statements, we may give full credit to the united testimony of many respectable persons, including some of the nearest relations of the poet, but lately gone to their graves, that Oliver Goldsmith, who has been, in the same spirit of error, so often denominated a Doctor, was born within a mile and a half of Ballymahon, on the southern bank of the river Inny, at Pallas, in the parish of Cloncalla, commonly called Forney. The walls of the house are yet standing; the roof fell in but two years ago; it is distinctly visible from the canal between this and Tenelick, and in it, perhaps, rather than on any other spot, even his beloved 'mount before Lissoy gate,' should his monumental pillar be erected. The name of the townland in which this interesting ruin stands is spelled Pallice in our barony books; but those who can feel the charm of classic allusion under such a temptation, will readily pardon the great Antæus of literature, the author of the 'Dictionary of the English Language,' for having once in his lifetime spelled a word erroneously. This evidence, gentlemen, I consider to be conclusive; for Dr. Johnson cannot be supposed to have known that such obscure places as Pallice or Forney existed, except from the lips of the poet himself, who was on the most intimate terms of friendship with him." The same volume of the Gentleman's Magazine' has (vide pp. 444, 448, and 623) further particulars, with poems, &c., on Goldsmith, by the Rev. Mr. Graham. GOLDSMITH'S TUTOR, THE REV. THEAKER WILDER. 6 A few years ago the late Professor De Morgan wrote (Notes and Queries, Sept. 15, 1860) in mitigation of the general censure heaped upon this gentleman as follows:-" There is an instance of the frequent manner in which Goldsmith managed to be more sensible in his writings than in his life or his conversation which, I think, deserves a note. His tutor, it is stated, was a Mr. Wilder. This must have been the Rev. Theaker Wilder (afterwards D.D.), who was a Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1769, when he published an edition of Newton's 'Universal Arithmetic.' His predecessor in teaching mathematics in the College was, as he informs us, a Mr. Maguire; but the tradition is that Wilder was the teacher of Goldsmith, who was at college from 1744 to 1749. Goldsmith, as we know, threw snatches of his own life into the mouths of any of his characters whom he put forward as narrators of their own youthful career. One marked instance is the Vicar of Wakefield's son; another is the over-benevolent man who relates his own history in Letter XXVII. of the Citizen of the World.' This narrator, whose earlier life is Goldsmith's in most of the facts, mentioning his father's disappointment at his college failures, speaks as follows: "His disappointment might be partly ascribed to his having overrated my talents, and partly to my dislike of mathematical reasonings at a time when my imagination and memory, yet unsatisfied, were more eager after new objects, than desirous of reasoning upon those I knew.' "Here is the plain and discriminating account of a man who in after life came to understand the causes of his own earlier likes and dislikes ; and the account, short as it is, contains useful matter for thought. Í believe it may be added that fond as Goldsmith is of making his young characters repeat his own life, he does not in any one case make them give any account of unkind usage received from college tutors. If there were anything of the sort which dwelt on his mind, it is most probable that his writings contain allusions to it." Professor De Morgan concluded by asking if there were any such allusions; and to his query there was no response whatever.-ED. THE PORTRAITS OF GOLDSMITH. (See 'Life,' p. 42.) Of Oliver Goldsmith we may be said to have two portraits, viz., that by Sir Joshua Reynolds-the well-known wig-less profile portrait which has been engraved times out of number-and the sketch portrait by Henry Bunbury (Geoffrey Gambado). Reynolds's portrait was painted about 1768-70, and it, no doubt, was the work from which the "mezzotinto prints "were taken of which Goldsmith himself speaks in his letter to his brother Maurice, Jan., 1770: see the Letters at the end of this volume. The original is in the Knole Park collection (the Earl of Amherst's). A copy was made by Sir Joshua for Mr. Thrale's famous library adornments at Streatham; and when that collection was sold by auction the copy was bought for £133 by the Duke of Bedford (though the original had been painted by Sir Joshua for thirty-six guineas in 1770-or at least that was his price for such portraits at that time: vide W. Cotton), and went to enrich the Woburn collection. Another copy, it would seem, was also made by Sir Joshua; for the Rev. R. H. Newell, when he waited on Mr. Oliver Goldsmith Hodson, of St. John's, Roscommon, the grand-nephew of Goldsmith, was told by that gentleman that he possessed "the original portrait by Reynolds" (vide Newell's Remarks on the Actual Scene of the Deserted Village,' &c., 1811). The picture in the National Portrait Gallery is another copy