1757. that he must descend in the social scale, and peradventure starve. But though it could not disgrace or degrade him, Et. 29. it called a class of writers into existence whose degradation reacted upon him; who flung a stigma on his pursuits, and made the name of man-of-letters the synonyme for dishonest hireling. Of the fifty thousand pounds which the Secret Committee found to have been expended by Walpole's ministry on daily scribblers for their daily bread, not a sixpence was received, either then or when the Pelhams afterwards followed the example, by a writer whose name is now enviably known. All went to the Guthries, the Amhersts, the Arnalls, the Ralphs, and the Oldmixons; and while a Mr. Cook was pensioned, a Harry Fielding solicited Walpole in vain. What the man of genius received, unless the man of rank had wisdom to adorn it by befriending him, was nothing but the shame of being confounded, as one who lived by using the pen, with those who lived by its prostitution and abuse. It was in vain he strove to escape this imputation; it increased, and it clove to him. To become author was to be treated as adventurer: a man had only to write, to be classed with what Johnson calls the lowest of all human beings, the scribbler for party. One of Fielding's remarks, under cover of a grave sneer, conveys a bitter sense of this injustice. 'An author, in a country where there is no "public provision for men of genius, is not obliged to be a more disinterested patriot than any other. Why is he, "whose livelihood is in his pen, a greater monster in using "it to serve himself, than he who uses his tongue for the same purpose?" Nor was the injustice the work of the vulgar or unthinking; it was strongest in the greatest of living statesmen. If any 1757. one had told William Pitt that a new man of merit, called Et. 29. Goldsmith, was about to try the profession of literature, he would have turned aside in scorn. It had been sufficient to throw doubt upon the career of Edmund Burke, that, in this very year, he opened it with the writing of a book.* It was Horace Walpole's vast surprise, four years later, that so sensible a man as "young Mr. Burke" should not have "worn off his authorism yet. He thinks there is nothing so "charming as writers, and to be one. He will know better one of these days."+ Such was the worldly account of literature, when, as I have said, deserted by the patron, and not yet supported by the public, it was committed to the mercies of the bookseller. They were few and rare. It was the mission of Johnson to extend them, and to replace the writer's craft, in even its worldliest view, on a dignified and honourable basis; but Johnson's work was just begun. He was himself, as yet, one of the meaner workers for hire; and though already author of the Dictionary, was too glad in this very year to have Robert Dodsley's guinea for writing paragraphs in the London Chronicle. "Had you, sir, been an author of the "lower class, one of those who are paid by the sheet," remonstrated worthy printer Bowyer with an author who could pay, who did not need to be paid, and who would not be trifled with by the man of types. Of the lower class, unlike that dignitary Mr. John Jackson, still was Samuel Johnson; he was but a Grub Street man, paid by the sheet, when Goldsmith entered Grub Street, periodical writer and reviewer. * The Vindication of Natural Society, in imitation of Lord Bolingbroke. + Horace Walpole's Correspondence (Ed. 1840; to which I shall in future refer as the Collected Letters of Walpole.) Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century (1812), ii. Periodicals were the fashion of the day. They were the 1757. means of those rapid returns, of that perpetual interchange Et. 29. of bargain and sale, so fondly cared for by the present arbiters of literature; and were now, universally, the favourite channel of literary speculation. Scarcely a week passed in which a new magazine or paper did not start into life, to perish or survive as might be. Even Fielding had turned from his Jonathan Wild the Great, to his Jacobite's Journal and True Patriot; and, from his Tom Jones and Amelia, sought refuge in his Covent Garden Journal. We have the names of fifty-five papers of the date of a few years before this, regularly published every week.* A more important literary venture, in the nature of a review, and with a title expressive of the fate of letters, the Grub Street Journal, had been brought to a close in 1737. Six years earlier than that, for a longer life, Cave issued the first number of the Gentleman's Magazine. Griffiths, aided by Ralph, Kippis, Langhorne, Grainger, and others, followed with the earliest regular Review which can be said to have succeeded, and in 1749 began, on whig principles, that publication of the Monthly which lasted till our own day. Seven years later, the tories opposed it with the Critical, which, with slight alteration of title, existed to a very recent date, more strongly tainted with high-church advocacy and quasi-popish principles than when the first number, sent forth under the editorship of Smollett in March 1756, was on those very grounds assailed. In the May of that year of Goldsmith's life to which I have now arrived, another Review, the Universal, began a short existence of three years, its principal contributor being Samuel Johnson, at this time wholly devoted to it. * See the curious and complete list in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, iv. 38-97. H 1757. Such were a few of the examples that, if the least liberty Et. 29. of choice had been his, might have raised or depressed the sanguine heart of Oliver Goldsmith, when, under the watchful eye of Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths, now providers of his bed and board, he sat down in the bookseller's parlour in Paternoster Row somewhat sarcastically faced with the sign of The Dunciad, to begin his engagement on the Monthly Review. END OF BOOK THE FIRST. |