Chapter 5

Writers’ series), 1888, pp. 110–21.

started with a loss. This, which to some critics has seemed unintelliglble, rests upon the following: ‘The first three editions, . . . resulted in a loss, and the fourth, which was not issued until eight [four?] years after the first, started with a balance against it of £2 16s. 6d., and it was not until that fourth edition had been sold that the balance came out on the right side’ (_A Bookseller of the Last Century_ [John Newbery] by Charles Welsh, 1885, p. 61). The writer based his statement upon Collins’s ‘Publishing book, account of books printed and shares therein, No. 3, 1770 to 1785.’

James’s Powder. This was a famous patent panacea, invented by Johnson’s Lichfield townsman, Dr. Robert James of the _Medicinal Dictionary_. It was sold by John Newbery, and had an extraordinary vogue. The King dosed Princess Elizabeth with it; Fielding, Gray, and Cowper all swore by it, and Horace Walpole, who wished to try it upon Mme. du Deffand _in extremis_, said he should use it if the house were on fire. William Hawes, the Strand apothecary who attended Goldsmith, wrote an interesting _Account of the late Dr. Goldsmith’s Illness, so far as relates to the Exhibition of Dr. James’s Powders,_ etc., 1774, which he dedicated to Reynolds and Burke. To Hawes once belonged the poet’s worn old wooden writing-desk, now in the South Kensington Museum, where are also his favourite chair and cane. Another desk-chair, which had descended from his friend, Edmund Bott, was recently for sale at Sotheby’s (July, 1906).

And find no spot of all the world my own. Prior compares his namesake’s lines _In the Beginning of_ [Jacques] _Robbe’s Geography_, 1700:—

My destin’d Miles I shall have gone,

By THAMES or MAESE, by PO or RHONE,

And _found no Foot of Earth my own._

above the storm’s career. Cf. 1. 190 of _The Deserted Village._

should thankless pride repine? First edition, ‘’twere thankless to repine.’

Say, should the philosophic mind, etc. First edition:—

’Twere affectation all, and school-taught pride,

To spurn the splendid things by heaven supply’d

hoard. ‘Sum’ in the first edition.

Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own. In the first version this was—

Boldly asserts that country for his own.

And yet, perhaps, etc. In the first edition, for this and the following five lines appeared these eight:—

And yet, perhaps, if states with states we scan,

Or estimate their bliss on Reason’s plan,

Though patriots flatter, and though fools contend,

We still shall find uncertainty suspend;

Find that each good, by Art or Nature given,

To these or those, but makes the balance even:

Find that the bliss of all is much the same,

And patriotic boasting reason’s shame!

On Idra’s cliffs. Bolton Corney conjectures that Goldsmith meant ‘Idria, a town in Carniola, noted for its mines.’ ‘Goldsmith in his “History of Animated Nature” makes mention of the mines, and spells the name in the same way as here.’ (Mr. J. H. Lobban’s _Select Poems of Goldsmith_, 1900, p. 87). Lines 84–5, it may be added, are not in the first edition.

And though the rocky-crested summits frown. In the first edition:—

And though rough rocks or gloomy summits frown.

lines 91–2. are not in the first editions.

peculiar, i.e. ‘proper,’ ‘appropriate.’

winnow, i.e. ‘waft,’ ‘disperse.’ John Evelyn refers to these ‘sea-born gales’ in the ‘Dedication’ of his _Fumifugium_, 1661:— ‘Those who take notice of the scent of the orange-flowers from the rivage of Genoa, and St. Pietro dell’ Arena; the blossomes of the rosemary from the Coasts of Spain, many leagues off at sea; or the manifest, and odoriferous wafts which flow from Fontenay and Vaugirard, even to Paris in the season of roses, with the contrary effect of those less pleasing smells from other accidents, will easily consent to what I suggest [i.e. the planting of sweet-smelling trees].’ (_Miscellaneous Writings_, 1825, p. 208.)

Till, more unsteady, etc. In the first edition:—

But, more unsteady than the southern gale,

Soon Commerce turn’d on other shores her sail.

