CHAPTER III

"Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain,Teach him that states of native strength possest,Though very poor, may still be very blest."

This poem, and also and not lessThe Traveller, although it is a tale of wandering, beyond all else, reveal the light and the love of the home.

At the University of Edinburgh, Goldsmith became a more earnest student. He was certainly not without the higher aspirations of the sublime profession to which circumstance and necessity rather than aptitude or inclination had called him. Whilst it may be questioned whether he ever had the poetic imagination of the physician, he never allowed the honour in which he held the vocation to lessen, and never lost the satisfaction he himself cherished through his association with this calling. To the last he was proud of being—or as his cynical critic might say, of counting himself—a doctor. In Scotland he worked harder, studied chemistry with intelligence, and evinced considerable ability. He viewed with ardour his prospective work in life, and was keenly interested in the medical system and the surgical processes of that period. As a student he was respected. He became a conspicuous member of the Medical Society. It is needless, however, to add that his studies were not so strenuous as to make his mood at any time monastic, compellinghim to live heedless of passing pleasures and delightful days, or forgetful of his fellow-men.

Goldsmith had been very poor in Dublin. He was not rich in Edinburgh, but he was welcomed in the refined circles of both University and civic society. He discovered his place amongst graceful and gracious women and high-minded and cultured men, and then, all at once, amid all his new-found success and happiness, he unexpectedly closed his medical career at the University and left not less suddenly than he had come. Nothing could be more abrupt than his departure. Rumour has it that, with chaotic benevolence, he had become security for one of his fellow-students for a considerable sum of money on account of a tailor's bill. Here we have the prototype of "the good-natured man."

YOUNG GOLDSMITH.Rischgitz Collection.]GOLDSMITH AS A YOUNG MAN.(From the rare etching by Bretherton after Bunbury's drawing.)

Rischgitz Collection.]

Goldsmith could make nothing of mathematics, and held this science fit only for mean intellects. Later in his life this delightful philosopher confided to Malone that he still held the study in a kind of scorn, seeing that he could himself turn an ode of Horace into English better than any of the mathematicians. There is scarcely an infinitesimal sign of the principle of mathematical precision about the career of Oliver Goldsmith. Yet in Scotland, possibly because the virtue of prudence is infectious, during this period, for some time and by some miracle, Noll cultivated a habit to which he was throughout his career very slightlyaddicted—he paid his way. Yet when he was leaving this centre of learning we find Uncle Contarine once more besought, and this time for twenty rapidly forthcoming sterling pounds, to carry Mr. Oliver to the Continent for the completion of his medical education. The wandering spirit had seized him. Paris and Leyden, with their learned lecturers, were but pretexts for travelling and fulfilling the long-cherished hope of seeing foreign lands. He thirsted for deep draughts of experience flowing from the hidden springs of unknown climes. Professor Masson wittily tells us that as Goldsmith had planned to go to Paris, of course he arrived in the end at Leyden. Having secured those necessary munitions of war which to the full extent of his means Uncle Contarine unfailingly provided, Goldsmith set sail in a ship bound for Bordeaux. At Newcastle he was, by mistake, arrested as a political prisoner and retained in durance as a Jacobite. The ship sailed without him. It sank; every life was lost. Soon after reaching Leyden, Goldsmith left that seat of learning for his wanderings through Europe, his only aids to this majestic design being a fine voice and an instrument of music—some sort of flute, we must presume. It was a queer pilgrimage. The peasantry gave the minstrel food by day and a bed at night. Village after village welcomed him. He left Leyden penniless. He might have had a useful coin or two to help him, but that, espying some lovely flowers, he could not resist buyingall his poor purse permitted and sending them to Uncle Contarine. No long-suffering uncle, in all the chronicles and all the untold trials of uncles, deserved better of a nephew than this good old man.

Goldsmith's ramble through Europe was one of the maddest escapades in the records of the eccentricities of adolescent genius. The enterprise was attended with ceaseless difficulty, danger, and deprivation. Not seldom the hedgeside yielded him his nightly rest. Places of learning from time to time gave the wanderer a dinner. He could make the monasteries havens of repose. For a little while he acted as guide and tutor to the son of some wealthy manufacturer. This youth cared nothing for architecture or antiquity, the histories of cities, or natural scenery. His sole purpose seemed to be to save money on his travels. The liberal and lively tutor left a pupil as dull as he was mean. The love of wandering lay deep in Goldsmith's heart. This early pilgrimage through much of Europe inspired his pen to writeThe Traveller. In later years he had throughout this eager longing for a roving life.

Notwithstanding his roaming, in some inexplicable manner, Goldsmith, the pilgrim of improvidence and knight errant from the Order of Chivalrous Carelessness, still pursued his medical studies, and carried this training for the vocation of a doctor to some kind of completion. Italy is supposed to have conferred his diploma as a physician upon Goldsmith, andeither Padua or Louvain has the honour.The Travellermust, indeed, long have been in all its grace and beauty treasured in his heart, for he actually penned lines for this fine poem during these boyish wanderings through Europe.

