Goldsmith Part 2

When Goldsmith was writing those letters in the _Public Ledger_--with "pleasure and instruction for others," Mr. Forster says, "though at the cost of suffering to himself"--he was receiving for them alone what would be equivalent in our day to 200 a year. No man can affirm that 200 a year is not amply sufficient for all the material wants of life. Of course there are fine things in the world that that amount of annual wage cannot purchase. It is a fine thing to sit on the deck of a yacht on a summer's day, and watch the far islands s.h.i.+ning over the blue; it is a fine thing to drive four-in-hand to Ascot--if you can do it; it is a fine thing to cower breathless behind a rock and find a splendid stag coming slowly within sure range. But these things are not necessary to human happiness: it is possible to do without them and yet not "suffer." Even if Goldsmith had given half of his substance away to the poor, there was enough left to cover all the necessary wants of a human being; and if he chose so to order his affairs as to incur the suffering of debt, why, that was his own business, about which nothing further needs be said. It is to be suspected, indeed, that he did not care to practise those excellent maxims of prudence and frugality which he frequently preached; but the world is not much concerned about that now. If Goldsmith had received ten times as much money as the booksellers gave him, he would still have died in debt. And it is just possible that we may exaggerate Goldsmith's sensitiveness on this score. He had had a life-long familiarity with duns and borrowing; and seemed very contented when the exigency of the hour was tided over. An angry landlady is unpleasant, and an arrest is awkward; but in comes an opportune guinea, and the bottle of Madeira is opened forthwith.

In these rooms in Wine Office Court, and at the suggestion or entreaty of Newbery, Goldsmith produced a good deal of miscellaneous writing--pamphlets, tracts, compilations, and what not--of a more or less marketable kind. It can only be surmised that by this time he may have formed some idea of producing a book not solely meant for the market, and that the characters in the _Vicar of Wakefield_ were already engaging his attention; but the surmise becomes probable enough when we remember that his project of writing the _Traveller_, which was not published till 1764, had been formed as far back as 1755, while he was wandering aimlessly about Europe, and that a sketch of the poem was actually forwarded by him then to his brother Henry in Ireland. But in the meantime this hack-work, and the habits of life connected with it, began to tell on Goldsmith's health; and so, for a time, he left London (1762), and went to Tunbridge and then to Bath.

It is scarcely possible that his modest fame had preceded him to the latter place of fas.h.i.+on; but it may be that the distinguished folk of the town received this friend of the great Dr. Johnson with some small measure of distinction; for we find that his next published work, _The Life of Richard Nash, Esq._, is respectfully dedicated to the Right Wors.h.i.+pful the Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of Bath. The Life of the recently deceased Master of Ceremonies was published anonymously (1762); but it was generally understood to be Goldsmith's; and indeed the secret of the authors.h.i.+p is revealed in every successive line. Among the minor writings of Goldsmith there is none more delightful than this: the mock-heroic gravity, the half-familiar contemptuous good-nature with which he composes this Funeral March of a Marionette, are extremely whimsical and amusing.

And then what an admirable picture we get of fas.h.i.+onable English society in the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Bath and Nash were alike in the heyday of their glory--the fine ladies with their snuff-boxes, and their pa.s.sion for play, and their extremely effective language when they got angry; young bucks come to flourish away their money, and gain by their losses the sympathy of the fair; sharpers on the look-out for guineas, and adventurers on the look-out for weak-minded heiresses; d.u.c.h.esses writing letters in the most doubtful English, and chair-men swearing at any one who dared to walk home on foot at night.

No doubt the _Life of Beau Nash_ was a bookseller's book; and it was made as attractive as possible by the recapitulation of all sorts of romantic stories about Miss S----n, and Mr. C----e, and Captain K----g; but throughout we find the historian very much inclined to laugh at his hero, and only refraining now and again in order to record in serious language traits indicative of the real goodness of disposition of that fop and gambler. And the fine ladies and gentlemen, who lived in that atmosphere of scandal, and intrigue, and gambling, are also from time to time treated to a little decorous and respectful raillery. Who does not remember the famous laws of polite breeding written out by Mr. Nash--Goldsmith hints that neither Mr.

