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GOLDSMITH AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS.

A CONTROVERSY of no great importance has been occasioned by Mr. Forster's "Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith." In 1837, Mr. Prior, who had, for several years before, been occupied in collecting materials for the life of Goldsmith, published what Mr. Forster justly calls his most careful biography of the poet. He, about the same time, edited his "Miscellaneous Works," incorporating with the old collection much matter gleaned from the reviews and magazines with which Goldsmith was connected; notices of books and essays, which had either been overlooked by former editors, or regarded as undeserving a place among his more permanent works. This task was performed diligently, and with great love of the subject in which he was engaged, by Mr. Prior, and both his books are of exceeding value. Of these books Mr. Forster has made considerable use, and they must have, in some respects, abridged his labour, when he undertook his own work. This, for the most part, is often enough acknowledged by Mr. Forster, and, to say the truth, we are by no means sure that had Mr. Prior's work never existed, Mr. Forster's work would have been materially different from what it is. The character of Goldsmith, as deduced by Mr. Forster, from all existing materials, including those which the diligence of Mr. Prior has added to those previously accessible to all, is not essentially different from the view taken of it by Scott, by Campbell, and by a writer who, had life been spared, would have ranked as an authority on such subjects with either Scott or Campbell the late Professor Butler,† -all of whose essays on the life and genius of Goldsmith were published before the appearance of Mr. Prior's book. Minute accuracy or inaccuracy, in such a view of the subject as Forster takes, is of but little comparative

moment. He has adopted-perhaps sometimes silently-Mr. Prior's correction of some name of place or date, and he hassilently-corrected Mr. Prior's mistakes-the matters being, for his purposes, almost indifferent, and in our mind, to say the truth, of small account. He has which Mr. Prior seems unreasonably angry with-transcribed Mr. Prior's transcripts, instead of transcribing from the old books which are in every library and this without, in all cases, referring to Mr. Prior. We protest we cannot understand the meaning of this complaint. Our edition of Goldsmith's Works we are sorry to say is not Prior's, which we have no doubt is the best, but it professes to give matter not in former editions. Are we, when we wish to make use of a passage of Goldsmith for any purpose, to examine whether it has been for the first time printed in the volume before us, or not? Has the person, whose claim on public gratitude is the having rendered more easily accessible a passage of a great author that but for him would lie unknown in the dust of libraries, a right to deprive the public of all use of that which he has rendered accessible? Has Forster used anything that it was unfair to use, in these labours of Mr. Prior? Has there been any ungenerous concealment of the merits of a former labourer in the same field, as far as their field of occupation is the same? Ifit were true, as Mr. Prior says, that there is no fact in Mr. Forster's book which is not also in his, is not this of but little moment when the question is not as to the facts themselves, but as to the view taken of them? A little examination would leave a good many of these facts in rather a shattered condition; and, as far as Mr. Forster's work is concerned, we really think it would be, in every respect, improved by the omission of several of them, to

"The Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith." By John Forster, Esq. London: Bradbury and Evans. 1848.

† Professor Butler's paper on the subject appeared in the DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE, Vol. VII., 1836—Gallery of Illustrious Irishmen, No. I.

which, whatever be the test applied, we think a little examination will shew he has given too easy credence. The disputes as to Goldsmith's birth-place have been removed by a reference to the family bible, which determines it to have been at Pallas, in the county of Longford. In three lives of Goldsmith, published before Mr. Prior's, that are on our shelves, Pallas is stated to be his birth-place. It was stated also on his monument in Westminster Abbey. This was thought to have been disproved, and other places were successively assigned, on what seemed sufficient authority. Mr. Forster states the fact as it truly was; but we think that, as it had been a matter of dispute, and as without the evidence which Mr. Prior was, we believe, the first to produce, it would have been impossible for any person to decide between the conflicting claims, it was scarcely reasonable not to have stated that the point was fixed beyond controversy by Mr. Prior. The inscription on his monument misstates the year of his birth. Biographers who lived before Mr. Prior stated the true date, but to Mr. Prior is due the merit of establishing it; and, were it of much importance, we think a foot-note, indicating this, ought to have been given; but, through Mr. Forster's beautifully-printed volume, no one foot-note occurs; and we almost fall out with a symmetry which interferes with convenience to such an extent, as to deprive author and readers of what, to both author and readers, is calculated to present a great advantage. In this controversy, which has extended to several lengthy letters, that have been published in the weekly literary journals, we differ from both the combatants. Forster's use of Mr. Prior's work we think perfectly fair-but we think it ought to have been more distinctly stated than it is as for instance, in the case which we have mentioned. We feel that there ought to have been words of the very strongest acknowledgment of a debt to Mr. Prior, which not only Forster, but every man who shall ever write on the subject of Goldsmith, must be contented to owe to a biographer, whose researches have led him to every accessible source of information, at a time when they were still accessible. On the other hand, we

