Chapter XXI: Epilogue: To ‘she Stoops to Conquer.’

This epilogue was spoken by Mrs. Bulkley in the character of Miss
Hardcastle. It is probably the epilogue described by
Goldsmith to Cradock, in the letter quoted at p. 246, as ‘a very mawkish
thing,’ a phrase not so incontestable as Bolton Corney’s remark that it is
‘an obvious imitation of Shakespere.’

That pretty Bar-maids have done execution. Cf.
_The Vicar of Wakefield_, 1766, i. 7:—‘Sophia’s features
were not so striking at first; but often did more certain execution.’

coquets the guests. Johnson explains this word ‘to
entertain with compliments and amorous tattle,’ and quotes the following
illustration from Swift, ‘You are _coquetting_ a maid of honour, my
lord looking on to see how the gamesters play, and I railing at you both.’

Nancy Dawson. Nancy Dawson was a famous ‘toast’ and
horn-pipe dancer, who died at Haverstock Hill, May 27, 1767, and was
buried behind the Foundling, in the burial-ground of St. George the
Martyr. She first appeared at Sadler’s Wells, and speedily passed to the
stage of Covent Garden, where she danced in the _Beggar’s Opera_.
There is a portrait of her in the Garrick Club, and there are several
contemporary prints. She was the heroine of a popular song, here referred
to, beginning:—

Of all the girls in our town,

The black, the fair, the red, the brown,

Who dance and prance it up and down,

There’s none like Nancy Dawson:

Her easy mien, her shape so neat,

She foots, she trips, she looks so sweet,

Her ev’ry motion is complete;

I die for Nancy Dawson.

Its tune—says J. T. Smith (_Book for a Rainy Day_,
Whitten’s ed., 1905, p. 10) was ‘as lively as that of “Sir Roger de
Coverley.”’

Che farò, i.e. _Che farò senza
Euridice_, the lovely lament from Glück’s _Orfeo_,
1764.

the Heinel of Cheapside. The reference is to
Mademoiselle Anna-Frederica Heinel, 1752–1808, a beautiful Prussian,
subsequently the wife of Gaetano Apollino Balthazar Vestris, called
‘Vestris the First.’ After extraordinary success as a _danseuse_ at
Stuttgard and Paris, where Walpole saw her in 1771
(Letter to the Earl of Strafford 25th August), she had come to London;
and, at this date, was the darling of the Macaronies (cf. the note on p.
247, l. 31), who, from their club, added a _regallo_ (present) of six
hundred pounds to the salary allowed her at the Haymarket. On April 1,
1773, Metastasio’s _Artaserse_ was performed for her benefit,
when she was announced to dance a minuet with Monsieur Fierville, and
‘Tickets were to be hand, at her house in Piccadilly, two doors from Air
Street.’

spadille, i.e. the ace of spades, the first trump
in the game of Ombre. Cf. Swift’s _Journal of a Modern Lady in a
Letter to a Person of Quality_, 1728:—

She draws up card by card, to find

Good fortune peeping from behind;

With panting heart, and earnest eyes,

In hope to see _spadillo_ rise;

In vain, alas! her hope is fed;

She draws an ace, and sees it red.

Bayes. The chief character in Buckingham’s _Rehearsal_,
1672, and intended for John Dryden. Here the name is put for the ‘poet’ or
‘dramatist.’ Cf. Murphy’s Epilogue to Cradock’s _ Zobeide_,
1771:—

Not e’en poor ‘Bayes’ within must hope to be

Free from the lash:—His Play he writ for me

’Tis true—and now my gratitude you’ll see;

and Colman’s Epilogue to _The School for Scandal_, 1777:—

So wills our virtuous bard—the motley _Bayes_

Of crying epilogues and laughing plays!

RETALIATION.

_Retaliation: A Poem. By Doctor Goldsmith. Including Epitaphs on the
Most Distinguished Wits of this Metropolis_, was first published by
G. Kearsly in April, 1774, as a 4to pamphlet of 24 pp. On the title-page
is a vignette head of the author, etched by James Basire, after Reynolds’s
portrait; and the verses are prefaced by an anonymous letter to the
publisher, concluding as follows:—‘Dr. Goldsmith _belonged to a
Club of_ Beaux Esprits, _where Wit sparkled sometimes at the Expence
of Good-nature.It was proposed to write Epitaphs on the Doctor; his Country, Dialect
and Person, furnished Subjects of Witticism.—The Doctor was called
on for’ Retaliation, ‘and at their next Meeting produced the following
Poem, which I think adds one Leaf to his immortal Wreath._ This account
seems to have sufficed for Evans, Percy, and the earlier editors. But in
vol. i. p. 78 of his edition of Goldsmith’s _Works_, 1854, Mr.
Peter Cunningham published for the first time a fuller version of the
circumstances, derived from a manuscript lent to him by Mr. George Daniel
of Islington; and (says Mr. Cunningham) ‘evidently designed as a preface
to a collected edition of the poems which grew out of Goldsmith’s trying
his epigrammatic powers with Garrick.’ It is signed ‘D. Garrick.’ ‘At a
meeting’—says the writer—‘of a company of gentlemen, who were
well known to each other, and diverting themselves, among many other
things, with the peculiar oddities of Dr. Goldsmith, who would never allow
a superior in any art, from writing poetry down to dancing a horn-pipe,
the Dr. with great eagerness insisted upon trying his epigrammatic powers
with Mr. Garrick, and each of them was to write the other’s epitaph. Mr.
Garrick immediately said that his epitaph was finished, and spoke the
following distich extempore:—

Here lies NOLLY Goldsmith, for shortness call’d Noll,

Who wrote like an angel, but talk’d like poor Poll.

Goldsmith, upon the company’s laughing very heartily, grew very
thoughtful, and either would not, or could not, write anything at that
time: however, he went to work, and some weeks after produced the
following printed poem called _ Retaliation_, which has been
much admired, and gone through several editions.’ This account, though
obviously from Garrick’s point of view, is now accepted as canonical, and
has superseded those of Davies, Cradock, Cumberland, and others, to which
some reference is made in the ensuing notes. A few days after the
publication of the first edition, which appeared on the 18th or 19th of
April, a ‘new’ or second edition was issued, with four pages of
‘Explanatory Notes, Observations, etc.’ At the end came the following
announcement:—‘G. Kearsly, the Publisher, thinks it his duty to
declare, that
Dr. Goldsmith wrote the Poem as it is here printed, a few errors of the
press excepted, which are taken notice of at the bottom of this page.’
From this version _ Retaliation_ is here reproduced. In the
third edition, probably in deference to some wounded susceptibilities, the
too comprehensive ‘most Distinguished Wits of the Metropolis’ was
qualified into ‘_some of the most_ Distinguished Wits,’ etc., but no
further material alteration was made in the text until the suspicious
lines on Caleb Whitefoord were added to the fifth edition.