This sojourn on the Continent occupied two years or more. He reached England in the year 1756, landing at Dover. This penniless pilgrim made his way on foot, bravely trudging the highroad, with few hopes of coming fame, but many pangs of very present poverty. Our minstrel gathered a little money here and there by singing ditties and ballads, spontaneous compositions, delightfully original, to cheer him and the laughing rustic hearts he met and loved, lads and maids, old men and children, and all, forthwith and henceforth and for ever, his friends. Tramping from Dover, receiving a warm English welcome at many a wayside farm, and the hearty hospitality of the cottage hearth and home; anon sleeping in barns, or, if need be, making the hedgerow his haven and shelter for the night, passing village after village—the days went by, and then he sighted the great town of great trial. He entered London, the city of cities, with its innumerable multitudes and its untold loneliness.

No one can read the opening line inThe Traveller—

"Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow"—

without feeling that the words could only have sprung from very genius. We have herethat uniqueness that signalises and divides. Throughout there is that sincerity of sentiment which separates and guides those deeper natures who amid all joys know the vein of sorrow prevailing in the human heart. From yearning aspiration comes that exaltation which connotes the higher character. It is this element that we are apt to forget in our humorists. Lamb, Hood, Thackeray, and Goldsmith, had strains of reflection which went more into the very heart of being and not being, fulfilling and failing, living and dying, than we can ever discover in those who decorate their days with a clamant seriousness. That semblance of earnestness accepted by the populace often lacks poetic force and sublime sanction.The Travellerattains the heights and depths of the Divine communion that unites poetry with prayer. The speeding pen, the quivering lips, the moving mind, and beating heart, are slight contrasted with this prayerful yearning of the unseen and spiritual. Poetry is the unutterable, yet sweetly and strangely uttered voicing of the soul ineffable.

She Stoops to Conquerinspired Sheridan with his inimitable dramatic conceptions.The Travellerroused Byron to the heights he attained in "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage."The Travellerheralds an era and proclaims the true imperial note, clear and triumphant. If poetry be the prophetic vein, calling an age to realise its aspirations, foreseeing, forewarning, and foremaking coming time, then here the poet, themaker, and the creator, speaks. Nor kings nor warriors rule, but thinkers, and amongst these rulers in the high realm of thought and spiritual power, highest of all in every age and clime—the poet! Hidden in the soul's depths we discover an earnestness which in the outward light-hearted man we fail to recognise. That one we thought we knew so well, we find, too late, we knew, if not altogether ill, at least too slightingly. The poem is doubtless too didactic at times to always move consummate delight. There is a ring more Latin than English in the line,

"Wealth, commerce, honour, liberty, content."

Yet even in this we see how words can weigh with meaning, and not one prove wasted, but each contributes to the fulfilling of the complete intention. This line has that poetic power which in one single flash can show what volumes men might write and not reveal. Pope crippled meaning and weakened force to procure a rhyme—nay, since he actually planned the rhymes to make his couplets before he penned his poetry, to him not infrequently it was far more to rhyme than realise. In Goldsmith's couplet,

"Till carried to excess in each domain,This favourite good begets peculiar pain,"

we have a dissertation upon both individual and national ethics, and the sole secret of the failures of men and States. There appearpassages where Goldsmith held Virgil much in view. To some extent this poem, and alsoThe Deserted Village, remind one of Volney. In this light the style in places is more French than English. There is full force in the phrase,

"And e'en in penance, planning sins anew."

While the poem is always graceful, readers are not at their happiest when pleasing poets turn philosophers. Throughout the piece there is a manly courage, a purity of motive, a magnanimous ideality, and an unexpected and almost muscular robustness. What gaiety there is in this phrase—

"Sport and flutter in a kinder sky."

We have, when he comes to France, upon which country he writes delightfully, a couplet happily autobiographical:

"Yet would the village praise my wondrous power,And dance forgetful of the noontide hour."

Radiant must have been the moments when later the little man in Fleet Street could look back on scenes like these. We wish that his own graceful pen had granted us a full and vivid record of his roamings.

It cannot be said that from the higher standpoint Goldsmith owed much to Dublin, Edinburgh, Leyden, or Louvain. His class-rooms for the study of life were provided in rustic inns, his studious chambers village greens inthe land where he was born, French riversides, Swiss mountains, Italian lakes, the blue skies of many climes, and later the crowded streets of the London he loved. His books were the hearts of women, the smiles of children, and the lives of men.

