Traveller, and whose constant manner of drinking to him was, 'Come, Noll, here's "my service to you, old boy!' Repeating this one night after the comedy (the Good"Natured Man) was played, and when there was a very full club, Glover went over "to Goldsmith, and said in a whisper that he ought not to allow such liberties. "'Let him alone,' answered Goldsmith, 'and you'll see how civilly I'll let him "down." He waited a little; and, on the next pause in the conversation, called out ‘aloud, with a marked expression of politeness and courtesy, 'Mr. B., I have the "honour of drinking your good health.' 'Thankee, thankee, Noll,' returned "Mr. B., pulling the pipe out of his mouth, and answering with great briskness." Enough in this vein! Quite as numerous are the anecdotes of Goldsmith's extreme tenderness of nerve, his generosity, his quick sympathy with all kinds of distress. Once, at a whist-table, we are told, hearing a woman sing in the streets, and struck by something peculiarly mournful in the tones of her voice, he could not rest till he had run out, given her some silver, and sent her away. In his own poverty he was ready with help and kind words not only for the Purdons, Hiffernans, and other poor Grub Street hacks, personally known to him, but also for any unknown young fellow he might casually encounter walking about the Temple Gardens and looking aimless and woe-begone. Remembering this, one cannot help wondering sometimes what might have happened or been prevented, if the boy Chatterton, during his fatal three months in London (May-August 1770) had chanced upon Goldsmith in his weary ramblings. One cannot but imagine, at all events, a certain sad significance in the fact that the hour of the last agony of that marvellous young life, the hunger-and-arsenic agony in the dreadful garret in Brooke Street, Holborn, coincided with the time of Goldsmith's absence from London on his Paris journey. As it was, he was one of the first, on his return, to hear of Chatterton's fate, and to talk of him and the Rowley Poems. But what more is needed to attest the essential goodness of Goldsmith's heart, his singular unselfishness and placability than the story which Boswell tells of his momentary quarrel with Johnson? "I dined with him (Johnson) this day (May 7, 1773),” says Boswell, "at the house of my friends, Messrs. Edward and Charles Dilly, booksellers, in the Poultry: there were present-their elder brother, Mr. Dilly of Bedfordshire; Dr. Goldsmith; Mr. Langton; the Rev. Dr. Mayo, a Dissenting "minister; the Rev. Mr. Toplady; and my friend, the Rev. Mr. Temple." There was much talk; they came at last on the subject of toleration; and Johnson, whom the presence of a Dissenting minister made unusually loud and pugnacious, was hammering away on this subject, without much success against Dr. Mayo's calm stolidity in the common opinion, "During this argument," continues Boswell, "Goldsmith sat in restless agitation, from a wish to get in and shine. Finding "himself excluded, he had taken his hat to go away, but remained for some time 'with it in his hand, like a gamester, who, at the close of a long night, lingers for a "little while, to see if he can have a favourable opening to finish with success. "Once when he was beginning to speak, he found himself overpowered by the loud voice of Johnson, who was at the opposite end of the table and did not perceive 66 66 66 66 66 "Goldsmith's attempt. Thus disappointed of his wish to obtain the attention of "the company, Goldsmith in a passion threw down his hat, looking angrily at 'Johnson, and exclaimed in a bitter tone, "Take it.' When Toplady was going to "speak, Johnson uttered some sound, which led Goldsmith to think that he was "beginning again, and taking the words from Toplady. Upon which he seized "this opportunity of venting his own envy and spleen, under the pretext of supporting another person: 'Sir,' said he to Johnson, this gentleman has heard 66 you patiently for an hour; pray allow us now to hear him.' JOHNSON * (sternly)—' Sir, I was not interrupting the gentleman; I was only giving him a signal of my attention. Sir, you are impertinent.' Goldsmith made no reply, "but continued in the company for some time." After he had gone, the rest talked a while longer; but at last, it being the club night, the company broke up. "He “(Johnson), and Mr. Langton, and I," says Boswell, “went together to the club, "where we found Mr. Burke, Mr. Garrick, and some other members, and amongst "them our friend Goldsmith, who sat silently brooding over Johnson's reprimand "to him after dinner. Johnson perceived this, and said aside to some of us, ‘I'll "make Goldsmith forgive me;' and then called to him in a loud voice, 'Dr. Goldsmith, something passed to-day where you and I dined; I ask your pardon.' "Goldsmith answered placidly, 'It must be much from you, Sir, that I take ill.' "And so at once the difference was over, and they were on as easy terms as ever, "and Goldsmith rattled away as usual." 66 66 66 Goldsmith, as Boswell had to admit, did not always drivel in conversation. Forked lightnings now and then came out of the fog, and he said excellent and memorable things. We have already quoted his definition of Boswell's main faculty, and Boswell has himself honestly recorded two or three sallies of Goldsmith at his expense. One evening, in a circle of wits, he found fault with me for talking of Johnson as "entitled to the honour of unquestionable superiority. 