Some imitations of the play have appeared on the French stage; among others La Fausse Auberge a prose comedy in two acts which came out at the Italian theatre at Paris in 1789, and experienced tolerable success. CHAPTER XXIII. Fracas with Evans the bookseller.-An unfinished novel.-Claims upon his charity. -The Grumbler.-Dictionary of Arts and Sciences.-History of Greece. THE applause bestowed upon his comic labours was too great not to draw from less successful candidates for public favour, a portion of that abuse frequently incurred by superior merit. A letter of this description appeared in the London Packet newspaper, of the 24th March, which he would no doubt have treated with the neglect * "SIR, "To Dr. Goldsmith; "Vous vous moyez par vanité. "The happy knack which you have learned of puffing your own compositions provokes me to come forth. You have not been the editor of newspapers and magazines, not to discover the trick of literary humbug. But the gauze is so thin, that the very foolish part of the world see through it, and discover the Doctor's monkey face and cloven foot. Your poetic vanity, is as unpardonable as your personal; would man believe it, and will woman bear it, to be told, that for hours, the great Goldsmith will stand surveying his grotesque orang-outang figure in a pier glass. Was but the lovely H-k as much enamoured, you would not sigh, my gentle swain, in vain. But your vanity is preposterous. How will this same bard of Bedlam ring the changes in praise of Goldy! But what has he to be either proud or vain of? The Traveller is a flimsy poem, built upon false principles; principles diametrically opposite to liberty. What is the Good-natured Man, but a poor, water-gruel, dramatic dose? What is the Deserted Village, but a pretty poem, of easy numbers, without fancy, dignity, genius or fire? And pray what may be the last speaking pantomine so praised by the Doctor himself, but an incoherent piece of stuff, the figure of a woman, with a fish's tail, without plot, incident, or intrigue. We are made to laugh at stale, dull jokes, wherein we mistake pleasantry for wit, and grimace for humour; wherein every scene is unnatural, and inconsistent with the rules, the laws of nature, and of the drama; viz. Two gentlemen come to a man of fortune's house, eat, drink, sleep, &c. and take it for an inn. The one is intended as a lover to the daughter; he talks with her for some hours, and when he sees her again in a different dress, he treats her as a bar-girl, and swears she squinted. He abuses the master of the house, and threatens to kick him out of his own doors. The Squire whom we are told is to be a fool, proves the most sensible being of the piece; and he makes out a whole act, by bidding his mother lie close behind a bush, persuading her that his father, her own husband, is a highwayman, and that he is come to cut their throats; and to give his cousin an opportunity to go off, he drives his mother over hedges, ditches, and through ponds. There is not, sweet sucking Johnson, a natural stroke in the whole play, but the young fellow's giving the stolen jewels to the mother supposing her to be the landlady. That Mr. Colman did no justice to this piece, I honestly allow; that he told all his friends such things deserve and which he had hitherto always shown, but for the injudicious interference of a military acquaintance, one of his countrymen, Captain Higgins, who with something of the national pugnacity, thought it necessary to involve his friend in a personal encounter in answer to this very silly and very harmless abuse. An unfinished fragment intended for a detail of the affair, and no doubt meant for publication in lieu of that which afterwards appeared, was found among his papers in the handwriting of an amanu ensis. "As I find the public have been informed by the newspapers of a slight fray which happened between me and the editor of an evening paper; to prevent their being imposed upon, the account is shortly this. "A friend of mine came on Friday to inform me that a paragrnph was inserted against me in the London Packet which I was in honour bound to resent. I read the paper, and considered it in the same light as he did. I went to the editor and struck him with my cane on the back. A scuffle ensued ***" A few new particulars of the assault upon the publisher are thus communicated by a surviving witness, whose recollection of the occurrence is but little impaired by time.