With the exception of Garrick’s couplet, and the fragment of Whitefoord
referred to at p. 234, none of the original epitaphs upon which Goldsmith
was invited to ‘retaliate’ have survived. But the unexpected ability of
the retort seems to have prompted a number of _ex post facto_
performances, some of which the writers would probably have been glad to
pass off as their first essays. Garrick, for example, produced three short
pieces, one of which (‘Here, Hermes! says Jove, who with nectar was
mellow’) hits off many of Goldsmith’s contradictions and foibles with
considerable skill (_v._ Davies’s _Garrick_, 2nd ed.,
1780, ii. 157). Cumberland (_v. Gent. Mag._, Aug. 1778, p. 384)
parodied the poorest part of _ Retaliation_, the comparison of
the guests to dishes, by likening them to liquors, and Dean Barnard in
return rhymed upon Cumberland. He wrote also an apology for his first
attack, which is said to have been very severe, and conjured the poet to
set his wit at Garrick, who, having fired his first shot, was keeping out
of the way:—

On him let all thy vengeance fall;

On me you but misplace it:

Remember how he called thee _Poll_—

But, ah! he dares not face it.

For these, and other forgotten pieces arising out of _Retaliation_,
Garrick had apparently prepared the above-mentioned introduction. It may
be added that the statement, prefixed to the first edition, that
_Retaliation_, as we now have it, was produced at the ‘next meeting’ of
the Club, is manifestly incorrect. It was composed and circulated in
detached fragments, and Goldsmith was still working at it when he was
seized with his last illness.

Of old, when Scarron, etc. Paul Scarron (1610–60),
the author _inter alia_ of the _Roman Comique_, 1651–7,
upon a translation
of which Goldsmith was occupied during the last months of his life. It was
published by Griffin in 1776.

Each guest brought his dish. ‘Chez Scarron,’—says
his editor, M. Charles Baumet, when speaking of the poet’s entertainments,—‘venait
d’ailleurs l’élite des dames, des courtisans & des hommes de
lettres. On y dinait joyeusement. _Chacun apportait son plat_.’ (_Œuvres
de Scarron_, 1877, i. viii.) Scarron’s company must have been as
brilliant as Goldsmith’s. Villarceaux, Vivonne, the Maréchal
d’Albret, figured in his list of courtiers; while for ladies he had
Mesdames Deshoulières, de Scudéry, de la Sablière,
and de Sévigné, to say nothing of Ninon de Lenclos and
Marion Delorme. (Cf. also Guizot, _ Corneille et son Temps_,
1862, 429–30.)

If our landlord. The ‘explanatory note’ to the
second edition says—‘The master of the St. James’s coffee-house,
where the Doctor, and the friends he has characterized in this Poem, held
an occasional club.’ This, it should be stated, was not the famous
‘Literary Club,’ which met at the Turk’s Head Tavern in Gerrard Street.
The St. James’s Coffee-house, as familiar to Swift and Addison at the
beginning, as it was to Goldsmith and his friends at the end of the
eighteenth century, was the last house but one on the south-west corner
of St. James’s Street. It now no longer exists. Cradock (_Memoirs_,
1826, i. 228–30) speaks of dining _at the bottom of St. James’s Street_
with Goldsmith, Percy, the two Burkes (_v. infra_), Johnson, Garrick,
Dean Barnard, and others. ‘We sat very late;’ he adds in conclusion, ‘and
the conversation that at last ensued, was the direct cause of my friend
Goldsmith’s poem, called “_Retaliation._”’

Our Dean. Dr. Thomas Barnard, an Irishman, at this
time Dean of Derry. He died at Wimbledon in 1806. It was Dr. Barnard who,
in reply to a rude sally of Johnson, wrote the charming verses on
improvement after the age of forty-five, which end—

If I have thoughts, and can’t express them,

Gibbon shall teach me how to dress them,

In terms select and terse;

Jones teach me modesty and Greek,

Smith how to think, Burke how to speak,

And Beauclerk to converse.

Let Johnson teach me how to place

In fairest light, each borrow’d grace,

From him I’ll learn to write;

Copy his clear, familiar style,

And from the roughness of his file

Grow like himself—polite.

(Northcote’s _Life of Reynolds_, 2nd ed., 1819, i. 221.)
According to Cumberland (_Memoirs_, 1807, i. 370), ‘The dean
also gave him [Goldsmith] an epitaph, and Sir Joshua illuminated the
dean’s verses with a sketch of his bust in pen and ink inimitably
caricatured.’ What would collectors give for that sketch and epitaph!
Unfortunately in Cumberland’s septuagenarian recollections the ‘truth
severe’ is mingled with an unusual amount of ‘fairy fiction.’ However Sir
Joshua _did_ draw caricatures, for a number of them were exhibited at
the Grosvenor Gallery (by the Duke of Devonshire) in the winter of 1883–4.

Our Burke. The Right Hon. Edmund Burke, 1729–97.

Our Will. ‘Mr. William Burke, late Secretary to
General Conway, and member for Bedwin, Wiltshire’ (Note to second
edition). He was a kinsman of Edmund Burke, and one of the supposed
authors of Junius’s _ Letters_. He died in 1798. ‘It is said
that the notices Goldsmith first wrote of the Burkes were so severe that
Hugh Boyd persuaded the poet to alter them, and entirely rewrite the
character of William, for he was sure that if the Burkes saw what was
originally written of them the peace of the Club would be disturbed.’
(Rev. W. Hunt in _Dict. Nat. Biography_, Art. ‘William Burke.’)

And Dick. Richard Burke, Edmund Burke’s younger
brother. He was for some years Collector to the Customs at Grenada, being
on a visit to London when _Retaliation_ was written (Forster’s
_ Life_, 1871, ii. 404). He died in 1794, Recorder of Bristol.

Our Cumberland’s sweetbread. Richard Cumberland,
the poet, novelist, and dramatist, 1731–1811, author of _The West
Indian_, 1771, _The Fashionable Lover_, 1772, and many
other more or less sentimental plays. In his _Memoirs_, 1807,
i. 369–71, he gives an account of the origin of _ Retaliation_,
which adds a few dubious particulars to that of Garrick. But it was
written from memory long after the events it records.

Douglas. ‘Dr. Douglas, since Bishop of Salisbury,’
says Cumberland. He died in 1807 (_v. infra_).

Ridge. ‘Counsellor John Ridge, a gentleman
belonging to the Irish Bar’ (Note to second edition). ‘Burke,’ says Bolton
Corney, ‘in 1771, described him as “one of the honestest and best-natured
men living, and inferior to none of his profession in ability.”’ (See also
note to line 125.)

