The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith

by Oliver Goldsmith

He had still, however, to conquer the public. The Bee, although it contains one of his most characteristic essays (‘A City Night-Piece’), and some of the most popular of his lighter verses (‘The Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize’), never attained the circulation essential to healthy existence. It closed with its eighth number in November, 1759. In the following month two gentlemen called at Green Arbour Court to enlist the services of its author. One was Smollett, with a new serial, The British Magazine; the other was Johnson’s ‘Jack Whirler,’ bustling Mr. John Newbery from the ‘Bible and Sun’ in St. Paul’s Churchyard, with a new daily newspaper, The Public Ledger. For Smollett, Goldsmith wrote the ‘Reverie at the Boar’s Head Tavern’ and the ‘Adventures of a Strolling Player,’ besides a number of minor papers. For Newbery, by a happy recollection of the Lettres Persanes of Montesquieu, or some of his imitators, he struck almost at once into that charming epistolary series, brimful of fine observation, kindly satire, and various fancy, which was ultimately to become the English classic known as The Citizen of the World. He continued to produce these letters periodically until the August of the following year, when they were announced for republication in ‘two volumes of the usual Spectator size.’ In this form they appeared in May, 1762.

But long before this date a change for the better had taken place in Goldsmith’s life. Henceforth he was sure of work,—mere journey-work though much of it must have been;—and, had his nature been less improvident, of freedom from absolute want. The humble lodgings in the Old Bailey were discarded for new premises at No. 6 Wine Office Court, Fleet Street; and here, on the 31st of May, 1761, with Percy, came one whose name was often in the future to be associated with Goldsmith’s, the great Dictator of London literary society, Samuel Johnson. Boswell, who made Johnson’s acquaintance later, has not recorded the humours of that supper; but it marks the beginning of Goldsmith’s friendship with the man who of all others (Reynolds excepted) loved him most and understood him best.

During the remainder of 1761 he continued busily to ply his pen. Besides his contributions to The Ledger and The British Magazine, he edited The Lady’s Magazine, inserting in it the Memoirs of Voltaire, drawn up some time earlier to accompany a translation of the Henriade by his crony and compatriot Edward Purdon. Towards the beginning of 1762 he was hard at work on several compilations for Newbery, for whom he wrote or edited a History of Mecklenburgh, and a series of monthly volumes of an abridgement of Plutarch’s Lives. In October of the same year was published the Life of Richard Nash, apparently the outcome of special holiday-visits to the then fashionable watering-place of Bath, whence its fantastic old Master of the Ceremonies had only very lately made his final exit. It is a pleasantly gossiping, and not unedifying little book, which still holds a respectable place among its author’s minor works. But a recently discovered entry in an old ledger shows that during the latter half of 1762 he must have planned, if he had not, indeed, already in part composed, a far more important effort, The Vicar of Wakefield. For on the 28th of October in this year he sold to one Benjamin Collins, printer, of Salisbury, for 21 pounds, a third in a work with that title, further described as ‘2 vols. 12mo.’ How this little circumstance, discovered by Mr. Charles Welsh when preparing his Life of John Newbery, is to be brought into agreement with the time-honoured story, related (with variations) by Boswell and others, to the effect that Johnson negotiated the sale of the manuscript for Goldsmith when the latter was arrested for rent by his incensed landlady—has not yet been satisfactorily suggested. Possibly the solution is a simple one, referable to some of those intricate arrangements favoured by ‘the Trade’ at a time when not one but half a score publishers’ names figured in an imprint. At present, the fact that Collins bought a third share of the book from the author for twenty guineas, and the statement that Johnson transferred the entire manuscript to a bookseller for sixty pounds, seem irreconcilable. That The Vicar of Wakefield was nevertheless written, or was being written, in 1762, is demonstrable from internal evidence.