Nash nor his fair correspondent at Blenheim, the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, excelled in English composition--for the guidance of the ladies and gentlemen who were under the sway of the King of Bath? "But were we to give laws to a nursery, we should make them childish laws," Goldsmith writes gravely. "His statutes, though stupid, were addressed to fine gentlemen and ladies, and were probably received with sympathetic approbation. It is certain they were in general religiously observed by his subjects, and executed by him with impartiality; neither rank nor fortune s.h.i.+elded the refractory from his resentment." Nash, however, was not content with prose in enforcing good manners. Having waged deadly war against the custom of wearing boots, and having found his ordinary armoury of no avail against the obduracy of the country squires, he a.s.sailed them in the impa.s.sioned language of poetry, and produced the following "Invitation to the a.s.sembly," which, as Goldsmith remarks, was highly relished by the n.o.bility at Bath on account of its keenness, severity, and particularly its good rhymes.

"Come, one and all, to Hoyden Hall, For there's the a.s.sembly this night; None but prude fools Mind manners and rules; We Hoydens do decency slight.

Come, trollops and slatterns, c.o.c.ked hats and white ap.r.o.ns, This best our modesty suits; For why should not we In dress be as free As Hogs-Norton squires in boots?"

The sarcasm was too much for the squires, who yielded in a body; and when any stranger through inadvertence presented himself in the a.s.sembly-rooms in boots, Nash was so completely master of the situation that he would politely step up to the intruder and suggest that he had forgotten his horse.

Goldsmith does not magnify the intellectual capacity of his hero; but he gives him credit for a sort of rude wit that was sometimes effective enough. His physician, for example, having called on him to see whether he had followed a prescription that had been sent him the previous day, was greeted in this fas.h.i.+on: "Followed your prescription? No. Egad, if I had, I should have broken my neck, for I flung it out of the two pair of stairs window." For the rest, this diverting biography contains some excellent warnings against the vice of gambling; with a particular account of the manner in which the Government of the day tried by statute after statute to suppress the tables at Tunbridge and Bath, thereby only driving the sharpers to new subterfuges. That the Beau was in alliance with sharpers, or, at least, that he was a sleeping partner in the firm, his biographer admits; but it is urged on his behalf that he was the most generous of winners, and again and again interfered to prevent the ruin of some gambler by whose folly he would himself have profited. His constant charity was well known; the money so lightly come by was at the disposal of any one who could prefer a piteous tale. Moreover he made no scruple about exacting from others that charity which they could well afford. One may easily guess who was the d.u.c.h.ess mentioned in the following story of Goldsmith's narration:--

"The sums he gave and collected for the Hospital were great, and his manner of doing it was no less admirable. I am told that he was once collecting money in Wilts.h.i.+re's room for that purpose, when a lady entered, who is more remarkable for her wit than her charity, and not being able to pa.s.s by him un.o.bserved, she gave him a pat with her fan, and said, 'You must put down a trifle for me, Nash, for I have no money in my pocket.' 'Yes, madam,' says he, 'that I will with pleasure, if your grace will tell me when to stop;'

then taking an handful of guineas out of his pocket, he began to tell them into his white hat--' One, two, three, four, five ----' 'Hold, hold!' says the d.u.c.h.ess, 'consider what you are about.' 'Consider your rank and fortune, madam,' says Nash, and continues telling--'six, seven, eight, nine, ten.' Here the d.u.c.h.ess called again, and seemed angry. 'Pray compose yourself, madam,' cried Nash, 'and don't interrupt the work of charity,--eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.' Here the d.u.c.h.ess stormed, and caught hold of his hand. 'Peace, madam,' says Nash, 'you shall have your name written in letters of gold, madam, and upon the front of the building, madam,--sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.' 'I won't pay a farthing more,'

says the d.u.c.h.ess. 'Charity hides a mult.i.tude of sins,'

replies Nash,--'twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five.' 'Nash,' says she, 'I protest you frighten me out of my wits. L--d, I shall die!' 'Madam, you will never die with doing good; and if you do, it will be the better for you,' answered Nash, and was about to proceed; but perceiving her grace had lost all patience, a parley ensued, when he, after much altercation, agreed to stop his hand and compound with her grace for thirty guineas. The d.u.c.h.ess, however, seemed displeased the whole evening, and when he came to the table where she was playing, bid him, 'Stand farther, an ugly devil, for she hated the sight of him.' But her grace afterwards having a run of good luck, called Nash to her. 'Come,' says she, 'I will be friends with you, though you are a fool; and to let you see I am not angry, there is ten guineas more for your charity. But this I insist on, that neither my name nor the sum shall be mentioned.'"

