Sidebilder
PDF
ePub
[graphic][merged small]

saw no vulgarity in the head of Goldsmith; and we may be sure he did not agree with many of his friends in considering him " very like a journeyman tailor," or with Miss Reynolds, in thinking him " the ugliest of men." An inferior painter might have easily succeeded in giving a vulgar look to Goldsmith, by dressing him in his plum-coloured coat, and hiding his honest, open forehead under a well-powdered wig. So painted, the portrait might have seemed to the acquaintances of Goldsmith more like than that of Reynolds. But Sir Joshua meant to paint the author of the Vicar of Wakefield' and of the Deserted Village,' and not the Goldy who was laughed at by Boswell and Hawkins, and quizzed by Burke. It may be noticed that the ideal drapery of this portrait and the view of the face almost exactly correspond to the painter's treatment of his very early portrait of his own father.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

This head of Goldsmith is to me the most pathetic picture Reynolds ever painted: not only because, in looking at it, I think of the Deserted Village,' but far more because the sufferings of a whole life and of the tenderest of hearts are written in it. The Ugolino of Reynolds is agonizing; but the portrait of Oliver Goldsmith displays a gentler, yet a rarer power, than was required to delineate the sufferings of the dying family in the terrible Tower.

[The portrait of Goldsmith must have been an object of special attraction in the Exhibition just before its doors were closed.

On May 26th, after many postponements and premature advertisements, had appeared his poem of 'The Deserted Village,' with a dedication to Sir Joshua.

"I can have no expectations," writes the poet, " in an address of this kind, either to add to your reputation or to establish my own. You can gain nothing from my admiration, as I am ignorant of the art in which you are said to excel, and I may lose much by the severity of your judgment, as few have a juster taste in poetry than you. Setting interest, therefore, aside— to which I never paid much attention-I must be indulged at present in following my affections. The only dedication I ever made was to my brother, because I loved him better than most other men. He is since dead. Permit me to inscribe this poem to you." The poem attained wide and immediate popularity, and before the end of August reached a fifth edition.

Whatever Reynolds might think of the political economy of Goldsmith's exquisite Idyll-which the Doctor maintained to be his own honest deduction from observation-he deserved the honour of this dedication by his fellow-feeling for the subject, as well as his thorough appreciation of the poet. In every loving reminiscence of a humble country birthplace; in every touch descriptive of village character, sports, and enjoyments; in every trait of that unrivalled picture of the good pastor "passing rich with forty pounds a year," the painter's heart must have gone along with the poet's.

In none of the great men of the Club could Goldsmith have found a stronger, stancher, more enduring attachment to the scenes and associations of his youth than in Reynolds, who loved, he used to say, every stone in Plympton; who valued the mayoralty of his little native borough beyond all the distinctions that his

own Sovereign, or that English or foreign universities and academies could bestow, and whose heart warmed to Northcote for his broad Devonshire dialect. His own good father, Samuel Reynolds, might have sat for the original of Goldsmith's pastor:

"Remote from towns he ran his godly race,

Nor e'er had changed, nor wish'd to change, his place:
Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power,
By doctrines fashion'd to the varying hour;
Far other aims his heart had learn'd to prize,
More bent to raise the wretched than to rise;
His house was known to all the vagrant train,
He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain.

Careless their merits or their faults to scan,
His pity gave ere charity began.

Even children follow'd with endearing wile,

And pluck'd his gown, to share the good man's smile.
His ready smile a parent's warmth express'd,
Their welfare pleas'd him, and their cares distress'd;
To them his heart, his love, his smiles were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven."

Few points in the life of Reynolds are calculated to give his biographer more pleasure than the constant evidence he finds of the intimacy and mutual affection subsisting between the painter and Goldsmith. Reynolds, at all events, appreciated the beautiful, tender genius which worked below that crust of awkwardness, uncouthness, and childish vanity. He never started the laugh against poor Goldy's innocent pleasure in his fine clothes, or snubbed his sometimes ineffectual joke; never "smoked," or "hummed," or "bit" him, as the slang of the time ran. He seems at this time to have dined oftener with Goldsmith than any one else. They were often seen together at Vauxhall and Ranelagh; the thickset little poet in butterfly brilliancy of colours,

« ForrigeFortsett »