what close survey of those countless academic institutions of Italy in the midst of which Italian learning at this time withered, evidence is not wanting; and he always thoroughly discriminated the character of that country and its people. But small the bliss that sense alone bestows, 1756. It is a hard struggle to return to England; but his steps are now bent that way. "My skill in music," says the philosophic vagabond, whose account there will be little danger in Et. 28. accepting as at least some certain reflection of the truth, "could avail me nothing in Italy, where every peasant was a “better musician than I: but by this time I had acquired another "talent which answered my purpose as well, and this was a skill "in disputation. In all the foreign universities and convents there "are, upon certain days, philosophical theses maintained against every adventitious disputant; for which, if the champion opposes "with any dexterity, he can claim a gratuity in money, a dinner, "and a bed for one night. In this manner, then, I fought my 66 way towards England; walked along from city to city; examined "mankind more nearly; and, if I may so express it, saw both "sides of the picture." CHAPTER VI. PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB-STREET. 1756-1757. It was on the 1st of February, 1756, that Oliver Goldsmith stepped upon the shore at Dover, and stood again among his countrymen. Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state, Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of human kind pass by, Intent on high designs. . . ... 1756. Æt. 28. The comfort of seeing it must have been about all the comfort to At this moment, there is little doubt, he had not a single him. farthing in his pocket; and from the lords of human kind, intent on looking in any direction but his, it was much more difficult to get one than from the careless good-humoured peasants of France or Flanders. In the struggle of ten days or a fortnight which it took him to get to London, there is reason to suspect that he attempted a low comedy" performance in a country barn; and, at one of the towns he passed, had implored to be hired in an apothecary's shop. In the middle of February he was wandering without friend or acquaintance, without the knowledge or comfort of even one kind face, in the lonely, terrible, LONDON streets. He thought he might find employment as an usher: and there is a dark uncertain kind of story, of his getting a bare subsistence in this way for some few months, under a feigned name; which must have involved him in a worse distress but for the judicious silence of the Dublin Doctor (Radcliff), fellow of the college and jointtutor with Wilder, to whom he had been suddenly required to apply for a character, and whose good-humoured acquiescence in his private appeal saved him from suspicion of imposture. Goldsmith showed his gratitude by a long, and, it is said, a most delightful letter to Radcliff, descriptive of his travels; now unhappily destroyed. He also wrote again to his more familiar Irish He went among friends, but his letters were again unanswered. the London apothecaries, and asked them to let him spread plasters for them, pound in their mortars, run with their medicines but they, too, asked him for a character, and he had none to give. At last a chemist of the name of Jacob took compassion upon him, and the late Conversation Sharp used to point out a shop at the corner of Monument-yard on Fish-street-hill, shown to him in his youth as this benevolent Mr. Jacob's. Some dozen years later, Goldsmith startled a brilliant circle at Bennet Langton's with an anecdote of "When I lived among the "beggars in Axe-lane," just as Napoleon, fifty years later, appalled the party of crowned heads at Dresden with his story of "When "I was lieutenant in the regiment of La Fère." The experience with the beggars will of course date before that social elevation of mixing and selling drugs on Fish-street-hill. For doubtless the latter brought him into the comfort and good society on which he afterwards dwelt with such unction, in describing the elegant little lodging at three shillings a week, with its lukewarm dinner served up between two pewter plates from a cook's shop. 66 me. t. 29. 1757. Thus employed among the drugs, he heard one day that Sleigh, an old fellow-student of the Edinburgh time, was lodging not far off, and he resolved to visit him. He had to wait, of course, for his only holiday; "but notwithstanding it was Sunday," he said, afterwards relating the anecdote, "and it is "to be supposed I was in my best clothes, Sleigh did not know Such is the tax the unfortunate pay to poverty." He did not fail to leave to the unfortunate the lessons they should be taught by it. Doctor Sleigh (Foote's Doctor Sligo, honourably named in an earlier page of this narrative) recollected at last his friend of two years gone; and when he did so, added Goldsmith, "I found his heart as warm as ever, and he shared his purse and "friendship with me during his continuance in London." With the help of this warm heart and friendly purse, seconded also by the good apothecary Jacob ("who," says Cooke, "saw