Trulliber undisturbed among his pigs, and a parson Adams to his ale in Lady Booby's kitchen. Yet as little was he disposed to tolerate any false reaction from such indifference; and at the ascetic saints of the new religious sect, which had risen to put down cheerfulness, and could find its only music in a chorus of sighs and groans, he aimed the shafts of his wit as freely, as at the over-indulging, gormandising priests of the bishop's visitation-dinner, face to face with whom, gorged and groaning with excess, he brought the hungry beggar, faint with want, to ask of them the causes of his utter destitution, body and soul. Nor did he spare that other dignified profession, which, in embarrassing what it professed to make clear, in retarding with cumbrous impediments the steps of justice, in reserving as a luxury for the rich what it pretended to throw open to all, in fencing round property with a multiplicity of laws and exposing poverty without a guard to whatever threatened or assailed it, countenanced and practised no less a falsehood.* Almost alone in that age of indifference, the Citizen contemplate this. Goldsmith is less severe in his exposure, but it is efficient, too; 666 *The simple notions of the Chinese citizen on this subject appear very alarming to his friend, who uses precisely the defensive argument with which the absurdity has been upheld ever since. "I see,' cries my friend, that you are for a speedy 1760. Æt. 32. 1760. of the World raised his voice against the penal laws which Et. 32. then, with wanton severity, disgraced the statute book; insisted that the sole means of making death an efficient, was to make it an infrequent, punishment; and warned society of the crime of disregarding human life and the temptations of the miserable, by visiting petty thefts with penalties of blood.* He who does not read for amusement only, may also find in these delightful letters, thus published from week to week, a comment of special worth on casual incidents. of the time. There was in this year a city-campaign of peculiar cruelty. A mob has indiscriminate tastes for blood, 866 "administration of justice; but all the world will grant, that the more time there "is taken up in considering any subject, the better it will be understood. Besides, "it is the boast of an Englishman, that his property is secure, and all the world "will grant that a deliberate administration of justice is the best way to secure his 66 6 property. Why have we so many lawyers, but to secure our property? why so many formalities, but to secure our property? Not less than one hundred "thousand families live in opulence, elegance, and ease, merely by securing our 66 6 property.' ... 'But bless me,' returned I, 'what numbers do I see here"all in black-how is it possible that half this multitude find employment?' 'Nothing so easily conceived,' returned my companion, 'they live by watching "each other. For instance, the catchpole watches the man in debt, the attorney "watches the catchpole, the counsellor watches the attorney, the solicitor the "counsellor, and all find sufficient employment.'-'I conceive you,' interrupted "I, they watch each other: but it is the client that pays them all for watching."" Letter xcviii. The reader is to remember that this was written a hundred years ago, and that we are only at this hour bestirring ourselves to provide something of a remedy. * Could anything be better reasoned than this, which indeed anticipates the closest arguments of Bentham ? "When a law, enacted to make theft punishable "with death, happens to be equitably executed, it can at best only guard our 'possessions; but when, by favour or ignorance, justice pronounces a wrong "verdict, it then attacks our lives, since in such a case the whole community "suffers with the innocent victim if, therefore, in order to secure the effects of one man, I should make a law which may take away the life of another, in such to attain a smaller good, I am guilty of a greater evil; to secure society "in the possession of a bauble, I render a real and valuable possession precarious. "... Since punishments are sometimes necessary, let them at least be rendered 66 terrible, by being executed but seldom, and let Justice lift her sword rather to "terrify than revenge." Letter lxxx. a case, and after hunting an admiral Byng to death will as eagerly 1760. run down a dog. On a groundless cry of hydrophobia, dogs Et. 32. were slaughtered wholesale, and their bodies literally blocked up the streets. "The dear, good-natured, honest, sensible "creatures!" exclaimed Horace Walpole. Christ! How can anybody hurt them?" But what Horace said' only to his friend, Goldsmith said to everybody: publicly denouncing the cruelty, in a series of witty stories ridiculing the motives alleged for it, and pleading with eloquent warmth for the honest associate of man.