draw yet nearer to the fire, while the schoolboy in the corner opens his eyes wide and round, and flies off the footstool he has chosen for his seat, when the door accidentally blows open. Vast is the crop of such fruit, shining on our Christmas Tree; in blossom, almost at the very top; ripening all down the boughs! Chanter, ou je m'abuse, Est ma tâche ici-bas. In those charming lines of Béranger, one may fancy described the career, the sufferings, the genius, the gentle nature of Goldsmith, and the esteem in which we hold him. Who, of the Among the later toys and fancies hanging millions whom he has amused, doesn't love him? there as idle often and less pure-be the To be the most beloved of English writers, what image once associated with the sweet old Waits, a title that is for a man! A wild youth, way. the softened music in the night, ever unalter ward, but full of tenderness and affection, able! Encircled by the social thoughts of quits the country village, where his boyhood Christmas time, still let the benignant figure of has been passed in happy musing, in idle shelmy childhood stand unchanged! In every cheer-ter, in fond longing to see the great world out ful image and suggestion that the season of doors, and achieve name and fortune: and brings, may the bright star that rested above after years of dire struggle, and neglect and the poor roof be the star of all the Christian poverty, his heart turning back as fondly to World! A moment's pause, O vanishing tree, his native place as it had longed eagerly for of which the lower boughs are dark to me as change when sheltered there, he writes a book yet, and let me look once more! I know there and a poem, full of the recollections and feelare blank spaces on thy branches, where eyes ings of home: he paints the friends and scenes that I have loved have shone and smiled; from of his youth, and peoples Auburn and Wakewhich they are departed. But, far above, I see field‡ with remembrances of Lissoy. Wander the raiser of the dead girl, and the Widow's he must, but he carries away a home-relic with Son; and God is good! If Age be hiding for him, and dies with it on his breast. His nature me in the unseen portion of thy downward is truant; in repose it longs for change: as on growth, O may I, with a grey head, turn a the journey it looks back for friends and quiet. child's heart to that figure yet, and a child's He passes to-day in building an air-castle for to-morrow, or in writing yesterday's elegy; and he would fly away this hour, but that a cage and necessity keep him. What is the charm of his verse, of his style, and humour? His sweet regrets, his delicate compassion, his soft smile, his tremulous sympathy, the weakness which he owns? Your love for him is half pity. You come hot and tired from the day's battle, and this sweet minstrel sings to you. Who could harm the kind vagrant harper? Whom did he ever hurt? He carries no weapon, save the harp on which he plays to you; and with which he delights great and humble, young and old, Béranger (1780-1851) was a kind of French Burns, a writer of songs beloved by the people. The lines may be translated somewhat freely thus: trustfulness and confidence! Now, the tree is decorated with bright merriment, and song, and dance, and cheerfulness. And they are welcome. Innocent and welcome be they ever held, beneath the branches of the Christmas Tree, which cast no gloomy shadow! But, as it sinks into the ground, I hear a whisper going through the leaves. "This, in commemoration of the law of love and kindness, mercy, and compassion. This, in remembrance of Me!" WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACK ERAY (1811-1863) FROM THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS OF GOLDSMITH "Jeté sur cette boule, Laid, chétif et souffrant; Etouffé dans la foule, Faute d'être assez grand: I'ne plainte touchante De ma bouche sortit. Le bon Dieu me dit: Chante, These papers, six in number, were prepared by Flung into life, Dwarfed, ugly, in pain; What wonder, should spring So my task here below Is a-singing to rove; If pleasure I sow. Shall I not reap love? The scenes respectively of the poem and the romance on which Goldsmith's literary reputation chiefly rests. Compare The Deserted Village and the notes thereon, p. 373. the captains in the tents, or the soldiers round dunce: Paddy Byrne, the hedge-schoolmaster, the fire, or the women and children in the vil- took him in hand: and from Paddy Byrne he lages, at whose porches he stops and sings his was transmitted to a clergyman at Elphin. simple songs of love and beauty. With that When a child was sent to school in those days, sweet story of the "Vicar of Wakefield' he the classic phrase was that he was placed has found entry into every castle and every under Mr. So-and-so's ferule. Poor little anhamlet in Europe. Not one of us, however cestors! It is hard to think how ruthlessly busy or hard, but once or twice in our lives you were birched; and how much of needless has passed an evening with him, and undergone whipping and tears our small forefathers had the charm of his delightful music. to undergo! A relative-kind uncle Contarine Goldsmith's father was no doubt the good|—took the main charge of little Noll; who went Doctor Primrose, whom we all of us know. through his schooldays righteously doing as litSwift was yet alive, when the little Oliver was tle work as he could: robbing orchards, playing born at Pallas, or Pallasmore, in the county at ball, and making his pocket-money fly about of Longford, in Ireland. In 1730, two years whenever fortune sent it to