Part 7

I saw him, after his conflict was accomplished, go forth out of the desert with his Bible, enter Rome publicly, and unsparingly chastise the crimes of the proud city. I saw the haughty ladies of Rome first start, then bow themselves to the severe judgment of the teacher; saw Marulla and Paula renounce the dissipated life of Rome, and follow the preacher; found convents and Christian institutions in accordance with his views; saw him grow in the combat with the spirit of the age, till he stood as a founder of the greatest power on earth—that of the Christian Church. The _fool_, who had buried himself in the sands of Syria, and done battle with himself during solitary days and nights.

Ah! this fool, this glowing sun of the desert, as he now stood forth to view, through the veil of fifteen centuries, grew greater and greater in my eyes, till, finally, he expanded himself over the whole of Birmingham, with all its factories, workshops, steel-pens, and the like, as a colossus above an ant-hill.

Birmingham is almost entirely of the class of what are called Chartists; that is, advocates of universal suffrage. They are this, through good and through evil; and the resistance which their just desire to be more fully represented in the legislative body has met with from that body, has brought them more and more into collision with the power of the state, more and more to base their demands in opposition, even to the higher principles of justice; for they overlook the duty of rendering themselves worthy of the franchise by sound education. But the fault here, in the first place, was not theirs. Growing up amid machinery and the hum of labor, without schools, without religious or moral worth; hardened by hard labor, in continual fight with the difficulties of life, they have moulded themselves into a spirit little in harmony with life’s higher educational influences, the blessings of which they had never experienced. Atheism, radicalism, republicanism, socialism of all kinds will and must flourish here in concealment amongst the strong and daily augmenting masses of a population, restrained only by the fear of the still more mighty powers which may be turned against them, and by labor for their daily needs, so long as those powers are sufficing. And perhaps the Americans are right where they say, in reference to this condition of things;—“England lies at our feet—England cannot do without our cotton. If the manufactures of England must come to a stand, then has she a popular convulsion at her door.” Perhaps it may be so; for these hosts of manufacturing workmen, neglected in the beginning by society, neglected by church and state, look upon them merely as exacting and despotic powers; and in strict opposition to them, they have banded together, and established schools for their own children, where only the elements of practical science are admitted, and from which religious and moral instruction are strictly excluded. In truth, a volcanic foundation for society, and which now, for some time past, has powerfully arrested the attention of the most thinking men of England.

But into the midst of this menacing chaos light has already begun to penetrate with an organizing power; and over the dark profound hovers a spirit which can and will divide the darkness from the light, and prepare a new creation.

From Birmingham I traveled, on the morning of the 4th of October, by a railway to Leamington, and thence alone in a little carriage to Stratford-on-Avon.

[1] A minister paid by the community for devoting himself exclusively to its poor, and one worthy of the confidence reposed in him.

* * * * *

OLIVER GOLDSMITH—HIS CHARACTER AND GENIUS.

BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

In wit a man, simplicity a child. Pope.

For over half a century after Goldsmith’s death, the world continued in a state of uncertainty concerning his writings and himself. The greater part of the task-work he had performed for the booksellers was unknown, and Oliver spoken of, in a traditionary sort of way, as the author of the Vicar of Wakefield and the Deserted Village, and a man of laughable eccentricities. The majority of his readers—and no poet had more of them or enjoyed a wider English popularity—never thought he was other than an Englishman; and those who knew the country of his birth differed about the place of it—some asserting he was born at Lissoy, in Westmeath, and others contending for other localities. Even Dr. Johnson, who has set down his native place—Pallas, in Longford—correctly in his epitaph, makes a mistake of three years in his age. All this is remarkable of the cotemporary of Johnson—one who ranked with that literary colossus in his time and was so closely connected with Burke, Reynolds, Percy and the other celebrities of that period. Resembling, in some measure, Butler, in the obscurity of his personal history and the popularity of his works, Goldsmith seemed to be vaguely merging into the Vicar of Wakefield, or the Good Natured Man—just as the poet of the Restoration had come to be confounded with his Roundhead hero—when Prior’s life of him, twenty years ago, first threw a fair light upon the past; indicated the great mass of his writings (poorly compensated, anonymous and plagiarized, in his life-time,) and cleared away a large amount of the misconceptions and fallacies that had been gathered about his fame.

