KING HENRY II. 1764-67 I think your Lordship will have a great deal of pleasure in reading Lord Lyttleton's History. You will like to see a Gothic building by a Roman architect. The story is Gothic, but expressed with majesty, gravity and force, without anything dark or rude, or perplexed and confused. MONTAGU, ELIZABETH, 1767, Letter to Lord Kames, July 30. Lyttleton's "Henry II." is a learned and honest book.-SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 1805, Letter to John May, Aug. 5; Life and Correspondence. Lord Lyttelton, in his "Life of Henry the Second," goes through a very candid and temperate inquiry into this question; and he thinks the Commons was originally a part of the national council or Parliament. The strongest evidence he produces is drawn from the two celebrated instances of the petitions sent, one by the borough of St. Alban's, the other by Barnstaple. -SMYTH, WILLIAM, 1840, Lectures on Modern History, Lecture vi. The subject of it is well chosen, the arrangement is good, and the style clear. The great bulk of it is still useful; and an addition which should retrench some superfluities, correct some inaccuracies, and embody the pith of the best recent works on the same subjects, would be a standard book for every student of English or general medæival history.-CREASY, SIR EDWARD, 1850-76, Memoirs of Eminent Etonians, p. 307. The work was, in fact, highly instructive, learned, careful, and accurate, but like many another of that description, wanted the crowning touch of genius to give it lasting importance. Its whole plan and form was tedious and uninviting. Lyttleton had pursued, through five dreary volumes, the life of a king who had been long forgotten by the public, and whose reign, with one or two striking episodes, had been dull and unimportant. His work is as long as the whole of Hume's History of England, and while that graceful writer had condensed in a few pages the Life of Henry II., Lyttleton gave to one reign labor and space sufficient for the history of the nation.-LAWRENCE, EUGENE, 1853, The Lives of the British Historians, vol. I, p. 378. A prolix and ill arranged but elaborate and sensible performance, founded throughout on original authorities, and, from the detailed and painstaking investigations it contains of many fundamental points, still forming perhaps the best introduction we possess to the study of the English constitution.-CRAIK, GEORGE L., 1861, A Compendious History of English Literature and of the English Language, vol. II, p. 358. GENERAL Have you seen Lyttleton's Monody on his wife's death? There are parts of it too stiff and poetical; but others truly tender and elegiac, as one would wish. —GRAY, THOMAS, 1747, Letter to Thomas Wharton, Nov. 30. Lord Lyttelton's Poems are the works of a man of literature and judgment, devoting part of his time to versification. They have nothing to be despised, and little to be admired.-JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1779-81, Lyttelton, Lives of the English Poets. In the "Persian Letters," as in all his other works, Lyttelton is but an imitator: -the idea, the name, and some of the details are borrowed from the "Lettres Persannes" of the President Montesquieuthen in high repute. Johnson, impressed perhaps with the idea that they were written by an Oxonian of eighteen, treats them slightingly as too "visibly the production of a very young man. They would not, it is true, thirty years later, have added much to the fame which Lyttelton had, rather by his rank than his writings, attained; but they are, we think, no contemptible production even for the age of twenty-five; and they may still be read with amusement and some information as to the manners of the time. Their most serious faults to modern readers, says Mr. Phillimore, "are occasional indelicacies, both of thought and expressionwhich, as well as their extreme political opinions, was a subject of regret to Lyttelton in after-life." The indelicacy, though probably now less visible than it was in the original edition, is still too obvious; but it was the style of that day, and hardly exceeds the freedoms of some papers in the "Spectator," and falls infinitely short of the licence of his originalthe great French magistrate and moralist, as he is called.-CROKER, JOHN WILSON, 1845, Phillimore's Lord Lyttelton, Quarterly Review, vol. 78, p. 229. His literary reputation in a great measure died with him; his poems are long since forgotten and his prose writings have little merit. The "Persian Letters, the most amusing of them all, were written while he was very young, and are a tolerable imitation of Montesquieu. They contain passages indelicate and coarse, and could hardly be placed in the hands of the young and pure of our own day. They probably gave rise, however, to Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World," and by their popularity led that delightful writer to imitate and surpass them. But Goldsmith's letters are the perfect and graceful productions of a man of genius, Lyttleton's those of a coarse and inferior artist.-LAWRENCE, EUGENE, 1853, The Lives of the British Historians, vol. 1, p. 383. Cruel sceptics, like Gibbon, have not failed to point out that his works are "not illuminated by a ray of genius." But his heart has spoken once or twice, in the loosely-strung Pindaric Monody to his wife, and in the elegiac prologue to "Coriolanus," Thomson's posthumous tragedy.