Hickey. The commentator of the second edition of
_Retaliation_ calls this gentleman ‘honest Tom Hickey’. His
Christian name, however, was _Joseph_ (Letter of Burke, November 8,
1774). He was a jovial, good-natured, over-blunt Irishman, the legal
adviser of both Burke and Reynolds. Indeed it was Hickey who drew the
conveyance of the land on which Reynolds’s house ‘next to the Star and
Garter’ at Richmond (Wick House) was built by Chambers the architect.
Hickey died in 1794. Reynolds painted his portrait for Burke, and it was
exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1772 (No. 208). In 1833 it belonged to
Mr. T. H. Burke. Sir Joshua also painted Miss Hickey in 1769–73. Her
father, not much to Goldsmith’s satisfaction, was one of the Paris party
in 1770. See also note to l. 125.

Magnanimous Goldsmith. According to Malone
(Reynolds’s _Works_, second edition, 1801, i. xc), Goldsmith
intended to have concluded with his own character.

Tommy Townshend, M.P. for Whitchurch, Hampshire,
afterwards first Viscount Sydney. He died in 1800. Junius says Bolton
Corney, gives a portrait of him as _still life_. His presence in
_ Retaliation_ is accounted for by the fact that he had
commented in Parliament upon Johnson’s pension. ‘I am well assured,’ says
Boswell, ‘that Mr. Townshend’s attack upon Johnson was the occasion of his
“hitching in a rhyme”; for, that in the original copy of Goldsmith’s
character of Mr. Burke, in his _ Retaliation_ another person’s
name stood in the couplet where Mr. Townshend is now introduced.’
(Birkbeck Hill’s _ Boswell_, 1887, iv. 318.)

too deep for his hearers. ‘The emotion to which he
commonly appealed was that too rare one, the love of wisdom, and he
combined his thoughts and knowledge in propositions of wisdom so weighty
and strong, that the minds of ordinary hearers
were not on the instant prepared for them.’ (Morley’s _Burke_,
1882, 209–10.)

And thought of convincing, while they thought of
dining. For the reason given in the previous note, many of Burke’s
hearers often took the opportunity of his rising to speak, to retire to
dinner. Thus he acquired the nickname of the ‘Dinner Bell.’

To eat mutton cold. There is a certain resemblance
between this character and Gray’s lines on himself written in 1761,
beginning ‘Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune.’ (See Gosse’s
_Gray’s Works_, 1884, i. 127.) But both Gray and Goldsmith may
have been thinking of a line in the once popular song of _Ally
Croaker_:—

Too dull for a wit, too grave for a joker.

honest William, i.e. William Burke (_v. supra_).

Now breaking a jest, and now breaking a limb. A
note to the second edition says—‘The above Gentleman [Richard Burke,
_v. supra_] having slightly fractured one of his arms and legs, at
different times, the Doctor [i.e. Goldsmith] has rallied him on those
accidents, as a kind of _retributive_ justice for breaking his jests
on other people.’

Here Cumberland lies. According to Boaden’s _Life
of Kemble_, 1825, i. 438, Mrs. Piozzi rightly regarded this portrait
as wholly ironical; and Bolton Corney, without much expenditure of acumen,
discovers it to have been written in a spirit of _persiflage_.
Nevertheless, Cumberland himself (_Memoirs_, 1807, i. 369)
seems to have accepted it in good faith. Speaking of Goldsmith he says—I
conclude my account of him with gratitude for the epitaph he bestowed on
me in his poem called _ Retaliation_.’ From the further details
which he gives of the circumstances, it would appear that his own
performance, of which he could recall but one line—

All mourn the poet, I lament the man—

was conceived in a less malicious spirit than those of the others, and had
predisposed the sensitive bard in his favour. But no very genuine
cordiality could be expected to exist between the rival authors of _The
West Indian_ and _She Stoops to Conquer_.

And Comedy wonders at being so fine. It is
instructive
here to transcribe Goldsmith’s serious opinion of the kind of work which
Cumberland essayed:—‘A new species of Dramatic Composition has been
introduced, under the name of _ Sentimental_ Comedy, in which the
virtues of Private Life are exhibited, rather than the Vices exposed; and
the Distresses rather than the Faults of Mankind, make our interest in the
piece. . . . In these Plays almost all the Characters are good, and
exceedingly generous; they are lavish enough of their _Tin_ Money on
the Stage, and though they want Humour, have abundance of Sentiment and
Feeling. If they happen to have Faults or Foibles, the Spectator is taught
not only to pardon, but to applaud them, in consideration of the goodness
of their hearts; so that Folly, instead of being ridiculed, is commended,
and the Comedy aims at touching our Passions without the power of being
truly pathetic.’ (_Westminster Magazine_, 1772, i. 5.) Cf. also
the _Preface to The Good Natur’d Man_, where he ‘hopes that too
much refinement will not banish humour and character from our’s, as it has
already done from the French theatre. Indeed the French comedy is now
become so very elevated and sentimental, that it has not only banished
humour and _Moliere_ from the stage, but it has banished all
spectators too.’

The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks. Dr.
John Douglas (_v. supra_) distinguished himself by his exposure of
two of his countrymen, Archibald Bower, 1686–1766, who, being secretly a
member of the Catholic Church, wrote a _History of the Popes_;
and William Lauder 1710–1771, who attempted to prove Milton a plagiarist.
Cf. Churchill’s _Ghost_, Bk. ii:—

By TRUTH inspir’d when _Lauder’s_ spight

O’er MILTON cast the Veil of Night,

DOUGLAS arose, and thro’ the maze

Of intricate and winding ways,

Came where the subtle Traitor lay,

And dragg’d him trembling to the day.

‘Lauder on Milton’ is one of the books bound to the trunk-maker’s in
Hogarth’s _Beer Street_, 1751. He imposed on Johnson, who wrote
him a ‘Preface’ and was consequently trounced by Churchill (_ut supra_)
as ‘_our Letter’d_ POLYPHEME.’

Our Dodds shall be pious. The reference is to the
Rev. Dr. William Dodd, who three years after the publication of _Retaliation_
(i.e. June 27, 1777) was hanged at Tyburn for forging the signature of the
fifth Earl of Chesterfield, to whom he had been tutor. His life previously
had long been scandalous enough to justify Goldsmith’s words. Johnson made
strenuous and humane exertions to save Dodd’s life, but without avail.
(See Birkbeck Hill’s _Boswell_, 1887, iii. 139–48.) There is an
account of Dodd’s execution at the end of vol. i of Angelo’s _Reminiscences_,
1830.

our Kenricks. Dr. William Kenrick—say the
earlier annotators—who ‘read lectures at the Devil Tavern, under the
Title of “The School of Shakespeare.”’ The lectures began January 19,
1774, and help to fix the date of the poem. Goldsmith had little reason
for liking this versatile and unprincipled Ishmaelite of letters, who,
only a year before, had penned a scurrilous attack upon him in _The
London Packet_. Kenrick died in 1779.