There has hardly been any author in modern times, or perhaps in the ancient, whose personal character contrasts—is made to contrast—so much with the genuine celebrity he has achieved. He would seem to have been laughed at a good deal, and treated with a want of consideration and respect, even by those who loved him and wept at his death; and the impression generally conveyed is, that his manners were uncouth and his conversation ridiculous. Those who have helped to create such a character for Oliver, think they have compounded with their consciences when they have admitted he was a charming writer, and a simple, honest soul, who had no harm in him, and always meant well. Nevertheless, but one half of their portrait can be received. There were no such violent contrarieties in the elements that went to compose Oliver Goldsmith. His biographers—to make the most lenient estimate of them—knew him imperfectly and found it much easier to produce their effects by glaring contrasts than by the patient and loving discrimination due to the truth of every man’s character—especially that of a man like Goldsmith—so marked by peculiarities of education, and so severely tried by circumstances.

The literary character is sure to suffer, more or less, in contact with society. Men of letters who spend half their time with the dead are not exactly the people to be _au fait_ of all the ways of the living; and have not always the good sense of Thomas Baker, who, for that very reason, refused, long ago, to be introduced to the Earl of Oxford and the polished people of his acquaintance. They generally offend against the conventions and are not pardoned in their biographies, which are sometimes writ by men of the world, and which, when even written by authors, who may be supposed capable of sympathizing more with the literary character, still show how the jealousies and prejudices of the craft will stand in the way of honest criticism. A man’s character depends very much on his historians—and Goldsmith, a literary adventurer, a bookseller’s hack, and an Irishman, was particularly—perhaps, necessarily—unfortunate in his.

There have been crowds of distinguished literary men whose peculiarities were almost as much ridiculed as those of Goldsmith, but who have found a more dignified appreciation, by virtue of fairer biographers. Socrates was laughed at more than any man in Athens. But his immortal pupil has rescued his fame from those wits and satirists who used to loiter about the porches, and go, of a morning, to applaud the Clouds of Aristophanes. Socrates was an ugly little man—in the midst of the fine-faced men of Attica—generally threadbare and slovenly; and even Plato has been obliged to allow that his honored master was like an apothecary’s gallipot, painted outside with grotesque figures, but containing balm within. He was as much laughed at as Goldsmith; but nobody can think Socrates a laughable old fellow. There was the Emperor Julian. When he sojourned at Antioch, he was ridiculed and lampooned by the citizens for his careless dress and beard, and his simple manners. Whereupon, instead of treating them as Sulla did those facetious Greeks who said “his face was a mulberry sprinkled with meal,” the philosophic apostate wrote a book against them, called “Misopogon,” in which he pleasantly satirized himself for his literary peculiarities, justified his critics, and happily admitted that he did not, indeed, resemble in any thing those witty and fashionable people who made merry at his expense. If these Antiochans were Julian’s biographers, he should cut but a silly figure in the eyes of posterity. As it is, he has hardly fared much better in another point of view. La Fontaine was voted intolerably stupid in society. The gay Parisians said he merely vegetated—and he was called the Fable Tree—bringing forth fables! Poor Burns complained that though, when he wished, he could make himself “beloved,” he could not make himself “respected.” He confessed that he wanted discretion—was prone to a _lapsus linguæ_, and very apt to offend the sense of the society he was in—in this, somewhat like Goldsmith. We could cite a score of instances showing that famous men have been barely tolerated in society and very much exposed to the ridicule of it. But their biographers have done their better qualities justice, and they are not remembered in any remarkable degree in connection with the peculiarities which excited the satire of their cotemporaries.

