l. 52. —–
“By day, ’twas gadding or coquetting”. The first version after ‘coquetting’ begins a fresh paragraph with–
Now tawdry madam kept, etc.
l. 58. —–
“A sigh in suffocating smoke”.
Here in the first version follows:–
She, in her turn, became perplexing, And found substantial bliss in vexing. Thus every hour was pass’d, etc.
l. 61. —–
“Thus as her faults each day were known”. First version:
‘Each day, the more her faults,’ etc.
l. 71. —–
“Now, to perplex”. The first version has ‘Thus.’ But the alteration in line 61 made a change necessary.
l. 85. —–
“paste”. First version ‘pastes.’
l. 91. —–
“condemn’d to hack”, i.e. to hackney, to plod.
A NEW SIMILE.
The ‘New Simile’ first appears in ‘Essays: By Mr. Goldsmith, 1765, pp. 234-6, where it forms Essay xxvii. In the second edition of 1766 it occupies pp. 246-8 and forms Essay xix. The text here followed is that of the second edition, which varies slightly from the first. In both cases the poem is followed by the enigmatical initials ‘*J. B.,’ which, however, as suggested by Gibbs, may simply stand for ‘Jack Bookworm’ of ‘The Double Transformation’. (See p. 204.)
l. 1. —–
“Long had I sought in vain to find”. The text of 1765 reads–
‘I long had rack’d my brains to find.’
l. 6. —–
“Tooke’s Pantheon”. Andrew Tooke (1673-1732) was first usher and then Master at the Charterhouse. In the latter capacity he succeeded Thomas Walker, the master of Addison and Steele. His ‘Pantheon’, a revised translation from the Latin of the Jesuit, Francis Pomey, was a popular school-book of mythology, with copper-plates.
l. 16. —–
“Wings upon either side–mark that”. The petasus of Mercury, like his sandals (l. 24), is winged.
l. 36. —–
“No poppy-water half so good”. Poppy-water, made by boiling the heads of the white, black, or red poppy, was a favourite eighteenth-century soporific:–‘Juno shall give her peacock ‘poppy-water’, that he may fold his ogling tail.’ (Congreve’s ‘Love for Love’, 1695, iv. 3.)
l. 42. —–
“With this he drives men’s souls to hell”. Tu….
….virgaque levem coerces
Aurea turbam.–Hor. ‘Od’. i. 10.
l. 57. “Moreover, Merc’ry had a failing”. Te canam….
Callidum, quidquid placuit, iocoso Condere furto.–Hor. ‘Od’. i. 10.
Goldsmith, it will be observed, rhymes ‘failing’ and ‘stealing.’ But Pope does much the same:–
That Jelly’s rich, this Malmsey healing, Pray dip your Whiskers and your tail in. (‘Imitation of Horace’, Bk. ii, Sat. vi.)
Unless this is to be explained by poetical licence, one of these words must have been pronounced in the eighteenth century as it is not pronounced now.
l. 59. —–
“In which all modern bards agree”. The text of 1765 reads ‘our scribling bards.’
EDWIN AND ANGELINA.
This ballad, usually known as ‘The Hermit’, was written in or before 1765, and printed privately in that year ‘for the amusement of the Countess of Northumberland,’ whose acquaintance Goldsmith had recently made through Mr. Nugent. (See the prefatory note to ‘The Haunch of Venison’.) Its title was “‘Edwin and Angelina. A Ballad’. By Mr. Goldsmith.” It was first published in ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’, 1766, where it appears at pp. 70-7, vol. i. In July, 1767, Goldsmith was accused [by Dr. Kenrick] in the ‘St. James’s Chronicle’ of having taken it from Percy’s ‘Friar of Orders Gray’. Thereupon he addressed a letter to the paper, of which the following is the material portion:– ‘Another Correspondent of yours accuses me of having taken a Ballad, I published some Time ago, from one by the ingenious Mr. Percy. I do not think there is any great Resemblance between the two Pieces in Question. If there be any, his Ballad is taken from mine. I read it to Mr. Percy some Years ago, and he (as we both considered these Things as Trifles at best) told me, with his usual Good Humour, the next Time I saw him, that he had taken my Plan to form the fragments of Shakespeare into a Ballad of his own. He then read me his little Cento, if I may so call it, and I highly approved it. Such petty Anecdotes as these are scarce worth printing, and were it not for the busy Disposition of some of your Correspondents, the Publick should never have known that he owes me the Hint of his Ballad, or that I am obliged to his Friendship and Learning for Communications of a much more important Nature. — I am, Sir, your’s etc. OLIVER GOLDSMITH.’ (‘St. James’s Chronicle’, July 23-5, 1767.) No contradiction of this statement appears to have been offered by Percy; but in re-editing his ‘Reliques of Ancient English Poetry’ in 1775, shortly after Goldsmith’s death, he affixed this note to ‘The Friar of Orders Gray:– ‘As the foregoing song has been thought to have suggested to our late excellent poet, Dr. Goldsmith, the plan of his beautiful ballad of ‘Edwin and Emma [Angelina]’, first printed [published?] in his ‘Vicar of Wakefield’, it is but justice to his memory to declare, that his poem was written first, and that if there is any imitation in the case, they will be found both to be indebted to the beautiful old ballad, ‘Gentle Herdsman, etc.’, printed in the second volume of this work, which the doctor had much admired in manuscript, and has finely improved’ (vol. i. p. 250). The same story is told, in slightly different terms, at pp. 74-5 of the ‘Memoir’ of Goldsmith drawn up under Percy’s superintendence for the ‘Miscellaneous Works’ of 1801, and a few stanzas of ‘Gentle Herdsman’, which Goldsmith is supposed to have had specially in mind, are there reproduced. References to them will be found in the ensuing notes. The text here adopted (with exception of ll. 117-20) is that of the fifth edition of ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’, 1773[4], i. pp. 78-85; but the variations of the earlier version of 1765 are duly chronicled, together with certain hitherto neglected differences between the first and later editions of the novel. The poem was also printed in the ‘Poems for Young Ladies’, 1767, pp. 91-8*. The author himself, it may be added, thought highly of it. ‘As to my “Hermit,” that poem,’ he is reported to have said, ‘cannot be amended.’ (Cradock’s ‘Memoirs’, 1828, iv. 286.)
[footnote] *This version differs considerably from the others, often following that of 1765; but it has not been considered necessary to record the variations here. That Goldsmith unceasingly revised the piece is sufficiently established.
l. 1. —–
“Turn, etc.” The first version has —
Deign saint-like tenant of the dale, To guide my nightly way,
To yonder fire, that cheers the vale With hospitable ray.
l. 11. —–
“For yonder faithless phantom flies”. ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’, first edition, has —
‘For yonder phantom only flies.’
l. 30. —–
“All”. ‘Vicar of Wakefield’, first edition, ‘For.’
l. 31. —–
“Man wants but little here below”. Cf. Young’s ‘Complaint’, 1743, ‘Night’ iv. 9, of which this and the next line are a recollection. According to Prior (‘Life’, 1837, ii. 83), they were printed as a quotation in the version of 1765. Young’s line is–
Man wants but Little; nor that Little, long.
l. 35. —–
“modest”. ‘Vicar of Wakefield’, first edition, ‘grateful.’
l. 37. —–
“Far in a wilderness obscure”. First version, and ‘Vicar of Wakefield’, first edition:–
Far shelter’d in a glade obscure
The modest mansion lay.
l. 43. —–
“The wicket, opening with a latch”. First version, and ‘Vicar of Wakefield’, first edition:–
The door just opening with a latch.
l. 45. —–
“And now, when busy crowds retire”. First version, and ‘Vicar of Wakefield’, first edition:–
And now, when worldly crowds retire To revels or to rest.
l. 57. —–
“But nothing, etc.” In the first version this stanza runs as follows:–
But nothing mirthful could assuage The pensive stranger’s woe;
For grief had seized his early age, And tears would often flow.
l. 78. —–
“modern”. ‘Vicar of Wakefield’, first edition, reads ‘haughty.’
l. 84. —–
“His love-lorn guest betray’d”. First version, and ‘Vicar of Wakefield’, first edition:–
The bashful guest betray’d.
l. 85. —–
“Surpris’d, he sees, etc.” First version, and ‘Vicar of Wakefield’, first edition:–
He sees unnumber’d beauties rise, Expanding to the view;
Like clouds that deck the morning skies, As bright, as transient too.
l. 89. —–
“The bashful look, the rising breast”. First version, and ‘Vicar of Wakefield’, first edition:–
Her looks, her lips, her panting breast.
l. 97. —–
“But let a maid, etc.” For this, and the next two stanzas, the first version substitutes:–
Forgive, and let thy pious care
A heart’s distress allay;
That seeks repose, but finds despair Companion of the way.
My father liv’d, of high degree, Remote beside the Tyne;
And as he had but only me,
Whate’er he had was mine.
To win me from his tender arms, Unnumber’d suitors came;
Their chief pretence my flatter’d charms, My wealth perhaps their aim.
l. 109. —–
“a mercenary crowd”. ‘Vicar of Wakefield’, first edition, has:–
‘the gay phantastic crowd.’
l. 111. —–
“Amongst the rest young Edwin bow’d”. First version:–
Among the rest young Edwin bow’d, Who offer’d only love.
l. 115. —–
“Wisdom and worth, etc.” First version, and ‘Vicar of Wakefield’, first edition:–
A constant heart was all he had, But that was all to me.
l. 117. —–
“And when beside me, etc.” For this ‘additional stanza,’ says the ‘Percy Memoir’, p. 76, ‘the reader is indebted to Richard Archdal, Esq., late a member of the Irish Parliament, to whom it was presented by the author himself.’ It was first printed in the ‘Miscellaneous Works’, 1801, ii. 25. In Prior’s edition of the ‘Miscellaneous Works’, 1837, iv. 41, it is said to have been ‘written some years after the rest of the poem.’
l. 121. —–
“The blossom opening to the day, etc.” For this and the next two stanzas the first version substitutes:–
Whene’er he spoke amidst the train, How would my heart attend!
And till delighted even to pain, How sigh for such a friend!
And when a little rest I sought In Sleep’s refreshing arms,
How have I mended what he taught, And lent him fancied charms!