About Christmas in the same year Goldsmith moved into lodgings at Islington, his landlady being one Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming, a friend of Newbery, to whose generalship this step seems attributable. From the curious accounts printed by Prior and Forster, it is clear that the publisher was Mrs. Fleming’s paymaster, punctually deducting his disbursements from the account current between himself and Goldsmith, an arrangement which as plainly indicates the foresight of the one as it implies the improvidence of the other. Of the work which Goldsmith did for the businesslike and not unkindly little man, there is no very definite evidence; but various prefaces, introductions, and the like, belong to this time; and he undoubtedly was the author of the excellent History of England in a Series of Letters addressed by a Nobleman to his Son, published anonymously in June, 1764, and long attributed, for the grace of its style, to Lyttelton, Chesterfield, Orrery, and other patrician pens. Meanwhile his range of acquaintance was growing larger. The establishment, at the beginning of 1764, of the famous association known afterwards as the ‘Literary Club’ brought him into intimate relations with Beauclerk, Reynolds, Langton, Burke, and others. Hogarth, too, is said to have visited him at Islington, and to have painted the portrait of Mrs. Fleming. Later in the same year, incited thereto by the success of Christopher Smart’s Hannah, he wrote the Oratorio of The Captivity, now to be found in most editions of his poems, but never set to music. Then after the slow growth of months, was issued on the 19th December the elaboration of that fragmentary sketch which he had sent years before to his brother Henry from the Continent, the poem entitled The Traveller; or, A Prospect of Society.

In the notes appended to The Traveller in the present volume, its origin and progress are sufficiently explained. Its success was immediate and enduring. The beauty of the descriptive passages, the subtle simplicity of the language, the sweetness and finish of the versification, found ready admirers,—perhaps all the more because of the contrast they afforded to the rough and strenuous sounds with which Charles Churchill had lately filled the public ear. Johnson, who contributed a few lines at the close, proclaimed The Traveller to be the best poem since the death of Pope; and it is certainly not easy to find its equal among the works of contemporary bards. It at once raised Goldsmith from the condition of a clever newspaper essayist, or—as men like Sir John Hawkins would have said—a mere ‘bookseller’s drudge,’ to the foremost rank among the poets of the day. Another result of its success was the revival of some of his earlier work, which, however neglected by the author, had been freely appropriated by the discerning pirate. In June, 1765, Griffin and Newbery published a little volume of Essays by Mr. Goldsmith, including some of the best of his contributions to The Bee, The Busy Body, The Public Ledger, and The British Magazine, besides ‘The Double Transformation’ and ‘The Logicians Refuted,’ two pieces of verse in imitation of Prior and Swift, which have not been traced to an earlier source. To the same year belongs the first version of a poem which he himself regarded as his best work, and which still retains something of its former popularity. This was the ballad of Edwin and Angelina, otherwise known as The Hermit. It originated in certain metrical discussions with Percy, then engaged upon his famous Reliques of English Poetry; and in 1765, Goldsmith, who through his friend Nugent (afterwards Lord Clare) had made the acquaintance of the Earl of Northumberland, printed it privately for the amusement of the Countess. In a revised and amended form it was subsequently given to the world in The Vicar of Wakefield.

With the exception of an abortive attempt to resume his practice as a medical man,—an attempt which seems to have been frustrated by the preternatural strength of his prescriptions,—the next memorable thing in Goldsmith’s life is the publication of The Vicar of Wakefield itself. It made its appearance on the 27th of March, 1766. A second edition followed in May, a third in August. Why, having been sold (in part) to a Salisbury printer as far back as October, 1762, it had remained unprinted so long; and why, when published, it was published by Francis Newbery and not by John Newbery, Goldsmith’s employer,—are questions at present unsolved. But the charm of this famous novel is as fresh as when it was first issued. Its inimitable types, its happy mingling of Christianity and character, its wholesome benevolence and its practical wisdom, are still unimpaired. We smile at the inconsistencies of the plot; but we are carried onward in spite of them, captivated by the grace, the kindliness, the gentle humour of the story. Yet it is a mistake to suppose that its success was instantaneous. Pirated it was, of course; but, according to expert investigations, the authorized edition brought so little gain to its first proprietors that the fourth issue of 1770 started with a loss. The fifth, published in April, 1774, was dated 1773; and had apparently been withheld because the previous edition, which consisted of no more than one thousand copies, was not exhausted. Five years elapsed before the sixth edition made its tardy appearance in 1779. These facts show that the writer’s contemporaries were not his most eager readers. But he has long since appealed to the wider audience of posterity; and his fame is not confined to his native country, for he has been translated into most European languages. Dr. Primrose and his family are now veritable ‘citizens of the world.’