cannot agree with Mr. Prior in thinking that Mr. Forster, or any other writer is precluded from a statement of the facts of Goldsmith's life, because he, Prior, has succeeded in verifying or refuting former narratives. It would have been impossible for Mr. Forster to build his superstructure of interesting comment on the character of Goldsmith and the literature of his era, without detailing the facts of his life. Had Prior's account of them been less loaded with the production of evidence necessary for his purpose of establishing the facts themselves, but unnecessary and only cumbersome for Mr. Forster's, where the facts themselves are treated but as evidence of something more important, we should have thought Forster's easier and more natural course would have been to quote more frequently than he does, Mr. Prior's very words. The ascer

tainment of the actual facts of Goldsmith's life has been Mr. Prior's peculiar province. The inferences to be deduced from these facts are, properly speaking, the sole object of Mr. Forster's book. Each work is, in its own way, valuable. Each book is, for its own purposes, best. We think Mr. Forster's acknowledgments ought to have been far more distinct, as his necessary obligations to Mr. Prior are coextensive with the whole life of Goldsmith, and not confined to the incidents first mentioned by Prior. We think, too, that a juster appreciation of the proper merits of Mr. Forster's book will, when the excitement of this controversy is over, make Mr. Prior feel that, for Forster's purposes, the minute accuracy of information which his book has given to Mr. Forster, in common with every person who studies the subject, was not essential-and is therefore not, perhaps, spoken of with all the gratitude to which Mr. Prior thinks himself entitled. The character of Goldsmith is Forster's sole subject-it is but one of Mr. Prior's for Forster assumes the facts which Mr. Prior investigates; but to say the truth, the facts are rather inconvenient to both, and not quite reconcilable with either Prior's history, or Forster's romance. But for the interruption of these facts, as they are called, there is no saying to what extent the idolatries of these worshippers of Goldsmith would have gone.

From the works and the life of Goldsmith taken together, not only Mr. Prior and Mr. Forster, but the writers who have put together what has been sometimes called "Percy's Life of Goldsmith" and his other biographersas for want of a better name we must call them have formed a strange ideal of the man-forgetting that in this, as in other cases, the poet lives two distinct and wholly disparate lives-that his world of imagination is most often one entirely in contrast with that forced on him by the realities of the world; that his walk on earth is not among the scenes which his fancy creates; that anything more utterly prosaic, more inconsistent with truth and nature, than the effort, which some persons have been engaged in, to re-create what they call his "Auburn," by clipping hawthorns, and putting up, in village ale-houses, copies of

"The twelve good rules the royal martyr drew," can scarcely be conceived. In the same spirit, all the adventures of "Moses" and "Tony Lumpkin,” were told of Goldsmith himself; and it is really hard to disconnect the mingled web of fiction and fact, so zealously has it been woven together. The biography of Goldsmith, in the narratives prefixed to the different editions of his works, is manufactured from his own works of imagination. All the droll stories he has invented, of simplicity or shrewdness, are ascribed to himself as the hero; and tradition is engaged in its work of moulding anew the materials supplied to its hand. No person has travelled in the Highlands of Scotland, who has not been amused by the guides pointing out not only the actual localities of the incidents created by Scott, but also exhibiting their skill in ascribing to some well-known individual the traits of his "Meg Merrilies" and "Edie Ochiltree." Fairy legends, invented by the genius of Crofton Croker, are told by the boatmen at Killarney, and affirmed by them to be believed in the neighbourhood-nay, are believed. The enthusiast who resided at one of the localities, which claims to be the original Auburn, bought some cracked tea-cups to adorn an ale-house, on which he had exhibited the sign of the "Three Jolly Pigeons," that the visitor might be reminded of the