Yet still (and woe betide the hour!) I spurn’d him from my side,
And still with ill-dissembled power Repaid his love with pride.
l. 129. —–
“For still I tried each fickle art, etc.” Percy finds the prototype of this in the following stanza of ‘Gentle Herdsman’:–
And grew soe coy and nice to please, As women’s lookes are often soe,
He might not kisse, nor hand forsoothe, Unlesse I willed him soe to doe.
l. 133. —–
“Till quite dejected with my scorn, etc.” The first edition reads this stanza and the first two lines of the next thus:–
Till quite dejected by my scorn,
He left me to deplore;
And sought a solitude forlorn,
And ne’er was heard of more.
Then since he perish’d by my fault, This pilgrimage I pay, etc.
l. 135. —–
“And sought a solitude forlorn”. Cf. ‘Gentle Herdsman:–
He gott him to a secrett place,
And there he dyed without releeffe.
l. 141. —–
“And there forlorn, despairing, hid, etc.” The first edition for this and the next two stanzas substitutes the following:–
And there in shelt’ring thickets hid, I’ll linger till I die;
‘Twas thus for me my lover did, And so for him will I.
‘Thou shalt not thus,’ the Hermit cried, And clasp’d her to his breast;
The astonish’d fair one turned to chide, — ‘Twas Edwin’s self that prest.
For now no longer could he hide,
What first to hide he strove;
His looks resume their youthful pride, And flush with honest love.
l. 143. —–
“‘Twas so for me, etc.” Cf. ‘Gentle Herdsman’:–
Thus every day I fast and pray,
And ever will doe till I dye;
And gett me to some secret place, For soe did hee, and soe will I.
l. 145. —–
“Forbid it, Heaven.” ‘Vicar of Wakefield’, first edition, like the version of 1765, has ‘Thou shalt not thus.’
l. 156. —–
“My life.” ‘Vicar of Wakefield’, first edition, has ‘O thou.’
l. 157. —–
“No, never from this hour, etc.” The first edition reads:–
No, never, from this hour to part, Our love shall still be new;
And the last sigh that rends thy heart, Shall break thy Edwin’s too.
The poem then concluded thus:–
Here amidst sylvan bowers we’ll rove, From lawn to woodland stray;
Blest as the songsters of the grove, And innocent as they.
To all that want, and all that wail, Our pity shall be given,
And when this life of love shall fail, We’ll love again in heaven.
These couplets, with certain alterations in the first and last lines, are to be found in the version printed in ‘Poems for Young Ladies’, 1767, p. 98.
AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A MAD DOG.
This poem was first published in ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’, 1766, i. 175-6, where it is sung by one of the little boys. In common with the ‘Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize’ (p. 47) it owes something of its origin to Goldsmith’s antipathy to fashionable elegiacs, something also to the story of M. de la Palisse. As regards mad dogs, its author seems to have been more reasonable than many of his contemporaries, since he ridiculed, with much common sense, their exaggerated fears on this subject (‘v. Chinese Letter’ in ‘The Public Ledger’ for August 29, 1760, afterwards Letter lxvi of ‘The Citizen of the World’, 1762, ii. 15). But it is ill jesting with hydrophobia. Like ‘Madam Blaize’, these verses have been illustrated by Randolph Caldecott.
l. 5. —–
“In Islington there was a man”. Goldsmith had lodgings at Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming’s in Islington (or ‘Isling town’ as the earlier editions have it) in 1763-4; and the choice of the locality may have been determined by this circumstance. But the date of the composition of the poem is involved in the general obscurity which hangs over the ‘Vicar’ in its unprinted state. (See ‘Introduction’, pp. xviii-xix.)
l. 19. —–
“The dog, to gain some private ends”. The first edition reads ‘his private ends.’
l. 32. —–
“The dog it was that died”. This catastrophe suggests the couplet from the ‘Greek Anthology’,
ed. Jacobs, 1813-7, ii. 387:–
Kappadoken pot exidna kake daken alla kai aute katthane, geusamene aimatos iobolou.
Goldsmith, however, probably went no farther back than Voltaire on Freron:–
L’autre jour, au fond d’un vallon, Un serpent mordit Jean Freron.
Devinez ce qu’il arriva?
Ce fut le serpent qui creva.
This again, according to M. Edouard Fournier (‘L’Esprit des Autres’, sixth edition, 1881, p. 288), is simply the readjustment of an earlier quatrain, based upon a Latin distich in the ‘Epigrammatum delectus’, 1659:–
Un gros serpent mordit Aurelle.
Que croyez-vous qu’il arriva?
Qu’Aurelle en mourut? — Bagatelle! Ce fut le serpent qui creva.
SONG
FROM ‘THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.’
First published in ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’, 1766, ii. 78 (chap. v). It is there sung by Olivia Primrose, after her return home with her father. ‘Do, my pretty Olivia,’ says Mrs. Primrose, let us have that little melancholy air your pappa was so fond of, your sister Sophy has already obliged us. Do child, it will please your old father.’ ‘She complied in a manner so exquisitely pathetic,’ continues Dr. Primrose, ‘as moved me.’ The charm of the words, and the graceful way in which they are introduced, seem to have blinded criticism to the impropriety, and even inhumanity, of requiring poor Olivia to sing a song so completely applicable to her own case. No source has been named for this piece; and its perfect conformity with the text would appear to indicate that Goldsmith was not indebted to any earlier writer for his idea.
His well-known obligations to French sources seem, however, to have suggested that, if a French original could not be discovered for the foregoing lyric, it might be desirable to invent one. A clever paragraphist in the ‘St. James’s Gazette’ for January 28th, 1889, accordingly reproduced the following stanzas, which he alleged, were to be found in the poems of Segur, ‘printed in Paris in 1719’:–
Lorsqu’une femme, apres trop de tendresse, D’un homme sent la trahison,
Comment, pour cette si douce foiblesse Peut-elle trouver une guerison?
Le seul remede qu’elle peut ressentir, La seul revanche pour son tort,
Pour faire trop tard l’amant repentir, Helas! trop tard — est la mort.
As a correspondent was not slow to point out, Goldsmith, if a copyist, at all events considerably improved his model (see in particular lines 7 and 8 of the French). On the 30th of the month the late Sir William Fraser gave it as his opinion, that, until the volume of 1719 should be produced, the ‘very inferior verses quoted’ must be classed with the fabrications of ‘Father Prout,’ and he instanced that very version of the ‘Burial of Sir John Moore’ (‘Les Funerailles de Beaumanoir’) which has recently (August 1906) been going the round of the papers once again. No Segur volume of 1719 was, of course, forthcoming.
Kenrick, as we have already seen, had in 1767 accused Goldsmith of taking ‘Edwin and Angelina’ from Percy (p. 206). Thirty years later, the charge of plagiarism was revived in a different way when ‘Raimond and Angeline’, a French translation of the same poem, appeared, as Goldsmith’s original, in a collection of Essays called ‘The Quiz’, 1797. It was eventually discovered to be a translation ‘from’ Goldsmith by a French poet named Leonard, who had included it in a volume dated 1792, entitled ‘Lettres de deux Amans, Habitans de Lyon’ (Prior’s ‘Life’, 1837, ii. 89-94). It may be added that, according to the ‘Biographie Universelle’, 1847, vol. 18 (Art. ‘Goldsmith’), there were then no fewer than at least three French imitations of ‘The Hermit’ besides Leonard’s.
EPILOGUE TO ‘THE GOOD NATUR’D MAN.’
Goldsmith’s comedy of ‘The Good Natur’d Man’ was produced by Colman, at Covent Garden, on Friday, January 29, 1768. The following note was appended to the Epilogue when printed:– ‘The Author, in expectation of an Epilogue from a friend at Oxford, deferred writing one himself till the very last hour. What is here offered, owes all its success to the graceful manner of the Actress who spoke it.’ It was spoken by Mrs. Bulkley, the ‘Miss Richland’ of the piece. In its first form it is to be found in ‘The Public Advertiser’ for February 3. Two days later the play was published, with the version here followed.
l. 1. —–
“As puffing quacks”. Goldsmith had devoted a Chinese letter to this subject. See ‘Citizen of the World’, 1762, ii. 10 (Letter lxv).
l. 17. —–
“No, no: I’ve other contests, etc.” This couplet is not in the first version. The old building of the College of Physicians was in Warwick Lane; and the reference is to the long-pending dispute, occasionally enlivened by personal collision, between the Fellows and Licentiates respecting the exclusion of certain of the latter from Fellowships. On this theme Bonnell Thornton, himself an M.B. like Goldsmith, wrote a satiric additional canto to Garth’s ‘Dispensary’, entitled ‘The Battle of the Wigs’, long extracts from which are printed in ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine’ for March, 1768, p. 132. The same number also reviews ‘The Siege of the Castle of Aesculapius, an heroic Comedy, as it is acted in Warwick-Lane’. Goldsmith’s couplet is, however, best illustrated by the title of one of Sayer’s caricatures, ‘The March of the Medical Militants to the Siege of Warwick-Lane-Castle in the Year’ 1767. The quarrel was finally settled in favour of the college in June, 1771.
l. 19. —–
“Go, ask your manager”. Colman, the manager of Covent Garden, was not a prolific, although he was a happy writer of prologues and epilogues.
l. 32. —–
The quotation is from ‘King Lear’, Act iii, Sc. 4.
l. 34. —–
In the first version the last line runs:–
And view with favour, the ‘Good-natur’d Man.’
EPILOGUE TO ‘THE SISTER.’
‘The Sister’, produced at Covent Garden February 18, 1769, was a comedy by Mrs. Charlotte Lenox or Lennox, ‘an ingenious lady,’ says ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine’ for April in the same year, ‘well known in the literary world by her excellent writings, particularly the Female Quixote, and Shakespeare illustrated…. The audience expressed their disapprobation of it with so much clamour and appearance of prejudice, that she would not suffer an attempt to exhibit it a second time (p. 199).’ According to the same authority it was based upon one of the writer’s own novels, ‘Henrietta’, published in 1758. Though tainted with the prevailing sentimentalism, ‘The Sister’ is described by Forster as ‘both amusing and interesting’; and it is probable that it was not fairly treated when it was acted. Mrs. Lenox (1720-1804), daughter of Colonel Ramsay, Lieut.-Governor of New York, was a favourite with the literary magnates of her day. Johnson was half suspected of having helped her in her book on Shakespeare; Richardson admitted her to his readings at Parson’s Green; Fielding, who knew her, calls her, in the ‘Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon’, 1755, p. 35 (first version), ‘the inimitable author of the Female Quixote’; and Goldsmith, though he had no kindness for genteel comedy (see ‘post’, p. 228), wrote her this lively epilogue, which was spoken by Mrs. Bulkley, who personated the ‘Miss Autumn’ of the piece. Mrs. Lenox died in extremely reduced circumstances, and was buried by the Right Hon. George Ross, who had befriended her later years. There are several references to her in Boswell’s ‘Life of Johnson’. (See also Hawkins’ ‘Life’, 2nd ed. 1787, pp. 285-7.)
