BOOK THE SECOND. CHAPTER I. REVIEWING FOR MR. AND MRS. GRIFFITHS. 1757. THE means of existence, long sought, seemed thus to be found, when, in his twenty-ninth year, Oliver Goldsmith sat down to the precarious task-work of Author by Profession. He had exerted no control over the circumstances in which he took up the pen: nor had any friendly external aid, in an impulse of kindness, offered it to his hand. To be swaddled, rocked, and dandled into authorship is the lot of more fortunate men: it was with Goldsmith the stern and last resource of his struggle with adversity. As in the country-barn he would have played Scrub or Richard; as he prescribed for the poorer than himself at Bankside, until worse than their necessities drove him to herd with the beggars in Axe Lane; as in Salisbury Court he corrected. the press among Mr. Richardson's workmen, on Tower Hill doled out physic over Mr. Jacob's counter, and at Peckham dispensed the more nauseating dose to young gentlemen of Doctor Milner's academy: he had here entered into Mr. Griffiths's service, and put on the livery of the Monthly Review. 1757. Æt. 29. 1757. Æt. 29. He was man-of-letters, then, at last; but had gratified no passion, and attained no object of ambition. The hope of greatness and distinction, day-star of his wanderings and his privations, was at this hour, more than it had ever been, dim, distant, cold. A practical scheme of literary life had as yet struck no root in his mind; and the assertion of later years, that he was past thirty before he was really attached to literature and sensible that he had found his vocation in it, is no doubt true. What the conditions of his present employment were, he knew well: that if he had dared to indulge any hopes of finer texture, if he had shown. the fragments of his poem, if he had produced the acts of the tragedy read to Richardson, Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths must have taken immediate counsel on the expenses of his board. He was there, as he had been in other places of servitude, because the dogs of hunger were at his heels.* * In a paper full of eloquence and humour which Mr. De Quincey wrote upon the subject of this biography in the North British Review, so different an opinion is formed from that which I offer of this Griffiths-agreement, as well as of my contrast between the position of the man-of-letters in Goldsmith's day and that of the men of Queen Anne, while the grounds of difference are so amusingly expressed, that the reader will probably thank me for quoting the passage. I should premise that Smart's agreement, alluded to in the outset, will be found described, post, Book iii. Chap. x. "The pauperised (or Grub Street) section of the literary body, at the date of "Goldsmith's taking service amongst it, was (in Mr. Forster's estimate) at its very "lowest point of depression. And one comic presumption in favour of that notion "we ourselves remember; viz., that Smart, the prose translator of Horace, and a "well-built scholar, actually let himself out to a monthly journal on a regular "lease of ninety-nine years. What could move the rapacious publisher to draw "the lease for this monstrous term of years, we cannot conjecture. Surely the villain "might have been content with three score years and ten. But think, reader, of "poor Smart two years after, upon another publisher's applying to him vainly for "contributions, and angrily demanding what possible objection could be made to "offers so liberal, being reduced to answer 'no objection, sir, whatever, except "an unexpired term of ninety-seven years yet to run.' The bookseller saw that "he must not apply again in that century; and, in fact, Smart could no longer let "himself, but must be sublet (if let at all) by the original lessee. Query now66 was Smart entitled to vote as a freeholder, and Smart's children (if any were "born during the currency of the lease) would they be serfs, and ascripti "prelo? Goldsmith's own terms of self-conveyance to Griffiths the terms we 1757. He was not a strong man, as I have said; but neither was his weakness such that he shrank from the responsibilities Et. 29. it brought. When suffering came, in whatever form, he met it with a quiet, manful endurance: no gnashing of the teeth, "mean on which he 'conveyed' his person and free-agency to the uses of the said "Griffiths (or his assigns?)