Oliver Goldsmith; a biography

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Introduction

I. Biographical Sketch of Irving v

II. Irving's Goldsmith ™i

III. Irving's Works ix

Chronological Table xi

Author's Preface xiii

INTRODUCTION.

I. Biographical Sketch op Irving.

If one were to search for a biographer for Oliver Goldsmith, no fitter person could be found than Washington Irving. Irving's wandering nature, his relish for humor and for satire, his kindliness of heart and loneliness of life, his love for children, his sympathy for the unfortunate, — all render him capable of entering into the life of the homeless man whose character he so feelingly delineates.

Washington Irving, the real pioneer of American literature, was born of strict Scotch and English ancestry, in New York, April 3, 1783. As a little child, he was led by his nurse to General Washington, whose name he bore and whose life he was destined to write. His schooling was meagre, not from the lack of opportunity, but because study was irksome and repugnant to his tastes. He seems even to have refused the proffered college education of which his brothers availed themselves. Fond of the drama, he often neglected studies and sleep to delight himself in the pleasures of the stage, and he read much, books of travel being his favorites.

At the age of sixteen he entered on the study of law ; but while he succeeded in passing all requirements, the work was never congenial to him. The friendship he formed, however, with the family of Josiah Hoffman, an eminent attorney in whose office he remained some time, was of a deep and life-long character. He was formally admitted to the bar after his return from a European tour ; but he seems never seriously to have entered on the practice of his profession, vi INTRODUCTION.

though knowledge of law was of service to him in his subsequent diplomatic life.

When seventeen years of age, he made his first voyage up the Hudson. The country, then new and wild, had a witching effect on his imagination, which bore fruit in later years in the charming stories he has left of the enchanting Hudson Kiver region. But he was frail and inclined toward pulmonary troubles ; so in 1804, when he was in his nineteenth year, his relatives decided to send him abroad for his health. He visited France, Italy, Sicily, and England, forming valuable acquaintances and filling his mind with the romance of Continental places. After two years spent in travel, with restored health he returned to New York to begin the career of a man of letters.

Irving had written a series of essays for his brother Peter's paper, "The Morning Chronicle," before going abroad ; but his literary life may be said to begin with the publication, in connection with his brother and James K. Paulding, of a satirical periodical which they called " Salmagundi." It was modelled after the " Spectator," and was at once popular and successful. After running through twenty numbers, it was discontinued because of a misunderstanding with the publishers.

Then followed a period of indecision, clouded by an event that influenced his whole subsequent career. Miss Matilda Hoffman, the daughter of his law associate and the intended sharer of his life, died. He says, " This affliction tended to throw some clouds into my disposition which have ever since hung about it." He remained always true to this youthful ideal ; and though he was fond of the society of good women, and though his home was shared by many of his female relatives, he never married.

His first important book, "Knickerbocker's History of New York," appeared in 1809. It was a kindly burlesque on the Dutch settlers of New York ; and though some of their descendants were inclined to take offence at this fun-pro-

INTRODUCTION. vii

voking, though in the main accurate, history, it became at once popular and raised Irving to the rank of literary men. For a few years, however, his industry was desultory. Though inclined toward literary work, he yielded to the allurements of society. He contributed to magazines and finally became the editor of the " Analectic Magazine." The War of 1812, just at its close, drew him into political life. Joining the staff of Governor Tompkins, he went through northern New York, enjoying the travel more than the military experience into which he was thrown. The war closed four months after he entered the service.

In 1815 a sudden opportunity to travel was offered him. The following seventeen years were spent in England, France, and Spain. He made valuable acquaintances with such men as Byron, Scott, Campbell, Moore, Lamb, and Disraeli. He enjoyed the social life of the Old World, to which his growing literary reputation introduced him. And above all, he decided to devote his life uninterruptedly to literature. The " Sketch Book" was written in London and sent home, where it was published in 1819 and 1820. In 1829 he was made secretary of the American legation in London, and held the position for two years. This period of his life was fruitful in the storing of material for many delightful sketches and for some of his fascinating Spanish stories and histories.

On returning to New York in 1832, he found himself the idol of the people. He was feted and was sought for all social and literary gatherings ; but he wearied of all this and longed for retirement and a home. Before settling down, however, he took another trip up the Hudson, then a journey into the broad West, making his travels memorable by his " Tour on the Prairies."

The romantic and beautiful section on the Hudson, a few miles above New York, had always been fascinating to him, and there, near " Sleepy Hollow," he bought, in 1835, an old Dutch stone cottage, which he transformed, with love vin INTRODUCTION.

and care, into a beautiful home-like place, at first called " Wolfert's Roost," afterward " Sunnyside," by which name it has ever since been known.

