Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/787

Rh GOLDSMITH systems of natural and moral philosophy. A poet may (:.1Slly be pardoned for reasoning ill ; but he cannot be par- doned for describing ill, for observing the world in which he lives so carelessly that his portraits bear no resemblance to the originals, for exhibiting as copies from real life mon- strous combinations of things which never were and never could be found together. What would be thought of a painter who should mix August and January in one land- scape, who should introduce a frozen river into a harvest scene? Would it be a sufficient defence of such a picture to say that every part was exquisitely coloured, that the green hedges, the apple-trees loaded with fruit, the wag- gons reeling under the yellow sheaves, and the sun-burned reapers wiping their foreheads were very ﬁne, and that the ice and the boys sliding were also very line? To such a picture the Deserted Village bears a great resemblance. It is made up of incongruous parts. The village in its happy da.ys is a true English village‘. The village in its decay is an Irish village. The felicity and the misery which Gold- smith has brought close together belong to two different countries, and to two different stages in the progress of society. He had assuredly never seen in his native island such a rural paradise, such a seat of plenty, content, and tranquillity, as his Auburn. He had assuredly never seen in England all the inhabitants of such a paradise turned out of their homes in one day, and forced to emigrate in a body to America. The hamlet he had probably seen in Kent ; the ejectment he had probably seen in Munster; but by joining the two, he has produced something which never was and never will be seen in any part of the world. In 1773 Goldsmith tried his chance at Covent Garden with a second play, S/Le Stoops to C'onq'ue2'. The manager was, not without great difficulty, induced to bring this piece out. The sentimental comedy still reigned, and Gold- smith’s comedies were not sentiment-il. The Gooilnalured .l[un had been too funny to succeed; yet the mirth of the I .'oocl1za,lzu-ed .l[«m, was sober when compared with the rich drnllery of She Stoops to Conquer, which is, in truth, an in- comparable farce in ﬁve acts. On this occasion, however, genius triumpl1e~;l. Pit, boxes, and galleries were in a constant roar of laughter. If any bigoted admirer of Kelly and Cumberland ventured to hiss or groan, he was speedily silenced by a general cry of “turn him out,” or "throw him over.” Two generations have since conﬁrmed the ver- dict which was pronounced on that night. 'hile Goldsmith was writing the Deserted l’-illaf/e and .5’/zeb'[o0ps to Conquer, he was employed on works of a very different kind,——works from which he derived little reputa- tion but much proﬁt. He compiled for the use of schools a I[isto7'_y of Ifome, by which he made £300; a I[istor_1/ of /;'n_r}lruuI, by which he made £600; a IIi.s-tor_y of Greece, for which he received £250; a i'umral Ilistory, for which the booksellers covenanted to pay him 800 guineas. These works he produced without any elaborate research, by merely selecting. abridging, and translating into his own clear, pure, and ﬂowing language, what he found in books well known to the world, but too bulky or too dry for boys and girls. He committed some strange blunders, for he knew nothing with accuracy. Thus, in his IIz'.st0r_?/ Qf Eng- /«mrl, he tells us that Naseby is in Yorkshire; nor did he correct this mistake when the book was reprinted. He was very nearly hoaxed into putting into the Iiistory of Greece an account of a battle between Alexander the Great and llontezuma. In his Am'mrztecl i'a(ure he relates, with faith and with perfect gravity, all the most absurd lies which he could ﬁnd in books of travels about gigantic Patagonians, monkeys that preach sermons, nightingales that repeat long conversations. “If he can tell a horse from a cow,” said Johnson, “ that is the extent of his know- ledge of zoology.” How little Goldsmith was qualified to 763 write about the physical sciences is sufficiently proved by two anecdotes. He on one occasion denied that the sun is longer in the northern than in the southern signs. It was vain to cite the authority of Maupertuis. “ Mauper— tuis 1” he cried, “ I understand those matters better than Maupertuis.” On another occasion he, in deﬁance of the evidence of his own senses, maintained obstinately, and even angrily, that he chewed his dinner by moving his upper jaw. Yet, ignorant as Goldsmith was, few writers have done more to make the ﬁrst steps in the laborious road to know- ledge easy and pleasant. His compilations are widely dis- tinguished from the compilations of ordinary bookmakers. He was a great, perhaps an unequalled, master of the arts of selection and condensation. In these respects his his- tories of Rome and of England, and still more his own abridgments of these histories, well deserved to be studied. In general nothing is less attractive than an epitome ; but the epitomes of Goldsmith, even when most concise, are always amusing; and to read them is considered by intelli- gent children not as a task but as a pleasure. Goldsmith might now be considered as a prosperous man. He had the means of living in comfort, and even in what to one who had so often slept in barns and on bulks must have been luxury. His fame was great and was constantly rising. He lived in what was intellectually far the best society of the kingdom, in a society in which no talent or accomplishment was wanting, and in which the art of con- versation was cultivated with splendid success. There pro- bably were never four talkers more admirable in four dif- ferent ways than Johnson, Burke, Beauclerk, and Garrick; and Goldsmith was on terms of intimacy with all the four. He aspired to share in their colloquial renown, but never was ambition more unfortunate. It may seem strange that a man who wrote with so much perspicuity, vivacity, and grace should have been, whenever he took a part in con- versation, an empty, noisy, blundering rattle. But on this point the evidence is overwhelming. So extraordinary was the contrast between Goldsmith’s published works and the silly things which he said, that Horace Walpole described him as an inspired idiot. “ Noll,” said Garrick, “wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll.” Chamier declared that it was a hard exercise of faith to believe that so foolish a chatterer could have really written the Traveller. Even Boswell could say, with contemptuous compassion, that he liked very well to hear honest Goldsmith run on. “ Yes, sir,” said Johnson, “but he should not like to hear him- self.” Minds differ as rivers differ. There are transparent and sparkling rivers from which it is delightful to drink as they How; to such rivers the minds of such men as Burke and Johnson may be compared. But there are rivers of which the water when ﬁrst drawn is turbid and noisome, but becomes pellucid as crystal and delicious to the taste, if it l)e suffered to stand till it has deposited a sediment; and such a river is a type of the mind of Goldsmith. His ﬁrst thoughts on every subject were confused even to ab- surdity, but they required only a little time to work tl1em— selves clear. When he wrote they had that time, and therefore his readers pronounced him aman of genius ; but when he talked he talked nonsense, and made himself the laughing-stock of his hearers. He was painfully sensible of his inferiority in conversation ; he felt every failure keenly; yet he had not suﬂicient judgment and self-com- mand to hold his tongue. His animal spirits and vanity were always impelling him to try to do the one thing which he could not do. After every attempt he felt that he had exposed himself, and writhed with shame and vexation; yet the next moment he began again. His associates seem to have regarded him with kindness, which, in spite of their admiration of his writings, was not