of personal and political opposition to the subject of it, it is manly and kind. The weak places were pointed out with gentleness, while Goldsmith strongly seized on what he felt to be the strength of Smollett. "The style of this "Historian," he said, "is in general clear, nervous, and "flowing; and we think it impossible for a Reader of taste "not to be pleased with the perspicuity and elegance of "his manner.”* For the critic's handling in lighter matters, I will mention what he said of a book by Jonas Hanway. This was the Jonas of whom Doctor Johnson affirmed that he acquired some reputation by travelling abroad, but lost it all by travelling at home: not a witticism, but a sober truth. His book about Persia was excellent, and his book about Portsmouth indifferent. But though an eccentric, he was a very benevolent and earnest man; and though he made the com-. mon mistake of thinking himself even more wise than he was good, he had too much reason to complain, which he was always doing, of a general want of earnestness and seriousness in his age. His larger schemes of benevolence have connected his name with the Marine Society and the Magdalen, both of which he originated, as well as with the Foundling, which he was active in improving; and to his courage and perseverance in smaller fields of usefulness (his determined contention with extravagant vails to servants t * Monthly Review, xvi. 532, June 1757. "When I sat to Hogarth," said Mr. Cole, "the custom of giving vails "to servants was not discontinued. On taking leave of the painter at the "door I offered his servant a small gratuity, but the man very politely "refused it, telling me it would be as much as the loss of his place if his master "knew it. This was so uncommon and so liberal in a man of Hogarth's profes"sion at that time of day, that it much struck me, as nothing of the kind had "happened to me before." My old friend Allan Cunningham, after quoting this in his Lives of the Painters, i. 176, adds: "Nor is it likely that such a thing would happen again. Sir Joshua Reynolds gave his servant £6 annually of wages, and 1757. Et. 29. 1757. not the least), the men of Goldsmith's day were indebted for Et. 29. liberty to use an umbrella. Gay's pleasant poem of Trivia, and Swift's description of a city shower, commemorate its earlier use by poor women; by "tuck'd-up sempstresses and “walking maids;"* but with even this class it was a winter privilege, and woe to the woman of a better sort, or to the man, whether rich or poor, who dared at any time so to invade the rights of coachmen and chairmen. But Jonas steadily underwent the staring, laughing, jeering, hooting, and bullying; and having punished some insolent knaves who struck him with their whips as well as tongues, he finally established a privilege which, when the Journal des Débats gravely assured its readers that the king of the barricades (that king whose throne has since been burnt at the top of fresh barricades on the site of the Bastille) was to be seen walking the streets of Paris with an umbrella under his arm, had reached its culminating point and played a part in state affairs. Excellent Mr. Hanway, having settled the "offered him £100 a-year for the door!" I doubt whether this latter statement rests on good authority; for it is the defect of an otherwise pleasant book to do only scant and grudging justice to Reynolds, and too readily to believe everything said against him. The biographer took such earnest part with Hogarth, that he became unconscious how unfairly he was treating Reynolds. * "Britain in winter only knows its aid "To guard from chilly showers the walking maid." Gay's Trivia. "The tuck'd-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, "While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides." Swift's City Shower. Nevertheless, Mr. Bolton Corney, since this biography first appeared, has produced some lines a century earlier in date, which might seem to prove that the "umbrella" had been in use in Michael Drayton's time, even by the high-born mistress of the sempstress and the maid. "Of doves," says that old poet, "I have a dainty paire "Which, when you please to take the aier.. "That neither cold nor heate shall tan you, "And, like vmbrellas, with their feathers "Sheeld you in all sorts of weathers." Notes and Queries, ii. 523. use of the umbrella, made a less successful move when he would have written down the use of tea. 66 This is one of the prominent subjects in the Journey from Portsmouth: the book which Griffiths had now placed in his workman's hands. Doctor Johnson's review of it for the Literary Magazine is widely known, and Goldsmith's deserved notoriety as well. It is more kindly, and as effectively, written. He saw what allowance could be made for a writer, however mistaken, who "shows great goodness "of heart, and an earnest concern for the welfare of his country." Where the book was at its worst, the man might be at his best, he very agreeably undertakes to prove. "The appearance of an inn on the road, suggests to our Philosopher an eulogium on temperance; the confusion "of a disappointed Landlady gives rise to a Letter on "Resentment; and the view of a company of soldiers "furnishes out materials for an Essay on War." As to the anti-souchong mania, Goldsmith laughs at it; and this was doubtless the wisest way. "He," exclaimed Jonas in horror, "who should be able to drive three Frenchmen "before him, or she who might be a breeder of such a race "of men, are to be seen sipping their Tea! ... What a "wild infatuation is this! . . . The suppression of this 66 66 dangerous custom depends entirely on the example of "Ladies of rank in this country . . . Some indeed have "resolution enough in their own houses, to confine the use "of Tea to their own table, but their number is so extremely "small, amidst a numerous acquaintance I know only of “Mrs. T. . . . whose name ought to be written out in letters "of gold." "Thus we see," is Goldsmith's comment upon this, "how fortunate some folks are. Mrs. T. . . . is praised "for confining luxury to her own table she earns fame, and ... 