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time at which he was writing, we think the cordial and kindly mention of him in Retaliation even supposing, with Mr. Piozzi, that something of irony tempered the praises-is a proof that Goldsmith did not regard him as an enemy; and though Mr. Forster regards Cumberland's account of the origin of the "Retaliation" as "pure romance," it yet accounts for the circumstance of Johnson's not having been introduced into the poem. His narrative is, that Goldsmith being present, the company, at St. James's Coffee House, began making epitaphs on Goldsmith, that Johnson checked the mirth, and that he, Cumberland, wrote a few lines, which concluded with

"All mourn the poet-I lament the man."

This accounts for Johnson's being omitted in the "Retaliation," and Cumberland's character being drawn in a more serious temper of praise than the others, as certainly he did not detect the grave irony which Mr. Piozzi mentions, nor, in truth, do we. We do not remember Cradock's account of the matter, which Forster says is inconsistent with Cumberland's; but Davies's is before us, in which he ascribes the origin of the poem to some lines of Garrick's, in imitation of Swift, entitled "Jupiter and Mercury," in which the composition of Goldsmith is amusingly described:

"Right and wrong shall be jumbled, much gold and some dross;

Without cause to be pleased, without cause to be

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In all

These were, however, Garrick's retort to Goldsmith's playful satire. English literature-in all Goldsmith's writings, perfect as they are-there is nothing more perfect than the characters of Garrick and of Burke, in the "Retaliation." That of Burke, considering it was in written 1774, was absolutely prophetic.

Scott says the "Retaliation" placed Goldsmith on a more equal footing with the society in which he lived. Poor fellow-the advantage was but of short duration. Circumstances fix the composition of the poem to February, 1774, and he appears to have

read it at a meeting of his friends soon after. On the 4th of the following April he died, in the 45th year of his age.

Each successive work of Goldsmith's exhibited new and unexpected power; and considering the embarrassed circumstances in which he lived, it is surprising how there could have been at all times such a genial flow of easy spirits as they indicate. That vigour of mind should assert itself when occasions arise, does not surprise; but that distress-pecuniary distress—and its concomitants, felt or feared

"Toil, envy, want, the patron and the gaol"

should not have so paralysed the kindlier affections or graces, as to render impossible the creation of such works as "The Deserted Village" and "The Vicar of Wakefield," is to us a matter of astonishment. That Goldsmith was helplessly improvident, there can be no doubt that he was deeply in debt when he died, is certain; and yet we think the account is overstated against him somewhat unduly when an estimate is formed of his moral character. He was improvident, because no prudence could have previously ascertained his probable income. His supper of bread and milk, and his shoemaker's holiday, as he called it, a stroll in the fields, and a shilling ordinary, were, during the time we know his life best, his only luxuries. Even then his poverty or his prudence rendered it necessary that his publisher should make arrangements for his board and lodging, as for a grown child. He was absolutely unable to make or keep money. But his extravagance has been overstated. He has himself stated the fact truly he remained poor, because he had never been otherwise; he remained poor, because his works, appreciated as they were at once, were not of a kind that the world would for. pay

:

"And thou, sweet poetryThou source of all my grief and all my woe, That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so."

A man poor at first, can never be otherwise than poor in Goldsmith's unhappy profession; for without any blame whatever, either to the booksellers or to the public, it is quite impossible that more than sufficient to support life, if even so much, can be

obtained by writing for daily bread, unless the subjects written on be of a kind in which instruction is required by a vast body of the public, and unless, in addition to this, the writer in some way shares the profits of printer or publisher, that is, risks some money capital in the speculation, and this the poor devil author never has at least Goldsmith had not. Goldsmith's support was derived not from his poetry, but from his school-books.

But we must conclude. It was impossible for us, consistent with expressing our own opinion of Goldsmith, to have given extracts from Mr. Forster's book, because he seldom states a fact without embodying with the statement some opinion or sentiment which, if finally admitted to be true, cannot yet be assented to without more discussion than we could at at all command space or time for. Facts, too, are very often implied rather than told, and this is particularly the case when the implied facts are of exceedingly doubtful authority. The style is, perhaps, too rhetorical for narrative, but the book is empha tically a good and a pleasant one. We are not sure that the character of Goldsmith has been as much misunderstood as Mr. Forster imagines, or that the view which he presents of it is essentially different from that which we at all times have held. But this examination of specific details is of the most important moment, and we think the poet's name will ultimately stand clear of any disfiguring stain. "Let us not speak of his frailties," said Johnson, he was a great man." At one time it was the habit to represent him as an idle profligate. Idleness is disproved by the vast amount of work which he accomplished. Of profligacy no one trace appears. At his lodgings, when haunted by the poor hangers-on of literature, while he supplied them with wine, he himself took milk. While slaving over his "Animated Nature" he made out employment and payment for them in translations from Buffon, and such portions of the task as they could do. In Garrick's pleasant verses, which we have before quoted, gambling and raking are said to be ingredients thrown into the composition when the gods were making the odd fellow to be called Goldsmith; yet, strange to say, the only thing approaching to