Macpherson. ‘David [James] Macpherson, Esq.; who
lately, from the mere _force of his style_, wrote down the first poet
of all antiquity.’ (Note to second edition.) This was ‘Ossian’ Macpherson,
1738–96, who, in 1773, had followed up his Erse epics by a prose
translation of Homer, which brought him little but opprobrium. ‘Your
abilities, since your Homer, are not so formidable,’ says Johnson in the
knockdown letter which he addressed to him in 1775. (Birkbeck Hill’s _Boswell_,
1887, ii. 298.)

Our Townshend. See note to line 34.

New Lauders and Bowers. See note to l. 80.

And Scotchman meet Scotchman, and cheat in the dark.
Mitford compares Farquhar’s _Love and a Bottle_, 1699, Act iii—

But gods meet gods and jostle in the dark.

But Farquhar was quoting from Dryden and Lee’s _Oedipus_, 1679,
Act iv (at end).

Here lies David Garrick. ‘The sum of all that can
be said for and against Mr. Garrick, some people think, may be found in
these lines of Goldsmith,’ writes Davies in his _Life of Garrick_,
2nd ed., 1780, ii. 159. Posterity has been less hesitating in its verdict.
‘The lines on Garrick,’ says Forster, _Life of Goldsmith_,
1871, ii. 409, ‘are quite perfect writing. Without anger, the satire is
finished, keen, and uncompromising; the wit is adorned by most
discriminating praise; and the truth is
only the more unsparing for its exquisite good manners and good taste.’

Ye Kenricks. See note to line 86.

ye Kellys. Hugh Kelly (1739–1777), an Irishman,
the author of _False Delicacy_, 1768; _A Word to the Wise_,
1770; _The School for Wives_, 1774, and other _sentimental
dramas,_ is here referred to. His first play, which is described in
Garrick’s prologue as a ‘Sermon,’ ‘preach’d in Acts,’ was produced at
Drury Lane just six days before Goldsmith’s comedy of _The Good
Natur’d Man_ appeared at Covent Garden, and obtained a success which
it ill deserved. _False Delicacy_—said Johnson truly
(Birkbeck Hill’s _ Boswell_, 1887, ii. 48)—‘was totally
void of character,’—a crushing accusation to make against a drama.
But Garrick, for his private ends, had taken up Kelly as a rival to
Goldsmith; and the _comédie sérieuse_ or _ larmoyante_
of La Chaussée, Sedaine, and Diderot had already found votaries in
England. _False Delicacy_, weak, washy, and invertebrate as it
was, completed the transformation of ‘genteel’ into ‘sentimental’ comedy,
and establishing that _genre_ for the next few years, effectually retarded
the wholesome reaction towards humour and character which Goldsmith had
tried to promote by _The Good Natur’d Man_. (See note to l.
66.)

Woodfalls. ‘William Woodfall’—says Bolton
Corney—‘successively editor of _The London Packet_ and
_The Morning Chronicle_, was matchless as a reporter of
speeches, and an able theatrical critic. He made lofty pretensions to
editorial impartiality—but the actor [i.e. Garrick] was not _
always_ satisfied.’ He died in 1803. He must not be confounded with
Henry Sampson Woodfall, the editor of Junius’s _ Letters_. (See
note to l. 162.)

To act as an angel. There is a sub-ironic touch in
this phrase which should not be overlooked. Cf. l. 102.

Here Hickey reclines. See note to l. 15. In
Cumberland’s _Poetical Epistle to Dr. Goldsmith; or Supplement to his
Retaliation_ (_Gentleman’s Magazine_, Aug. 1778, p. 384)
Hickey’s genial qualities are thus referred to:—

Give RIDGE and HICKY, generous souls!

Of WHISKEY PUNCH convivial bowls.

a special attorney. A special attorney was merely
an attorney who practised in one court only. The species is now said to be
extinct.

burn ye. The annotator of the second edition,
apologizing for this ‘forced’ rhyme to ‘attorney,’ informs the English
reader that the phrase of ‘burn ye’ is ‘a familiar method of salutation in
Ireland amongst the lower classes of the people.’

Here Reynolds is laid. This shares the palm with
the admirable epitaphs on Garrick and Burke. But Goldsmith loved Reynolds,
and there are no satiric strokes in the picture. If we are to believe
Malone (Reynolds’s _Works_, second edition, 1801, i. xc),
‘these were the last lines the author wrote.’

bland. Malone (_ut supra_, lxxxix) notes this
word as ‘eminently happy, and characteristick of his [Reynolds’s] easy and
placid manners.’ Boswell (Dedication of _Life of Johnson_)
refers to his ‘equal and placid temper.’ Cf. also Dean Barnard’s verses
(Northcote’s _Life of Reynolds_, 2nd ed., 1819, i. 220), and
Mrs. Piozzi’s lines in her _Autobiography_, 2nd ed., 1861, ii.
175–6.

He shifted his trumpet. While studying Raphael in
the Vatican in 1751, Reynolds caught so severe a cold ‘as to occasion a
deafness which obliged him to use an ear-trumpet for the remainder of his
life.’ (Taylor and Leslie’s _Reynolds_, 1865, i. 50.) This
instrument figures in a portrait of himself which he painted for Thrale
about 1775. See also Zoffany’s picture of the ‘Academicians gathered about
the model in the Life School at Somerset House,’ 1772, where he is shown
employing it to catch the conversation of Wilton and Chambers.

and only took snuff. Sir Joshua was a great
snuff-taker. His snuff-box, described in the Catalogue as the one
‘immortalized in Goldsmith’s _Retaliation_,’ was exhibited,
with his spectacles and other personal relics, at the Grosvenor Gallery in
1883–4. In the early editions this epitaph breaks off abruptly at the word
‘snuff.’ But Malone says that half a line more had been written. Prior
gives this half line as ‘By flattery unspoiled—,’ and affirms that
among several erasures in the manuscript sketch devoted to Reynolds it
‘remained unaltered.’ (_Life_, 1837, ii. 499.) See notes to ll.
53, 56, and 91 of _The Haunch of Venison_.

Here Whitefoord reclines. The circumstances which
led to the insertion of these lines in the fifth edition are detailed in
the prefatory words of the publisher given at p. 92. There is more than a
suspicion that Whitefoord wrote them himself; but they have too long been
accepted as an appendage to the poem to be now displaced. Caleb Whitefoord
(born 1734) was a Scotchman, a wine-merchant, and an art connoisseur, to
whom J. T. Smith, in his _Life of Nollekens_, 1828, i. 333–41,
devotes several pages. He was one of the party at the St. James’s
Coffee-house. He died in 1810. There is a caricature of him in
‘Connoisseurs inspecting a Collection of George Morland,’ November, 16,
1807; and Wilkie’s _Letter of Introduction_, 1814, was a
reminiscence of a visit which, when he first came to London, he paid to
Whitefoord. He was also painted by Reynolds and Stuart. Hewins’s _Whitefoord
Papers_, 1898, throw no light upon the story of the epitaph.

a grave man. Cf. _Romeo and Juliet_, Act
iii, Sc. 1:—‘Ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me _a grave
man_.’ This Shakespearean recollection is a little like Goldsmith’s
way. (See note to _The Haunch of Venison_, l. 120.)

and rejoic’d in a pun. ‘Mr. W. is so notorious a
punster, that Doctor Goldsmith used to say, it was impossible to keep him
company, without being _infected_ with the _itch of punning_.’
(Note to fifth edition.)