PROLOGUE TO ‘ZOBEIDE.’
‘Zobeide’, a play by Joseph Cradock (1742-1826), of Gumley, in Leicestershire, was produced by Colman at Covent Garden on Dec. 11, 1771. It was a translation from three acts of ‘Les Scythes’, an unfinished tragedy by Voltaire. Goldsmith was applied to, through the Yates’s, for a prologue, and sent that here printed to the author of the play with the following note:– ‘Mr. Goldsmith presents his best respects to Mr. Cradock, has sent him the Prologue, such as it is. He cannot take time to make it better. He begs he will give Mr. Yates the proper instructions; and so, even so, commits him to fortune and the publick.’ (Cradock’s ‘Memoirs’, 1826, i. 224.) Yates, to the acting of whose wife in the character of the heroine the success of the piece, which ran for thirteen nights, was mainly attributable, was to have spoken the prologue, but it ultimately fell to Quick, later the ‘Tony Lumpkin’ of ‘She Stoops to Conquer’, who delivered it in the character of a sailor. Cradock seems subsequently to have sent a copy of ‘Zobeide’ to Voltaire, who replied in English as follows:–
9e. 8bre. 1773. a ferney.
Sr.
Thanks to yr muse a foreign copper shines Turn’d in to gold, and coin’d in sterling lines. You have done to much honour to an old sick man of eighty. I am with the most sincere esteem and gratitude Sr.
Yr. obdt. Servt. Voltaire. A Monsieur Monsieur J. Cradock.
The text of the prologue is here given as printed in Cradock’s ‘Memoirs’, 1828, iii. 8-9. It is unnecessary to specify the variations between this and the earlier issue of 1771.
l. 1. —–
“In these bold times, etc.” The reference is to Cook, who, on June 12, 1771, had returned to England in the ‘Endeavour’, after three years’ absence, having gone to Otaheite to observe the transit of Venus (l. 4).
l. 5. —–
“Botanists”. Mr. (afterward Sir Joseph) Banks and Dr. Solander, of the British Museum, accompanied Cook.
l. 6. —–
“go simpling”, i.e. gathering simples, or herbs. Cf. ‘Merry Wives of Windsor’, Act iii, Sc. 3:– ‘– These lisping hawthorn buds that… smell like Bucklersbury in ‘simple’-time.’ In the caricatures of the day Solander figured as ‘The ‘simpling’ Macaroni.’ (See note, p. 247, l. 31.)
l. 11. —–
“With Scythian stores”. The scene of the play was laid in Scythia (‘v. supra’).
l. 28. —–
“to make palaver”, to hold a parley, generally with the intention of cajoling. Two of Goldsmith’s notes to Garrick in 1773 are endorsed by the actor — ‘Goldsmith’s parlaver.’ (Forster’s ‘Life’, 1871, ii. 397.)
l. 32. —–
“mercenary”. Cradock gave the profits of ‘Zobeide’ to Mrs. Yates. ‘I mentioned the disappointment it would be to you’ — she says in a letter to him dated April 26, 1771 –‘ as you had generously given the emoluments of the piece to me.’ (‘Memoirs’, 1828, iv. 211.)
THRENODIA AUGUSTALIS.
Augusta, widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and mother of George the Third, died at Carlton House, February 8, 1772. This piece was spoken and sung in Mrs. Teresa Cornelys’s Great Room in Soho Square, on the Thursday following (the 20th), being sold at the door as a small quarto pamphlet, printed by William Woodfall. The author’s name was not given; but it was prefaced by this ‘advertisement,’ etc.:–
‘The following may more properly be termed a compilation than a poem. It was prepared for the composer in little more than two days: and may be considered therefore rather as an industrious effort of gratitude than of genius. In justice to the composer it may likewise be right to inform the public, that the music was adapted in a period of time equally short.
SPEAKERS.
‘Mr. Lee and Mrs. Bellamy’.
SINGERS.
‘Mr. Champnes, Mr. Dine, and Miss Jameson; with twelve chorus singers. The music prepared and adapted by Signor Vento.’
It is — as Cunningham calls it — a ‘hurried and unworthy off-spring of the muse of Goldsmith.’
(Part I).
l. 122 “—–
Celestial-like her bounty fell”. The Princess’s benefactions are not exaggerated. ‘She had paid off the whole of her husband’s debts, and she had given munificent sums in charity. More than 10,000’l.’ a year were given away by her in pensions to individuals whom she judged deserving, very few of whom were aware, until her death, whence the bounty came. The whole of her income she spent in England, and very little on herself’ (‘Augusta: Princess of Wales’, by W. H. Wilkins, ‘Nineteenth Century’, October, 1903, p. 675).
l. 132. —–
“There faith shall come”. This, and the three lines that follow, are borrowed from Collins’s ‘Ode written in the beginning of the year’ 1746.
(Part II).
l. 22 “—–
The towers of Kew”. ‘The embellishments of Kew palace and gardens, under the direction of [Sir William] Chambers, and others, was the favourite object of her [Royal Highness’s] widowhood’ (Bolton Corney).
l. 77. —–
“Along the billow’d main”. Cf. ‘The Captivity’, Act ii, I. 18.
l. 83. —–
“Oswego’s dreary shores”. Cf. ‘The Traveller’, l. 411.
l. 91. —–
“And with the avenging fight”. Varied from Collins’s ‘Ode on the Death of Colonel Charles Ross at Fontenoy’.
l. 177. —–
“Its earliest bloom”. Cf. Collins’s ‘Dirge in Cymbeline’.
SONG
FROM ‘SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.’
This thoroughly characteristic song, for a parallel to which one must go to Congreve, or to the ‘Here’s to the maiden of bashful fifteen’ of ‘The School for Scandal’, has one grave defect, — it is too good to have been composed by Tony Lumpkin, who, despite his inability to read anything but ‘print-hand,’ declares, in Act i. Sc. 2 of ‘She Stoops to Conquer’, 1773, that he himself made it upon the ale-house (‘The Three Pigeons’) in which he sings it, and where it is followed by the annexed comments, directed by the author against the sentimentalists, who, in ‘The Good Natur’d Man’ of five years before, had insisted upon the omission of the Bailiff scene:–
‘OMNES.
Bravo, bravo!
‘First’ FELLOW.
The ‘Squire has got spunk in him.
‘Second’ FELLOW.
I loves to hear him sing, bekeays he never gives us nothing that’s ‘low’…
‘Fourth’ FELLOW.
The genteel thing is the genteel thing at any time. If so be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.
‘Third’ FELLOW.
I like the maxum of it, Master Muggins. What, tho’ I am obligated to dance a bear, a man may be a gentleman for all that. May this be my poison if my bear ever dances but to the very genteelest of tunes. ‘Water parted’*, or the minuet in ‘Ariadne’.’
[footnote] *i.e. Arne’s ‘Water Parted from the Sea’, — the song of Arbaces in the opera of ‘Artaxerxes, 1762. The minuet in ‘Ariadne’ was by Handel. It came at the end of the overture, and is said to have been the best thing in the opera.
l. 9. —–
“When Methodist preachers, etc.” Tony Lumpkin’s utterance accurately represents the view of this sect taken by some of his contemporaries. While moderate and just spectators of the Johnson type could recognize the sincerity of men, who, like Wesley, travelled ‘nine hundred miles in a month, and preached twelve times a week’ for no ostensibly adequate reward, there were others who saw in Methodism, and especially in the extravagancies of its camp followers, nothing but cant and duplicity. It was this which prompted on the stage Foote’s ‘Minor’ (1760) and Bickerstaffe’s ‘Hypocrite’ (1768); in art the ‘Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism’ of Hogarth (1762); and in literature the ‘New Bath Guide’ of Anstey (1766), the ‘Spiritual Quixote’ of Graves, 1772, and the sarcasms of Sterne, Smollett and Walpole.
It is notable that the most generous contemporary portrait of these much satirised sectaries came from one of the originals of the ‘Retaliation’ gallery. Scott highly praises the character of Ezekiel Daw in Cumberland’s ‘Henry’, 1795, adding, in his large impartial fashion, with reference to the general practice of representing Methodists either as idiots or hypocrites, ‘A very different feeling is due to many, perhaps to most, of this enthusiastic sect; nor is it rashly to be inferred, that he who makes religion the general object of his life, is for that sole reason to be held either a fool or an impostor.’ (Scott’s ‘Miscellaneous Prose Works’, 1834, iii. 222.)
l. 23. —–
“But of all the birds in the air”. Hypercriticism may object that ‘the hare’ is not a bird. But exigence of rhyme has to answer for many things. Some editors needlessly read ‘the ‘gay’ birds’ to lengthen the line. There is no sanction for this in the earlier editions.
EPILOGUE TO ‘SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.’
This epilogue was spoken by Mrs. Bulkley in the character of Miss Hardcastle. It is probably the epilogue described by Goldsmith to Cradock, in the letter quoted at p. 246, as ‘a very mawkish thing,’ a phrase not so incontestable as Bolton Corney’s remark that it is ‘an obvious imitation of Shakespere.’
l. 6. —–
“That pretty Bar-maids have done execution”. Cf. ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’, 1766, i. 7:– ‘Sophia’s features were not so striking at first; but often did more certain execution.’
l. 16. —–
“coquets the guests”. Johnson explains this word ‘to entertain with compliments and amorous tattle,’ and quotes the following illustration from Swift, ‘You are ‘coquetting’ a maid of honour, my lord looking on to see how the gamesters play, and I railing at you both.’
l. 26. —–
“Nancy Dawson”. Nancy Dawson was a famous ‘toast’ and horn-pipe dancer, who died at Haverstock Hill, May 27, 1767, and was buried behind the Foundling, in the burial-ground of St. George the Martyr. She first appeared at Sadler’s Wells, and speedily passed to the stage of Covent Garden, where she danced in the ‘Beggar’s Opera’. There is a portrait of her in the Garrick Club, and there are several contemporary prints. She was the heroine of a popular song, here referred to, beginning:–
Of all the girls in our town,
The black, the fair, the red, the brown, Who dance and prance it up and down, There’s none like Nancy Dawson:
Her easy mien, her shape so neat, She foots, she trips, she looks so sweet, Her ev’ry motion is complete;
I die for Nancy Dawson.