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evidence of the first is a sentence of Judge Day's, who speaks of him in 1769 "The poet frequented much the Grecian coffee-house, then the favourite resort of the Irish and Lancashire templars; and delighted in collecting around him his friends, whom he entertained with a cordial and unostentatious hospitality. Oecasionally he amused them with his flute, or whist, neither of which he played well, particularly the latter, but in losing his money he never lost his temper. In a run of bad luck and worse play, he would fling his cards upon the floor, and exclaim "Bye-fore George I ought for ever to renounce thee-fickle, faithless fortune.'" It is really impossible that, were the charge true, it should not have been the subject of frequent conversation in the Johnson circle. Of inebriety he has been in the same way accused, without the shadow of a proof, and in disregard, or, perhaps, ignorance of the fact, that his whole life establishes the contrary. Of coarser indulgences, which Garrick's epigram sug. gests in the lines we have quoted, and expresses more distinctly in some that follow, there is not the slightest evidence, except one passage, in which Miss Letitia Maria Hawkins relates his going to Bath with some profligate woman, after swindling a bookseller out of a sum of five hundred pounds, for a History of England. The book. seller's accounts are preserved, and disprove this part of the lady's story; and the story, not worth more minutely repeating, is so connected together, that it is not possible to imagine thewhole and every part other than a fabrication invented to assist this lady in selling her catch-penny anecdotes. In Goldsmith's strange life, every incident of which has been hunted out with such diligence, and this, too, the life of a man singularly unreserved, and incapable of concealment, the wonder is that there were not deviations from personal purity, and that the idolatry of his biographers has not found that behind the silver veil there was some Mokanna's head. On the contrary, every inquiry has turned out favourably for the inspired boy, torn from his home, and thrown without a friend upon the world. Johnson's first mention of him to Boswell is this "Dr. Goldsmith is one of the first men we now have, as an author, and he is a

very worthy man, too. He has been loose in his principles, but is coming right." Goldsmith himself, speaking of some of the persons who, in his day, were called Free-thinkers, said"I never feel confidence in such men; I am far from being what I ought to be, or what I wish to be; but whatever be my follies, my mind has never been tainted by unbelief." Goldsmith's feelings on religious subjects were strong-were blended with his affections for persons, and his recollections of home; and we think one of the most valuable parts of the service that Mr. Forster and Mr. Prior have done, is that their disproof of the hundred vile and unthinking things said against him will allow

the charm of his works to be undisturbed by any but kindly feelings towards the man.

The pictures in the "Vicar of Wakefield" will assume new truth and beauty, when we seek no longer to refer them to particular persons or places, but to the unobscured feeling of piety in the author's own mind. We will find more pleasure, when we think in this view of his village pastor, than if we identify it with any individual members of his family, though, as we have said, the thoughts were blended in the poet's mind when the "Village Pastor" was imagined,

Whose good works formed an endless retinue, Such Priest as Chaucer sang in fervent lays; Such as the heaven-taught skill of Herbert arew, And tender Goldsmith crowned with deathless praise."*

Wordsworth-" River Duddon."

A.

LIFE AND TIMES OF O'CONNELL.

O'CONNELL'S life and times, if properly written, would form an instructive chapter in the history of Ireland. The period during which he lived and acted, was the period of transition between the old ascendancy principles, which followed, as a necessary consequence, the successes of the Protestant party in the wars of the Revolution; and the latitudinarian, or, as they are called, liberal notions, which now, to a great extent, govern the empire. And if the late Mr. O'Connell was not one of the most efficient agents by whom the spread of the new doctrines was promoted, until, in Ireland, they achieved their ultimate triumph-we, at least, are at a loss to discover any other individual upon whom such a distinction may be more fittingly conferred.

He possessed, in an eminent degree, all the qualities which were indispensable to enable him to grapple successfully with all the difficulties which he had to encounter in the contest upon which he entered. With a healthy temperament and a powerful frame of body, he united a sanguine, hopeful spirit, and an untiring energy of mind. His faculties were all acute and vigorous; and disciplined, by what may be called the mental gymnastics of his profession, to the highest degree of perfection which they were calculated to attain. Even his faults and deficiencies were such as to favour the attainment of his favourite objects. His was not that love of truth which would have made him hesitate in giving all utterance to statements or asseverations, which served his purpose when they were made, although they might prove, in the end, unfounded. His was not the delicacy which abstains from epithets by which a true-bred gentleman would feel himself disgraced; when to use them might bespatter an adversary, or excite against him the hootings of the mob.