‘if the table he set on a roar.’ Cf. _Hamlet_,
Act v, Sc. I.

Woodfall, i.e. Henry Sampson Woodfall, printer of
_The Public Advertiser_. He died in 1805. (See note to l. 115.)

Cross-Readings, Ship-News, and Mistakes of the Press.
Over the _nom de guerre_ of ‘Papyrius Cursor,’ a real Roman name, but
as happy in its applicability as Thackeray’s ‘Manlius Pennialinus,’
Whitefoord contributed many specimens of this mechanic wit to _The
Public Advertiser_. The ‘Cross Readings’ were obtained by taking two
or three columns of a newspaper horizontally and ‘onwards’ instead of
‘vertically’ and downwards, thus:—

Colds caught at this season are

The Companion to the Playhouse.

or

To be sold to the best Bidder,

My seat in Parliament being vacated.

A more elaborate example is

On Tuesday an address was presented;

it unhappily missed fire and the villain made off,

when the honour of knighthood was conferred on him

to the great joy of that noble family

Goldsmith was hugely delighted with Whitefoord’s ‘lucky inventions’ when
they first became popular in 1766. ‘He declared, in the heat of his
admiration of them, it would have given him more pleasure to have been the
author of them than of all the works he had ever published of his own’
(Northcote’s _Life of Reynolds_, 2nd ed., 1819, i. 217). What
is perhaps more remarkable is, that Johnson spoke of Whitefoord’s
performances as ‘ingenious and diverting’ (Birkbeck Hill’s _Boswell_,
1887, iv. 322); and Horace Walpole laughed over them till he cried (Letter
to Montagu, December 12, 1766). To use Voltaire’s witticism, he is _bien
heureux_ who can laugh now. It may be added that Whitefoord did not, as
he claimed, originate the ‘Cross Readings.’ They had been anticipated in
No. 49 of Harrison’s spurious _Tatler_, vol. v [1720].

The fashion of the ‘Ship-News’ was in this wise: ‘August 25 [1765]. We
hear that his Majestys Ship _Newcastle_ will soon have a new
figurehead, the old one being almost worn out.’ The ‘Mistakes of the
Press’ explain themselves. (See also Smith’s _Life of Nollekens_,
1828, i. 336–7; Debrett’s _New Foundling Hospital for Wit_,
1784, vol. ii, and _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1810, p. 300.)

That a Scot may have humour, I had almost said wit.
Goldsmith,—if he wrote these verses,—must have forgotten that
he had already credited Whitefoord with ‘wit’ in l. 153.

Thou best humour’d man with the worst humour’d muse.
Cf. Rochester of Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset:—

The best good man, with the worst-natur’d muse.

Whitefoord’s contribution to the epitaphs on Goldsmith is said to have
been unusually severe,—so severe that four only of its eight lines
are quoted in the _ Whitefoord Papers_, 1898, the rest being
‘unfit for publication’ (p. xxvii). He afterwards addressed a metrical
apology to Sir Joshua, which is printed at pp. 217–8 of Northcote’s _
Life_, 2nd ed., 1819. See also Forster’s _ Goldsmith_,
1871, ii. 408–9.

SONG FOR ‘SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.’

Boswell, to whom we are indebted for the preservation of this lively song,
sent it to _The London Magazine_ for June, 1774 (vol. xliii, p.
295), with the following:—

‘To the Editor of _The London Magazine_.

SIR,—I send you a small production of the late Dr. _Goldsmith_,
which has never been published, and which might perhaps have been totally
lost had I not secured it. He intended it as a song in the character of
Miss _ Hardcastle_, in his admirable comedy, _She stoops to
conquer_; but it was left out, as Mrs. _Bulkley_ who played the
part did not sing. He sung it himself in private companies very agreeably.
The tune is a pretty Irish air, called _The Humours of Balamagairy_,
to which, he told me, he found it very difficult to adapt words; but he
has succeeded happily in these few lines. As I could sing the tune, and
was fond of them, he was so good as to give me them about a year ago, just
as I was leaving London, and bidding him adieu for that season, little
apprehending that it was a last farewell. I preserve this little relick in
his own handwriting with an affectionate care.

I am, Sir,

Your humble Servant,

JAMES BOSWELL.’

When, seventeen years later, Boswell published his _Life of Samuel
Johnson, LL.D._, he gave an account of his dining at General
Oglethorpe’s in April, 1773, with Johnson and Goldsmith; and he says that
the latter sang the _Three Jolly Pigeons_, and this song, to
the ladies in the tea-room. Croker, in a note, adds that the younger
Colman more appropriately employed the ‘essentially low comic’ air for
Looney Mactwolter in the [_Review; or the_] _Wags of Windsor_,
1808 [i.e. in that character’s song beginning—‘Oh, whack! Cupid’s a
mannikin’], and that Moore tried to bring it into good company in the
ninth number of the _Irish Melodies_. But Croker did not admire
the tune, and thought poorly of Goldsmith’s words. Yet they are certainly
fresher than Colman’s or Moore’s:—

Sing—sing—Music was given,

To brighten the gay, and kindle the loving;

Souls here, like planets in Heaven,

By harmony’s laws alone are kept moving, etc.

TRANSLATION.

These lines, which appear at p. 312 of vol. V of the _History of the
Earth and Animated Nature_, 1774, are freely translated from some
Latin verses by Addison in No 412 of the _Spectator_, where
they are introduced as follows:—‘Thus we see that every different
Species of sensible Creatures has its different Notions of Beauty, and
that each of them is most affected with the Beauties of its own kind. This
is nowhere more remarkable than in Birds of the same Shape and Proportion,
where we often see the Male determined in his Courtship by the single
Grain or Tincture of a Feather, and never discovering any Charms but in
the Colour of its own Species.’ Addison’s lines, of which Goldsmith
translated the first fourteen only, are printed from his corrected MS. at
p. 4 of _Some Portions of Essays contributed to the Spectator by Mr.
Joseph Addison_ [by the late J. Dykes Campbell], 1864.

THE HAUNCH OF VENISON.

