OLIVER GOLDSMITH

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 112, 17 November 1928, Page 21

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

(1728—1928) [FIRST ARTICLE.] THE tfEST LOVED OF POtTS . : THE STYLE AND THE MAX (By"Ajax.") We aro all bound.to mako mistakes sometimes, and most of us are able to keep at it pretty regularly without getting tired, but it is' not often that an exceptionally careful and accurate writer manages in his very first sentence to como a cropper that even the hustled journalist would usually bo wary enough to avoid. Yet this is how Austin Dobson opens his valuable chapter in "The Cambridge History of English Literature" on the writer the bicontenary of whose birth fell on Saturday last.: — "No man," wrote Unit authoritative but autocratic biographer, John Forster, "ever put so much ot himself into his- books as Goldsmith, from the beginning to the very end of his career." To many authors this saying is only partly applicable; but' it is entirely ' applicable to tile author of "The Vicar of Wakefield." "If Forster had said that no man is so good a poet as Shakespeare, and Dobson had added that to many poets this saying is only partly applicable, but that it is entirely applicable to tho author of "Hamlet," the absurdity of the addition would have been gross and palpable. In essence the absurdity of the .remark that Dobson _has actually made is, however, identical. The saying that nobody ever put so much of himself into his books as Goldsmith is not really applicable in part .to many other men. It is a superlative which fits him alone. He is first and the rest nowhere. In a rondeau' which Austin Dobson prefixed to a selection of "Eighteenth Century Essays',' forty years ago a contrast was drawn between those leisurely days when They could afford-to turn a phrase. 'Or trim a straggling tlieme aright. and the hustle of to-day. Alore swiftly now the hours take (light! What's read at morn is dead at niglit: Scant space have wo for Art's delays. Whose breathless thought so briefly stays. We may not work —ah! would we might, ' . With slower pen! It may seem as though I had deliberately chosen a sample of Dobson's very '' . careless prose—a unique sample, as fains my experience goes —to serve as a -text for his verses. But nothing was further from my thoughts. It was really for the light they throw on the secret of Goldsmith's charm that I had selected Forster 's remark and Dobson s endorsement of it, but the strange form of -the endorsement resulted in this undesigned side-track. It is, Of course, inevitable that every poet should put something of himself into his verses. "What else could he put?" the plain man might/ask, to which one answer might Tie the remark of a writer, who was so subtle a poet as to be very far from a plain mail. To Wordsworth's_ statement that Shakespeare "unlocked his heart" in the "Sonnets" Browning.'s answer was: Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he! "So much the less Shakespeare perhaps," the plain man might retort, '' but so much the more a man,'' and with plain men at any rate it is the humanity of a poet that counts. Resisting a tempting invitation down another—and this time a quite intermin-able—side-track, I decline to bo ambushed by the psychology of the 'Sonnets" and fortify myself with another reference to my text. Whatever may have been the practice of other poets or other prose-writers, Goldsmith had a way of unlocking his heart iv everything he wrote. So characteristic was this way of his that we must have said, had he departed from it, then so much "the less Goldsmith he " and the less Goldsmith because the less human. From first to last his work was largely autobiographic, and this element is so persistent that, by a converse process of reasoning, some authorities have not hesitated to treat as autobiography incidents in "The Vicar of Wakefield," for which there is no external evidence at all. They are sure that things at once so real and so'characteristic cannot possibly have ' fjccn invented. But this use of personal experience is but a trivial incident of the quality of which Forster . and Dobson speak. It is not so much his personal history as his personality that Goldsmith has communicated to his writings with a thoroughness to which in English literature there; appears to be no parallel among writers of anything like equal eminence. Add to this that Goldsmith had an exceptionally lovable personality to communicate, aud that lie was able to communicate it by means of" an admirably easy, clear, and natural style, and I suppose that we are as near to . the secret of Goldsmith's charm as any words but his own can take us. His writing appears, indeed, to illustrate, with the happiest results, that much misquoted and much misundcr-. stood saying of Button's, "The style is the man himself." Regarding the general impression of Goldsmith's personality which is thus disclosed in his writings, tho opening sentences of "Tho Life of Oliver Goldsmith" by Mr. F. Frankfort Moore may be quoted:— Oliver Goldsmith has ever been the best loved of English writers. He is the Benjamin of tho largo family of 18th century poets, of whom Dryden was the Jacob and Pope tho Judah. Wo venerate Dryden, wo admire Pope, we esteem Young, we auoto Gray, we neglect Thomson, wo ignore Johnson, wo tolerate Cowper, but wo love Goldsmith. T.eally when wo come to consider tho whole question of tho place occupied by English poets in the affections of their readers we are led to wonder if the position of Goldsmith is not absolutely unique. Though I neither venerate Dryden, nor do I treat most of the oth'cr poets in Mr. .Moore's list as he says we all do, I welcome all that he has to say on the positive side in favour of his idol. Whatever may be our attitude to other poets, we must all love Goldsmith. • -a- * * Mr. Moore's eulogy gave mo all tho greater pleasure from its contrast with the cold disparagement which Goldsmith's verso receives from Professor Saintsbury in "The Peace of tho Aug. ustans." Neither "The Traveller" nor "Tho Deserted Village" is, ho writes, first rate or even secondrate poetry, though there is in both lino rhetoric, which is possibly not wholly Goldsmith's own. But It is posslblo to read "The Traveller," and quite easy to read "The Deserted Village," over again—in the second instance at least over and over again—despite the damaging associations of old learning and even of modern teaching, d-^plte the want of poetical Intoxication, despite the often banal ami in part sometimes actually unreal thought. The strong disapprobation which I marked in the margin of this passage years ago seems to me, on cool reflection, to supply a good illustration of Mr. Moore's .point. AVo all lovo Goldsmith, and most of us are unable to listen patiently to criticism of one we love so much..-But after conceding from' a strictly judicial standpoint that'there is doubtless a solid foundation for much

