Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 22.djvu/92

 francs to be employed in bribery, and was compelled to follow Napoleon to Boulogne, in order that Austria might be deluded by the pretended expedition against England. He was present at the battle of Eylau, and his occasional missions lasted from February 1803 to June 1807. During this period he was interpreter to the Paris tribunals, and in 1805 he prepared a French translation of Blackstone, which, though inadvertently commended by the ‘Moniteur,’ was angrily suppressed by Napoleon. Long anxious to leave France, he was allowed in 1809 to embark at Dunkirk in a vessel bound for America, which, however, landed him at Dover. In England he ‘suffered some temporary inconvenience and restraint [imprisonment in Tothill Fields], but had reason to be satisfied with the treatment of the English government, and to thank God that he was born within the pale of the English constitution.’ By this time he had become effectually cured of his sympathies with republicanism, and had formed a rooted antipathy to Napoleon and his plans. He became a notary in London, published in 1809 an ‘Exposition of the Conduct of France towards America,’ and in January 1811 established a Sunday newspaper, ‘The Anti-Gallican Monitor and Anti-Corsican Chronicle,’ which, with altered titles (‘Anti-Corsican Monitor’ in 1814, and ‘British Monitor’ in 1818), was continued till 1825. Goldsmith's denunciations, not only of the French revolution, but of English sympathisers, provoked fierce recriminations. He had cross actions for libel with Perry, who, he says, was suborned by Napoleon to give garbled extracts from his correspondence during his missions. Perry, being shown to be the aggressor, was awarded a farthing damages, whereupon Goldsmith dropped his own suit. His proposal in 1811 for a subscription for setting a price on Napoleon's head was brought before the House of Lords by Earl Grey, was reprobated by the government, who promised if possible to bring the author to condign punishment, and was consequently abandoned. Goldsmith, however, subsequently issued an appeal to the Germans in favour of tyrannicide. In 1811 he published the ‘Secret History of the Cabinet of Bonaparte,’ and ‘Recueil des Manifestes, or a Collection of the Decrees, &c., of Napoleon Bonaparte,’ and in 1812 the ‘Secret History of Bonapart's Diplomacy.’ The charges of debauchery and unscrupulousness brought by him against Napoleon have found at least partial credence with recent writers. Napoleon certainly winced under these attacks, and, according to Goldsmith, offered him 200,000l. in 1812 to discontinue them. About 1813 Goldsmith was introduced to Louis XVIII, whose restoration he warmly advocated. In 1814 he translated Carnot's ‘Memorial,’ and in 1815 he published ‘An Appeal to the Governments of Europe on the necessity of bringing Napoleon Bonaparte to a public trial.’ After Waterloo he advocated an alliance with France as England's natural ally, and declared that the three Eastern powers, the partitioners of Poland, had in a great degree deserved his early strictures. He visited Paris in May 1818, and again in November 1819, when a French paper denounced him as having calumniated the army in his ‘Cabinet of Bonaparte.’ Goldsmith repudiated the French translation of that book as containing interpolations and blunders, but found it necessary to recross the Channel. His newspaper, latterly a warm supporter of Robert Owen, having been given up 3 April 1825, Goldsmith returned to Paris, where, his disclaimer of the translation being accepted, or resentments having died out, he suffered no molestation. He was interpreter to the Tribunal of Commerce till 1831, founded the short-lived Paris ‘Monitor,’ and published in 1832 ‘Statistics of France,’ so good a digest that a French translation appeared the following year. In 1837 his only child, Georgiana, married Lord Lyndhurst [see, the younger]. A sketch of Barère, with whom he was intimate in 1802–9, which appeared in the ‘Times’ of 1841, is attributed to Goldsmith by Barère's biographer, Carnot. He died of paralysis at Paris on 6 Jan. 1846. The ‘Times’ stated that he was seventy-three or seventy-four, but contemporaries describe him as in extreme old age. He had latterly been solicitor to the British embassy, and had charge of the letters and packages for English residents, which in those days of high postage were franked to the embassy.



GOLDSMITH, OLIVER (1728–1774), poet, second son and fifth child of Charles Goldsmith, by his wife, Ann, daughter of the Rev. Oliver Jones, master of the diocesan school at Elphin, was born at Pallas, near Ballymahon, Longford, 10 Nov. 1728 (, i. 14). Charles Goldsmith, married in 1718, was at this time curate to the rector of Kilkenny West. He also farmed a few fields. His other children were Margaret (b. 1719); Catherine, born 13 Jan. 1721 (Mrs. Hodson); Henry, born 9 Feb. 1722 or 1723, died in May 1768; Jane, born before Oliver; Maurice, born 7 July 1736; Charles, born 16 Aug. 1737; and John, born 1740. In 1730 Charles