At the ripe age of eighty-seven the "beau of three generations"

breathed his last (1761); and, though he had fallen into poor ways, there were those alive who remembered his former greatness, and who chronicled it in a series of epitaphs and poetical lamentations. "One thing is common almost with all of them," says Goldsmith, "and that is that Venus, Cupid, and the Graces are commanded to weep, and that Bath shall never find such another." These effusions are forgotten now; and so would Beau Nash be also, but for this biography, which, no doubt meant merely for the book-market of the day, lives and is of permanent value by reason of the charm of its style, its pervading humour, and the vivacity of its descriptions of the fas.h.i.+onable follies of the eighteenth century. _Nullum fere genus scribendi non tetigit. Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit._ Who but Goldsmith could have written so delightful a book about such a poor creature as Beau Nash?

CHAPTER VIII.

The Arrest.

It was no doubt owing to Newbery that Goldsmith, after his return to London, was induced to abandon, temporarily or altogether, his apartments in Wine Office Court, and take lodgings in the house of a Mrs. Fleming, who lived somewhere or other in Islington. Newbery had rooms in Canonbury House, a curious old building that still exists; and it may have occurred to the publisher that Goldsmith, in this suburban district, would not only be nearer him for consultation and so forth, but also might pay more attention to his duties than when he was among the temptations of Fleet Street. Goldsmith was working industriously in the service of Newbery at this time (1763-4); in fact, so completely was the bookseller in possession of the hack, that Goldsmith's board and lodging in Mrs. Fleming's house, arranged for at 50 a year, was paid by Newbery himself. Writing prefaces, revising new editions, contributing reviews--this was the sort of work he undertook, with more or less content, as the equivalent of the modest sums Mr. Newbery disbursed for him or handed over as pocket-money. In the midst of all this drudgery he was now secretly engaged on work that aimed at something higher than mere payment of bed and board.

The smooth lines of the _Traveller_ were receiving further polish; the gentle-natured _Vicar_ was writing his simple, quaint, tender story.

And no doubt Goldsmith was spurred to try something better than hack-work by the a.s.sociations that he was now forming, chiefly under the wise and benevolent friends.h.i.+p of Johnson.

Anxious always to be thought well of, he was now beginning to meet people whose approval was worthy of being sought. He had been introduced to Reynolds. He had become the friend of Hogarth. He had even made the acquaintance of Mr. Boswell, from Scotland. Moreover, he had been invited to become one of the original members of the famous Club of which so much has been written; his fellow-members being Reynolds, Johnson, Burke, Hawkins, Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, and Dr.

Nugent. It is almost certain that it was at Johnson's instigation that he had been admitted into this choice fellows.h.i.+p. Long before either the _Traveller_ or the _Vicar_ had been heard of, Johnson had perceived the literary genius that obscurely burned in the uncouth figure of this Irishman; and was anxious to impress on others Goldsmith's claims to respect and consideration. In the minute record kept by Boswell of his first evening with Johnson at the Mitre Tavern, we find Johnson saying, "Dr. Goldsmith is one of the first men we now have as an author, and he is a very worthy man too. He has been loose in his principles, but he is coming right." Johnson took walks with Goldsmith; did him the honour of disputing with him on all occasions; bought a copy of the _Life of Nash_ when it appeared--an unusual compliment for one author to pay another, in their day or in ours; allowed him to call on Miss Williams, the blind old lady in Bolt Court; and generally was his friend, counsellor, and champion.