'Sir,' said he, 'you are for making a monarchy of what should be a republic.' Again, in 1773, when Boswell had booked Johnson for his three months' tour that autumn in Scotland and the Hebrides, and it was more than flesh and blood could stand to hear him exulting in the prospect and talking of the matchlessness of his great man, “Is he like Burke, who winds into a subject like a serpent?" said Goldsmith angrily. Even Johnson himself was occasionally outwitted by Goldy, and took it goodhumouredly. "JOHNSON-I remember once being with Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey. While we surveyed the Poets' Corner, I said to him,— 'Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.' "When we got to Temple Bar, he stopped me, pointed to the heads upon it, and "slyly whispered me, 'Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.' Again, when Goldsmith, in talk with Johnson and Reynolds, spoke of the difficulty of fable-writing, and gave as an instance "the fable of the little fishes who saw birds fly over their heads, and, envying them, petitioned Jupiter to be changed into birds." While he was dilating on this and pointing out very earnestly that the skill consisted in "making them talk like little fishes," Johnson's laughter roused him. "Why, Dr. Johnson," he proceeded smartly, "this is not so easy as you seem to think; for, if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales." Again, these two often-quoted sayings about Johnson are Goldsmith's: "There is no arguing with Johnson; for, when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt-end of it;" and, "Johnson, to be sure, has a roughness of manner, but no man has a better heart : he has nothing of the bear but his skin." Finally, take the story of the tête-à-tête supper of Johnson and Goldy off rumps and kidneys at Jack's Coffee House in Dean Street :-"Sir," said Johnson, "these rumps are pretty little things, but then a man must eat a great many of them before he is satisfied." "Ay, but how many of these would reach to the moon?" said Goldsmith. "To the moon!" echoed Johnson; "that, sir, I fear, exceeds your calculation." "Not at all," said Goldy firmly; "I think I could tell." "Pray then let us hear?" "Why," said Goldy slowly—and Mr. Forster must be right in supposing that here he edged off as far as possible from Johnson—“one, if it were long enough.' "Sir, I have deserved it," gasped Johnson at last. Poor Goldsmith's successes in this way, however, bore no proportion to his failures. "I have been but once at the club since you left England," wrote Beauclerk to Lord Charlemont, another member of the club, on the 5th of July, 1773; "and we were entertained as usual by Dr. Goldsmith's absurdities." This had become the common way of talking of him. More especially since Garrick, with his love of mimicry and mischief, had become a member of the club, it had become the fashion there to laugh at Goldy and all he said and did. But the fashion extended beyond the club; and, whenever Goldy's friends met together, and Garrick chanced to be among them, Goldy's "absurdities" were sure to be the theme. One such place was St. James's Coffee House in St. James's Street, where for some time a company of persons, partly belonging to the club and partly not, had been in the habit of dining together periodically. Here, one day in February 1774, when Goldy was absent, it was proposed to write jocular epitaphs upon him. Several such were written, and among them this by Garrick :— "Here lies Poet Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll, Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll." But it was not very safe to challenge Goldsmith at this kind of sport, as Garrick and others found to their cost when, in the course of the next month, fragments of Goldsmith's little poem called Retaliation began to be whispered about. Who does not know this exquisite masterpiece of satire, or rather of humorous characterpainting? For there is not a touch of malice or mere caricature in it, but only the keenest and kindliest observation, and the quintessence of happy expression? How all the friends that had been laughing at him are paid off, one by one, with what is at once most gracious compliment and most delicate banter, so that they must have both liked it and not liked it, and must have known that the tables were turned upon the whole pack of them, by this one retort of Goldy, for all time to come! Especially what three portraits in miniature are those of Burke, Garrick, and Reynolds! Burke lived five-and-twenty years longer, and was to be and do during those five-and-twenty years a great deal more than he had yet been or done; but it is Goldsmith's character of him that we always quote when we want epigram or epitome. In vain Garrick tried, by subsequent verses, not in the best taste, to outepitaph Goldy after he was dead; his clever "Poor Poll" couplet does last, but Goldy's thirty-two lines on Garrick in his Retaliation last also, and are a settlement for ever of the account between them. And what portrait of any one has come to us from the pencil of Reynolds more graphic than the unfinished pen-and-ink sketch of Reynolds himself with which Retaliation ends? He had more to Did he "It must So, with this loving tribute to Sir Joshua, the poem breaks off. say in