Young Oliver Goldsmith, diffident and with no adroitness of address, was not one of those authors who can take publishers by storm, and fame with a wave of the hand. He was a nervous man. Although one of the most collected of writers, he had to be fully at his ease before, in conversation or the common intercourse of society, he could be himself and reveal that force of mind and invincibility of personality that mark his influence and creates his charm. He knew and felt his weakness. When Johnson narrated his adventures in a close and friendly gossip with the King, Goldsmith said:

"Well, you acquitted yourself in this conversation better than I should have done, for I should have bowed and stammered through the whole of it."

Goldsmith's face must have shone in moments of animation, its very ugliness gaining a beauty all its own, more lovable for that transformation one smile creates. He may have had an uncouth appearance and an awkward bearing.The charm and gentleness of such a spirit as his must have outweighed accidents of form. Now we associate an inevitable purity and tenderness with him and with all he ever did. If he had a poor outward mien and fashion, men must have thought nothing of this compared to the inward grace of the heart and love-illumined soul of the man.

Alone in London, he had come to his fierce fight: not for fame, but for bread. Through all his squalid wanderings in the hard times, and all his sordid trials, he sustained his cheerfulness, and in a selfless supremacy ever strove to bestow on other lives the faith and courage his own bright heart never wholly lost. How he lived in these early days in London no one knows, and the tale of want, care, and humiliation incident to gnawing peril and privation made a story too agonising for him, open as he was, ever to fully reveal. He said one day very quietly: "When I lived among the beggars in Axe Lane."

He may have laughed as he said the words. He must have shuddered. The laugh was a selfless sacrifice. The shudder was real and to the very last too true, for painful memory was vivid. We cannot tell whether, like Shakespeare, he held the reins of horses, standing outside taverns and theatres; or whether he carried bags for pence, ran errands, gambled for his bread, or begged for shelter. Here was a sweet, weak, pure, and gentle, sympathetic lad, only a boy in heart and strength, and not evena child in that hardness life demands, stepping he knew not whither, meeting the world in an actual and visible solitude, and a loneliness of soul beyond the force of words to tell. There are those who, having passed their twentieth year, are already men of mark and power. Not such a one was poor Noll. Through ceaseless dependence and uncertainty in both his purpose and his position in life, he tardily gained that dignity and validity that attends the realisation of man's estate.

With Goldsmith now one eager and despairing quest for work followed hard upon another, and disappointments in rapid and relentless succession. After wandering on from door to door, and hope to its scattering, and chance to its dispelling, he obtained his first situation as a dispenser in a chemist's shop. He lost opportunities and failed to create confidence, more than anything through the forlornness of his appearance, and the too obvious simplicity of his bearing. Then he heard of an old friend, a warm-hearted Edinburgh student, a certain Dr. Sleigh. To this generous man he bent his steps. As soon as he was recognized, he was received into the home of his former companion, and welcomed with all that brotherliness of which sterling friendship is capable.

The old apothecary, with whom Goldsmith worked as a dispenser for a time, deserves the grateful honour that we now can pay his kindly heart. His name was Jacobs. He appears to have been an old man of benign mien andinclination. He recognized the superior learning and credentials of his young assistant. He thought that a qualified doctor should not be serving drugs in a shop, but in greater dignity visiting his patients. Largely through this man's kindly exertions, and also with a little help from Dr. Sleigh, who soon left London and was lost to his former friend, and with the sympathy and good wishes of more than one old Edinburgh comrade, remembered and met again, Goldsmith was set up in a mean and meagre manner as a physician, in a very poor and dingy neighbourhood—Bank Side, Southwark. The whole prospect was neither pleasant nor propitious. Hidden in his desolute obscurity, friends lost, for a time at all events, all thought of Goldsmith. The poor doctor soon seemed quite alone, and, what was worse, forgotten.

From the moment that Oliver Goldsmith entered London, penury and meanness had dogged his steps. It is piteous to dwell upon these squalid scenes. We need not recall the second-hand wardrobe that decked him out as a physician in this practice, unimaginably poor and dark and dingy. Fancy cannot conceive a greater dreariness or deeper destitution. He was so poor that his poorest patients felt compassion for his even greater poverty. Seeing one day his doctor's pockets bulging with papers, so that he looked like the man of letters in a then clever and popular caricature, an invalid, a journeyman printer, who had sought this physician's aid and advice, now feelinglycommended him to Samuel Richardson, his own master and employer, with at first, at all events, apparently auspicious results. Leaving his dubious practice, Goldsmith became proof reader to the printer, publisher, and novelist who had also in his own good time befriended the great Dr. Johnson. No ultimate advantage, however, accrued to Goldsmith from this distinguished association with and employment by one of the most successful authors of the day.

He met the poet Young, and other men. He never wrote for Richardson, and soon left this place of books and business. His position can have been neither dignified nor lucrative. The wanderer bent his weary feet, neither knowing whither his steps might tend nor with the wherewithal to meet the journey. He was almost starving in the streets, when one day he met young Milner, another Edinburgh student, who carried Noll off to his father, a learned Presbyterian divine, who kept a school. Goldsmith then had, it seems, some vague dream about being sent to the East to decipher ancient inscriptions, but in the end he found occupation in Peckham, and not Palestine.