In 1842 he was appointed minister to Spain. At Madrid he was busied in diplomatic work, often meeting royalty, and taking part with profound interest in the tragic scenes through which Spain was then passing. His pen was idle, though he travelled over the Continent whenever his health, which was very poor at the time, would allow. In the latter part of 1845 he resigned his official position and returned to his beloved Sunnyside. There he dwelt until the close of his life, surrounded by relatives and engaged in a revision of his complete works. His " Life of Washington " was finished a short time before his death, which occurred November 28, 1859. During nine of these last years, he received in royalties on his revised works more than $85,000.

The closing years of Irving's life were serene and happy. In the midst of devoted relatives, honored as a man and as a writer, he enjoyed a well-earned peace. The man and his writings were one. He was genial, modest in the estimate of his powers, generous, pure, and lovable. Political life sought him, and almost any career would have opened to him. Yet he was not a politician but a literary man, not local in his interests but cosmopolitan ; he lived and wrote, not for his age alone, but for all admirers of what is best in literature.

II. ' Irving's Goldsmith.

The Life of Goldsmith was written when Irving was nearly seventy years of age. It bears the stamp of his finished style and mature judgment. It was the enlargement of a sketch made twenty-five years earlier. Various lives of Goldsmith had been written, but with the new and abundant material placed in his hands, Irving produced the one which has been most widely read.

INTRODUCTION. ix

A good biography, says Carlyle, ought to show the effect of society on the individual and of the individual on society. Irving has succeeded in writing such a biography of Goldsmith. The youth in rural Ireland, the student at the university, the wanderer on the Continent, the hack-writer of Grub Street, is shown under the moulding influence of a severe and often cruel world. Then, after a long struggle, the world recognized and rewarded Goldsmith. The subtle influence of his winning style, of his quiet manner and his sympathetic nature, was quietly shaping the thought of the time ; yet he held aloof from political wrangle and from party strife. All this Irving shows by illustration and enforces by argument.

In style there are elements common to both author and biographer. The works of both are marked by ease and grace, by tenderness and pathos, and by a mild irony. The American author was just the person to write the life of the brilliant, lovable Irishman.

Irving, who was fully appreciated while he lived, succeeded in gaining the acknowledgment of the world's indebtedness to him; Goldsmith, who craved kind words, barely won the friendship of a world that is often tardy in recognizing merit.

III. Irving's Works.

1807. Salmagundi.

1809. Knickerbocker's History of New York.

1815-19. Contributions to the Analectic Magazine.

1819. The Sketch Book.

1822. Bracebridge Hall.

1824. Tales of a Traveller.

1824. American Essays (never printed).

1828. Life of Columbus.

1829. Conquest of Grenada.

1831. Voyages of the Companions of Columbus.

1832. The Alhambra.

x INTRODUCTION.

1835. Tour on the Prairies.

Newstead Abbey.

1836. Legends of the Conquest of Spain. 1836. Astoria.

1849. Life of Goldsmith.

1855. Life of Washington.

In the study of Irving's Goldsmith, the student will find the following books of assistance : —

Besant's London in the Eighteenth Century.

Boswell's Life of Johnson.

Prior's Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith.

Davidson's Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield.

Dobson's Life of Goldsmith.

Irving's Life and Letters of Washington Irving.

Warner's Washington Irving.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.

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Preface

In the course of a revised edition of my works I have come to a biographical sketch of Goldsmith, published several years since. It was written hastily, as introductory to a selection from his writings; and, though the facts contained in it were collected from various sources, I was chiefly indebted for them to the voluminous work of Mr. James Prior, 1 who had collected and collated the most minute particulars of the poet's history with unwearied research and scrupulous fidelity; but had rendered them, as I thought, in a form too cumbrous and overlaid with details and disquisitions, and matters uninteresting to the general reader.

When I was about of late to revise my biographical sketch, preparatory to republication, a volume was put into my hands, recently given to the public by Mr. John Forster, 2 of the Inner Temple, 3 who,

1 James Prior, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries ; Member of the Royal Irish Academy ; author of the Life of Gold' smith, Life of Burke, etc., etc.

2 (1812-1876.) An English barrister and man of letters; biographer of Goldsmith and Dickens.

8 The London Temple was the lodge of the ancient religious order of the Knights Templars. Edward II. suppressed the order and gave the house to the Earl of Pembroke. After changing hands once or twice, it was, in 1346, leased to students of law. On the site of the ancient Temple now stand the two

PREFACE

In the course of a revised edition of my works I have come to a biographical sketch of Goldsmith, published several years since. It was written hastily, as introductory to a selection from his writings; and, though the facts contained in it were collected from various sources, I was chiefly indebted for them to the voluminous work of Mr. James Prior, 1 who had collected and collated the most minute particulars of the poet's history with unwearied research and scrupulous fidelity; but had rendered them, as I thought, in a form too cumbrous and overlaid with details and disquisitions, and matters uninteresting to the general reader.

When I was about of late to revise my biographical sketch, preparatory to republication, a volume was put into my hands, recently given to the public by Mr. John Forster, 2 of the Inner Temple, 3 who,

1 James Prior, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries ; Member of the Royal Irish Academy ; author of the Life of Gold' smith, Life of Burke, etc., etc.

2 (1812-1876.) An English barrister and man of letters ; biographer of Goldsmith and Dickens.

8 The London Temple was the lodge of the ancient religious order of the Knights Templars. Edward II. suppressed the order and gave the house to the Earl of Pembroke. After changing hands once or twice, it was, in 1346, leased to students of law. On the site of the ancient Temple now stand the two xiv PREFACE.

likewise availing himself of the labors of the indefatigable Prior, and of a few new lights since evolved, has produced a biography of the poet, executed with a spirit, a feeling, a grace, and an eloquence that leave nothing to be desired. Indeed it would have been presumption in me to undertake the subject after it had been thus felicitously treated, did I not stand committed by my previous sketch. That sketch now appeared too meagre and insufficient to satisfy public demand; yet it had to take its place in the revised series of my works unless something more satisfactory could be substituted. Under these circumstances I have again taken up the subject, and gone into it with more fulness than formerly, omitting none of the facts which I considered illustrative of the life and character of the poet, and giving them in as graphic a style as I could command. Still, the hurried manner in which I have had to do this amidst the pressure of other claims on my attention, and with the press dogging at my heels, has prevented me from giving some parts of the subject the thorough handling I could have wished. Those who would like to see it treated still more at large, with the addition of critical disquisitions and the advantage of collateral facts, would do well to refer themselves to Mr. Prior's circumstantial volumes or to the elegant and discursive pages of Mr. Forster.

Inns of Court, the Middle Temple and the Inner Temple, which are occupied by the societies of barristers. These societies have the right of " calling candidates to the degree of barristers."

PREFACE. xv

For my own part I can only regret my shortcomings in what to me is a labor of love; for it is a tribute of gratitude to the memory of an author whose writings were the delight of my childhood, and have been a source of enjoyment to me throughout life ; and to whom, of all others, I may address the beautiful apostrophe of Dante l to Virgil : 2 —

W.I.

Sunxysede, Aug. 1, 1849.

1 (1265-1321.) The illustrious author of the Divina Cornmedia.

2 (70-19 b. c.) A Roman poet of the Augustan age ; author of the JEneid, Pastoral Poems, and Georgics.

8 u Thou art my master, and my author thou, Thou art alone the one from whom I took The beautiful style that hath done honor to me."

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

Chapter I

Birth and Parentage. — Characteristics of the Goldsmith Race.

— Poetical Birthplace. — Goblin House. — Scenes of Boyhood.

— Lissoy. — Picture of a Country Parson. — Goldsmith's Schoolmistress. — Byrne, the Village Schoolmaster. — Goldsmith's Hornpipe and Epigram. — Uncle Contarine. — School Studies and School Sports. — Mistakes of a Night.

•v There are few writers for whom the reader feels such personal kindness as for Oliver Goldsmith, for few have so eminently possessed the magic gift of identifying themselves with their writings. We read his character in every page, and grow into familiar intimacy with him as we read. The artless benevolence that beams throughout his works ; the whimsical yet amiable views of human life and human nature: the unforced humor, blending so happily with good feeling and good sense, and singularly dashed at times with a pleasing melancholy; even the very nature of his mellow, and flowing, and softly -tinted style, — all seem to bespeak his moral as well as his intellectual qualities, and make us love the man at the same time that we admire the author. While the productions of writers of loftier pretension and more sounding names are suffered to moulder on our shelves, those of Goldsmith are cherished and laid in our bosoms. We do not quote them with ostentation, but they mingle with our minds, sweeten our tempers, and harmonize our thoughts; they put us in good-humor with ourselves and with the world, and in so doing they make us happier and better men.

An acquaintance with the private biography of Goldsmith lets us into the secret of his gifted pages. We there discover them to be little more than transcripts of his own heart and picturings of his fortunes. There he shows himself the same kind, artless, good-humored, excursive, sensible, whimsical, intelligent being that he appears in his writings. Scarcely an adventure or character is given in his works that may not be traced to his own parti-colored story. Many of his most ludicrous scenes and ridiculous incidents have been drawn from his own blunders and mischances, and he seems really to have been buffeted into almost every maxim imparted by him for the instruction of his reader.

Oliver Goldsmith was born on the 10th of November, 1728, at the hamlet of Pallas, or Pallasmore, county of Longford, in Ireland. 1 He sprang from a respectable, but by no means a thrifty stock. 2 Some families seem to inherit kindliness and incompetency, and to hand down virtue and poverty from generation to generation. Such was the case with the Goldsmiths. "They were always," according to their own accounts, "a strange family; they rarely acted

i The Goldsmith country is in the very centre of Ireland. The counties of Longford and Westmeath are in the province of Leinster and those of Roscommon and Leitrim are in Connaught. The river Shannon cuts the region in two, and the river Inny connects two of the small inland lakes.

2 Originally the Goldsmith stock was English.

like other people ; their hearts were in the right place, but their heads seemed to be doing anything but what they ought." "They were remarkable," says another statement, "for their worth, but of no cleverness in the ways of the world." Oliver Goldsmith will be found faithfully to inherit the virtues and weaknesses of his race.

His father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, with hereditary improvidence, married when very young and very poor, and starved along for several years on a small country curacy and the assistance of his wife's friends. His whole income, eked out by the produce of some fields which he farmed, and of some occasional duties performed for his wife's uncle, the rector of an adjoining parish, did not exceed forty pounds.

" And passing rich with forty pounds a year." l

He inhabited an old, half rustic mansion, that stood on a rising ground in a rough, lonely part of the country, overlooking a low tract occasionally flooded by the river Inny. In this house Goldsmith was born, and it was a birthplace worthy of a poet; for, by all accounts, it was haunted ground. A tradition handed down among the neighboring peasantry states that, in after years, the house, remaining for some time untenanted, went to decay; the roof fell in, and it became so lonely and forlorn as to be a resort for the "good people " or fairies, who in Ireland are supposed to delight in old, crazy, deserted mansions for their midnight revels. All attempts to. repair it were in vain; the fairies battled stoutly to maintain possession. A huge misshapen hobgoblin used to bestride 1 From The Deserted Village.

the house every evening with an immense pair of jackboots, which, in his efforts at hard riding, he would thrust through the roof, kicking to pieces all the work of the preceding day. The house was therefore left to its fate, and went to ruin.

Such is the popular tradition about Goldsmith's birthplace. About two years after his birth a change came over the circumstances of his father. By the death of his wife's uncle he succeeded to the rectory of Kilkenny West; and, abandoning the old goblin mansion, he removed to Lissoy, 1 in the county of Westmeath, where he occupied a farm of seventy acres, situated on the skirts of that pretty little village.

This was the scene of Goldsmith's boyhood, the little world whence he drew many of those pictures, rural and domestic, whimsical and touching, which abound throughout his works, and which appeal so eloquently both to the fancy and the heart. Lissoy is confidently cited as the original of his "Auburn" in the "Deserted Village; " his father's establishment, a mixture of farm and parsonage, furnished hints, it is said, for the rural economy 2 of the " Vicar of Wakefield;" and his father himself, with his learned simplicity, his guileless wisdom, his amiable piety, and utter ignorance of the world, has been exquisitely portrayed in the worthy Dr. Primrose. Let us pause for a moment, and draw from Goldsmith's writings one or two of those pictures which, under feigned names, represent his father and his family, and the happy fireside of his childish days.

1 Since the poet's time the village has been called Auburn. — Lippincott's Gazetteer. For a description, see pp. 242-246.

2 The rural scenes.

"My father," says the "Man in Black," who, in some respects, is a counterpart of Goldsmith himself, — "my father, the younger son of a good family, was possessed of a small living in the church. His education was above his fortune, and his generosity greater than his education. Poor as he was, he had his flatterers poorer than himself: for every dinner he gave them they returned him an equivalent in praise, and this was all he wanted. The same ambition that actuates a monarch at the head of his army, influenced my father at the head of his table ; he told the story of the ivy tree, and that was laughed at ; he repeated the jest of the two scholars and one pair of breeches, and the company laughed at that ; but the story of Taffy 1 in the sedan-chair was sure to set the table in a roar. Thus his pleasure increased in proportion to the pleasure he gave; he loved all the world, and he fancied all the world loved him.

"As his fortune was but small, he lived up to the very extent of it : he had no intention of leaving his children money, for that was dross ; he resolved they should have learning, for learning, he used to observe, was better than silver or gold. For this purpose he undertook to instruct us himself, and took as much care to form our morals as to improve our understanding. We were told that universal benevolence was what first cemented society : we were taught to consider all the wants of mankind as our own ; to regard the human face divine 2 with affection and esteem ; he wound us up to be mere machines of pity, and rendered us incapable of withstanding the slightest impulse made either by real or fictitious distress. In a

1 Irish for Davy, a nickname for any Welshman.

2 From Milton's Paradise Lost, book iii. 1. 44.

word, we were perfectly instructed in the art of giving away thousands before we were taught the necessary qualifications of getting a farthing." 1

In the " Deserted Village " we have another picture of his father and his father's fireside: —

" His house was known to all the vagrant train, He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain; The long-remembered beggar was his guest, Whose beard, descending, swept his aged breast; The ruin'd spendthrift, now no longer proud, - Claim'd kindred there, and had his claims allow'd; The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay, Sat by his fire, and talked the night away; Wept o'er his wounds, or tales of sorrow done, Shoulder'd his crutch, and show'd how fields were won. Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow, And quite forgot their vices in their woe; Careless their merits or their faults to scan, His pity gave ere charity began."

The family of the worthy pastor consisted of five sons and three daughters. Henry, the eldest, was the good man's pride and hope, and he tasked his slender means to the utmost in educating him for a learned and distinguished career. Oliver was the second son, and seven years younger than Henry, who was the guide and protector of his childhood, and to whom he was most tenderly attached throughout life.

Oliver's education began when he was about three years old; that is to say, he was gathered under the wings of one of those good old motherly dames, found in every village, who cluck together the whole callow

1 " The History of the Man in Black " is the title of Letter No. xxvii of the Letters of a Citizen of the World, written by Goldsmith. They were begun as the Chinese Letters in the Public Ledger newspaper, in January, 1760. They were collected under the more imposing title and printed in two volumes in 1762.

brood of the neighborhood, to teach them their letters and keep them out of harm's way. Mistress Elizabeth Delap, for that was her name, flourished in this capacity for upward of fifty years, and it was the pride and boast of her declining days, when nearly ninety years of age, that she was the first that had put a book (doubtless a hornbook) 1 into Goldsmith's hands. Apparently he did not much profit by it, for she confessed he was one of the dullest boys she had ever dealt with, insomuch that she had sometimes doubted whether it was possible to make anything of him : a common case with imaginative children, who are apt to be beguiled from the dry abstractions of elementary study by the picturings of the fancy.

At six years of age he passed into the hands of the village schoolmaster, one Thomas (or, as he was commonly and irreverently named, Paddy) Byrne, a capital tutor for a poet. He had been educated for a pedagogue, but had enlisted in the army, served abroad during the wars of Queen Anne's time, and risen to the rank of quartermaster of a regiment in Spain. At the return of peace, having no longer exercise for the sword, he resumed the ferule, and drilled the urchin populace of Lissoy. Goldsmith is supposed to have had him and his school in view in the following sketch in his "Deserted Village": —

"Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, With blossom'd furze unprofitably gay, There, in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule, The village master taught his little school; A man severe he was, and stern to view, I knew him well, and every truant knew:

1 The hornbook was a leaf, on which were printed the alphabet and the Lord's Prayer. It was covered with transparent horn and fixed in a frame with a handle.

Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace

The day's disasters in his morning face ;

Full well they laugh'd with counterfeited glee

4-tall his jokes, for many a joke had he;

Full well the busy whisper circling round,

Convey 'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd:

Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught,

The love he bore to learning was in fault;

The village all declared how much he knew,

'T was certain he could write, and cipher too;

Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,

And e'en the story ran that he could gauge:

In arguing, too, the parson own'd his skill,

For, e'en though vanquished, he could argue still;

While words of learned length and thund'ring sound

And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,

That one small head could carry all he knew."

There are certain whimsical traits in the character of Byrne, not given in the foregoing sketch. He was fond of talking of his vagabond wanderings in foreign lands, and had brought with him from the wars a world of campaigning stories, of which he was generally the hero, and which he would deal forth to his wondering scholars when he ought to have been teaching them their lessons. These travellers' tales had a powerful effect upon the vivid imagination of Goldsmith, and awakened an unconquerable passion for wandering and seeking adventure.