elevation given, or lasting effect produced? by previous reading and training, were Had Scotland, England, and America, been brought out by curiosity, or in some cases ransacked for their choicest spirits, only to by a better principle, to hear some of the produce a certain tickling gratification, at most amounting to a high intellectual treat? We do not wish to speak dogmatically on the point, but it is our distinct impression that in a spiritual, not in a pecuniary sense, the cost outwent the profit. The great ends of teaching were not, and in the space, and in the circumstances, could hardly have been answered. Multitudes, unprepared

first men of the age, listened with most exemplary attention, were thrilled or tickled, but we fear not fed. We are convinced that steady attendance upon one plain single month's course on geology, or modern history, would have done more good than whole years spent in hearing such brilliant birds of passage.

From the North British Review.

LIFE OF GOLDSMITH.

The Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith. A Biography. In Four Books. By JOHN FORSTER. London, 1848.

THIS book accomplishes a retribution the children of flesh, whose pulses beat too which the world has waited for through sympathetically with the agitations of seventy and odd years. Welcome at any mother-earth, cannot sequester themselves rate by its purpose, it is trebly welcome by in that way. They walk in no such altiits execution, to all hearts that linger indul- tudes, but at elevations easily reached by gently over the frailties of a national favo-ground-winds of humble calamity. And rite once wickedly exaggerated-to all from that cup of sorrow, which upon all lips hearts that brood indignantly over the is pressed in some proportion, they must powers of that favorite once maliciously submit, by the very tenure on which they undervalued. hold their gifts, to drink, if not more profoundly than others, yet always with more peril to the accomplishment of their earthly mission.

A man of original genius, shown to us as revolving through the leisurely stages of a biographical memoir, lays open, to readers prepared for sympathy, two separate thea- Amongst this household of children too tres of interest; one in his personal career; tremulously associated to the fluctuations of the other in his works and his intellectual earth, stands forward conspicuously Oliver development. Both unfold together; and Goldsmith. And there is a belief current each borrows a secondary interest from the-that he was conspicuous, not only in the other the life from the recollection of the sense of being constitutionally flexible to works the works from the joy and sorrow the impressions of sorrow and adversity, in of the life. There have, indeed, been case they had happened to occur, but also authors whose great creations, severely pre- that he really had more than his share of conceived in a region of thought transcen- those afflictions. We are disposed to think dent to all impulses of earth, would have that this was not so. Our trust is, that been pretty nearly what they are under any Goldsmith lived upon the whole a life which, possible changes in the dramatic arrange- though troubled, was one of average enjoyment of their lives. Happy or not happy ment. Unquestionably, when reading at -gay or sad-these authors would equally midnight, and in the middle watch of a have fulfilled a mission too solemn and too century which he never reached, this record stern in its obligations to suffer any warp- of one so amiable, so guileless, so upright, ing from chance, or to bend before the or seeming to be otherwise for a moment accidents of life, whether dressed in sun- only in the eyes of those who did not know shine or in wintry gloom. But generally his difficulties, nor could have understood this is otherwise. Children of Paradise, them; when recurring also to his admirable like the Miltons of our planet, have the genius, to the sweet natural gaiety of his privilege of stars to "dwell apart." But oftentimes pathetic humor, and to the