* "The circumstances attending the personal contest between Dr. Goldsmith and Evans the bookseller with whom I lived at the time, are to the best of my recollection as follow. "A letter signed Tom Tickle appeared in the London Packet of which Evans was the publisher, reflecting on the person and literary character of Goldsmith and introducing the name of one of his female acquaintance. Instigated as it was believed by injudicious friends, he came to Paternoster Row accompanied by Captain Horneck of the Guards,† and inquiring of me whether Evans was at home, I called the latter from an adjoining room and heard Goldsmith say to him-'I have called in consequence of a scurrilous attack in your paper upon me (my name is Goldsmith) and an unwarrantable liberty taken with the name of a young lady. As for myself I care little, but her name must not be sported with.' Evans declaring his ignorance of the matter, said he would speak to the editor, and stooping down for the file of the paper to look for the offensive article, the Poet struck him smartly with his cane across the it would be damned, I positively aver; and from such ungenerous insinuations, without a dramatic merit, it rose to public notice, and it is now the ton to go to see it; though I never saw a person that either liked it or approved it, any more than the absurd plot of the Homes' tragedy of Alonzo. Mr. Goldsmith, correct your ar. rogance! Reduce your vanity; and endeavour to believe, as a man, you are of the plainest sort; and as an author, but a mortal piece of mediocrity. Brise le miroir infidèle, "TOM TICKLE." * Mr. Harris, late of St. Paul's Churchyard, whose publications for youth are so well known, and who succeeded to the business of Francis Newbery, the nephew, not the son, of John Newbery. + Other accounts state it to have been Captain Higgins. back. Evans who was sturdy, returned the blow with interest, when in the scuffle a lamp suspended over head was broken and the oil fell upon the combatants; one of the shopmen was sent for a constable, but in the meantime Dr. Kenrick who had been all the time in the adjoining room, and who it was pretty certain was really author of the newspaper article, came forward, separated the parties, and sent Goldsmith home in a coach. "Captain Horneck expressed his surprise at the assault, declaring he had no previous intimation of such a design on the part of the Poet, who had merely requested that he should accompany him to Paternoster Row. Evans took steps to indict him for an assault; but subsequently a compromise took place by his assailant agreeing to pay fifty pounds to the Welsh charity." The affair gave ample employment to the newspapers for several days. A sense of common danger, on all such occasions, unites a body which almost claims to be irresponsible not only against the law but against individuals who attempt to resent their untruths or provocations; and Goldsmith was assailed for the gross outrage, as it was called, of beating a man in his own house.* Among other things urged against him was that of having been formerly editor of a Magazine, in which he had no doubt taken as many liberties with others as had been in the present instance taken with him. To the latter part of this accusation, from which as far as can be discovered he was quite free, he however thought proper to reply in the following address, printed in the Daily Advertiser of the 31st March, 1773. "To the Public. "Lest it should be supposed that I have been willing to correct in others an abuse of which I have been guilty myself, I beg leave to declare, that in all my life I never wrote or dictated a single paragraph, letter, or essay in a newspaper, except a few moral essays under the character of a Chinese, about ten years ago, in the Ledger, and a letter to which I signed my name, in the St. James's Chronicle. If the liberty of the press, therefore, has been abused, I have had no hand in it. "I have always considered the press as the protector of our freedom, as a watchful guardian, capable of uniting the weak against the encroachments of power. What concerns the public, most properly admits of a public discussion. But of late the press has turned * Of the innumerable squibs issued on the occasion, the following is a specimen:- "THE COMBAT. "While the printer was busy-to give him a blow, from defending public interest, to making inroads upon private life; from combating the strong, to overwhelming the feeble. No condition is now too obscure for its abuse, and the protector has become the tyrant of the people. In this manner the freedom of the press is beginning to sow the seeds of its own dissolution; the great must oppose it from principle, and the weak from fear; till at last every rank of mankind shall be found to give up its benefits, content with security from insults. "How to put a stop to this licentiousness by which all are indiscriminately abused, and by which vice consequently escapes in the general censure, I am unable to tell; all I could wish is that, as the law gives us no protection against the injury, so it should give calumniators no shelter after having provoked correction. The insults which we receive before the public, by being more open are the more distressing; by treating them with silent contempt, we do not pay a sufficient deference to the opinion of the world. By recurring to legal redress we too often expose the weakness of the law, which only serves to increase our mortification by failing to relieve us. In short, every man should singly consider