"Broken tea-eups, wisely kept for show, Ranged o'er the chimney, glistening in a row." And believing visitors were so satisfied of the genuineness of the tea-cups, that they were stolen as relics of the poet, and memorials of the visit. And, genuine as the tea-cups, are the anecdotes told in each locality of Goldsmith and his family. The inquiries of each successive traveller are answered in the neighbourhood by the inhabitants of the district repeating what they have heard from the last, and thus stories are made. The writer, who takes the trouble of sifting and examining the story, told as Goldsmith's life, by his biographers one and all, will find that there is scarcely a single fact of what is called his early life, that is supported by any evidence whatever-will also find that much of it that seems sustained by evidence, was not believed by Goldsmith's own family; that the incidents, for instance, of his journey to Cork, and the humorous adventures among his acquaintances when they found he was penniless and troublesome, were regarded as a mere extravaganza, in which there was not one word of truth, and from the first not intended to impose on any one, nor indeed even now calculated to impose on any one but a biographer in desperate want of materials; that the letters to his uncle Contarine, telling of hair-breadth 'scapes, imprisonment for suspected treason, and for actual debt, incurred by becoming security for a friend, were every word of them false, and modes of concealing from his benevolent uncle the loss of money, given for the purpose of pursuing his studies, in idleness or dissipation. In short, we are inclined to think that when the life of Goldsmith is hereafter written, the biographer's task will be omission, not addition; that Mr. Hogan's paradise of Lissoy will fade away, and leave not a single trace behind; that a few notes of time and place, with what Boswell, and Cumberland, and Perry have jotted down, will comprise the whole narrative. People will cease to believe every drollery in Goldsmith's "Comedies" to have been borrowed from his own life; every reference to authorship in his " Essays" to be a record of his own experience. Both Mr. Prior and Mr. Forster have, we think, something to answer

for in confusing matter so entirely distinct, as the poet's actual life among men, and the fictitious, though no less real life, which he has given to the creations of his imagination.

No

If

man sees into the heart of anotherno language, even supposing on the part of the speaker perfect sincerity, and on the part of the hearer entire attention, succeeds in perfectly revealing to one human being the mysteries of another's bosom; and this effort to present before us, as the hero of a romance, the Oliver Goldsmith of real life, is a violation of the first conditions of Art. To have placed such a character as Goldsmith's among imaginary scenes, would have been almost less fabulous than this effort to create again, with our imperfect materials, the actual incidents of his life, and from them to infer his character. biography once becomes romance, farewell to any true statement of any incident-farewell to truth of character in the persons likely to become the subjects of biographyfarewell to veracity in those who may abuse the opportunities of social intercourse to framing a record of the life of those with whom they have been allowed to move in unsuspecting confidence. Evil enough has been done in the publication of the letters and the journals, and even the prayers of persons whose names have, by any accident, been prominent enough to attract the notice of the public. If this continues, no man will venture to speak, or to write, or to think aloud, which conversation among friends is always felt as being, without the fear of the biographer. Our own conviction is, that the shortest biographies are the best, and that a few sentences-a dozen dates of time and place, will be felt as a more appropriate appendix to the works of Goldsmith, and, with his works, will suggest a more adequate idea of him and his times, than can be given by any cumbrous addition of the lumber of Hawkins, and Craddock, and Cumberland, and such men, from whom, after all, these big books are made.

An author, however, must consider the taste of the age for which he writes, and Mr. Forster has done something in recalling public attention to one of our true classics. His book is divided into four parts, and each

part has its interest. The first relates to the first twenty-nine years of Goldsmith's life. His family were of the gentry; his father a clergyman of the Church of England, poorly beneficed, and having to bring up a large family. His eldest son had been educated in Trinity College, Dublin, obtained some academic distinctions, and was established as curate and tutor in his father's neighbourhood. One of his pupils married a sister of Goldsmith's, and the means of the rest of the family were disproportionately diminished by her father giving her a portion larger than he could properly afford. This delayed his sending Oliver to college, and compelled his entering college in an humbler grade than his brother had done. The incident is adverted to painfully by Goldsmith, who had at all times a good deal of sensitive false pride. The habits of idleness, however, formed by his loitering at home after his school education was completed, were probably the worst consequence of this. In Goldsmith's immediate neighbourhood, for the first ten years of the poet's childhood, the blind harper, Carolan, wandered from place to place. "He had been brought up at Carrick-on-Shannon, where the uncle of Goldsmith, the Rev. Mr. Contarine, first settled, and expired in the county of Roscommon, to which that gentleman afterwards removed." Goldsmith is said to have been carried to visit him, and we have evidence in his own works how much his imagination was affected by the recollections of Carolan, and by the floating traditions which preserved his memory. We dwell on this the more, because it seems to have escaped Mr. Forster's attention, and seems to us more likely to have influenced the young dreamer both for good and evil, than almost any of the causes that are enumerated to account for the strange vagrant life, which seems to have been from the first his taste. In his " Essays"Essay Twentieth-we have a picture of Carolan, introduced by some mention of the bards of the Irish :

