booksellers in advance. With all his literary success, he has neither money nor influence; but he has empty fame and he is ready to participate with them; he is honorary professor, without pay; his portrait is to be engraved in mezzotint, in company with those of his friends, Burke, Reynolds, Johnson, Colman, and 5 others, and he will send prints of them to his friends over the Channel, though they may not have a house to hang them up in. What a motley letter! How indicative of the motley character of the writer! By the bye, the publication of a splendid mezzotinto engraving of his likeness by Reynolds was 10 a great matter of glorification to Goldsmith, especially as it appeared in such illustrious company. As he was one day walking the streets in a state of high elation, from having just seen it figuring in the print-shop windows, he met a young gentleman with a newly married wife hanging on his arm, 15 whom he immediately recognized for Master Bishop, one of the boys he had petted and treated with sweetmeats when a humble usher at Milner's school. The kindly feelings of old times revived, and he accosted him with cordial familiarity, though the youth may have found some difficulty in recognizing in the 20 personage, arrayed, perhaps, in garments of Tyrian dye, the dingy pedagogue of the Milners. "Come, my boy," cried Goldsmith, as if still speaking to a school-boy, "come, Sam, I am delighted to see you. I must treat you to something what shall it be? Will you have some apples?" glancing at an 25 old woman's stall; then, recollecting the print-shop window: “Sam,” said he, "have you seen my picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds? Have you seen it, Sam? Have you got an engraving? Bishop was caught; he equivocated; he had not yet bought it; but he was furnishing his house, and had fixed 30 upon the place where it was to be hung. 66 "Ah, Sam!" rejoined Goldsmith reproachfully, "if your picture had been published, I should not have waited an hour without having it." After all, it was honest pride, not vanity, in Goldsmith, that 35 was gratified at seeing his portrait deemed worthy of being perpetuated by the classic pencil of Reynolds, and "hung up in history" beside that of his revered friend Johnson. Even the great moralist himself was not insensible to a feeling of this kind. Walking one day with Goldsmith, in Westminster Abbey, among the tombs of monarchs, warriors, and statesmen, they came to the sculptured mementos of literary worthies in poets' corner. Casting his eye round upon these memorials 5 of genius, Johnson muttered in a low tone to his companion, – "Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis." O Goldsmith treasured up the intimated hope, and shortly afterwards, as they were passing by Temple Bar, where the heads of Jacobite rebels, executed for treason, were mouldering aloft on 10 spikes, pointed up to the grizzly mementos, and echoed the intimation, "Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.” CHAPTER XXVIII Publication of The Deserted Village; Notices and Illustrations of it. SEVERAL years had now elapsed since the publication of The Traveller, and much wonder was expressed that the great 15 success of that poem had not excited the author to further poetic attempts. On being questioned at the annual dinner of the Royal Academy by the Earl of Lisburn, why he neglected the Muses to compile histories and write novels, "My Lord," replied he, "by courting the Muses I shall starve, but by my 20 other labors I eat, drink, have good clothes, and can enjoy the luxuries of life." So, also, on being asked by a poor writer what was the most profitable mode of exercising the pen, My dear fellow," replied he, good-humoredly, "pay no regard to the draggle-tailed Muses; for my part I have found 25 productions in prose much more sought after and better paid for." 66 Still, however, as we have heretofore shown, he found sweet moments of dalliance to steal away from his prosaic toils, and court the Muse among the green lanes and hedge-rows in the rural environs of London, and on the 26th of May, 1770, he was enabled to bring his Deserted Village before the public. The popularity of The Traveller had prepared the way for this poem, and its sale was instantaneous and immense. The 5 first edition was immediately exhausted; in a few days a second was issued; in a few days more a third, and by the 16th of August the fifth edition was hurried through the press. As is the case with popular writers, he had become his own rival, and critics were inclined to give the preference to his first 10 poem; but with the public at large we believe The Deserted Village has ever been the greatest favorite. Previous to its publication the bookseller gave him in advance a note for the price agreed upon, one hundred guineas. As the latter was returning home he met a friend to whom he mentioned the 15 circumstance, and who, apparently judging of poetry by quantity rather than quality, observed that it was a great sum for so small a poem. "In truth," said Goldsmith, "I think so too; it is much more than the honest man can afford or the piece is worth. I have not been easy since I received it." In fact, he 20 actually returned the note to the bookseller, and left it to him to graduate the payment according to the success of the work. The bookseller, as may well be supposed, soon repaid him in full with many acknowledgments of his disinterestedness. This anecdote has been called in question, we know not on what 25 grounds; we see nothing in it incompatible with the character of Goldsmith, who was very impulsive and prone to acts of inconsiderate generosity. As we do not pretend in this summary memoir to go into a criticism or analysis of any of Goldsmith's writings, we shall 30 not dwell upon the peculiar merits of this poem; we cannot help noticing, however, how truly it is a mirror of the author's heart, and of all the fond pictures of early friends and early life forever present there. It seems to us as if the very last accounts received from home, of his "shattered family," and the desola- 35 tion that seemed to have settled upon the haunts of his childhood had cut to the roots one feebly cherished hope, and produced the following exquisitely tender and mournful lines: 10 15 "In all my wand'rings round this world of care, And as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue, How touchingly expressive are the succeeding lines, wrung from a heart which all the trials and temptations and buffetings of the world could not render worldly; which, amid a thousand follies and errors of the head, still retained its childlike innocence; and which, doomed to struggle on to the last 20 amidst the din and turmoil of the metropolis, had ever been cheating itself with a dream of rural quiet and seclusion: 25 30 35 "Oh bless'd retirement, friend to life's decline, How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these, Who quits a world where strong temptations try NOTE The following article, which appeared in a London periodical, shows the effect of Goldsmith's poem in renovating the fortunes 40 of Lissoy. "About three miles from Ballymahon, a very central town in the sister-kingdom, is the mansion and village of Auburn, so called by their present possessor, Captain Hogan. Through the taste and improvement of this gentleman, it is now a beautiful spot, although fifteen years since it presented a very bare 5 and unpoetical aspect. This, however, was owing to a cause which serves strongly to corroborate the assertion, that Goldsmith had this scene in view when he wrote his poem of the Deserted Village. The then possessor, General Napier, turned all his tenants out of their farms that he might enclose them in 10 his own private domain. Littleton, the mansion of the General, stands not far off, a complete emblem of the desolating spirit lamented by the poet, dilapidated and converted into a barrack. "The chief object of attraction is Lissoy, once the parsonagehouse of Henry Goldsmith, that brother to whom the poet 15 dedicated his Traveller, and who is represented as a village pastor, "Passing rich with forty pounds a year.' "When I was in the country, the lower chambers were inhabited by pigs and sheep, and the drawing-rooms by oats. 20 Captain Hogan, however, has, I believe, got it since into his possession, and has, of course, improved its condition. "Though at first strongly inclined to dispute the identity of Auburn, Lissoy House overcame my scruples. As I clambered over the rotten gate, and crossed the grass-grown lawn or court, 25 the tide of association became too strong for casuistry: here the poet dwelt. and wrote, and here his thoughts fondly recurred when composing his Traveller in a foreign land. Yonder was the decent church, that literally 'topped the neighboring hill.' Before me lay the little hill of Knockrue, on 30 which he declares, in one of his letters, he had rather sit with a book in hand than mingle in the proudest assemblies. And, above all, startlingly true, beneath my feet was "Yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, And still where many a garden-flower grows wild.' "A painting from the life could not be more exact. 'The stubborn currant-bush' lifts its head above the rank grass, and 35 |