A great many things worked unfavorably for Goldsmith. His face was very plain-favored in expression, he spoke with a brogue and hesitated a little in his utterance. In his nature he was shy, and his manners in society had all the simplicity and unguarded impulse of his earlier years. Such a man, living in comparative retirement, might have passed through the world without any disparagements. But Goldsmith was thrown upon the great stage of London, and into the society of the most fastidious critics and gentlemen of the age. Here his ordeal was a severe one—as the result showed. Boswell, Hawkins, Cumberland, Northcote, Thrale and the rest of those who either wrote memoirs or furnished reminiscences of our author, have proved how little they could sympathize with the plain, blunt Irishman—who was only a simple child of nature and of genius.

Among those who have most contributed to lessen the prestige of Goldsmith’s name was James Boswell, Dr. Johnson’s literary henchman and biographer. In all that Boswell writes of Oliver he exhibits his desire to disparage him. It is true he sometimes expresses partiality for Goldsmith’s conversation. But he, doubtless, intends this as a show of frankness to obtain the more easy credence for his general opinions of the poet. One great cause of this feeling on Boswell’s part was his reverent attachment to the fame of Dr. Johnson, and his jealousy of any one who came or seemed to come into rivalry with that Ursa Major of the British literary firmament. Boswell had the little soul of a parasite, and always felt offense at any exhibition of independence toward Johnson—such having the effect of rebuking his own absurd obsequiousness. Goldsmith, though the easiest and kindliest of men, still kept up that frank, irrespective manliness of disposition which belongs to genius, and could not sympathize with Boswell’s extreme notions of worship. The poet must have felt the folly and impoliteness of trumpeting Johnson in season and out of season—often in presence of better men than the lexicographer—and must have been offended with it, too. On one occasion, indeed, he said to Boswell, with his usual point and good sense—“Sir, you are for making a monarchy of that which should be a republic.” He respected Dr. Johnson, but never bowed down to him, nor to any one else. And the son of a Scottish lord, who venerated on all-fours, could not forgive the poor Irish scholar for standing erect in presence of the grim idol—as Johnson too often was, in his austere moods. Along with all this, Boswell probably knew very well the opinion which Goldsmith had of himself. In conversation with some one who called Boswell a Scotch cur, Goldsmith remarked—“Not so—he is only a Scotch bur: Tom Davies (the publisher) threw him at Johnson and he sticks to him.” A saying which, of course, found its way to the _bur’s_ ears. All these things are sufficient to account for the animus palpably exhibited against Goldsmith in Boswell’s Life of Johnson.

When his book appeared, he was sharply and universally condemned for his treatment of the dead writer. Lord Charlemont expressed his indignant astonishment how James Boswell could affect to undervalue a man of such genius and popularity. Burke said to Lady Crewe, on the subject—“What sympathy could you expect to find, my dear madam, between an Irish poet and a Scotch lawyer?” Wilkes swore two such characters were moral antipodes. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who knew Goldsmith like a brother, and who had heard from report how Boswell meant to depict the poet, remonstrated earnestly with him on the subject before the biography of Johnson came out. Bishop Percy, Mr. Stephens, Mr. Malone and others denied that Goldsmith was guilty of the fooleries and grimaces and unworthy feelings attributed to him by Boswell, and protested against the low estimate he had made of Oliver’s genius and character. And yet with all Boswell’s earnestness in the attempt to lessen Goldsmith, it is remarkable how little he is really able to injure him in the long run. He has created an unfavorable impression of the poet’s manners it is true; but this is wearing away; and the fact is, that, not only the silly Boswell himself, but the austere doctor whom he delighted to honor, and wrote every thing to glorify, seems to be more reflected on than Goldsmith, in most things that have been recorded to the disparagement of the latter in connection with Johnson.