himself as the guardian of the liberty of the press, and as far as his influence can extend, should endeavour to prevent its licentiousness becoming at last the grave of its freedom. "OLIVER GOLDSMITH." One of the jests played off upon him on this occasion was a story, that having proceeded after the engagement with injured eyes and bandaged face to his friend Dr. Johnson, complaining of the insolence and slanders of anonymous writers in the newspapers, the latter is made to reply, though with a very humble imitation of his sarcastic wit, that if he (Dr. Johnson) had attempted to resent all the slanders vented against him through such channels, he would have had by that time neither eyes to see, nor jaws to eat with. This alleged conversation some of his friends deemed it necessary to meet by a formal contradiction. What Johnson really thought and said on this occasion is told by Boswell. "On Saturday April 3d, the day after my arrival in London this year, I went to his (Dr. Johnson's) house late in the evening and sat with Mrs. Williams till he came home. I found in the London Chronicle Dr. Goldsmith's apology to the public for beating Evans the bookseller, on account of a paragraph in a newspaper published by him, which Goldsmith thought impertinent to him and to a lady of his acquaintance. "The apology was written so much in Dr. Johnson's manner that both Mrs. Williams and I supposed it to be his; but when he came home he soon undeceived us. When he said to Mrs. Williams, 'Well, Dr. Goldsmith's manifesto has got into your paper;' I asked him if Dr. Goldsmith had written it, with an air that made him see I suspected it was his, though subscribed by Dr. Goldsmith. "JOHNSON. Sir, Dr. Goldsmith would no more have asked me to have wrote such a thing as that for him, than he would have asked me to feed him with a spoon, or do any thing else that denoted his imbecility. I as much believe that he wrote it as if I had seen him do it. Sir, had he shown it to any one friend he would not have been allowed to publish it. He has indeed done it very well, but it is a foolish thing well done. I suppose he has been so much elated with the success of his new comedy, that he has thought every thing that concerned him must be of importance to the public.' In the press, the play was as successful as on the stage, not less, it is said, than six thousand copies having been sold during this and the ensuing season. It was dedicated to Dr. Johnson, as much from sincere esteem as in return for the good opinion first formed by him of the piece, and his zealous endeavours to carry it forward to representation: "I have particularly reason," he says, "to thank you for your partiality to this performance." The terms otherwise used on this occasion form a compliment of the most flattering kind. “By inscribing this slight performance to you I do not mean so much to compliment you as myself. It may do me some honour to inform the public that I have lived many years in intimacy with you. It may serve the interests of mankind also to inform them that the greatest wit may be found in a character, without impairing the most unaffected piety." The copy-right passed into the hands of Mr. Francis Newbery, who had published the Vicar of Wakefield. An anecdote connected with its transfer is thus in substance stated by the same gentleman, whose account of the quarrel has just been given, and who had abundant opportunities of knowing the fact. Being pressed by pecuniary difficulties in 1771-1772, Goldsmith had at various periods obtained the advance of two or three hundred pounds from Newbery under the engagement of writing a novel, which after the success of the Vicar of Wakefield promised to be one of the most popular speculations. Considerable delay took place in the execution of this undertaking, and when at length submitted to the perusal of the bookseller, it proved to be in great measure the plot of the comedy of the Good-natured Man, turned into a tale. Objections being taken to this, the manuscript was returned. Goldsmith declared himself unable or unwilling to write another, but in liquidation of the debt now pressingly demanded, said he should require time to look round for means of raising the money, unless Mr. Newbery chose to take the chance of a play coming forward at Covent Garden. "And yet to tell you the truth, Frank," added the candid poet in making the proposal, "there are great doubts of its success." Newbery accepted the offer, doubtful of being otherwise repaid, and the popularity of "She Stoops to Conquer," gained, according to the recollection of the narrator, above three hundred pounds more than the sum advanced to the author. This novel thus mentioned as rejected he afterwards read in the family of Mr. Bunbury, and by one of the ladies then present, is very well remembered as being taken from the comedy, though the impression remains that it was unfinished. What became of the manuscript, or the name given to it, is unknown. This uncertainty |