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 228. Oliver Goldsmith 1728-1774 Born, at Pallas, Co. Longford, 10 Nov. 1728. Family removed to Lissoy, 1730. At village school, 1734-35; at school at Elphin, 1736-39; at Athlone, 1739-41; at Edgeworthstown, 1741-44. To Trin. Coll., Dublin, as Sizar, 11 June 1744; Symth Exhibition, 1747; B. A., 27 Feb. 1749. With his mother at Ballymahon, 1749-51. Rejected as a clergyman, 1751. Private tutorship, 1751-52. To Edinburgh to study medicine, autumn of 1752. To Leyden, 1754. Travelled on the Continent, 1755-56. Possibly took M. B. degree at Louvain or Padua. Returned to London, Feb. 1756. Set up in practice as physician. Master at school at Peckham, winter of 1756 to 1757. Contrib. to "Monthly Review," April to Sept., 1757, Dec. 1758; to "Literary Mag.," Jan. 1757, Jan. to May, 1758; to "Critical Review," Nov. 1757, Jan. to Aug., 1759, March 1760; to "The Busybody," Oct. 1759. Ed. "Lady's Mag.," 1759-60. Friendship with Johnson begun, 1761. Contrib. to "The Public Ledger," Jan. to Feb., 1760; to "The British Mag., " Feb. 1760 to Jan. 1763. Visit to Bath for health, 1762. Removed to Islington, winter of 1762. Tried again to set up as physician, 1765. Settled in Temple, 1767; lived there till death. "The Good-natured Man" produced at Covent Garden, 29 Jan. 1768; "She Stoops to Conquer," Covent Garden, 15 March 1773; "The Grumbler" (adapted from Sedley), Covent Garden, 8 May 1773. Contrib. to Westminster Mag.," Jan. to Feb. 1773; to "Universal Mag.," April 1774. Died, in London, 4 Apr. 1774. Buried in the Temple. Works: "Memoirs of a Protestant' (anon.), 1758; "Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning" (anon.), 1759; "The Bee" (anon. ; 8 nos.), 1759; “A History of the Seven Years' War," 1761; "A Poetical Dictionary" (anon.), 1761; "History of Mecklenburgh," 1762; "The Mystery Revealed," 1742 (1762); "A Citizen of the World" (anon.), 1762; "Life of Richard Nash" (anon.), 1762; "The Art of Poetry on a new Plan" (anon.; attrib. to Goldsmith), 1762; "The Martial Review" (anon.), 1763; “An History of England" (anon.), 1764; "The Traveller," 1765; "Essays," 1765; "The Vicar of Wakefield" (2 vols.), 1766; "History of Little Goody Two-Shoes" (anon. attrib. to Goldsmith), 1766; "The Good-natured Man," 1768; "The Roman History" (2 vols.), 1769 (abridged by Goldsmith, 1772); "The Deserted Village," 1770; "The Life of Thomas Parnell," 1770; “Life of . . . Viscount Bolingbroke" (anon.), 1770; "The History of England” (4 vols.) 1771 (abridged, 1774); "Threnodia Augustalis," 1772; "She Stoops to Conquer,” 1773; "Retaliation," 1774 (2nd to 5th edns. same year); "The Grecian History" (2 vols.), 1774; "A History of the Earth" (8 vols.), 1774. Posthumous: "Miscellaneous Works," 1775; "The Haunch of Venison," 1776; "A Survey of Experimental Philosophy" (2 vols.), 1776, "Poems and Plays," 1777; "Poetical and Dramatic Works," 1780; "The Captivity," 1836; "Asem, the Man-Hater," 1877. He translated: (under pseud. of "James Willington") Bergeracs' "Memoirs of a Protestant," 1758; Plutarch's "Lives" (with J. Collyer,) 1762; Formey's "Concise History of Philosophy," 1766; Scarron's "Comic Romance," 1776; and edited: Newbery's "Art of Poetry," 1762; "Poems for Young Ladies" (anon.), 1767; "Beauties of English Poesy," 1767; "T. Parnell's Poems," 1770.-SHARP, R. FARQUHARSON, 1897, A Dictionary of English Authors, p. 114. PERSONAL Of all solemn coxcombs Goldsmith is the first; yet sensible-but affects to use Johnson's hard words in conversation. - WARTON, THOMAS, 1766, Letter to Joseph Warton, Jan. 22. Jarvis. A few of our usual cards of compliment that's all. This bill from your tailor; this from your mercer; and this from the little broker in Crooked Lane. He says he has been at a great deal of trouble to get back the money you borrowed. Honeywood. That I don't know: but I am sure we were at a great deal of trouble in getting him to lend it. Jarvis. He has lost all patience. Honeywood. Then he has lost a good thing. Jarvis. There's that ten guineas you were sending to the poor man and his children in the Fleet. I believe that would stop his mouth for a while at least. Honeywood. Ay, Jarvis, but what will fill their mouths in the meantime?-GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, 1768, The Good-Natured Man. Honors to one in my situation are something like ruffles to one that wants a shirt. -GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, 1770, Letter to Maurice Goldsmith, January. From our Goldsmith's anomalous character, who Can withhold his contempt, and his reverence too? From a poet so polished, so paltry a fellow! From a foot that each path of vulgarity trod; poses; All deformity seeming, in some points of view, In others quite accurate, regular, true: Till the student no more sees the figure that shocked her, But all in his likeness,-our odd little doctor. -PIOZZI, HESTER LYNCH, 1773? The Streatham Portraits, Autobiography, ed. Hayward, p. 254. Without cause be he pleased, without cause be he cross Be sure, as I work, to throw in contradictions, A great love of truth, yet a mind turn'd to fictions; Now mix these ingredients, which, warm'd in the baking, Turn'd to learning and gaming, religion and raking. With the love of a wench let his writings be chaste; Tip his tongue with strong matter, his lips with fine taste: That the rake and the poet o'er all may prevail, Set fire to the head and set fire to the tail; For the joy of each sex on the world I'll bestow it, This scholar, rake, Christian, dupe, gamester and poet. Though a mixture so odd he shall merit great fame, And among brother mortals be Goldsmith his name; When on earth this strange meteor no more shall appear, You, Hermes, shall fetch him to make us sport here. -GARRICK, DAVID, Jupiter and Mercury. Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit : Affectuum potens at lenis dominator: In loco cui nomen Pallas, April iv, MDCCLXXIV. -JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1776, Epitaph on Tomb, Westminster Abbey. |