APPENDIX TO THIS EDITION OF THE

ESSAYS.

ON THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE 'BELLES LETTRES'

SERIES.

(See pp. 311, 323, et sq.)

SIR James Prior's opinion in favour of Goldsmith's authorship is thus given (Life of Goldsmith,' v. i. p. 345) :—“ Among these [the pieces which Goldsmith did not gather into his collection of Essays' of 1765 and 1766 respectively] were several classical criticisms, the style of which admits of no mistake, and were further known to be his by Bishop Percy and Malone." And, again (ib. p. 351) :—" He commenced in that work [the British Magazine] a series of papers on the Belles Lettres,' embracing a considerable portion of classical criticism . . . Fourteen papers altogether were given, each forming about three pages of the Magazine, printed in double columns, and the attention was either drawn to them, or the proprietors were willing to do so, by a passage in the preface to the volume for 1762, where it is stated, as if much consideration were due to the subject, or the writer, that besides four articles continued uninterruptedly through the work, they have added a fifth on the subject of the Belles Lettres, which we flatter ourselves will meet with peculiar approbation.'

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Mr. Peter Cunningham's opinion against Goldsmith's authorship (given at p. 323) is of course weighty; but, save for one consideration, Bishop Percy's contrary opinion, as testified by his publication of this series of essays for the first time with Goldsmith's works, might be taken as being at least equally weighty. The one circumstance is that the inclusion of these essays in the 1801 edition of Goldsmith's works may really not have been the Bishop's act, but rather that merely of the persons he employed as editors. It is known that Percy disapproved of much that was both done and left undone with regard to the edition of Goldsmith which was put forth under his auspices, and for which he has since been very generally held accountable. If the inclusion of these essays was one of the blunders of his editors and publishers of which the Bishop has made such complaint (see his Letters in Nichols'' Literary Illustrations,' vi., p. 583, &c.), the importance of their appearance in Goldsmith's works as due to the act of the author's friend and literary executor is of course much diminished.

Some other points, however, in this controversy may be briefly adverted to.

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In the first essay, 'Upon Taste,' at p. 327, there is a remark upon the culture of youth, wherein the word 'fermentation' is used. The same word with a similar application occurs in two of Goldsmith's known works. In the Enquiry into Polite Learning,' 1759 (chapter on Rewarding Genius in England'), Goldsmith wrote :-"I forget whether the simile has been used before, but I would compare the man whose youth has been thus passed in the tranquillity of dispassionate prudence, to liquors which never ferment, and consequently continue always muddy." And in the Life of Bolingbroke,' 1770, we have the same idea taking the form:-"This period [of Bolingbroke's youth] might have been compared to that of fermentation in liquors, which grow muddy before they brighten; but it must also be confessed that those liquors which never ferment are seldom clear." The appearance of this apparently favourite simile of Goldsmith in the 'Belles Lettres' essays, bearing a date coming between the above two instances, is certainly some evidence of Goldsmith's authorship.

The break in the monthly succession of these essays, when they first appeared, in the British Magazine, also affords some evidence in favour of the theory of Goldsmith's authorship. We find them appearing regularly month after month from July, 1761, to January, 1763, excepting only the months of July, August, October, and December, 1762. Now, the first three of these four blank months are coincident precisely with Goldsmith's summer visit to Bath, partly for a holiday, and partly to compile for Newbery (a proprietor of the British Magazine, where theBelles Lettres' essays were appearing) the Life of Richard Nash.' See introductory note, &c., to the Life of Nash' in our vol. iv.

Another point in favour of Goldsmith's authorship is afforded, we are inclined to think, by the remarks upon mathematical studies which will be found in the essay Upon Taste' (p. 327). These, though more temperately expressed than elsewhere, betray Goldsmith's want of liking for mathematics, which appears in many places in his works (see 'Polite Learning,'' Parnell's Life,' &c.), and which is conspicuous likewise in the accounts we have of his school days.

Against the theory of Goldsmith's authorship may be alleged the facts we have mentioned at pp. 325 and 331, that the author of these essays, whoever he was, did not translate the pieces of poetry from the Latin, &c., which he quoted, but instead-except in some instances, perhaps, -borrowed translations from others. Certainly one would think a Goldsmith need not have been a borrower from the Rev. Philip Francis, and others, in the matter of poetry. Yet it will not be safe to count upon this. At the time these Belles Lettres essays were published, 1761-3, Goldsmith had published nothing in poetry-nothing at least that entitled him to be considered a poet; he might well, therefore, have mistrusted his powers in this regard, and so might have borrowed rather than have translated for himself.