One of Boswell’s first anecdotes of Johnson and Goldsmith will show the paltry, parasitical spirit in which he was in the habit of making his notes and comments. They three had been supping at the Mitre tavern, when Johnson got up to go home and take tea with his blind dependent, Miss Williams. “Dr. Goldsmith,” says Bozzy, “being a privileged man, got up to go with him, strutting away and calling to me, with an air of superiority, like that of an esoteric over an exoteric disciple of a sage of antiquity, ‘I go to Miss Williams.’” He says he envied this “mark of distinction,” but soon had the same honor himself! Boswell always betrays himself. For, without a grain of Oliver’s genius, he shows himself to be as thoughtless and absurd as he would have us think the poet to have been. If the latter did really exhibit any thing like exultation on the occasion alluded to—the canny Scot mistook it; he could not enter into the humorous vein of the author of the Citizen of the World, who never let any opportunity of pleasantry of any kind escape him, and who, doubtless, with a playful impulse, would, slily and aside, for Boswell’s behoof, put on a comic air of loftiness, at the idea of his own privilege. Such little _traits_ were very characteristic of Oliver Goldsmith, at all periods of his life; and neither his own dignity nor that of any one else was much thought of, whenever his funny “Cynthias of the minute” came across him. With all his respect for Dr. Johnson, he had still—though Boswell does not seem to admit it—a very strong sense of what was odd, petulant and _grandiose_ in the doctor’s manners, and could sport with it, too, to the bear’s face, with a rare and child-like temerity. For instance, once at Jack’s Coffee-house, where the pair were dining on rumps and kidneys, Johnson said—“These rumps are pretty things; but a man must eat a great number of them.” Goldsmith assented with pleasantry, and then, under the easy, unawed impulse of his nature, and carried away by the thought that he was not at his dreary desk, but at dinner with his friend, pushed on with—“But how many of them would go to the moon?” Johnson had, doubtless, said such small matters did not _go far_—a common expression, which would have provoked Oliver’s pun—though the story says nothing of this.

“To the moon?” replies Johnson; “I think that exceeds your calculation.”

“Not at all, sir,” cries Goldie—looking ludicrously prepense, at the terrible, grave face opposite—“I think I could tell.”

“Well, sir,” rejoined Ursa Major; whereupon the other comes out with:

“One, if it was long enough!”

Johnson growled angrily, and said he was a fool to provoke such an answer. Not a fool, however, but a solemn bear, whose very grimness, contrasted with the absurdity of the solution, was Goldsmith’s irresistible temptation. We must, in fact, justify Oliver’s fun—though we did not see Johnson’s face. The thing was laughter-compelling. Goldsmith had no undue feeling of deference in his nature at all, though he used certainly to go on all-fours to amuse the children. His irrespective and somewhat careless humor often irritated Johnson, who generally supped full of flattery.

“Doctor,” said Johnson one day, “I have not been quite idle; I lately made a line of poetry.”

Instead of holding up his hands reverently, Goldsmith cried out with his customary levity—“Come, sir, let us hear it; we will try and put a bad one to it.”

“No, sir,” replied the petted monster, drawing in; “I have forgotten it.”

