MINOR CORRESPONDENCE.

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith. By John Forster.

See Goldsmith lie neglected and distress'd,
By poverty, disease, and debts oppress'd;
In want's cold hour his flatt'ring patrons fail,
And death alone protects him from a jail.

SUCH is the lament over neglected genius by the author of the Progress of Civil Society, who has illustrated the desponding language of his text by the following note :-" Goldsmith died at the early age of forty-five, of a fever rendered mortal, as it frequently is, by mental agitation and distress. He had, as Johnson observed, practised every artifice of acquisition, and every folly of extravagance, and then owed nearly two thousand pounds; a great sum for a man who had originally nothing but his learning and talents, but a trifle for the public or private munificence of a great nation, when the object was the preservation of one of the brightest ornaments to its language and literature. Under the direction of a liberal and judicious patronage, Goldsmith might have reached the highest degree of excellence in English poetry. . . . It is a melancholy reflection that, though Great Britain has been more fertile in poetical genius during the present age than at any preceding period of her history, no important work has been produced. Johnson, Goldsmith, Churchill, Gray, and Chatterton, were all in a great measure lost to the Muses for want of proper encouragement."

...

There is no doubt a general outline of truth in this complaint, though more applicable to some of the persons mentioned than to others. The sluggishness of Johnson might not have been quickened by prosperity, nor the fastidiousness of Gray propitiated by patronage; but Goldsmith's genius might have been let loose from its long and cruel bondage to expatiate more freely in walks of imagination, to indulge its flowing vein of comic pleasantry, or to paint for our sympathies tender representations of humble life, softened with the touches of ideal beauty. The same admirer of the poet proceeds to say :

"It was lamented by Goldsmith that he had come too late into the world for that Pope and other poets had taken up the places in the temple of fame, so that as but few in any period can possess poetical reputation, a man of genius can now hardly acquire it. This complaint, though approved by Johnson, I cannot think just, nor indeed anything better than a common-place excuse for indolent vanity. The merit and celebrity of Goldsmith's two short poems, the Traveller' and 'Deserted Village,' prove incontestably that, had he exerted his faculties in that species of composition with the unremitted diligence and activity of Pope, he would have held a place equally honourable and conspicuous in the temple of fame. The malignity of envy might indeed have precluded him from it while living, but the moment that death had placed him out of the reach of that passion, the snarling of the critics would have been

drowned in the acclamations of the multitude. Innumerable subjects, capable of any kind and degree of embellishment, are still unoccupied ; and the boundless variety of nature affords endless shades of character and modifications of incident and imagery that have not yet been exhibited in any language, much less in that of the English, whose poetical range is yet very limited," &c. Full half a century has passed since this just and graceful tribute of praise to the genius of Goldsmith was paid by Mr. Payne Knight: a biography of him was subsequently prefixed to a collection of his Poetry by Dr. Anderson in 1795, and fuller materials being collected by Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore, the narrative was composed by Dr. Thomas Campbell under the Bishop's direction, and added to his Miscellancous Works published in 1801. Goldsmith's poetry was now enjoying a calm and steady popularity, and his Vicar of Wakefield still grew more and more in the public favour, when the reputation of Fielding and Smollett was slowly giving way before the altered taste, if not improved morals, of modern days. Mr. Prior + therefore seemed to supply a want all but expressed, when with a curious diligence and persevering industry he seemed to follow Goldsmith's departed footsteps, and with the success with which striving labour is generally rewarded, secured much traditional information, corrected some prevailing errors, and gave to the unfinished portrait a more full and perfect representation. To this Mr. Forster has perhaps supplied all that was required,‡ in changing the single portrait into a family picture: throwing Goldsmith into the company of his contemporaries, and embellishing his view of the Poet's genius and knowledge by a constant reference to the literature of the day, by a comparison of his works with those of his rivals, and by a discriminating review not only of his intellectual powers but also of the whole disposition of his mind, with all those virtues that command our love, with all the weaknesses that ensure our pity. "Out of the heart," says the moralist," are the issues of life, and out of the life are the issues of poetry;" and a biography containing a more instructive or a more interesting commentary on this text could not be given than the one before us; none, where the great moral lesson is more fully disclosed, of how intimately the

See Nichols's Illustrations of Literature, vol. vi. p. 584, and vol. vii. 783. We say nothing of the controversy between the two biographers of Goldsmith touching the materials which they have possessed or used, because it was a dispute, like others only of momentary interest, not worth recalling, by those especially who like ourselves wish "to spread friendships and to cover heats;" secondly, as we know authors to be a race of animals who are born to prey on each other, "Homo homini lupus ;" and lastly, as we find the very same complaint has been brought against Mr. Prior that he has alleged against Mr. Forster, for the Rev. E. Mangin says, "Mr. Prior applied to Dr. Streane for information respecting Goldsmith, and the Doctor put into his hands a copy of Mr. Mangin's Essay on Light Reading, published in 1808, observing that it contained all he had to tell. The author of this Life of the Poet has employed much of what he found in this Essay without having the courtesy to use marks of quotation." See Parlour Window, p. 5. So that, after all, Mr. Forster may only have been taking Mr. Mangin's property, lying in Mr. Prior's name.-REV.