There is no particular reason, however wayward his studies, to question that Goldsmith was, in the lighter order of that day, a qualified physician. When he landed in England from the Continent in all probability he had secreted in some loose pocket a foreign medical diploma. Besides this certificate, granting him the right to practise, but not the power to succeed, as adoctor, he carried other papers—parts of poems, essays, notes for plays, and perhaps even then the opening of a novel. He set great store on these precious papers. He may have lost his diploma. He became an usher in Dr. Milner's school at Peckham. He hated this work. InThe Vicar of Wakefield, in a few striking sentences, he shows the humiliations of the position. Wherever we find him, he is always the same in the matter of worldly prudence, and in his fondness for making those about him bright. He spent his salary in giving treats to his pupils. The kindly schoolmaster's wife said that she ought to keep Mr. Goldsmith's money as well as the young gentlemen's. Dear Noll was full of fun and fine humour for the boys about him, doing all he could for their delight, and loving some like a brother. When years had passed and he had attained his fame, he met one of his old scholars, knew him in an instant, and although the lad had become a married man, was anxious, as in the old days, to treat him at an apple-stall. Then suddenly he said:

"Sam, have you seen my picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds? Have you seen it, Sam? Have you got an engraving?"

Sam had not yet procured the picture.

"Sam," said Goldsmith, "if your picture had been published, I should not have waited an hour without having it."

Despite his pranks with his pupils, this time was no happy period. The unpleasantness ofthe office and the severities of the scorned and profitless labours weighed sorely on him. Every collection of schoolboys has its share of ineffaceable snobs. These were a trial to the teacher. Amid his practical jokes with William the footboy, and one merry-maker and another, there is still an underlying earnestness in all and a reverence for the pure sentiment of the heart. At this time, when asked whom he held the best commentator on the Scriptures, Goldsmith replied very simply, "Common Sense."

The principal of the school, Dr. Milner, was one of the most sincere of Goldsmith's friends. At the house of this good man, Griffiths, the publisher, meeting Goldsmith, detected his abilities at once, and found him the first opening for his literary labours. He gave him mere hack-work on theMonthly Review. This was the Whig journal of the day, and opposed later by its Tory rival, theCritical Review, edited by Smollet, also physician, novelist, and historian. Leaving Peckham, Goldsmith now lived for a while over the shop of his employer in Paternoster Row, gaining shelter of a sort and board and lodging.

Poor as may have been the fare, and mean as must have been the livelihood under the roof of Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths, Oliver Goldsmith, escaping from these conditions of life, entered others that were for a time, at all events, far worse. One cannot tell what he did, or where he went, or how he lived. Near Salisbury Square some squalid garret shelteredhim. He tried to shun the common gaze and hide his very whereabouts. He turned to translating, chance criticisms, and any drudgery that came his way, and all to little purpose. He lived in wretchedness and obscurity, bearing the weight of an increasing poverty, until at last the very hope of bare subsistence perished.

On one dark and misty day, as Goldsmith, in his tattered and threadbare clothes, sat pensive and dejected in his dingy, miserable garret, rich in fancies and very poor in food, a merry rap upon the door aroused the poet from his meditations. A young countryman, all hope and health, had briskly announced his advent. This comer was not one to wait without and need a bidding for his entrance. Oliver could not hide himself completely. He was tracked down at last, and by none other than his younger brother Charles. To the youth the emaciated apparition of poor Oliver was indeed astounding. Charles had pictured him already a prosperous and influential man of letters, who had but to raise and wave his hand to confer work, wealth, and position, and the possibilities of fame upon anyone whom he might lovingly patronise and befriend. Imagine the disappointment.

"All in good time, my dear boy," said Oliver. "I shall be richer by-and-by. Besides, you see, I am not in positive want. Addison, let me tell you, wrote his poem of 'The Campaign' in a garret in the Haymarket, three storeys high, and you see I am not come tothat yet, for I have only reached the second storey."

Some days later, just as suddenly as he had come, the younger brother vanished. He had brought Oliver a breath of the old home. Charles made his way to Jamaica, in all likelihood as a common sailor, and proved a rover to the last. Darker shadows were to fall upon poor Noll through still deeper experience of deprivation, misadventure and despair. The days of doubt were passed at last, and in the end successes were achieved in every sphere, unrivalled alike in their sublime heights and vast variety.

Goldsmith's first victory was theInquiry into the State of Polite Learning.

TheInquirywas written at a time when its author had suffered from the tyranny and the mercilessness of booksellers. This explains his onslaught upon this then ungenerous craft. Injury had been heaped on insult. Disappointment and despair were tearing and gnawing at the poor man's heart. The demon imp of petty poverty first starved him and then laughed at his insufficing fare, reduced him to rags and ridiculed his wretchedness.

