row. Death and Burial.— Goldsmith died of a fever in April, 1774, barely forty-five years of age. The news of his death was received by all who knew him with the deepest sorBurke burst into tears; Sir Joshua Reynolds laid aside his brush; newspapers and magazines were filled with tributes to his memory; and, above all, the miserable outcasts who had been befriended by the poet's tenderness, voiced a grief as bitter as it was genuine. It was planned to have a public funeral, but, for some unknown reason, the poet was buried privately in the cemetery of Temple Church. Soon, however, the Literary Club, in memory of its deceased member, caused a monument to be erected in Poet's Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Dr. Johnson's stately Latin epitaph has been thus translated: "OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH, A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, Whether smiles were to be moved or tears, The love of friends, And the veneration of readers, He was born in Ireland, At a place called Pallas, In the parish of Forney, and the county of Longford, Educated at the University of Dublin, 4th April, 1774." GOLDSMITH THE MAN were Personal Appearance.-"The general cast of Goldsmith's figure and physiognomy was not engaging, and the impression made by his writings on the mind of a stranger was not confirmed by the external graces of their author. In stature he was somewhat under the middle size; his body was strongly built, and his limbs as one of his biographers expresses it more sturdy than elegant. His forehead was low, and more prominent than is usual; his complexion pallid; his face almost round, and pitted with smallpox. His first appearance was, therefore, by no means captivating; yet the general lineaments of his countenance bore the stamp of intellect, and exhibited traces of deep thinking; and when he grew easy and cheerful in company, he relaxed into such a display of benevolent good-humor as soon removed every unfavorable impression. His pleasantry in company, however, sometimes degenerated into buffoonery; and this circumstance, coupled with the inelegance of his person and deportment, often prevented him from appearing to so much advantage as might have been expected from his learning and genius. Irving. Generosity and Improvidence.-"Take thought for the morrow is a maxim that Goldsmith never learned to heed. No matter how much money he acquired, he always spent just enough more to be perpetually in debt, and his whole life was clouded by his frantic struggles to settle old scores. Not that he was dishonest even his most severe biographer could not accuse him of that — but he always spent money freely, and it went as often for presents to his friends and gifts to those in distress, as for the gratification of his own desires. All his life he could not help seeing the importance of thrift, but to learn the lesson himself. that he could not do; and so it is always "poor" Goldsmith that we think of - "poor " in more senses than one. Much has been made, particularly in Mr. Forster's biography, of the cold and neglectful attitude of the world toward Goldsmith; but it seems evident that he was his own worst enemy. Anecdotes of his heedless generosity and improvidence are many. Just before he started out from Leyden for his foot trip through Europe, seeing some high-priced tulip roots, he impulsively spent all but his last guinea for them, and sent them to his Uncle Contrarine. Boswell tells how Johnson, being hastily summoned by Goldsmith, who was in danger of arrest for debt to his long-suffering landlady, gave the poet a guinea, went out to sell The Vicar of Wakefield, and, on returning, found Goldsmith making merry over a bottle of Madeira which he had bought with Johnson's gift. Goldsmith's love for fine dress kept him constantly in debt to tailors, and much of his hack writing was done to satisfy "that little account." One critic speaks of the poet as "toiling, that he might play; earning his bread by the sweat of his brains, and then throwing it out of the window." Money matters blighted much of Goldsmith's later life, and he was often found by his friends in the deepest melancholy. When he died, he was over £2000 in debt. What wonder that Johnson wrote to Boswell," Was ever poet so trusted before?" Other Characteristics. In many respects Goldsmith's character reveals contradictory traits. He was careless about his life, yet almost finically careful about everything that he wrote. The slums of London, and the makeshifts of direst poverty, he knew only too well, yet the purity of his own nature, and the loftiness of his ideals remained unsullied. Beset by sham and conventionality, he was always sincere in what he said and did. Awkward and diffident in speech and person, he was the personification of ease and grace with the pen. His companions might ridicule him, but they liked him and respected him as a writer. But it is, after all, posterity that measures worth in life and letters; and we love Goldsmith the man despite his faults, because he loved humanity. common-sense LITERARY CONDITIONS 66 Age of Johnson.-To think of the literature and the literary conditions of the eighteenth century is to think, first of all, of Dr. Samuel Johnson, of whom one critic speaks as "sitting on the throne of literature." By reason of his learning, his rugged honesty and independence, his aggressiveness in manner and speech, his extraordinary ability at disputation, either on paper or in conversation, his lambent humor, and especially his the quality most characteristic of the majority of educated men and women-of that day" the impression that Johnson made upon all was one of bigness of body, mind, and spirit." As a poet, essayist, critic, biographer and lexicographer, his influence was felt in all aspects of the literary activity of his day. The phrase," Johnsonian age," bespeaks the type and the trend of the writing of this period. It was distinctly an age of prose, though poetry of the mechanical kind, brought into repute and fashion by Pope and his literary adherents during the preceding century, had not wholly died out. 66 The Trend of Literature. While the "Johnsonian age was not remarkably fruitful in authorship, for the dominant intellectual ideas of the day exalted the critical over the creative, and manner over matter, activity in letters was by no means stilled. Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne were blazing the way for future novelists; Burke, Chatham, Pitt, Fox and Sheridan were making speeches destined to immortalize eloquence; Hume, Robertson and Gibbon were at work upon their monumental histories; Goldsmith and Sheridan, through their comedies, were awakening interest in the drama; and, best sign of all, Young, Chatterton, Gray, Collins and Goldsmith, in their "nature poetry," by a closer study and a more faithful revelation of man and nature, were continuing the reaction, begun unconsciously by Thomson in his The Seasons, against the classical artificiality of Pope: "poetry of the head was beginning to give way to poetry of the heart." Letters as a Living.- Notwithstanding a certain public interest and pride in the men of letters of this period, the life of a professional writer was apt to know hardship and even actual want. In the age of Pope, a literary aspirant, desiring a reading public, was forced to secure the favor and the support of a member of the nobility. The passing of this system of patronage gave to writing, in the age of Johnson, a more independent and self-respecting tone, but the author who depended solely on his own pen, had a harder task than ever before. There were no publishers, and a writer had to stake his hopes of recognition upon the bookseller, who was often as arbitrary as he was uncultured. Of the literary drudgery that such a situation fostered, Goldsmith himself, in his Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning, paints a picture, dark-hued, but faithful to fact. "The author, unpatronized by the great, has naturally recourse to the bookseller. There cannot, perhaps, be imagined a combination more prejudicial to taste than this. It is the interest of the one to allow as little for writing, and for the other to write as much as possible; accordingly, tedious compilations and periodical magazines are the result of their joint endeavors. In these circumstances the author bids adieu to fame; writes for bread; and for that only imagination is seldom called in." |