Boswell’s attempts to depreciate Goldsmith are blunderingly made. He always admits enough to betray his own unfair spirit. Johnson having had in 1767, an interview with the king in the library of St. James’s Palace, the thing was greatly talked of. Boswell says, that once at the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the doctor was, by request (the henchman’s of course), induced to repeat the circumstances of the meeting, and that during the recital, Goldsmith was observed to be silent and _inattentive_. He says, the latter was envious of Johnson’s luck, but he goes on to state that at last the frankness and simplicity of his nature prevailed, he advanced to Johnson and told him, he acquitted himself admirably—that he (Goldsmith), “should have bowed and stammered through the whole of it.” No sign of any very deadly envy in all this, surely. Johnson himself, though he mostly made a point of defending Goldsmith against attacks, could not help feeling a little pique and jealousy toward the wit, who never refrained from arguing the matter with him, comically or keenly as he saw fit. Johnson was truculent at times, and would speak rudely to Goldsmith in company. One of the surly moralist’s formulas, whenever Goldsmith would say, “I don’t see that,” was—“Nay, my dear sir, why can you not see what everybody else sees?” On such occasions, Goldsmith’s independence, or want of tact was against him. Johnson at times, used to put him down in this way. During an argument, Goldsmith having been several times contradicted, “sat in restless agitation,” says the veracious Boswell, “from a wish to get in and shine.” No easy matter when Johnson was cloudy. “Finding himself excluded,” he goes on—“he had taken his hat to go away, but remained for some time with it in his hand. Once, when beginning again to speak, he was overpowered by the loud voice of Johnson, who was at the opposite end of the table, and did not notice the attempt. Thus disappointed, Goldsmith threw down his hat in a passion, and said—‘take it’—looking angrily at Johnson. Then Toplady was about to speak, Oliver hearing Johnson growl something, and thinking he was about to go on again, begged he would let Toplady proceed, as the latter had heard Johnson patiently for an hour. ‘Sir,’ roared Johnson, ‘I was not going to interrupt the gentleman. Sir, you are impertinent!’ Goldy said nothing, but continued in the company for some time. When they all met in the evening at the club, Johnson said aside to Boswell, ‘I’ll make Goldsmith forgive me:’ and then aloud—‘Doctor Goldsmith, something passed between us, where you and I dined: I ask your pardon.’ Goldsmith answered placidly, ‘It must be much from you, sir, that I take ill.’ After which,” says Boswell, “Goldsmith was himself again, and rattled away as usual.” All this exhibits the usual animus of Boswell, the coarse tyranny of Johnson, and the fine disposition of Oliver, in a fair light. Goldsmith knew Johnson intimately—_intus et in cute_—and used to say of him, with that happiness of thought and fancy which his bashfulness could, not entirely mar—“there is no arguing with Johnson; when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the but-end of it.”

Johnson talked for victory—Goldsmith for enjoyment. The former came armed at all points into the argument—the latter was but too glad to fling off all lettered restraint, remove his harness as it were, and enjoy himself in the midst of what he loved so cordially, the sight of happy human faces. Johnson generally entered into conversation like an athlete or a bull into an arena. He once said to Boswell, after some literary reunion—“we had good talk to-night.” “Yes, sir,” returned the admiring disciple, “you tossed and gored several persons.” A pleasant affair, truly, one of those conversations on philosophy and polite literature must have been in the Johnsonian times. Poor Goldsmith was disposed to be light, discursive, and unaffected in genial society—or if affected at all, it was in the desire to contrast his own open pleasantry with the dread gravity of Johnson, and those who stood in awe of him. Oliver was out of his element, in fact, among the generality of those with whom he came into contact at the club and elsewhere. He should have lived in the days of the loud-laughing Jerrold, and Hunt, the old boy at all times, and the pun-elaborating Lamb; he should have known Moore, the gayest of wits, and Maginn, who also _stammered_ forth “his logic and his wisdom and his wit.” The simplicity of his disposition, and the Irish impulses of his nature, led him to desire a hearty enjoyment of his social hours in the midst of his friends. He would have quips and cranks, and a spice of that happy frivolity which comes as easy to the finest geniuses as their more dignified inspirations. But such he was not to have at the Literary Club, where Jupiter-Johnson took the chair—or rather the field, and “glowering frae him,” kept himself perfectly ready to “toss and gore,” as usual.

“While all the clubbists trembled at his nod.”

A great deal of pedantry and paradox was mixed up with the literature of Goldsmith’s time; men’s minds were apt to be as stiff as their costumes, and authors were considered to have a certain professional dignity to support.

Oliver, as we have said, was out of his element in the midst of such circumstances; he did not admire the gravity which is too often a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind, but was disposed in company

“To rattle on exactly as he’d talk To any body in a ride or walk.”