Its tune — says J. T. Smith (‘Book for a Rainy Day’, Whitten’s ed., 1905, p. 10) was ‘as lively as that of “Sir Roger de Coverley.”‘
“Che faro”, i.e. ‘Che faro senza Euridice’, the lovely lament from Gluck’s ‘Orfeo’, 1764.
l. 28. —–
“the Heinel of Cheapside”. The reference is to Mademoiselle Anna-Frederica Heinel, 1752-1808, a beautiful Prussian, subsequently the wife of Gaetano Apollino Balthazar Vestris, called ‘Vestris the First.’ After extraordinary success as a ‘danseuse’ at Stuttgard and Paris, where Walpole saw her in 1771 (Letter to the Earl of Strafford 25th August), she had come to London; and, at this date, was the darling of the Macaronies (cf. the note on p. 247, l. 31), who, from their club, added a ‘regallo’ (present) of six hundred pounds to the salary allowed her at the Haymarket. On April 1, 1773, Metastasio’s ‘Artaserse’ was performed for her benefit, when she was announced to dance a minuet with Monsieur Fierville, and ‘Tickets were to be hand, at her house in Piccadilly, two doors from Air Street.’
l. 31. —–
“spadille”, i.e. the ace of spades, the first trump in the game of Ombre. Cf. Swift’s ‘Journal of a Modern Lady in a Letter to a Person of Quality’, 1728:–
She draws up card by card, to find Good fortune peeping from behind;
With panting heart, and earnest eyes, In hope to see ‘spadillo’ rise;
In vain, alas! her hope is fed; She draws an ace, and sees it red.
l. 35. —–
“Bayes”. The chief character in Buckingham’s ‘Rehearsal’, 1672, and intended for John Dryden. Here the name is put for the ‘poet’ or ‘dramatist.’ Cf. Murphy’s Epilogue to Cradock’s ‘Zobeide’, 1771:–
Not e’en poor ‘Bayes’ within must hope to be Free from the lash:– His Play he writ for me ‘Tis true — and now my gratitude you’ll see;
and Colman’s Epilogue to ‘The School for Scandal’, 1777:– So wills our virtuous bard — the motley ‘Bayes’ Of crying epilogues and laughing plays!
RETALIATION.
‘Retaliation: A Poem. By Doctor Goldsmith. Including Epitaphs on the Most Distinguished Wits of this Metropolis’, was first published by G. Kearsly in April, 1774, as a 4to pamphlet of 24 pp. On the title-page is a vignette head of the author, etched by James Basire, after Reynolds’s portrait; and the verses are prefaced by an anonymous letter to the publisher, concluding as follows:– ‘Dr. Goldsmith ‘belonged to a Club of’ Beaux Esprits, ‘where Wit sparkled sometimes at the Expence of Good-nature. It was proposed to write Epitaphs on the Doctor; his Country, Dialect and Person, furnished Subjects of Witticism. — The Doctor was called on for’ Retaliation, ‘and at their next Meeting produced the following Poem, which I think adds one Leaf to his immortal Wreath.’ This account seems to have sufficed for Evans, Percy, and the earlier editors. But in vol. i. p. 78 of his edition of Goldsmith’s ‘Works’, 1854, Mr. Peter Cunningham published for the first time a fuller version of the circumstances, derived from a manuscript lent to him by Mr. George Daniel of Islington; and (says Mr. Cunningham) ‘evidently designed as a preface to a collected edition of the poems which grew out of Goldsmith’s trying his epigrammatic powers with Garrick.’ It is signed ‘D. Garrick.’ ‘At a meeting’ — says the writer — ‘of a company of gentlemen, who were well known to each other, and diverting themselves, among many other things, with the peculiar oddities of Dr. Goldsmith, who would never allow a superior in any art, from writing poetry down to dancing a horn-pipe, the Dr. with great eagerness insisted upon trying his epigrammatic powers with Mr. Garrick, and each of them was to write the other’s epitaph. Mr. Garrick immediately said that his epitaph was finished, and spoke the following distich extempore:–
Here lies NOLLY Goldsmith, for shortness call’d Noll, Who wrote like an angel, but talk’d like poor Poll.
Goldsmith, upon the company’s laughing very heartily, grew very thoughtful, and either would not, or could not, write anything at that time: however, he went to work, and some weeks after produced the following printed poem called ‘Retaliation’, which has been much admired, and gone through several editions.’ This account, though obviously from Garrick’s point of view, is now accepted as canonical, and has superseded those of Davies, Cradock, Cumberland, and others, to which some reference is made in the ensuing notes.
A few days after the publication of the first edition, which appeared on the 18th or 19th of April, a ‘new’ or second edition was issued, with four pages of ‘Explanatory Notes, Observations, etc.’ At the end came the following announcement:– ‘G. Kearsly, the Publisher, thinks it his duty to declare, that Dr. Goldsmith wrote the Poem as it is here printed, a few errors of the press excepted, which are taken notice of at the bottom of this page.’ From this version ‘Retaliation’ is here reproduced. In the third edition, probably in deference to some wounded susceptibilities, the too comprehensive ‘most Distinguished Wits of the Metropolis’ was qualified into ”some of the most’ Distinguished Wits,’ etc., but no further material alteration was made in the text until the suspicious lines on Caleb Whitefoord were added to the fifth edition.
With the exception of Garrick’s couplet, and the fragment of Whitefoord referred to at p. 234, none of the original epitaphs upon which Goldsmith was invited to ‘retaliate’ have survived. But the unexpected ability of the retort seems to have prompted a number of ‘ex post facto’ performances, some of which the writers would probably have been glad to pass off as their first essays. Garrick, for example, produced three short pieces, one of which (‘Here, Hermes! says Jove, who with nectar was mellow’) hits off many of Goldsmith’s contradictions and foibles with considerable skill (‘v’. Davies’s ‘Garrick’, 2nd ed., 1780, ii. 157). Cumberland (‘v. Gent. Mag’., Aug. 1778, p. 384) parodied the poorest part of ‘Retaliation’, the comparison of the guests to dishes, by likening them to liquors, and Dean Barnard in return rhymed upon Cumberland. He wrote also an apology for his first attack, which is said to have been very severe, and conjured the poet to set his wit at Garrick, who, having fired his first shot, was keeping out of the way:–
On him let all thy vengeance fall; On me you but misplace it:
Remember how he called thee ‘Poll’ — But, ah! he dares not face it.
For these, and other forgotten pieces arising out of ‘Retaliation’, Garrick had apparently prepared the above-mentioned introduction. It may be added that the statement, prefixed to the first edition, that ‘Retaliation’, as we now have it, was produced at the ‘next meeting’ of the Club, is manifestly incorrect. It was composed and circulated in detached fragments, and Goldsmith was still working at it when he was seized with his last illness.
l. 1. —–
“Of old, when Scarron, etc.” Paul Scarron (1610-60), the author ‘inter alia’ of the ‘Roman Comique’, 1651-7, upon a translation of which Goldsmith was occupied during the last months of his life. It was published by Griffin in 1776.
l. 2. —–
“Each guest brought his dish”. ‘Chez Scarron,’ — says his editor, M. Charles Baumet, when speaking of the poet’s entertainments, — ‘venait d’ailleurs l’elite des dames, des courtisans & des hommes de lettres. On y dinait joyeusement. ‘Chacun apportait son plat’.’ (‘Oeuvres de Scarron’, 1877, i. viii.) Scarron’s company must have been as brilliant as Goldsmith’s. Villarceaux, Vivonne, the Marechal d’Albret, figured in his list of courtiers; while for ladies he had Mesdames Deshoulieres, de Scudery, de la Sabliere, and de Sevigne, to say nothing of Ninon de Lenclos and Marion Delorme. (Cf. also Guizot, ‘Corneille et son Temps’, 1862, 429-30.)
l. 3. —–
“If our landlord”. The ‘explanatory note’ to the second edition says — ‘The master of the St. James’s coffee-house, where the Doctor, and the friends he has characterized in this Poem, held an occasional club.’ This, it should be stated, was not the famous ‘Literary Club,’ which met at the Turk’s Head Tavern in Gerrard Street. The St. James’s Coffee-house, as familiar to Swift and Addison at the beginning, as it was to Goldsmith and his friends at the end of the eighteenth century, was the last house but one on the south-west corner of St. James’s Street. It now no longer exists. Cradock (‘Memoirs’, 1826, i. 228-30) speaks of dining ‘at the bottom of St. James’s Street’ with Goldsmith, Percy, the two Burkes (‘v. infra’), Johnson, Garrick, Dean Barnard, and others. ‘We sat very late;’ he adds in conclusion, ‘and the conversation that at last ensued, was the direct cause of my friend Goldsmith’s poem, called “Retaliation.”‘
l. 5. —–
“Our Dean”. Dr. Thomas Barnard, an Irishman, at this time Dean of Derry. He died at Wimbledon in 1806. It was Dr. Barnard who, in reply to a rude sally of Johnson, wrote the charming verses on improvement after the age of forty-five, which end —
If I have thoughts, and can’t express them, Gibbon shall teach me how to dress them, In terms select and terse;
Jones teach me modesty and Greek, Smith how to think, Burke how to speak, And Beauclerk to converse.
Let Johnson teach me how to place In fairest light, each borrow’d grace, From him I’ll learn to write;
Copy his clear, familiar style, And from the roughness of his file
Grow like himself — polite.