1757. Æt. 29. 1757. At. 29. saves something in domestic expenses into the bargain!" In subsequent serious expostulation with Mr. Hanway on some medical assumptions in his book, the reviewer lays aside his humble patched velvet of Bankside, and speaks as though with nothing less invested than the president's gold-headed cane: after which he closes with this piece of quiet good-sense. "Yet after all, why so violent an outcry against this devoted article of modern luxury? Every "nation that is rich hath had, and will have, its favourite "luxuries. Abridge the people in one, they generally run into another; and the Reader may judge which will be 'most conducive to either mental or bodily health: the watery beverage of a modern fine Lady, or the strong beer, "and stronger waters, of her great-grandmother?"* 66 66 66 66 This paper had appeared in July, and in the same number there was also a clever notice from the same hand of Dobson's translation of the first book of Cardinal de Polignac's Latin poem of Anti-Lucretius: the poem whose ill success stopped Gray in what he playfully called his Master Tommy Lucretius ("De Principiis Cogitandi"). The cardinal's work I may mention as a huge monument of misapplied learning and not a little vanity; the talk of the world in those days, now forgotten. It was the work of a life; could boast of having been corrected by Boileau and altered by Louis the Fourteenth; and was kept in manuscript so long, and so often, with inordinate self-complacency, publicly recited from by the author in a kind earnest of what the world was one day to expect, that some listeners with good memories (Le Clerc among them) stole its best passages, and published them for the world's earlier benefit as their own. This drove the poor cardinal at last to premature delivery, *Monthly Review, xvii. 50-4, July 1757. + Ibil, 44. + Works, ii. 191. 1757. and an instalment of thirteen thousand lines appeared;* of which certainly one line (Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, Phœboque Et. 29. sagittas, which the worthy cardinal had himself stolen from Marcus Manilius), having since suggested Franklin's epitaph (Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis),† has a good chance to live. To the August number of the Review, among other matters, Goldsmith contributed a lively paper on those new volumes of Voltaire's Universal History which so delighted Walpole and Gray; but in the September number, where he remarks on Odes by Mr. Gray, I find opinions which place in lively contrast the obscure Oliver and the brilliant Horace. Walpole called himself a whig, in compliment to his father; but except in very rare humours he hated, while he envied, all things popular. "I am more humbled," was his cry, when thirsting for every kind of notoriety, "I am more * See Grimm's Anecdotes, i. 455. may add, that, ten years after the present date, George Canning, of the Middle Temple, Esq," father of the statesman, published a poor translation of the Cardinal's first three books. + Turgot's biographer, Condorcet, quotes this line as the only Latin verse composed by the great French economist; but Turgot had only "adapted" it, and from Polignac no doubt, to place under a portrait of Franklin. The line of Manilius, the bar from which both wires are drawn, is that in which he speaks of Epicurus, "Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, viresque Tonanti." Astron. lib. v. line 104. In the form of a letter to the authors of the Monthly Review (xvii. 154, August 1757). Gray disliked Voltaire's opinions generally, "but this," says Mr. Nichols, "did not prevent his paying the full tribute of admiration due to his genius. He was delighted with his pleasantry; approved his historical "compositions, particularly his Essai sur l'Histoire Universelle; and placed his "tragedies next in rank to those of Shakspeare." Works, v. 32, 33. In a letter to Wharton (July 10, 1764) he talks of his having been reading "half-a-dozen 66 new works of that inexhaustible, eternal, entertaining scribbler Voltaire, who at last (I fear) will go to Heaven, for to him entirely it is owing that the king of "France and his council have received and set aside the decision of the parliament "of Thoulouse in the affair of Calas... you see, a scribbler may be of some use in "the world." Works, iv. 35, 36. Let me add to this note that Gray's high opinion of Voltaire's tragedies is shared by one of our greatest authorities on such a matter now living, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, whom I have often heard maintain the marked superiority of Voltaire over all his countrymen in the knowledge of dramatic art, and the power of producing theatrical effects. |