Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

CHAPTER XIV.

OLD DRUDGERY, AND A NEW VENTURE DAWNING. 1766.

1766. Æt. 38.

BUT if solid rewards seldom waited on even the happiest of Goldsmith's achievements, he never now lost courage and hope, or showed signs of yielding in the struggle. He had always his accustomed resource, and went uncomplainingly to the old drudgery. Payne the bookseller gave him ten guineas for compiling a duodecimo volume of "Poems for Young Ladies. "In three parts: Devotional, Moral, and Entertaining." It was a respectable selection of pieces, chiefly from Parnell, Pope, Thomson, Addison, and Collins; with additions of less importance from less eminent hands, and some occasional verses which he supposed to be his friend Robert Nugent's, but which were really written by Lord Lyttelton. It has been assumed to be in this book "for young ladies" that two objectionable pieces by Prior were inserted; but the statement, though sanctioned by Percy, is incorrect. It was in a more extensive compilation of Beauties of English Poetry Selected, published in the following year, and for the gathering together of which Griffin the bookseller gave him fifty pounds, that he made the questionable choice of the "Ladle" and "Hans Carvel," which for once interdicted from general reading a book with his name upon its title-page. This was unlucky for the selection in other respects, making allowance for a limited acquaintance with the earlier English poets, was a reasonably good one; and in this, as well as in its preface and brief notices of the pieces quoted, though without any claim to originality or critical depth, was not undeserving of what he claimed generally for books of the kind as entitling them to fair reward. He used to point to them as illustrating, better than any other kind of compilations, "the art of profession" in authorship. "Judgment," he said, "is to be paid for in such selections; "and a man may be twenty years of his life cultivating his "judgment." But he has also, with its help, to be mindful of changes in the public taste, to which he may himself have contributed. Nothing is more frequent than these, and few things so sudden. Staid wives will shrink with abhorrence in their fortieth autumn, from what they read with delight in their twentieth summer; and it was now even less than twenty years since that faultless "family expositor," Doctor Doddridge (as we

learn from the letters of the holy divine), thought it no sin to read the Wife of Bath's Tale to young Nancy Moore, and take his share in the laugh it raised. Doctor Johnson himself had not forgotten those habits and ways of his youth; and amazed Boswell, some ten years later, by asserting that Prior was a lady's book, and that no lady was ashamed to have it standing in her library.

The Doctor could hardly have taken part in the present luckless selection, however, since through all the summer and autumn months of the year he had withdrawn from his old haunts and friends, and taken refuge with the Thrales. For the latter, happening to visit him in Johnson's-court one day at the close of spring, found him on his knees in such a passion of morbid melancholy, beseeching God to continue to him the use of his understanding, and proclaiming such sins of which he supposed himself guilty, that poor sober solid Thrale was fain to "lift up one hand to shut his mouth," and the worthy pair bore him off, by a sort of kindly force, to their hospitable home. With cheerfulness, health returned after some few months; he passed a portion of the summer with them at Brighton; and from that time, says Murphy, Johnson became almost resident in the family. "He went occasionally to "the club in Gerrard-street, but his head-quarters were fixed at "Streatham." Goldsmith had rightly foreseen how ill things were going with him, when not even a new play could induce him to attend the theatre.

[ocr errors]

In his own attendance at the theatre he was just now more zealous than ever, and had doubtless "assisted" at some recent memorable nights there. When all the world went to see Rousseau, for example, including the King and Queen; when their majesties, though Garrick exhibited all his powers in Lusignan and Lord Chalkstone, looked more at the philosopher than the player; and when poor Mrs. Garrick, who had exalted him on a seat in her box (rewarded for her pains by his laughing at Lusignan and crying at Lord Chalkstone, not understanding a word of either), held him back by the skirts of his coat all night, in continual terror that "the recluse philosopher" would tumble over the front of the box into the pit, from his eager anxiety to show himself,Goldsmith could hardly have stayed away. Nor is he likely to have been absent when the Drury-lane players (with many of whom, especially Mr. and Mrs. Yates, he had now formed acquaintance) made the great rally for their rival fund; and, in defiance of his outlawry, Wilkes unexpectedly showed himself in the theatre, more bent on seeing Garrick's Kitely than keeping faith with the ministry, to whom, through Burke, he had the day before promised to go back to Paris more secretly and quickly than he had come to London. Least of all could Goldsmith have been

absent when the last new comedy was played, of which all the town was talking still; and which seems to have this year turned his thoughts for the first time to the theatre, with serious intention to try his own fortune there.

The Clandestine Marriage, the great success of the year, and for the strength and variety of its character deservedly so, had been the joint work of Colman and Garrick; whose respective shares in its authorship have been much disputed, but now seem clear and ascertainable enough. The idea of the comedy originated with Colman, as he was looking at the first plate in Hogarth's immortal series of Marriage à la Mode; but he admits that it was Garrick who, on being taken into counsel, suggested that important alteration of Hogarth's "proud lord" into an amiable old ruin of a fop, descending to pin his noble decayed skirts to the frock of a tradesman's daughter, but still aspiring to the hopes and submitting to the toils of conquest, which gave to the stage its favourite Lord Ogleby. These leading ideas determined on, rough hints for the construction and conduct of the plot, of which Colman's was made public by his son three-and-thirty years ago, and Garrick's did not see the light till the other day, were exchanged between the friends; and from these it is manifest that, in addition to what Colman in his letters somewhat scantily admits to have been Garrick's contributions,—namely, the first suggestion of Lord Ogleby, his opening levee scene, and the fifth act which he closes with such handsome gallantry,—the practised actor had mapped out more clearly than Colman, though he may not have written all, the other principal scenes in which his chosen character was concerned. What he submitted for the interview where the antiquated fop supposes Fanny to have fallen in love with him, will not only exhibit this, but hereafter help us to understand some disagreements between himself and Goldsmith. "Bride," he remarks, putting the actor always in place of the character, resolves to open her heart to Garrick, and try to bring him over to forgive them. "O'Brien consents, and leaves her upon seeing "Garrick come smiling along. Enter Garrick, he smiling, and "taking every word from the girl as love to himself. She "hesitates; faulters; which confirms him more and more, till at "last she is obliged to go off abruptly, and dare not discover what "she intended, which is now demonstration to Garrick, who is left 66 alone, and may show himself in all the glory of his character in "a soliloquy of vanity. He resolves to have the girl, and break "the hearts of the rest of the female world." Powell had to replace O'Brien, however, and King was substituted for Garrick, before the play was acted; and out of the latter circumstance arose a coolness between the friends which will reappear in this