of what Mr. Saintsbury says, one is surely entitled to object from the same standpoint to "the nasty way ho says it." It is not his censure but the grudging condescension of his faint praise that is the real offence. As one of the charms of Mr. Frankfort Moore's book is. tho fury with which as a patriotic irishman he champions a brother Irishman against the misrepresentations of a mean, vain, jealous, cunning, vindictive, parasitical Scotchman named Boswell, I should be glad to hear him for a few minutes on. this other critic who, though not of the same nationality, may well have had his manners corrupted by twenty years of residence in a Scottish University. But even. Mr. Moore would surely be satisfied with what Professor Saintsbury has to say about the unique and inimitable beauty of Goldsmith's prose. Referring to the "standard" quality of the lSth century. The professor writes in the work already quoted:— It is perhaps most eminently present in that remarkable style .which is so charming and so difficult to characterise —more so even than Addison's own. Johnson, Burke, Gibbon, his own contemporaries, can bo analysed in this respect with no difficulty; you know, If you have some patience and a little skill in such processes, exactly what makes them what they are, and what you yourself like or dislike in (hem. Coldsmlth defies analysis, and therefore synthetic Imitation. Even Thackeray, who could write, if not like Addison, like Steele, and also like a contemporary of Goldsmith, Horace Walpole, so as to deceive the very elect if he had attempted the trick, never attempted the trick, nevrr attempted to imitate Goldsmith, and merely resembles him in perfect naturalness .... It (tlio 18th Century) was much, too fond of assuming, "pcrsonac" but, when it dropped them, the human "res" remained In a curiously normal, and unsophisticated condition, nor was that condition ever better shown than in Goldsmith. - Reverting to Goldsmith's verse, let me conclude »with what is the best answer to either censure or faint praise—a few samples from the poems themselves. My choice of the first two was directed by a desire to. illustrate that deep personal pathos which for me makes parts of "The Traveller" and "The Deserted Tillage!' among the' hardest things in poetry 'to read aloud. Tho first is the very familiar passage with which "The Traveller"' opens':— Itcmote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, Or by the lazy Scheldt; Or wandering Po, Or onward, where the rude Carlnthian boor Against the houseless stranger shuts the door; Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies, A weary waste expanding to the skies; Where'er I roam, whatever-realms to see. My heart uutravell'd fondly turns to thee; Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain. And drags at each remove a lengthening chain. ■It was seventeen years after Goldsmith had left his home in Ireland when "The Deserted Village" was published, but the wish which he expressed in the following lines that ho nr.ght return to die at home, was not realised: — In all my wand'rings round this world of In all my gr'.efs—and God has given my share.— I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, Amidst.these humble bowers to lay riie down; To husband, out life's taper at tlio close, And koep the flame from wasting by repose. I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, Amidst the swains to show my book-learn'd skill, Around my fire an evening group to draw, And tell of all J felt, and all I saw; And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue. Pants to the place from whence at first she Hew. I still had hopes, my long vexations pas's'd, Here to return—and die at home at last. My last extract is from the description in "The Deserted Village" of tho Village Preacher, for which the poet is considered to have drawn some traits from his father, tho Rev. Charles Goldsmith, and some from his clerical brother, -to whom "The Traveller" was dedicated. - The simile with which the passage concludes is described by Austin Dobson as "fine and deservedly popular" and by Gilbert Wakefield as "perhaps tho. sublimest that English poetry can boast." At church, with meek and unaffected grace, His looks adorn'd the venerable place; Truth from his lips prevail'd witli double sway, And fools, who came to scoff, remain'd to pray. The service pass'd, around the pious man, Witli steady zeal, each honest rustic ran; Even children follow'd with endearing wile; And pluck'd his gown, to share the good man's smile. His ready smile a parent's, warmth express'd,Tiieir welfare pleas'd him, and their cares distress'd; To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven. As some tall cliff, that litis its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves tlio storm, i Though round its breast the rolling clouds arc spread, Kternal sunshine settles on its head.