(Northcote’s ‘Life of Reynolds’, 2nd ed., 1819, i. 221.) According to Cumberland (‘Memoirs’, 1807, i. 370), ‘The dean also gave him [Goldsmith] an epitaph, and Sir Joshua illuminated the dean’s verses with a sketch of his bust in pen and ink inimitably caricatured.’ What would collectors give for that sketch and epitaph! Unfortunately in Cumberland’s septuagenarian recollections the ‘truth severe’ is mingled with an unusual amount of ‘fairy fiction.’ However Sir Joshua ‘did’ draw caricatures, for a number of them were exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery (by the Duke of Devonshire) in the winter of 1883-4.
l. 6. —–
“Our Burke”. The Right Hon. Edmund Burke, 1729-97.
l. 7. —–
“Our Will”. ‘Mr. William Burke, late Secretary to General Conway, and member for Bedwin, Wiltshire’ (Note to second edition). He was a kinsman of Edmund Burke, and one of the supposed authors of Junius’s ‘Letters’. He died in 1798. ‘It is said that the notices Goldsmith first wrote of the Burkes were so severe that Hugh Boyd persuaded the poet to alter them, and entirely rewrite the character of William, for he was sure that if the Burkes saw what was originally written of them the peace of the Club would be disturbed.’ (Rev. W. Hunt in ‘Dict. Nat. Biography’, Art. ‘William Burke.’)
l. 8. —–
“And Dick”. Richard Burke, Edmund Burke’s younger brother. He was for some years Collector to the Customs at Grenada, being on a visit to London when ‘Retaliation’ was written (Forster’s ‘Life’, 1871, ii. 404). He died in 1794, Recorder of Bristol.
l. 9. —–
“Our Cumberland’s sweetbread”. Richard Cumberland, the poet, novelist, and dramatist, 1731-1811, author of ‘The West Indian’, 1771, ‘The Fashionable Lover’, 1772, and many other more or less sentimental plays. In his ‘Memoirs’, 1807, i. 369-71, he gives an account of the origin of ‘Retaliation’, which adds a few dubious particulars to that of Garrick. But it was written from memory long after the events it records.
l. 10. —–
“Douglas”. ‘Dr. Douglas, since Bishop of Salisbury,’ says Cumberland. He died in 1807 (‘v. infra’).
l. 14. —–
“Ridge”. ‘Counsellor John Ridge, a gentleman belonging to the Irish Bar’ (Note to second edition). ‘Burke,’ says Bolton Corney, ‘in 1771, described him as “one of the honestest and best-natured men living, and inferior to none of his profession in ability.”‘ (See also note to line 125.)
l. 15. —–
“Hickey”. The commentator of the second edition of ‘Retaliation’ calls this gentleman ‘honest Tom Hickey’. His Christian name, however, was ‘Joseph’ (Letter of Burke, November 8, 1774). He was a jovial, good-natured, over-blunt Irishman, the legal adviser of both Burke and Reynolds. Indeed it was Hickey who drew the conveyance of the land on which Reynolds’s house ‘next to the Star and Garter’ at Richmond (Wick House) was built by Chambers the architect. Hickey died in 1794. Reynolds painted his portrait for Burke, and it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1772 (No. 208). In 1833 it belonged to Mr. T. H. Burke. Sir Joshua also painted Miss Hickey in 1769-73. Her father, not much to Goldsmith’s satisfaction, was one of the Paris party in 1770. See also note to l. 125.
l. 16. —–
“Magnanimous Goldsmith”. According to Malone (Reynolds’s ‘Works’, second edition, 1801, i. xc), Goldsmith intended to have concluded with his own character.
l. 34. —–
“Tommy Townshend”, M.P. for Whitchurch, Hampshire, afterwards first Viscount Sydney. He died in 1800. Junius says Bolton Corney, gives a portrait of him as ‘still life’. His presence in ‘Retaliation’ is accounted for by the fact that he had commented in Parliament upon Johnson’s pension. ‘I am well assured,’ says Boswell, ‘that Mr. Townshend’s attack upon Johnson was the occasion of his “hitching in a rhyme”; for, that in the original copy of Goldsmith’s character of Mr. Burke, in his ‘Retaliation’ another person’s name stood in the couplet where Mr. Townshend is now introduced.’ (Birkbeck Hill’s ‘Boswell’, 1887, iv. 318.)
l. 35. —–
“too deep for his hearers”. ‘The emotion to which he commonly appealed was that too rare one, the love of wisdom, and he combined his thoughts and knowledge in propositions of wisdom so weighty and strong, that the minds of ordinary hearers were not on the instant prepared for them.’ (Morley’s ‘Burke’, 1882, 209-10.)
l. 36. —–
“And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining”. For the reason given in the previous note, many of Burke’s hearers often took the opportunity of his rising to speak, to retire to dinner. Thus he acquired the nickname of the ‘Dinner Bell.’
l. 42. —–
“To eat mutton cold”. There is a certain resemblance between this character and Gray’s lines on himself written in 1761, beginning ‘Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune.’ (See Gosse’s ‘Gray’s Works’, 1884, i. 127.) But both Gray and Goldsmith may have been thinking of a line in the once popular song of ‘Ally Croaker’:–
Too dull for a wit, too grave for a joker.
l. 43. —–
“honest William”, i.e. William Burke (‘v. supra’).
l. 54. —–
“Now breaking a jest, and now breaking a limb”. A note to the second edition says — ‘The above Gentleman [Richard Burke, ‘v. supra’] having slightly fractured one of his arms and legs, at different times, the Doctor [i.e. Goldsmith] has rallied him on those accidents, as a kind of ‘retributive’ justice for breaking his jests on other people.’
l. 61. —–
“Here Cumberland lies”. According to Boaden’s ‘Life of Kemble’, 1825, i. 438, Mrs. Piozzi rightly regarded this portrait as wholly ironical; and Bolton Corney, without much expenditure of acumen, discovers it to have been written in a spirit of ‘persiflage’. Nevertheless, Cumberland himself (‘Memoirs’, 1807, i. 369) seems to have accepted it in good faith. Speaking of Goldsmith he says — I conclude my account of him with gratitude for the epitaph he bestowed on me in his poem called ‘Retaliation’.’ From the further details which he gives of the circumstances, it would appear that his own performance, of which he could recall but one line —
All mourn the poet, I lament the man —
was conceived in a less malicious spirit than those of the others, and had predisposed the sensitive bard in his favour. But no very genuine cordiality could be expected to exist between the rival authors of ‘The West Indian’ and ‘She Stoops to Conquer’.
l. 66. —–
“And Comedy wonders at being so fine”. It is instructive here to transcribe Goldsmith’s serious opinion of the kind of work which Cumberland essayed:– ‘A new species of Dramatic Composition has been introduced, under the name of ‘Sentimental’ Comedy, in which the virtues of Private Life are exhibited, rather than the Vices exposed; and the Distresses rather than the Faults of Mankind, make our interest in the piece…. In these Plays almost all the Characters are good, and exceedingly generous; they are lavish enough of their ‘Tin’ Money on the Stage, and though they want Humour, have abundance of Sentiment and Feeling. If they happen to have Faults or Foibles, the Spectator is taught not only to pardon, but to applaud them, in consideration of the goodness of their hearts; so that Folly, instead of being ridiculed, is commended, and the Comedy aims at touching our Passions without the power of being truly pathetic.’ (‘Westminster Magazine’, 1772, i. 5.) Cf. also the ‘Preface to The Good Natur’d Man’, where he ‘hopes that too much refinement will not banish humour and character from our’s, as it has already done from the French theatre. Indeed the French comedy is now become so very elevated and sentimental, that it has not only banished humour and ‘Moliere’ from the stage, but it has banished all spectators too.’
l. 80. —–
“The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks”. Dr. John Douglas (‘v. supra’) distinguished himself by his exposure of two of his countrymen, Archibald Bower, 1686-1766, who, being secretly a member of the Catholic Church, wrote a ‘History of the Popes’; and William Lauder 1710-1771, who attempted to prove Milton a plagiarist. Cf. Churchill’s ‘Ghost’, Bk. ii:–
By TRUTH inspir’d when ‘Lauder’s’ spight O’er MILTON cast the Veil of Night,
DOUGLAS arose, and thro’ the maze Of intricate and winding ways,
Came where the subtle Traitor lay, And dragg’d him trembling to the day.
‘Lauder on Milton’ is one of the books bound to the trunk-maker’s in Hogarth’s ‘Beer Street’, 1751. He imposed on Johnson, who wrote him a ‘Preface’ and was consequently trounced by Churchill (‘ut supra’) as ‘our Letter’d POLYPHEME.’
l. 86. —–
“Our Dodds shall be pious”. The reference is to the Rev. Dr. William Dodd, who three years after the publication of ‘Retaliation’ (i.e. June 27, 1777) was hanged at Tyburn for forging the signature of the fifth Earl of Chesterfield, to whom he had been tutor. His life previously had long been scandalous enough to justify Goldsmith’s words. Johnson made strenuous and humane exertions to save Dodd’s life, but without avail. (See Birkbeck Hill’s ‘Boswell’, 1887, iii. 139-48.) There is an account of Dodd’s execution at the end of vol. i of Angelo’s ‘Reminiscences’, 1830.
“our Kenricks”. Dr. William Kenrick — say the earlier annotators — who ‘read lectures at the Devil Tavern, under the Title of “The School of Shakespeare.”‘ The lectures began January 19, 1774, and help to fix the date of the poem. Goldsmith had little reason for liking this versatile and unprincipled Ishmaelite of letters, who, only a year before, had penned a scurrilous attack upon him in ‘The London Packet’. Kenrick died in 1779.
l. 87. —–
“Macpherson”. ‘David [James] Macpherson, Esq.; who lately, from the mere ‘force of his style’, wrote down the first poet of all antiquity.’ (Note to second edition.) This was ‘Ossian’ Macpherson, 1738-96, who, in 1773, had followed up his Erse epics by a prose translation of Homer, which brought him little but opprobrium. ‘Your abilities, since your Homer, are not so formidable,’ says Johnson in the knockdown letter which he addressed to him in 1775. (Birkbeck Hill’s ‘Boswell’, 1887, ii. 298.)
l. 88. —–
“Our Townshend”. See note to line 34.
l. 89. —–
“New Lauders and Bowers”. See note to l. 80.
l. 92. —–
“And Scotchman meet Scotchman, and cheat in the dark”. Mitford compares Farquhar’s ‘Love and a Bottle’, 1699, Act iii–
But gods meet gods and jostle in the dark.