narrative. Colman thought Garrick's surrender of Lord Ogleby a capricious forfeiture of promise; but though an exception to his previous withdrawal from all new parts was certainly at first intended in this case, he exercised a sound discretion in changing that purpose. The new character was in truth little more than an enrichment of one of his own farces, assisted by a farce of his friend Townley's; and he could himself but have made Lord Ogleby an improved Lord Chalkstone. It was better left to an entirely new representative, and King justified his choice. Colman's sense of injury was, nevertheless, kept carefully alive by good-natured friends; and when Garrick, some time after the play's production, and while the town were still crowding to see it, wrote in triumph to his coadjutor of the difficulties of the rival house ("The ministry all to pieces! Pitt, they say, and a new "arrangement. Beard and Co. going positively to sell their patent "for sixty thousand pounds. 'Tis true; but, mum. We have not "yet discovered the purchasers. When I know, you shall know : "there will be the devil to do"), he little imagined what notions he was then infusing into Colman's busy discontented brain.

The unexampled success of their comedy had seemed in truth to have as thoroughly reconciled them, as it had unsettled poor Goldsmith's thoughts, and driven them in the direction of the stage. It was not unnatural. The reputation of his later writings, bringing him into occasional better company, had tempted him to habits of greater expense, while it failed to supply the means of keeping pace with them. His accounts with Newbery were growing more and more involved; an unpaid note for fifty pounds, which he had given in settlement three years ago, began to make threatening re-appearance; his last draft upon the not unfriendly but cautious bookseller, though for only eleven guineas, had been dishonoured; and ordinary modes of extrication appeared more difficult and distant than ever. There was hope in the theatre. Anxiety and pain he knew there would also be; but he was not indisposed to risk them. They could never wholly obscure the brighter side. No longer might the playhouse be called the sole seat of wit; nor could it any more be said, as in Steele's days, to bear as important relation to the manners as the bank to the credit of the nation: but besides the tempting profits of an "author's nights," which, with any reasonable success, could hardly average less than from three to four hundred pounds, there was nothing to make the town half so fond of a man, even yet, as a successful play. It had been the dream, too, of his own earliest ambition; and though his juvenile tragedy had gone the way of dreams, he had now a surer and not untried ground to build upon, of humour, character, and wit. He resolved to attempt a comedy.

What, meanwhile, his leisure amusements were, since Johnson's withdrawal to the Thrales had limited their intercourse even at Gerrard-street, may be worth illustrating by occasional little anecdotes of the time, though rather loosely told. He had joined a cardclub, at the Devil tavern near Temple-bar, where very moderate whist was played; and where the members seem to have occupied the intervals of their favourite game with practical jokes upon himself. Here he had happened to give a guinea instead of a shilling, one night, to the driver of a coach (after dining with Tom Davies); and on the following night a fictitious coachman presented himself, to restore a guinea equally counterfeit. It was a trick to prove that not even the honesty of a hackney coachman would be too startling a trial for Goldsmith's credulity; and, as anticipated, the gilded coin was taken with an overflow of simple thanks, and subsequent more solid acknowledgment of the supposed marvellous honesty. Other incidents tell the same tale of credulous, unsuspecting, odd simplicity. Doctor Sleigh of Cork had asked him to be kind to a young Irish law-student heretofore mentioned, who had taken chambers near his own, who was known afterwards as a writer for the newspapers, as Foote's and Macklin's biographer, and, from the title of the most successful poem he published, as Conversation Cooke; and this young student, invited to apply to him in case of need, was told with earnest regrets one day, in answer to a trifling application, that he was really not at that moment in possession of a guinea. The youth turned away in less distress than Goldsmith; and, returning to his own chambers after midnight, found a difficulty in getting in. Goldsmith had meanwhile himself borrowed the money, followed with it too late, and thrust it, wrapped up in paper, half underneath the door. Cooke hurried next day to thank him, and tell him what a mercy it was somebody else had not laid hold of it. "In truth, my dear fellow," said Goldsmith, "I did not think of that." As little did he trouble himself to think, when a French adventurer went to him towards the close of the year with proposals for a History of England in French; which was not only to be completed in fifteen volumes at the cost of seven guineas and a half, and to be paid for in advance, but to have the effect of bringing into more friendly relations the men of letters of both countries. Goldsmith, though he had been fajn but a few days before this, for the humble payment of two guineas, to write Newbery a "Preface to "Wiseman's Grammar," had no mean notion of the dignity of literature in regard to such proposals as this French impostor's, and now indulged it at a thoughtless cost. Straightway he gave his name, impoverished himself by giving his last available guinea, and, in "the Colonel Chevalier de Champigny's" advertisements,

« ForrigeFortsett »