of the Reynolds portrait, "by," as Mr. Scharf tells us, a pupil of Sir Joshua Reynolds. portrait formerly belonged to Goldsmith himself. It was purchased from Mr. R. H. Boyce in 1861. The most notable engravings of the Reynolds portrait are, according to Mr. W. Cotton (Catalogue of Sir Joshua Reynolds's Portraits, 1857), that by G. Marchi (the Italian pupil of Sir Joshua, who engraved the first mezzotint, and who, probably, was the "pupil" who painted the National Portrait Gallery copy), and S. W. Reynolds, the master of Cousins. Reynolds's portrait is considered good, but rather flattering. Bunbury's, which was engraved (by Bretherton) for and published with the first edition of the Haunch of Venison,' 1776, is considered a better likeness, though the features are somewhat caricatured. Bunbury was the husband of "Little Comedy" (Miss Catherine Horneck): see p. 32, antè, vol. ii., pp. 94, 106, &c. A third portrait has lately been discovered, but this must at present 66 This be viewed as being of but doubtful authenticity. Its owner described it in Notes and Queries, Sept. 22 and Dec. 1, 1860, as portraying a gentleman decidedly like Goldsmith, "in a fantastic dress, playing the flute. He wears a handsome scarlet robe, or roquelaire; and a fur cap, with gilt tassel, on his head." It is added that "the style of the colouring resembles that of Sir Joshua Reynolds." Nothing more seems to be known of this portrait. There is no picture of the kind included in the lists of Reynolds's works. The peculiarities of the flute and red roquelaire (the physician's red cloak which Goldsmith is said sometimes to have worn) of course favour the idea that this portrait is meant for the poet; but then it may be merely a fancy sketch. To the above, however, should be added some mention of Nollekens' medallion portrait, on the monument in Westminster Abbey. Though no doubt in the main a study of Reynolds's picture, this is considered a good likeness.- ED. Horace Walpole's saying that Goldsmith was an "inspired idiot," is almost as well known as the Monument on Fish-Street Hill, yet it may not be a fact quite so demonstrable. Mr. Forster quotes the saying, and gives as a reference Davies's Life of Garrick,' vol. ii., p. 152; but he omits to say that neither the second edition, 1780, nor the enlarged edition, 1808, of Davies's book has the remark. It certainly will be found in the third and fourth editions, dated 1781 and 1784 respectively; but why was the passage afterwards cut out? Perhaps the following will help us to the reason. Davies died in 1785, the year after the publication of his fourth edition; and Walpole survived till 1797. As the paragraph containing Walpole's remark does not appear in the 1808 edition, may it not have been struck out by Davies himself, and that, perhaps, upon Walpole's own disavowal of it? Often as the "inspired idiot" quotation is made, we have never yet seen Walpole's chapter and verse given for it. In his 'Letters' we find Walpole saying (addressing Mason, Oct. 8, 1776): "Goldsmith was an idiot, with once or twice a fit of parts." Previously, in the same collection, we find (April 27, 1773): "I have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith; though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts," &c. Later the same year, in an account of a dinner at Beauclerc's, where he met Goldsmith, Walpole says: "Goldsmith is a fool, the more wear[y]ing for some sense. And again, in a letter dated April 7, 1774, he comments upon Goldsmith's death thus: "The poor soul had sometimes parts, though never common-sense." These utterances of course give somewhat the same meaning, but neither can be said to be the epigram in common circulation. It may be, indeed, that Walpole's bad repute as a sayer of ill-natured things has in this case done him—as well as Goldsmith-an injustice.-ED. DR. JOHNSON AND GOLDSMITH. (See 'Life,' p. 58.) Dr. Johnson's omission of Goldsmith from his 'Lives of the English Poets,' the first edition of which appeared 1779-81, has been sometimes remarked upon as singular; but Malone has very effectually explained the omission, in a note to Boswell's Johnson' (Bohn's edition, vol. vi., p. 250) as follows: "Dr. Johnson was not the editor of this collection of the English Poets; he merely furnished the biographical prefaces with which it is enriched, as is rightly stated in a subsequent page [Boswell, vol. viii., pp. 1, 2, &c]. He, indeed, from a virtuous motive, recommended the works of four or five poets, whom he has named [in his 'Life of Isaac Watts:' they were Watts, Blackmore, Pomfret, and Yalden], to be added to the collection; but he is no otherwise answerable for any which are found there, or any which are omitted. The poems of Goldsmith (whose life I know he intended to write, for I collected some materials for it by his desire) were omitted in consequence of a petty exclusive interest in some of them vested in Mr. Carnan, a bookseller." Carnan was the partner of Francis Newbery when the letter succeeded to the St. Paul's Church-yard business of his uncle, John Newbery.-ED. |