* Nor was this the only mad-dogcry of the year. The yell of a Grub-street mob as fierce, on a false report of the death of Voltaire, brought Goldsmith as warmly to the rescue. With eager admiration, he asserted the claims of the philosopher and wit; told the world it was its lusts of war and sycophancy which unfitted it to receive such a friend; set forth the independence of his life, in a country of Pompadours and an age of venal oppression; declared (this was before the Calas family) the tenderness and humanity of his nature; and claimed freedom of religious thought for him and all men. "I am "not displeased with my brother because he happens to "ask our father for favours in a different manner from "me." As we read the Chinese Letters with this comment of the time, those actual days come vividly back to us. * It is pleasant to quote his most kindly speech. "Of all the beasts that graze "the lawn, or hunt the forest, a dog is the only animal that, leaving his fellows, 86 attempts to cultivate the friendship of man; to man he looks in all his necessities "with a speaking eye for assistance; exerts for him all the little service in his power with cheerfulness and pleasure; for him bears famine and fatigue with "patience and resignation; no injuries can abate his fidelity, no distress induce "him to forsake his benefactor; studious to please, and fearing to offend, he is "still an humble stedfast dependant; and in him alone fawning is not flattery. "How unkind, then, to torture this faithful creature, who has left the forest to "claim the protection of man! how ungrateful a return to the trusty animal for "all his services !" Letter Ixix. 1760. Earl Ferrers glides through them again, with his horrible Et. 32. passion and yet more ghastly composure. The theatres again contend with their Pollys and Macheaths, and tire the town with perpetual Beggars' Operas. Merry and fashionable crowds repeople White Conduit and Vauxhall. We get occasional glimpses of even the stately commoner and his unstately ducal associate. Old George the Second dies, and young George the Third ascends the throne. Churchill makes his hit with the Rosciad; and Sterne, having startled the town with the humour and extravagance of his Tristram Shandy, comes up from country quiet to enjoy popularity. How sudden and decisive it was, need not be related. No one was so talked of in London this year, and no one so admired, as that tall, thin, hectic-looking Yorkshire parson. He who was to die within eight years, unheeded and untended, in a common lodging-house, was everywhere the honoured guest of the rich and noble. His book had become a fashion, and east and west were moved alike. Mr. Dodsley offered him 650l. for a second edition and two more volumes; Lord Falconberg gave him a curacy of 1501. a-year; Mr. Reynolds painted his portrait; and Warburton, not having yet pronounced him an “irre"coverable scoundrel," went round to the bishops and told them he was the English Rabelais. "They had never "heard of such a writer," adds the sly narrator of the incident.* "One is invited to dinner where he dines," said Gray, "a fortnight beforehand:" and he was boasting, Walpole's Coll. Lett. iv. 39. + Letter to Wharton, 22d April, 1760. Works, iii. 241. In another letter to Wharton, two months later, he writes, with his usual manly appreciation of all that is good and original "there is much good fun in Tristram, and humour some"times hit, and sometimes missed. I agree with your opinion of it, and shall see 1760. himself, of dinner engagements fourteen deep; even while he declared the way to fame to be like that to heaven, through Et. 32. much tribulation, and described himself, in the midst of his triumphs, "attacked and pelted from cellar and garret." Perhaps he referred to Goldsmith, from whose garret in Green Arbour Court the first heavy blow was levelled at him; but there were other assailants, as active though less avowed, in cellars of Arlington-street and garrets of Strawberry-hill. Walpole may yet more easily be forgiven than Goldsmith in such a case. The attack in the Citizen of the World was aimed, it is true, where the work was most vulnerable; and it was not ill done to protest against the indecency and affectation, which doubtless had largely contributed to the so sudden popularity, as they found promptest imitators; but the humour and wit ought surely to have been admitted; and if the wisdom and charity of an uncle Toby, a Mr. Shandy, or a corporal Trim, might anywhere have claimed frank and immediate recognition, it should have been in that series of essays which Beau Tibbs and the Man in Black have helped to make immortal. Most charming are these two characters. Addison would 66 own comic figure at the head of them)? Have you read his sermons (with his They are in the style, I think, most proper for the pulpit, and show a very strong imagination and a sensible heart. "But you see him often tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of his audience." iii. 251. "If a bawdy blockhead thus breaks in on the community, he sets his whole "fraternity in a roar; nor can he escape, even though he should fly to the nobility for "shelter." Citizen of the World, Letter lxxv. The sarcasm of this may be forgiven, since Goldsmith showed always an honest and high-minded dislike of all coarseness, all approach to even sensual allusions, in his own writings; but why blockhead? except indeed in the sense that the man who resorts to such, may be held so far to open himself to the imputation expressed by Roscommon's couplet, so often given to Pope, "Immodest words admit of no defence, For want of decency is want of sense." |