TheInquirywas published by Dodsley. Upon this work the poor author placed all his hopes, and was not disappointed. He had sailed his little boat to the sea at last. The hardships, however, that he had passed through held to the end their sway upon his heart.

TheInquirywas for its author the first triumphant advance. Its consequences had their obverse aspect. The criticism of actor-managers drew forth Garrick's indignation. The results of this were to be realised later inGoldsmith's career. The judicial severities levelled against the tribe of publishers gathered black clouds. Griffiths took the onslaught on his craft as personal, and thundered out a libellous retort, that, wanting much, was lacking nothing in spite, which failing in taste found its fruition in malice. Griffiths was one of those mean men who can never forgive, and whose deeds in sober truth do test the force of our own capacity to pardon and forget. Even when Goldsmith was dead, Griffiths still tried to cast vituperations on the poor man's memory.

AT THE MITRE TAVERN.Rischgitz Collection.]DR. JOHNSON, BOSWELL AND GOLDSMITH, AT THE MITRE TAVERN.(From the painting by Eyre Crowe.)

Rischgitz Collection.]

At this time Noll engaged to furnish two brightly written articles each week for thePublic Ledger, of which paper Newbery was the proprietor. These serial articles appeared under the title ofThe Citizen of the World. A large concourse of readers looked forward to the welcome advents of the cheerful and clever Citizen. The character became a household word. This was Goldsmith's first really great popular hit. Apart, however, from the appreciation of the general public, it must be considered that, more than anything hitherto, these articles brought their author to the knowledge and gained the admiration of the men of letters of his day. TheCitizenfigures in a popular and lively light, yet still with a charming and a moving manner. Here we see the writer in his fairest freedom and delight, ruling a little philosophic realm and social world all his own. Up to that time nothing quite like it had been done before. There is, as the name implies,a world of difference between Addison, the Spectator; Steele, the Tatler; Johnson, the Rambler; and Goldsmith, the Citizen.

The Citizen of the Worldis a capital collection of essays, possessed of an imperishable interest and significance, and a charm as faultless and unfailing as that compassion and consuming charity which never pass from the page, and never deserted the heart of their gentle author. Still, this spirit touches and moves the heart. He saw the wrongs and the goodness, the truth and the untruth, and he knew the minds of men. This cosmopolitan saw Russia, the enemy of the peace of Europe, and foresaw its vast advancing, aggressive power. He warned the English how insecure was their then faulty hold upon the American colonies. In these essays we find vigorous and thrilling protests against cruelty to animals. These appeals then were rare indeed, and even now are only revealed in any earnestness through a slowly dawning purer spirit. The greatest men of that age, and the best, loved Goldsmith like a brother. Very soon we see Dr. Johnson marching down Fleet Street arm-in-arm with Percy to take supper with Dr. Goldsmith. The lexicographer has on a new suit of clothes and a wig finely powdered, and looks uncommon through this unexpected scrupulosity of costume. Percy is impertinent enough to inquire the cause of this finery.

"Why, sir," said Johnson, "I hear that Goldsmith, who is a very great sloven, justifieshis disregard of cleanliness and decency by quoting my practice, and I am desirous this night to show him a better example."

This amusing incident marks the foundation of a great friendship. If ever Goldsmith had a friend, that friend was Johnson; if Johnson ever had a friend, that friend was Goldsmith. The story does not proclaim dear Noll a dandy this time. Doubtless his care or carelessness in garment kept pace, step by step, with varying moods. There is evidence enough to tell us how much he doted on finery and fashionable raiment in those bills from his tailor, which to the very last remained unpaid. Filby could afford the loss. It will be gathered from all this that with a change in fortune there had also been a departure from those scanty quarters in Green Arbour Court. His new apartments in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, were not elaborately furnished, nor dignified in themselves or their situation, but they were the sign of better days. For all Fame brings its rich rewards. For Goldsmith the greatest of these was Johnson's friendship and esteem. The bond that bound these two was this, that they were always the last to abandon the poor and the worthless. Tired out with failure or importunity, other men of kindly heart might leave the incorrigible to their fate, but not Samuel Johnson nor Oliver Goldsmith. A better basis for friendship could not be.

No sooner was Goldsmith known, than a bright devoted band of loving spirits clusteredround, loving the life of the man and feeling the help and the hope that it gave. Simplicity sways its sceptre. Purity of heart is a Divine power. Not through his position and achievements, but for himself, men and women loved and honoured him. Burke and Reynolds became his devoted friends and constant allies. Fairest of all the bonds was that dreamy sympathy with the sweet little Jessamy Bride. He loved the poor. In this affection it might be said that his very life was dedicated to all who bore the burden of sad necessity, and needed help or solace in their suffering. For the most part his intimacies were with men, but noble women whose names have passed away must have honoured him and found that hour a happy one that brought the comforting and kindly and enkindling soul within the circle of the home. He loved children and understood them. He longed to have them for his readers. In a picturesque succession the old lady who taught Charles Lamb his letters was patted on her curly head by Goldsmith when she was a little child.