Accordingly, when Mr. Boswell entertained the great Cham to supper at the Mitre--a sudden quarrel with his landlord having made it impossible for him to order the banquet at his own house--he was careful to have Dr. Goldsmith of the company. His guests that evening were Johnson, Goldsmith, Davies (the actor and bookseller who had conferred on Boswell the invaluable favour of an introduction to Johnson), Mr. Eccles, and the Rev. Mr. Ogilvie, a Scotch poet who deserves our grat.i.tude because it was his inopportune patriotism that provoked, on this very evening, the memorable epigram about the high-road leading to England. "Goldsmith," says Boswell, who had not got over his envy at Goldsmith's being allowed to visit the blind old pensioner in Bolt-court, "as usual, endeavoured with too much eagerness to _s.h.i.+ne_, and disputed very warmly with Johnson against the well-known maxim of the British const.i.tution, 'The king can do no wrong.'" It was a dispute not so much about facts as about phraseology; and, indeed, there seems to be no great warmth in the expressions used on either side. Goldsmith affirmed that "what was morally false could not be politically true;" and that, in short, the king could by the misuse of his regal power do wrong. Johnson replied, that, in such a case, the immediate agents of the king were the persons to be tried and punished for the offence. "The king, though he should command, cannot force a judge to condemn a man unjustly; therefore it is the judge whom we prosecute and punish." But when he stated that the king "is above everything, and there is no power by which he can be tried," he was surely forgetting an important chapter in English history. "What did Cromwell do for his country?" he himself asked, during his subsequent visit to Scotland, of old Auchinleck, Boswell's father. "G.o.d, Doctor," replied the vile Whig, "_he garred kings ken they had a lith in their necks_."

For some time after this evening Goldsmith drops out of Boswell's famous memoir; perhaps the compiler was not anxious to give him too much prominence. They had not liked each other from the outset.

Boswell, vexed by the greater intimacy of Goldsmith with Johnson, called him a blunderer, a feather-brained person; and described his appearance in no flattering terms. Goldsmith, on the other hand, on being asked who was this Scotch cur that followed Johnson's heels, answered, "He is not a cur: you are too severe--he is only a bur. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of sticking." Boswell would probably have been more tolerant of Goldsmith as a rival, if he could have known that on a future day he was to have Johnson all to himself--to carry him to remote wilds and exhibit him as a portentous literary phenomenon to Highland lairds. It is true that Johnson, at an early period of his acquaintance with Boswell, did talk vaguely about a trip to the Hebrides; but the young Scotch idolater thought it was all too good to be true. The mention of Sir James Macdonald, says Boswell, "led us to talk of the Western Islands of Scotland, to visit which he expressed a wish that then appeared to me a very romantic fancy, which I little thought would be afterwards realised. He told me that his father had put Martin's account of those islands into his hands when he was very young, and that he was highly pleased with it; that he was particularly struck with the St.

Kilda man's notion that the high church of Glasgow had been hollowed out of a rock; a circ.u.mstance to which old Mr. Johnson had directed his attention." Unfortunately Goldsmith not only disappears from the pages of Boswell's biography at this time, but also in great measure from the ken of his companions. He was deeply in debt; no doubt the fine clothes he had been ordering from Mr. Filby in order that he might "s.h.i.+ne" among those notable persons, had something to do with it; he had tried the patience of the booksellers; and he had been devoting a good deal of time to work not intended to elicit immediate payment. The most patient endeavours to trace out his changes of lodgings, and the fugitive writings that kept him in daily bread, have not been very successful. It is to be presumed that Goldsmith had occasionally to go into hiding to escape from his creditors; and so was missed from his familiar haunts. We only reach daylight again, to find Goldsmith being under threat of arrest from his landlady; and for the particulars of this famous affair it is necessary to return to Boswell.

Boswell was not in London at that time; but his account was taken down subsequently from Johnson's narration; and his accuracy in other matters, his extraordinary memory, and scrupulous care, leave no doubt in the mind that his version of the story is to be preferred to those of Mrs. Piozzi and Sir John Hawkins. We may take it that these are Johnson's own words:-- "I received one morning a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent pa.s.sion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a gla.s.s before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for 60. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill."