But Farquhar was quoting from Dryden and Lee’s ‘Oedipus’, 1679, Act iv (at end).
l. 93. —–
“Here lies David Garrick”. ‘The sum of all that can be said for and against Mr. Garrick, some people think, may be found in these lines of Goldsmith,’ writes Davies in his ‘Life of Garrick’, 2nd ed., 1780, ii. 159. Posterity has been less hesitating in its verdict. ‘The lines on Garrick,’ says Forster, ‘Life of Goldsmith’, 1871, ii. 409, ‘are quite perfect writing. Without anger, the satire is finished, keen, and uncompromising; the wit is adorned by most discriminating praise; and the truth is only the more unsparing for its exquisite good manners and good taste.’
l. 115. —–
“Ye Kenricks”. See note to line 86.
“ye Kellys”. Hugh Kelly (1739-1777), an Irishman, the author of ‘False Delicacy’, 1768; ‘A Word to the Wise’, 1770; ‘The School for Wives’, 1774, and other ‘sentimental dramas,’ is here referred to. His first play, which is described in Garrick’s prologue as a ‘Sermon,’ ‘preach’d in Acts,’ was produced at Drury Lane just six days before Goldsmith’s comedy of ‘The Good Natur’d Man’ appeared at Covent Garden, and obtained a success which it ill deserved. ‘False Delicacy’ — said Johnson truly (Birkbeck Hill’s ‘Boswell’, 1887, ii. 48) — ‘was totally void of character,’ — a crushing accusation to make against a drama. But Garrick, for his private ends, had taken up Kelly as a rival to Goldsmith; and the ‘comedie serieuse’ or ‘larmoyante’ of La Chaussee, Sedaine, and Diderot had already found votaries in England. ‘False Delicacy’, weak, washy, and invertebrate as it was, completed the transformation of ‘genteel’ into ‘sentimental’ comedy, and establishing that ‘genre’ for the next few years, effectually retarded the wholesome reaction towards humour and character which Goldsmith had tried to promote by ‘The Good Natur’d Man’. (See note to l. 66.)
“Woodfalls”. ‘William Woodfall’ — says Bolton Corney — ‘successively editor of ‘The London Packet’ and ‘The Morning Chronicle’, was matchless as a reporter of speeches, and an able theatrical critic. He made lofty pretensions to editorial impartiality — but the actor [i.e. Garrick] was not ‘always’ satisfied.’ He died in 1803. He must not be confounded with Henry Sampson Woodfall, the editor of Junius’s ‘Letters’. (See note to l. 162.)
l. 120. —–
“To act as an angel”. There is a sub-ironic touch in this phrase which should not be overlooked. Cf. l. 102.
l. 125. —–
“Here Hickey reclines”. See note to l. 15. In Cumberland’s ‘Poetical Epistle to Dr. Goldsmith; or Supplement to his Retaliation’ {‘Gentleman’s Magazine’, Aug. 1778, p. 384) Hickey’s genial qualities are thus referred to:–
Give RIDGE and HICKY, generous souls! Of WHISKEY PUNCH convivial bowls.
l. 134. —–
“a special attorney”. A special attorney was merely an attorney who practised in one court only. The species is now said to be extinct.
l. 135. —–
“burn ye”. The annotator of the second edition, apologizing for this ‘forced’ rhyme to ‘attorney,’ informs the English reader that the phrase of ‘burn ye’ is ‘a familiar method of salutation in Ireland amongst the lower classes of the people.’
l. 137. —–
“Here Reynolds is laid”. This shares the palm with the admirable epitaphs on Garrick and Burke. But Goldsmith loved Reynolds, and there are no satiric strokes in the picture. If we are to believe Malone (Reynolds’s ‘Works’, second edition, 1801, i. xc), ‘these were the last lines the author wrote.’
l. 140. —–
“bland”. Malone (‘ut supra’, lxxxix) notes this word as ’eminently happy, and characteristick of his [Reynolds’s] easy and placid manners.’ Boswell (Dedication of ‘Life of Johnson’) refers to his ‘equal and placid temper.’ Cf. also Dean Barnard’s verses (Northcote’s ‘Life of Reynolds’, 2nd ed., 1819, i. 220), and Mrs. Piozzi’s lines in her ‘Autobiography’, 2nd ed., 1861, ii. 175-6.
l. 146. —–
“He shifted his trumpet”. While studying Raphael in the Vatican in 1751, Reynolds caught so severe a cold ‘as to occasion a deafness which obliged him to use an ear-trumpet for the remainder of his life.’ (Taylor and Leslie’s ‘Reynolds’, 1865, i. 50.) This instrument figures in a portrait of himself which he painted for Thrale about 1775. See also Zoffany’s picture of the ‘Academicians gathered about the model in the Life School at Somerset House,’ 1772, where he is shown employing it to catch the conversation of Wilton and Chambers.
“and only took snuff”. Sir Joshua was a great snuff-taker. His snuff-box, described in the Catalogue as the one ‘immortalized in Goldsmith’s ‘Retaliation’,’ was exhibited, with his spectacles and other personal relics, at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1883-4. In the early editions this epitaph breaks off abruptly at the word ‘snuff.’ But Malone says that half a line more had been written. Prior gives this half line as ‘By flattery unspoiled –,’ and affirms that among several erasures in the manuscript sketch devoted to Reynolds it ‘remained unaltered.’ (‘Life’, 1837, ii. 499.) See notes to ll. 53, 56, and 91 of ‘The Haunch of Venison’.
l. 147. —–
“Here Whitefoord reclines”. The circumstances which led to the insertion of these lines in the fifth edition are detailed in the prefatory words of the publisher given at p. 92. There is more than a suspicion that Whitefoord wrote them himself; but they have too long been accepted as an appendage to the poem to be now displaced. Caleb Whitefoord (born 1734) was a Scotchman, a wine-merchant, and an art connoisseur, to whom J. T. Smith, in his ‘Life of Nollekens’, 1828, i. 333-41, devotes several pages. He was one of the party at the St. James’s Coffee-house. He died in 1810. There is a caricature of him in ‘Connoisseurs inspecting a Collection of George Morland,’ November, 16, 1807; and Wilkie’s ‘Letter of Introduction’, 1814, was a reminiscence of a visit which, when he first came to London, he paid to Whitefoord. He was also painted by Reynolds and Stuart. Hewins’s ‘Whitefoord Papers’, 1898, throw no light upon the story of the epitaph.
l. 148. —–
“a grave man”. Cf. ‘Romeo and Juliet’, Act iii, Sc. 1: — ‘Ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me ‘a grave man’.’ This Shakespearean recollection is a little like Goldsmith’s way. (See note to ‘The Haunch of Venison’, l. 120.)
l. 150. —–
“and rejoic’d in a pun”. ‘Mr. W. is so notorious a punster, that Doctor Goldsmith used to say, it was impossible to keep him company, without being ‘infected’ with the ‘itch of punning’.’ (Note to fifth edition.)
l. 160. —–
‘”if the table he set on a roar”.’ Cf. ‘Hamlet’, Act v, Sc. I.
l. 162. —–
“Woodfall”, i.e. Henry Sampson Woodfall, printer of ‘The Public Advertiser’. He died in 1805. (See note to l. 115.)
l. 170. —–
“Cross-Readings, Ship-News, and Mistakes of the Press”. Over the ‘nom de guerre’ of ‘Papyrius Cursor,’ a real Roman name, but as happy in its applicability as Thackeray’s ‘Manlius Pennialinus,’ Whitefoord contributed many specimens of this mechanic wit to ‘The Public Advertiser’. The ‘Cross Readings’ were obtained by taking two or three columns of a newspaper horizontally and ‘onwards’ instead of ‘vertically’ and downwards, thus:–
Colds caught at this season are
The Companion to the Playhouse. or
To be sold to the best Bidder,
My seat in Parliament being vacated.
A more elaborate example is
On Tuesday an address was presented; it unhappily missed fire and the villain made off, when the honour of knighthood was conferred on him to the great joy of that noble family
Goldsmith was hugely delighted with Whitefoord’s ‘lucky inventions’ when they first became popular in 1766. ‘He declared, in the heat of his admiration of them, it would have given him more pleasure to have been the author of them than of all the works he had ever published of his own’ (Northcote’s ‘Life of Reynolds’, 2nd ed., 1819, i. 217). What is perhaps more remarkable is, that Johnson spoke of Whitefoord’s performances as ‘ingenious and diverting’ (Birkbeck Hill’s ‘Boswell’, 1887, iv. 322); and Horace Walpole laughed over them till he cried (Letter to Montagu, December 12, 1766). To use Voltaire’s witticism, he is ‘bien heureux’ who can laugh now. It may be added that Whitefoord did not, as he claimed, originate the ‘Cross Readings.’ They had been anticipated in No. 49 of Harrison’s spurious ‘Tatler’, vol. v [1720].
The fashion of the ‘Ship-News’ was in this wise: ‘August 25 [1765]. We hear that his Majestys Ship ‘Newcastle’ will soon have a new figurehead, the old one being almost worn out.’ The ‘Mistakes of the Press’ explain themselves. (See also Smith’s ‘Life of Nollekens’, 1828, i. 336-7; Debrett’s ‘New Foundling Hospital for Wit’, 1784, vol. ii, and ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’, 1810, p. 300.)
l. 172. —–
“That a Scot may have humour, I had almost said wit”. Goldsmith, — if he wrote these verses, — must have forgotten that he had already credited Whitefoord with ‘wit’ in l. 153.
l. 174. —–
“Thou best humour’d man with the worst humour’d muse”. Cf. Rochester of Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset:– The best good man, with the worst-natur’d muse.
Whitefoord’s contribution to the epitaphs on Goldsmith is said to have been unusually severe, — so severe that four only of its eight lines are quoted in the ‘Whitefoord Papers’, 1898, the rest being ‘unfit for publication’ (p. xxvii). He afterwards addressed a metrical apology to Sir Joshua, which is printed at pp. 217-8 of Northcote’s ‘Life’, 2nd ed., 1819. See also Forster’s ‘Goldsmith’, 1871, ii. 408-9.
SONG FOR ‘SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.’
