Contrasted faults through all his manners reign: 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 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 "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." 1755. Æt. 27. CHAPTER VI. 1756. PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB STREET. 1756-1757. It was on the 1st of February, 1756, that Oliver Goldsmith Æt. 28. stepped upon the shore at Dover, and stood again among his countrymen. Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state, With daring aims irregularly great. Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of human kind pass by, The comfort of seeing it must have been about all the comfort to him. At this moment, there is little doubt, he had not a single 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 goodhumoured 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 In one of the newspaper notices which appeared after his death, the writer stated that he had once set up as an apothecary in a country town. This was immediately denied, on the assumption that Ireland was referred to; whereupon friend or acquaintance, without the knowledge or comfort 1756. of even one kind face, in the lonely, terrible, LONDON Et. 28. 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 had involved him in a worse distress but for the judicious silence of the Dublin Doctor (Radcliff), fellow of the college and joint-tutor 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 the writer rejoined (St. James' Chronicle, April 12, 14, 1774), "We never said "that he set up in Ireland. The country town alluded to is an English town, the name of which is forgotten. But the writer of this and the former paragraph 'assures the public that he had the anecdote from the Doctor's own mouth." Mr. Prior has quoted this, i. 201. 66 * Percy's friend, Campbell (in his Survey of the South of Ireland, 286-9), gives an account of this incident from the recollections of Radcliff's widow, but in antedating it before his foreign travel makes an evident mistake, which is silently corrected in the Percy Memoir, 37, where reference is made to Campbell's book. I now quote the latter: "Upon his first going to England, he was in such distress, "that he would gladly have become an usher to a country school; but so destitute 66 was he of friends to recommend him, that he could not without difficulty obtain "even this low department. The master of the school scrupled to employ him "without some testimonial of his past life. Goldsmith referred him to his tutor "at college for a character; but all this while he went under a feigned name. "From this resource, therefore, one would think that little in his favour could be "ever hoped for; but he only wanted to serve a present exigency; an ushership "was not his object. In this strait, he wrote a letter to Dr. Radcliff, imploring "him, as he tendered the welfare of an old pupil, not to answer a letter which he "would probably receive, the same post with his own, from the schoolmaster. He "added that he had good reasons for concealing both from him and the rest of the *world his name, and the real state of the case; every circumstance of which he "promised to communicate on some future occasion. His tutor, embarrassed "enough to know what answer he should give, resolved at last to give none. And "thus was poor Goldsmith snatched from between the horns of his present 1756. friends, but his letters were again unanswered. He went Et. 28. among the London apothecaries, and asked them to let him spread plaisters 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 or Sir Joshua'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. 1757. Æt. 29. Thus employed among the drugs, he heard one day that "dilemma, and suffered to drag on a miserable life for a few probationary months." + "George Langton told me that he was present one day" [it could not have been George, but no doubt was Bennet] "when Goldsmith (Dr. Oliver), in a "circle of good company, began with, 'When I lived among the beggars in Axe "Lane,'Every one present was well acquainted with the varied habits of "Goldsmith's life, and with the naïveté of his character; but this sudden trait "of simplicity could not but cause a momentary surprise." Best's Personal and Literary Memorials, 76. 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 me. 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. 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. * Cooke's Narrative. Europ. Mag. xxiv. 91. + Percy Memoir, 38. 1757. Æt. 29. |