We do not know who this landlady was--it cannot now be made out whether the incident occurred at Islington, or in the rooms that Goldsmith partially occupied in the Temple; but even if Mrs. Fleming be the landlady in question, she was deserving neither of Goldsmith's rating nor of the reprimands that have been bestowed upon her by later writers. Mrs. Fleming had been exceedingly kind to Goldsmith. Again and again in her bills we find items significantly marked 0 0_s._ 0_d._ And if her accounts with her lodger did get hopelessly into arrear; and if she was annoyed by seeing him go out in fine clothes to sup at the Mitre; and if, at length, her patience gave way, and she determined to have her rights in one way or another, she was no worse than landladies--who are only human beings, and not divinely appointed protectresses of genius--ordinarily are. Mrs. Piozzi says that when Johnson came back with the money, Goldsmith "called the woman of the house directly to partake of punch, and pa.s.s their time in merriment."

This would be a dramatic touch; but, after Johnson's quietly corking the bottle of Madeira, it is more likely that no such thing occurred; especially as Boswell quotes the statement as an "extreme inaccuracy."

The novel which Johnson had taken away and sold to Francis Newbery, a nephew of the elder bookseller, was, as every one knows, the _Vicar of Wakefield_. That Goldsmith, amidst all his pecuniary distresses, should have retained this piece in his desk, instead of p.a.w.ning or promising it to one of his bookselling patrons, points to but one conclusion--that he was building high hopes on it, and was determined to make it as good as lay within his power. Goldsmith put an anxious finish into all his better work; perhaps that is the secret of the graceful ease that is now apparent in every line. Any young writer who may imagine that the power of clear and concise literary expression comes by nature, cannot do better than study, in Mr. Cunningham's big collection of Goldsmith's writings, the continual and minute alterations which the author considered necessary even after the first edition--sometimes when the second and third editions--had been published. Many of these, especially in the poetical works, were merely improvements in sound as suggested by a singularly sensitive ear, as when he altered the line

"Amidst the ruin, heedless of the dead,"

which had appeared in the first three editions of the _Traveller_, into

"There in the ruin, heedless of the dead,"

which appeared in the fourth. But the majority of the omissions and corrections were prompted by a careful taste, that abhorred everything redundant or slovenly. It has been suggested that when Johnson carried off the _Vicar of Wakefield_ to Francis Newbery, the ma.n.u.script was not quite finished, but had to be completed afterwards. There was at least plenty of time for that. Newbery does not appear to have imagined that he had obtained a prize in the lottery of literature. He paid the 60 for it--clearly on the a.s.surance of the great father of learning of the day, that there was merit in the little story--somewhere about the end of 1764; but the tale was not issued to the public until March, 1766. "And, sir," remarked Johnson to Boswell, with regard to the sixty pounds, "a sufficient price too, when it was sold; for then the fame of Goldsmith had not been elevated, as it afterwards was, by his _Traveller_; and the bookseller had such faint hopes of profit by his bargain, that he kept the ma.n.u.script by him a long time, and did not publish it till after the _Traveller_ had appeared. Then, to be sure, it was accidentally worth more money."

CHAPTER IX.

THE TRAVELLER.

This poem of the _Traveller_, the fruit of much secret labour and the consummation of the hopes of many years, was lying completed in Goldsmith's desk when the incident of the arrest occurred; and the elder Newbery had undertaken to publish it. Then, as at other times, Johnson lent this wayward child of genius a friendly hand. He read over the proof-sheets for Goldsmith; was so kind as to put in a line here or there where he thought fit; and prepared a notice of the poem for the _Critical Review_. The time for the appearance of this new claimant for poetical honours was propitious. "There was perhaps no point in the century," says Professor Ma.s.son, "when the British Muse, such as she had come to be, was doing less, or had so nearly ceased to do anything, or to have any good opinion of herself, as precisely about the year 1764. Young was dying; Gray was recluse and indolent; Johnson had long given over his metrical experimentations on any except the most inconsiderable scale; Akenside, Armstrong, Smollett, and others less known, had pretty well revealed the amount of their worth in poetry; and Churchill, after his ferocious blaze of what was really rage and declamation in metre, though conventionally it was called poetry, was prematurely defunct. Into this lull came Goldsmith's short but carefully finished poem." "There has not been so fine a poem since Pope's time," remarked Johnson to Boswell, on the very first evening after the return of young Auchinleck to London. It would have been no matter for surprise had Goldsmith dedicated this first work that he published under his own name to Johnson, who had for so long been his constant friend and adviser; and such a dedication would have carried weight in certain quarters. But there was a finer touch in Goldsmith's thought of inscribing the book to his brother Henry; and no doubt the public were surprised and pleased to find a poor devil of an author dedicating a work to an Irish parson with 40 a year, from whom he could not well expect any return. It will be remembered that it was to this brother Henry that Goldsmith, ten years before, had sent the first sketch of the poem; and now the wanderer,

"Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow."

declares how his heart untravelled

"Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain, And drags at each remove a lengthening chain."