him. Everybody after the child's birth, Charles Goldsmith re- knows the story of that famous "Mistake of a moved his family to Lissoy, in the county West- Night," when the young schoolboy, provided meath, that sweet "Auburn' which every per- with a guinea and a nag, rode up to the "best son who hears me has seen in fancy. Here the house" in Ardagh, called for the landlord's kind parson brought up his eight children; and company over a bottle of wine at supper, and loving all the world, as his son says, fancied for a hot cake for breakfast in the morning; all the world loved him. He had a crowd of and found, when he asked for the bill, that the poor dependants besides those hungry children. best house was Squire Featherstone's, and not He kept an open table; round which sat flat- | the inn for which he mistook it. Who does not terers and poor friends, who laughed at the know every story about Goldsmith? That is a honest rector's many jokes, and ate the produce delightful and fantastic picture of the child of his seventy acres of farm. Those who have dancing and capering about in the kitchen at seen an Irish house in the present day can fancy home, when the old fiddler gibed at him for his that one of Lissoy. The old beggar still has his¦ ugliness, and called him Æsop; and little Noll allotted corner by the kitchen turf;2 the made his repartee of “Heralds proclaim aloud maimed old soldier still gets his potatoes and this saying-See Esop dancing and his monkey buttermilk; the poor cottiers still asks his playing.' One can fancy a queer pitiful look honour's charity, and prays God bless his rever- of humour and appeal upon that little scarred ence for the sixpence; the ragged pensioner face-the funny little dancing figure, the funny still takes his place by right and sufferance. little brogue. In his life, and his writings, There's still a crowd in the kitchen, and a which are the honest expression of it, he is crowd round the parlour table, profusion, con- constantly bewailing that homely face and perfusion, kindness, poverty. If an Irishman son; anon he surveys them in the glass ruecomes to London to make his fortune, he has a fully; and presently assumes the most comical half-dozen of Irish dependants who take a dignity. He likes to deck out his little person percentage of his earnings. The good Charles in splendour and fine colours. He presented Goldsmith left but little provision for his hun- himself to be examined for ordination in a pair gry race when death summoned him; and one of of scarlet breeches, and said honestly that he his daughters being engaged to a Squire of did not like to go into the Church, because he rather superior dignity, Charles Goldsmith im- was fond of coloured clothes. When he tried poverished the rest of his family to provide the to practise as a doctor, he got by hook or by girl with a dowry. crook a black velvet suit, and looked as big and grand as he could, and kept his hat over a patch on the old coat: in better days he bloomed out in plum-colour, in blue silk, and in new velvet. For some of those splendours the The smallpox which scourged all Europe at that time, and ravaged the roses off the cheeks of half the world, fell foul of poor little Oliver's face, when the child was eight years old, and left him scarred and disfigured for his life. An old woman in his father's village taught him his letters, and pronounced him a 3 A peasant renting and cultivating a small holding. Vicar'' (of Wakefield). 1 The 2 peat heirs and assignees of Mr. Filby, the tailor, stories, they must have been a very simple pair; have never been paid to this day: perhaps the kind tailor and his creditor have met and settled their little account in Hades. as it was a very simple rogue indeed who cheated them. When the lad, after failing in his clerical examination, after failing in his They showed until lately a window at Trinity plan for studying the law, took leave of these College, Dublin, on which the name of O. Gold- | projects and of his parents, and set out for smith was engraved with a diamond. Whose Edinburgh, he saw mother, and uncle, and lazy diamond was it? Not the young sizar's, who Ballymahon, and green native turf, and sparkmade but a poor figure in that place of learn- ling river for the last time. He was never to ing. He was idle, penniless, and fond of pleas- look on old Ireland more, and only in fancy ure: he learned his way early to the pawn-revisit her. broker's shop. He wrote ballads, they say, for the street singers, who paid him a crown for a poem: and his pleasure was to steal out at night and hear his verses sung. He was chastised by his tutor for giving a dance in his rooms, and took the box on the ear so much to heart, that he packed up his all, pawned his books and little property, and disappeared from college and family. He said he intended to go to America, but when his money was spent, the young prodigal came home ruefully, and the good folks there killed their calf-it was but a lean one-and welcomed him back. "But me not destined such delights to share The poor I spoke in a former lecture of that high courage which enabled Fielding,12 in spite of disease, remorse, and poverty, always to retain a cheerful spirit and to keep his manly benevo After college he hung about his mother's lence and love of truth intact, as if these treashouse, and lived for some years the life of a ures had been confided to him for the public buckeens passed a month with this relation benefit, and he was accountable to posterity for a constancy and that, a year with one patron, a great deal their honourable employ; and