Boswell, to whom we are indebted for the preservation of this lively song, sent it to ‘The London Magazine’ for June, 1774 (vol. xliii, p. 295), with the following:–
‘To the Editor of ‘The London Magazine’. SIR, — I send you a small production of the late Dr. ‘Goldsmith’, which has never been published, and which might perhaps have been totally lost had I not secured it. He intended it as a song in the character of Miss ‘Hardcastle’, in his admirable comedy, ‘She stoops to conquer’; but it was left out, as Mrs. ‘Bulkley’ who played the part did not sing. He sung it himself in private companies very agreeably. The tune is a pretty Irish air, called ‘The Humours of Balamagairy’, to which, he told me, he found it very difficult to adapt words; but he has succeeded happily in these few lines. As I could sing the tune, and was fond of them, he was so good as to give me them about a year ago, just as I was leaving London, and bidding him adieu for that season, little apprehending that it was a last farewell. I preserve this little relick in his own handwriting with an affectionate care. I am, Sir,
Your humble Servant,
JAMES BOSWELL.’
When, seventeen years later, Boswell published his ‘Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.’, he gave an account of his dining at General Oglethorpe’s in April, 1773, with Johnson and Goldsmith; and he says that the latter sang the ‘Three Jolly Pigeons’, and this song, to the ladies in the tea-room. Croker, in a note, adds that the younger Colman more appropriately employed the ‘essentially low comic’ air for Looney Mactwolter in the [‘Review; or the] Wags of Windsor’, 1808 [i.e. in that character’s song beginning — ‘Oh, whack! Cupid’s a mannikin’], and that Moore tried to bring it into good company in the ninth number of the ‘Irish Melodies’. But Croker did not admire the tune, and thought poorly of Goldsmith’s words. Yet they are certainly fresher than Colman’s or Moore’s:–
Sing — sing — Music was given,
To brighten the gay, and kindle the loving; Souls here, like planets in Heaven,
By harmony’s laws alone are kept moving, etc.
TRANSLATION.
These lines, which appear at p. 312 of vol. V of the ‘History of the Earth and Animated Nature’, 1774, are freely translated from some Latin verses by Addison in No 412 of the ‘Spectator’, where they are introduced as follows:– ‘Thus we see that every different Species of sensible Creatures has its different Notions of Beauty, and that each of them is most affected with the Beauties of its own kind. This is nowhere more remarkable than in Birds of the same Shape and Proportion, where we often see the Male determined in his Courtship by the single Grain or Tincture of a Feather, and never discovering any Charms but in the Colour of its own Species.’ Addison’s lines, of which Goldsmith translated the first fourteen only, are printed from his corrected MS. at p. 4 of ‘Some Portions of Essays contributed to the Spectator by Mr. Joseph Addison [by the late J. Dykes Campbell], 1864.
THE HAUNCH OF VENISON.
It is supposed that this poem was written early in 1771, although it was not printed until 1776, when it was published by G. Kearsly and J. Ridley under the title of ‘The Haunch of Venison, a Poetical Epistle to the Lord Clare. By the late Dr. Goldsmith. With a Head of the Author, Drawn by Henry Bunbury, Esq; and Etched by [James] Bretherton.’ A second edition, the text of which is here followed, appeared in the same year ‘With considerable Additions and Corrections, Taken from the Author’s ‘last’ Transcript.’ The Lord Clare to whom the verses are addressed was Robert Nugent, of Carlanstown, Westmeath, M.P. for St. Mawes in 1741-54. In 1766 he was created Viscount Clare; in 1776 Earl Nugent. In his youth he had himself been an easy if not very original versifier; and there are several of his performances in the second volume of Dodsley’s ‘Collection of Poems by Several Hands’, 4th ed., 1755. One of the Epistles, beginning ‘Clarinda, dearly lov’d, attend The Counsels of a faithful friend,’ seems to have betrayed Goldsmith into the blunder of confusing it, in the ‘Poems for Young Ladies’. 1767, p. 114, with Lyttelton’s better-known ‘Advice to a Lady’ (‘The counsels of a friend, Belinda, hear’), also in Dodsley’s miscellany; while another piece, an ‘Ode to William Pultney, Esq.’, contains a stanza so good that Gibbon worked it into his character of Brutus:–
What tho’ the good, the brave, the wise, With adverse force undaunted rise,
To break th’ eternal doom!
Tho’ CATO liv’d, tho’ TULLY spoke, Tho’ BRUTUS dealt the godlike stroke, Yet perish’d fated ROME.
Detraction, however, has insinuated that Mallet, his step-son’s tutor, was Nugent’s penholder in this instance. ‘Mr. Nugent sure did not write his own Ode,’ says Gray to Walpole (Gray’s ‘Works’, by Gosse, 1884, ii. 220). Earl Nugent died in Dublin in October, 1788, and was buried at Gosfield in Essex, a property he had acquired with his second wife. A ‘Memoir’ of him was written in 1898 by Mr. Claud Nugent. He is described by Cunningham as ‘a big, jovial, voluptuous Irishman, with a loud voice, a strong Irish accent, and a ready though coarse wit.’ According to Percy (‘Memoir’, 1801, p. 66), he had been attracted to Goldsmith by the publication of ‘The Traveller’ in 1764, and he mentioned him favourably to the Earl of Northumberland, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. A note in Forster’s ‘Life’, 1871, ii. 329-30, speaks of Goldsmith as a frequent visitor at Gosfield, and at Nugent’s house in Great George Street, Westminster, where he had often for playmate his host’s daughter, Mary, afterwards Marchioness of Buckingham.
Scott and others regarded ‘The Haunch of Venison’ as autobiographical. To what extent this is the case, it is difficult to say. That it represents the actual thanks of the poet to Lord Clare for an actual present of venison, part of which he promptly transferred to Reynolds, is probably the fact. But, as the following notes show, it is also clear that Goldsmith borrowed, if not his entire fable, at least some of its details from Boileau’s third satire; and that, in certain of the lines, he had in memory Swift’s ‘Grand Question Debated’, the measure of which he adopts. This throws more than a doubt upon the truth of the whole. ‘His genius’ (as Hazlitt says) ‘was a mixture of originality and imitation’; and fact and fiction often mingle inseparably in his work. The author of the bailiff scene in the ‘Good Natur’d Man’ was quite capable of inventing for the nonce the tragedy of the unbaked pasty, or of selecting from the Pilkingtons and Purdons of his acquaintance such appropriate guests for his Mile End Amphitryon as the writers of the ‘Snarler’ and the ‘Scourge’. It may indeed even be doubted whether, if ‘The Haunch of Venison’ had been absolute personal history, Goldsmith would ever have retailed it to his noble patron at Gosfield, although it may include enough of real experience to serve as the basis for a ‘jeu d’esprit’.
l. 4. —–
“The fat was so white, etc.” The first version reads — ‘The white was so white, and the red was so ruddy.’
l. 5. —–
“Though my stomach was sharp, etc.” This couplet is not in the first version.
l. 10. —–
“One gammon of bacon”. Prior compared a passage from Goldsmith’s ‘Animated Nature’, 1774, iii. 9, ‘a propos’ of a similar practice in Germany, Poland, and Switzerland. ‘A piece of beef,’ he says, ‘hung up there, is considered as an elegant piece of furniture, which, though seldom touched, at least argues the possessor’s opulence and ease.’
l. 14. —–
“a bounce”, i.e. a braggart falsehood. Steele, in No. 16 of ‘The Lover’, 1715, p. 110, says of a manifest piece of brag, ‘But this is supposed to be only a ‘Bounce’.’
l. 18. —–
“Mr. Byrne”, spelled ‘Burn’ in the earlier editions, was a relative of Lord Clare.
l. 24. —–
“M–r–‘s.” MONROE’s in the first version. ‘Dorothy Monroe,’ says Bolton Corney, ‘whose various charms are celebrated in verse by Lord Townshend.’
l. 27. —–
“There’s H–d, and C–y, and H–rth, and H–ff”. In the first version —
‘There’s COLEY, and WILLIAMS, and HOWARD, and HIFF.’
— Hiff was Paul Hiffernan, M.B., 1719-77, a Grub Street author and practitioner. Bolton Corney hazards some conjectures as to the others; but Cunningham wisely passes them over.
l. 29. —–
“H–gg–ns”. Perhaps, suggests Bolton Corney, this was the Captain Higgins who assisted at Goldsmith’s absurd ‘fracas’ with Evans the bookseller, upon the occasion of Kenrick’s letter in ‘The London Packet’ for March 24, 1773. Other accounts, however, state that his companion was Captain Horneck (Prior, ‘Life’, 1837, ii. 411-12). This couplet is not in the first version
l. 33. —–
“Such dainties to them, etc.” The first version reads:–
Such dainties to them! It ‘would’ look like a flirt, Like sending ’em Ruffles when wanting a Shirt.
Cunningham quotes a similar idea from T. Brown’s ‘Laconics, Works’, 1709, iv. 14. ‘To treat a poor wretch with a bottle of Burgundy, or fill his snuff-box, is like giving a pair of lace ruffles to a man that has never a shirt on his back.’ But Goldsmith, as was his wont, had already himself employed the same figure. ‘Honours to one in my situation,’ he says in a letter to his brother Maurice, in January, 1770, when speaking of his appointment as Professor of Ancient History to the Royal Academy, ‘are something like ruffles to a man that wants a shirt’ (‘Percy Memoir’, 1801, 87-8). His source was probably, not Brown’s ‘Laconics’, but those French ‘ana’ he knew so well. According to M. J. J. Jusserand (‘English Essays from a French Pen’, 1895, pp. 160-1), the originator of this conceit was M. Samuel de Sorbieres, the traveller in England who was assailed by Bishop Sprat. Considering himself inadequately rewarded by his patrons, Mazarin, Louis XIV, and Pope Clement IX, he said bitterly — ‘They give lace cuffs to a man without a shirt’; a ‘consolatory witticism’ which he afterwards remodelled into, ‘I wish they would send me bread for the butter they kindly provided me with.’ In this form it appears in the Preface to the ‘Sorberiana’, Toulouse, 1691.
“a flirt” is a jibe or jeer. ‘He would sometimes…cast out a jesting ‘flirt’ at me.’ (Morley’s ‘History of Thomas Ellwood’, 1895, p. 104.) Swift also uses the word.
l. 37. —–
“An under-bred, fine-spoken fellow, etc.” The first version reads —
A fine-spoken Custom-house Officer he, Who smil’d as he gaz’d on the Ven’son and me.
l. 44. —–
“but I hate ostentation”. Cf. Beau Tibbs:– ‘She was bred, ‘but that’s between ourselves’, under the inspection of the Countess of All-night.’ (‘Citizen of the World’, 1762, i. 238.)
l. 49. —–
“We’ll have Johnson, and Burke”. Cf. Boileau, ‘Sat.’ iii. Ll. 25-6, which Goldsmith had in mind:–
Moliere avec Tartufe y doit jouer son role, Et Lambert, qui plus est, m’a donne sa parole.
l. 53. —–
“What say you — a pasty? It shall, and it must”. The first version reads —
I’ll take no denial — you shall, and you must.