Goldsmith's income accrued, not through royalties upon his few great and immortal works, but from arduous and endless ephemeral tasks. This ceaseless taxation of the mental faculties probably represents the most exhausting of all the processes of gaining a decent livelihood. Never the strongest of men, these relentless intellectual exactions gave the brain no rest, and kept the physical frame in a condition of constant nervous weakness. Writing from a bed of sickness, he tells his employer almost pitifully, amid the strain of things, that he cannot complete his translations from Plutarch. Without a pension or a sinecure in some office of the State, literary life at that time was fraught with such incalculable difficulties that it demanded the maximum of prudence to achieve the minimum of subsistence. Men of letters lived, and by some miracle enjoyed themselves. The commercial basis of their being, and their professional and economic relationship with both the booksellers and the public, were as unsatisfactory as can be imagined.The sum received by Milton for "Paradise Lost" indicates the usage of an earlier day. Things had not much improved. Newbery gave five guineas for the copyright ofThe Citizen of the Worldand fourteen guineas forThe Life of Beau Nash. A struggle consequent upon the combination of very little means, and still less practical prudence, soon began in Goldsmith's case. His mode of life, if not luxurious, was easier than it had been. It bore the semblance of secure prosperity. He left his chambers in Wine Office Court for a more commodious set of apartments in Canonbury, then a delightful village. Newbery made all the arrangements. From him Goldsmith's landlady received her quarterly due for the board and lodging of this celebrated author. However precautious this plan of payment may have been, it probably led to Noll spending more on incidental outlays than he otherwise would have done with a weekly reckoning to meet. His cares never came from personal profusion or self-indulgence, but from the warmth and impulse of his too generous heart and lavish love of giving. With him the purpose of money was not its preservation for a rainy day, but its distribution on a fine one. He never found much fun in making guineas come, or hilarity in keeping them. It was a vast delight to make them fly. At this feat no one was ever more accomplished. Here we have the man and his mistakes, and the troubles that came, and came to stay. Some mighthave grown rich from his financial opportunities. Whilst making the most and the worst of his prudential incompetence, it is easy to estimate too highly his rewards. It is an exaggeration to speak of his having made in his time thousands of pounds.

All he earned very hardly he squandered most carelessly. This foreshadows that fierce stream of fatality in which he proved powerless to the end. Underlying currents of embarrassments were as constant as the grace and purity and beauty of his heart, and more close to him than that they could not be. Those men of business who never had their dues met, were better able to bear the losses than would have been the poor pensioners whom Goldsmith's compassion enriched. His was never the philanthropy of reasoned prudence, but that of impotent prodigality. He scattered guineas as heedless of himself as he was careless of his creditors. He was at this time most industrious. In 1763 and 1764 he produced countless miscellaneous articles and essays. He composed aHistory of Englandin a series of letters written after the manner of a nobleman to his son, and through this mistakenly attributed to Lord Chesterfield. He may have penned "Goody Two-Shoes"—it is too late to tell. Subsequently came another and more responsibleHistory of England, used until recently in many of our public schools. Oliver Goldsmith had become one of the men of his time.

FACSIMILERischgitz Collection.][British Museum.FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN GOLDSMITH AND DODSLEY, MARCH 31, 1763.

Rischgitz Collection.][British Museum.

