, 1562; Jeffreys, 1736; Erskine, 1736; Pullin, 1750; and Anon. (Eton), 1769 (who may have preceded Goldsmith). But after his (Goldsmith's) death appeared another Oxford anonymous version, 1778, and one by Arthur Murphy, 1786.