It is supposed that this poem was written early in 1771, although it was
not printed until 1776, when it was published by G. Kearsly and J. Ridley
under the title of _The Haunch of Venison, a Poetical Epistle to the
Lord Clare. By the late Dr. Goldsmith. With a Head of the Author, Drawn by
Henry Bunbury, Esq; and Etched by_ [_James_] _ Bretherton._
A second edition, the text of which is here followed, appeared in the same
year ‘With considerable Additions and Corrections, Taken from the Author’s
_last_ Transcript.’ The Lord Clare to whom the verses are addressed
was Robert Nugent, of Carlanstown, Westmeath, M.P. for St. Mawes in
1741–54. In 1766 he was created Viscount Clare; in 1776 Earl Nugent. In
his youth he had himself been an easy if not very original versifier; and
there are several of his performances in the second volume of Dodsley’s
_Collection of Poems by Several Hands_, 4th ed., 1755. One of
the Epistles, beginning ‘Clarinda, dearly lov’d, attend The Counsels of a
faithful friend,’ seems to have betrayed Goldsmith into the blunder of
confusing it, in the _Poems for Young Ladies_. 1767, p. 114,
with Lyttelton’s better-known _ Advice to a Lady_ (‘The
counsels of
a friend, Belinda, hear’), also in Dodsley’s miscellany; while another
piece, an _Ode to William Pultney, Esq._, contains a stanza so
good that Gibbon worked it into his character of Brutus:—

What tho’ the good, the brave, the wise,

With adverse force undaunted rise,

To break th’ eternal doom!

Tho’ CATO liv’d, tho’ TULLY spoke,

Tho’ BRUTUS dealt the godlike stroke,

Yet perish’d fated ROME.

Detraction, however, has insinuated that Mallet, his step-son’s tutor, was
Nugent’s penholder in this instance. ‘Mr. Nugent sure did not write his
own Ode,’ says Gray to Walpole (Gray’s _Works_, by Gosse, 1884,
ii. 220). Earl Nugent died in Dublin in October, 1788, and was buried at
Gosfield in Essex, a property he had acquired with his second wife. A _
Memoir_ of him was written in 1898 by Mr. Claud Nugent. He is described
by Cunningham as ‘a big, jovial, voluptuous Irishman, with a loud voice, a
strong Irish accent, and a ready though coarse wit.’ According to Percy (_Memoir_,
1801, p. 66), he had been attracted to Goldsmith by the publication of
_The Traveller_ in 1764, and he mentioned him favourably to the
Earl of Northumberland, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. A note in
Forster’s _Life_, 1871, ii. 329–30, speaks of Goldsmith as a
frequent visitor at Gosfield, and at Nugent’s house in Great George
Street, Westminster, where he had often for playmate his host’s daughter,
Mary, afterwards Marchioness of Buckingham.

Scott and others regarded _The Haunch of Venison_ as
autobiographical. To what extent this is the case, it is difficult to say.
That it represents the actual thanks of the poet to Lord Clare for an
actual present of venison, part of which he promptly transferred to
Reynolds, is probably the fact. But, as the following notes show, it is
also clear that Goldsmith borrowed, if not his entire fable, at least some
of its details from Boileau’s third satire; and that, in certain of the
lines, he had in memory Swift’s _Grand Question Debated_, the
measure of which he adopts. This throws more than a doubt upon the truth
of the whole. ‘His genius’ (as Hazlitt says) ‘was a mixture of originality
and imitation’; and fact and fiction often mingle inseparably
in his work. The author of the bailiff scene in the _Good Natur’d Man_
was quite capable of inventing for the nonce the tragedy of the unbaked
pasty, or of selecting from the Pilkingtons and Purdons of his
acquaintance such appropriate guests for his Mile End Amphitryon as the
writers of the _Snarler_ and the _Scourge_. It may
indeed even be doubted whether, if _The Haunch of Venison_ had
been absolute personal history, Goldsmith would ever have retailed it to
his noble patron at Gosfield, although it may include enough of real
experience to serve as the basis for a _jeu d’esprit_.

The fat was so white, etc. The first version reads—‘The
white was so white, and the red was so ruddy.’

Though my stomach was sharp, etc. This couplet is
not in the first version.

One gammon of bacon. Prior compared a passage from
Goldsmith’s _Animated Nature_, 1774, iii. 9, _à propos_
of a similar practice in Germany, Poland, and Switzerland. ‘A piece of
beef,’ he says, ‘hung up there, is considered as an elegant piece of
furniture, which, though seldom touched, at least argues the possessor’s
opulence and ease.’

a bounce, i.e. a braggart falsehood. Steele, in No.
16 of _The Lover_, 1715, p. 110, says of a manifest piece of
brag, ‘But this is supposed to be only a _Bounce_.’

Mr. Byrne, spelled ‘Burn’ in the earlier editions,
was a relative of Lord Clare.

M—r—’s. MONROE’s in the
first version. ‘Dorothy Monroe,’ says Bolton Corney, ‘whose various charms
are celebrated in verse by Lord Townshend.’

There’s H—d, and C—y, and H—rth, and
H—ff. In the first version—
‘There’s
COLEY, and WILLIAMS, and HOWARD,
and HIFF.’—Hiff was Paul Hiffernan, M.B., 1719–77, a
Grub Street author and practitioner. Bolton Corney hazards some
conjectures as to the others; but Cunningham wisely passes them over.

H—gg—ns. Perhaps, suggests Bolton
Corney, this was the Captain Higgins who assisted at Goldsmith’s absurd
‘fracas’ with Evans the bookseller, upon the occasion of Kenrick’s letter
in _The London Packet_ for March 24, 1773. Other accounts,
however, state that his companion was Captain Horneck (Prior, _Life_,
1837, ii. 411–12). This couplet is not in the first version.

Such dainties to them, etc. The first version
reads:—

Such dainties to them! It _would_ look like a flirt,

Like sending ’em Ruffles when wanting a Shirt.

Cunningham quotes a similar idea from T. Brown’s _Laconics, Works_,
1709, iv. 14. ‘To treat a poor wretch with a bottle of Burgundy, or fill
his snuff-box, is like giving a pair of lace ruffles to a man that has
never a shirt on his back.’ But Goldsmith, as was his wont, had already
himself employed the same figure. ‘Honours to one in my situation,’ he
says in a letter to his brother Maurice, in January, 1770, when speaking
of his appointment as Professor of Ancient History to the Royal Academy,
‘are something like ruffles to a man that wants a shirt’ (_Percy
Memoir_, 1801, 87–8). His source was probably, not Brown’s _Laconics_,
but those French ‘ana’ he knew so well. According to M. J. J. Jusserand (_English
Essays from a French Pen_, 1895, pp. 160–1), the originator of this
conceit was M. Samuel de Sorbieres, the traveller in England who was
assailed by Bishop Sprat. Considering himself inadequately rewarded by his
patrons, Mazarin, Louis XIV, and Pope Clement IX, he said bitterly—‘They
give lace cuffs to a man without a shirt’; a ‘consolatory witticism’ which
he afterwards remodelled into, ‘I wish they would send me bread for the
butter they kindly provided me with.’ In this form it appears in the
Preface to the _Sorberiana_, Toulouse, 1691.

_a flirt_ is a jibe or jeer. ‘He would sometimes . . . cast out a
jesting _flirt_ at me.’ (Morley’s _History of Thomas Ellwood_,
1895, p. 104.) Swift also uses the word.