varied accomplishments from talent or eru | deadly agitations and its torments of susdition, by which he gave effect to endow- pense, probably enough by the energies of ments so fascinating-one cannot but hope, or even of anxiety which exalted it, that sorrow over the strife which he sustained, period of bitter conflict was found by the king and over the wrong by which he suffered. a more ennobling life than he would have A few natural tears one sheds at the re- found in the torpor of a prosperity too prohearsal of so much contumely from fools, found. To be cloyed perpetually is a which he stood under unresistingly as one worse fate than sometimes to stand bareheaded under a hail storm;* and worse within the vestibule of starvation; and we to bear than the scorn of fools, was the im- need go no farther than the confidential perfect sympathy and jealous self distrust- letters of the court ladies of this and ing esteem which he received to the last other countries to satisfy ourselves how from friends. Doubtless he suffered much much worse in its effects upon happiness wrong; but so, in one way or other, do than any condition of alarm and peril, most men he suffered also this special is the lethargic repose of luxury too wrong, that in his life-time he never was monotonous, and of security too absolute. fully appreciated by any one friend- -some- If, therefore, Goldsmith's life had been one thing of a counter-movement ever mingled of continual struggle, it would not follow with praise for him-he never saw himself that it had therefore sunk below the standenthroned in the heart of any young and ard of ordinary happiness. But the lifefervent admirer, and he was always over- struggle of Goldsmith, though severe enough shadowed by men less deeply genial, though (after all allowances) to challenge a feeling more showy than himself:-but these things of tender compassion, was not in such a dehappen, and have happened to myriads gree severe as has been represented.* He amongst the benefactors of earth. Their enjoyed two great immunities from suffernames ascend in songs of thankful commemo- ing that have been much overlooked; and ration, but not until the ears are deaf such immunities that, in our opinion, four that would have thrilled to the music. And in five of all the people ever connected with these were the heaviest of Goldsmith's afflic- Goldsmith's works, as publishers, printers, tions: what are likely to be thought such, compositors (that is, men taken at ranviz., the battles which he fought for his dom), have very probably suffered more, daily bread, we do not number amongst upon the whole, than he. The immunities them. To struggle is not to suffer. Hea- were these:-1st, From any bodily taint of ven grants to few of us a life of untroubled low spirits. He had a constitutional gaiety prosperity, and grants it least of all to its of heart; an elastic hilarity; and, as he favorites. Charles I. carried, as it was himself expresses it, "a knack of hopthought by a keen Italian judge of physio- ing"-which knack could not be bought gnomy, a predestination to misery written in with Ormus and with Ind, nor hired for a his features. And it is probable that if any day with the peacock-throne of Delhi. How Cornelius Agrippa had then been living, to easy was it to bear the brutal affront of beshow him in early life the strife, the blood- ing to his face described as " Doctor minor," shed, the triumphs of enemies, the treach- when one hour or less would dismiss the eries of friends, the separation for ever from Doctor major, so invidiously contradistinthe familiar faces of his hearth, which guished from himself, to a struggle with darkened the years from 1642 to 1649, he scrofulous melancholy; whilst he, if returnwould have said-" Prophet of wo! if I bearing to solitude and a garret, was returning to live through this vista of seven years, it is also to habitual cheerfulness. There lay because at the further end of it thou showest one immunity, beyond all price, from a me the consolation of a scaffold." And yet mode of strife to which others, by a large our persuasion is, that in the midst of its majority, are doomed-strife with bodily wretchedness. Another immunity he had of almost equal value, and yet almost equal

*We do not allude chiefly to his experience in childhood, when he is reported to have been a general butt of mockery for his ugliness and his supposed stupidity; since, as regarded the latter reproach, he could not have suffered very long, having already at a childish age vindicated his intellectual place by the verses which opened to him an academic destination. We allude to his mature life, and the supercilious condescension with which even his reputed friends doled out their praises to him,

*We point this remark not at Mr. Forster, who, upon the whole, shares our opinion as to the toler able comfort of Goldsmith's life; he speaks indeed elsewhere of Goldsmith's depressions; but the question still remains were they of frequent recurrence, and had they any constitutional settlement? We are inclined to say no in both cases.