of time at the public-house. Tired of this life, equally happy and admirable I think was shown it was resolved that he should go to London, by Goldsmith, whose sweet and friendly nature and study at the Temple; but he got no bloomed kindly always in the midst of a life's farther on the road to London and the wool- storm, and rain, and bitter weather. sack 10 than Dublin, where he gambled away the fellow was never so friendless but he could befifty pounds given to him for his outfit, and friend some one; never so pinched and wretched whence he returned to the indefatigable for- but he could give of his crust, and speak his giveness of home. Then he determined to be word of compassion. If he had but his flute a doctor, and uncle Contarine helped him to a left, he could give that, and make the children couple of years at Edinburgh. Then from Edin-happy in the dreary London court. He could burgh he felt that he ought to hear the famous give the coals in that queer coal-scuttle we read professors of Leyden and Paris, and wrote of to his poor neighbour: he could give away most amusing pompous letters to his uncle about the great Farheim, Du Petit, and Duhamel du Monceau, whose lectures he proposed to follow. If uncle Contarine believed those letters-if Oliver's mother believed that story which the youth related of his going to Cork, with the purpose of embarking for America, of his having paid his passage-money, and having sent his kit on board; of the anonymous captain sailing away with Oliver's valuable luggage in a nameless ship, never to return; if uncle Contarine and the mother at Ballymahon, believed his his blankets in college to the poor widow, and When he met his Doctor but he must treat them still. "Have you seen the print of me after Sir Joshua Reynolds?''13 he asked of one of his old pupils. "Not seen it? not bought it? Sure, Jack, if your picture had been published, I'd not have 13 Reynolds painted his portrait, and it was engraved in mezzotint by Marchi in 1770, 11 Goldsmith's The Trav- 12 Henry novelist. been without it half-an-hour." His purse and are shocking to read of-slander, contumely, his heart were everybody's, and his friends' as vulgar satire, brutal malignity perverting his much as his own. When he was at the height commonest motives and actions; he had his of his reputation, and the Earl of Northumber- share of these, and one's anger is roused at land, going as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, reading of them, as it is at seeing a woman asked if he could be of any service to Doctor | insulted or a child assaulted, at the notion that Goldsmith, Goldsmith recommended his brother, a creature so very gentle and weak, and full and not himself, to the great man. “My | of love, should have had to suffer so. And he patrons," he gallantly said, "are the book- had worse than insult to undergo-to own to sellers, and I want no others." Hard patrons fault and deprecate the anger of ruffians. they were, and hard work he did; but he did There is a letter of his extant to one Griffiths, not complain much: if in his early writings | a bookseller, in which poor Goldsmith is forced some bitter words escaped him, some allusions to confess that certain books sent by Griffiths to neglect and poverty, he withdrew these ex- are in the hands of a friend from whom Goldpressions when his works were republished, and smith had been forced to borrow money. "He betters days seemed to open for him; and he was wild, sir," Johnson said, speaking of Golddid not care to complain that printer or pub- smith to Boswell, with his great, wise benevolisher had overlooked his merit, or left him lence and noble mercifulness of heart-“Dr. poor. The Court face was turned from honest | Goldsmith was wild, sir; but he is so no more." Oliver, the Court patronised Beattie; 14 the Ah! if we pity the good and weak man who fashion did not shine on him-fashion adored suffers undeservedly, let us deal very gently Sterne.15 Fashion pronounced Kelly16 to be with him from whom misery extorts not only the great writer of comedy of his day. A little tears, but shame; let us think humbly and —not ill-humour, but plaintiveness—a little be- charitably of the human nature that suffers so trayal of wounded pride which he showed ren- sadly and falls so low. Whose turn may it be der him not the less amiable. The author of to-morrow? What weak heart, confident before the "Vicar of Wakefield' had a right to pro- trial, may not succumb under temptation intest when Newbery17 kept back the manuscript vincible? Cover the good man who has been for two years; had a right to be a little peevish vanquished-cover his face and pass on. with Sterne; a little angry when Colman's18 For the last half-dozen years of his life, actors declined their parts in his delightful Goldsmith was far removed from the pressure comedy, when the manager refused to have a of any ignoble necessity: and in the receipt, scene painted for it, and pronounced its damna- | indeed, of a pretty large income from the booktion before hearing. He had not the great sellers his patrons. Had he lived but a few public with him; but he had the noble John-years more, his public fame would have been son, and the admirable Reynolds, and the as great as his private reputation, and he might great Gibbon, and the great Burke, and the have enjoyed alive a part of that esteem which great Fox-friends and admirers illustrious in his country has ever since paid to the vivid and deed, as famous as those who, fifty years be- versatile genius who has touched on almost fore, sat round Pope's table. every