Nothing can be more interesting in everyperiod in the history of literature, art, science, and philosophy than the manner in which, thrown together by the mysterious magnetism of mutually alluring greatness and power, the first and highest minds of all epochs grow inevitably associated. We find this now in the formation of the Literary Club, of which many of the most moving minds of that day in which Goldsmith lived were members. The Club met on Monday evenings in the Turk's Head Tavern, Soho. It was in working order in 1764. Sir Joshua Reynolds was its founder. Goldsmith's membership of the Literary Club, happy as it was, marks great misunderstandings involved in that misguided judgment passed upon the man by his contemporaries, which posterity has been content too easily to accept. It was thought that Oliver Goldsmith had no learning to substantiate his position, and that he had no wit for conversation, but only for writing. There is so little to support these ideas that it is surprising that they should have arisen, and for any period, or in any mind, have persisted. Horace Walpole, in his graceful way, called Goldsmith an inspired idiot. Garrick told us that "Dear Noll wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll." Johnson said: "No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand." The charge that Goldsmith was incapable of collected thought in conversation falls to the ground if we recall one gentle utterance: "It must be much from you, sir, that I take ill." These words fromone who had suffered an indescribably teasing impertinence at the hands of Johnson are the most collected conceivable. They are not less chivalrous. InThe RetaliationJohnson alone is spared. To this friend nothing could shake Goldsmith's admiring and unalterable faithfulness and affection. There is a certain spirit in expression that must stand inevitably associated with the collected mind. When it was wondered why Johnson cared for some unhappy mortal who had no charm or talent, Goldsmith said, in his quiet and reflective way: "The man is poor and honest, which is recommendation enough for Johnson." Concerning one who was undeserving, according to the manner of the world, who had no honour, and had forfeited all claim to character, yet still retained Johnson's compassion, Goldsmith rejoined: "This man has become miserable, and that ensures the protection of Johnson." Goldsmith, who could so readily reply to protests with answers at once as felicitous and as reflective as these, could not have been an uncollected conversationalist. Not merely the words, but also the manner that one must associate with their utterance preclude the possibility. Goldsmith is supposed to have had no learning because one day he called upon Gibbon, who gulled him. He questioned the author of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" upon some historic issue, and the historian led him grotesquely astray. Who would not have accepted anything Gibbon said without criticism?Who would have expected this great personage capable of indulging in a school-boy prank? Goldsmith's writings prove him well instructed and widely read, and show his mind as curiously stored and equipped as its whole genius was charming and gracious. If he could not talk, but could only write, then the pen in his hand is taken as an instrument capable of exerting hypnotic force, and converting by magic a fool into a wit.

In his own time, from some unaccountable cause, it became a habit to treat Goldsmith with a form of moral and intellectual patronage. This has never entirely passed away. Carlyle, following Horace Walpole's idea, writing of Johnson, thus speaks of Goldsmith: "An inspired idiot hangs strangely about him. Yet on the whole there is no evil in the gooseberry fool, but rather much good—of a fine, if of a weaker sort than Johnson's—and all the more genuine that he himself could never become conscious of it."

In the sphere of the high-minded of that period, with the possible but not the clear and certain exception of Johnson himself, not one in all that circle, illustrious as it was, so impressed the kindred spirits of that time and age as Oliver Goldsmith did. His impressiveness swayed its force and influence over all. This was due first to the winning grace, but partly to the greatness of the man. "Dr. Goldsmith," said Johnson, "is one of the first men we now have as an author, and he is avery worthy man, too." At another time he said: "As a writer he was of the most distinguished abilities. Whatever he composed he did it better than any other man could, and whether we consider him as a poet, as a comic writer, or as a historian, so far as regards his power of composition he was one of the finest writers of his time, and will ever stand in the foremost class." These words were uttered shortly after Goldsmith's death. One can imagine the looking back with love upon the companionship and the conversation of one friend at least who would never be forgotten. All natures in some sphere, touch the infinite. In the silence of his great heart, the radiance of his intellect, and in his uttered word, the very soul of Goldsmith's genius lies in a loving understanding. In this man there flows and shines the very grace of the very Christ. Unfailing gentleness lives lighted by divinity.

GOLDSMITH IN MIDDLE AGE.Rischgitz Collection.]GOLDSMITH IN MIDDLE AGE.(From an engraving by Ridley.)

Rischgitz Collection.]

Those were happy days passed in heart-to-heart friendships and affections, and they were merry hours that sped so swiftly at the Literary Club. The great are never greater than in the hearts of their homes and the simplicities of their friendships. At this club the gods forgot their power and high beings laid aside their loftiness. In the midst we find the man they teased the man most welcome; that one that all affected to despise, each in his inmost heart unfeignedly respected. The man most laughed at was most loved. Oliver Goldsmith made the mirth of things. He was always forbearing,and to this passive pleasingness he added that finest of activities, unfailing kindliness. If it is no wonder that they loved him, it is no marvel that they laughed at him as well.

It is commonly said that Goldsmith had a thick-set figure. This does not mean that he was a sturdy, muscular man. Weakness of constitution, a habit of stooping as he strolled in his meditative manner, and constantly bending as he wrote at desk or table, and early deprivations both of soul and body, had huddled up the low stature and given the compressed frame a semblance of solidity. His cheeks were sunken, and there were dark rims about the eyes, and the minimum of fleshly and substantial covering clad these limbs. Goldsmith had a queer little manner of bobbing. This bob he fondly imagined a bow. That it was meant to be dignified there is no doubt. It came a little from that personal vanity from which no one will ever wish to deem him entirely exempt, and a little, too, from great nervousness. It flowed also from an innate good breeding and cultured and natural chivalry. This bobbing as he entered or left a room was finely caricatured by Garrick. No doubt the actor's own bowing was the perfection of formal grace. Yet if the motive of politeness and personal ceremonial condone its outward and practical shortcomings, then we shall discover more true soul in Goldsmith's bob than Garrick's bow. Noll bobbedtimidly when compliments were paid him, and gratefully and affirmatively when in his presence he heard others praised. If anything noble or beautiful was told of anyone, then came the revering little bob, this time intended as a tribute to human honour and the virtue of the heart and the valour of the race.