ly forgotten by his biographers, viz., from jective privilege lay in his buoyancy of anthe responsibilities of a family. Wife and imal spirits; the objective in his freedom children he had not. They it is that, be- from responsibilities. Goldsmith wanted ing a man's chief blessings, create also for very little more than Diogenes: now Diohim the deadliest of his anxieties, that stuff genes could only have been robbed of his his pillow with thorns, that surround his tub:* which perhaps was about as big as daily path with snares. Suppose the case most of poor Goldsmith's sitting-rooms, of a man who has helpless dependants of and far better ventilated. So that the liathis class upon himself summoned to face bility of these two men, cynic and nonsome sudden failure of his resources: how cynic, to the kicks of fortune, was pretty shattering to the power of exertion, and, much on a par; whilst Goldsmith had the above all, of exertion by an organ so deli- advantage of a better temper for bearing cate as the creative intellect, dealing with them, though certainty Diogenes had the subjects so coy as those of imaginative sen- better climate for scothing his temper. sibility, to know that instant ruin attends But it may be imagined, that if Goldhis failure. Success in such paths of lite- smith were thus fortunately equipped for rature might at the best be doubtful; but authorship, on the other hand the position success is impossible, with any powers what- of literature, as a money-making resource, ever, unless in a genial state of those pow- was in Goldsmith's days less advantageous ers; and this geniality is to be sustained than in ours. We are not of that opinion; in the case supposed, whilst the eyes are and the representation by which Mr. Forster fixed upon the most frightful of abysses endeavors to sustain it seems to us a yawning beneath his feet. He is to win showy, but untenable refinement. The his inspiration for poetry or romance from outline of his argument is, that the aristhe prelusive cries of infants clamoring for tocratic patron had, in Goldsmith's day, daily bread. Now, on the other hand, in by the progress of society, disappeared; the case of an extremity equally sudden he belonged to the past-that the mercealighting on the head of a man in Gold-nary publisher had taken his place-he smith's position, having no burthen to sup- represented the ugly present-but that the port but the trivial one of his own personal great reading public (that true and equineeds, the resources are endless for gain- table patron, as some fancy) had not yet ing time enough to look around. Suppose matured its means of effectual action upon him ejected from his lodgings: let him literature: this reading public virtually, walk into the country, with a pencil and a perhaps, belonged to the future. All this sheet of paper; there sitting under a hay- we steadfastly resist. No doubt the old stack for one morning, he may produce full-blown patron, en grand costume with what will pay his expenses for a week: a his heraldic bearings emblazoned at the day's labor will carry the sustenance of head of the Dedication, was dying out, like ten days. Poor may be the trade of author- the golden pippin. But he still lingered in ship, but it is as good as that of a slave in sheltered situations. And part of the maBrazil, whose one hour's work will defray chinery by which patronage had ever moved, the twenty-four hours' living. As a reader, viz., using influence for obtaining subscripor corrector of proofs, a good Latin and French scholar (like Goldsmith) would al- *Which tub the reader may fancy to have been ways have enjoyed a preference, we pre-only an old tar-barrel: if so, he is wrong. Isaac sume, at any eminent printing-office. This Casaubon, after severe researches into the nature of that tub, ascertained to the general satisfaction of again would have given him time for look-Christendom that it was not of wood, or within the ing round; or, he might perhaps have ob- restorative powers of a cooper, but of earthen ware, tained the same advantage for deliberation and once shattered by a horse's kick, quite past refrom some confidential friend's hospitality. remnant of the forty thieves lurked in, when waitpair. In fact, it was a large oil-jar, such as the In short, Goldsmith enjoyed the two privi-ing for their captain's signal from Ali Baba's house; leges, one subjective-the other objective and in Attica it must have cost fifteen shillings, which, when uniting in the same man, Consequently a week's loss of house-room and supposing that the philosopher did not steal it. would prove more than a match for all dif- credit to Oliver Goldsmith, at the rate of living then ficulties that could arise in a literary career prevalent in Grub Street, was pretty much the same to him who was at once a man of genius so thing in money value as the loss to Diogenes of his popular, of talents so versatile, of reading crockery house by burglary, or in any nocturnal lark of young Attic wine-bibbers. The underwriters so various, and of opportunities so large would have done an insurance upon either man at for still more extended reading. The sub-pretty much the same premium.