And, again, tending against the Goldsmith theory of authorship, is the decidedly unfavourable view of Shakspere we have in the essays on Metaphor and Hyperbole. The estimate of Shakspere in the series of papers on the History of Our Own Language' (given in our

vol. iv.), of which the 'Bee' essay on the 'Augustan Age in England' formed part, is hardly reconcilable with the censure dealt out in the Belles Lettres essays; yet if Goldsmith wrote both he must thus have blown both hot and cold, so to speak, at dates very near each other, i.e., in 1758, the date of the Literary Magazine, wherein appeared the 'Our Own Language' essays, and 1761-2, the date of the Belles Lettres essays. The estimate of Shakspere in the Poetical Scale,' which Prior believed to be Goldsmith's, and which we print in our vol. iv., is also very high, and agrees better with the 'Own Language' estimate than with that of the fifth and sixth of the Belles Lettres' series; as does, we may add, the opinion incidentally given in the review of Murphy's Orphan of China,' 1759 see the Criticisms in our vol. iv. On the other hand it must be confessed that the passage on Shakspere in the chapter on the Stage in the Enquiry into Polite Learning, a work to whose second edition Goldsmith put his name, comes somewhat near to the captiousness of the 'Belles Lettres' passages.

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Looking to style, generally, though there is not much to guide us, we think the first essay, 'Upon Taste,' appears to be fairly like Goldsmith, while the second and following pieces are less so. Perhaps this may indicate a way out of the difficulty as to the authorship which has not yet been touched upon. Goldsmith was very fond of writing prefaces to other authors' performances, as is shown by the collection of Prefaces and Introductions' in our fourth volume. Perhaps the Belles Lettres essays were for the most part by another hand, but were touched up here and there by Goldsmith; and it may have been that this touchingup included the prefacing of the whole with the introductory essay, Upon Taste.' It will be seen that the points mentioned above relative to the "fermentation" simile, the view of mathematics, and the contradictory judgment of Shakspere will all accord with this view,-the view, namely, that Goldsmith wrote the first essay only, though perhaps he had also some hand in the succeeding essays.--ED.

GOLDSMITH'S LETTERS.

[Goldsmith's Letters have come together piecemeal, and are a meagre collection, even when all are told. Very few, too, even of those that have been printed are known to exist in the originals. Indeed, Goldsmith's letters, like his MSS., are among the rarities of the autograph collectors.

·

The first collection made consisted of the letters with which Percy studded his Life' of the poet, 1801. These were mostly part of the narrative of Mrs. Hodson, Goldsmith's sister. The next most considerable addition came as a result of the industry of Sir James Prior and his assistant, Mr. T. Wright, and were first printed in Prior's Life of Goldsmith,' 2 vols., 1837. Both these collections we give in the following pages, together with the few other letters that have accrued from various sources since. Some of the letters are viewed as being "doubtful," for the reasons we have generally indicated in notes.

The Rev. John Mitford, in a note to his 'Life of Goldsmith,' written for the Aldine edition of the poems in 1831, said:" The letters of Goldsmith are so excellent, that it is to be hoped his next biographer will delight us with an increased collection of them;"-and though we are now able to make a better collection than any in existence when, and since, Mr. Mitford wrote, we would gladly still add to those letters that follow.

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It is remarkable that no letters of Goldsmith to Johnson and some others of the more famous of his numerous friends are known to exist. In Johnstone's Memoirs of Dr. Parr' (1828, v. i. p. 489), Archdeacon Leman, writing to the doctor, in 1820, says :—“ Sir William Scott has written to inquire if I had found among my friend's [Bishop Bennett's] papers some letters relating to Goldsmith, and which passed between him and Burke and Johnson and Marley, and were supposed to be in the Bishop's possession. There are none such in England, and I do not recollect ever having heard of such having been in his possession. Can you who were so intimate with the Bishop recollect anything about them?" Mr. Mitford thought this pointed to a possible source of more letters of Goldsmith. But there is no answer following by Dr. Parr, and nothing otherwise seems to have come of Archdeacon Leman's query. Perhaps, however, one reason for the paucity of letters of Goldsmith may be gleaned from what Dr. Grainger said (Nichols's Illustrations,' vii. p. 286):-" When I taxed little Goldsmith with 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.' No doubt many of the poet's letters were appeals for assistance in his never-ending financial difficulties, and these we can imagine as being often suppressed from delicacy of feeling on the part of his friends. One of the few extant, written to Garrick, was endorsed by the latter "Goldsmith's parlaver" (sic: see p. 471), and perhaps its preservation is due to mere accident.

To this collection of the Letters we add the memoranda, receipts, &c. from the Newbery MSS., &c., which were mostly first printed in Prior's 'Life of Goldsmith,' 1837.-ED.]