"Their bards are still held in great veneration among them; those traditional heralds are invited to every fune ral, in order to fill up the intervals of the howl with their songs and harps. In these they rehearse the actions of the ancestors of the deceased, bewail the

bondage of their country under the English government, and generally conclude with advising the young men and maidens to make the best use of their time, for they will soon, for all their pleasant bloom, be stretched under the table, like the dead body before them.

"Of all the bards this country ever produced, the last and greatest was CAROLAN THE BLIND. He was at once a poet, a musician, a composer, and sung his own verses to his harp. The original natives never mention his name without rapture; both his poetry and music they have by heart; and even some of the English themselves, who have been transplanted there, find his music extremely pleasing.

His songs, in general, may be compared to those of Pindar, as they have frequently the same flights of imagination; and are composed (I do not say written, for he could not write) merely to flatter some man of fortune upon some excellence of the same kind. In these, one is praised for the excellence of his stable, as in Pindar; another for his hospitality, a third for the beauty of his wife and children, and a fourth for the antiquity of his family. Whenever any of the original natives of distinction were assembled at feasting or revelling, Carolan was generally there, where he was always ready, with his harp, to celebrate their praises. He seemed, by nature, formed for his profession: for, as he was born blind, so was he possessed of an astonishing memory, and a facetious turn of thinking which gave his entertainers infinite satisfaction." 994

The vagrant life which Carolan led, was not unlikely to have its charms for the young poet. Goldsmith's language in the passage we have quoted, and yet more in some sentences which the reader will find in the essay to which we have referred him in the note, unconsciously exhibits how entirely distinct the society of the Eng. lish inhabitants and the native Irish was, and, to a writer who, more than any other whom we can name, shut out from his own nature all false associations, of whatever kind-from whose works faction would in vain seek to select a single sentence that, fairly read, could answer any of its

purposes,

it is not surprising that a poet-for we believe Carolan to have been a true poet who addressed his audience through the language of music, rather

than of words, and thus, at all events, had an increased power of influencing the feelings common to all-should have been an object of frequent thought. In his own wanderings, with his flute in his hand, blowing away care, and winning his bread from the French peasant, he may not improbably have been thinking of Carolan, and his life of enjoyment. We know that Burns seriously meditated some such life. The unbounded admiration with which Carolan was regarded by all classes, was itself calculated to aid the charm. Impressions," says Mr. Prior, "produced by the admiration of those around us, take a strong hold on juvenile minds. What we hear praised, we desire to imitate, for imitation is one of the first faculties which develops itself in early life." The only reference to Carolan in Mr. Forster's book is, as far as we know, the following, and we transcribe the sentence, to show how this kind of romance is written: :

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"At the age of six, Oliver was handed over to the village school, kept by Mr. Thomas Byrne. Looking back from this distance of time, and penetrating through greater obscurity than its own cabin smoke, into the Lissoy academy, it is to be discovered that this excellent Mr. Byrne, retired quartermaster of an Irish regiment that had served in Marlborough's wars, was more apt to

Shoulder a crutch, and shew how fields were won,' and certainly more apt to teach wild legends of an Irish hovel, or tell of CaroIan the Blind, James Freney, Rogues and Rapparees, than to inculcate what are called the humanities. He seems to have preferred a Virgil in Irish verse to a Roman Virgil, and to have had more faith in fairies than in fluxions. Little Oliver came away from him much as he went; but for certain wandering, unsettled tastes, which his friends thought to have been here implanted in him, and the enduring effects of a terrible disease."Forster, p. 4.

The passage we have quoted has the great fault of mixing up commentary with statement, and leaving the reader doubtful how much is ascertained fact, and how much mere conjecture. Mrs. Hodson, Goldsmith's sister, was the first to give an account of the matter; and she merely states that Oliver,

Goldsmith, Essay 20. † Prior's "Life of Goldsmith," Vol. I., P. 38.

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