[742] See ante, i. 498.
[743] See ante, ii. 61, 335; iii. 375, and post, under Nov. 11.
[744] Beattie had attacked Hume in his Essay on Truth (ante, ii. 201 and v. 29). Reynolds this autumn had painted Beattie in his gown of an Oxford Doctor of Civil Law, with his Essay under his arm. 'The angel of Truth is going before him, and beating down the Vices, Envy, Falsehood, &c., which are represented by a group of figures falling at his approach, and the principal head in this group is made an exact likeness of Voltaire. When Dr. Goldsmith saw this picture, he was very indignant at it, and said:—"It very ill becomes a man of your eminence and character, Sir Joshua, to condescend to be a mean flatterer, or to wish to degrade so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as Dr. Beattie; for Dr. Beattie and his book together will, in the space of ten years, not be known ever to have been in existence, but your allegorical picture and the fame of Voltaire will live for ever to your disgrace as a flatterer."' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 300. Another of the figures was commonly said to be a portrait of Hume; but Forbes (Life of Beattie, ed. 1824, p. 158) says he had reason to believe that Sir Joshua had no thought either of Hume or Voltaire. Beattie's Essay is so much a thing of the past that Dr. J. H. Burton does not, I believe, take the trouble ever to mention it in his Life of Hume. Burns did not hold with Goldsmith, for he took Beattie's side:—
|
'Hence sweet harmonious Beattie sung His Minstrel lays; Or tore, with noble ardour stung, The Sceptic's bays.' |
(The Vision, part ii.)
[745] See ante, ii. 441.
[746] William Tytler published in 1759 an Examination of the Histories of Dr. Robertson and Mr. Hume with respect to Mary Queen of Scots. It was reviewed by Johnson. Ante, i. 354.
[747] Johnson's Rasselas was published in either March or April, and Goldsmith's Polite Learning in April of 1759.I do not find that they published any other works at the same time. If these are the works meant, we have a proof that the two writers knew each other earlier than was otherwise known.
[748] 'A learned prelate accidentally met Bentley in the days of Phalaris; and after having complimented him on that noble piece of criticism (the Answer to the Oxford Writers) he bad him not be discouraged at this run upon him, for tho' they had got the laughers on their side, yet mere wit and raillery could not long hold out against a work of so much merit. To which the other replied, "Indeed Dr. S. [Sprat], I am in no pain about the matter. For I hold it as certain, that no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself."' Warburton on Pope, iv. 159, quoted in Person's Tracts, p. 345. 'Against personal abuse,' says Hawkins (Life, p. 348), 'Johnson was ever armed by a reflection that I have heard him utter:—"Alas! reputation would be of little worth, were it in the power of every concealed enemy to deprive us of it."' He wrote to Baretti:—'A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.' Ante, i. 381. Voltaire in his Essay Sur les inconvéniens attachés à la Littérature (Works, ed. 1819, xliii. 173), after describing all that an author does to win the favour of the critics, continues:—'Tous vos soins n'empêchent pas que quelque journaliste ne vous déchire. Vous lui répondez; il réplique; vous avez un procès par écrit devant le public, qui condamne les deux parties au ridicule.' See ante, ii. 61, note 4.
[749] However advantageous attacks may be, the feelings with which they are regarded by authors are better described by Fielding when he says:—'Nor shall we conclude the injury done this way to be very slight, when we consider a book as the author's offspring, and indeed as the child of his brain. The reader who hath suffered his muse to continue hitherto in a virgin state can have but a very inadequate idea of this kind of paternal fondness. To such we may parody the tender exclamation of Macduff, "Alas! thou hast written no book."' Tom Jones, bk. xi. ch. 1.