All through his life Goldsmith was greatly given to grand clothes. It is a pity that grand clothes were not always greatly given to him, for he never appeared quite able to pay for them. Although he became deeply involved in debt, he never cultivated luxurious or unworthy delights. His pleasures were of the simplest. His insolvent condition was due, true enough, to pleasure and his foremost luxury—the luxury of ceaseless charities that he could as ill afford as a coach-and-four. He was one of the hearts not meant to draw near the gates of heaven alone, and could not accept a pleasure without someone sharing it with him and having more than half.

When he gave his suppers, we find the measure of the man who always gave more than he received, for the viands were for his friends, and a basin of boiled milk satisfied his own demands. There is a sad message in the milk. It showed the concealed weakness of the little man, and the growing disease, not now ever to be wholly known, from which he died so young.Too likely all through his life some constant, growing pain, stealing his pleasures, stole his prudence too. He was always frank and as open with his creditors, as he was candid with his friends. When Newbery's account with him had become complicated, he had no means of liquidating the reckoning save by offering the copyright of his play, then advancing towards production under many disadvantages.

"To tell the truth, Frank," he said, in his lofty and affable manner, "there are very small hopes of its success."

It is almost diverting to find Goldsmith himself baffled, if not beaten, in seeking prosperity from literature, majestically introducing others into the sacred sphere. His name was sufficient to lead others to those rewards that he himself needed even more than they did. Like Johnson, Goldsmith wrote many introductions to books and various dedications for authors, who availed themselves both of the influence and of the ability of these distinguished leaders in the realm of letters. When Goldsmith had become known in the world and life of literature, and was already respected by a select circle of the authors of the time, although his place and power were by no means established, it was through the pressure of debt and its distresses that the greatest work of his genius came to light.

"One morning in the year 1764," said Dr. Johnson to the faithful Boswell, "I received a message from poor Goldsmith that he was ingreat distress, and as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed."

It is impossible to pass and not pause here in grateful admiration for the true heart of Dr. Johnson, who never failed a friend or any man. He proceeded with his confidences.

"I found," he went on, concerning Goldsmith, "that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him."

The coming passage is beautifully characteristic:

"I put the cork into the bottle," said Johnson, and then goes on with the narrative.

"I desired he would be calm," he proceeded, "and I began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced. I looked into it and saw its merits, told the landlady I should soon return, and having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in high tone for having used him so ill."

Amid all his distresses, Goldsmith had been quietly and diligently perfecting his beautiful novel,The Vicar of Wakefield. Simultaneouslyhe had been engaged uponThe Traveller. At that very instant it lay completed in his desk.

The pure delights of life he knew faithfully, and lovingly bestowed. This man possessed not merely in an unusual, but in an absolutely unique, degree the grace of sympathetic affectionateness. He fulfilled the Pauline mandate, "Be kindly affectionate one to another." In Goldsmith this was nothing less than very genius. His graceful letters to his Irish friends, and, indeed, to all to whom he ever wrote, evince the kindest and most caressing feelings imaginable. They are about the home, the children, the pet animals, and trivial ties, and pleasing, pleading memories and hopes. As you read, Divinity hedges about the lowly hearths that he pictured so lovingly. It is a curious power. When Goldsmith was at Bath, from the way that Johnson mentions him in his letters to Langton we note how much the little doctor was missed by his friend when he left town. It was a bright moment when Goldsmith moved into his chambers in the Temple. Here he lived his last years, and his literary life will always be associated more with this place than with any other. In these rooms, amongst his friends might have been seen old General Oglethorpe, that courageous veteran Paoli, and the young and dauntless Grattan. Here theRoman Historywas written. This work was greatly applauded by the critics. Its production made Johnson burst forth into that splendour of laudation in which he said thatwhatever Goldsmith did, he did better than all others, and he counted him as an historian superior to Hume, Smollett, and Lyttelton. Goldsmith had a fine faculty in histories for presenting vital facts concisely, and making his pages compendious. The grace he had by instinct others strove to create by vast elaboration. It has been said that Robertson's ornamentations hid what is essential in his records. No one can ever discover Goldsmith in anything striving for effect. It is not possible now to enumerate, or even ascertain, all the friends that came to those chambers in the Temple. Among them may be mentioned young Craddock, with an estate in the country, æsthetic tendencies, and literary talents. With him, in a few light musical works that came to little, Goldsmith collaborated. This man had that respect for the poet and the humorist his life and character and genius deserved. When once this cultured squire exhibited for criticism an elaborate manuscript, which in all the peace of leisured wealth and ease, and such talent as he possessed, he had composed with exquisite care, well might poor Goldsmith say:

"Ah, Mr. Craddock, think of me, that must write a volume every month."

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