-do not appear to have been much more dignified than "Smart's in the quality of the conditions, though considerably so in the duration "of the term; Goldsmith's lease being only for one year, and not for ninety-nine, 66 so that he had (as the reader perceives) a clear ninety-eight years at his own "disposal. We suspect that poor Oliver, in his guileless heart, never congratulated "himself on having made a more felicitous bargain. Indeed, it was not so bad, "if everything be considered: Goldsmith's situation at that time was bad; and "for that very reason the lease (otherwise monstrous) was not bad. He was to have "lodging, board, and 'a small salary,' very small, we suspect; and in return for "all these blessings, he had nothing to do, but to sit still at a table, to work hard "from an early hour in the morning until 2 P. M., (at which elegant hour we pre"sume that the parenthesis of dinner occurred,) but also—which, not being an "article in the lease, might have been set aside, on a motion before the King's "Bench-to endure without mutiny the correction and the revisal of all his MSS. "by Mrs. Griffiths, wife to Dr. G. the lessee. This affliction of Mrs. Dr. G. "surmounting his shoulders, and controlling his pen, seems to us not at all less "dreadful than that of Sindbad, when indorsed with the old man of the sea; and "we, in Goldsmith's place, should certainly have tried how far Sindbad's method "of abating the nuisance had lost its efficacy by time, viz., the tempting our "oppressor to get drunk once or twice a-day, and then suddenly throwing "Mrs. Dr. G. off her perch. From that bad eminence,' which she had "audaciously usurped, what harm could there be in thus dismounting this 'old 66 woman of the sea?' And as to an occasional thump or so on the head, which "Mrs. Dr. G. might have caught in tumbling, that was her look-out; and might "besides have improved her style. For really now, if the candid reader will "believe us, we know a case, odd certainly, but very true, where a young man, an author by trade, who wrote pretty well, happening to tumble out of a first-floor "in London, was afterwards observed to grow very perplexed and almost unintelli"gible in his style; until some years later, having the good fortune (like Wallenstein "at Vienna) to tumble out of a two-pair of stairs window, he slightly fractured his (( skull, but on the other hand, recovered the brilliancy of his long fractured "style. Some people there are of our acquaintance who would need to tumble "out of the attic story before they could seriously improve their style. "Certainly these conditions the hard work, the being chained by the leg to "the writing-table, and, above all, the having one's pen chained to that of "Mrs. Dr. Griffiths, do seem to countenance Mr. F.'s idea, that Goldsmith's period was the purgatory of authors. And we freely confess that excepting Smart's "ninety-nine years' lease, or the contract between the Devil and Dr. Faustus, we "never heard of a harder bargain driven with any literary man. Smart, Faustus, "and Goldsmith, were clearly over-reached. Yet, after all, was this treatment in "any important point (excepting as regards Dr. Faustus) worse than that given "to the whole college of Grub Street, in the days of Pope? The first edition of the 1757. or wringing of the hands. Among the lowest of human Et. 29. beings he could take his place, as he afterwards proved his right to sit among the highest, by the strength of his affectionate sympathies with the nature common to all. And so sustained through the scenes of wretchedness he passed, he had done more, though with little consciousness of his own, to achieve his destiny, than if, transcending the worldly plans of wise Irish friends, he had even clambered to the bishops' bench, or out-practised the whole college of physicians. The time is at hand in his history, when all this becomes clear. Outside the garret-window of Mr. Griffiths, by the light which the miserable labour of the Monthly Review will let in upon the heart-sick labourer, it may soon be seen. Stores of observation, of feeling, and experience, hidden from himself at present, are by that light to be revealed. It is a thought to carry us through this new scene of suffering, with new and unaccustomed hope. Men Goldsmith never publicly avowed what he had written in the Monthly Review; any more than the Roman poet talked of the millstone he turned in his days of hunger. who have been at the galleys, though for no crime of their own committing, are wiser than to brag of the work they performed there. All he stated was, that all he wrote was tampered with by Griffiths or his wife. Smollett has depicted this lady as an antiquated female critic; and when " illiterate, bookselling" Griffiths declared unequal war against that potent antagonist, protesting that the Monthly Review "Dunciad dates from 1727; Goldsmith's matriculation in Grub Street dates "from 1757-just thirty years later; which is one generation. And it is "important to remember that Goldsmith, at this time in his twenty-ninth year, was simply an usher at an obscure boarding-school; had never practised "writing for the press, and had not even himself any faith at all in his own capa"city for writing." North British Review, ix. 198-200. |