The Traveller.
“When Goldsmith died, half the unpaid bill he owed to Mr. William Filby (amounting in all to 79l.) was for clothes supplied to this nephew Hodson.”—Forster's Goldsmith, p. 520.
As this nephew Hodson ended his days (see the same page) “a prosperous Irish gentleman”, it is not unreasonable to wish that he had cleared off Mr. Filby's bill.
“These youthful follies, like the fermentation of liquors, often disturb the mind only in order to its future refinement: a life spent in phlegmatic apathy resembles those liquors which never ferment and are consequently always muddy.”—Goldsmith, Memoir of Voltaire.
“He (Johnson) said Goldsmith was a plant that flowered late. There appeared nothing remarkable about him when he was young.”—Boswell.
“At present, the few poets of England no longer depend on the great for subsistence; they have now no other patrons but the public, and the public, collectively considered, is a good and a generous master. It is indeed too frequently mistaken as to the merits of every candidate for favour; but to make amends, it is never mistaken long. A performance indeed may be forced for a time into reputation, but, destitute of real merit, it soon sinks; time, the touchstone of what is truly valuable, will soon discover the fraud, and an author should never arrogate to himself any share of success till his works have been read at least ten years with satisfaction.
“A man of letters at present, whose works are valuable, is perfectly sensible of their value. Every polite member of the community, by buying what he writes, contributes to reward him. The ridicule, therefore, of living in a garret might have been wit in the last age, but continues such no longer, because no longer true. A writer of real merit now may easily be rich, if his heart be set only on fortune: and for those who have no merit, it is but fit that such should remain in merited obscurity.”—Goldsmith, Citizen of the World, Let. 84.
Goldsmith attacked Sterne, obviously enough, censuring his indecency, and slighting his wit, and ridiculing his manner, in the 53rd letter in the Citizen of the World.
“As in common conversation,” says he, “the best way to make the audience laugh is by first laughing yourself; so in writing, the properest manner is to show an attempt at humour, which will pass upon most for humour in reality. To effect this, readers must be treated with the most perfect familiarity; in one page the author is to make them a low bow, and in the next to pull them by the nose; he must talk in riddles, and then send them to bed in order to dream for the solution,” &c.
Sterne's humorous mot on the subject of the gravest part of the charges, then, as now, made against him, may perhaps be quoted here, from the excellent, the respectable Sir Walter Scott. “Soon after Tristram had appeared, Sterne asked a Yorkshire lady of fortune and condition, whether she had read his book, ‘I have not, Mr. Sterne,’ was the answer; ‘and to be plain with you, I am informed it is not proper for female perusal.’ ‘My dear good lady,’ replied the author, ‘do not be gulled by such stories; the book is like your young heir there’ (pointing to a child of three years old, who was rolling on the carpet in his white tunics): ‘he shows at times a good deal that is usually concealed, but it is all in perfect innocence.’ ”