An under-bred, fine-spoken fellow, etc. The first
version reads—

A fine-spoken Custom-house Officer he,

Who smil’d as he gaz’d on the Ven’son and me.

but I hate ostentation. Cf. Beau Tibbs:—‘She
was bred, _but that’s between ourselves_, under the inspection of the
Countess of All-night.’ (_Citizen of the World_, 1762, i.
238.)

We’ll have Johnson, and Burke. Cf. Boileau, _Sat._
iii. ll. 25–6, which Goldsmith had in mind:—

Molière avec Tartufe y doit jouer son rôle,

Et Lambert, qui plus est, m’a donné sa parole.

What say you—a pasty? It shall, and it must.
The first version reads—

I’ll take no denial—you shall, and you must.

Mr. J. H. Lobban, _Goldsmith, Select Poems_, 1900, notes a
hitherto undetected similarity between this and the ‘It _must_, and
it _shall_ be a barrack, my life’ of Swift’s _Grand Question
Debated_. See also ll. 56 and 91.

No stirring, I beg—my dear friend—my dear
friend. In the first edition—

No words, my dear GOLDSMITH! my very good Friend!

Mr. Lobban compares:—

‘Good morrow, good captain.’ ‘I’ll wait on you down,’—

‘You shan’t stir a foot.’ ‘You’ll think me a clown.’

‘And nobody with me at sea but myself.’ This is
almost a textual quotation from one of the letters of Henry Frederick,
Duke of Cumberland, to Lady Grosvenor, a correspondence which in 1770 gave
great delight to contemporary caricaturists and scandal-mongers. Other
poets besides Goldsmith seem to have been attracted by this particular
lapse of his illiterate Royal Highness, since it is woven into a ballad
printed in _The Public Advertiser_ for August 2 in the above
year:—

The Miser who wakes in a Fright for his Pelf,

And finds _no one by him except his own Self_, etc.

When come to the place, etc. Cf. Boileau, _ut
supra_, ll. 31–4:—

A peine étais-je entré, que ravi de me voir,

Mon homme, en m’embrassant, m’est venu recevoir;

Et montrant à mes yeux une allégresse entière,

Nous n’avons, m’a-t-il dit, ni Lambert ni Molière.

Lambert the musician, it may be added, had the special reputation of
accepting engagements which he never kept.

and t’other with Thrale. Henry Thrale, the
Southwark brewer, and the husband of Mrs. Thrale, afterwards Mrs. Piozzi.
Johnson first made his acquaintance in 1765. Strahan complained to Boswell
that, by this connexion, Johnson ‘was in a great measure absorbed from the
society of his old friends.’
(Birkbeck Hill’s _Boswell_, 1887, iii. 225.) Line 72 in the
first edition reads—

The one at the House, and the other with THRALE.

They both of them merry and authors like you.
‘They’ should apparently be ‘they’re.’ The first version reads—

Who dabble and write in the Papers—like you.

Some think he writes Cinna—he owns to Panurge.
‘Panurge’ and ‘Cinna’ are signatures which were frequently to be found at
the foot of letters addressed to the _Public Advertiser_ in
1770–1 in support of Lord Sandwich and the Government. They are said to
have been written by Dr. W. Scott, Vicar of Simonburn, Northumberland, and
chaplain of Greenwich Hospital, both of which preferments had been given
him by Sandwich. In 1765 he had attacked Lord Bute and his policy over the
signature of ‘Anti-Sejanus.’ ‘Sandwich and his parson Anti-Sejanus [are]
hooted off the stage’—writes Walpole to Mann, March 21, 1766.
According to Prior, it was Scott who visited Goldsmith in his Temple
chambers, and invited him to ‘draw a venal quill’ for Lord North’s
administration. Goldsmith’s noble answer, as reported by his reverend
friend, was—‘I can earn as much as will supply my wants without
writing for any party; the assistance therefore you offer is unnecessary
to me.’ (_Life_, 1837, ii. 278.) There is a caricature portrait
of Scott at p. 141 of _The London Museum_ for February, 1771,
entitled ‘Twitcher’s Advocate,’ ‘Jemmy Twitcher’ being the nickname of
Lord Sandwich.

Swinging, great, huge. ‘Bishop Lowth has just
finished the Dramas, and sent me word, that although I have paid him the
most _swinging_ compliment he ever received, he likes the whole book
more than he can say.’ (_Memoirs of Hannah More_, 1834, i.
236.)

pasty. The first version has Ven’son.’

So there I sat, etc. This couplet is not in the
first version.

And, ‘Madam,’ quoth he. Mr. Lobban again quotes
Swift’s _Grand Question Debated_:—

And ‘Madam,’ says he, ‘if such dinners you give

You’ll ne’er want for parsons as long as you live.’

These slight resemblances, coupled with the more obvious likeness of the
‘Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff’ of _ Retaliation_ (ll. 145–6)
to the _Noueds_ and _ Bluturks_ and _Omurs_ and stuff’
(also pointed out by Mr. Lobban) are interesting, because they show
plainly that Goldsmith remembered the works of Swift far better than _The
New Bath Guide_, which has sometimes been supposed to have set the
tune to the _Haunch_ and _Retaliation_.

‘may this bit be my poison.’ The gentleman in _She
Stoops to Conquer_, Act i, who is ‘obligated to dance a bear.’ Uses
the same asseveration. Cf. also Squire Thornhill’s somewhat similar
formula in chap. vii of _The Vicar of Wakefield_, 1766, i. 59.

‘The tripe,’ quoth the Jew, etc. The first version
reads—

‘Your Tripe!’ quoth the _Jew_, ‘if the truth I may speak,

I could eat of this Tripe seven days in the week.’

Re-echoed, i.e. ‘returned’ in the first edition.

thot. This, probably by a printer’s error, is
altered to ‘that’ in the second version. But the first reading is the more
in keeping, besides being a better rhyme.

Wak’d Priam. Cf. 2 _Henry IV_, Act I,
Sc. 1:—

Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,

So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,

Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night.

And would have told him half his Troy was burnt.

sicken’d over by learning. Cf. _Hamlet_,
Act iii, Sc. 1:

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is _sicklied o’er_ with the pale cast of thought.

Notwithstanding the condemnation of Shakespeare in the _Present State
of Polite Learning_, and elsewhere, Goldsmith frequently weaves
Shakespearean recollections into his work. Cf. _She Stoops to Conquer_,
1773, Act i, p. 13, ‘We wanted no ghost to tell us that’ (_Hamlet_,
Act i, Sc. 5); and Act i, p. 9, where he uses Falstaff’s words (1 _Henry
IV_, Act v, Sc. 1):—

Would it were bed-time and all were well.

as very well known. The first version has, ‘’tis
very well known.’

EPITAPH ON THOMAS PARNELL.