A selection of Poems for Young Ladies, in the ‘Moral’ division of which he included his own Edwin and Angelina; two volumes of Beauties of English Poesy, disfigured with strange heedlessness, by a couple of the most objectionable pieces of Prior; a translation of a French history of philosophy, and other occasional work, followed the publication of the Vicar. But towards the middle of 1766, he was meditating a new experiment in that line in which Farquhar, Steele, Southerne, and others of his countrymen had succeeded before him. A fervent lover of the stage, he detested the vapid and colourless ‘genteel’ comedy which had gradually gained ground in England; and he determined to follow up The Clandestine Marriage, then recently adapted by Colman and Garrick from Hogarth’s Marriage A-la-Mode, with another effort of the same class, depending exclusively for its interest upon humour and character. Early in 1767 it was completed, and submitted to Garrick for Drury Lane. But Garrick perhaps too politic to traverse the popular taste, temporized; and eventually after many delays and disappointments, The Good Natur’d Man, as it was called, was produced at Covent Garden by Colman on the 29th of January, 1768. Its success was only partial; and in deference to the prevailing craze for the ‘genteel,’ an admirable scene of low humour had to be omitted in the representation. But the piece, notwithstanding, brought the author 400 pounds, to which the sale of the book, with the condemned passages restored, added another 100 pounds. Furthermore, Johnson, whose ‘Suspirius’ in The Rambler was, under the name of ‘Croaker,’ one of its most prominent personages, pronounced it to be the best comedy since Cibber’s Provok’d Husband.

During the autumn of 1767, Goldsmith had again been living at Islington. On this occasion he had a room in Canonbury Tower, Queen Elizabeth’s old hunting-lodge, and perhaps occupied the very chamber generally used by John Newbery, whose active life was, in this year, to close. When in London he had modest housing in the Temple. But the acquisition of 500 pounds for The Good Natur’d Man seemed to warrant a change of residence, and he accordingly expended four-fifths of that sum for the lease of three rooms on the second floor of No. 2 Brick Court, which he straightway proceeded to decorate sumptuously with mirrors, Wilton carpets, moreen curtains, and Pembroke tables. It was an unfortunate step; and he would have done well to remember the Nil te quaesiveris extra with which his inflexible monitor, Johnson, had greeted his apologies for the shortcomings of some earlier lodgings. One of its natural results was to involve him in a new sequence of task-work, from which he never afterwards shook himself free. Hence, following hard upon a Roman History which he had already engaged to write for Davies of Russell Street, came a more ambitious project for Griffin, A History of Animated Nature; and after this again, another History of England for Davies. The pay was not inadequate; for the first he was to have 250 guineas, for the second 800 guineas, and for the last 500 pounds. But as employment for the author of a unique novel, an excellent comedy, and a deservedly successful poem, it was surely—in his own words—‘to cut blocks with a razor.’

And yet, apart from the anxieties of growing money troubles, his life could not have been wholly unhappy. There are records of pleasant occasional junketings—‘shoe-maker’s holidays’ he called them—in the still countrified suburbs of Hampstead and Edgware; there was the gathering at the Turk’s Head, with its literary magnates, for his severer hours; and for his more pliant moments, the genial ‘free-and-easy’ or shilling whist-club of a less pretentious kind, where the student of mixed character might shine with something of the old supremacy of George Conway’s inn at Ballymahon. And there must have been quieter and more chastened resting-places of memory, when, softening towards the home of his youth, with a sadness made more poignant by the death of his brother Henry in May, 1768, he planned and perfected his new poem of The Deserted Village.

In December, 1769, the recent appointment of his friend Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy brought him the honorary office of Professor of History to that institution; and to Reynolds The Deserted Village was dedicated. It appeared on the 26th of May, 1770, with a success equal, if not superior, to that of The Traveller. It ran through five editions in the year of its publication; and has ever since retained its reputation. If, as alleged, contemporary critics ranked it below its predecessor, the reason advanced by Washington Irving, that the poet had become his own rival, is doubtless correct; and there is always a prejudice in favour of the first success. This, however, is not an obstacle which need disturb the reader now; and he will probably decide that in grace and tenderness of description The Deserted Village in no wise falls short of The Traveller; and that its central idea, and its sympathy with humanity, give it a higher value as a work of art.