in Goldsmith "talents above his condition"), he now "rose from the apothecary's "drudge to be a physician in a humble way," in Bankside, Southwark. It was not a thriving business: poor physician to the poor : but it seemed a change for the better, and hope was strong in him. An old Irish acquaintance and school-fellow (Beatty) met him at this time in the streets. He was in a suit of green and gold, miserably old and tarnished; his shirt and neckcloth appeared to have been worn at least a fortnight; but he said he was practising physic, and doing very well! It is hard to confess failure to one's school-fellow. E Our next glimpse, though not more satisfactory, is more professional. The green and gold have faded quite out, into a rusty full-trimmed black suit: the pockets of which, like those of the poets in innumerable farces, overflow with papers. The coat is second-hand velvet, cast-off legacy of a more successful brother of the craft; the cane, the wig, have served more fortunate owners; and the humble practitioner of Bankside is feeling the pulse of a patient humbler than himself, whose courteous entreaties to be allowed to relieve him of the hat he keeps pressed over his heart, he more courteously but firmly declines. Beneath the hat is a large patch in the rusty velvet, which he thus conceals. But he cannot conceal the starvation which is again impending. Even the poor printer's workman he attends, can see how hardly in that respect it goes with him; and finds courage one day to suggest that his master has been kind to clever men before now, has visited Mr. Johnson in spunging-houses, and might be serviceable to a poor physcian. For his master is no less than Mr. Samuel Richardson of Salisbury-court and Parson's-green, printer, and author of Clarissa. The hint is successful; and Goldsmith, appointed reader and corrector to the press in Salisbury-court,— admitted now and then even to the parlour of Richardson himself. and there grimly smiled upon by its chief literary ornamert, great poet of the day, the author of the Night Thoughts,— -sees hope in literature once more. He begins a tragedy. With what modest expectation, with what cheerful, simple-hearted deference to critical objection, another of his Edinburgh fellow-students, Doctor Farr, will relate to us. From the time of Goldsmith's leaving Edinburgh, in the year 1754, I never saw him till 1756, when I was in London, attending the hospitals and lectures; early in January [1756 is an evident mistake for 1757] he called upon me one morning before I was up, and on my entering the room, I recognised my old acquaintance, dressed in a rusty full-trimmed black suit, with his pockets full of papers, which instantly reminded me of the poet in Garrick's farce of Lethe. After we had finished our breakfast, he drew from his pocket a part of a tragedy; which he said he had brought for my correction; in vain I pleaded inability, when he began to read, and every part on which I expressed a doubt as to the propriety, was immediately blotted out. I then more earnestly pressed him not to trust to my judgment, but to the opinion of persons better qualified to decide on dramatic compositions, on which he told me he had submitted his production, so far as he had written, to Mr. Richardson, the author of Clarissa, on which I peremptorily declined offering another criticism on the performance. The name and subject of the tragedy have unfortunately escaped my memory, neither do I recollect with exactness how much he had written, though I am inclined to believe that he had not completed the third act; I never heard whether he afterwards finished it. In this visit I remember his relating a strange Quixotic scheme he had in contemplation of going to decipher the inscriptions on the written mountains, though he was altogether ignorant of Arabic, or the language in which they might be supposed to be written. The salary of 300l. per annum, which had been left for the purpose, was the temptation! Temptation indeed! The head may well be full of projects of any kind, when the pockets are only full of papers. But not, alas, to decipher inscriptions on the written mountains, only to preside over pot-hooks at Peckham, was doomed to be the lot of Goldsmith. One Doctor Milner, known still as the author of Latin and Greek grammars useful in their day, kept a school there; his son was among these young Edinburgh fellow-students with Oliver, come up, like Farr, Sleigh, and others, to their London examinations; and thus it happened that the office of assistant at the Peckham Academy befell. "All my ambition now is to live," he may well be supposed to have said, in the words he afterwards placed in the mouth of young Primrose. seems to have been installed at nearly the beginning of 1757. attempt has been made to show that it was an earlier year, but on grounds too unsafe to oppose to known dates in his life. The good people of Peckham have also cherished traditions of Goldsmith House, as what once was the school became afterwards fondly designated; which may not safely be admitted here. Broken window-panes have been religiously kept, for the supposed treasure 66 He AD |