This epitaph, apparently never used, was published with _The Haunch
of Venison_, 1776; and is supposed to have been written about 1770.
In that year Goldsmith wrote a _Life of Thomas Parnell, D.D._,
to accompany an edition of his poems, printed for Davies of Russell
Street. Parnell was born in 1679, and died at Chester in 1718, on his way
to Ireland. He was buried at Trinity Church in that town, on the 24th of
October. Goldsmith says that his father and uncle both knew Parnell (_Life
of Parnell_, 1770, p. v), and that he received assistance from the
poet’s nephew, Sir John Parnell, the singing gentleman who figures in
Hogarth’s _Election Entertainment_. Why Goldsmith should write
an epitaph upon a man who died ten years before his own birth, is not easy
to explain. But Johnson also wrote a Latin one, which he gave to Boswell.
(Birkbeck Hill’s _Life_, 1887, iv. 54.)

gentle Parnell’s name. Mitford compares Pope on
Parnell [_Epistle to Harley_, l. iv]:—

With softest manners, gentlest Arts adorn’d.

Pope published Parnell’s _Poems_ in 1722, and his sending them
to Harley, Earl of Oxford, after the latter’s disgrace and retirement, was
the occasion of the foregoing epistle, from which the following lines
respecting Parnell may also be cited:—

For him, thou oft hast bid the World attend,

Fond to forget the statesman in the friend;

For SWIFT and him despis’d the farce of state,

The sober follies of the wise and great;

Dext’rous the craving, fawning crowd to quit,

And pleas’d to ’scape from Flattery to Wit.

his sweetly-moral lay. Cf. _The Hermit_,
the _Hymn to Contentment_, the _Night Piece on Death_—which
Goldsmith certainly recalled in his own _City Night-Piece_. Of
the last-named Goldsmith says (_Life of Parnell_, 1770, p.
xxxii), not without an obvious side-stroke at Gray’s too-popular _Elegy_,
that it ‘deserves every praise, and I should suppose with very little
amendment, might be made to surpass all those night pieces and church yard
scenes that have since appeared.’ This is certainly (as Longfellow sings)
to

rustling hear in every breeze

The laurels of Miltiades.

Of Parnell, Hume wrote (_Essays_, 1770, i. 244) that ‘after the
fiftieth reading; [he] is as fresh as at the first.’ But Gray (speaking—it
should be explained—of a dubious volume of his posthumous works)
said: ‘Parnell is the dung-hill of Irish Grub Street’ (Gosse’s Gray’s
_Works_, 1884, ii. 372). Meanwhile, it is his fate to-day to be
mainly remembered by three words (not always attributed to him) in a
couplet from what Johnson styled ‘perhaps the meanest’ of his
performances, the _Elegy— to an Old Beauty_:—

And all that’s madly wild, or oddly gay,

We call it only _pretty Fanny’s way_.

THE CLOWN’S REPLY.

This, though dated ‘Edinburgh 1753,’ was first printed in _Poems and
Plays_, 1777, p. 79.

John Trott is a name for a clown or commonplace
character. Miss Burney (_Diary_, 1904, i. 222) says of Dr.
Delap:—‘As to his person and appearance, they are much in the _John-trot_
style.’ Foote, Chesterfield, and Walpole use the phrase; Fielding
Scotticizes it into ‘John Trott-Plaid, Esq.’; and Bolingbroke employs it
as a pseudonym.

I shall ne’er see your graces. ‘I shall never see
a Goose again without thinking on Mr. _Neverout_,’—says the
‘brilliant Miss Notable’ in Swift’s _Polite Conversation_,
1738, p. 156.

EPITAPH ON EDWARD PURDON.

The occasion of this quatrain, first published as Goldsmith’s* in _Poems
and Plays_, 1777, p. 79, is to be found in Forster’s _Life and
Times of Oliver Goldsmith_, 1871, ii. 60. Purdon died on March 27,
1767 (_Gentleman’s Magazine_, April, 1767, p. 192). ‘“Dr.
Goldsmith made this epitaph,” says William Ballantyne [the author of _Mackliniana_],
“in his way from his chambers in the Temple to the Wednesday evening’s
club at the Globe. _I think he will never come back_, I believe he
said. I was
sitting by him, and he repeated it more than twice. (I think he will never
come back.)”’ Purdon had been at Trinity College, Dublin, with Goldsmith;
he had subsequently been a foot soldier; ultimately he became a
‘bookseller’s hack.’ He wrote an anonymous letter to Garrick in 1759, and
translated the _ Henriade_ of Voltaire. This translation
Goldsmith is supposed to have revised, and his own life of Voltaire was to
have accompanied it, though finally the Memoir and Translation seem to
have appeared separately. (Cf. prefatory note to _Memoirs of M. de
Voltaire_ in Gibbs’s _Works of Oliver Goldsmith_, 1885,
iv. 2.)

* It had previously appeared as an extempore by a correspondent in
the _Weekly Magazine_, Edin., August 12, 1773 (_Notes and
Queries_, February 14, 1880).

Forster says further, in a note, ‘The original . . . is the epitaph on “La
Mort du Sieur Etienne”:—

Il est au bout de ses travaux,

Il a passé, le Sieur Etienne;

En ce monde il eut tant des maux

Qu’on ne croit pas qu’il revienne.

With this perhaps Goldsmith was familiar, and had therefore less scruple
in laying felonious hands on the epigram in the _Miscellanies_
(Swift, xiii. 372):—

Well, then, poor G—— lies underground!

So there’s an end of honest Jack.

So little justice here he found,

’Tis ten to one he’ll ne’er come back.’

Mr. Forster’s ‘felonious hands’ recalls a passage in Goldsmith’s _Life
of Parnell_, 1770, in which, although himself an habitual sinner in
this way, he comments gravely upon the practice of plagiarism:—‘It
was the fashion with the wits of the last age, to conceal the places from
whence they took their hints or their subjects. A trifling acknowledgment
would have made that lawful prize, which may now be considered as plunder’
(p. xxxii).

EPILOGUE FOR LEE LEWES’S BENEFIT.

This benefit took place at Covent Garden on May 7, 1773, the pieces
performed being Rowe’s _Lady Jane Grey_, and a popular
pantomimic after-piece by Theobald, called _Harlequin Sorcerer_,
Charles Lee Lewes (1740–1803) was the original ‘Young Marlow’ of _She
Stoops to Conquer_. When that part was thrown up by
‘Gentleman’ Smith, Shuter, the ‘Mr. Hardcastle’ of the comedy, suggested
Lewes, who was the harlequin of the theatre, as a substitute, and the
choice proved an admirable one. Goldsmith was highly pleased with his
performance, and in consequence wrote for him this epilogue. It was first
printed by Evans, 1780, i. 112–4.

in thy black aspect, i.e. the half-mask of
harlequin, in which character the Epilogue was spoken.

rosined lightning, stage-lightning, in which
rosin is an ingredient.