tions, was still in capital working order-is true that this august being, to whom a fact which we know from Goldsmith him- dedications burned incense upon an altar, self (see the Enquiry); for he tells us that withdrew into sunset and twilight during a popular mode of publication amongst bad Goldsmith's period; but he still revisits the authors, and certainly it needed no publish- glimpses of the moon in the shape of auer's countersign, was by means of subscrip- thor. When the auctoritas of a peer could tion papers: upon which, as we believe, a no longer sell a book by standing at the considerable instalment was usually paid head of a dedication, it lost none of its down when, as yet, the book existed only power when standing on a title-page as the by way of title-page, supposing that the author. Vast catalogues might be comwhole sum were not even paid up. Then posed of books and pamphlets that have as to the publisher (a nuisance, we dare owed a transient success to no other cause say, in all stages of his Natural History), on earth than the sonorous title, or the dishe could not have been a weed first spring- tinguished position of those who wrote ing up in Goldsmith's time, but must al- them. Ceasing to patronize other people's ways have been an indispensable broker or books, the grandee has still power to pamiddleman between the author and the tronize his own. All celebrities have this world. In the days even of Horace and form of patronage. And, for instance, had Martial the book-seller (bibliopola) clearly the boy Jones (otherwise called Inigo acted as book-publisher. Amongst other Jones) possessed enough of book-making passages proving this, and showing undeni- skill to forge a plausible curtain-lecture, as ably that Martial, at least, had sold the overheard by himself when concealed in copyright of his work to his publisher, is Her Majesty's bed-room, ten steam-presses one arguing pretty certainly that the price working day and night would not have supof a gay drawing-room copy must have plied the public demand; and even Her been hard upon £1, 11s. 6d. Lid ever any Majesty must herself have sent for a largeman hear the like? A New York news-paper copy, were it only to keep herself au paper would have been too happy to pirate courant of English literature. In short, the whole of Martial had he been three first, the extrinsic patronage of books; times as big, and would have engaged to secondly, the self-patronage of books in drive the bankrupt publisher into a mad-right of their merits; and thirdly, the artihouse for twopence. Now, it cannot be ficial machineries for diffusing the knowsupposed that Martial, a gay light-hearted, ledge of their existence, are three forces in fellow, willing to let the public have his current literature that ever have existed book for a shilling, or perhaps for love, had and must exist in some im erfect degree. been the person to put that ridiculous price Horace recognises them in his upon it. We may conclude that it was the publisher. As to the public, that respectable character must always have presided The Di are the paramount public, arbitratover the true and final court of appeal, silently defying alike the prestige of patron- rally on some just ground of judgment, ing finally on the fates of books, and geneage and the intriguing mysteries of pub- though it may be fearfully exaggerated on lishing. Lordly patronage might fill the the scale of importance. The homines are sails of one edition, and masterly publish- the publishers; and a sad homo the pubing of three. But the books that ran con-lisher sometimes is, particularly when he tagiously through the educated circles, or commits insolvency. But the columnæ are that lingered amongst them for a generation, must have owed their success to the unbiassed feelings of the reader--not overawed by authority, not mystified by artifice. Varying, however, in whatever proportion as to power, the three possible parties to an act of publication will always be seen intermittingly at work-the voluptuous self-indulging public, and the insidious publisher, of course; but even the brow-beating patron still exists in a new avatar. Formerly he made his descent upon earth in the shape of Dedicatee; and it

"Non Di, non homines, non concessere columnæ."

those pillars of state, the grandees of our the golden canopy of our transitory pomps, own age, or any other patrons, that support

* It may be necessary to explain, for the sake of the many persons who have come amongst the reading public since the period of the incident referred to, that this was a boy called Jones, who was continually entering Buckingham Palace clandestinely, was as regularly ejected by the police, but with respectable pertinacity constantly returned, and on one occasion effected a lodgment in admiration of such perseverance and impudence, the royal bed-chamber. Some happy wit, in just christened him, In-1-go Jones.

and thus shed an alien glory of colored light | class. The modes of combining characters, from above upon the books falling within the particular objects selected for symthat privileged area.