There is a certain resemblance between this passage and one of the later paradoxes of Smollett’s Lismahago;—‘He affirmed, the nature of commerce was such, that it could not be fixed or perpetuated, but, having flowed to a certain height, would immediately begin to ebb, and so continue till the channels should be left almost dry; but there was no instance of the tide’s rising a second time to any considerable influx in the same nation’ (_Humphry Clinker_, 1771, ii. 192. Letter of Mr. Bramble to Dr. Lewis).

lines 141–2. are not in the first edition.

Its former strength was but plethoric ill. Cf. _The Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 98:—‘In short, the state resembled one of those bodies bloated with disease, whose bulk is only a symptom of its wretchedness.’ [Mitford.]

Yet still the loss, etc. In the first edition:—

Yet, though to fortune lost, here still abide

Some splendid arts, the wrecks of former pride.

The paste-board triumph and the cavalcade. ‘Happy Country [he is speaking of Italy], where the pastoral age begins to revive! Where the wits even of Rome are united into a rural groupe of nymphs and swains, under the appellation of modern Arcadians [i.e. the Bolognese Academy of the _Arcadi_]. Where in the midst of porticos, processions, and cavalcades, abbes turn’d into shepherds, and shepherdesses without sheep, indulge their innocent _ divertimenti_.’ (_Present State of Polite Learning_, 1759, pp. 50–1.) Some of the ‘paste-board triumphs’ may be studied in the plates of Jacques Callot.

By sports like these, etc. A pretty and well-known story is told with regard to this couplet. Calling once on Goldsmith, Reynolds, having vainly tried to attract attention, entered unannounced. ‘His friend was at his desk, but with hand uplifted, and a look directed to another part of the room; where a little dog sat with difficulty on his haunches, looking imploringly at his teacher, whose rebuke for toppling over he had evidently just received. Reynolds advanced, and looked past Goldsmith’s shoulder at the writing on his desk. It seemed to be some portions of a poem; and looking more closely, he was able to read a couplet which had been that instant written. The ink of the second line was wet:—

By sports like these are all their cares beguil’d;

The sports of children satisfy the child.

(Forster’s _Life_, 1871, i. pp. 347–8).

The sports of children. This line, in the first edition, was followed by:—

At sports like these, while foreign arms advance,

In passive ease they leave the world to chance.

Each nobler aim, etc. The first edition reads:—

When struggling Virtue sinks by long controul,

She leaves at last, or feebly mans the soul.

This was changed in the second, third, fourth, and fifth editions to:—

When noble aims have suffer’d long controul,

They sink at last, or feebly man the soul.

No product here, etc. The Swiss mercenaries, here referred to, were long famous in European warfare.

They parted with a thousand kisses,

And fight e’er since for pay, like Swisses.

Gay’s _Aye and No, a Fable_.

breasts This fine use of ‘breasts’—as Cunningham points out—is given by Johnson as an example in his Dictionary.

With patient angle, trolls the finny deep. ‘Troll,’ i.e. as for pike. Goldsmith uses ‘finny prey’ in _The Citizen of the World_, 1762, ii. 99:—‘The best manner to draw up the _finny prey_.’ Cf. also ‘warbling grove,’ _Deserted Village_, l. 361, as a parallel to ‘finny deep.’

the struggling savage, i.e. wolf or bear. Mitford compares the following:—‘He is a beast of prey, and the laws should make use of as many stratagems and as much force to drive the _ reluctant savage_ into the toils, as the Indians when they hunt the hyena or the rhinoceros.’ (_Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 112.) See also Pope’s _Iliad_, Bk. xvii:—

But if the _savage_ turns his glaring eye,

They howl aloof, and round the forest fly.

lines 201–2 are not in the first edition.

For every want, etc. Mitford quotes a parallel passage in _Animated Nature_, 1774, ii. 123:—‘Every want thus becomes a means of pleasure, in the redressing.’

