'O blest retirement! friend to life's decline, His Heaven commences ere the world be past!' The description of the parish priest (probably intended for a character of his brother Henry) would have done honour to any poet of any age.—In this description the simile of the bird teaching her young to fly, and of the mountain that rises above the storm, are not easily to be paralleled.—The rest of the poem consists of the character of the village school-master, and a description of the village ale-house, both drawn with admirable propriety and force; a descant on the mischiefs of luxury and wealth; the vanity of artificial pleasures; the miseries of those who, for want of employment at home, are driven to settle new colonies abroad; and concludes with the following beautiful apostrophe to poetry: And thou, sweet Poetry! thou loveliest maid, That found me poor at first, and keep'st me so; Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well. This finished poem was by no means a hasty production; it occupied two years in composing; and was the effect of the most minute observation, during an excursion of between four and five years. Soon after the appearance of this work, he paid a tribute to the merit of Dr Parnell, in a Life prefixed to a new edition of that elegant writer's "Poems on several Occasions;" a work that does honour to the head and heart of the author. The Doctor did not reap a profit from his poetical labours equal to those of his prose. The Earl of Lisburne, whose classical taste is well known, one day at a dinner of the Royal Academicians, lamented to the Doctor his neglecting the Muses, and inquired of him why he forsook poetry in which he was sure of charming his readers, to compile histories and write novels? The Doctor replied, 'My Lord, by courting the Muses I shall starve; but by my other labours, I eat, drink, have good clothes, and enjoy the luxuries of life.' The next comedy the Doctor produced was in the year 1772; it was called, She Stoops to Conquer, and proved more successful than the Good Natured Man. Colman who was then manager of Covent Garden Theatre, and had given incontestable proofs of dramatic genius, in the production of various excellent pieces, was greatly mistaken in his judgment of this comedy, which he thought too farcical, and had consigned to condemnation at the time of its last rehearsal. Indeed, the performers in general, coincided with the manager in opinion. The piece, however, notwithstanding the sentence pronounced by that acknowledged critic, was received with great applause, to his mortification, and the exultation of the author, who was not a little piqued at the critic from the following circumstance." The first night of the performance of his comedy, Goldsmith did not come to the house, till it approached the close, having been ruminating in St James's Park, on the very important decision of the fate of his piece then pending, and such was his anxiety and apprehension of its failure, that he was with great difficulty prevailed on to repair to the theatre, on the suggestion of a friend, who pointed out the necessity of his presence, in order to take cognizance of any passages that might appear objectionable, for the purpose of omission or alteration in the repetition of the performance. Our author, with an expectation suspended between hope and fear, had scarcely entered the passage that leads to the stage, than his ears were shocked at a hiss, which proceeded from the audience, as a token of their disapprobation of the farcical supposition of Mrs Hardcastle being so palpably deluded, as to conceive herself at the distance of fifty miles from her house, when she was not at the distance of fifty yards. Such were the tremour and agitation of the Doctor on this unwelcome salute, that, running up to the manager, he exclaimed, “What's that?" "Pshaw! Doctor," replied Colman, in a sarcastic tone, "don't be terrified at squibs, when we have been sitting these two hours upon a barrel of gunpowder." Goldsmith's pride was so hurt by the poignancy of this remark, that the friendship which had before subsisted between the manager and the author was dissolved for life. The success of the comedy of She Stoops to Conquer produced a most illiberal personal attack on the author in one of the public prints. Enraged at this abusive publication, Dr Goldsmith repaired to the house of the publisher, and, after remonstrating on the malignity of this attack on his character, began to apply his cane to the shoulders of the publisher, who, making a powerful resistance, from being the defensive soon became the offensive combatant. Dr Kenrick, who was sitting in a private room of the publisher's, hearing a noise in the shop, came in and put an end to the fight, and conveyed the Doctor to a coach. The papers instantly teemed with fresh abuse on the impropriety of the Doctor's attempting to beat a person in his own house, on which in the Daily Advertiser of Wednesday, March the 31, 1773, he inserted the following Address:. . TO THE PUBLIC. 'Lest it may be supposed that I have been willing to correct in others an abuse of which I have been guilty myself, I beg leave to declare, that, in all my life, I never wrote, or dictated, a single paragraph, letter, or essay in a newspaper, except a few moral essays, under the character of a Chinese, about ten years ago in the Ledger; and a letter, to which I signed my name, in the St James's Chronicle. If the liberty of the press therefore has been abused, I have had no hand in it. 'I have always considered the press as the protector of our freedom, and watchful guardian, capable of uniting the weak against the encroachments of power. What concerns the public most properly admits of a public discussion. But of late, the press has turned from defending public interest, to making inroads upon private life: from combating the strong, to overwhelming the feeble. No condition is now too obscure for its abuse, and the protector is become the tyrant of the people. In this manner the freedom of the press is beginning to sow the seeds of its own dissolution; the great must oppose it from principle, and the weak from fear, till, at last, every rank of mankind shall be found to give up its benefits, content with security from its insults. How to put a stop to this licentiousness, by which all are indiscriminately abused, and by which vice consequently escapes in the general censure, I am unable to tell; all I could wish is, that, as the law gives us no protection against the injury, so it should give calumniators no shelter after having provoked correction. The insults which we receive before the public, by being more open, are the more distressing; by treating them with silent contempt, we do not pay a sufficient deference to the opinion of the world. By recurring to legal redress, we too often expose the weakness of the law, which only serves to increase our mortification by failing to relieve us. In short, every man should singly consider