Mr. J. H. Lobban, ‘Goldsmith, Select Poems’, 1900, notes a hitherto undetected similarity between this and the ‘It ‘must’, and it ‘shall’ be a barrack, my life’ of Swift’s ‘Grand Question Debated’. See also ll. 56 and 91.
l. 56. “No stirring, I beg — my dear friend — my dear friend”. In the first edition —
No words, my dear GOLDSMITH! my very good Friend!
Mr. Lobban compares:–
‘Good morrow, good captain.’ ‘I’ll wait on you down,’ — ‘You shan’t stir a foot.’ ‘You’ll think me a clown.’
l. 60. —–
“‘And nobody with me at sea but myself.'” This is almost a textual quotation from one of the letters of Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, to Lady Grosvenor, a correspondence which in 1770 gave great delight to contemporary caricaturists and scandal-mongers. Other poets besides Goldsmith seem to have been attracted by this particular lapse of his illiterate Royal Highness, since it is woven into a ballad printed in ‘The Public Advertiser’ for August 2 in the above year:–
The Miser who wakes in a Fright for his Pelf, And finds ‘no one by him except his own Self’, etc.
l. 67. —–
“When come to the place”, etc.
Cf. Boileau, ‘ut supra’, ll. 31-4:–
A peine etais-je entre, que ravi de me voir, Mon homme, en m’embrassant, m’est venu recevoir; Et montrant a mes yeux une allegresse entiere, Nous n’avons, m’a-t-il dit, ni Lambert ni Moliere.
Lambert the musician, it may be added, had the special reputation of accepting engagements which he never kept.
l. 72. —–
“and t’other with Thrale”. Henry Thrale, the Southwark brewer, and the husband of Mrs. Thrale, afterwards Mrs. Piozzi. Johnson first made his acquaintance in 1765. Strahan complained to Boswell that, by this connexion, Johnson ‘was in a great measure absorbed from the society of his old friends.’ (Birkbeck Hill’s ‘Boswell’, 1887, iii. 225.) Line 72 in the first edition reads —
The one at the House, and the other with THRALE.
l. 76. —–
“They both of them merry and authors like you”. ‘They’ should apparently be ‘they’re.’ The first version reads —
Who dabble and write in the Papers — like you.
l. 78. —–
“Some think he writes Cinna — he owns to Panurge”. ‘Panurge’ and ‘Cinna’ are signatures which were frequently to be found at the foot of letters addressed to the ‘Public Advertiser’ in 1770-1 in support of Lord Sandwich and the Government. They are said to have been written by Dr. W. Scott, Vicar of Simonburn, Northumberland, and chaplain of Greenwich Hospital, both of which preferments had been given him by Sandwich. In 1765 he had attacked Lord Bute and his policy over the signature of ‘Anti-Sejanus.’ ‘Sandwich and his parson Anti-Sejanus [are] hooted off the stage’ — writes Walpole to Mann, March 21, 1766. According to Prior, it was Scott who visited Goldsmith in his Temple chambers, and invited him to ‘draw a venal quill’ for Lord North’s administration. Goldsmith’s noble answer, as reported by his reverend friend, was — ‘I can earn as much as will supply my wants without writing for any party; the assistance therefore you offer is unnecessary to me.’ (‘Life’, 1837, ii. 278.) There is a caricature portrait of Scott at p. 141 of ‘The London Museum’ for February, 1771, entitled ‘Twitcher’s Advocate,’ ‘Jemmy Twitcher’ being the nickname of Lord Sandwich.
l. 82. —–
“Swinging’, great, huge. ‘Bishop Lowth has just finished the Dramas, and sent me word, that although I have paid him the most ‘swinging’ compliment he ever received, he likes the whole book more than he can say.’ (‘Memoirs of Hannah More’, 1834, i. 236.)
l. 84. —–
“pasty”. The first version has ‘Ven’son.’
l. 87. —–
“So there I sat, etc.” This couplet is not in the first version.
l. 91. —–
“And, ‘Madam,’ quoth he”. Mr. Lobban again quotes Swift’s ‘Grant Question Debated’:–
And ‘Madam,’ says he, ‘if such dinners you give You’ll ne’er want for parsons as long as you live.’
These slight resemblances, coupled with the more obvious likeness of the ‘Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff’ of ‘Retaliation’ (ll. 145-6) to the ‘Noveds’ and ‘Bluturks’ and ‘Omurs’ and stuff’ (also pointed out by Mr. Lobban) are interesting, because they show plainly that Goldsmith remembered the works of Swift far better than ‘The New Bath Guide’, which has sometimes been supposed to have set the tune to the ‘Haunch’ and ‘Retaliation’.
l. 91. —–
“‘may this bit be my poison.'” The gentleman in ‘She Stoops to Conquer’, Act i, who is ‘obligated to dance a bear.’ Uses the same asseveration. Cf. also Squire Thornhill’s somewhat similar formula in chap. vii of ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’, 1766, i. 59.
l. 95. —–
“‘The tripe,’ quoth the Jew, etc”. The first version reads —
‘Your Tripe!’ quoth the ‘Jew’, ‘if the truth I may speak, I could eat of this Tripe seven days in the week.’
l. 103. —–
“Re-echoed”, i.e. ‘returned’ in the first edition.
l. 104. —–
“thot”. This, probably by a printer’s error, is altered to ‘that’ in the second version. But the first reading is the more in keeping, besides being a better rhyme.
l. 110. —–
“Wak’d Priam”. Cf. 2 ‘Henry IV’, Act I, Sc. 1:–
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night. And would have told him half his Troy was burnt.
l. 120. —–
“sicken’d over by learning”. Cf. ‘Hamlet’, Act iii, Sc. 1:
And thus the native hue of resolution Is ‘sicklied o’er’ with the pale cast of thought.
Notwithstanding the condemnation of Shakespeare in the ‘Present State of Polite Learning’, and elsewhere, Goldsmith frequently weaves Shakespearean recollections into his work. Cf. ‘She Stoops to Conquer’, 1773, Act i, p. 13, ‘We wanted no ghost to tell us that’ (‘Hamlet’, Act i, Sc. 5); and Act i, p. 9, where he uses Falstaff’s words (1 ‘Henry IV’, Act v, Sc. 1):–
Would it were bed-time and all were well.
l. 121. —–
“as very well known”. The first version has,
”tis very well known.’
EPITAPH ON THOMAS PARNELL.
This epitaph, apparently never used, was published with ‘The Haunch of Venison’, 1776; and is supposed to have been written about 1770. In that year Goldsmith wrote a ‘Life of Thomas Parnell, D.D.’, to accompany an edition of his poems, printed for Davies of Russell Street. Parnell was born in 1679, and died at Chester in 1718, on his way to Ireland. He was buried at Trinity Church in that town, on the 24th of October. Goldsmith says that his father and uncle both knew Parnell (‘Life of Parnell’, 1770, p. v), and that he received assistance from the poet’s nephew, Sir John Parnell, the singing gentleman who figures in Hogarth’s ‘Election Entertainment’. Why Goldsmith should write an epitaph upon a man who died ten years before his own birth, is not easy to explain. But Johnson also wrote a Latin one, which he gave to Boswell. (Birkbeck Hill’s ‘Life’, 1887, iv. 54.)
l. 1. —–
“gentle Parnell’s Name”. Mitford compares Pope on Parnell [‘Epistle to Harley’, 1. iv]:–
With softest manners, gentlest Arts adorn’d.
Pope published Parnell’s ‘Poems’ in 1722, and his sending them to Harley, Earl of Oxford, after the latter’s disgrace and retirement, was the occasion of the foregoing epistle, from which the following lines respecting Parnell may also be cited:–
For him, thou oft hast bid the World attend, Fond to forget the statesman in the friend; For SWIFT and him despis’d the farce of state, The sober follies of the wise and great; Dext’rous the craving, fawning crowd to quit, And pleas’d to ‘scape from Flattery to Wit.
l. 3. —–
“his sweetly-moral lay”. Cf. ‘The Hermit’, the ‘Hymn to Contentment’, the ‘Night Piece on Death’ — which Goldsmith certainly recalled in his own ‘City Night-Piece’. Of the last-named Goldsmith says (‘Life of Parnell’, 1770, p. xxxii), not without an obvious side-stroke at Gray’s too-popular ‘Elegy’, that it ‘deserves every praise, and I should suppose with very little amendment, might be made to surpass all those night pieces and church yard scenes that have since appeared.’ This is certainly (as Longfellow sings) to
…..rustling hear in every breeze The laurels of Miltiades.
Of Parnell, Hume wrote (‘Essays’, 1770, i. 244) that ‘after the fiftieth reading; [he] is as fresh as at the first.’ But Gray (speaking — it should be explained — of a dubious volume of his posthumous works) said: ‘Parnell is the dung-hill of Irish Grub Street’ (Gosse’s Gray’s ‘Works’, 1884, ii. 372). Meanwhile, it is his fate to-day to be mainly remembered by three words (not always attributed to him) in a couplet from what Johnson styled ‘perhaps the meanest’ of his performances, the ‘Elegy — to an Old Beauty’:–
And all that’s madly wild, or oddly gay, We call it only ‘pretty Fanny’s way’.
THE CLOWN’S REPLY.
This, though dated ‘Edinburgh 1753,’ was first printed in ‘Poems and Plays’, 1777, p. 79.
l. 1. —–
“John Trott” is a name for a clown or commonplace character. Miss Burney (‘Diary’, 1904, i. 222) says of Dr. Delap:– ‘As to his person and appearance, they are much in the ‘John-trot’ style.’ Foote, Chesterfield, and Walpole use the phrase; Fielding Scotticizes it into ‘John Trott-Plaid, Esq.’; and Bolingbroke employs it as a pseudonym.
l. 6. —–
“I shall ne’er see your graces”. ‘I shall never see a Goose again without thinking on Mr. ‘Neverout’,’ — says the ‘brilliant Miss Notable’ in Swift’s ‘Polite Conversation’, 1738,