subject of literature, and touched nothing that he did not adorn. Except in rare instances, a man is known in our profession, and esteemed as a skillful workman, years before the lucky hit which trebles his usual gains, and stamps him a popular author. In the strength of his age, and the dawn of his reputation, having for backers and friends the most illus Nobody knows, and I dare say Goldsmith's buoyant temper kept no account of, all the pains which he endured during the early period of his literary career. Should any man of letters in our day have to bear up against such, Heaven grant he may come out of the period of misfortune with such a pure kind heart as that which Goldsmith obstinately bore in histrious literary men of his time, fame and prosbreast. The insults to which he had to submit perity might have been in store for Goldsmith, had fate so willed it, and, at forty-six, had not sudden disease carried him off. I say prosperity rather than competence, for it is probable that no sum could have put order into his affairs, or sufficed for his irreclaimable habits of dissipation. It must be remembered that he owed £2000 when he died. "Was ever poet," Johnson asked, "so trusted before?'' As has been the case with many another good fellow of his nation, his life was tracked and his substance wasted by crowds of hungry beggars and lazy dependants. If they came at a lucky time (and be sure they knew his affairs better than he did himself, and watched his pay-day), he gave them of his money: if they begged on empty-purse days, he gave them his promissory bills: or he treated them to a tavern where he had credit; or he obliged them with an order upon honest Mr. Filby for coats, for which he paid as long as he could earn, and until the shears of Filby were to cut for him no more. Staggering under a load of debt and labour, tracked by bailiffs and reproachful creditors, running from a hundred poor dependants, whose appealing looks were perhaps the hardest of all pains for him to bear, devising fevered plans for the morrow, new histories, new comedies, all sorts of new literary schemes, flying from all these into seclusion, and out of seclusion into pleasure-at last, at five-and-forty, death seized him and closed his career. I have been many a time in the chambers in the Temple which were his, and passed up the staircase, which Johnson and Burke and Reynolds trod to see their friend, their poet, their kind Goldsmith-the stair on which the poor women sat weeping bitterly when they heard that the greatest and most generous of all men was dead within the black oak door. Ah! it was a different lot from that for which the poor fellow sighed, when he wrote with heart yearning for home those most charming of all fond verses, in which he fancies he revisits Auburn : monarch of the Irish Yvetot. He would have told again, and without fear of their failing, those famous jokes which had hung fire in London; he would have talked of his great friends of the Club-of my Lord Clare and my Lord Bishop, my Lord Nugent-sure he knew them intimately, and was hand and glove with some of the best men in town-and he would have spoken of Johnson and of Burke, and of Sir Joshua who had painted him-and he would have told wonderful sly stories of Ranelagh and the Pantheon,2 and the masquerades at Madame Cornelys; and he would have toasted, with a sigh, the Jessamy Bride1-the lovely Mary Horneck. The figure of that charming young lady forms one of the prettiest recollections of Goldsmith's life. She and her beautiful sister, who married Bunbury, the graceful and humorous amateur artist of those days, when Gillray3 had but just begun to try his powers, were among the kindest and dearest of Goldsmith's many friends, cheered and pitied him, travelled abroad with him, made him welcome at their home, and gave him many a pleasant holiday. He bought his finest clothes to figure at their country house at Barton-he wrote them droll verses. They loved him, laughed at him, played him tricks and made him happy. He asked for a loan from Garrick, and Garrick kindly supplied him, to enable him to go to Barton: but there were to be no more holidays and only one brief struggle more for poor Goldsmith. A lock of his hair was taken from the coffin and given to the Jessamy Bride. She lived quite into our time. Hazlitt saw her an old lady, but beautiful still, in Northcote 'ss paintingroom, who told the eager critic how proud she always was that Goldsmith had admired her. The younger Colman has left a touching rem "Here, as I take my solitary rounds, In these verses, I need not say with what melody, with what touching truth, with what exquisite beauty of comparison-as indeed in hundreds more pages of the writings of this honest soul-the whole character of the man is told-his humble confession of faults and weakness; his pleasant little vanity, and desire that his village should admire him; his simple scheme of good in which everybody was to be happy-no beggar was to be refused his dinner -nobody in fact was to work much, and he to be the harmless chief of the Utopia,† and the Thackeray's quotation here from The Deserted Village extends through thirty lines more, for which see page 374, II. 83-112. † See page 110 and note. 1 Compare page 365. 3 4 Goldsmith's pet name 5 James Gillray, a cari caturist. 6 David Garrick, the actor. 7 William Hazlitt, the essayist. 8 James Northcote, of the Royal Academy. 9 George Colman, a dramatist, son of the Colman mentioned above. A little town in Normandy whose lords were Of whom renown hath little said. Sing ho, ho, ho and he, he, he Etc. |