The very first line of the poem strikes a key-note--there is in it a pathetic thrill of distance, and regret, and longing; and it has the soft musical sound that pervades the whole composition. It is exceedingly interesting to note, as has already been mentioned, how Goldsmith altered and altered these lines until he had got them full of gentle vowel sounds. Where, indeed, in the English language could one find more graceful melody than this?--

"The naked negro, panting at the line, Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine, Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave, And thanks his G.o.ds for all the good they gave."

It has been observed also that Goldsmith was the first to introduce into English poetry sonorous American--or rather Indian--names, as when he writes in this poem,

"Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around, And Niagara stuns with thundering sound,"

--and if it be charged against him that he ought to have known the proper accentuation of Niagara, it may be mentioned as a set-off that Sir Walter Scott, in dealing with his own country, mis-accentuated "Glenaladale," to say nothing of his having made of Roseneath an island. Another characteristic of the _Traveller_ is the extraordinary choiceness and conciseness of the diction, which, instead of suggesting pedantry or affectation, betrays on the contrary nothing but a delightful ease and grace.

The English people are very fond of good English; and thus it is that couplets from the _Traveller_ and the _Deserted Village_ have come into the common stock of our language, and that sometimes not so much on account of the ideas they convey, as through their singular precision of epithet and musical sound. It is enough to make the angels weep, to find such a couplet as this--

"Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose, b.r.e.a.s.t.s the keen air, and carols as he goes,"

murdered in several editions of Goldsmith's works by the subst.i.tution of the commonplace "breathes" for "b.r.e.a.s.t.s"--and that, after Johnson had drawn particular attention to the line by quoting it in his Dictionary. Perhaps, indeed, it may be admitted that the literary charm of the _Traveller_ is more apparent than the value of any doctrine, however profound or ingenious, which the poem was supposed to inculcate. We forget all about the "particular principle of happiness" possessed by each European state, in listening to the melody of the singer, and in watching the successive and delightful pictures that he calls up before the imagination.

"As in those domes where Caesars once bore sway, Defaced by time, and tottering in decay, There in the ruin, heedless of the dead, The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed; And, wondering man could want the larger pile, Exults, and owns his cottage with a smile."

Then notice the blaze of patriotic idealism that bursts forth when he comes to talk of England. What sort of England had he been familiar with when he was consorting with the meanest wretches--the poverty stricken, the sick, and squalid--in those Fleet-Street dens? But it is an England of bright streams and s.p.a.cious lawns of which he writes; and as for the people who inhabit the favoured land--

"Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state, With daring aims irregularly great; Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of human kind pa.s.s by."

"Whenever I write anything," Goldsmith had said, with a humorous exaggeration which Boswell, as usual, takes _au serieux_, "the public _make a point_ to know nothing about it." But we have Johnson's testimony to the fact that the _Traveller_ "brought him into high reputation." No wonder. When the great Cham declares it to be the finest poem published since the time of Pope, we are irresistibly forced to think of the _Essay on Man_. What a contrast there is between that tedious and stilted effort, and this clear burst of bird-song! The _Traveller_, however, did not immediately become popular. It was largely talked about, naturally, among Goldsmith's friends; and Johnson would scarcely suffer any criticism of it. At a dinner given long afterwards at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, and fully reported by the invaluable Boswell, Reynolds remarked, "I was glad to hear Charles Fox say it was one of the finest poems in the English language." "Why were you glad?" said Langton. "You surely had no doubt of this before?" Hereupon Johnson struck in: "No; the merit of the _Traveller_ is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it." And he went on to say--Goldsmith having died and got beyond the reach of all critics and creditors some three or four years before this time "Goldsmith was a man who, whatever he wrote, did it better than any other man could do.

He deserved a place in Westminster Abbey; and every year he lived would have deserved it better."