Their morals, like their pleasures, are but low. Probably Goldsmith only uses ‘low’ here in its primitive sense, and not in that which, in his own day, gave so much umbrage to so many eighteenth-century students of humanity in the rough. Cf. Fielding, _Tom Jones_, 1749, iii. 6:— ‘Some of the Author’s Friends cry’d—“Look’e, Gentlemen, the Man is a Villain; but it is Nature for all that.” And all the young Critics of the Age, the Clerks, Apprentices, etc., called it _Low_ and fell a Groaning.’ See also _Tom Jones_, iv. 94, and 226–30. ‘There’s nothing comes out but the ‘most lowest’ stuff in nature’—says Lady Blarney in ch. xi of the _ Vicar_, whose author is eloquent on this topic in _The Present State of Polite Learning_, 1759, pp. 154–6, and in _She Stoops to Conquer_, 1773 (Act i); while Graves (_Spiritual Quixote_, 1772, bk. i, ch. vi) gives the fashion the scientific appellation of _ tapino-phoby,_ which he defines as ‘a dread of everything that is _low_, either in writing or in conversation.’ To Goldsmith, if we may trust George Colman’s _Prologue_ to Miss Lee’s _Chapter of Accidents_, 1780, belongs the credit of exorcising this particular form of depreciation:—

When Fielding, Humour’s fav’rite child, appear’d,

_Low_ was the word—a word each author fear’d!

Till chas’d at length, by pleasantry’s bright ray,

Nature and mirth resum’d their legal sway;

And Goldsmith’s genius bask’d in open day.

According to Borrow’s _Lavengro_, ch. xli, Lord Chesterfield considered that the speeches of Homer’s heroes were frequently ‘exceedingly low.’

How often, etc. This and the lines which immediately follow are autobiographical. Cf. George Primrose’s story in _The Vicar of Wakefield_, 1766, ii. 24–5 (ch. i):—‘I passed among the harmless peasants of Flanders, and among such of the French as were poor enough to be very merry; for I ever found them sprightly in proportion to their wants. Whenever I approached a peasant’s house towards night-fall, I played one of my most merry tunes, and that procured me not only a lodging, but subsistence for the next day.’

gestic lore, i.e. traditional gestures or motions. Scott uses the word ‘gestic’ in _Peveril of the Peak_, ch. xxx, where King Charles the Second witnesses the dancing of Fenella:—‘He bore time to her motions with the movement of his foot—applauded with head and with hand—and seemed, like herself, carried away by the enthusiasm of the _gestic_ art.’ [Hales.]

Thus idly busy rolls their world away. Pope has ‘Life’s _idle business_’ (_Unfortunate Lady_, l. 81), and—

The _busy, idle_ blockheads of the ball.

Donne’s _Satires_, iv. l. 203.

And all are taught an avarice of praise. Professor Hales (_Longer English Poems_) compares Horace of the Greeks:—

Praeter laudem, nullius avaris.

_Ars Poetica_, l. 324.

copper lace. ‘St Martin’s lace,’ for which, in Strype’s day, Blowbladder St. was famous. Cf. the actress’s ‘copper tail’ in _Citizen of the World_, 1762, ii. 60.

To men of other minds, etc. Prior compares with the description that follows a passage in vol. i. p. 276 of _Animated Nature_, 1774:—‘But we need scarce mention these, when we find that the whole kingdom of Holland seems to be a conquest upon the sea, and in a manner rescued from its bosom. The surface of the earth, in this country, is below the level of the bed of the sea; and I remember, upon approaching the coast, to have looked down upon it from the sea, as into a valley.’

Where the broad ocean leans against the land. Cf. Dryden in _Annus Mirabilis_, 1666, st. clxiv. l. 654:—

And view the ocean leaning on the sky.

the tall rampire’s, i.e. rampart’s (Old French, _rempart, rempar_). Cf. _Timon of Athens_, Act v. Sc. 4:—‘Our rampir’d gates.’

bosom reign in the first edition was ‘breast obtain.’

Even liberty itself is barter’d here. ‘Slavery,’ says Mitford, ‘was permitted in Holland; children were sold by their parents for a certain number of years.’

A land of tyrants, and a den of slaves. Goldsmith uses this very line as prose in Letter xxxiv of _The Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 147.

dishonourable graves. _Julius Caesar_,