honour of the great painter who had been so truly his friend. contemplate the addition of a portrait of Johnson? Most probably not. be much from you, Sir, that I take ill," the gentle creature had said to the terrible Samuel on receiving his apology for a gross insult; and, notwithstanding his tetchy observation about Johnson to Boswell, "Is he like Burke, who winds into a subject like a serpent?" it is clear that there was no human being for whom Goldsmith felt so profound and absolute a regard. They were not to be troubled, any of them, with poor Goldy much longer. His Animated Nature and his Grecian History, though not published, were off his hands; and except that Retaliation may have been lying on his desk to have a few lines added to it now and then when he was in the humour, we hear of nothing particular that was occupying him in the months of February and March 1774. He had come to the end of some years of labour in compiling; and now, if ever, was the time for carrying into effect the resolution, to which he had been persuading himself, of retiring permanently into some quiet part of the country and coming to London only for two months every year. But, in fact, either to go or stay would have been difficult for him. All his resources were gone; his feet, as he walked in the streets, were in a meshwork of debt, to the extent of about 2,000%.; and all that he could look forward to, with any promise of relief in it, was the chance of a new stretch of some ten thousand acres of additional ditch-work and compilation, for some bookseller who would not mind prepaying for the labour in part. He did talk of something of the kind to the publisher Nourse, into whose hands the property of the Animated Nature had passed, and who had it now at press. What would Mr. Nourse say to taking shares with Griffin in a large sequel to the Animated Nature, in the form of a work on the "vegetable and fossil kingdoms?" Mr. Nourse does not appear to have had time to consider this proposal when, as far as Goldsmith was concerned, it became unnecessary for him to think more : about it. Goldy had gone in March, for a week or two, to his retreat at Hyde on the Edgeware Road, when an attack of a local complaint to which he had for some time been subject brought him back to his chambers in the Temple. The immediate illness passed off, but a kind of nervous fever followed; and at eleven o'clock at night on the 25th of March, Mr. Hawes, an apothecary and a friend of Goldsmith's, was sent for. He found Goldsmith very ill, and bent on doctoring himself with "James's fever-powders," a patent medicine the property in which had belonged to Newbery the publisher, and in which Goldsmith had great faith. In spite of all that Mr. Hawes could say, he would take one of these powders; after which he became worse and worse. Dr. Fordyce, who had been just elected a member of the Gerrard Street Club, and Dr. Turton, another physician of celebrity, were called in to assist Mr. Hawes, but without avail. "Your pulse," said Dr. Turton to his patient, "is in greater disorder than it should be from the state of your fever is your mind at ease?" "It is not," said Goldsmith. And so, with varying symptoms, he lay on in his chambers in Brick Court till Monday, the 4th of April, 1774, on which day it was known through town that Goldsmith was dead. He died at half-past four that morning in strong convulsions. When Burke was told the news, he burst into tears. When Reynolds was told it, he left his painting-room, where he then was, and did no more work that day. How Johnson was affected at the moment we can only guess; but three months afterwards he wrote as follows to Bennet Langton, in Lincolnshire: "Chambers, you find, is gone far, and poor "Goldsmith is gone much farther. He died of a fever, exasperated, as I believe, by "the fear of distress. He raised money and squandered it by every artifice of 'acquisition and folly of expense. But let not his frailties be remembered; he I was a very great man. When Goldsmith died he was forty-five years and five months old. His body was buried, on the 9th of April, in the burying-ground of the Temple Church. The monument to him in Westminster Abbey, with the Latin inscription by Johnson, was erected in 1776. 66 66 About Goldsmith personally we can add but few particulars to those already given. As is implied by the very name "Goldy," so persistently attached to him in spite of his remonstrances, he was a little man,—not above five feet five inches high, it is said, though stout and thick about the chest and limbs. To have seen him walking down Fleet Street, with the gigantic Johnson by his side, must have been a sight indeed. His pale and pitted face taken along with his figure, people thought him one of the plainest little bodies that ever entered a room; they even called his appearance 66 ' mean." Looking at his portrait now, and knowing what he was, we do not find this, but only a certain oddness, caused by the outbulging forehead, the lax mouth and chin, and in general the pouting, sulky, “You don't sufficiently respect me," expression. Though sociable and convivial, and lavishly expensive in his style of entertaining others, he seems himself to have had simple enough tastes in eating and drinking; he never had a habit of excess in wine, and he was fond of a bowl of milk to the last. One of his peculiarities—he himself |