In Dr. Johnson's Life of Dr. Samuel Parr, the Doctor writes, "Sir William Scott has written to ask if I have found among Bishop Bennet's papers some letters relating to Goldsmith, which passed between Burke, and Johnson, and Marlay, and which were supposed to be in the Bishop's possession." For Goldsmith himself, epistolary correspondence seems to have had little charms, for Grainger says, “When I taxed Goldsmith for not writing as he promised me, his answer was That he never wrote a letter in his life,' and faith, I believe him, unless to a bookseller for money." -See Nichols's Illust. of Lit. vol. vii. p. 286.-Rev.

entire character in all its distinct portions is bound up together, and to judge of the writer or the poet, we must study the man. As, however, the facts which form this chequered life, with its brief gleams of sunshine,* and its ever-recurring showers, are familiar to most of our readers, and, if not, could better be read in Mr. Forster's pages than ours, we shall content ourselves with a few extracts taken here and there which touch upon some of those works on which the fame of the writer is principally founded. Mr. Forster's book, looked at in all its parts as a critical view of the literature of that time, would be deserving of a full and interesting commentary, but that is quite beyond our power now to give, and we must content ourselves with some very scanty gleanings from its pages.

Mr. Forster thus briefly describes the prospects of literature at the time that Goldsmith was putting on his " iron bondage," to devote himself to the taskmaster Griffiths, to have "a small regular salary," and to work from day to day in his garret at Paternoster Row, at the appropriate sign of the Dunciad!

"Fielding had died in shattered hope and fortune, at what should have been his prime of life, three years before. Within the next two years, poor and mad, Collins was fated to descend to his early grave. Smollett was toughly fighting for his every day's existence. Johnson, within some half dozen months, had been tenant of a spunging-house. No man throve that was connected with letters, unless connected with their trade and merchandise as well, and, like Richardson, could print as well as write books. It was in truth

one of those times of transition which press hardly on all whose lot is cast in them. The patron was gone and the public had not yet come. The seller of books had as yet exclusive command over the destiny of those who wrote them; and he was difficult of access; without certain prospect of the trade-wind hard to move. • The shepherd in Virgil,' said Johnson to Lord Chesterfield, 'grew at last acquainted with love, and found him a native of the rocks." Nor had adverse circumstances been without their effect upon the literary character itself. Covered with the blanket of Boyse and sheltered by the night-cellar of Savage, it had forfeited less honour and self-respect than as the paid client of the ministries of Walpole and Henry Pelham. As long as its political services were acknowledged by offices in the state; as long as the coarse wit of Prior could be paid by an embassy, or the delicate humour of Addison win its way to a secretaryship; while Steele and

Congreve, Swift and Gay, sat at ministerial tables, and were of account in cabinet councils; its slavery was not less real than in later years, yet all externally went well with it. Though even flat apostacy, as in the case of Parnell, might in those days be the claim of literature to worldly esteem, still it was esteemed by the crowd, and had the rank and consideration which worldly means could give to it. But when another state of things succeeded, when politicians had too much shrewdness to despise the helps of the pen, and too little intellect to honour its claims and influence; when it was thought that to strike at its dignity was to command its more complete subservience; when corruption in its grosser forms had become chief director of political intrigue, and it was less the statesman's office to wheedle a vote, than the minister's business to give hard cash in return for it; literature, or the craft so called, was thrust from the House of Commons into its lobbies and waiting-rooms, and ordered to exchange the dignity of the council-table for the comforts of the great man's kitchen. The order did not of necessity make the man of genius a servant or a parasite; its sentence upon him was simply, that he must descend in the social scale, peradventure starve. But though it could not disgrace or degrade him, it called a class of writers into existence whose degradation and disgrace reacted upon him; who flung a stigma on his pursuits, and made the name

* Mr. William Ballantyne informs us that Macklin told him, "he gave a cheerful little hop, when Doctor Goldsmith, the facetious Dr. Glover, Fenton the accomplished Welsh bard, and the humane Tom King the comedian, were of the party. The hop was at my own apartments, when Dr. Goldsmith was so happy that he danced and threw up his wig to the ceiling, saying Men were never so much like men as when they looked like boys.'" Mackliniana.-REV.

On a passage in the " Inquiry into the State of Learning," in which Goldsmith had said, "What are the proper encouragements of genius? I answer, subsistence and respect," Mr. Forster has the following commentary: