The life and times of Oliver Goldsmith

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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xi

to it certain facts as the result of his own research, can from that instant lay claim to the entire beneficial interest in those facts, nay, can appropriate to himself the subject of the biography, and warn off every other person as a trespasser from the ground so seized.

Now, upon the reason or common sense of such a proposition, I should be ashamed to waste a word. Taking for granted the claim of discovery to the full extent asserted, the claim to any exclusive use of such discovery is sheer folly. No man can hold a patent in biography or in history except by a mastery of execution unapproached by competitors. He only may hope to have possessed himself of a subject, who has exhausted it ; or to have established his originality in dealing with facts, who has so happily disposed and applied them as to preclude the chances of more successful treatment by any subsequent writer. But between me and my accuser in this particular case, a really practical question was raised under cover of the extravagant and impossible one. The substance of Mr. Prior's pretensions as a discoverer in connection with Goldsmith came in issue ; and the answer could only be, that these had been enormously exaggerated. It became necessary to point out that to even a small fraction of the matter assumed to have been first set forth by him, his title as its discoverer could as little be proved, as his right to any exclusive property or ownership in it. I found myself obliged to assert, that the most important particulars of Goldsmith's life, except as to bibliography, where the books themselves furnished easy hints for the supply of every defect, had been published long before by Cooke, Glover, Percy, Davies, Hawkins, Boswell, and their contemporaries or commentators ; and that were each fact again expressly assigned to its original authority, what Mr. Prior might claim for his would be found ridiculously small compared with the bulk of his volumes.

In support of that assertion I now place before the public xii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

the present book. Not only are very numerous corrections to every former publication on the subject here made, and a great many new facts brought forward, but each fact, whether new or old, is given from its first authority, and no quotation has been made at second hand.

The gravest defect in my first edition is thus remedied. 1 no longer, from a strained sense of the courtesy due to a living writer, and an immediate predecessor on this ground, confine my acknowledgments chiefly to him. The reader is enabled to see exactly the extent of my obligations to Mr. Prior, and also, for the first time, the extent of his obligations to books which he has largely copied, and never remembered or cared to name. For, nothing is so noteworthy in this stickler for a property in facts originally derived, as the perpetual false assumption of an original air, by quoting as from the communication of individuals, information derived from printed sources. His footprints were in each case so carefully obliterated, that he doubtless thought it perfectly safe to do this, and relied on all trace being lost of his having simply been where others had been before him. No one reading his book would expect to find already printed in a magazine of the last century not a few of its most characteristic " original " anecdotes. To the highly curious and valuable series of published recollections of Goldsmith, written by one of his intimate companions, William Cooke of the Temple, before even Percy's edition of the Miscellaneous Works, Mr. Prior never once refers. He preserves almost as close a silence in respect to the Percy Memoir itself, which, though remaining still by far the fullest and most authentic repository of "original" information about Goldsmith, he sedulously avoids to name in connection with any of the interesting matter he abstracts unscrupulously from it. When, in the course of repelling his attack, I had occasion to repeat my obligations to what I regard as the most valuable details in his book, namely, Goldsmith's accounts and agreements

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xiii

with his publisher Newbery, and the bills of his landlady Mrs. Fleming, it never occurred to me to doubt that those papers were Mr. Prior's, and remained in his possession. The truth, however, is that they were placed at his disposal by Mr. Murray, of Albemarle-street, whose son and successor has most kindly placed them at mine ; and though I have quoted them throughout my volumes as originally published by Mr. Prior, it will be found that I have corrected several mistakes in his transcription of them, and printed some part of their contents for the first time. Even to the entertaining tailor's bills which in his book first illustrated Groldsmith's boyish love of dress, I have been enabled to add some curious details derived from a discovery of yet earlier date, connecting with his very outset in life as a medical student his indulgence in those innocent foibles.

The reader will do me the justice to remember that any apparent depreciation of the labours of a predecessor in the same field with myself has been forced upon me. I had no thought towards this gentleman but of gratitude in connection with the pursuit which had occupied us in common, until he repelled the expression of that feeling. Of course I did not think his book a good one, or I would not have written mine ; but I liked his liking for the subject, had profited not a little by his exertions in connection with it, valued the new facts he had contributed to its illustration, and was content, without the mention of any adverse opinion as to the mode in which he had used those materials, to let the reader silently infer the reason which had induced my own attempt. For why should I now conceal that the very extent of my sympathy with the purpose of his biography had unhappily convinced me of its utter failure in his hands : and that for this reason, with no dislike of him, but much love for Goldsmith, the present biography was undertaken ? It seemed no unworthy task to rescue one of the most fascinating writers in the language xiv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

from one of its dullest books, from a posthumous admiration more harassing than any spite that vexed poor G-oldsmith while he lived, from a clumsy and incessant exaltation far worse than Hawkins's absurd contempt or the amusing slights of Boswell. In the course of this attempt it became necessary to correct many errors, to supply many omissions, and to restore point to many anecdotes mistold or misunderstood; but while all this was done silently, Mr. Prior's name was introduced into the text of my narrative not less than fifteen times, and a brief advertisement at its close was devoted to the eulogistic statement (for which I can" only now implore the pardon of my readers) that the " diligent labour, enthu- " siasm, and ability displayed in his edition and elaborate " memoir twelve years ago, had placed every subsequent writer " under weighty obligations to him."

If any one then had warned me of the impending wrath of Mr. Prior, it would have appeared to me simply ridiculous. "With some reason, perhaps, any new biographer may demand a brief interval for public judgment before a successor shall occupy his ground, but even this in courtesy only; and it never occurred to me to question Mr. Washington Irving' s perfect right to avail himself to the uttermost of the present work, though he did so within as many weeks as I had waited years before encroaching on Mr. Prior's. But if any one had gravely assured me that the author of a book published twelve years, and which, with no encouragement for a second edition, had for more than half that time been transferred to the shelves of the cheap bookstalls, would think himself entitled coarsely to assail me for opening his subject anew, I should have laughed at a suggestion so incredible ; and if, in support of the statement, details of the proposed attack had been given as based chiefly on the imputation of borrowing without acknowledgment, I should have convinced my informant, by the series of examples I am now about to submit to the reader,

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xv

how monstrous and impossible it was that of all men on earth Mr. Prior should ever venture on such a charge, or throw down such a challenge.

At page 13 of Mr. Prior's first volume, in giving several details of the childhood of the poet, he expresses his thanks to " the Eev. Dr. Strean, of Athlone, to whom I feel obliged for " the inquiries he has made," So at pages 22, 23, 110, and in other places (in the second volume, 255, &c). Yet the obligation was really incurred, not to Dr. Strean, but to an Essay only once very slightly and cursorily alluded to (102), containing (139 — 149) the whole of Dr. Strean' s information, and published in 1808 by Mr. Mangin, who not without reason complained, on the appearance of Mr. Prior's book, that, though Dr. Strean had placed it in Mr. Prior's hands telling him it contained all he had to say about Goldsmith, he had "employed much of " what he found in the Essay without having the courtesy to " use marks of quotation." (Parlour Window Booh, 4-5.)

At pp. 28-29, 45-47, 109, 118, 128, and in other parts of the description of Goldsmith's boyhood, all the characteristic anecdotes are given generally as on the authority of his sisters or friends ; but any particular mention of the Percy Memoir, in which (5-6-7-9-13-14) they were first published, is studiously avoided. In like manner the account of his first adventures in Edinburgh, told with an original air at p. 134-135, the notice of Mr. Contarine at p. 50-51, and of Mr. Lawder at p. 130, are taken without acknowledgment from the same source (19-20, 17, and 18) ; and at p. 47 a little fact is described as from the communication of a reverend gentleman, who had already communicated it to all the world at a public, meeting fifteen years before (Gent. Mag. xc. 620).

At p. 76, coupled with a previous intimation at p. 63, the reader is left to infer that Dr. Wilson's account of the college xvi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

riot in which Goldsmith took part is laid before him from unpublished letters, whereas all the facts, on the special authority of Dr. Wilson, are stated in the Percy Memoir (16-17), to which no allusion is made ; and in like manner the characteristic expression in that memoir, that " one of his contempo- " raries describes him as perpetually lounging about the college "gate" (15), is appropriated as a piece of original information at p. 92, and assigned to Dr. Wolfen.

At p. 98 much is made of the loss of the formal registry proving Goldsmith to have taken his bachelor's degree (all which is in the Percy Memoir, 17, though Mr. Prior does not tell his readers so), and a self-glorifying announcement is made of the satisfactory settlement of that interesting question, even in the absence of so important a piece of proof, by the fact that " his name was first found by the present writer in the list of " such as had right of access to the college library, to which by "the rules graduates only are admissible." Yet Mr. Prior had before him Mr. Shaw Mason's Statistical Account or Survey, published nearly twenty years before, where, for satisfactory evidence that Goldsmith had taken his bachelor's degree, Mr. Mason expressly describes his name as "in the roll of " those qualified for admission to the college library" (iii. 358).

At pp. 159-164, one of the best of all Goldsmith's letters is printed without the slightest hint that it had been printed in the Percy Memoir (27-32) ; and the same silence is preserved (138) in regard to a letter printed, though with less satisfactory completeness, at pp. 22-26 of the same most authentic narrative. Let me add, that though Dr. Percy omits some valuable points in this letter, Mr. Prior is not entitled to say that all copies of it hitherto printed have been taken from " imperfect "transcripts," saving only that which "has been submitted "to the present writer," &c, &c. In the 25th volume of the European Magazine (332-333) there is a copy, postscript and all, word for word the same as Mr. Prior's, except that the

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xvii

close is more characteristic than his, of the writer's spirit in those boyish days.

At p. 169-170 there is much parade about certain discoveries in connection with Dr. Ellis, and we are told that "from I accounts given by this gentleman in conversation in various "societies in Dublin, it appears that, &c.;" but what appears is literally no more than had been told far more characteristically at p. 33-34 of the Percy Memoir, to which no allusion is made, either here or a few pages on (174), when one of the prettiest of all the stories of Groldsmith's improvidence is given on Dr. Ellis's authority, without a hint of the book {Percy Memoir, 33-34) in which it first appeared.

At p. 176, the same sort of parade is made about a lost letter of Groldsmith's descriptive of his travels " communicated to the "writer by &c. &c. &c. to whose father &c. &c." — the fact of the letter, as well as of the accident that destroyed it, having been published nearly half a century before by Dr. Campbell, in his Survey of the South of Ireland (286-289), and referred to not only at p. 37 of the Percy Memoir, but in a previous biographical sketch by Isaac Eeed (xi-xii.) .

At p. 209 an interesting notice of Groldsmith's obscurest days in London is set forth as " in the words put into his "mouth by a gentleman who knew him for several years," and the gentleman is elaborately described in a note as a "barrister and author of &c. &c. ; " but the circumstance is carefully suppressed that " the words " are really quoted from a narrative printed nearly fifty years before in the European Magazine (xxiv. 91). In like manner, at p. 212-213, by far the most valuable and curious anecdote of those dark days, is reprinted verbatim from p. 39-40 of the Percy Memoir, without the most distant allusion to its having already appeared there.

At p. 217-218 mention is made' of one of Miss Milner's recollections of Groldsmith while an usher with her father, but no one could infer that this had been already quoted by xviii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

Mr. Mitford from Watkins's Literary Anecdotes (515), though certainly it was more pardonable in Mr. Prior thus to borrow without leave from one source, than to utterly omit, as he does, all mention of the most interesting details of those curious recollections to be found in other sources (in the European Magazine, liii. 373-375 ; and in the Gentleman's Magazine, lxxxvii. 277-278). At p. 220 the origin of Goldsmith's first connection with literature, and the peculiar engagement he entered into, are related without a hint of having been derived from p. 60 of the Percy Memoir.

At p. 244, the sudden and disconcerting visit of Charles Goldsmith to London is referred to his having heard of Oliver's great friends through a letter to Mrs. Lawder, although there is proof, but a few pages on (268), that Oliver could have written no such letter ; and Mr. Prior had, in truth, simply copied the fact from Northcote's Life of Reynolds (i. 332-333). An original letter is given at pp. 246-251, full of interest and character, without anything to inform the reader that he might have found it at pp. 40-45 of the Percy Memoir ; nor would it be very clear to him, even though Bishop Percy is mentioned in a note, that the letter at pp. 259-262 had been copied from the same source (50-52) ; still less that the long and characteristic fragment of a letter at pp. 275-278 is also but a verbatim copy from pp. 46-49 of the same ill-treated authority, and that the master-piece of all Goldsmith's epistolary writing, for the varied interest of its contents, has been bodily transferred without acknowledgment from pp. 53-59 of the one book to pp. 297-303 of the other.

At pp. 370-372, an anecdote is related as having been told by Goldsmith himself "with considerable humour;" but the story is ill-told, and with no mention" of the printed authority from which it was derived (in the European Magazine, xxiv. 259-260). Precisely the same remark I have to repeat of the stories at pp. 422-424, and of the statement at p. 495 for

Preface To The Second Edition

which an erroneous authority is given. These will be found in the European Magazine, xxiv. 92, 93, and 94. " The remem- " brance of Bishop Percy" is invoked for another whimsical anecdote at p. 377, when the exact page of the memoir (62-63) which contains it, might with equal ease and more propriety have been named.

Thus far Mr. Prior's first volume; in which I have indicated scarcely any facts, for the use of which even as he had borrowed them himself, except that I never sought to put them forth as my own discoveries, I was not assailed and insulted by him. I now proceed in the same way, with all possible brevity, through the second volume of his book : merely premising, as a help to those who would have some clue to this perpetual and strange desire to represent as from oral or written communication facts derived from printed sources, that Mr. Prior took occasion in the course of his attack upon me expressly to lay down the doctrine, that what has been printed for any given number of years can no longer be held new, or regarded in the light of a discovery ; and as, in his own esteem, he is nothing if not a discoverer, and by consequence a proprietor, of facts, there ought perhaps to be little to surprise the reader in the foregoing and following examples.

At pp. 1-11 of the second volume there is a vast deal about Goldsmith's Oratorio of the Captivity, about the fact of two copies being still extant in his handwriting, and about Mr. Prior being enabled to print for the first time " from that "which appears the most correct transcript;" the reader being kept quite ignorant that already this poem had been printed, from a copy in Goldsmith's handwriting at the least as curious as Mr. Prior's, and certainly as correct (the one having been made for Newbery, and the other for Dodsley, and the latest kx PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

in transcription presenting only a few changes of text from the other), in the octavo edition of the Miscellaneous Works published by the London "trade " in 1820.

At p. 55 a story is repeated from the recollections of Miss Reynolds, communicated to Mr. Croker, which had already been far better told in the Gentleman' 's Magazine for July 1797. In pp. 80-94 a great clutter is made about the ballad of Edwin and Angelina, as to which all that was really essential is told in pp. 74-76 of the Memoir by Percy, whose personal connection with the dispute arising out of it gives peculiar authority to his statement.

At p. 130 the assertion about Goldsmith's having got a large sum for what might seem a small labour, put forth as an exaggeration reported by others which " he took no pains to " contradict," but to which he would " in substance reply " &c« is all taken without acknowledgment from Cooke's narrative in the European Magazine (xxiv. 94) ; in which the exaggeration, such as it is, is most emphatically assigned to Goldsmith himself. At p. 135 the whimsical anecdote described to have teen told to Dr. Percy, "with some humour by the Duchess " of Northumberland," might more correctly have been quoted from p. 68-69 of the Percy Memoir.

At p. 139 there occurs, at last, formal mention of a person "admitted to considerable intimacy with him, Mr. "William " Cooke, a barrister, known as the writer of a work on dramatic " genius, and of a poem, &c "; of whom it is added that " he " related many amusing anecdotes of the poet from personal " knowledge ;" but where the anecdotes are to be found is carefully suppressed, nor indeed could any one imagine that they had ever found their way into print. At p. 139-140 a highly characteristic story of Goldsmith is given as from the relation of this Mr. Cooke, " corroborated to the writer by the late " Eichard Sharpe, Esq., to whom Mr. Cooke told it more than " once ; " 'the story being nothing more than a transcript from

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xxi

Taylor's Records of his Life (i. 107-110), published four years before Mr. Prior wrote.

At p. 140-141, one of Cooke's most amusing stories is ill-told without a mention of its printed source (Eur op. Mag. xxiv. 260). At p. 167 an incident is given from Mrs. Piozzi's relation, though with no mention of her book (Anecdotes, 244-246) ; and connected with it is a formal confirmation of her mistake as to the club's night of meeting, which the very slight diligence of turning to p. 72 of the Percy Memoir would have enabled Mr. Prior to correct. And at pp. 175, 178 (where certain lines are quoted without allusion to an anecdote current at the time which had given them their only point), 181, 182,andl97, circumstances and traits of character are set forth without the least acknowledgment from Cooke's printed papers (European Magazine, xxiv. 170, 422, xxv. 184, xxiv. 172, 261, and 429), with only such occasional mystification of the reader as that " a jest of the poet "was repeated by Mr. Cooke" (197), or that "Bishop Percy in "conversation frequently alluded to these habits " (182).

At pp. 194-196, a long passage is given from Colman's Eandom Records (i. 110-113) ; at p. 207 a business-agreement of Goldsmith's as "drawn up by himself" is given from the Percy Memoir (78) ; and at pp. 220-223 a letter from Oliver to Maurice Groldsmith is copied from the same source (86-89), — without a clue in any of these cases to the book which contains the original.

At p. 237-238 we are informed that Mr. Percival Stockdale's Memoirs "furnishes scarcely an allusion to Groldsmith. His "papers, however, supply an anecdote communicated by a I lady eminent for her writings in fiction, his friend, and whom 1 the writer has likewise the honour, &c. &c. &c." And then the anecdote, professing to be transcribed by Miss Jane Porter from the manuscripts of Mr. Stockdale, turns out to be a literal transcription from that very Memoirs of the worthy gentleman (ii. 136-137), which had been published nearly thirty years xxii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

before Mr. Prior's book, and in which Mr. Prior had been able to find " scarcely an allusion " to Groldsmith.

At pp. 254-269 there is a long rigmarole about the identity of Lissoy and Auburn, and about the alehouse &c rebuilt by Mr. Hogan, — all professing to be the result of written communication or personal inquiry, — not a syllable of which may not be found in Mangin's Essay (140-143) ; in Mr. JSe well's elaborate and highly illustrated quarto edition of the Poetical Works (1811 : " with remarks attempting to ascertain chiefly " from local observation the actual scene of the Deserted Vil- " lage : " 61-80), and in Mr. Hogan's own account in the Gentlemans Magazine (xc. 618-622), — not one of these authorities being once named by Mr. Prior.

At p. 288-289 we have a charming fragment of a letter to Reynolds transferred without acknowledgment from the Percy Memoir (90-91) ; at p. 300, an agreement with Davies is silently taken from an earlier page (79) ; at p. 375, a curious letter of Tom Paine' s to Groldsmith is so taken from a later page (96-98) ; and at pp. 328-330, an admirable letter is in like manner copied, and not even correctly copied, from the same mal-treated book (92-94).

At p. 309 an anecdote is given from an earlier volume of the magazine which contained the printed papers by Cooke {European Magazine, xxi. 88), but with careful avoidance of any clue to the authority. At pp. 313-321 not a few of the traits of Hiffernan are borrowed from one of Cooke's papers respecting him (European Magazine, xxv. 110-184), still with no hint of any such source. At p. 349-350, a very characteristic story of Groldsmith is copied without allusion from the Eercy Memoir (100). At p. 353 an incident is mentioned as " according to the late Mr. John Taylor," which is simply copied from Taylor's Records (i. 118). And so, at pp. 370 and 401, where the incidents given are silently transcribed from Northcote (Life of Reynolds,!. 288 and 286).

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xxiii

At p. 381 a pleasant anecdote appears as though originally told, but which Cooke had long before related in print {European Magazine, xxiv. 261) ; at p. 386-387, two letters are appropriated without allusion to Column's Posthumous Letters (ed : 1820 ; 180), or to Grarrick's Correspondence (ed : 1830; i. 527), where they first appeared; at pp. 389, 465, aud 481, anecdotes, full of character, which Cooke certainly 1 deserved the credit of having told in print {European Magazine, [xxiv. 173, 261, and 262), are given without an allusion to him; at pp. 421 and 473, two anecdotes, the former being one of the most charming recorded of Groldsmith, which had been told in the same magazine, but in a later and an earlier number than those in which Cooke wrote (lv. 443. and xix. 94), are silently taken in the same way ; at p. 465-466, a curious trait given as "mentioned by Malone" might as well have been given as copied from his Life of Dry den (i. 518) ; and, for a final act of justice to the Percy Memoir, let me add that the libel at p. 408-409, the unfinished fragment at p. 410, the address to the public at p. 413-414, the amusing verses at p. 419, and the Oglethorpe letter at p. 422-423, are all drawn, with the same 3xtraordinary absence of all mention of their source, from that drst authentic record of Groldsmith' s career (103-105, 105-106, L07-108, 102-103, and 95-96).

To close the ungracious task which has thus been forced jpon me. Letters quoted by Mr. Prior are never referred to ■he place from which he draws them, except in the few instances vhere a really original letter happens to have fallen in his ^ay. Whether it be at p. 390, where a letter of Groldsmith' s co Cradock (in Memoirs, i. 225) is misplaced, and referred to vhat it has no connection with ; or at p. 429, where a letter of. Groldsmith's to Garrick (in Memoirs of Doctor Burney, i. 272- >73) is? given as though personal communication had drawn It from Madame d'Arblay ; or at p. 470, where a letter of Beattie's (in Forbes's Life, ii. 69) is made use of- or at pp. 369, xxiv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

472, 482, 488, and 510, where quotations are printed, and in two instances misprinted, from letters of Beauclerc's (iri Hardy's Life of Lord Charlemont, 178, 163, 177, 178, and 179) ; or at p. 526, where we find a letter from Maurice Goldsmith to Mr. Hawes (in Hawes's Account, 22), — still the reader is left without a clue to the source of these letters, in any single instance, and may suppose, for anything to the contrary revealed to him by Mr. Prior, that all have proceeded from that amazing fund of private and exclusive discovery, on which this gentleman founds his claim to an exclusive property in their use.

And now, having gone through Mr. Prior's volumes, as I hope for the last time, I shall content myself with this farther remark, that I ground my claim to whatever merit my own volumes may possess, on the completeness of their contrast to his, and on the conviction that no two books so utterly unlike each other were ever before written on the same subject. Por a help to the reader's judgment in one direction only, 1? subjoin a mention of those pages in my volumes which contain facts, anecdotes, or personal traits exclusively relating to Groldsmith himself, here included for the first time in any Life of him ; and I have placed an asterisk before the new 1 ; facts or characteristics so affecting bim personally, added to the present edition. "Were I to attempt so to distinguish the new matter introduced having relation to the time, and filling up the picture I seek to present of Goldsmith's associates and friends, it would involve a specification of almost every page.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xxv

In conclusion, with particular reference to a change in the title of this biography, intended more correctly to express the extended aim and character it now assumes, perhaps the reader may be requested to remember that while " the times," as well as "the life," are meant to be comprised, the persons introduced appear always as far as possible in the character and proportions which they bore to the society of their day, during the life, and not beyond it ; that Burke is not yet the impeacher of Hastings, nor Boswell the biographer of Johnson ; and that in thus bringing within the circle of view not a little of the social as well as literary characteristics, of the arts, the theatres, and the politics, of this fragment of the eighteenth century, still the object has strictly been to show in more vivid lights from each, the central figure of Goldsmith himself, not exaggerated, not unduly exalted, but with all that there was in him to admire and love, and all there was around him to suggest excuse or pity.