What

ever the object was which he proposed to himself, he scrupled not at the means by which it was to be accomplished. If his end was to be attained

by plausible argument, no one could be more plausible. If, by coarse invective, an antagonist was to be annoyed, or intimidated, no feeling of self-respect ever interposed to prevent the virulence, or to mitigate the vulgarity, of his vituperation. He was not deficient in wit, while he abounded in broad humour, admirably calculated to catch and captivate the masses, who were often spellbound by his eloquence, and whom he contrived to mould to his views and purposes, by skilfully identifying them with their own.

The precise period during which he lived seems to have been that in which he was calculated to appear to most advantage. In the age precedingthat of Curran, and Grattan, and Flood, and Yelverton-he would not have been endured. Those great men were trained in a different school. The subtle essence of liberty, as it was exhaled from the pages of Grecian and Roman history, was the inspiring influence by which they were animated; and they addressed themselves to men of cultivated minds, by whom any departure from the usages or the conventionalities of civilized society would be promptly resented. When they did address the multitude, it was like men who sought to raise them to their own level, not to descend to theirs. And when the bully and the swaggerer was to be acted, it was not by words, but by deeds, they sought to make good their pretensions; and their language was often mildest and most decorous when it preluded those personal conflicts, for which, in their day, every public man held himself prepared, as often as offence was taken at his words, or an adversary felt himself emboldened, or necessitated, to substitute, for verbal disceptation, the arbitrement of the pistol or the sword. To have been found wanting on such an occasion, would have irretrievably damaged the character of a public man, who would lose all his weight when his personal courage was once doubted.

By the efforts of those great men, the galley-slaves were unmanacled, and

the pack-staves placed in their hands; who then constituted another audience for demagogues like the late Mr. O'Connell to address, whose sympa thies, as they were coarser, required a coarser species of entertainment; and who were not revolted by the rudeness and the vulgarity in which they but recognised an image of themselves.

Then commenced the era of what may be called centaur agitation. The demagogue became a mixture of the man and the beast. He was, as it were, the eye and the mind of the brute multitude, which saw and thought as he directed. And never, from the days of Cleon, did there exist an individual who filled this office more effectively than the late Mr. O'Connell. He impersonated all the passions, prejudices, and instincts, of the body whom he addressed, while he infused into them a portion of the intelligence by which he was himself distinguished; and gave a unity and consistency, as well as an energy and determination, to the movement upon which he never ceased to urge them forward, until it resulted in the achievement of emancipation.

He found the body to whom he belonged subject to disabilities the most galling. They had increased in numbers, and risen in wealth, while they yet continued excluded from some of the most desirable privileges of constitutional government; which had been imparted to them in such stinted measure as only to stimulate the desire for more, and inspire them with a passionate determination to rest short of nothing less than entire and perfect equality with their Protestant fellow-subjects.

A feeble and ineffective coterie of the Roman Catholic aristocracy had previously governed their affairs; aided by some turbulent and energetic individuals who had risen up amongst the mercantile community, and whose not very doubtful participation in the views and the practices of the United Irishmen, while it won for this body the hearty co-operation of such men as Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Wolfe Tone, in a corresponding degree disgusted and alienated from them the friends of constitutional order.

The Romish priesthood were not, at that time, the political characters they have since become. A large proportion of them had been educated abroad,

VOL. XXXII.-NO. CLXXXIX.

had acquired a salutary horror of the evils of Jacobinism, and were, more or less, possessed by a spirit of old gentility, which inclined them to the aristocracy rather than to the people. They had, moreover, witnessed the miseries caused by the rebellion of ninety-eight, and the abortive but most mischievous insurrection of 1803; and they were very little disposed to see the country plunged into similar troubles for any, even the most desirable, political objects.

But Maynooth had begun to be felt in its working; and this race of peaceloving and inoffensive ecclesiastics began rapidly to disappear. It was no longer necessary to go to the continent for education, or even to pay for one at home; and the consequence was, that a new order of men were introduced into the Roman Catholic ministry-men, who as they sprung from, so they became identified with, the masses of their countrymen, and brought with them, into the clerical office, the sympathies and the antipathies, both national and hereditary, by which they have ever since been distinguished.

We do not here propose to discuss the policy or the impolicy of this endowment. Upon that subject we have, upon former occasions, expressed ourselves at large. We are only desirous at present to point out the new element which was then introduced into the agitation now seriously recommenced for the entire removal of the Roman Catholic disabilities, and of which Mr. O'Connell so skilfully and so powerfully availed himself first, to scatter to the winds the domination of the Roman Catholic aristocracy; and next, to mould and methodise into united and energetic action, the rude and scattered elements of democratic power, until they became a mighty influence, to coerce and to regulate the councils of the empire.

The first remarkable instance in which O'Connell decidedly identified himself with the Romish democracy, was the celebrated "Veto" question. The Roman Catholic advocates in the Houses of Lords and Commons had admitted the necessity or the expediency of such a concession to the crown, in the appointment of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, as might serve, ostensibly at least, to guarantee the loyalty of that order. In this ar2 A

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