pathy, the diction, and often the manners,' hold up an imperfect mirror to any generation that is not their own. And the reader of novels belonging to an obsolete era, whilst acknowledging the skill of the groupings, or the beauty of the situations, misses the echo to that particular revelation of human nature which has met him in the social aspects of his own day; or too often he is perplexed by an expression which, having dropt into a lower use, disturbs the unity of the impression, or is revolted by a coarse sentiment, which increasing refinement has made unsuitable to the sex or to the rank of the character. How bestial and degrading at this day seem many of

We are not therefore of Mr. Foster's opinion, that Goldsmith fell upon an age less favorable to the expansion of literary powers, or to the attainment of literary distinction, than any other. The patron might be tradition-but the public was not therefore a prophecy. My lord's trumpets had ceased to sound, but the vox populi was not therefore muffled. The means indeed of diffusive advertisement and of rapid circulation, the combinations of readers into reading societies, and of roads into iron net-works, were as yet imperfectly developed. These gave a potent stimulus to periodic literature. And a still more operative difference between ourselves and the scenes in Smollett! How coarse are them is that a new class of people has the ideals of Fielding!-his odious Squire since then entered our reading public, viz. Western, his odious Tom Jones. What a -the class of artizans and of all below the gallery of histrionic masqueraders is thrown gentry, which (taken generally) was in open in the novels of Richardson, powerful Goldsmith's day a cipher as regarded any as they were once found by the two leading real encouragement to literature. In our nations of the earth. A popular writer, days, if The Vicar of Wakefield had been therefore, who, in order to be popular, must published as a Christmas tale, it would speak through novels, speaks to what is have produced a fortune to the writer. In least permanent in human sensibilities. Goldsmith's time, few below the gentry That is already to be self-degraded. Sewere readers on any large scale. So far there condly, because the novel-reading class is really was a disadvantage. But it was a by far the most comprehensive one, and bedisadvantage which applied chiefly to no- ing such, must count as a large majority vels. The new influx of readers in our amongst its members those who are poor times, the collateral affluents into the main in capacities of thinking, and are passively stream from the mechanic and provincial resigned to the instinct of immediate pleasections of our population, which have cen-sure-to these the writer must chiefly tupled the volume of the original current, humble himself; he must study their symcannot be held as telling favorably upon literature, or telling at all, except in the departments of popularized science, of religion, of fictitious tales, and of journalism. To be a reader, is no longer, as once it was, to be of a meditative turn. To be a very popular author is no longer that honorary distinction which once it might have been amongst a more elevated, because more select body of readers. We do not say this invidiously, or with any special reference. But it is evident that writers and readers must often act and react for reciprocal degradation. A writer of this day, either in France in England, to be very popular, must be a story-teller; which is a function of literature neither very noble in itself, nor, secondly, tending to permanence. All novels whatever, the best equally with the worst, have faded almost with the tion that produced them. This is a curse written as a superscription above the whole VOL. XIV. No. III.

genera

24

pathies, must assume them, must give them back. In our days, he must give them back even their own street slang; so servile

are

* Often but not so uniformly (the reader will think) as the diction, because the manners sometimes not those of the writer's own age, being ingenious adaptations to meet the modern writer's conjectural ideas of ancient manners. These, however, (even in Sir Walter Scott), are precisely the most mouldering parts in the entire architecture, being always (as, for instance, in Ivanhoe) fantastic, caricatured, and betraying the true modern ground gleaming through the artificial tarnish of antiquity. All novels, in every language, are hurrying to decay; and hurrying by internal changes -were those all; but, in the meantime, the everlasting life and fertility of the human mind is for e, by an external change. Old forms, fading from ever accelerating this hurry by superseding them, the interest, or even from the apprehension, have no chance at all as against new forms embodying the same passions. It is only in the grander passions of poetry, allying themselves with forms more abstract and permanent, that such a conflict of the old with the new is possible.