himself as a guardian of the liberty of the press, and, as far as his influence can extend, should endeavour to prevent its licentousness becoming at last the grave of its freedom. OLIVER GOLDSMITH.' The profits arising from his two comedies were estimated at £1300, rating the Good-natured Man, at £500, and She Stoops to Conquer at £800, which, with the product of other works, amounted, as is asserted upon a good authority, to £1800; but, through a profuse liberality to indigent authors, and particularly those of his own country, who played on his credulity, together with the effects of a habit he had contracted for gaming, he found himself, at the close of that very year, not in a state of enjoyment of a pleasing prospect before him, but enveloped in the gloom of despondency, and all the perplexities of debt, accumulated by his own indiscretion. It is remarkable, that, about this time, our author altered his mode of address; he rejected the title of Doctor, and assumed that of plain Mr Goldsmith. This innovation has been attributed to various causes. Some supposed he then formed a resolution never to engage as a practical professor in the healing art; others imagined that he conceived the important appellation of Doctor, and the grave deportment attached to the character, incompatible with the man of fashion, to which he had the vanity to aspire; but whatever might be his motive, he could not throw off the title, which the world imposed on him to the day of his death, and which is annexed to his memory at the present day, though he never obtained a degree superior to that of Bachelor of Physic. Though Goldsmith was indiscreet, he was, at the time, industrious; and, though his genius was lively and fertile, he frequently submitted to the dull task of compilation. He had previously written Histories of Greece, and Rome; and afterwards undertook, and finished, a work, entitled, A History of the Earth and Animated Nature; but if a judgment may be formed of this work from the opinion of the learned, it redounded more to his emolument than his reputation. A short time before he paid the debt of nature, he had formed a design of compiling an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, and had printed and distributed amongst his friends and acquaintances, a prospectus of the work; but as he received very little encouragement from the booksellers, he desisted, though reluctantly, from his design. His last production, Retaliation, though not intended for public view, but merely his own private amusement, and that of a few particular friends, exhibits strong marks of genuine humour. It originated from some jokes of festive merriment on the author's person and dialect, in a club of literary friends; where good nature was sometimes sacrificed at the shrine of wit and sarcasm; and as Goldsmith could not disguise his feelings upon the occasion, he was called upon for Retaliation, which he produced the very next club meeting. It may not be so accurate as his other poetical productions, as he did not revise it, or live to finish it in the manner he intended; yet high eulogiums have been passed on it by some of the first characters in the learned world, and it has obtained a place in most of the editions of the English Poets. Our author now approached the period of his dissolution. He had been frequently' attacked for some years with a strangury, and the embarrassed state of his affairs aggravated the violence of the disorder, which, with the agitation of his mind, brought on a nervous fever, that operated in so great a degree, that he exhibited signs of despair, and even a disgust with life itself. Finding his disorder rapidly increase, he sent for Mr Hawes, his apothecary, as well as intimate friend, to whom he related the symptoms of his malady. He told him he had taken two ounces of ipecacuanha wine as an emetic; and expressed a great desire of making a trial of Dr James's fever powders, which he desired him to send him. The apothecary represented to his patient the impropriety of taking the medicine at that time; but no argument could prevail with him to relinquish his intention; so that Mr Hawes, apprehensive of the fatal consequences of his putting this rash resolve into execution, in order to divert him from it, requested permission to send for Dr Fordyce, who attended immediately on receiving the message. Doctor Fordyce, of whose medical abilities Goldsmith always expressed the highest sense, corroborated the opinion of the apothecary, and used every argument to disuade him from taking the powders; but, deaf to all the remonstrances of his physician and friend, he fatally persisted in his resolution: and when the apothecary visited him the following day, and inquired of him how he did, he fetched a deep sigh, and said in a dejected tone, "He wished he had taken his friendly advice last night." The Doctor, alarmed at the dangerous symptoms which the disorder indicated, thought it necessary to call in the advice of another physician; and accordingly proposed sending for Dr Turton, of whom he knew Goldsmith had a great opinion. The proposal was acceded to; a servant was immediately despatched with a message; and on his arrival, the two Doctors assisted at a consultation, which they continued regularly every day, till the disorder put a period to the existence of their patient, on the 4th day of April, 1774, in the 45th year of his age. His friends, who were very numerous and respectable, had determined to bury him in Westminster Abbey: his pall was to have been supported by Lord Shelburn, Lord Louth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the Hon. Mr Beauclerc, Mr Edmund Burke, and Mr Carrick; but, from some unaccountable circumstances, this design was dropped; and his remains were privately deposited in the Temple burial-ground, on Saturday, the 9th of April; when Mr Hugh Kelly, Messrs John and Robert Day, Mr Palmer, Mr Etherington, and Mr Hawes, gentlemen who had been his friends in life, attended his corpse as mourners, and paid the last tribute to his memory. A subscription, however, was afterwards raised by his friends, to defray the expense of a marble monument, which was placed in Westminster Abbey, between Gay's monument and the Duke of Argyle's, in the Poets' Corner, with the following Latin inscription, written by his friend Dr Samuel Johnson: OLIVARI GOLDSMITH, Poeta, Physici, Historici, Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit, Sive Risus essent movendi Affectuum potens at lenis Dominator, Amicorum Fides Lectorum Veneratio Natus Hibernia Fornia Lonfordiensis In Loco cui Nomen Pallas Obiit Londini Translation. This Monument is raised Poet, Natural Philosopher, and Who left no species of writing untouched, or Unadorned by his Pen, Or draw tears: He was a powerful master Over the affections, Though at the same time a gentle tyrant; In expression at once noble, His memory will last As long as society retains affection, And reading wants not her admirers. |